Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 16:58:42 +1100
Subject: Re: AUT: Porto Alegre - sectarianism and the left
From: Thiago Oppermann <topp8564-AT-mail.usyd.edu.au>




On 3/11/02 3:49 PM, "-AT-ndy" <andy-AT-xchange.anarki.net> wrote:

> Thiago Oppermann wrote:
> 
>> Well, I cannot see the difference between what you are arguing and what I
>> said.
> 
> I'm not "arguing" anything.

But you talk as if you were.

> 
>> Basically the criticism is over the WSF's decision making structure, which
>> you
>> don't like, perhaps for good reasons.
> 
> When did I say anything about the WSF's decision-making structure?!? I merely
> quoted
> from an interview with the FAG's International Secretary.

You quoted approvingly.

<snip>

> 
>> Also on the story about breaking from the parade and being controlled by the
>> CUT
>> marshals - that is not the whole story; Brazil Indymedia - a den of middle
>> class
>> anarchists - had another take on it, which was that the anarchists tried to
>> face
>> off with the incomparably larger multitude, then joined in, didn't feel
>> welcome
>> and stormed off.
> 
> OK, so there are contradictory accounts of what happened at the WSF march in
> 2002.
> Are you saying that the account you provide above is the accurate one? Maybe
> it is,
> I don't know. How do you know? Were you there? If not, why give more credence
> to
> this account than the one proffered by the FAG International Secretary other
> than
> the fact that, iyo, anarchists are bitchy and very unreliable? And what on
> Earth
> does it mean to say that Brazil Indymedia is a "den of middle class
> anarchists"?
> 
> "O Centro de Mdia Independente  um site de publicao aberta. O que  publicado
> de inteira responsabilidade dos autores."
> 
> In other (English) words - and just like every other Indymedia site - anyone
> can
> publish their opinions on Brazil Indymedia, and it's certainly not the
> responsibility of some iniquitous den of middle class anarchists to defend
> them.

Yes, but in Brazil a telephone line costs as much as small car.

> 
>> Furthermore, one may question what the point of breaking a bank to pieces
>> would
>> have been...
> 
> Of course! When did I say otherwise?!?
> 
>> not everyone likes that sort of protest; I don't see how this was the time
>> for it,
>> and I would have also tried to discourage people from engaging in it.
> 
> Sure, and I would have supported your right to do so.

How about the CUT's right to do so? Maybe you are quite open on this one, a
good thing, but the people quoted, and specially the IMC Brasil folks, were
up in arms as if the CUT had acted like evil Stalinists.

> 
>> It seems totally pointless, given that a major meeting was underway to work
>> out
>> how to break the banks for good;
> 
> It was? What does 'breaking the banks for good' mean if not the dismantling of
> capitalism? If this does imply the latter, does this really reflect the WSF's
> agenda
> at Porto Alegre? That wasn't my impression.

What was your impression? This is the basic, substantial point: do you think
that the WSF was some sort of conciliatory scheme? A PR exercise for the PT?
A place where people were in fact discussing how to get rid of the banks,
and everything else? How about all of these?

> 
>> it would simply alienate a society which not so long ago was torturing and
>> killing
>> anarchists.
> 
> Putting aside the question of whether or not throwing eggs and stones at banks
> and
> at McDonald's is going to alienate others, was it "society" that was not so
> long ago
> torturing and killing anarchists, or was it the state?

Well, the ugly thing is that a large section of the public supported the
state, even when knowing fully well what was going on. My family is not
untypical: I have an uncle in the armed forces, now the second in command of
the Policia Militar in Brazilia; an asshole. Another uncle was an anarchist
who ended up hiding out in the bush somewhere.

