This post gives a brief and general introduction to scraping Twitter with Python, extracting geodata from this data and mapping it using Fusion Tables and CartoDB. I talked about this as well as some Facebook scraping I did with R in the working group on the Digitalization of Societies and Methods at the Annual Westermarck Conference in Tampere on Thursday.

Twitter is a tricky platform for any programmer who wants to extract geodata. Scrape tweets from any given hashtag and you’ll only get a marginal amount of actual, pinpointed geodata with a longitude and a latitude. This has at least my experience when scraping Twitter.

What is one to do then, if what you are looking for is geodata? I came across this problem when I was scraping a hashtag for an international day of action against the private equity (or vulture) fund Blackstone. The events of the day were organized by a coalition of housing groups across several countries and continents and had an appointed hashtag, #StopBlackstone. I was following the action on the ground in Barcelona, where I was doing fieldwork with the compañerxs of la PAH for the project Learning in Productive Social Movements.

La PAH is a huge movement and it was clear from the outset that they would come up with a big mobilization. But what would the day look like in other places? I didn’t see participant numbers from different places reported afterwards, but on the could deduce from pictures that most actions were small. But how about other types of engagement? How did the designated hashtag take off? Without falling into the old hyperbole of ‘Twitter revolutions’ I think it’s still safe to say that social media engagement is a real part of how many movements build power. Yes, it is still only one metric among others when measuring the power of a movement, but it is still a metric. As such it can at least tell us something, even if it doesn’t tell us nearly everything.

What I wanted to find out was what amount of unique users were engaging with the hashtag #StopBlackstone in different places. On the one hand, this is admittedly a blunt approach, which captures only a fraction of the properties of the network the formed around the hashtag. On the other hand, a map showing all the unique users that engaged with that hashtag would probably (and in the end did) produce a good approximation of the impact the action had in different places.

But where to start? For each tweet you send, Twitter includes two types of location data in the data that makes up the tweet:

1. Exact location data for the tweet.
2. General location data for the user.

Most people have turned off sharing of geodata for individual tweets. This means that there is no information on where they tweeted that exact tweet from. For instance, in the batch of 8310 tweets I scraped during one day of activities on the #StopBlackstone hashtag, only two users included the coordinates that the tweet was sent from. Five included the place they were tweeting from. Not much data to work with!

What most users do provide though, is information on their own general location. For the purposes of my research this was enough: it wasn’t really important to know where one individual was tweeting from but to get an approximation of the geographical distribution of people tweeting.

What I did then, was a script to loop through the diverse geodata in each scraped tweet. I would first check if the tweet was provided with exact data on where it was sent from. If not, I would move on to the general location data provided by the user and saving that instead. The resulting list of JSON objects included locations for 709 users out of 1245, who had produced 5184 out of the total 8310 of tweets I scraped during that day.

To geocode and map this data I tried two different approaches. First, I passed the data through Google Refine to convert it from JSON to CSV. Then I uploaded it to Google Fusion Tables to geocode the data and produce this map:

Because Fusion Tables has very few features for visualizing data points, I used  CartoDB in my second approach to produce something more informative and pretty. This time I used OpenRefine to both convert the data to CSV and geocode it. Then the data was ready for CartoDB, that I used to produce the map at the beginning of this post. This map doesn’t only show the geographical distribution of users, but also the amount of tweets (and retweets) that each user produced during the day as the size of the data point. In both maps you can find out more about a particular user by clicking on a data point.

On the ground, the #StopBlackstone action had at least 200 participants in Barcelona, with far smaller  turnouts for the demonstrations in Dublin, Atlanta, Chicago, New York, Seattle, London and Japan. This is clearly reflected in the data on the map, where most locations match with actual places. There are also many outliers, of which most seem to be due to the elusive locations some people have in their Twitter description (“Peace is a continuous act”, “Donde haya injusticia”, “el mundo”, “Union Sovietica”, Nación Humana Universal” etc.).

In this post I will walk through the different steps of scraping tweets, extracting the relevant location data from them, geocoding this data and then mapping it. Not because this would necessarily be the best approach to my chosen problem, but because this was something I did in 2015 when I had just started working with Python, the Twitter API and geocoding, and I learnt a lot while doing it.

1. Scraping Twitter with Python

Twitter is the chosen medium to experiment on for a lot people who want to learn data science. The API of the platform is well documented and clear. Most programming languages have good libraries for interfacing with it. And, finally, Twitter data is much more straightforward to process than, for instance, Facebook data. That’s also why I started working with Twitter data in 2015.

To get my data, I used the following elegant solution based on the Python Twitter library Tweepy and a script by Marco Bonzanini, with some added code for saving the tweets into a JSON file:

import tweepy
from tweepy import Stream
from tweepy.stream import StreamListener 
from tweepy import OAuthHandler
import json

consumer_key = "YOUR CONSUMER KEY"
consumer_secret = "YOUR CONSUMER SECRET"
access_token = "YOUR ACCESS TOKEN"
access_secret = "YOUR ACCESS SECRET"
 
auth = OAuthHandler(consumer_key, consumer_secret)
auth.set_access_token(access_token, access_secret)
 
api = tweepy.API(auth)

@classmethod
def parse(cls, api, raw):
    status = cls.first_parse(api, raw)
    setattr(status, 'json', json.dumps(raw))
    return status
 
# Status() is the data model for a tweet
tweepy.models.Status.first_parse = tweepy.models.Status.parse
tweepy.models.Status.parse = parse

class MyListener(StreamListener):
 
    def on_data(self, data):
        try:
            with open('FILENAME.json', 'a') as f:
                f.write(data)
                return True
        except BaseException as e:
            print("Error on_data: %s" % str(e))
        return True
 
    def on_error(self, status):
        print(status)
        return True
 
#Set the hashtag to be searched
twitter_stream = Stream(auth, MyListener())
twitter_stream.filter(track=['#HASHTAG_TO_SEARCH'])

If you install the Tweepy library and run this code in Terminal with an active hashtag, tweets will start pouring into your JSON file. Twitter imposes some limits on how many tweets you can access per second, but that only poses a problem for very active hashtags. These can produce several megabytes of data in less than a minute. To interrupt the code, just press ctrl+C.

 2. Getting location data out of tweets

In the #StopBlackstone data I scraped with the code above in October 2015, the first scraped tweet is my own retweet of this tweet:

Tomorrow at 1pm in #NYC | Our Homes are NOT Commodities! #StopBlackstone https://t.co/3foWJ6XsE4 pic.twitter.com/BYBmLlQ8WG

— Occupy Wall Street (@OccupyWallStNYC) October 13, 2015

Each tweet I scraped is saved as a JSON object and includes massive amounts of data. I’ve made an online copy of the retweet of this tweet as it was when I scraped JSON object above here.

Out of the multitude of information stored in the tweet, I want to access location data for the tweet itself, and if that isn’t available, the user. I wrote the following script to do this:

import json

# Tweets are stored in in file "fname". In the file used for this script, 
# each tweet was stored on one line

fname = 'Blackstone_STREAM.json'

with open(fname, 'r') as f:
    
    #Create dictionary to later be stored as JSON. All data will be included
    # in the list 'data'
    users_with_geodata = {
        "data": []
    }
    all_users = []
    total_tweets = 0
    geo_tweets  = 0
    for line in f:
        tweet = json.loads(line)
        if tweet['user']['id']:
            total_tweets += 1 
            user_id = tweet['user']['id']
            if user_id not in all_users:
                all_users.append(user_id)
                
                #Give users some data to find them by. User_id listed separately 
                # to make iterating this data later easier
                user_data = {
                    "user_id" : tweet['user']['id'],
                    "features" : {
                        "name" : tweet['user']['name'],
                        "id": tweet['user']['id'],
                        "screen_name": tweet['user']['screen_name'],
                        "tweets" : 1,
                        "location": tweet['user']['location'],
                    }
                }

                #Iterate through different types of geodata to get the variable primary_geo
                if tweet['coordinates']:
                    user_data["features"]["primary_geo"] = str(tweet['coordinates'][tweet['coordinates'].keys()[1]][1]) + ", " + str(tweet['coordinates'][tweet['coordinates'].keys()[1]][0])
                    user_data["features"]["geo_type"] = "Tweet coordinates"
                elif tweet['place']:
                    user_data["features"]["primary_geo"] = tweet['place']['full_name'] + ", " + tweet['place']['country']
                    user_data["features"]["geo_type"] = "Tweet place"
                else:
                    user_data["features"]["primary_geo"] = tweet['user']['location']
                    user_data["features"]["geo_type"] = "User location"

                #Add only tweets with some geo data to .json. Comment this if you want to include all tweets.
                if user_data["features"]["primary_geo"]:
                    users_with_geodata['data'].append(user_data)
                    geo_tweets += 1
            
            #If user already listed, increase their tweet count
            elif user_id in all_users:
                for user in users_with_geodata["data"]:
                    if user_id == user["user_id"]:
                        user["features"]["tweets"] += 1
    
    #Count the total amount of tweets for those users that had geodata            
    for user in users_with_geodata["data"]:
        geo_tweets = geo_tweets + user["features"]["tweets"]

    #Get some aggregated numbers on the data
    print "The file included " + str(len(all_users)) + " unique users who tweeted with or without geo data"
    print "The file included " + str(len(users_with_geodata['data'])) + " unique users who tweeted with geo data, including 'location'"
    print "The users with geo data tweeted " + str(geo_tweets) + " out of the total " + str(total_tweets) + " of tweets."

# Save data to JSON file
with open('Blackstone_users_geo.json', 'w') as fout:
    fout.write(json.dumps(users_with_geodata, indent=4))

Running the script in Terminal produces the file “Blackstone_users_geo.json” along with the following dump:

The file included 1245 unique users who tweeted with or without geo data.
The file included 709 unique users who tweeted with geo data, including ‘location’.
The users with geo data tweeted 5184 out of the total 8310 of tweets.

What the script actually does, is this: It iterates over all the tweets I scraped, extracting the user who authored the tweet or retweet. For each user, the script checks if they provided specific geodata on where they tweeted from. The vast majority didn’t. Then the script moves on to location data that users provide voluntarily in their profile description. In most cases this includes some actual information on where this person is based, thus giving a clue on how engagement with the hashtag was distributed geographically.

The scripts creates a variable, “primary_geo”, which saves the best possible geo data found. In addition, there are loops for figuring out how many tweets people made in total and how many users provided some kind of geodata.

3. Converting JSON to CSV with OpenRefine

Before geocoding and mapping the data, I needed to change the format of the data. Twitter serves tweets as JSON objects and this is also how I process them in my script. But neither CartoDB or Fusion Tables work well with JSON.

