Various
Leaflets Critiquing Green Anarchist
One Green Anarchist, One Bullet, Finger on the Trigger & Pull It! (1996)
Red Alert by Unpopular Books (1997)
If Paul Rogers of Oxford Green Anarchist has broken with Richard Hunt why does he still use Hunt's ideas? (1997?)
All true anarchists agree that Richard Hunt is a racist scumbag and want nothing to do with him. The problem with Paul Rogers & Co. at Oxford Green Anarchist is that while they’ve ended their association with Richard Hunt, they are still using a good number of his fascist ideas. This is most obvious in Green Anarchist merchandise such as T-shirts and posters, many of which were designed by Hunt and are now mainly sold through the Nazi Alternative Green magazine. To take just one example, Green Anarchist still sell Hunt’s poster featuring the slogan Tax Is Theft. Anarchists quite rightly leave anti-tax agitation to the far-Right who try to use it as a way of tricking people into thinking fascism is radical. The Nazis might promise to get rid of tax to win votes (these slimebags lie even more than ordinary politicians) but they won’t get rid of the state! Anti-tax agitation is a big issue in America and its leading exponents such as Posse Comitatus have close ties with the Ku Klux Klan. Anarchists want to abolish government, to campaign against tax waters down this position and simultaneously leads people to associate the anarchist movement with the far-Right.
Syndicalism shows that it is possible to have a complex industrial society without hierarchies. Oxford Green Anarchist deny this in their platform. Worse still, they don’t explain how they plan to move from a complex mass society that can support a large population, to a world of small agricultural communities where there is less technology. Nazi scumbag Richard Hunt, who invented Oxford Green Anarchist’s ideology, says in the fascist Alternative Green that for this to happen there will have to be a 75% reduction in the population. Do Oxford Green Anarchist plan to set up death camps? Even if they simply want to leave the bulk of the working class to starve to death this is still fascist! Oxford Green Anarchist have a lot of explaining to do. However, anarchists are not sectarian like dogmatic marxists, now that the Green Anarchist Network has broken with Richard Hunt, it only has to break with his ideas and stop selling his posters to become an integral part of the anarchist movement. There are good people in the Green Anarchist Network whose energetic activism is an inspiration to others, it is a shame their excellent work is devalued by their association with Paul Rogers, who has not only worked politically in the past with Nazi scumbag Richard Hunt, but continues to use Green Anarchist as a vehicle for Hunt’s ideas. Real anarchists who are involved with GA should either force Oxford Green Anarchist to drop its genocidal platform, or if they are unable to do this leave Green Anarchist and join revolutionary groups that fight against all fascist ideologies.
ANARCHISM IS FREEDOM! SMASH THE STATE!
One Green Anarchist, One Bullet, Finger on the Trigger & Pull It! (1996)
Green Anarchist Throw Off the Mask of Liberalism! by Unpopular Books
In Green Anarchist No.39 (Autumn '95, page 24) Green Anarchist ran a proposal to set up a Green Colony in Southern Africa: "I propose the primitivist anarchist community gets off its arse to build and maintain a village as an example to not only the fanatical, class structured, Kropotkin toting anarchists but society in general. It'd be a nice to get away from it all. One can purchase 600 acres in Zimbabwe or Mozambique for US$66,000. This includes a double storey house with electricity and water. There's cheaper land available. I know someone who for US$2,100 purchased 1,550 square metres of undeveloped coastal land. In the next four years I hope to contact and enlist the support of 100-500 primitivist anarchists. These people should not only have the necessary finance but also the required able bodies and mental capabilities to establish a settlement."
The author Renato (or should that be Renamo) Quaroni goes on to sketch out building up a mailing list, developing guidelines and arranging access to the InterNet. GA respond to this proposal to set up a Green-ustan with the following note: "GA notes: Treat this project with caution. Given GA's security warning, you'd be mad to want your names posted in the InterNet! Renato is appealing for money because he hasn't got any. Enthusiasm is fine but get assurances about quality of land and political stability of the country it's in before committing yourself."
This is nothing short of the Nazi policy of Lebensraum or 'living space'. Whereas Nazi Germany wanted to colonise Eastern Europe, Green Anarchist is publishing proposals to do just the same in Southern Africa, although the scale of this proposal is more akin to the proto-Nazi Aryan communes set up in South America by Nietzsche's sister and others of her ilk in the 1890s. Land is cheap in Mozambique because years of war, sponsored by the South African Apartheid regime have left the country ravaged. Some of the inhabitants are so poor they arrive at the Zimbabwe border and try to sell their shoes in order to get a meal to eat. War and land mines have left many inhabitants badly injured with missing limbs. Renamo's plan excludes such people as untermensch (the Nazi term for sub-human). It is for wealthy westerners with access to substantial dollar funds.
GA publish this essentially fascist proposal as part of their "no censorship, no endorsement" policy. Aside from their usual paranoid remark about security, concern for Renamo's finances and the quality of the land, they advise the reader to "get assurances about the political stability of the country". These scum are one moment revelling in the reflected glory of the Tahitian uprising, and the next moment worrying about whether their colonists might wind up in a country where the state is insufficiently strong to suppress revolts against the property laws which allow the wealthy to exclude the poor and disabled from the land.
