Anarchy: a journal of desire armed. #36, Spring 1993
anticopyright - Anarchy may be reprinted at will for
non-profit purposes, except in the case of individual
copyrighted contributions.
LETTERS
-includes part three of three
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`Racism' is not
a bad word
Dear Anarchy,
Well, I have criticized the anarchists for their nit-picking,
endless feuds and pedantics, but here I am replying to a reply to
my letter in Anarchy #33.
I am enraged because the nit-picking pedantic named Lawrence wrote
in a letter to Anarchy that "the crackers who take up arms against
what they see as an occupational government should be P.O.W.s too."
Well, old buddy, you were saying that Karen Eliot listed only
`leftists' and that was why she listed only blacks, Puerto Ricans,
etc. and no whites. Then, are you saying that there are no white
leftists?
Further, there are many white loyalists who are not `crackers'.
`Crackers' refer to people from the state of Georgia who in the
early days of the nation cracked whips over the heads of the oxen
as they traveled into Florida to settle. It has been used in the
past in a derogatory manner to refer to all southerners.
This is really a sneering-down-the-nose by Lawrence at white
loyalists and southerners as well. He places himself on a pedestal
of snobbishness unparalleled by anarchist pedantics anywhere.
Actually, many white loyalists are Californians.
It was the northern capitalists that ran roughshod over the
agrarian southerners, laid waste the land, the country and starved
many women and children as well as the military. I myself am a
northeasterner, but I side completely now with the southerners, the
`crackers', the `redlegs', the `rednecks' if the author wishes to
continue the nomenclature of the men who got out and fought to
protect the white race in the Second American Revolution of 1983-
1985 in the northwest, while the anarchists talked and talked and
talked and talked. What have the anarchists done lately? Write and
talk and feud and bullshit in my view.
See my review of the anarchist publication, Demolition Derby, in
The Rational Feminist, Summer, 1992. (Sample $3).
In addition, `racism' is not a bad word. It is a word brainwashed
into the American public's mind by the ethnic media masters of the
nation as a pejorative word. Anybody with a brain in their head is
a racist: He loves his/her own race and wishes to live among
his/her own race rather than in a mixed jungle of `integrated'
cultures which all hate each other but won't admit it.
Look around the world today and see what enforced integration of
cultures, as well as races, has done to the world. This bullshit
about pretending that we are all equal is unhistoric, stupid as
hell and hypocritical. The white race, or the European culture is
the one which conquered the world and dominated it for centuries
and is now being given a guilt trip about it and saying it isn't
nice. That is the line of the lowest common denominator who are out
and want to get in. May the white loyalists triumph evermore, and
to hell with pedantic bullshit artists.
Most sincerely,
Molly Gill
Editor, The Rational Feminist
Apt. #2002
10200 - 122nd Av. N.
Largo, FL. 34643
A fucked decision
An Open Letter to Anarchy
Magazine,
This letter is being stapled in all copies of Anarchy #33 (Summer
'92) sold at Librairie Alternative Bookshop (Montr‚al's anti-
authoritarian bookstore), and is being mailed to Anarchy magazine
where we, the members of the Alternatives collective, hope that it
will be published. We also hope for an explanation from the folx at
Anarchy.
What is bugging us is the publication of a letter from Molly Gill,
a white supremacist and anti-semite, with no response or disclaimer
from the editors of Anarchy. In her letter Ms. Gill calls on us to
support political and prisoners of war (POWs) from the "White Na-
tionalist Movement," putting these on a par with Black, Puerto
Rican or Native American nationalist prisoners. These suggestions
come at the end of a letter full of praise for anarchists and
Anarchy magazine, and Ms. Gill signs "Novice Anarchist Researcher,"
attempting to give the impression that she is an anarchist.
The editors of Anarchy chose to publish this letter in a prominent
position (it was the first of almost twenty pages of letters
included in that issue) and without any response challenging this
association of White Nationalism, Molly Gill and Anarchism.
If we didn't know better (or perhaps if we weren't hiding our heads
in the sand?) we might take this as an indication that Anarchy sees
no apparent contradiction between White Nationalism and Anarchism.
Perhaps it should be taken to mean that Anarchy also supports White
Nationalist POWs, such as those connected with the Aryan Nations,
whose letters and poetry Ms. Gill has previously published in her
own 'zine (The Rational Feminist, previously The Radical Feminist).
We honestly don't understand why the editors failed to call Ms.
Gill on her racism, seeing that they often take time to write
detailed responses to other letters. Mere oversight?
