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Home · Articles · News · News · Anti-Fascist Front
September 23rd, 2009 JAMES PITKIN | News
 

Anti-Fascist Front

A Portland anti-racist group has had a busy—and controversial—summer.

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TARGETED: Tim Titrud poses in front of his camper, which reads “911 was an inside job.” On the right are materials he received by mail Sept. 15. PHOTO: Darryl James

On the afternoon of Sept. 15, Tim Titrud arrived home in Clackamas County after finishing his workday as a self-employed landscaper and checked his mailbox.

Along with the usual assortment of bills and junk mail was a pink envelope postmarked from Portland with no return address. Titrud opened it and found a greeting card covered with pink flowers. The card read, “Thinking of You.”

Also included was a color photo of Hitler, with runic symbols scrawled across his face and around his head. On the back of the photo were Germanic runes that spelled out the words “Destroy Yourself.”

Titrud, who is 50 years old and lives with his wife, was not surprised, nor did he call police. The letter included a calling card for Rose City Antifa, a Portland anti-racist group that recently tried to shut down an event Titrud helped organize featuring a speaker who’s been accused of anti-Semitism.

“They don’t really scare me,” Titrud says of the group. “These guys are idiots. It’s just kind of weird. Kind of creepy-weird.”

Little is known publicly about Rose City Antifa—a group that anonymously posts articles about its activities on the Portland Indymedia website. Its members, who wear bandannas over their faces when they protest in public, declined repeated requests from WW over the past five weeks to be interviewed for this story.

Despite its secrecy, Rose City Antifa has had an active summer of publicly exposing Titrud and others who members accuse of spreading racist ideas in Portland—including a call for longtime Portland activist Tim Calvert to be fired from his job on the board of CityBikes Workers’ Cooperative. They accuse Calvert of harboring anti-Semitic beliefs.

“We believe that those pushing organized Jew-hatred and pogrom politics should be collectively resisted,” they write on Indymedia. “No compromises and no half-measures!”

The resulting controversy has not only driven a wedge into Portland’s close-knit protest community. It also raises serious questions about the outer limits of free expression and civil protest in a city that puts great value in both.

Some have praised Rose City Antifa for rooting out alleged racists in our midst. Others criticize the group’s zero-tolerance approach as nothing more than ideological bullying.

“They’re worse than the early colonists with the heretics, where you were removed out into the wilderness to die,” says Grace Grant, a member of the left-wing Laughing Horse Book Collective in Northeast Portland. “I don’t want to be part of that kind of community. It’s pretty heartless. I don’t know who’s setting these standards and norms.”

Anti-fascism first arose in Europe in the 1920s to oppose violent far-right groups, and has since spread to the Americas and Australia. Rose City Antifa is part of the Anti-Racist Action Network, which boasts 20 chapters in cities across the U.S. and Canada.

Rose City Antifa was founded in 2007, when anti-racists organized to shut down a meeting of the neo-Nazi Hammerskin Nation set for the Sherwood Elks Lodge (see “Skin Cancer,” WW, Oct. 3, 2007). The group posts cards and fliers at the Red Black Cafe, the Black Rose Collective Bookstore and other places where anarchists and the far-left gather, but its total membership is unknown.

On Saturday, Sept. 19, the group set up a recruitment table at a punk concert in North Portland benefiting the volunteer group Portland Books to Prisoners. Stanislav Vysotsky, a Willamette University sociology professor who studies anti-racist groups, was at the table laying out anti-fascist literature next to a sign that said “Rose City Antifa.”

Vysotsky denied he’s a member of the group. But he defended its tactics in an interview with WW.

Vysotsky says publicly outing one’s enemies—including publishing their home addresses and pressuring their employers to fire them—is a widely accepted practice by progressive social movements.

(It’s also used by the right wing, which publishes addresses of abortion doctors on far-right websites.)

“The strategy is to shut them down.” Vysotsky says. “Someone can’t be active if they are out looking for a job, and homes are their base of operation. If you put yourself in the shoes of a movement member, there is very much a logic to this.”

Not everyone agrees. Chip Berlet, a nationally renowned journalist and activist who’s devoted his career since 1967 to fighting hate groups, says wearing masks and relying on intimidation is counterproductive to the cause.

“What you learn early on is that these kinds of stunts are completely ineffective for social change work. It does really nothing to help the people who are being oppressed,” Berlet says. “This is immature, inexperienced organizing from people who haven’t figured out that macho is passe.”

