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The Future of Indymedia?

category international | arts and media | feature author Tuesday January 17, 2006 13:29author by Terryauthor email room101ucg at yahoo dot co dot uk Report this post to the editors

Banner of Chartist Newspaper

This is the first part of three interlinked articles on the potential political role of net based alternative media

The first part looks at American autonomist Marxist Harry Cleaver’s account of how international solidarity networks were built up around the Chiapas revolt in 1994, ‘The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle’ and at the states’ response to on-line social movement organising, in particular at state actions against the Indymedia network.

The second article, An Historical Overview of Media and Class Struggle argues that the full potential of the Internet for political mobilisation has yet to be realised, as societies where Internet usage is currently widespread are pretty quiescent, with relatively little in the way of social protest and class struggle by comparison with say the 1960s and 70s. This argument is made by an historical overview of the role of the media and alternative media in various instances of protest and struggle.

Finally,The Internet, Communication and Horizontal Organisation looks at the role of the internet in communications, and argues that it can facilitate horizontal as opposed to hierarchal forms of social movement organising.

This has a pretty narrow focus looking at the role of the internet in the West, there are also many issues related to it and attempts by authoritarian regimes to suppress its political use in the South.

Furthermore, my argument is based on the assumption of a continuing growth in Internet usage, particularly in regard to the parts on communications and organising.
These articles began life as an essay written over a year ago, for academic purposes, I’ve it edited for indymedia.

A very reasonable criticism of it would be that it largely ignores the digital divide, that is more for reasons of space and time than anything else. Nonetheless the arguments in regard to the potential of alternative media on the net are sound.

The Electronic Fabric of Struggle

Cleaver’s central contention in The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle is that: “While the state has all too effectively limited mass media coverage and serious discussion of Zapatista ideas, their supporters have been able, to an astonishing degree, to circumvent and offset this blockage through the use of electronic networks in conjunction with the more familiar tactics of solidarity movements”

Towards the end of his essay he admits that the mere presence of information on the Internet does not assure this effect, and earlier he argues that initially at least the electronic pro-Zapatista networks were built around earlier anti-NAFTA networks.

We might also consider that the E.Z.L.N. phenomenon occurred during the early 1990s crisis on the left, which made them particularly attractive to some international audiences. That is, that the E.Z.L.N.’s move away from Leninism due to the influence of the indigenous in Chiapas fitted with similar moves for different reasons from parts of what was to become their international network, most notably Italy’s Ya Basta!

Moreover this was a period when the Chiapas rising struck a particularly optimistic note (for some audiences), coming against the backdrop of a massive collapse in the left, and in things large parts of the left regarded as someways good, e.g. trade union power, the Soviet Union, the Sandinistas and most national liberation movements, and social democratic Keynesianism; not just the Internet then.

He argues that this national and international flow of information significantly hindered the Mexican state’s ability to isolate the Zapatistas as the first step to co-opting or destroying them.
As he writes in another article: “We now know that the Mexican government's position has actually been fairly consistent ever since: a public façade of negotiations behind which the state has elaborated a highly repressive counterinsurgency program of systematic terrorism against Zapatista communities using not only every available police and military agency of the state itself but including the financing, arming and cooperation with paramilitary groups that have murdered dozens and driven thousands from their homes and villages. Some time back the Mexican magazine Proceso published a 1994 internal military document outlining this strategy including the use of paramilitaries --and every month that passes has brought more evidence of its systematic and continuing nature. The primary constraint that national and international mobilization has placed on the Mexican government has been to sometimes halt overt military operations (Spring of 1994 and 1995) and sometimes force the state to pretend to negotiate.” (My emphasis)

In that article he further claims that out of the international solidarity networks for Chiapas grew the Zapatista Encounters Against Neoliberalism and For Humanity in 1996 and 1997, which were meetings gathering thousands of grassroots activists from across the world.
From this sprang the Peoples’ Global Action network, which spanned several continents and organised many of the earlier anti-globalisation demonstrations, most notably a caravan of Indian farmers across Europe and the June 18th 1999 international day of protest; all this possible, due to, to a large extent, the Internet.

The significance of all this I would say he overstates, most of the world’s anti-I.M.F. rioters having difficulty affording water, food and housing, let alone Internet access.

Indymedia and the State.

The next section will deal with how the state has attempted to hinder internet based alternative media, and following that the powerful role played by the mainstream media in social conflict and the possibilities for subverting that power through the internet.

I will now turn to look at state actions against the Indymedia network, which we might consider to demonstrate the significance to which the state gives to social movement organising on-line.

In the summer of 2004 Indymedia founding member Lenin Cali Najera of Equador was murdered. His colleagues suspect the robbery during which this killing took place was faked as cover for a political assassination carried out by right wing paramilitaries, such have employed this modus operandi in at least some South American states, Argentina at least, and whom, of course, usually act with the connivance of the authorities.

