In Counter Info 50 we published an article urging support for the3 people jailed for their association withGreen Anarchist (GA). Since then we have read an article, The Irrationalists, in GA 51,signed by one of the defendants, Steve Booth, with which we haveprofound disagreements.
THE IRRATIONALISTS article supports the Oklahoma bombers and theAum cult's gas attack on the Tokyo underground. We quote here the2nd and 3rd paragraphs of this article :
"The Oklahoma bombers had the right idea. The pity was that theydid not blast any more government offices. Even so, they did allthey could and now there are at least 200 government automatons thatare no longer capable of oppression.
The Tokyo sarin cult had the right idea. The pity was that intesting the gas a year prior to the attack, they gave themselvesaway. They were not secretive enough. They had the technology toproduce the gas but the method of delivery was ineffective. One daythe groups will be totally secretive and their methods of fumigationwill be competely effective." GA51 p.11
This article justifies such actions on the grounds that "the crowd" are dupes of the system (they vote for politicians, eat atMacDonalds, buy the Sun, buy lottery tickets, etc).
In GA 52 there appeared an article, entitled "NO MORE SINGLEISSUES Steve Booth on Irrationalism and beyond" ( p.12) In thisarticle Steve Booth changes the emphsasis of his views. (This may bepartly due to criticism of The Irrationalists article from within"the movement".) He states that
"The revolution can go one of 3 ways:
1) Alternative One is that we have a large scale, mass revolt withthe majority of people getting involved.............
2) Alternative Two is much more likely. We might get a fairpercentage of people getting involved over a longer period of time. We will get a range of activities from petitions and protests throughto violence, shootings and bombings.........
3) Alternative Three is that we get a few people fighting for therevolution. The fewer the activists, the less visible therevolution, the greater the despair. We will get alienation-drivenIrrationalist type groups like the Aum cult putting poison gas downthe Underground. Their successors will use microlights to spraybotulin toxin, anthrax spores or Ebola virus over cities.....
Alternative Three is bloody. So let's work together and push forAlternative Two. Let's see if we can push Alternative Two up toAlternative One"
(........indicates sections missed out here for space reasons :however we have tried to represent the argument fairly.
We feel Steve Booth's support for the Oklahoma bombings and thesarin gas attack to be so self evidently disgusting that it is notnecessary for us to write a lot. Both these attacks killed workingclass people who in no way can be considered "the enemy". Theunderground attack was completely random - except that top bosses andpoliticians are not likely to be using such public transport and thuswould be safe. The majority of the people inside the bombedgovernment building in Oklahoma would, we would think, be office andclerical workers, plus there were children in the building's creche.
While the article in GA 52 is more sophisticated, and appears toindicate a lessening in enthusiasm for such actions, we fundamentallydisagree with SB's view that such actions can in any way be part ofany possible revolutionary strategey. In addition to the fact thatthe actions were in fact carried out by right wing authoritarians,such kinds of actions would be equally anti revolutionary no matterthe professed politics of the perpetrators.
This is not because we support pacifism. We support collectiveresistance that physically defies the police, state and ruling class. We supported the uprisings of 1985 in Tottenhham and Brixton forexample. When we oppose the violence of the Oklahoma bombing or theAum cult gas attack we are not opposing violence against the system,we are opposing violent attacks on our own class.
SB dismisses those inside the Oklahoma government building as "200government automatons that are no longer capable of oppression." Incontrast we believe that to be successful a revolution willultimately need the conscious involvement of the majority of people. Workers employed by the state and by multinationals are not enemiesbut an essential element of any successful revolution. We need toencourage and participate in the class struggle that these and otherworkers and claimants engage in.
Our differences here are based on the fact that CI sees classstruggle as a vital process leading to revolutionary change, while GAhas denounced class struggle.
Until GA publicly declares that it now condemns the Oklahomabombing, the Aum gas attack and indiscriminate violence againstworking class people, we have to consider that GA is not part of therevolutionary movement. In fact by passing off support for suchinhuman and anti working class actions as "green anarchism", GA is,to the limited extent that it is read by people not already activeand involved, sowing confusion and having a negative affect.
Of course we opposed the state's actions against Green Anarchistand welcome the success of the Gandalf defendants appeal ; werecognise the danger of the state succeeding in stopping thereporting of liberatory direct action.