Affinity Groups
Oct 31 2005 12:14
Having been active for a considerable period of time and pursuing various forms of operating within politics from mass movement building, to communities of resistance, i have found that the small scale affinity group is the most excellent for accomplishing direct actions.
The affinity group allows activists to explore one another and develop a depper personal and political understanding of one another. I dfind the larger consensus based projects lead to conformity and the needs of the individual are lost within the framework of the personality and domionat ideolgy within meetings.
What do people think, small scale affinity good or bad. 
Oct 31 2005 12:18
#2
Insurrection wrote:
Having been active for a considerable period of time and pursuing various forms of operating within politics from mass movement building, to communities of resistance, i have found that the small scale affinity group is the most excellent for accomplishing direct actions.The affinity group allows activists to explore one another and develop a depper personal and political understanding of one another. I dfind the larger consensus based projects lead to conformity and the needs of the individual are lost within the framework of the personality and domionat ideolgy within meetings.
What do people think, small scale affinity good or bad.
So affinity groups help you get laid.
Okay, joke over Jack/Wayne.
Oct 31 2005 12:22
#3
meanoldman wrote:
Quote:
What do people think, small scale affinity good or bad.Eh?
What do you expect people to say, 'no working in small groups is always a bad thing'?
I would like to know what other politicos feel towards this subject, as i feel that groups such as dissnet are focusing on mass movement building and putting emphasis on this rather than smaller scale direct actions with a small group of people.
Oct 31 2005 12:23
#4
What's the goal of your politics? Do you think it's possible to achieve those goals without some kind of mass movement?
Oct 31 2005 12:24
#5
not your best Wayne, not your best.
Oct 31 2005 12:24
#6
So affinity groups help you get laid.
Okay, joke over Jack/Wayne.
not the ones i have worked in,but they do allow you to push the limits of direct action and feel confident, its essentially a quality/quantity debate.
Oct 31 2005 12:25
#7
Oct 31 2005 12:28
#8
meanoldman wrote:
What's the goal of your politics? Do you think it's possible to achieve those goals without some kind of mass movement?
My politics are primarily concerned with moving from riot to insurrection, or fermenting discontent and inspirational direct action.
Im not ruling out the mass movement, but having seen millions alledgedly march against the war and nothing happening i remain to convinced by the mass movement.
Oct 31 2005 12:29
#9
revol68 wrote:
not your best Wayne, not your best.
My name is not wayne i can assue you 
Oct 31 2005 12:34
#10
Insurrection wrote:
i have found that the small scale affinity group is the most excellent for accomplishing direct actions.
I find that although walking is a good way of getting to the local shops it is of new use if I'm trying to get to New York and almost useless if I want to get to Cork (400km).
Likewise affinity groups tend to be good for smale scale 'direct action' but no use for organising a co-ordinated general strike. And (because of their friendship/trust basis and the subculture that generates) be a barrier in trying to do local stuff that involves people who don't all eat particular foods or dress in particular clothes or share a common ideology.
It depends what your trying to do are you suggesting that there is some single organisational model that fits all circumstances?
Oct 31 2005 12:34
#11
You still haven't really stated any goals. Why do you want to 'ferment discontent'? Will my life be better in an insurrectionary state? What affect will 'inspirational direct action' have on my community?
Oct 31 2005 12:41
#12
I remember this one french guy in Genoa who was an insurrectionist, he kept shouting at workers to come out and join the party, live your dreams, smash shit up. He was a right cock, the night before we were drinking in the wee locker room place and the cunt spelt his wine and when we went ot clean it up he stopped us and let some woman do it.
Anyway nice to see you back wayne.
What's next a treast on living without dead time, or a thread titled "never work, steal a good book."
Oct 31 2005 18:37
#13
This is bullshit, small groups of wacky insurectionists will achieve nothing more than a riot porn video produced and edited by GT, and a good time seeing cops get hit with bricks, sticks and fences!!! or geraniums in the case of the g8 scuffle in edinburgh....
Class Struggle anarchists should build large groups/ organisations which have a working class base and relevance to the working class.
Oct 31 2005 20:00
#14
Insurrection wrote:
My politics are primarily concerned with moving from riot to insurrection, or fermenting discontent and inspirational direct action.
It's 'fomenting', bananaman 8)
Oct 31 2005 23:00
#15
Insurrection - you seem strangely familiar but I can't put my finger on it...
Also, this thread is rubbish so I hope I don't know you
Nov 1 2005 00:35
#16
Quote:
My politics are primarily concerned with moving from riot to insurrection, or fermenting discontent and inspirational direct action.Im not ruling out the mass movement, but having seen millions alledgedly march against the war and nothing happening i remain to convinced by the mass movement.
