WIKILEAKS MOMENT / NAPSTER MOMENT

The ongoing News International fiasco appears, on the face of it, a good old-fashioned scandal, a “Watergate” for our times, as the #hackgate hashtag suggests. This, the story goes, is a case of a brave investigative journalist bringing hitherto unknown corruption to light in the mainstream media, and, in exposing it, raising questions about the hidden links of the rich and powerful. It’s been a nice return to classic Fleet Street values of speaking truth to power, of exposé and outrage, a pause in the running narrative of the past 10 months- austerity, insurrection and cyberwar. So runs the broadsheet analysis. However, it’s actually an integral part of that thread of confusion and worldwide destabilisation running from Wikileaks, through the Arab Spring, and European and US anti-austerity struggles, to Anonymous and the ongoing Cyberwar (beta).

Whilst traditional commentators are keen to accentuate the differences of these struggles, and paint any attempt to analyse their commonalities as self-valorisation of the most obnoxious kind by western activists, we believe that the causes of these worldwide shifts in power are very much linked. The links lie in our changing attitude to extant authority, to our shared relationship with changing trends in international capital and, importantly, in the role of technology in these changes. The hacking scandal isn’t an event that will lead to a cleaning up of the media and a return to the “values” the NOTW hacks seemingly undermined; rather, it is the spreading of a process of delegitimisation running concurrently across societies worldwide, from the authoritarian regimes of North Africa to the War on Drugs in the US, or the rise of Lulzsec.

The link between the hacking scandal and these new currents of political and social change is based around two new models of crisis; models of the technological freeing up of information, and ensuing deligitimisation of those who have controlled that information. Crisis for them, but for us, a possible opportunity. We call these models “The Napster Moment” and “The Wikileaks Moment”.

The Napster Moment

Faced with slightly changing circumstances, a manager is able to make two choices– to modify how her system operates, or to retain the methodologies of the status quo. The brave or foolhardy manager will opt for change; to optimise the efficiency of their operation. Such a move is inherently risky; if the changes result in reduced efficiency, in failure, then she faces the blame as the manager who implemented the system. Those who want a quiet life will take the sensible option– retain the current model, and invest their energies in plastering over the cracks. With any luck, the system will outlive her tenure, and, if worst comes to worst, she can offer the defence that it was the system that was unsustainable– she just happened to be at the helm when it broke, but it’s the system she inherited and it could have happened to anyone.

This hypothesis on the inherent conservative bias in managerial practice can be applied as a general tendency. Complacency as to the efficacy of any given system tends to prevail amongst those who control the system, whether that system is the music industry, the newspaper industry or liberal capitalist democracy. People keep using the system, people keep abiding by the rules, laws and logic of the system– therefore, people must be invested in the system, must believe in the system, right?

Wrong. Whilst the ideological framework of, and popular consent for, any given system might appear to be largely intact, and ticking over nicely, that’s not in itself evidence that its clients are ideologically invested in that system. The managers continue maintaining the system, unaware of the growing contradictions within it that are threatening to realise themselves at any given point. That point occurs with the Napster Moment- the moment when technology allows the clients to circumvent the authority that manages the system. The moment refers not just to the peer-to-peer music sharing software that allowed users to obtain music free of charge (through piracy), but from the situation the music industry found itself in. For an industry that had, for so long, taken its user’s loyalty and expenditure for granted, suddenly the cat was out of the bag. This is the situation that describes The Napster Moment– a point of no-return, where, due to technological development, a defunct authority no longer has the legitimacy to enforce its hold over its users.
This is more than a technological crisis; it’s an ideological crisis. The ability to pirate music, whether through sharing CDs, taping off the radio or pirating in smaller “silo communities” (non-networked peer-to-peer associations, for example) already existed, but Napster offered a technological and ideological structure to turn peer-to-peer music trading into something which offered a genuine popular opposition to the music industry as distributors.

As a model for crisis, we can start to see it in its nascent form across cyberspace. For example Silk Road, an online anonymous marketplace which runs on Tor anonymity software, enables the trading of contraband, especially drugs and controlled substances, for bitcoins, an online crypto-currency, via mail. It’s highly possible that Silk Road, at least as a model, could spell the Napster Moment for the prohibition of drugs in western democracies. Its position here brings us back to our original point about consent: Napster and Silk Road didn’t arise from nowhere to create the ability for piracy and drug-dealing, but rather made it possible to organise those activities in such a way that their networked nature became an coherent challenge to the concept that the intellectual property regime, or the prohibitions on drugs, operate by common consent of citizens. Will law enforcement agencies now be forced to take the line of the music industry and implement increasingly authoritarian measures – seizing personal computers and mail, tapping phones and checking bank accounts, monitoring bitcoin mining – just to maintain the facade of the War on Drugs?
This is the Pandora’s Box of the Napster Moment– an unleashing of the hidden rejection of the dominant ideology committed through mass disobedience from the privacy of your bedroom. In collective anonymity we trust.

The Wikileaks Moment

If the Napster Moment is a tipping-point for mass-networking information which once crossed cannot be retracted, then the Wikileaks Moment is something quite different; a moment within a process where technology allows the release of previously-limited information that totally strips away the ideological justification for a given authority. The scale of the leak is massive– so massive the content becomes almost irrelevant compared with its effect. How many people know the details of the Wikileaks Cables? The real relevance is that the US rhetoric surrounding foreign policy has been revealed as a political disguise for vicious realpolitik, and those who have claimed this to be the case for so many years have had their conspiracy justified.

This position was recently brought up by theorist and Gaga-botherer Slavoj Zizek during his recent performance with Julian Assange at the Frontline Club. Addressing the importance of Wikileaks, he said

“So, again, what I want to say is, let me begin with the significance of what you, Amy, started with, these shots. I mean, not shooting, but video shots of those Apache helicopters shooting on. You know why this is important? Because the way ideology functions today, it’s not so much that—let’s not be naive—that people didn’t know about it, but I think the way those in power manipulate it. Yes, we all know dirty things are being done, but you are being informed about this obliquely, in such a way that basically you are able to ignore it.”

What Zizek highlights here is that we all hold an understanding as to the nature of power, but it is due to the sheer quantities of specific data and information that, taken as a whole, undermine our ability to accept previously hidden but acknowledged practices. The “moment” of the Wikileaks Moment is the point at which the traditional tactics of defence and apology– for example, what K-punk calls the “individual as scapegoat-trophy in order to deflect from a structural tendency”– fail because the scale and previously-concealed nature of the accusations have dealt a fatal blow to the integrity and legitimacy of the defendant; or rather, to the complex ideology of commonsense and everyday truth they hide behind.

