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“Free Tommy” and the mainstream media’s inability to report anti-fascism, a thread: 
1/ Last year I wrote this about the Guardian’s poor report of anti-fascist mobilisation against a Free Tommy march. The Guardian ignored the women-led mobilisation which stopped the fash, and used pictures and quotes from SWP front organisations instead.
brockley.blogspot.com/2018/10/london…
brockley.blogspot.com/2018/10/london…
2/ Yesterday’s Observer article by @damiengayle and @matthabusby was poor too. Pics & tweets from SWP fronts. Implication that @Feminist_AntiF’s “The enemy does not arrive by boat” was a Stand Up To Racism (SWP) banner. SUTR given sole credit for organising.
3/ A quick check of hashtags #StopTommy and #LondonIsAntifascist would have shown that @London_AFA organised the main counterdemonstration, not SUTR.
4/ This thread, involving one of the Guardian’s journalists, is incredibly revealing of how news of demos is produced. Basically, as far as I can see, the SWP produce the copy and the reporters add in a couple of tweets.
5/ Gullible liberals and vulnerable students continue to get re-directed to anodyne and ineffective SWP fronts whose main purpose is recruitment for the party. Effective, militant groups get sidelined because they don’t do professional press releases.
6/ Another reason this is bad is that if people can’t trust outlets like the Guardian, it feeds hyper-partisan alternative platforms, where fake news and conspiracy theories take hold. At a time we need good news sources more than ever.
7/ So, reporters, learn to tell the difference.
This is what protests by SWP fronts looks like (stand away from the fascists, manufactured placards, endless boring speeches by trade union hacks & party leaders saying the same thing, a Labour MP bused in for a brief appearance):
This is what protests by SWP fronts looks like (stand away from the fascists, manufactured placards, endless boring speeches by trade union hacks & party leaders saying the same thing, a Labour MP bused in for a brief appearance):
And this is what autonomous anti-fascism looks like (colours; pyro; a diversity of banners, perspectives and approaches; music; willingness to confront the right; looking after each other):
(I’ve lost some of the photo credits for those images, which is bad practice [although I’m not a paid journalist...]. Thanks for others to @Another_Europe @UrbanReappropr1 @dokool.)
8/ For real anti-fascism, follow @AntiFascistNetw @ldnantifascists @London_AFA @Feminist_AntiF and some of the accounts listed here: mobile.twitter.com/bobfrombrockle…
10/ Finally if you need background on what’s wrong with the SWP and its fronts, Google “Comrade Delta”, read @WailQ independent.co.uk/voices/donald-…
or follow this thread
or follow this thread
One more, here’s the @Feminist_AntiF “The enemy does not arrive by boat, he arrives by limousine, no to fortress Britain” banner mentioned in the Guardian article, from a demo last year. (I’m not 100% sure that banner was there this weekend?)
