No Pasaran: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis

Author Talks

Shane Burley, Joan Braune, and Shon Meckfessel will discuss their research into fascist movements and their contributions to the book, No Pasaran: Antifascist Dispatches from a World in Crisis.

¡No Pasarán! is an anthology of antifascist writing that takes up the fight against white supremacy and the far-right from multiple angles. From the history of antifascism to today's movement to identify, deplatform, and confront the right, and the ways an insurgent fascism is growing within capitalist democracies, a myriad of voices come together to shape the new face of antifascism in a moment of social and political flux.

Shane Burley is a writer and filmmaker based in Portland, Oregon. He is the author of Why We Fight: Essays on Fascism Resistance and Surviving the Apocalypse (AK Press, 2022) and Fascism Today: What It Is and How to End It (AK Press, 2017). His work appears in places like NBC News, The Daily Beast, Jacobin, The Baffler, Al Jazeera, Truthout, and the Oregon Historical Quarterly. He is currently writing a book on antisemitism for Melville House, and he can be found on Twitter @Shane_Burley1. 

Shane will talk about his contributions to the book, which look at the legacy of earlier militant antifascist movements, such as Anti-Racist Action, the role of the police abolitionism in antifascism, and how we can define antifascism as a movement. 

Joan Braune (she/her) researches and educates about hate groups and how to stop their destructive influence, frequently speaking with educators, faith communities, labor unions, charities and social justice organizations, and others. She teaches Philosophy and Leadership Studies at the college level and has published two books on the psychoanalyst and Critical Theorist Erich Fromm as well as numerous articles and chapters on countering fascism, hate, and antisemitic conspiracy theories. She is coeditor of the forthcoming The Ethics of Researching the Far Right (University of Manchester Press 2023) and serves on the editorial board of The Journal of Hate Studies.

Joan will discuss her chapter, "A Partial Typology of Empathy for Enemies: Collaborationist to Strategic." The chapter looks at how journalists, academics, activists, and practitioners in work against hate need to be careful to establish boundaries that keep themselves and their communities safe. Braune will share some troubling case studies of harm that was done when people befriended dangerous members of hate groups and failed to have proper boundaries. She will discuss the contribution of and limits of love and empathy in work against fascism.

Shon Meckfessel has been a social movement organizer and writer for over thirty years, and has researched and participated in social movements across the US, Western and Eastern Europe, the Middle East, and Latin America. Shon is the author of Suffled How It Gush: A North American Anarchist in the Balkans (AK Press, 2009) and Nonviolence Ain't What It Used To Be: Armed Insurrection and the Rhetoric of Resistance (AK Press, 2016) as well as numerous essays and articles. He has appeared as a social movement scholar and advocate in the New York Times and on Democracy Now, Al Jazeera, CNN, NPR, BBC, Radio, and Fox News. Shon is currently an English professor at Highline College, outside of Seattle.

Shon wil be discussing his chapter "Why does the US far right love Bashar al-Assad?", co-written with Syrian-British scholar and activist Leila al-Shami. The chapter explores the internationalist politics of contemporary fascist movements, disputing the notion that anti-imperialism is or has ever been specific to the left, and explores in developing intimacy between advocates of genocidal politics at home and abroad.

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