ESF demo...

WTF!

I wouldn't call it ultra leftist wank mate, more like fucking obvious and self evident.

Aha, at last summat that explains everything. You still have the party mindset dontcha mate?! Why dontcha go back to them, I'm sure they would be more than willing to accomodate you and your feelings towards the police

Good point, don't let swpies run into me

there's too many ex-swpies contaminating the anarchist movement with their residual party mindsets. All they do is sell newspapers, innit

Think we could all do with a purge

Can I just say that my past in the SWP makes me A. Better qualified to ciriticise them B. Better qualified to criticise the hysterical anti-Trotness of loads of anarchists.

The SWP turned me from a left liberal into a revolutionary with a class struggle analysis. I don't begrudge that fact. I have plenty of problems with them - they are totally willing to jump into bed with any vaguely left leaning mainstream figure or movement, their critique of anarchism is a bit naive (but actually totally right on when it comes to individualism, or it was), they put respectability above sincerity and so on. And having viewed them from both inside and out I can say they have got a lot worse in recent years. I knew plenty of sound hardcore activist when I was a member, as far as I've seen most of them are now out of the party and still sound hardcore activists.

I was involved with the wombles for about a month after leaving the SWP (just over three years ago) and believe me they are much worse than any trot group.

And yes Yrwenot3, I am pro-police aren't I? About as much pro-police as Sabotabby is a unionist.

Do you wanna unpack that one on a different thread, cos it's gonna get challenged to fuck on this board. Well at least it should do.

Well at least I definitely don't reckon the wombles would ever contemplate colluding with the police or trying to hijack any movements for their own careerist ends.

I think you've been outed mate, sober up and think about what you've been saying this evening. I can't believe you've defended a sad parasitical Trot party over an anarchist group who actually do shit.

What's the world coming too on these boards?

Ok then, let's have a little look at the Wombles' tactics. During my (very brief) time with them I gathered the main point of their organisation was supposed to be to "defend the demo". For a start, could you be more patronising towards the movement? Have no fear, peaceful protesters, the wombles are here! So anyway, to defend the demo, they spend some time beforehand carefully building up their image as wadical twoublemakers, then they all mask up, wear white overalls and padding (so the police can pick them out nice and easily) and stand at the front of the demo. A few of them (bless them) stuck two fingers up at the line of coppers. Result? The frontline of the demo gets the full frontal assault of the metropolitan police. Nice "demo-protecting" guys. Oh and when they weren't busy protecting demos, the wombles generally sat around getting stoned, making stupid hand gestures and talking about how the fash were spying on them through their mobiles.

Of course, that was years ago. Maybe they've changed a bit since then.

Fuckin hell, the SWP and some residual Trot mindset amongst Trolls on this board is the fuckin key to the political culture of this board.

Blimey, it's the missing piece of jigsaw in the enrager puzzle.

They're all ex-Trots who bang on about "my politics being better than yours crap" and "you don't have a class analysis".

They don't have a fuckin clue what direct action means, particularly community direct action. They have a complete lack of understanding of how complex issues are understood and evolve - everything gets argued in terms of polarised understandings of situations. And they've always gotta have the last word on any interaction. And they all defend one another in fits of comradely cognitive dissonance. And they just sit behind their keyboards all day trolling this site doing sweet fucking FA

And to top it all one of em's an obsessive compulsive cleaner who gets drunk whilst cleaning the Freedom Bookshops fridge

fuckin hell - I gotta go and lie down

ywermate, don't lump all ex-trots together. I too started from solidly socialist politics, not trots though, but firm party political leftie stuff anyway. I came into contact witrh anarchists mainly in trade unionist stuff which is why i was impressed. point is: there are fuckloads of really good ex-swp'ers, and there are still loads remaining in swp.

But then again, i am such a moderate that i hang out with some trots and commies all the time and will support and show solidarity to them if need be. I have better enemies to deal with than trot groups...

Too right, JDMF and Revol. One of our comrades here in Colchester is an official communist (for those that don't know, someone who fully supports the old Stalinist regimes). You can critique his politics to fuck, but he's a nice guy, you know? His take on Russia, Cuba etc is a bit shit but at least he's actually prepared to support his class in the here and now.