The Neoist Alliance issued a leaflet six months ago (Green Anarchism Exposed) pointing out the fascistic basis of GA's philosophy. Many people ignored this, dismissing it as a joke or a sectarian wrangle, as if opposing fascism is sectarianism. Just because Nazis replace swastikas with encircled As, does not make their ideas any more acceptable. Following a number of police raids on GA the Anarchist 'movement' has decomposed to such an extent that many other Anarchist groups have responded positively to GA's requests for solidarity. We say no solidarity with fascists.
Unpopular Books has published a pamphlet called Green Apocalypse. This contains two essays showing how GA's bizarre mix of fascism and anti-fascism has it roots in Bakuninism, how the GA lie machine smears those who dare criticise them, and is backed up by documentation of exchanges between the Neoist Alliance and others with GA.
Published as a leaflet by Unpopular Books, London October 1995.
Red Alert by Unpopular Books (1997)
World Revolution (WR) prides itself on a series of articles where it has subjected Bakunin the nineteenth century anarchist to an avalanche of criticism. But Bakunin is dead. But in response to well-founded criticism from the London Psychogeographical Association and Unpopular Books, the WR springs to the defence of Green Anarchist (GA), a right-wing anarchist group which has consistently dismissed the notion of class struggle as outdated, and has instead promoted a pseudo-existentialist notion of the revolutionary which draws its inspiration from the Oklahoma bombing in the USA and the Aum cults sarin poison attack on the Japanese underground system:
"Over all areas; animal rights, the environment, roads, the anti-JSA protests, we are going to see an increase in militancy, why? Because the ossified political structures are wholly unresponsive to peoples' needs and aspirations. The Unabomber, the ALF, Justice Department and ARM, the Oklahoma bombers and the Japanese Aum cult all show the direction it is going in. Outside of Middle Eastern Terrorism, events like the Oklahoma bomb would have been unthinkable 15 years ago. Such developments are inspirational and open up wide ranges of new possibilities. As far as I know, Britain has yet to develop some equivalent of the armed militia groups, but given the moronic totalitarianism of British politics, this can only be a matter of time." Into the 1990's with Green Anarchist (Green Anarchist Books, 1996)
Unpopular Books recently published Militias: Rooted in White Supremacy featuring two articles discussing the militia movement in the USA and a further essay on Anarchism and the Militias exposing GA's championing of the US militia movement and linking in the fascist apologetics of Nigel Pennick published in 1979 by the Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review. WR makes no mention of this, but pretends that our activity revolves around denouncing the International Communist Current of which they are the section in Britain. While it is true that we have spent a certain amount of energy exposing their clumsy attempts to present themselves as "the only organisation at present prepared to defend the revolutionary milieu" (WR No.190, Dec 1995). In fact, their energy goes into defending themselves from any criticism, denouncing anyone who dares breath a word against them as 'parasites'. In fact on two occasions (Is Subversion Sane? and Green Parasites) we have defended the ICC from unjustified allegations of Stalinism. This is because our goal is not a blind attack on the ICC out of petty jealousy, pique or some sort of stunt, but because we want to expose the Leninism which lays at the root of their behaviour.
Before looking deeper at the degeneracy of the ICC, it is necessary to clarify beyond doubt how Green Anarchist reject any sort of working class politics, and in fact despise the working class, seeing themselves as part of a 5% moral elite. Back in Spring 1994, Green Anarchist N0.34 devoted 5 pages to the class question. A few quotes:
"Class politics is attractive because it removes responsibility from the individual and places it on the working class as a whole."
"In practice, the class paradigm is not about a one-off battle between cops and strikers, nor a sustained campaign, class war or revolution, but it is really about keeping the conflict flowing along predictable lines, it is about political business as usual. the class paradigm uses the confrontational energy as a bargaining tool. It asks for higher wages, it asks for re-instatement if your sacked strikers, less pit closures etc. You know the script. Ultimately, the class paradigm reinforces the bosses right to rule."
