Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information
Montréal Contre-information

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How to Form an Affinity Group

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Jan 022020
 

From CrimethInc.

The Essential Building Block of Anarchist Organization

Turbulent times are upon us. Already, blockades, demonstrations, riots, and clashes are occuring regularly. It’s past time to be organizing for the upheavals that are on the way.

But getting organized doesn’t mean joining a pre-existing institution and taking orders. It shouldn’t mean forfeiting your agency and intelligence to become a cog in a machine. From an anarchist perspective, organizational structure should maximize both freedom and voluntary coordination at every level of scale, from the smallest group up to society as a whole.

You and your friends already constitute an affinity group, the essential building block of this model. An affinity group is a circle of friends who understand themselves as an autonomous political force. The idea is that people who already know and trust each other should work together to respond immediately, intelligently, and flexibly to emerging situations.

This leaderless format has proven effective for guerrilla activities of all kinds, as well as what the RAND Corporation calls “swarming” tactics in which many unpredictable autonomous groups overwhelm a centralized adversary. You should go to every demonstration in an affinity group, with a shared sense of your goals and capabilities. If you are in an affinity group that has experience taking action together, you will be much better prepared to deal with emergencies and make the most of unexpected opportunities.

This guide is adapted from an earlier version that appeared in our Recipes for Disaster: An Anarchist Cookbook.

Affinity Groups are Powerful

Relative to their small size, affinity groups can achieve a disproportionately powerful impact. In contrast to traditional top-down structures, they are free to adapt to any situation, they need not pass their decisions through a complicated process of ratification, and all the participants can act and react instantly without waiting for orders—yet with a clear idea of what to expect from one another. The mutual admiration and inspiration on which they are founded make them very difficult to demoralize. In stark contrast to capitalist, fascist, and socialist structures, they function without any need of hierarchy or coercion. Participating in an affinity group can be fulfilling and fun as well as effective.

Most important of all, affinity groups are motivated by shared desire and loyalty, rather than profit, duty, or any other compensation or abstraction. Small wonder whole squads of riot police have been held at bay by affinity groups armed with only the tear gas canisters shot at them.

The Affinity Group is a Flexible Model

Some affinity groups are formal and immersive: the participants live together, sharing everything in common. But an affinity group need not be a permanent arrangement. It can serve as a structure of convenience, assembled from the pool of interested and trusted people for the duration of a given project.

A particular team can act together over and over as an affinity group, but the members can also break up into smaller affinity groups, participate in other affinity groups, or act outside the affinity group structure. Freedom to associate and organize as each person sees fit is a fundamental anarchist principle; this promotes redundancy, so no one person or group is essential to the functioning of the whole, and different groups can reconfigure as needed.

The affinity group is a flexible model.

Pick the Scale That’s Right for You

An affinity group can range from two to perhaps as many as fifteen individuals, depending on your goals. However, no group should be so numerous that an informal conversation about pressing matters is impossible. You can always split up into two or more groups if need be. In actions that require driving, the easiest system is often to have one affinity group to each vehicle.

Get to Know Each Other Intimately

Learn each other’s strengths and vulnerabilities and backgrounds, so you know what you can count on each other for. Discuss your analyses of each situation you are entering and what is worth accomplishing in it—identify where they match, where they are complentary, and where they differ, so you’ll be ready to make split-second decisions.

One way to develop political intimacy is to read and discuss texts together, but nothing beats on-the-ground experience. Start out slow so you don’t overextend. Once you’ve established a common language and healthy internal dynamics, you’re ready to identify the objectives you want to accomplish, prepare a plan, and go into action.

Decide Your Appropriate Level of Security

Affinity groups are resistant to infiltration because all members share history and intimacy with each other, and no one outside the group need be informed of their plans or activities.

Once assembled, an affinity group should establish a shared set of security practices and stick to them. In some cases, you can afford to be public and transparent about your activities. in other cases, whatever goes on within the group should never be spoken of outside it, even after all its activities are long completed. In some cases, no one except the participants in the group should know that it exists at all. You and your comrades can discuss and prepare for actions without acknowledging to outsiders that you constitute an affinity group. Remember, it is easier to pass from a high security protocol to a low one than vice versa.

