history repeats itself – the first time as scandal,
the second time as “so what else is new?”
Most will say “Oh – no – not this again!” – and will wonder why I write so intensely and in such detail over something which seems relatively unimportant. However, in order to have the satisfaction of contesting public calumnies about myself I need to be public about the mostly bullshit responses even if few will be interested.
******
Crowd shrinkology and crowd repression:
From prevention of revolt to disaster
“People gathered confidence from apparent police defeat,” said Dr John Drury, the social psychologist who led the research. “Seeing a burning police car and no police responding gave people the idea that the police were weak. That in turn allowed them to move onto a number of different targets…The police didn’t always engage, which created the impression the police were incapable of engaging,” said Dr Drury. “It turns out they misjudged that because it emboldened people more than they calculated.”1
– from POLICEPROFESSIONAL.COM, (a UK cop online journal), 6th September 2017
On Tuesday 5th September (2017), the Evening Standard (London) published a similar article “London riots ‘were fueled by a warped sense of community spirit” and various versions of the same article appeared on The Bristol Post, The Manchester Evening News and several other sites, including ITV News.
On Libcom, John Drury said (Wednesday 6th September): ” I reject the implication that the finding that defeating the police is empowering for rioters is instrumentally useful to the police”. He can caricature his “finding” by reducing it to a useless tautology as much as he likes (and what others don’t like), but it’s clear that the above quote from POLICEPROFESSIONAL.COM has a very clear use for the cops – i.e. giving a very clear instance of the necessity of zero tolerance towards public order – immediately respond to anything because if you don’t it just encourages rioters to go further. Sure, this “merely” articulates in a more objective form what goes round the heads of many cops or between them in private, without them expressing it publicly. But articulating “truths”, whether genuine or ideological, always reinforces, influences and encourages a more conscious application of them. Otherwise there’d be not much point in saying or writing anything other than trivia.
Meanwhile, Mike Harman, one of libcom’s admin (who back in 2011, when the scandal broke, always sided with his co-conspirators in censorship and avoidance of the bleeding obvious) cites a text I wrote justifying his previous wariness about snitchjacketing. This text was published in August 2013 and was in response to a French text in France which appeared 21 months after the scandal broke in October 2011, and had no relevance to anything said during the development of the scandal at the time (the English translation is wrongly dated as 6th July 2012, but the real date is correctly dated on the original French version – 6th July 2013; if extra proof of this is needed – the article refers to a text I published at the beginning of 2013). As for the fear of “snitchjacketing” by naming him – why the fuck should anybody who wants to subvert this society care about him being thumped because he gave/gives advice to the cops? Moreover, the fact that his name was used became a pretext-cum-red-herring for libcom admin to get all high & mighty about the whole affair, fearing he could be sacked or whatever – when anybody who spoke to his immediate bosses at University of Brighton would discover that they’d known about his involvement in Aufheben for at least 5 years previous to the scandal breaking. And, besides, libcom accepted links to articles that clearly had his name on it – we revealed nothing that wouldn’t have taken 5 extra seconds to find out about if we hadn’t revealed it, but they have to rigidly stick to their original phoney “outrage” in order to give their authority an image of strength and consistency. On October 2nd this year, MH said “JD’s not having studied protest movements for several years in 2011 seemed relevant to me” – but this shows that his advice to cops included the anti-G20 demos in London in April 2009, when Ian Tomlinson was killed by the filth this guy works with. Besides, as an argument it’s a bit like saying “X not having raped anybody for several years seemed relevant to me”. MH then goes onto another red herring – somehow conflating autonomous help during disasters with state control during disasters (which he considers merely “skirting the line on what might be useful vs. used” – a pathetic evasion of a critique of state control during disasters). “For the State a catastrophe is a catastrophe. It is a moment of rupture with consensus, with social peace, whether it be for one reason or another. For the State it is clear that the primary objective is to get things back to normal as quickly as possible. In the towns around nuclear power plants the State organises mock evacuation and emergency procedures claiming that this will help people to be prepared in case of a nuclear accident. In health terms these exercises are of no benefit to anyone. But they are however a great opportunity for the cops to learn precious lessons about crowd management. The Katrina catastrophe did not dull the cops’ sense of responsibility as they beat up looters and protected stores.” – here. As for “JD … leaking information on individuals to police … was fabricated later on based on the initial allegations. ” – not even the flawed non-fides article claims that, so I suspect that this is just an expression of his own cavalier attitude towards the “facts”.
