Monbiot meeting on ESF

Globalise Resistance are well known to be nothing but a useless pathetic front group for the SWP.

And George Monbiot doesn't agree with violent protest.

Therefore anyone OPEN MINDED enough to be an anarchist shouldn't bother going to this event.

OK, don't go, right... got the message. DON'T GO TO THE MEETING!!!!!!!!!!

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Sectarianism: It's BIG and it's CLEVER.

The main problem with George Monbiot isn't that he doesn't agree with 'violent protest' (although I do find his personal need to condemn actions which he doesn't agree with in the corporate media extremely annoying - see this article where he denounces Reclaim the Streets as 'part of the problem' shortly after May Day 2000, when the state where desperately seeking help from whomever they could to criminalise the 'anti-capitalist movement':  http://www.monbiot.com/dsp_article.cfm?article_id=285 ) but rather that he is an upper-class fool who uses the position of privilege that he has (as a rich, well educated white man with huge connections in the establishment - he works as an academic at Oxford University!) to criticise the excesses of capitalism (it's treatement of indigenous people in the so-called 'Third World', and its destruction of the environment through the development of infrastructure (roads, airports...) and new technologies - biotech in particular) whilst defending the system in its entirity (condeming protests that "go too far", encouraging people to find solutions within the system by urging the creation of new, nicer political parties and a 'fairer' management of the economy). When you consider howmuch this upper class cretin benefits from the continuation of the present system (for his power and influence he relies upon his contact within the present ruling class - without them he's nothing!) it's hardly a surprise when he leaps to its defence.

As for his new found friends in the Socialist Workers Party... they've always looked for nice, respectable liberals to work together with. They use them to draw attention to the party and its front groups such as Globalise Resistance in order to be able to pose as the radical alternative to them. I say they're welcome to each other.

Actually he's an academic at Oxford Brookes Uni, not that other outfit up the road.

I don't disagree with your analysis of monbiot/swp, but that doesn't mean anarchists should't have a presence at such meetings. We can't complain later, if we are not there - it is important to publicly say that we have something different to say from monbiot and his new found friends.

My attitude to the ESF was pretty much along the same lines as the comments above, but I've been persuaded that we should try and influence the meetings, rather than just moan on the newswire. However, i do not mean we should compromise - we must not be co-opted into a traditional hierachal system. We must try and make it something else - RECLAIM THE EUROPEAN SOCIAL FORUM!

Why slate George here when this very website hides articles which have anything to do with the rockefeller empire?

BILDERBERG, COUNCIL ON FOREIGN RELATIONS AND THE TRILATERAL COMMISSION.

Now, see how long this article lasts..............!

(P.S, before you start laughing it's time to wake up and stop falling for this crap time after time after time; YOUR BORING!)

People who read the Indymedia newswire are all big boys and girls. We don't need someone to tell us which meetings to go to, thank you very much. We don't need so-called "non-hierarchical", anarchist thought-police to guide us in these matters--we can make our own minds up.

Monbiot has his strengths and weaknesses. It is a good sign when people of his background begin to rebel against their own class. We should try to influence him rather than hurl mindless insults at him.

I agree with the person who said that it would be a good idea to attend this meeting to try and influence him away from his naive pacifist prejudices. In general, it is a good idea for anti-capitalists to talk to each other calmly and rationally and exchange thoughts and ideas. Better than pulling faces and sticking tongues out at each other--as some of the loop de loop commentators on this page seem to like to do.

Oh, and by the way, you so-called "non-hierarchy" types, we have been here before. Have a look at Jo Freeman's "Tyranny of Strcuturelessness" wriiten in the 60s.

 http://flag.blackened.net/revolt/hist_texts/structurelessness.html

Something tells me Barney the purple dinosaur was taking the piss. Re-read the comment and see if you think it's meant to be taken seriously. I think you'll find it's actually meant as a dig at anarchists, not written by one.

Hazel, ok he's at Oxford Brookes at the moment not Oxford Uni - but he was there before (and for a while at Keele, Bristol and East London Unis - busy boy!)

In relation of Chris' comment: I agree mostly. I think that we should go along to meetings like the ESF and even that talk plugged here, I just thought it right to give a bit more of an incite into who is and what his politics are. Of the extent to which the ESF can be 'reclaimed', I'm not too sure. Perhaps its possible. I tend to think that the groups such as ATTACK (France), the Italian Refounded Communist Party and (to a much lesser extent) the British SWP, have quite a tight control on the structures and will use 'coalitions', even problematic ones with radicals as means of promoting their 'radicalism'/on-the-edge-ness. I tend to think it might be more worthwhile putting time into organising a big counter-conference (ie: outside and against, yet in contact with the Forum) - but I'm not too sure about that.

As for Ned: There's some good stuff in the article, "The Tyranny of Structurelessness". It's been published together in a pamphlet called, "Untying the knot" (available from AK Press, Active Distribution, radical bookshops etc...) and is published together with a reallly excellent response called, "The Tyranny of Tyranny". Your webpage, unofrtunately didn't have a link to it. Anyone interested can read it at:  http://www.pgaconference.org/_postconference_/fo_tyrannyoftyranny.htm
I think you have to ask if George Mobiot really is "rebelling against his class" - a lot of what he writes, and where he writes it (in The Guardian, for academic journals etc...) seem to be more a defence of class society and a call for its reform as something nicer than any real "rebellion". And I don't think that the "insults" people are "hurling" at him are mindless. People are justifiably pissed off by the rubblish he espouses and his attempts at recouperation. Rather than spending time and energy trying to persuade him away from his pacsifist ideas we need to concentrate on getting rid of the system which allows for people from his background, with so much access to resources, from being able to recouperate struggles and transform it into the party politics and polite protest that the system can cope with - and that means creating and using independent media to criticise his ideas, aswell as having it out with people like him in public.

