Anarchy: a journal of desire armed. #36, Spring 1993 anticopyright - Anarchy may be reprinted at will for non-profit purposes, except in the case of individual copyrighted contributions. LETTERS -includes part three of three @@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@@ `Racism' is not a bad word Dear Anarchy, Well, I have criticized the anarchists for their nit-picking, endless feuds and pedantics, but here I am replying to a reply to my letter in Anarchy #33. I am enraged because the nit-picking pedantic named Lawrence wrote in a letter to Anarchy that "the crackers who take up arms against what they see as an occupational government should be P.O.W.s too." Well, old buddy, you were saying that Karen Eliot listed only `leftists' and that was why she listed only blacks, Puerto Ricans, etc. and no whites. Then, are you saying that there are no white leftists? Further, there are many white loyalists who are not `crackers'. `Crackers' refer to people from the state of Georgia who in the early days of the nation cracked whips over the heads of the oxen as they traveled into Florida to settle. It has been used in the past in a derogatory manner to refer to all southerners. This is really a sneering-down-the-nose by Lawrence at white loyalists and southerners as well. He places himself on a pedestal of snobbishness unparalleled by anarchist pedantics anywhere. Actually, many white loyalists are Californians. It was the northern capitalists that ran roughshod over the agrarian southerners, laid waste the land, the country and starved many women and children as well as the military. I myself am a northeasterner, but I side completely now with the southerners, the `crackers', the `redlegs', the `rednecks' if the author wishes to continue the nomenclature of the men who got out and fought to protect the white race in the Second American Revolution of 1983- 1985 in the northwest, while the anarchists talked and talked and talked and talked. What have the anarchists done lately? Write and talk and feud and bullshit in my view. See my review of the anarchist publication, Demolition Derby, in The Rational Feminist, Summer, 1992. (Sample $3). In addition, `racism' is not a bad word. It is a word brainwashed into the American public's mind by the ethnic media masters of the nation as a pejorative word. Anybody with a brain in their head is a racist: He loves his/her own race and wishes to live among his/her own race rather than in a mixed jungle of `integrated' cultures which all hate each other but won't admit it. Look around the world today and see what enforced integration of cultures, as well as races, has done to the world. This bullshit about pretending that we are all equal is unhistoric, stupid as hell and hypocritical. The white race, or the European culture is the one which conquered the world and dominated it for centuries and is now being given a guilt trip about it and saying it isn't nice. That is the line of the lowest common denominator who are out and want to get in. May the white loyalists triumph evermore, and to hell with pedantic bullshit artists. Most sincerely, Molly Gill Editor, The Rational Feminist Apt. #2002 10200 - 122nd Av. N. Largo, FL. 34643 A fucked decision An Open Letter to Anarchy Magazine, This letter is being stapled in all copies of Anarchy #33 (Summer '92) sold at Librairie Alternative Bookshop (Montr‚al's anti- authoritarian bookstore), and is being mailed to Anarchy magazine where we, the members of the Alternatives collective, hope that it will be published. We also hope for an explanation from the folx at Anarchy. What is bugging us is the publication of a letter from Molly Gill, a white supremacist and anti-semite, with no response or disclaimer from the editors of Anarchy. In her letter Ms. Gill calls on us to support political and prisoners of war (POWs) from the "White Na- tionalist Movement," putting these on a par with Black, Puerto Rican or Native American nationalist prisoners. These suggestions come at the end of a letter full of praise for anarchists and Anarchy magazine, and Ms. Gill signs "Novice Anarchist Researcher," attempting to give the impression that she is an anarchist. The editors of Anarchy chose to publish this letter in a prominent position (it was the first of almost twenty pages of letters included in that issue) and without any response challenging this association of White Nationalism, Molly Gill and Anarchism. If we didn't know better (or perhaps if we weren't hiding our heads in the sand?) we might take this as an indication that Anarchy sees no apparent contradiction between White Nationalism and Anarchism. Perhaps it should be taken to mean that Anarchy also supports White Nationalist POWs, such as those connected with the Aryan Nations, whose letters and poetry Ms. Gill has previously published in her own 'zine (The Rational Feminist, previously The Radical Feminist). We honestly don't understand why the editors failed to call Ms. Gill on her racism, seeing that they often take time to write detailed responses to other letters. Mere oversight? It would have perhaps been worst had Ms. Gill kept her sympathies to herself, though. For her game over the past several years seems to be to pose as a Leftist, or an Anarchist, or a Feminist, in order to make contacts with genuine Leftists, Anarchists and Femi- nists. Once contact has been established she will start trying to convince these people of a Jewish world conspiracy, the evils of race-mixing, or of the necessity of stand[ing] by White Racist prisoners. Her 'zine is an eclectic mix of articles taken from Marxist-Leninist, Anarchist, Feminist, anti-Zionist as well as White Nationalist, neo-Nazi and Third-Positionist sources. She has published poetry by