Datacide has a stall again at this year’s Anarchist Bookfair in London.
This year’s London Anarchist Bookfair will be on Saturday 28th October from 10am to 7pm.
Venue: Park View School
West Green Road, London, N15 3QR
The Bookfair is open to the public and free to attend. There are no tickets and no need to book, just come along. Progammes will be available at the door, suggested donation £1.
Who can afford to live inside the law?
War among the poor (or ‘war of the poor against the poor’, ‘civil/internecine war of the poor’, etc.) is:
– An exaggerated and reductive name (too bloody and too simple) for a real phenomenon. Intra-class competition is often violent, sometimes lethal, endlessly rhetorical and always managed from above. The proprietors’ 500-year Plan.
– An oxymoron, if opposing bodies of ‘the poor’ are supposed to be autonomous belligerent subjects rather than someone else’s cannon fodder. An essential feature of ‘war’ is ignored. Has any group of ‘the poor’ ever fought an organized campaign of destruction exclusively against other poor people except under the influence of generals or senior managers?1 Of course the poor have fought autonomously many times, but the enemy was always an army sent out by some department of ‘the rich’.
For anyone trying to show that violent competition between proletarians amounts to ‘war among the poor’, few social situations could offer less useful evidence than the urban riots2 in the US (2014-15), the UK (2011) or France (2005)3. No one disputes that some working-class people were badly hurt and a few killed by non-police violence during some of those events, or, for example, that most of the homes accidentally burned in London were rented by the poor, or that ‘working-class’ cars built the Paris barricades, etc. etc. The stories of Muslim ‘identity’ groups ‘taking over’ the fighting in France by force, ‘pushing out’ left activists and unaffiliated local proletarians, are also well known and much disputed. And there’s no more reason to disbelieve the many reports of ugly individual beatings/stabbings/robberies than there is to forget that these things happen every night in the cities concerned, or to pretend that they could serve any conceivable collective purpose of a riot. [Read more →]
Rotten to the Grassroots
Twenty-sixteen was probably the worst year for online hate speech to date: a year when a loose network of neo-fascist trolls known as the Alt Right finally managed to overwhelm many online discussion platforms in the West, after years of trying.
Posing as members of an outraged, but otherwise ordinary public, these trolls flooded Facebook, Twitter, and many major news websites with hateful posts.
It seemed clear that they were striving to mould a new popular consensus of contempt for minorities everywhere… and by extension, a consensus of contempt for any social justice movement that stood in their way. And, to a degree, they succeeded in altering the public’s perceptions about everything from the new Star Wars movie, to the Brexit, to Hilary Clinton’s state of health, not to mention the election campaign of President Trump.
Maybe it would be more correct to call theirs an ‘unpopular consensus’ though, because no matter what the Alt Right would like us to believe, its extremist hate is still in a minority across the Western world. However, it is easy to forget this fact when its virtual foot soldiers are seizing an ever-increasing range of territory online.
How big of a range exactly? One study undertaken by the Anti-Defamation League found that 2.6 million anti-Semitic tweets had been posted to Twitter by just 1,600 individuals in 2016. Together, these anti-Semitic tweets were seen around 10 billion times.
The study’s authors noted that, ‘Waves of anti-Semitic tweets tend to emerge from closely connected online “communities.” These aggressors are disproportionately likely to self-identify as Donald Trump supporters, conservatives, or part of the “alt-right.”‘
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center, an NGO that monitors American hate groups, the Alt Right is a group bound together by, ‘a loose set of far-right ideals centered on “white identity” and the preservation of “Western civilization.” Alt-Right adherents stridently reject egalitarianism and universalism.’ [Read more →]
“Nihilists and buffoons are allergic to the slightest hint of significance”
Terry Eagleton, ‘On Evil’
Michael Moynihan (of Non, Blood Axis, Coup de Grace and Sleep Chamber, and a regular collaborator with other pro-Fascist musicians in the neo-folk, martial industrial and noise milieus) has miraculously acquired a reputation as something of a Fascist intellectual, as he is also a writer, editor and publisher of a range of books, magazines and journals. Moynihan was a member of the Abraxas Foundation, which co-founder Boyd Rice hoped would attract “a new demographic of people who are into the occult, Fascism, and Social Darwinism”. Along with Didrik Søderlind he authored the commercially successful Lords of Chaos – The Bloody Rise of the Satanic Metal Underground, which glamorised the Norwegian Black Metal scene while analysing it within the framework of his own occult Fascist concerns. He is also an associate of Adam Parfrey, whose Feral House publishing company has established itself as a major source of Fascist esoterica. Moynihan’s journal, Tyr, promotes a range of Fascist thinkers as well as corresponding pagan and occult notions, publishing pseudo-scientific articles and clunky political, cultural and music reviews aimed largely at promoting the works of his co-thinkers in the Fascist and pagan underground. Having read a fair amount of his work I think it’s safe to say that Moynihan’s reputation as an intellectual is more an index of the intellectual poverty of the radical right rather than proof of any substantial talent on his part. [Read more →]
We’re doing a table at the Warsaw Independent Bookfair Saturday 9 and Sunday 10 September 2017.
