Last Wednesday the proud boys alongside other far right groups blocked a road in Michigan leading to a hospital, to protest against and defy the lockdown.
The response from fascists to the coronavirus pandemic has either been to celebrate and attempt to worsen the effects of covid19, to deny its existence or to blame the virus on foreigners and marginalised groups.
At the most extreme end “black pilled” accelerationists, who hope a worsening economy will mean a race war happens sooner, slashed the tyres of ambulances at a hospital in Kent. Successor groups of Sonnenkrieg and Atomwaffen divisions have encouraged their followers to spread panic, while eco-fascists and Malthusians have celebrated the virus, taking up the slogan “Humans are the virus, corona is the cure.”
Other fascists have variously tried to blame the spread of corona on Hasidic Jews, Muslims, the Chinese, Romanians or even 5g phones.
Meanwhile the far left have responded mainly by setting up and building mutual aid groups to ensure people in quarantine get food delivered and people who are broke and out of work aren’t left to starve. Other actions taken include banner drops, distributing homemade hand sanitiser, squatting to house homeless people and making demands on the government to distribute personal protective equipment to key workers.
We’re expecting the period of isolation to be followed by a recession worse then what we faced a decade ago. Right wing governments are likely to ensure the working class are hit hardest and the rich do better than ever out of this, using austerity measures as an excuse for privatisation and neoliberalism.
In times of economic downturn people are increasingly drawn to both the far left and far right. We plan to respond by stepping up resistance to the growing far right threat as well as bailiffs, police racism and immigration enforcement. Meanwhile we’ve got to start creating the society we’d rather live in now, continuing mutual aid networks beyond the pandemic, opening up our groups to an influx of new people and ideas and organising to meet the material needs of those of us hit hardest.
#coronavirus #covid19 #FckBoris #LeaveNoOneBehind #L161 #OpinionPiece
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