Why do we tolerate nutters on the anarchist scene?

[Sue]

kippers. i am always on about kippers.

 

[Fozzie Bear]

I know people who are still in contact with him in my part of the world. From what I remember of him, for all his eccentricities he was a good & capable political activist involved in many worthy and constructive campaigns. He also helped expose elements of the far right trying to involve themselves in & infiltrate Green Ecological Animal rights and Peace Movement, not to mention the whole business with Searchlies handing info over to Police authorities and other state agencies information on politcal campaigns and activists. I think some people on hear are being a bit unfair to him.

Maybe some of the people involved with Green Anarchist were great and did good things. But they still published some totally poisonous anti-working class material.

I don't want to rake all that up
again particularly, but it is an example of a current in anarchism which I am glad has largely been extinguished in the UK as far as I know.

 

[LDC]

Maybe some of the people involved with Green Anarchist were great and did good things. But they still published some totally poisonous anti-working class material.

I don't want to rake all that up
again particularly, but it is an example of a current in anarchism which I am glad has largely been extinguished in the UK as far as I know.

It's not entirely dead as a political milieu. Also I think there were quite a few strands that made up that current, some elements of which I think you can see in some of the insurrectionary stuff, and of course there are still bits of it in the animal rights/liberation scene.

Many of the people I know who in the '90s would have considered themselves a 'green anarchist' of some sort have slowly migrated through that via insurrectionary politics and a few other tendencies to a solid anti-state communist position. (And even back then there was a fair amount of overlap/cross fertilization of ideas, the anti-State communist magazine Wildcat came out with an anti-civ position, and Aufheben/Brighton Autonomists were heavily involved in anti-roads struggles.)

 

[LDC]

Maybe some of the people involved with Green Anarchist were great and did good things. But they still published some totally poisonous anti-working class material.

Most of that was Steve Booth rather than any of the others IME.

 

[Lurdan]

the anti-State communist magazine Wildcat came out with an anti-civ position

My impression was that this was also mainly one individual, R, who became their American wing, and came out with some rather odd stuff later on. But I guess he was a significant percentage of the membership (That final phase, Wildcat mk. 3, was fairly hostile to anarchism).

 

[BigMoaner]

Yep.

For some strange and unknown reason the response of the people meeting him was to say 'OK... We're going to the pub now' at which point they departed in some haste.

Pmsl

 

[LDC]

My impression was that this was also mainly one individual, R, who became their American wing, and came out with some rather odd stuff later on. But I guess he was a significant percentage of the membership (That final phase, Wildcat mk. 3, was fairly hostile to anarchism).

The US Green Anarchist story is (not surprisingly) a strange one...

One of the UK GA editors (although the one that did more of the music reviews really) that I know as 'Saxon' (wouldn't use even fake names normally, but since it's on Wikipedia...) did indeed go to the Pacific NW in the US and was part of establishing a Green Anarchist (called Green Anarchy) there. He was swiftly thrown out of (or left under a cloud...) the collective though. The magazine continued and got quite a reputation, partly due to the timing being around the anti-WTO stuff in Seattle in 1999 and the years of active ELF/ALF stuff for the years afterwards.

It folded eventually, a reflection of the scene collapsing really.

Dredging my memory, the GA magazine is the UK had quite an odd trajectory didn't it? It in part came from fringe bits of the Green Party, and then their was that split with Richard Hunt who was a weird mix of localism, British patriotism, and ecological thought. He got booted out and then the magazine became the more explicitly anarchist publication most people know it as.

And then later on in the mid/late '90s there was all the stuff around infiltration by the State and/or the far right. Then the conspiracy trials. Then the split when for a bit there were 2 magazines with the same name being put out by two editorial collectives (well, two individuals really).

 

[chilango]

It's not entirely dead as a political milieu. Also I think there were quite a few strands that made up that current, some elements of which I think you can see in some of the insurrectionary stuff, and of course there are still bits of it in the animal rights/liberation scene.

Many of the people I know who in the '90s would have considered themselves a 'green anarchist' of some sort have slowly migrated through that via insurrectionary politics and a few other tendencies to a solid anti-state communist position. (And even back then there was a fair amount of overlap/cross fertilization of ideas, the anti-State communist magazine Wildcat came out with an anti-civ position, and Aufheben/Brighton Autonomists were heavily involved in anti-roads struggles.)

Yeah, you still see a lot of echoes of it in the nonsense the informals/insurrectionists come out with.

Fortunately my own dabblings into primmo stuff were fairly brief and superficial and the pull of other, competing, strands of ideas were stronger.

Never, ever, attracted by the insurrectionary stuff - despite having a nice chat with the Elephant Editions lady once who palmed a big pile of Bonnano's pamphlets onto me!

 

[LDC]

Yeah, you still see a lot of echoes of it in the nonsense the informals/insurrectionists come out with.

Fortunately my own dabblings into primmo stuff were fairly brief and superficial and the pull of other, competing, strands of ideas were stronger.

Never, ever, attracted by the insurrectionary stuff - despite having a nice chat with the Elephant Editions lady once who palmed a big pile of Bonnano's pamphlets onto me!

Yeah, I think the insurrectionary ethos is pretty strong in anarchism and communism, and rightly so IMO.

