Indymedia: It's time to move on
A reposter | 17.02.2013 19:48 | Indymedia
Two weeks ago, on 31st January, the Nottingham Indymedia collective disabled the ability to publish new newswire items. This drastic action was taken in order to demonstrate what will be lost if the collective folds, in the hope that those who use the site will step up to keep it going. A meeting will be held at the Sumac Centre tomorrow, on Monday 18th Feb, to discuss the future of the project and all those with an interest in being involved are invited to attend.
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/indymedia-its-time-move/
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/indymedia-its-time-move/
Indymedia is the name given to a particular network with a rather uneven global reach, to which many hundreds of local independent media projects, mostly web-based, have been affiliated at one time or another. It is also the name for a particular approach to news media – one that attempts to avoid hierarchal production and hence promote grassroots reports on events.
It seems to me that the moment has arrived to examine the Indymedia model and ask whether it is still useful and necessary to the social movements that it grew from. After all, a lot has changed since 1999, when the first Indymedia site was launched, both in terms of the online environment and the outside world.
On the web, we have seen the rise of corporate empires like Facebook and Twitter : monoliths with hundreds of millions of users and an apparent stranglehold on dissemination of information online. Pockets of resistance exist: open source enclaves that don’t seek property rights on everything you post and federate with others rather than seeking global dominion. However, these tiny anomalies are few and far between, pushed out to the margins of a web that is increasingly enclosed by multi-million dollar businesses.
The rise of the giants has been propelled by massive investment in developing software. The resulting flexibility and capability of Facebook and friends makes these sites attractive to the user who wants to quickly and easily communicate their ideas and plans to hundreds and even thousands of others.
The undoubtedly dirty money that the corporate monsters get through stealth advertising, selling other people’s content and from ‘no strings attached’ venture capital is what makes this constant development possible. Volunteer coders who scrabble to find time for independent projects in between day jobs and political activism simply cannot compete, however ingenious their ideas. The result is that the anti-corporate web is often buggier, clunkier and more out-of-date than its capitalist rivals. Users who are often unaware or don’t care about the politics simply opt for the slicker sites.
Indymedia collectives in the UK are no strangers to this phenomenon. The UK Indmedia/Mayday collective site runs on a Content Management System (CMS) called Mir that was migrated to 10 years ago. This gives the site the look and feel of a 10-year old site: rather old in web development terms. London Indymedia decided enough was enough and one of their techs developed Hyperactive, a CMS that was meant to incorporate some of the features that had been developed as part of ‘Web 2.0’ and that are now commonplace on social media sites. It was taken up by a number of regional sites, including Nottingham in 2010. Unfortunately the usual time and energy constraints on the people involved conspired to thwart the project. Hyperactive is no longer under development and Indymedia seems to be unable to find a sustainable way of keeping up to date.
It is not just the online environment that has changed. I would question whether a coherent user community still exists in the same way that it did at the height of the anti-globalisation movement. The loose coalition of anti-capitalist, environmental and anti-war movements that protested the big summits of global power has evolved in many directions. Many of those involved took note of the diminishing returns of spectacular protests and looked for other avenues for their dissidence.
Those who chose to embed themselves in local struggles whilst ‘thinking global’ were amongst those who set up and nourished a proliferation of local Indymedia collectives in the early years of the 21st Century. This was certainly true of Nottingham Indymedia, which was launched soon after the Gleneagles anti-G8 protests of 2005 in an attempt to sustain the local activity that had been mobilised.
Fast forward to 2013 and it is clear that these movements have suffered many defeats, police spy infiltration and repression and many activists have burned out or moved on with their lives. Movements that came along in their absence, such as the anti-cuts movements, have seemed ephemeral and have not been able to sustain themselves. The younger generations that might have replaced them look to newer, amorphous brands, such as Anonymous and Occupy, which don’t have an obvious local manifestation. The result is that many activists no longer seem to have affinity with Indymedia, which has become associated with movements of the past that have run their course.
However, I don’t just want to look at the cultural peculiarities of Indymedia as it has manifested itself in this time and place. What of the underlying model of media production and dissemination that underpins these particular individual instances?
To my mind, Indymedia has three major strengths: eradicating hierarchy, protecting privacy and enabling collective media production.
Firstly, Indymedia seeks to undermine the traditional media model of editorial hierarchies which filter out the vast majority of content and viewpoints according to the whims of the gatekeepers. Indymedia encourages a proliferation of voices and stories, often through open publishing on the web.
Whilst open publishing has become commonplace on web forums and mailing lists, the idea of open publishing for news remains controversial, largely because many are still in thrall to the idea that certain viewpoints are more important and more accurate than others.
The idea behind overthrowing this hierarchy was to allow the previously voiceless and marginalised the opportunity to speak. In practice, this is hard to achieve. Few Indymedia sites allow totally open publishing because soon they would be overrun with bullying, abusive behaviour, used as a platform for authoritarian and discriminatory viewpoints and to spread malicious lies.
Indymedia sites tend to have a set of guidelines and moderators to remove posts that infringe them. The problem with this is that it can reinstate hierarchy by the backdoor. The moderators can easily slip into an editorial role, making decisions that, subconsciously or not, influence the character and environment of the site and consequently the user community.
For this reason, Indymedia collectives strive to ensure that moderation is transparent and accountable to the wider community. Again, this is the principle but the reality often fails to live up to it. Few individuals have the time and energy to scrutinise every moderation decision or go to collective meetings unless they are already a member of the collective (and therefore part of the in-group). Indeed, the recent history of Indymedia in the UK has largely been one of schisms between different in-groups hostile to what they perceive as external ideas about how to run their site.
These limitations aside, I firmly believe that the principle of access to the creation of media for all has revolutionary implications and is needed to break the hold of the media empires. A grassroots media from below is needed to challenge the narrative of the powerful and assert the viewpoint of those excluded from mainstream discourses. Whether the open publishing model is the best way to achieve that goal or not is open to debate.
The second major strength of Indymedia has been its promotion of anonymity in a world of state and corporate monitoring and control. Whilst mainstream sites track IP addresses and every mouse click you make, many Indymedia sites have been robust in not logging user data and allowing the powerless the possibility of not being scrutinised by the powerful.
The dangers of complying with the statist aim of controlling the internet are clear. There are numerous examples of sites giving up user data to the authorities to enable prosecutions and repression. Indymedia sites publishing reports of interest to the police and other security agencies have been raided and had servers seized. Thanks to the security measures in place, these police state measures have not led to personally identifiable data being grabbed. Protecting the identities of users who choose not to disclose is essential, in order to give confidence to those who take direct action against the powers that be.
As with all of these principles, however, anonymity has a dark side. When no one knows who is speaking, it is easy to maliciously impersonate other people, to infiltrate discussions and derail them. But perhaps this also encourages the reader to question what s/he is being told and to try to dig deeper in an attempt to find the truth.
The final key ingredient to Indymedia, and probably most often neglected, is the aim of collective creation of media. More than just a resource, Indymedia should be a community greater than the sum of individual contributions. When I first got involved in the network, there was intense collaborative activity on mailing lists in order to craft feature articles, set up media stations at major actions and share knowledge and expertise. Over time, differences of opinion and infighting have set in and the UK network has irreversibly broken down. There is no longer much of a meaningful Indymedia community and very little collaboration outside of a few small groups of Indymedia ‘professionals’.
The result is that a lot of the energy and excitement has gone and more than a few collectives seem to continue out of duty rather than a positive commitment to the project. Providing a platform and the motivation for the collective creation of media were essential in making Indymedia a rewarding network to be in and in taking its output much further than a collection of isolated individual viewpoints ever could.
So, given all of the above, is Indymedia still important? Yes, absolutely, as an idea. Unlike some, I am not particularly fussed about the Indymedia name and brand; what is important is that a media from below continues to flourish and challenge the media imposed from above. I have tried to outline what I see as the major challenges and obstacles that will inevitably crop up – the struggle to keep up technologically, the necessity of avoiding hierarchical organisation and exclusion and the need to support community and collaboration as well as giving voice to dissent.
I think it is high time for those involved in Indymedia and other similar projects to examine the new political and social terrain, to evolve and adapt in order to continue what Indymedia has set in motion. I am not content to keep banging my head against the same limiting brick walls forever; I want to find ways of moving over them, avoiding them or undermining them. Now seems as good a time as any to start looking for fellow travellers.
Our decision to curtail publishing on the Nottingham Indymedia site and call a meeting is an attempt to create a space for new ideas. We are not interested in continuing along the slow but certain path to total irrelevance but want to draw in new people and start off in new directions whilst remaining faithful to the underlying principles of Indymedia.
The mainstream media has recently been exposed once again as utterly corrupt, devoid of ethics and manipulative. However, few independent media outlets can come up with a sustainable alternative which gives a voice to those who have been spoken over for so long. This article has been written in the hope that others will reflect on the successes and failures of the Indymedia movement and that new independent media models can be developed from its legacy.
It seems to me that the moment has arrived to examine the Indymedia model and ask whether it is still useful and necessary to the social movements that it grew from. After all, a lot has changed since 1999, when the first Indymedia site was launched, both in terms of the online environment and the outside world.
On the web, we have seen the rise of corporate empires like Facebook and Twitter : monoliths with hundreds of millions of users and an apparent stranglehold on dissemination of information online. Pockets of resistance exist: open source enclaves that don’t seek property rights on everything you post and federate with others rather than seeking global dominion. However, these tiny anomalies are few and far between, pushed out to the margins of a web that is increasingly enclosed by multi-million dollar businesses.
The rise of the giants has been propelled by massive investment in developing software. The resulting flexibility and capability of Facebook and friends makes these sites attractive to the user who wants to quickly and easily communicate their ideas and plans to hundreds and even thousands of others.
The undoubtedly dirty money that the corporate monsters get through stealth advertising, selling other people’s content and from ‘no strings attached’ venture capital is what makes this constant development possible. Volunteer coders who scrabble to find time for independent projects in between day jobs and political activism simply cannot compete, however ingenious their ideas. The result is that the anti-corporate web is often buggier, clunkier and more out-of-date than its capitalist rivals. Users who are often unaware or don’t care about the politics simply opt for the slicker sites.
Indymedia collectives in the UK are no strangers to this phenomenon. The UK Indmedia/Mayday collective site runs on a Content Management System (CMS) called Mir that was migrated to 10 years ago. This gives the site the look and feel of a 10-year old site: rather old in web development terms. London Indymedia decided enough was enough and one of their techs developed Hyperactive, a CMS that was meant to incorporate some of the features that had been developed as part of ‘Web 2.0’ and that are now commonplace on social media sites. It was taken up by a number of regional sites, including Nottingham in 2010. Unfortunately the usual time and energy constraints on the people involved conspired to thwart the project. Hyperactive is no longer under development and Indymedia seems to be unable to find a sustainable way of keeping up to date.
