Access denied! (sorry about that)

I am looking for: https://libcom.org/forums/thought/unity-identity-of-subject-and-object-in-marx

i am looking for
http://libcom.org/forums/theory/adorno-on-pop-music-29082008

I want to access: https://libcom.org/forums/news/michael-schmidt-author-black-flame-exposed-white-nationalist-infiltrator-26092015

Hello. I want to access: https://libcom.org/article/anarchism-south-africa-interview-michael-schmidt-zacf-2007

There was no discussion of this article in the comment section after it. There was one comment from a person complaining about Schmidt in general.

Is this one gone forever? "Critical comments on rose-tinted revisionist views of skinheads"

http://libcom.org/history/1960-today-skinhead-culture

That article was nonsense and so it was removed, yes

I did eventually read that (very short) article - and agreed that it was nonsense!

still love Nemo's penguin < : )

Followed a link on the site to this but it's been fed to the penguin

http://libcom.org/forums/anti-fascism/putting-the-record-straight

Any chance of this "bourgeois motherfucker" seeing it?

Admin: comment lightly edited as we have re-published the discussion.

In the absence of the above link, our thoughts on anti-fascism are that all states are fascist, in that they bind disparate elements of the capital, including the labour force, within the nation, or conglomerate of nations.

The term anti-fascist is a mystification. The working class is inherently against the mercantile state and its political administration. Fascism or anti-fascism are terms that only aim to disunify the class of labour.

cheers!

I got to this page (https://libcom.org/discussion/request-content-posting-rights-here) from Content Guidelines to ask for permission to submit content but a red pengu yelling at me Access Denied!
I've already tried different browsers and also made sure I'm logged in to my account.

Hi Sharam - what happens if you press the "submit content" button at the top of the page?

Ah OK - I am able to publish your drafts, so perhaps that is a good way forward for now? I just did that for the Loren Goldner piece you submitted. I hope that is OK.

Thanks Shahram - yes that is all fine. I believe that someone with more admin powers than I would need to change your permissions. I am sure one of them will be along in due course, but please proceed in the meantime...

Fozzie deserves a promotion I think; look at all the content he's uploaded! A real Stakhanov that all libcom contributors should try to emulate. Give Fozzie more admin privileges right now!!

Comrade Fozzie has been working at the Library of Communism for over 21 years; he damn well deserves to edit people's posting permissions!

(I also hope he didn't take offense to me comparing him to Stakhanov—the whole Stalinist labor-competition thing was indeed terrible.)

Thanks for the nice comments both. Posting content is its own reward :-)

Hi comrades, looking for this thread, does it still exist somewhere? --http://libcom.org/forums/solidarity-federation/question-relation-between-solfed-cnt-practices-16012013?page=1#comment-506622

Hi there! I am looking for the forum threads mentioned in the comments of the "Black Flame" Library entry (https://libcom.org/article/black-flame-revolutionary-class-politics-anarchism-and-syndicalism-lucien-van-der-walt-and), apparently discussing historical failings and inaccuracies of the book:

http://libcom.org/forums/history-culture/new-historical-syndicalist-book-03032009

http://libcom.org/forums/history-culture/books-italian-anarcho-syndicalism-05102010#comment-400771

Btw: can we please have a landing page that links to all forum discussions that have been resurrected? Especially on historical and theoretical topics, I fear that a lot of really valuable content was lost with the removal of the forum (although there were probably good reasons for doing so, which I do no know about). Or maybe a landing page already exists and I'm just too daft to find it?

Also, not all of the valuable discussion on theoretical or historical topics were linked to library comments so it seems there's no hope to ever find and ask to resurrect them, or am I missing something?

Having said that (don't get me wrong), I'm very happy about everything that still exists to this day - thanks for this all your work and for providing this great resource over all these years!

Hey, I published those two threads so you should be able to access them now.

