Subject: Re: [Eng.] Quebec Cops Raid Anarchist Milieux From: pmargin-AT-xchange.apana.org.au (Profit Margin) Date: Sat, 29 Jun 96 07:48:54 AEDT Path: xchange!news From: "R.W. Wogatzke" <101607.2566-AT-compuserve.com> Newsgroups: mail.ainfos Subject: [Eng.] Quebec Cops Raid Anarchist Milieux Message-ID: <960628142838_101607.2566_JHP60-5-AT-CompuServe.COM> Date: 28 Jun 96 10:28:39 EDT Sender: news-AT-xchange.apana.org.au Reply-To: a-infos-d-AT-lglobal.com ---------- Forwarded Message ---------- From: Arm The Spirit, INTERNET:ats-AT-locust.cic.net To: Multiple recipients of list, INTERNET:ATS-L-AT-BURN.UCSD.EDU Date: 28.06.1996 13:27 Subject:Quebec Cops Raid Anarchist Milieux Quebec Cops Raid Anarchist Milieux The past few days have witnessed dramatic repression of Quebec anarchists, following a mass riot in Quebec City on June 24th, St-Jean Baptiste Day (this is a very popular Quebec holiday, and has often been a good excuse to riot in the past). Thousands of people smashed windows and expropriated goods during the riot, as well as trashing the National Assembly (the place where the government meets), breaking its windows and trying to set it afire. Initially the Quebec police chief claimed that the riot had been instigated by an unnamed "extreme right wing" group. However, a State-controlled "anti-fascist" watchdog group, the "World Anti-Fascist League" was quick to set them right. WAL leader Alain Dufour, publicly fingered anarchists in general, and the newspaper Demanarchie in particular, as having instigated the riot. Following Dufour's "revelations" a comrade was arrested for selling Demanarchie at Place Youville, the popular youth hangout where the riot had started. The comrade's house was subsequently raided and his computer seized, and then twenty police raided the Food Not Bombs in Quebec city (FNB is an anti-authoritarian anti-poverty group). A total of four people were arrested, three of whom were charged with growing pot. The comrade who had been arrested for selling the paper has been released but is under surveillance, and the FNB comrades will be appearing in court tomorrow. That evening the chief investigator for the Quebec police revealed that several dozen copies of Demanarchie had been found at one of the raided houses, and held up a copy for reporters to oogle, as if this was proof of anything. The situation has not stabilized yet, and the government is promising a through investigation, which means added heat and surveillance on the radical left in Quebec. It is important that comrades across Canada and the United States, and indeed around the world, pay attention to what is happening to us. We'll try and keep you posted as things progress. In the meantime, it should be taken for granted that money will be needed to defend our comrades, but as of yet I can't give any address for it to be sent. What people can do is telephone the Victoriaville Police Department and demand that the Quebec City police lay off of the radical Left and cease engaging in all of this post-riot repression. The phone number is: 819-752-4545. In closing, today the Montreal Section of Demanarchie released the following statement to the bourgeois media: Why You Have Understood Nothing Of The St-Jean Riot The Demanarchie collective rejects all claims of authorship and ownership of the St-Jean riot at Quebec City. Bear unto Caesar that which is Caesar's: the riot belongs only to those who participated in it. As we explained quite clearly in our editorial, the one that you find so controversial: "The Riot is a spontaneous phenomenon." This is to say that the accusations of a conspiracy and premeditation are nothing but lies meant to criminalize us on the basis of our political beliefs. The hunt for scapegoats is an attempt to disguise the authorities' responsibility for the ever-worstening social climate which is making more and more young people feel like they have less and less to lose. If you really want to find those responsible for the damage done on the St-Jean, go check out the cops and the mass media. Policies of zero tolerance and sensationalistic blather provoke the excitement and the violence of crowds. You can gag the anarchists, but you won't be able to silence the cries of the excluded. ------------------------- On The Necessity Of Not Being A Back-Stabbing Bastard Recent events in Quebec have brought to light the scientific necessity of progressive people to not be BACK STABBING BASTARDS. The case in point is Alain Dufour and Peter Vorias of the World Anti-Fascist League. Before I continue I should say that the WAL is not a typical "World"-wide organization: its only offices are in Montreal and its perspective is limitted by Quebec liberal-left realpolitik. Furthermore, it is no typical "anti-fascist" group, for it has seen fit to target the radical left as well as the far-right. In fact in many ways the LAM acts as an extention of the "left" wing of the Parti Quebecois' party apparatus, receiving government grants in exchange for the maintenance of the illusion that the Quebec nationalist movement is securely controlled by left-thinking technocrats, in contradistinction to the far-right