It is undeniable that over the past couple of years, Indymedia moderation has on occasion allowed itself to be subjective, partisan and to assist with the agenda of cliques and commentators in suppressing information, mediating discussion through its ability to hide comments and in allowing non-pacifist struggle abroad and in the UK to be consistently denigrated. Moderators have repeatedly removed comments which express solidarity with insurrectionary and revolutionary ideas, whilst leaving comments up which attack those ideas and the attacks which result from this tendency.

As anarchists, it is important that we reflect continually on our own projects and that we are flexible enough to change them or dissolve them when we feel they are no longer useful or are felt to have become damaging to social struggle. It is obvious to us that sincere revolutionaries in this country have by and large ceased to make use of the comments pages precisely because they are so routinely censored by being hidden on the pretext of an ‘editorial guideline’. It is equally obvious that this function is now being used almost singularly by the security services, fascists, and reactionary liberals to sow discontent and to demoralise people. Indymedia has become the vector of a psychological operation waged by the state. The moderation is now apparently so fully infiltrated and it’s larger function so subverted, we have taken the strategic decision to remove the ability to make comments on articles, communiqués and news items. We will also be reviewing the editorial guidelines, for example the guideline against questioning IMC decisions. No one should be above questioning, not least us. We accept at this juncture that as a collective, we have to be more accountable and our interventions more transparent.

Our decision to alter the nature of the website is also because, while we agree to use technology to spread news of struggle against the current social order, our evolution both as individuals, anarchists and as a species requires that we learn discretion and the intelligence to know when to stop. The contemporary fetish for social networking sites merely encourages the kind of faceless, mediated, rude and dangerous interactions and bullying that we have seen emerging through the comments pages on Indymedia. We have seen the havoc that indiscriminate and cynical use of technology can wreak, in our personal lives and in the larger society. We have no way of knowing who is using our site and who is commenting and this is why it is such a spectacular weapon in the hands of the state. We are against civilisation and without removing the tool of Indymedia completely, we will not allow our alternative media to continue to be used by those who want to destroy us.

Please feel free to use Indymedia to disseminate news and particularly your action reports.

The Comments Function will be disabled some time later on April 1st.