Thanks, Juan, much appreciated!
If anyone could still comment on whether we could have a kind of landing page linking all available discussion topics ( i.e. https://libcom.org/discussion/ ) or if there already is some way to do so, that would be great!

You can use google/wayback machine to find discussion threads. If there is a particular thread you want restored, there's also a thread here where you can request it.

https://libcom.org/discussion/request-republishing-older-threads-currently-unavailable

If you want to request any other old threads be republished

Any reason that all discussions that have taken place on this site cannot be published? So much content seems to have been lost to the ether, only to be retained in the vaults.

As we have discussed many times, libcom is over 20 years old, and used to have very loose posting rules. As such many old forum posts contain problematic content, which breached tighter posting rules we introduced later.
So at various points over 20 odd years we have un-published large numbers of old threads which breached comment guidelines. In some of these mass-unpublishings, we may have hidden some threads which either were okay, or could be tidied up relatively easily. However, going through every single one of hundreds of thousands of pages of comments to tidy them up one by one, is impossible.

Hi comrades ..... I was trying to view this discussion, which no longer appears. I was wondering if someone can do their magic and make it reappear? Thanks & solidarity!
http://libcom.org/forums/nefac/nefac-and-iwa-ait-vs-ils-sil

There were several comments which breached posting guidelines in that thread. Have tidied up and re-published

Thanks, Steven!

"Access denied!": http://libcom.org/forums/thought/black-panthers-and-maoism#comment-489376 ?

Thank you! (Just returning here)

"Access denied!": https://libcom.org/forums/theory/question-parasitism-letter-edited-ingram-march-1996-recalling-icc-1981-burglaries- ?

"Access denied!": https://libcom.org/forums/general/misandry-thread-29052015

"Access denied! ": https://libcom.org/forums/middle-east/rojava-26052015 ?
This is obviously what happens when I spend more time reading comments, than on things prompting comments!
Notwithstanding the first dead end in recent hours, is from an email exchange with a friend, around ten or more years ago!

These are all back up now. Thanks!

Hi comrades, looking for:

http://libcom.org/forums/north-america/announcing-wild-rose-collective-iowa-city-iowa-21032010

Thanks!

As requested that is back: https://libcom.org/discussion/announcing-wild-rose-collective-iowa-city-iowa
 

Thanks, Steven

Hi, quick question, is this website still run by Zionists? Or is it an actual leftist space now? I can never tell because you guys got rid of the forums where it was obvious that half of this website thinks Jewish people are perpetual victims of discrimination even if when they steal land from people and execute children. I find myself back here every now and then because someone links a .PDF but because this website has a history of Zionism I never really make an effort to participate. Thanks in advance (and also, if the answer is yes, I hope you all die thanks again)

Welcome to Libcom Drakula13Masr.

Please review these tags and see if you can spot any Zionist content along the lines you mention:

https://libcom.org/tags/israel

https://libcom.org/tags/palestine

https://libcom.org/tags/zionism

Let me know how you get on!

I'm glad to hear your attitudes have changed (I think?) and I will let you know if I spot anything. I have to admit I avoided this site as a whole because the racially-motivated harassment and gaslighting I was subjected to while here was, simply, not worth it.

Re: Zionist content, I'd say this article, while old enough to vote, is still pretty fucking gross:

https://libcom.org/article/anti-semitism-and-left-redux

The author singles out a Muslim man with an offensive sign saying "Kill all (Zionist) Juice". Putting aside the inflammatory nature of the sign, the guy is someone with mental health issues who was radicalized and then entrapped by the feds. He is obviously troubled and it is very manipulative for someone to make a shit-post about Gaza while singling out a disturbed person who fits a stereotype.

The rest of the article is frankly, a lot more fucked up. It claims the leftist cartoonist Carlos Latuff "flirts with anti-Semitism" and repeats the claim again and again that any political imagery involving Israel or Zionism exercising power or control is suggestive of anti-Semitism because anti-Semitic theories also obviously involve that kind of imagery. That is an incredibly manipulative sleight of hand to make normal left-wing commentary about actual abuses of power seem questionable or discriminatory.

