anti-capitalism is the anti-capitalism of idiots I
[moved from comments]
During and since the events around the G20 conference there have been, apparent to me, manifestations of often quite intense responses to the actions of some people, frequently and reductively identified as the actions of ‘Arterial Bloc’. Quite a few people who identify themelves as critical of the G20 and even as supporters of or participants in anti-g20 activities have gone out of their way to criticise or condemn (the actions attributed to) Arterial Bloc.
By contrast, those articulating positions either defending these actions or just not outright condemning those involved have been largely on the back foot, and have made efforts to be measured and polite in response to aggressive criticisms that did not, on the whole, reflect any parallel efforts. The public remarks of Socialist Alternative’s Mick Armstrong, happily reproducing seemingly all of the cliches of anti-protester discourse up to and including those concerning a xenophobic construction of ‘outside agitators’, are only the most extreme example of the collapse of the supposedly oppositional into reactionary and conformist choices which can only assist the state in its repressive actions against those being deemed beyond the pale.
Largely absent from all of this is any critique of the actual roles of those claiming the position and authority of ‘organisers’ of anti-g20 protests and activities, the dishonesty, manipulations and slimy interests of not merely most of the socialist groups involved, but also those constantly deploying the rhetoric of anti-hierarchical organisation, of spokescouncils and affinity groups, even of anarchism.
The Stopg20 meetings were saturated with this dishonest crap. The media spokespeople that the collective claimed it didn’t have used the authority of their relation to the stopg20 collective to falsify the form of organisation of anti-g20 activities, to outright lie about events in order to distance themelves as official and legitimate protesters from the Arterial Bloc. These creeps - hello, Marcus - acted in mainstream media interviews as if Stopg20 had some collective commitment to ‘non-violent’, ‘peaceful’ protest when the discourse of ‘diversity of tactics’ explicitly included acknowledgement that some would quite possibly be intending and/or willing to adopt a different set of political assumptions about what constitutes an acceptable action. In Stopg20 spokescouncils people were invited to some of the meetings at which it was clear that this was to be the case: the affinity group/spokescouncil process means that many organising decisions are made at meetings separate from the stopg20 meetings and the separation in this case can only be used to demonstrate some inherent and principled political separation by falsifying the way in which everything was organised, and by attributing to stopg20 decisions that were not made or even, so far as I know, proposed. This being the only way to do it, this is what was done.
The central limit on such discussion at stopg20 spokescouncils, proposed by one of the central figures of stopg20, was that caution should be used because the space might not be safe from the eyes and ears of the state.
The retrospective construction of ‘legitimate protesters’, and of mythical official commitments to non-violence, was the work of people like Marcus who used the stopg20 ‘media collective’ to very loudly and publicly bullshit. Those who identified with Stopg20 allowed the creation of media spokespeople despite claiming in meetings that there would be no spokespeople, and did not contest the lies of such spokespeople even as these lies helped to define a public rhetoric of exclusion and demonisation that went well with the arrests, charges, denials of bail, etcetera that are documented on this site.
These tendencies were evident in advance, including the use of seemingly radical rhetoric to give a particular political capital and cover to quite other practices, very conventional notions of politics and forms of organising that have distinctly unappealing content and trajectories, as we have seen yet again.
In many ways the kind of repulsive actions we have seen since the g20, by ’socialists’ and even by ‘anarchists’, were the kinds of actions the stopstopg20 affinity group suggested were likely, in comments on the Stopg20 spokescouncil which took place on the Wednesday night prior to the G20 meeting - comments which appeared on the Stopg20 website (www.stopg20.org) and on the stopstopg20 site (stopg20.blogsome.com).
Those most active in Stopg20, whether ‘media collective’ people or not - those who played these public roles after Saturday’s events or who let others do so when they could have tried to prevent it or publicly contradicted the lies being spewed out, who could have at least publicly and clearly denied the spokesperson status of those involved and not permitted the deliberate lies about Stopg20 to go totally unchallenged - those who have been silent since on the politics of these practices - these are people who should not be trusted.
We need an actual analysis of why these people lie and will lie again - the form and content of politics/activism which constitutes material interests in notions of ‘democracy’, ‘representation’, ‘community’, practices of network-building/recruitment and parallel development of political capital and authority - an entire array of assumptions and dynamics, in many ways common to the self-described ’socialists’, ‘anarchists’, ‘autonomists’, or whatever that make up such scenes (and will try to form them again for ASEAN), that should be deconstructed, or maybe I just mean pulled apart.