Instead of writing a script for converting JSON to CSV (or doing it in the original script) I just passed the data to OpenRefine, converted it to a table and downloaded it as a CSV file.

4a. Mapping geocoded data with Google Fusion Tables

Next I wanted to geocode this data, so that I can plot it on a map. The purpose is, in other words, to transform location data into a longitude and latitude marking it’s position on planet Earth.

I usually use CartoDB out of personal preference, but due to their data limits I initially found Google Fusion Tables to be a better fit. To my great surprise, I noticed that Fusion Tables automatically geocodes any column in a table that is designated as ‘location’. So, after uploading my data to Fusion Tables, designating my “primary geo” column as a “location” column and creating a map the Fusion Table map earlier in the post was born.

4b. Geocoding with Google Refine, mapping with CartoDB

I give Fusion Tables points for simplicity and clarity. But if you want to customize your map, it’s not the best possible service. I quickly got frustrated when I wanted to make the data points reflect the amount of tweets each user had created. For this, CartoDB proved much better.

The problem with CartoDB is, in my experience, that their geocoding quotas are pretty strict. This means that you can only get a limited amount of data geocoded through their service, much less than the 709 places I needed to geocode.

So before uploading my data to CartoDB, I needed to geocode it somewhere. For this I again used OpenRefine, following the excellent tutorial at the Opensas blog. There were small differences to the geocoding done by Fusion Tables. My own location at the time was “Helsinki | Barcelona”. OpenRefine interpreted this as “Barcelona” and Fusion Tables as “Helsinki”. Both approaches use the Google Maps API, so I’m not sure why the difference. Anyway, the resulting map can be seen at the beginning of the post. I used the CartoDB web app to do small edits in the style of the map and borrowed a basemap from Mapbox.

Conclusions

Producing the maps for this semi-tutorial gave me some interesting information both on geodata on Twitter as well as the relationship between local activist networks and actions by international coalitions.

Regarding geodata and Twitter, it seems like one can produce informative displays of the geographical distribution of different networks even if the available data is quite inexact. Many users provide their location with enough accuracy to geocode it and map it. This data is static rather than dynamic, as it doesn’t provide information on where people tweet, but in large amounts it provides a good overview of where a specific hashtag has gained traction.

Looking at the maps produced here, we notice that even though the action was supposedly international,  Spanish Twitter really dominated the #StopBlackstone hashtag. Even many data points in the US are actually Spanish (like “Valencia” that both Fusion Tables and Google Refine coded into Florida, even though it’s an autonomous province in Spain) and many random locations that seem to be in Spain, were coded into Latin America. The correct way to use the map would then to take a first look to get an approximation of were users were clustered. After that, you can click at the data points in a cluster to get a better understanding of why users were clustered there and assess the validity of the geodata.

Regarding the relationships between different levels of activity in networked movements: Combined with the fact that most pictures from the actions indicate a much larger mobilization at the Spanish offices of the Blackstone subsidiary Anticipa in Barcelona than anywhere else, it seems like the Spanish companerxs really dominated the action. My own gut feeling about this is that international actions usually only work if they are nurtured and amplified by networks that are more present in the everyday lives of people.  La PAH has built its power on countless assemblies, stopped evictions and occupations of banks and this is what they brought to the international mobilization.

The post Scraping, extracting and mapping geodata from Twitter appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

Riots are coming, they are already here, more are on the way, no one doubts it. They deserve an adequate theory.

Joshua Clover has written a book with an intuitive premise. Riot. Strike. Riot, released by Verso last year, tries to give a framework for understanding the wave of revolts and riots that has swept over the world, focusing particularly on the United States. The claim is no less than that “the riot can now be thought as a fundamental form of class struggle rather than an impolitical spasm” and “a sundial indicating where we are within the history of capitalist accumulation.” The book has created a lot of debate among comrades and journalists alike, including several reviews, a book tour in Europe and a dossier by Viewpoint Magazine with three critiques from Alberto Toscano, Amanda Armstrong and Delio Vasquez, as well as a response from Clover.

In this article, I will reflect the argument Clover makes on riots and more specifically circulation struggles – a name given for struggles that take place first and foremost in the marketplace, not the sites of production. I’ll use Clovers analytical apparatus to illuminate the politics of the Spanish housing rights movement la Plataforma de Afectados por la Hipoteca as well as to show some limits to the arguments Clover makes. I start with  a short summary of what I found to be the most central arguments that Clover made and then move on to la PAH. Finally, I will look at Clovers conception of the commune as a strategy to overcome the internal and external limits of the riot – and other circulation struggles.

This is a first sketch of thoughts that I will be presenting at the Westermarck Annual Conference on Sociology working group on housing the 24th of March. If you want to hear more, please come to my presentation at 9 AM.

Riot. Strike. Riot Prime.

The riot has been the topic of many recent books, as Joshua Clover points out in the early pages of Riot.Strike.Riot. What puts Clover apart from these, is his attempt to place the riot within a periodization of social struggles under capitalism. Following authors who theorize over the qualitative shifts in the composition of capital over different cycles of accumulation, Clover makes the point that similar shifts can be found in the way we struggle under capital. Historical variations in the compositions of capital and labour create varying historical opportunities and needs for social uprisings and revolts.

First, during the heydays of primitive accumulation and the creation of a workforce through the dispossession of the means of production, came the riots of the early days of capitalism. These were oriented towards the sphere of circulation of commodities in the marketplace: food riots were a direct assault on unaffordable prices and an attempt to satisfy basic needs. As labour got organized, the riot became a more peripheral form of social struggle. Now, instead of the marketplace, it was the sphere of production where labour could organize best – not for price reductions, but for higher salaries, shorter working days and so on.

Today, as union membership is waning and the amount of working hours lost due to strikes annually has stayed at record lows for 20 years, the age of the strike seems to be approaching it’s end – at least in the West. Meanwhile, the riots seem to be returning and making headlines around Europe and the US. Are these just a rerun of their historical predecessors? No, but before we clarify this point, let’s really pin down the difference that Clover makes between strike and riot.

So, what is a strike and what is a riot? The former has been theorized plenty, but as for the riot, most writers deal with it in purely economical (as a tipping point to be predicted by studies of social inequality, unemployment etc) or purely political (as an Event or the return of History) terms. What Clover attempts is to overcome this split and find the strike and the riot in the historically oscillating intersection of the reproduction of capital, on the one hand, and the reproduction of labour, on the other. He offers the following succinct definitions of the strike and the riot:

The strike is the form of collective action that

1. struggles to set the price of labor power (or the conditions of labor, which is much the same thing: the amount of misery that can be purchased by the pound);
2. features workers appearing in their role as workers;
3. unfolds in the context of capitalist production, featuring its interruption at the source via the downing of tools, cordoning of the factory floor, etc.

The riot is the form of collective action that

1. struggles to set the price of market goods (or their availability, which is much the same thing, for the question is similarly one of access);
2. features participants with no necessary kinship but their dispossession;
3. unfolds in the context of consumption, featuring the interruption of commercial circulation.

The movement Clover traces between cycles of struggle is not simply cyclical, but also one of qualitative shifts. One cycle of circulation struggles will be both similar to and different from the next one.

The early riots in Clovers account marked the emergence of the labour movement – they were a preamble to an enduring proletarian show of strength. This is not the case for the current wave of riots, which marks the fall of the labour movement. So, against the economism of those who would draw on simple statistics like the unemployment rate to explain the riot, Clover proposes a model that can account for the “difference between rise and fall, between tightening and slackening labor markets, between the capacity for dynamism and expansion and the course of stagnation and contraction.” (145)

The differences between the conditions of the preindustrial riots and the conditions of current riots are innumerable, but some seem more relevant than others: Our contracting economies, where people are being laid off due to a lack of growth combined and increasing automation, are a far-cry from the expansive boom of the early 19th century. The logistical revolution, which has “aerosolized” the actual production and circulation of goods necessarily changes the site for the contemporary riot. Circulation now is not what it was then, but rather a circulation prime marked by resistance of the riot prime. And unlike then, we today face a fully developed state protected by an increasingly militarised police force. If the preindustrial riot had direct access to “the economy” in the form of the market place, riot prime faces different conditions: “For riot, the economy is near, the state far. For riot prime, the economy is far, the state near. Either way it is the marketplace and the street.” (126)

In Clovers words, “the preindustrial riot finds the market immediately before it, a concrete phenomenon; it finds the economy itself. At the same time it does not find the police, the armed state, except in the most attenuated forms”. The postindustrial riot, on the other hand, “ finds only a sampling of commodities in the local shops. Looting seizes upon this as it must: the truth of the the old riot, the setting of prices at zero.” (123)

It’s important to note that Clover isn’t making a simple argument where riots are just an attempt to get stuff for free. This is a point that Clover puts special emphasis on in his exchange of arguments with Delio Vasquez in Viewpoint. Riots emerge out of the production of non-production, out of the birth of surplus populations that “have been excluded from production and pushed into the social sphere of circulation, defined in the last instance for the proletariat by market dependence and for capital by the compulsion toward efficient realization of value.” Excluded from production, but still dependent of the market, this (most often racialized) surplus population “must fight in circulation whether or not they endeavor to disrupt, interfere, resolve consumption needs.”

La PAH: Circulation struggles beyond the riot

Riot. Strike. Riot is a hyperbolic book if there ever was one. It makes a huge, sweeping periodization without providing much data to support it. On top of it all, the book appoints a hegemonic figure for different spheres and periods of struggle and straight out ignores a myriad of other ways people have struggled in these same spheres. This, and more, was pointed out in the various critiques compiled by Viewpoint. Still, the argument is tempting and offers a basis for building an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses different strategies might have in different types of struggles.

Looking beyond the riot, we find a number of struggles taking place in the sphere of circulation. One common rubric suggested for these by groups like Allt åt Alla in Sweden and Plan C in the UK is that of the ‘social strike’. Plan C writes:

These are making the new conditions visible, disrupting the circulation of capital and directly socialising, collectivising and communising our social relations, reproduction and struggles. (emphasis added)

The most common example of a social strike today seems to be the women’s strike in Poland that was organized last fall against the planned (and then scrapped) abortion ban. It was a good example of the strike as an event, as a disruption with a clear before and an after. But what would the social strike look like as a continuous practice, as a repeated microintervention against capital? One example of this might be what the housing movement la PAH is doing in Spain.

La PAH was formed to stop the wave of foreclosures and evictions that swept over Spain in the wake of the mortgage crisis that started in 2007. Recently, when the tide of foreclosures gave way for a sharp increase in rent-related evictions, the movement expanded to deal with housing in general. The movement is based on weekly assemblies, where people share their experiences and try to find solution for their case, usually with the aim of debt nullification (‘dacion en pago’) combined with a social rent for the same apartment and exceeding no more than 8% of the income of the former mortgage holder. La PAH supports its members primarily through negotiations with landlords and banks, by stopping evictions and by blocking the offices of banks that fail to give a deal to their former clients.

