{"id":2083,"date":"2013-05-22T23:33:44","date_gmt":"2013-05-22T23:33:44","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.temp.shooflysolutions.com\/review-antifa-by-andy-carrington\/"},"modified":"2013-05-22T23:33:44","modified_gmt":"2013-05-22T23:33:44","slug":"review-antifa-by-andy-carrington","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/archive.idavox.com\/index.php\/2013\/05\/22\/review-antifa-by-andy-carrington\/","title":{"rendered":"REVIEW: ANTIFA BY ANDY CARRINGTON"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Antifa\"A collection of poems by an antifacist writer and activist from the UK, and antifa everywhere can relate to where he is coming from!<\/h3>\n

<\/p>\n

For decades, the antifa scene in the UK<\/st1:country-region> has been one of the most relentless, whether it is full-on neo-Nazis or today\u2019s neo-Fascists of the English Defence League (EDL). It has inspired music, culture and other kinds of art, so it was only a matter of time before someone would put out a volume of antifa-inspired poems, and that\u2019s what brings us to Andy Carrington, an antifascist writer and poet living in the Northern England town of Bradford<\/st1:city>. Inspired by today\u2019s attacks on Muslims by the EDL, Antifa is quite the spiritual journey through the history and the anger that comes with taking on fascists who cannot seem to get the message.<\/p>\n

\u201cMy main fight throughout putting this book together has been with the English Defence League (EDL)<\/i> and British National Party<\/i> (BNP)<\/i>, whose members, I\u2019ve found, tend to hide behind patriotism as a way of targeting Muslims and installing fear in others about the apparent threat Islam poses to Western democracy at this point in time,\u201d he writes in the forward, where he also notes how there is very little difference between the discrimination seen by the Jewish people during Hitler\u2019s reign and that which is felt by Muslims today.<\/p>\n

From this we are given over fifty poems that address several facets of hate and fighting it. That last part has to be noted, because while many of the poems address racism directly, several of them encourage people to take action, such as \u201cCities Lead the Way\u201d and \u201cA Little Bit of Anarchy is Good for the Soul\u201d, but there\u2019s also admonishment for those who take a more\u2026passive position. Carrington has little use for those who come up with excuses not to call out racism when they see it, or those who make up excuses for the racism itself. One of the more powerful pieces is \u201cThe Many Shades of Prejudice\u201d where he zeroes in on people who do some sort of selective racism, hating one ethnicity while giving a pass to others, and thinking that doesn\u2019t mean they are racist. In this day and age where conservatives in the US think they can be absolved of their racist sins by parading people of color in front of everyone claiming to be friends with them, Carrington hits it out of the park when he writes in the piece \u201c(T)hat\u2019s one of the reasons why humanity\u2019s failing\/ And some of us are still struggling to really get along.<\/p>\n

Carrington\u2019s antifa work apparently has generated some infamy among his country\u2019s fash as they have profiled him a number of times on Redwatch, a neo-Nazi website that tries to identify and locate antifascist activists. But in his piece \u201cFuck Redwatch\u201d, he has more than a little fun with that particular lot. You know it\u2019s getting good to him when he tells the Nazi webmasters of that little site, \u201cI guess I should take it as a compliment that it\u2019s me <\/i>you chose to feature\/ And times I just laugh at how pathetic you lot appear to be.\/ Am I getting to you?\/ Am I really?<\/p>\n

And while it might be getting to them, the rest of the collection is enough to bring a round of cheers from the rest of us. Rare do we see such candid observations from the antifa side, and this alone makes the book Antifa an inspiring must-read.<\/p>\n

To learn more or to order, go to <\/a>www.andycarrington.co.uk<\/a><\/p>\n

 <\/b><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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