The article then goes on to suggest some sort of equivalency between Palestinian resistance and Israel's colonization. The entire article mixes Zionist pabulum with disclaiming rhetoric, effectively whitewashing one of the most egregious manifestations of racist inequality in the modern Era by chalking up opposition to "ressentiment" and victimhood rhetoric. Even assuming this is anything other than a massive slap in the face, the article blurs the line between this alleged victim rhetoric (on behalf of, well, actual victims) and anti-Semitism.

Lastly, even where the article correctly identifies some anti-Semitic content on the left aimed at Israel it completely removes any responsibility for this conflation from Zionism itself and suggests it is the result of bad theory and anti-communism.

EDIT: Also this part: " If one doubts the nationalism of the left, a simple thought experiment should assist: imagine the consequences if one were to burn an Israeli flag on a demonstration. Then a stars and stripes perhaps. Then a Palestinian one. If the cheers didn't turn into jeers or violence I would be very surprised."

^^^You guys literally had Palestinian flags on your front page the last time I was here. I can't imagine why it would even need explaining how demeaning and offensive this is and what a whitewash of Zionism it is to suggest both things are simply forms of nationalism.

I'm not sure how that article passed muster with whoever was running this heap in 2008 but frankly it is really demeaning. I don't think you should remove it but it might be worth LibCom putting some effort into explaining if/why they still feel the same way and if not, what efforts LibCom has made to remove people who believe these things from the collective.

EDIT 2: This article, while badly written IMO, is not Zionist propaganda, but I think a lot of the comments are: https://libcom.org/article/death-israel-lobby

Thanks Drakula13Masr, it is good to hear you feel a bit more positive about the site now.

To clarify, I am not someone who runs Libcom, but have been a contributor/member for over 20 years. I have been a relatively prolific contributor of new content and because of that have slightly more powers on here than some (for example I can remove self-evidently spam content).

From my perspective, since the site has been set up it has been broadly anarchist / ultra-left / libertarian communist. This means that the content (i.e. articles, blogs, galleries, etc) has been overwhelmingly anti-nationalist, anti-racist, etc. Having said that, it is worth bearing in mind that the content on the site reflects the revolutionary movement over several decades (but mainly the 19th Century onwards) which means that there are some archaic/anachronistic positions and language in some of the articles.

Comments from Libcom users have inevitably varied in both quality and coherence. I think most people would agree that some of the threads on the forums in the early days were pretty terrible in retrospect. From my perspective this was a product of general forum culture at the time (which gravitated towards antagonism for the sake of it) and also the young age of many of the contributors.

As you can see from this thread, people have mixed views about the forums being removed after a significant upgrade to the site a few years back.

This doesn't answer the specific issues you have identified, but I am glad you have engaged with the site a bit more and I hope that the above clarifies some of the general issues you have raised.

Thanks Fozzie for your response. Unfortunately while I think you are correct to say this site and its contents reflect "the revolutionary movement over several decades" I think that speaks very negatively of said movement. Zionism is repulsive and that was well-established among left intellectuals and most left movements, so articles and positioning that was framed as anti-Zionist while repeating key Zionist propaganda arguments are a deeply disturbing and discrediting aspect of Western leftist movements.

This article in Jewish Currents goes over some of the arguments that were being leveraged by people who self-identified as anarchists and were promoting the kind of material I identified on this site as particularly repulsive: https://jewishcurrents.org/how-not-to-fight-antisemitism

While I do not agree with the article in its entirety I agree with the key point it is making about anti-Semitism fearmongering and it appears much of the content on the site which I am concerned about is rooted in the same liberal Zionist propaganda that is promoted in pseudo-left Jewish organizations in the U.S., which the piece identifies and critiques. I think LibCom should put some thought into identifying and rejecting such politics moving forward assuming it has not already been a conversation.