Good to see this moved to an article, I thought it had some excellent points, but what happened to the article by “a”? Doesn’t seem to be here anymore…
Comment by Aotearoa Anarchist — December 28, 2006 @ 9:30 am
uh, the idiot moderator deleted it by accident. can one of the less idiot moderators please post it again? it was good.
i’m very sorry.
Comment by Administrator — December 28, 2006 @ 9:35 am
Benjamin,
Your description of the media collective is quite innacurate. What actually happened was that the stopg20 website was recieving huge numbers of requests for interviews by the media. There was much discussion at meetings about how to respond - there was some suggestion that no response should be made at all. Eventually it was unanimously agreed that a collective ought to be formed, with a mandate to feild enquiries and do interviews. It was very difficult to get anyone to volunteer for this task, and those who did, did so reluctantly. Those who refused to help are now the loudest critics of those who did. If you didn’t like the way it was being done, there were more than enough opportunities to do it yourself. It’s probably easier to do nothing, and whinge about those who do something.
As for what was said to the media, every single journalist was repeatedly told we have no ’spokespeople’ and that they were not to use this term. The strategy was a simple one - the overwhelming majority of the questions were about possible violence, and the tactic that was used, was to not address this issue, but to instead turn it around to discuss the violence of capitalism etc. At meetings it was made clear that this was the startegy, and there were plenty of opportunites for people to offer alternatives.
The reality is, those who were involved, specifically Marcus, worked extremely hard doing a thankless and difficult task. Naturally, he was misrepresented, and his staements distorted. Surely everyone involved understands that this is what happened?
But by and large, he did an excellent job. I am keen to see some specific criticisms of what was actually said by him or the media collective, rather than name calling and generalisations.
Maybe next time, Benjamin, you might to take on this job, seeing as you have such profound insight about how it should have been done.
Matthew.
Comment by Matthew Price — December 31, 2006 @ 1:10 am
I’ve read the transcripts of live interviews done after Saturday, so the ‘misrepresentation’ defence doesn’t hold. And no, I won’t ever be taking the talking-to-the-media job, thanks. I’m sure everyone worked hard. At what is another point.
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — December 31, 2006 @ 2:05 am
Marcus dangerously named a specific group that he knows nothing of as being responsible for the violence on national radio. Simply, he was asked who was responsible for the violence and he decided to respond with names of groups that he’d heard at a spokescouncil. The transcripts of this interview have been posted to various lists. I would think all in Melbourne will take extreme care in how they work with him in the future in light of this.
As for this article… there’s been so much said bout Art B - criticisms, responses to criticisms, claims that those repsonses weren’t adequate, expressions of solidarity, etc - and i’ve been thinking it’s really bout time that those that attended the spokescouncils StopG20 organised started getting serious in expressing how dangerous this false model of ‘autonomous’ organising has become. I’m glad Ben has done this.
I have previously been involved in trying to make spokes work as a truly decentralised network, this time I limited my involvement to just attending and using them as info-sharing between affinity groups. It turned out there were only a few others there who wanted the same out of this model. I had suspicions from the get go that the media collective would never act as an affinity group that bore out the requests of those at the spokes. It always seemed likely they’d fall into a fairly centralised ‘Bureau of Information and Media’ format.
Despite the efforts of a few who really tried to make the spokes process be a decent attempt at info-sharing and coordination (and that disclaimer is important cos there were people in Stop G20 who really did live up to everything they said - eg Liz T’s responses to the media), i think it was pretty much doomed to fail from the outset (yes, hindsight and all) because spokes has basically become a word thrown about by a number of people with no intention of following through with that politics. People with pretty fucking blatant authoritarian tendencies.
Anyway, just to say i see no further need to participate in these structures while they continue to exist in such a false way. I think a whole number of people and groups managed to organise separate of this structure quite successfully and when we did attempt to engage with the spokes in an info-sharing way we were betrayed by people trying to cover their own arses.
Marcus has not been misrepresented – he has blatantly lied about an affinity group that in its participation in the spokes communicated nothing about taking action on Saturday and even if it had gave him no right to name them on national radio. As an affinity group that has long existed separate from the next summit protest and which had no intention of dissolving post-G20 his words could have a major impact on what we do in the future.
