hitmouse
music obfuscation technology
I think it's about their position on Russia/Ukraine, but the person did provide this helpful follow-up explanation:
London Anarchist Bookfair 2023/24
- Thread starter steeplejack
- Start date
I read Mumsnet less than I read Twitter which I only really use to check my train isn’t delayed or cancelled. I think Mumsnet is pretty GC though isn’t it? Not sure about the wider politics. There’s probably Tories on there. They don’t seem to understand what anarchism is. I doubt they’d be supportive if they did educate themselves on it though.
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
'They are definitely in favour of genocide. I can't remember anything about it but I might have heard somebody saying something about it on the internet. But it's definitely true'.
Oh. My.
redsquirrel
This Machine Kills Progressives
I know I'm getting sucked in ...
But that tweet by the BristolAF is shitty.
Complete and utter bollocks. That random loons repeat shite is all too par for the course but that an organisation would propagate a total smear like that.
But that tweet by the BristolAF is shitty.
Complete and utter bollocks. That random loons repeat shite is all too par for the course but that an organisation would propagate a total smear like that.
The39thStep
Urban critical thinker
'denying Russian atrocities? What's up with these fruitcakes?
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
I don't read Mumsnet usually but they're a good thermometer of the latest transphobe issue, yeah they seem to be GC as you say. I just wondered what they had to say about this anarchist falling out.
I only read what you pointed to and there’s only a handful of replies. My post was based on that.
PTK
Paul Kegan
View attachment 393881Well, I think ol' Joe Stalin was right, after all. Anarchist-Trotskyist saboteurs are in the pay of the fascists.
Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
Maybe its a launch of ‘Anarchists For NATO’?
TopCat
Putin fanboy
Well it certainly seems support for Ukraine is prerequisite for getting a stall.
kenny g
Sheeple Awake!
How far things have moved on from the days of Towards a Citizens Militia: Anarchist Alternatives to NATO and the Warsaw Pact.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
You're as bad as some of those dysfunctional children tweeting about the ACG and genocide sometimes coming out with shit like that.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Fucking hell, that is insane. They need a kicking and booting out of any serious movement the loon. This is really politically dangerous behaviour, it's the type of shit that in more serious movements and times results in real consequences for people. Like calling someone a grass cos of a rumour you overheard.
It makes me think of an anarchist comrade who organised for years under a dictatorship. He was always exactly on time for meetings, and never took any notes and remembered and did everything he said he was going to do.
I asked him about that when I noticed it, and he explained being early and hanging for a meeting might get you picked up by the secret police, being late the same for the people waiting for you, and being caught with notes might get you tortured and killed.
These jokers are pissing on people like that and the seriousness with which they and others take things.
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LDC
On est tous des pangolins
Just why would you Tweet some shit that like the kids on Twitter is both untrue and also could get taken out of context to cause problems?
There's plenty of good political criticisms to be made of this stuff (and various positions on the war) but saying things like that is just really problematic behaviour. There's clearly no such pre-requisite for getting a stall at the bookfair is there?
Yossarian
Get thee behind me, Santa
Aren't you kind of old for this shit?
Wilf
Slouching towards Billingham
Macho and puerile, all in one post. We'll done.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
This is like the other threads on the 'post-truth' world, people can repeat any old shit as fact, or just lie online and there's no consequences, it's all just shout whatever you want into the ether with no comebacks for you, and ignoring the fact it might cause real problems for others in real life.
charlie mowbray
The Enforcer
BTW, the Belfast Anarchist Bookfair has been cancelled now because of identitarian scumbaggery.
danny la rouge
I have a cheese grater in the dishwasher.
I’ve hesitated commenting on this latest affair, but I have to say something about the above.
This is not just some arsehole on Twitter shouting bizarreness into the night. This is another anarchist organisation.
We’ve all made mistakes when arguing and disagreeing with other people. I know I have. I recently apologised for the unintended consequences of something I wrote, and belatedly helped rectify it. So I’m not claiming to be a saint. And honestly, coming to terms with internet discourse is hard for humanity to get to grips with. We evolved to operate face to face in small bands. So I get that things can slip away from one when interacting online.