Make Decisions Together

Affinity groups generally operate on via consensus decision-making: decisions are made collectively according to the needs and desires of every individual involved. Democratic voting, in which the majority get their way and the minority must hold their tongues, is anathema to affinity groups—for if a group is to function smoothly and hold together under stress, every individual involved must be satisfied. Before any action, the members of a group should establish together what their personal and collective goals are, what risks they are comfortable taking, and what their expectations of each other are. These matters determined, they can formulate a plan.

Since action situations are always unpredictable and plans rarely come off as anticipated, it may help to employ a dual approach to preparing. On the one hand, you can make plans for different scenarios: If A happens, we’ll inform each other by X means and switch to plan B; if X means of communication is impossible, we’ll reconvene at site Z at Q o’clock. On the other hand, you can put structures in place that will be useful even if what happens is unlike any of the scenarios you imagined. This could mean preparing resources (such as banners, medical supplies, or offensive equipment), dividing up internal roles (for example, scouting, communications, medic, media liaison), establishing communication systems (such as burner phones or coded phrases that can be shouted out to convey information securely), preparing general strategies (for keeping sight of one another in confusing environments, for example), charting emergency escape routes, or readying legal support in case anyone is arrested.

After an action, a shrewd affinity group will meet (if necessary, in a secure location without any electronics) to discuss what went well, what could have gone better, and what comes next.

It’s safer to act in chaotic protest environments in a tight-knit affinity group.

Tact and Tactics

An affinity group answers to itself alone—this is one of its strengths. Affinity groups are not burdened by the procedural protocol of other organizations, the difficulties of reaching agreement with strangers, or the limitations of answering to a body not immediately involved in the action.

At the same time, just as the members of an affinity group strive for consensus with each other, each affinity group should strive for a similarly considerate relationship with other individuals and groups—or at least to complement others’ approaches, even if others do not recognize the value of this contribution. Ideally, most people should be glad of your affinity group’s participation or intervention in a situation, rather than resenting or fearing you. They should come to recognize the value of the affinity group model, and so to employ it themselves, after seeing it succeed and benefiting from that success.

Organize With Other Affinity Groups

An affinity group can work together with other affinity groups in what is sometimes called a cluster. The cluster formation enables a larger number of individuals to act with the same advantages a single affinity group has. If speed or security is called for, representatives of each group can meet ahead of time, rather than the entirety of all groups; if coordination is of the essence, the groups or representatives can arrange methods for communicating through the heat of the action. Over years of collaborating together, different affinity groups can come to know each other as well as they know themselves, becoming accordingly more comfortable and capable together.

When several clusters of affinity groups need to coordinate especially massive actions—before a big demonstration, for example—they can hold a spokescouncil meeting at which different affinity groups and clusters can inform one another (to whatever extent is wise) of their intentions. Spokescouncils rarely produce seamless unanimity, but they can apprise the participants of the various desires and perspectives that are at play. The independence and spontaneity that decentralization provides are usually our greatest advantages in combat with a better equipped adversary.

Bottomlining

For affinity groups and larger structures based on consensus and cooperation to function, it is essential that everyone involved be able to rely on each other to come through on commitments. When a plan is agreed upon, each individual in a group and each group in a cluster should choose one or more critical aspects of the preparation and execution of the plan and offer to bottomline them. Bottomlining the supplying of a resource or the completion of a project means guaranteeing that it will be accomplished somehow, no matter what. If you’re operating the legal hotline for your group during a demonstration, you owe it to them to handle it even if you get sick; if your group promises to provide the banners for an action, make sure they’re ready, even if that means staying up all night the night before because the rest of your affinity group couldn’t show up. Over time, you’ll learn how to handle crises and who you can count on in them—just as others will learn how much they can count on you.

Go Into Action

Stop wondering what’s going to happen, or why nothing’s happening. Get together with your friends and start deciding what will happen. Don’t go through life in passive spectator mode, waiting to be told what to do. Get in the habit of discussing what you want to see happen—and making those ideas reality.