> 
>> The MST's good behaviour: The MST is nothing if not militiant; they invade
>> farms
>> every week, they carry redistribution mano a mano. Last year, they occupied
>> offices in Porto Alegre for two weeks in solidarity with their mates who had
>> taken
>> over the President's farm in Minas Gerais (another state). This didn't really
>> win
>> them many friends in the city; the PT and them have a very uneasy
>> relationship in
>> this and in many other instances. I imagine this had a lot to do with them
>> not
>> being so militant in this
>> specific instance. I am please to inform you that they are back to their
>> naughty
>> ways now.
> 
> Naughty... but nice.

Yep. :)

> 
>> Andy, the conference in Melbourne went well; but you didn't really go out of
>> your
>> way to embrace the trots did you? Did you give the ISO a "role in the
>> decision
>> making structure"? Why not? Amplify that reason by about a million and you
>> have
>> the reason why the FAG, a marginal group of maybe two thousand people, were
>> not
>> involved in the WSF at the same level the PT (which has millions of members)
>> or
>> the MST (250,000 _families_). Ie. there is an intense difference of opinion
>> coupled with an enormous difference of scale.
> 
> You're right. There's no comparison between the WSF and NGNM. Not only didn't
> I go
> out of my way to "embrace the trots" in organising the conference, any offer
> on
> their part to play a determining role would have been refused (although they
> were of
> course free to participate in the conference itself). This is because NGNM was
> an
> 'anarchist and an autonomist conference', not a 'world social forum'.

So, you didn't have trouble with people feeling excluded because you
excluded them by definition. I don't want to piss on your awesome work,
Andy, but I think that this isn't a fair criticism of the organisers of the
WSF. 

A better one would be where the hell does that ATTAC money come from, how
much of it is there and what strings are attached.

>Further, 
> the
> scale is completely different; the WSF is huge, NGNM was tiny.
> 
> That said, the basis of the FAG's complaint was that they believed, and the
> WSF was
> billed as being, "an open forum". Officially then, it wasn't a conference of
> the PT
> or the MST,

Well, it was billed as open forum, but look carefully at their "statement of
principles" at the web site and it is clear that they mean that whilst no
one would be excluded (except for ETA...) they were going to be organising
the star attractions. Resources would be spent on those. This is what the
problem appears to be.

Fair enough. perhaps the criticism is valid; I am moving back to Porto
Alegre later this year, so we can have a re-run of this debate then.


> and yet (again, according to the FAG) "it turned out that it
> wasn't like
> that at all" and "when [the FAG] arrived at the opening meetings, everything
> had
> already been decided by people high in the ranks of ATTAC and the [PT]".

Yes, this is a problem; but it is something that  comes with the scale, I
think.

> In 
> other
> words, the organisation wasn't decided by 'millions' of PT members or even 'a
> quarter of a million' MST families, but a relatively small group of people at
> the
> top of ATTAC and the PT... at least, that seems to be the opinion of the FAG.
> 
>> I honestly cannot see what is supposed to be wrong.
> 
> I honestly cannot see why you assume what I think, right or wrong.

Hmm. Maybe because you say things like this. I don't assume, I infer on the
basis of what you have written. What you wrote appeared to me to be a
criticism of the WSF on the grounds I addressed. Maybe I am wrong; sorry.
Let's wind this up.

> 
>> It is in my view a little ironic that anarchists should be complaining about
>> not
>> being allowed into the central organising committee of anything... why should
>> the
>> Forum have only one organising committee? Where is the anarchist
>> justification for
>> that?
> 
> Huh? When did I (or any other anarchist, for that matter) propose that the
> Forum
> "have only one organising committee"? Are you suggesting that we have? If so,
> where's the evidence?

Oh god. Now you are channelling Louis. I translated a mountain of stuff this
year and last about the WSF; most of my translations were of the
non-affiliated FAG stuff, Projeto Periferia, etc... If you don't believe
that this  was the complaint, well, fine.

It's an elementary point of logic: if you don' like the main central
organisation committee, why not form your own parallel committee - as they
did. If you think that having two or thirty "committees" is not a bad thing,
why worry?