Meanwhile in Cyprus a major national scandal took place after police admitted to investigating Petros Evdokas at the behest of the C.I.A. due to his publication of material on Indymedia Cyprus claiming American interference in the process of the ‘peace plan’ referendum on the divided island.

Shortly before the protests at the Republican National Convention in New York in the fall several police agencies raided an Indymedia benefit film showing in the city.

Also in the run up to those events the service provider of Indymedia New York was subpoenaed to release connections logs, in an investigation into the posting of the already publicly available details of delegates to the convention.


On the 7th of October the hard drives of two Indymedia servers hosting 20 sites and a couple of radio stations were seized in London by an unknown law enforcement agency. The British government denies responsibility and the most likely suspect is the F.B.I., acting at the instigation of an Italian judge.

Previous to this in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, the Indymedia Centre established for the duration of the anti-G8 demonstration there was subjected to a violent police raid, and similar, though with less violence, happened to the Indymedia Centre established in Geneva, France, during summit protests there.

In Ireland there have been several instances of the police singling for arrest and/or assault photographers/film makers, some of whom have been Indymedia volunteers.

This happened at the protests at the privatisation conference taking place in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin in the fall of 2001, it also happened during the Reclaim the Streets party in Dublin in May 2002. During a subsequent trial of one of the police officers involved the defence case was that Indymedia had orchestrated the entire episode.

In February 2003 one Indymedia film maker received a court injunction forbidding him from entering the environs of Shannon airport, this while he was making a documentary on military re-fuelling at the airport, and related protests.

In March 2003 one photographer was arrested at the airport and charged under a public order offence, the sum total of the evidence consisting of the assertion by the arresting officer that she found having her photograph taken while arresting someone to be an “aggressive and intimidating” experience.

Since this essay was originally penned over a year ago more of the same has happened, Bristol indymedia ran into trouble with the authorities, as did infoshop.org, and other cameria wielders were arrested at Shannon. In addition “our” “Justice” Minister has been denouncing indymedia.ie .

I consider this to be a pattern which speaks volumes. To see it clearer, consider that in Genoa the police had innumerable sites as potential targets for a raid, all of which were more crucial to actual organising (as opposed to dissemination of information) than the Indymedia Centre, many of which would have been far easier to attack away from the glare of cameras and several of which were actually being used for criminal purposes. Yet which did they select?

Obviously the distaste for being subject to public scrutiny extends further than just Garda in Co. Clare. The following article will look at the wider role of information provision.

author by Seanpublication date Tue Jan 17, 2006 11:37author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Tery, could you possibly put this one libcom=-on the forums and newswire perhaps as well? as it is very useful and relevent

Cheers

http://libcom.org/

author by .:.publication date Tue Jan 17, 2006 20:54author address author phone Report this post to the editors

no matter whom you were pitching the original at. As being one of those who was actually physically present for the "horizontal relationship" chinwag, I just wish to add one very important consideration-
The internet is no longer U$ alone, nor is it any type of "english" alone. Respect whomever posts "here" in gaeilge, as much as know, that the internet has viability problems as a true tool of horizontal political relationships, which is what we were chinwagging (in italian) with Luther when that phrase was coined, nice to see it ended up in a college essay by Terry in ireland (?) and then through his "career" brought to other "Irish boys & girls".

and thats how the story ends...

author by Terrypublication date Sat Jan 21, 2006 12:07author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Thanks, Anything on indymedia is copy left if not stated otherwise so you could go ahead and get lib com to use it. You might also get them to add the indymedia.ie feature wire to there 'news feed' section.

author by RobbieSpublication date Mon Jun 30, 2008 13:29author address author phone Report this post to the editors

Net as Political Tool

I’ve just come across this article – highly recommended by someone on the lists. The critique isn't done out of a desire to snipe, but out of a search for sense and meaning.

It’s gainsaid that the internet is a useful tool for political movements especially among middle classes in the West. What isn’t recognized above is that technology doesn’t just enable the ‘Left’ type of political activism, hence, the initial semblance of democratic lustre may be negated somewhat.

The Leftist schema you posite is problematic because there are a whole load of assumptions of what the ‘Left’ is; one might well ask, for instance, is the Left-Right polarity a useful political guide anymore.

For example, the Zapatista-inspired examples Terry mentions above, relate to mobilization and organization. These terms are not necessarily democratic, let alone participatory or deliberative.

Mapping an x/y axis of democracy/participation (x) and mobilization (y), one wouldn’t expect to see them correspond to traditional notions of Right-Left. So, www.politics.ie might be left in terms of participation; it may not score so well on mobilization; however, the prevailing political ethos on the site is fairly hegemonic.

