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“Libcom” and “Aufheben” working with the police

Non Fides | 24.07.2013 09:10 | Repression | Social Struggles

From Non Fides - translated from french by actforfreedom/sysiphus.

For some time now a controversy (mainly in English) has been taking place concerning the Libcom site – a kind of online libertarian news platform – and Aufheben – a libertarian-communist review – close to the communising milieu, both from the United Kingdom.

Libcom is already well known in England for always having been against the insurrectionalist anarchists, sabotage, and the animal and earth liberation movements. It is also known for having tried to sabotage the solidarity campaign of the Anarchist Black Cross for the release of John Bowden, anti-authoritarian prisoner serving a long sentence in England [1].

In January 2011, a Greek communist group TPTG discovers that (Dr.) John Drury [pictured below], one of the main editors of Aufheben was part of a team of scientists who regularly publish articles in English police newspapers and gives lectures to the police. This group of researchers specializes in police crowd control tactics and counter insurgency [2]. TPTG then send an open letter to the English, which they also circulate.


One would have thought that this character would have been disengaged from the antiauthoritarian milieu with kicks in the ass as a result of such revelations by the Greeks, but nothing happened. Instead Aufheben, along with the administration of Libcom, launched a campaign in defence of Dr. Drury. They also censured on Libcom any mention of the argument in order to stifle this “Aufhebengate”, arguing their “friendship” for the collaborator.

Therefore, as an anarchist website, we join the call launched by the Greek comrades and those seeking to expose this revelation beyond any censorship by the libertoid English intelligentsia, the same who were so quick to dissociate themselves in the bourgeois press from the English rioters of August 2011 when the prison sentences began to rain down. But when dealing with these vile people, it is not silence that should be opposed, but the outright exclusion from our real and virtual spaces and the impossibility of any dialogue with any collaborator with the police, communist and / or libertarian or not. May the wind that will ravage this world of cops and lucre [flics et fric] carry them with it. We call to spread the information widely (also in France).

Some contributers to Non Fides – Base de données anarchiste.

P.S.

PS. On the subject, we recommend reading (English) very good text Cop-out: the signifigance of Aufhebengate here.

 http://dialectical-delinquents.com/?page_id=9

Footnotes

[1] More information about Bowden here.

 http://bristolabc.wordpress.com/prison-texts/john-bowden/

[2] Here, for example, the reproduction of articles co-authored by the stallion in question, called “Principles and Practices of the Police Public Order based on knowledge” for information.

 http://actforfree.nostate.net/olicing.oxfordjournals.org/content/1/4/403.full.pdf?keytype=ref&ijkey=n1vc1aWuzqxsz6P

Non Fides
- Homepage: http://www.non-fides.fr/?Libcom-and-Aufheben-working-with

Comments

Hide the following 21 comments

Ongoing

25.07.2013 09:35

Thanks for posting, this is definitely worth dragging up again since this scumbag is continuing to write with Clifford Stott, the academic and paid police consultant who supervised Sussex Police's shit new tactic of police liason officers-
 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2012/06/496890.html

Their forthcoming papers are listed here-
 http://www.sussex.ac.uk/profiles/92858

Nice background on Stott here-
 http://fromoutsidethewhale.wordpress.com/2012/06/27/crowded-out/

I guess Drury actually thinks his two existences can co-exist. Which shows his ultra-leftism is simply a sham and means nothing in the real world.

/AFAIK/


Undeniable facts

25.07.2013 13:07

Clifford Stott works with the police. He is a cop collaborator.
John Drury works with Clifford Stott. He is a cop collaborator collaborator.
Aufheben works with John Drury. They are cop collaborator collaborator collaborators.
Libcom defended Aufheben. They are cop collaborator collaborator collaborators collaborators.

The above facts are undeniable.

Anon


From an online discussion list called au-top-sy, in early 2011:

25.07.2013 13:09

"Anyone, such as myself, with the poor judgment or bad taste to spend too much time around the late 20th/early 21st century US anti-authoritarian scenster-scene notices that this scene attracts more than its share of obnoxious mental cases. One of them is a current San Francisco resident named ____. (This individual) is the sole active member of a leftist sect that he calls "Insane Dialectical Posse." The first word of the title is the accurate part.

I attempted to relate to ____ as a friend and comrade for about eleven years, and in taking him at face value I got repeatedly burned for my efforts. In July 2004 I made it absolutely clear to ____ that I wanted nothing more to do with him.