This is the situation Murdoch finds himself in. The criminal nature of the phone-hacks are less relevant than the proof that News International’s patriotic tears for Our Brave Boys have been crocodile tears, and that the Editorial line of any given paper is a creative fiction aimed at building a saleable identity. The joy of the establishment Left at having their anti-Murdoch conspiracies validated was unrestricted, but missed the realisation that not only did this stripping back of the constructed nature of editorialism apply to “their side” too, but that the rejection of the editorial authority will also be applied wholesale. Wikileaks didn’t damage administrations specifically, it damaged the very legitimacy of parliamentary democracy as a model of just governance. Hackgate won’t damage News International alone, but erode the idea of news outlets as agents of truthfulness or honest political analysis. It was the scale of the leaks, and the incessant feedback of networked commentary in the form of twitter, that pushed this into more than a scandal; and the traditional remedy for a scandal within neoliberalism– the rooting out of bad apples and the independent inquiry– will never restore faith, because nobody wants their faith to be restored.

The wider question that has been passing round militants in the DSG network: Is Murdoch’s “Wikileaks moment” symptomatic of the Establishment’s Napster Moment? The corruption and nepotism of the closed circle of politicians, press and police was a disgusting necessity for the efficient running of the state in the interests of the status quo, but it worked because it was hidden, neatly covered with the facade of the consensus of progressive patriotism, classless society rhetoric and the meritocracy. This conspiracy was a vital tool of governance, but now a precedent of bottom-up transparency has been set, whereby those of us who are excluded from the circles of power have the technological tools (and will) for the constant revelation of such scandals. An endless appetite for transparency, causing an infinite loop of scandal, resulting in a revolving door of administrations. The system of parliamentary democracy and capitalist media as it exists in Britain simply wasn’t designed as a transparent system, and technological developments, hitting at the same time as a restructuring crisis, are forcing open those contradictions. Faced with its Napster Moment, the parliamentary system has two options- either to acknowledge the changing conditions, or, like the music industry, to plough ahead with the current model, and use increasingly repressive and authoritarian tactics to enforce its legitimacy amongst its client base.

DSG EDITORIAL

OMNIA SUNT COMMUNIA

“A story of beauty and disgrace”

A brief post- a recommendation to listen to yesterday’s Novara show from Resonance FM, featuring Federico Campagna of Through Europe giving a fascinating history and analysis of the Italian workerist movement, Autonomia and its continued relevance and resonance within anti-austerity movements today- more so than the insurrections of France in 1968. We really cannot recommend this enough- following our recent post on Antonio Negri, this programme provides a wonderful introduction to the subject.

Listen here- Workerism, Autonomia and Lessons from the Italian Left; What can 2011 learn from Italy in the 1970s

We’ve also provided some links to further reading and ideas touched upon in the programme-

Background

When Insurrections Die (Gilles Dauvé)- an analysis of the failure of workers movements throughout the 20th Century

The Workerists and the Unions in Italy’s Hot Autumn (Steve Wright)- chapter from “Storming Heaven” on the industrial unrest of 1969

The birth of Italian Workerism (Steve Wright)

Autonomia and Workerist theory

Franco “Bifo” Berardi– Selected Berardi texts

Mario Tronti– Selected Tronti texts

Antonio Negri– Selected Negri texts

The Grundrisse (Marx) From the late 60’s, new translations of Marx’s earlier writings became available across Europe, and formed the basis of a new critique of political economy, aimed equally at the Soviet system as the burgeoning consumer democracies of the West. Marx’s “Grundrisse der Kritik der Politischen Ökonomie” (Outlines of the Critique of Political Economy) was highly influential within Autonomist currents- not least the section…

Fragment on the Machines (pdf)(Marx), which continues to inform ideas and critiques of the General Intellect and post-fordist labour today

Domination and Sabotage (PDF) (Antonio Negri)– fascinating Negri text

Fighting for Feminism– Letters from Lotta Continua regarding Women and revolutionary struggle in Italy

Automia: Post-Political Politics (amazon link) (poor quality pdf)- collections of texts and interesting documents from the Autonomia movement, released by Semiotext(e)

Feminism, Workerism and Autonomy (Patrick Cuninghame)– Overview of the struggle against unpaid reproductive labour

Let’s Spit on Hegel – Rivolta Femminile manifesto

Auto-Reductionism in Turin, 1974 (Cherki and Wieviorka)– Account the auto-reduction of prices, collectively bargaining for reduced living costs in everyday life

Cultural manifestations / Mao-Dadaism

Radio Alice– An interview with Franco Berardi on Radio Alice

Transcript of Radio Alice broadcast during a police raid

A Laughter That Will Bury You All (Patrick Cuninghame)- a survey of the creative and cultural aspects within Autonomia

Il Trasloco (Federico Campagna)- Article about Bifo’s wonderful film

Legacy / Side Notes

The aftermath- Armed Struggle in Italy, 1976-78
The Walsall Anarchists (John Quail)– an account of the conspiracy against the Walsall Anarchists, 1892

Aufheben archive – British libertarian communist group influenced by autonomist movements. They even have a myspace omg.

Wu-Ming Foundation blog– Italian collective, author of Luther Blissett’s “Q”

The Free Association– British affinity group influenced by autonomist ideas

For further reading, libcom.org has an indispensable library of material

And lastly- the incredible youtube video of the funeral of Enrico Berlinguer, PCI General Secretary, that Federico mentioned…

BRITAIN’S FIRST CYBER-STRIKE – How the June 30th strike may play out online

June 30th marks a very considerable mobilisation of industrial action in Britain, in the shape of a large public sector strike. The Trades Unions are making their first tentative steps towards politically motivated action for a generation, with a massive withdrawal of workers labour in response to government plans for pensions reform; whilst the pensions dispute is the legal justification for industrial action (under Britain’s strict, Thatcherite anti-strike legislation), in reality the issue is the tip of the iceberg. The consensus behind the strikes is that of a political fight against the cuts in general. The range of action we will see on June 30th will stretch far beyond those “directly” affected by pensions plans, with a cross-section of those worst hit by the cuts expected to engage with the day of action– the disabled, those who face massive reductions to vital welfare benefits, students, schools pupils and parents and other public-service users.

The participation of these groups raises old questions about how people not traditionally represented by and outside of trade-union structures and activities can appropriately take direct action if they cannot withdraw their labour. But it also raises other issues that need to be addressed; notably, how changing conditions of production and employment in a 21st century, late-capitalist economy have affected the viability of the mass strike alone as an effective tool of social struggle.

There is no doubt that the withdrawal of labour is still the primary tactic working people have in defence of their interests, and as a process that broadens understanding of the dynamics of a class society through praxis; that is, in the very act of striking we can begin to understand our position and our potential for re-imagining social relations outside of the wage relation. But society today isn’t encapsulated by the unionised mass worker, but rather by the short term contract, the service industry worker, the temp and those whose labour isn’t rewarded at all. How are those most badly affected by cuts- the single-mother and the unpaid carer- supposed to withdraw their labour? It’s simply not possible. The difficulties faced by those in precarious jobs, with short term contracts, alienated and disconnected from their workmates and threatened by aggressive management, are similar. Simply calling on them to “unionise! don’t work!” is rhetoric, not a tactic.