The activities of la PAH take place in the sphere of circulation in several ways: as a practice of price-setting, as a blockade of goods and infrastructure and as the only possible struggle for a certain group of dispossessed people.

First of all, by pushing for debt nullification and social rents, la PAH provides a tool for setting the price of housing. The movement is a direct intervention by its members into housing – one of the most central sites of contemporary capitalist accumulation – forcing down the price on a commodity that has become perhaps the central tool to displace and marginalize labour.

Secondly, la PAH directly attacks the creation of new debt by blocking bank offices and stopping customers from entering, by tarnishing the reputations of the banks and by helping its members get of a vicious circle of refinancing operations that in the end give very few if any mortgage holders a real solution. Here, la PAH shows how blockades can be effective not only against transportation systems but also against sites of commerce.

Thirdly, by preventing evictions and keeping foreclosed homes of the market, la PAH disrupts value creation through accumulation by dispossession. People who come to la PAH have, in the words of Clover, “no necessary kinship but their dispossession” and this makes for a very transversal movement, with very different kinds of people forming connections and creating common notions. The growth of la PAH has happened as a necessity, as organizing in the only site where the Spanish mortgage crisis can be addressed collectively.

Strikes and transparency

So what kind of beast is la PAH, at least in the bestiary of Joshua Clover? Drawing on further distinctions between the riot and the strike, Clover makes some illuminating points on how the two have historically been perceived in relation to each other.

After the strike became the weapon of choice for the labour movement, the social status of the riot changed. The strike was formalized against the riot, making the latter the “the other” of the former. At this point the riot, “now defined equally as the strike’s opposite number, must equally find its content in its form. But this has paradoxical consequences. Its form is disordered; disorder becomes its content. No one know what the riot wants. It wants nothing but its own disorder, its bright opacity.” (83)

If the riot is opaque, then the strike is transparent. If the riot is disorderly, the strike is orderly. If the riot is elusive, the strike presents clear demands.

Even a vague familiarity with labour history is sufficient for refuting the universality of this claim: strikes have often been wild, expressing nothing but the desire for everything. Riots, on the other hand, can articulate a very concrete and often outright reactionary or racist desire. But let’s nonetheless stick with the distinction Clover makes, because it feels like an accurate description of our contemporary setting. Today, rioting usually equals self-marginalization and voluntary delegitimization of any struggle in the eyes of the mainstream press.

How should one then understand a movement like la PAH, that has successfully battled in the sphere of circulation but doing so in the spirit of the strike? The first difference between the riot of Clover and la PAH that comes to mind, is the fact that la PAH is very explicitly non-violent. But this isn’t really relevant, because at no point does Clover use violence as a distinguishing or even important feature of the riot. What characterizes the riot is rather its nature as a circulation struggle where the dispossessed connect as the dispossessed and with to set the price of market goods as well as its difference vis-a-vis the strike (the above listed opacity, disorder, elusiveness).

From this perspective, one could say that la PAH is a circulation struggle, but using the means of the strike. Unlike the riot, la PAH instrumentalizes legitimacy gained through (among other things) transparency, a sense of order and clear and demands that have been made legitimate both through the ubiquitous nature of the Spanish mortgage crisis and some very determined efforts of la PAH to establish a certain narrative of the crisis, its culprits and its victims. To what consequence do they do this? Well, one could say that la PAH uses its legitimacy to get past the police and to the economy. La PAH creates an air around the group that makes repression against them difficult for any regime that wants to maintain its legitimacy.

But this ‘air’ actually flows two ways. Most people who come to la PAH, perceive themselves as good, law-abiding citizens and they have no history of confrontations with the police. In addition, many hesitate to come to la PAH or share their experiences in the group due to shame or fear of being stigmatized. If la PAH was more elusive and engaged in a more intense conflict with the cops, the majority of the people who come to them would probably stay home or go elsewhere (or become one more number in the statistics of mortgage related suicides). In this context, the ‘strike profile’ chosen by la PAH is a strategic necessity for getting people past a number of obstacles, to la PAH and then, past the police, to the economy. Of course, other movements might have risen instead of la PAH, winning different victories with different methods, but that doesn’t make the hybrid nature of la PAH any less intriguing.

There’s at least one more reason the hybrid model of la PAH might be so successful: the very special nature of housing as a commodity. While it is certainly true that most people who come to la PAH share mainly a condition of dispossession, it is also the case that many of those who hold a mortgage and still inhabit their home are at the cusp of dispossession rather than being already dispossessed. They are standing in line for downwards social mobility, fighting to hold on to what they were promised during the madness of the credit boom. They pushed toward the exit from the “community of money”, into what the movement has called “social death”.

Using transparency to summon the legitimacy works as a tool for getting past the police and to the economy – but only if you have something to negotiate over. This truth doesn’t only apply to the mortgage holder, but to anyone who can barricade the door to their apartment and force their bank or landlord to go through a lengthy judicial process to get an eviction order. Holding a mortgage or just a rental contract gives you certain leverage against a bank or a landlord, provided you have the guts, the collective power and also some institutional support in the form of elementary housing rights. La PAH thus works as a good example of the strategic significance of the social strike alongside the riot in the sphere of circulation.

On the other hand, la PAH shows how the institutional setting and relative position within the working classes offers opportunities for struggle that might be absent elsewhere. A more aggressive police force, weaker housing laws, more repressive courts and so on could easily eradicate the basis for such a movement – as the attempts of the Spanish ruling right-wing party Partido Popular to criminalize even basic forms of protest through the so called ‘gag law’ clearly shows.

While the picture Clover paints of riot prime is surplus rebellion, la PAH is best understood as a price-setting struggle or social strike. They are, quoting Clover, “distinct, if related, forms” of circulation struggles. (129) La PAH can thus be used to point at several junctions/points of divergence: historically between different regimes of accumulation, institutionally between different regimes of policing and legality, geographically and socially between different strata of the surplus population and intensities of dispossession, strategically between different struggles of circulation. Additionally, la PAH illuminates how the social strike can be understood as a form of struggle within the sphere of circulation but under circumstances that make borrowing from the repertoire of the strike not only possible but strategically intelligent.

Surplus populations and the global division of nonlabor

In this sense, la PAH illustrates the difference between how different layers of the surplus population can afford to struggle. Clover implicitly makes this distinction by separating between “the reserve army of labour” which “remains conceptually within the logic of the labour market, driving down wages, moving in and out of the wage with shifts in the supply of demand for labour”, and the “stagnant surplus population chronically outside the formal wage or ‘structurally unemployed’”. (155-156) These are the people who, in the words of Gilles Deleuze, are “too poor for debt, too numerous for confinement”. Here Clover turns to the definition of the proletariat by another Gilles D., Gilles Dauvé, as “the negation of this society”, “those who are without reserves, who are nothing, have nothing to lose but their chains, and cannot liberate themselves without destroying the whole social order.” (162) From this perspective, the riot and the social strike as strategies of struggles in the sphere of circulation appear as two distinct modalities with at least a loose relationship to different sections of the surplus population and their different outlooks, possibilities and political desires.

But Clovers argument isn’t only descriptive, it’s also prescriptive. He is making a point about strategy and about what is possible in the current moment. The “production of nonproduction” and the increasing size of the global surplus population has fundamentally changed the relationship between labour and capital. Clover points to a strike by the United Autoworkers in Detroit in August 1973, when the union that was famed for its ferocity and radical politics, for the first time “mobilized to keep a plant open” (146). For labour, that had become increasingly invested in the redistribution of profits of post-World War II growth, the main threat was suddenly the same as for the individual capitalist: “that a given firm cease to exist”.

This created an affirmation trap and a “cruel optimism” like the one described in the work of Lauren Berlant:

The object/scene that ignites a sense of possibility actually makes it impossible to attain the expansive transformation for which a person or a people risks striving; and, doubly, it is cruel insofar as the very pleasures of being inside a relation have become sustaining regardless of the content of the relation. (Berlant quoted on 147, emphasis added)

In short, “labour ceases to be the antithesis of capital”. Clover draws here on Théorie Communiste and Moishe Postone to point out that “traditional Marxism” “misrecognizes the basis of capitalism as ownership of means of production, while “‘treating productive labour as transhistorical source of wealth and the basis of social constitution’” (148). This misunderstanding has caused traditional Marxism to critique the mode of distribution alone and to equate communism with as the ceasing of the means of production. Against this cruel optimism of socialism, Clover proposes communism as the “”the abolition of the economy and the end of the indexical relation between one’s labour and any relation or access to social wealth”.

Care, Communism, Commune

How does la PAH appear in this light? Is it a movement of “cruel optimism”, demanding a redistribution of the commodity known as housing and a reintegration into the circuits of capital? I suspect Clover might do such a reading, were he ever to take interest in the movement. Why so? Because of one central lack in Riot. Strike. Riot, namely the fundamentally macropolitical perspective that runs through most of the book.

In the final pages of Riot. Strike. Riot, Clover approaches the limits of the riot. Much like the colonizer for the colonized in the works of Frantz Fanon, the police appears as the necessary enemy to unify the rioting crowd, establishing a Hegelian relationship of recognition, a “police-riot dialectic”. And much like the struggle for decolonization, the riot must “transcend recognition”. The police are both necessary for the riot and the limit which prevents it from unifying in action over anything other than a common opposition to an enemy. What could overcome this limit? Clover names this strategy the Commune, a communism of the present that “offers the production and consumption of needs (and of pleasures!–”communal luxuries”) beyond the measures of capital”.

The commune appears beyond wage and price because those struggles cease to be possible in any practical sense, because human reproduction in that moment is not to be found in either the workplace or the marketplace. To the degree that the commune is a historical opening, it is as well a foreclosure, and this foreclosure is inseparable from its working existence. As Marx reminds us, “The great social measure of the Commune was its own working existence.” (190)

The commune emerges as a foreclosure of earlier forms of struggle, marking a historic turn that makes them inefficient and vacuous, and as an opening of other, new forms of struggle, that emerge as a necessity when human reproduction is “not to be found in either the workplace or the marketplace”. It is “a social relation, a political form, an event” and tactic of collective action. One might add that it’s a name that brings together different struggles and practices, providing a horizon where there was previously only capitalist realism. Perhaps one image of this struggle as a necessity which emerges out of the vacuity of previous forms of resistance would be the Kurdish uprising in Bakur or Western Turkey. It is, as a friend commenting on this text pointed out, about survival in such a profound sense that it forces the question of struggle as a form of life to the forefront.