It would have perhaps been worst had Ms. Gill kept her sympathies
to herself, though. For her game over the past several years seems
to be to pose as a Leftist, or an Anarchist, or a Feminist, in
order to make contacts with genuine Leftists, Anarchists and Femi-
nists. Once contact has been established she will start trying to
convince these people of a Jewish world conspiracy, the evils of
race-mixing, or of the necessity of stand[ing] by White Racist
prisoners. Her 'zine is an eclectic mix of articles taken from
Marxist-Leninist, Anarchist, Feminist, anti-Zionist as well as
White Nationalist, neo-Nazi and Third-Positionist sources. She has
published poetry by one particular "White Nationalist POW" who was
convicted of killing a Jewish talk-show host and of having belonged
to the neo-nazi Posse Comitatus.
It is difficult to know what effect her work has on those movements
which she attempts to infiltrate. What is clear, however, is that
she is particularly interested in infiltrating the anarchist
movement and that the editors of Anarchy, by publishing with no
reply her letter (as well as her contact address!), have failed
miserably to resist this infiltration.
And you should have known better: seeing a sympathetic mention of
"White Nationalism," particularly in reference to prisoners of war,
should have been enough to get your danger lights flashing. The
fact that Ms. Gill has already been exposed (by one of your regular
contributors, no less) in Instead Of A Magazine as a White
Supremacist infiltrator makes your neglect all the more galling.
This entire situation makes us sick. We hate fascists, and we hate
those who knowingly help them. We are assuming your brains were on
a holiday, and that this won't happen again. If we are mistaken,
and you actually sympathize with Ms. Gill's brand of bullshit, then
please let us know.
As an anti-authoritarian bookshop we have a policy of not
supporting racism. For this reason some members of the collective
felt very strongly that issue #33 should be pulled from the
shelves. Everyone else agreed that if this kind of thing were to
happen more often, Anarchy would clearly no longer belong in the
bookshop or in the anarchist movement, but most people felt that
publishing this letter was an oversight. Because Anarchy is the
kind of magazine lots of people want to read and that we always get
requests for, and because of interesting articles elsewhere in
issue #33, the collective decided not to remove it. It should be
stressed that this was not an easy decision, and that certain
collective members were still uncomfortable selling it.
The compromise was this letter: we have let you know that we think
your printing Ms. Gill's letter without any response was a fucked
decision. We have let your readers know that your tolerance of such
bullshit is not accepted everywhere in the anarchist movement. We
hopefully have helped expose Ms. Gill, so that her projects of
infiltration and disruption will be slightly less effective in the
future.
We wish this letter had not been necessary. We also hope that next
time you print racist drivel in your letters section that you take
the time to respond.
In the hopes that you get your shit together, the Alternative
Bookshop Collective.
Librairie Alternative
2035 Boul. St-Laurent
Montr‚al, Qu‚bec H2X 2T3
Canada
Jason comments:
Fuck white nationalism,
fuck Marxist obfuscation
I have to wonder why it is that, if your letter was supposedly
written and stapled to copies of Anarchy #33 for sale, we only
received a copy from you in December - after Anarchy #35 was
already printed and being sent out through the mail? Was it to
ensure that we couldn't respond to your slimy accusations - made
behind our backs - in a more timely manner?
In case you've never noticed, each issue of Anarchy invites readers
to write for the letters column whether they "are sympathetic or
critical of anarchist tendencies and practices. All letters will be
printed with the author's initials only, unless it is specifically
stated that her/his full name may be used...." This should answer
two of your questions: We published Molly Gill's letter because she
sent it to us to be published, and we included her whole name and
address because she wanted us to do so. We publish an open letters
column. This means that we don't refuse to publish letters just be-
cause we disagree with them, even if they are written by racists,
fascists, liberals, authoritarian Marxists, or other enemies of
freedom. Sure, we could have refused to publish Gill's letter, but
what would this have proved? That we don't trust our readers to
recognize an inept attempt at white supremacist propaganda? If it
was so obvious to you, how much more obvious must it have been to
our anarchist readers?
It is also true that we could have responded to that particular ob-
noxious letter, just as it is true that we could respond to every
letter with which we disagree. However, our general policy is to
only reply to letters which question, argue with, or attack us in
some fairly direct way. This Gill did not do, unlike you.
That Gill's letter happened to be published at the beginning of the
letters column in issue #33 was related to the time it was re-
ceived, and not any desire of ours to display it "in a prominent
position." We generally try to publish letters in the order in
which they are received. (In practice this usually translates to
their being published in the order in which they are typed, with
some consideration given to how they fit on the pages during
layout.)
Apparently you are also unaware that I have already `exposed'
Gill's racist and fascist proclivities in a past issue of Anarchy
(see issue #30, p.7, where I quote from one of her more obnoxious
white-supremacist rants and list some of the unsavory articles
she's published). This would have made another exposure redundant,
especially when her ill-conceived game was obvious for all to see.
