By Liz Rodriguez
Infoshop.org is a group of big government leftists who call themselves anarchists, and are promoting the idea of crashing the Tea Parties. Their website appears to be full of propaganda written by Infoshop and news spun by them. Their slogan is ‘Kill capitalism before it kills you!’ They go on to say “Infoshop News is the most popular English language news site run by anarchists.”
You just have to laugh at so called anarchists, like Infoshop, when they fight for government control, Obamacare, and more social programs and federal spending.
Infoshop’s website pushes phony anarchism and crashing the Tea Parties. They are also taking credit for the small protest of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference in New Orleans last Friday.
This is Infoshop’s propaganda, from their website, on the protest:
Anarchists took to the streets in New Orleans on Friday to protest the SRLC, marching to the Hilton Hotel, where a banner was hanging from the roof which said “We won’t pay for their crisis. Become the crisis!”
The march then headed to Brennan’s Restaurant, where a $10,000 a plate SRLC dinner was in progress. Brennan’s is notorious as the largest donor to the LA Restaurant Association, which sued to block a $1 minimum wage raise that was approved by voters in New Orleans in 2002.
Protesters marched against traffic and lost the police on the way, and attempted to storm the restaurants doors after chants echoed off the walls in the narrow French Quarter streets. The police arrived just as people started to stream through the doors and they pushed everyone back outside. SRLC delegates were forced to walk a gauntlet of protesters chanting “they say cut backs, we say fight back!” as they exited the restaurant.
Eventually the march headed back to the Hilton and chanted “Racist, Sexist, Anti-Gay, Right Wing Bigots Go Away” to the delegates entering and exiting the hotel before dispersing.
The march included brass bands, students from UNO, healthcare workers fighting to re-open Charity Hospital, and people angry about a bunch of racist, fascist bigots coming to New Orleans after their leaders drowned it only 4 years ago. New Orleans is still badly damaged from the hurricane, and the GOP should be ashamed to come party on top of its ruins while we still struggle to recover. Their arrogance and wealth is only fuel to stoke our fires of anger at the injustice and deprivation we live through every day.
Has anyone else seen it reported that way? I am starting to think Infoshop makes news up.
Here is the actual article on the protest, from a Louisiana news source, that Infoshop links to:
From Nola.com:
About 200 to 250 people marched on the hotel where the Southern Republican Leadership Conference met Friday, chanting slogans against Louisiana’s Republican governor and the health care and education cuts in his proposed budget.
They chanted “Hey, hey! Ho, ho! Bobby Jindal has got to go!” Several said they planned to protest outside the hotel where the governor was holding a $10,000-a-plate fundraiser.
Outside the Hilton hotel, some people wearing tags identifying them as delegates walked past as if they didn’t see the group or hear the tubas, trombones, trumpets, saxophone and drums playing a repetitive riff. Others were irritated or amused.
“This is good! They even have a good sound track!” said delegate Sarah Harper Scott of Augusta, Ga. She had come out with several friends to take pictures of the motley group clustered on a corner across from the hotel.
“Normally I protest. I don’t get protested against,” she said.
Kathy Hildebrand of Snelville, Ga., was less amused. “They want our money but they don’t want us,” she said, noting that one big banner read “Republicans Geaux Home.”
The protesters included doctors and other workers at free clinics in the city and students and professors at the University of New Orleans. Signs included “Save UNO” and “Stop Jindal. “Save healthcare” and “Tax the rich — stop the budget cuts.”
Infoshop.org needs to get their ideology straight because they make Anarchism look much worse than it is.
Will the real anarchists please stand up?
Important Related Info:
Crash course: Your Illustrated Guide To The Tea Party Saboteurs
{ 18 comments… read them below or add one }
I had heard that the protesters attacked some of the people walking out and one lady is in the hospital with a briken leg from the attack. It is no where in the news. Has anyone else heard this. i heard it on my local radio this morning from somenone who was right there and attended the dinner.
Nope, I haven’t heard it and can’t find it. What station did you hear that on? Please let me know, I will call them.
Here it is.
GOP Official & Boyfriend Savagely Beaten For Wearing Palin Pins – Including Broken Leg, Jaw, Concussion… Media Silent
http://gatewaypundit.firstthings.com/2010/04/gop-official-boyfriend-savagely-beaten-for-wearing-palin-pins-including-broken-leg-jaw-concussion-media-silent/
real anarchist here.
anarchism, a.k.a. libertarian socialism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anarchism
learn to read.
You are giving me a wikipedia page as a reference? So you are a Socialist, Anarchist, Libertarian? That shit don’t make sense. Look I think it’s really messed up that anarchy in America has become nothing more than a bunch of liberals on unemployment and welfare. Real anarchists are NOT dependents on the STATE! You can’t have it both ways. You either want government or you don’t.