Since then, ____ has subjected me to an off-and-on occasionally violent stalking and harassment campaign.

Often this has involved sketchy online antics (the internet was tailor-made for the ______s of the world.) ________ has also flipped out and threatened to get violent with me on three occasions on the streets of SF; on Haight Street near Bound Together Bookstore, on Mission and 19th, and once inside the Mission District's Cafe Le Boheme, where I made _______ go away by merely brandishing my stun-gun.

At various times ___________'s clownish vendetta has involved his enthusiastic victimization of uninvolved third parties. One major step he took in this, at the end of 2005, was to allege to a man he barely knows that this man's ex-girlfriend and I had an affair back when this man and the woman in question were a couple.

__________ has now followed up on this despicable stunt by "outing" this alleged affair at length on the repulsive UK website "libcom.org" in an exhaustive series of postings last month, Dec. 2010.

In hosting material of this sort the authors of the libcom.org website have shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that they and their project libcom.org have no integrity and no credibility. Libcom's sponsorship of ______________'s online nocturnal emissions are proof that libcom.org is an internet troll phenomenon, an online urinal wall of toxic rumors spewed by anonymous sociopaths who are individually and collectively one hundred percent bad news:

 http://libcom.org/forums/libcommunity/kevin-keating-libcom-15122010?page=1

The alleged affair referred to on libcom.org never took place. This thread is mostly an incompetently staged exercise in Creative Writing by the frustrated bad writer _____________. (In any case) as all grown ups know, other people's private lives are a wholly private matter and not the concern of outside parties. For obvious reasons, the very idea of consensual sex among adults falls far outside of the limited range of life experience of the prepubescent boys who do libcom.org, so it is something for them to marvel over at prurient length. Paraphrasing George Bernard Shaw, those that can, do, and those that can't post stuff on dung beetle web sites like libcom.org...

If libcom.org will humor the creepy voyeurism of a ___________ Libcom will humor anything. Libcom.org has texts on it; so what. There is nothing useful on libcom.org that cannot be found elsewhere. Libcom's key point of reference is not Marxism, anarchism or real-world class conflict but the hyper-alienated culture of the internet. The principles of reverse engineering can be applied here. Libcom's authors give no evidence that they have ever attemped to apply their opinions off-line, among real people in the living world. They have a website, and that's all they have, and with this they can act with anonymous online impunity in compensation for their inability to engage with the corporeal world around them. They don't have to worry about whether their antics will rob them of political credibility because they never had any political credibility to begin with, and a concept like political credibility would be unfathomable to them in any case. As long as they are cutting and pasting articles written by others the little boys at libcom are able to function within their finite level of social competence. When they attempt to strike out on their own they display the social mores of maladjusted children on an elementary school playground. The putrid antics on display here are not a unique abberation in an otherwise impeccable track record -- they are integral to what the libcom.org project is all about.

An involvement in the online world flows in inverse relation to an engagement with the living world around us -- that includes my typing this message now. A project that reproduces the most up to date pathologies of market society has nothing to contribute to a fight for a world worth living in. Whether the people who do libcom.org are malicious children going through a fleeting phase, or adolescents in late middle age with no real life behind them and more of the same in front of them, Libcom.org is total bad news, a shameful embarrassment to the perspectives in the materials libcom.org posts links to. In practice libcom.org is a minor-league negation of the contributions that self-styled ultra-leftists and anarchists aspire to make in the fight against contemporary exploitation and alienation.

Libcom.org's pretensions to revolutionary or subversive credibility cannot be taken seriously. This project has been terminally compromised by the malignant antics of its authors. Libcom.org should be shut down, and until this happens it should be shunned by anyone with a functioning backbone and a rudimentary sense of personal decency."

Kevin Keating
San Francisco

Kevin Keating


No credibility

25.07.2013 13:24

libcom has no credibility.

- In 2001 they grassed up the Wombles to the cops in Brighton, and said Carlo Giuliani "had it coming".
- In 2004 they attacked the Beyond ESF Middlesex Declaration, as part of supporting Labour's Ken Livingstone.
- A leading libcom admin is the son of a top aide to war criminal Tony Blair.
- Another founding member works for Unison, the cops' union.
- In 2005, libcom rushed to condemn "terrorism" at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, feeding the state's agenda to criminalise dissent.
- In 2008, libcom sabotaged the release of anarchist political prisoner John Bowden.
- In 2011, libcom condemned the August riots for disrupting people getting to work.
- Libcom has also recently pulled strings to get prominent anarchists banned from social centres and bookshops based on false sexual allegations.
- And of course, they continue to defend Aufheben, who continue to work with John Drury, who has published papers with Clifford Stott, who openly works with the cops.

