Welcome, I just want to say thankyou for agreeing to meet us
as, you know, people here are anarchists and activists, involved in
a whole lot of different struggle in Ireland
people are involved in the anti-war movement, the Rossport campaign, and pro-choice activity
eh
defeating, eh, the
service charge, collection of taxes and
way more I can't possibly remember
because I'm nervous
[Laughs] Due to pressure on the amount of time, we decided that
best thing to do is to focus
on a couple of questions that we will be asking you, but if you've got qustions you want to ask us
we can do that aswell. It's open comment so it's eh
sorry I have to be so rushed...got a tight schedule
....pardon?
no it's ok
[laughs]
Best possible place, this is already relaxing
...
Ok so John has got the first question, where is he?
Here - OK, Hi - Eh, just wondering, anarchism is a pretty
small political tendency in the world today
I'm just wondering,
what do you think relevancy, to you think there is any relevancy, or what do you see it playing in
the future
I actually don't think that anarchism is a small tendency
I mean, what's called anarchism
is a small tendency, but it's a very natural eh
 
understanding of most people, you know I'm sure you find this in your own organizing work
when you talk about anarchist principles they resonate
with most people, because it's basically
their own conception of the world
I mean the feeling that you ought to be
dominated by
someone is eh, not a natural human feeling.
So if there are, and everyone's faced with them all the time,
structures of domination and control, most people don't like 'em. Well okay, that's anarchism.
They eh, if you don't like systems of domination and control,
you should do things to dismantle them.
You know, it's a basic anarchist principle. It's, eh, very deeply embedded in people, you really have to
work really hard to drive it out of people's heads. There's enormous
to drive these normal sentiments out of people's heads,
but they're never far below the surface, which is why they always well up
all over the time, whenever there's eh, you know whenever there's
any kind of confrontation or break, or opportunity to think about things they just emerge.
I think anarchists have the easiest organizing task of
anybody, they're
mostly talking common sense.
 
Eh okay,
Dermot, who interrupted you yesterday,
- Sorry about that one - he got very excited, he's got a second chance to redeem himself
I hope it's not your last tour, with your busy schedule and all that
but it's great to see you. First thing I'd like to say is welcome to the North side,
it's great to have you over here.
[laughs]
Em, the second thing I want to say was - one of the first things that you wrote about
the Spanish revolution, in 1936.
This year being 2006, would be the seventieth anniversary
and I wanted to ask you, what do think is
the relevance of that, or does it have any relevance today?
given that is quite a while ago.
Actually, he is right about that, at the advanced age of
ten years old, but em, fortunately it's not preserved
 
But eh, it was - yeah I was pretty much interested in it from a child's point of view. I was hanging around, a couple of years later
I was hanging around anarchist offices in New York and picking up literature, talking to
refugees, there was plenty of refugees who came over to
the United States, they were running the local second hand book stores
and so on, very happy to see some young person around.
But it was a
pretty amazing event, I mean there was
...
and it has tremendous relevance, I think. It's
the peak of anti-authoritarian
activism and success in history.
There's been nothing like it, certainly in the modern world.
And it was so important that it immediately elicited
a joint attack, by every force in the world.
I mean the facists, Stalinists,
liberal democracies
And they all got together at once to crush it. Because this was much to dangerous to tolerate.
And it was only after they had succeeded in crushing the revolution
that sort of went to pick up the pieces,
and fight each other, more or less.
But eh,
There was a popular libertarian revolution
there was a lot to learn from it. It was not spontaneous, it had been developed for you know,
fifty years of intensive organizing
experimentation
schools, revolts
which partially succeeded
crushed, but it left a memory and people go on.
And eh, it was just in people's heads, so when them moment came, people just carried
out what was in their heads.
It was done in different ways, in the industrial areas in Catalonia,
the peasant areas, Asturias and so on, that fell very rapidly.
It was complex, you know. There was a lot of things
to be criticised.
Interesting, good proposals to how to win the war
which have been mostly suppressed by now.
But the sensible idea
as to how to fight Franco, was coming from anarchists, in particular from Camillo Berneri
who was killed in the May days.
Italian anarchist who joined.
And his eh...
you know it might not of worked, but he had the right idea, and it's an idea that's
very pertinent to the
world since, you know, not on the base of knowing it.
But these things are so obvious to people, they keep coming back, you know, without any history
But his idea which is highly pertinent, was that they should not fight a military war against Franco
It's not gonna work, eh they should fight a -
to the extent that there's any fighting, it's gonna be guerrilla war, which is very natural in Spain, that's where the concept of guerrilla war
developed in the Napoleonic wars.
