As promised, a guide to/review of contemporary anarchist organisations in Orstralia.
Introduction
Like the numerous Marxist organisations — Miaowists, Stalinists & Trotskyites — anarchism in contemporary Australia is a fringe movement, and in terms of its organisational framework and popularity, even more so. Anarchism also has far fewer allies in the academy and the media, no regular journals of any standing, and fewer historical roots. To the extent that ‘anarchism’ has influence within contemporary Australia, therefore, it’s largely through culture, and the adoption of broadly ‘anti-authoritarian’ ideas and practices within other social movements — the environmental, peace and women’s movements in particular, but also on the fringes of the labour movement.
Having said this, there are a small number of formal, self-consciously ‘anarchist’ groups and projects currently in existence, almost all concentrated in the two major cities of Melbourne (Pop. 3,850,000) and Sydney (Pop. 4,300,000). Further, individual anarchists are involved in a broad range of campaigns, groups and projects: animal liberation/rights, anti-racist and anti-fascist, ecological/environmental, feminist, media, queer, indigenous and prisoner solidarity, squatting, student, and union, among others.
Affinity Groups
Anarchist Direct Action | ADA is based in Melbourne, and formed very recently.
Mutiny | Based in Sydney, Mutiny evolved from a libertarian, direct-action oriented anti-war campaigning group to a more explicitly anarchist organisation. Since April 2006, it has published a regular monthly zine (unfortunately no longer available online).
- NB. The term ‘affinity group’ also applies more generally to a number of ad-hoc formations created for particular events and projects, and operating within a defined and fairly limited time-frame. Often, these are associated with major protest events. Numerous affinity groups of one sort or another have existed during the last few decades.
Distros/Infoshops
Anarres | Established in 1990, Anarres is an anarchist mail-order service based in Melbourne. It has a reasonably large catalogue, with many titles from overseas publishers, principally AK and Freedom Press, and New Society Publishers.
Barricade | Established in 1995, Barricade is an infoshop, which for its first eight years operated out of premises on Sydney Road before moving, in January 2003, to Irene Warehouse, where it closed in August 2006. The infoshop is soon to reopen in a new space in Northcote.
Beating Hearts | Another anarchist mail-order service, Beating Hearts is based in Brisbane.
Black Rose | Based in Sydney, Black Rose was established in 1982 as the result of a split in the Jura collective.
Jura | The longest-established infoshop in Australia, Jura opened in 1977.
Syndicalist Organisations
Anarcho-Syndicalist Federation | Based in Melbourne, the ASF has been in existence, in one form or another, since 1986.
Anarcho-Syndicalist Network | A Sydney-based group, with a representative in Melbourne, the ASN produces a bi-monthly zine titled Rebel Worker. The ASN was founded in 1992 after splitting from the ASF. RW began publication in 1982 as the paper of the IWW, and has been consistently produced since then.
IWW | The modern IWW was (re-)established in Sydney in 1976, disbanding in 1983 to form the ‘Rebel Worker Group’, which later (1986) became the Sydney ASF. The contemporary IWW was revived in the early ’90s.
Other
Alarm Collective | An online forum for anarchist yoof.
Anarchist Black Cross (Melbourne) | Prisoner solidarity.
Melbourne Anarchist Club | Historically, the MAC was the first formal anarchist organisation in Australia, announcing its formation on May 1, 1886. It ceased functioning in 1889. The contemporary MAC is a local organising project, responsible for establishing a social centre, the International Workers’ Club, in Northcote.
Melbourne Anarchist-Communist Group | Formed in 2005, the MAC-G has to date published four issues of its newsletter, The Anvil, and a number of leaflets.
*Sydney Anarchist Communist Trajectory (SACT) | Formed in mid-2008. “Open to all people interested in class struggle, workers’ control, direct democracy, and the revolutionary overthrow of the capitalist system.” Oi oi! Contact: sydneyanarchistcommunistgroup[at]gmail[dot]com.
- ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Individual anarchists are involved in a number of other projects. These include:
Black Dove | Based in Perth, Black Dove is a libertarian organising project.
EngageMedia | “A video sharing site focusing on social justice and environmental issues in South East Asia, Australia and the Pacific. It is a space for critical documentary, fiction, artistic and experimental works that challenge the dominance of the mainstream media.”
Food Not Bombs | Melbourne | Sydney | FNB began life in Melbourne in 1996. It provides free vegan meals at regular street stalls and caters at various community gatherings.
Indymedia (Oceania) | First developed in 1999 to record anti-WTO Seattle summit activity (in part employing technology developed by Sydney activists), Indymedia has since become a global phenomenon. Anarchists have had extensive involvement in this process.
Loophole | A recently (2007) established community activist space in Melbourne’s north.
Anarchist Media Institute / ‘Anarchist World This Week’ / Defend & Extend Medicare Group / Direct Democracy Not Parliamentary Rule (nee Vote Informal Today, Direct Democracy Tomorrow) / Friends of our ABC / Libertarian Workers For A Self-Managed Society / People for Constitutional Human Rights / Reclaim the Radical Spirit of the Eureka Rebellion / Sedition Charter / Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner Commemoration Committee / Joseph Toscano | A one-man anarchist band, the indefatigable Doctor Toscano has been declaiming anarchy for over thirty years.
In addition to the above, as an aside, here’s a list of what I believe to have been the major anarchist(ic) — but not necessarily explicitly anarchist — convergences of the last few years:
2001 : No Gods, No Masters, April 27–30, Melbourne | Media Circus* & Red & Black Forum, July 12–15 & 28–29, Melbourne & Sydney | Liberty, Autonomy, Solidarity, August 25–26, Wollongong
2002 : From Resurgence to Insurgence, April 27–28, Sydney
2003 : Anarchy For Life, May 2–4, Brisbane | Belladonna DIY Fest, November 27–29, Wollongong
2004 : Anarcon ‘04, January 23–27, Perth | State of Emergency, May 21–24, Melbourne | Belladonna DIY Fest, December 3–5, Wollongong
2005 : Queeruption7, February 16–23, Sydney | Anarcon ‘05, February 26–27, Melbourne | Subplot (Sydney Social Forum), August 27–30, Sydney | Belladonna DIY Fest, November 9–11, Wollongong
2006 : A Space Outside, November 13–15, Melbourne | Live and Let DIY, December 1–3, Brisbane
2007 : Camp Betty, June 7–11, Melbourne | F.L.A.R.E. in the Void, September 4–9, Sydney
2008 : Live and Let DIY, February 1–3, Brisbane
Note that a further gathering of anarchists took place in Melbourne this year over the Easter weekend, to discuss the possibility of establishing an anarchist federation and other, attendant issues. Some discussion of what transpired is available on the Australian Anarchy Bulletin Board.