and xenophobic elements that the Anglo-Canadian establishment loves to "expose". The WAL (or LAM, as it is locally known, this being its French acronym) was started in 1989 by punks and skins who had succesfully repelled a neo-nazi bonehead attack on an concert where the anti-fascist band Berurier Noir were playing. The boneheads were smashing people's skulls outside and security at the event responded by locking the doors, so that neither the boneheads nor their victims could get into the gig. People inside spontaneously rushed the doors, get out and gave the boneheads a bit of a thrashing. Weekly meetings followed and an anti-fascist youth group was formed. Within a year or two though Alain Dufour had established himself as head honcho at the WAL. Under pressure from police he had the group repudiate street-level confrontation of fascists. It disbanded a street level organization with well over a hundred members, and pretty soon became a clique of Dufour and a few flunkies doing research and infiltration of boneheads on the one hand and "public education" jazz in schools on the other. The group's "street presence" was reduced to painting over racist graffitti (a one-shot deal I believe) and holding one or two vigils for victims of neo-nazi violence. The first indication of the WAL's role as and agent of State repression came several years ago. Just as Spike Lee's movie Malcolm X was released, WAL also released a research document entitled "The Malcolm X Movement amongst young Blacks". While the document made clear distinctions between the anti-Semitism of the Nation of Islam and the anti-racist Afrocentrism of local Black community groups like A.K.A.X., the question on many people's minds was what business was it of theirs? While many amongst us do believe that the NOI does qualify as a far-right group, the document was essentially an exploration of Black Nationalist sentiment. The introduction explained that the group had received many calls from white people claiming to have been stabbed or beaten up by Blacks wearing Malcolm X regalia (baseball caps, T-shirts, etc.), and the the WAL intended to examine this as another version of racism. During the entire document, none of the State repression of Blacks in the USA or Canada was mentioned, this despite the fact that resources on these subjects were made available to WAL. In short, the "anti-fascists" had produced an overview of the radical Black milieu from an essentially criminological point of view. That same year, in an interview with a pacifist magazine, Dufour spelled out WAL's perspective on the Montreal police. When asked his opinion of the cops, Dufour answered that there were problems, some cops were homophobic and racist, but there were also good cops (he even gave the example of a "good cop" who wanted to join the WAL!); when pressed on this point and asked is he felt there was systematic discrimination on the part of the police Dufour responded in the negative, adding that "there are progressive police officers who give an opportunity for un to sensitize people in that milieu. The WAL is there to sensitize them and even to help train them if they want." In 1993 the situation continued to clarify itself. A local newspaper called the Montreal Mirror reported allegatioons that WAL research-director Nicholas Pouliot had tipped off the cops that an anti-racist activist was planning on gpoing to a neo-nazi gathering to beat some of them up (a highly unlikely plan). While Pouliot denied that he had done any such thing, he explained that "I would do it if I knew of a case of direct confrontation. We don't exactly have time to track left-wing groups but if I had the manpower and resources I would." Referring to the issue of "political correctness" on university campuses, he claimed that "It's frightening and I consider it to be the same as fascism." Following these remarks Pouliot apparently left the WAL, but the group's leftphobia continued unabated. In a letter to Voir, another community newspaper, WAL explained that when "communists choose to support organizations such as the Shining Path (Peru) et use the same methods such as terrorism, we will take a stand". Shortly following this pious declaration, Radio-Canada reported that WAL had shared information with both CSIS and the Quebec Provincial Police's intelligence unit. That summer saw large scale mobilization of the Montreal left against a concert organized by the neo-Nazi Heritage Front in the suburb of Vaudreuil and against the presence of members of the French National Front at the government conference in September. WAL activists not only steered clear of this grassroots mobilization, but went so far as to publicly denounce it as being "controlled by Marxists" (perhaps of the Shining Path variety?) At the demonstration against the National Front where over 1000 people took to the streets (the largest anti-fascist demonstration in recent Montreal history) Pouliot was spotted taking photos of the anti-racist protesters. If the demo against the National Front was to mark an unprecedented success in anti-fascist organizing in Montreal, local radicals were to outdo themselves