J. Zerzan in Montreal for anarchist bookfair: local contestation has flared up

John Zerzan, anti-civ anarchist writer and theorist will be giving 3 talks in Montreal on May 15, 16 and 18. In Montreal, there has been for several years a number of green anarchists of various persuasions, and a number of anarcho-communists or situationist and marxist inspired leftists that would rather that the green anarchists disappear.

With the appearance of the north eastern federation of anarcho-communists, an organisationalist, platformist group, the gulf between the non anarcho-communists and them tended to widen. Montreal's green-anarchists were found in groups such as Liberterre, and in the Mauvaise Herbe, which is still active as a green-anarchist group.

A situ inspired, hyper-organisationalist, pro-tech group called Hors-d'Oeuvre came into being 2 years ago. Their flashy page layouts, website (hors-doeuvre.org/) and strident, shock tactic rhetoric is largely the work of one person, "badacid".

Hors-d'Oeuvre is opposed to Zerzan's coming to Montreal. The group leafleted during the very red-black (and maoist) Mayday march calling for the formation of a Coalition for progress in the anarchist milieu...

This wasn't the only thing they did. The group sent a threatening email to Zerzan. It was written in English, unlike nearly all of their texts, written in French. Here it is:

02.05.2008 - Warning (to John Zerzan)
Montreal’s a dangerous place. Stop. Especially for you. Stop. It’s primitivist season. Stop. Stay where you are. Stop. A message from Hors-d’Øeuvre.

This short cryptic threat was then posted on their website, where it still remains.

The flyer they gave out on Mayday was translated into English. It can be seen in it's original on their website, as a laid-out pdf or text. Here it is in English:

Forward.
Forward.
We don't back down!

The time for the plenary is over. Before starting a war, we should consult our potential allies. The goal of this tract is to gather those people who, like us, think that the notions of progress and revolution are inseparable. Indeed, we wish to go from words to deeds: it is time to organise a broad contestation of individualist, primitivist and post-leftist ideas.

All these ideologies are the product of the latest big international crisis of capitalism. Rich in lessons for the bourgeoisie, the brief revolutionary period which followed 1968 ended in a liberal reform and a co-optation without precedent of subversive ideas. The ruling class saw the importance of neutralising the diverse marxist political ideas in vogue at the time. The task consisted in inventing bastard fields of study by employing the fallen idols of the revolt. These cynical intellectual celebrities repressed their earlier desires as they gained more and more power in the universities and elsewhere. The failure of their policies lead to the politics of failure: post-modernism.

To the fabrications of postmodern ideologues, we oppose a political praxis that values more than ever rationality and progress. By progress, we understand a positive evolution of civilisation working towards a collective goal: happiness. Placing under common control the means of production via direct democracy is a project at once exciting and essential. The revolution is a change of state which consists in the passage to a superior degree of society. A return backwards is impossible. Idealist political conceptions of our adversaries offer no solutions to the problems of humanity. This is why on a daily basis our work is done with proven modern methods, such as documentary research, investigative journalism, critical reflection, training and organisation in political groups.

Zerzan the individual will be in town soon. We will wage war on him, since he's the impostor par excellence of contemporary anarchism. To advocate regression is literally reactionary. To be opposed to language, to mathematics and to music is to be opposed to the beauty of the world. We are faced with a genocidal, nihilist policy. (We're) sick of these insufferable contradictions. The confusion has gone on long enough. Enough of progressive conservatives, parliamentary maoists, bohemian bourgeois, anarchist primitivists, libertarian professors and other political schizophrenics.

We invite you to a meeting with the view to forming a Coalition for progress in the anarchist milieu based on individuals. It will take the form of a deliberative meeting; we value your contributions. Meeting on Sunday May 4 at 2 p.m. sharp, in UQAM's agora. Hors-d'oeuvre will submit a plan of action including a polemical text.

Hors-d'Oeuvre

We will force them to admit that everything continues.

