Bøker av Patrick Strickland

In the vein of George Orwell's Homage to Catalonia and Martha Gellhorn's The View from the Ground, a remarkable work of reportage based on hundreds of hours of on-the-ground reporting, that tells how Greece's violent far right is trying to destroy the birthplace of democracy . . .In 2012, Greece’s far-right political party the Golden Dawn were building a significant street presence in Greece. Over the previous decade they had grown from a tiny group of neofascist brawlers to a formidable vigilante force responsible for multiple murders, street fights and shootings.On the eve of the 2012 election one of their candidates said that the “knives will come out after the elections.” And the knives did come out. Golden Dawn became a significant parliamentary presence and used it as a platform to escalate their terror campaigns against migrants and leftists across the country. They also became an inspiration for far-right groups across Europe and the Americas.   Journalist Patrick Strickland first arrived in Greece in 2015 to cover the European refugee crisis, just as Golden Dawn were ramping up their campaign of terror. With an eye for journalistic detail that recalls Orwell’s reportage in Spain, Strickland traces the antecedents of Golden Dawn to the dark years of Nazi occupation and subsequent military dictatorship, and looks at the post 2008 economic crisis that emboldened the far right.He also introduces us to the resistance forces standing up to the right, taking us to the Greek islands where people rallied together to support the hundreds of thousands of refugees traveling across the Aegean Sea. Strickland also takes us to the anarchist squats in Athens where activists took over abandoned buildings and opened them up to the refugees, a tactic they viewed as an anti-fascist alternative to dooming migrants to life in the squalid refugee camps. You Can Kill Each Other After I Leave is an exemplary work of narrative nonfiction and compelling journalism that provides an intimate portrait of the stories of migrants and activists resisting the growth of the far-right, as well as a vivid and shrewd analysis of the evolving political landscape in Greece and Europe.

“The Marauders is a blistering book, a hard-ass stare into the voracious mouth of the US-Mexico border. Patrick Strickland has done a fine piece of reporting from places we don’t dare to tread.” — Luis Alberto Urrea, author of The Devil''s Highway This real-life Western tells the story of how citizens in a small Arizona border town stood up to anti-immigrant militias and vigilantes. The Marauders uncovers the riveting nonfiction saga of far-right militias terrorizing the border towns of southern Arizona. In one of the towns profiled, Arivaca, rogue militia members killed a man and his nine-year-old daughter in 2009. In response, the residents organized and spent two years trying to push  the new militias out through boycotts and by urging local businesses to  ban  them. The militias and vigilante groups again raised the stakes, spreading Pizzagate-style conspiracy theories alleging that town residents were complicit in child sex trafficking, prompting fears of vigilante violence.   The Marauders flips the standard formula most often applied to stories about immigration and the far right. Too often those stories are told from the perspective of the ones committing the violence. While Strickland doesn''t shy away from exploring those dark themes, the far right are not the protagonists of the book. Rather, the people targeted by hate groups, and the individuals who rose up to stop them in their tracks, are the heroes of this dramatic story.

The left and its anti-authoritarian variants were fighting far-right populism and neo-Nazis long before the mainstream media became aware of such groups. Journalist Patrick Strickland provides on-the-ground profiles of the unique characters involved in anti-fascist struggles in countries across Europe, offering historical context, explaining the roots and growth of the far-right, as well as the history of European anti-fascism and how it informs struggles around the world today.