one particular "White Nationalist POW" who was convicted of killing a Jewish talk-show host and of having belonged to the neo-nazi Posse Comitatus. It is difficult to know what effect her work has on those movements which she attempts to infiltrate. What is clear, however, is that she is particularly interested in infiltrating the anarchist movement and that the editors of Anarchy, by publishing with no reply her letter (as well as her contact address!), have failed miserably to resist this infiltration. And you should have known better: seeing a sympathetic mention of "White Nationalism," particularly in reference to prisoners of war, should have been enough to get your danger lights flashing. The fact that Ms. Gill has already been exposed (by one of your regular contributors, no less) in Instead Of A Magazine as a White Supremacist infiltrator makes your neglect all the more galling. This entire situation makes us sick. We hate fascists, and we hate those who knowingly help them. We are assuming your brains were on a holiday, and that this won't happen again. If we are mistaken, and you actually sympathize with Ms. Gill's brand of bullshit, then please let us know. As an anti-authoritarian bookshop we have a policy of not supporting racism. For this reason some members of the collective felt very strongly that issue #33 should be pulled from the shelves. Everyone else agreed that if this kind of thing were to happen more often, Anarchy would clearly no longer belong in the bookshop or in the anarchist movement, but most people felt that publishing this letter was an oversight. Because Anarchy is the kind of magazine lots of people want to read and that we always get requests for, and because of interesting articles elsewhere in issue #33, the collective decided not to remove it. It should be stressed that this was not an easy decision, and that certain collective members were still uncomfortable selling it. The compromise was this letter: we have let you know that we think your printing Ms. Gill's letter without any response was a fucked decision. We have let your readers know that your tolerance of such bullshit is not accepted everywhere in the anarchist movement. We hopefully have helped expose Ms. Gill, so that her projects of infiltration and disruption will be slightly less effective in the future. We wish this letter had not been necessary. We also hope that next time you print racist drivel in your letters section that you take the time to respond. In the hopes that you get your shit together, the Alternative Bookshop Collective. Librairie Alternative 2035 Boul. St-Laurent Montr‚al, Qu‚bec H2X 2T3 Canada Jason comments: Fuck white nationalism, fuck Marxist obfuscation I have to wonder why it is that, if your letter was supposedly written and stapled to copies of Anarchy #33 for sale, we only received a copy from you in December - after Anarchy #35 was already printed and being sent out through the mail? Was it to ensure that we couldn't respond to your slimy accusations - made behind our backs - in a more timely manner? In case you've never noticed, each issue of Anarchy invites readers to write for the letters column whether they "are sympathetic or critical of anarchist tendencies and practices. All letters will be printed with the author's initials only, unless it is specifically stated that her/his full name may be used...." This should answer two of your questions: We published Molly Gill's letter because she sent it to us to be published, and we included her whole name and address because she wanted us to do so. We publish an open letters column. This means that we don't refuse to publish letters just be- cause we disagree with them, even if they are written by racists, fascists, liberals, authoritarian Marxists, or other enemies of freedom. Sure, we could have refused to publish Gill's letter, but what would this have proved? That we don't trust our readers to recognize an inept attempt at white supremacist propaganda? If it was so obvious to you, how much more obvious must it have been to our anarchist readers? It is also true that we could have responded to that particular ob- noxious letter, just as it is true that we could respond to every letter with which we disagree. However, our general policy is to only reply to letters which question, argue with, or attack us in some fairly direct way. This Gill did not do, unlike you. That Gill's letter happened to be published at the beginning of the letters column in issue #33 was related to the time it was re- ceived, and not any desire of ours to display it "in a prominent position." We generally try to publish letters in the order in which they are received. (In practice this usually translates to their being published in the order in which they are typed, with some consideration given to how they fit on the pages during layout.) Apparently you are also unaware that I have already `exposed' Gill's racist and fascist proclivities in a past issue of Anarchy (see issue #30, p.7, where I quote from one of her more obnoxious white-supremacist rants and list some of the unsavory articles she's published). This would have made another exposure redundant, especially when her ill-conceived game was obvious for all to see. I feel so intimidated by your threat to pull Anarchy "from the shelves" of Librairie Alternative over a single letter written by a lone loony racist that I can hardly keep from laughing. As readers who checked out our "Distributor hall of shame" at the beginning of this issue will have noted, Librairie Alternative Bookshop appears there because we have had repeated problems getting paid for issues sent. In fact, we didn't send copies of issue #33, nor did we send copies of following issues, precisely