"The class paradigm is not against the system but part of it, a vehicle for turning anger into hot air rather than activity, a way of wanking off creative energy into uselessness and futility. It is time we ditched this bankrupt ideology."The Class Paradigm by Lancaster Bomber
"What really motivates the revolutionary? The individual revolutionary, the person seeking change "Given that all of us want change . . ." etc is not in the first instance a sense of solidarity with the oppressed everywhere but the existential need to deny, the need to act against his or her own existential negation. Class in itself is not meaningfully homogeneous. We need to get rid of this wishful thinking, and start to think about ways in which we ourselves can act against our oppression. If we wait for other people, for the working class to do it for us, we shall be waiting a long time." The Dogma of Class Denied by Stephen Booth
"Society is split up so much that Steve Booth is probably right, the working class will never come together as a homogenous revolutionary group. This is not so much a defence of the Marxist sense of class but we need to be real about what is possible. Anarchism must be relevant to ordinary people because they have the power to change things for the better." The Dogma of Class Defended by Boris
"So support 3rd world peasant revolutions anyway, and let the working class here rot. And the so-called underclass could further undermine the property status quo by sowing seeds for food everywhere. Imagine town council flower beds ruined by a crop of spuds!" Class and Land by Mr Blobby
More recent articles in GA and Lancaster Bomber (part of the Green Anarchist Network) are even more disturbing. They have attacked resistance to the Job Seekers Allowance. Rather than seeing as this as an attack on workers and claimants, forcing people into low paid work, they propose Oklahoma style bomb attacks on dole offices. Apparently it doesn't matter if workers or claimants are killed as we are "passive clottery ticket buying masses" "who do not buy the Socialist Worker but the Sun and vote Tory/Tony". "Ordinary factory workers, maybe even your next door neighbour make the CS gas and electric torture prods, apply the telephone taps, operate the CCTV cameras and feed information into the black list scheme." (Anarchist Lancaster Bomber No.17 Jan 1997) They talk about developing an underground economy but fail to explain what exactly they mean by this. In fact there is an underground economy of child prostitution, crack dealing and extortion run by organised crime i.e. a strata of the capitalist class.
These few quotes serve to illustrate that far from being a "confused expression of an effort to relate to the class struggle" GA are virulent enemies of working class autonomy and instead want to promote an existentialist individualist view of revolt. It is no surprise that one of their heroes is Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a career soldier who tried to stage an anti-Nazi coup by assassinating Hitler. Lancaster Bomber suggest that his attempt failed "because he was not prepared to take the necessary steps to see it through to the end. Stauffenberg should have stayed with his briefcase." What stupidity! How can you stage a coup by blowing yourself up? They haven't even worked out that Stauffenberg was an elitist who wanted to get rid of the jumped up little corporal in order to patriotically take over the helm of the German state. These are the people who the ICC defend.
And as to the provocation? We have published Green Apocalypse which contains a detailed analysis of GA, and in particular applies a critique of Bakuninism in the context of contemporary politics, rather than simply tackling the old man's skeletons like the ICC. In it we can see where the provocations come. After the Neoist Alliance criticised GA for being as fascistic as their ideological architect Richard Hunt (Re:Action No.1, Winter Solstice 1994, reproduced in Green Apocalypse), GA responded with the fabrication that the editor of Re:Action was associated with the Nazi band Skrewdriver and indeed had acknowledgements on a record sleeve a decade ago. This was a simple lie. This was a provocation. Green Apocalypse scrupulously reproduces both texts from GA, Lancaster Bomber as well as those from the Neoist Alliance, LPA, G-Spot, Student Outlook as well as other texts. The ICC's defence of Green Anarchist is inexcusable. Implicit in this they are suggesting that GA's allegations concerning Skrewdriver are true, but without having the bottle to say so outright. Enough of such snide hiding in the shadows of Green Anarchist. Let them withdraw the allegation of provocation or present the evidence. GA have failed to present any evidence after two years because there is none.
Despite all the fine words criticising Bakunin, they end up going along with contemporary Bakuninism as analysed in Green Apocalypse. the reason because they know that the criticisms piled up by the LPA/Unpopular Books are exposing them for the shucksters they are. They are terrified because our publication The Revolution is Not a Masonic Affair, shows how freemasonry was used by the revolutionary bourgeoisie. Their critique of Bakunin is centred on his freemasonry/secret societies approach. Implicitly this refutes their theory of decadence, according to which bourgeois forms remain progressive until circa 1914. They have accused us of "gangster methods" (without giving any examples of what they mean). However it will be with the merciless logic of history that we will fully expose their fatuous posturing, their use of the German Left Communist to act as a fig leaf behind which they can hide the bourgeois role of bolshevism. But that must wait for a detailed pamphlet. In the meantime we hope this Red Alert, has clarified the latest degeneracy of World Revolution, which has reached such a stage that they can no longer be considered part of the revolutionary milieu.
Red Alert Earlier Draft
World Revolution abandon the communist movement to back right-wing Green Anarchist
RED ALERT
“While the inhabitants of the libertarian swamp reject centralised revolutionary organisation, the activity of these elements, to the extent that they haven't been sucked into leftism, is nevertheless directed against the ruling class. That of the LPA [London 0 01 Psychogeographical Association] is directed against proletarian political organisations. Mc This only highlights the difference between political parasitism and the swamp, even 3558 though they seem to express similar attitudes.
The elements of the swamp are generally contemptuous of political organisations because they see them as being irrelevant to the working class, but this can still be the confused expression of an effort to relate to the class struggle. On the other hand, the LPA with dibits sophisticated knowledge of history, has no interest in providing a coherent perspective for the working class. The activity of the LPA is devoted to creating notoriety 3 -for its presiding genius as a 'revolutionary' master based on all sorts of publicity stunts preach onejmore dubious than the other: provocations against the anarchist milieu, in particular Green Anarchist and Class War. .