But Mike Harman has to justify the niggling guilty feeling of having taken the wrong side back in 2011, even if such a justification involves distorting history and any chronological sense. He probably hopes that his current position will act like some exorcism of unpleasant dreams, as if mere talk is a cure. His tightrope act balancing between his commitment to a project that has no integrity and a critique of aspects of it allows him to carry on as normal, but relieved of his bad conscience. But like all ideologists he has to alter history to “relieve” himself of this bad conscience, a bad conscience bound to return yet again until he finally does something to genuinely relieve the bad conscience. Like stop playing silly bugger politics with re-organising history so as to make himself seem like a good “reasonable” guy. Of course, he’s not quite the only person in the world to play such games
Radicalgraffiti said (here) : « the initial aligation may have been taken more seriously if some people had not gone straight to denouncing libcom, the london anarchist bookfair, afed and solfed as cops »
If this is a reference to me, I never denounced anybody listed there as cops. The critique of libcom admin came after the admin defended (with censorship and lies) JD giving advice to the cops, and was an attack on their censorship and lies, not saying they were actual cops. The anarchist bookfair was only critiqued a year later when they allowed JD, the crowd controller, to have a stand there and nobody bothered to confront him, not saying the bookfair were actual cops. Afed was never critiqued by myself, so I obviously never said they were cops. Though Afed’s silence about Aufhebengate is clearly both opportunist – it allows them to contribute to libcom without the slightest hassle; battlescarred might complain about Chris Harman being in the library but he’s not bothered about JD or Michael Schidt, the fascist, being there. In fact indifference to such questions is as common to the vast majority of those who participate in libcom as it is to the vast majority of those who remain asleep before the enormity of bullshit that’s spewed out by the system and by those complicit in it. Increasing amounts of people don’t give a toss about anything any more, and that applies to so-called anarchists, communists and libertarians as much as it applies to those who have no pretension of trying to oppose this world of lies etc. In fact, nobody said that libcom and JD , or afed and solfed or the anarchist bookfair were cops themselves, though some, in France mainly, said (some 21 months after the scandal broke, as I’ve already said ) libcom worked with cops (which I critiqued). Red Marriott gives some semblance of credence to Radicalgraffiti’s calumny with his « Maybe, but », which is just typical of his lazy attitude towards any facts that might vaguely implicate him directly, and certainly expressive of an embittered attitude towards anything concerning me.
Let’s make it clear – what JD does and did, is far worse than just the job of an ordinary cop: he’s an informer, in effect a 5th columnist, giving information that only could be gleaned by being part of some semblance of a movement. And only someone who responds to such things in the manner of meandering philosophical irrelevance, or constant distortion of the facts, would dispute this.
As for Jef Costello’s «Honestly, my first thought when all this emerged was that as it was Samotnaf then it was all exaggerated because I don’t think he has ever written anything that wasn’t denouncing someone. » – this is a gross exaggeration itself, and said not at all “honestly” – as can easily verified by any reference to any of my texts. A lie. A convenient caricature, designed to ingratiate himself with his libcom scene. In fact, this was the first text on libcom that focused on a specific person, that simplistically could be said to be a “denunciation”. And Jef Costello knows some of my other texts on libcom, since he made largely uncritical, largely complimentary, comments on them (e.g. this and this, where his comments are reproduced). So for JC to dismiss what I wrote about JD on the basis of some totally spurious idea about previous texts of mine is just a convenient retrospective deceitful excuse, a lie which he hopes to get away with because no-one, other than me, is going to be bothered to check it up (and, anyway, probably it’s only me who cares whether what he said is true or bullshit). Typical political manipulative mentality: falsify the attitudes of those you can’t so easily dismiss without having firstly falsified them – typical strawman technique. What’s rarely said about such manipulative lies is that it also befuddles the mind of the liar: s/he ends up repressing their own memory and often starts believing their own lies. Those who falsify their own memory in order to temporarily feel good about themselves and manipulate others against a perceived enemy invariably end up confusing themselves as well.
Of course, all radical critique involves « denouncing » but, unless one believes that such « denouncing » should only be of abstractions (capitalism, reification, commodity fetishism, etc. ), one can hardly avoid denouncing individuals who are unnecessarily complicitous with the state and the commodity economy, particularly those who claim to want to contribute to a revolutionary opposition to the state and the economy3. But then his uncritical support for the French racket “Alternative Libertaire”, phoney “libertarians” who collaborate with the the semi-Trot electoralist party – the NPA (New Anti-capitalist Party), illustrates, at best, an absolute absence of anything other than a risk-free adherence to such abstractions and an almost total lack of critical vigilance.
