Stop StopG20! Stop the Stagemanagement of Dissent

Tried to submit the following on the arushandapush website (http://arushandapush.blogsome.com/) - doesn’t seem to have worked:

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.

Benjamin

In order to prevent this post being an exercise in nit-picking, we have decided to post an article by Monsieur Dupont. We consider that this article succinctly delineates the kind of politics dominant in the organisation of “StopG20” activities.

That article, which discusses the politics of a counter-summit protest in Prague, can be viewed here.

We were prompted to post this article, as well as some ‘nit-picking’ points, by the experience of Wednesday night’s Stopg20 spokescouncil, as well as by the numerous suggestions from people that Arterial Bloc and/or A Space Outside represent elements within stopG20 counter-posed to those about which we have been whinging. The Dupont article is our lazy way of giving some context to our criticism, a way of enframing our picking of nits.

[the media affinity group]
The most dominant contributors to the (un)lively discussion at the StopG20 spokescouncil were Marcus and Phoenix – representatives of the Stopg20 ‘media collective’. Handling the media on behalf of the Stopg20 group – whilst recognising that that organisation is, for all intents and purposes, nothing – they are the ones who seem to be doing much of the talking to the media, directly and by the editing and transmitting the media statements of other affinity groups. These people, after outlining their role, reassured everyone that in each of their engagements with the media they deflected comments about potential protestor violence by making cunning remarks to imply that “police cause the violence”. This formed part of an intent to “refocus media attention” onto (what they consider to be) the “real issues with the G20”. These real issues are ‘basic things’ which (they asserted) everyone would agree on. This lowest common denominator position is one that is made possible by the effacement of all criticism of G20 that is contradictory or otherwise incompatible to that of the left-liberal-green position. This effacement means that the left-liberal-green position is made hegemonic, where differing positions are simply the over-zealous extension or incomplete approximation of that position.

Our non-representatives thus claimed that they were, in fact, effectively representing us. After all, if they were really only speaking as themselves, why would they have to reassure us that we would agree?

In short, this media affinity group have constituted themselves as a “media collective”, acting as a centralised point for all media contact, from which they make statements which are always attributed to StopG20 spokespeople. Disingenuous statements about not acting as StopG20 spokespeople appear as a thin cover for the most conventional activist practices regarding the media. But, since no-one else seemed to have a problem with this, what is the function of this rhetoric beyond attempting to pre-empt criticism?

[the police liaisons]
Then there was the most astonishing announcement of the spokescouncil. The ‘Police Liaisons’ (though more than one group seemed to have met with the police) informed the group that the police will try a new tactic – police officers will be in the crowd, wearing yellow vests. This was not treated as a problem, and the idea of attempting to prevent this was not raised. After further revelations on the activities of the police liaison group it became clear that they were working with the police in efforts to ensure that the event was totally in control of organisers and the police. Their efforts are directed at ensuring the stopG20 events are perfectly managed - to be as alienating as possible and devoid of any possible confrontation or any activity other than the quite contemplation of commodities.

[‘Safe community space”]
Perhaps making the job of the police liaisons irrelevant are the efforts to ensure there is to be what is now apparently referred to as a ‘safe community space’. The primary rally will end at the police barricades where an event will take place at which participants are to be asked to respect the desire of organisers that this be a ‘safe community space’, because ‘the community’ will be there, some of whom are from ‘multicultural groups’, and, in case this isn’t enough, because ‘children’, ‘injured people’ and ‘the elderly’ will be there. Contradicting the media collective’s smug implications that police initiate all violence, participants who wish to engage in any confrontation are asked to do so elsewhere, outside of the area to which the rally is to be directed and in such a way that such confrontation is not to be connected to this area or those within it. Who will listen to bands and perform street theatre at the g20 from behind the police barricades.

We imagine anyone being rude to police will be told to stop because this is the ‘safe space’ and such rudeness might endangering it, as police wander through the reclaimed streets of this temporary autonomous zone.