'Political Parasitism discredits the struggle for communism’
World Revolution No.203, April 1997
World Revolution (WR) prides itself on a series of articles where it has subjected Bakunin, the nineteenth century anarchist, to an avalanche of criticism. But Bakunin is dead. But in response to well-founded criticism from the London Psychogeographical Association and Unpopular Books, the WR springs to the defence of Green Anarchist (GA), a rightwing anarchist group which has consistently dismissed the notion of class struggle as outdated, and has instead promoted a pseudo-existentialist notion of the revolutionary which draws its inspiration from the Oklahoma bombing in the USA and the Aum cults sarin poison attack on the Japanese underground system:
"Over all areas; animal rights, the environment, roads, the anti-JSA protests, we are going to see an increase in militancy, why? — Because the ossified political structures are wholly unresponsive to peoples' needs and aspirations. The Unabomber, the ALF, Justice Department and ARM, the Oklahoma bombers and the Japanese Aum cult all show the direction it is going in. Outside of Middle Eastern Terrorism, events like the Oklahoma bomb would have been unthinkable \ 15 years ago. Such developments are inspirational and open up wide ranges of new possibilities.
As far as I know, Britain has yet to develop some equivalent of the armed militia groups, but given the moronic totalitarianism of British politics, this can only be a matter of time."
Into the 1990's with Green Anarchist (Green Anarchist Books, 1996) Unpopular Books recently published Militias: Rooted in White Supremacy featuring two articles discussing the militia movement in the USA and a further essay on Anarchism and the Militias exposing GA’s championing of the US militia movement and linking it to the fascist apologetics of Nigel Pennick published in 1979 by the Cienfuegos Press Anarchist Review. WR makes no mention of this, but pretends that our activity revolves around denouncing the International ‘Communist’ Current (I‘C’C) of which they are the section in Britain. While it is true that we have spent a certain amount of energy exposing their clumsy attempts to present themselves as “the only organisation at present prepared to defend the revolutionary milieu” (W7? No.190, Dec 1995). In fact, they only worry about defending themselves from any criticism, denouncing anyone who dares breath a word against them as ‘parasites’. In fact on two occasions (Is Subversion Sane? and Green Parasites) we have defended the I‘C*C from unjustified allegations of Stalinism. This is because our goal is not a blind attack on the I‘C’C out of petty jealousy, pique or some sort of stunt, but because we want to expose the Leninism which lies at the root of their behaviour.
Before looking deeper at the degeneracy of the I‘C’C, it is necessary to clarify beyond doubt how Green Anarchist reject any sort of working class politics, and in fact despise the woiking class, seeing themselves as part of a 5% moral elite. Back in Spring 1994, Green Anarchist No.34 devoted 5 pages to the class question. A few quotes:
"Class politics is attractive because it removes responsibility from the individual and places it on the working class as a whole."
"In practice, the class paradigm is not about a one-off battle between cops and strikers, nor a sustained campaign, class war or revolution, but it is really about keeping the conflict flowing along predictable lines, it is about political business as usual, the class paradigm uses the confrontational energy as a bargaining tool. It asks for higher wages, it asks for reinstatement of sacked strikers, less pit closures etc. You know the script. Ultimately, the class paradigm reinforces the bosses right to rule."
"The class paradigm is not against the system but part of it, a vehicle for turning anger into hot air rather than activity, a way of wanking off creative energy into uselessness and futility. It is time we ditched this bankrupt ideology."
‘The Class Paradigm’, by Lancaster Bomber "What really motivates the revolutionary? The individual revolutionary, the person seeking change "Given that all of us want change . . etc is not in the first instance a sense of solidarity with the oppressed everywhere but the existential need to deny, the need to act against his or her own existential negation."
"Class in itself is not meaningfully homogeneous. We need to get rid of this wishful thinking, and start to think about ways in which we ourselves can act against our oppression. If we wait for cither people, for the working class to do it for us, we shall be waiting a long time."
‘The Dogma of Class Denied”, by Stephen Booth
"Society is split up so much that Steve Booth is probably right, the working class will never come together as a homogenous revolutionary group."
"This not so much a defence of the Marxist sense of class but we need to be real about what is possible. Anarchism must be relevant to ordinary people because they have the power to change things for the better."
‘The Dogma of Class Defended’, by Boris
"So support 3rd world peasant revolutions anyway, and let the working class here rot. And the so-called underclass could further undermine the property status quo by sowing seeds for food everywhere. Imagine town council flower beds ruined by a crop of spuds!"
‘Class and Land’, by Mr Blobby
More recent articles in GA and Anarchist Lancaster Bomber (part of the Green Anarchist Network) are even more disturbing. They have attacked resistance to the Job Seekers Allowance. Rather than seeing this as an attack on workers and claimants, forcing people into low paid work, they propose Oklahoma style tomb attacks on dole offices. Apparently it doesn’t matter if workers or claimants are killed as we are “passive clottery ticket buying masses” “who do not buy the Socialist Worker but the Sun and vote Tory/Tony”. “Ordinary factory workers, maybe even your next door neighbour make the CS gas and electric torture prods, apply the telephone taps, operate the CCTV cameras and feed information into the black list scheme.” (Anarchist Lancaster Bomber No. 17 Jan 1997) They talk about developing an underground economy but fail to explain what exactly they mean by this. In fact there is an underground economy of child prostitution, crack dealing and extortion run by organised crime — Le. a strata of the capitalist class.