Although I've only relatively recently created an account here, I've looked at this site numerous times over around probably fifteen years.
My being a (heterodox) left-communist/proletarian internationalist/Marxist (who happens to be black and working class), I find much to disagree.
However, whilst there is certainly some ID-politics, there is not necessarily that much of the variety of ghoulish, romantic 'anti-capitalist', third-worldist, conspiracist politics, that vampire character evidently wants, thankfully.

Your comments have been broad-brush and 'anti-intellectualist', with those X-ist, Y-ist, etc tendencies implicit, and therefore manipulative and meritless.
I take those matters seriously, unlike your comments.
If hereabouts your comments are taken seriously, and my criticism considered "unfair flaming", that would be unfortunate.
I would rather raise the level of debate beyond where you want to have it.

"No, u!" - You

OK, then raise the level of debate instead of just saying you want to: explain which part of my comments are third worldist and conspiratorial, and if it makes sense I'll humbly accept your criticism. In the meantime, I'll stand my ground that the articles I cited were infused with Zionist propaganda, as were the (now hidden) forum discussions I mentioned, and that the concerns raised in the Jewish Currents article I cited above outlined how those Zionist propaganda lines were problematic (to say the least).

As a way of seeking to be more 'constructive', I would suggest following where this takes you: https://zuriz.wordpress.com/2023/02/26/anti-postone-a-year-on-where-were-at-and-what-were-planning-next/

I very much agree with critique of Postone and I am glad you cited that blog as I did not know there were additional materials available about Michael Sommer's critique. I'm not sure why you would cite that and still criticize my take: this sounds like friendly fire, comrade.

I'm generally critical of Postone's work, and his acolytes/epigones, but my enemies' enemies are not necessarily my friends.
I have that book, but it's been displaced by other reading, when I've been reading it. Ill try again soon.
I should say that I was more interested in Postone et al back around up to fifteen years ago, when I was in friendly but not uncritical contact with Association of Musical Marxists/UnKant (defunct in its original formation), who were one of the scattershot targets of Postonian 'Principia Dialectica', which preceded in becoming effectively defunct.

I forgot the original purpose of that followup comment.. which was to direct you to more here: https://zuriz.wordpress.com/tag/moishe-postone/

The author's description of the "Aftermath" Facebook group which he decries sounds a lot like LibCom in the days I am describing. I'm not sure why you think I'm your enemy's enemy given that I agree with the analysis you posted and haven't said anything that deviates from it, let alone anything "third worldist" or "conspiratorial" so at this point I feel like you're either just avoiding whatever criticisms you have or getting confused yourself. Whatever. Good luck!

I will return to your question soon.. But it's partly an accident of timing, that I logged back in to look at those items above, to which I wanted access, after your comments.
Also a question of not accepting the given terms of the debate.
It's just passed 5.30AM where I am, and it was supposed to be a brief visit here.
Also, my first response was partly a general introduction, beyond merely you, as it was the first comment that wasn't merely requesting access to something.

Just a quick clarification, re: my enemies' enemies...; having a critical vantage point towards Postone in common, still at least leaves open the question of how much else agreement we might have, including if it's even a converging vantage point.

Slight return (for now); re: Association of Musical Marxists/UnKant: https://zuriz.wordpress.com/2015/04/30/echte-kunstler-sind-revolutionare/
https://datacide-magazine.com/eat-like-an-idealist-the-assassin-association-of-musical-marxists-reader-book-review/

Principia Dialectica: https://libcom.org/article/principia-dialectica-magazine
https://enemiesofutopia.wordpress.com/

Like Columbo, just one more thing.. I don't know how I forgot these: https://militantesthetix.co.uk/AMM/ammsubfr.html
https://militantesthetix.co.uk/unkant/unkantfront.html