What seems clear is that those ensuring that there will be a ‘safe community space’ are attempting to ensure that, if something other than obedience towards organisers were to occur, it will be immediately crushed by the participants themselves, through moral blackmail or whatever means is necessary. This is all necessary so that the ‘community’ attending can watch those bands, listen to those speakers, and browse the items at the ‘Really Really Free Market’, so that they can experience “protest culture”.

This is unlikely to be necessary, given an apparent absence of any groundswell in favour of a more confrontational politics – except perhaps for a bit of martyrdom. As usual, the concept of ‘community’ (people said that this event would be the primary ‘community outreach project’ of the stopg20) is used manipulatively as an imaginary category demanding passivity. A couple of people made very short interventions to suggest that the safety of compliance might be illusory but also that the safety conceivable as an assertion of collective power might not be possible at this point.

(Speakers were listed: unfortunately ‘our African speaker’ has pulled out at the last minute, but efforts are being undertaken to replace them.)

[affinity(support) groups]
Somewhat apart from the absolutely managed activities of the G20 protest are the efforts of the ‘autonomously organised’ affinity groups. Roughly these groups can be divided into a gaggle of support groups, who admit that they won’t be doing anything except asking people to ‘use’ them for their own purposes so that they don’t feel like they are wasting their time, and a number of groups dedicated to ensuring that confrontational attitudes with the police are quashed immediately. (For example, Zombie Bloc are willing to block roads if people want, by shuffling on to them, living dead style, while Carnival Beyond Capitalism people are more likely to define a large space in which people can be actively policed by both the organisers and by actual police wandering around the Carnival just as they would after capitalism. Or beyond it.) In many ways both of these activities seems to revolve around the imagined existence of a group that will be undertaking a direct assault against the G20 summit. The existence of which, so far as we can tell, only exists in the fantasy (either nostalgic or paranoid) of current participants. These may have been paying too much attention to the media hype about another S11, about ten thousand people coming, etcetera, which is currently being ratified by protest (non-)spokespeople who wish to use this simulation of impending action to launch their message into the media even as the authorities wish to use this event to try out new methods of policing. Neither side wishes to articulate the truth, which is that neither side actually expects many people to show up or seriously believes that those who do will be undertaking any large-scale collective confrontation with the forces of order. (Significant portions of those ‘organising’ are constituting themselves as forces of order, though in the case of one affinity group this will at least be only in their heads as they announced they would be meditating to ‘send’ niceness into the G20, the protest and the city as a whole.)

[A Space Outside and Arterial Bloc]
Perhaps contradicting these general tendencies is the existence of the Arterial Bloc and of A Space Outside. In their ‘call-out’ the Arterial Bloc make the assertion that they are not interested in “being martyrs” - something entirely refreashing in this organisation of flagellation. However, from the look of stopG20 efforts at present, that is exactly what they will be engaging in. The only people that stand alongside them – in relative political terms – are the A Space Outside people who are likely to be busy trying to get attention at harmless media stunts inside or outside ‘bad’ corporations, or else doing media stunts aimed at drumming up fear for the impending climate change apocalypse. Most likely the Arterial Bloc, with their traditional counter-summit desire to confront the G20 conference, will end up either wasting their time at a lame festival, getting fed to the cops by the non-violent types, or smashing themselves against police barriers. Thus, given the current balance of forces inside and outside the protest, the most likely outcome of their activity is indeed martyrdom. Or boredom.

Despite all this there is still room for humour. One affinity group, in an act of solidarity with third world peoples, will camp out in cardboard boxes and eat rice whilst holding signs asking for the admittance of environment ministers and political leaders of third world nations to the G20. They will be doing this whilst attempts are made to differentiate StopG20 from Make Poverty History…

Always willing to join in and be constructive, the stopstopg20 affinity group has launched a new project: Hock Your Rubbish! We have extensively promoted the Hock Your Rubbish! events on the ‘official’ stopg20 site i.e. not ours, in the spirit of a diversity of tactics. TEXT HERE and CALENDAR HERE

However, because of the past removal of our other contributions (as a result of a serious dibber-dobber incident), we suspect that those running the site may shortly remove the Hock Your Rubbish! material from its places in the “G20 Alternative and Creating Community forum”, in the “Campaign Ideas Forum”, and listed for every single day of the month in which the Hock Your Rubbish! festival is intended to run in the “calendar of events”. Anticipating this act of policing, we have formulated the following complaint in advance, the text of which has been included in this post as well as the original text of the advertisement for our constructive contribution.