I say, go along and tell him and his sad new opportunistic mates what you think of them.

Hola

Monbiot is of course a waste of time, and I don't think that meeting will be very interesting. Monbiot doesn't actually understand the ESF, nor how he is giving legitimacy to the SWP's front group, as well as this 'Peace and Justice' nonsense, now called 'Respect' - how ironic that an SWP-run coalition is called respect when they trample on anyone in their way to get 'power'.

But: will people please stop criticising the ESF as SWP-dominated and thus refusing to get involved. By not getting involved, you leave it in the hands of the SWP, and thus they will turn the space into a political rally about the fucking war.

A bit of participation and networking with the non-hierarchicals will ensure they are put in their place and we can create an ESF genuinely worthy of the name.

If we don't succeed, we withdraw and stage a counter-event.

Simple really.

A lot of you really seem to have a bee in your bonnets about the "poshness" or otherwise of lefty commentators, don't you?

Are you sure you are anarchists? Your comments appear to be more akin to the rigid Marxist who believes that nobody who doesn't wear overalls and carry a spanner (ie. the urban 'proletariat') can be of any use in the (long-awaited) revolution that is to come.

Anarchist thought accepts anyone from ANY class who has seen through the lies of capitalism, hierachy and state oppression and chooses to work towards its abolition.

Just look at some of the great thinkers of anarchism and their backgrounds:

Willam Godwin (upper-middle, son of a Methodist preacher)
Pierre-Joseph Proudhon (middle-class businessman)
Michael Bakunin (Russian aristocrat)
Peter Kropotkin (Russian prince)
Errico Malatesta (son of landowning squire - gave the land away to his tenants and retrained as an electrician)

And lest we forget, Marx was solidly bourgeois and Engels owned a factory.

Now lets stop all this damaging inverted snobbery and focus on things that MATTER.

Thanks, comrades.

I agree with the last comment, and the important thing to remember and refer to with the SWP on the issue of making the decision-making process non-hierachical and fully transparant is that GR/SWP through the ESF process put forward some ridiculous motion that local social Forums should not be recognised!!! Now they talk of transparancy and opening up the decision-making process, it is clear that is all-talk, and so we can hold that bewildering motion up to them which can only embarrass them to backing down.

Barney the Purple Dinosaur ... an excellent mimic/satirical joke-post taking the piss out of all you predictable state-agents peddling disinformation, paranoia and division. You hopeless ambassadors of dull propaganda for the capitalist death-train. Fuck-off. The prospect of the ESF being dominated by the SWP becomes a self-prohesising reality the more it is drummed into people. J18 was the success it was because of the wide-networking it received ...the same can be for ESF. We also have to recognise that SWP are useful up to a point (albeit an very limited one). Their sponsoring of George Galloway's tour was good, despite reservations about him, HE & STOP-THE-WAR DO GIVE VISIBILITY TO THE RESISTANCE. Lets not knock that, but build within, inside and outside it.

I say we should participate AND have our counter-conference as well! Mainly because there will be issues like the plight of ecology and indigenous peoples around the world that won't get covered sufficiently in ESF. We are the real grassroots movement and we need more visibility too. Think Claremont Road, Wandsworth, J18.

George is all right really - he managed to kick start (with others) a land rights movement in the Uk - now sadly deceased. I've met him a few times over the years and once had the entertaining sight of said George wearing suit and carrying a briefcase get covered in mud whilst diving a digger at Newbury. Give a chap a break........

Ned you fool, the pamphlet the Tyranny of Structurelessness isn't about being pro-hierarchy, it's a criticism of groups with INFORMAL hierarchy. It suggests putting a few rules in place to make sure everyone in a group gets a say and is MORE democratic (and anti-hierarchical) than either a structureless group or a hierarchical one that elects leaders to think for them, which you seem to prefer.

The two essays, T. of S. and T. of T. are available from the Anarchist Federation - www.afed.org.uk

And you lot claim to be trying to create a more peaceful and co-operative world? You can't even get on with each other!

It's a good thing. Its democratic and it proves that (unlike you, yer smug toss) the Bodysnatchers haven't got to us yet.

Its called having a range of different opinions. In the old days it used to be thought of as "democratic", before democracy came to mean "agreeing with the government all the time."

I'm not surprised you find it so "amusing". All this "discussion" must seem a little odd to you types who've already fallen victim to the Bodysnatchers.

Good luck, anyway.

I don't see much actual debate about George Monbiot's ideas here? Have any of you actually read his book (the Age of Consent)? Some of the ideas he advocates are not particularly new, but they are very well argued and thought out.
Rather than just slag him off, why don't you deal with the issues that he presents. What kind of anarchists are you anyway? You can't just disagree with everything. If you can't argue your points, then I guess you are just the trendy, temporary type, who will go off and drive daddy's Porsche and work at an advertising company in five year's time.