[Sat 28th Oct 2017] London Anarchist Bookfair (London)

[Pickman's model]

Radical suggestion Pickman's model. About time anarchism got with the programme on drugs legalisation.

I'm thinking rifles not needles, pg. But I'll meet you halfway with a dreyse needle gun

 

[planetgeli]

Well, dirty needles cause problems for both so...yeah.

 

[Red Cat]

For me, it raises questions about the tone and form that (some) activism is taking. Some thoughts springing to the top of my mind include:

• This reminds me of stuff I’ve encountered over the years in the NUS. Something about these kind of arenas being “safer” for those seeking to indulge in grandstanding?
• It’s very inward facing. And entirely negative.
• The impact of social media - especially Twitter on the tone of contributions and the forming of groups and setting of lines.
• Statements. So many fucking statements.
• Condemnflation and increasingly prescriptive forms of writing.

...but they’re just thoughts. Of mine. As an observer from a distance. They’re not new to this incident. There've been other examples, increasingly, over recent years. I think both the commentariat thread and the idpol thread also touch on some of this.

Thanks.

As an outsider, that's how it appears to me too. I was wondering if I was missing something.

 

[Red Cat]

I am interested in bimble 's question about why this faultline? “terfs” v trans rights activists

 

[nyxx]

Mis-quoting both what I posted in response to you and what I posted in the first place.
I’ll engage with you again when you can be bothered to read my words properly and take them as they are rather than invent additions to them.

Yeh. I didn't say the contents not worth examining - you're telling lies, my lovely. Your apparent belief that there was no controversy before these leaflets, that these leaflets form the sole bones of contention, that there was no 'terf'/trans beef before: it's bollocks.

 

[chilango]

I am interested in bimble 's question about why this faultline? “terfs” v trans rights activists

I’m gonna speculate wildly here...

Both sides “punch above their weight” via social media, enabling an escalation that wouldn’t have been physically possible in the good old days.

#Ciswhitehetmen probably make up a significant proportion of the “scene” still. Add in a strain of liberal politics here and there and generous lashings of middle class guilt and you’ve got the recipe for hesitation, prevarication and an audience for the dispute who are pretty shaky about how to engage with it.

It could’ve, probably has in the past,and probably still will, also flare up around other aspects of identity politics.

 

[Pickman's model]

Mis-quoting both what I posted in response to you and what I posted in the first place.
I’ll engage with you again when you can be bothered to read my words properly and take them as they are rather than invent additions to them.

I haven't misquoted you: and if you're not aiming your comments at me then don't quote me. I've not added or subtracted from your words, so pls stop lying about it.

 

[killer b]

I think there's a similar faultline - if not as visible right now - around the accommodation of reactionary religion by some in the left (hence the other, smaller flare up about the anti-religion stall)

 

[Fozzie Bear]

It died years ago from you tourist cunts.

 

[killer b]

 

[Pickman's model]

I think there's a similar faultline - if not as visible right now - around the accommodation of reactionary religion by some in the left (hence the other, smaller flare up about the anti-religion stall)

Yeh. That banner's round 11, 12 years auld. It's been there years. The time to object to it was when it was first displayed, not once it's become a fixture. And if religion is so big and intelligent it should be able to take a banner like that in its stride. Btw it wasn't an anti-religion stall as such it was active distribution

 

[LDC]

I’m gonna speculate wildly here...

Both sides “punch above their weight” via social media, enabling an escalation that wouldn’t have been physically possible in the good old days.

#Ciswhitehetmen probably make up a significant proportion of the “scene” still. Add in a strain of liberal politics here and there and generous lashings of middle class guilt and you’ve got the recipe for hesitation, prevarication and an audience for the dispute who are pretty shaky about how to engage with it.

It could’ve, probably has in the past,and probably still will, also flare up around other aspects of identity politics.

And I'd add that it involves a load of people that are genuinely fucked over and traumatized, and who see the other 'side' as being partly complicit (or at least excusing) in that trauma.

 

[bimble]

It looks to me like maybe there's also a bit of a generational split going on here as well, like the old (last 40+ years or so) ideas around what gender is and what woman means were more collective socially defined categories seen as imposed from outside by a society that needs changing and the new ideas are different, holding that its up to each individual to define themselves.

 

[butchersapron]

Yeh. That banner's round 11, 12 years auld. It's been there years. The time to object to it was when it was first displayed, not once it's become a fixture. And if religion is so big and intelligent it should be able to take a banner like that in its stride. Btw it wasn't an anti-religion stall as such it was active distribution

They should put up their brexit one.

 

[Red Cat]

And I'd add that it involves a load of people that are genuinely fucked over and traumatized, and who see the other 'side' as being partly complicit (or at least excusing) in that trauma.

It does seem very boundaryless to me, spilling all over the place, pulling people in, excluding others. It's very dramatic.

 

[LDC]

It does seem very boundaryless to me, spilling all over the place, pulling people in, excluding others. It's very dramatic.

Yeah, and there's totally a pattern where some traumatized people re-enact their trauma in various other situations in a really un-boundaried and quite destructive way. (Not to put it all down to that at all of course.)