But what’s macropolitical about Clover’s perspective here? Well, in Clover’s account there’s a sense of either-or. Either you demand distribution or break out of this “cruel optimism” and proceed towards the abolition of the economy. This simplification doesn’t do justice for the elaborate argument that Clover makes, but I think it still points at a certain limit in it: It risks dampening our curiosity for the micropolitical potential in situations that don’t fall on the right side of the dichotomies Clover draws. This becomes very clear when we think about la PAH from this perspective.

La PAH is a communist movement in the sense that it is a kind of “real movement which abolishes the present state of things”; it is a micropolitical communism, that abolishes the private shame and fear associated with debt and replaces it with a communist ethics of mutual aid and mutual care. In la PAH, the demand for decent housing works as an empty signifier that brings together people who risk a complete dispossession. Its an object that for many members expands from a practical demand (housing) to the cultivation of an ethic (mutual aid) and the valorization of that ethic as the basis for all human interactions. It is a limited form of the commune if there ever was anything close to it in Europe during the past years. In Clovers own words, “a tactic which is also a form of life” (191), destroying what separates us from our power. This reading is more directed at the geometry of affects at play in a given social situation. In the case of la PAH, the real cruel optimism is that of the relationship between the bank and the mortgage holder, where the mortgage worked as an empty promise for a better future, later to be replaced by different refinancing schemes or foreclosure plans. La PAH works to overcome the sad passions that prevent mortgage holders to go to war with their banks, establishing a collective joy of the dispossessed.

But even in la PAH we find a limit, not unlike the one Clover points out through the riot-police dialectic. The delimiting of the group to the issue of housing is both necessary for its existence and an inevitable limit that must be crossed. The question of the commune remains ultimately implicit, and making it explicit remains the enigma to be answered – not once and for all, but all the time. As Clover also points out, there’s no quick fix, no single Event that will make it transpire, only, to quote some American friends, a steady “accumulation of small realities”. But what’s easily clouded if we stick to the argument Clover makes, is how the process of becoming common can happen anywhere and at any time. Finding those moments and places in every situation, is the real challenge we need to face. And however we set upon this road, it’s clear that it must be a past of joyful encounters, of building our power. In the words of Deleuze:

The affects of joy are like a springboard, they make us pass through something that we would never have been able to pass if there had only been sadnesses. (10)

That’s all for now. I might return to Riot.Strike.Riot and la PAH through the theme of the ‘spatiality’ of the riot’, which I didn’t have time to write about now, or I might not. If you want to discuss these issues, come to my presentation at 9 AM on the 24th of March in Tampere or write a comment below.

The post Looking for the Commune: Riots, Circulation Struggles and Social Strikes appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

1. Let’s begin with Hardt, who made a few points.

First, Trump isn’t a fascist, Hardt said, but rather belongs to the sequence of new strongmen leaders like Erdogan in Turkey, Orban in in Hungary, Duterte in the Philippines, Putin in Russia. The platforms that these leaders push for do indeed have many characteristics of fascism, including racial purity as a basis for national belonging, suspensions of democratic freedoms, attacks against the press (and more, I missed some of the points while scribbling my notes). So, why not call them fascist?

Well, Hardt doesn’t really respond to this question. Instead he asks what happens when we evoke the name of fascism. Referencing Trotsky, and Gramsci on the one hand and the Red Army Fraction on the other, Hardt told us that the use of the word fascism means an end to politics. When fascism is diagnosed in a regime, only suffocating popular front politics (Trotsky, Gramsci) or armed resistance (RAF) remain. Fascism equals a state of emergency that suspends all other struggles and calls us for exceptional unity and exceptional means. And this is not the case for Trump, Hardt said, and as such his ascent does not signify the end of politics.

Instead, Trump and others like him are more a combination of a continuity of neoliberal policies and nationalism. These leaders want to run a country like a corporation with white-supremacist  overtones. Not that much new under the (black) sun then?

I think Hardt makes a useful point when he forces the question of the performativity of calling the name of fascism to the forefront. But he seems lost when drawing up his bestiary of far-right politics, using a rigid conceptual apparatus without historicizing fascism itself. (And honestly, the way he sums up the traits of the current conjuncture of reactionary regimes does sound an awful lot like fascism).

2. From this perspective, Paolo Virno offered a more interesting intervention. Leaning back on his 2005 text Theses on the New European Fascism,  Virno opens up the discussion on what he calls ‘postmodern fascism’, where “the pleasure of difference may become hierarchy”. The text is really excellent (and short) and worth a read for anyone trying to grapple with questions of antifascist organizing. I’ll briefly try to sum up the argument – which at times gets cryptic in the way Virno and other postoperaists often do.

Virno structures his text around a historicization (or maybe rather periodization) of 20th and 21st century. In this account, the rise, fall and second rise of fascism is intimately tied to how work and production have been organized and reorganized over the century . 20th century fascism was an expression of the “socialism of capital” that emerged as a response to the Russian revolution and that built on “hyperstatalism, the militarizing of work, public support for the effective demand and political Fordism”. Fascism was a sort of extrapolation of this mode. After the war, the antifascist safeguard that was established against was achieved through interconnecting working identity and democratic citizenship.

21st century fascism emerges out of the crisis of this interconnection as a crisis of both representation and work, “on the ruins of industrial democracy, or working democracy”. This new fascism “presents itself as civil war within the field of dependent work informed by the tempest of technology and post-Fordist ethics” and “very closely concerns mass intellectuality”. Unlike 20th century fascism, it “does not thrive in the closed rooms of the ministry of the interior, but rather in the kaleidoscopoe of metropolitan forms of life”. I’m sure Virno has never heard of 4Chan, Pepe the Frog or subreddits, but his diagnosis captures the evolution of the alt-right out of these ecosystems in a way that established definitions of fascism fail to do (here I’m thinking about Griffin and Paxton, for instance).

Virno’s analysis falls in line with the postoperaist notion of the collapse of the end of labor as a measure for the value of commodities in the 1970s. In the same process, work becomes something that cannot be reduced to a given or limited site, with the real skills needed to perform most jobs in the service and creative sectors “maturing in the vast world outside the time specifically dedicated to work”. The source of value production becomes the social cooperation that proliferates in the social networks that far exceed the times and places of actual wage labor. Postmodern fascism becomes the “terrifying double” of this cooperation, basing itself of the contemporary cult of ‘differences’ but turning it around into discriminatory and oppressive hierarchies, based on claims of an “artificial substantive foundation”. It’s worth to quote Virno at length here:

Fascism at the turn of the century, on the other hand, gives direct expression to the excess of cooperation, but gives it a hierarchical, racist, despotic expression. It makes of socialization outside work a feral and deregulated sphere predisposed to the exercise of personal domination; it installs the myth of ethnic determination, of rediscovered roots, of “blood and soil” supermarket rhetoric; it reestablishes in its folds familial links between sects and clans destined to achieve that disciplining of bodies which is no longer provided by work relations. Fascism at the turn of the century is a form of the barbaric colonizing of social cooperation outside work. It is the Grand Guignol parody of a politics finally not of the state.

So let’s just call Trump a fascist? Maybe, but two objections come to mind if we want to make this call based on Virno. Firstly, what Virno seems to describe are actually reactionary social movements more than this or that form of governance. The barrage of blood-chilling executive orders that Trump has launched in the few days of his presidency cannot be sufficiently explained in the framework provided by Virno. Secondly, towards the end of his paper, Virno clarifies what he is actually writing about:

Bear in mind, we are certainly not dealing with fascist “positions’ but with projects whose realization determines that empty space, which is to say that no-man’s land, in which fascism at the turn of the century can effectively become stronger.

If Hardt’s perspective raises the question of the strategic value of calling a name (‘fascism’), then what Virno does through his periodization is to raise the question of the function and social space that fascism has occupied during different historical epochs, in the light of shifts in the mode of production (I have explored classical Marxist approaches to this perspective together with Jemima Repo in this text).

This is the function of Trump: to occupy the no-man’s land that Virno describes and that all other political projects have failed to take over. In this sense, Trump has taken us into extremely dangerous territory and should be understood as playing the role of the fascist, whether or not he is a fascist. Maybe this is what Bifo meant, when he in his intervention called the Polish Law and Order regime ‘national workerism’ (and as a consequence calling upon himself furious critiques from many in the audience who were actual veterans of the Italian workerist movement of the 1960s and 70s)?

Interestingly, both Virno and Hardt call for the same strategy of response, which Hardt describes through three prongs (intersectional movements like BLM or NoDAPL, international migrant solidarity and electoral and union strategies) and Virno more abstractly as democratic, nonrepresentative institutions to give “full political expression to the current intertwining of work, communication and abstract knowledge”.

Are these adequate and sufficient responses? I don’t think so, but elaborations on that point will have to wait until a possible later post.

The post C17: Fascism – naming it, historicizing it appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

There is no alternative to communism today.

This was the premise of C17, a remarkable conference on communism held in Rome at the social center Esc and the National Museum of Modern Art during this past weekend. The program of the seminar included an awe-inspiring lineup of communist intellectuals, including interventions by Silvia Federici, Jodi Dean, Jacques Rancière, Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, Bifo, Saskia Sassen, Maria Lucia Boccia, Mario Tronti, Christian Marazzi, among many others.

One of the more exciting presentations was given by Michael Hardt on Saturday, at the session on the ‘communism of the sensible’. In his presentation, Hardt walks us through the idea of communism, starting from the economic sphere but quickly extending his argument into a beautiful elaboration on the nature of the common and a uniquely concise articulation on a theoretical basis for a contemporary communist politics. The video of the session has thus far not been included in the archive of events at C17, so it’s worth to reproduce the argument at length here. To be clear: unless otherwise noted, the following text is based on notes from the presentation Hardt made.

In the Communist Manifesto, Marx and Engels define the “distinguishing feature of communism” as the abolition of bourgeois private property. This definition of communism is entirely negative, and according to Hardt, Marx and Engels don’t really give a positive definition as a correlate. Hardts’ response is, hardly surprisingly, to issue the common as a positive ground for thinking communism.

If private property is characterized by a limited access to use plus a monopoly on decision making, then, conversely, the commons are characterized by open access to use and collective decision making. Without the common there is no communism, and thus a positive rewriting of the Communist Manifesto today would have to include an affirmation of the common. This isn’t a mere issue of symmetry – a communist politics can not just oppose the capitalist state with a communist one – and, in fact, the very idea of ‘common property’ is an oxymoron. The common, then, is not property.

But if this is the case, why is the theory of communism so often reduced to the question of property relations – and something of the economic sphere – not least by Marx and Engels? This question, Hardt explains, eludes the fact that private property relations actually extend into all realms of human activity. Hardt then proceeds to give four examples on how this articulation of the depth of property relations has been expressed in the history of communist struggle and theory.