Who elected the libcom clique? Nobody. What mandate do they have? None. What credibility do they have? Zero.

KyerrG


Daddy's boy

25.07.2013 17:18

Clifford Stott works with the police. He is a cop collaborator.
John Drury works with Clifford Stott. He is a cop collaborator.
Aufheben works with John Drury. They are cop collaborators.
Libcom defends Aufheben. They are cop collaborators.

The above facts are undeniable.

Good day.

Captain Anarchy


More information?

25.07.2013 17:46

With regards to the allegations below - any chance you could post some links to any further information or evidence??

- In 2001 they grassed up the Wombles to the cops in Brighton, and said Carlo Giuliani "had it coming".
- In 2004 they attacked the Beyond ESF Middlesex Declaration, as part of supporting Labour's Ken Livingstone.
- A leading libcom admin is the son of a top aide to war criminal Tony Blair.
- Another founding member works for Unison, the cops' union.
- In 2005, libcom rushed to condemn "terrorism" at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, feeding the state's agenda to criminalise dissent.
- In 2008, libcom sabotaged the release of anarchist political prisoner John Bowden.
- In 2011, libcom condemned the August riots for disrupting people getting to work.
- Libcom has also recently pulled strings to get prominent anarchists banned from social centres and bookshops based on false sexual allegations.

MB


Sure

25.07.2013 19:43

With regards to the allegations below - any chance you could post some links to any further information or evidence??

- In 2001 they grassed up the Wombles to the cops in Brighton, and said Carlo Giuliani "had it coming".

libcom admin Steven was in the SWP at the time:  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2001/10/12826.html

- In 2004 they attacked the Beyond ESF Middlesex Declaration, as part of supporting Labour's Ken Livingstone.

It's described as 'bizarre' here:  http://libcom.org/library/middlesex-declaration-precariat

- A leading libcom admin is the son of a top aide to war criminal Tony Blair.

 http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1372924/Civil-servant-son-Blair-aide-dubbed-Captain-Anarchy-unmasked-organiser-cuts-protest-mayhem.html

- Another founding member works for Unison, the cops' union.

Steven works for Unison:  https://www.unison.org.uk/at-work/police-and-justice-staff/

- In 2005, libcom rushed to condemn "terrorism" at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, feeding the state's agenda to criminalise dissent.

 http://libcom.org/news/statement-against-london-bombings-07082005

- In 2008, libcom sabotaged the release of anarchist political prisoner John Bowden.

The infamous thread on this seems to have been 'disapeared' down the memory hole...

- In 2011, libcom condemned the August riots for disrupting people getting to work.

 http://libcom.org/news/north-london-solfeds-response-london-riots-09082011

- Libcom has also recently pulled strings to get prominent anarchists banned from social centres and bookshops based on false sexual allegations.

Several respected activists have been banned from Freedom, LARC etc, libcom let their role slip here:  http://libcom.org/forums/news/kafka-sales-will-be-through-roof-nyc-anarchist-book-fair-10042012 and then tried to justify it here:  http://libcom.org/blog/safer-spaces-false-allegations-nyc-anarchist-bookfair-26042012

KyerrG


libcom deffo state

25.07.2013 19:55

my guess is libcom is a state project to promote civil anarchism/draw people away from real anarchism.

Mafanta


thanks

25.07.2013 20:00

KyerrG - thanks, will ave a read thru

MB


Classic misdirection

25.07.2013 22:40

Only problem is it's the self-styled "insurrectionalist anarchists", or at least the people who post on Indymedia using that kind of terminology, whose most closely resemble the agent-provocateur agenda

Rochester


@Mafanta

26.07.2013 08:51

Looks like you might be right. How many real anarchist sites are preserved by the British Library?

 http://www.webarchive.org.uk/ukwa/target/32899250

British Librarian


truth

26.07.2013 09:24

make you think


Will the real spook please stand up

26.07.2013 10:16

Funny how this gets brought up every six months or so for no apparent reason. It's almost the sort of thing you'd expect the state to do as part of a smear campaign aimed at destroying the world's largest library of anarchist works...