*****

A number of individuals (many outside of the Mauvaise Herbe, which is hosting Zerzan's trip to Montreal) and groups such as the bookfair collective have expressed concern about the possibility of disruption. Hors-d'Oeuvre (HO) has mostly just put out vitriolic texts. When the Mauvaise Herbe (MH) had Jason McQuinn speak here, they also picketed, and a few opportunistic Nefacers also joined in and asked questions after the talk. There is one known incident where HO beat up someone in the anarchist milieu.

HO is trying to whip people up against green anarchism in Montreal. Badacid, ever the post-university (older) patriarchal type, seems to use HO as a vehicle to appeal to younger, pre-university students who are perhaps less experienced, but are trying to make their way in what they believe is anarchism and radicalism. HO is a spectacle unto itself; one can't be sure they are completely serious or trying to parody a certain ultra-left approach.

Also of note: For many years now the MH has distributed many pamphlets and books in French and English of Zerzan's writings, as well as those of other (notorious) post-leftists, anti-org or anti-civ writers such as Bob Black and Fredy Perlman. HO has never tried to have these publications removed from the anarchist bookstore, l'Insoumise. All of a sudden, the arrival of one of the authors we carry is considered too outrageous for them. For groups like the Nefac and HO, their favorite authors can't come to Montreal. Bakunin and Malatesta are dead, Guy Debord is also dead. For green anarchists, some of our thinkers, like Perlman, are dead, but others are alive. Jensen, Glendinning, Zerzan, Black and others are alive and will speak where they wish and where they are invited. This is not negotiable, and anarchists in Montreal won't accept that one group, HO, becomes the police-buffoons of the milieu.

HO's plans for Zerzan's

HO's plans for Zerzan's workshop

A translation of the text found posted on Quebec's equivalent of indymedia.

Demonstration "You can't stop progress!"
Anonymous Wednesday May 7, 10:41pm
Begining Sunday 18th 9:30 am
End: Sunday 18 noon
Organization: Coalition for Progress in the Anarchist Milieu (CPMA)
Date and time of the event: Sun, 2008-05-18 09:30
Location:
At the main doors of the CEDA (2515, Delisle street) [where the bookfair and your conference take place]

What? Demonstration "You can't stop progress!"
Who? Coalition for Progress in the Anarchist Milieu (CPMA) and it's allies
When? Sunday May 18 2008 at 9:30 am SHARP (just before John Zerzan's conference sheduled for 10 am)
Where? At the main doors of the CEDA (2515, Delisle street)

Why? Professor John Zerzan, invited by his fans from the Mauvaise Herbe, will be in town for the Montreal anarchist bookfair. In full swing of a promotional campagn, he'll take advantage of his conference to try to fence you his latest science-fiction work, Twilight of the Machines. We think that the incursion of his primitivist ideas in the libertarian milieu is unacceptable and his presence at the Bookfair is revolting. His anti-social rantings goes against any consistent anarchist project.

How? The demonstration is still a reliable method of contestation and we will show it.

http://www.cmaq.net/node/29996

.. this has to be some sort

.. this has to be some sort of joke. If not, enlighten me to the sarcasm.

Regardless, montreal is a cesspool for anarchists these days. If anarchists from the east-coast are not flocking there to gain credentials, then they are at least dreaming about the place as their own little Spain'36.

Fucking APZ's.

anarchists flocking to

anarchists flocking to Montreal? It seems to be mostly filled with Islamist solidarity groups like Tadamon, who masquerade as some sort of "anti-authoritarians" in the same way that Maoists usually do.

Fuck Platformism and

Fuck Platformism and Platformists. These anarcho-ideologues couldn't be any more irrelevant to contemporary social struggle if they tried. The fact that they feel so threatened by Zerzan speaks volumes about how feeble-minded their "analyses" actually are.

Hors-doeuvre seem akin to

Hors-doeuvre seem akin to the food they take their name from: an unnecessary and somewhat unappetising accompaniment that actually stifles your immediate enjoyment of the glorious feast laid out before you.

awesome pictures!

awesome pictures!

Smack-down in Montreal! Are

Smack-down in Montreal!

Are you ready to rrrrruuuuummmble!!!!

