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What's going on with Solidarity Federation?

SMS | 22.06.2009 09:01 | Social Struggles

The state we are in -

"Right, so a job i've been after for several years opened its recruitment window this week (a fortnight every year at best), and the blurb contains this gem:

[#]My prospective employers wrote:
We would particularly welcome applications from communities that are currently under-represented, such as people from a minority ethnic background and women[#].
I am neither of the above, and this has precisely zero impact on my ability to do the job. You can see how the BNP spin this as anti-white male prejudice. Cos it is, regardless of the intentions. Fucksake.
This thread particularly welcomes contributions from platformist fuckwits and male feminists defending this PC shite.

so am i being a bigoted cunt, or is it just that i'm a little pissed off to wait 18 months for a 10-day application window in which the absence of a dark-coloured vagina could consign me to 18 more months of tedious office shit?"

Amazingly the above quote was written, not by a member of the BNP on Stormfront, but a member of Solidarity Federation on a publicly accessible 'libertarian communist' website. The Solidarity Federation (SolFed) is a federation of class struggle anarchists advocating a strategy of anarcho-syndicalism as a method of abolishing capitalism and the state, and has historically had a reputation for being serious opponents of bigoted and reactionary ideas. But ironically the above quote from one of its members doesn't actually contravene Solfed's aims and principles as according to their constitution: "All members have the right to: Free expression of their ideas"

The question is what has turned a once active proponent of working class solidarity (Solfed came out of DAM - leading one of the most active anti-fascist initiatives of its era) and an advocate of collective workplace militancy into a repository for BNP-lite sentiment?

And what does it say about the state of the anarchist movement where members of revolutionary organisations can feel confident enough coming out publicly with this sort of stuff?

SMS

Comments

Hide the following 5 comments

i saw this too

22.06.2009 10:05

yeah i saw this thread too,  http://libcom.org/forums/libcommunity/fucking-pc-gone-mad-rant-thread-17062009.
i find the oft used phrase "pc gone mad" usually precurses racist, sexist, ableist, homophobic, etc statements and attitudes.
Unfortunately this sort of crap seems to come up a lot on certain "anarchist" forums, although to be fair lots of people on the thread called the poster out on his bigotry.

lib commenter


in fairness

22.06.2009 11:44

the admittedly retarded comments of one Sol Fed member (and which I think are out of character) does not a 'solfed a repository of BNP lite sentiment' make.
As has been pointed out plenty of people took him to task on his post.

nothingnegated


ncomfortable reading.

22.06.2009 12:05

Other prominent members of SolFed did defend him and his statements though.

Interestingly that thread on libcom does bring up the point quite well that it isn't the aggressive tone of many posters that puts people off posting there, it's the often quite dodgy opinions of some of the laddish regulars.

black-fem


women

22.06.2009 12:35

How many women post on Libcom? no more than 2 or 3. There used to be alot more women posting on that forum. wonder why they left.

hgj


Hang on a mo...

22.06.2009 13:05

Loud mouthed maybe, not sure about prominent ;).

I'm not sure how the phenomenon of individual members going off on one without thinking what they sound like is a problem peculiar to Solfed though? As is pointed out elsewhere, it was one person's rant which was clarified (or edited, depending on how charitable you're feeling) very quickly after being challenged. And the thread was then binned. Hardly Stormfront lite.

RR