Polite Portland may seem the last city in the U.S. in need of anti-fascist squads. But the city has gained a measure of infamy in anti-racist circles as the birthplace of Volksfront, a racist skinhead group founded in 1994 that is still active locally and now boasts chapters in seven countries.

The Alabama-based Southern Poverty Law Center and other organizations that track hate groups have reported a steep rise in extremist activity since Barack Obama was elected the nation’s first black president. The killing of a security guard at the National Holocaust Memorial in June, reports of right-wing extremists recruiting at conservative tea parties, and a rise in militia activity have all stoked worries that the extreme right is gaining a new foothold.

“We see a mainstreaming of white nationalism that we haven’t seen previously,” says Eric Ward, national field director for the Center for New Community, an anti-racism nonprofit in Chicago. He supports Rose City Antifa’s efforts, saying white nationalists may now be infiltrating the environmental movement and other progressive causes—in part because lefties haven’t taken the threat seriously enough.

Against that backdrop came Rose City Antifa’s busy summer, starting with the episode that led to Titrud finding a snapshot of Hitler in his mailbox.

Titrud and Calvert belong to the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance, a group that challenges the accepted explanation for the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Some alternative theories assign Mossad a secret role in the attacks. Titrud recently removed signs on his camper, which used to read “End Wars for Oil or Israel” and “Israel, Stop Killing Peace.”

In June, his group organized a talk in Portland by Valdas Anelauskas, a scholar born in the former Soviet Union. Some of Anelauskas’ work has been labeled anti-Semitic, and he’s closely associated with the Pacifica Forum, a discussion group in Eugene that’s been accused of hosting other anti-Semitic speakers.

According to its account on Indymedia, Rose City Antifa learned Anelauskas was set to speak June 10 at Laughing Horse Books and pressured the collective to cancel the event. The fallout led Calvert and two others to leave the collective, and the 9/11 Truthers no longer meet at the bookstore—they’re meeting instead in a pizza parlor in Milwaukie.

Anelauskas’ talk was moved to the Old Wives’ Tales restaurant on East Burnside Street. About 12 people showed up to hear his talk on the Frankfurt School, a group of 20th-century Marxist scholars Anelauskas accuses of sabotaging Western culture. In a video of the lecture available online, Anelauskas makes no overtly anti-Semitic remarks.

Nonetheless, Rose City Antifa posted a statement June 25 on Indymedia identifying Titrud and Calvert as organizers of what the group identified as an “anti-Semitic” event. They called on CityBikes to fire Calvert, saying his “conspiracy theories about Jewish power and his denial of the Nazi genocide against the Jewish people have been an open secret in Portland for years.”

Calvert refuses even to defend himself against that charge, saying he’s being accused of a thought crime.

“Free speech means hearing people you don’t agree with,” he says. “This totally hearkens back to the days of heresy and the Inquisition, the idea that people are somehow infected and need to be purged. It’s Stalinist. It’s Catholic Church. It’s intellectually embarrassing.”

Some commenters on the Indymedia site were supportive of Rose City Antifa. Other said the group had gone too far.

“You can bash a fellow’s politics all day long but trying to run him out of a living is going too far,” one commenter wrote. “Or was it OK to do to queers back in the day?”

Few Portlanders can boast Calvert’s lefty credentials. Besides demonstrating against every U.S. invasion from Grenada to Iraq, he volunteered for the sister-city organization linking Portland to the Nicaraguan town of Corinto, helped start Laughing Horse Books in 1985, and built up the Red Rose School for activists in the late 1980s. He made CityBikes a workers’ co-op in 1990 after being hired there in 1989.

Calvert says it’s the first time he’s been attacked in more than 25 years as an activist. He’s kept his $13.50-an-hour job at CityBikes, despite graffiti calling him a Nazi that’s sprung up on the co-op’s Southwest Ankeny Street shop. Staff has cleaned up the graffiti without calling police.

CityBikes’ board posted a letter on Indymedia supporting Calvert, then retracted it 12 days later, saying not all its members had been consulted.

“They’re scared, and I still feel threatened,” Calvert says.

Meanwhile, Rose City Antifa’s campaign continues.

On July 7, the group put up 200 fliers along Northwest 21st and 23rd avenues with the name, photo and address of Nob Hill resident Julian Lee. The fliers accuse Lee of plastering the neighborhood with racist stickers, call him “Nazi trash,” and urge residents to “make it clear” that his “racist propaganda is unwelcome” (see WW, July 15, 2009).

The decision to out Lee makes even the head of one of Oregon’s largest Jewish congregations uncomfortable.