Widening tactics of dissent, refusal and disruption of capital is vital. It is within these two defining conditions – the Europe-wide anti-austerity struggle, and the post-fordist economic model– that the concepts and tactics of the new models of the “cyberstrike” are emerging. Predictably, like almost all developments within cyberspace, they are being misunderstood, misrepresented or usually ignored by the mainstream press, who, in Britain, seem to have fallen back on the idea that anything related to the internet is the domain of friendless teenage virgins. It seems completely beyond their understanding that those whose voices have previously been absent from direct industrial action may be starting to be empowered to organise and agitate via the internet.

So how might the June 30th strike play out online? Given the current climate, recent online events and the speed of development, only an idiot would make concrete predictions, but there are a number of tactics and scenarios which are now distinct possibilities. These range in intensity from essentially political pressure (a “hashtag revolt”) right through to acts of illegalism– even mass illegalism– in an attempt to shut down production in the economy.

Surprisingly, considering the hype and confusion in the media regarding hacker group Lulzsec at the moment, a “cyberattack” in the form of a DoS (Denial-of-Service) action or security leak by a hacktivist group has not even been raised as possibility in the press. In Britain especially, security for government computer infrastructure is notoriously weak (as the Lulzsec NHS leaks prove), and a pre-planned action by a hacker group with a sympathetic ideological leaning could produce significant embarrassment for the Government at just the moment where it vitally needs to uphold it’s “legitimacy”. More than this, a DoS attack, or a series of attacks, upon Government websites could produce far more damage to production and inconvenience to management than 1000 picket-lines. It hardly needs pointing out that such online action is highly illegal, but whilst the Government and Police have invested significant time and resources into contingency planning for civil disorder on the streets they have been highly complacent over the prospect of widespread cyber-disorder.

Whether groups do exist with the ideological leanings towards taking direct action in support of striking workers is unquestionably complicated to assert. Defining the identities and motivation of online activists and/or hackers is not as easy as saying X is “in it for the lulz”, politically-motivated or just “trying to meet the rent”, or they’re a member of either Anon, Lulzsec or Cult of the Dead Cow, or they’re left-wing, libertarian or anarchist. To search for a definitive identity and ideology amongst cyber-identities is like asking “Are you a teacher, a mother, or exhausted?” “Are you a student, a call-centre worker, or indebted?” “Are you a Tory, a banker, or a bastard?”. However, as we’ve reported previously, there has, over the past year, been an increasing move towards politicisation within hacker groups, especially Anonymous.

That politicisation has resulted in widespread and practical actions across the world, from mass-faxing the Wikileaks Cables to Egypt after the government cut the internet, to attacking and defacing government websites and facilitating proxies for twitter etc. And these actions were not, as is often reported, limited to “The Arab Spring”- they also took place in support of “Indignados” movements across Europe. It is not inconceivable that Anonymous or related groups may draw similar links to the UK and undertake actions here.

A tactic similar to the small hacker-groups, but capable of being utilised by larger networks of less-skilled activists, or even ordinary members of the public, is the DDoS (Distributed-Denial-Of-Service) attack whereby groups utilise tools such as network attack applications like Low Orbit Ion Cannon to target a website and force it offline. However the DDoS as a tactic has precedents within online activism. The “online sit-in” from the late 90’s/early 2000’s was essentially a “tool-less” DDoS attack whereby thousands of internet users loaded, and reloaded, the same webpage repeatedly, draining the server of bandwidth until the website crashed or became too slow to use through overuse (we all remember those bad old days). These processes require incredibly basic skill sets, making them open to utilisation by exactly the people normally excluded from direct action.

A politically motivated online sit-in is a non-violent direct action aimed at causing disruption in order to raise awareness. The sit-in has long been a tool of effective protest, most notably in the civil-rights era in the US. Today governments are working hard, globally, to criminalise this act of non-violent resistance as an act of war before it becomes a viral, popular action; for decades protestors around the world have blocked roads to stop traffic. Whilst illegal, the context is widely understood that the act, though illegal, is hardly criminal. That does not hold true to the online sit-in, blocking site-traffic from reaching it’s destination.

On top of this is the possibility of “socially-engineered disruption”– essentially the computer workers equivalent of the “clog in the machine” or the “paperclip in the photocopier”, a form of industrial sabotage. Within online security jargon, social engineering means gaining access, information or action not through technical hacking but through manipulating the human link in the security chain. Typically this is a malicious action, whether phishing for data from less tech-savvy users, or “baiting”. However, within the context of industrial sabotage, an age-old tool of industrial action, this could just as easily be a worker purposefully disrupting their workplace in order to impede production whilst unable to strike. On June 30th, workers with strong ideological ties could well take part in solidarity sabotage; with many working in the IT professions such action, online or otherwise, could have deferred and untraceable consequences, not least with workers being far more highly-skilled in technical operation than their bosses.

Inevitably the most popular online actions on June 30th will be based on social media. We can expect a whirlwind of twitter updates, yfrog images, online petitioning and concerted attempts to shape mainstream media narrative through “send us your experiences” type citizen journalist initiatives taking place. The efficacy of such actions in terms of impeding production seems doubtful to us, although they will contextualise public opinion. However, we are seeing increased mobilisation through social media which escapes being over-codified with conventional activist rhetoric. This combination of populism and agility may well provide a base for the growth of movements that echo the “indignados” movements occurring in Southern Europe. As we have argued before, there are increasing signs that people are beginning to contextualise the “anti-cuts” movement within much broader issues of anti-austerity and rejection of traditional political structures, from Spain and Greece to the Arab Spring. We believe that this rejection is in no small part due to an implicit understanding that the conditions of our labour are rapidly changing whilst the political representation of the issues which that throws up, from the parliamentary system to trade unions, isn’t.

One thing is now certain- the zones of operation for political action are polymorphous and integrate into all areas of production and reproduction of capital- including immaterial areas such as the internet and IT networks. Contrary to what the mainstream media might print, the working-class are not dinosaurs but the productive class within society, and, as such, the innovative class. Whilst potential direct-action in cyberspace will be criminalised, in press rhetoric if not yet in law, just as IRL direct action against the reproduction of capital has been criminalised for centuries, the idea that criminalisation will prevent it from being utilised in liberatory struggle is unlikely. As austerity bites, as social divisions increase, the reaction of workers, those who can’t find work and those who don’t work will be to see the internet, a place they live and work in as first nature, as a fitting place for everyday struggle.

The longer the command line, the shorter the strike!

(Click through on the images for larger formats for avatars etc- toot toot! next stop, social democracy!)