To the site foreman (’the red pencil of political correctness’),

We are shocked to find that you have removed our ‘Hock Your Rubbish’ event information from your website.

We admit that by ‘planning’ to hold this event every day for a month, We have in effect made grandiose claims on behalf of a stupid idea. But this is not at all a deviation from what is in fact the norm of affinity groups – and the stopG20 ‘movement’ itself. Further, given the commitment to a ’diversity of tactics’ in the search for alternatives we don’t understand why our ‘Hock Your Rubbish’ event has been singled out. All we wanted to do was celebrate alternatives by helping everyone to hock their rubbish all day, every day.

What makes this removal even more baffling is the fact that you have not removed the material of the other ‘creative’ and ‘diverse’ parody affinity groups including at your site:
• The Clown Army (“disseminating negative energy” indeed!)
• The Really, Really Free Market (enough said)
• Lollipops to stop the G20 (activists luring preschoolers to a ‘protest’ with candy?)
• and of course A Space Outside (a parody of the testicular cancer affinity group Remaining Men Together)
In the interest of your own consistency we request that this material be removed along with our ‘Hock Your Rubbish’ event. But, if you could leave the t-shirt cooperative material up, this would be good as it looks like it will be a good money-spinner.
Thank-You

Yours Sincerely

StopStopG20

…Now the advertisment…

Do you want to make a real difference? Do you want real alternatives? NOW? This is DIY revolution.

Heres how it works:
1. Take your household rubbish bin, with your household rubbish inside it.
2. Empty rubbish onto the street and inform the neighbours of your contribution to building an alternative world - a world beyond capitalism.
3. Now see the growing community spirit!

At the G20 convergence we, the ‘gifters’, will assemble in order to set up the first ever ‘Hock your rubbish’ carnival. To join in:
1. Go to your local fastfood restaurant and re-claim their rubbish from capital.
- Now you are half way to freedom! -
2. Pour your reclaimed rubbish onto the ground at the G20 ‘hock your rubbish’ market
3. Now watch others browse and take from your rubbish, or enjoy the time browsing and taking some rubbish for YOURSELF!
4. Now you and all of humanity are free thanks to this simple - non-reactionary - counter economy.

For more tips on hocking your rubbish everyday see our simple guide

Brought to you by…

the stopstopG20 affinity group.

The enemy has been engaged and through that engagement a politics is being defined and executed. For unknown reasons two targets have been elevated to such a status as to merit effort being exerted in the creation of this text…

First, are the stencil posters that the recuperative forces of capital have been putting up around Melbourne. In order to bring a crowd larger than the sum of the organisers of this representation of resistance StopG20 has decided on linking their event with anti-war in Iraq sentiment. Based on success being conceived as equating with the quantifiable conversion of human beings to their own image of resistance and in some instances renouncement of other elements of the spectacle. The actual text of the stencil posters reads “stop the war/stop g20” so the idea that what is being referred to is the Iraq war is an assumption, but a safe one, as reference to other wars does not seem to fit, for instance they could have decided to be honest with themselves and announce their intent to prevent any ‘class’ war – but that seems unlikely. The stopG20 group has decided that they will gain the most people for conversion to their image of resistance through attaching themselves to an image with greater prominence within the spectacle. But in itself the call for “stop the war” is telling, such claims always come to and from the idea of the “continuation of war by other means” – that is the imposition of capital through a mechanism, imagined as different, that holds a monopoly on the use of violence. These stencils are an aspect of the “continuation of war by other means continues”, they are images that replace lived experience so as to ensure the continuation and furtherance of the imposition of the social relations of capital. This is why it is crucial that they are destroyed.