Suspicious


So... point by point

26.07.2013 10:45

** In 2001 they grassed up the Wombles to the cops in Brighton, and said Carlo Giuliani "had it coming". **
Who's "they"?

** In 2004 they attacked the Beyond ESF Middlesex Declaration, as part of supporting ** Labour's Ken Livingstone.
Lol you think they support Ken Livingstone?  http://libcom.org/search/apachesolr_search/ken%20livingstone

** A leading libcom admin is the son of a top aide to war criminal Tony Blair. **
Love that your link is to the ever-reliable Daily Mail as it does a hatchet job against another anarchist - apparently your critical thinking about that paper only extends as far as when you're not using it to score points? Anyhow, who gives a shit what his dad does? Bakunin's dad was a career diplomat with 500 serfs ffs.

** Another founding member works for Unison, the cops' union. **
Or to put it another way, he gets facility time at work while he does casework for colleagues, who happen to be organised with the second-largest union in Britain, which has 1.4 million members, with its biggest branch being in the NHS.

** In 2005, libcom rushed to condemn "terrorism" at the G8 summit in Gleneagles, feeding the state's agenda to criminalise dissent. **
Er, your link is to the train bombings on 7/7 which killed civillians. Are you saying you'd do that?

** In 2008, libcom sabotaged the release of anarchist political prisoner John Bowden. **

No, some people on the site, including a few but not all admins, decided that John Bowden's attitude towards the crime he was jailed for of boiling a man alive, cutting their head off and keeping it in his fridge didn't seem to have shown much remorse and took the piss on the forums. I didn't like the tone, but having an opinion is not the same thing as sabotage and never has been.

** In 2011, libcom condemned the August riots for disrupting people getting to work. **

Er, no. North London Solfed put out a statement on the riots which a) doesn't say anything like that, b) is nothing to do with libcom, which simply hosted the statement.

** Libcom has also recently pulled strings to get prominent anarchists banned from social centres and bookshops based on false sexual allegations. **

Again libcom had nothing to do with that, it was a decision come to after a lengthy process supported by pretty much every organised anarchist group in London. The fact you've brought this up is a decent clue to who you actually are - Seamus.  http://libcom.org/blog/warning-tout-03092012

** And of course, they continue to defend Aufheben, who continue to work with John Drury, who has published papers with Clifford Stott, who openly works with the cops. **

They've not spoken about it in years, because there's been nothing new to say. It's only you who brings it up, because you need a stick to carry on your vendetta against a group which helped push you out of the movement. And given you've repeatedly dobbed people in to the cops, you've not got a fucking leg to stand on.

** Who elected the libcom clique? **

Do you even know how a collective works?

Mythbuster


Libcom

26.07.2013 11:19

is a pile of putrid liberal bollox. Might as well call it liberalcom.

Hamish


If any good comes of this...

26.07.2013 11:36

...it will be cos it's a textbook example of COINTELPRO tactics. We should learn them, get wise to them, and not fall for it (in fact, this doesn't have much traction IRL in the UK, it seems to be mainly coming from France and Greece). There's not one shred of evidence, let alone conclusive proof, that libcom collaborate with the cops, but some anonymous folks with an agenda are slinging shit to see what sticks.

From wikipedia:

COINTELPRO tactics have been alleged to include discrediting targets through psychological warfare; smearing individuals and groups using forged documents and by planting false reports in the media; harassment; wrongful imprisonment; and illegal violence, including assassination.[3][4][5] The FBI's stated motivation was "protecting national security, preventing violence, and maintaining the existing social and political order."[6] FBI records show that 85% of COINTELPRO resources targeted groups and individuals that the FBI deemed "subversive",[7] including communist and socialist organizations.

Enough of this shit
- Homepage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/COINTELPRO


@ Rochester & MythBuster etc

26.07.2013 12:05

>Only problem is it's the self-styled "insurrectionalist anarchists", or at least the people who post on Indymedia >using that kind of terminology, whose most closely resemble the agent-provocateur agenda

Says the anonymous one-line poster on Indymedia, who knows what the "agent-provocateur agenda" 'really' is. Have you ever even been in a riot or trashed something? I fucking doubt it. Any time any UK activist sees an action they don't identify with, they type 'agent-provocateur' into IMC, and smear the actions. And that's all they can do, and its all the cops can do. That is why the cops and the fash are trying to stop the action groups with all their weirdo trolling, and they are helped along by the petty public schoolboy antics of Libcom and the AFED.