Fuckin hell this is all too much to take in

Can't believe I'm reading things from the Trolls eulogising Trot parties cos they've 'got a class analysis'. Why is this class analysis rhetoric so fucking important to you lot, if you don't do fuck all it's fucking meaningless!

You know what? We have our fair share of vacuously rhetorical 'socialist' activists here in Brum. Most of them are fat old white geezers who meet in pubs and letch at 'bits of skirt'.

To some extent I might agree with them about class analysis, but the difference is they do fuck all apart from selling newspapers to people and mentoring young men through weekly book readings of Das Kapital. Sounds sinister don't it?

Does anyone else feel a little compromised by the dominant ideological project being expressed on these boards by so many ex-Trot trolls?

How the fuck can we purge these ex-Trot Trolls off these boards?

Answers on a postcard...

Meanwhile is anyone out there gonna defend the Wombles? I guess not cos most of em aint keyboard fucking jockeys who waste their time on these boards

Where's that icepick gone?

So in your vast experience of social interaction with activists - You've just said you're a 16 year old goth on another thread who doesn't clean their bedroom cos the worlds in such a mess - the world of activists is clearly split into two halves. Class conscious 'sincere' Trots versus anarchists who shit themselves.

Yeah sounds right

Do you have some fucking problem reading other peoples posts. The SWP has hundreds of members, some of whom, like the executive committee are complete bastards who view everyone else simply as fucking sheep, and probably think we'd all be better off militarised and in camps according to the more mental parts of trotsky's wriitings, the people beleive they are RIGHT and everyone else is WRONG, they are a bit nuts.

Personlly I would compare them to the sort of ''so-called-anarchist''' cunts who think its wrong to shop in supermarkets, because its too ''consumerist'' or some similar bollocks.

However, the majority of the SWP are decent people, your average swappie thinks they're working towards a socialist society and is motivated by those positive aims, not some wanky anarchist fantasy about how they secretly exist to stop you 'freely expressing your creativityyyy'', or some insane indymedia story involving the freemasons, JFK and the moon landings in some way.

So seriously, shut the fuck up!

john

hang on lucy was talking about cobas not the guardian.

So if the SWP have such great class analysis how come there willing to work with scabs like livingstone and call in the police? ok, some of the members might be alright people, but to engage with the SWP as an organisation is futile.

The SWP are an establishment front. I know this from personal experience - not a pleasant one either, as you might guess from my name :red: . The unsuspecting recruits don't realise this and think they are joining a genuine leftist organisation, so be gentle with some of them. And you wonder about the icepick.

WAS IT?

I don't count myself as a gullible prick you know, but it did sorta resonate with me. I bet other people reading this thought, "yeah that makes sense" too.

Bet you're really 17 years old, innit

I dunno teenagers these days don't half grow up quick

there's one of them in birmingham. but he's a loon who got kicked out of the rcg for having extreme views like there should be more suicide bombers, and he only does anything to do with prisoners or immigrants, because apparently they're the vanguard of the proletariat.

anyway, alot of people do get into doing stuff through trot groups, because they are visible, and if you develop a political consciousness and go along to the only visible political activity going on, then you are likely to to get sucked into them. that doesn't mean that the parties themselves shouldn't be attacked at every available opportunity. maggie thatcher had class analysis but here aims were not the same as anarchists, trots also have class analysis but their aims are also opposed to ours, although it is quite likely that those who believe trot arguements are more likely to be convinced of anarchist arguements than those who support thatcher.

i don't see why the fact that some people have been in the swp is a problem though, plenty of people in the anarchist movement have also been punks who pissed on people, hippies who thought smoking weed would save the world, and activisty types who wasted away their time with well meaning but ultimately futile projects to change little bits of the system, all of which is just as pointless. if they've become anarchists it means they've abandoned these pursuits and weak politics. or it should. to be honest compared to the other things, i think residual trotty ness, as much as i despise the left, is probably likely to do less harm and hold the movement back less than the dregs of the other tendencies.

