What does it mean to be an anti-fascist? Never easy to answer, today this question can seem like a Zen koan. First you have to decide what constitutes fascism. Then you have to figure out how to oppose it. Beyond those groups that deliberately invoke the iconography of brown and black shirts — a small number, relatively speaking — there is a wealth of potential enemies. The challenge is to choose them well. (More…)
State repression. Leftwing violence. The dialectic is familiar, worse, discomfiting. There is something decidedly crude about it all, as though such scenarios ought to be a thing of the past, replaced, as it were, by less harmful modes of conflict. What happened to culture jamming? Isn’t alternative consumption enough? (More…)
Switzerland isn’t synonymous with the left. Best-known for its banks, it’s more commonly equated with financial services, and the politics such an economic specialty suggests. Independent, historically, from the rest of Europe, the affluent, alpine, multilingual confederation is far more difficult to make sense of than its neighbors. (More…)
What is the best way to handle a legacy of extremism? This is an important question for every democratic government, but particularly in those nations where radical ideology once held sway. And Germany remains on the top of list. No matter how stable the post-war Federal Republic’s political institutions, the Third Reich is never too far from people’s thoughts. (More…)
Piazza Vittorio was empty. With the exception of two elderly men, struggling to inflate what looked like an enormous stage prop. As I grew closer, its details came into focus. It was a fake boulder, with the word “Crisis” (Italian for “crisis,” shorthand for the economic crisis) written on it. (More…)
This sticker, the final installment in Souciant’s series on the German Left Party’s youth outreach campaign, complements the other anti-military message in the series. But, whereas that one builds on a pull-no-punches approach developed in the Weimar Republic, and reanimated by punk, today’s is strangely subdued. (More…)
Squatting is in the news again. This time, as a consequence of a new UK law criminalizing the practice. In effect since November, the legislation could not have been passed at a poorer (to put it bluntly,) time. With the British economy in its fourth year of crisis, there was something especially cruel about the gesture. If you’re homeless, that’s your lot. Shelter is out of the question. (More…)
Lublin‘s Studio for Socially Engaged Art, led by Szymon Pietrasiewicz (see At War With the Past) designed a social tolerance campaign using hand-drawn images printed on city bus tickets. These pictures presented Jews, Roma and gays as being accepted by soccer fans of the local football club, Motor Lublin. (More…)
Blame the duration. Now in its eleventh year, the war in Afghanistan has assumed an aura of permanence. Like the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, it grinds on, without any endpoint in sight. American declarations about drawing down its troops look good in the newspaper. However, nobody takes them seriously anymore. (More…)
Burning rivers, blood-soaked seal fur, birds coated in oil and now beachside amusement parks standing forlornly in the surf: the environmental movement has long had a gift for distilling complex problems into memorable images. The traditional Left, by contrast, has struggled to find those proverbial pictures worth a thousand words to communicate its most crucial arguments. (More…)
This sticker, the first in a series from the German Left Party’s youth outreach campaign that Souciant will be featuring in the weeks to come, provides a biting critique of the career opportunities —The Clash’s song by that name is brought to mind — in Germany’s army, the Bundeswehr. Even as it mobilizes nostalgia for its more egalitarian past: (More…)
The Eurozone crisis needs a counterculture. Unable to claim a youth genre for its repertoire, at best, it has been represented by a resurgence of interest in punk. Whether it be mohawk hairstyles for women, studded leather boots from Milan, or Berlin goth-punk groups like Tanzkommando Untergang, a signature is indeed emerging. It’s reach, however, is limited. Surely, there is something with a wider appeal. (More…)