I was surprised to learn that the Polish magazine Alerta, which is published by an antifa group known as 161 Crew, ran an article about Kortatu’s 1987 visit to Warsaw. After all, I had written a piece on the exact same subject last year, focusing heavily on the skinhead presence at the Kortatu show. Had Alerta (“Anti-fascism, anarchism, music, DIY”) stumbled upon any information that was lacking from my own humble attempt at reconstructing the events, I wondered? Would their account contradict mine? They didn’t seem to be shipping the magazine outside Poland, but luckily a friend from Wroclaw helped me out.
It turned out that they had simply translated my piece into Polish. It’s the first article in the current issue of their magazine, which clocks in at 100 pages and comes with a glossy cover. The editors haven’t added any introduction – or health warning – of their own, and they’ve recycled many of the illustrations already used for our blog.
A contact from Warsaw shrugged his shoulders: “When Polish punks see something on the internet, they consider it up for grabs”. Now, as an adherent of the creative commons principle, I’ve got nothing against that: Alerta spelled out my name and credited Creases Like Knives (if rather inconspicuously at the end of the article), so all was good on that front. I still found it strange that they had not approached us – neither to announce their intention of translating the piece, nor to notify us once it was published.
Had they got in touch, they might not have to translate all the statements from people I had interviewed back into Polish and risk distorting them – I could have sent them all the original Polish quotes instead. I could also have proofread their translation and let them know if they had got anything wrong.
That said, apart from a couple of minor issues the Alerta translation is very solid. For the most part, the editors have also left intact the sections where I’m critical of certain antifa myths about Polish skinheads. This, I suppose, testifies to a degree of openness and willingness to treat readers as thinking adults. There are only two instances of mild censorship. Number one, I mentioned that a Polish antifa activist called Rupert, when interviewed by “the hipster magazine Vice”, spun some questionable theories about skinheads and the security apparatus of the Polish People’s Republic. The Alerta translation just reads “the magazine Vice”, sans “hipster” – perhaps an accident.
Secondly, I wrote, “Polish antifa consists largely of anarchists (often of a decidedly liberal bent) who are quick to put an equal sign between the socialist regime and fascism – after all, both were ‘authoritarian’”. This, I imagine, hit a little too close to home: the phrase “often of a decidedly liberal bent” is missing from the Alerta translation. It would have been preferable if 161 Crew had left my text intact and wrote a brief intro of their own, perhaps distancing themselves from certain remarks instead of pretending that I hadn’t written them.
Would I have gladly cooperated with Alerta if the editors had approached me about the article? Let me put it this way: the exchange of different views is a good thing in and of itself. And given that they were going to translate the piece anyway, it would have been in my interest to help ensure that the Polish version was as accurate as possible. In exchange for their promise to refrain from any censorship whatsoever, I would have offered to proofread the translation and provide all the original Polish quotes.
This doesn’t mean that I particularly like the politics of 161 Crew. Don’t get me wrong, I’ve got nothing against physical self-defence. The problems begin when anti-fascism becomes one’s main preoccupation and takes on an ideological life of its own, drawing on vague liberal concepts such as ‘authoritarianism’ as the prism through which everything is seen and understood. Ironically, if this is the central tenet of your worldview you often end up acting as someone else’s useful idiot. Instead of working out an independent working-class position, the anti-fascist winds up defending the ailing liberal order against the conservative competition, at times even lining up behind whichever side strikes him as less ‘authoritarian’ in rich men’s wars (see Ukraine). No radical posturing changes that, and from what I’ve seen 161 Crew are a perfect example of “anarchism of a distinctly liberal bent”.
I could elaborate on why I think authoritarianism is a useless concept. But this is not the place to go into extended political monologues. So let me just stress again that I have nothing against the translation of my article for Alerta. However much I may disagree with the 161 Crew outlook, I applaud their willingness to engage with viewpoints different from their own. That’s something that is often sorely missing nowadays.
Matt Crombieboy
Creases Like Knives 