because of this (and we still haven't been paid for issues as far back as Summer, 1991!). If it weren't for another anarchist in Montr‚al stocking the bookshop, there would have been nothing there for you to censor. As it is, your threat to join other reactionary bookshops which refuse to carry Anarchy rings hollow when you already refuse to pay us. At the same time, it only brings discred- it to you for its petty-mindedness. Artificial scandal "Revolutionaries do not denounce antifascism for not `making the revolution', but for being powerless to stop totalitarianism, and for reinforcing, voluntarily or not, Capital and the State...The fascist and antifascist ideologies are each adaptable to the momentary and fundamental interests of Capital, according to the circumstances." -Jean Barrot Fascism/Antifascism Dear comrades: I am writing to you as a reader and supporter of Anarchy. Recently, I learned about a letter mailed to you by the collective of the Alternative Bookstore in Montreal, concerning a letter you printed by Molly Gill. I am a member of that collective, and have been for most of the past twelve years. Because I am a member, their letter supposedly speaks for me. It does not. I had nothing to do with its content or the decision to write it, which was made without my knowledge or consent. The letter itself is a perfect illustration of how not to write to fellow libertarians; in one short page it manages to be hostile, contemptuous, insulting, self-righteous and fatuous. It contains several threats directed against Anarchy. It also insinuates that Anarchy tolerates or is sympathetic to fascist ideas, which is ridiculous, as anyone who reads the paper knows. The letter refers to Gill as an "infiltrator", which is not the case. An infiltrator is someone who insinuates her or his way into a group in order to achieve goals that run directly counter to its own. Red Warthan is a nazi-fascist who really did infiltrate anarchist groups in North America. Molly Gill, on the other hand, has infiltrated precisely nothing. At worst, she has written a few letters to anarchist papers, three of which have been published. The only fault the editors of Anarchy can be accused of is that of being too generous to someone who has cynically used their paper to spread fascist ideas. Even in this case, it is good that because of Anarchy, people know Molly Gill's name and address, and something about her politics. Although the author of the bookstore's letter received a mandate from the collective to write it, the letter itself was not brought to a meeting for approval before it was mailed, despite the fact that it supposedly spoke for the whole collective. So most members weren't even aware of its specific content until after it was sent. The letter expresses the views and personal agenda of its author more than those of the collective as a whole. Neither he nor they signed it, preferring to denounce Anarchy anonymously. What makes me angriest about the letter is its dishonesty and manipulativeness. Under the pretext of denouncing a (non-existent) fascist infiltration of the anarchist movement, it makes what can only be a conscious attempt to discredit a major libertarian review in its own pages. The grossly insulting tone of the letter, its rhetorical overkill and crude insinuations about the motives of Anarchy's editorial staff make this clear, I think. The letter is an attempt to create an artificial scandal far out of proportion to the actual threat represented by Gill's basically insignificant letter. At this point, a disinterested reader might wonder why this is so. To answer this question, it would be useful to examine the current situation at Alternatives. Alternative Bookstore is the longest lasting continuously running anarchist project in Montreal. It opened for the first time in the fall of 1974, and has been open for almost twenty years. Such a statement might leave people with the impression that Alternatives is a stable and secure project. Nothing could be further from the truth: that the bookstore even exists is due to the enormous effort put into it over a period of several years by a small number of people, in spite of the isolation and poverty that has always dogged it, and which has almost snuffed it out on more than one occasion. All of the founding members of the project have gone their own separate ways, and of the current collective, only one member has been there for more than five years. The collective has a high rate of turnover in its membership, and this situation is related to that of the anti-authoritarian milieu as a whole. There are probably several hundred people in Montreal who identify with anti- authoritarian ideas in some way, and some of them are socially active. However, these people generally keep within their immediate circle of friends and act together with them, in their everyday lives. Most anti-authoritarians here are unaware of or only dimly aware of what the others are doing. This diffuseness is not necessarily a bad thing, but it does make the exchange of news, ideas and mutual aid more difficult. In spite of this, it would be absurd to expect the milieu to focus around a single project. The bookstore project, which was once specifically libertarian, arose out of a diffuse and politically fragmented milieu, and the bookstore's problems should always be seen in this context. If the bookstore project isn't dead yet, it has gone into a coma on two occasions already: the first, in 1979, was caused by the gradual departure of the staff, leaving Dimitri Roussopoulos in control. The bookstore was re-collectivized in 1982 and broke with Roussopoulos permanently, for political reasons (Roussopoulos is infamous here for his continual abuse and