It is not just the online environment that has changed. I would question whether a coherent user community still exists in the same way that it did at the height of the anti-globalisation movement. The loose coalition of anti-capitalist, environmental and anti-war movements that protested the big summits of global power has evolved in many directions. Many of those involved took note of the diminishing returns of spectacular protests and looked for other avenues for their dissidence.
Those who chose to embed themselves in local struggles whilst ‘thinking global’ were amongst those who set up and nourished a proliferation of local Indymedia collectives in the early years of the 21st Century. This was certainly true of Nottingham Indymedia, which was launched soon after the Gleneagles anti-G8 protests of 2005 in an attempt to sustain the local activity that had been mobilised.
Fast forward to 2013 and it is clear that these movements have suffered many defeats, police spy infiltration and repression and many activists have burned out or moved on with their lives. Movements that came along in their absence, such as the anti-cuts movements, have seemed ephemeral and have not been able to sustain themselves. The younger generations that might have replaced them look to newer, amorphous brands, such as Anonymous and Occupy, which don’t have an obvious local manifestation. The result is that many activists no longer seem to have affinity with Indymedia, which has become associated with movements of the past that have run their course.
However, I don’t just want to look at the cultural peculiarities of Indymedia as it has manifested itself in this time and place. What of the underlying model of media production and dissemination that underpins these particular individual instances?
To my mind, Indymedia has three major strengths: eradicating hierarchy, protecting privacy and enabling collective media production.
Firstly, Indymedia seeks to undermine the traditional media model of editorial hierarchies which filter out the vast majority of content and viewpoints according to the whims of the gatekeepers. Indymedia encourages a proliferation of voices and stories, often through open publishing on the web.
Whilst open publishing has become commonplace on web forums and mailing lists, the idea of open publishing for news remains controversial, largely because many are still in thrall to the idea that certain viewpoints are more important and more accurate than others.
The idea behind overthrowing this hierarchy was to allow the previously voiceless and marginalised the opportunity to speak. In practice, this is hard to achieve. Few Indymedia sites allow totally open publishing because soon they would be overrun with bullying, abusive behaviour, used as a platform for authoritarian and discriminatory viewpoints and to spread malicious lies.
Indymedia sites tend to have a set of guidelines and moderators to remove posts that infringe them. The problem with this is that it can reinstate hierarchy by the backdoor. The moderators can easily slip into an editorial role, making decisions that, subconsciously or not, influence the character and environment of the site and consequently the user community.
For this reason, Indymedia collectives strive to ensure that moderation is transparent and accountable to the wider community. Again, this is the principle but the reality often fails to live up to it. Few individuals have the time and energy to scrutinise every moderation decision or go to collective meetings unless they are already a member of the collective (and therefore part of the in-group). Indeed, the recent history of Indymedia in the UK has largely been one of schisms between different in-groups hostile to what they perceive as external ideas about how to run their site.
These limitations aside, I firmly believe that the principle of access to the creation of media for all has revolutionary implications and is needed to break the hold of the media empires. A grassroots media from below is needed to challenge the narrative of the powerful and assert the viewpoint of those excluded from mainstream discourses. Whether the open publishing model is the best way to achieve that goal or not is open to debate.
The second major strength of Indymedia has been its promotion of anonymity in a world of state and corporate monitoring and control. Whilst mainstream sites track IP addresses and every mouse click you make, many Indymedia sites have been robust in not logging user data and allowing the powerless the possibility of not being scrutinised by the powerful.
The dangers of complying with the statist aim of controlling the internet are clear. There are numerous examples of sites giving up user data to the authorities to enable prosecutions and repression. Indymedia sites publishing reports of interest to the police and other security agencies have been raided and had servers seized. Thanks to the security measures in place, these police state measures have not led to personally identifiable data being grabbed. Protecting the identities of users who choose not to disclose is essential, in order to give confidence to those who take direct action against the powers that be.
As with all of these principles, however, anonymity has a dark side. When no one knows who is speaking, it is easy to maliciously impersonate other people, to infiltrate discussions and derail them. But perhaps this also encourages the reader to question what s/he is being told and to try to dig deeper in an attempt to find the truth.
The final key ingredient to Indymedia, and probably most often neglected, is the aim of collective creation of media. More than just a resource, Indymedia should be a community greater than the sum of individual contributions. When I first got involved in the network, there was intense collaborative activity on mailing lists in order to craft feature articles, set up media stations at major actions and share knowledge and expertise. Over time, differences of opinion and infighting have set in and the UK network has irreversibly broken down. There is no longer much of a meaningful Indymedia community and very little collaboration outside of a few small groups of Indymedia ‘professionals’.
The result is that a lot of the energy and excitement has gone and more than a few collectives seem to continue out of duty rather than a positive commitment to the project. Providing a platform and the motivation for the collective creation of media were essential in making Indymedia a rewarding network to be in and in taking its output much further than a collection of isolated individual viewpoints ever could.
So, given all of the above, is Indymedia still important? Yes, absolutely, as an idea. Unlike some, I am not particularly fussed about the Indymedia name and brand; what is important is that a media from below continues to flourish and challenge the media imposed from above. I have tried to outline what I see as the major challenges and obstacles that will inevitably crop up – the struggle to keep up technologically, the necessity of avoiding hierarchical organisation and exclusion and the need to support community and collaboration as well as giving voice to dissent.
I think it is high time for those involved in Indymedia and other similar projects to examine the new political and social terrain, to evolve and adapt in order to continue what Indymedia has set in motion. I am not content to keep banging my head against the same limiting brick walls forever; I want to find ways of moving over them, avoiding them or undermining them. Now seems as good a time as any to start looking for fellow travellers.
Our decision to curtail publishing on the Nottingham Indymedia site and call a meeting is an attempt to create a space for new ideas. We are not interested in continuing along the slow but certain path to total irrelevance but want to draw in new people and start off in new directions whilst remaining faithful to the underlying principles of Indymedia.
The mainstream media has recently been exposed once again as utterly corrupt, devoid of ethics and manipulative. However, few independent media outlets can come up with a sustainable alternative which gives a voice to those who have been spoken over for so long. This article has been written in the hope that others will reflect on the successes and failures of the Indymedia movement and that new independent media models can be developed from its legacy.
A reposter
e-mail:
http://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/indymedia-its-time-move/
Comments
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Utter rubbish.
17.02.2013 20:22
That's not very long I have to say. And involved in what way exactly?
Indymedia is fine enough and has a role in publishing which increases in legitimacy by the day. For instance, how many of you can now post on the internet without having to sign in to Twitter, Facebook, Tumblr, Google, Yahoo and Discus first? What I mean is how many of you can now comment without having to first travel over to the US where you must personally identify yourself to a service which is routinely monitored by the security and intelligence services?
How many is that again? Ummm, would that be zero by any chance?
The web is being closed down and it is Facebook, Twitter and Google that are closing it down. Funnily enough, they are sworn to tell you how much they love you while they are doing it. In the very near future, you will not be able to comment at all anywhere in the world on any website MSM or supposedly independent site without first being forced to pass through a vetting and monitoring service. You yourselves will have created the police state that you claim to have been fighting. How's that for fucking stupid?
Indymedia allows you to comment and allows you to comment with freedom to speak. You can say what you want and you can say anything you want. You can do it without being monitored by the intelligence services of foreigners who do not understand your culture or your idelology. To say that Indymedia is finished because of some easily guessed at idea of what constitutes good publsihing is something anybody can do. This article contains nothing but guesswork and silliness. Long standing users of Indymedia will know why this "campaign" to delegitimise IMC is ongoing and will find it very easy to get at who is responsible for it.
You see, we reject the idea that all you have to do to make something stick is to endlessly repeat some juvenile piece of garbage until such time as people simply give up arguing against it. We reject that and we reject the people that build this world of injustice by taking that approach. It isn't reasonable and it isn't mentally sound. One wonders at the mental health of people who do that. My friends call it fanaticism, I call it totalitarianism. It isn't legitimate we all agree.
If you want to write "yet another article" about the demise of Indymedia, and lets face it, you have done little else for the last 5 years, then I would suggest you actually stick to the facts, none of which point to the IMC project finishing.
The more this global malevolent shadow builds to smother and take ownership of our freedoms, the more relevant and legitimate Indymedia becomes.
So I guess that for now anyway, Indymedia's enemies will just have to sit back, do the figures, add up the nays and the yays, and will have to come to the conclusion that the data demands they conclude with...
Indymedia lives on.
anonymous
What ever happened to UK independent media?
17.02.2013 23:14
Yet nothing has come to replace these. Where are the new networks?
I know that the 'younger people' (cf Prince Charles: 'Hello, you're a young person are you? How long have you been young?' etc) mostly do Blogs, Facebook and Twitter, but two main thoughts that come to mind are...
A: Is the idea of a 'publication' now redundant?
Text-length tweets, disparate atomised Bloggers and FB banter hardly replace the concept of a publication. Call me old fashioned, but I can't see why the idea of a publication should be a redundant idea. It's about having an editorial position, a prescribed range of subject matter and format, and publishing articles which are consistently of a certain quality, and reflecting the editorial line. Readers seek out publications which they largely agree with, or provide them with what they are looking for, and can come to trust, even rely on these publications, and sometimes networks or 'communities' can form from this.
Some of the most useful aspects to the idea of the edited publication are that - for instance - they can be a 'clearing house' bringing together a range of news and info; they can point you at information you never would have heard about otherwise; they can take the specific language and data of a special interest group and translate it into something you can understand better; if a publication consistently maintains an editorial line or level of quality or integrity, it helps you interpret or decipher whatever they are saying.
And while Indymedia is a paradigm-shift away from most editorial-room norms, it is able to function as a node in the way a good publication can: a place to visit often which brings a lot of strands together (as opposed to a scattered array of atomised, lone bloggers, campaign sites and tweeters which you've got no way of knowing about), a clearing house for the latest on a whole range of topics, and a sense that it is a hub for a 'community' (well whatever you call the activist scene). If you're involved in one campaign chances are you're also interested in many others and the general state of play - so Indymedia (and Schnews) have been filling that role.
With the spread of blogs and twitter feeds and FB pages and postings, one thing that is often missing is the sense that any of it has been verified. The flipside of 'citizen journalism' is that you may read reams of unverified or anonymous material and end up not trusting any of it. I realise that on Indymedia the open postings were never verifiable, but I take the features to be 'editorialised' to a reasonable level of quality control. That was always the good thing about Schnews - it normally appears to be well researched.
B: Security of Social Networking
I realise that those er 'young' people use social media as though it's in their DNA, but, surely by now they are waking up to security issues involved. The fact is we simply cannot have so much of peoples' personal info - revealing everything about them - sitting on corporate servers forever, out of peoples' hands. You may think that 10 years is a long time on the web - but remember that in 10 years time, FB will have nearly 20 years of some peoples' lives on their servers. FB may not be recognisable by then - it may have fallen into other corporate hands, and your personal data open-slather for marketing and surveillance agencies (if it isn't already). FB is a dream come true for any despotic regime.
There are other known social network sites written with security and privacy in mind - which of course anybody involved in activism should move straight to (eg Crabgrass, Diaspora).