You can catch up, or fuck off. It's not the "insurrectionalist anarchists" who track IPs on their forums and websites, and defend police collaborators, it's fucking Libcom. Last time I looked, the insurrectionalists were burning, looting, kicking it off, defending their prisoners and being straight up and open about it- whilst the Libcom are keeping it well legal, nicey-nicey middle-class, democratically approved for Mr & Mrs Normal, and doing some well shady shit against the interests of the movement behind closed doors and being totally divisive. It doesn't matter how many times geek twats post weirdo shit on IMC to try to divide and rule, the fact is the "insurrectionalist anarchists" have an actual continuity in Europe and around the world, and have started their war, and they are not going to stop, not for you silly UK activists, not for those backward anarcho-socialist federations and not for the poor moves by police keyboard jockeys.


@ MythBuster, fuck knows who you are, but you don't know me, and I didn't write those reasons nor require your responses, so Fuck YOU. Your Libcom library circle-jerk is nothing more than an online nerd freak show.

It's worth mentioning that in that infamous John Bowden thread which has since 'disappeared', admin 'Fall Back' called for a LIFE SENTENCE for imprisoned eco-activist Jeff Luers, who was then serving a massive 21.5 years for setting just three SUVs on fire at 3am in the morning. And fuck all your weak cowardly apologia shit about John Bowden's 'attitude', who the fuck are you or any of your priviliged civil anarchist arselickers to judge?

Fuck 'Steven', 'Fall Back' and all you other Libcops, moronic AFEDers, socialist activistoids, and other tinfoil-hat wearing COINTELPRO conspiraloons. Hatred exists for a reason. Those who sow discord reap tempests.

See you in hell.







Zero


This is ridiculous

26.07.2013 16:34

1. So TPTG & some french bloke 'out' JD as a cop collaborator.
2. Aufheben say they looked into it, and his story checked out.
3. TPTG & some french bloke denounce Aufheben as cop collaborators.
4. libcom look into Aufheben's story, and also say it checks out (email trails, powerpoint slides etc).
5. TPTG, some french bloke, and an assorted bunch of grudge-bearers including known touts and sex offenders denounce libcom as cop collaborators.
6. Allegations get repeated every 6 months with embellishments (JD is now apparently an expert in counter-insurgency).

If people think Aufheben are lying (why?), why don't they arrange to see the evidence they claim to have which clears JD of working for the cops?

Recap


@Recap

26.07.2013 18:30

You fucking idiot, we're not stupid, we have actually done the research. Going into a room in which a bunch of police officers are sitting and waiting to listen to you speak about something that is supposed to help them do their jobs better is what counts as being a fucking snitch. Fuck Aufheben, JD and his mate Clifford Stott.

Spread your defensive weirdo shit about 'touts' (that's actually you lot), 'sex offenders' (is it the bogeyman Hakim Bey?!), the evil deluded 'TPTG' and the lone 'French bloke', whatever, - this is not going to work and we're not going to go away. So now, all that is left for you, is to fuck off and die on your shit forum for dried up reformist wankers who have OCD.

;-)

Enjoy the weekend! Looks like another scorcha!

Reading Richard


Sigh

26.07.2013 19:13

"Going into a room in which a bunch of police officers are sitting and waiting to listen to you speak about something that is supposed to help them do their jobs better is what counts as being a fucking snitch."

Well this is the exact thing that's in dispute. Aufheben say they can prove JD didn't write the papers in question or give any presentations on public order. But hey, you know the TRUTH so actually checking out their story is irrelevant.

Recap


So wait...

26.07.2013 19:26

- Clifford Stott works with/for the police. This is uncontroversial.
- John Drury has published with Clifford Stott. The authorship of crucial joint papers is disputed.
- Aufheben say JD's story checks out, and that he hasn't worked on public order police advice (and his contact with the cops is to do with 'mass emergencies').
- Libcom say Aufheben backed up JD's story with evidence (email trails, presentation notes).
- As far as we know, nobody else has attempted to verify Aufheben's story, but have formed opinions one way or the other based on the polemics.

That's 4 degrees of separation between libcom and the cops. Even if it's all true and Aufheben and libcom are lying for reasons unknown, "libcom are working with the police" is completely unsubstantiated.

Kevin Bacon