HARI KARI II – a multitude of sins

A brief follow-up…

Last week we published a little expose of a perhaps little “less-than-rigorous” interview Independent journalist Johann Hari claimed to have conducted with Italian communist Toni Negri. A few days later we received an anonymous tip-off e-mail containing a link to a letter sent to The Independent by academics Matteo Mandarini and Alberto Toscano, which The Independent declined to publish and was subsequently published online. It’s a good rebuttal to the original article, taking the paper to task for presenting “views regarding Negri’s political past that in Italy, today, are only held by the fringes of the right”, claiming that Hari’s “reference to (relatives of) Negri’s ‘victims’ is quite peculiar, as no one to our knowledge has yet come forward to claim that status.” The letter is well worth a read in full.

But it was a footnote appended to the post by Rowan Wilson, the publicist Hari mentions within the interview, that particularly caught our eye-

“I was the so-called ‘publicist’ mentioned in the article(I work for Continuum, the publishers of ‘Time for Revolution’,and was innvolved in organising the ICA event). A few minor, but incorrectly reported, details that I have personal knowledge of (eg,there was no taxi called, I didn’t say the things ascribed to me, Negri wasn’t behaving arrogantly as suggested, there was no angry confontation with ICA staff, etc) casts serious doubt on the veracity of anything that Hari says.”

Ouch.

It seems that even the “vivid picture of Negri as a personally rude and rather objectionable man” was a creative embellishment. Which raises the (perhaps sinister) question- what did Toni and Johann natter about over those multiple glasses of wine?

Truth- a slippery business, comrades!

HARI KARI/HACKERY

As an amusing aside from our usual ruthless criticism of everything existing, here’s a little insight into the workings of the mainstream media. We’ve long found this piece of super-liberal journalism rather lulzy- it’s an attempted take-down of Italian communist and every ultra-leftist’s favourite “psychopath”, Toni Negri, by Orwell Prize winner Johann Hari from The Independent in 2004. Hari interviews him at the ICA in London, and carefully tries to balance his horror at the Gulag with his horror of Negri’s flagrant disregard of a no smoking sign, heavily implying throughout that Negri is a murderous terror-monger. It was a poor interview, failing to even attempt to engage with his writings on the grounds that it’s too impenetrable, although he paints a vivid picture of Negri as a personally rude and rather objectionable man.

A great introduction to this formidable “old terrorist” is the book “Negri on Negri”, published in 2003, where Anne Dufourmentelle produces an in-depth interview, based around a lexicon of his thought, and forming a much more cohesive and thorough look at the man’s ideas and life. But reading through it, a strange sense of deja-vu settled over us. Where have we read that before? This week, it was bought to our attention.

Hari’s “interview”, vivid and lifelike and seemingly full of conflict between the two great minds, seems to contain whole passages lifted from Dufourmentelle’s much lengthier interview. Compare and contrast…

Hari on memory

Dufourmentelle on memory (pgs 100-101)

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Hari on truth

Dufourmentelle on truth (pg 26)

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Hari on Negri’s father

Dufourmentelle on Negri’s father (pg 97)

——————————————————————————————————————–

Hari on crime

Dufourmentelle on crime (pg 25)

——————————————————————————————————————–

It’s rather ironic that an article whose main premise is that Negri negates a “truthful memory”, essentially attempting to fabricate history to fit his own political agenda, seems to be based upon an encounter in the ICA which is almost entirely fabricated. To take Negri’s answers to entirely different questions, and recontextualise them around Hari’s agenda, which involves the sustenance of the very systems of power that falsely accused and imprisoned Negri for decades of his life as a political prisoner in Italy, seems especially disingenuous. Today’s climate seems rife with journalists, politicians and the Police trying to paint those who take action outside of parliamentary power structures as “extremists”, whilst those who pooter on defending an increasingly indefensible status quo pull back the boundaries of what is, and what isn’t, acceptable politics. The parliamentary system of democracy is indicting itself across Europe, and as a reaction, radical thought and direct action is increasingly vilified within “mainstream” discourse. To quote Orwell himself- “Liberal- a power worshipper without power”.

Negri is a complex, flawed yet exciting writer, with a fascinating history of conflict with the state, playing an influential role in the radical Italian left in the 20th century. If you want to get to know something about him, do what Hari did- read Dufourmentelle’s book, or some of his own writings.

GLOOM/REMUNERATE

HANG ON IN THERE, PROLETARIANS!

(Download full printable A3 pdf here)

Twenty reasons why it’s kicking off in cyberspace

In February the Newsnight economics editor Paul Mason very succinctly laid out the radically different nature of recent popular uprisings across North Africa, the Middle East and Europe compared to earlier political movements, and the economic and sociological reasons behind it. This incisive blogpost rang true for many of those involved in those social movements, articulating, as it did, a new sentiment and new political priorities amongst those populations. The short article sketched out a more cohesive image which the media in general was missing, partly through structural failings, but largely because events were unfolding at speed and trying to drag the chaotic events into an understandable analysis was difficult.

Running alongside the (still unfolding) Arab Spring, informing and shaping and being shaped in turn by those events, was a developing online conflict with major similarities; young, optimistic graduates who saw societies in more generalised terms of “power”, highly networked, informal and decentralised decision making processes and a deep cynicism and mistrust of traditional power elites and political ideologies. In the last month especially we’ve seen a series of events and developments that are changing the game of cyber-war (and cyber-class-war).

So what’s going on in cyberspace? What we’re seeing is a significant escalation in serious geo-political combat, and the mainstream press has failed in it’s coverage so far. Perhaps years of rehashing press releases have left many hacks without the critical journalistic capabilities to monitor, study, explain and contextualise the recent events of the cyber-war, leaving the majority of the populace completely in the dark as to what’s happening, and how governments and (unelected) transnational organisations are investing significant resources in an attempt to limit online freedoms.

Make no mistake- this is not a minor struggle between state nerds and rogue geeks- this is the battlefield of the 21st Century, with the terms and conditions of war being configured before our very eyes. Given the significant economic disruption online activism and hacking can cause, and the power online tools have to agitate, plan and execute IRL activism, the current increase in tensions between hackers and the capital/state partnership is every bit as significant as the continuing developments of the Arab Spring, with which the online activist movements are inextricably linked. Below we have laid out a brief overview of recent events. This list is necessarily partial, given the complexity, history and depth of the situation, and we are by no means experts in the field; we would recommend people use it as a jumping off point to help get more educated (we have heavily hyperlinked the text FYI). Get googling.

1. At the heart of it is a newly politicised generation of hackers who have moved from a lulz-based psychic-economy to an engaged, socially-aware and politically active attitude towards world events, primarily as a reaction to the way governments and multinationals dealt with the fallout of Wikileaks. The “politicisation of 4chan” and the birth of Anonymous have set the stage for a practice of socially-engaged hacktivism of a form and scale we’ve not seen before.

2. This new “political hacktivist” class are digital natives and have become evangelised by passing through the immoral free-for-all of 4chan, to the development of a political critique and political programme through Anonymous.