 

[bimble]

^ not helped by the 'pick a side' rhetoric thrown about with abandon, including on here.

 

[Pickman's model]

^ not helped by the 'pick a side' rhetoric thrown about with abandon, including on here.

The auld bushist 'if you're not with me, you're against me'

 

[Thora]

It looks to me like maybe there's also a bit of a generational split going on here as well, like the old (last 40+ years or so) ideas around what gender is and what woman means were more collective socially defined categories seen as imposed from outside by a society that needs changing and the new ideas are different, holding that its up to each individual to define themselves.

Definitely a generational split. I think the cut off is whether you know what Tumblr is

 

[LDC]

I'm really wary of thinking this is a generational split rather than a political one as it feels like a way of subtly painting 'older people' as wrong and out dated, as well as papering over the politics at the heart of the dispute.

I think while these politics might be more be more common in the 'youth', it's not as much as it can seem, and anyway there's good reasons why it might be more common among people who've grown in a markedly different political time than some folks in their 30s/40s and upwards have.

 

[Pickman's model]

I'm really wary of thinking this is a generational split rather than a political one as it feels like a way of subtly painting 'older people' as wrong and out dated, as well as papering over the politics at the heart of the dispute.

I think while these politics might be more be more common in the 'youth', it's not as much as it can seem, and anyway there's good reasons why it might be more common among people who've grown in a markedly different political time than some folks in their 30s/40s and upwards have.

it's not generational

from observation on the day there's auld 'terfs' and young 'terfs': and the age distribution of people opposed to them seemed to me equally broad.

 

[butchersapron]

It's a class thing.

 

[chilango]

Obviously class.

But also.

There is a generational aspect to it though. Of sorts.

But this isn’t strictly an age thing but rather in terms of “generations of struggle” (clumsy I know).

Anarchism has been vulnerable to this in the UK for ages because of the weakness of continuity amongst groups and orgs.

Attrition and the pressures/responsibilities of daily life tend towards a significant proportion of activists dropping off/out as they grow older.

Replaced by newer (usually - but not necessarily at all - younger) activists just starting out.

Much Anarchist activism has been temporally self-contained, with less “passing on” of stuff going on than the Marxist left has traditionally been able to do with the larger presence of organisations they have had. Until recently. Now the the rest of the left is in the same position of having to start again every few years.

So the current crop of activists - who weren’t around for the 80s or 90s and can probably trace their antecedents to the student protests of, what? 2011/12?, are developing tactics and strategies heavily seduced by the “now”. Social media, occupy, etc. with little inherited from the experience of previous waves and few structures from which to do so.

Ironically the Bookfair was one of the main means through which to try and maintain a thread of continuity within the movement(s).

Maybe?

 

[chilango]

...and of course, now activists can seek out and find other activists with a very narrow line of agreement or whatever online.

Previous generations faced a far greater onus on getting on with the much broader range of views that represented what could be gathered together in the back room of a pub.

Outside London at least.

Which is why most of the spats that did happen, happened in London. Generally.

Plus disputes perpetuated in the journals and organs that only came out a few times a year were much slower burning iirc.

 

[JimW]

Isn't it only apparently generational due to the retreat of the working class over these last decades, i.e. these sort more prominent as our voices have been marginalised?

ETA As in, not seen as a force in society more so no even pandered to by liberal types?

 

[bimble]

When people are saying its a class thing you don't mean that one side is working class & the other isn't but that all involved are middle class twits?

 

[LDC]

Obviously class.

But also.

There is a generational aspect to it though. Of sorts.

But this isn’t strictly an age thing but rather in terms of “generations of struggle” (clumsy I know).

Yeah, that's what I meant, a generational thing in terms of how people see politics rather than a simple generational/age thing.

 

[LDC]

When people are saying its a class thing you don't mean that one side is working class & the other isn't but that all involved are middle class twits?

I think it's largely a class thing, in that it's partly how people see the bigger political picture and social change, and there's two conflicting dynamics broadly. This is basically at the heart of the discussion on the ID politics thread.

 

[LDC]

So the current crop of activists - who weren’t around for the 80s or 90s and can probably trace their antecedents to the student protests of, what? 2011/12?, are developing tactics and strategies heavily seduced by the “now”. Social media, occupy, etc. with little inherited from the experience of previous waves and few structures from which to do so.

Yeah, totally, it feels like there was quite a gap of 'new activity' between 2003-2009 or so, and then the next generation (for want of a better term) got involved through the student struggles of 2010/2011 and much of the conflicting issues revolve around that generation and the politics and perspectives they brought with them, especially in London.

 

[Pickman's model]

Yeah, totally, it feels like there was quite a gap of 'new activity' between 2003-2009 or so, and then the next generation (for want of a better term) got involved through the student struggles of 2010/2011 and much of the conflicting issues revolve around that generation and the politics and perspectives they brought with them, especially in London.

I don't recognise this gap which omits e.g. the anti-war movement, the g8 in Scotland, the ayn, the g20 etc.