The rise of the black-brown in the NATO heartland
When I discussed some of these things in the comments here some people said I should write a blogpost about it, and since I have nothing else to do at the moment, here goes. This report is mostly written from the perspective of participants and supporters of the CNT-b union in Belgium but it is not any official CNT-b text, it is solely my (Tim Declercq) own personal report and responsibility.
- The first few months of war
Almost immediately after the start of the war in Ukraine in February 2022 calls were spread by some self-proclaimed anarchist groups to provide weapons and other support to people fighting in various Ukrainian militia groups. In particular these calls were spread by Vrije Bond, a group which I was still a member of at the time (I had joined in 2015). We quickly found out that many of the people being supported were part of various fascist militia groups, including the Right Sector and others. I discussed this with other people from Vrije Bond but they refused to budge and insisted on supporting these calls and not telling people about the fascist connections. So on 7 April 2022 I decided to leave Vrije Bond, it is one thing to unknowingly sponsor fascist militia groups, it is quite another to do so knowingly and willfully while trying to hide that from the people being asked to give money.
At the same time discussions about this were taking place between people from the CNT-b, where it was decided that we would refuse to support ultra-nationalist and fascist tendencies and would not move away from our position of class struggle and proletarian internationalism. As was further decided, anti-fascist groups were informed of the presence of these people in fascist militia groups, and a text exposing this was published on the Dutch Indymedia.[1] The text in question was almost immediately censored by the Indymedia team and moved to the hidden section of the site, an act of censorship that would turn out to be quite prescient for what was still to come.
- The secret union-busting campaign
At this point we are in the middle of 2022, and all that was standing in the way of this new black-brown alliance was the anarchist unions. It was at this point that Vrije Bond engaged in an extensive union-busting campaign. It should be said here that we are no strangers to union-busting efforts, after the CNT-b's involvement in the great railway strike of 2016 which came within an inch of overthrowing the government we got a good taste of this. I myself was forced into early medical retirement, Peter was getting dragged through the court system for "subversive" publications during the strike while every effort was being put into sabotaging his solidarity campaign, new laws were passed taking away railway workers' right to strike, new regulations were introduced for State Security screenings of railway personnel, etc.
The first union that would drown under the weight of this campaign was the Radical Riders union in Amsterdam (Netherlands), a union of delivery riders which had managed to win numerous fights.[2] One of its leading members, the Jewish comrade Sjerp van Wouden, informed us of an extensive use of anti-semitism during this campaign. Presumably the brown part of the black-brown alliance didn't like Jews so much, which is hardly surprising seeing how great fans they are of Stepan Bandera, Roman Shukhevych, and other Holocaust criminals.[3] The campaign against the CNT-b, and me and Peter Terryn in particular, was no less extensive though quite less effective. In this case we are talking about visits to the social center Het Groot Ongelijk in Louvain to intimidate people, death threats by the brown part of the alliance, putting people on a Myrotvorets-like website, as well as passing along names of activists to State Security. This last part did force us to pretty much lock everything down.
- One year of war
Having gained dominance in the self-proclaimed radical-left scene, the black-brown alliance had gained the self-confidence to operate more openly and brazenly. Whereas up until then most of the effort had gone into covering up and hiding the fascist connections through extensive use of censorship and secret campaigns against groups and individuals standing in the way (in particular the unions and some social centers), by now it was decided to be more open about the new alliance. As such the idea was enacted to organize a common demonstration with ultra-nationalist groups where they would march together through Brussels behind fascist slogans. This demonstration was timed for February 2023, one year after the start of the war, and was organized by several Vrije Bond groups, some self-proclaimed anti-fascist groups, and ultra-nationalist Ukrainian groups. And so this cacophony of black and brown made its way through the streets of Brussels behind screams of "Glory to the Nation! Death to its enemies!" ("Slava natsi! Smert vorogam!"), "Ukraine über alles!" ("Ukraina ponad ushe!"), and various OUN-B slogans such as "Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes!" ("Slava ukraina! Heroijam slava!").[4]
Undeterred by any of this, we at the CNT-b and Het Groot Ongelijk maintained our principled opposition to this new brown-tinted nationalism that was sweeping through our movements, and remained committed to class struggle and proletarian internationalism. By now we had also gotten in touch with revolutionary trade unions in the region there, from the Donetsk miners union to the KRAS-MAT, which allowed us to fill in the details of our understanding of the situation. Despite the censorship we continued to expose these connections with ultra-nationalists and fascists in Ukraine. For example another, more detailed, exposé was published on the Dutch Indymedia.[5] Not so much because we expected it not to be censored (it quickly was) but more so as to ensure that a dated public record exists of these things so that nobody can pretend later that they "didn't know."
The censorship campaign was by now no longer limited to Vrije Bond and Indymedia NL, but included a good part of the self-proclaimed anti-fascist movement in Belgium, including Anti-Fascistisch Front and leading members of Blokbuster and CAB. By and large the very same people who had also engaged in the campaign against CNT-b after that railway strike, how little things change... All of whom were rather desperately censoring any mention of these things and banning anyone in their groups talking about it, while the promotional and sponsorship events for this new black-brown alliance were continuing at a high rate. The censorship also started hitting literally anything the CNT-b supported, even entirely unrelated to the alliance with Ukrainian ultra-nationalists, for example our calls for the Rouvikonas firetruck fundraisers or our calls for support for the Anepos solidarity convoys to Greece.
- Two years of war
The attempts by Vrije Bond to get anarchists to throw their weight behind this black-brown alliance have only accelerated. No longer content with just asking people to sponsor their friends, they have started asking people to themselves emulate and follow in the footsteps of Sergey Petrovichev ("CONTINUE THEIR WAY! WAY TO FREEDOM!" in all caps and exclamation marks).[6] It is rather a bit unclear what exactly they mean by this, as Maxim Martsinkevich is dead so it's rather difficult to take selfies with him, and White Rex doesn't hold events in Belgium or the Netherlands so it's rather difficult to make promotional material at their events.[7] At the same time, cracks have been opening in the facade due to the publications on LibCom confirming much of what we had been saying for the past 3 years.[8] Leaving the censors scrambling to cover up their role in this affair, which will inevitably fall flat on its face due to our diligence in ensuring the existence of a dated public record of it all. So make no mistake, over here in Belgium/Netherlands this information was known and discussed within a month after the start of the war.
All in all, it is rather sad that some things which have nothing to do with this had to suffer, such as the Rouvikonas firetruck fundraisers, but the positive side of this is something mentioned by an Italian comrade: "The one good thing about this war is that it shows which groups are run by the State."
Tim Declercq
1. https://web.archive.org/web/20220813005332/https://www.indymedia.nl/node...
2. https://vrijeteelt.nl/verklaring-sjerp-van-wouden-bij-royering-uit-vrije...
3. For example from Sergey Petrovichev's group: https://www.facebook.com/permalink.php?story_fbid=pfbid0i8PmU378oKsohWvb...
4. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yeYzkjv1CFY
5. https://web.archive.org/web/20230921213124/https://www.indymedia.nl/node...
6. https://www.vrijebond.org/first-international-day-of-commemoration-of-th...
7. From the Facebook account of Sergey Petrovichev: https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=3293046094106365
8. https://libcom.org/article/collaboration-pro-war-anarchists-far-right-ma... and https://libcom.org/article/myths-and-truth-about-enemies-our-enemies
Pictured with this article is the Belgian national-"anarchist" Jacques Guy Martin who went and fought with one of the nazi groups in Ukraine, and was well received by some self-proclaimed anarchists upon his return. (I didn't really know which picture to add to this article, so I figured this one was quite topical)