“ this is the digital natives striking back here
people that live, eat, breathe and sleep on the internet”
(quoting from the lulzsec irc channel yesterday)

Digital natives are radicalised primarily by the threat to their internet freedom, with the continued shift in policy by global governments against the assumed freedoms of the net (laid out in the past). A natural by-product will be the continued radicalism of youth online.

3. Much like the IRL uprisings in Africa, Middle East and Europe, there’s a generational aspect to the way this conflict is playing out– although, like those uprisings, this is as much a symptom as a cause. A generation bought up on MTV, fed an endless stream of sophisticated advertising, naturally trained in memetic exchange, are going to know how to fight an infowar much more instinctively, and hence at greater speed and adaptability. An IRL manifestation being the role of the “citizen journalist” in the age of old media’s death rattle.

4. For net natives, there’s a definite sense of an international, borderless identity, whereby on a day-to-day level national borders hold less and less meaning. If your interactions with a fellow computer users are the same whether they live in London, Texas or Cairo, the narratives of national difference start to break down. Instead, they define according to their roles and activities online, and their values and political beliefs: a new, international class of immateriality, with all the repercussions of online solidarity that holds.

5. This erosion of borders has manifested itself strongly in the way newly radicalised hacktivists related to the unfolding events of the Arab Spring. As Paul Mason points out in his blogpost “People have a better understanding of power. The activists have read their Chomsky and their Hardt-Negri, but the ideas therein have become mimetic: young people believe the issues are no longer class and economics but simply power.” This highly problematic retreat from a fundamentally economic analysis has, despite it’s problems, enabled a casual ease with which the issue of international solidarity is approached.

6. There is a growing understanding of the infrastructure and fabric of the internet as a whole by a younger generation that grew up believing that decentralised infrastructure / free speech and the free sovereignity of the net was a given. That pioneer generation is now finding out that those ideals were only utopian notions afforded to them as result of governments slow ability to act and control the flow of data. As an (admittedly simplistic) example, whole organising infrastructures of UK activist and student groups were shut down wholesale during the recent purge of facebook groups.

7. There is an intensity of feedback that fuels the fire. Realtime results can be measured by everyone on the global stage, leading to a fueling of the ego of a close-knit group of hackers who are dropping the share price of a multi-billion pound corporation like Sony because it dared to assault the hacker ethic, one hack at a time.
This is sometimes matched by morale-boosting donations, such as with LulzSec, who yesterday received upwards of $7000 in bitcoins.

Not since the etoy.com saga of 1990s has the ability existed for real time participation in the dropping of a corporations share price been so readily available.

8. We are seeing the splintering of “hackers group” Anonymous into multiple manifestations that display a more comprehensive understanding of hacking techniques (although in many cases exploiting relatively low level techniques such as SQL injections; we’re certainly yet to see the use of computer science III).

These emergent groups are able to carry out sustained and targeted attacks under a rebrand of sorts, a multiplicity of approach that cannot be assigned entirely to the collective identity of Anonymous. This often allows group to act without the need to deal with moralfaggotry.

9. Anonymous is breaking apart but only in the sense that the media’s depiction of a grand narrative for the “hacking movement” ever held any truth. Anonymous as a group has always been inherently pluralistic with a healthy but constant wave of fail raids.
What creates this logical divergence from a single hive mind is the shift from a necessity for op in botnet assemblies, facilitated through the use of LOIC (Low Orbit Ion Cannon), with the DDoS now relegated to just another tool in a growing arsenal of a disparate emergent hackers movement.

10. The continued evolution of Operation Payback demonstrates both the power of this hacktivism, and how underdeveloped defence systems are. Op Payback was launched back in September 2010 as a reaction to the hiring of Aiplex Software by Bollywood movie rights holders, for the purpose of DDoSin’ The Pirate Bay for copyright infringment. During the first wave of attacks a large number of anons originating from 4chan targeted RIAA,
MPAA and ACS:LAW in a revenge attack in defence of internet sovereignty.
The operation evolved into a targeted attack on a series of laws firms who had targeted file sharers with legal threats. ACS:LAW was the worst hit when their database was leaked online leading to the demise of the company.
These attacks continued, targeting, amongst others, Sarah Palin and Gene Simmons.

With the advent of the Wikileaks Cablegate saga we saw an escalation of Op Payback, in defence of the organisation with the creation of hundreds of mirrors for the site, the alternative dissemination of leaks and the attack on those that had withdrawn services to the organisation as a result of state pressure.
The operation has again shifted gears with it now focusing on the PROTECT IP Bill.

11. Beyond Anonymous and hacktivism there exists a greater threat, and despite the reaction of Anonymous to the rhetoric of the Pentagon, much of the new mantra being espoused by governments globally relates to the first age of real cyber warfare. With entire parts of infrastructure now plugged into the network, there exists a real threat and possibility for hacker/cyberattack based offensives across borders. We saw this during the South Ossetia War in 2008, when Georgia suffered extensive damage from cyberattack, or in the ongoing standoff between Iran and the US/Israel, where the US/Israel succeeded in feeding Stuxnet, a worm, into the Iranian nuclear programme infrastructure.

12. Governments are responding with a conscious and concerted effort to reframe cyber activity and activism as criminality against state and capital, which, no doubt, will soon be upgraded to a form of terrorism. This bears analogies to similar reframing of narratives around workers movements throughout the 19th and 20th Century, not least the “strategy of tension” in Italy in the 1970s.

The eG8 summit, held at the end of May, was part of this restructuring of the official relationship between State and Net. Nicholas Sarkozy spoke to attendees (including Mark Zuckerberg) on the cultural repercussions of Facebook et al, but his speech betrayed a more pointed message for those who seek IRL change through virtual means, as reported on IPtegrity-

“The Internet is ‘not a parallel universe stripped of morals and all of
the fundamental principles which govern society in democratic countries’, he said.
…
‘Don’t let the technology that you have forged…the revolution that have started [sic] … carry along the bad things without any brakes, don’t let it become an instrument in the hands of thow [sic] who would attack our security and therefore our liberty and our integrity.’

13. The Pentagon have declared cyberterrorism and cyberattacks as a conventional attack of war, with the right for reprisals.

14. NATO have also begun to redefine the parameters of war in relation to cyber attacks and acts of “cyberterrorism”, declaring conventional retalliation to acts of “cyberwarfare” to be legitimate. The Information and National Security subsection of the NATO Spring Report this year is focused very specifically on Cablegate and Anonymous as known identities. This is the first time a NATO report has cited the existence of Anonymous.

“Observers note that Anonymous is becoming more and more sophisticated and could potentially hack into sensitive government, military, and corporate files.”

In the same paragraph it is suggested that “It remains to be seen how much time Anonymous has for pursuing such paths. The longer these attacks persist the more likely countermeasures will be developed, implemented, the groups will be infiltrated and perpetrators persecuted.”

15. Anonymous reacted directly to the Spring Report and “declared war on NATO”. Perhaps you may think this is the idle threat of basement dwellers, but NATO certainly don’t. Things are changing at unprecedented speed in the infowar.