manipulation of others; he is also a businessman, with all that that implies). This re- collectivization was accompanied by an upsurge in anti-authoritari- an activity, including the founding of at least three new projects, and by a split between Dimitri's academic coterie and the active anarchists. Fortunate circumstances in '82 and early '83 allowed anarchists to complete the purchase of the building that houses the bookstore, giving the project some measure of security. The building is still owned by a non-profit organization founded by anarchists. The bookstore closed in the fall of 1985 for renova- tions, as the building was on the verge of collapsing and was actually unsafe to be in. The cost of the renovations was so enormous that the comrades who managed the building came within a hair's breadth of shutting down the project, but they managed to secure a mortgage that solved the problem. When the store re-opened in 1986 I was still with the project, but most of the collective of '82 had left, and the store was basically founded again. I re- joined the collective in early '89 (having been absent for two years), and between '89 and the summer of '91, a protracted and vicious internal dispute over the political orientation of the project led to about ten people either leaving it or being denied membership in the collective. This amounted to a killing haemor- rhage, and the bookstore is now a different project because of it. To make a long story short, a tendency sympathetic to leftist politics and the most retrograde and reactionary national libera- tion movements coalesced in the collective and sought to re-define the bookstore's politics, by shifting its anti-authoritarian criteria to include Maoist and Trotskyist literature, the official organ of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP), and Basque nationalist literature, among others. One bookstore member even invited a Maoist newspaper to bring a stack of their papers in for distribution, which was delivered by one of their militants. An opposing group in the collective sought to defend the bookstore's specifically libertarian content, and re-establish it as a project based on a coherent and revolutionary critique of this world. As a result, they advocated a firm refusal of statist, capitalist and nationalist ideologies, and a corresponding refusal of that kind of literature. This group was mostly composed of francophone comrades, two of whom were ex-members of the La Sociale bookstore (a revolutionary project that I participated in with them) and were all aware of anarchist, situationist and left communist theory. These people are friends and comrades of mine, and I sided with them in the bookstore dispute. They wrote three documents outlining their perspective, which contained criticisms of the project, a discussion paper for a collective debate about the bookstore's political orientation, and a proposal for a full overhaul and re-founding of the bookstore project. These papers were given to collective members and shown to other comrades in 1990 and early 1991. They make interesting reading, and offer some insight into the bookstore's development. By mid-1991, these three comrades came to the conclusion that the personal and political divisions in the bookstore made any real improvement in the project unlikely. They were deeply dissatisfied with the collective's political incoherence and the back-biting there, and decided to leave. Their assessment was that the bookstore was dead as a political project. For them and for me, the bookstore's decline was summed up in an incident that occurred at a special meeting of the collective in mid-'91, called to define the bookstore's political orientation. A particularly repulsive piece of abuse by the leftist sympathisers resulted in a woman named Anna Delso being excluded from this meeting, on the grounds that she "was not a member". She left in tears, humiliated. Anna has been an anarchist revolutionary for more than fifty years. She took part in the Spanish revolution and risked death as a courier for the French resistance. She has been an active anarchist in Montr‚al since her arrival (due to exile: the Franco dictatorship would have shot her) in the early '50s. Her involvement with Alternative goes back to its founding, and she is a former member. It is worth noting the treatment the current collective, including the author of their "collective" letter, reserved for this anti-fascist. Previous collectives have at least tried to keep a broad range of libertarian literature in stock, despite the bookstore's small income. This is no longer the case. The situation of both the English and French-language anarchist sections can only be described as desperate. The shelves are almost empty, with only a couple of dozen books in each half of the section. In a predomi- nantly French-speaking city, the situation of the French-language section is especially bad: not a single book there was ordered less than two years ago, and the selection is awful. This also holds true for the periodicals. Moreover, this situation has gone on for over a year and a half now. All of the libertarians who used to visit the bookstore regularly either don't come any more (and there are many of them) or do come, and remark that there is nothing there. Alternatives has a budget of several thousand dollars a year, rent- free space to operate from and a volunteer staff, so some of the pressures experienced by regular bookstores don't apply there. Although the bookstore is poor and isolated even within the anti- authoritarian milieu here (and I'm not trying to ignore this or minimize its importance) it still has the money and resources it needs to be an excellent anarchist bookstore. The sorry