 |
SUMMARY OF EVENTS
Antifascists in Charlotte propagated an event to de-platform fascists at 4 PM at the Martin Luther King statue in Marshall Park and arrived there at that time. From 4:00 until about 5:30 they stayed at that location, which is on some high ground near the perimeter of the park. During this relatively long amount of time a fascist, who was recording this group, was identified and run out of the park by local antifascists. Antifascists in Charlotte did not move the perimeter down closer to the other antifascists, as well as the Indivisible crowd that was gathering, until it was getting dark and the rally was starting by the pond. In total there were about 45 masked antifascists and probably another 55 liberal attendants there. During the rally there were some uniting points among all those present, but there was also some back and forth between antifascists and Indivisible when the organizers of the Indivisible march promoted electoral politics and the murderous protectors of capital, CMPD. After this a sidewalk march lasting about 45 minutes went on throughout downtown, leading back to the park. About half way through the march the liberals separated from the larger group of antifascists (which consisted of both Charlotte and visiting comrades). The reasons that the march split are not completely clear to us. The march ended back at Marshall Park and it was over at that time.During this demonstration there were things that went relatively well, and things that need great improvement. The best things that antifascists in Charlotte did represented a refusal to compromise politics. These good aspects principally derived from unity in strategy, and manifested in two ways: physically driving out the one fascist who showed, and shutting down the politicians who made statements in support of the police. The errors that occurred here, which were serious and many, were due principally to mechanical materialism and also manifested in lack of thorough planning.
SUCCESS OR FAILURE?
To
put Thursday’s action into context, this was the first antifascist
action we have had disciplined participation in. Concealing one’s
identity is a misdemeanor in the state of North Carolina. What can be
said is this experience put into practice the slogan, “dare to struggle, dare to win” because
for once in Charlotte a group united by a common enemy used the masking
tactic and encouraged sympathetic onlookers to join with flags and
masks. Legalism is very popular in the US left today, and our city and
state make no exception to this. Legalists would insist that we in
practice tail the anti-mask law— in facing this question they often show
up to antifascist protests unmasked using the argument, “it’s not worth
risking arrest this time.” But to get arrested for this would’ve been
worth the benefit of showing some relative degree of militancy, however
modest. For what’s one misdemeanor charge compared to the risk of posing
absolutely no threat by not incorporating even the most basic tactic in
militancy?
However, overall we cannot claim yesterday’s action as a complete victory. It had relatively progressive aspects that needed to happen and be tested out. But if we measure the success by the fact that only one fascist showed up and that no one was arrested, then we are only using factors determined by outside forces. To do this would neglect the necessity for antifascists to take on responsibility for internal things that happened, and be accountable to our ideology: Maoism. The analysis of this action comes down to one fundamental question: can all the shortcomings be blamed on outside factors, or can we learn from these failures, synthesize them into more knowledge, and in the future make the leap from knowledge to practice again?
The Peruvian Communist Party (PCP) writes in its Fundamental Documents, when speaking about Mao, that:
“In Marxist philosophy he developed the essence of dialectics, the law of contradiction, establishing it as the only fundamental law; and besides his profound dialectical understanding of the theory of knowledge, whose center are the two leaps that make up its law (from practice to knowledge and vice versa, but with knowledge to practice being the main one).”