These few quotes serve to illustrate that far from being a “confused expression of an effort to relate to the class struggle” GA are virulent enemies of the working class and instead want to promote an existentialist individualist view of revolt It is no surprise that one of their heroes is Count Claus von Stauffenberg, a career soldier who tried to stage an antiNazi coup by assassinating Hitler. Lancaster Bomber suggests that his attempt failed “because he was not prepared to take the necessary steps to see it through to the end. Stauffenberg should have stayed with his briefcase ” What stupidity! How can you stage a coup by blowing yourself up? They haven’t even worked out that Stauffenberg was an elitist who wanted to get rid of the jumped up little corporal in order to patriotically take over the helm of the German state. These are the people who the I‘C’C defend.
And as to the provocation? We have published Green Apocalypse which contains a detailed analysis of GA, and in particular applies a critique of Bakuninism in the context of contemporary politics, rather than simply tackling the old man’s skeletons like the 1‘C’C. In it we can see where the provocations come. After the Neoist Alliance criticised GA for being as fascistic as their ideological architect Richard Hunt (Reaction No.l, Winter Solstice 1994, reproduced in Green Apocalypse), GA responded with the fabrication that the editor of Reaction was associated with the Nazi band Skrewdriver and indeed had acknowledgements on a record sleeve a decade ago. This was a simple lie. This was a provocation. Green Apocalypse scrupulously reproduces both texts from GA, Anarchist Lancaster Bomber as well as those from the Neoist Alliance, LPA, G-Spot, Student Outlook as well as other texts. The 1‘C’C’s defence of Green Anarchist is inexcusable. Implicit in this they are suggesting that GA’s allegations concerning Skrewdriver are true, but without having the bottle to say so outright. Enough of such snide hiding in the shadows of Green Anarchist. Let them withdraw the allegation of provocation or present the evidence. GA have failed to present any evidence after over two years — because there is none. Neither have they withdrawn the allegation.
Despite all the fine words criticising Bakunin, they end up going along with contemporary Bakuninism as analysed in Green Apocalypse. The reason — because they know that the criticisms piled up by the LPA/Unpopular Books are exposing them for the shucksters they are. They are terrified because our publication The Revolution is Not a Masonic Affair, shows how freemasonry was used by the revolutionary bourgeoisie. Their critique of Bakunin is centred on his freemasonry/secret societies approach. Implicitly this refutes their theory of decadence, according to which bourgeois forms remain progressive until circa 1914 not the 1860’s. They have accused us of “gangster methods” (without giving any examples of what they mean by this). However it will be with the merciless logic of history that we will fully expose their fatuous posturing, their use of the German Left Communist to act as a fig leaf behind which they can hide the bourgeois role of bolshevism. But that must wait for another more detailed pamphlet.
In the meantime we hope this Red Alert, has clarified the latest degeneracy of World Revolution, which has reached such a stage that they can no longer be considered part of “the revolutionary milieu”.
Leutha Blissett, 1st May 1997
Texts available: The following leaflets are available: In Defence of Revolutionary Organisation, Is Subversion Sane?, Green Parasite, Swamp Thing No.s 1 &2, Sucked. Please send SAE and a few stamps to help cover the cost of photocopying.
Pamphlets available: Green Apocalypse — £3.50
The Revolution is Not a Masonic
Militias: Rooted in White Supren Full publication list available on request.
Unpopular Books, Box 15, Kingslar
1497160
9739HV3800
2001
MC 3558
9723HV1B13
Green Parasite by Unpopular Books (1996)
https://stewarthomesociety.org/ga/parasite.htm
I don't suppose I was the only one to get quite cross about Green Anarchist's latest smear. On page 27 of issue 43/44 (Autumn 96) in a review of Autonomedia's recent publication of This World We Must Leave and Other Essays by Jacques Camatte, they sneakily denounce Jacques Camatte as a former Stalinist. And here they aren't just using the epithet as a term of abuse. They categorically state that "Camatte's journal, Invariance, started out as a split from the Italian Communist Party (PCI)". Of course, it should come as no surprise that Green Anarchist are lying through their teeth, their ludicrous attacks on Stewart Home have shown truth to be the first casualty of their agenda. They now regularly declare that anyone who doesn't go along with their analysis is either a state asset or being manipulated by a state asset.
Nevertheless it is hard to see why they would want to smear Camatte, after all they hold him up as one of fountain heads of primitivism, even going so far as to suggest that the Unabomber's 'critique' of leftism "fits with a US anti-ideological current originating with Camatte and the SI [Situationist Internationale]' (Same page, response to a letter). Of course, the Unabomber's sub-Nietzschean twitterings bear no relationship with any of the theories developed by Invariance or any other communist groups.