“I would caution people to be exceedingly careful about identifying people and where they live for fear of crazies out there who will take the law into their own hands and do something violent,” says Rabbi Daniel Isaak, who leads more than 1,000 member households at Congregation Neveh Shalom in Southwest Portland. “On some level, they have responsibility for any serious harm that would come as a result.”

The tactic can also prove clumsy. In May, Rose City Antifa published the addresses of two Volksfront members living in Southeast Portland, including a telephone number for the skinheads’ landlord. Trouble was, the landlord had died more than two months before of diabetes and heart disease. Callers instead reached his grieving widow.

“I wish they wouldn’t have done that,” she told WW, declining to give her name. “I’m a Christian, and I don’t support anything like [Nazism].”

Rose City Antifa’s biggest summer coup came July 19, when the group learned the time and location of a Portland talk by David Irving, the notorious British historian who once spent 10 months in an Austrian prison for denying the Holocaust.

About 50 people showed up to protest Irving’s talk at the Embassy Suites Airport Hotel. They failed to shut down Irving’s event, but Rose City Antifa members congratulated themselves on Indymedia anyway, saying they were “successful in sending a clear message that fascist organizing is not welcome in our community.”

See a video of Rose City Antifa protesting Irving’s appearance July 19 below:

 
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09.26.2009 at 06:55 Reply
Here's a reality check:

Tim Titrud's wife is a Japanese immigrant, and Tim lived with her in Japan for two years.

Most of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance members have Jewish friends with whom they are in frequent contact.

Zionism poses a serious threat to world peace, equal rights, and justice. Israel and Mossad were probable perpetrators of the 9/11 attacks, along with the CIA, Pentagon, and Bush Administration. Investigating Israel's participation in the 9/11 attacks is essential to understanding what happend on 9/11.

 

09.27.2009 at 12:06
"Most of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance members have Jewish friends with whom they are in frequent contact."

yeah they used to say "some of my best friends are jewish"

and why are you publishing more information here about his family if he's being harassed by antifas? that's dumb.

 

09.27.2009 at 12:06
"Most of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance members have Jewish friends with whom they are in frequent contact."

yeah they used to say "some of my best friends are jewish"

and why are you publishing more information here about his family if he's being harassed by antifas? that's dumb.

 

10.02.2009 at 06:57
The members of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance have many friends who are Jewish. The Rose City Antifa, on the other hand, is composed entirely of Jews and Zionists.

 

10.02.2009 at 06:57
The members of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance have many friends who are Jewish. The Rose City Antifa, on the other hand, is composed entirely of Jews and Zionists.

 

10.03.2009 at 08:03
Jay
"The Rose City Antifa, on the other hand, is composed entirely of Jews and Zionists."

And you know this how?

 

10.03.2009 at 08:03
Jay
"The Rose City Antifa, on the other hand, is composed entirely of Jews and Zionists."

And you know this how?

 

09.26.2009 at 12:28 Reply
To the Editor, Willamette Week,

The disparaging nature of James Pitkin’s recent article on Rose City Antifa was painfully (and dangerously) misleading. It’s articles like these by folks like Pitkin that make folks like me dubious of journalists is general.

While I could go on and on about the author’s unethical use of fear-mongering

(and subtle racism), I’d rather use this space to call out what was perhaps the most atrocious aspect of the article: by obscure suggestion, Pitkin likens Rose City Antifa to right-wingers who promote the death of choice-providing physicians. Not only is this an unethical and untimely comparison (given the recent murder of Dr. George Tiller), it is just plain calumnious nonsense. Since when are people fighting against organized racism and anti-Semitism in any way similar to people who advocate for the murder of fellow humans? Since when can we draw any parallels between people who are continuing on the work of folks like Rosa Parks and those who use violence against other humans to further their religious insanity?

Could Pitkin’s inability to differentiate between two such separate ideologies possibly spring from his own relationship to closeted anti-Semitic groups such as the 9-11 Truth Alliance? Pitkin was eager to discuss what the group was “up to” in his September 11 Blog Post “How Our Local 9-11 Truthers Are Commemorating the Day” (http://wweek.com/editorial/3546/13087/). While it’s not my place to say whether Pitkin and Titrud (and other 9-11 Truthers) have a collusion in all of this, it does seem clear that Pitkin has been publicly supporting Titrud (and his racist work and organizing) for some time now – especially given Pitkin’s smear job on Rose City Antifa on July 15th (Rogue of the Week).

Rose City Antifa is a group fighting for human liberation and against oppression. Their work is targeted at outing people who are actively organizing and supporting ideas of racism and anti-Semitism – something we should ALL be in support of. Do Portland a Favor and ask James Pitkin to offer Rose City Antifa a public apology.

