Rose City Antifascists celebrates its fourth year as an active antifascist organization this October. We would like to take the time to reflect on our successes, thank those of you who helped us over the years, and renew our commitment to eliminating organized bigotry in our city.

Flash back to 2007. Volksfront--an international neo-Nazi organization that was founded in Oregon's prison system--teamed up with the neo-Nazi Hammerskin Nation gang to bring over one hundred violent racists to the Willamette Valley. The president and founder of Volksfront, Randal Krager, called Portland his home, and large white supremacist gatherings--like Hammerfest, Aryan Fest, etc.--had been taking place in our region on a semi-regular basis for decades.

In four short years, the landscape has changed. We attribute this in no small part to the hard work of those active in the fight against fascism. There has not been a single large gathering of neo-Nazis in the Portland area since the Ad-Hoc Coalition Against Racism and Fascism--RCA's predecessor--was successful in shutting down Hammerfest, and Volksfront's Oregon leadership no longer reside in Portland after RCA's repeated campaigns exposing their white power activity. Our city is not a safe organizing base for fascists.

Over the past four years, RCA has maintained constant research and monitoring of organized fascist activity in our area, received hundreds of tips, given workshops, hosted a national anti-racist conference, participated in strategy sessions with neighbors about combating fascist activity in their area, mobilized to protest bigotry, "outed" active white power organizers to their neighbors and workplaces, published news reports, developed educational materials to fight bigotry, and supported fellow antifascists in the Pacific Northwest.

We couldn't have done it without help. Rose City Antifascists sincerely thanks our friends and allies, anonymous tipsters, event spaces which have taken a stand, community members and neighbors who have shared our research or contributed their own, and all of those who make confronting bigotry a priority in their lives. Thank you for fighting alongside us.

As we enter into our fifth year of actively opposing fascism in Portland, we remember ways in which RCA has had a positive impact on our city. We also take note of the many sobering reminders that organized racism, homophobia, and other oppression remains a big problem in our area. Rose City Antifa will continue to build off of our successes, and learn from our missteps. Our organization remains absolutely committed to opposing fascism and helping build a culture of dignity and respect in Portland.
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Call to Action:
Oppose First Public Meeting of Anti-Gay Mars Hill Church
10 AM this Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 3210 SE Taylor



Last month Mars Hill--an evangelical megachurch with nine branches in Washington and one in New Mexico--postponed its first public meeting after a dance-in and kiss-in was organized by LGBTQ folks in Portland to protest the church’s hateful message equating homosexuality with cancer. Mars Hill claimed the postponement was a result of parking concerns due to the Belmont Street Fair scheduled to take place the same day.

In an effort to save face, Mars Hill Pastor Tim Smith and a colleague met with the Q Center’s Executive Director Barbara McCullough-Jones and Operations Manager Paul Fukui, and waited for the controversy to blow over.

We are not satisfied with this empty gesture that fails to address Mars Hill’s active promotion of bigotry and dehumanization of LGBTQ people, women, yoga practitioners, and others.

The church has announced plans to open its doors to the public for the first time at 10 AM this Sunday, October 16th, 2011 at 3210 SE Taylor.

We urge active opposition to the scheduled opening.  Let’s show Mars Hill that organizing against LGBTQ people will not fly in the Rose City!  

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BOOT DAVID IRVING OUT OF TOWN!

David Irving’s last anti-Semitic speaking engagement in Portland was met with resistance from local anti-racist and antifascist groups.  This time, we intend to shut him down.

Irving’s speaking tour serves as a platform for spreading lies and hate, and as a source of income for Irving.

Will we allow a fascist to financially gain from spreading racist propaganda without opposition in the Rose City?

Not a chance.

Please join Rose City Antifascists in letting David Irving know that racism in any form is not welcome in Portland. Continue checking our blog for  opportunities to get involved.

For more information on David Irving, please refer to our 2009 Portland Indymedia release here, and South Side Chicago ARA's release below the cut.

As always, if you have information or tips about racist or fascist organizing in Portland, please contact us at fight_them_back [at] riseup [dot] net or call our voicemail tip line at 971-533-7832.
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Graffiti at Irvington School -- photo Ross William Hamilton/The Oregonian
The Oregonian reports that the Irvington School in northeast Portland has been tagged with racist graffiti. On the morning of Saturday, January 8, a resident near the school discovered spray-painted messages which according to the newspaper “included swastikas, racial slurs and the words ‘white power.’” If you have any information surrounding this incident or other instances of racist propaganda and intimidation, please contact our organization. We will be monitoring this situation.
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Overview