Big government anarchists is a contradiction. Not that it isn’t inconsistent for conservatives to hold mutually exclusive ideas simultaneously. The anarchists hate big government, that is their main thing. They think big government exists to help big businesses screw common people. They believe in the right of communities to decide what is best for themselves. And at that level they think that community governance can create a more balanced playing field.
American liberals see government as a balance against the power of wealthy elites (like the 10% who own 70% or so of all assets). They see big federal government as a way to balance off the disproportionate power local industries can have on state government. Like the state judge Massey coal bought in 2007, or the attempt by the home-builders association to elect their own slate of judges in washington state. A few years ago.
Both liberals and anarchists agree that the families of workers shouldn’t starve because somebody else wants to get even richer, and when people are hit by hard times, their neighbors should help them through the rough patches, but from there they share very little in common.
Anarchists are closer to libertarians,than liberals. But instead of saying no big government, get off my lawn, I don’t care if your kids are dying, anarchists say, no big government, but if my neighbors kids are starving why don’t we grow something that we can eat off this lawn here.
huh?
Left Anarchism has a rich history actually.
In America there were such prominent anarchists as Emma Goldman and Alexander Berkman, along with the martyrs Sacco & Vanzetti.
During the Spanish Civil War in the 30′s, hundreds of thousands of people considered themselves anarchists (more precisely, anarcho-syndicalists) and fought alongside communists against Franco’s fascist army backed by Hitler.
Left-anarchists want freedom both from the oppression of the state, and the oppression of the capitalist mode of production. They want the “means of production” to be controlled by the people, and decisions to be made collectively and voluntarily.
Other names for the left-libertarian tendencies include anarcho-syndicalism, social anarchism, social libertarianism, anarchist communism, class-war anarchism, libertarian socialism etc etc…
The authors of this article know nothing about anarchism. Anarchism does not mean unfettered capitalism. Also, it has a pretty damn huge history. Anarchy would be a stateless system of free associations of workers who democratically distribute goods and services and democratically manage labour.
You conservatives arguing for a smaller state don’t even realise that capitalism is only possible because the state enforces private property (by private property I mean land/means of production) through a system of legal contracts, hence libertarian capitalism is the true oxymoron here.
I disagree, and you spell like a Brit or a Canadian or something. We conservatives understand that there is a purpose for government, and we also understand that our government’s powers are supposed to be limited by the US Constitution.
You said: “Anarchy would be a stateless system of free associations of workers who democratically distribute goods and services and democratically manage labour.”
Democracy is a political form of government so how can a stateless system work democratically? Why did you even put that word in there. Your definition would make more sense with out it.
I spell like a ‘Brit’ because I am British!!
And I never said that conservatives don’t support the state – note that I said small government, not no government. I apologise for the length of the following post (I got a bit carried away).
As for democracy, I meant that the free associations are co-operatives that are run democratically; i.e. each producer has an equal say. For example, take the Mondragon corporation, for instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mondrag%C3%B3n_Cooperative_Corporation
If there is a crime, then the community have every right to intervene; we have no problem with that. In fact it is a good thing since there is no liberty when a criminal . The communities are run democratically with mandated delegates; call it a decentralised “government” if you will.
In any case, the exact Ancient Greek etymology of Anarchism is more specifically “without rule”, as in, there are no superior economic or political positions in society and no way of using coercive political infrastructures such as the state or the system of private accumulation of capital (capitalism) against other human beings in any way that is coercive or exploitative since they won’t exist. We believe that power is the root cause of domination and exploitation. We hope to fix this by equalising all power distributions among citizens. An example is gun rights; person A may be stronger than person B but if both citizens are permitted ownership over guns then differences in physical strength (power) may be surpassed in favour of equal power (gun rights) and person A no longer has the power to intervene with person B despite his brute force. Not all leftists oppose gun rights, remember that, if nothing else. Another example is the power a politician has over his constituents which may also be surpassed by replacing representative democracy (power to elect but have no say in politics) with a right to say how your local neighbourhood is run. Democracy isn’t really a specific governing system as it is a way to run any system, whether you decide to “run your house democratically” with all members of your family having a “vote” (yeah I know, silly example) or whether your business is a co-operative.
Some may say it is utopian to build a stateless society and hope everyone will just behave and get along but we say that it is utopian to put certain people in specific positions of power and hope THEY will behave. In fact we don’t deny man is imperfect as our authoritarian opponents like to claim; that’s why we say strip him of his power to coerce!
Socialism (democratic means of the production) is at the heart of anarchism; infact their are two main schools of socialism, that is the libertarian school of socialism of which anarchism is part of (and no, that is no oxymoron since we have been using the word for over 150 years where as the rightist use is extremely new in comparison) and the statist school of socialism (the “Red Bureacracy” as practiced in the USSR).