16. Anonymous have started to engage in more active outreach programmes, such as bootcamp training. This is of particular importance for the generation that grew up online or politicised through anonymous and 4chan, many who were drawn to the “movement” with more radical inclinations and have had the time now to develop a deeper understanding of hacking tools etc… or at very least become adept skiddys.

Much of this is basic advice for how to look after yourself online, a form of practical mutual aid analogous to the protest handbooks distributed by Anonymous during the North African uprisings; rather than advice on how to build a shield to protect yourself against watercannon, these “bootcamps” feature advice on how to use proxies and encrypt data, for example.

17. Governments worldwide are now entering a race to mass-recruit cyberwarriors in order to bolster cyberdefense, with UK security services launching the “Cyber Security Challenge” as an attempt to create an army of white hats.

18. Lulzsec is the fastest growing and most prolific hacking group the internet has seen in recent years, having single-handedly declared war by attacking an FBI affiliated website Infragard.

Yesterday Lulzsec’s twitter account jumped from hundreds to 75,000 followers. Lulzsec is fundamentally representative of the evolution loosely drawn out in previous points. They appear to descend if only in lulzy rhetoric from the likes of Goatse Security, the GNAA and Gnosis.

19. Despite the enormous presumed weighting in favour of the authorities, hackers still hold primacy, and that’s what gives the situation such political potency. When the white hat security firm HBGary Federal attempted to create an expose of the true face of Anonymous they were swiftly shut down by a sustained assault by anonymous that clearly demonstrated their abilities, illustrating the inherent security flaws created by human complacency.

20.Hackers are upping their game to match the rhetoric used against them; indeed, in the past few years security breaches have shown the potential weaknesses in systems that could, in future, be exploited as part of war. Today, however, hackers are, essentially, exploiting those breaches. When a group makes a “significant and tenacious” attack on a lynchpin of the military-industrial complex like Lockheed Martin, talks of “potential” cyberwar become a thing of the past. We have arrived, we are deep within the first cyberwar.

As a hacker wrote last Saturday, “We all know that cyberspace has come to an intense moment of confrontation; it will become more and more difficult to focus on the very reasons of the conflict opening, as the fog of war is rising.” We are no experts in the field, but given the increased tempo and ever thicker “fog of war” we felt these events and organisations need wider discussion. Developing a general public understanding of these issues is vital if we are to prevent governments manipulating our understanding of events in order to suppress the sovereignty of the internet.The hacker cause, if such a thing can be pinned down, must surely be opening up the free flow of all information as widely as possible.

The mainstream media are proving incapable or unwilling to contextualise, to bring light to complicated, discreet and hidden worlds and languages; whilst they dither on the Assange personality cult, and whether it’s possible to be both a liberal messiah and a rapist simultaneously, governments are writing the script for the next decade of online repression. Equally, those currently engaged in online skirmishes should at least heed examples from the past.

We must educate ourselves, but beyond this we must engage practically in the application of the tools we currently have. As the events unfolding begin to accelerate at a pace not unlike the Arab Spring, we should look to the technologies and networks that are being developed such as diaspora, a p2p DNS, flattr and bitcoin. There is a necessity now to understand the implication of such projects and the pursuit of their pragmatic ideals, so that we can begin to push the current trajectory of the net away from ever-increasing control and surveillance and towards a liberatory project of free information exchange.

Knowledge is free.
We are Legion. We do not forgive. We do not forget. Expect us.

DSG: Ebaumsworld Division

QUEMADOS CON EL SISTEMA

img for DSG: Peter Willis

Egypt, Bahrain, London, Spain?– Tahrir Square as a meme

As in the early days and weeks of what have become known as “The Arab Spring”– a series of insurrections against long-established regimes across North Africa– the British mainstream media seem to have missed the boat on the current “May 15th” movement currently filling the streets and squares of cities and towns across Spain. The basis of the Spanish protests bear more similarities with those insurrections- anger at soaring youth unemployment, political corruption and, like much of Europe, huge social and financial restructuring plans in the name of “austerity”. But there are now interesting examples of how the shared causes of these grievances are having a feedback effect on the tactics of popular protest being used, and how certain tropes of “struggle” are spreading memetically between movements against poverty, corruption and austerity measures. Not least of these is the potent symbol of Tahrir Square, the hub of dissent during the uprisings in Egypt this year, which we are seeing in an entirely new incarnation in Puerta Del Sol in Madrid this week (hashtags- #Acampadelsol #Spanishrevolution #yeswecamp).

Tahrir Square- Screenshot of livestream

The relationship between the North African and Middle-Eastern uprisings and the problems of Europe is highly symbiotic, although rarely flagged up by much of the media on the conservative right and liberal left. Whilst they have tried to diffuse the anger and it’s repercussions by portraying the insurrections as part of a cultural “quest for democracy”, the Arab Spring is, quite plainly, the result of the economic forces of the global downturn and the financial crisis that precipitated it. Faced with already high graduate unemployment and rocketing food prices, the collapse of their export economies were the straw that broke the working-classes back in North Africa– the ensuing crisis of legitimacy, industrial actions and massive street violence (also completely downplayed by the European media) may have then been painted as a political crisis, but they were only the symptoms of a financial crisis with which working people had been lumbered, and could no longer sustain.

It’s perhaps understandable why the west has sought to play down the economic and class nature of the uprisings. It may well seem crass for young westerners to compare, for example, the student and EMA protests of last year with the oppression faced by Egyptian, Bahrainian and Libyan youths and rebels, but the fundamental issues that cause the discontent have similar roots and manifestations– very high graduate unemployment, a rising cost in living (food and, in Europe, rent) and collapsing legitimacy of traditional political structures, both of those in office and opposition- in short, a crisis of trust in the ideology of a social contract. For those involved to start drawing international and class comparisons and links, and for the street protests and direct actions to be generalised across Europe, would not suit the established Western democracies at all well. It’s against this attempt to distance these shared struggles that workers, demonstrators and anti-austerity activists are fighting, because the inevitable realisation would be made, sooner or later, that the problems of each country are not due to, for example, an overbureaucratic welfare state or mismanagement by a particular tyrant, but due to international issues of capital.

These are, indeed, international issues of class vs capital. But what has also been fascinating is the way certain tropes, tactics and symbols of these protests have spread across the continents memetically, not because of any specific tactical or political efficacy relevant to each individual location, but as an only semi-conscious, infectious “linking” of different “struggles”. As an example, the image of Tahrir Square has now become a fundamental core feature linking many of these movements. When tens of thousands of Egyptians headed for the Square on the days following their “day of rage” against the government, they did so for practical reasons relevant to their very specific social and geographic conditions– the need to coalesce for self-defence reasons, to gain a certain communal courage, to keep out in the open and in the eye of the international media, expecting a brutal repression from the Egyptian state security services. But the idea of Tahrir– a central encampment, held for as long as possible, acting as a hub for the worlds media, has since become more than a practical development. It has become a meme of the social movements.