- See also : Let’s Play (Quasi-)Celebrity Anarchy! // Oceania / South/East Asia Directory for a broader survey of libertarian groups and projects
Hello @ndy, thanks for this post. It was interesting for this former Sydney lefty who’s been out of the loop for a while.
I liked your post about Camille Pissarro too, it was a fantastic exhibition. Despite the usual toffs getting his politics backwards, seeing the original works was a powerful experience.
Thanks EC. I should point out that it’s not complete, and I’ll add to it as time goes on and, hopefully, as others contribute.
Regarding Pissarro — yeah. I didn’t see the exhibition myself, unfortunately. With regards his and other artist’s involvement in and association with the then-extant anarchist movement, it was often quite intensive, and the anarchist milieu very broad and terrifically active. Benedict Anderson explores some of this territory in Under Three Flags: Anarchism and the Anti-Colonial Imagination (Verso, 2007). (Review by Danny.)
See also:
Paris and the Anarchists: Aesthetes and Subversives During the Fin de Siècle, Alexander Varias, St. Martin’s, 1996. Reviewed by Robert Graham, Social Anarchism, 27, 1999.
Félix Fénéon: Aesthete and Anarchist in Fin-de-Siècle Paris
Joan Ungersma Halperin
Yale University Press, 1988
Anarchism and Cultural Politics in Fin de Siècle France
Richard D. Sonn
University of Nebraska Press, 1989
Anarchism, Representation, and Culture
Jesse Cohn
neme
January 2006
More recently:
Realizing the Impossible: Art Against Authority
Edited by Erik Reuland and Josh MacPhee
AK Press, 2007
What about Mutiny? There’s also this anarchist youth organisation whose name currently escapes me. They have members in Qld and SA, I believe.
Mutiny is listed. Its web presence is minimal at this point. The anarchist yoof thing is called Alarm. Afaik, it’s largely confined to Melbourne and Sydney.
What about the black cross? I met one guy carrying a banner for them at the march for Lex Wotton earlier this year…
I’m not sure if it was the same guy, but at a rally this year I also met a guy who gave me a self-declared “Anarchist newspaper against war and militarism” with the title/heading “Unless You’re Free”. Actually I think it might have been the same dude. Mick? Michael? Something like that rings a bell. Anyway.
Why is it that your list of socialist groups is so much more thorough than your list of anarchist groups/orgs/lists/cells/whatever? Seems like you invest far more energy into fighting fascists and ridiculing (though often they deserve it) socialists than you do in building an anarchist movement, which you presumably hope for.
Oh, and as long as radicals (?) are spending time talking about aesthetics, it would seem to me that we’re all fucked.
The ABC is listed.
I’m aware of the publication you refer to. I can’t find my copy at the moment, but from what I can recall it was produced by anarchists in Melbourne and Sydney. I’ve no idea if the person at the Lex Wotton demo was the same person distro-ing it at the other rally you attended, and wouldn’t care to speculate.
I’m not sure I understand your point about the respective merits of my listings of anarchist and Marxist groups. I think both are reasonably thorough, although obviously subject to (peer) review. Regarding what I spend my time doing, I disagree. I’ve spent many years engaged in building explicitly anarchist groups and projects. I also recognise that I exist within a broader milieu, and in order to understand it, my activities need to be placed within this context. In other words, while I may expend some energy (among other activities) as part of a collaborative network dedicated to monitoring the far right, other anarchists concentrate on other projects.
Finally, with regards aesthetics, it’s kinda ironic that you should argue for this point, especially given that Trotsky himself dedicated a good proportion of his own intellectual labour to critiquing art and culture. I think that discussions of art and aesthetics have their place alongside a vast range of other subjects. So too have the vast majority of revolutionary thinkers.
PS.
Curious to discover wtf I have actually been blogging about, at least recently, I’ve looked at my blog entries for May.
These are the subjects I’ve discussed:
The attempted censorship of my blog by mathaba.net
May Day
Melbourne taxi drivers’ strike
1968
Trotskyist sectariana
London council elections
B&H Belgium
Forward Intelligence Team monitoring in the UK
ASIO and political repression
Welf Herfurth and the New Right
The murder of Nicola Tommasoli in Verona
G20 legal process
Threatened legal action vs. Dave Kerin
NSW electricity privatisation
Banksy
ALP policy on refugees
Crazy Greek anarchists setting fire to things (again)
Peter Norman documentary
It’s the End of the World as We Know It subvertising
Tory bloggers
The Leninist Party Faction
Celebrity Australian anarchists
Eric McDavid
Punk on film
Critchley vs. Zizek
New anarchist zine from Kiwi
Stormfront.org
The re-emergence of Geoff Baron (the potty-mouthed priest)
Nepal
Quadrant
James Saleam
Michael Warby on fascism
Political repression in Canada
Media treatment of Israel and anarchism
Jock Palfreeman
Spiked
Troy Southgate
Collingwood Magpies
Anarchism in South Africa
Local neo-Nazi personalities
Blogs and censorship
Bill Henson
Utah Phillips
Marxist Humanism
Hicham Yezza
…
Not diverse enough? Too diverse? You tell me.
So touchy 🙂
I was merely commenting on the disparity between the two lists, that’s all.
RE your topics, they’re fantastic. If there were international councils for bloggers and internet journalists, you would have my vote.
RE aesthetics… Trotsky wrote about culture and (especially) literature while Stalin was getting him kicked out of the party in 1923. These topics were seen to be safe enough for him to continue his work while trying to get a decent opposition group together. Spending a year researching literature and the arts in the midst of social upheaval was Trotsky’s way of backing down to confrontation with Stalin, not something to be celebrated!