two years later. That's when a Coalition of many of the same groups united with local feminist organization and organized a spectacular 5000-strong demonstration against the far-right Catholic organization Human Life International. Again, the WAL were completely absent. In fact, many people had assumed that the League had disbanded. It had lost its government grants when its accounts showed that $7000 was missing in the 1992-1993 year, and it had no mass base on which to rely. However, the group is still around, although I do not know if its grants have been reinstated or if it has some other way of financing its snooping. Whatever the case, WAL's allegiances were made clear this past week. On Sunday June 23rd and in the wee hours of the 24th, thousands of people riotted in Quebec City. The occasion was the very popular St-Jean Baptiste Day celebration, a day with a tradition of riots. Fancy hotels were smashed up, goods expropriated, windows broken, and the National Assembly (the Quebec government's buildings) was trashed. This was tyhe second riot in Quebec City in recent months; both had started at the Place Youville, a popular hangout for youth who cannot afford the more expensive hangouts and who are on the receiving end of a disproportionate amount of police harrassment. Following the riot, Quebec City police chief Norman Bergeron claimed that an unnamed "extreme right wing group" was behind the trouble. Perhaps he was thinking of the Northern Hammerskins with a post office box in nearby Levis, or perhaps he was just trying to cover his ass by showing how the police had been overwhelmed because of "outside agitators". The WAL though had the real dirt, or so they thought. Alain Dufour and Peter Vorias of the League both made public statements to the effect that the riot was the work of anarchists, specifically the Demanarchie newspaper collective. They showed media copies of the paper and explained that it had "great influence" over the local extreme left, concluding that "their calls to riot were listened to." (The most recent issue of Demanarchie was all about police repression and, considering that the most recent forms of anti-police resistance in Quebec had been riots, the collective also examined the role of riots in building social resistance.) Within a day of his statements Quebec City police had arrested five people and raided two houses associated with the anarchist milieu. One comrade was arrested for selling Demanarchie and had his computer seized; he has since been released as the cops couldn't figure out what to charge him with. The second raid was on a house associated with Food Not Bombs. Twenty cops arrested four people, one of whom was later released. The three others remain in custody facing charges of posession and cultivation of marijuana. Copies of Demanarchie in one of the houses were also seized, and then waved by cops at a press conference as if they were "proof" of some kind of conspiracy. After fanning the flames, WAL has nothing to say about this political repression. As they have always maintained, they will combat "extreme ideas" wherever these may be found. Perhaps they'll try and bask in the glory of what they have done, or perhaps they'll lay low for a few months then come forth explaining that their words had been "taken out of context". For the Anti-Fascist movement the solution should be clear: all bridges to the WAL must be burnt. If people want to use their info on the far-right or access their files, this is a personal judgement call, but they should be treated as any other conservative police unit. Today they have fingered local anarchists who have been involved in real anti-fascist organizing. Tomorrow they may finger you. (Source: a comrade in Quebec...) ++++ stop the execution of Mumia Abu-Jamal ++++ ++++ if you agree copy these lines to your sig ++++ ++++ see http://www.xs4all.nl/~tank/spg-l/sigaction.htm ++++ +++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++=Arm The Spirit is an autonomist/anti-imperialist information collective based in Toronto, Canada. Our focus includes a wide variety of material, including political prisoners, national liberation struggles, armed communist resistance, anti-fascism, the fight against patriarchy, and more. We regularly publish our writings, research, and translation materials in our magazine and bulletins called Arm The Spirit. For more information, contact: Arm The Spirit P.O. Box 6326, Stn. A Toronto, Ontario M5W 1P7 Canada E-mail: ats-AT-etext.org WWW: http://burn.ucsd.edu/~ats FTP: ftp.etext.org --> /pub/Politics/Arm.The.Spirit +++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++===+++= -------------------------------------------------- --/\-- A-Infos A-Infos / / \ \ A-Infos A-Infos ---|--/----\--|--- A-Infos A-Infos \/ \/ /\______/\ http://www.lglobal.com/TAO/ainfos.html To Subscribe to a-infos Send a message to majordomo-AT-lglobal.com With the message in the body: subscribe a-infos To Unsubscribe send: unsubscribe a-infos -------------------------------------------------- --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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