Dear IRR News subscriber,

What will it take for a generation of European politicians to wake up to the fascist threat? This week on IRR News, Liz Fekete laments the situation in Chemnitz in the east German state of Saxony, where police all but lost control of the streets to a fascist mob for two days, and where more far-right demonstrations are planned for the first weekend of September. The situation in Chemnitz is too close for comfort, she warns, to the events that gave rise to the pogroms in Rostock and Hoyerswerda in 1991. Germany’s resilient anti-fascist documentation centres, active in the 1990s, make this comparison too and are appealing for international support in the wake of the police’s failure to protect anyone deemed of ‘foreign appearance’.

Black and migrant women are amongst the first victims of far-right violence, and this week the IRR’s Sophia Siddiqui, writing for the online women of colour feminist magazine gal-dem, takes apart the messages of ‘fascist white feminism’. The alternative Right #120dB movement (named after the volume of a rape alarm) is spreading its racialised poison across Europe, claiming that sexual violence is ‘imported violence’ perpetrated by ‘criminal migrants’.

Our fortnightly calendar of racism and resistance further documents the impact of anti-immigrant policies on women and LGBT communities in particular.

Here in the UK, as former members of the Anti-Nazi League (ANL) and Rock Against Racism call for the launch of an ANL-type cultural and political campaign, IRR News will continue to report on the activities of locally-based anti-fascist committees across the country.

IRR News Team