state of the anarchist section is the result of a deliberate policy decision made by the current collective, which has used thousands of dollars of the bookstore's funds to buy a wide variety of sometimes interesting but basically reformist literature. The anarchist section has been systematically neglected, and with it all the history and theory of the revolutionary movement. There is no attempt to stock libertarian literature systematically, and no sign yet that the situation will improve. This is a political problem, and it requires a political solution. I would be happier if the bookstore collective would direct its energies toward a re-appraisal of its own activity, instead of venting its frustration on fraternal projects. My warmest wishes to you all, Doug Imrie, Montr‚al, Qu‚bec Censorship disturbing Dear Anarchy: I worked at Alternative Bookshop from 1982-84 and during 1986-87. I find it very disturbing that some members would have censored Anarchy and that, in the bookshop's single-minded zeal, the question of censorship is not even discussed in their letter, nor did it assume much importance in conversations I had with members. This sign of the authoritarian bent the bookshop has taken concerns me personally, since I had two articles in the issue in question, one of which, my "Femme aux Bananes" piece, dealt with a local situation not dissimilar to the present one. Since the bookshop had not made it a priority to pay Anarchy, and no copies of the "Abandoning Civilization" issue were available, when the following issue came out I took five extra copies I had of the "Abandoning" issue down for the bookshop to distribute. Also, the reference to infiltrators by the letter's author, Karl Levesque, is too provocative not to respond to: this guy has prob- ably done more of a wrecking job in the anarchist milieu than all the North American fascist infiltrators put together. Levesque arrived in town in his mid-teens in the mid-eighties. He first worked at Caf‚ Commune, and only joined the bookshop later, when I was working at La Sociale, another anti-authoritarian bookshop. Initially calling himself an anarchist, Levesque soon embraced the state, broke with an anarchist outlook and began supporting Leninists and various national liberation movements. I (and others) had some of the most convoluted conversations of our lives, as Levesque continued to call himself an anti-authoritarian despite his support for Leninists and the state. Not only were his brains on a vacation, Levesque was permanently out to lunch, and I attempted to ignore him if he ranted at me when I dropped by the bookshop. Ultimately, Levesque's outbursts began to take on a more specifi- cally anti-anarchist bent. When a person interviewing a prospective bookshop member said that no real anarchist milieu had coalesced in Montreal, Levesque interjected "tant mieux" ("all the better"), as he went out the door. When I brought up a piece he did in his now- defunct Youth Lib Zine about an Anarchist Youth Federation gathering in Ottawa, he was quite frank in calling his piece an "anti-anarchist rant." These sound bites remained etched in my memory because I was shocked and dismayed by how hostile his outlook had become. At this point, or earlier, Levesque should have realized that he was in the wrong project and left. In a more normal situation, he would have simply been ejected. But friendship factors and a leftist bookshop faction which was becoming encrusted in the project made this a far from ordinary situation. The shit really hit the fan when Levesque ordered in a pile of MIM Notes, a Maoist/Stalinist journal, to give out in the free section. The issue in question contained a letter from an ex-Maoist and an editorial response saying Stalin was 70% correct! When bookshop members virulently objected to the arrival of the Stalinist paper and those of other organizations wishing to take power, Levesque threw a tantrum, went "on strike," and threatened to leave the project ("on strike for Stalin," someone quipped). Around this time a member who had been in Paris for close to a year returned. A couple of other people were interested in joining, and the thought that Levesque might leave and that the project might start to get back on track made me interested in re-joining. Although I had worked there for four years, and people who had worked with me in the bookshop and La Sociale wanted me to come in, the leftists used a bureaucratic formalism to keep me out, saying that because I had formally resigned (as opposed to being on leave, or whatever, like the person in Paris), I would have to wait to get back in. The other people were kept out as well, and one recently returned to Ottawa after being unable to get into the project for three years. Exasperated with dealing with leftists and national liberationists and feeling that the project was dead in the water, most of the hard-core people began to leave. Today, the main criterion for working in the bookshop is the ability to tolerate Leninist sympathizers and leftists. The most startling aspect of Levesque's denunciation of Gill as an infiltrator is his resemblance to what he disparages. Although he again said that he is not an anarchist in a recent conversation, Levesque passes himself off as one when he finds it convenient (in the present unsigned diatribe but at other times as well). Gill's crackpot blend of white nationalist, extreme left and anarchist influences is also not dissimilar to Levesque's nationalist totalitarian/Leninist sympathizer-with-an-anti-authoritarian-cover approach. With people new to the local scene, Levesque has been known to use Bakunin's nationalist tendencies as a bridge to suck them in towards his authoritarian approach. Like Gill's letter