Always and everywhere

Silence. A striking silence, with its dreams,

Caresses the horizon. Its dreams are now ours,

As the hands of desire, placed upon the sword,

Intoxicate with hurricanes a world delivered.

Paul Éluard, Paris during the War

 

By May 1999 we’re all still at it. For the neo-nazis, it’s the beginning of their attempt to break through into mainstream politics, mostly by way of the German NPD, as well as other Western European parties that have come out of the far-right scene. It’s the beginning of their rebirth—from violent thugs in bomber jackets to upstanding young men in white shirts and black ties. Deep down though, nothing has really changed at all. They keep on with their nazi cryptosymbolism and their references to the Third Reich. They keep on with their holocaust denial, planning marches with torches through the old Jewish Quarter. They keep on with their white power punk concerts, and they keep on with their racially and ideologically motivated, hateful, violent attacks.

They just try to look more civilised while they’re at it.

Besides Prague, there’s also a very active neo-nazi group from Rakovník who call themselves the National Alliance. They have close ties to the neo-nazis in Prague that’ve congregated around the National Resistence group, with the two groups working together to coordinate their entry into mainstream politics. Soon after, they merge into a National Socialist Bloc. They invite each other to their rallies, where there are usually representatives of both groups speaking. The words “There were no six million dead…” echo across Vítkov Hill in Prague from the lips of a National Alliance mouthpiece by the name of V.S. The abbreviation ‘NA’ is written in the same font as an SS unit’s collar insignia.

For me, those days have almost completely blurred into one. We were active all across the Czech Republic. The idea was that, anywhere the neo-nazis stuck their heads out, anywhere they tried to organise their demonstrations or plan their marches, anywhere that they were attacking the clubs or terrorizing the city centre by night, we would be there.

Not one of their rallies would be allowed to take place without pushback. Our response would differ depending on how far away the place was and how strong we were at any given time. Sometimes we’d just saunter about, picking off stragglers or catching small groups on their way to or from the demo; other times we’d confront them at their rallies head-on with our own counter-demonstrations.

We had transformed—from laughable, feeble leftists into their worst nightmare. Our attacks were so frequent they started saying amongst themselves that we had to be secret police. After so many battles lost, they started talking about how, in Prague, they were being attacked by the anti-racist SHARP Skinheads. At first glance, it’d usually seem like that’s what we were. But in reality, we were a vibrant mix of people from various different subcultures, with a variety of political leanings and drives. No simple label of “leftist” or “anarchist” could fit any one of us perfectly, although both terms worked together as a kind of common denominator, both on the visual side of things as well as when it came to our shared values.

Our starting point was the defence of free space. A free space for alternative culture and alternative politcal views. A free space for people no matter their skin colour, sexual orientation, or religion. A free space for discussion and the expression of opinion.

As such, our organisation’s foundational characteristic was a willingness to come together whenever and wherever necessary to protect that free space. To spend as much time as was needed on travel, surveillance, stake-outs. To come running to the aid of whoever was in need. To spend long nights monitoring rallies where nothing even happened. Collecting information, putting the pieces together, luring them into traps. A willingness to work on oneself in every aspect. Practice, training, making connections, translating, writing, taking photos, obtaining important information and joining the dots. Joining forces and staying unified. From city to city, all across Europe.

Perhaps today, twenty years later, these sound like strange, empty phrases. But just think of what it would be like if you and your girlfriend and your buddies all got beat up on your way home from the club. Imagine you’re all stood out in front of a concert hall and a molotov comes flying towards you. Imagine getting chased around your estate by five psychopaths with knives, who you ran into on a nightbus on your way back from a party and who didn’t think you were cool enough.

You wouldn’t want to just sit there and watch while people like that gained power, not at any level of politics. Neither would you want to give them any control over the city streets. Slogans like “Never again!” or “No pasarán!” wouldn’t just be empty words then; they’d be signs of a struggle, paid for in blood, to try to do something about people like that…

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Sometimes a win, sometimes a bust. Sometimes a wild goose chase and sometimes a lucky bullseye.

