I've seen the so-called Antifa in the news a lot recently. It's brought back some memories from my encounter with them, seventeen years ago, in the year 2000. That was about the last time I joined in any kind of protesting - mainly because of the Antifa - or 'Black Bloc Anarchists' as they were known in those days.
The news coming out of America recently (at least since the Donald Trump election campaign last year) has been getting really crazy, shocking, depressing and confusing - and when I say 'news' I really mean.. what appears on my Facebook 'newsfeed' - which isn't really news at all, but a mind warping mix of propaganda, lies, half-truths and cute cat videos. Since the events in Charlottesville last week it's been going into overdrive. I just don't know what to think any more. That's the truth.
The question of whether the use of violence is justified when dealing with Nazis is not a simple one. That is all I'll say on the matter for now. This isn't an opinion piece. Frankly, I don't even know if I have an opinion on the matter. I don't like Nazis - they killed my grandpa's entire family because they were Jewish. I don't like violence - it's what they used to do it. This is just a memoir. A true story of three or four days in Prague, in September 2000.
The way I got into activism was when a good friend of mine, James, went to a protest camp in a forest near Newbury and didn't come back. After we hadn't heard from him for a few weeks (this was in the days when only drug dealers and yuppies had mobile phones) another friend, Reuben, decided to go and look for him. And he didn't come back either. Eventually I thought I ought to go and check if they were ok and hadn't been initiated into a cult or something.
As it happened, when I found them they were perfectly fine and having the time of their lives. They had just slipped into a parallel dimension, that's all. In this dimension, they were sitting round a fire, deep in an ancient forest with a bunch of people who looked like something out Robin Hood crossed with Mad Max - playing music on mandolins, violins, penny whistles and drums. James had found a girlfriend, Sam who played the fiddle and had long dreadlocks and they were living together in a tree-house high up in a massive old oak tree.
Once it was established that I was their friend and not an undercover cop, I was welcomed into the tribe and there I stayed for several months until finally the time came when all of the trees were cut down and we had to go.
I'm just telling you this as a bit of background to the story I'm about to tell you. Because that was where I learned all about non-violent direct action protest. That's what it was all about. At least for most of us at that camp. Yes, we were serious - no doubt about that - and dedicated - but it was also a lot of fun and we knew we were on the right side. We were facing the forces of darkness with love and light, colour and music. We felt that if we could be free of all the chains of society, other people would want to join us, seeing us so free. The police and bailiffs would take off their uniforms and stop following orders - stop playing the role of the oppressor. The chainsaw operators would lay down their tools of destruction and go and hug a tree instead - on seeing the beauty and magic of nature.
Well, like a said, it didn't quite work out that way, but at least we tried. And it opened my eyes to a movement that was growing fast in those days. We were protectors of the environment. Cars were our main enemy, as well as faceless corporations profiting from pollution and destruction.
'Reclaim the Streets' was a good one. Organised in secret, as I remember, hundreds of us would show up in the middle of a city, shut down the busiest main road and have a huge party there until the police came to restore law and order. But just for a few hours we could imagine and actually be in a world without law and order, without cars and trucks taking up all of the space that could otherwise be occupied by humans, just being human. There were often a few scuffles at the end with the police. A bit of graffiti left on the road. Maybe a broken window of a MacDonalds. A few arrests. Sometimes it would make the evening news - obviously they'd only show the very worst bits and make it look like there'd been a riot - but really it was mostly just a bunch of peaceful people who cared about the environment and wanted to be free. Some in fancy dress, some in ordinary clothes, a few all in black with bandanas over their faces.
And so it was, that in the summer of 2000, after the Big Green Gathering, a bunch of us with no particular place to go decided to get on our bicycles and ride to Prague, where the G8 summit was set to take place. As I recall, that was the beginning of the so-called Anti-Capitalist movement.
Now, protesting 'Capitalism', for me at least, was a bit more problematic as it's a vague term with a slippery meaning. It's one thing to stop a road being built, or a mine being expanded, or an experimental genetically modified crop being planted - it's something else to stop an idea. How do you do that?
Well, it seemed to us at the time, that if the leaders of the eight most powerful countries in the world were going to be having a secret meeting to discuss God-knows-what plots, plans and deals, then we should at least be there to remind them of issues they may not consider important - such as environmental destruction, inequality and oppression - as well as protest things like the arms trade, corporate greed, economic and political corruption, etc...