and the reason class analysis is important, if that's not painfully obvious, is because without it an activity, no matter how successful itself, well meaning, hardcore or whatever, is essentially in the grand scheme of things completely useless and individualistic self-gratification. time could have been better spent, if not on worthwhile activity informed by class analysis, then doing something much more enjoyable, like watching a samurai movie or reading harry potter or having sex or cooking.

um, back to the original post topic and related stuff... although i do think the esf is a big waste of time, and i wasn't there and other stuff, i don't think highlighting how authorities react in certain situations is a bad thing for anarchists to do. the tactics the cops use against activists now is essentially just practice and fine tuning for if and when the class war intensifies on the part of the working class. and if we can practice sticking together against them it can be used as examples of how to resist them, and if we can sue them when they break their own laws... it means we can get tidy sums to do useful stuff with, or at least buy lots of beer.

i also agree though that really, anarchists should not be approaching it with the why oh why reversed daily mail tone that often happens. analyse what the cops are doing and why, see how we can work around it or prevent/disrupt it in future situations. but we all know the cops are scum so being shocked everytime they do something shit doesn't help much. in fact it seems to indicate that their social role isn't fully understood. they are there to pretect the ruling classes interests, and by extension to be arseholes. we should be more worried when they're being nice, because there's bound to be sinister reasons behind it.

from what i understand from comparing my experience of the police in the uk with my short stay in greece last year, the british police don't need to be as brutal because they are far more advanced in techniques of containment and crowd control than in other countries. in greece, people could happily walk to a demo unmasked with a bag full of mollies, safe in the knowledge that there would be no cctv footage to analyse afterwards, most journalists would be too scared to come near enough for a clear face shot, and the cops don't have cameras. on the other hand, they needed to go to a demo carrying a bag full of mollies, because they knew the moment a demo full of anarchos started, the police would charge in with teargas and batons and everything, and if they got arrested they'd get the shit kicked out of them and fitted up with as many charges as possible. although this is kind of answering the other thread now...

um, yeah, trots are baaaad though. remember, every anarchist's hero should be sabate, he killed fash, commies, robbed banks to support comrades, and didn't even fall into vanguardism in 20 years of guerrilla warfare... he was also a cocky cunt with a sense of humour.

Well, I'm fed up with lifestylers too. The lifestylers you probably don't wanna recognise - the one's that do fuck all and spout rhetorical shit about class analysis on bulletin boards and moan myopically about the movement.

You probably don't think this is symptomatic of lifestylism, but I reckons it is. Why? Cos it achieves fuck all and it means you don't commit to fuck all and you don't change fuck all. Just sit back with your mates in the pub with your 'literature' boasting who's more class analysis than thou shite.

Eulogising about the SWP and other Trot groups just takes the fucking biscuit too. There are plenty of decent anarchists out there that don't fit your one-dimensional stereotype of clueless hippy fuckwits. The trouble is, it's looking less and less like you're ever gonna meet them on this board, cos who the fuck is gonna suffer you and your dysfunctional mates trolling of this board to get to know you and do summat together?

Like the good captain says on the storming of the ESF thread -

Hey and I bet it don't get much of a look in either does it Revoltin

Isn't there more to activism than selling people a lifestyle complete with books and T-shirts?

[yawn] I'm off to bed

keep trolling you trot loving anarcho cynic

31

So, I think everyone's got some insight into what you think about anarchism and what it means in this country.

But I haven't got a fucking clue what you think activism is.

So let's have it. What is this activism that you're so eager to deride at every opportunity on this board?

At the start of the ESF process, I was involved in trying to counteract the control games around the organisation of the ESF. The end result of the torturous game was that autonomous spaces were created as a positive action against an esf whose organisers had deliberately missed the point of the esf charter of principles and chosen exclusion of some groups (like anarchist groups) in favour of other groups (like themselves as organisers: the greater london council, socialist labour, our friends GR aka SWP). i could be more subtle in my analysis but its late and i 'm tired. People did fight for inclusion within the official ESF, i left the game early cause i thought it was a fight best left and, in the end, creating autonomous spaces was the ESF people wanted to make who were alienated deliberately in many instances by the organisational process of the ESF.