Some of the greatest achievements of the early Soviet Union came through investigations of the abolition of private property, Hardt says and introduces his first example (1). One of the more articulate voices was the communist theorist of law, Evgeny Pashukanis. His thesis was, that civil and public law cannot really be separated, since the very sovereignty that any law in capitalist societies rests upon is based on private property. All laws under capitalism are at their base about property relations. As a consequence, Hardt says, we need new forms of rights that are based on the common. (As a side note: Similar ideas can be found in the writings of Carl Schmitt when he makes a parallel between Marx’s idea of primitive accumulation and a political variant of the original accumulation of power through the establishment of the sovereign state).

Hardt finds his second example (2) in the “more daring and far reaching efforts to abolish private property in the Soviet Union” that Alexandra Kollontai ventured upon during her time as People’s Commissar for Social Welfare. Kollontai attacked the private relation of the couple that binds the family together and functions as a vehicle for gender hierarchy, “making the wife an instrument for production”. This lead Kollontai to equal romantic love with a trap and a mechanism for the subordination of women. The relation of the couple is defined by property and possession (“I am yours and you are mine”) and in the couple form attachment takes the expression of a refusal to share past experiences. The couple becomes an antisocial unit that has no need for the rest of society and that breaks other forms of attachment and love. This is repeated in the family that completely closes in on itself and where the parents often hold a proprietary attitude towards their children (my children/your children). Here Hardt quotes feminist theorists Michèle Barrett and Mary McIntosh, when he says that “caring/sharing/loving would be more widespread if the family wouldn’t claim them for itself”. (This, one might remark, is actually at the root of why raising children today can be so challenging: while childcare has in many societies been a collective task, responding to the continuous needs of a child by one or two people is a daunting task that is very hard to perform without excessive stress.)

These arguments serve to stress the point that mere abolition of institutions is not sufficient without experiments with new forms of life. Hardt tells us that Kollontai actually prepared a platform for the withering away of the bourgeois family, but Lenin’s response was that “it wasn’t time” and the rest is, as the saying goes, history. Hardts’ suggestion is not to abolish love entirely but that today, like then, to find a new basis for love in the common is a fundamental communist task. (This, of course, is already something that’s happening, with the amorphous and open significance that the concept of ‘fam(ily)’ gains in queer networks of care serving as a particularly good example.)

Hardt then gives his third example (3) on the depth and extent of property relations through legal theorist Cheryl Harris equation of ‘whiteness as property’. For Harris, whiteness doesn’t only afford economic advantages. No, whiteness functions at a deeper, metaphorical level as actual property. Hardt elaborates on this through W.E.B. DuBois’ expression ‘wages of whiteness’, which the latter used to describe how white members of the working class are compensated with public and psychological wages that are simply not available to workers of color. Whiteness as property is the possession that white people have over the exclusion of people of color and a promise of their own sovereignty – which in turn offers a hint on why so many whites vote for racists that don’t actually promote their economic interests. Whiteness here becomes a privileged means to property beyond mere economic resources.

Hardt extends this point further with reference to Fred Moten who has described blackness as non-property (building upon the afropessimist writings of Frank Wilderson and Jared Sexton), as “a continuous performance for a quest for freedom”. Why is this last point relevant to the general argument that Hardt makes? Well, because Motens description of blackness as non-property against the property of whiteness has parallels with the way Hardt tries to pin down the common as non-property against bourgeois private property.

In a fourth and final, slightly different example (4), Hardt moves to the question of political organizing, where the refusal of leadership can be opposed with centralization akin to the limits imposed by private property on use and decisions. The standard version of this opposition equals hierarchy with efficiency and durability whereas horizontality is equaled with spontaneity, inefficiency and ephemerality. This is the same line of attack that standard arguments raised against the commons follow: In his (in)famous essay on the tragedy of the commons, ecologist Garrett Hardin wrote that property is the only mechanism for care. Without property there is not only bad decisions, but no decisions. In other words, without private property, chaos reigns.

Now, many have been lured into responding to this by defending the inherent harmony in spontaneity. But this won’t do for Hardt: The common is not spontaneous, it needs to be managed. Democratic modes for this type of management are possible, Hardt says, and must be developed. Returning to Kollontai, Hardt finds a parallel argument in the false opposition between the supposed fidelity of the romantic couple and the indiscriminate promiscuity feared by conservative advocates of the nuclear family. This is a mistake, as sex is (literally) a distraction here.

According to Hardt, the argument Kollontai makes is not only not about sex but, in fact, not even against monogamy per se (“the revolution will not be sexual”). The real point is to show how our affections are tied to property relations in order to open up the possibility to build them upon another, common basis. So, Hardt isn’t giving this lecture in the history of struggles to call for an abolition of all institutions and collective rituals but to chart a strategic field where the quest to build new, common,forms of collectivity appears through exposing the weaknesses of old, proprietary forms. We do not need to get rid of families, love and all the associated rituals but make them common, through opening them up and making them ‘non-property’. (This, one might add, is also one more theoretical blow to the sloppy critiques of ‘identity politics’ that conflates political form with it’s contents).

Hardt articulates this point further through Foucault’s writings on the homosexual way of life. If we place our hope in sex, we leave unexplained the very thing in the homosexual relations that Foucault observed and participated in which can potentially threaten the social structure – namely, that they expressed modes of love characterized by care of different temporalities and degrees of openness (partnerships that last a lifetime, short encounters of care and so on). It’s interesting to note, that Hardt here seems to make a very similar reference to the same passages in Foucault’s History of Sexuality II that Giorgio Agamben uses in his attempts to pin down the ethical in his recent book The Use of Bodies. This, despite the fact that Agamben was chastised heavily by Negri and Virno during their interventions at C17.

Here, Hardt makes a turn towards some kind of a political proposal, suggesting a model of dual power where projects and leaders that engage with the state apparatus are subordinated by movements – the primacy of the common over property means that actual communist strategy need to be in the hands of movements/the multitude. Hardt doesn’t go into details, but I assume a textbook example of this type of division of labour would be that between the Spanish indignados and later movements like la PAH on the one hand and municipal election initiatives like Barcelona En Comú and their leader Ada Colau on the other.

The Spanish experience has certainly given some credibility to this approach, but I found this last part slightly anticlimactic nonetheless. There’s is a certain poverty in the way Hardt, Negri and others use the concept of ‘movements’. This feels like a relative to the banal economism that Hardt so eloquently disseminates in his presentation, as a fetishization of movements that tends to guide us into the common as a variant of activism, always returning us to the lacking imaginaries of the exclusively political sphere (and not really doing justice to what la PAH is either). Here I might be echoing The Invisible Committee, when they recently criticized the idea of the commons for its separation of the common into something to be managed by a someone. This attack against the split between a constituting and constituted power highlights the very things that one could easily read into Hardt’s own presentation, namely the need for an expression of the common that far exceeds the movement perspective that Hardt in the end evokes.

The post C17: Michael Hardt on the abolition of property appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

28-vuotias Jimi Karttunen menehtyi 16. syyskuuta 2016, viikko sen jälkeen kuin Suomen vastarintaliikkeen aktivisti oli pahoinpidellyt hänet Helsingin Elielinaukiolla. Tänään, 24. syyskuuta, Helsingissä järjestettiin Karttusen muistolle sekä rasismia ja fasismia vastaan mielenosoitus, johon osallistui arviolta 15.000 ihmistä. Tässä tilaisuudessa pitämäni puhe.

Kesäkuussa 1936, kun kenraali Francon johtaman vallankaappauksen armeijat olivat Madridin porteilla, fasistien vastaiset joukot omaksuivat iskulauseen “No pasarán – Tästä ette kulje”. Iskulausetta toistettiin kaikilla sisällissodan barrikadeilla, jopa tappioiden kasautuessa. Iskulauseeseen tiivistyi se henki, joka elävöitti taistelua epätoivoisinakin hetkinä; viesti fasisteille ei ollut vain “tästä ette kulje”, vaan “tästä ette kulje, koska me olemme täällä”.

Paljon toivekkaammassa hengessä kirjoitettiin Italian toisen maailmansodan jälkeinen perustuslaki, jossa fasistinen ja rasistinen järjestötoiminta kiellettiin suoraan. Vielä lainsäädäntöä tärkeämpää oli Italian maailmansotien jälkeinen yhteisymmärrys, jonka turvin ihmiset hyväksyivät laajalla rintamalla taistelun fasisteja vastaan. Tämän konsensuksen jakoivat kaikki yhteiskunnalliset toimijat anarkisteista kristillisdemokraatteihin ja sen voimin fasistit pakotettiin vuosikymmeniksi yhteiskunnan uloimpaan marginaaliin.

Suomessakin fasistiset toimijat kiellettiin Neuvostoliiton painostuksesta toisen maailmansodan jälkeen lailla, mutta varsinaista konsensusta fasismia vastaan ei muodostunut. 1930-luvun sini-mustien airueiden perinteitä ei koskaan käsitelty kunnolla ja isänmaallisuuden suhde suomalaiseen fasismiin on edelleen sekä läheinen että hyvin ongelmallinen. Kenties suomalaisen poliittisen eliitin vastaus eurooppalaisen fasismin ja äärioikeiston nousuun on juuri siksi ollut niin vaisu ja hampaaton. Suomessa ei vallitse yhteisymmärrystä ongelman vakavuudesta, eikä täällä ole sellaista perinnettä, joka pakottaisi tekemään eron nimenomaan äärioikeistoon, eikä vain ääriliikkeisiin yleensä, saatika puuttumaan toden teolla arkipäiväiseen ja rakenteelliseen rasismiin.

Ongelma ei kuitenkaan ole vain laeissa, eikä niitä säätävissä poliitikoissa, vaan laajemmin hengittämässämme yhteisessä ilmassa. Se on viimeistään nyt käynyt kovin tunkkaiseksi ja ohueksi. Sanotaan se nyt kovaan ääneen: yhteiskunnallisen rauhan Eurooppa on kuollut, eikä ole enää olemassa puolueettomuuden maaperää, sellaista neutraalin tarkkailijan katsomoa, jossa voisi turvallisesti seurata yhteiskunnallisia tapahtumia ottamatta niihin kantaa. Hiljaisuuden rikkomiseksi eivät yksin riitä uudet lait, eivätkä poliisitoimet, vaan meidän kaikkien on toimittava – yhdessä vihellettävä peli poikki – ei vain tänään, vaan joka päivä. Fasistien ja rasistien valtapyrkimykset ovat realiteetti, uusi normaali, jonka kanssa joudumme kaikki elämään, vaikka se tietysti koskettaa joitakuita enemmän kuin toisia. Siksi meidän, jotka tänään korotamme äänemme emmekä enää vaikene, on viimeistään nyt kysyttävä, miltä meidän ajamamme fasismin vastainen yhteisymmärrys näyttää?