Comment by Vikram — December 31, 2006 @ 3:37 am
I would echo at least part of Vikram’s qualification: whatever one thinks of the fact of appearing in the media under the authority of ‘protest organiser’, Liz T.’s media work at least had the quality of aspiring to a kind of political integrity, including a refusal, either explicitly or implicitly, to play the role of legitimate protester let down by unruly elements. While I still think her choices are politically debatable, I certainly wasn’t including her amongst the people not to be trusted. Rather, and for what good it did, she was among the only stopg20 people I saw not ceding de facto representative status to those only too willing to play the slimiest of roles.
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — December 31, 2006 @ 11:56 pm
I have not read the transcript of the interview concerned, but if someone can post it, or a link to it, I would be keen to read it. My understanding was, that Marcus was read a statement by a particular group, a statement which was also posted to the stopg20 organise list, and was asked to respond. He did so, and possibly erred in doing so. But it was made to sound like he was having a go at this group. But I would again qualify this by stating that my knowledge of this interview is 2nd hand.
Aside from that I had no problem with what I read of the interviews he did. Again, a little context from someone who was involved in the media collective might be instructive for those who are now so critical. The way it worked, was that Phoenix was recieving the inbound enquiries, and offering the interviews to anyone who could do it - anyone who had volunteered. Time and time again, the only person available was Marcus - it was not some ego trip either. He and the rest of us agreed that this work should be shared, and he was usually asked as a last resort, if no-one else was available, in an attempt to have multiple voices.
I understand that the more important point here is structural/organisational, but I am labouring this point because I truly believe that what is being said about Marcus is quite unfair. And I say this as a person who does not belong to the Socialists, or any other organisation.
I agree that Liz T’s work was very very good - much respect to her.
But I maintain that it is unfair to pass up or ignore opportunities to have a say in how this role is done, and then rip into those who did it after the fact. If you have a problem with the way he went about things, then constructive criticism is fine. But the tirade of personal abuse that he has copped on the organise list for example, has been far more divisive, and a much greater act of disloyalty and betrayal, than any of the critiques of the actions that occured at the rally.
As for the spokescouncils, and the stopg20 meetings, I don’t think that there was a great deal wrong with the way they were run. I agree with Rodney’s assesment that the greatest problem in the lead up was the lack of numbers and enthusiasm. The biggest problem after the event has been that there are firm ideological differences about protest tactics, and these differences would have arisen regardless of how the events were organised.
Matthew.
Comment by Matthew Price — January 3, 2007 @ 9:31 am
Ok then, here’s the transcript. So he names Art B - that’s already a prob but then everybody was doing that. But he also names Mutiny. This is the extremely problematic naming that i refer to in my earlier comment as he knew even less about this group then he did about Art B. I think he got off lightly.
ABC Radio PM:
JOSIE TAYLOR: Marcus Greville was one of the organisers of the Stop G20 demonstration. Despite the violence, he says the protest was a fantastic success.
> >
MARCUS GREVILLE: The media has reported only an unrelated and unconnected group of about 50 people and the property damage that they inflicted upon the police van.
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JOSIE TAYLOR: Who were the people responsible for that violence?
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MARCUS GREVILLE: The names of the groups are Arterial Bloc and a group called Mutiny. Above and beyond that, we don’t have any information, because they organised externally to us.
> >
JOSIE TAYLOR: So you had no idea that that was about to happen?
> >
MARCUS GREVILLE: You know, there’s rumours that float around the Internet. They organised, as far as I can tell, mainly using email. So we had no confirmed idea that this was going to happen and we were very surprised when before the actual rally at 11:30, from the outside of our organising framework, they started to take down barricades, and we were very disappointed.
Comment by Vikram — January 4, 2007 @ 5:13 am
Matthew,
1. It’s not that we didn’t ‘have a say’ in how the media work was done; it’s that what we said, and what the ‘media collective’ themselves said, was very different from what was done. Someone from Arterial Bloc raised a concern at a spokes that the ‘media collective’ would fall into the trap of ‘good protester’ versus ‘bad protester’, in which sections of the protest might seek to shore up their own legitimacy in the media by distancing their actions from those of other parts of the protest. This is a particular problem if those speaking for the ‘good protesters’ are presented, by effort or by default, as spokespeople for The Protest as a whole. When this was raised to the ‘media collective’ members present they assured everyone that this would not happen.
