Final Straw: Anarchism and Antifascism in So-Called Australia

Long running anarchist podcast and radio show The Final Straw talks with outback legend Slack Bastard about the anarchist and antifascist movement in Australia.

This week, we’re sharing a recent conversation with Andy Fleming. Andy is an anarchist and anti-racist organizer based out of Melbourne, Australia. For the episode, Andy tells us about his research into far-Right organizing in Australia and, to a lesser degree, Aotearoa (aka New Zealand), who key players are, what tendencies are present and their influence in popular and political culture. We also speak about the resistance to the far-Right, Australia’s immigration policies, Settler-Colonial status, cultural context for far right organizing in Australia and a bit about government counterinsurgency-style repression of radical left, ecological and indigenous movements in Australasia.

[Sean Swain starts at 3min 17sec, Andy Fleming at 10min 07sec + Announcements at 1hr 34min 21sec]

We apologize for the audio quality on this chat, we had connection issues consistently and upping the quality of the sound is a thing we’re striving for. If you are listening to the radio edition of this episode, you should REALLY check out the podcast version for extra chat and some musical suggestions from Andy.

Archives of Andy’s writings can be found dating back over 15 years at SlackBastard.AnarchoBase.com, and his commentaries on the far left and the far right in Australia are well worth reading. Andy also contributes to the SUWA radio show on 3CR on the 4^th Fridays (good luck finding archives of the emission, you may just have to listen within a week of the broadcast). You ca also find Andy on twitter and fedbook and he just started up a patreon where you can support his research and commentary. Here’s a link to the Oxford University Press book containing his essay “The Far Right in Australia”. A question I’d meant to ask but because of time differences and it being 1am my time by the time we stopped talking I forgot to ask was about his ideas on Antifa as an anarchist and the need to go beyond Antifascist organizing, the internal limitations of a lack of a positive program. Turns out Andy wrote about this topic in an article called “Antifa is liberalism, feminism is cancer, and I’m a monkey’s uncle.”