The smear, conflating communists with the Communist Party is an old anarchist trick. At the same time however, they continually need to borrow from Communist theoretical work, thus many pro-situs believe that the Situationist International was anarchist, when it very clearly had nothing to do with the anarchist movement. Now they want to 'assimilate' Camatte. This process of 'assimilation' has been amply illustrated in my text 'The Sucking Pit', to be found in Green Apocalypse.
However, there still remains the puzzle of why should GA smear Camatte when they also want to pillage his contribution to the communist movement? The clue is perhaps to be found latter on in the same piece. After extolling the "richness of Camatte's thought" they then say "If further recommendation is needed 'Camatte is a bete noire' to the International Communist Current (ICC), a hilarious account of whom can be found in a recent Subversion." Here they quote the Autonomedia introduction where the ICC is held up as an equivalent of the International Communist Party, from which the Invariance group emerged. Whilst in GA's eyes Camatte is 'reformed Stalinist' who has seen the light, they are clearly implying that the ICC are still Stalinist.
Of course, many people will claim that this implies too much subtlety to GA, concurring with my description of Paul Rogers as being "intellectually inert". However, as Rogers has been seen cheek by jowl with a certain Michel Prigent, whose leaflets attacking Unpopular Books have even accused us of being Bordigo-Nashists, Rogers cannot pretend to be ignorant of the 'Italian Communist Left', of whom Bordiga and the International Communist Party constituted a major part. (In fact the ICC have produced the most useful English language book The Italian Communist Left 1926-45, available for £12 including p&p from World Revolution, BM Box 869, London WC1N 3XX. Also see Internationalists in France during the Second World War by Pierre Lanneret, available for £3 from Phoenix Press, P.O. Box 824, London N1 9DL). Prigent of course warbled to the tune of top French newspapers Le Monde, Liberation and Figaro, in denouncing Bordiga for his pamphlet Auschwitz, ou le grand alibi. He has yet to explain why he hasn't included Camatte's 'Evanescence du mythe antifasciste' on the same basis!
And here we have to turn to the ICC themselves, who have spent a great deal of space discussing the campaign against an 'ultra-left revisionism' by some of the French press, as well as parasitism. In my text In Defence of Revolutionary Organisation, I have already exposed their weaknesses. Suffice it to say they have dismissed the call to dissolve, and refuse to accept that their self-obsession has obscured their sense of judgement. Compared to war of lies mounted by the GA/Larry O'Hara/Michel Prigent contingent against the Neoist Alliance, the 'Manchester Altercation' seems a trivial affair. They have studiously avoided mentioning our publication of Green Apocalypse in order to foster the pretence that they were "the only organisation to defend the revolutionary milieu" (World Revolution No. 190). Did these fools not realise that it was only a matter of time before GA turned their lie machine upon them?
"Political currents are defined by their social function and parasitism is clearly counter-revolutionary" Its groups and individuals come from different political origins: some are renegades like the C[ommunist] B[ulletin] G[roup] and the FECCI [ICC External Faction], others are leftists like Hilo Rojo in Spain, or the Iranian SUCM [????]. Nevertheless parasitism has a common purpose and is clearly co-ordinated at some level, probably by state infiltration: in the present period the simultaneous emergence of groups in different countries singing the same tune about the madness and Stalinism of the ICC is remarkable." (World Revolution No.198, October 1996)
Now GA have emerged from the far right to join the anti-ICC chorus. The ICC hint at co-ordination and even state infiltration, but have yet to provide concrete evidence for this. Revolutionaries know that the state is set to crush the very thought of revolution even before the barricades are erected. It goes without saying that state agents are going to sniff around revolutionary groups, and from time to time soW discord. Therefore there is no point in publishing such speculation unless there is concrete evidence. We demand that the ICC publish what evidence they have. It is the height of irresponsibility to posture in such a way without such evidence as it prevents a scientific understanding of how the forces arranged against us function.
We also cannot passover the insulting stupidity of GA in their cryptic remark about Autonomedia's promise to publish two more volumes of Camatte's essays: "We await their publication with enthusiasm as they should do much more to improve the quality of debate in UK that (sic) the fragmentory (sic) pamphlets hawked around by those largely ignorant of their contents thus far." This refers primarily to Unpopular Books and also by inference to David Brown who translated much of the work. Let us be clear: what Autonomedia are palming off as the "Collected Works" simply happen to be those which have already been translated. No doubt repackaging those out of print pamphlets will help the text gain a bigger audience, if only because the book sells as a commodity better in bookshops. However, nothing is being added by this process, no attempt to check whether other texts have a specific relevance. Rather by highlighting Camette and separating him from the Invariance project as a whole we are faced by precisely the sort of cult of the personality so abjured by the Italian Left (and which we are actively combating through the Luther Blissett multiple name project).