in Anarchy, Levesque can be deceptively friendly (if you tolerate him, he'll be friendly to you). "Your paper looks great," Gill said in a gushy note to Demolition Derby, before I wrote a nasty letter which she printed in her journal with an evasive response. In her own publication Gill distances herself from anarchists; similarly, with local hard-core anti-statists, Levesque drops the anarchist pretence, unleashing a constant stream of abuse against anarchists, situationists, desire politics, Anarchy magazine, Jason, etc., etc. Like Gill, Levesque apparently is prone to conspiracy approaches. Instead of bothering to find out what Anarchy had actually said about Gill, he fabricates a scenario, berating Anarchy for not reacting to a piece in Instead of a Magazine by an unnamed "regular contributor." In fact, Anarchy would have been hard put to be aware of the piece in question since it doesn't even exist! This entire paragraph of the bookstore's letter is false from start to finish. Now that he's too old to run a youth-lib operation, Levesque says that the major focus of his activities is anti-fascism. However, with so-called anti-fascism it is always necessary to peel away the masks to reveal what it is for as opposed to taking at face value what it claims to be against. In practice, people focusing on anti- fascism tend to be leftists, often Leninists or Leninist sympathiz- ers. In line with their vision of a preponderant role for the state, they predictably concentrate on petitioning the cops to be more vigilant and the state to ban neo-nazi activities. At one local anti-fascist event, a couple of dozen neo-fascists showed up outside and started to raise a ruckus. The anti-fascists cowered inside and called the cops. Then came bitter complaints to the media about the cops not getting to the scene fast enough - the same racist cops who are beating and shooting people of color on a daily basis, and who touched off the Oka crisis by firing indis- criminately at Mohawk men, women and children. As a result of the influence of Stalinism, Maoism, Castroism etc., militant "anti- fascism" has a long history of homophobia and racism. The virulent- ly homophobic Maoist Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path), a group supported by MIM Notes, is massacring native people who object to their hegemony. In the jungle town of Pallpa, the rival Peruvian guerilla organization MRTA "`executed' seven gay men in one of the streets as part of their `cleansing of undesirables' actions" (Angles, December '92). "The Irish People's Liberation Organization (IPLO), an offshoot of the Irish National Liberation Army, fire- bombed a gay bar in Belfast on September 19, 1992. As three men hurled the device and a fuel canister into the Waterfront Pub, one shouted, `We have a bomb for this queer pub'" (Xtra, November 13, 1992). In France, the once-powerful French Communist Party has always fancied itself the soul of anti-fascism. In the nineties, the Banlieu Rouge (the "Red Suburbs" - a belt of working-class neighborhoods surrounding Paris) are becoming riddled with brown- shirts, as Communist Party members desert the party en masse in order to join the extreme right National Front. From a left totalitarian state to a right-wing equivalent, for folks like this, is a short jump. The same people who once counted on the state to solve the "fascist problem" are now calling on the state to solve the "Arab problem" with mass expulsions. As anti-authoritarians and anarchists, we're anti-fascists too. But we need to develop our own analysis of fascism (and anti-fascism). Anti-fascist leftists sometimes have access to useful information. At times, we may fight alongside anti-fascists against fascists in the streets. At times, we will have to fight against `anti- fascists' to prevent them from manipulating us, putting us in prison, or up against a wall. I agree with the bookshop that publishing Gill's missive is problematic. I am uncomfortable with the thought of Anarchy becoming a bulletin board for neo-fascists. But if fascists are trying to infiltrate the milieu, I want to be aware of what they are saying. I have no intention of relying on the interpretations of professional `anti-fascists' like Levesque. It is also important to put this affair in context. Levesque was unable to name a single neo-fascist other than Gill who is attempting to infiltrate the anarchist milieu. And in a letter in the feminist porn journal Eidos Gill whines that "it is the anarchist-oriented writers and presses that have been the most hostile" - so she doesn't seem to be getting anywhere fast. As well, Anarchy's open forum letters policy is extremely precious and any attempt to tamper with it I find very dangerous. When two of the three core bookshop members were working at Caf‚ Commune - another once-antiauthoritarian project I worked at which also degenerated into a leftist stomping ground - an anti-nationalist poster of mine was censored there, so this is not the first time I've had to deal with these people: I certainly do not intend to trust them concerning such matters! Instead of taking orders from confusionist reactionary jerks like Levesque, why not find out whether we're really being infiltrated by neo-fascists? Since Anarchy is widely distributed, perhaps anyone aware of such incidents could write in to inform the milieu. Michael William C.P. 1554, Succ. "B" Montreal, Quebec Canada H3B 3L2 A sham of a mockery Dear Anarchy, As a resident of Montr‚al, I've already had the opportunity to read the "Open Letter" addressed to you by the "Alternative Bookshop collective" and stapled into copies of issue #33 on sale there, and I'd like to respond to it. The letter should be richly ironic to anybody who has been in