However sorry but I still can't see how any social networking setup - however secure - can provide a platform for a staple publication like Indymedia or Schnews. But go ahead and prove me wrong.
Get out of the 'walled gardens' folks. The web is rapidly 'privatising', and if we're not careful it will be run by a handful of corporations - Apple, Google, Amazon, FB etc, and the majority of people will be 'locked-in' with these corporations through the services they offer, the proprietary software and formats they own. It's already at the stage that a website which is outside these 'Walled Gardens' - and isn't linked up to its eyeballs with 'Like' buttons, and not even on a Blog site like Wordpress - is out in a ghost-town hinterland which nobody needs to go to anymore. Get out of these privatised enclosures and re-affirm the autonomous, secure places people have spent years carving out.
Armchair Pundit
@anonymous
17.02.2013 23:46
This article is thoughtfully written from a position of sympathy not just with indymedia but with the idea of independant, free, grassroots media. It's certainly not a "juvenile piece of garbage" or "utter rubbish". Its asking vital questions about why we are in our current situation and where we might want to get to. And as if someone being involved in a project for "only" 8 years doesn't entitle them to have an opinion on it! How many campaigns or projects last a fraction of that time?
Its clear to everyone who visits the site (and I'm not involved in any way, I'm an anarchist who uses it to find out whats happening in the world, and I have no axe to grind) that indymedia is in serious trouble. When I first came across it almost ten years ago I was utterly inspired, not just by the concept of a free media, but by the vibrancy of the articles and the world that it represented.
As the OP stated, the world has changed. The movement that spawned IM has splintered in many different directions. This is hard for us to deal with - friends who once fought alongside us have taken different paths, and there are fewer and fewer people to take their place. There are new challenges emerging - how do we organise in this decade? How can we rally an anti-capitalist movement? The situation on the ground has changed and we have to change with it.
I don't have answers to those questions, but I wholeheartedly welcome honest and intelligent contributions to the debate, such as the OP.
This is not about the "death of Indymedia", although presumably (from the bile you just spewed onto the keyboard) you've been very involved in an IMC and are very attached to it as a project, and so its understandable that you might mistake IM for the movement that created it. The decline of indymedia (and if you're denying a decline you are, quite frankly, fucking bonkers) is a symptom of this wider trend. In order to remain effective as a movement we need to critically appraise our tactics and our tools. Indymedia is one such tool.
bob
why that post is bad
18.02.2013 01:00
It didn't offer sufficent fealty to the unsurpassed and flawless wisdom and masterful mastery of the tiny little clique that grabbed this site, is why. It always sets them off if you're not sufficiently worshipful and in less than perfect awe of their perfect awesomeness.
The purpose of Indymedia UK, at this point, is to preserve its own power, such as it is. They proved that in May of 2011.
And maintaining power for power's sake is indeed the sign of a dying leadership of a dying movement. Most IMCistas have stepped off the bus, because the see the direction it's going.
And they, not the guys driving the bus over the cliff just to prove that they can, are the ones who are true to the spirit of Indymedia.
Baddie McBadbad
a question
18.02.2013 01:19
Is there anyone left who actually believes this about Indymedia UK?
freeedom of speeech
Whinging and whining.
18.02.2013 01:30
When I started the politics of jealousy of wealth were endemic and universally accepted, Anti-Capitalism was a conspiracy theory touted by Communists and terrorists, it was considered universally that you cannot buck the market, the bankers were universally trusted and the political movements of Capitalism such as Capitalists and Socialists had the highest membership in their long histories. The media were great movements that struggled for the truth and you could always trust politicians.
Then Indymedia started and the fight began.
Twelve years later Capitalism has collapsed as an ideological force, jealousy of wealth is universally rejected, anti-Capitalism is described as being the worlds second superpower in terms of influence, you can not only buck the market but you can fuck it too, bankers are despised throughout the known world and the political movements of Capitalism such as Capitalists and Socialists have experienced one of the most catastrophic collapses of membership in their entire history. The media have all but collapsed and are routinely ridiculed.
And all you can do is sit here with your fucking finger stuck up your fucking nose gobbing off about how Indymedia is finished for the umpteenth fucking time.
Do you want to know the secret of our success?
We do not attribute our failures to those we despise in the hope that by doing so, we might be rid of those failures at the expense of those we despise.
Maybe you need to search inside yourself to try to understand why it is you keep failing.
Endlessly repeating the same old deluded garbage to people who know better might have something to do with it. Oh and also, you might want to stop endlessly moaning, whinging and whining about everything failing and going wrong all the time...we only accept that sort of thing from Capitalists and warmongers.
You are, your own answer.
Me
Good grief!
18.02.2013 01:52
What really fucks you off is you are completely unable to close this site down. That is what you have been dedicated to for the last two or three years. Every now and again an article appears denouncing the UK national by claiming that IMC is finished and that its just an inevitable part of the relentless onslaught of Capitalism. Always we here about the strength of Capitalism being the ultimate force and always we here about how Indymedia is failing and that Capitalism must and will triumph. Always always the same ole same ole. You never fail to let your true feelings gush out onto the page. Sometimes you think you're being clever, but its only in your mind.
"Is there anyone left who actually believes this about Indymedia UK?" - in reply to being able to post freely on the UK national site.
Post that again on the comments section of the IMC UK Newswire. Yes, that's right, the very same IMC UK newswire that you have been posting articles about IMC UK dying for the last two or three years. Remember though, that the IMC UK national site is a "subjective" resource and that we are a site for activists. If you are just using it to justify armies mudering children then you have to expect that your comments will be removed or hidden and yes, you must expect that as we are campaigning for justice and peace, we have exactly ZERO reasons to keep your troll crap on this site where people can see it. That isn't our fault, it is your fault.
If you don't like that then you are quite free to fuck off and play in the busy road if you want - honestly, we don't care what happens to you, neither will anybody else. This is what you must expect if you want to justify the killing of children by authoritarians.
I can't believe we have to still post comments to this site on this topic. I mean for christ sake troll, at least TRY to put a bit of effort into it.
This is frankly becoming embarrasssing now. I really do mean that.
I am now laughing at you.
anonymous
fourteenth earl of gurney
18.02.2013 02:09
"That's not very long I have to say."
Ooooo, you tell him, your highness! Eight years doing Indymedia isn't nearly long enough to deserve an actual opinion on it. A presumptuous little embryo, compared to *your* exalted heights. Good thing you whipped the little pup before he said something out of place!
dry bones
oooh the bad bad man disagrees
18.02.2013 02:29
Ha! Why bother to "close it down" when Mayday has spent two years working three shifts daily making itself worthless, chasing off readers, chasing off contributors, destroying its own reputation, cluelessly bigging itself up even as it fades into irrelevence as anything but a negative lesson about a hierarchy that claims to be non-heirarchic?
That's the part that you don't get. The damage to this site in the last five years came from inside, not outside. Not only are you convinced your shit don't stink, you think that rubbing it all over the rest of Indymedia is making the whole UK network smell better. What happened instead is that the rest of the network got tired of getting rubbed with your shit and found more useful things to do with their time.
Thanks however for taking the time to demonstrate just how out of control the Mayday ego has gotten.
Now go ahead and back up what you were saying about how people are free to post whatever they want here without interference.
hang on to your ego there, man
Baddie McBadbad
18.02.2013 07:57
Remind us what power we have McBadBad.
And what was proved in May 2011 is that you can't enforce consensus in the face of blocks.
You can always spend your time at BeTheMedia which is the site that the majoritee thought would be the answer.
And Indymedia was never a free speech site - it always had guidelines and hid posts from day one. Dedicated trolling has ensured that it continues to do so.
IMCista
Completed deluded
18.02.2013 10:18
Then Indymedia started and the fight began.
Twelve years later Capitalism has collapsed as an ideological force, jealousy of wealth is universally rejected, anti-Capitalism is described as being the worlds second superpower in terms of influence, you can not only buck the market but you can fuck it too, bankers are despised throughout the known world and the political movements of Capitalism such as Capitalists and Socialists have experienced one of the most catastrophic collapses of membership in their entire history. The media have all but collapsed and are routinely ridiculed."
You are completely and utterly deluded. I ask again, what planet are you living on? Capitalism has never in history functioned so well to transfer wealth from the poor to the rich.
This is not about partisan groups. This is not about a shady group of freedom-trampling nazis attacking you personally or trying to stamp out dissent on the web. There is a real world out there, where we are fighting and currently being defeated. We need to reassess our tools and our methods. Indymedia is just one part of the struggle, and should be prepared to change to suit the times.
You must derive a lot of self-esteem from being involved in such an important part of the anti-capitalist movement. But are you doing a more important job than all those who are campaigning and usng indymedia to reach out to others? You clearly think that you know best, and not only that but that anyone who challenges your obstructive and obnoxious viewpoint is a troll, or worse.
And IMCista - if indymedia is important to the anti-capitalist movement then its admins have a great degree of power (eg a syndicated article from Bristol IMC was hidden last week because it was a direct criticism of IMC UK). To deny that control of a media outlet entails power is a pretty bizarre assertion for an "imcista" to make.
bob
Why carry lies?
18.02.2013 13:08
Hidden as inaccurate - the whole thread was a troll - complete with a pretend meeting and the establishment of a secret group who will build a transparent Indymedia.
Why should we carry lies about ourselves Bob?
And if you insist they are true, then point us to the anti-Semitic and truther posts Bob. I'll unhide the post if you can, so far no-one has.
The post can still be read - but it isn't going to be in the newswire if its not true. So where is the power?
IMCista
contradiction city
18.02.2013 13:47
We also have both 'Indymedia is responsible for every good thing over the last decade' and 'Indymedia has no power.'
And we have 'then point us to the anti-Semitic and truther posts Bob' and the fact that you hide any posts that do point them out.
Just another day in Indymedia: contradiction city.
"Remind us what power we have McBadBad."
You have the domain and servers you nicked in the great password coup of May 2011, for one.
does not compute
Power
18.02.2013 13:55
Regardless of how you choose to wield it, power is power. If you have a login which enables you to moderate comments and articles, you have power. Denying the existence of hierarchy is a mechanism by which it becomes entrenched. Of course, if indymedia is to work, it needs to be moderated, because of the amount of crap which gets posted. But this task is a very serious responsibility. You have the opportunity to stifle criticism, and whether you take that opportunity or not, to see you denying the inherent power of your position is unsettling.
You say that the post you censored contained lies about you. I hope you won't remove this comment if I quote the relevant section:
"Notts Indymedia are currently trying to understand the problem and it seems that there is a realisation that Indymedia has fallen behind new media like Facebook and Twitter, is not always viewed as welcoming to new people and is seen by many as closely aligned with the 911 Truth movement and Antisemitism."
This is the only part of the original posting which mentioned anti-semitism or truthers. It simply states that this is a perception which some people have, rather than making allegations. Whether or not this perception is true, it is a problem, because this perception damages indymedia and, more importantly, the movement as a whole.