And again, it's in people's heads.
And the main thing that they should do is undercut the roots of this Franco army.
The Franco army was a Moorish army, it was coming from Morocco.
And his sensible  proposal was - you don't fight them, you cause them to collapse.
And you cause them to collapse by dealing with their problems
I mean the people in the Franco army are just as oppressed as you are.
You know they're not some kind of beasts, they're Moroccans who were enlisted into the
essentially foreign legion. It's the same Spanish legion incidentally which today
speaking of relevance, it's the same Spanish legion which in
the last few days, has its commander announced
that they're gonna march on Madrid, to prevent eh,
devolution, in eh, Spain.
Or routes to Catalonia
So that's today's headline. Same legion,
same commander, you know - not the same people, but same kind of commanders.
And the suggestion then which is advised now too
is to undercut their base
by supporting the revolutionary movements in North Africa
they were there, they were- Abd el-Karim was organizing a revolutionary movement
to try to, you know,
calling for land, for freedom. Ridding themselves of French and Spanish imperialism.
And Berneri's proposal was, well ok let's
if we support them, instead of fighting them, they could join us.
They want land, they don't want French boots on their necks.
So sure, let's all get together and
fight the same war against the combined leadership on all sides.
Now of course that
utterly infuriated France, and Britain and the United States,
they went totally berserk.
But eh, if you
you have the choice at that point, shall we cater to the imperial powers
and let them carve us up, and smash us and so on
or shall we just fight a people's war against them?
Well you know, it could well work
I mean it could have held off the second world war, because of the changes that might have taken place.
But those are issues which are by no means dead,
like I said, [look] at the front pages now, and they show up both in terms of
struggles against imperialism, in different forms
but same principles. And also just the
tremendous success in [?]
And building a society without  hierarchy and so on
one of the best descriptions of it all, he didn't understand what was going on,
is George Orwell, he had really no idea what was going on
but he was writing from the point of view of the POUM militia
the kind of semi-Trotskyite militia, and that's what he saw.
So he didn't understand the anarchists at all, he didn't know anything about them.
But he gave a
very vivid portrayal of what it was like, 'cause he'd never seen anything like that.
He'd go through Barcelona, and they wouldn't be calling anyone Sir
people are "Comerades". There's no hierarcy, people are participating.
"I don't understand what it was, alot of things I don't like
but it's something you just have to appreciate"
He came back a couple of months later, and he said it's totally different, you're back to the
bowing, scraping, the orders.
Stalinist communist leadership had taken over
crushed the revolution, was in the process of crushing the revolution
with the support of the West and the support of Franco.
But that's , even from his skewed perspective
just as a perceptive human being, he saw something really important's happening here.
And if you read the documents on the collectivisation, by now they're available.
Actually when I was writing about it, this is a long time ago, I had to use original documents.
which I picked up in bookstores around 1940.
By now they're all available.
It's all in scholarship, the original documents are out,
you can really learn quite a lot about it.
And yeah, it's an inspiring experience I think, with lots of lessons.
Okay, Oisín.
You've said before that class war is occurring
but that not everyone seems to be aware of that fact.
Just a question on that I want to ask you is
what do you think the significance and relevance
of class analysis is for libertarian socialist politics?
Yeah
it remains of continuing relevance, there are class differences, they're important
part of the strength of the anarchist tradition is to recognise
that that's only some of the forms of
hierarchy and domination, there's plenty of others
But they're crucially significant
there's struggling in Ireland all the time
and everywhere else.
The recent strikes are an example
I mean, class war always goes on
and now there's one class that relentlessly fights class war: the business class
They never relent for a minute.
They're always fighting a vicious class war.
They want everybody else to pretend it doesn't exist
but for them it's a permanent war.
Any attempt to...
And the whole doctrinal system
schools, media and so on tries to prevent people from seeing it.
Kind of "we're all in it together"
you know "harmony", this and that
But you know, what's the business world doing?
Business and government are so closely connected, you can barely distinguish them.
But business
government
educational hierarchies
yeah, they're always fighting class war.
I mean every time you look at an advertisement on television, it's class war
it's trying to turn you into a passive consumer
so you won't talk to other people
and try to figure out
there's something wrong with all of these things.
Eh there's not a moment when they're not engaged in class war
you can decide, you know, you can succumb so you're not gonna notice it
but it's hitting you every minute of the day, down to an infant.
I mean when I watch television with my grandchildren,
you know, three year old kids
just take a look at what's being presented to them on televison
I mean they're being deeply indoctrinated
into passivity, conformism
consumerism
rejection of conflict
this is just
class war
constant class war, it never stops.