the bookshop recently, and I hope after reading my response you will see why. What ostensibly prompted this rant was your publication-without- comment in issue #33 of a silly letter by crypto-fascist Molly Gill and the inclusion of her mailing address, which, for the author of the collective's declaration, constituted a major breach in what ought to be your eternal vigilance against nazi `infiltration'. The author describes Gill's attempts to worm into various people's confidences and berates Anarchy for either not knowing about them (he's unaware of earlier denunciations of Gill in Anarchy) or not caring. He can't seem to decide which is worse or which he'd rather insinuate: were your "brains on holiday," or do you `tolerate' fas- cism? He tells the sordid tale of how Gill "poses as a Leftist, or an Anarchist, or a Feminist, in order to make contacts with genuine [sic] Leftists, Anarchists and Feminists [why the capitals?]. Once contact has been established she will start trying to convince these people of a Jewish world conspiracy, the evils of race- mixing, or of the necessity of stand [sic] by White Racist prisoners." To begin with, the `open' letter was written by collective member Karl L‚vesque after he was given a blank-check imprimatur from some of the other members. It is important to understand that not all the members besides L‚vesque even saw the letter before it was sent. Before I start my comments on L‚vesque and his letter, I have to point out that I agree with some small part of what it has to say. Surely it would have been better for you to have mentioned that Gill has been denounced - in your own pages as well as elsewhere. I admire your policy of printing radically dissenting opinions and for that reason I don't think you should have censored the letter, but a disclaimer of some sort would have been to the point. Still, I doubt anybody besides L‚vesque took Gill's letter so seriously. His semi-literate hysteria indicates how hastily he wrote his denunciation, and its offensive, insinuating, and au- thoritarian tone speaks volumes about the author. That L‚vesque's response is so comically out of proportion with what nominally provoked it should make any reader - even the ones unfamiliar with him and his gripe with Anarchy and anarchism - wonder what really made him so mad. What I feel compelled to ask L‚vesque is, if Gill's `infiltration' is as ham-fisted as what he describes, why would any "genuine anarchist" feel at all threatened? If all Gill does is write unctuous, overtly white-supremacist letters to people and conduct `infiltrations' in order to read Mein Kampf to leftists and feminists... What, me worry? L‚vesque is not himself an anarchist, but he has no qualms about donning the mask when it serves his purpose. He talks about "genuine anarchists" and Anarchy's fitness for membership in the "anarchist movement," while rejecting anarchism in his own case for reasons too stupid to merit discussion. He has called himself an `anti-statist' and `anti-authoritarian'. But he has also called himself a leninist at different times - though perhaps he doesn't any more - so who can tell? L‚vesque's communiqu‚ is fortunate because it brings to light the hitherto obscure forces at work ruining the Alternative Bookshop. L‚vesque has declared his support for "national liberation" rackets. In his letter he complains about Gill's putting "White Nationalist Movement" political prisoners "on a par with Black, Puerto Rican or Native American nationalist prisoners." In other words, he has problems with white right-wing nationalism, but he has no problem with nationalism so long as white leftists like himself and oppressed non-whites have a monopoly on the con. It's that sort of idiocy that has conspired to render "Montr‚al's anti- authoritarian bookstore" all but void of the rich variety of anar- chist literature available today, while stocking its shelves with not particularly anti-authoritarian leftist books and magazines that are also available elsewhere. There are anarchist books there, but not many in comparison. A glance at the Left Bank catalogue shows how incredibly much the bookstore doesn't have. The glaring lack of anarchist lit is partially a matter of budget restrictions but mostly a matter of skewed priorities. There is money to buy books - there are plenty of books in the bookstore - but not, apparently, anti-authoritarian books. A bookstore is only as good as the people who control the purse-strings and do the ordering, and in the case of the `Alternative' priority seems to go to books about sexual politics, animal rights and various other things which might be offensive to some particular authority but more often than not lack any general rejection of authority as such. I would be interested to see what the bookstore would be like if it actually stocked anti-authoritarian literature as per its supposed mandate. But that would require an honest and magnanimous effort on the part of the controlling interests, an effort they seem disinclined to make. L‚vesque doesn't mention it, but the very issue of Anarchy that caused this brouhaha was for a long time unavailable at the bookshop because he and his comrades weren't willing to pay for it. It only became available there when the subsequent issue (#34) was already out. If the bookshop collective wants to ban Anarchy, they know from experience exactly how to do it! In fact, Anarchy is one of maybe six anti-authoritarian zines even irregularly available there, and it has shared table space in the past with the organ of the RCP-front Vietnam Veterans Against the War (Anti-Imperialist), the Maoist International Movement Notes (both of these have been removed) and assorted leninist literature. L‚vesque even mentions