Beyond this there was nothing controversial, just a shorter post along the same lines as the OP of this thread. It can still be accessed on the bristol newswire, in case anyone missed it, under the title "Fragmentation - how to stop the rot of Indymedia in the UK". There was no call for a meeting or a "secret group".
It also says
"... the Mayday group that uses the Indymedia UK name are running that site into the ground."
I would suggest that this is the reason that it was hidden. It wasn't a troll, it was very clearly a genuine post expressing feelings which seem to me to be widespread, Because it was critical of you, however, it was censored for being untrue.
bob
like this?
18.02.2013 14:08
Here you go then -
The comments demonstrated the antisemitic nature of the post, which supports the antisemitic view that perhaps the Jews faked their own Holocaust.
The Indymedia UK reaction was to hide, not the post, but the comments showing the post was antisemitic.
#antiracismfail
punkt aus
The future of Indymedia
18.02.2013 14:23
I am a youth worker based in London and have been both a reader off and contributor to Indymedia uk since it began but I stopped posting stories at the time of the collective split because I was annoyed to see people putting themselves above the future of Indymedia UK. Despite my efforts to introduce the young adults I work with to Indymedia none of them use it because they view it as challenging to use, "Twitter is so much faster" old fashioned, "looks like my Dad's website" and worst of all completely out of synch with their world.
I think we have all recognised there has been a slow decline in the number of stories posted to the site with once regular posters and organisations no longer bothering (for example SHAC who once posted all the time but now stick to their own website) and now we have just a few 'die-hards' who focus on their single issue views and campaigns.
I doubt that Indymedia UK will follow London, Notts and Northern in closing however I do doubt that many people are still reading on a regular basis and that is the problem that nobody wants to address that Indymedia UK has become somebody simply shouting in an empty room.
Jennifer
anti-Semitism and Indymedia
18.02.2013 14:27
which blames 66 million deaths on "Bolshevik Jews"
Look at the site and you'll see this is not a one-off, there's lots and lots of Jew-hating stuff there, not just the comments but the articles.
How is anyone supposed to take Indymedia UK seriously when one of its editors runs a hate speech site on the side?
Yet what does Indymedia UK have to say, officially, about ftp's hate site on the side?
Nothing.
here's a problem
example
18.02.2013 14:33
"Dr. Balles see only one kind of “violence” but ignores the violence planned and perpetrated by Jewry against the American people. Under these circumstances a strong 2nd Amendment may be the only thing that will protect the goys from a government ruled by Jewry."
That was posted today. Pretty typical for the site, too.
While you're at it, have a look at this cartoon:
Yet ftp is certain he's not running an antisemitic hate site.
Do the rest of you Indymedia editors agree? Or will you turn your head silently away and pretend you didn't see it?
a bit more
Antisemitism ?
18.02.2013 14:35
"The living lie that is Israel will only be expunged when every last jew is driven from Palestine"
"The Jews in Palestine are all colonial invaders that need to return to Europe"
"There will be conflict in Palestine as long as one key factor remains - the presence of Jews who should not be there, they MUST be returned to Europe."
I have other examples.
Reader
deliberation.info
18.02.2013 14:40
Concerns about moderation policy should be directed to the Moderation List.
IMCister
The entire problem in one sentence
18.02.2013 14:56
I bet they will.
Laughing a very great deal
Hypocrite
18.02.2013 14:57
bob
Homepage:
http://indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/02/506637.html?c=all
@imcista
18.02.2013 15:28
Regardless of how you choose to wield it, power is power. If you have a login which enables you to moderate comments and articles, you have power. Denying the existence of hierarchy is a mechanism by which it becomes entrenched. Of course, if indymedia is to work, it needs to be moderated, because of the amount of crap which gets posted. But this task is a very serious responsibility. You have the opportunity to stifle criticism, and whether you take that opportunity or not, to see you denying the inherent power of your position is unsettling.
You say that the post you censored contained lies about you. I hope you won't remove this comment if I quote the relevant section:
"Notts Indymedia are currently trying to understand the problem and it seems that there is a realisation that Indymedia has fallen behind new media like Facebook and Twitter, is not always viewed as welcoming to new people and is seen by many as closely aligned with the 911 Truth movement and Antisemitism."
This is the only part of the original posting which mentioned anti-semitism or truthers. It simply states that this is a perception which some people have, rather than making allegations. Whether or not this perception is true, it is a problem, because this perception damages indymedia and, more importantly, the movement as a whole.
Beyond this there was nothing controversial, just a shorter post along the same lines as the OP of this thread. It can still be accessed on the bristol newswire, in case anyone missed it, under the title "Fragmentation - how to stop the rot of Indymedia in the UK". There was no call for a meeting or a "secret group".
It also says
"... the Mayday group that uses the Indymedia UK name are running that site into the ground."
I would suggest that this is the reason that it was hidden. It wasn't a troll, it was very clearly a genuine post expressing feelings which seem to me to be widespread, Because it was critical of you, however, it was censored for being untrue.
bob
@ Jennifer
18.02.2013 15:34
"I do doubt that many people are still reading on a regular basis and that is the problem that nobody wants to address that Indymedia UK has become somebody simply shouting in an empty room. "
:
:
I'm sorry to say that I feel this is the crux of the matter. I know that for Notts Indymedia this was a very real fear and I think this is the problem for Indymedia-uk. I know a number of people (mostly related to Climate Camp work) none of who still reads here or posts. I usually check out the site once every two weeks in case there is something new when I once looked once a day. My sister told me recently she hadn't looked at Indymedia-uk in over a year ! Without re-engaging with the people the site will die.
Tjabe
Job Done
18.02.2013 16:06
2Sam
Bored by the Trolls
18.02.2013 16:09
Do they think we're stupid enough not to recognise the usual Troll business?
Troll meme check list:-
IMC UK Stole the IMC UK Site
IMC UK is dead its time to move on
IMC UK is anti-semetic
Its all about a small faction of POWER FREAKS
ftp is an anti-semite
f off
Simon
@ Simon
18.02.2013 16:31
IMC UK is dead its time to move on
IMC UK is anti-semetic
Its all about a small faction of POWER FREAKS
ftp is an anti-semite
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is is 'trolling' because they are true ?
Is it 'trolling' because these are the issues that are driving people away from IMC?
Is it trolling because these are the problems that the moderators are consistently failing to address ?
Is it trolling because you don't want to see these facts repeated ?
Shall we take them one by one ?
1 = IMC UK Stole the IMC UK Site
True - the uk collectives had agreed that nobody would use the ;indymedia uk' name and Mayday stole the url and blocked all over other mods from having access
2 = IMC UK is dead its time to move on
London, Notts, Northern all closing. Southern, Birmingham, Oxford and Sheffield closed in all but name with one or two person collectives
3 = IMC UK is anti-semetic
Regular posts that cross the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, a weekly obsession with all things Jewish and a prominent moderator in the collective with a documented history of supporting anti-Semitic hate speech
4 = Its all about a small faction of POWER FREAKS
The Mayday collective stole the site and refused to allow others to be involved, seems clear enough
5 = ftp is an anti-semite
I don't think anyone is still arguing that this is not the case.
Anything else there "simon" ?
Inconvenient truther
I agree the trolling is really stupid misinformation
18.02.2013 16:41
It's pure misinformation, anyone who was involved in May 2011 would know that.
The troll should just bugger off. Go and do something usefull and positive instead of trying to stir shit and trying to demoralize people. It won't wash the gateway 202 and 303 posts showed how these dumb asses operate
Clara Bell
Inane Trolling
18.02.2013 16:45
I rekon the troll posted this article. I think the mods should hide it so then if there is a genuine author they can e-mail the mod list to see why it was hidden
Beggars Belief
Fuck Off Troll
18.02.2013 16:50
Fuck Off Troll
Simon
now comes the "troll" card
18.02.2013 17:06
At least we got an answer from Mayday about ftp's little hate site problem. Their official position is that they don't care that ftp co-founded an anti-Jewish hate site - I mean, really, it's only the Jews,the site is very clearly spending large amounts of time on the wrong side of the line between anti-Zionism and anti-Semitism, but it's nothing important, right? It's only Jews, right? Not like it would affect Indymedia's reputation, right?
"Comments and posts about another website are irrelevant to Indymedia" - clearly false in this case. If Mayday honestly believes it, they are deluded. When an Indymedia editor runs a hate site, that's hardly "irrelevant" to the Indymedia mission. But Mayday considers any attempt to point out the anti-Semitism problem of one editor as an attack on their entire way of life, an attempt to bring the site down, ye gods it's the barbarians at the gates, man the battle stations, yaaaarrggggg banzai!
Simon, go visit that site. Poke around. See how thick the Jew-hate is. Then ask yourself what an Indymedia editor is doing co-founding a site like that. You'll see how inadequate an answer closing your eyes and shouting "troll" is.
asker
Yes indeedeee
18.02.2013 17:15
Former mod
Trolling
18.02.2013 17:20
I recommend to the mods that all comments are hidden and the ability to comment here disabled.
Frank
Paid troll
18.02.2013 17:21
I know
I recognise the style
Links to Zionism has he.
Frank
@ simon
18.02.2013 17:24
IMC UK is dead its time to move on - nearly all Indy readers and contributors have decided it was time to move on some time in the last five years, and are no longer part of Indymedia
IMC UK is anti-semetic - not necessarily true, they just aren't bothered by the anti-Semite in their ranks, and don't see how poorly that's reflecting on them over the last five years
Its all about a small faction of POWER FREAKS - you said it, I didn't
ftp is an anti-semite - if he still thinks deliberation.info is not deeply problematic on the Jews, or if he's happy to have helped found a site that's thick with raw anti-Jewish sludge, then yes he is.
five points
Poor Frank
18.02.2013 17:47
A Doctor writes
Having guts.
18.02.2013 17:57
If you can't be arsed to use the correct forum then don't expect people to jump through your hoops.
IMCista
and the selective hiding begins.......
18.02.2013 18:11
Inevitable censorship
Email the list
18.02.2013 18:12
That's right Bob, you email the list and once you've done that they will use it to trawl your IP details, do a WHOIS search and then publish your details all over the site.
Smarter than the average bear
In the kangaroo court of IMC uk comments...
18.02.2013 18:16
"So we have both 'you can publish anything you want' and 'you can't publish anything you want.'
Yes - you can publish anything you want - but if it breaches the guidelines it will be hidden.
Take for example anti-Semitism - its clear that there are users who want stringent censorship.##
So far, one example is produced:
and we are told:
"The comments demonstrated the antisemitic nature of the post, which supports the antisemitic view that perhaps the Jews faked their own Holocaust."
Is there anti-Semitism in the post, or not? The comments are not in the post - which was originally hidden because it was posted without acknowledgement of the authorship. Hence the first sentence:
"Please do not hide the findings of the UN Human Rights Committee for any spurious reasons now ... "
But the post is about freedom of expression and if there is anti-Semitism in the comments, then it is the comments that should be hidden.
Next there are posts cited that are by people who have nothing to do with Indymedia, on a site which is nothing to do with Indymedia - and the relevance of this is what?