Miltä näyttäisi esimerkiksi sellainen fasismin vastainen yhteisymmärrys, jonka turvin jokainen uskaltaisi puhaltaa vastarintaliikkeen toiminnalta pelin poikki? Yhteisymmärrys jonka turvin toimia kuten Jimi Karttunen: hiljentää sanoin, vihellyksin, huudoin ja muin elein nämä rasistit ja fasistit jokaisen kerran kun he kehtaavat markkinoida kuvottavaa maailmankuvaansa kaduilla. Miltä näyttäisi sellainen fasismin vastainen konsensus, joka kohtaisi jokaisen rasistisen mielenosoituksen moninkertaisella joukolla ja kertoisi heille, että “ei, tästä te ette kulje”?

Miltä näyttäisi sellainen rasismin ja fasismin vastainen yhteisymmärrys, joka ei hyväksyisi nykyhallituksen yhteistyötä perussuomalaisten kanssa? Joka ei hyväksyisi sitä, että kokoomuksen ministerit Petteri Orpo, Paula Risikko ja pääministeri Juha Sipilä sanovat jakavansa meidän, täällä tänään mieltään osoittavien ihmisten kanssa saman asian, samalla kun he istuvat samassa hallituksessa uusnatseja hyysäävän rasistisen Olli Immosen sekä uusnatsien väkivaltaa vähättelevän Jussi Halla-ahon ja Juho Eerolan puolueen kanssa? Miltä näyttäisi sellainen fasismin vastainen yhteisymmärrys, jonka paineessa kokoomuksen ja keskustan ministerien olisi sanottava perussuomalaisille, että heidän kanssaan ei tehdä politiikkaa, että “tästä he eivät kulje”?

Entä miltä näyttäisi sellainen fasismin ja rasismin vastainen yhteisymmärrys, jonka turvin suomalaiset rodullistetut uskaltaisivat puuttua heihin kohdistuvaan rasismiin ja syrjintään ja tietää, että he eivät jää yksin? Jossa jokainen, joka haastaa rakenteellisen ja arkisen rasismin, tietää, että ympäröivät ihmiset yhtyvät hänen vastalauseeseensa ja sanovat “ei, tämä ei käy, tästä ette kulje”.

Ja lopuksi, miltä näyttäisi sellainen antirasistinen ja antifasistinen yhteisymmärrys, joka kieltäytyisi taipumasta nykyhallituksen rasistiseen maahanmuuttopolitiikkaan – sellainen yhteisymmärrys, jonka nojalla suuri osa yhteiskunnasta kieltäytyisi luovuttamasta siirtolaisia maahanmuuttoviranomaisille, suojellen heitä tarpeen mukaan laittomasti, samassa hengessä kuin mustia orjia salakuljetettin ulos Yhdysvaltojen etelävaltioista ja juutalaisia kätkettiin Natsi-Saksassa? Miltä näyttäisi antirasistinen yhteisymmärrys, jonka turvin uskaltaisimme yhdessä sanoa siirtolaisia etsivälle rasistiselle poliisille ja viranomaisille, että “ei, tästä te ette kulje”?

Uskon, että me olemme täällä tänään, koska etsimme vastausta näihin kysymyksiin. Yhtä vastausta tai ratkaisua ei tietenkään ole, mutta tärkeimmän olemme jo löytäneet: olemme löytäneet toisemme. Me olemme ne, jotka ensiksi korottavat äänensä, jotka rikkovat ahdistavan hiljaisuuden, viheltävät pelin poikki ja sanovat, että “ei, tästä he eivät kulje koska me olemme täällä ja meitä on paljon, paljon enemmän”.

The post Puhe Peli poikki -mielenosoituksessa 24.9.2016 appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

Ennen kuin menen itse asiaan, niin sanottakoon että mielestäni on periaatteessa ongelmallista asettaa ihmisiä tuomiolle heidän some-suhteidensa perusteella. Immosella on yli 4000 ystävää Facebookissa ja on selvää, ettei hän voi olla heistä kaikista täysin perillä. Toisaalta Immonen kuitenkin itse korosti viime viikolla hyväksyvänsä uusia ystäviä sitä mukaan kuin hän on arvioinut heidät “asiallisiksi”.

Onko istuvan kansanedustajan sitten “asiallista” pitää lukuisia Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen uusnatseja kavereinaan? Ei mielestäni. Tietääkö Immonen keitä alla olevat henkilöt ovat? Vaikea kuvitella, ettei ainakin osasta tietäisi – näkeehän hän myös heidän ystävinään mitä heidän seinillään kirjoitellaan. Kun Immonen vielä kaikkien kesällä ilmitulleiden seikkojen lisäksi jakaa jollain tasolla näiden henkilöiden tavoitteen “kansallismielisestä vallankumouksesta” niin yhteydet tietysti näyttäytyvät varsin epäilyttävinä.

Kuvat minulle on luovuttanut anonyymi lähde. Suojellakseni hänen identiteettiään olen peittänyt hänen ja Immosen yhteiset ystävät kuvista.

1. Janne Moilanen Esiintyy Facebookissa erilaisilla tekonimillä, joista viimeisin on “Jawetti von Monolithius”. Hänen profiilikuvassaan näkyy Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen lippu, jonka Immonen ilmeisesti arvioi “asialliseksi”.

Moilasen kirjoituksia SVL:n sivuilla voi lukea tästä.

2. Ali Kaurila on Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen keskeisimpiä hahmoja. Kaurilan nimi tuli julkisuuteen kun Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen sisäinen foorumi julkaistiin verkossa tammikuussa. Kaurila esiintyy Facebookissa nimellä “Ali Kauri”.

3. Otto Emil Rutanen on Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen Helsingin ryhmänjohtaja. Rutanen oli paikalla Jyväskylässä kun Vastarintaliikkeen aktivistit ja tukijat pahoinpitelivät kolme henkilöä pari viikkoa sitten. Rutanen antoi tapahtumasta haastatteluja Suomen ja Ruotsin Vastarintaliikkeiden nettiradioihin. Hän piti myös Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen puolesta puheen Eugen Schaumanin haudalla, jossa Immonen poseerasi Vastarintaliikkeen ja Suomen Sisun surullisen kuuluisassa yhteiskuvassa.

Tässä SVL:n omilta sivuilta kaksi kuvaa Rutasesta Schaumanin haudalla.

4. Jesse Eppu Torniainen on myös Iltalehden jutussa ilman nimeä mainittu Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen pitkäaikainen aktivisti, joka on tuomittu useasta pahoinpitelystä ja yhdestä törkeästä pahoinpitelystä. Vastikään Immosen ystäväkseen hyväksymä Torniainen oli Eugen Schaumanin haudalla, eli Immonen on ainakin ohimennen tavannut myös hänet somen ulkopuolella. Torniainen oli ainakin toukokuussa myös aktiivinen Stadin Kingeissä. Immosen ja Torniaisen Facebook-ystävyys alkoi tietojeni mukaan Schauman-tapauksen jälkeen.

Torniaisen kirjoituksia SVL:n sivuilla.

5. Henry Mustonen on Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen aktivisti ja Iltalehden jutussa mainitun Ferus Finnum -kaupan äänetön yhtiömies.

The post Vielä Immosen natsiystävistä appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

Näistä tapauksista yksi vastikään sattunut on erityisen huomionarvoinen. Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen keskeisiin aktivisteihin lukeutuva mies päätyi kameraan HIFK:n ja Ilveksen välisen toukokuisen jalkapallo-ottelun aikana alkaneen tappelun yhteydessä. Iltalehden tapahtumasta julkaisemasta videosta voi nähdä, miten mies lyö kahta tapahtuman järjestyksenvalvojaa takaapäin suoraan päähän. Asian nosti esiin myös Varisverkosto eilen.

Sama mies on vuodesta 2007 lähtien tuomittu useasta pahoinpitelystä ja yhdestä törkeästä pahoinpitelystä. Näistä rikoksista hänelle on myös langetettu vankilatuomioita.

Mies osallistui samaan Eugen Schaumanin muistotilaisuuteen toukokuussa kuin perussuomalaisten kansanedustaja Olli Immonen sekä kirjailija Timo Hännikäisen järjestämään itsenäisyyspäivän marssille viime joulukuussa. Alla kuvia miehestä osallistumassa mainittuihin tilaisuuksiin.

The post Vastarintaliikkeen uusnatsit aktiivisia myös HIFK:n huligaaneissa appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

Kirjoitin perjantaina Kansan Uutisiin jutun viime itsenäisyyspäivän 612-marssista. Jutun ja blogiini kirjoittamani kuvaliitteen keskiössä oli kirjailija Timo Hännikäisen yhteydet uusnatsistiseen Suomen Vastarintaliikkeeseen.

Hännikäinen on nyt vastannut minulle Sarastus-lehdessä julkaisemansa jutun kautta. Vastaus sisältää omasta kirjoituksestani muutaman hullunkurisen tulkinnan, jotka haluan oikaista.

Artikkelissaan Hännikäinen maalailee minusta salaliittoteoreetikkoa, joka pyrkii “paljastamaan” hänen natsisympatiansa. Tosiasiassa en usko Hännikäisen olevan ideologialtaan roomalaistervehdyksiä tekevä kansallissosialisti, joka salamyhkäisesti valmistelisi tavarajunia tulevan kansallismielisen vallankumouksen puhdistuksia varten. En yritä “sankarillisesti” tuoda hänen “todellisia” näkemyksiään päivänvaloon. Hännikäinen on kirjoitustensa perusteella ideologisesti lähellä fasismia, mutta kuten hän itsekin kirjoittaa niin hän tuskin on kansallissosialisti.

Sen sijaan yritin tuoda esille, minkälainen järjestäjäporukka tosiasiassa toimi 612-tapahtuman taustalla. Näiden tietojen ja Hännikäisen oman vastineen perusteella on mielestäni täysin selvä, ettei Hännikäiselle ole minkäänlainen ongelma tehdä yhteistyötä sellaisten ihmisten kanssa, joiden kansallissosialistiseen ideologiaan kyllä sisältyy tavoite “ulkomaalaisten” joukkokarkoituksista ja diktatuurinen hallinto. Hännikäinen itse kirjoittaakin nyt, kiistettyään asian aiemmin, että  “tapahtuman järjestysmiesten joukossa oli Suomen Vastarintaliikkeeseen kuuluvia ihmisiä”. Hänen omien sanojensa mukaan ei kuitenkaan haittaa, “että osa järjestysmiehistä oli uusnatseja”.