But let’s get this very clear. Whatever disagreement one might have with the ACG - and, let’s be honest here, one thing our milieu is great at is finding things to disagree about - they do not argue for genocide. And an AFed local group using its official social media to take part in a narrative suggesting that they do is utterly beyond the pale. It’s disgusting behaviour, and I truly hope they are made to understand that.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
It's maybe partly that my early years were when social media wasn't a thing, but the willingness to say stuff like that publically, even more so as a political group, absolutely astounds me.
One of the things that I always thought about anarchism was that it demanded a much higher standard of behaviour and general respect towards other people if we expected to be able to manage things without the organs of a State to catch, mediate, judge and/or punish people. Yet some of this newer wave of people in the anarchist subculture seem to think there's no need for that at all, it's some kind of free for all when you can say or do pretty much anything about anyone free from any repercussions.
Pickman's model
Starry Wisdom
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
There's all sorts of related issues I think; lack of face-to-face events, plenty of groups aren't groups at all but one or 2 people with social media account, and a death of printed media where opinions and statements are slowly and more carefully researched, thought about and worded replaced with communication methods where you can instantly say something to thousands of people with little or no thought.
I also think the growth of identity politics has brought an influx of people that see anarchist and alternative politics as a safe refuge from the world, and many of them are deeply traumatised and they bring all sorts of dysfunctional behaviours with them.
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Larry O'Hara
Well-Known Member
Not moved on, but reversed. Does rather confirm my view that many anarchists are in fact liberals. I remember being nearly lynched at the ABF many years ago for suggesting state infiltration of Leeds AFA via Searchlight. Yet lo and behold AFA nationally later confirmed it in spades. Did I ever get an apology? Did I fuck….
I remember back in the day sitting in meetings with people so off their face they could barely speak. I might even have been one of them on occassion. Let's not pretend this is a new phenomena, it just looks a bit different because times change.
And it's no real surprise that people who've had a particularly shitty times of things might be drawn to a movement that seeks radical change. How to manage that is probably a fruitful discussion, dismissing it as just identity politics probably isn't.
cesare
shady's dreams ♥
We were at one Bookfair where one of the libcom admins was attacked a few feet away, and another libcom stalwart made himself sensibly scarce as he was the target. I think that was the Bookfair phildwyer visited. Anyhow, these arguments erupting into violence or threats of violence started way before the rise of identity politics.
Fozzie Bear
Well-Known Member
Similarly the AF account posted this as part of a thread by the London Bookfair restating who was attending (and posting a new image without ACG).
Lovely.
danny la rouge
I have a cheese grater in the dishwasher.
To be perfectly honest, the shit this particular account comes out with is one of the reasons I abandoned TwitterX. Seeing this account’s output is very bad for my mental health. And is precisely the reason I don’t consider AFed a serious organisation.
LDC
On est tous des pangolins
To the first yes, and it's the same with alcohol, but that's very different to what I see now with some of what's going on with the way some people behave, compounded by social media and other factors. A pissed person in a meeting disrupts that meeting, and can be thrown out. Someone playing shit out on Twitter can disrupt whole movements and groups, and cannot be thrown out. It's not just a question of, 'Oh this has always happened, it's just a bit different'.
No, it's not a surprise, and I'm not blaming them for being unwell or traumatised, but IME there's a bunch of people that aren't drawn to it as a vehicle for social change (or if they are it's in theory only rather than being engaged as such) but are drawn to it as mostly a subcultural space where they feel welcome. And on some level that's great, but that isn't what revolutionary politics is primarily about and we/movement/groups have shown we can't manage it, and so I think it's partly contributed to the destruction of anarchism as any kind of serious potential social force in the short to medium term.
It's partly the tensions that's always existed within anarchism around personal/political etc. but it's also reflecting the mess that much of society is also in with various collapses and breakdowns in all sorts of social and political areas, just in a particular political scene that is much more vulnerable to this stuff than other similar areas are.
E2A: I wasn't dismissing it as identity politics, I was saying that scene has brought a bunch of people into anarchism with some of them having those behaviours. I think poor behaviour has always existed in the anarchist movement (of course) but the way it manifests itself now (around issues of identity and also predominantly online) is very different and has much wider consequences.
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