This week, we’re featuring three segments in our episode.
First up, you’ll hear Maru Mora-Villalpando talking about the immigration prison known as the Northwest Detention Center in Tacoma, WA and the organizing that her organization La Resistencia does to shut down this private prison run by Geo Group. [ 00:00:54 – 00:44:00 ]
Then, a member of Pittsburgh Fash Watch, an antifascist group, talks about their mobilization and unmasking of white supremacists in their area, such as WLM and Goyim Defense League (GDL) chud Brandon Cahall. [ 00:45:07 – 00:54:42]
Finally, Sean Swain addresses post-election ennui. [ 00:54:45-end ]
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Featured Track:
- Bella Ciao by Leslie Fish
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Pittsburgh Fash Watch Transcription
TFSR: Can you give us a brief history and context of your group?
PFW: We’re antifascists that came together around countering White Lives Matter days of action in our area. pghfashwatch is a project for communication and publication that is used as a node for communication and publication by multiple area crews.
TFSR: Can you share whatever information you are comfortable sharing on what you observed online before alerting the press?
PFW: There is a dossier at https://pghfashwatch.noblogs.org/files/2024/09/cahall_dossier.pdf which details some of Brandon Cahall’s online activity. We reached out to the press to spread greater awareness of Cahall after marching to his house and conducting a flyering campaign throughout the city.
TFSR: For those who aren’t familiar with this kind of work, can you speak to guidelines and standards for investigations and doxing.
PFW: We would never release information on someone who we weren’t 100% sure was participating in neo-Nazi activities. Additionally, if any neo-Nazis want to leave their movement and actively cooperated, we would not publish details on them. The information that was published was developed over months and has been checked endlessly for accuracy.
TFSR: Can you give the listening audience a general sense of the socioeconomic and demographic composition of Pittsburgh? Is Millvale, the neighborhood where this incident took place, similarly composed?
PFW: Pittsburgh is obviously known for its steel industry, but the past several decades have seen a massive influx of “eds and meds” jobs. Any reputation as a tech hub is a bit overstated. Millvale, which is its own municipality that adjoins Pittsburgh proper, is slightly poorer and whiter than the city proper. That said, there are a lot of working class progressives and left-leaning people there, queer-friendly establishments, and a lot decent community oriented efforts happening.
TFSR: Do far right groups have a history of activity in the area? Can you talk about the groups you have found to be active? In what ways do their various goals overlap and where they diverge? For that matter, does membership in these groups overlap? What groups, for example have absorbed NJP (National Justice Party) membership if it is no longer a going concern?
PFW: Pittsburgh and Southwest PA more generally have long been areas with substantial white supremacist and neo-Nazi activity. Historically, there was a pretty active Nazi sympathizer named Edwin Flaig who was based in Millvale and active in the 1930s and 1940s. There was a lot of Klan activity in the Pittsburgh area in the 1920s. But people resisted then, just like they’re resisting now. There is some overlap betweeen Patriot Front and WLM. NJP had shared membership with a local bonehead crew, John Smaligo, that was organizing Nazi rock shows in the area for a few years. Joseph Jordan aka Eric Striker is believed to still live in the area. He was scared out of a bar last year. There is also a militia in the area whose leadership has been moving more and more towards “nationalist” politics. The extent to which these groups are connected or actively working together changes. WLM and Patriot Front seem to have a cozy relationship locally, which matches what we’re seeing and hearing in other regions.
TFSR: Also, on the topic of locality, technology like internet and label printers allow for a mass dispersal of propaganda that can appear to show large presence when maybe it’s just a small group or even a single crank. Are you able to get a sense of numbers from your investigations?
PFW: WLM publishes edited videos of their rallies and actions. In western PA they number no more than half a dozen. Based on their own videos and Patriot Front videos, cross-membership is likely. Patriot Front hasn’t been super active in our area, but we saw an uptick in activity after we marched on Brandon. PF tags and stickers were often found alongside or near WLM tags and stickers, seemingly put up around the same time. As concerning as any white nationalist activity is, there aren’t many of them and they are definitely outnumbered by antifascists.
TFSR: Where are these groups organizing? Have you observed some kind of tipping point in which they feel suitably emboldened to take their work into the real world?
PFW: WLM and Patriot Front have both adopted models of IRL organizing that minimize risk to their followers. Their public demos are extremely short and not announced in advance, which lowers the barrier to entry for risk averse cowards. At most, they’re out in public for 15 minutes. They do a lot more stickers, tagging, and banner drops than they do rallying. That says something about how confident they are.