If it weren’t for a thorough study of pamphlets, newspaper articles, and online resources, all I’d have left from those days would be a cluster of images, all jumbled up in time.

Disparate moments. Flashes. Punches and shouts. The feeling of jumping into the fray. Now. Now. Of a dark night, cut through by a stampede of boots, trying in vain to escape. A door kicked in. Minutes. Seconds. Moments etched in time that you’ll never be able to get out of your head.

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I’m driving back from Berlin with my mates, two crates of molotovs in the boot of the car. We hide them in a park by the train station near a narrow bridge, where we’re planning to intercept today’s nazi demo before it can even start.

I’m standing at the train station, dressed in street clothes, on the phone to an incoming train full to the brim with antifa. No undercover police to be seen, and the whole of the National Alliance is lined up there on the platform. Soon as the train pulls in it kicks off—glass shattering in the train station restaurant. Then suddenly, from out of nowhere, a dozen SWAT vans pull up and in a few minutes our lot are all in handcuffs. We’ve seriously underestimated things this time. How could we have missed them? Where the fuck were they hiding? I make myself scarce. We’ll try to come up with other things to do around town.

In broad daylight in a half-deserted border town, someone dressed all in black will tend to stand out. The secret police spot us from across the square, leave their cars, and head for the station. Sirens blare, and they’re on us in seconds. Then we’re being interrogated by the counter-extremism department, and the colonel squawks at J.: “Don’t stand behind me! You’re a dangerous person you are…”

A whole night spent carting about released detainees in an overcrowded Škoda Felicia. Jakub Polák’s our Knight Rider. Then another town and a frantic escape at the end of a rally, outnumbered two to one, searching for the nearest public transport going anywhere.

Smoke grenades flying right into the middle of a nazi demo on Wenceslas Square, and the sound of the speaker’s microphones being disconnected…

Catching them before the rallies, tallied in the double digits. Anywhere. Stopovers, metro stations, underpasses, streets, only takes a couple seconds. Grit. Grief.

The murder of Hassan Abdelradi. Grief and retribution.

“Come quick, they’re after me, I’m at the pub,” says K., a Roma from Milada[1], over the phone…

And quickly we came, from behind the bushes ten shadows fall on eight once-brave men.

Skittles being knocked over.

Bruised knuckles. Sawn-off hockey sticks. A stolen knuckleduster with blunt spikes and the swastika scratched off, which would still have plenty of work to do.

T-shirts, tattered and torn, proclaiming hatred, any day, anytime, anywhere: Prague is Hatefree!

Out for a spot of fried cheese, billiards, and a date with one of the weekly National Socialist Bloc meet-ups at the bar on the estate, just a couple metres away from them, behind enemy lines.

Eavesdropping from beneath a window.

Pointless trips, day and night, pointless waiting.

Reading their chats: double identities, stupidity, naivety.

Photos, videos.

Hunter to hunted and vice versa. Attacking, retreating.

Uncertainty. Fear.

Brutality. Aggression. Ruthlessness. And deep down inside, a whetstone grinding away.

Grotty pavements and shards of glass…

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The nazis have two marches planned, both of them through Josefov, Prague’s Jewish Quarter. The first is on the anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz. It’s complete nonsense, with no understanding of the context. Almost like they need to prove to themselves that they’re real neo-nazis and they’re not afraid to show it.

So there we are, watching them gather on Franz Kafka Square. A few dozen, kitted out with torches and balaclavas. After reassessing the situation, they decide that actually they won’t be marching through the streets of Josefov by the Maisel Synagogue, opting instead to leave the city centre en masse and head towards the embankment… Leaving turns into retreating, and retreating into fleeing… And in their rush to flee, they start falling over each other once we catch up to them. The stragglers hole up in the courtyard of the hospital by Charles Square, standing there in one big exhausted, terrified huddle, as a flare arcs through the air towards them like a parting gift.

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Then the second attempt. Neo-nazis gathering outside a Hatecore record shop in the Vysočany district. Two hundred of their finest bruisers. Police are searching people somewhere further off. Legs and arms spread, forehead against the concrete wall of a block of flats.