Without a structure that encourages ideas to flow into action, without comrades with whom to brainstorm and barnstorm and build up momentum, you are likely to be paralyzed, cut off from much of your own potential; with them, your potential can be multiplied by ten, or ten thousand. “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed people can change the world,” Margaret Mead wrote: “it’s the only thing that ever has.” She was referring, whether she knew it or not, to affinity groups. If every individual in every action against the state and status quo participated as part of a tight-knit, dedicated affinity group, the revolution would be accomplished in a few short years.

An affinity group could be a sewing circle or a bicycle maintenance collective; it could come together for the purpose of providing a meal at an occupation or forcing a multinational corporation out of business through a carefully orchestrated program of sabotage. Affinity groups have planted and defended community gardens, built and occupied and burned down buildings, organized neighborhood childcare programs and wildcat strikes; individual affinity groups routinely initiate revolutions in the visual arts and popular music. Your favorite band was an affinity group. An affinity group invented the airplane. Another one maintains this website.

Let five people meet who are resolved to the lightning of action rather than the agony of survival—from that moment, despair ends and tactics begin.


Printable zine version of this article is also available for download.

 

État policier” Newspaper – Call for Submissions of Texts

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Dec 282019
 

From the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality

The theme this year of the 24th International Day Against Police Brutality is “Police Everywhere, Justice Nowhere: International Solidarity!”.

Capitalism is collapsing. Neoliberalism is dying. Those in power cling to their authority as their greed pushes us towards environmental catastrophe, they wage war on solidarity and become more and more monstrous every day that passes.

As they did during the bloody colonial birth of this state and all its kind, the power-holders turn to the police, the gendarmerie, the capital watchdogs to guarantee their ill-gotten gains.

Our continents become fortresses, those who seek refuge are imprisoned, the poor work hard and die, the rich get richer, the pigs get their wages by smashing our heads in.

What they don’t know, however, is that we will win.

The fight against police brutality is about removing the fangs of a rabid beast, which walks through our communities like the scarecrows they are. Here to frighten us, to prevent us from getting angry, to keep us small. From Ferguson to Palestine, from Montreal to Rio de Janeiro. From Winnipeg to La Paz, from Port-au-Prince to Santiago.

As we struggle to build a better world, the police, in all its disgusting forms, are blocking our way.

In order for us to move forward, we must get rid of them.

As has been the case for more than 20 years, the Collective Opposed to Police Brutality (C.O.B.P.) began its conscientious work by organizing the International Day Against Police Brutality on March 15.

As we have done since our inception, we will print and distribute our annual newspaper “L’État Policier”.

This year, we are turning to our comrades, allies and colleagues who are activists against the police state for articles, comics, designs, poems, opinion pieces or any other contribution to add to our annual journal.

If you would like to submit an article to our journal, please send it to the following address: cobp@riseup.net

The texts must be a maximum of two pages long and may be written in French, English or Spanish. Authors who want their texts translated must let us know within a reasonable time so that we can find people for the translation, and we invite you to send us images to match with your text if you wish. However, the images will be part of both pages.

The final deadline for the journal’s content is February 15, 2020.

International solidarity with all those who fight, fight against the State and its armed wing, the police, and flee police action.

COBP (Collectif opposé à la brutalité policière)

https://cobp.resist.ca/

Invitation to the Winter Games of Urban Revolt

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Dec 192019
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Print: 11 x 17″

Poster text:

INVITATION TO THE WINTER GAMES OF URBAN REVOLT
December 20, 2019 – March 15, 2020
Challenge your friends, your neighbors, and other crews.
Sabotage social control, de-gentrify our neighborhoods!

 

Three fields of play await the athletes.

no 1 Camover Returns

Destroy surveillance cameras

  • dummy camera = 2 points
  • functional camera = 6 points
  • smart doorbell with camera (Amazon Ring / Google Nest) = 6 points

no 2 Nobody Pays

  • each metro turnstile disabled = 3 points
    • all the turnstiles of a station = bonus +4
  • each fare distribution machine disabled = 6 points
    • all the distribution machines of a station = bonus +2

no 3 A Long Winter for Condo Promoters

  • glue the locks of a condo sales office (all doors) = 6 points
  • redecorate exterior (paint bombs, graffiti, or extinguisher) = 4 points
  • redecorate interior (with an extinguisher) = 10 points

Bonus

  • claim one’s action with a meme = 2 points
  • burn a christmas tree displayed in public = 4 points
  • disable a cop car during a snow storm = 10 points

*This is not an encouragement to brag about one’s actions or otherwise endanger one’s security or that of friends.

