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Anti-fascist Heather Heyer murdered by alt-right in ISIS style car attack

Date: Fri, 2017-08-25 16:03

The alt-right have just carried out an ISIS style attack on anti-fascist protesters in Virgina killing at least one person and wounding 19.  In the video you will see the car accelerating at speed down an empty street into protesters that are 50m away at an intersection, it ploughs into them without slowing down.  Towards the end of the video the car can be seen reversing back up the street at speed with its front bumper hanging off.  At that point it has hit people and other static cars, pushing them forward into yet more people 

This second video shows the aftermath, at least 9 people appear to be on the ground scattered over about 30m.  

The official report as of now says 19 people are being treated for serious injuries and one has died.  There were reports that this person was an IWW member but this is unverified.

This third video was a livestream that shows the car coming into the crowd from inside the march at around the 7.30 mark - warning its graphic, you can see people being thrown in the air 

In the slowed down video you can see a white women and a black women flying through the air, the white women goes right over the car in front, the black women lands on the bonnet of the attacking car before it reverses back.  A still photo which we are not linking as the people are too identifiable shows two men the the air while two further people have literally been knocked out of their trainers to one side.

Earlier the attempts by the fascists to hold a hate rally fell apart in panic with the leadership fleeing the park after the police used tear gas.  Individual groups of fascists were left behind, the attack with the car seems to have happened about two hours after the rally was abandoned.

The text to here was originally an 'almost live' report created by updating a Facebook posting by editing it as more information becomes available.

The woman murdered by the alt right car attack in Virginia has been named overnight as 32 year old Heather Heyer. Heather was marching with a group that included DSA and IWW members. Her last public post read "If you’re not outraged, you’re not paying attention."

Photos have emerged of the man charged with the murder at the fascist rally with the shield and uniform of American Vanguard - see photo in comments. Just as the fascist leadership fled their failed rally first American Vanguard have rushed out a statement claiming that James Fields was not a member!

Meanwhile photos have emerged of the rally organiser James Kessler alongside the Republican congressman Tom Garrett.

"Yesterday, those of us who were in Charlottesville witnessed a Nazi murder Heather Heyer and injure many others on Water Street. This was not an accident. I was 6 feet away and saw the racist ram his car into another car, which sent other cars, people, and glass flying. I saw the bodies. I heard the screams.
The members and friends of the Raleigh-Durham IWW General Defense Committee who went to Charlottesville are all home safe. Contrary to reports that arose from video that showed us near the front of the line holding our IWW flags, no IWW members were killed. But all of us are deeply affected by what we saw and heard, and many of us will choose, in the coming days, to take time and space to care for ourselves, since we've got a long struggle ahead.

I am not just "saddened" or "disturbed" by this cold blooded murder. I am sick at heart. I feel the force of this attack not only because I witnessed it, but because we know from experience, we know from history, and we know in our bones that this was an attack on all of us, on the whole working class. This didn't start in Charlottesville and it won't end there. We are living in a period when even the small gains of the working class - and especially immigrants, black people, and other working class people of color - have created such a crisis in white supremacist, capitalist America, that the only response it can generate is to meet out horrific violence on our communities. That violence comes from organized nonstate actors like the League of the South and the National Socialist Movement in partnership with state actors like ICE, the cops, and the department of injustice.
That was why the IWW General Defense Committee was in Charlottesville in the first place, and it is why we will be in the streets again. More importantly, it is why we will be organizing our workplaces and neighborhoods, running skill shares, creating food justice projects, and standing up with other organized freedom fighters against ICE and the Durham County Jail like Alerta Migratoria and Inside-Outside Alliance.

Like most others in the IWW General Defense Committee, I believe that organized worker's power is the best, indeed the only way to overcome the fascism that threatens us now but has always been an inevitable byproduct of white supremacy and capitalism in America. Neither feel good rallies that say "we're not this" from a distance, nor random, individual acts of rage, however well intentioned, will suffice. If you want to join this fight, we urge you to join an organization that uses direct action to fight fascism, preferably as part of a broader anticapitalist struggle. The IWW General Defense Committee, to which I belong, is one such organisation."
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GW - This is my personal statement on #cville, offered only for myself, written for distribution to the press and the public. Feel free to share or use in whatever way you think best smashes fascism.

"The Anarchists saved our lives"

Cornel West, a well known US political activist, has praised Anarchists and anti-fascists for preventing a mob of neo-Nazis from brutally assaulting him and others during the shutdown of the 'Unite the Right' fascist gathering in Charlottesville, USA, by left-wing demonstrators.

Speaking on Democracy Now!, a US based independent news station, he said: "We would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the antifascists who approached, over 300, 350 antifascists."
"The antifascists, and then, crucially, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that."

A clergyman who was present on the day heaped further praise on anti-fascists, writing on Facebook: "We may have had different goals but if you're looking to praise people specifically for shutting down the 'Unite the Right' rally praise/thank the antifa. Not the clergy and not the police."
While some naive liberal commentators may decry the use of tactical anti-fascist violence against fascist groups, the importance of this kind of resistance cannot be overstated. Those clergy got a baptism of fire and realised that you're not going to be able to talk a neo-Nazi mob out of attacking you.
If fascist groups can control the streets through the kind of violence witnessed in Charlottesville, their confidence will increase and they will begin to attack and kill anyone and everyone who opposes them.
The fact that one comrade was murdered and many more injured by a white supremacist ramming a car into a group of anti-fascists attests to this.
Only organised anti-fascist resistance will defeat the wave of reactionary fascist violence rising in the US and Europe. See you on the streets. No Pasaran!

"AMY GOODMAN: We’re talking about the terror in Charlottesville. The white supremacist violence there began Friday

CORNEL WEST: ... The next day, for example, those 20 of us who were standing, many of them clergy, we would have been crushed like cockroaches if it were not for the anarchists and the antifascists who approached, over 300, 350 antifascists. We just had 20. And we’re singing "This Little light of Mine," you know what I mean? So that the—

AMY GOODMAN: "Antifa" meaning antifascist.

CORNEL WEST: The antifascists, and then, crucial, the anarchists, because they saved our lives, actually. We would have been completely crushed, and I’ll never forget that. Meaning what? Meaning that you had the police holding back, on the one hand, so we couldn’t even get arrested. We were there to get arrested. We couldn’t get arrested, because the police had pulled back, and just allowing fellow citizens to go at each other, you see, and with all of the consequences that would follow there from.

View the full episode at https://www.democracynow.org/2017/8/14/cornel_west_rev_toni_blackmon_clergy