On our side, it’s the strongest turnout we’ve ever had. Before the demo, a hundred of us stroll through the early morning streets of Prague. Luckily for everyone, during the day nothing gets in the way of our planned route. Our counter-demo is well-organised, lots of placards, headed by a tight-knit phalanx. We’re there from the very beginning, marching right at the front behind a huge banner, until we arrive at the Jewish Quarter.

There are a few small groups of neo-nazis here that weren’t part of the mass meeting, who quickly find out what it means to be in the wrong place at the wrong time. They get the worst of it, right in front of the police line, because the police don’t get a chance to protect them. They try all sorts of things to wall off the space in front of the Faculty of Law, but it doesn’t work, we’re always on the move.

Once it becomes clear that the main group of demonstrators aren’t coming, we disperse into the dim light of evening and head for Prague’s city centre. We run into another group of nazis on Old Town Square, around ten or so, and race after them, chasing them down a couple streets until they get what they came for. I pull myself up over the pile of beaten bodies and start making my way back to the square, when suddenly I see our counter-demo, the whole lot of them, approaching from around the corner. Even though I was pummelling these nazis myself just a couple minutes ago, that mob scares me. Some sense of reservation within me screams: “Yes, this is right, this is what they deserve, but that? That’s too much!”

A mob like that always causes fear, no matter what purpose it’s been assembled for. I stay there, standing by a pair of beat-up nazis who are cowering in fear between two parked cars, one of which is a police car with police officers sat inside. After after a few incredibly long seconds the mob reaches us. I use my own body to protect the two nazis from one side. The policemen prefer to stay shut up in their car.

I get beaten with a chain—a beating that was meant for them—but I stand my ground in the narrow space between the cars. The mob. The beatings. The darkness. Those two, cowering behind me… I can’t remember how long it lasted, ten seconds, a couple minutes…

The policemen slither out of their car once a SWAT unit arrives to back them up. In an instant the mob disperses… I fade away into the shadows.

Did I really just protect two neo-nazis with my own body? Two utter bastards? Two of our sworn enemies? One of them with the number 88 tattooed on his neck, who I ran into again a couple years later, when I tried unsuccessfully to ambush him because reports of him committing violent attacks had started to spread?

A paradox. And at the same time, in that moment, a natural human response.

To this day I can still picture that mob approaching, filling the dark street. And even when I stood with them, on the same side, there was still something about it that terrified me.

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Another rally in one of the nazis’ favourite small towns. We’re running late. Didn’t manage to meet up in time. Three cars. We spend a couple minutes bickering and making jabs at each other, who’s to blame, whether it still makes sense to even go.

My phone rings. This one journalist tells me over the phone that the rally’s already over and that all the leaders of the National Alliance are sat in some pub together, then he tells me the pub’s name. I pause to take it all in, then I ask myself: “Why the fuck has he called me?” Surely he knows what’ll happen now that he’s told me. He repeats the information to make sure that I’ve got it; it seems to really matter to him. Maybe—after what he heard during the speeches in the square—maybe he wants it to happen. “Alright, cheers. Take care.”

We drive to the pub. This is our mission for today. We’ll go after the ones at the top, no more chasing nobodies through the suburbs for us. We get to the place. We park a couple blocks away on some side streets next to the road out of town.

The pub is in the middle of an estate: walls, closed doors, a private event. Okay, so we can’t verify any of the info that we’ve received, we can’t tell who’s inside or how many of them there are. Nothing we have is for certain. We’ve no choice but to wait.

We split up into three groups based on who came in which car. Each group will look after themselves. We’re monitoring all the routes in and out. We lie in wait. Hours go by. Two, four, six. Morale drops a little. We take a moment to confer with each other, but we end up telling ourselves that we’ll just have to wait until they come out, even if we have to wait another four hours.