The journey to Prague was an enjoyable jaunt across Holland and Germany. Sometimes we camped, other times we were hosted at social centers and squats along the way where we got to meet our fellow anarchist brethren from across the sea, get stoned, play music and talk about the revolution.
One particularly interesting aspect of the journey for me was going from Bavaria into Czeck - or Czeckoslovakia as it used to be called in my grandpa's time. Somehow there was something very familiar about being in that area - maybe I recognised certain mannerisms in the people that reminded me of Grandpa Joe. I could imagine him being there as he was when he was a younger man - about the age that I was then. We passed through the little Czeck town where he grew up - it had two names, one of them is Cheb, I can't remember the other or which one is in use these days. It was a charming town, orderly, quiet, a few grand old buildings with bohemian style. I don't think that on the face of it, it looked very different now than it had sixty years ago, in the 1940's.
(the town of Cheb as it looks today)
It was very hard to imagine how it could have been that the entire Jewish population, including Grandpa Joe's parents, his older brother, his brother's wife and their two young children had been first set apart, then rounded up and then sent off to concentration and death camps. My grandpa had managed to get away because he was in the Czeck army in a unit that defected and joined the allies in the fight against the Nazis. He didn't much talk about that time, so I don't know too much about it. But it's something that's always haunted me - the thought of what happened to his family, how it could have happened and if I would have gone the same way if I'd been there at the time. Surely I would have found a way to escape, to fight back, to survive...
When we got to the city of Prague, things were hotting up for the G8. Protesters were arriving from all over Eurpoe, East and West. It was still only a few years since the Berlin wall had come down so this was a good opportunity to meet our brothers and sisters who had grown up on the other side of the iron curtain.
We camped out in a big park on the edge of town and a headquarters was set up in a big building that I think had been squatted for the occasion. There was a real buzz of exitement about it. There were probably about thirty of us who'd cycled over from England - not all together, but we'd seen each other along the way here and there. I knew most of them from the protesting scene and activist circles. Good guys. I felt we were of the same mind, even though people came from a wide range of backgrounds, from well spoken, privately educated university students to ex-squaddies grown up on council estates and cynical from brutal army service - for example.
When the day of the protest came, the co-ordination was incredible. Especially when you consider that nobody was in charge. Everybody just did what they felt they were supposed to do. Some people stayed in the headquarters, maps of the city laid out on tables, they manned the few mobile phones and walkie talkies that were available. Those of us with bicyles acted as go betweens and high speed couriers of urgent messages, racing over cobblestones between different parts of the city from one group to the next. Everybody else just took to the streets - some in fancy dress, some in ordinary clothes, some all in black, with black hoods, black jeans and bandanas over their faces. Actually I was surprised at how many of those there were. Especially as quite a few of them were some of the people I knew from our little cycling trip.
One thing that sticks in my mind is when this privately educated, eager young student I knew (or at least thought I did, up to that point), now dressed all in black, bursting with excitement at seeing so many others dressed the same way as her - came up to me and said
'Isn't there just something so sexy about a black bloc?!'
and I just scratched my beard and kind of shook my head, looking around at the scene that was unfolding. This wasn't like the Reclaim the Street parties that I'd been expecting. This was altogether darker and more menacing. At least to my eyes.
Scuffles were breaking out on the front lines with the riot police. Some of the protesters were pulling up cobblestones from the road and throwing them. Some protesters were wearing helmets and carrying sticks and shields, ready for battle. The Italians, as I recall were particularly heroic in their bravery and preparedness. In every police line there was one policeman who'd job it was just to stand there with a camera and take photos of everyone - for identification purposes of course - so I could see why the black outfits and masks made sense. After all, if everyone was dressed the same and you couldn't see anyone's face it would be much harder to identify individuals.
Somebody sprayed the word 'Solidarnosc' across a wall. Someone sprayed an Anarchy symbol on the stones of a beautiful fountain in the middle of a large city square where all the black bloc had gathered and were marching round and round, chanting and waving flags. A fearsome sight. I'll tell you now, it was not a scene that inspired me. Rather it filled me with a kind of dread.