The second target worth mentioning is the Trades Hall council building. This image of resistance has for too long been the left edge of the imposers of capital, ensuring that any attempted escape is contained within a norm of the necessity of work. Now in its old age, this building and those that control it move more and more closely to the approximation of the image of that which they oppose themselves to – it would appear that the irrelevancy of democracy is being realised at the level of the spectacle. That may be reason enough for the defilement of this building but what makes such action absolutely necessary is the reverence of the institution and by extension (by its absurd participants) the physical building itself. The church that is Trades Hall must be defiled and ridiculed until it is reduced to a representation of its actuality – a barren hole.

Upon realisation that work and oppression under capitalism is only going to increase as a result of the ‘killing of the planet’ Melbournians have decried the lies of environmentalists. For years Meblournians have clung in hope to the message on the old Spencer Street power station, “no jobs on a dead planet”; it was a symbol of hope, but now it is only a constant reminder of the deception of the environmentalists. It is now clear that the promised life beneath the waves without work is not real. In fact, the very environmentalists that had promised this glorious time are now the front line of capital in the expansion of markets and the enforcement of the relations of capital. The ‘dead planet’ claim is now simply the excuse for capital, lead by environmentalist, to further make impositions upon the lives of Melbournians and the rest of humanity. Work camps far worse than have been experienced before have already been created and the environmentalists, who promised so much with the slogan “no jobs on a dead planet” are the front line in the effort to herd people into them. At present all that Melbournians can do in the face of this is cry out ‘thanks a bunch… enviro-tards’!

As any real content of resistance is bled out of these counter summits they increasingly become indistinguishable from outdoor markets or shopping malls. Here is an extract from an email from ’somebodies’ encouraging a ‘really really free market’ as an act of resistance, during the G20.

“Basically, somebodies create a space in a public setting, put out the word, and people bring stuff and/or take stuff. Whilst it could just be seen as a swap meet, the Really, Really Free Market movement has its roots in a really different way of seeing social and economic relations.”
…
“The Really, Really Free Market movement aims to counteract capitalism in a non-reactionary way. It holds as a major goal, to build a community based on sharing resources, caring for one another and improving
the collective lives of all.”

By ‘non-reactionary’ I suspect this person refers to the idea that people shouldn’t say things like ‘everything is fucked lets destroy it’ – instead people should propose alternatives. One thing I have never heard explained from these people is just why all their ‘non-reactionary’ activities are expansions of capital – always creation of commodities to hold onto as ‘an answer, or a multitude of answers’. Why is it so hard to conceive of escape from capital being a world without the commodity – why is there this clinginess to commodities from people that find this work-capital-commodity society so inhumane.
…
And then the statement – ‘the really, really free market movement has its roots in a really different way seeing social and economic relations’ was it a bewildering joke or some attempt to mystify people into thinking that the organisers of this spectacle were ‘outside or capital’ and like Gabriel had informed humanity of the escape from their alienation – a swap meet.

Along with this project this summit, as with others, has attracted ‘affinity groups’ whose primary purpose seems to be gaining access to an elusive niche market - the anit-capitalist - so as to be able to carry out their ‘anti-capitalist activities’. One such group is a t-shirt cooperative that have gone one step further then the people of the LIP factory* in the self-management of their own oppression - they have decided to set up their own factory and industry. They have decided that the best action to support an anti-capitalism movement is to set up a t-shirt co-operative, make really really radical t-shirts with really really radical slogans. And of course what makes this co-operative so radically radical is that they use concensus decision making to enforce their own oppression – that’s so much more radical-er than anything ever! This group plans to use the G20 summit as the perfect opportunity to attract business from their niche market…

In light of this we must ask – what do we do about these really really capo-scumbags? Our first thought would, logically, be to round up some people to rob them blind (in an effort to ‘improve the collective lives of us all’), unfortunately this is only likely to leave those in the new factories with renewed motivation to sacrifice in the pursuit of production. A second thought might be to just forget it and leave them to suffer in their silly efforts – just as one would leave any sales person struggling to construct a market (this is of course the likely outcome – but only as a result of laziness – not commited thought). The third option would be to ridicule them in an effort to lift the mystification that prevents them seeing the reality of their flagellation. Perhaps simple things like covering the area in which they are selling/spruiking, or whatever, with stencils proclaiming such things as ‘YOU ARE THE CAPITALISTS’.