Tämä toteama erottaa Hännikäisen merkittävällä tavalla eräästä toisesta kansallismielisen liikkeen eturivin älyköstä, eli Jussi Halla-ahosta, joka ei monista minun mielestäni ongelmallisista mielipiteistään huolimatta kuuna päivänä veljeilisi Vastarintaliikkeen uusnatsien kanssa.

Puolustuksekseen Hännikäinen selittää, miten hänellä on ystävinään “RKP:läisiä, kommunisteja, anarkisteja, libertaareja, turanisteja, ekofasisteja ja keskustalaisia”. On hienoa, että Hännikäisellä on paljon ystäviä. Hän ei kuitenkaan joko ymmärrä tai halua ymmärtää, ettei minun kritiikkini kohdistunut hänen ystävyyssuhteisiinsa vaan hänen politiikkaansa. Ihminen, joka on vilpittömän kiinnostunut maailmasta toivottaa ystävikseen monenlaisia hahmoja, mutta politiikkaa heidän kanssaan ei silti tarvitse tehdä.

Kenties on merkki Hännikäisen narsismista, että puolet hänen pitkästä kirjoituksestaan purkaa sellaisia häntä koskevia väitteitä, joita en koskaan ole esittänyt, mutta jotka silti ovat jotenkin päätyneet hänen päähänsä minun mielipiteinäni. Näiden joukossa on suora asiavirhe, jonka mukaan olisin antanut ymmärtää, että puolet marssin osallistujista oli Vastarintaliikkeestä. Tosiasiassa kirjoitin selvästi, että heitä oli järjestyksenvalvojien lisäksi noin kymmenen 200 henkilön marssissa. Tässä mielessä Hännikäinen muistuttaa kovasti sitä vainoharhaista karikatyyriä, jota hän piirtää minusta ja muista kriitikoistaan.

Hännikäisen omia poliittisia päiväkirjamerkintöjä paljon kiinnostavampia ovat ne käytännön liittolaisuudet, jotka 612-marssi synnytti. Suomessa noin vuonna 2008 alkaneen uuden kansallismielisen liikehdinnän eduksi voidaan todeta, että uusnatsit on pidetty enemmän tai vähemmän ulkona joka ikisestä poliittisesta hankkeesta (natsien omia lukuun ottamatta). 612-marssi haastaa tämän perinteen. Marssi avasi sekä verkossa että kaduilla suoran keskusteluyhteyden uusnatsien ja muiden kansallismielisten välillä. Yhtäältä tämä voi johtaa laajemman kansallismielisen liikkeen marginalisaatioon, toisaalta se saattaa päästää uusnatsit hieman lähemmäksi poliittista valtavirtaa.

Joka tapauksessa uskon 612-marssin järjestäjien vahvistaneen  Suomen Vastarintaliikkeen toimintaedellytyksiä. Järjestön aktivistit pääsivät toimimaan toverillisessa hengessä muiden kansallismielisten kanssa ja luomaan yhteyksiä heidän omaa lahkoaan paljon laajempaan piiriin. Tämä saattaa myös luoda uutta rekrytointipohjaa liikkeelle, jonka toimintaan on alusta asti kuulunut myös poliittinen väkivalta.

Hännikäinen ei kuitenkaan näe tätä yhteyttä, vaan tuomitsee kirjoituksessaan esimerkiksi Jyväskylän puukotuksen. En tiedä onko Hännikäinen tietoinen siitä, että yksi hänen tapahtumaansa turvanneista järjestyksenvalvojista keskusteli Skypessä kirjastohyökkäyksestä yhden hyökkääjän kanssa tapahtumaa edeltävänä iltana. Tämä siis Jyväskylän puukotuksen esitutkintamateriaalin perusteella. Toinen järjestyksenvalvoja taas oli seuraamassa oikeudenkäyntiä ja osoittamassa syytetyille tovereilleen tukensa. Hännikäisen hyökkäyksestä irtisanoutuminen näyttäytyy tässä valossa joko naivina tai ivallisena.

612-marssin ongelmallisuuden voisi muotoilla myös kysymyksenä poliittisesta subjektista. Subjektilla tarkoitan sitä toimintaan suuntautuvaa identiteettiä, joka voi yhdistää monia erilaisia ihmisiä yhteisen poliittisen projektin alle. Esimerkiksi 1900-luvun tärkeimpiin poliittisiin subjekteihin kuului vasemmistolainen työväenliike ja maailmansotien välinen kansallismielinen liikehdintä.

612-marssi rakensi nähdäkseni kansallismielistä subjektia, joka perussuomalaisten vuoden 2011 vaalivoittoa pohjustaneesta liikehdinnästä poiketen toivottaa riveihinsä myös kansallissosialistit ja muut demokratiaa vastustavat tahot – joista osa muuten kirjoittaa Hännikäisen Sarastus-julkaisussa. Tässä suhteessa marssi on osa kansallismielisen liikkeen valikoitujen osien radikalisaatiota. Toinen indikaattori samasta kehityksestä on pääosin Facebookissa toimivan ja häpeilemättömästi fasistista ja kansallissosialistista propagandaa levittävän Poliittisen korrektiuden parhaat -sivuston kansallismielisten keskuudessa nauttima laaja suosio.

Aivan kuten Vastarintaliikettä niin Hännikäistä tällaiset pohdinnat eivät kuitenkaan kiinnosta. Hänen päähänsä ei yksinkertaisesti mahdu sitä ajatusta, että politiikan tekeminen uusnatsien kanssa voisi olla jotenkin ongelmallista, vaikka he eivät saisi kantaa omia tunnuksiaan. Hännikäinen ja hänen aateveljensä kääntävät päinvastoin tämän tyyppisen kritiikin kriitikon omaksi kriisiksi. Minun tapauksessani vasemmisto on kriisissä (kuinka imartelevaa onkaan, että minun vaatimaton kirjoitteluni voi viestiä moninaisen ja hajanaisen poliittisen suuntauksen kriisistä), toisissa tapauksissa valtamedia on kriisissä. Tämä kiertely ja kaartelu johtaa aina samaan lopputulemaan: Hännikäisen omassa poliittisessa projektissa ei voi olla mitään vikaa. Tämä silmänkääntötemppu näyttäytyy erikoiselta etenkin nyt, kun Hännikäinen jäätyään kiinni 612-tapahtumaa koskevasta valehtelusta yrittää kääntää puheen kaikkeen muuhun paitsi itse asiaan.

Miksi siis kirjoittaa Hännikäisestä? Siksi, että ihmisillä on oikeus tietää minkälaisia poliittisia liittolaisuuksia hänen kaltaisensa julkisuuden henkilö rakentaa. Tieto Hännikäisen ja muiden 612-järjestäjien uusnatsiyhteistyöstä selkeyttää myös heidän omaa arvomaailmaansa. Vaikka Hännikäinen ei ole kansallissosialisti eikä varmasti jaa kaikkia Vastarintaliikkeen arvoja hänen kirjoituksensa kumpuavat samasta kansallismielisestä ja konservatiivisesta aateperinnöstä, joka suhtautuu äärimmäisen vihamielisesti parlamentaarista demokratiaa, monikulttuurisuutta ja perinteisestä poikkeavia sukupuolirooleja ja perhearvoja kohtaan. Tässä mielessä yhteistyötä uusnatsien kanssa on kovin vaikea nähdä sattumana.

Näiden tietojen perusteella varmasti jotkut jättävät jatkossa väliin yhteistyön Hännikäisen ja hänen tovereidensa kanssaan kun taas toiset, toivon mukaan harvalukuiset henkilöt näkevät hänet entistäkin kiinnostavampana, sellaisena aikamme kapinallisena jona hän jopa koomisuuteen asti yrittää esiintyä.

Lopuksi haluan vielä korjata pari Hännikäisen tekemää suoraa asiavirhettä. Ensinnäkin dokumentaatio 612-marssin järjestelyistä on tehty julkisesti löytyvän materiaalin ja julkisella paikalla otettujen kuvien perusteella ja täyttää tuskin laittoman henkilörekisterin tunnusmerkit, toisin kuin Hännikäinen manailee.

Toiseksi Hännikäinen väittää, että minut olisi poistettu 612-kulkueesta poliisin toimesta “häiriötekijänä”. Näin ei tietenkään käynyt, onhan kuvaaminen yleisellä paikalla jokaiselle lain turvaama oikeus. Poliisi tarkisti kyllä minun henkilötietoni marssin loppupuolella, mutta päästi minut sitten taas seuraamaan marssia. Mitään rikosepäilyä “häiriköinnistä” tai muusta ei missään vaiheessa ollut, eikä poliisi estänyt minua kuvaamasta edes tarkistaessaan papereitani. Miksi sitten tämä toimenpide? Poliisin mukaan jokin nimeltä mainitsematon taho marssista oli antanut ymmärtää, että minä voin olla tapahtumalle uhaksi. Tämä minun kuvaamiseeni suuntautuva pelko kertoo aika paljon niistä harhaluuloista, joiden vallassa monet Suomen kansallismieliset tuntuvat elävän.

The post Miksi Timo Hännikäisen ja Vastarintaliikkeen yhteyksistä pitää kirjoittaa? appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

Kansan Uutiset julkaisi tänään minulta jutun koskien Helsingin Töölössä viime itsenäisyyspäivänä järjestettyä 612-marssia. Jutussa kerron, että pääosa marssin järjestyksenvalvojista kuului Suomen Vastarintaliikkeeseen. Juttuun ei mahtunut kaikkia kuvia, joihin väittämä perustui, joten julkaisen tässä jutusta puuttuvat kuvat.

Jutun tärkein pointti oli siis 612-marssin järjestäjien, joihin lukeutuu muun muassa kirjailija Timo Hännikäinen, yhteydet Suomen Vastarintaliikkeeseen.

612-marssin järjestyksenvalvojista neljä (1, 2, 3, 4) on tunnistettavissa varmasti myös nimeltä ja yksi (5) melko varmasti. Yhtä (6) järjestyksenvalvojaa en pystynyt nimeämään, vaikka hän alla olevien kuvien perusteella toimii Vastarintaliikkeessä. Toinen (7) järjestyksenvalvoja näyttää kovasti Vastarintaliikkeen tunnetulta aktivistilta, mutta en pysty sanomaan varmasti. Lisäksi tapahtumassa oli yksi (8) järjestyksenvalvoja, jota en kyennyt nimeämään enkä millään tavalla yhdistämään Vastarintaliikkeeseen.