Just before midnight the doors open and out come about a dozen high-ranking members of the National Alliance. They leave in a drunken rabble—roaring, chanting, crooning—and head for the park next to the pub. We spread ourselves out amongst the bushes, there’s about as many of us as there are of them. Using hand-signals, we show each other how we should cut them off. We wave to each other: this way, here…

They have a couple of torches with them; they light them up and start singing some nazi songs. We’re on them in seconds, mobbing them from all sides, each of us to a man—a man who’s about to get his gob bashed in. None of them put up much of a fight, they try to make a run for it, every man for himself, not a thought for each other, bedlam. I grab one by his leather jacket, but in his rush to escape he slips right out of it, leaving the jacket hanging in my hand. I hold onto it for a moment, thinking he’ll come back and fight me for it, but he just scampers away. Fuck the jacket, let’s go for a jog then. I knock him to the floor, giving him a couple quick thumps.

I make my way back to see how the rest of them are getting on. The nazis have all either scattered or are lying on the ground about the park. One of them—who’s noticeably older and who we’d mostly let be—pulls out a pistol and starts waving it around, aiming at each of us in turn. He shoots into the air. It’s hard to tell whether it’s a BB gun or the real thing. There’s no time to find out… instinctively, I put my hands in the air and back off. He roars something incoherent and continues pointing the gun around. “Okay… Now!” I give the guy next to me a nod and we scram, dashing over a nearby bridge then further, down a dark footpath along the river. That’s enough for today. A quick rendezvous in a park and the drivers head off to get their cars. The rest of us lie low in the bushes by the motorway. We wait for the cars. Hop in quick and we’re gone.

One of those nazis, a former leader of the National Alliance, moved to Prague a few years later; his relationship fell apart, and he started drinking heavily. I saw him in the city centre once, on Opletalova Street. Black trousers, grubby red hoodie, plastic bag from Lidl, big bushy beard, and messy, greasy hair. He had bags under his eyes and this empty look on his face, shoulders all hunched up. I called out his name. I had the kind of appearance that meant nazis would tend to get confused about which side I was actually on, and often they’d believe that I was one of them. “Oi Vláďo!” I said, “Y’alright mate? What’s up?” He just turned away with that twitchy gaze of his and disappeared into a Vietnamese corner shop down the street. At thirty five years old they found him dead in his house. Drank himself to death.

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We travelled to Germany a lot, went to meetings with antifascists from Dresden, Leipzig, and Berlin. We’d go in solidarity to support each others demos. Once we received an invitation to a pan-European antifa conference at SO36, a nightclub in Berlin. Mrt. spoke to them about Antifascist demos in Prague, about how our work was going and about our connections with other political movements. Our critical stance against communism was pretty unique across Europe as a whole. Then one of the moderators asked him a question about the role of women in our antifascist movement—a question that he was completely unprepared for. His answer ended up being a confused scramble for words, the crux of which was: we are open to women, it’s just that they’re not interested in us.

But actually, was that really the case? Looking back I’d probably say no, not at all. We never really stopped to think about the questions like those. We’d adopted the violent sport of street fighting, pitting ourselves against the neo-nazis, playing either by their rules or by our own. We’d gotten completely lost in questions of combat effectiveness and how to protect ourselves from the police or possible crackdowns. Back then, many people accused us of elitism and machismo. From their perspective, probably rightly so. From our point of view though, we were putting a lot on the line and, when we were out in the street, we needed to know that we could count on each other no matter what, for whatever reason; to stick to a set of protective rules, which had kept us safe for so long already. A lack of understanding. Incompatible realities. Hold your tongue. A mafia mindset. Back then we didn’t want to hear those kinds of criticisms. To us, it all seemed besides the point. We got the feeling that we were being treated unfairly just for being respectful and open. But maybe we were open more in our ideas, our beliefs, and our words than we were in reality.

It took a few years more before we were capable of really doing something. Of diversifying our work, making it more vibrant while still preserving our ability to fight. Of beginning to use a different vocabulary and, in doing so, learning much. But to a certain extent this was possible due to the fact that, together, we were able to build and defend a space that could provide basic safety and security for our work. A space where anyone could raise the kind of questions that he/she/they wanted to ask, and where we could try to give them a proper answer.

 

Translated by Samuel Dix

[1] Translator’s Note: Squat Milada was one of the Czech Republic’s most active squats, occupied from 1997 until 2009. Wollmann himself helped to set it up, and as such it plays an important role in Blood Circle Black.