I feel so intimidated by your threat to pull Anarchy "from the
shelves" of Librairie Alternative over a single letter written by
a lone loony racist that I can hardly keep from laughing. As
readers who checked out our "Distributor hall of shame" at the
beginning of this issue will have noted, Librairie Alternative
Bookshop appears there because we have had repeated problems
getting paid for issues sent. In fact, we didn't send copies of
issue #33, nor did we send copies of following issues, precisely
because of this (and we still haven't been paid for issues as far
back as Summer, 1991!). If it weren't for another anarchist in
Montr‚al stocking the bookshop, there would have been nothing there
for you to censor. As it is, your threat to join other reactionary
bookshops which refuse to carry Anarchy rings hollow when you
already refuse to pay us. At the same time, it only brings discred-
it to you for its petty-mindedness.
Artificial scandal
"Revolutionaries do not denounce antifascism for not `making the
revolution', but for being powerless to stop totalitarianism, and
for reinforcing, voluntarily or not, Capital and the State...The
fascist and antifascist ideologies are each adaptable to the
momentary and fundamental interests of Capital, according to the
circumstances." -Jean Barrot
Fascism/Antifascism
Dear comrades:
I am writing to you as a reader and supporter of Anarchy. Recently,
I learned about a letter mailed to you by the collective of the
Alternative Bookstore in Montreal, concerning a letter you printed
by Molly Gill. I am a member of that collective, and have been for
most of the past twelve years. Because I am a member, their letter
supposedly speaks for me. It does not. I had nothing to do with its
content or the decision to write it, which was made without my
knowledge or consent.
The letter itself is a perfect illustration of how not to write to
fellow libertarians; in one short page it manages to be hostile,
contemptuous, insulting, self-righteous and fatuous. It contains
several threats directed against Anarchy. It also insinuates that
Anarchy tolerates or is sympathetic to fascist ideas, which is
ridiculous, as anyone who reads the paper knows.
The letter refers to Gill as an "infiltrator", which is not the
case. An infiltrator is someone who insinuates her or his way into
a group in order to achieve goals that run directly counter to its
own. Red Warthan is a nazi-fascist who really did infiltrate
anarchist groups in North America. Molly Gill, on the other hand,
has infiltrated precisely nothing. At worst, she has written a few
letters to anarchist papers, three of which have been published.
The only fault the editors of Anarchy can be accused of is that of
being too generous to someone who has cynically used their paper to
spread fascist ideas. Even in this case, it is good that because of
Anarchy, people know Molly Gill's name and address, and something
about her politics.
Although the author of the bookstore's letter received a mandate
from the collective to write it, the letter itself was not brought
to a meeting for approval before it was mailed, despite the fact
that it supposedly spoke for the whole collective. So most members
weren't even aware of its specific content until after it was sent.
The letter expresses the views and personal agenda of its author
more than those of the collective as a whole. Neither he nor they
signed it, preferring to denounce Anarchy anonymously.
What makes me angriest about the letter is its dishonesty and
manipulativeness. Under the pretext of denouncing a (non-existent)
fascist infiltration of the anarchist movement, it makes what can
only be a conscious attempt to discredit a major libertarian review
in its own pages. The grossly insulting tone of the letter, its
rhetorical overkill and crude insinuations about the motives of
Anarchy's editorial staff make this clear, I think. The letter is
an attempt to create an artificial scandal far out of proportion to
the actual threat represented by Gill's basically insignificant
letter. At this point, a disinterested reader might wonder why this
is so. To answer this question, it would be useful to examine the
current situation at Alternatives.
Alternative Bookstore is the longest lasting continuously running
anarchist project in Montreal. It opened for the first time in the
fall of 1974, and has been open for almost twenty years. Such a
statement might leave people with the impression that Alternatives
is a stable and secure project. Nothing could be further from the
truth: that the bookstore even exists is due to the enormous effort
put into it over a period of several years by a small number of
people, in spite of the isolation and poverty that has always
dogged it, and which has almost snuffed it out on more than one
occasion.
All of the founding members of the project have gone their own
separate ways, and of the current collective, only one member has
been there for more than five years. The collective has a high rate
of turnover in its membership, and this situation is related to
that of the anti-authoritarian milieu as a whole. There are
probably several hundred people in Montreal who identify with anti-
authoritarian ideas in some way, and some of them are socially
active. However, these people generally keep within their immediate
circle of friends and act together with them, in their everyday
lives. Most anti-authoritarians here are unaware of or only dimly
aware of what the others are doing. This diffuseness is not
necessarily a bad thing, but it does make the exchange of news,
ideas and mutual aid more difficult. In spite of this, it would be
absurd to expect the milieu to focus around a single project. The
bookstore project, which was once specifically libertarian, arose
out of a diffuse and politically fragmented milieu, and the
bookstore's problems should always be seen in this context.