The other blatant difference is that the context was a post-revolutionary society. True, by ’23 everything was pretty much fucked, but still… Prior to the revolution I would wager that every Marxist was relatively focused on building towards said historical event. I would wager that most Anarchists were doing similar.
A focus on aesthetics and shit like that is a (post-)modern phenomenon typical of vague post-colonial academics and I think can be understood as an act of despair/frustration/self-centredness… Narrowing the field of combat down to aesthetics means it might actually be possible to win, at least, in the context of an individual life. Meanwhile people are dying.
Of course art is a topic of interest for most people including leftists, but this is far from saying let’s spend hours discussing ‘post-marxist’ philosophies of aesthetics.
I’m making a small point here, not sure if we disagree all that much. I’m sure you’ll let me know.
Speaking of aesthetics… Go the black and white! 😀
“I was merely commenting on the disparity between the two lists, that’s all.”
What disparity, exactly?
On Trotsky and aesthetics: I used Trotsky as an example. As I also indicated, art and art criticism — and by art I mean ‘the arts’ — have been of concern to a great variety of revolutionary thinkers, and remain so. In any case, Leon‘s interest in art extended beyond the period he was fighting a losing battle with Stalin. For example, in 1938, Trotsky co-authored a ‘Manifesto: Towards a Free Revolutionary Art’ together with the Surrealist turned Trotskyist Andre Breton. “Our aims: The independence of art–for the revolution; The revolution–for the complete liberation of art!”
Beyond this, I’m obviously about as interested in celebrating Trotsky’s interest in art as I am the achievements of the Bolsheviks as a whole in capturing state power in Russia.
“Prior to the revolution I would wager that every Marxist was relatively focused on building towards said historical event. I would wager that most Anarchists were doing similar.”
And as they say, a fool and his money are soon parted. In reality, art was of concern to a wide range of revolutionaries, philosophers and thinkers, Marxist, anarchist and otherwise. Further, most all had a more sophisticated understanding of ‘art’ than as a simple alternative to ‘revolution’. One bloke wrote that art is always and everywhere the secret confession, and at the same time the immortal movement of its time.
“A focus on aesthetics and shit like that is a (post-)modern phenomenon typical of vague post-colonial academics and I think can be understood as an act of despair/frustration/self-centredness… Narrowing the field of combat down to aesthetics means it might actually be possible to win, at least, in the context of an individual life. Meanwhile people are dying.”
Maybe. That is, people are certainly dying — as must we all — but I don’t see how it relates to the above, however. “As long as radicals are spending time talking about aesthetics, it would seem to me that we’re all fucked” was your original observation. I say: People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouth.
juancastro wrote:
This is such total shit: both historically and philosophically. We see in any moment of upsurge an explosion in popular participation and interest in artistic creation. As we engage in collective emancipation those elements of life that seemed estranged from us become ours, something that we can see ourselves in.
You also fail to grasp that how a society thinks of itself, and represents this thought, is as ‘real’ as any other social phenomena. And thus is a terrain of antagonism and struggle.
And what is the revolution for if it is not the freeing of creativity and forming lives worth living? What is this without ‘art’? Even if we must destroy art to realise it.
big rebel love
Dave
Grumpy Cat:
I was going to go on and talk about how art expressed change as it happens, so I agree with you up to a point; it seems probably (and historically true) that during revolutions the creativity of people can be unleashed like never before.
But I don’t think that art is a _significant_ terrain of struggle… Sure it reflects broader class antagonisms, but I don’t think there can be any hope for victory on that front before victory on other, deeper, more significant ones.
I could say the same thing about curriculum design, and compare Freire and Bobbit and say look at the struggle, yeah let’s all fight for Freire’s far more radical, inclusive, progressive, etc. model/philosophy of education. But the reality is that it will never be accepted by Bourgeois society, so let’s not kid ourselves.
@ndy:
RE disparity, I dunno, maybe it was the lack of interesting/sarcastic/whatever remarks.
RE Revolutionaries and art… You win 🙂 To clarify, I didn’t mean to say that there was this binary with art and revolution on either side. Just that the search for a “social anarchist aesthetic” strikes an off chord for me somehow. Sounds a bit like Proletarian Science. Though I know you mean it differently. Anyway, ts’all good, I take your point.
RE Love; To me it seems that ‘love’ – monogamous, generally heterosexual relationships – have been the cornerstone of class societies throughout history. Nothing subversive about love unless you mean it in some redefined revolutionary sense which is like, _totally_ begging the question.
eg. http://www.isreview.org/issues/38/women_family.shtml
RE “social anarchist aesthetic”:
Billy Bragg and RATM are both revolutionaries of some sort, yet their music could not differ more. I could imagine a similar divergence in art… It seems ridiculous to limit what one would or could describe as “social anarchist” art to an aesthetic range. The values are the core, how they manifest is open to infinite and creative interpretation.
Thus talk about values and principles that could or should be represented in revolutionary art is both awesome and potentially fruitful, while the purely aesthetic side is maybe less so, though I can see how that wouldn’t be true either. I dunno.
viva Italian social realism.
Um… have you considered reading Cohn’s essay?
Where is a social anarchist aesthetic to be found? Does it exist?
Et cetera.
Billy Bragg is not really a revolutionary, either in his art or his politics. One of his main political platforms has been anti-Toryism. Thus in the 2005 UK election, Bragg campaigned on behalf of Blairite Oona King for the seat of Dorset, simply on the basis that anyone was better than a Tory, and that to do otherwise — such as support Galloway, who also contested the seat — was to split the ‘left’ vote. As it happens, Galloway won the seat by 823 votes. Prior to this, Bragg helped to organise the Red Wedge Tour in 1987, trying to convince the kids to vote Labour, and thereby depose Fatcher.
Rockin’ the vote: Billy Bragg for Blair?
Red Pepper
Between the pop and the party
Will Brown
Democratic Socialist
A better example of ‘revolution’ in this context is the following:
Agitpop is back at the Brits
BBC
February 10, 1998
As for RATM, they certainly place more emphasis on solidarity with and involvement in revolutionary campaigns, but aside, perhaps, from the fact that Morello refuses to use guitar effects, I’m not sure that their music is a huge departure from established rock ‘n’ roll genres. Further, they — like Bragg and Chumbawamba — have happily recorded for one of the majors.