Disclaimer: this poster is produced solely for informational purposes and does not incite anyone to break any law.

Toronto: Attack on Google Smart City Project

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Dec 162019
 

Anonymous submission to North Shore (1 December 2019)

Last night some anarchists visited the Sidewalk Toronto office on Parliament Street. Their cheerful paint job needed some touching up to remind everyone that for all their land acknowledgements and “consultations”, sidewalk is a sinister force in our city [tag reads “Fuck Off Sidewalk”].

There are plenty of reasons to oppose sidewalk. Indigenous elders have criticized their tokenistic consultation of First Nations (hey, why not just remediate the stolen land and give it back, anyways?) Their aggressive proposals for data collection, private police forces and cashless stores are all pretty dystopic. and we can bet that their “affordable” housing stock will be nowhere near attainable for those who need it.

Respect to the efforts of groups like Block Sidewalk for their pushback against this plan. It isn’t a done deal so let’s keep fighting! we chose this tactic to reflect our hostility toward google and all forms of exclusivity and surveillance, and hope it inspires future action!

Raf Stomper’s Trial in Montréal: A Losing Proposition… Except for the Man at the Center of It

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Dec 132019
 

From Montréal Antifasciste

Montréal, December 12, 2019 — Today is the fourth and final day of the trial of the recognized leader of Atalante Québec, Raphaël Lévesque (alias Raf Stomper), at the Palais de Justice in Montréal. Lévesque is charged with mischief, breaking and entering, and criminal harassment. The charges arise from a stunt Lévesque and six other Atalante militants pulled on May 23, 2018, at the Vice Québec office.

We haven’t been all that interested in the trial up to this point. All we’re seeing is a court circus out of all proportion to the action that led to the charges. We are entirely aware of the fact that our perspective on the issue will differ from that of the media (which is a party to this little affair), the “justice system,” and the generally held liberal position of Québécois society. That’s why we thought it wise to explicitly formulate out position [for additional information, media can visit https://montreal-antifasciste.info or contact us at alerta-mtl @ riseup.net]

We think that the almost political character that this trial has taken on because the media was the target plays right in to the fascists’ hands. It would have been better if, from the outset, this action had been treated as what it was (a weak example of political theatre that would be quickly forgotten), rather than turning to the criminal justice system and shining a spotlight on Lévesque, giving him the attention he craves.

Furthermore, the substance of the case is very debatable and the outcome far from certain. Whatever the verdict may be, we see the whole exercise as a losing proposition. If Lévesque wins, he comes out of it vindicated and energized, which, one would suspect, will mean that he and his band of cretins repeat this sort of action in the future. If, on the other hand, he is found guilty of criminal harassment and/or mischief, jurisprudence that further reduces the playing field for legitimate direct action is established, not just for the right but for the left as well. Put differently, the state ends up with a new tool for suppressing opposition, whatever its source.

On the other hand, if the media reports about the trial from the first few days are accurate, it’s obvious that the judge fell face first into the trap the fascists had laid for her, in spite of the mass of evidence accumulated about the true nature of Atalante: depoliticization, even “de-demonization,” which is the desired outcome of the entire ruse.

The Palais de Justice is not a favourable terrain for the antifascist struggle. We’re not proposing a dogmatic blanket refusal to ever engage on this terrain, and don’t reject the possibility of using it if specific gains are possible, although the likelihood of this is extremely limited, but we certainly don’t believe that we should count on the courts to win this war, or even any important battle. The courts only exist to ensure one thing: the liberal order, i.e., the necessary conditions for the reproduction of state and the capitalist system that supports the systemic inequalities that our movements are working to eliminate.