In his introduction to What is Situationism? A Reader, Home warned that "Jean Barrot is the political theorist most likely to inherit the SI's mantle as guru to those anglo-american ultra-left obscurantists who look to France for intellectual leadership although he faces stiff opposition from Jacques Camatte" (p2). This appears to be coming about with Camatte moving swiftly into the lead. No doubt his dissolution of a class perspective will make him more acceptable to the middle classes than Barrot. But whatever the ebbs and flows of intellectual fads, I will carry forth Camatte's desire "to present the left [i.e. Left Communists] in its originality, to divide it from Leninism and Trotskyism, to make a real break with the Third International" (The Origin and Function of the Party Form, Postface 1974, English translation by Charlatan Stew 1977, p21)
Green Parasite Earlier Draft
“Like the flea, Bakuninism is a parasite that lives on the blood of real social movements. This is why Green Anarchism takes on board anything it thinks will appeal to potential leaflets attacking Unpopular Books have even accused us of being Bordigo-Nashists, Rogers cannot pretend to be ignorant of the ‘Italian supporters. There is no depth to Green Anarchism, its ideologists don’t care whether or not their doctrine is coherent, what they’re trying to project is an image that people will buy. It is precisely because Green Anarchism has no substance that its handful of adherents become hysterical if anyone ‘dares’ criticise them.”
Luther Blissett, ‘The Sucking Pit’ in Green Apocalypse, available from:
Unpopular Books
I don’t suppose I was the only one to get quite cross about Green Anarchist's latest smear. On page 27 of issue 43/44 (Autumn 96) in a review of Autonomedia’s recent publication of This World We Must Leave and Other Essays by Jacques Camatte, they sneakily denounce Jacques Camatte as a former Stalinist And here they aren’t just using the epithet as a term of abuse. They categorically state that “Camatte’s journal, Invariance, started out as a split from the Italian Communist Party (PCI)”. Of course, it should come as no surprise that Green Anarchist are lying through their teeth — their ludicrous attacks on Stewart Home have shown truth to be the first casualty of their agenda. They now regularly declare that anyone who doesn’t go along with their analysis is either a state asset or being manipulated by a state asset.
Nevertheless it is hard to see why they would want to smear Camatte — after all they hold him up as one of fountain heads of primitivism even going so far as to suggest that the Unabomber’s ‘critique’ of leftism “fits with a US anti- ideological current originating with Camatte and the SI [Situationist Internationale]” (Same page, response to a letter). Of course, the Unabomber’s sub-Nietzschean twitterings bear no relationship with any of the theories developed by Invariance or any other communist groups.
The smear, conflating communists with the Communist Party is an old anarchist trick. At the same time however, they continually need to borrow from Communist theoretical work — thus many pro-situs believe that the Situationist International was anarchist, when it very clearly had nothing to do with the anarchist movement Now they want to ‘assimilate’ Camatte. This process of ‘assimilation’ has been amply illustrated in my text ‘The Sucking Pit’, to be found in Green Apocalypse,
However, there still remains the puzzle of why should GA smear Camatte when they also want to pillage his contribution to the communist movement? The clue is perhaps to be found latter on in the same piece. After extolling the “richness of Camatte’s thought” they then say “If further recommendation is needed ‘Camatte is a bete noire" to the International Communist Cunent (ICC), a hilarious account of whom can be found in a recent Subversion"" Here they quote the Autonomedia introduction where the ICC is held up as an equivalent of the International Communist Party, from which the Invariance group emerged. Whilst in GA’s eyes Camatte is ‘reformed Stalinist’ who has seen the light, they are clearly nplying that the ICC are still Stalinist
Of course, many people will claim that this implies too luch subtlety to GA, concurring with my description of Paul logers as being “intellectually inert”. However, as Rogers has •een seen cheek by jowl with a certain Michel Prigent, whose
Communist Left’, of whom Bordiga and the International Communist Party constituted a major part (In fact it is the ICC who have produced the useful English language book The Italian Communist Left 1926-45, available for £12 including p&p from World Revolution, BM Box 869, London WC1N 3XX. Also see Internationalists in France during the Second World War by Pierre Lanneret, available for £3 from Phoenix Press, P.O. Box 824, London N1 9DL). Prigent, of course, warbled to the tune of top French newspapers Le Monde, i Liberation and Figaro, in denouncing J Bordiga for his pamphlet Auschwitz, ou le grand alibi. He has yet to explain why he hasn’t mentioned Camatte’s ‘Evanescence du mythe antifasciste’ on the same basis!
And now we have to turn to the ICC themselves, who have spent a great deal of space discussing the campaign against an ‘ultra-left revisionism’ by some of the French press, as well as what they term ‘parasitism’. In my text In Defence of Revolutionary Organisation, I have already exposed their weaknesses. Suffice it to say they have dismissed the call to dissolve, and refuse to accept that their self-obsession has obscured their sense of judgement Compared to war of lies mounted by the GA/Larry O’Hara/Michel Prigent contingent against the Neoist Alliance and Unpopular Books, the ‘Manchester Altercation’ seems a trivial affair. They have studiously avoided mentioning our publication of Green Apocalypse in order to foster the pretence that they were “the only organisation to defend the revolutionary milieu” {World Revolution No. 190). Did these fools not realise that it was only a matter of time before GA turned their lie machine upon them?