So sure class analysis is important, it's not the only thing that's going on
but it's a major problem.
Tobi
You've been speaking at events like this since theAmerican invasion of South Vietnam
How have you noticed a change in the reception of yourself
Well when I started speaking about the invasion of South Vietnam
it was years,
I mean in an educated audience you still can't use the phrase
if I was talking in Harvard graduate school I couldn't use the words
it would be like talking in Sumerian or something
 
because the words don't
exist, I mean have you ever seen it in a newspaper
or scholarly work or anything
I mean there is no such thing except in the real world
So first of all you couldn't talk about it
futher more the audiences were 3 or 4 people in somebodies living room
or occasionally it would be a church and there would be four people there
the pastor
who kindly gave us the church, the organiser
a drunk who walked in
some other guy ??? American, that was a typical audoence
when the anti-war movment began
in the early 60s, err close to the middle, 1964
that late
if we wanted to have a meeting, somewhere, say a college
we would  have to bring together half a dozen topics
Iran, Venezula, Brazil, Vietnam
to maybe get ten people to come out
because they are interested in different things
in fact err the first public
in Boston where I live
is the most liberal city in the country
they like to call themselves the Athens of America
Harvard, all this kind of stupid
but its the centre of American liberalism
I mean the first public meeting against the war
was the international days of
solidarity, against the war
was October 15th 1965 and there were
demonstrations all over and around the world
so here
we tried to have an outdoor demonstration in Boston, there hadn't been one before
at any scale. There is a place in Boston, thats the Boston common which is the free speech area
kinda like Hyde Park, so there was a march down to
Boston common
A couple of speakers
I was supposed to be one of the speakers
big mobs of counter demonstrators
mostly coming from the universities
there to break up the demonstration
I couldn't get a word out, no one could be heard, in fact the only reason
we weren't slaughtered was
there were 100 state cops around who didn't like what we were saying but
didn't want to see people murdered on the Boston common
Next day in the newspapers
take a look at the Boston  Globe, supposadely the most liberal newspaper in the country
the front page, the entire front page was devoted to this
big picture in the front
of the wounded soldier, you know there is a solider
fighting for freedom
the rest of it was all about these
comme rats trying to undermine our
brave soliders
that kind of stuff
the radio was full of it, you know just denunciations
if you go to Congress one of the people who later pretended
after the war went sour everybody suddenly became a
long time secret dove
You know really secret
and then the memoir, the Kennedy memoir, they wrote their memoirs and so on
??? the story
People who later became celebrated as anti-war
Heros Mike Hansfield and others
were denouncing what they called 'the irresponsibility of the protesters'
and in way they were right because
the protests were so mild it was embarrassing
it was literally embarassing .. this was 4 years after
Kennedy had launched a major war
against South Vietnam and before that war about 70,000
people had been killed
by the US Client state err 61 , 62
was when the major war started.. all against he south .. but in February 1965
thats when they
started bombing the north .. and thats what you could protest against
the bombing of the north .. most of the anti war movement from that point on was against the bombing of the north
the bombing of the north was an atrocity
but didn't come close to what was going on in South Viewnam
not even close.  But thats kinda gone from history and part of the reason is the anti-war movement
either didn't understand
which is partially, largely true.  Or just couldn't pick it up
Well that was February 1965 but that time there were 200,000
250,000 American troops
in South Vietnam
rampaging. The country was almost gone
you know
been totally devestated
and so it went
by 1967
and '68 there was a substantial movement
???
sort of thing
but still the focus was mostly on . Europe
too, the focus was on bombing the North
and there is a reason for that, its not a pretty reasons
the reason is that the attack on South Vietnam
was costless for the United States
they were just killing and massacring completly defenceless people
no body cares.  When you bomb North Vietnam
it was more dangerous.  For one thing you are hitting
Russian ships .. in the harbour
your bombing a Chinese railroad
that the French built railroads, the Chinese railroad
happened to go through North VIetnam
So you start bombing a Chinese railroad
well the Chinese might react, The Russians might react
if you bomb anywhere near Hanoi you are bombing
European embassies .. they get upset
now furthermore there are reporters up there
so they will go 20 miles around Hanoi
and they will see villages wiped out
So bombing the north carried costs
and that was the issue but bombing the south carried no costs
Its striking when you read the declassified .. um Pentagon papers
are kinda like stolen archives, you get the real story, not whats declassified by the government
And therefore they are almost ignored by scholarship
and by the media, practically ignored.  They are very revealing
for example one of the things they show is that the bombing of
the north was planned in meticulous detail
you know they really thought about it, how far should we go?
with the bombing of the south its not even mentioned
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