If the bookstore project isn't dead yet, it has gone into a coma on
two occasions already: the first, in 1979, was caused by the
gradual departure of the staff, leaving Dimitri Roussopoulos in
control. The bookstore was re-collectivized in 1982 and broke with
Roussopoulos permanently, for political reasons (Roussopoulos is
infamous here for his continual abuse and manipulation of others;
he is also a businessman, with all that that implies). This re-
collectivization was accompanied by an upsurge in anti-authoritari-
an activity, including the founding of at least three new projects,
and by a split between Dimitri's academic coterie and the active
anarchists. Fortunate circumstances in '82 and early '83 allowed
anarchists to complete the purchase of the building that houses the
bookstore, giving the project some measure of security. The
building is still owned by a non-profit organization founded by
anarchists. The bookstore closed in the fall of 1985 for renova-
tions, as the building was on the verge of collapsing and was
actually unsafe to be in. The cost of the renovations was so
enormous that the comrades who managed the building came within a
hair's breadth of shutting down the project, but they managed to
secure a mortgage that solved the problem. When the store re-opened
in 1986 I was still with the project, but most of the collective of
'82 had left, and the store was basically founded again. I re-
joined the collective in early '89 (having been absent for two
years), and between '89 and the summer of '91, a protracted and
vicious internal dispute over the political orientation of the
project led to about ten people either leaving it or being denied
membership in the collective. This amounted to a killing haemor-
rhage, and the bookstore is now a different project because of it.
To make a long story short, a tendency sympathetic to leftist
politics and the most retrograde and reactionary national libera-
tion movements coalesced in the collective and sought to re-define
the bookstore's politics, by shifting its anti-authoritarian
criteria to include Maoist and Trotskyist literature, the official
organ of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP),
and Basque nationalist literature, among others. One bookstore
member even invited a Maoist newspaper to bring a stack of their
papers in for distribution, which was delivered by one of their
militants. An opposing group in the collective sought to defend the
bookstore's specifically libertarian content, and re-establish it
as a project based on a coherent and revolutionary critique of this
world. As a result, they advocated a firm refusal of statist,
capitalist and nationalist ideologies, and a corresponding refusal
of that kind of literature. This group was mostly composed of
francophone comrades, two of whom were ex-members of the La Sociale
bookstore (a revolutionary project that I participated in with
them) and were all aware of anarchist, situationist and left
communist theory. These people are friends and comrades of mine,
and I sided with them in the bookstore dispute. They wrote three
documents outlining their perspective, which contained criticisms
of the project, a discussion paper for a collective debate about
the bookstore's political orientation, and a proposal for a full
overhaul and re-founding of the bookstore project. These papers
were given to collective members and shown to other comrades in
1990 and early 1991. They make interesting reading, and offer some
insight into the bookstore's development. By mid-1991, these three
comrades came to the conclusion that the personal and political
divisions in the bookstore made any real improvement in the project
unlikely. They were deeply dissatisfied with the collective's
political incoherence and the back-biting there, and decided to
leave. Their assessment was that the bookstore was dead as a
political project. For them and for me, the bookstore's decline was
summed up in an incident that occurred at a special meeting of the
collective in mid-'91, called to define the bookstore's political
orientation. A particularly repulsive piece of abuse by the leftist
sympathisers resulted in a woman named Anna Delso being excluded
from this meeting, on the grounds that she "was not a member". She
left in tears, humiliated. Anna has been an anarchist revolutionary
for more than fifty years. She took part in the Spanish revolution
and risked death as a courier for the French resistance. She has
been an active anarchist in Montr‚al since her arrival (due to
exile: the Franco dictatorship would have shot her) in the early
'50s. Her involvement with Alternative goes back to its founding,
and she is a former member. It is worth noting the treatment the
current collective, including the author of their "collective"
letter, reserved for this anti-fascist.
Previous collectives have at least tried to keep a broad range of
libertarian literature in stock, despite the bookstore's small
income. This is no longer the case. The situation of both the
English and French-language anarchist sections can only be
described as desperate. The shelves are almost empty, with only a
couple of dozen books in each half of the section. In a predomi-
nantly French-speaking city, the situation of the French-language
section is especially bad: not a single book there was ordered less
than two years ago, and the selection is awful. This also holds
true for the periodicals. Moreover, this situation has gone on for
over a year and a half now. All of the libertarians who used to
visit the bookstore regularly either don't come any more (and there
are many of them) or do come, and remark that there is nothing
there.
Alternatives has a budget of several thousand dollars a year, rent-
free space to operate from and a volunteer staff, so some of the
pressures experienced by regular bookstores don't apply there.
Although the bookstore is poor and isolated even within the anti-
authoritarian milieu here (and I'm not trying to ignore this or
minimize its importance) it still has the money and resources it
needs to be an excellent anarchist bookstore. The sorry state of
the anarchist section is the result of a deliberate policy decision
made by the current collective, which has used thousands of dollars
of the bookstore's funds to buy a wide variety of sometimes
interesting but basically reformist literature. The anarchist
section has been systematically neglected, and with it all the
history and theory of the revolutionary movement. There is no
attempt to stock libertarian literature systematically, and no sign
yet that the situation will improve.
This is a political problem, and it requires a political solution.