Aivan kirjoituksen loppuun olen myös laittanut kuvat muutamasta sellaisesta tapahtumaan osallistuneesta Vastarintaliikkeen aktivisista, jotka ovat olleet ennen julkisuudessa tai jotka ovat liikkeen verkkojulkaisun Kansallisen vastarinnan “toimittajia”. Tässä julkaisen siis vain tietoja sellaisista henkilöistä, jotka ovat joko A) 612-marssin järjestäjiä tai B) Vastarintaliikkeen riveissä omalla nimellä ja/tai kasvoillaan toimiva aktivisti.

1. Johannes Murto

612-marssissa järjestyksenvalvojana toiminut Cari Johannes Murto on Suomen vastarintaliikkeen Porin ryhmän johtaja. Kesäkuussa 2014 Murto vastaanotti ryhmän puolesta Vastarintaliikkeen Vuoden aktivistiryhmä -palkinnon. Murto on myös kirjoittanut viime viikolla vuodetulle Vastarintaliikkeen sisäiselle foorumille. Murto esiintyy Vastarintaliikkeen sivuilla useassa yhteydessä omalla nimellään ja hänet helppo tunnistaa sivuilla olevista kuvista.

Murrolla on myös kylmäävä rikoshistoria Satakunnan käräjäoikeudessa. Tammikuussa 2010 Murto tuomittiin yhdessä toisen vastaajan kanssa törkeästä pahoinpitelystä ehdolliseen vankeuteen. Murto ja hänen ystävänsä olivat toukokuussa 2009 käyneet ilman minkäänlaista ennakkovaroitusta tai provokaatiota kahden miehen kimppuun julkisella paikalla Porissa. Murto ja hänen ystävänsä olivat potkineet vastaajaa kunnes hän oli makanut maassa tajuttomana. Toisen miehen onnistui paeta paikalta.

Murto syyllistyi jälleen pahoinpitelyyn vuonna 2010, kun hän löi hänen uhriksi joutunutta henkilöä useamman kerran nyrkillä kasvoihin yhdessä toisen miehen kanssa. Tällä kertaa tuomioksi tuli yhteiskuntapalveluksi muunnettu ehdoton vankeusrangaistus.

Satakunnan käräjäoikeuden asiakirjoissa esiintyvä Cari Johannes Murto on syntynyt vuonna 1988. Vastarintaliikkeen Cari Johannes Murto ilmoitti vuonna 2013 olevansa 25-vuoden ikäinen. Molemmat asuvat tai toimivat Porin seudulla. Voimme siis olla kohtuullisen varmoja siitä, että kyse on samasta henkilöstä. Murto vaikuttaa myös olleen kiinniotettuna Vastarintaliikkeen häiriköityä vasemmistoliiton vapputapahtumassa Porissa viime vuonna.

2. Ali Kaurila

Toinen järjestyksenvalvojana toiminut Vastarintaliikkeen aktivisti on nimeltään Ali Kaurila. Kaurila on viime viikolla vuodetun foorumin ja Helsingin Sanomien samasta aiheesta kirjoittaman artikkelin perusteella liikkeen johtajan Juuso Tahvanaisen jälkeen Vastarintaliikkeen kaikista keskeisin aktivisti. Hänen kautta kulkevat monet yhteydet Ruotsin emojärjestöön ja muihin kansainvälisiin kontakteihin. Kaurila on myös suunnitellut suuren osan Vastarintaliikkeen propagandasta ja hän on liikkeen toimintakeskus Kodin tärkeimpiä organisaattoreita.

Kaurila on tunnistettavissa syksyllä 2014 Kosovossa otettujen kuvien perusteella. Kuvat julkaistiin viime viikolla Vastarintaliikkeen foorumin vuotaneella sivustolla.

3. Kimmo Saarela

Kolmas tunnistamani järjestyksenvalvojana toiminut aktivisti on Kimmo Saarela. Kimmo Saarela on tunnistettu aikaisemmin Viikon patriootti -blogissa. Saarela on esiintynyt Vastarintaliikkeen sivuilla omalla nimellään.

4. Pauli Kaila

Neljäs tunnistamani aktivisti on Pauli Johannes Kaila. Kailasta löytyy verkosta kuvia, jotka osoittavat hänen olevan yllä näkyvä mies. Kaila on aktiivinen Vastarintaliikkeen vuodetulla foorumilla. Foorumilla Kaila esiintyy etunimellä Pauli, mutta Kansalliseen vastarintaan hän kirjoittaa etunimellä Johannes.

5. Aktivisti #5

Viides tapahtumasta Vastarintaliikkeen aktivistiksi tunnistamani järjestyksenvalvoja on yllä olevissa kuvissa näkyvä mies. Sama henkilö osallistui myös Vastarintaliikkeen delegaatioon Kreikassa 31. tammikuuta järjestetyyn Imia-marssiin, jonka järjestäjä oli uusnatsipuolue Kultainen aamunkoitto. Puolueen jäseniä on tuomittu muun muassa murhasta. Sivunmennen sanottakoon muuten, että Imia-marssilla ja 612-tapahtumalla on soihtuineen kovin samantyyppinen estetiikka.

Olen kohtuullisen varma, että tämä henkilö on tunnistettu myös nimeltä Viikon patriootti -blogissa. Koska blogi kuitenkin on ainoa paikka, jossa tämä henkilö on ollut esillä omalla nimellään niin en halua julkaista hänen nimeään tässä ilman täysin varmaa tunnistusta.

6. Aktivisti #6

Kuudennen tunnistuksen kohdalla en osaa antaa henkilön nimeä. Yllä näkyvä mies kuitenkin on selvästi Vastarintaliikkeen aktivisti, sillä hänestä julkaistiin vain viikko sitten kuva liikkeen tempausta käsittelevässä jutussa Etelä-Suomen Sanomissa. Tempausta käsiteltiin myös Vastarintaliikkeen omilla sivuilla.

7. Epävarma tunnistus

Seitsemäs tunnistus on epävarma, enkä osaa sanoa täysin varmasti onko yllä olevissa kuvissa sama henkilö. Olen kuitenkin sitä mieltä, että sekä oikealla että vasemmalla näyttäisi olevan sama henkilö.

8. Kenties Vastarintaliikkeeseen liittymätön järjestyksenvalvoja

Lopuksi vielä kahdeksas järjestyksenvalvoja, jota siis en onnistunut tunnistamaan ja joka ei välttämättä liity Vastarintaliikkeeseen.

Alla vielä joitain kuvia tapahumasta tukemaan yllä tekemiäni havaintoja.

The post Timo Hännikäinen ja Suomen Vastarintaliike appeared first on Mikael Brunila.

Paljastettu-ryhmän Saku Timonen ja antifasistinen Varis-verkosto ehtivät jo nostaa esiin tämän väitteen ongelmallisuuden. Molemmat kirjoitukset kannattaa lukea, niissä on paljon hyödyllistä tietoa, enkä ainakaan itse löytänyt niistä suoranaisia asiavirheitä.

Tiivistäen marssin taustalta löytyy tosiasiassa Sarastus-julkaisun toimituksen jäsen Timo Hännikäinen, joka maallikon kannalta on uusfasisti sanan jokaisessa olennaisessa merkityksessä. Marssia on mainostettu erilaisilla ääroikeistolaisilla alustoilla kuten Vastarintaliikkeen kotisivuilla, Musta Sydän -blogissa, Sarastuksen omilla sivuilla ja Suomen Sisun kotisivuilla ja jopa yksittäisten perussuomalaisten kotisivuilla. Lisäksi marssin Facebook-tapahtumasta ilmenee, että myös useat osallistujat ovat tunnettuja äärioikeistolaisia profiileja.

Otin itselleni vapauden täydentää näitä havaintoja datajournalistisesta näkökulmasta. Latasin kaiken “aktiviteetin” eli postaukset, tykkäykset, kommentit ja kommenttien tykkäykset Facebook-sivuilta 612Fi ja Kansallinen vastarinta 2014. Ensiksi mainittu on tämän päiväisen tapahtuman Facebook-sivu, jälkimmäinen taas Suomen vastarintaliikkeen sivu.

Vertailemalla näiden sivujen aktiivisia käyttäjiä pitäisi saada aika hyvä kuva siitä, minkälainen kytkös tapahtuman osallistujien ja Suomen vastarintaliikkeen kannattajien välillä on.

No mikä kytkös sitten on?

181 henkilöä on osallistunut 612Fi-sivuille kommentoimalla, postaamalla tai tykkäämällä sen jälkeen kuin sivut perustettiin lokakuun 10. päivä. Näistä henkilöistä 60 on myös ollut aktiivisia Kansallinen vastarinta 2014 -sivuilla viimeisen vuoden aikana (otanta 5.12.2013 – 5.12.2014). Noin kolmasosa 612-sivun käyttäjistä viihtyy siis myös Vastarintaliikkeen Facebook-sivuilla. Samanlaisia yhteyksiä löytyy myös Suomen Sisun ja Sarastuksen sivujen käyttäjien ja 612-tapahtuman käyttäjien väliltä, mutta ne ovat huomattavasti heikompia.

Olennainen havainto tässä on, että uusnatsit ja heidän symppaajansa ovat vahvasti läsnä 612-tapahtumassa. Tapahtuman järjestäjiä asia tuskin kiinnostaa, sillä he pyrkivät kaikesta päätellen myös pimittämään oman äärioikeistolaisen ideologiansa.

Alla havaintoa tukeva graafinen aineisto.

Ensiksi pdf-muotoinen luettelo molemmilla tarkastamillani sivuilla toiminneista henkilöistä. EDIT: Joidenkin mielestä tämä luettelo täyttää laittoman henkilörekisterin kriteerit. Koska tarkoitukseni ei ollut nostaa esiin yksittäisiä nimimerkkejä, niin poistan listan kunnes olen saanut asiaan juridisesti perehtyneen mielipiteen.

Lisään sen sijaan kirjoituksen loppuun graafisen esityksen kaikista Kansallinen vastarinta 2014 -sivun viime vuoden aktiviteeteista. Tämä on suoraan Facebookin avoimesta API:sta ja sivun tarjoamaa julkista tietoa.

Tätä voi verrata graafiseen esitykseen 612-sivun käyttäjien aktiviteeteista. Molemmilla sivuilla suurimmat pallot ovat sivujen aktiivisimmista käyttäjistä. Viivat pallojen välillä edustavat yhteyksiä käyttäjien välillä (tykkäyksiä, saman postauksen kommentointia jne.). Kuva kannattaa avata uuteen välilehteen ja zoomata, jotta tekstit näkyvät.

Aktiviteetit 612-sivulla:

Aktiviteetti Kansallinen vastarinta 2014 -sivuilla:

The post Äärioikeiston marssi: datajournalistinen näkökulma appeared first on Mikael Brunila.