To give a brief overview, memetics is a theory of how information and ideas transfer within and between social contexts. Originally posited by Richard Dawkins in his book “A Selfish Gene”, the theory contends that ideas pass through populations in much the same way as genes do, adapting and evolving according to the conditions they inhabit, with versatile and strong ideas thriving and spreading whilst ossified and unsubstantial ones die of, or perhaps only thrive within a very specific environment and are able to spread outside that environment. Dawkins used the analogy of genetic mutation to explain his basic outline of a theory of ideas, but it remained very much a creative analogy.

With the development of sophisticated communicative technologies, not least the internet, the idea of memetics soon found a fertile breeding ground itself. A meme is no longer a theory of ideas, but an object in itself. There’s much, much more to be said on this than could possibly be included in this article, but today meme can be a self-aware, self-referencing idea, joke or image that finds resonance within a culture or cultures online and in real life, and spreads, changing constantly on it’s journey. It’s even possible for the meme to become a proverbial dustmans broom, with signifiers and content changing until it is almost totally empty of it’s original form, but retains enough generalised understanding to be able to function, for the idea or joke to continue. And this is an important point– a meme doesn’t have to resonate in exactly the same way with all participants to take off. A single idea or image can be read and reflected on by many different audiences.

We can think of the internet as a bank of ideas, and the really successful meme occurs when one of those ideas chimes massively with the population it encounters, summing up a shared or individual experience or viewpoint to the extent that users wish to perpetuate it as somehow representative of their position, often amending it slightly on it’s way. The successful meme is not necessarily new, incisive, funny or holding a powerful critique. It is, however, popular and democratic. This is perhaps one of the strongest arguments for the radical democratic possibilities of the self-aware meme. It has proved hard to fabricate memes in an authentic sense if there is not a critical mass within the population for whom the meme carries significant cultural resonance. The infectious symbolism of a “Tahrir Square” passed throughout North Africa in the spring, with the combination a central meeting point and a “day of rage” (organised with the help of Facebook) finding common popular support across the gulf states. So what was a useful tactic for the residents of Cairo has now become a symbolic action, a meme that has found resonance because, from the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain in February to the Puerta del Sol in Madrid this week, the symbol seems to unite the demonstrators to their common grievances.

Broadcasting Live with Ustream.TV
Live Stream of protests in Puerta Del Sol.

It’s very difficult, writing from the UK, to fully understand the cultural reasons the meme of the “Square-as-hub”, with pitched tents, net hubs and public discussions has taken off as such a central focus of these protests. Undoubtabley, there’s the obvious reasons of mass-solidarity– street protests have always been a major tool in the arsenal of the working-classes. But these occupations are not identical to street-protests of the past. It’s possible that part of the reason they have proved so infectious is that many of these protests have been organised outside of the pre-existing political frameworks of extant parties or trade unions. The lack of a centralised organisational hierarchy has been a key feature of many of these demonstrations- instead, multiple groups and individuals have taken part in organising collaboratively. It’s not that unions or parties haven’t been involved, but that the protests have not been explicitly called by them, for example. As these protests are new expressions of a joining together and a multiplicity of struggles and concerns, there are constant new conversations, arguments, planning meetings and debates to be had- and the central location of the Square has often been utilised for this purpose. This place of free debate has, no doubt, been one of the reasons the Square has found such resonance as a tactic in the authoritarian regimes it emerged from.

Within the West the idea has transfigured itself. There are no shortage of opinions, and means to express them, within Madrid, for example. Instead, the Square has come to symbolise different values and desires. The occupation of space in capitalist democracies for a non-commercial, non-regulated activity holds it’s own allure, and carries it’s own political message, as does the collective aspects of the political action in an environment where to act politically has being an increasingly individualistic, isolated act. Perhaps these are some of the reasons that the tented Square has become a key trope of dissent, alongside the decentralised nature of protests, the distrust of centralism and party politics and the nominally non-hierarchical organising methods that have characterised popular uprisings and protests this year.

In Britain the Trotskyist political party the SWP tried to emulate this meme in a painfully clumsy way, with calls to turn “Trafalgar Square into Tahrir Square” after the huge Trade Unions march on March 26th. Such a plan was almost bound to fail; the meme had passed through the Middle East based upon certain shared grievances and values, not least those of a progressive, networked, over-educated and under-employed graduate class. The “Trafalgar to Tahrir” venture completely missed this fundamental aspect of the Arab Spring, and instead pitched itself instead with the strong whiff of an middle-eastern solidarity camp lumped in with pretty blunt anti-Tory rhetoric, attaching itself to long established ideas of anti-imperialism and “fuck the Tories” rather than relating to the everyday problems of those participating- rent, pay, life ambitions, personal relationships, hours and conditions. Those organisational practices that gave birth to the Tunisian and Egyptian movements have their analogues in Britain, but they are anathema to those of the authoritarian democratic centralism practiced within the SWP.

It failed because it attempted to operate upon a level of kitsch, a recuperation of the aesthetics of Tahrir Square, rather than understanding and acknowledging the resonances that reflect participants lives and turn something genuinely “viral” or memetic. In the end the Metropolitan Police quickly, effectively and brutally cleared the Square late in the evening with a minimum of coverage, because this quintessential “forced meme” had failed to touch the imagination. This highlights something that is core to a meme’s very make-up- it is not a subjective expression, a singular vocalisation of a popular idea. Rather it is a communal creation that changes and develops as it passes across the internet, mutating in various networks. It is a dialogue that works towards a collective, nuanced position as an expression of the general intellect, and as such those who participate in it’s transference, in even the smallest manner, do so out of a feeling of collective ownership of the idea. People can distinguish between this real collectivity and an artificial collectivity in a total natural way, almost intuitively, and as such the Trafalgar to Tahrir “meme” failed to resonate; indeed, it indicted itself as the top-down image-manipulation it claimed to oppose.

Of course, the focus on the square as a symbolic site, either for a “coming together” of an ignored North-African working-class with a wealth of grievances, or, as in Spain, holding specifically anti-capitalist demands, also highlights it’s limitations. For example, both literally and metaphorically, in the non-hierarchical, decentralized “Public Square” it is only the loudest, most imposing voices that can make themselves heard. This “tyranny of structurelessness”, of implicit leadership by the charismatic, manipulative and unaccountable, is a long way from democratic control of power. The inflation of it’s symbolic value makes these attitudes and behaviours much harder to tackle, because questioning them becomes lumped in with questioning the symbol which enables them.

The tactic also becomes problematic when the form of the protest, the driving force of the idea of “the Square” starts to become it’s content; when “taking the space” replaces any discussion of what is being attempted, what aims are and what processes are fit to achieve those aims. We’ve already seen a prime-example of this in Britain last year, where the tactics and processes of campus occupation and “consensus decision-making” became aims and achievements in themselves for much of the so-called “student movement”. A self-congratulatory atmosphere ensued, with the very simple task of making decisions equitably becoming seen as a “victory” against the government rather than a basic component of non-coercive human interaction. This is a key component in the life of a meme– the content is emptied out of the meme until all that remains is a self-reflexive closed network, relevant only to those who already understand, incapable of communicating new ideas or pushing for change.