Despite the concern of anti-fascists and anti-racists, the Austrian far-Right post-industrial project Allerseelen proceeded on a West Coast tour from December 15 – 22. Four of the six Allerseelen dates were in support of the popular Portland “dark metal” group Agalloch. These four shows took place in Portland, Seattle, Los Angeles, and San Francisco. In response to this Agalloch / Allerseelen tour—and two earlier Allerseelen shows without Agalloch in Portland and Salem—Rose City Antifascists issued a statement documenting the politics and associations of Gerhard Petak and his Allerseelen project. Significant controversy followed. We aim here to address some of the responses to our activity; to clarify our position in cases where the content and intent of our writing has been misrepresented or misperceived; and finally to stress why we believe antifascism is important, why counterculture matters, and why fascist countercultural efforts should be opposed.
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On the night of Saturday, December 11, militant anti-racists distributed over a hundred “Wanted” posters in Oregon City and downtown Milwaukie. The posters, which were stapled and pasted in both locations, ask for community members to provide information on individuals associated with Volksfront International. Read the Rose City Antifa release about this action here.

The following day, December 12, Rose City Antifa released another appeal for information, leaking 120 photos of Volksfront members and their gatherings to the activist website Portland Indymedia, and again asking for information on those pictured. See the albums here.
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This December, the Austrian far-Right “post-industrial” and martial music project Allerseelen is set to give a series of performances on the US West Coast. Allerseelen is the project of Gerhard Petak (AKA Kadmon and Gerhard Hallstatt) who also incorporates other performers into the act when playing live. Several of the Allerseelen shows are scheduled to take place in larger venues supporting the prominent Portland, Oregon “dark metal” group Agalloch, who will be touring to promote their new album. The hitching of Allerseelen onto the tour of a larger heavy metal act will provide new outlets for Petak’s extreme-Right messages. Agalloch, the group which Allerseelen will support, is at present crossing over from underground cult status to something nearer the mainstream, the group’s latest album even being promoted with a write-up and “exclusive first listen” on National Public Radio’s music webpage. It is troubling that the accompanying act Agalloch chose to expose its growing audiences to, has a long history of far-Right involvement and propaganda, and is an attempt to make aspects of fascist discourse acceptable. (Allerseelen will first play two separate headlining shows before joining the Agalloch tour.) Agalloch’s decision to further link itself to Petak / Allerseelen by appearing on a new compilation CD released by Petak’s label, is likewise of concern to anti-fascists and is of similar poor judgment.

Linked below you will find an article describing Gerhard Petak's far-right political views and associations—while Petak has had contact with some people who could be fairly described as Nazis or neo-Nazis, Petak has also criticized the Third Reich in print, and we do not describe him personally as a Nazi. We place Petak’s viewpoints and advocacy on the terrain of neo-fascism and the far-Right, especially that of the European New Right. Some other ideological influences will be discussed in passing. If at times Petak’s viewpoints appear as a jumble of varied and even opposing influences, it is worth noting that fascism has always been a syncretic ideological movement—one that attempts to fuse differing elements into a single whole. Indeed, this syncretic nature has given rise to one of fascism’s primary qualities, that of simultaneously being “A and not A” and often harboring diametrically opposed impulses, such as attempting mass political mobilization while also vocalizing contempt for mass society. These contradictions unfortunately do not render fascism or fascist politics harmless.

The dates of Allerseelen’s tour are:

Waldteufel + Allerseelen:
15 Dec 2010 Portland
16 Dec 2010 Salem (+ HELL, Barghest)

Agalloch + Allerseelen:
17 Dec 2010 Portland OR Berbati's Pan (+ Aerial Ruin)
18 Dec 2010 Seattle WA Neumo’s (+ Alda + Waldteufel)
21 Dec 2010 Los Angeles CA Ultra Violet Social Club (+ Winterthrall)
22 Dec 2010 San Francisco CA Great American Music Hall (+ Dispirit)

We invite Agalloch to clarify its position towards the far-Right and fascism, and to indicate what precisely it meant by promoting Allerseelen to its audience. We furthermore invite Nanotear Booking Agency—Agalloch’s agent and responsible for the Agalloch / Allerseelen shows—to make clear why it has adopted a fascist-friendly policy of giving a platform to far-Right ideologues such as Allerseelen.
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On the same day as Portland Police Chief Mike Reese and Mayor Sam Adams announced that Officer Ron Frashour would be dismissed from the Portland Police for shooting and killing an unarmed Black man this January, news also broke of minor discipline against Portland Police Captain Mark Kruger. As Maxine Bernstein of The Oregonian reported this Tuesday, November 16, Police Chief Mike Reese placed Kruger on 80 hours unpaid leave, required him to take a “Tools for Tolerance” training, and tied him to an unspecified “mentorship arrangement” lasting from between half a year to two years. This internal discipline is related to Kruger’s placing of a memorial to five WWII German soldiers in Rocky Butte Park approximately a decade ago. Rose City Antifascists recently released a statement about Kruger, the accusations of Nazi sympathy that have been swirling around him since 2003, and the complicity of the City Attorney’s Office and previous Police Chiefs in covering for Kruger.   