Fascist chat-rooms aren’t necessarily more moderated than Leftist ones (according to an indymedian who told me he used to have arguments on them just to piss them off).

Perhaps, collective power isn’t harnessed by conscience-awakening propaganda, but by awareness of social conditions – involvement and interaction that requires engagement on the basis of an assumption of equality of validity of life experiences (albeit in different areas). Some ideologues of the Left are more exclusive about ideas; they wouldn’t throw pearls to swine or give cavear to the generals (i.e., they're selective when it comes to those they'd like to engage with).

Finally, on this ‘Leftist’ point, the examples Terry cites are reactive – i.e., they are objecting to the agenda of power, so they realise that the power-system itself is objectionable. It would be impossible or politically suspect if the above groups had exactly the same vision of society. What they have in common is protest. In some ways, knitting collectives or indymedia itself demonstrate the political (small p) potential of the internet, because, in theory, they follow their own agenda.

Indymedia and the State

Rather than considering the above accounts of state repression to be ‘a pattern which speaks volumes”, it would seem to speak volumes for a deeply flawed methodology. Out of countless examples of state oppression of investigation and journalists throughout the world, you take the ones that have any connection to indymedia to try to form a pattern.

The state does not like being watched all that thoroughly, by anyone. Indymedia is one of many many scrutineers; not even that, just a platform which can be scapegoated by the staate and mainstream media occasionally when indymedia is relevant and when there’s no other explanation (i.e., Reclaim the Streets 2002 and the February rioting in 2006 – even then McDowell only said that the gardaí were studying pictures that were up on indymedia (inuendo).

Reporters Without Borders document hundreds of cases of abuse of journalists every year. In Ireland, Geraldine Kennedy and others had their phones tapped in the 1980s, Michael McDowell defamed Frank Connolly under Dáil Privelege in 2006, Susan O’Keeffe jailed for not revealing her sources to the Beef Tribunal in the early 1990s; Reports on this site of people being intimidated by Special Branch for visiting a shop that sells RSF literature; in the spring of 1996 a man in a trench-coat tried to dessuade me from having anything to do with ‘that lot’ – I’d just bought an anarchist paper from Gregor Kerr on Westmoreland Street.

The pattern being one of the state disliking transparency and independent thought, rather than being anti-indymedia per se, can be illustrated by going through the examples cited in the article.

Surmises as to the death of an Ecuadorian activist wouldn’t hold much academic water. On the other hand, there is hardly a country in Latin America where journalists haven’t been killed by the state.

US investigation into an indycontributor in Cyprus wasn’t because he was contributing to indymedia, but because of what he was writing. US would just as likely have asked for him to be investigated if he had a popular blog…

Police raids on NYC indymedia in runup to National Convention in 2005 isn’t surprising. In the national party conventions, police suspend civil liberties for anyone they don’t trust. For example, someone I knew went to protest at the Republican convention in Philadelphia in the Summer of 2000. She was in a large garrage with several dozen other activists she didn’t know, and they were charged (wrongfully) with being in possession of illegal weapons. Guns are allowed, apparently, but not masking tape, slats and cardboard. Slightly ironic that the Mayor of Philadelphia was a Democrat. The victims eventually had the charges against them dropped, but not after going through some considerable stress as they tried to pay their way through college at the same time. So, it’s not just indymedia national conventions, nor is it just indymedia folks who get harassed by US authorities for excercising freedom of speech.

ISPs are now being made to supply all the details that were sought back then from nyv indy.

The siezing of the two indy servers in London in October 2005 is significant; but indy is not alone in this – e.g., piratebay was raided and shut down in Stokholm in the summer of 2006.

Yes, the police may have prioritised indymedia centre in Genoa, 2001.

I’m not familiar with the Burlington protest.

The Reclaim the streets example is stretching it – they’d attack anyone filming their brutality (who wasn’t one of their own). The Defence case grasping at straws isn’t all that credible when we take into account that people didn’t have indymedia badges on them, and gardaí were assaulting by-standers who knew nothing about the Reclaim the Streets event hitherto.. I daresay, a tourist with a camera wouldn’t have been safe from the gardaí that afternoon.

The February 2003 injunction appears not to have been against indymedia, but the individual concerned; moer than probable that if this individual wasn’t a member of indymedia, that the injunction would’ve been slapped on him anyway.

March 2003 incident is not directly related to indymedia.

From the little I remember of the Bristol case, the reason given for shutting it down wasn’t because it was indymedia. That British authorities have left other indymedias untouched (for the most part) would give credence to this.

Yes, McDwell has spoken out against indymedia on more than one occasion. He also spoke out against the ‘Daily Ireland’ newspaper.

 
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