With regards Italian social realism, it was championed by Mussolini, among others…
I think the subject of revolutionary class consciousness and symbolic representation is more complex than you seem to acknowledge.
Btw, it may not be terribly funny, but I did title my post ‘Attack of the Anarchoids from Neptune!’, which to my mind suggests a certain levity.
Juan: the Trot Guide, like the Nazi guides, has evolved along with the contributions of others. new information, clarifications, etc. I expect the Anarchist guide will be similar.
That essay is great!
It makes sense that realism/neorealism is/was a reaction against the romantics/bourgeois apologists. I guess it serves to stoke the fires within, but doesn’t exactly provide a vision to fight for. Still, the world could do with more class-conscious rage.
I like the last three paragraphs a LOT… really, the whole thread drawn out by the author is fantastic.
Very educative stuff. Yet another reason you would get my vote.
Speaking of social realism, I think I detect a whiff of it in these…
http://1948.com.au/2008events/melbourne/POP/POP.html#photos
For Lumpen:
Alarm collective is mainly in sydney, with some members in melbourne.
Qld people and me (SA) are just forum members.
🙂
Ah, I knew I wasn’t imagining things.
“RE disparity, I dunno, maybe it was the lack of interesting/sarcastic/whatever remarks.”
One of Uncle Joe Toscano’s projects, ‘Direct Democracy Not Parliamentary Rule’, was officially launched on November 3, 2004, with the aim of gathering together 550 signatures in order to register with the AEC as a political party.
140 weeks later, it has 111 members.
Things have really slowed-down in terms of recruiting.
In July 2007, the party claimed 109 members; in April 2007, 104; in February 2007, 103; in September 2006, 101; in August 2006, 100; in April 2006, 98; in October 2005, 89; in September 2005, 88; in August 2005, 87; in June 2005, 80; and finally, in April 2005, 63.
Now, let’s assume that the party will continue to recruit at the average rate at which it has between April 2005 and May 2008. That’s a total of ( 111 – 63 = ) 48 members, over a period of 37 months, or approximately 1.3 members a month. Given that the party aims for 550 members, it needs to recruit 439 more. Assuming a recruitment rate of 1.3 members a month, this means that in approximately 338 more months, it will finally have achieved this goal.
Some time in the year 2037, perhaps.
Alternatively, if the party doubles its flow of new members, that would mean 2022 is definitely a year to mark on the calendar.
Another project, ‘People For Constitutional Human Rights’, was formed in March 2005, in order “to create a climate in the community that will force a future Australian government to hold a referendum/s that will give the Australian people the opportunity to include a Bill of Rights within the Australian Constitution. The inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the Australian Constitution would mean that future governments could not remove the human rights citizens enjoy through the passage of legislation through both houses of parliament. The only way they could remove the human rights that would be included in a future Australian Constitution would be through a referendum. The inclusion of a Bill of Rights in the Australian Constitution would protect the individual from the arbitrary exercise of State power.”
It has since dissolved.
In last year’s Federal election, Joe Toscano and Jude Pierce stood for the Victorian Senate. They gained 5,695 votes. SA candidates received 2,535 votes; the SEP, 2,403.
Joe has stood for the Senate on a number of previous occasions. In 2004, and six years previously, in 1998. In 1998, Joe ran with Steve Reghenzani on a platform of ‘A New Constitution for a New Millennium’. This became ‘Direct Democracy Not Parliamentary Rule’ (or possibly ‘Parliamentary Democracy, Two Minutes of Illusory Power’) in 2001, and possibly even retained this title for the campaign of 2004. In 1990, Joe campaigned alongside another Stephen. Steve R got the arse, so to speak, and was replaced by Jude in 2006. Note that in 2004, SA gained 4,906 votes; Joe got 3,418. On the 2001 campaign, see Anarchists Claim Credit For Victorian Senate Informal Vote, November 13, 2001.
The ‘Defend and Extend Medicare’ Group was formed in May 2003, and dissolved shortly after the 2004 Federal election. In December 2003, the Group was featured in a series of three articles in the Herald Sun by Keith Moor and Charles Miranda: ‘Left Hijack Health Fight’ (December 5); ‘Health Activists On File’ (December 6); and ‘Activists Reject ‘Extreme’ Tag’ (December 8). Allegations regarding the use of state ‘intelligence’ agencies to investigate the group were reiterated in a subsequent article by Bruce Billson (July 13, 2004): “The Defend and Extend Medicare Group (DEMG) has been investigated by intelligence authorities amid claims it had been infiltrated by extremists.”
On a related note:
Edited version of article:
The website in question was ‘Anarchist Action’.
@ndy M, I gots a question about Uncy Joe? Is it true that he is a doctor of hearts, as well as a doctor of love?
Hearts, love and also backs.
RE Juan Castro:
darl, if you’re going to accept *that* as the definition of love then I don’t know where to start…
maybe I’ll have to say: “People who talk about revolution without referring explicitly to daily life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have a corpse in their mouths”?
but then again, I just like saying that.
(Also, even as second-wave feminism was making critiques of the family unit/compulsory heterosexuality/the ideal of fairy-tale romance, they were talking up the idea of sisterhood – a form of love – and/or women-loving-women.)
(not to mention your historical inaccuracies: the idea that love=marriage is a relatively new phenomenon, supposedly sweeping in on a wave of romance to replace the marriage=business deal of an earlier time. & there’s a lot more to it.)
up with love!
princess mob
Where is the love?
one)
Police probe anarchy website
Nick Papps
Herald Sun
February 16, 2004
MELBOURNE anarchists are telling school children how to blow up schools and set them alight.
A guide boasting of “81 ways to trash your school” has been promoted on an anarchist website established by Melbourne students.
Victoria Police have revealed they are investigating the anarchists and a website promoting anarchist activities.
“Liberate your life, smash your school,” the guide tells students, along with advice on starting fires and making bombs.
An investigation of Melbourne’s anarchist networks by the Herald Sun has also found:
A HOW-TO guide to disrupting aircraft, hacking into computers and occupying buildings, which is known as Melbourne Activists Cookbook.
