butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No they're not. And I didn't realise that you and sweetpea had decided what could be talked about and how.
what happened to all the 90s political scenes?
- Thread starter xslavearcx
- Start date
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Quite. There's very little actual "politics" in any of the posts on this thread. Merely mentioning a writer/book/tendency isn't exactly taxing on the reader is it?
I deliberately kept my posts "lite". I'm quite happy to do a pretty "throwaway" discussion of this stuff, y'know anecdotes, chit chat etc. augmented by the odd more serious link that people can read or not read.
But this subject does warrant a heavier duty analysis too. Whether that's on this thread or elsewhere.
I guess it depends on whether you believe nostalgia is enough.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
i'd definately like to see a more heavy duty analysis now ive got the nostalgia out my system 
What demos in the 90s? Because to my memory and understanding, the second wave of protest kicked off with Seattle, followed by Genoa, and there wasn't much in that vein before, it was more roads/ animal rights/ other things.
The discussion on the other thread that led to this was how much connection there was between 90s protest, and why the energy that seemed to be around died out.
I think one of the reasons could be the higher level of violence (at least against property) now, meaning the police have cracked down a lot more. Animal rights was (is?) a violent movement in some ways but that was distributed and covert making it difficult to tackle. People on the streets smashing windows is in plain sight for one and the police love public order policing, for second.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Are you serious in asking what demos in the 90s?
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
I'm sorry but you seem to have got pretty much everything in this post wrong!
Seattle was arguably the culmination of a wave of protest rather than the start. Albeit one that in itself spawned a number of echoes and attempted repetitions.
...and most of the stuff in the 90s contained a FAR higher level of property damage than broken windows. It was a core feature of much that went on.
I can expand later if needs be.
I'm sorry but you seem to have got pretty much everything in this post wrong!
That's fine. That's one reason why I'm interested.
I don't know what you mean by `no they're not`. And I'm not telling you what to say.
So if you want some more analysis. All the lifestyle stuff, all the `alternative` stuff has to go. It's not how you change things. It isn't remotely relevant to most people's lives. Squats, kettling, chucking tins cans at lines of paramilitary OB, Guerilla Gardening...to me it felt like people didn't really take the changes they wanted seriously. Leftist/radical/anarchist (whatever you'd like to call it) action does not revolve around some feeble re-hash of the 1970s punk scene, talking broadly here. So many bad experiences with `anarchists` who were nothing more than individualists stuck in some kind of uniformed time warp, looking down their noses at the general public...
You can still believe exactly the same things in your head, take all the influences from any writer/era/action you care to - seriously, that is where you should never sell out - but you (plural) cannot present yourself to the public in the way the protests did in 1996-2001. That should be obvious.
There is a huge wave of resentment of politicians, capital and the system in general at the moment and you don't tap into it by doing crazy dredd clown nude-biking don't eat foxes soundsystem autonomous spaces.
Much as i like loud (house) music, nudity and foxes...
Just in case you think I'm 100pc negative I'm not. There were/are many inspiring/interesting and excellent people in the wider `movement` who have done and still are doing amazing things.
It's the broader thing. Like I say, when `we` can pull a ferry load of day trippers to Calais with us, that will be much more potent...and it can be done.
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
By "no it's not" i'm saying that what you said was happening on thread and finger wagging about was not happening.
And you seem to have missed the point of the thread which was to a) for participants to stroll down memory lane and b) point out why so little substantive stuff came out it. Not to say, hey let's do all that stuff again, it's exactly what's needed right now! Which is why no one on the thread did that either. And there were plenty pointing out your points above at the time - and before that in the 80s against the anarcho-punks or pacifists, and in the 70s against the hippies and in the 60s against the CND coffe house liberals and so on....
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Hakim Bey came up with an explanation of an existing phenomenon, he didn't dream TAZs up.
I don't think the Iraq protests were irrelevant (far from it) but I don't think they were massively relevant to this discussion because the vast majority of people who participated were otherwise relatively politically inactive, that was one of the massive strengths of them.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
thats what i thought. guess, if there is any value to that approach, it be best to drop that name then
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
thats what i thought. guess, if there is any value to that approach, it be best to drop that name then
IIRC there was a piece in the class war discussion bulletin thing sometime in the 80s asking what happens after the police fuck off - which puts the idea in a a very simple way whilst opening up the idea that communities are going to face serious problems when they do and the need for them to identify and have answers to those problems.
ok fair enough
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
No worries, i think the thread chilango may do later would be a good place to discuss this sort of stuff in and why so much of it failed - on the social level anyway, it did work for individuals, but that again, may well have been one of the problems. And what this means for us today.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
I reckon that maybe one of the positive legacys of the 90s movement could be the kind of accumulated experience that would come with people living on protest cites and how they manage group dynamics in a way that is guided by 'left-wing' principles. Perhaps?