CF will do a talk based on Hedonism & Revolution – The Barricade and the Dancefloor Sunday at 14.45
Facebook Event for the Bookfair
Timetable of Talks
Infos in Polish, English, Russian:
For English scroll down // Русская версия внизу
Druga edycja Warszawskiego Niezależnego Kiermaszu Książek odbędzie się w Klubie Pogłos przy Burakowskiej 12 w dniach 9-10 września 2017. Jeśli piszesz, drukujesz, organizujesz, tłumaczysz, prowadzisz bibliotekę albo coś badasz, tworzysz lub po prostu, tak jak my, lubisz książki, wpadnij wesprzeć nas w działaniach na rzecz niezależnych wydawnictw i książkowej samoorganizacji. Zapraszamy na dyskusje, wykłady, warsztaty i koncerty w trakcie WNKK!
W ubiegłym roku w Kiermaszu udział brały różnorodne grupy z kraju i zagranicy, międzynarodowe kolektywy, migranci i migrantki mieszkający w Warszawie oraz dziesiątki miłośniczek i miłośników książek w każdym wieku. Nie możemy się doczekać, aby tegorocznej jesieni znów się z wami spotkać!
Oprócz wydarzeń związanych z tematyką wydawniczą, kiermasz to także przestrzeń warsztatów oraz spotkań poruszających szerokie spektrum tematów – chcemy oddać głos inicjatywom oddolnym i osobom wykluczanym z dominującego dyskursu //z powodu rasy, pochodzenia, płci, orientacji seksualnej, wieku, ekonomicznych barier lub sprawności//. Pomyślmy wspólnie jak dzielić się naszymi doświadczeniami, aby uczyć się od siebie nawzajem, z szacunkiem dyskutować nad alternatywami oraz spojrzeć krytycznie na współczesną rzeczywistość.
Wciąż niezdecydowani_e? Spójrzcie na tegoroczny program (http://warsawbookfair.esy.es/) i krótką video zajawkę z podsumowaniem WNKK 2016 (vimeo.com/183179046).
Jeśli macie jakieś pytania, chcecie włączyć się w przygotowanie wydarzenia lub pomóc w promocji i organizacji przed i w trakcie samego kiermaszu (np. przy plakatowaniu, przygotowywaniu przestrzeni, opiece nad dziećmi, etc.) piszcie na adres warsawbookfair[at]riseup.net (w temacie wpiszcie: “Pomoc”)
ENG
The second edition of the Warsaw Independent Bookfair will take place on September 9 and 10, 2017.
The fair will be hosted by the Pogłos Club (Burakowska, 12) and accompanied by events including discussions, lectures, workshops and concerts. We warmly invite writers and translators, artists and researchers, publishers and librarians (and also those who do not fit into these categories) to join us in promoting and putting into practice the idea of independent publishing and self-organisation. While the focus on publishing remains, this year will also include a series of parallel events on a broader range of topics with the aim of giving voice to the grassroots initiatives and groups so often excluded from the dominant discourse //whether for reasons of race, ethnicity, gender, sexuality, age, income or ability.// Let’s think how to share our experiences openly and with respect, make criticisms sharper and clearer and learn to discuss alternatives together.
Last year, the Bookfair gathered dozens of participants from Poland and abroad, migrants living in Warsaw and international collectives. We — both adults and children — had lots of fun and cannot wait to see you this autumn!
Still not sure? Have a look at a short video of the event (vimeo.com/183179046), learn about the venue and see last year’s program (www.warsawbookfair.esy.es).
If you’re interested in getting involved in helping out with the event or participating in the organising process leading up to the bookfair, please get in touch via email at warsawbookfair[at]riseup.net and add ‘help’ in the subject line for details. [Read more →]