AN ANARCHIST cell known as the Brunswick Liberation Front is being investigated over several attacks on businesses.
ANARCHIST groups have identified 13 Australian companies for action.
The police security intelligence group is monitoring the anarchists and warned they will be prosecuted if they carry out their threats.
“Our message is, we know who you are and we are monitoring your activities,” Inspector Rod Wilson said. “We are monitoring their activities in many ways.
The Brunswick Liberation Front is being investigated over a series of attacks in Lygon St.
Details on the group and its targeting of a Brunswick family business were recently posted on a Melbourne anarchist website, the same website promoting school attacks.
Several businesses have had their windows smashed and a family threatened with torching.
The website says the BLF carried out the attack on the family and is opposed to the gentrification of Brunswick.
The communique from the BLF says “arson, property destruction and direct action are the tactics we will use”.
Brunswick police have launched a probe into the BLF and the attack on the family.
“We are looking into this and the apparent connection with the website,” Detective Senior Constable Eddie Barake said.
“We take this incident seriously and will not tolerate this sort of violence.”
Inspector Wilson said the BLF tried to recruit students. “We are aware of the investigations that are being done by Brunswick,” he said. “We are aware of activist groups like that which were behind the World Economic Forum protests.
BLF had long been trying to attract students through schools and universities and had been linked to other anarchist groups such as Black Block, he said.
Herald Sun investigations have revealed the Melbourne anarchist website promoting the school disruption guide was set up by two students.
One of the youths who established the website said he was an anarchist and set up the the site for Australian anarchists “to voice their opinion”.
“We are a resource in Australia to voice their opinions,” the school student said.
Following Herald Sun and police investigations, the guide to disrupting schools was removed from the website.
two)
Anarchists use computer highway [for] subversion
Adrian Levy and Ian Burrell
Sunday Times
March 5, 1995
British anarchists are using the Internet network to link up with international terrorist groups and co-ordinate the disruption of schools, looting of shops and attacks on multinational firms.
Police chiefs have asked the Special Branch to investigate after discovering anarchist cells circulating hundreds of computer files of seditious information. They included guides to looting shops, infiltrating government departments, sabotaging telecommunications systems and the making of bombs, weapons and drugs.
Many of the files were obtained from terrorist groups, including The Sons of Glendower in Wales, Direct Action in France, and the Anti Imperialist Cell (AIC), a German anarcho-terrorist group responsible for a wave of bombings and shootings last year. The Royal Ulster Constabulary is studying links to outlawed loyalist paramilitary groups.
Detectives are alarmed by the increasing sophistication of the anarchist groups. They have arrested a Scottish man – the first UK arrest for allegedly encouraging violence using a computer – and plan to question several others for suspected public order and fraud offences. “Anarchists now represent a significant threat” said one officer.
The anarchist campaign was launched at a conference entitled Anarchy in the U.K. held in London last October. It began with a call to arms by Ian Bone, of the extremist Class War organisation, who said violence was the only way to overthrow the state.
Members of the 350-strong audience were also encouraged to liaise on the Internet by Ian Heavens, a computer programmer. He told them to use special directories run by anarchists; some are booby trapped with viruses that attack the computers of unauthorised intruders. He claimed last week that he disapproved of violence. However, as an editor of Spunk, the biggest anarcho-computing directory in Britain, he has distributed files that include advice on “How to overthrow the government”, by robbing banks, disabling police vehicles, stealing documents and inciting readers to arm themselves. One of his groups contacts is an AIC cell in lower Saxony, which boasts of carrying out a shooting at the metalworkers’ union offices in Cologne in November 1994. Other files on the network report how bombs were placed at the offices of polticial parties in Dusseldorf and Bremen last June. German police are still investigating the incidents.
Heavens, whose files also include advice on the manufacture of explosive devices, claimed his aim was to create a “meaningful democracy”.
Many of the anarchist files are on a special directory that is overseen by Louise Schuller, a student at City University in London. It is used by cells from London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Oxford and Bristol, who regularly update their material. Schuller could not be contacted this weekend.
Police discovered the groups were singling out schoolchildren as targets. One printout, entitled “81 ways to trash your school”, and circulating among Scottish pupils, encourages readers to burn down school buildings using simple incendiary devices made of cigarettes.
It also directed pupils to carry out citizen’s arrests on staff and take part in dirty protests and riots.
The technical resources and computer skills of the anarchists have surprised police and experts. “We have been amazed at the level of organisation of these extremist groups who have appeared on the Internet in a short amount of time”, said Simon Hill, editor of Computing magazine, the trade journal.
Detectives investigating one anarchist cell found activists had hacked into credit card computers, stealing thousands of pounds. “Other groups we came across have the knowhow to take out the phone network for the equivalent of an entire state in America” said Craig Dure, of Lothian and Borders Police. The files also
reveal how anarchists plan to hijack the green movement.
Phreak, a group based in London, has drawn up a detailed plan of attacks on construction companies across Britain. One file reports a raid on the Snowdonia offices of the ARC, the building firm, causing 10,000 pounds of damage to the company’s computer system. “We wiped out months of work” claimed the
author.
The anarchists have invited sympathisers from abroad to join in attacks on the British economy. Dutch anarchists plan regular looting trips to London, asking British contacts for legal advice and addresses of suitable stores. A notice for a future expedition advised: “Shopping is fun when everything is free”.
Chris Smith, Labour’s heritage spokesman, said the findings showed the need for international agreements to ban groups preaching violence from the information superhighway. “Current laws were framed in the age of print. We need a new framework of rules for the age of electronic communication.”
Additional reporting by Iain Martin and Peter Warren.
three)
Anarchism runs riot on the superhighway
Computing
March 2, 1995
Alarming evidence suggesting communication between terrorist and anarchist groups via the Internet has been uncovered by the Computing Inquiry team.
Inquiry has discovered that anarchist and terrorist groups use the Internet and a variety of information is available, including instructions on how to make bombs and produce drugs.
Inquiry also has proof of attempts by anarchists to contact sympathetic hacking groups with a view to exchanging technical know-how over public-domain bulletin boards.