*The LIP factory is a factory that went backrupt and was taken over by its workers in order to avoid unemployment. They self-managed the factory and their own oppression in order to produce watches. Down the track they hired casuals to help out – they wern’t included in the ‘self-management’. This t-shirt project seems to be the same except that they are setting up the jobs in the first place.

The Mytleford Tobacco Cooperative has today announced the launch of their fairtrade certified ‘Cigarrillo para Liberata’ brand cigerette. An initiative of the anarchist Victoria Tobacco Farmers faction of the cooperative. The cigarettes come in response to big tobacco’s (dominated by British American Tobacco) constant buying pressure that have finally pushed the farmers off the land. In a press release the anarchist farmers stated "we got the idea from our zapatista comrades and their café rebelde brand coffee, hopefully we too can continue labouring day and night". The co-op’s brand hopes to match the success of other fairtrade products in keeping people toiling at the land for the sake of tradition and a barely subsitance level of income (in the continuance of wage slavery). But with these farmers being far less photogenic than their fair trade colleagues in South American and Africa will these farmers be as successful? Only time will tell.

A copy of the advertisment can be found here  

Tonight, we revealed ourselves to the ‘serious’ StopG20 group. We went along to a spokes-council meeting and introduced our affinity group, the stopstopg20 affinity group, to the people in attendance. Unfortunately, attendance at the spokes-council was down – numbering around 10ish.

We prepared a short statement – more a collection of connected points – that outlined our intended activity and the reasoning behind it. Unfortunately, my inability to deal with nervousness induced by crowds in a public speaking situation meant that I rambled on each point and meandered through the collection as a whole.

So as promised (to the ten or so at the meeting) and for those not at the meeting… here are the points that we were going to read out…

1. Increasingly everything we do is becoming work, becoming labor for capital. And Increasingly we are being surrounded by nothing but commodities. This has occured to such a degree that it may be that we can only define our world through commodities.
2. This is a situation that is true for our resistance to capital as well – increasingly participation in organized resistance equates to automatic recuperation into capital.
3. It is in this context that stopg20 (the serious one) has been formed – and what we are witnessing brings new meaning to the term going through the motions – as the success of the late ninties in anti-summit convergences is searched for.
4. What we see here is a collection of images acting as resistance – the signifier standing in for the signified. The only political content of the stopG20 organisation appears to be to gather together everything that appears ‘left or progressive’ or ‘anti-American’.
5. By refusing to acknowledge the futility of sacrifice to objects and continuing to collect possible objects for submission to the alienation and exploitation inherent in capital are perpetuated and reproduced, as capital is reproduced.
6. StopG20 is a representation and scaffold for the spectacular-commodity of resistance in place of lived experience. And is therefore a spectacle that distracts us from making decisive in roads against capital.
7. We believe that the most fun and worthwhile activity as part of an anti-capitalist life is to assault the spectacular-commodity that is the StopG20 object.
8. Therefore we, ‘StopstopG20 is embarking on an attempt at disrupting the recuperation of resistance into one of the many objects that are the ‘left wings of capital’ – be they the Venezuelan state, Greens, fair trade, the remnants of social democracy or any other silliness…

We have redone the “Carnival Against Capitalism” poster to reflect the true nature of the event. You can download it here. Notice the diversity and the doves. Though some have suggested that we ‘waste our time’ producing such material, it didn’t really take that much time: we constructed the poster, for example, in the commercials during an episode of ‘Battlestar Galactica’.

Welcome to our stopg20 blog, website of the stopstopg20 affinity group, a wave of proletarian self-activity that is tidal in scope, founded on the rejection of nationalism, capitalism, recuperation, and the left-wings of capital whether states (Cuba, Venezuela, whoever) nice businesses/ngos/charities (fair trade transnationals, Make Poverty History, whatever) or the institutional remnants of social democracy (…and now, we present, a trade unionist!)

the main enemy is at home

…in the Left.