Indymedia is an open publishing site which hides posts which breach the guidelines. It has no veto over the moderation policies of another site, which does not belong to ftp or any other IMCista.
So all we seem to have there is guilt by association.
The thread is being trolled, and it is pointless trying to reason with anonymous trolls. So, if you want to discuss it use the lists.
IMCista
Same memes
18.02.2013 18:17
deLiberation is what? Jew Hating?
Are you by any chance of the Jewish persuasion?
All religious types have the god delusion, you into that ? I'm not a 'believer' in that ruling class bullshit are you?
Some one pointed to the Paul Eisen "I love Zundel" article on that site,
I watched some videos of Zundel one interview with an Israeli Journalist,
Zundel is no better than the Zionist Nationalists is he? Zundel Admires Hitler. Zionists admire Sharon both murdering war criminals who engaged in genocide.
Paul Eisen is a twat, but he doesn't post to IMC UK though does he? So trying the guilt by association trip don't bother me , there's no evidence that ftp is an anti-semite, just because Paul Eisen and other crazies post to deLiberation don't prove your point. It's smear smear and more smear the usual troll fare.
All the other stuff about theft of the site don't really fit with me 'property is theft' ideology stolen? off who exactly?
Bunch of liberal half wits taken in by the Canadian super kid with his shiny new CMS, who for his day job wrote WEBCAMERON for the Tories among other corporate nasties. Where is he now? Be the Media? ok just do it stop wasting time? get on with it.
Simon
" .there's no evidence that ftp is an anti-semite "
18.02.2013 18:28
(wipes eyes)
Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha Ha
How much more evidence do you need ?
ROFLMAO !
all right there
18.02.2013 19:40
Yes, it is an anti-Semitic post. It treats an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory pseudo-history of WWII as if it were an actual academic historical possibility rather than the noxious belches of anti-Semitic fantasists, most of whom did not disguise that their intent in making that shit up was to exonerate Hitler.
This is the bullshit you're protecting. Does it make you happy to protect anti-Semitic bullshit, Indymedia UK, or is just a reflex by now?
"deLiberation is what? Jew Hating?"
Exactamente. Your defense of Zundel - who made his dosh printing and smuggling German-language neo-Nazi propaganda into Germany - isn't helping you a bit in trying to demonstrate it's not an anti-Semitic site. Zundel is the only Holocaust denier better known in the world than David Irving, the site calls him a hero, and ftp is okay with that going on on the "anti-Zionist" site he co-founded.
Name an anti-Semitic idea that isn't championed somewhere on the site. Holocaust denial? Jew bankers running the world? Jews owning the media? Jewish plot to take over the UK? It's all there and more.
But "far-right anti-Semitic fascism on my site - so what," says ftp, "as long as Gilad Atzmon still strokes my hair fondly. *Sigh!*"
got yer answers
This is macabre but fascinating
18.02.2013 19:41
While many of the comments flying back and forth should really be in the privacy of an internal list let alone one-to-one communication, this dialogue on the newswire does answer some questions for the outsider about what happened to Indymedia. But whether the concept itself has any life left in it is a different issue to how badly broken-down the dynamic within the IMC UK group became. The bickering is appalling and illustrates long-standing unresolvable arguments.
That said - this dialogue sadly lacks any proper dialogue about why or whether the Indymedia concept has a place in the current situation, or what it can do in the age of social networking. Instead of debating any valid points the original article had, that fact that it was posted at all just seemed to press a load of peoples' buttons.
Because of course, it's not like these new corporate social networking things have made Indymedia redundant: they may be superficially slicker, but they've introduced huge security/surveillance problems, and to use them at all is a capitulation to the privatised internet.
I personally don't think that the idea of a place where people can post anonymously is suddenly irrelevant because of fucking Twitter and FB (then again web traffic drying up tells another story).
As another person who's followed and posted on Indymedia since day one, I guess I'm watching it founder and wondering when the new fucking-pissed-off post-austerity generation are going to stand up and unleash new movements of resistance and of course they'll need to create their own media - and how different to Indymedia will that be?
Armchair Pundit
all right there
18.02.2013 19:43
18.02.2013 19:40
"Is there anti-Semitism in the post, or not?"
Yes, it is an anti-Semitic post. It treats an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory pseudo-history of WWII as if it were an actual academic historical possibility rather than the noxious belches of anti-Semitic fantasists, most of whom did not disguise that their intent in making that shit up was to exonerate Hitler.
This is the bullshit you're protecting. Does it make you happy to protect anti-Semitic bullshit, Indymedia UK, or is just a reflex by now?
"deLiberation is what? Jew Hating?"
Exactamente. Your defense of Zundel - who made his dosh printing and smuggling German-language neo-Nazi propaganda into Germany - isn't helping you a bit in trying to demonstrate it's not an anti-Semitic site. Zundel is the only Holocaust denier better known in the world than David Irving, the site calls him a hero, and ftp is okay with that going on on the "anti-Zionist" site he co-founded.
Name an anti-Semitic idea that isn't championed somewhere on the site. Holocaust denial? Jew bankers running the world? Jews owning the media? Jewish plot to take over the UK? It's all there and more.
But "far-right anti-Semitic fascism on my site - so what," says ftp, "as long as Gilad Atzmon still strokes my hair fondly. *Sigh!*"
got yer answers
got yer answers
Quote the text?
18.02.2013 19:57
all right there
"Yes, it is an anti-Semitic post. It treats an anti-Jewish conspiracy theory pseudo-history of WWII as if it were an actual academic historical possibility rather than the noxious belches of anti-Semitic fantasists,"
Well, that's your interpretation -please quote the anti-semitic passages in the text.
IMCista
Just loving this
18.02.2013 20:36
2Sam
Liar Liar Pants on fire
18.02.2013 22:05
Troll Troll Troll
Fuck off
Simon
do try to keep up
19.02.2013 00:27
You must have missed the part where it called the neo-Nazi Zundel "the greatest dissident of all time." Do try to keep up, there's a good lad. I know this stuff is over your head, but still, do try to apply yourself a bit.
And Bard has already started moving the goal posts, so you know he's finding his ground treacherous.
Ask yourself a simple question, Bard - can a post be racist in intent without using any racist words? The answer is an obvious yes. And you personally have deleted any number of those posts here.
But somehow when it comes to Jews clever clever Roy Bard always manage to forget that... ooops! coincidence! ... while looking for a pretext to protect the anti-Semitic speech ... oops! another coincidence!
hack and slash goes the hider
Why are the other mods tolerating 'FTP'
19.02.2013 06:29
Do they share his views ?
Are they scared of him ?
Is it ignorance ?
How far will they allow him to go until they say enough, ?
Amazed
In answer to the Trolls now hidden comment (please hide)
19.02.2013 12:01
"You must have missed the part where it called the neo-Nazi Zundel "the greatest dissident of all time.""
No Troll you said I had defended Zundel that was your lie, you then went on to say that my alleged defense of Zundel showed what an anti-semitic site IMC UK was, Also in my comment I said Paul Eisen was a "twat" It was Eisen who authored the Zundel article and who described Zundel as the greatest dissident of all time not me.
The Zundel case is interesting because of the stupidly huge ammount of effort the Zionists put into shutting this Nationalistic Hitler admirer up. When any one who hears Zundel speak is very quickly able to see what a freakin nutter he is. That is the Zundel case demonstrates what a bunch of fanaticists the Zionist lobby are, how powerful they are, how reactionary they are and what a bunch of violent freaks they are. It demonstrates to me at least that the Zionists are no better than Zundel and that they and Zundel deserve each other.
Simon
the mayday way
19.02.2013 13:47
unimpressed
Stifling dissent @IMCista
19.02.2013 14:58
18.02.2013 17:57
You want an answer Bob - email the list.
If you can't be arsed to use the correct forum then don't expect people to jump through your hoops.
IMCista
I've emailed the list. No response yet, IMCista. Why don't you defend your dictatorial moderation stance in a public forum, anyway? I can be arsed, can you?
bob
@Armchair Pundit
19.02.2013 15:19
I think this thread demonstrates that some of the weaknesses inherent in any online service haven't been avoided by Indymedia. The lack of face-to-face interaction means that people are far more aggressive than they would be normally. Their is a lack of accountability, both for posters and moderators, which wouldn't be tolerated in any other radical community. Of course, this is a side-effect of anonymity and so there's no real way round it, at least as far as posting articles and comments goes. Its really sad to see people who presumably became involved in the IMC project beause of anarchistic ideals acting in such an oppressive and childish way. I think that any future independant media project would have to carefully consider their decision making processes and their mechanisms for complaints and accountability. Indymedia UK (on the evidence of this thread alone) stands as a terrifying example of an idealistic project gone horribly wrong.
By the way, the above is my opinion. I'm not making any assertions or allegations. There is no legitimate reason whatsoever to hide this comment.
bob
@Bob
19.02.2013 17:05
I appreciate that someone stepped away from internal 'discussions' to answer some of the questions I (and probably many onlookers) have.
Yep I think it's a good point about Indymedia being a hub where people can encounter a range of stuff outside their own sphere of activity. In that way it can function in a similar way to other news sites - eg - you visit to see an array of stuff all brought together on the one site. It's as though Twitter, FB and atomised bloggers have made this a redundant concept but that's ridiculous.
If Indymedia traffic is down, and people are all over at FB, well in fact that doesn't speak of the irrelevance of Indymedia, but it's about people being lazy, with a herd mentality - 'my friends are doing it so will I' - they are sleepwalking into a surveillance nightmare seduced by convenience. However things move very fast on the web and this is just what's going on at the moment - in 5 years time it might be something else.
Having said that - when that new post-austerity generation ups the ante and unleashes a tidal wave of movements and necessarily creates a new form of autonomous media, then perhaps it will take a lot of Indymedia ideas, and combine them with secure/encrypted versions of social networking ideas.
Your other comment that this thread shows the problems of running collectives without face-to-face interaction is absolutely spot-on. I guess that was another 'frontier' aspect to Indymedia - it introduced new ways of working - eg - decentralised networks of non-hierarchies whose primary form of communication is online (perhaps younger people are far more used to working like this by now). And anonymous Open Publishing was always going to be open to trolls, nutters etc. The people who end up creating the successor to Indymedia will also have to learn from these lessons.
That said - I'm talking as though Indymedia is nearly over, when it may just be having a lean patch. Hypothetically, and it's probably not possible, but if only a whole new collective could take over Indymedia UK, starting from scratch and removing all the schisms and long-term problems, and they could introduce encrypted social networking ideas or whatever was necessary. But maybe it can't be like that, and the new people will have to start from scratch.
Armchair Pundit
since you asked
19.02.2013 17:30
Among other things, as you have demonstrated so dramatically here, the power to arbitrarily hide comments on whim in order to spin the discussion to your liking.
Have a look at the whole discussion, hidden comments and all, and you'll see exactly how you (ab)use that power.