Pardon my frankness, but

Pardon my frankness, but let's all get real with ourselves: there is no "movement." None of us have moral alliegences prior to ourselves as individuals. I am no more aligned with Zerzan than with Makhno and vice versa. The whole point of the Society of The Spectacle (and I mean the concept, not the book) was that "everything that was directly lived has moved away into a representation." Debord was a megalomaniac who eventually shot himself. However, he is an important piece of a larger puzzle if anarchist theory and practise is going to have any historical relevance; and by "historical relevance," I mean relevant to the passing of the present historical Moment. Because representation has superseded lived reality as our basic spatial and temporal reference points, we are led into what is literally a dialectic of negation: the freezing of the historical Moment in suspended animation. (Think Hans Solo frozen in carbonite.) This concept is supported by Deleuze and Guattari, Slavoj Zizek, and, I can only assume, even Lacan. Deleuze and Guattari have the concept of the "despotic Signifier," which they connect directly to the tragic (or is that comic?) farce of Western psychoanalysis. Deleuze and Guattari, Zizek, and even Lacan are interesting because they all make such deliberate asses of themselves when trying to get their theories across. Why? Because they are aware of the fact that what we most remember of them is their image: an image subordinated to its content. Though this inescapable reality of everyday lives was put on hyperdrive with the with the invention of the television and other image technologies, the fetishization of Images stems all the way back to Greek Tragedy - and, in particular, the image of Oedipus.

The dialectic of negation is the

    historical death

of Ideology as such. It is nothing less than the negation of a false Reason; the Reason of Descartes, the Reason of civilization. To cry "Postmodernism!" every time you hear a critique of Reason is what Deleuze and Guattari would call paranoiac behaviour; the behaviour of the nervous ideologue who knows (s)he doesn't have the confidence or skill to argue convincingly in favour of his/her "positions." I don't care whether you are a primitivist, a Platformist, or a fucking Stalinist - the dialectic of negation is a basic fact about life in the 21st Century that you WILL have to accept (if not fully understand) if you wish to make ANY revolutionary and/or insurrectionary headway. It seems, however that much of the anarchist milieu is more interested in teenybopper quarreling than smashing the State. This is why I won't be attending the bookfair in Montreal and it is why I think that most anarchists are hopelessly delusional. Assuming we all share the goals of demolishing all authority, there should be no hostility on the basis of differing anaylses going on. As for coming off looking like a "privileged" university student, I have long since ceased to care. We are all just images to begin with. Besides, this is about much more than just intellectual poverty. It is about certain people (of certain theoretical/ideological factions more so than others) who call themselves anarchists but are, in fact, fascistic in both Theory and Practise.

jesus, you really are a

jesus, you really are a wanker aren't you?

I remember now why I want

I remember now why I want out of University life and thought.
Academic writing is unbelievably pretentious and totally withdrawn from reality. You talk about your dialectic of negation as if it were a real, tangible thing. And, you say it's something we all "WILL" have to accept. Now, there's "fascistic" theory and practise.

It was a prediction, not a

It was a prediction, not a command. Unlike some anarchists, I don't go around threatening to beat people up if they don't believe what I believe. But, point taken, I will kneel before my altar of Subcomandante Marcos and give myself 50 lashes for breaking the anarcho-scenester code of collectivist guilt and ignorance. *sarcasm*

Hey, I wrote the comment

Hey,
I wrote the comment regarding the use of "WILL", and am actually genuinely sorry for the righteous tone of my accusation. Have been dealing personally with my relationship to academic thought, and, well, I guess, I vented when I read your post.

Please don't send Puff Daddy

Please don't send Puff Daddy out to kill me. I'm really a very nice guy, I swear!;)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MnWveedO42Q

I don't know how seriously

I don't know how seriously one can take these threats against John here but I would like to make it known that if anyone so much as lays a finger on him in a negative way then they're getting fucked up. Simple as that. And if anyone starts to be a disruptive asshole then they're getting verbally fucked up.

Sweeet!;)

Sweeet!;)

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