We believe that the anti-racist and antifascist struggles must, first and foremost, be conducted daily in our living and working environments, in our communities, and in the streets, with constant information campaigns and the promotion of the values that motivate us. However Raf Stooper’s trial ends, the struggle will continue. Montréal Antifasciste, its allies, and its sympathizers will continue to track, expose, and generally disrupt the lives of the fascists from Atalante and all those who advance political projects based on inequality and exclusion—until we win!

¡No pasaran!

Messe des Morts: Neo-Nazi Pascal Giroux Gets a Beating

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Dec 132019
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

On Friday, November 28, the black metal festival La Messe des Morts took place at Théâtre Paradoxe. Three neo-Nazis were spotted on site or had announced their intention to be there on social networks. One of them, Pascal Giroux, received quite a beating upon leaving the theater.

Pascal Giroux is openly a neo-Nazi militant since the golden age of boneheads in Montreal. Recently he had joined the islamophobic group Soldiers of Odin, and he participated in all their actions, until their dissolution in 2018. In pictures, he can be seen wearing a Section Saint-Laurent shirt and an SOO hoodie, posing in front of a Black Sun flag and protecting the house of neo-Nazi Phillipe Gendron in 2018, during an anti-racist demonstration.

Antifascist and black-metal communities are vigilant and there will no longer be any safe space for Nazis. Fred, Maxime, William, Joey, you are warned.

Montreal is antifascist.

Varennes: An Atalante Nazi on Rue Sainte-Anne

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Dec 112019
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Vincent Cyr, resident of Rue Sainte-Anne in Varennes is a dangerous neo-Nazi and member of the organization Atalante Quebec. Vincent sometimes boxes in Parc de la Commune with his Nazi friends. He regularly participates in Atalante’s activities in Montreal.

On the night of Monday, December 11, 2019, 1000 flyers were distributed on his street, in his neighborhood, at bus shelters and in front of key locations in the town. Because people like him hide and the population needs to know.

Hunt Nazis, wherever they are!

signed: some south shore antifascists

Destruction of Amazon and Google Doorbell Surveillance Cameras

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Dec 092019
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

Recently, we went on a nighttime stroll and removed some Google Nest and Amazon Ring doorbell surveillance cameras from a couple residential streets.

These products, which one can easily spot at night by their blue or green ring of light, are popping up more and more in Montreal and elsewhere. The cameras can store recorded video on the cloud for up to 60 days.

It’s been well documented that Amazon is using Ring to build a private surveillance network, fully integrated with police departments, under the guise of combating package theft.

On a positive note, these doorbell cameras make it easy to fight back against the giants of techno-capitalism right in our neighborhoods. They are easily removed with a small crowbar. It’s suggested to have a buddy with you and/or wear electrical insulating gloves as a precaution against the risk of shock from live wires. And be aware that the battery-powered camera may continue recording and transmitting even after being torn from the wall, while it’s still in range of its home wifi network; the user may also receive a notification on their phone.

Fuck Amazon, Google, and their encroaching techno-dystopia.

National Insecurity: The RCMP Knocks on Doors in Montreal

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Dec 072019
 

Anonymous submission to MTL Counter-info

When it comes to its colonial, racist regime of borders and prisons, the Canadian state, in its police headquarters and technocratic backrooms, sees trouble on the horizon. With a network of border posts, patrols, surveillance technology, detention centers, courts, “alternatives to detention”, and deportation squads, this country’s rulers hope to secure the authority to determine who can make a life on the territory they fraudulently govern, who can find a place to live, who can send their kids to school, who can access health care, who can go about their days without fear. They are supported in this project by mass media always ready to dramatize any new trend in irregular border crossings, by cultural myths positing Canada as friendly and welcoming, concealing a murderous, cruel reality, and of course by the far right, who have the vital task of mis-directing poor and working people’s anger towards fellow victims of the global economic system at the root of their sense of powerlessness.

Yet this web of domination is far from impenetrable. Canada’s land border with the United States is too massive to completely control; clandestine crossing points abound. Likewise, overstaying a visa and keeping out of CBSA’s sights is not impossible. Across the country, migrants organize solidarity networks to ensure that no one needs to face the serious challenges of accessing services without status and confronting a racist immigration system alone.