I would be happier if the bookstore collective would direct its
energies toward a re-appraisal of its own activity, instead of
venting its frustration on fraternal projects.
My warmest wishes to you all,
Doug Imrie, Montr‚al, Qu‚bec
Censorship disturbing
Dear Anarchy:
I worked at Alternative Bookshop from 1982-84 and during 1986-87.
I find it very disturbing that some members would have censored
Anarchy and that, in the bookshop's single-minded zeal, the
question of censorship is not even discussed in their letter, nor
did it assume much importance in conversations I had with members.
This sign of the authoritarian bent the bookshop has taken concerns
me personally, since I had two articles in the issue in question,
one of which, my "Femme aux Bananes" piece, dealt with a local
situation not dissimilar to the present one. Since the bookshop had
not made it a priority to pay Anarchy, and no copies of the
"Abandoning Civilization" issue were available, when the following
issue came out I took five extra copies I had of the "Abandoning"
issue down for the bookshop to distribute.
Also, the reference to infiltrators by the letter's author, Karl
Levesque, is too provocative not to respond to: this guy has prob-
ably done more of a wrecking job in the anarchist milieu than all
the North American fascist infiltrators put together.
Levesque arrived in town in his mid-teens in the mid-eighties. He
first worked at Caf‚ Commune, and only joined the bookshop later,
when I was working at La Sociale, another anti-authoritarian
bookshop. Initially calling himself an anarchist, Levesque soon
embraced the state, broke with an anarchist outlook and began
supporting Leninists and various national liberation movements. I
(and others) had some of the most convoluted conversations of our
lives, as Levesque continued to call himself an anti-authoritarian
despite his support for Leninists and the state. Not only were his
brains on a vacation, Levesque was permanently out to lunch, and I
attempted to ignore him if he ranted at me when I dropped by the
bookshop.
Ultimately, Levesque's outbursts began to take on a more specifi-
cally anti-anarchist bent. When a person interviewing a prospective
bookshop member said that no real anarchist milieu had coalesced in
Montreal, Levesque interjected "tant mieux" ("all the better"), as
he went out the door. When I brought up a piece he did in his now-
defunct Youth Lib Zine about an Anarchist Youth Federation
gathering in Ottawa, he was quite frank in calling his piece an
"anti-anarchist rant." These sound bites remained etched in my
memory because I was shocked and dismayed by how hostile his
outlook had become. At this point, or earlier, Levesque should have
realized that he was in the wrong project and left. In a more
normal situation, he would have simply been ejected. But friendship
factors and a leftist bookshop faction which was becoming encrusted
in the project made this a far from ordinary situation.
The shit really hit the fan when Levesque ordered in a pile of MIM
Notes, a Maoist/Stalinist journal, to give out in the free section.
The issue in question contained a letter from an ex-Maoist and an
editorial response saying Stalin was 70% correct! When bookshop
members virulently objected to the arrival of the Stalinist paper
and those of other organizations wishing to take power, Levesque
threw a tantrum, went "on strike," and threatened to leave the
project ("on strike for Stalin," someone quipped). Around this time
a member who had been in Paris for close to a year returned. A
couple of other people were interested in joining, and the thought
that Levesque might leave and that the project might start to get
back on track made me interested in re-joining. Although I had
worked there for four years, and people who had worked with me in
the bookshop and La Sociale wanted me to come in, the leftists used
a bureaucratic formalism to keep me out, saying that because I had
formally resigned (as opposed to being on leave, or whatever, like
the person in Paris), I would have to wait to get back in. The
other people were kept out as well, and one recently returned to
Ottawa after being unable to get into the project for three years.
Exasperated with dealing with leftists and national liberationists
and feeling that the project was dead in the water, most of the
hard-core people began to leave. Today, the main criterion for
working in the bookshop is the ability to tolerate Leninist
sympathizers and leftists.
The most startling aspect of Levesque's denunciation of Gill as an
infiltrator is his resemblance to what he disparages. Although he
again said that he is not an anarchist in a recent conversation,
Levesque passes himself off as one when he finds it convenient (in
the present unsigned diatribe but at other times as well). Gill's
crackpot blend of white nationalist, extreme left and anarchist
influences is also not dissimilar to Levesque's nationalist
totalitarian/Leninist sympathizer-with-an-anti-authoritarian-cover
approach. With people new to the local scene, Levesque has been
known to use Bakunin's nationalist tendencies as a bridge to suck
them in towards his authoritarian approach. Like Gill's letter in
Anarchy, Levesque can be deceptively friendly (if you tolerate him,
he'll be friendly to you). "Your paper looks great," Gill said in
a gushy note to Demolition Derby, before I wrote a nasty letter
which she printed in her journal with an evasive response. In her
own publication Gill distances herself from anarchists; similarly,
with local hard-core anti-statists, Levesque drops the anarchist
pretence, unleashing a constant stream of abuse against anarchists,
situationists, desire politics, Anarchy magazine, Jason, etc., etc.