Infact these two schools have historically had huge clashes (the left is more divided than you may think), including the huge debates Bakunin (an anarchist) had with Marx over whether there should be a dictatorship of the proletariat (we don’t believe in it) and including the infamous brutal aggression by Trotsky’s Red Army against the revolutionary Kronstadt sailors who opposed the Bolshevik red tape.
We oppose conservatism since we consider it authoritarian, particularly the hierarchical system of laissez-faire capitalism which certain modern branches of conservatism advocate as well as the core principle of traditional values. Put simply, we oppose traditional values as much as liberal values if it involves groups in society opposing their values on others. We don’t care much for the patriarchical family, religion, or respect for authority (traditional values) but then we don’t particularly care much for the liberal ideas that it is a sin to smoke in front of another human being or that we must all recycle or give up our gun rights (we don’t have many in the UK
). In short, LEAVE US ALONE!! (p.s. we completely and utterly hate Sarah Palin 
– but then we hate the corporatist Obama as well who your lot appear to be fond of labelling a socialist).
As far as the welfare state/NHS goes, we support it since something is necessary to diminish the inequality caused by capitalism. However its not enough. Solidarity (mutual aid) will be the system to replace it. Taxation would be voluntary since you voluntarily provide your labour to a free association in return for the goods and services of society. We advocate labour vouchers that can’t be circulated, unlike currency.
Since capitalism is a hierarchy of landlord over tenants and employer over wage labourers, we oppose that as well.
P.s. May I point you to An Anarchist FAQ? anarchyfaq.org It is one of the richest sources of Anarchist theory on the web and ought to prove to you that we are not just a bunch of liberals crying for more government! Before there is a mass movement of people (a lot of us advocate syndicalism, a revolutionary, highly militant and far more democratic form of trade unionism) ready to take over from the state, we certainly would not oppose social welfare! The only grounds we would oppose it on would be that people become to dependent upon it and see it as a reason not to try and make change.
In any case, the government can stop the welfare state anytime it likes if it is willing to stop enforcing private property rights!
sure
Is that “sure” as in you agree with me, or “sure” as in “if you say so…”
I don’t agree with you at all. I actually don’t think your ideas make any sense. And they won’t work. What are you going to do to all of the people that refuse to distibute goods and be a productive part of society? Basically you want everything run democratically, but with out elected officials. You want everyone to have the same amount of money. You don’t even like that some one is better looking and or more muscular than another. According to you, we all need to be equally miserable, poor and ugly. Stop enforcing private property rights? So you don’t want people to own anything? What you are talking about will never work. I think you and your friends should go conquer an island far, far way and test out anarchy.
Hmm…I don’t remember saying anything about equal genetics or biology (or even equal pay, for that matter – I believe pay should be allocated according to labour output by a measure of socially necessary labour time rather than private accumulation of capital as it is under present day society), only equal political and economic power, people aren’t *forced* to distribute their goods to society; if they don’t distribute them, they get nothing in return, people may own personal property but not private property (which is the private accumulation of capital – land, transport [railways/roads] and the means of production), property rights would be replaced with use rights (I recommend reading Proudhon for more detail on this but basically you are entitled to occupy and use land/capital only on the basis that you enhance it through your labour or that it is a direct product of your labour with the exception of households which are only occupied and used by the people who live there. Ownership, while being that of all society, does not equate to occupance and use rights) there are elected delegates as I said quite clearly.
And what I am talking about already has already been a reality, e.g. Catalonia in ’36, Ukranian Free Territories. Also, I don’t think small scale isolated experiments can exist without the help of society through technology and syndicalism, hence me and “my friends” (I don’t know any anarchists in real life) conquering an island far away won’t work, especially considering that the historic brutality of agricultural work was what gave way to capitalism in the first place.
If you’re interested, I’ve just written a whole piece about the economic calculation debate (or am in the process of finishing it), although you probably hate the anarchists enough by now and I should just go
You said “An example is gun rights; person A may be stronger than person B but if both citizens are permitted ownership over guns then differences in physical strength (power) may be surpassed in favour of equal power (gun rights) and person…….” You advocate socialism, and you hate the private sector. I don’t know why we keep going back and forth it is a waste of both of our time so lets just end it. Your form of anarchism has got too many rules.
At the end of the day, the title of this post, “Big Government Leftists, Disguised As Anarchists, Protest Southern Republican Leadership Conference In New Orleans” is a mistake. To suggest that these anarchists are just secret Communists is either ill-informed or intentionally misleading. Anarchism and Communism are two distinct political tendencies that result in very different policies and outcomes. The antagonisms between the two ideologies run so deep, that there have even been numerous instances of armed conflict between the two. To suggest that they are the same thing is simply illogical.