The Anarchists’ World Cup

From Ciao Magazine - By Claire Albrecht .

The World Cup is still front-page news around the country,and is being particularly keenly followed in the Inner West. But there’s a group who have a very different take on the event – local anarchists.

It’s the first weekend of the World Cup, it’s freezing cold and I’m in Glebe looking for a bunch of anarchists kicking a football around. They’re holding a People’s World Cup in Jubilee Park and I’ve come along to sit down and have a serious chat with them. I spot dreadlocks, set my target and hone in. There are pots of some kind of vegan stew beside the barbecue so I’m pretty sure I’m in the right place, and I assault a couple of likely candidates with questions. What is the meaning of this? Who are the organisers? Where are they? Can I talk to them?

Of course, they’re on the field. Playing soccer. Der. The few anarchists still off the field become spooked, take flight and leave me with their resident Italian rep, Luke. He’s a young fellow with dreadlocks and a Lazio shirt who’s been a member of the Jura Collective (operating out of Jura Books at 440 Parramatta Road) for two years, and for an hour or so we chat about anarchism, nationalism and soccer while the game continues. Various other players come off the field and engage in our conversation as they see fit, sucking down beers and rolling cigarettes while we discuss how anarchism could solve many of the world’s problems.

Eventually, once my limbs are frozen solid, the game ends and Luke gathers together some of the organisers to have a talk. There’s about fi ve of us in a circle, exchanging ideas. It’s the most egalitarian interview I’ve ever done – though Jeremy from Jura Books is obviously the head spokesperson.

I start with the basics, asking Jeremy to summarise the anarchist philosophy. “Anarchists are in favour of freedom and equality, and opposed to the state,” he explains. “I guess anarchists have a critique of the world as capitalist and authoritarian. The society, the state that we live in, is very much dominated by government and by corporations. We want to see a world where people are not dominated by those things.”

Luke chimes in. “I think the major thing in anarchism is the idea of hierarchy, and hierarchy plays out in all these other things – class, patriarchy, racism. The way in which anarchism differs from your general Marxist idea of socialism is that it doesn’t just stop at class.”

Okay, so we’ve set the ground rules. Next question – why are so many anarchists to be found in the Inner West? Sydney’s two anarchist bookshops are a Molotov cocktail throw away from each other with Jura Books in Petersham and Black Rose in Enmore. What’s the deal? “I think there is a culture and a tradition that draws people to the Inner West,” says Jeremy. “But I don’t think that it’s all based here. I think there’s visible stuff in the Inner West but I think that people are fighting back everywhere. And I’m defi nitely a believer that workers all over the place are fi ghting back on their jobs.

“I guess in the Inner West people are more confident and perhaps privileged enough to take action, because there is a degree of wealth, you know, it’s more or less middle class people and they’ve got a bit more time to get involved.”

In an area that’s dominated by the Greens, anarchism doesn’t seem so ‘out there’ – even some of those who are now respectable local councillors are rumoured to have dabbled in anarchism in their younger days. “I think social change becomes real in spaces, and that’s something that’s happening in the Inner West,” Jeremy continues. “There’s a certain history and culture of using the space in a certain way, so, you know, that’s people walking down King Street and wearing certain clothes, or gathering at Newtown Square and having a rally or a speak-out there. And that’s also where spaces like Jura or Black Rose come in.

“Anarchists, more so than any other social movement, believe in the means of your struggle being congruent with the ends. So the world that we want to get to, which is based on freedom and equality, we want to prefigure that world now. And the only way to really do that is in a space. So anarchists, more than Trotskyists or other groups, like to create spaces, whether it’s squatted social centres, squats where people live, or bookshops and community libraries – we like to create these spaces and demonstrate what we’re trying to bring to the world.”

So what is the People’s World Cup trying to demonstrate? I’m struggling with the idea of being against the World Cup, but protesting against it by holding one of your own. Another organiser, Nick, explains the thinking behind the day. “One of the reasons is that we all enjoy the sport. We love playing it and obviously the hype about the event is because a lot of
people like watching the game. But it doesn’t have to be – that’s what our argument is – it doesn’t have to be all the negative things associated with the World Cup. For example, it’s not just nationalism, it’s the racism that comes with that. If you’ve ever sat in a sporting arena and watched a game where there’s two nations playing each other, there’s hostility, there’s racism.

“What this event was partly trying to do was to say, well, there are alternatives to that. We love the game, the way it’s played is fantastic and getting people to play is awesome. However, we can play it differently.”

From what I could gather, the anarchists’ game still
maintained two teams, but had no referee and no goalkeepers, and anyone was allowed to join in. Some of the most interesting reactions to the game occurred when team members switched teams, and had to change their loyalties.

Nick also feels passionately about the way the soccer community in Australia and in the Inner West has changed recently. “Soccer has such a wonderful migrant working class history in Australia and that’s all changed in the last fi ve years – now the game’s been de-ethnicised completely. That’s all been stripped away with the A League. It’s all the Sydney Corporate Team, and that’s just a repudiation of the entire history of football in this country, and this is so relevant to our community in the Inner West, where football is a very important part of it. It’s still nice to watch, of course, but there’s no support that’s real anymore.”

So there you have it – an anarchist interpretation of soccer. For those of you who want to learn more, Jura Books and Black Rose have huge collections of literature, as well as libraries which, for a small joining fee, yield enormous amounts of information across a range of subjects. There’s even an organic food co-op!

You can find Jura (jura.org.au) at 440 Parramatta Road, Petersham and Black Rose (blackrosebooks. org) at 22 Enmore Road, Enmore. Photo: Ben Creg

I wonder if the person

I wonder if the person wearing the Lazio jersey is aware that many of the team's supporters are fascists.

Well, Australia is a type of

Well, Australia is a type of Fascist nation, that it still retains the union jack in the corner of its flag, still a ship of the british empire, its royalist authorities exploiting still the last extremity of its former colonialist empire, and all by compulsory democratic decree. How else can we view a nation so much in approval of monarchistic rule?

what would T Pain do?

what would T Pain do?

I don't know, he's on a boat

I don't know, he's on a boat motherfucker, don't you ever forget.

Ummm, it seems state

Ummm, it seems state constitutions, whether westminster parliamentary or republican arrangements, still suffer from an insidious informal flexibility to mould/manipulate by media propaganda the desires of the masses. Maybe anti-constitutional regions only retain their wildness, as do anti-authoritarian individuals there freedoms?

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