Riots arise from social causes, eg food shortages, political stitchups which enrage the populace of a city, things along those lines. They are geographically located and derive generally from people who live nearby the place where they are rioting. Violent summit protests aren't riots. They represent minority extremists travelling to a particular place to stir up shit and generally have fuckall support outside of those people living in the direct proximity of the actual summit (who have hence been fucked over by the security procedures carried out by states and so on).
What you are advocating makes no sense at all. You are saying that we need to all start acting like minority extremists travelling from place to place to stir shit up, with absolutely no relation to the working class, because you believe that the greater the audacity of the 'actions' (to use the 'activist' phraseology) the more likely all of a sudden the working class will pile in and we'll have a revolution. Basically you're saying we should all make a horrific nuisance of ourselves, isolate ourselves from the rest of our class so as to become a totally detached subculture, get arrested and spend the rest of our lives going in and out of various prisons, and that if we succeed, and really isolate ourselves properly this time, then at this point there will be a working class insurrection. This is anarcho-Wahabism.
Is this what you are proposing?
Also to claim that a large protest constitutes a social movement is a total misreading of the situation. From what I saw during the run up to the imperialist assault and subsequent imperialist plunder of Iraq was the abject and total failure of those against the war to actually create a social movement to fight it. I was most heavily involved in anti-war activities at this time - it's all I was really doing during this period.
Nov 1 2005 20:24
#17
I think it depends on what sort of work you are actually doing.
If you are doing illegal actions, especially with potentially heavy consequences, then there is a case for 'need to know'. Unless someone is directly involved in either the planning or execution of an action, then they don't need to know. Simple. What people don't know, they can't let slip accidentally.
I've had this debate with a Swappie (now an ex-Swappie) on Urban75 a couple of years ago, about the efficacy of mass direct action as opposed to small group actions. I made it clear that, if colleagues of mine (I'm a Trident Ploughshares member) were planning to pay Devonport Dockyard a visit one night, then it would be absolute lunacy to call up the entire local activist community and tell them to turn up with placards, banners, whistles, megaphones, newspapers etc.
For me, it isn't simply a case of doing small groups actions OR mass actions. It's a matter of deciding which tactic works best for a given situation. Sometimes a mass action like a blockade will work best, at other times a small group action will give better results.
Nov 2 2005 01:13
#18
i think this might be a case of setting up straw men (scratch that, straw non-gender specific anthropothingies) to knock down. I can't see anyone denying that small-scale affinity group actions can be effective methods of accomplishing goals, but i don't see them as creating anarchy, that obviously needs a mass movement.
the ambiguity in the term 'moving from riot to insurrection' is, in my view, evident of the ambiguity that is evident in insurrectionary anarchist thought. try as i might to read bonano, landstreicher etc., i rarely end up with a concrete idea of what they're on about. the insurrectionist identity seems to be bound up with constant struggle, attacking the infastructures of the state and capital. It's already been noted that excluding one's actions to those who share one's identity leads to a separation from others who are exploited. Also, this idea of 'fermenting discontent' (somewhat like homebrew) reveals an assumption of the anarchist role as that of pushing struggle towards revolutionary ends (i.e. what we think revolutionary is). Thus social struggle is seen as separate from us, and our intervention in it frequently lapses into vanguardism. I think we make a mistake when we identify 'anarchists' as a discrete social category.
I'd say that what we are all struggling for is a situation where all relations are anarchic. Some think that this should be achieved through a strongly class conscious workers movement, others through insurrection, whatever that might mean. i don't think we should ever allow our tactics to be confused with our identities; i have done affinity group actions, but i wouldn't define my struggle, as consisting solely of them. nor will i allow my desire for anarchy to become the source of identity (be it workerist, insurrectionist, lifestylist, whatever).For me, anarchism is a method; a way of analysing how we are prevented from attaining control over our lives, and an understanding of ways in which we can challenge this disempowerment.
take the example of the war. If an affinity group action can disarm a warplane in Shannon, then fantastic. But i think we should realise that while much direct action needs to be done privately, a revolutionary movement needs public space to breathe and we should look at implementing, or suggesting, an anarchist way of understanding the source of the problem, and an understanding that the only permanent way to resolve these ever-increasing problems is to end the collective disempowerment of the people. And i'm not sure how useful 'moving from riot to insurrection' will be in this context.
Eh?
What do you expect people to say, 'no working in small groups is always a bad thing'?