by Ana Hernandez
Saturday, July 8th dozens of members of fascist organization Patriot Front marched through downtown Austin unopposed. As the 2024 elections approach there are new attempts from fascists to take to city streets and organize the fringe of supporters of the Republican Party.
July 8th was in a sense a repeat of past efforts on the part of the fascists. Beginning in 2016 assorted fascist movements, including the precursor to Patriot Front, attempted to establish presence in conventionally liberal cities like Austin, Portland, and Seattle. However, these attempts were frustrated by the people in these cities, the rallies and marches were confronted by overwhelming force and ended in police escorting the fascists to safety. The extreme reactionaries as well as the fascists saw temporary setbacks in the debacles of the Unite the Right and January 6th Riots and have since taken time to bivouac and regroup.
After four years of Democratic Party subversion, the progressive left and activist subcultures have basically been lulled into slumber or split apart, leaving an opening for organizations like Patriot Front to march unopposed. The group has learned from its bitter past humiliations and begun organizing their marches without public notice and on seemingly random dates.
This is not the group’s first time in Austin: in 2018, three members of the group confronted a neighborhood picket and boycott on Austin’s East Side, resulting in several arrests of local activists and one member of Patriot Front being sent to the hospital with a head-wound after being hit with an axe handle by a picketer. Patriot Front member and open neo-Nazi fetishist Paul Gray was among those injured. This year on March 1st, Gray appeared on Fox News to be praised by the monopoly media giant as a “former American paratrooper” joining the fight in Ukraine; the imperialist monopoly failed to mention that Gray is a committed and confessed fascist. Gray undoubtedly finds his place among one of the numerous fascist groups in Ukraine financed by US imperialism.
In November of 2018, local anarchist/liberal bookstore MonkeyWrench Books was protested by Patriot Front. Several days later, the store had its windows shattered on the anniversary of Kristallnacht, a Nazifascist atrocity in which storefronts owned by German Jews were smashed along with lynchings and burning of homes.
Between 2018 and 2020 Austin saw energetic activity from Antifascists including educational and cultural events, social gatherings, and violent strategic actions. For a time it would appear that the city enjoyed a reprieve from groups like Patriot Front. The lack of fascist activity in the open can be attributed to a general united front to stop the minuscule fascist movements from growing, unity which no longer exists, but must be re-established as the far-right begins to get off the ropes.
On the Fascist Menace
The threat of fascism must not be embellished with alarmist notions, the conditions for any fascist group, organization or party for taking state power are currently non-existent for a number of reasons. First, they have not managed a type of populism capable of recruiting average working people in large numbers as their idols of the past did. Second, the ruling class in the US is not so divided that they would accept forced corporativization of independent companies into single monopolies. The nature of private ownership in the US means the ruling class still continues to prefer reactionary democratic liberalism, and is not likely to go in for fascism which is inherently unstable. Third, and most importantly, the success of fascism as a solution to capitalist crisis always depends on the threat to the ruling class posed by the Communist Party, a threat that is non-existent in the US today.
The real threat posed by the fascists today is one directly impacting local people. A fascist who has no ability to gain power will still use terror tactics against the population, especially those they deem too far to the left, or belonging to a demographic they despise. Fascist violence is their propaganda, the same as a march. The only way to undermine their propaganda is to not fear them and to fight to build organizations among the people that are firmly in the people’s interests, organizations that can react much faster than individuals when it comes down to halting an unannounced fascist parade, organizations that can work together against imperialism and all its manifestations of reaction. The principal means of combating fascism in the given conditions is educating the working classes en masse in their interests, amidst class combat. The enhancement and spread of class consciousness erodes support and sympathy for fascism among the broad masses.