This year, a list of CBSA agents’ names was published, encouraging people to hold them responsible for their destructive effects on our communities and comrades. And over the past two years, in response to the government’s effort to build new migrant prisons, Montreal-area contractors who have accepted work on the prison slated to open in Laval in 2021 have faced protests and a series of attacks, beginning with the release of crickets into prison architect Lemay’s building in spring 2018. This past July, a Lemay vice-president’s BMW was burned outside his home. On the night of October 26, the general contractor for the prison, Tisseur, appears to have lost a truck to a targeted arson. Most recently, this month, vehicles parked at the headquarters of subcontractor DPL had their tires slashed.

Such actions have an impact, both material and psychological; as the president of excavation firm Loiselle told the media after its headquarters was vandalized, “we don’t want trouble with these people.” Should these attacks continue and spread, they could quickly change the landscape of the state’s capability to maintain and expand the enforcement of borders, immigration, and citizenship.

It is no surprise that police agencies, of which at least 4 in the Montreal area have unsolved events related to the migrant prison within their territorial jurisdiction (SPVM, SPL (Laval), SPAL (Longueuil), and SQ), would join forces to share resources and coordinate a more intensive investigation. In fact, a La Presse article in July revealed that such a move was in the works.

The week of October 28th saw the first clear signs of this escalation in repressive resources, as a small number of long-time activists received house visits and phone calls from RCMP officers on the island of Montreal. The officers belong to an INSET (Integrated National Security Enforcement Team), the unit that has coordinated security for summits like the G7 and investigated other instances of what they call “violent extremism”. Each INSET is made up of RCMP officers, CSIS agents, and members of local police forces, as well as members of CBSA and Citizenship and Immigration Canada [source: Wikipedia].

The officers who paid these visits in October had no warrant, and they said they wanted to discuss migrant justice organizing, as well as anti-gentrification movements, in relation to criminal acts that are under investigation. Those visited did not let the cops in or speak with them.

We consider these events important to share publicly so that comrades can take appropriate precautions, recognize patterns, and avoid the spread of false information. Anyone who is contacted by the RCMP, other police, or CSIS in a similar way or in relation to this investigation is strongly encouraged to let comrades know as soon as possible.

In past investigations, the Montreal INSET has used tactics that include bugging phones and houses, tailing suspects, surreptitiously entering houses and offices to make observations unbeknownst to suspects, and infiltrators and paid informants. Even combining these methods and others across several years, the INSET has been unable to bring charges in the past. Collectively, it’s clear where our power lies when faced with this type of investigation: the value of silence and total non-cooperation with any police can not be overstated. There is nothing to be gained by letting officers into your home or saying anything to them. Without a valid warrant, police have no right to enter your home or office (see the COBP’s “Guess What! We’ve Got Rights!?”). Contact a trusted lawyer if you are unsure of your rights in any situation.

Moreover, we benefit from continually reflecting on our security practices and striving to build a security culture that keeps us and our comrades as safe as possible while allowing us to fight with conviction and expand our capacity. This recently published reflection on security culture has much to offer both as an introduction to the topic and a prompt for re-assessing and refining our practices.

By bringing other struggles to which anarchists have contributed, namely anti-gentrification, into their sights, and by brandishing the spectre of “terrorism”, despite investigating mere arson and broken windows, the RCMP shows that it is not simply trying to solve specific crimes; they want to disrupt our movements’ ability to challenge the racist and colonial foundations of the Canadian state and the capitalist imperatives that govern it everywhere. With or without legal proceedings, they want to assign criminality to ideas that threaten them. They want us to be afraid to take the risks necessary to build something different. They want to break down solidarity between those speaking publicly and those acting clandestinely, so that public organizing contains itself within the approved channels of protest, and anonymous interventions are denounced and isolated. Importantly, they are also signaling that our movements are a threat to their ability to carry out their functions, a reminder that now is not the time to shrink away.

We know that the mere threat of repression can be effective at disrupting movements. While the information about this investigation and INSET tactics is concerning, we see no reason for paranoia or panic. This much is simple: if the cops have questions, it shows that they don’t know what they want and need to know. The struggle continues, and it is through the continued and increasing involvement of a wide variety of groups and individuals dedicated to keeping each other safe, sharing information and resources, and refusing to allow the state to sow divisions between us that we will all be the most formidable opponents to the police and the border regime.

