Report Back from UW-Madison: Anti-Fascist Organizing Against Alt-Right Church Burner

It was the afternoon of January 25th, on his way to class, when a University of Wisconsin student was handed a white slip of paper with small black print on it that read “Fight Anti-White Racism on Campus!” “Join Our Student Club” with the hashtag #UWAltRight. The student shared the picture of this vile piece of fascist propaganda on social media and in hours it went viral in the Madison, Wisconsin area.

The “organizer” (genocide spreader) that was passing out the slips was Daniel Dropik, known arsonist of Black churches who has an entry in the Southern Poverty Law Center’s (SPLC) hate incidents database. The group he was promoting is the fascist, white nationalist group, the American Freedom Party (AFP), a hardened hate group with multiple entries in hate group databases. The SPLC entry description states: “The American Freedom Party (formerly American Third Position) is a political party initially established by racist Southern California skinheads…”

There are many different factors that we could point to as being responsible for why the UW Madison is in the minority of campuses in the country who have an open white nationalist group organizing in public on them. Madison is known for its liberal progressive culture and politics. It is likely that the progressive aspect of Madison is what pushed this racist terrorist into action before other similar snowflakes on campuses across the country. It is worth noting also that the liberal aspect of Madison will become and already has been a barrier to fighting the neo nazi student group because of the liberals’ strict religious like adherence to the protection of freedom of speech over any and all other things, including the training and recruiting of soldiers into a genocidal storm trooper army. And indeed, every single local television news outlet has not failed to provide platforms for the racist organizing of the AFP by airing pieces that come off more like an advertisement for Daniel Dropik then a condemnation, or even a critique of fascist organizing.

The picture of the white supremacist organizing flyer served as a lightning bolt to ignite the sleeping giant that is the popular anti-fascist movement on the UW campus and in the city in general. Within hours, dozens of organizations having many different political perspectives were in contact with the antifascist group of students on campus the Student Coalition for Progress (SCP) who had already been organizing against the proto-fascist group Young Americans for Freedom (YAF) the student group who brought the crypto fascist speaker, Ben Shapiro, to speak on campus. SCP was the first to respond to the discovery of AFP and served as a pole around which almost forty different groups across the city gravitated around. On the weekend following the discovery of AFP, in just a few days, around twenty different groups came together and held a democratic meeting to decide how to respond and to organize a demonstration, Take Back Our Campus, Resist White Supremacy, the following Tuesday. The nascent coalition was able to come to several democratic decisions including the passing of the UW-Madison Student Coalition for Progress Emergency Declaration.

One of the immediate responses of the University of Wisconsin Madison’s Chancellor, Rebecca Blank was a racist anti-Black power grab, as if the presence of Nazis on campus wasn’t bad enough. Becky decided that this was the opportunity to push through a criminal background check on new incoming student applicants, a move that would disproportionately affect Black youth applicants, not to mention those who won’t even bother to apply should such a policy be instituted. According to a statement released by the Chancellor, Becky also refused to condemn AFP beyond recognizing that it is a registered hate group, and appeared to not be against allowing the Nazi group to receive a student charter and become a Registered Student Organization. These things were taken up in the Emergency Declaration that the coalition put out.

The demonstration went off with little hitches beyond what one would expect from a newly formed group. Many different speakers gave impassioned speeches from many different political perspectives, all of them antifascist. Around 300 folks showed up to hear the speeches and then the group marched up to the UW Administration building, Bascom Hall, where they rallied once again. It then came to the group’s attention that Becky was holding a “Tele Town Hall” one block away at the Student Activity Center (SAC) and a group of folks broke off and went to disrupt the meeting, shouting down the chancellor and chanting “This is our university, fuck white supremacy,” “No more check box”  and “Hey Becky, what’d you say, make these fascists go away!” Becky’s response was more of the same liberal “freedom of speech” doctrine that one is so used to receiving. One thing that was clear from the speeches, the slogans and the groups forming around the demonstration is that we seem to be in the middle of the rise of a people’s popular anti-fascist front that will require new forms of organization like one of the speakers who is working towards building the General Defense Committee there pointed out.

One tricky question that must be answered is how should this coalition be demanding or organizing around getting the fascist student group out of Madison? Do we put pressure on the chancellor to deny them a charter, risking the university using similar reasoning to cancel the charter of left organizations too, or do we avoid demanding any state institutional power being used at all by using the power of the people to “chase dem baldheads out of the town?”

Two days after the demonstration the UW System Board of Regents met to discuss the racist power grab, adding a checkbox to new student applications. They cited an obscure law so that they could deliberate the question behind closed doors. It remains to be seen what decisions the Board of Regents has made in secret deliberation, but it is clear that the board and the chancellor were most likely looking for an excuse to implement a racist policy like this. The good thing is that the coalition is to meet again over the weekend to strategize over how to move forward with the new developments. For now, the Student Coalition for Progress is circulating this petition to #BanTheBox from new student applications.

Long live the people’s popular antifascist front! #BanTheBox! Fascists off our campus NOW!