In our statement on Mark Kruger published November 13—before news of Kruger’s discipline was released to the public—we argued: “While we are interested in seeing how this situation develops, we are not holding our breath for Kruger to face meaningful consequences for his actions.” While we do not consider that Kruger’s brief unpaid leave is substantial discipline for his Nazi hero-worship, institutional forces did move quicker than we expected, in fact before we even published our analysis. Furthermore, we suggested that the Portland Police Association (PPA) would leap to Kruger’s defense. While it is possible that there will be words from the PPA on this issue, Kruger has in fact waived his right to arbitration regarding the imposed discipline, probably because it is little more than a slap on the wrist. The PPA has instead focused its outrage on the dismissal of Ron Frashour and the discipline of three other police regarding the killing of Aaron Campbell earlier this year: “Today we can say that the rank and file of the Portland Police Bureau have lost faith in their leaders.” Inasmuch as our analysis differed from the actual turn of events, this seems due to an underestimation of the current crisis of policing in Portland, which has proved deep enough to lead to some surprises. (This crisis is not just within the corridors in power, but is also a factor of pressure brought on the City—highly visible and politically embarrassing responses from Black community organizations plus allies following the Campbell killing, efforts such as the Fire Frashour campaign, and even street disturbances such as the near-riot that followed the Police killing of Jack Dale Collins in March, as well as subsequent anarchist sabotage.) Given that Kruger was neither demoted nor fired, our analysis was nevertheless not too far from the mark.

On November 16, Mark Kruger also issued a public letter of apology, stating yet again that his interest was purely “in military history,” that he has no “admiration for Nazism,” and that his actions were subject to “misperception”—all claims that significantly stretch the bounds of believability. The November 12 memorandum confirming Kruger’s discipline—also made public on Tuesday—provides further information about the German soldiers memorialized by Kruger. As well the already-known names of Waffen SS member Michael Wittman, and Wehrmacht leader Harald von Hirschfeld (involved in a massacre of thousands of prisoners) the names of the three other German soldiers on Kruger’s plaques are now also public information. These names are Erich Bärenfänger, a Wehrmacht officer who took part in the Battle of Berlin and who was briefly Hitler’s deputy; Wolfgang Luth, who destroyed dozens of vessels as a U-Boat commander; and Walter Nowotny, at one time the Luftwaffe’s greatest killer. Kruger’s apology letter absurdly claims that he did not know that Hirschfeld was involved in war crimes, because there were not “the internet’s research tools of today” a decade ago. Within this letter, Kruger does not discuss Wittman’s membership in the SS. Now that Bärenfänger’s name has been released, we know that another of those memorialized by Kruger was part of the NSDAP (Nazi Party) machinery. Bärenfänger joined the SA (“Sturmabteilung” or “Stormtroopers” in English, popularly referred to as the “brownshirts”) in 1933. The SA was at one point the primary paramilitary force of the Nazi Party, although it was eclipsed in this role by the SS following the “Night of the Long Knives” of 1934. Bärenfänger was therefore another ideologically committed Nazi honored by Kruger.

Materials from the Police internal investigation on Mark Kruger’s activity have not been released to the public.
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Mark Kruger
“I would not have promoted Mark to captain if I felt at any time the allegations were true. I supported him then and I support him now.” —Rosie Sizer, Portland Police Chief June 2006–May 2010, email of October 14, 2009

In news reported by The Oregonian early last month, Portland’s Police Review board has criticized a cop in unusually strong language, stating that Captain Mark Kruger brought “discredit and disgrace upon the Bureau and the City” by erecting plaques to his Third Reich military heroes in a city park a decade ago. The statement followed an Internal Affairs investigation, which was itself prompted by a complaint to Independent Police Review Division (IPRD) as well as by demands from City Commissioner Dan Saltzman.

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Portland neo-Nazi Daniel Lee Jones—a onetime activist in Bill White’s American National Socialist Workers Party—was sentenced this week to a year and a half in federal prison for mailing a noose to the president of the Lima, Ohio chapter of the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People. Last year, we wrote about Daniel Lee Jones’ role in organizing a September 2009 Nazi gathering near Vancouver, Washington. A story from The Oregonian about Jones’ sentencing is here.
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