Terminal Boredom, a bulletin board system (BBS) based in Scotland – recently closed by Scottish police following the arrest of one hacker – contained specific references to Spunk Press, an anarchist archive on the Internet.
Sources contacted by Inquiry confirm that individuals associated with Terminal Boredom had the ability and motivation to attack and deliberately disable computer systems.
According to a hacker connected with one of the board’s prime movers (who cannot be named for legal reasons), the board had an essentially anarchic attitude.
Inquiry is reliably informed that, as a result of police investigations into the UK-wide bulletin board, more arrests are likely. In one case a report has been placed to the Royal Ulster Constabulary.
Our research has revealed that Ian Heavens, a software programmer, married to a lawyer and working in Edinburgh, is responsible for the Spunk Press archive. A Cambridge graduate, he has promoted the use of bulletin boards and the Internet at a recent anarchist conference.
In conjunction with a now-defunct group of anarchists running a bulletin board known as Fastbreeder, he held meetings to increase the use of computers by anarchists.
Sources report that Heavens chaired a meeting at the ‘Ten Days that Shook the World’ conference in Camden, North London, last October. The aim was to foster data exchange between anarchists groups in Spain, Ireland, the US and the UK.
The event was part of a series of workshops at which bulletin boards were demonstrated which carried details of how to make Molotov cocktails and bombs, as well as social security fraud and shoplifting.
According to a daily newsletter circulated during the conference – attended by groups ranging from Class War, the Animal Liberation Front, direct action environmental group Earth First, as well as New Age travellers and anti-road demonstrators – computer networks present an unrivalled opportunity for communicating with, and gaining access to, hackers.
A flyer for the workshops stated: ‘Computer networks are cheaply accessible to 25 million people worldwide; no lengthy print runs are needed, and storage capacity is practically unlimited.’
Heavens, who denies seeking contact with hackers, admitted the archive contains information on bomb making, fare-dodging and ways of accessing terrorist information.
‘The editorial collective rejects the common stereotype of anarchism as being violent and disassociate themselves from any support for violence,’ said Heavens, adding: ‘Spunk Press is an attempt to redress the distorted image of anarchism that is available on the Internet, for instance hacking and bomb-making recipes.
‘Anarchism is a philosophy of contemporary relevance with it’s emphasis on small-scale production, care for the environment, a meaningful democracy and people being given the opportunity to take control of their own lives.’
A routine sweep of the Internet by the Inquiry team for information on ‘anarchy’ found Seed, a catch-all directory for the European Counter Network, Spunk Press and Class War.
Seed describes Class War, notorious for it’s violent opposition to the Poll Tax and Criminal Justice Bill, as an organisation that ‘argues that change will only happen when working class people organise themselves to use direct action against the individuals and institutions responsible for their problems’.
It adds: ‘Seed is part of a student project investigating the alternative press and the Internet. All of the information linked to the Seed home page falls outside of the responsibility of City University.’
One file on the Spunk archive, Spunk 280, contains directions on how to access information from terrorist groups operating in Europe. The files in the alt.society.revolution section of the Internet, contain communiques claiming to be from terrorist groups ranging from the Kurdish PKK, the Red Army Fraction, Autonome Antifa and the Greek-Cypriot 17 November movement.
Files include calls for ‘observers’ to attend the imminent trials of 17 people arrested last July who have been charged with intent to build a criminal organisation, and communiques from the Red Army Fraction admitting responsibility for a bombing campaign in June 1994.
One message ran: ‘On the night of 4 June 1994, one week before the elections for the European Parliament, we deposited four explosive devices behind the building complex an Kaiserwertherstrasse 93 in Dusseldorf.
‘This building houses, among others, the offices the CDU [Christian Democratic Party], as well as the CDU regional offices of the Bergischesland region. We chose this site because of the minimal risk to uninvolved persons.’
Elsewhere, the Red Army Fraction sets out the following agenda: ‘We want to contribute to the further development of a militant resistance in Germany, one which has it’s roots in the political context of the militant armed struggle of the Red Army Fraction.’
The author of Spunk 280, (who uses the email address: [xxxxxx] and points readers in the direction of the terrorist communiques), adds that if readers get on Spunk Press’ list they should be able to obtain a work called ‘Practical Anarchy Online’.
But the author adds: ‘If you’re into the hacker-anarchist stuff (which is mainly of the vulgar “let’s blow ’em up” variety), you can look in http://ftp.eff.org in /pub/cud or on the eff mirror archives on my site,’ quoted by the author as red.css.itd.umich.edu in pub/Politics and pub/Zines.
Similar material can be found on the Spunk Press system. One file contains corrections to the bomb-making ‘recipes’ in the Anarchists’ Cookbook, how to fare-dodge and damage police cars.
It was information of the ‘let’s blow ’em up’ variety that worried Fife police about the Terminal Boredom bulletin board, allegedly used by a group called Phate, which has attracted notoriety among the London hacking community for its willingness to perpetrate malicious acts.
The police investigation into the board had been triggered by the revelation in a Scottish paper that Terminal Boredom contained details of a credit card number-generating system known as Credit Master Three, which has been shown to Inquiry. The system is credited to an infamous hacking group known as the Legion of Doom.
According to sources, Terminal Boredom has not only had links with Spunk and sympathy for animal liberation causes, but also held copies of the Terrorist’s Handbook, copies of which have been found circulating in Scottish schools.
Inquiry obtained a copy of the Terrorist’s Handbook from an anarchist-leaning section of the Internet known at Candyman. Candyman contains files from the Legion of Doom which offer correspondence courses on hacking.
As well as the handbook, which contains detailed information on the manufacture of explosives and how to obtain raw materials, are files concerned with the manufacture of illegal drugs. One file on sabotage, called the School Stopper’s textbook, lists ’81 ways to trash your school’.
Details of a UK bulletin board called pHreak were circulated during the computer workshops organised by Spunk Press and Fast Breeder. Its publicity material promises the best of the Net, including underground culture, environment news, public protest and action, and strange cults.
A brief logon shows it to be a contact point for Earth First and the anti-road group Road Alert. Files held in the ‘Fight For Your Rights’ lay out up-and-coming campaigns against road building, news of past actions, and appeals for help and support.