The issues I have with much of the stuff that passes for insurrectionary politics now is the fixation of turning it into an identity, sole strategy, and ideology, rather than being a way of thinking and acting when it's appropriate. There's also a very weird almost religious edge, and like has been mentioned, anti-class tinge to some of it. Sometimes I half expect them to say things like 'Wake up sheeple!'

Not to mention the fucking ridiculous actions and unintelligible communications that seem to come from the scene much of the time.

 

[likesfish]

The police seem to have wasted a lot of time and effort inflitrating groups that were no threat to anyone or anything.
The bristol loons with their vadalism might be worth dealing with the rest its security theatre they may well want to overthrow the state and by violent means.
There actual ability to put any of their words into action not so much.
Unless spooks is real and Mi5 are fighting a shadow war against armed anarchists.
Its a rather vindictive passed over middle manager fucking with new officers sending them off to listen to anarchists witter on

 

[DrRingDing]

Yeah, I think the insurrectionary ethos is pretty strong in anarchism and communism, and rightly so IMO.

The issues I have with much of the stuff that passes for insurrectionary politics now is the fixation of turning it into an identity, sole strategy, and ideology, rather than being a way of thinking and acting when it's appropriate. There's also a very weird almost religious edge, and like has been mentioned, anti-class tinge to some of it. Sometimes I half expect them to say things like 'Wake up sheeple!'

Not to mention the fucking ridiculous actions and unintelligible communications that seem to come from the scene much of the time.

Indeed. But I don't think a tiny handful of people equate to a 'scene'.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Although the fact Mark Kennedy actually recorded one (or more) political meetings for the cops on a specially adapted watch is a bit much!

Not really. You've been able to get watches that record to either internal flash memory, external flash memory, or to a micro-sd card for about 15 years now, and they're not exactly expensive (£150-200 15 years ago, a tenner nowadays). Would have been more impressive if he'd been using a broadcast device built into a watch, to forward the conversation to a recorder elsewhere.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Not cops. So called anarchists.

I'm an anarchist, and I record most community meetings I attend.
Then again, I do ask the assembled participants if they mind, and explain to them that I have a neurological issue with my short-term memory which makes note-taking impractical. It's actually been helpful to some attendees, as I've been able to clarify what's been said previously.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Going back the phone business, taking batteries out of phones, in the main part, is "security theatre", a safety blanket of sorts. But it has been confirmed by the Edward Snowden leaks that GCHQ can totally control phones if they so wish. Are you worth the attention of gchq? Unlikely. They have huge but finite resources. To target some individual phone will take budget. Budget that may be better spent elsewhere. The real danger is infiltrators from Domestic Extremism and Public Order Unit.

Not all mobiles, mostly smartphones. Your old-fashioned Nokia dumbphones and the like aren't GPS-enabled, and can't be switched on remotely and/or used as a "bug". Unfortunately, activists are as much consumers as the rest of the world, and are just as prey to wanting the latest all-singing, all-dancing smartphone.
Easiest phones to control and intercept are satellite phones, which had backdoors designed into the software specifically for intelligence purposes - probably why most naughty folk stopped using them about a decade ago, unless they had no alternative!

 

[ViolentPanda]

...Monbiot naked...

A term guaranteed to cause copious vomiting, if ever there was one!

 

[DrRingDing]

Not all mobiles, mostly smartphones. Your old-fashioned Nokia dumbphones and the like aren't GPS-enabled, and can't be switched on remotely and/or used as a "bug". Unfortunately, activists are as much consumers as the rest of the world, and are just as prey to wanting the latest all-singing, all-dancing smartphone.
Easiest phones to control and intercept are satellite phones, which had backdoors designed into the software specifically for intelligence purposes - probably why most naughty folk stopped using them about a decade ago, unless they had no alternative!

Of course the ability to install malware onto smartphones is far easier than for so called dumb phones. It's time for 'activists' to move on from the old Nokia style mobiles. They are a liability as you cannot encrypted voice or texts. This increases the surveillance opportunities for more softer intelligence gathering even if you think you're not giving anything away.

 

[DrRingDing]

I'm an anarchist, and I record most community meetings I attend.
Then again, I do ask the assembled participants if they mind, and explain to them that I have a neurological issue with my short-term memory which makes note-taking impractical. It's actually been helpful to some attendees, as I've been able to clarify what's been said previously.

Does that mean you get lumbered with producing minutes?

 

[ViolentPanda]

Does that mean you get lumbered with producing minutes?

Nope, although I do get phonecalls from whoever was taking minutes along the lines of "did Val say X or Y to Jim?", usually when something was said that was a matter of spoken nuance. I specifically tell people I won't produce minutes unless they're verbatim - no-one wants verbatim minutes.

 

[Pickman's model]

Nope, although I do get phonecalls from whoever was taking minutes along the lines of "did Val say X or Y to Jim?", usually when something was said that was a matter of spoken nuance. I specifically tell people I won't produce minutes unless they're verbatim - no-one wants verbatim minutes.

used to have almost verbatim mins in haringey anti-poll tax union.

 

[ViolentPanda]

used to have almost verbatim mins in haringey anti-poll tax union.

Ah, but did you want them?

 

[Pickman's model]

Ah, but did you want them?

i'd quite like them now