Amongst the posters responding to this revived affair, only el psy congroo seems to have shown some integrity and made a public decision about it. And then decided to return because that’s what libcom does to you – it’s so deeply annoying you just can’t let it go with the deafening silence the cynics at admin are using to – as Red M put it, “ignore it with a deafening silence”. The rest just use “freedom of expression” to merely mouth off without making any decision, nor even asserting any demand off libcom admin. They might well feel frustrated about the fact that libcom admin has done nothing other than make some mild written gesture towards reluctantly accepting fragments of truths that were blatantly obvious 6 years ago. But if the frustrated critics do and demand nothing, then the only pressure on libcom admin is to also do nothing: to speak but avoid any fundamental and concrete change. Which must leave these critics as frustrated as if they hadn’t said a word in the first place. About as satisfying as complaining to the cops about the cops and then finding your complaint filed away for eternity in some cop-bureaucrat’s dust-filled computer.
I clarify the futility of such an attitude in this article that I put up today (8th October 2017) on libcom:
Please remove all articles by me from your utterly compromised site
“The situationists’ practice of concretely breaking with apologists for any aspect of the present social order …has been subject to the greatest misunderstanding, although it follows quite directly from our basic positions. …Those who accept one or more variants of the prevailing pseudo-dialogue become the advocates of a new type of free exchange in the name of an abstract right to dialogue at any price (payable in avowed concessions to falsehood), and they reproach us for interrupting this fake dialogue. It is, however, only in this way that we are able to be the bearers of the reality of dialogue…. In rejecting someone in accordance with the rules of the game that he …had pretended to accept, it is our own resignation that we are rejecting….It is necessary to break clearly with the old confusion, and therefore with its partisans, whether they be open, cunning or simply unconscious.”
The Long Goodbye
I should have asked you to do this a helluva lot earlier. What’s prompted me to do this are 2 things. Firstly, the too-little-far-too-late revival of Aufhebengate after a 6 year-long gap. Those who want to see my reaction to this renewed interest in Aufhebengate can see it here: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/the-return-of-aaaagh-aufhebengate/
And secondly, the decision of a French friend to demand his texts be removed from a French site (this was because included on this site was a very recent text by a guy who supported Le Pen and who was a big boss of amusement parks whose policies were utterly racist ; the text itself is not overtly fascist or racist but the guy who wrote it is ; the same text by this fascist was also published in the Appeliste rag « Lundi Matin »). Which decision of his prompted me to reflect about the confusion encouraged by the eclectic fog of libcom and the fact that some of my texts are still found there.
The main problem with participating on libcom, aside from its obvious deceitful attitude and general censorious policies during Aufhebengate, is because it’s really a space for dialogue without consequences, where eclecticism turns everything said into an equivalent – the good and the bad, the radical and the counter-revolutionary, put in the mixer become an indistinguishable mish-mash. Michael Schmidt, Bordiga, Dr.John D., Chomsky alongside good stuff reduces the good stuff to the level of Michael Schidt, Bordiga, Dr.John D. and Chomsky – everything just seems like a show of opposition, even stuff that genuinely subverts the show. Eclecticism means refusing to strive for any consistency or to bother to look for what might and what might not be useful for the struggle against hierarchical power. Its lazy aim is just to attract endless amounts of people to the site on the basis of an abstract “opposition” to capital.
It’s also based on an ideological valorisation of polemical rivalry – a political mentality that believes that simply in the clash of ideas as merely ideas, the truth will out. In this atmosphere, those who adopt a revolutionary role assume that anybody opposing them is merely adopting the rivalrous posture that they adopt, though with a different content: for them, it’s all just a role.
But rivalry implies complicity as well, rather than a genuine attack on contradictions. Libcom’s self-contradictions make a nonsense of anything authentic that might appear there. All critical vigilance about what is genuinely insightful and what is definitely confusionist is repressed. Everything endlessly argued – nothing decided.
The most fundamental aspect of revolutionary critique is decision.
Continued participation in the fake dialogue of libcom is an addiction to avoidance of decision. And an addiction, rather like the addictions to alcohol and other drugs, to a fake exit from isolation – throwing out critiques into the world without ever having to deal with any practical consequences. An illusion of contact.
No-one with any radical integrity, no-one who wasn’t fundamentally resigned to this world of fake dialogue, would want to have their texts on a site that includes the racist scum Michael Schidt, a cop crowd control consultant like JD, a guy who defended the massacre of thousands of proletarians in revolt at Kronstadt until his death (Bordiga), or a 2-faced collaborator with the US state, not to mention other creeps and creepy ideas that are published on libcom.