According to the police sources contacted by Inquiry, responsibility for policing the activities of groups of the Internet is unclear.
Sources at the Metropolitan Police said there were no resources for a task already complicated by the fact that much of the information has come from countries in which they have no jurisdiction.
If you have a story you think the ‘Inquiry’ team should investigate, call Peter Warren on (0171) 927 9547.
Princess Mob
I have no doubt that second wave feminists and lots of others have denounced mainstream conceptions of love and sought to redefine it in far superior ways. And I agree that these ways ARE potentially liberating. But I would argue that ‘love’ is not defined in revolutionary ways for the majority of people.
Therefore I disagree that love is an intrinsically revolutionary concept. Though I’m sure @ndy can step in with an article or two to back you up… 🙂
@ndy… too many words.
juancastro, do i need to quote ché at you?
Juancastro wrote
What does that even mean? How do we know what ‘the majority of people’ think? It’s impossible (unless you’ve asked them). We can talk about the prominence of different ideologies/discourses and how they appear in a society, but that does not translate into knowing that a majority of people think a certain way. I am tempted to agree with Zizek that an ideology is strongest when most people do not actually believe in it but cynically go along with it – like parliamentary democracy in Australia; it functions well (as a tool of capitalist governance) because no one actually believes it is democratic in any real way and accept that the process is corrupt etc.
And what is changing the world collectively, and building new relationships with people if it is not ‘love’?
rebel LOVE
dave
Princess Mob:
The only quote I can recall from Che is something like a revolutionary is moved by strong feelings of love… I agree. That’s hardly what we’re arguing about though!
And Dave, you’re right that all that sounds like (and will be) an incredible manifestation of universal love. I don’t disagree with that either.
What I disagree with is a belief that somehow a lack of love, a lower quality of love or something like that is the problem with the world.
I just think when most people think about love and how it manifests they think about their partners and immediate loved ones, and think about dedicating their lives to the same. Well I think dedicating your life to your children is nice and can require incredible courage, but that doesn’t mean it’s particularly revolutionary. Dedicating your life to a school, an orphanage, an NGO… all these things are probably based on a broader, less traditional and ‘more radical’ conception of love, but will not result in social change.
Another problem with putting the emphasis on love and therefore morality is that it very quickly leads to elitism: “I’m so politically active because I love humanity, other people are so shit because they obviously don’t care enough about the world to do something”. I hear plenty of that sort of thing, especially in what I will problematically term ‘hippy’ social circles that I am sometimes involved with.
Everyone loves, but not everyone has a (relatively) clear anti-capitalist perspective as well. That’s what we need more of, and the way that’s going to happen is (as it always does) through struggle. Ideas of what love is will change as society changes.
Princess Mob – is that the one about the true revolutionary being guided by feelings of great love? Someone sprayed that up everywhere during s11 – I actually didn’t know that was a Che thing until now…
Cos if you’re not motivated by love, I suppose your options are fear, desire for power, belief in vulgar economic determinism, or the weird feeling of nice and nasty you get when you are sucked into a little cult that builds you up then knocks you down again as you work yourself to death on a path of meaningless activism and activity cos the fearless leader says that is the only way we are going to get a revolution. Lots of crap options… love is better. and I agree with grumpy cat… yay love!
Bloody hell – when did i turn into such a fucking hippie?
“I hear plenty of that sort of thing, especially in what I will problematically term ‘hippy’ social circles that I am sometimes involved with.”
“Bloody hell – when did i turn into such a fucking hippie?”
SNAP!
On lurve, two things: what is subversive about love? Good question. I suggest that it may be understood in a fairly conventional sense, but also in a broader, and perhaps radical sense, sometimes termed ‘eros’. Neo-Marcusian Professor George says:
See also : Raoul Vaneigem, The Revolution of Everyday Life (Traité du savoir-vivre à l’usage des jeunes générations), 1967.
Was it not Che who said, “Stop, comrades, in the name of love. Before you break my heart.”
Think it over.
Liz, in your list of motivations, you left out my personal fave: revenge. And hate! Can’t believe you forgot that one.
love and communist greetings
Ben
If the lesson is that we should not be moralistic tools then I agree with you juancastro. And there are lots of cool things about the notion of ‘hippie’ – it’s just become a bit of a catch-all for a lot of not so cool things.
But juancastro I think the you are edging towards a discussion about what creates revolutionary subjectivity: that is what breaks us from a position of being the working class – the exploited labour-power that re/creates capital – and transforms us into becoming the proletariat – the social force that can create communism? And don’t say some mechanistic answer about the falling rate of profit. I don’t think anyone has ever looked at the financial papers, seen a a general tendency towards a decrees in the rate of profit, and then rushed to the barricades. Is it not often very personal emotional and irrational feelings that compel us to attempt to leap from this world to that? This could well be the love of a specific person. It could be a vast range of reactions around specific hopes, rages, fears etc. The ‘miracle’ of revolt is when these individual emotional motivations find a collective resonance that can sustain them to become something more.
rebel love
Dave
Jeez! Some of you are just desperate to argue all these tangential points that I don’t disagree with! Liz! ARGH!
@ndy said exactly what I did and yet none of you seem to be attacking him. Why meeeeeee!
RE Hippies, I agree there might be some good instincts there… but without political clarification they easily become elitist middle class ideas as described above. The number of times I’ve been in conversations whilst camping with people (loosely grouped as hippies) who cry out with such pained expressions on their faces: “people are just SOO materialistic!”… I could self-combust just thinking about their attitude.
And there’s nothing all that fantastic about a life dream of creating a recycling shop, owning a small crafts store or something similar in a quiet rural town somewhere… A goal which seems to be a common thread in my experience.
BTW Liz I haven’t been added to the elist for OGASN, and no one from the MSA or the Greens have replied to me as of yet.
BTW Dave
You’re right about the point I was trying to make earlier; not that love doesn’t play a part, but that the ‘love discourse’ isn’t the key subjective factor involved in the build up to revolutionary struggles. Sure, in the organised revolutionary groups it could be a theme of some importance, but masses of people are moved by more objective factors. As much as I sympathise with the sentiment… I really don’t think explaining the rise and fall of revolutionary upsurges through personal experiences of love is accurate or useful.