Like Gill, Levesque apparently is prone to conspiracy approaches.
Instead of bothering to find out what Anarchy had actually said
about Gill, he fabricates a scenario, berating Anarchy for not
reacting to a piece in Instead of a Magazine by an unnamed "regular
contributor." In fact, Anarchy would have been hard put to be aware
of the piece in question since it doesn't even exist! This entire
paragraph of the bookstore's letter is false from start to finish.
Now that he's too old to run a youth-lib operation, Levesque says
that the major focus of his activities is anti-fascism. However,
with so-called anti-fascism it is always necessary to peel away the
masks to reveal what it is for as opposed to taking at face value
what it claims to be against. In practice, people focusing on anti-
fascism tend to be leftists, often Leninists or Leninist sympathiz-
ers. In line with their vision of a preponderant role for the
state, they predictably concentrate on petitioning the cops to be
more vigilant and the state to ban neo-nazi activities. At one
local anti-fascist event, a couple of dozen neo-fascists showed up
outside and started to raise a ruckus. The anti-fascists cowered
inside and called the cops. Then came bitter complaints to the
media about the cops not getting to the scene fast enough - the
same racist cops who are beating and shooting people of color on a
daily basis, and who touched off the Oka crisis by firing indis-
criminately at Mohawk men, women and children. As a result of the
influence of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism etc., militant "anti-
fascism" has a long history of homophobia and racism. The virulent-
ly homophobic Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), a group
supported by MIM Notes, is massacring native people who object to
their hegemony. In the jungle town of Pallpa, the rival Peruvian
guerilla organization MRTA "`executed' seven gay men in one of the
streets as part of their `cleansing of undesirables' actions"
(Angles, December '92). "The Irish People's Liberation Organization
(IPLO), an offshoot of the Irish National Liberation Army, fire-
bombed a gay bar in Belfast on September 19, 1992. As three men
hurled the device and a fuel canister into the Waterfront Pub, one
shouted, `We have a bomb for this queer pub'" (Xtra, November 13,
1992).
In France, the once-powerful French Communist Party has always
fancied itself the soul of anti-fascism. In the nineties, the
Banlieu Rouge (the "Red Suburbs" - a belt of working-class
neighborhoods surrounding Paris) are becoming riddled with brown-
shirts, as Communist Party members desert the party en masse in
order to join the extreme right National Front. From a left
totalitarian state to a right-wing equivalent, for folks like this,
is a short jump. The same people who once counted on the state to
solve the "fascist problem" are now calling on the state to solve
the "Arab problem" with mass expulsions.
As anti-authoritarians and anarchists, we're anti-fascists too. But
we need to develop our own analysis of fascism (and anti-fascism).
Anti-fascist leftists sometimes have access to useful information.
At times, we may fight alongside anti-fascists against fascists in
the streets. At times, we will have to fight against `anti-
fascists' to prevent them from manipulating us, putting us in
prison, or up against a wall.
I agree with the bookshop that publishing Gill's missive is
problematic. I am uncomfortable with the thought of Anarchy
becoming a bulletin board for neo-fascists. But if fascists are
trying to infiltrate the milieu, I want to be aware of what they
are saying. I have no intention of relying on the interpretations
of professional `anti-fascists' like Levesque. It is also important
to put this affair in context. Levesque was unable to name a single
neo-fascist other than Gill who is attempting to infiltrate the
anarchist milieu. And in a letter in the feminist porn journal
Eidos Gill whines that "it is the anarchist-oriented writers and
presses that have been the most hostile" - so she doesn't seem to
be getting anywhere fast.
As well, Anarchy's open forum letters policy is extremely precious
and any attempt to tamper with it I find very dangerous. When two
of the three core bookshop members were working at Caf‚ Commune -
another once-antiauthoritarian project I worked at which also
degenerated into a leftist stomping ground - an anti-nationalist
poster of mine was censored there, so this is not the first time
I've had to deal with these people: I certainly do not intend to
trust them concerning such matters!
Instead of taking orders from confusionist reactionary jerks like
Levesque, why not find out whether we're really being infiltrated
by neo-fascists? Since Anarchy is widely distributed, perhaps
anyone aware of such incidents could write in to inform the milieu.
Michael William
C.P. 1554, Succ. "B"
Montreal, Quebec
Canada H3B 3L2
A sham of a mockery
Dear Anarchy,
As a resident of Montr‚al, I've already had the opportunity to read
the "Open Letter" addressed to you by the "Alternative Bookshop
collective" and stapled into copies of issue #33 on sale there, and
I'd like to respond to it. The letter should be richly ironic to
anybody who has been in the bookshop recently, and I hope after
reading my response you will see why.
