RED Front Republic are angry. “Labelling Scottish Dawn as a terrorist organisation won’t solve anything,” a spokesman tells The National.
“They tried that with National Action and all that happened was they rebranded,” he adds. “And here we are again.”
With the rise in fascist, identitarian, and far-right groups in Scotland, there has been a quieter, and perhaps less prolific increase in numbers of anti-fascists. The Red Front Republic, is one of the better-known groups, but one which has little appetite for publicity seeking.
It first came to the notice of this newspaper more than a year ago when members took to the streets of Glasgow, running a food drive – spending Saturday nights handing out packages to the homeless. That was, in part, a response to National Action organising a “whites-only” soup kitchen in the city.
A few months after that, Home Secretary Amber Rudd said National Action was “a vile, racist, homophobic and anti-semitic group, which glorifies violence” and put it on the proscribed list.
All that really happened really was that neo-Nazis from National Action formed other groups with different names.
On Thursday, Rudd extended the ban to cover two of those groups: Scottish Dawn and National Socialist Anti-Capitalist Action – NS131. “By extending the proscription of National Action, we are halting the spread of a poisonous ideology and stopping its membership from growing - protecting those who could be at risk of radicalisation,” she said.
Red Front Republic (RFR) are angry that the Home Office thinks this is it, job done. “We don’t condone state bans on any groups,” the group’s spokesman says. He adds: “Scottish Dawn is a miniscule aspect of a larger problem that must be addressed in alternative ways.”
One of those alternative ways is occasionally violence. If you ask RFR if it’s right to punch Nazis, its members will say yes, but insist that they don’t want violence, and that they wouldn’t be violent first.
Earlier this year, they disrupted the first meeting of the Scottish branch of Generation Identity, a white supremacist group.
RFR describes Generation Identity as “a neo-fascist, alt-right organisation based in Europe, who hide behind suits and attempt to be seen as a militant youth group”.
RFR disrupted them not through aggression but by walking into their open meeting and asking for a chat.
“We’re trying to be something different,” a member adds. “We want to make a real impact in society”. Days before RFR met The National, officers from Police Scotland offered them money to become informants on Scotland’s burgeoning anti-fascist movement.
Not that the RFR really sees itself as part of that movement. In fact, it is pretty scathing about the other anti-fascists and anti-racists in Scotland.
When RFR protested at a Scottish Defence League march in Perth last month, they say they were followed constantly by police worried they’d attack the racists’ cordon.
The group will be out on the streets of Glasgow tonight, running another food drive.
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