When targeted by repressive forces, it can be tempting to appeal to discourses rooted in legality, decrying the ‘excesses’ of the state or demanding protection for ‘civil liberties’. But our movements will be stronger in the long run by acknowledging that if we want to see their world of confinement and control in flames, it’s inevitable that they will attempt to shut us down, by any means at their disposal. Once we step away from the myths of public opinion, it should be clear that there is nothing to gain by portraying ourselves as victims. It’s a question of practicing an unyielding solidarity and denying the state the power it seeks.

 

Call for Solidarity

In the event of raids or arrests related to the RCMP/INSET investigation, we call for offensive solidarity in Montreal and beyond against border enforcement infrastructure, or whatever targets are most relevant in your area! ?

Debunking Atalante: Not Nazis But… Yeah Actually

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Dec 052019
 

From Montréal Antifasciste

Whatever the interested parties may say, their neofascist/identitarian/national revolutionary/anti-communist/Nazi lineage is as clear as the Stompers/Légitime Violence/Atalante connection. The tattoos, fashion statements, musical tastes, and antics of the known Atalante members give some indication of their political orientation, and their sympathies are entirely and uncontestably “neo-Nazi.”

In September, Montréal Antifasciste published an article revealing where some of the key activists in the neofascist group Atalante Québec work. The objective was, as always, “exposing the fascists to their communities, colleagues, employers, families, and neighbours, from whom they generally hide the real nature of their activities […] because the projects they are involved in in their personal lives endanger both their immediate colleagues and the general public, most particularly racialized people, Muslims, Jews, queers, and leftists.”

Breaking with its usual practice, Atalante rushed out a communiqué to respond “aux propos diffamatoires incitant à la haine contre” eux [to the slanderous statements inciting hatred against] them and to the “fausses allégations lancées contre [nos] members” [false allegations made about (our) members]. Laughably, the communiqué responds to accusations we never made and twists some we did to make it easier for them to defend themselves. In particular, it attempts to portray Atalante and its militants as some sort of community-based charity organization that has absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with the “neo-Nazi movement” and is simply committed to “aid to families.”

Let’s be perfectly clear, we target Atalante Québec so heavily because they are a far-right organization directly modelled on European neofascist and identitarian movements like CasaPound (Italy), Groupe Union Défense (GUD), Troisième Voie, and Bastion Social (France) that are part of the revolutionary nationalist tendency (heirs to the Nazi Party’s Strasserist current) and were formed around the ultranationalist bonehead gang the Québec Stompers Crew and the Rock Against Communism band Légitime Violence.

If more proof is required, we’d be more than happy to oblige.

///

 

It seems as if they “doth protest too much”

From the get-go, the communiqué is a wee bit defensive:

« Dans un premier lieu, Atalante n’est pas un mouvement prônant la haine de l’autre, mais l’amour des siens. (…) Aussi, ce que des adultes consentants font dans leur chambre à coucher ne nous intéresse pas et ne nous regarde pas. De ce fait, nous refusons toutes les accusations stigmatisantes d’homophobie qui sont lancées par nos adversaires. »

[To begin with, Atalante is not a movement that promotes hatred of others, but rather, love of our own. . . . Furthermore, what consenting adults do in their bedroom is no concern of ours, which is why we reject all of our adversaries’ accusations, denouncing us as homophobes.]

This particular clarification is odd, to say the least, as the Montréal Antifasciste article that the communiqué claims to be responding to never specifically accused Atalante of homophobia nor has any other article that we’ve published. So why the vigorous rebuttal? It makes you wonder…

The following paragraph really ought to be accompanied by a mournful violin. Atalante’s social activity in “its milieu,” they tell us, includes “distributing food,” cleaning up graffiti, and providing “aid to families,” while their political activity is limited to “postering, publicity stunts, counter-demonstrations, commemorations, philosophical education, and physical training.”