But Mike Harman and others – at least, in relation to the cop crowd control consultant – think it’s enough to merely speak out and not make any difficult decision. A kind of « honesty » used as some kind of exorcism, to get it out of your system and relieve the guilt of not really having done anything when it was necessary to do so. And as a form of « free speech » used as a foil for not doing anything in the future. Talk is cheap. Impotent unarmed « critiques ». 6 years too late, no-one could possibly take such « critiques » seriously.
However, not doing anything about such contradictions is compensated by the fact that they can continue to have their texts published on a widely-read site and acquire a greater readership and a greater passive approval than if they took the time to set up their own blog, with a smaller « audience », but expressing their perspectives with a degree of consistency.
Anyone wanting a site that could contribute to the class war, and contribute to clarifying the contradictions they want to confront, would remain utterly confused by libcom. Whilst it obviously contains interesting facts about events (as there are on almost all sites, mainstream or otherwise) and sometimes interesting articles, finding the genuine insights is often like looking for a needle in a haystack. One might just as well have one’s texts put up in The Guardian if the flattery of wider readership is the aim3. In terms of an attack on this society, flattery gets you nowhere, even if in this society it gets you promotion. You can’t assess any radical influence in terms of the amount of site hits you get. Once the desire for a quantitatively-assessed popularity rather than a decisive influence becomes central, you find yourself fighting alienation in an alienated form, and libcom is such a form. In fact, writing on a site without revolutionary pretensions is less likely to confuse those seeking some ideas that could help them in their struggles than writing on one that claims to help people in such attempts.
When contradictions you can do something more or less immediately about – when such contradictions become apparent, either one tries to concretely modify one’s social relations or, in avoiding such a decisive action, one ends up with a very conservative cynicism – complaining sneeringly but carrying on with mutually contemptuous relations. One ends up accepting impotence before every alienation, a petrification tautologically justifying the feeling that there’s no point. Decision, however, makes ones social relations vastly clearer, and liberates untapped energy.
***
I shall not respond to any possible posts in response to this thread on this site. My possible responses will be posted on my own site – under the article on the return of Aufhebengate (http://dialectical-delinquents.com/the-return-of-aaaagh-aufhebengate/), and if people wish to do so, they can continue their responses there.
***
By some, all this will be brushed aside – caricatured as some « drama queen » self-important narcissism. But, for me at least, it’s got to be said, even if many will be totally uninterested and few will be much interested.
***
Anyway…..
The following is a list of the texts written by me or translated by me, put up (not always by myself) in the period up until 2011, which I would like you to take off. It does NOT include texts I’ve co-written – mainly with Red Marriott, the Wises and the Campaign for Real Life, just as it excludes texts I put up which were not written by me: in both cases, I am obviously in no position to demand their removal. All these texts, including the ones I’ve co-authored, but excluding some which I put up but did not participate in writing, are available in some version on my site – http://dialectical-delinquents.com/. Links to both versions are below.
The texts linked (44 of them altogether) are as follows :
Dialectical Delinquents version:
“Culture en danger?” – si seulement…
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/textes-francais/culture-en-danger-si-seulement/
1926-1985: So Near – So Far – a selective history of the British miners
Dialectical Delinquents version (in 2 parts):
France: occupations of secondary, primary and infant schools
Developing struggles in France
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
General Strike In France
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
France – The Cold Autumn Hots Up
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
France – The Hot Autumn Continues
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
France – Work or prison!
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
France – 1 Day General Strike Called In Guadeloupe, Martinique & French Guyana
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
France – How many bridges have we got to cross before we get to beat the boss?
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
France – Brief Outline Of Some Of The Most Recent Events
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Part of this: http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/200-2/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
2005: Notes on the riots for all those who want to change the world
Dialectical Delinquents version:
South Africa: now and then
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/south-africa-now-then/
2003: Notes on the Movement in France – Struggles around pensions and education
Dialectical Delinquents version:
“Ulach smah” (“No forgiveness”) – the Algeria insurrection, 2001
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Dialectical Delinquents version:
1990 – Emergency! Ambulance Strike
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/emergency/
rebel violence v. hierarchical violence (1986)
Dialectical Delinquents version:
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/culture/moore-is-less/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/culture/escape-from-alcatraz/
culture in danger? – if only…
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/culture/culture-in-danger-if-only/
Soaps Get In Your Eyes
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/culture/soaps-get-in-your-eyes/
1969: revolution as personal and as theatre (2001)
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/culture/1969-revolution-as-personal-and-as-theatre/
the end of music as we know it (1984)
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/culture/the-end-of-music-as-we-know-it/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/daily-life/suicide-or-revolution/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/daily-life/france-facebook-festivals-may-2010/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/daily-life/true-confessions-of-a-market-trader/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/class-struggle-histories-2/riots-in-china-2011/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
the thought of a thoughtless world (2000)
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/daily-life/the-thought-of-a-thoughtless-world/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/daily-life/hope-faith-charity-lottery/
Who gives a toss?