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
I think most experience is potentially socially useful in itself, but not so useful it it's hidden away as part of an activist ghetto or the jealosuly guarded as the property of specialists - so yes...and no
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Which is why some of the student protests, purely in propaganda terms, worked better. They tore up the rule-book and staged protests on their terms.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
true true. i guess that kinda experience can useful for the setting up of some third sector single issue group .. with paid positions of course
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
They were a bit actually. Safe, state sponsored expression. Everyone felt much better afterwards and the status quo continued.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
I think most experience is potentially socially useful in itself, but not so useful it it's hidden away as part of an activist ghetto or the jealosuly guarded as the property of specialists - so yes...and no
Janus!
butchersapron
Bring back hanging
Ignore him, he's a many times banned poster who hates himself and thinks its the fault of people better than him on here and he now just comes back (three times in the last 24 hours) to try and fuck up decent threads that they're on.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
aahh cool cheers...
chilango
Hypothetical Wanker
Just to address the couple of points made earlier...
There seems to be a myth, created after the fact, that Seattle was the start of something. Partly this is down to groups like the SWP (and I suspect plenty of others) who hadn't been involved prior to this and who didn't really pay much attention to what led to the events in Seattle. They preferred to re-write a history that showed them present at the beginning. It is also the case that postSeattle the summit hopping protests followed a more familiar choreography and used a more familiar language for the recuperators (be they liberal or Leninst).
Equally it would unfair to start a chronology of the 90s protests at, say, Twyford Down or the July 94 antiCJB demo, without mentioning the elements of continuity from various strands before them. Stop the City, Battle of the Beanfield, the Poll Tax amongst many many others fed into creating what happened in the mid 90s.
To be more specific though, Seattle followed the worldwide J18 protests which themselves followed some anti G8 type RTS thing in Birmingham. The move towards antiglobalization had been ongoing for sometime thru the PGA, the Zapatistas and many others. There was also a concerted push towards explicit anti capitalism from some of the more organised (and influential) elements in RTS and Earth First!
As for this, without going into too much detail, there were in the 90s thousands of incidents of serious property damage that you simply couldn't do now post 9/11. From the underground there was the ELF, the Justice Department, Animal Rights Militia and so on... There was the widespread trashing of machinery, physical attacks on property (and on at least one occasion security guards) destructive office occupations, GM trials destroyed etc etc. Antifascism was physically militant too. Welling, Waterloo and many others. In July 94 the mob attempted to storm Downing St, widespread rioting in Oct 94 driving the police from Hyde Park. Oh yes, there was plenty of burning, smashing and fighting on a scale we've yet to see repeated since on protests in the UK.
There seems to be a myth, created after the fact, that Seattle was the start of something. Partly this is down to groups like the SWP (and I suspect plenty of others) who hadn't been involved prior to this and who didn't really pay much attention to what led to the events in Seattle. They preferred to re-write a history that showed them present at the beginning. It is also the case that postSeattle the summit hopping protests followed a more familiar choreography and used a more familiar language for the recuperators (be they liberal or Leninst).
Equally it would unfair to start a chronology of the 90s protests at, say, Twyford Down or the July 94 antiCJB demo, without mentioning the elements of continuity from various strands before them. Stop the City, Battle of the Beanfield, the Poll Tax amongst many many others fed into creating what happened in the mid 90s.
To be more specific though, Seattle followed the worldwide J18 protests which themselves followed some anti G8 type RTS thing in Birmingham. The move towards antiglobalization had been ongoing for sometime thru the PGA, the Zapatistas and many others. There was also a concerted push towards explicit anti capitalism from some of the more organised (and influential) elements in RTS and Earth First!
As for this, without going into too much detail, there were in the 90s thousands of incidents of serious property damage that you simply couldn't do now post 9/11. From the underground there was the ELF, the Justice Department, Animal Rights Militia and so on... There was the widespread trashing of machinery, physical attacks on property (and on at least one occasion security guards) destructive office occupations, GM trials destroyed etc etc. Antifascism was physically militant too. Welling, Waterloo and many others. In July 94 the mob attempted to storm Downing St, widespread rioting in Oct 94 driving the police from Hyde Park. Oh yes, there was plenty of burning, smashing and fighting on a scale we've yet to see repeated since on protests in the UK.
xslavearcx
time for a nu-metal revival?
Globalise Resistance!!!
lazythursday
Averagely-Known Member
I spent time at an environmental protest in the early 90s - the protest camp to save Abbey Pond in Hulme in Manchester. Smaller scale than most of the higher profile road protests etc but following a similar pattern / type of people / tactics. What really struck me at the time was how divorced many of the people were from wider left wing politics - lots of quite deep greens, people who thought environmental politics was somehow different to the left/right divide. Surprising amount of homophobic comments - not 'natural' and probably due to pollution...
Later I was at most of the RTS events and a few anti-GM things though not really an activist. I suppose that we shouldn't forget that in many ways some of these protests were really successful - GM has never taken off in the UK, the roads programme was pretty much halted for many years - they just didn't have the potential to grow into something bigger because they were rooted in a sector of the population that defined itself as being different from the general population.
Later I was at most of the RTS events and a few anti-GM things though not really an activist. I suppose that we shouldn't forget that in many ways some of these protests were really successful - GM has never taken off in the UK, the roads programme was pretty much halted for many years - they just didn't have the potential to grow into something bigger because they were rooted in a sector of the population that defined itself as being different from the general population.
ViolentPanda
Hardly getting over it.
Possibly the "beginning" of various states arming themselves to deal with the trans-national nature of dissent, at least.
Similar threads