Instead of @ Magazine, which has not, in the thirteen months I've been going there, been available at the Alternative Bookshop. But even if they made anarchist literature a priority, the bookstore is run by a gang that denies membership to anarchists who wanted to volunteer/join, has effectively forced the resignations of others, and generally comports itself in an obnoxiously cliquish and authoritarian manner. The "open letter" is a case in point. In every collective I've ever been a member of, any joint statement that wasn't jointly composed was, at the very least, submitted to all members for comments which were incorporated into the text prior to publicly issuing it. In this case, L‚vesque was given permission by some collective members to write a letter, which he wrote, which was stapled into the bookstore's copies of issue #33, and which was sent to you. Other members of the collective, at least one of whom objects strongly to the letter, found out in the following week, by which time the thing was in the mail. What do you say about an `open' letter that is isn't even open to criticism from the collective? If this is how an `anti-authoritarian' group operates, I'd like to know what the `anti' signifies. L‚vesque is careful in his letter never to call the Bookshop an anarchist bookstore; that he and his cohorts maintain the pretence of its being anti-authoritarian is, as Woody Allen said in Bananas, a sham of a mockery of two shams of a mockery. No matter. Regardless of whether the `collective' decides to censor Anarchy, against the will of some members and despite the fact that it's "the kind of magazine lots of people like to read and that we always get requests for," it will continue to be available at other magazine stands in Montr‚al (alternatives to the Alternative?). And I for one will buy my copies somewhere where they aren't enhanced with Correct Thought stapled-in by the Central Committee. Let L‚vesque fantasize that guys like him determine who `belongs' in the anarchist movement. As Camatte and Collu put it, "To belong in order to exclude, that is the internal dynamic of the gang." The Bookshop's overseers may not care whether real-life anarchists go along with their asinine blackballing, but I doubt they've cared what anybody outside their party thinks for some time now. They have better things to do, like smoking out the fascist sympathizers hiding behind well-known anarchist magazines and increasing steadily the speed with which leftist mediocrity sucks their bookstore into its vortex. Sincerely, Larry Deck, Montr‚al, Qu‚bec No constructive ally Dear Editor, Concerning Adam Bregman's polemic on AIM's Columbus Day activities in San Francisco (Anarchy No.35, pp.24-5), a bit of perspective is in order. Concerning California AIM's alleged "lack of militancy" on October 12, the organization's stated goal was to prevent the symbolic reenactment of Columbus' landing, scheduled to occur that morning in the harbor. While I myself would have preferred to have seen the Italian-American federation parade through North Beach halted as well - something we managed in Denver in both 1991 and 1992 - this was never articulated as part of AIM's Bay Area agenda. Hence, even in Bregman's telling, AIM accomplished what it put forth as objectives in that locale. It should also be noted that Bregman makes no mention of having tried to organize anything at all with which to confront the North Beach parade. Rather, he appears to have `dozed', as he himself puts it, through the hard and `boring' work of organizing, and then simply showed up at the event, hoping to glom on somebody else's efforts and whining to high heaven when it didn't work out the way he preemptorily decided it should. I'm not at all sure of the details concerning why the San Francisco parade wasn't targeted by AIM. What I am sure of is that AIM has been able to sustain itself through an extended series of con- frontations, all of them of far more intensity and duration than anything Bregman suggests - or has likely participated in - precisely because it has consistently selected for itself the time, place and terms of such combat, and has never treated struggle as some sort of game. This, perhaps, is why the status quo tends to treat AIM - not a little gaggle of bozos posturing in black ninja suits, and `crumbling' at the first sign of police response to their petty street theater - as a genuine threat to established order. The thread of overweaning arrogance snaking its way through the whole of Bregman's reportage ties itself into a tidy little knot of blatant racism with his snide little commentary on Indians "banging on drums." This leads to a suggestion: maybe next time, rather than burdening himself with the tedium of napping through political work, this writer might want to just stay home watching Wayne's World. He'd undoubtedly find such a pursuit far more edifying in the long run, and it's clear he's no constructive ally, not to AIM, and probably not to anyone else either. Sincerely, Ward Churchill, Colorado AIM Denver, CO. Choose your poison! Women, I have only 1 thing to say & that is who would you rather sleep with - a man who writes article after article about how wonderful pornography is, or one who writes about issues concerning why women are raped every six minutes & battered every three? Sincerely, L.T., New York, NY. Josephine Geurls here Hey, Anyone who wrote Josephine Geurls in Austin and letter was returned, sorry, 4 months of mail got mishandled. Write me here at Box 28, Naalehu, HI. 96772. Or better yet cum over and hang out - too many mystical yuppie/ hippies. Not enough schizoversives. Yours truly, Josephine Geurls, Naalehu, HI. Ps. I esp. like photos of ecofeminist lesbian sex orgies!