TFSR: Can you speak to the divisions among white supremacists and white nationalists on the subject of Israel? Where do they diverge and where do they make common cause? In what ways has the genocide in Gaza exacerbated these divisions?
PFW: Cahall first came on our radar handing out neo-Nazi propaganda at a pro-Palestine rally. These neo-Nazis are all deeply antisemitic and try to equate all Jews with Israel in order to drive more antisemitism. We’re not really aware of how divisions among white supremacists show up around this topic.
TFSR: What was the nature of the propaganda that you observed being posted?
PFW: There’s more in the dossier above, but a lot of “White Lives Matter” stuff.
TFSR; Does this mark an uptick in activity for these kinds of groups or is it more of a churn?
PFW: WLM PA has become more active in the past year, in no small part due to Brandon Cahall’s propoganda and recruitment activities.
TFSR: Given the importance of Pennsylvania in the upcoming election, presidential candidates and their surrogates have spent a lot of time in the Pittsburgh area. Do you see this as a potential driver?
PFW: Not really. WLM, Patriot Front, and other decentralized neo-Nazi groups do not attach themselves to electoral politicians and outcomes in the same way that groups that were more prominent betweeen 2015 and 2020 did.
TFSR: On that subject, have you seen any meaningful responses to this kind of racism and organizing from anyone in government or law enforcement?
PFW: Aside from the occasional toothless comment from liberal politicians, no. Not a single one. This is of course unsurprising. As antifascists, we’re in this against the overt neo-Nazis in the streets as well as the fascism that our governments express. It’s important not to lose track of the three way fight.
TFSR: If Donald Trump loses do you foresee mitigation to the threat posed by white supremacist groups? To what degree do these groups still back him?
PFW: Trump’s loss and subsequent demobilizations degraded his semi-formal paramilitaries substantially (especially Proud Boys). WLM and others are not oriented around mainstream politics, so we don’t expect a Trump loss to substantially demobilize them.
TFSR: Do you think Democrats are willfully obtuse on acknowledging and addressing white supremacist organizing?
PFW: Elected Democrats believe that the existing power structures, especially law enforcement, are enough to keep us safe from white supremacists. This is obviously and categorically untrue. Obviously they object to and at times actively work or speak out against the more extreme elements of the far-right. But they don’t do much to actually disrupt day-to-day white nationalist organizing. There’s a good argument to be made that liberal policies fuel white nationalism, because they fail to unify and empower poor and working class people. Even if liberal politicians took a more active or effective role, we’d still advocate for everyday, street level antifascist activism.
TFSR: What types of responses have you seen from the community since this article was published?
PFW: The reaction to our on the ground campaign against Brandon Cahall was extremely positive. People in the neighborhood were willing to listen to us and took our fliers to both see the dossier and show their friends. Plenty of people were putting up stickers and flyers, and autonomously spreading Brandon’s dossier around for weeks. The whole effort activated a lot of people.
TFSR: Have you noted any response on the channels you monitor?
PFW: We haven’t seen public posts from neo-Nazis acknowleding this doxx. But we know that they were talking about it among themselves.
TFSR: If listeners want to learn more about antifascism, are there any texts or other resources you would recommend?
PFW: Shane Burley has written a book called Why We Fight and edited an anthology called No Pasaran! are good resources to look at for folks new to this stuff. Learning about your local antiracist or antifascist history is important too. Uplifting those histories is important. People maybe don’t know that the town of Carnegie physically resisted a Klan march in the 1920s, or that the town of Lily Pennsylvania scared off hundreds of Klan members around the same time. We’ve got to show people something that they can look back at and be inspired by.
TFSR: What can people in the community do to stay safe and help to prevent the spread of white supremacist propaganda?
PFW: If you see neo-Nazi propaganda/stickers, feel empowered to take it down. That shit is a stain on our streets. If you do, it’s awesome to get photos and info like time and place to pghfashwatch@protonmail.com. If you ever spot a white supremacist / fascist demonstration in public, attempt to get photos if it feels safe to do so. Photos of vehicles, shoes, jewelry, tattoos, and anything that could help identify these people is especially helpful. If you’re feeling froggy and have friends with you, confront them. Drown them out. Laugh at them. Let them know that they’re unwanted and unwelcome.
TFSR: Anything else you want to talk about or plug?
PFW: Free speech does not protect a person from others’ reactions to their statements. If you’re against nazis and their ideologies, you don’t have to to let their demonstrations or propoganda go unchallenged. They also are not entitled to hide behind face coverings and pretend to be normal community members