Baddie McBadBad
Homepage:
https://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2013/02/506637.html?c=all
you've got to be joking
19.02.2013 18:48
Among other things, as you have demonstrated so dramatically here, the power to arbitrarily hide comments on whim in order to spin the discussion to your liking.
Have a look at the whole discussion, hidden comments and all, and you'll see exactly how you (ab)use that power.
For example, I posted this earlier but made the cardinal mistake of posting a link to this thread with the comments unhidden. And slapbang! into the hiddens the post went. One cannot point in any thread here to what the unexpurgated version looks like, even though that's a URL to this very site!
That is, a post was hidden *on this site* for *linking to this site*.
You've got to be joking.
Baddie McBadBad
The blindness is spreading
20.02.2013 11:02
Laziness - ftp does a lot of the daily dogsbody work that other mods can't be arsed with.
Fear - ftp is quite an aggressive individual
Ignorance - too stupid to understand what he is doing
Agreement - they share his views regarding Jewish people
A recent series of communication between a concerned individual and one of the mods, 'MrDemeanour' who has long been one of ftp's camp followers seems to indicated a combination of both Ignorance AND Stupidity. He visited the disgusting 'deliberation.info' hate site and amazingly seemed unable to see any antisemitism of racism. This of course mimics the approach taken by 'ftp' himself over the past ten years where his personal hatred of Jewish people allows him to see no antisemitism despite it being blindingly obvious to other people.
Another nail in the coffin of the Indymedia UK site.
Stevo
A public record of an important exchange that is taking place
20.02.2013 11:06
> On 20/02/2013 03:31, subvert wrote:
>>
>> However, after superficial googling I haven't found out whether or not
>> the repeated allegations that ftp is a co-founder of deliberation.info
>> are true - maybe you can help me by confirming it one way or the other.
>
> I haven't seen any such allegation; I understand it isn't so, but I
> don't see what that would have to do with Indymedia even if it were true.
>>
>> The reason why this is important is because its very different from
>> posting on someone else's website which happens to contain racist gumpf.
>> The real world analog would be someone organising, funding and
>> publicising an EDL demo and then denying all association with the
>> ensuing Islamophobia and violence, whilst shouting "free speech! free
>> speech!".
>
> I don't agree. The site is very different from an "EDL demo".
You want links. Lets start with one that was shared in a hidden comment.
This is an article claiming that "Bolshevik Jews engineered the Russian
revolution". Its full of paranoid delusion statements, such as this one *
“The unprecedented catastrophe of the Russian revolution required an
explanation… For very many this lay in the coming to power of the Jews,
and their hatred for the Russian people."*
This is undoubtedly an anti-semitic article - and it is not a comment.
If deliberation.info doesn't have a moderation policy which gets rid of
rubbish like this it is a racist platform. Period.
>
>> Providing a platform for racism is not OK, on any level, at
>> any time.
>
> I don't think the site is "providing a platform for racism". I have
> read comments on the site (not articles) that I personally would have
> removed, but frankly, after spending quite a few hours searching for
> scandal, I failed to find anything to substantiate the smears against
> FTP that you seem to have got caught up in.
So would you have removed the above article, or not? And please don't
try to dismiss me as one more in a long line of trolls - I am concerned
about this, about whether I should ever use indymedia again, and I am
not the singular troll that ftp refers to.
>
>> Anyone who does provide a platform for racism should not only
>> be shunned, but driven off our streets at all costs. And that includes
>> the information superhighway.
>
> So should smearers and rumour-mongerers.
Rumours and smears have been flying around for a long time, and yet I
haven't been able to find a statement on the web from ftp saying that he
didn't found the site and doesn't support the anti-semitic stuff on
there, and that IMC UK believes this to be the case. When your reaction
to allegations is to hide them, shout troll, and yet refuse to answer
them publicly, of course rumours are going to continue to circulate.
>
> As I requested in a previous message, please substantiate your attacks
> with links.
>
> Look, I don't know if you realise this, but the allegations of racism
> against that site are largely to do with the fact that the site used
> to carry articles by two prominent jewish critics of Israeli policies:
> Israel Shamir and Gilad Atzmon. Both have been repeatedly accused of
> anti-semitism and holocaust denial. I do not think either is
> anti-semitic; but you should read their writings, and make your own
> mind up, rather than picking up batons passed to you by trolls on
> Indymedia.
Lets stick to the facts in front of us. I've got no desire or intention
to continue previous arguments. Please don't try to imply that I don't
know what I'm talking about or that, because I haven't been privy to
previous acrimonious disputes, my viewpoint is invalid.
>
> The site is focuses quite a lot on the illegality of Israel's
> treatment of palestinians, a topic which attracts concentrated
> propaganda from supporters of the Israeli government, and I believe
> that this is what is behind the controversy. I.e. the controversy is
> manufactured by hasbara. The criticisms of Israeli policy on that site
> are no more fierce than criticisms of e.g. USA policy that can be
> found everywhere, and that do not attract such accusations of prejudice.
>
Lets have a look at another link, also posted in an indymedia comment
and hidden.
Again, this is an article, not a comment. The cartoon is sickening - it
crosses the line from anti-zionism (in this case portraying Israel as a
branch of the american government) to anti-semitism (actually
suggesting, it seems, that the "jewish illuminati" pickpocket then lynch
american citizens). The article itself is not really an article - it is
a list of prominent Jews in the american government. Some of these
profiles attempt to link the individuals named to zionism. Others are
left blank, the implication being they are guilty, but their crimes
haven't been discovered yet.
SO - there's two articles published on the deliberation.info platform,
both anti-semitic, both published in the last few weeks.
Just on the point of "providing a platform", can I just draw your
attention to one of the comments to the "Lasha Darkmoon" article -
"...it’s common to write about the attitudes of Christians toward Jews,
but rarely if ever are Jews attitudes towards Christians discussed
(alarm bells go off in Jewish ears if this happens). On the internet you
don’t have to abide by that rule."
On the internet there are places, like deliberation.info, where racism
can fester. Anyone who provides those spaces shouldn't be welcome in an
IMC, in my opinion, and its clear that that opinion is shared by many
other people.
bob
bob
"deliberation.info"
20.02.2013 11:49
Antifa
Disinformation
20.02.2013 12:13
can fester"
This assumes a premise that 'deliberation.info' is a racist site or that racism is posted there, I have reviewed the site and have found none.
"Anyone who provides those spaces shouldn't be welcome in an IMC"
Agreed but there is no racism so the point is immaterial
"and its clear that that opinion is shared by many other people. "
Those people are Zionist funded trolls so their views do not matter, they are devoted to maintaining the Israel power myth.
anonymous
ftp admits founding the hate site
20.02.2013 16:23
Let's see what ftp has to say about "deliberation.info", as posted by ftp himself on "deliberation.info".
- Roy Bard, August 4, 2012 at 12:38 pm - Strangely Laura, I was at that first meeting too. And I have no memories whatsoever of planning a censored site which only reflected the point of view that you hold. In fact I distinctly recall talk about LIBERATING discourse. The immediate precursor to the meeting was the adoption of the PSC of exactly the censorship that you have been advocating as has just been evidenced by your emails, the site was to be set up as somewhere where censorship did not apply and where people were free to express their views.
- Roy Bard, August 7, 2012 at 11:48 am - The ‘and co’ was a group of about a dozen people, who met to discuss the crisis within the pro-Palestine solidarity movement, which was moving towards becoming another gate keeping institution, whereby activists who dared to think outside of the proscribed box would be ostracised – as we have seen with the expulsion of Francis from the PSC, and Ken o’ Keefe from Palestine Place. It was at that meeting that the plan to set up this site was formulated. However, not everyone who attended the meeting was able to devote time to the running of the site, and over time the group grew smaller.
Also, here is ftp officially speaking for the site and welcoming the posts of the Holocaust denier Paul Eisen:
- Roy Bard, August 7, 2012 at 11:55 am - Paul has a blog where he publishes his writings. His contributions would, of course, be welcome on this site too.
So yes, it seems that ftp was a co-founder of the anti-Semitic site, from the very beginning - before there was even a site, ftp was part of it. This would explain why he has not come forward to say that he is not a founding member of the site. And he felt a sufficient sense of ownership to declare what would or wouldn't be welcome there.
And the site is full to brimming with not only anti-Semitic comments but anti-Semitic articles as well, Jew-bashing articles that have nothing to do with Israel or zionism, or promoting the inherently anti-Semitic mythos of Holocaust denial.
Yet when challenged on it, ftp simply tried to play word games, arguing that there really is no such thing as bigotry against Jews because - seriously - there's really no such thing as Jews. Here he is reacting to the definition of anti-Semitism by showing that he doesn't actually believe it applies to anything at all in the real world, since there are really no Jews:
- Roy Bard, June 30, 2012 at 7:36 pm - "1. one of a scattered group of people that traces its descent from the Biblical Hebrews or from postexilic adherents of Judaism; Israelite. 2. a person whose religion is Judaism. 3. a subject of the ancient kingdom of Judah." I think the first definition has pretty much been debunked esp by Shlomo Sand. I haven’t heard anyone discriminating against the religion and there are probably no survivors of the third definition. So I have to admit that I am failing to see any “discrimination against or prejudice or hostility toward Jews”, therefore really can’t be celebrating it!
Got that? The site can't be anti-Jewish because, more or less, there's no such thing as a Jew.
Sickening. This is the sound of a man who's found his excuse for spreading anti-Semitism. It shows the deep intellectual dishonesty that has shaped his discourse on Jewish subjects since the days he thought Holocaust denier Israel Shamir was the bee's knees and had a crying jag when the anti-Zionist movement said 'no to Holocaust denial, no to Holocaust deniers' and poor Shamir was left a self-made pariah.
And this, finally, is the problem. Mayday's reputation for worthlessness on the topic of anti-Semitism turns out to be justified. It's like having an EDL member decide what posts are or are not racist.
But since Mayday apparently now ascribes to Orwell's declaration "the purpose of power is power" and Indymedia UK is about maintaining its power at all costs, any effort to disassociate with the anti-Semite ftp is not under discussion. If having a cracked anti-Semite in the editorial collective is the price to pay for the continued functioning of the site, the Mayday group has shown again and again, at Notts 08 and before, that they don't mind.
from the horse's mouth
context
20.02.2013 17:02
Seems you can't accuse him of agreeing to set up a microphone for David Irving.
Reeda
is ftp pro- or anti- Holocaust denial?
20.02.2013 17:27
"If you're going to quote from a thread, why not give the link"
I gave text and time of post, more than enough to use for a search, as you demonstrated.
"Seems you can't accuse him of agreeing to set up a microphone for David Irving."
Seems you can't deny he's welcoming the posts of the self-proclaimed Holocaust denier Paul Eisen.
Holocaust denial on the right he'll oppose. Holocaust denial on the left he'll endorse and promote.
Do you see anything in that thread where he says he does not want to be associated with the Holocaust denier Paul Eisen?
Do you see anything anywhere in any venue at any place on the internet where ftp says he does not want to be associated with the Holocaust denier Paul Eisen?