Clearly, in the interviews given by some ‘media collective’ members, this is exactly what happened. Like those before me I have to note that Liz T behaved honourably. That is, she actually did what the media collective committed to doing.
2. But I have to say: in the interview above, simply, Marcus lies. (Besides the bizarre, uncomradely and dangerous issue of pinning the ‘violence’ on a single affinity group…) Art B were not ‘an unrelated and unconnected group’, and did not come out of nowhere, ‘from outside of our organising framework.’ Art B were as much a part of the protest as the other groups that participated, and went to the spokescouncil to communicate about our plans. This was, at least according to the rhetoric of the people involved, what being part of the ‘organising framework’ meant: organising autonomously and communicating at spokescouncils.
3. I agree that the problem is not entirely down to the individuals involved: but if it is not possible for people to talk to the media without being presented as doing this (and there are arguments that it isn’t) then perhaps everyone needs to pay more attention to the critics who argue against any ‘media collective’ at all.
Comment by Gertrude — January 4, 2007 @ 7:29 am
Who is that ‘we’ Marcus talks of in the quoted comments from ABC radio?
If, as media collective peopled claimed in topg20 spokescouncil meetings and as has been repeated here, the idea was to refuse to address the question of ‘violence’, then people did not actually follow that policy, did they? And how long are people going to justify the crap they say to the media by talking about ‘distortion’? I don’t ‘trust’ or ‘like’ the media, but if they want to talk about bad, violent protesters, about how protesters are bad and violent, why would they ‘distort’ protesters to look like these protesters are (at the least)distancing themselves from ‘violence’ that these protesters are, in fact, not distancing thmelves from? Liz T. seems to have refused to play the same game as Marcus, at least, and oddly enough doesn’t seem to have had her words ‘distorted’ in the media to make it seem as if she was.
I would like to agree epecially with what Gertrude says in point 2. And if the media collective really was carrying out the ‘democratic’ wishes of people, then those people are also slimy and opportunistic. If not, then they allowed themselves to be ‘represented’ by a media collective mostly pursuing a revolting agenda and, as noted in the original comments, did not contest the representative status of thoe involved or the truth of what was being said.
I think that on the whole what happened confirms the broad outlines of the analysis put forward in the stopstopg20 affinity group’s comments on the Wednesday night spokescouncil (http://stopg20.blogsome.com/2006/11/17/wednesday-nights-spokescouncil/) - comments which were distributed prior to Saturday’s events by the way, also appearing on the stopg20 group’s own site (http://stopg20.org/node/165).
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — January 6, 2007 @ 3:54 am
These aren’t transcripts of live interviews, so not quite as safe as evidence as some of the material around, but this is from The Australian’s news.com.au from November 10 i.e. before the G20, an article entitled ‘G20 protesters vow peaceful rally’ - another distortion, obviously, which the site in question refused to correct despite everyone’s best efforts:
Stop G20 Media Collective spokesman Marcus Greville also said he does not expect a repeat of the violent scenes - clashes between demonstrators and riot police - that marred Melbourne’s hosting of the 2000 World Economic Forum.
“We’re doing our maximum to ensure that it is peaceful,” Mr Greville has said.
“But, as the collective we representative most of, but not all of, the groups that will be attending, we can’t give an iron-clad guarantee.
“The point is, we’re expecting big barricades … there will be massive separation between us and the police so we’re pretty confident.”
Mr Greville has said their non-violent demonstrations will seek to highlight issues that were not on the summit’s agenda - such as the wars in the Middle East, environmental crises and the economic hurdles faced by the world’s poorest nations.
from http://www.news.com.au/story/0,10117,20734263-29277,00.html; afterward the same publication ran a piece which included the following, including Marcus’ promotion from spokeman to chairman (which I am willing to accept didn’t come from him, by the way…):
Stop G20 chairman Marcus Greville said yesterday he did not know the identity of the protesters who spat on police and damaged property but said they were a fringe group who had descended on the event just before the violence erupted.
“They were a tiny, tiny minority,” Mr Greville said. “I don’t know why that’s where all the focus has been. I don’t know their identities … (but if I did) I wouldn’t tell police because that would be selling them out.”
What integrity! What courage! That was from http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,20793301-5006785,00.html.