 

09.27.2009 at 12:22 Reply
In response to Pitkin's article last week on RCA:

There are two possibilties which emerge when Pitkin's article is placed under a critical light: Either Pitkin is a lazy journalist, or he is intentionally disingenous in how he presents information in his article.

Pitkin's article is rife with factual inaccuracies. His essential arguement, that RCA has unfoundedly accused a list of seemingly innocent conspiracy theorists, leftists, and other citizens of collusion with anti-semites and/or racists doesn't hold water. Two easily confirmed facts which Pitkin's article blatantly denies: although he attempts to paint Calvert, Titrud, and Analeuskas as innocent victims, Calvert has actually presented the world with video evidence (as referenced in Pitkin's article) which undermines both Pitkin's assertion that,"In a video of the lecture available online, Anelauskas makes no overtly anti-Semitic remarks. " In the video of the lecture posted at

http://en.sevenload.com/videos/XTOAEUI-Frankfurt-School-Cultural-Marxism-PDX-9-11-Truth

Calvert introduces Analeuskas, explicitly acknowledging Analeuskas having been challenged and acknowledges that despite being notified of Analeuskas' politics, he insisted on promoting and making his event happen. Furthermore, Analeuskas references noted Holocaust denier David Irving, and German neo-nazi Ernst Zundell, in his speech-Pitkin is either a lazy journalist or disingeneous in suggesting otherwise.

Pitkin goes on to refer to Irving as a historian, a laughable title for a man whose entire,"historical," career is based in bending and distorting historical realities to defend Hitler and Nazi Germany as victims of a campaign of Jewish lies. Analeuskas' speech goes on to decry the gains won by the organizing of people of color, sexual minorities, and women in this country as the central tenets of a conspiracy to undermine its very civilization.

The Portland 9/11 Truth Comission had a video link to this speech and still have the flier advertising the event posted on their website:

http://www.911truthgroups.org/Default.aspx?alias=www.911truthgroups.org/portland

Liberalism loves to hold up the banner of human rights and equality-until it comes time to defend them. With this article, WW continues in a long tradition of slandering and attacking the very people who have defended and fought hard for those ideals.

As with in the 80s and 90s here in Portland, it will be left to youth in the streets, anarchists, SHARPS, communists and other citizens who actually embrace humanist ideals to actually wage the struggles neccessary to defend those ideals. I'm crossing my fingers (but not holding my breath) that at least some of WW and others with the resources and power may land on the right side this time.

-Peter Little

 

09.28.2009 at 07:39 Reply
So we 'obviously have a very personal stake in undermining Rose City Anti-Fascists', do we?

This reminds me of the comment by Zionists about the Jewish Film Festival in San Francisco. The Festival invited Cindy Corrie to introduce a documentary about her daughter Rachel, who was killed by an Israeli bulldozer: "We are appalled at the film festival’s decision to invite Cindy Corrie into our community. This bereaved mother cannot help but have a negative bias toward Israel".

Maybe we do have a stake in undermining 'anti' fascists who slander people who question the party line, spread white guilt and hearsay, exaggerate white extremism, try to get their critics fired or evicted, censor and threaten them, etc.. But we are ALWAYS open to dialog.

Unlike the pc hacks over at 'Indy' media, WW allows both sides, though hopefully you will remove thinly-veiled threats of violence. I particularly want to congratulate James Pitkin on his brave defense of Valdas Anelauskas. (This does not mean I agree with Valdas - I don't - though some of our self-appointed thought-cops seem to think listening to him means accepting his views). The media usually describes the mildest critics of Israel and its supporters as 'anti-semitic', but James and his editor have added a little to my hope and prediction that this country WILL eventually pressurize Israel to treat the Palestinians justly, as it leaned on apartheid South Africa. But it will be a long uphill fight - South Africa didn't have a fifth column of powerful supporters. American anti-racists opposed South Africa, rather than its critics.

The only time the infamous Pacifica Forum in Eugene gave a platform to advocating violence was when it invited a Zionist woman who defended Israel's 'right to defend itself' by lobbing phosphorus shells at schools in the Gaza strip. She was at the AIPAC meeting in Portland in March. Protesting outside was the 9/11 Truth Alliance. The subsequent campaign against this group is of course coincidental.

Obama has become O-bomber. Israel could soon unleash a war which could kill a million people and cause the collapse of the world economy. This is no time to play 'hunt the Nazi' in your local bike co-op. Let's unite for the anti-war rally in Pioneer Square, Friday Oct. 2, 5 pm..

