It’s hopelessly incompetent that this arguing is happening in public channels y’all. But here we are. Nothing is real to this kind of activist unless they can get engagement on twitter. A space for local anarchists to hang out, eat, and exchange ideas is clearly secondary when a single zine and some opinions held by its organizers apparently! threatens their whole existence. You thought you were providing community but these smart cookies were there to let you know that you’re actually doing genocide. Friends, the people who engage in pouring SHIT in an area CHILDREN play in aren’t the type to be grounded in perspective or taken at face value. And doing this because some people weren’t wearing a mask at an outdoor fair and comparing their behavior to rape apologia is wild. It’s offensive. It doesn’t matter how many loaded terms you tack onto whatever the hell this was supposed to be, the call is literally coming from inside the house. I’ve been habitually harassed in public over my identity and never had someone involve shit or felt the need to involve mine. What are you doing. Does it really need to be pointed out to you that not masking outside carries less risk than children exposed to your shit? Because for me, it totally undermines everything you’re saying. Like, I would want you to figure out whatever is causing you to do that first and then get back to the rest of us. I would personally worry that if people started kicking out anyone that wasn’t wearing a mask at their events just for you, that might encourage you to start using shit at other actions.
Yes, this is gatekeeping our spaces from people who commit biohazard war crimes on friendlies for the sake of a night of twitter juice, or whatever it is they tell themselves in their group chat.
There are actual genocides happening. There are actual fascists to fight. There are threats. Right now, here and abroad. Yes, that includes COVID. Literally no one responding to this ridiculous behavior is arguing that. But none of that is happening in the space you attacked in a way that warranted how you attacked it. You can’t act surprised when you get your ass beat over it either. You may not have weighed the risk of the actions you took – competently anyway – but here’s a little perspective. People don’t know who you are or what you intend when you approach a space and start wrecking shit. It’s going to get a response though. And that response is not something you can draft and draft before you hit send tweet. It’s going to be fluid – in the moment. Taking someone’s sight is a potentially lethal threat and can trigger fight or flight. It doesn’t matter if your sorry ass popped off that pepper spray when you realized you bit off more than you could chew. No amount of whataboutism to back up a silly connection to transphobia changes that. No one is tallying the amount of punching they give terfs vs the amount of punching a trans person receives, its a non-sequitur. They have nothing to do with each other. That’s not how these situations work. In other words, the situation became violent because your behavior made it violent.
This is not the way to spend your time. And if you have such a big problem (has to be considering what you did!), then stop complaining about limited anarchist spaces and add a new one. If shit slinging is the type of conflict resolution you’d like your events to have, I’ll probably pass on it. I wouldn’t even shoplift with a group of people who support this level of unhinged behavior and rhetoric. But maybe people who are into spreading disease to prove a point about spreading disease would attend.
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