Even leaving aside the fact that the political activity in question promotes an “ultranationalist,” viciously identitarian, and xenophobic project (hello, “remigration”!), presenting Atalante as a perfectly inoffensive community organization isn’t going to fool anyone—besides, of course, a handful of naive people who are taken in by this crass attempt to whitewash the true nature of the project.

They fulminate indignantly about us accusing “them” of having “agressé plusieurs personnes racisées et parfois à l’arme blanche” [attacking numerous racialized people, sometimes knifing them]. Again, this is odd, given that we did no such thing. What we did , in fact, point out is that a member of the Québec City Stompers, Yan Barras, also an Atalante militant from day one, stabbed six people in 2007 and was sentenced to two years in prison for this violent crime. It’s also true that in the article “Unmasking Atalante,” we reminded people that the group’s entourage includes a number of individuals who have been found guilty of armed racist attacks, including Mathieu Bergeron, Steve Lavallée, Jonathan Côté, and Rémi Chabot-Brideault. While we aren’t saying every Atalante member has been involved in attacks of this sort, the regular involvement of Mathieu Bergeron, for example, in Atalante’s actions and activities is enough to demonstrate that there’s a legitimate point to be made here.

The strident indignation that runs through the rest of the communiqué about the violence of the “antifascist groups,” including the absurd claim that “far-left websites” make “de fausses allegations contre [nos] membres (…) dansle but de les assassiner socialement, professionnellement et même physiquement” [false allegations against (our) members . . . with the goal of assassinating them socially, professionally, and even physically (our italics) are also perplexing, given Raf Stomper’s numerous explicitly violent threats in more than one Légitime Violence song:

« Ces petits gauchistes efféminés,
qui se permettent de nous critiquer,
ils n’oseront jamais nous affronter, on va tous les poignarder! »
(Légitime Violence)

[These little leftist sissies,
who dare to criticize us,
wouldn’t have the nerve to face us,
we’d just stab them all!]

« Tu cours à ta perte, tu connais notre réputation.
Une lame qui te transperce, un bruit une détonation!!! (…)
Tu succombes à nos coups tu passes sous nos roues. (…)
À grands coups de matraque j’entends tes os qui craquent. »
(Anti-Rash Action)

[Play at your own risk, you know who we are.
A knife will rip through you, a noise, an explosion!!!(…)
We’ll beat you down and roll right over you.(…)
A mighty blow with a club,
and I hear your bones cracking.]

 

Not nazis, but…

What we find most amusing about this insufferable whining has to be the claim that Atalante’s project “n’est pas animé par une logique raciale” [is not motivated by any racist thinking], that the allegations of Nazism amount to “defamation”, and that suggesting that people in Atalante’s entourage “advocate national socialism” reflects the “totalitarian doctrine” of the antifascist movement.

As far Atalante not being motivated by “racist thinking” goes, they’re going to have to explain to us their decision to reproduce an effigy of Julius Evola on the wall of the group’s private gym, the same Evola for whom “the revolt against the modern world” is fundamentally and profoundly racist.

The portrait of supremacist theorist Julius Evola (for whom Adolph Hitler was not radical enough…) appears between those of Friedrich Nietzsche and Dominique Venner on the wall of Atalante’s private gymnasium.

And what to make of militant fascists who deplore the alleged “totalitarian” character of their adversaries?

Be all that as it may, rather than responding to this laughable attempt at self-exoneration with the gazillionth written document, we’ll let some photos and videos from various Atalante members’ social media accounts speak for themselves.

///

 

Ian Stuart Donaldson was the singer of the band Skrewdriver and the founder of the international neo-Nazi bonehead network Blood & Honour. Ian Stuart coined the euphemism “Rock Against Communism” to describe the galaxy of extreme-right bands with an ultra-nationalist/Nazi allegiance that were part of the “White Power” movement from the early 1980s on. Légitime Violence is heir to this tradition in Quebec, as are many of the “anti-communist” bands whose colours are often worn by members and supporters of Atalante, such as SPQR and Bronson (Italy), Brassic and Offensive Weapon (United States), In Memoriam and Lemovice (France), etc. In Canada, Blood & Honour is listed as a “terrorist entity” by the federal government.

 

Read the article in its entirety on Montréal-antifasciste.info