 

09.28.2009 at 09:13
"I particularly want to congratulate James Pitkin on his brave defense of Valdas Anelauskas. "

Pitkin had problems asking basic questions to investigate this story, something basic a determined, if not "brave", reporter would do. I suspect any "bravery" you percieve is accidental.

 

09.28.2009 at 09:13
"I particularly want to congratulate James Pitkin on his brave defense of Valdas Anelauskas. "

Pitkin had problems asking basic questions to investigate this story, something basic a determined, if not "brave", reporter would do. I suspect any "bravery" you percieve is accidental.

 

09.29.2009 at 01:52
Contrary to what the Rose City Antifa says, trying to get someone fired from their job, sending someone threatening letters, and spreading malicious and unfounded rumors about people ARE acts of violence.

Visit the Antifa's websites and you will find that the Antifa endorses unprovoked violence, including beatings and murder, against anyone that the Antifa opposes. No wonder the Antifa is on the FBI's watch list.

 

09.29.2009 at 01:52
Contrary to what the Rose City Antifa says, trying to get someone fired from their job, sending someone threatening letters, and spreading malicious and unfounded rumors about people ARE acts of violence.

Visit the Antifa's websites and you will find that the Antifa endorses unprovoked violence, including beatings and murder, against anyone that the Antifa opposes. No wonder the Antifa is on the FBI's watch list.

 

09.30.2009 at 09:47
The Rose City Antifa claims to oppose fascism in all of its forms, but we never hear about the Antifa attending any anti-war protests against the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.

So I'm calling all of the members of the Rose City Antifa out, to attend the anti-war rally at Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square at 5 PM on Friday, October 5th. At the rally, you will accompany the members of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance and other organized and independent anti-fascists in protesting the USA's imperialism and its wars of aggression, and also to protest racist, fascist Israel's murderous treatment of the Palestinians.

I encourage all of the members of the Rose City Antifa to wear their trademark bandana masks to the anti-war rally this Friday at Pioneer Courthouse Square. If the Antifa members don't wear their masks at the rally, how else can we recognize them?

It would also be helpful if the Rose City Antifa members came to the anti-war rally this Friday carrying anti-Zionist placards and a Palestinian flag to demonstrate their solidarity with the beleagured Palestinians.

Never Forget -- Zionism is fascism!

To all the members of the Rose City Antifa, I say this: "Attend the anti-war rally in Portland this friday wearing your bandana masks and carrying anti-Zionist placards. Be there or be fascists."

 

09.30.2009 at 09:47
The Rose City Antifa claims to oppose fascism in all of its forms, but we never hear about the Antifa attending any anti-war protests against the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan, or against the Israeli genocide of the Palestinians.

So I'm calling all of the members of the Rose City Antifa out, to attend the anti-war rally at Portland's Pioneer Courthouse Square at 5 PM on Friday, October 5th. At the rally, you will accompany the members of the Portland 9/11 Truth Alliance and other organized and independent anti-fascists in protesting the USA's imperialism and its wars of aggression, and also to protest racist, fascist Israel's murderous treatment of the Palestinians.

I encourage all of the members of the Rose City Antifa to wear their trademark bandana masks to the anti-war rally this Friday at Pioneer Courthouse Square. If the Antifa members don't wear their masks at the rally, how else can we recognize them?

It would also be helpful if the Rose City Antifa members came to the anti-war rally this Friday carrying anti-Zionist placards and a Palestinian flag to demonstrate their solidarity with the beleagured Palestinians.

Never Forget -- Zionism is fascism!

To all the members of the Rose City Antifa, I say this: "Attend the anti-war rally in Portland this friday wearing your bandana masks and carrying anti-Zionist placards. Be there or be fascists."

 

09.28.2009 at 08:44 Reply
"ObaManiacs & their damned Marxist hate-crimes laws..."

Yeah, i see what this Valdas Anelauskas guy is all about, now! Also, he's a big fanboy of Pat Buchanan - another red flag. Anelauskas also refers to Jews as "those people".

And i'm sure Anelauskas would just LOVE it if America were to go back to the way things were in the 1950's. You know, back when there was still full-blow Aparthied, terrorism against Blacks, Gays had NO rights, Women could work few jobs, & churches were pretty-much rape-camps.

This guy goes on, in his broken English, about how Marxism & Liberalism are the greatest scourge facing the 21st century. Yet makes NO mention of FASCISM, of German prior to the 1950, modern fascism today, etc.

It's pretty damned clear where this guy's coming from. His speak isn't even coded!

 

 
 

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