What ostensibly prompted this rant was your publication-without-
comment in issue #33 of a silly letter by crypto-fascist Molly Gill
and the inclusion of her mailing address, which, for the author of
the collective's declaration, constituted a major breach in what
ought to be your eternal vigilance against nazi `infiltration'. The
author describes Gill's attempts to worm into various people's
confidences and berates Anarchy for either not knowing about them
(he's unaware of earlier denunciations of Gill in Anarchy) or not
caring. He can't seem to decide which is worse or which he'd rather
insinuate: were your "brains on holiday," or do you `tolerate' fas-
cism? He tells the sordid tale of how Gill "poses as a Leftist, or
an Anarchist, or a Feminist, in order to make contacts with genuine
[sic] Leftists, Anarchists and Feminists [why the capitals?]. Once
contact has been established she will start trying to convince
these people of a Jewish world conspiracy, the evils of race-
mixing, or of the necessity of stand [sic] by White Racist
prisoners."
To begin with, the `open' letter was written by collective member
Karl L‚vesque after he was given a blank-check imprimatur from some
of the other members. It is important to understand that not all
the members besides L‚vesque even saw the letter before it was
sent.
Before I start my comments on L‚vesque and his letter, I have to
point out that I agree with some small part of what it has to say.
Surely it would have been better for you to have mentioned that
Gill has been denounced - in your own pages as well as elsewhere.
I admire your policy of printing radically dissenting opinions and
for that reason I don't think you should have censored the letter,
but a disclaimer of some sort would have been to the point.
Still, I doubt anybody besides L‚vesque took Gill's letter so
seriously. His semi-literate hysteria indicates how hastily he
wrote his denunciation, and its offensive, insinuating, and au-
thoritarian tone speaks volumes about the author. That L‚vesque's
response is so comically out of proportion with what nominally
provoked it should make any reader - even the ones unfamiliar with
him and his gripe with Anarchy and anarchism - wonder what really
made him so mad.
What I feel compelled to ask L‚vesque is, if Gill's `infiltration'
is as ham-fisted as what he describes, why would any "genuine
anarchist" feel at all threatened? If all Gill does is write
unctuous, overtly white-supremacist letters to people and conduct
`infiltrations' in order to read Mein Kampf to leftists and
feminists... What, me worry?
L‚vesque is not himself an anarchist, but he has no qualms about
donning the mask when it serves his purpose. He talks about
"genuine anarchists" and Anarchy's fitness for membership in the
"anarchist movement," while rejecting anarchism in his own case for
reasons too stupid to merit discussion. He has called himself an
`anti-statist' and `anti-authoritarian'. But he has also called
himself a leninist at different times - though perhaps he doesn't
any more - so who can tell?
L‚vesque's communiqu‚ is fortunate because it brings to light the
hitherto obscure forces at work ruining the Alternative Bookshop.
L‚vesque has declared his support for "national liberation"
rackets. In his letter he complains about Gill's putting "White
Nationalist Movement" political prisoners "on a par with Black,
Puerto Rican or Native American nationalist prisoners." In other
words, he has problems with white right-wing nationalism, but he
has no problem with nationalism so long as white leftists like
himself and oppressed non-whites have a monopoly on the con. It's
that sort of idiocy that has conspired to render "Montr‚al's anti-
authoritarian bookstore" all but void of the rich variety of anar-
chist literature available today, while stocking its shelves with
not particularly anti-authoritarian leftist books and magazines
that are also available elsewhere. There are anarchist books there,
but not many in comparison. A glance at the Left Bank catalogue
shows how incredibly much the bookstore doesn't have. The glaring
lack of anarchist lit is partially a matter of budget restrictions
but mostly a matter of skewed priorities. There is money to buy
books - there are plenty of books in the bookstore - but not,
apparently, anti-authoritarian books. A bookstore is only as good
as the people who control the purse-strings and do the ordering,
and in the case of the `Alternative' priority seems to go to books
about sexual politics, animal rights and various other things which
might be offensive to some particular authority but more often than
not lack any general rejection of authority as such. I would be
interested to see what the bookstore would be like if it actually
stocked anti-authoritarian literature as per its supposed mandate.
But that would require an honest and magnanimous effort on the part
of the controlling interests, an effort they seem disinclined to
make.
L‚vesque doesn't mention it, but the very issue of Anarchy that
caused this brouhaha was for a long time unavailable at the
bookshop because he and his comrades weren't willing to pay for it.
It only became available there when the subsequent issue (#34) was
already out. If the bookshop collective wants to ban Anarchy, they
know from experience exactly how to do it! In fact, Anarchy is one
of maybe six anti-authoritarian zines even irregularly available
there, and it has shared table space in the past with the organ of
the RCP-front Vietnam Veterans Against the War (Anti-Imperialist),
the Maoist International Movement Notes (both of these have been
removed) and assorted leninist literature. L‚vesque even mentions
Instead of @ Magazine, which has not, in the thirteen months I've
been going there, been available at the Alternative Bookshop.
