Antistasis Project, November 1st, 2020
Thoughts on anarchist movement strategy and liberation struggle during the electoral cycle.
Spoiler Alert: Neither an anti-voting rant or a political endorsement
For those of us who pay attention to politics and social movements, being days from an election like this can feel like being just too far away from a spot on the horizon to tell if it’s a revolution or an apocalypse. Do we speed up? Stop and rest? Find some other way around?
As we seek some perspective on our current moment, a quick history break might be helpful: October 28, 1940–80 years ago this week — was Oxi Day (pronounced ‘oh-hee‘), marking when Mussolini’s fascist forces were refused entry to Greece. It was a loud and clear message that some people weren’t going to step aside for the march of far-right totalitarian political regimes seeking to expand their control into surrounding countries.
The modern-day celebration of this holiday can get confusing, with its hypernationalism and flag-waving from a country that, for the past 10 years, elected literal neo-Nazis to parliament seats. Despite that, the decision to refuse Mussolini’s expansion of his new Italian empire across the Balkans and North Africa stands as an important moment in the collective partisan resistance that played a huge role in defeating Italian and German fascist ideology.