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — January 6, 2007 @ 4:13 am
And in relation to these discussions, I think there are interesting parallels with discussions and struggles in France in 2006, reflected for example in the document ‘Conned by “Credibility”‘, excerpts of which are translated at http://bopsecrets.org/recent/france2006.documents.htm#Credibility.
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — January 6, 2007 @ 10:27 am
I forgot to include this one, from The Age on November 20 (http://www.theage.com.au/news/national/block-and-blue-weeks-in-the-planning/2006/11/19/1163871273004.html) - Maria’s notion of ‘representation’ is pretty revealing, too:
Liz Thompson, one of the campaign co-ordinators with the StopG20 group, said she would not endorse or disendorse the actions of the Arterial Block.
“There was a diversity of tactics, a number of different groups involved, and all of those groups who were there to show their disapproval of the policies of the G20 were, from my perspective, perfectly allowed to do that,” Ms Thompson said.
She said several protesters were injured by police during the protests, and “snatch squads” of undercover officers had arrested suspected activists.
But a statement from Stop the War coalition and a StopG20 member, Marcus Grenville, said the group “strongly dissociated” itself from the Arterial Block.
Maria Rodrigues, an organiser of a G20 alternatives forum at RMIT, said yesterday that the 400 forum attendees felt their protest had been misrepresented by the Arterial Block.
“Misrepresented by, first of all, the people who were causing the violence, and secondly misrepresented by the media who focused on that violence,” she said. “It’s the small minority of people who disagree with the G20 who were getting violent.”
Comment by benjamin rosenzweig — January 7, 2007 @ 6:06 am
Sorry for the delayed reply. Having read those transcripts, a couple of things occur to me. It appears that there was confusion between Marcus’ role as a Stop the war spokesperson, and his role ih the media clloective. The last quote clearly identified him as “Stop the War coalition and a StopG20 member, Marcus Grenville”. I’m not splitting hairs here, the point is that he, or anyone else for that matter are entitled to make statements from the perspective of the affiliate groups they represent, so long as they say that this is the case. In some of the previous quotes, however, he does seem to be confusing those perspectives himself - making socialist Alliance, or Stop The war statements, in his capacity as a Stopg20 media collective member. This probably is an error of judgement. Perhaps one thing that can be learned from this, is that the two roles cannot be played simultaneously - media collective members ought not also be sopkespeople from groups with a narrower agenda.
Another thing I would point out is that in the immediate aftermath, it was my understanding that it was common knowledge that Art B were involved in certain actions, and that no-one was attempting to make a secret of it, because those involved remained anonymous. Obviously this was a mis-understanding, and I still have no idea of the identities of any such people. So I suspect that Marcus had a similar understanding.
Whoever it was, that carried out those highly publicised actions at the event, they either did not organise within stopg20, or they did so but kept their plans very secret from stopg20. Hence the statement that they organised independantly of stopg20. This is quite true. And given that we had no idea of what was being planned (assuming it was planned at all), nor the identities of those involved, then surely we are entitled to distance ourselves from such actions. I felt quite betrayed by those action, and particularly annoyed that we were kept in the dark about them, but then expected to publicly back them up, and were accused of disloyalty when this didn’t happen. I realise that others who were invovled in stopg20 did not have this reaction, and do not share this view, and perhaps Marcus was not speaking on their behalf when he made the statements above.
But when it comes to disloyalty and betrayal, I think thwere is a fair argument that we were on the recieving end of this. We were treated with disregard at best, contempt at worst, by those who kept us in the dark about strategy, then expected us to do all the PR work on their behalf afterwards.
The point I made about taking on such roles is important. Their seems to be a reflixively anti-authoritarian reaction against stopg20. As soon as such a group forms, people start to attack. I don’t know what impressions people have formed from affar about how stopg20 operated, but it was nothing like the gross misrepresentations I have read here and elsewhere. It was mostly just meetings of anyone who bothered to turn up. People would take on roles - usually reluctantly, because they had to be done. Decisions were amde by consensus, so anyone could turn up to the meetings, and put their view forward. I never once saw anyone silenced, dismissed, nor saw anyone group impose its ideology on anyone else.
I urge anyone who has a view about such things, that if you wait until after the event to put this view forward, it’s probably too late.
Comment by Matthew Price — January 22, 2007 @ 2:33 am