There’s no doubt the occupation of the Square provides a powerful and, in states with very repressive media structures, empowering spectacle, but it’s ability to deal a hammer-blow to the state are limited. In the final instance, the state will take any measure, no matter how repressive and no matter how ugly, to preserve it’s power structures. In Egypt this meant kicking out it’s venerable dictator– satiating the appetite of western powers and quelling the legitimate voices on the street, but still leaving the fundamental structures in tact. Once the publicity focus of the square had been effectively neutralised, it was only a matter of time before the old practices of state control slipped back in to place. Unable to hold any real leverage beyond the symbolic, workers in Egypt remain fundamentally powerless whilst the political class continue their machinations unabated. In Libya, it has mean a much more bloody and brutal defence of the tyrant, without whom the State would be more likely to crumble. In Spain, we are yet to see, but Puerta Del Sol can only be held for so long, whether it’s police, food or work that forces the occupants to leave. Unlike being faced with industrial action, where the working-class assert their power against the state and capital, occupation on a symbolic level can never force the hand of capital. The Square-as-meme remains a useful communicative tool to draw links between the shared causes of struggles, but it’s essentially only through taking actions that interfere with the flow of capital, with trade and with exploitation, that can begin the transformations of these struggles from protests of grievances into the beginnings of political and social revolutions.

-DSG EDITORIAL

————————————————————————-

This article is available in French translation here, with many thanks to the translator.

A GOOD DAY TO BURY BAD POLICING

Across London and the UK this morning dozens of anti-cuts organisers, protesters and social and political activists were woken with a knock at the door. Others were stopped in the street, near their homes or going about their business, throughout the day. Tonight, as we write, the undisclosed number are sat in police cells and interview rooms across London. 5 social centres in London were hit in early morning raids by our pet favourites, the Territorial Support Group, using dozens of officers and police vans. In Heathrow, just outside London, a community garden was raided by a squad of public order officers in full riot gear, batons in tow. Current reports suggest well over 30 arrests on a variety of charges, from the enigmatic “abstraction of electricity” to a variety of conspiracy charges. Solidarity to those lifted.

We’re not going to pretend we’re living in a Soviet-style police state here. But today’s raids draw uncomfortable parallels with the strategies of supposed democracies across western Europe since the end of the Second World War. When capital starts a painful restructuring of production (in this incarnation, through state-implemented, transnational “austerity” measures) resulting in social crisis, the state can be expected to step in to help with the management of that crisis– to whit, to shut down any opposition aimed at resisting, rather than tempering, capital. Democracy is all well and good, but business must not be impeded.

The police have stated quite categorically that this is “business as usual… [unconnected] to the Royal Wedding”. Well, they’re half-right. There’s absolutely no doubt that none of those nicked this morning had any intention to even peacefully mock the Wedding from the sidelines, short of the eccentric public theatre aficionado Chris Knight [whose arrest is featured in the video above]. In fact, Prof. Knight seems pretty much in keeping with the occasion- a lot of pomp and wild tradition, some slightly outdated, harmless ceremony and no-one treating it with a great deal of reverence. Knight’s very British eccentricities have landed him in the police cells on a conspiracy to commit public order offences charge.

But it’s not entirely disconnected from the Royal Wedding. Anyone subjected to the current newscycle is no doubt aware that today would be a “good day to bury bad news”, and, indeed, even a story pushing the medias twin hot-buttons of squatting and teh evil anarchyz(!!1!) failed to make a splash, even on the Daily Mail homepage, not known for it’s editorial brevity. Today’s raids and arrests have been a dexterously choreographed exercise in under-the-radar state intimidation.

London has a long tradition of autonomous social spaces, fulfilling different roles in different struggles for many years. Currently, these social centres provide organising spaces for activists fighting cuts– to have meetings, to offer training, to print posters and leaflets and make placards. They are also spaces for discussions, for education, art and film screenings, bike workshops and more. They are often also home for a few activists, as well as social spaces for a bit of conviviality, building communities and introducing people. And for as long as these spaces have existed (across Europe) the State has been trying to shut them down.

The aim isn’t just to close down these social centres, however. The aim is part of a longer-term strategy to delegitimise people who organise against austerity measures and government policy, to start to portray those who work against these measures as dark, shady figures, on a par with criminals or even terrorists. It fits into a pattern of behaviour on the part of the police, helped along adequately by the press- the routine “forewarnings” of bad ‘uns and shady, violent minorities turning up before any protest, the shifting of language from protestors to “domestic extremists”, the release of high injury figures on the part of the police, implicitly suggesting such injuries should be attributed to protestor violence, regardless of the real causes.

The tactic of today’s raids will, no doubt, end in much the same way as the illegal eviction of the Earl St Convergence Centre after the 2008 G20 demonstrations [as seen in the video above- worth watching to the end]- where police and private landlords interests came together, and the Met used squads of officers, armed with tasers and armoured personnel carriers, to illegally evict peaceful political activists in order that the private landlord could reoccupy the building without having to go through all the unnecessary and time consuming rigmarole of the legal and judicial system.
That situation resulted in those arrested receiving large payouts, but compensation for miscarriages of justice are now just an operational cost for the police when dealing with extra-parliamentary political organisers, or even just working-class people refusing to follow orders. Baton strike now, pay-out later is the modus operandi for the modern Metropolitan Police, a tactical choice to diffuse dissent in the immediate. Of course, for some compensation seems scant recompense for the destruction of human life.

The question now is how deep will this crackdown reach? As we build towards more mobilisations, such as the large public sector strike on 30th June, as well as, we hope, increasing community organising, wildcat strikes and factory occupations, how many more will have to face this paralegal intimidation and the implicit threats they hold? Essentially what we’re saying here is that if all those involved in the struggle against austerity don’t stop the rot right now, we can expect this tactic of delegitimisation to spread to all campaigns, organisations, direct actions and demonstrations which begin to effectively challenge both the government and capital. The last few months have seen press witch-hunts against protest and labour organisers intensify, both in the media and by the State, setting the stage for dawn raids and the denial of free assembly in public parks. It will take more than those directly affected by these raids, their friends, comrades and families, to effectively organise against further attacks.

We now find ourselves in a position where, just days before May Day, International Workers Day, labour organisers and anti-cuts activists sit in British gaols as the result of a concerted attempt by the British state to crackdown on political organising in defence of the working-class. Will the established Labour Movement and Union bureaucracies step up on such a transparently symbolic day and use it’s professed might to oppose this attack on self-organising? And, expecting the answer “no”, how do we do it for ourselves?

DSG EDITORIAL