So when you say:

what the wombles and other people did in london was creating autonomous spaces to support struggle, engage and inform people in places to network, get together and do stuff and yes, have fun. I don't understand what you believe history is or with who you think it is created.

where does militancy or politicisation begin? Instead of sitting around sneering imo we should use the tools at hand (like social centres, like autonomous spaces), because they are about taking space back, saying fuck you, getting power thats denied otherwise and using it usefully.

it pisses me off that the police kick off partly at the invitation of the swp and then people on enrager wade in to defend the swp and the police.

redyred, if i write it in alphabet letters across the fridge can you see that because i said some people wrote to the guardian that does not equate with me saying the fucking corporate liberal press is fine.

miss the point why don'cha? which bit of the sentence are you having problems with exactly?

the people that signed the letter were people who were involved with the esf like the babels and were totally pissed off by the response of the swp to the anarchist action.

the SWP wanted to call in the police against people who were doing an action in protest against the GLA/SWP etc controlled ESF. and thats ok? is it?

because the SWP have class analysis, which clearly leads to licking ken livingstones/new labours arse and subsuming everything else into voting respect.

oh for fucks sake, at least don't defend that

are you seriously suggesting that the SWP move towards liberal reformism has only happen in the last 3 years?

cos there part of the same organisation perhaps? Cos the central comitee is dictates their local activism?

And if these all these indiviudals with such devloped class analysis why have they left in disgust after the SWP's class colloboration by working with Livingstone on the ESF?

Well apparently me complaining about anarchists making a song an dance about police repression makes me pro-police, and saying the SWP should be engaged with not ignored makes me pro Livingstone-arse licking.

No. I spent a year and a half reading their publications and being involved in their organising, I know what they're about and I have a fucking good critique of them. Even when I was a member I was critical of quite a few things, but at the time thought it was better to be involved with a large group that actually did stuff rather than some tiny sect. I also read more political literature and was more involved in activism than at any other time in my life. In the end I got more and more frustrated with them and ending up leaving. But it was my first experiences of anarchism that made me really disillusioned and apathetic. I genuinely think on average individualist anarchists deserve a lot more stick than trots.

This is proper out to lunch shit.

Just cos Trots can bark back some party line they've assimilated from countless meetings where they don't get to participate, they are immune to criticism but anarchists are fucking clueless hippies.

What the fuck

And you certainly know summat about that don't you Revoltin?

I mean how individualist can you get on these boards, trolling, flaming, distorting, getting the last word in....

I reckon you and your trolling trot lovin mates (that's if they are all separate individuals in the real world) are the most individualistic anarchists I've ever come across.

Phwoar - I'm lovin this

have you been involved in a social centre?

just curious as to if this comes from personal experiences.

I guess it all depends on your aim as a 'autonomous social centre' and who your involving. I know my views have been changed loads about reclaimed community spaces after being involved in one.

the problem with engaging the swp is that although many members are ok as individuals, they are not acting as individuals when it matters. for example, caucusing before meetings so you all sing from the same hymn sheet, packing meetings out to silence other peoples views, hijacking admin positions in campaigns to turn it in the direction the party wants.. all this happens over and over again.

if you want to engage the swp i would suggest engaging with the key organisational players, alex callinicos etc etc, only you can't, redyred, because in your current role as anarchist, you'd never get near them. which is precisely the problem, not least for any of their members who might want to be heard. that means their views are considered as equal with others including the top of the hierarchy, not just pretending to hear...

i do know a lot about the swp. i was a member of the swp and stood for election as a candidate for the socialist alliance twice, once as an independent and once as a swppie. there, i'm outed. i really don't think there is very much you could tell me about them, tbh.

it still is shit you appear to have more empathy with the swp than an anarchist getting kicked around by cops. i'm glad you managed to meet the "real" anarchists after being disillusioned and apathetic by your first experiences of anarchism. i hope you are both happy now and have clarified your definition of "real".