Individual feelings of passion, rage, rebellion, etc. bubble up all the time, but I think the reason they coalesce into something greater at key points in history is due to the broader social factors at play. This isn’t something that just us robotic socialists argue…
lumpnboy:
juan:
What am I supposed to do in a group of militants who expect me to leave in the cloakroom, I won’t say a few ideas — for my ideas would have led me to join the group — but the dreams and desires which never leave me, the wish to live authentically and without restraint? What’s the use of exchanging one isolation, one monotony, one lie for another? When the illusion of real change has been exposed, a mere change of illusion becomes intolerable. But present conditions are precisely these: the economy cannot stop making us consume more and more, and to consume without respite is to change illusions at an accelerating pace which gradually dissolves the illusion of change. We find ourselves alone, unchanged, frozen in the empty space behind the waterfall of gadgets, family cars and paperbacks.
People without imagination are beginning to tire of the importance attached to comfort, to culture, to leisure, to all that destroys imagination. This means that people are not really tired of comfort, culture and leisure but of the use to which they are put, which is precisely what stops us enjoying them.
The affluent society is a society of voyeurs. To each his own kaleidoscope: a tiny movement of the fingers and the picture changes. You can’t lose: two fridges, a mini-car, TV, promotion, time to kill… then the monotony of the images we consume gets the upper hand, reflecting the monotony of the action which produces them, the slow rotation of the kaleidoscope between finger and thumb. There was no mini-car, only an ideology almost unconnected with the automobile machine. Flushed with Pimm’s No.1, we savour a strange cocktail of alcohol and class struggle. Nothing surprising any more, there’s the rub! The monotony of the ideological spectacle makes us aware of the passivity of life: survival. Beyond the pre-fabricated scandals – Scandale perfume, Profumo scandal – a real scandal appears, the scandal of actions drained of their substance to the profit of an illusion which the failure of its enchantment renders more odious every day. Actions weak and pale from nourishing dazzling imaginary compensations, actions pauperized by enriching lofty speculations into which they entered like menials through the ignominious category of ‘trivial’ or ‘commonplace’, actions which today are free but exhausted, ready to lose their way once more, or expire under the weight of their own weakness. There they are, in every one of you, familiar, sad, newly returned to the immediate, living reality which was their birthplace. And here you are, bewildered and lost in a new prosaism, a perspective in which near and far coincide.
The concept of class struggle constituted the first concrete, tactical marshalling of the shocks and injuries which men live individually; it was born in the whirlpool of suffering which the reduction of human relations to mechanisms of exploitation created everywhere in industrial societies. It issued from a will to transform the world and change life.
Such a weapon needed constant adjustment. Yet we see the First International turning its back on artists by making workers’ demands the sole basis of a project which Marx had shown to concern all those who sought, in the refusal to be slaves, a full life and a total humanity. Lacenaire, Borel, Lassailly, Buchner, Baudelaire, Hölderlin – wasn’t this also misery and its radical refusal? perhaps this mistake was excusable then: I neither know nor care. What is certain is that it is sheer madness a century later, when the economy of consumption is absorbing the economy of production, and the exploitation of labour power is submerged by the exploitation of everyday creativity. The same energy is torn from the worker in his hours of work and in his hours of leisure to drive the turbines of power, which the custodians of the old theory lubricate sanctimoniously with their purely formal opposition.
People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to everyday life, without understanding what is subversive about love and what is positive in the refusal of constraints, such people have corpses in their mouths.
juancastro: you’re the one who went off on a tangent about love. sure, i helped with it, but only cos i’m procrastinating.
@ndy/intelligence forces: the newspaper Unless You’re Free was a joint project of mutiny & anarchist direct action. & there’s a newish sydney group called Sydney Anarchist Communist Trajectory, or SACT. they’re good, they meet at jura.
for love,
princess mob
juancastro wrote:
but ‘objective’ factors are not objective – they are social relations, and we only ever experience them as we can – as subjective, emotional people (ourselves constituted and torn by social relations).
Capital may alienate our creativity – thus creating an social world that appears to be constituted of objective ‘things’. Is not communism the breaking of this?
rebel love
Dave
On hippies:
Where is a social anarchist aesthetic to be found? Does it exist?
Yes, and I have found it.
PS. People who talk about revolution and class struggle without referring explicitly to Ren & Stimpy, without understanding what is subversive about love of cartoons and what is positive in the refusal of child constraints, such people have never belly-danced for revolution.
*throws his hands up in the air in defeat*
🙂
lumpnboy I did forget hate and revenge, you are correct. I quite enjoy both of those at times.
“Fight the student ALP! Push Matt Hilakari down the stairs!” oh yeah…. maybe that’s why the MSA won’t talk to you juancastro….
Anyway – sorry juancastro. I thought I added you but fucked up the email address. fixed now. Oops. but I don’t understand why you say that you wrote exactly what @ndy did. also your comment that is before mine wasn’t there when i wrote mine – being moderated I suppose… I hate the internet. and I generally think people shouldn’t breed. and i thought we were arguing about love?! down with child constraints! let the kids run on the road! huzzah!
Trying to talk to a guy who’s far from ALP hehe, more like anarcho-greenie if I had to guess.
No response though, so maybe I’m a dead end.
@ndy, I got another group to add to your Toscano list: Tunnerminnerwait and Maulboyheenner commemoration committee:
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,23811184-2862,00.html
Oi! Alarm isn’t just a forum! It was an organization (though, it is to be revived).
Nice, though. Thanks.
Hmm, wasn’t there an infoshop in Brisbane or something?
Sophia wrote:
Not any more there isn’t.
Really now? I wonder why.
Oh, and Dave: question, what’s your excuse for being okay with **** and even living with him, given his rather nasty habit of ******* on ********, ******** *****? Just curious! Personally I think that any infoshop or bookshop or whatever is going to have a lot of problems when there’s a ****** ****** living in the same building. 🙂
Hi Sophia. Sorry I don’t really understand the questions (with all the missing words and stuff). Is it a question about someone with the same name as me?
cheers
Dave
Oh come on, Dave. We all know what ****** ****** means. Read between the lines. Here’s a clue: it rhymes with ****.