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/daily-life/shopping-who-gives-a-toss/
Education, Stupefication, Commodification
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/daily-life/education-stupefication-commodification/
Kamikaze Kapitalism – BM Combustion
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/war-politics/kamikaze-kapitalism/
notes on the 1999 Balkan war & the media (1999)
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/war-politics/notes-on-the-1999-balkan-war-the-media/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/uncategorised/cop-out-the-significance-of-aufhebengate/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
http://dialectical-delinquents.com/articles/uncategorised/france-roma-expulsions-2010/
Dialectical Delinquents version:
***
I would also ask you to take this off : https://libcom.org/tags/dialectical-delinquents – it merely contains the name of my site (dialectical delinquents) without anything under it, but it’s something that comes up on the first page of googling « dialectical delinquents », and obviously attracts a tiny bit more traffic to your site by those wanting to read mine. Equally, the stuff in the “endangered phoenix” (a site I did with Red Marriott beween 2005 & 2009) section of your library only has one page visible to those who don’t log in (moreover, the situation remains the same if I log in, but not if someone else does). Pages 2 – 6 merely contains a link to whatever happens to be the first article on your homepage. This is not an error targeted at “endangered phoenix” specifically: any name in the library that runs to more than one page probably has the same problem of all other pages not appearing, at least for those not logging in (and possibly for some that do, if they happen to have a low status).
Of course, you will probably not remove these texts, and I certainly have no intention of being so pathetic as to copyright them so as to have the state and its laws enforce my desire to have them removed.
The entrenched hierarchy of libcom means admin can remove texts – eg remove ones because of their crappy loyalty to the fake radicals of Aufheben – https://libcom.org/forums/feedback-content/why-article-has-been-removed-07102011 . And yet those who support the continuation of libcom by feeding it, despite its contradictions, seem to have no qualms about practically accepting (even if complaining about) such a fundamental insanity as, for example, having an article by the TPTG removed but not one by the fascist racist Michael Schidt. Meanwhile, those at the bottom of this hierarchy are powerless to remove even their own texts. Or at least, my low libcom ‘status’ prevents me from doing so; I know someone who, if she wishes to, can do those silly « up » or « down » popularity contest-type votes but I can’t, so maybe that applies to my ability to remove my own texts as well – I don’t know . However, whether you remove them or not, I need to make it very clear and very public that I find your site ridiculous, to say the least – and this is the best way I can think of doing that. And this is also a way of doing the only thing libcom is good for – free “advertising” of things people trying to contribute to an opposition to this society have written.
PS
I promise to be a good boy and behave myself and never write directly to libcom ever again, under Samotnaf or any other pseudonym if you do as I politely ask and kindly remove my texts. OK ?
**************************************
The first text put up on this site at the beginning of 2013 was “cop-out – the significance of Aufhebengate”, which was a sequel to “the strange case of dr. johnny and mr. drury”, a bowdlerised version of which had been put up in 2011 on libcom blog. And in 2013 I put up this: aufhebengate again: a response to responses (2013)
Other texts about Aufehebengate are :
Open Letter from TPTG
A cop consultant? A reading list.
And for those who want to see just one of John Drury’s co-authored articles helping the filth, see Chaos Theory
*******************************
1And when John Drury adds , “Obviously, what the media say in their articles is their biased interpretation of my statements” one might ask oneself what “biased interpretation” one could possibly have in reaction to the previous quote, unless of course he’s been misquoted, though one might wonder why he carefully avoids saying he’s been misquoted.
2. Of the latter, there are only essentially 3, out of a total of 150 articles in the English language (none in French) which are primarily about “denouncing” specific individuals: 2 have critiques of JD within them (though they’re not purely focused on him by any means), one is of Woland. There are 7 others focused on particular individuals, and these are: Thatcher, Mandela, Chomsky, Michael Moore, Tony Benn, Lenin and John Lennon. If Jef Costello wishes to avoid “denouncing” such individuals, then that’s his problem (and that of anybody who takes him seriously).
3 I myself felt flattered to have one of my articles on the movement in France during autumn 2010 come top of libcom’s hit parade for that year. They even upped the flattery by suggesting it be entered for one of the Orwell prizes, obviously having no critique of such a bourgeois prize and bourgeois desire for such a prize. In the end I suggested they send a libcom admin one for the Orwell prize – “Homage to Catatonia”, a joke they repeatedly censored until I gave up on re-posting it.
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