Could it be that ftp really has no problem endorsing Holocaust deniers, as long as they're on the left, not the right? That's where the evidence clearly points.
from the horse's mouth
This thread has been enough for me
20.02.2013 17:34
That ends here and now.
His clear, documented and admitted involvement in an obvious racist and anti-semitic website is enough for me to realise I am now longer reading the right site. I do not wish to be involved with people who are involved with what he is involved with and I am extremely surprised that the other Indymedia UK moderators are comfortable in allowing his continued involvement as his beliefs, views, writings and opinions are very much in contrast to the Indymedia UK founding principles.
Up until the last few days I have always been a strong Indymedia UK supporter and promoter at my workplace and I hope that when Bard is excluded from the collective I will be so in the future but until then I do not want anything to do with the site so I shall now cease posting on actions and events related to the fight against the EDL as I have been doing for the past two years as well as other topics.
For the other Moderators I hope you see the error of your ways in failing to confront Bard and do what you can to save the site before further damage is done.
Jim
You are finished
20.02.2013 19:07
Bye
Get rid of the fucking antisemitic Roy Bard
20.02.2013 19:13
Why is this all so difficult ?
It's fucking obvious that Bard is the problem, he caused problems with the Atzmon balls up, he defends Holocaust deniers, he founded and still supports a hate site, he drove other mods away from the site, he was complicit and involved in the theft of the Indymedia uk URL, he slags of other mods if they disagree with him, he defends Jew haters and works with them to disseminate racist hate material, he helped to cause the cause the split in the Indymedia ul collectives, he is obsessed with Jews and Israel.
Why is everybody else able to see this and the other collective members not ?
Obvious
Playing to an empty theatre
21.02.2013 06:55
Realist
@ Joe
21.02.2013 09:25
When the site has reached the point where only the mods are reading it and only the nutcase types are posting will ftp and his gang think they are still running a functioning news wire ?
Probably yes.
Realist
The problem
21.02.2013 09:28
"a pillar of the collective." To me this illustrates the problem.
bob
Excellent point
21.02.2013 09:30
Agree completely.
bob
Saving the world one troll at a time
21.02.2013 10:13
Still at least you guys are keeping the site alive :-)
Perhaps you'll end up like the undercover cops who kept campaigns alive and did all the work for them
laughing at trolls and their delusions
Understanding irony?
21.02.2013 10:31
Read the whole thread and see how much he is being ignored.
Having a giraffe
The decline of Indymedia UK
21.02.2013 10:38
Still at least you guys are keeping the site alive :-)
Perhaps you'll end up like the undercover cops who kept campaigns alive and did all the work for them "
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
The problem that you have failed to grasp is that those of us that are complaining about the involvement of an antisemite in the UK collective are not "keeping the site alive" we are complaining about. Using your theory a customer in Tesco complaining about the horse meat in his beefburger is a valued consumer.
As you seem to be a defender of Indymedia UK and the collective what is your view of having an antisemite and Holocaust denier involved in the moderation ?
Realist
Bob and the people
21.02.2013 10:46
Excellent Point
21.02.2013 10:00
"He fails to understand that people do not want his idea of a news wire."
Agree completely.
Bob says:
"The problem, which is apparent to me as an outsider but may not be obvious
to you, is that indymedia occupies a space in activist culture which
probably cannot be refilled while the UK site still exists."
If they don't want Indymedia then they must want a new wire.
trolls are so dumb
Question
21.02.2013 10:55
Is google stats able to tell the differences between consumers and complainants?
Statistician
@ statistician
21.02.2013 11:30
No the posts however which ftp is hiding as fast as his little stubby fingers can stab the keyboard do. I assume however you subscribe to the ftp theory of the paid Zionist troll who according to him posts 19 hours a day, 7 days a week from an Israeli government facility in Holland.
Helpful person
Breaking News – Anti-Semitic DeLiberation Site is On Its Death Bed
21.02.2013 13:43
Gilad Ratzmon and Paul Eisen Abandon Ship
hat tip to Mark Elf
The Death Throes of DeLiberation - the anti-Semitic Pro-Palestine site
When Palestine Solidarity Campaign expelled Frances Clarke-Lowes for being a proud ‘holocaust denier’ a new site DeLiberation arose, like a phoenix from the ashes.
All the old Atzmonites were there – Eisen, Roy Bard (Free the Peeps), Laura Stuart, FCL and of course our old friend Gilad Atzmon himself.
Alas the site has lasted little more than 6 months before degenerating into a most appalling sectarian bickering and name calling. It seems that the anti-Semites can’t agree among themselves.
Khalid Amaryeh
According to one of the regular contributors Khalid Amayreh
‘Deliberation has effectively become a mouthpiece for fanatical Shiite radicals embracing tyrannical regimes in Damascus and Tehran.’
Deliberation Should not have reached this point. This is the views of the founders of the site.
Khalid Amayreh, although not a contributor as I erroneously said, is a regular contributor to deLiberation and as his comments below his article Those living by the sword shall die by the sword
make clear he is a vile racist and mysoginist. An example of this is the following comment which I publish holding my nose:
(Alex) at least I know my father, and his father, and all my ancestors for the past 500 years.
Unlike me, most Shiites don’t know their fathers, because their mothers slept with hundreds of men in order to desreve the good company of Zaynab and Zahra in the hereafter.
In Baghdada, and Also in Iran, Obstetric & Gynecology Wards summon tens of men for DNA tests to know who is the boy’s mother.
In Mashhad, Iran, an Iranian girle sells herself for five dollars an hour. If she sleeps with 20 men, she makes a hundred dollars.
In Yemen, they send trucks packed with shiite girls to the mountains so that the houthi fighters could get rid of their dirty waters. And the next night, they are sent to another group of fighters, and so on annd so fourth. And so and so frth.
In Baghdad, most of the Shiite temples, the Husseinya, have been transformed into prostitution houses where a given girl has multiple husbands in less than 24 hours. And if they get pregnant, the child is named Abdul Hussein, Abdul Mahdi, etc.
And accorsig to the Shiite of Iblis, such whores will be the first to go to heaven on the day of judgment. Even Ayatullah Sistani, the highest ranking clergyman in Iraq, doesn’t know his father because his mother slept with so many men.
I am sorry to put you head down an d to diagrace you, but sometimes one has to say what one has to say. Remember you house is of glass and I am preparing for you a lot of surprises exposing your promiscuous cult.
This is what the deLiberation site has become - a festering swamp of the most vile racist and sexist comments imaginable - directed in this case at the Shi'ite brand of Islam. Quite how this helps the movement to support Palestine and oppose Zionism is anyone's guess.
Well might our Laura ask!
How has a site that was set up specifically to combat the Jewish anti-Zionist Zionists like myself and Jews for Boycotting Israeli Goods come to this pass? Really it is quite simple. In the words of Dean Acheson, US Secretary of State under Eisenhower, noted that ‘‘Great Britain has lost an Empire and has not yet found a role.’’
They all agreed on the wickedness of the Jewish anti-Zionists and their compatriots and supporters, as well as secular Palestinian comrades like Ali Abunimah and the Angry Arab blogger. What they couldn’t do was define a role for themselves because they had foresworn any analysis that could bind them together.
For Atzmon himself anti-Zionist is itself a form of Zionism! For Paul Eisen, attacking the factual basis of the holocaust was a precondition for any opposition to Israel. For Laura Stuart, who triggered the crisis, when she sent the editor/moderator Jonathan Blakeney an e-mail which he published, everything begins from the most medieval interpretation of Islam. I’ve only met her once but someone who dresses from head to toe in a burka/niqab is hardly going to be in favour of liberating anyone when she can’t begin the process herself.
And just to make it clear, I’m not at all opposed to the Islamic religion anymore than I’m opposed to Judaism or Christianity. But I will oppose and critique all religious practices. Jewish women in Mea Sharim in Jerusalem also cover themselves with a veil, it is not unique to Islam, and this practice owes more to tribalism and men’s oppression of women than Islam anyway.
To the end Paul Eisen found the Jewish hand in all the setbacks, much like Hitler blamed the last world war on Jewish aggrandisement and machinations rather than his invasion of Poland and Czechoslovakia:
Jonathon Blakeney, the semi-sensible editor of this lunatic sight reported the sad (?) news that
‘I have been told that Gilad Atzmon and Paul Eisen are leaving deLiberation.'
Of course this is not the first time that Atzmon's site has collapsed. There was the Palestine Thinktank setup up with Mary Rizzo, after the Peace Palestine site collapsed. On that occasion Mary, who has been almost totally silent, accused Atzmon of consorting with Israeli informers as well as being an out and out mysogynist.
Apparently my un-ethical and illegal use of emails is partly to blame. LOL :-) Although stricly speaking it is not illegal.
To which the appropriately named ‘fool me once’ (surely more than once?) repeated his masters voice saying that ‘A lot of people will find that very disappointing.’
Paul Eisen - Holocaust Denier Eminent Grise
Even Ariadna ticks off Eisen for his anti-Semitism
Eisen informed people that
‘I’m no longer an Editor because I cannot fit in with the current editorial style and practices.'
Apparently it was not Goebbels enough for him. But in any case:
BTW, I’ve only been an Editor for a total of about 4 weeks. I was an Editor for about 2 weeks at the beginning, and then I was removed. Then, about 2 weeks ago, they asked me to lend a hand with all the workload.’
The site editor, Jonathan Blakeney presumably then wrote that
‘Despite Eisen and Gilad jumping ship just as we getting really popular, we are not going to let that stop the deLiberation website.’
Popular? Hardly. Influential? Not at all.
But he says that ‘if nothing else we can all agree that we learnt a lot in the process.’
That is the problem. Nothing has been learnt.
The immediate trigger is the revolution in Syria which I’ve commented about yesterday. In may view the West has successfully subverted the process. It is no longer a popular revolution against the Assad regime.
Yet the contributors to DeLiberation, having based their analysis on Palestine on being Jewish or not Jewish could not then have any grasp of what is happening in Syria. How is it that a regime that is supported by Sunnis is also supported by the Shi’ite Tehran regime and Nasrallah, the Shi’ite leader of Lebanon’s Druze. Surely the Jews don’t control them too?
The answer of course is simple. Hezbollah relied on the Syrian regime to pass on the weaponry that Iran supplied, which in turn deterred Israel. It was based not on religion but realpolitik. Just as Pope Alexander XIII supported the Protestants against the Catholics at the Battle of the Boyne in Ireland in July 1690 so the leaders of the main currents within Islam take their positions based on today’s politics, not the Quoran.
If they had had their wits about them then the DeLiberationists would have noticed how the USA was able to successfully create sectarian divisions with murderous consequences in Iraq. And how Al Quaeda, an American creation, played the role of fascist murderers in this process, deliberately targeting the Shi’ite of Baghdad in particular.
Politics, class politics, seeing reality as it is, analysing the actions of regimes in terms of interests – political and class – is the only way of understanding what is happening in Syria today. Instead DeLiberation got sucked into the quagmire of sectarian divisions between Sunni, Alawite, Shi’ite and all the rest.