But even if they made anarchist literature a priority, the
bookstore is run by a gang that denies membership to anarchists who
wanted to volunteer/join, has effectively forced the resignations
of others, and generally comports itself in an obnoxiously cliquish
and authoritarian manner. The "open letter" is a case in point. In
every collective I've ever been a member of, any joint statement
that wasn't jointly composed was, at the very least, submitted to
all members for comments which were incorporated into the text
prior to publicly issuing it. In this case, L‚vesque was given
permission by some collective members to write a letter, which he
wrote, which was stapled into the bookstore's copies of issue #33,
and which was sent to you. Other members of the collective, at
least one of whom objects strongly to the letter, found out in the
following week, by which time the thing was in the mail. What do
you say about an `open' letter that is isn't even open to criticism
from the collective? If this is how an `anti-authoritarian' group
operates, I'd like to know what the `anti' signifies. L‚vesque is
careful in his letter never to call the Bookshop an anarchist
bookstore; that he and his cohorts maintain the pretence of its
being anti-authoritarian is, as Woody Allen said in Bananas, a sham
of a mockery of two shams of a mockery.
No matter. Regardless of whether the `collective' decides to censor
Anarchy, against the will of some members and despite the fact that
it's "the kind of magazine lots of people like to read and that we
always get requests for," it will continue to be available at other
magazine stands in Montr‚al (alternatives to the Alternative?). And
I for one will buy my copies somewhere where they aren't enhanced
with Correct Thought stapled-in by the Central Committee. Let
L‚vesque fantasize that guys like him determine who `belongs' in
the anarchist movement. As Camatte and Collu put it, "To belong in
order to exclude, that is the internal dynamic of the gang." The
Bookshop's overseers may not care whether real-life anarchists go
along with their asinine blackballing, but I doubt they've cared
what anybody outside their party thinks for some time now. They
have better things to do, like smoking out the fascist sympathizers
hiding behind well-known anarchist magazines and increasing
steadily the speed with which leftist mediocrity sucks their
bookstore into its vortex.
Sincerely,
Larry Deck, Montr‚al, Qu‚bec
No constructive ally
Dear Editor,
Concerning Adam Bregman's polemic on AIM's Columbus Day activities
in San Francisco (Anarchy No.35, pp.24-5), a bit of perspective is
in order. Concerning California AIM's alleged "lack of militancy"
on October 12, the organization's stated goal was to prevent the
symbolic reenactment of Columbus' landing, scheduled to occur that
morning in the harbor. While I myself would have preferred to have
seen the Italian-American federation parade through North Beach
halted as well - something we managed in Denver in both 1991 and
1992 - this was never articulated as part of AIM's Bay Area agenda.
Hence, even in Bregman's telling, AIM accomplished what it put
forth as objectives in that locale.
It should also be noted that Bregman makes no mention of having
tried to organize anything at all with which to confront the North
Beach parade. Rather, he appears to have `dozed', as he himself
puts it, through the hard and `boring' work of organizing, and then
simply showed up at the event, hoping to glom on somebody else's
efforts and whining to high heaven when it didn't work out the way
he preemptorily decided it should.
I'm not at all sure of the details concerning why the San Francisco
parade wasn't targeted by AIM. What I am sure of is that AIM has
been able to sustain itself through an extended series of con-
frontations, all of them of far more intensity and duration than
anything Bregman suggests - or has likely participated in -
precisely because it has consistently selected for itself the time,
place and terms of such combat, and has never treated struggle as
some sort of game. This, perhaps, is why the status quo tends to
treat AIM - not a little gaggle of bozos posturing in black ninja
suits, and `crumbling' at the first sign of police response to
their petty street theater - as a genuine threat to established
order.
The thread of overweaning arrogance snaking its way through the
whole of Bregman's reportage ties itself into a tidy little knot of
blatant racism with his snide little commentary on Indians "banging
on drums." This leads to a suggestion: maybe next time, rather than
burdening himself with the tedium of napping through political
work, this writer might want to just stay home watching Wayne's
World. He'd undoubtedly find such a pursuit far more edifying in
the long run, and it's clear he's no constructive ally, not to AIM,
and probably not to anyone else either.
Sincerely,
Ward Churchill, Colorado AIM
Denver, CO.
Choose your poison!
Women,
I have only 1 thing to say & that is who would you rather sleep
with - a man who writes article after article about how wonderful
pornography is, or one who writes about issues concerning why women
are raped every six minutes & battered every three?
Sincerely,
L.T., New York, NY.
Josephine Geurls here
Hey,
Anyone who wrote Josephine Geurls in Austin and letter was
returned, sorry, 4 months of mail got mishandled. Write me here at
Box 28, Naalehu, HI. 96772. Or better yet cum over and hang out -
too many mystical yuppie/ hippies. Not enough schizoversives.
Yours truly,
Josephine Geurls, Naalehu, HI.
Ps. I esp. like photos of ecofeminist lesbian sex orgies!