Why We Fight by Shane Burley: A Response, Part 1
“If apocalypse is coming either way – if it’s already here – then there is nothing to be gained by refusing the struggle. There is nothing to be gained by turning aside and refusing to confront the awful world we’ve inherited. That world is in the process of dying anyway… and what comes next is up to us.”
Why We Fight Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse
Shane Burley (Author); Natasha Lennard (Foreword)
Publisher: AK Press
ISBN-13: 9781849354066
Surviving an Apocalypse
I’m currently reading Shane Burley’s Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism, Resistance, and Surviving the Apocalypse. The usual practice for a book review is to read the whole book and then respond, but in this case, I’ve decided to read and respond in parts. Burley’s Introduction seems particularly appropriate to discuss here at Gods and Radicals, because it addresses the ongoing conflict with fascism in mythic terms.
Specifically, Burley discusses the widespread perception that we are currently living in the middle of an apocalypse, the catastrophic destruction of the world we have always known:
The apocalyptic feeling from the far right has brought about mass shootings, terroristic bombings, car attacks, all of which create an experience of apocalypse… accelerated by our failing social systems, which are hastening economic and ecological collapse.
Driving around Minneapolis over the past weekend, I was vividly reminded of how apocalyptic this city has felt over the past year. Almost a year after the beginning of the Uprising, sections of the city are still entirely boarded-up. A few blocks south of me, a boarded-up gas station is surrounded by two tall fences, with a huge coil of barbed wire in between. The past year in the Twin Cities has seen dozens of businesses burned to the ground, protracted street battles between the police and the people of the city, armed occupation by the National Guard, and repeated street confrontations with the Proud Boys and other fascist organizations.
I’ve referred to our current reality as apocalyptic many times in the past year, so it’s easy for me to relate to the myth Burley has chosen to explain our current situation. Like many other people, I expect things to get worse before they get better:
The question is not whether the oceans will rise, or another demagogue will come along, but when. The last few years have been overwhelmed with a feeling of the apocalypse, some kind of end of the world, but it is unclear exactly what that will be, and the story of that uncertainty has been soaked in a cataclysmic feeling of dread.
Something More Than Dread
There is something more than dread, though, and Burley correctly locates it in the embrace of the mythic struggle, in an equal but opposite millenarianism of the Left:
There is also a prophetic vision of egalitarianism and liberation, one that makes itself an enemy of the fascists…
If apocalypse is coming either way – if it’s already here – then there is nothing to be gained by refusing the struggle. There is nothing to be gained by turning aside and refusing to confront the awful world we’ve inherited. That world is in the process of dying anyway… and what comes next is up to us.
Antifascism suggests a possible future; through the total negation of white supremacy, this new future is made. The resistance that is forming in every corner of the world is this new world in utero…
I’ll continue to respond to Why We Fight in a series of essays for Gods and Radicals. My initial impression, based largely on the Introduction, is that Burley is on track. It’s up to us to recognize the apocalypse of our times, to see it correctly as two opposed visions, two possible futures… and to pick the right one.
Christopher Scott Thompson
Photo by Tam Hutchinson
is an anarchist, martial arts instructor, and devotee of Brighid and Macha.