“Political currents are defined by their social function and parasitism is clearly counter-revolutionary” Its groups and individuals come from different political origins: some are renegades like the C[ommunist] B[ulledn] G[roup] and the FECCI [ICC External Faction], others are leftists like Hilo Rojo in Spain, or the Iranian SUCM [????]. Nevertheless parasitism has a common purpose and is clearly co-ordinated at some level, probably by state infiltration: in the present period the simultaneous emergence of groups in different countries singing the same tune about the madness and Stalinism of the ICC is remarkable.” {World Revolution No.198, October 1996)
Now GA have emerged from the far right to join the leftist anti-ICC chorus. The ICC hint at co-ordination and even state infiltration, but have yet to provide concrete evidence for this. Revolutionaries know that the state is set to crush the very thought of revolution even before the barricades arc erected. It goes without saying that state agents arc going to sniff around revolutionary groups, and from time to lime sow discord and spread lies. Therefore there is no point in publishing such speculation unless there is concrete evidence. We demand that the ICC publish what evidence they have. It is the height of irresponsibility to posture in such a way without such evidence as it prevents a scientific understanding of how the forces arranged against us function.
We also cannot passover the insulting stupidity of GA in their cryptic remark about Aulonomcdia’s promise to publish two more volumes of Carnatic’s essays: “We await their publication with enthusiasm as they should do much more to improve the quality of debate in UK that (sic) the fragmentary (sic) pamphlets hawked around by those largely ignorant of their contents thus far.” This refers primarily to Unpopular Books and also by inference to David Brown who translated much of the work. Let us be clear: what Autonomedia arc palming off as the “Collected Works” simply happen to be those texts which have already been translated. No doubt repackaging those out of print pamphlets will help the texts gain a bigger audience, if only because books sell better as commodities in bookshops. However, nothing is being added by this process, no attempt to check whether other texts have a specific relevance and so to organise their translation. Rather by highlighting Camatte and separating him from the Invariance project as a whole we are faced by precisely the sort of cult of the personality so abjured by the Italian Left (and which we are actively combating through the Luther Blissett multiple name project).
In his introduction to What is Situationism? A Reader, Home warned that “Jean Barrot is the political theorist most likely to inherit the Si’s mantle as guru to those anglo- american ultra-left obscurantists who look to France for intellectual leadership — although he faces stiff opposition from Jacques Camatte” (p2). This appears to be coming about with Camatte moving swiftly into the lead. No doubt his dissolution of a class perspective will make him more acceptable to the middle classes than Barrot. But whatever the ebbs and flows of intellectual fads, I will carry forth Camatte’s desire “to present the left [i.e.Left Communists] in its originality, to divide it from Leninism and Trotskyism, to make a real break with the Third International” (The Origin and Function of the Party Form, Postface 1974, English translation by Charlatan Stew 1977, p21)
Luthert Blissett, October 1996
Send 3 Second Class stamps for our leaflets Sucked and In Defense of Revolutionary Organisation. Also see Debate No.2 in Transgressions #2, where I demolish John Moore’s ‘anarcho-primitivism’. (This is available for £7.50 from Transgressions, Department of Geography, Newcastle University, Newcastle NE1 7RU)
On Workers Autonomy
More and more workers are realising that the trade unions have become Little more than organisations selling insurance. But even in their traditional role, they have continual undermined working class struggles throughout this century. This pamphlet looks at how workers have organised to escape the limitations of the unions in order defend their own class interests against those of capital, and how this struggle for autonomy offers a basis for the revolutionary dictatorship of the proletariat
£1.00
Out Now!
also available from Unpopular Books:
Green Apocalypse
An analysis of Green Anarchist as unification of far-Right primitivism with the organisational techniques of the anarchist Mikhail Bakuninisc Reviews the smear tactics used by Green Party activist, Larry O’Hara, and how they have been effectively rebuffed.
Open Creation and its Enemies
Two articles by Asger Jom which appeared in the journal Situationniste Internationale. These previously neglected works show how Jom had a depth of vision which went beyond both that of Nash and Debord. Also includes the Manifesto (SJ.
£3.00
Black Mask
A collection of all the material from Black Mask, the radical New York group who transformed themselves from avant-garde artists into revolutionary hipsters. It also includes Up Against the Wall Motherfucker and other related leaflets and
£5.00
Class Struggle in a German Town
An account of radical intervention in a nuclear power plant construction in Phillipsburg from an original article that appeared in the German magazine Wildcat. It deals with how certain areas of work have been organised by sub-contractors to the disadvantage of the workers.
£1.00
The Decadence of the Shamans
This booklet argues that the real contribution to human culture made by the old-time shamans will be re-appropriated not through the individual solutions offered in the salons of the New Age, but in the context of the free activity of humanity in a society without money, classes or states.
£3.00
The Revolution is Not a Masonic Affair
Boris Nicholaevsky’s study of how various secret societies were active in the First International. This concentrates on the coteries French Freemasons in exile and their relation to figures like Mazzini and Garibaldi rather than the manouvres of Bakunin
covered in Green Apocalypse.
£2.00
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