> 
>> and the FARC were excluded; this is not good. These people were also in a
>> position
>> to complain about something, since they were not given visas. Would a couple
>> of
>> fascists in a crowd of 60,000 unionists be a bad thing?
> 
> For the fascists, or for the unionists?
> 
> (Btw, is this crowd of 60,000 unionists (?) related in any way to the
> unionists who
> declared that they were going to boycott the WSF because of its 'conservative'
> agenda?)

Ahhhhhhrrrrggggghhhhh!!!!! I think the position was that they were doing
exactly the same bloody thing that the FAG did, which was to write an letter
and then join the forum anyway, for the reasons reitarated about a billion
times, which are: the forum is a really good idea, despite the ideological
veneer painted onto the happenings.

This is really silly. If you had any idea how much of this veneer came from
the Brazilian media's spin on the forum, perhaps it might put this into
perspective.

Look at it this way: the forum is conservative? social-democratic? Well,
where were the Brazilian social democrats then? Nowhere to be seen. The PMDB
and PSDB - the real social-democrat scum - hate the forum, they are the ones
pushing the line that it is a PT-fest.

> 
>> It was a paranoid move to exclude them. As for ETA and the FARC, these are
>> the
>> actual cases of politically motivated control of the forum, as opposed to the
>> somewhat prima-dona-ish complaints of the FAG.
> 
> I don't claim to know precisely what motivated the WSF organisers to exclude
> the ETA
> and the FARC. According to an article in the NYT, however, it was because
> these
> groups "use violence"; a hopelessly inadequate - not to mention hypocritical -
> stance. As far as "prima-donna-ish complaints" is concerned, the same article
> states
> that:
> 
> 'The forum's centrist tilt is not endorsed by everyone here. Some 300 homeless
> families connected to Brazil's National Shelter Struggle occupied an abandoned
> 14-story building in the old city center today, draping the movement's red
> flags out
> of broken windows.
> 
> "The World Social Forum is reformist economically, traditionalist politically
> and
> conformist socially," said Mosio Reboucas, one of Brazil's first
> antiglobalization
> organizers. Mr. Reboucas said he was especially critical of the role played by
> socialist politicians at the forum.'
> 
> -AT-ndy.

Good for you Andy, you have discovered the New York Times.

Look at this a bit more closely and you will notice that the people who
staged the protest at the empty building got massive media attention in
Brazil. Their criticisms of the forum were discussed in the Folha de Sao
Paulo, the Brazilian answer to the NYT, and were all over the JB and
certainly the P.A. local rag Zero Hora. Weird isn't it? Side demos to forums
with numbers around 300 occur pretty much every second day somewhere in the
world; why was this one news? I think it is an interesting question why the
NYT should think it fit to print; yet allow very little criticism of the
WEF, certainly very little of it in news stories about the WEF. Don't get me
wrong: it is a very good thing that these people were heard as far and wide
as they were, but I think there are reasons for this beyond the  merits of
their cause. I think it is a typical journalistic device to create as much
kefuffle around big left-wing meetings; the NYT certainly is not saying that
the forum is acceptably centrist - if they were, then they are simply
falsifying the facts - I think that it is more a case of "jeez, these guys
are nuts: and they don't even represent the real workers!", with the obvious
political intention.

Now, I don't think the WSF represents everyone and everybody, but I think
that one of the more admirable things about it has been its capacity to
address criticism; whereas the world media ran with the squatters for all of
a day, the forum actually sent people over to talk to them; I don't know
what came out of this since no one, to my knowledge, bothered following it
up. Last I heard they had some MST (landless) folks talking to the MST
(roofless)... (MST is Movimento Sem Terra (Movement Without Land,
literally), the guys who went into the building were the Movement Sem Teto ,
or Movement Without a Roof) People at the Forum were actually worried about
the folks in the building and the calamity of homelessness, rather than
being worried about the political consequences of their little protest.

Anyway, I've had enough of this. If you want to debate some of the proposals
that were  forwarded at the forum, I'd be happy to. This is pointless,
though. I think we have just misunderstood each other, Andy.


Thiago

 
























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