I don’t mourn the imminent death of this site but I do mourn those who will continue to follow sectarian paths rather than seeing that Zionism was a political creation. It used being Jewish as its mask, its badge but underneath what matters are the economic and political interests of the West and US imperialism.
This is the lesson from DeLiberation. Forget the reverse racism, the ethnic divisions, concentrate on who pays who what. Follow the money and oil. As for Syria, the catalyst in this debacle, we face a western sponsored armed insurrection that will be no better than Assad. The popular revolution has been militarised and now those who opposed Assad in the streets, women who don’t want to wear the niqab/burka are opposed to what is happening.
Tony Greenstein
all is well in Potempkinville
21.02.2013 20:00
meanwhile, in Potempkinville
@bob
21.02.2013 20:49
Yes, they can't even spell "pillock" right.
ftfy, MrD
Silencing of debates
22.02.2013 09:09
Its always interesting to read about what goes on in my head, from people who are only comfortable saying such things anonymously on the internet,. Fascinating in fact.
Is this why they do it?
Proscribed meaning to "Forbid, esp. by law." So not very different to Censorship ie "The act, process, or practice of censoring."
I know about censorship - Apartheid South Africa relied heavily on it - and banned such items as the children's book Black Beauty, and the Pink Floyd Album, The Wall. (and that's part of the problem for me, once you start doing it, where do you stop?)
Now I know why the Apartheid regime censored stuff, and it seems that there are many who think they are on the 'left' (along with trolls who pretend they are on the left) who behave just like the Boers. They want whole areas of discourse to be proscribed and on this they are even to the right of the state......
So, despite his recent claim that he doesn't like libel laws because they inhibit free speech (he has used themtwice himself), Tony Greenstein beavers away at eroding free speech.
Being a contradictory man he thus is able to have a letter published where he writes:
immediately after writing:
So apparently even Greenstein doesn't buy the line, earlier on this thread that:
Well, I think he is correct in being willing to accept that racism is not the driving force behind some people's questioning of the Holocaust narrative, and therefore wrong in asserting that it is certainly racist.
And in his response 'Red Scribe' notes:
He also suggests that Greenstein's prime motivation here may well be "bureaucratic opportunism":
And this is why I think that there needs to be room for debate. The Palestinians are subjected to daily deprivation and humiliation in their homeland, and the PSC which is the largest and most visible 'Solidarity Campaign' in the UK is so stuck into realpolitik that it is in danger of completely undermining solidarity with the very people it was set to support. One example of this is provided in a Morning Star report:
As I wrote in relation to that:
As to anti-semitism, there are so many false claims around that it is my deep felt belief that we have no option other than to check each and every claim and decide for ourselves. This thread, full of unsubstantiated and perverted smears as it is, is a prime example of how carelessly the label is thrown about, and if you want to believe that as an anti-racist I have this contradictory streak which means I hate people because their mothers happen to he Jewish or some other ridiculous reason then go ahead, but do it elsewhere.
But I suspect most of the posts on this thread come from a very few people and that most of them share Bob's mindset:
And indeed, if you're so sure that you're right, then there is no debate to be had with you. Because you're supremacist to the core, censors at heart and incapable of allowing adult debate.
If you want to talk about deLiberation, which is not an Indymedia project, then start your own Zionist style smear-blog, or go and argue your case on deLiberation. Either must be more productive than writing stuff that gets hidden and read by very few.
ftp
how your experiment turned out
22.02.2013 17:36
A bit cherrypicked from some marginal anonyhack from the CPGB(ML), another bit from Tony Greenstein, and unnamed behind it all, the self-declared fascist David Irving and the neo-Nazi publisher Ernst Zundel, whose ideas you are protecting and defending.
Funny in particular how you hate Tony Greenstein with a loathing beyind loathing, believing him an endless fountain of endless error, the only "sayan of the week" your "deliberation" site ever got around to naming, but you're willing to hide behind one sentence of his when looking for your pretext to promote Holocaust denial.
One might almost conclude that you're essentially without principles when it comes to anti-Semitism, and will grab any pretext in order to prevent yourself from doing the hard work of thinking through exactly how you find yourself so deeply marginalised and with such a reputation for defending and spreading anti-Semitism.
Something has gone off, like milk left too long in the fridge. Hint: if it's not the entire rest of the world, then maybe it's you.
You start with a visceral hate of censorship - fair game. But is the only alternative really "you must be free to slag the Jews and echo neo-Nazi propaganda that they faked their own Holocaust"? Is that really the only choice? The visceral nature of your hatred of censorship prevents you from asking that question.
Instead, you did an experiment.
The real test of any stance is the real world. And that's what "deLiberation" did: tested your ideas in the real world. The central planning point of the "deLiberation" project - a project even you must admit failed in half a year - was the slogan "no gatekeeping." The context (PSC condemning Holocaust denial, Atzmon's anti-Semitism making him a pariah) made it clear what that slogan meant in practice: "say whatever you'd like about the Jews without fear of being called an anti-Semite."
Any fool could have seen what would happen to a site like that: you'd attract anti-Semites who quickly learn they can recycle any anti-Semitic meme in history, as long as they made some fig-leafy attempt at using the word "zionist" at least once somewhere, even if the rest of the post was "jews this jews that."
By the editorial standard you described, a post like this would be perfectly fine: "The zionist banker parasites are in total control of the United Kosherdom Kingdom, and they use their unmitigated power to force the press to propagandize the Holohoax." And the result is that you hung a flag out for Jew-haters, you put out the welcome mat.
Like flies to shit, you got the readership such posts bring you, and their central common thread of the posters was anti-Semitism. When it became clear that no dazzlingly new discourse on the Palestinans was happening, nothing but the same old "and the Jews poison wells" crap that played so well in medieval York, the mighty Ban-Hammer started flying. Not against the anti-Semites, of course, who were by then the site's lifeblood, but by those who could clearly see what course the sight was on (and have been vindicated by the site's spectatular implosion).
A brighter person would take a look at the failed "deliberation" site and discover that, no, the "let's slag the Jew" approach you supported gains you nothing but a solid reputation as someone who slags the Jews.
The PSC took a look at the matter, and decided that the "let's slag the Jews" approach gained the Palestinians exactly nothing. Your site concluded that this meant the PSC was now run by zionists. Which is ridiculous.
Omar Barghouti took a look at the matter, and decided that the "let's slag the Jews" approach gained the Palestinians exactly nothing. Again, your site concluded that Barghouti was now a "zionist asset". Which is ridiculous.
Laurie Penny and other "Zero Books" writers took a look at the matter, and decided that Atzmon's "let's slag the Jews" approach gained the Palestinians nothing but embarrassment. Your site concluded that they were all "anti-zionist zionists". Which is ridiculous.
Finally, any reasonable reader will conclude that the reason you built a Jew-slagging site has little enough to do with actually helping the Palestinians, little enough to do with actually spreading an understanding of history, and is mostly about giving people a place to slag the Jews.
And this is why you have been shunted aside, you and your faux-reasonable call for a "were the neo-Nazis right about the Jews faking their own Holocaust" "debate".
Will you ever give the matter a rethink? I hope so. But if you haven't learned the lesson of "deliberation.info" I can't imagine what would get through to you.
from the horses's mouth
@ 'from the horses mouth'
23.02.2013 07:47
Much respect to you.
Antifa
Whose hands ?
23.02.2013 09:15
There are no actual objectors to ftp outside of the Israeli Hasbara trollers that are seen here in this thread.
Attempts to shut down discussion of what Zionists tell us we must call the 'holocaust' is typical of their need to control the media landscape and divert attention from their crimes. ftp helped funded a site that allows discussion of those theories that other parts of the Zionist influenced media have avoided and that is to be applauded.
If the Zionists are so sure of the stories they tell us I'm sure they will have no problem defending and proving them in open debate with all the evidence out in the open.
anonymous
the larger question
24.02.2013 18:04
Then this thing happens called maturity, and maybe even wisdom, and with it the knowledge that just because you can say anything in the world doesn't mean that you have to, or that you should, and that some things are simply morally wrong to say. Yes, you have the right to call everyone on the tube a cunt, one by one, but that doesn't mean you should - and not merely because it's an invitation to a beating, but because as happens out not everyone in the world is a cunt.
Late in its intellectual down-spiral, defending "deliberation" eventually came down to that least common denominator: "I have the right to call the Jews cunts! I think Jews are cunts and I have the right to say that!"
With the particular case of Holocaust denial, it meant posting to "deliberation" that the Jews have pulled off the greatest crime in history, faking millions upon millions of deaths in a gigantic Jew conspiracy.
To which Bard says: "We have to be free to say stuff like that. Of course, I won't address the morality of it, I won't address the factuality of it, I won't address the neo-Nazi origin of the claims, I won't address any aspect of it whatsoever except for our right to call the Jews cunts. That is the only aspect of it that will every actually draw a response from me. The rest is just too unimportant."
Atzmon forced the issue with his attempts to pretty up anti-Semitism for the left. But the kind of rehashed anti-Semitism that Gilad Atzmon tried to introduce to the left was rejected, rejected big-time, and like a Tolkien character stuck in a cave the Atzmon wing can't imagine any reason for it except for "the zionistses" (pronounced Gollum style). There was no self-reflection any deeper than "Atzmon he was attacked by zionistsessssss. I hatessss them!"
PSC rejected Clark-Lowes for Holocaust denial? They're infiltrated by zionistsessssss! Omar Barghouti and Ali Abunimah condemn Atzmon's barely disguised anti-Semitism? They're more zionistsessssss! Martin Iqbal and Psych O'Keefe not welcome at the Palestine Place squat? Letter after letter from antizionist activists calling out Atzmon's Jew-hating bullshit for what we all knew it is? They're ALL zionistsessssss, zionistsessssss!
And that - blaming zionist infiltrators rather than honestly looking at their own discourse and its historical precedents - is the Atzmon wing's ticket for the train out of town, and they have ridden it into obscurity.
But the larger movement for Palestine - well, they have decided that they are past this point on the path. They've had enough of the "hook-nosed zionists" rhetoric. They have decided that, as I wrote before, slagging off the Jews - or using anti-Semitic rhetoric to slag off the zionists - was backing the wrong horse.
Bard is passionate about justice for the Palestinians - so passionate that he doesn't seem to notice that they have passed him by, by such a large gap that people like him are now a drag on the movement. It's very easy for a zionist to point to "deliberation" and say: see, the Palestinian movement is just a cloaca of undisguised anti-Semitism. That is Bard's gift to the movement: an exceptionally well-engineered and effective club to beat it with, which couldn't do a better job reinforcing the zionist claim that the Palestinian cause is clotted with anti-Semites.
There is still time for you to catch up, Bard. But it's not going to happen until you, maybe for the first time, honestly address the harm you've done, and the harm you're doing.
from the horse's mouth
Show him the door
25.02.2013 18:19
Looked at ftp's racist site, he should be ashamed of himself. No way should this man be an Indy uk mod.
No platform for racists
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