The police managed to prevent the building where the G8 was taking place from being stormed by protesters, but as evening came around, groups protesters, feeling empowered by the day's events, began roaming around the city - looking to cause damage. I don't know if any police cars were set on fire - I don't think it went that far - but quite a few windows got broken and there was an atmosphere of fear in the city. A few tourists were still sitting outside the taverns and restaurants, but looking quite uneasy. The residents and shop owners were looking sad and angry - especially the older ones who could probably remember the times the city had been overtaken before - first by the Nazis and then by the Communists - and the violence it involved.
I don't know if you've ever been to Prague but it's a beautiful city. Really one of the most beautiful cities in all of Europe - with its cobbled streets, ancient bridges over the Vltava river, baroque buildings, colourful churches with golden baubles on their spires and this incredible, six hundred year old clock which not only tells the time, also tells the movement of the planets. It was not the sort of place I felt was right to be smashing up.
It was getting late. I was walking along with my friend Eric, wheeling our bikes along the pavement of a busy narrow sidestreet, scratching our beards uncertainly at what to make of the scene. 'Let's go', one of us said and the other agreed. 'This is stupid.'
At that moment a police bus pulled up across the end of the street, blocking our path. We stopped and looked in confusion a several policemen got out, indicating that no one was to pass. So we quickly turned around and started heading in the opposite direction to get away from them. At that moment another police bus came along and blocked the other end of the street. Suddenly we were trapped. What was this? How would we get out of this?
Face to face with the police, it was quite obvious straight away that they had the advantage. They were big guys, thuggish and mean looking - probably recruited from neo-nazi groups (I was quite shocked to find so many still active in eastern europe) or criminal gangs. There was violence in their expressions and in their features. They also wore big boots, padded uniforms, hard hats and carried weapons. They decided to arrest everyone in the street without charge. Obviously people protested - we weren't even doing anything - but one or two people having their heads slammed into the side of a bus soon leads to a common understanding - that they can do what they want and there's not much we can do about it.
So we were all rounded up and put on the busses. My bike and Eric's bike were thrown into the luggage hold of the bus and we were driven to some holding place out on the edge of town. We were put into a room with about thirty other people who had also been rounded up - our hands were tied together with those plastic tie straps and we were told to sit on the floor and wait.
Well, I won't go into every detail of this part of the story. We were taken from one place to the other over the course of about three days. I think hundreds of people were arrested that night. At one point we were all crammed into a corridor, at another point about thirty of us squeezed into a cell meant for about four. Eventually we were taken to a detention center about an hour's drive away and given a proper cell with beds and something to eat. Other prisoners there were illegal immigrants from various parts of eastern Europe and Russia. Some of them had been there for months with no charge, since they weren't really criminals. Just in the wrong place at the wrong time. We'd had no contact with anyone on the outside, so had absolutely no idea how long we were going to be there or if anyone even knew where we were.
For me, the absolute moment of revelation came during the registration process of moving us from one place to another. It was at this point - maybe in the last place we got to - that we were given a number and that number was written on our arm. Fortunately it wasn't written in anything more permanent than a marker pen - but still, just seeing it there was enough. Enough to make me understand exactly how it happened and how easily it could have happened to me. I'm talking of course about my Grandpa's family and millions of others like them.
Fortunately I am priveliged enough to be a British citizen. After a few days, someone from the British government stepped in and got us released on the condition that we leave the country and don't come back. One guy who was with us came from Slovakia. He had a very hard time of it because the Czeck thugs in the police and prisons don't like the Slovaks, and the Slovak government didn't rush to his rescue. For all I know, he's still there.
But as for me and Eric and the others - we got away with no real harm done. They gave us our bikes back with the wheels kicked all out of shape, but all in all that seemed like a small price to pay for our freedom.
We got on a train and headed to the border with Germany. It was pouring with rain and a friendly German woman seeing us looking, no-doubt, like we'd just escaped from prison, kindly offered us a place to stay while we fixed up our bikes and waited for the rain to stop. It rained for a whole week, but we didn't mind. It was a beautiful little Bavarian town near the border with Austria. Near to a huge lake, it was quiet, clean, orderly and civilized, in true German fashion. The sort of place where you couldn't imagine anything bad happening ever.
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