A Response to a Fellow Anarchist's Letter

Dear Comrade,

I respond to your letter to Aontacht as a long-suffering fellow anarchist who has been involved with the publication for roughly a year. It is a publication whose internal structure has arisen organically out of attempts to correct past mistakes. Its many flaws are, more than anything else, the result of overcorrections. Our greatest weakness, however, is primarily the result of a flawed internal culture produced by our historical development. I agree with many of your points, but I believe it would be good to explain how things came to be this way.

Many of the early contributors were profoundly disillusioned with existing publications because they were tied to a party and heavily pushed the party line. The need was thus conceived for a publication that was permissive in what it published, with a baseline rejection of bigotry, capitalism, and not much else. This worked for a while, but the flipside to this is we have published frankly dogshit articles by cranks who were attracted to past works of crankery. László (the first crankster) has been up to some bullshit which my fellow contributors and I have busted his balls over many times. He has long since copped on, but the legacy persists.

There were two approaches taken by contributors in our attempts to improve the quality of publication. The first was the path of heavier moderation. For a brief period of time, we had an editorial board that ruled with a heavy hand. The problem with this was that with such power came responsibility. The old Editorial Board had in effect become a central committee, more concerned with ensuring all work was being done by people who were ideologically correct than by people who had the time and the skills. Many members on the board were indeed committed to a better Aontacht, but failed to realise how much of their time and effort had to be dedicated. This led to increasing tensions and constant arguments in which very few people can be said to have behaved in a comradely manner. This was exacerbated by a certain evil bastard (who had for a time managed to obscure his identity) that I am sure you know and hate as a fellow Dublin anarchist, who had inflamed tensions further. These constant heated arguments led to a split with many resemblances to a messy breakup.

In the aftermath, we have attempted to chart a middle course between the absolute structurelessness we had initially, which had led to informal power and crankery, and the overbearing power of the old board. We have attempted to take the other approach towards improving the quality of the publication, that being attempting to encourage better leftists to write for us. We have had our successes but our failures also.

In this current period, we have had multiple publishing decisions which were very controversial. These have usually led to us internally agreeing on more stringent regulations for what gets published. Still, the internal culture is one of immense permissiveness. I have struggled against this going too far on many occasions. The principal problem, in my view, is that many sketchy and cranky articles are not explicitly racist, but what they propose would materially harm our communities. In our attempt not to prescribe a political line, shit gets past the radar despite our misgivings because we fear becoming Stalinist censors. The prevailing advice is if you disagree with an article politically but the article gets published, you write a response. I have mostly stayed clear of this because I felt it would be best not to give the cranks arguing back-and-forth about immigration oxygen. Perhaps I was wrong.

The overall problem is not structural but a result of Aontacht being run by people. The overwhelming majority of the worst cranks are guest writers who are not involved in editing decisions. With better judgement by more people, less bloody red-brown diarrhoea will get published.

I remain a firm believer in the publication’s dual purpose as a theory magazine not dominated by parties and as a news publication that provides a leftist perspective to the common man. Like you and many other anarchists, I want it to be committed to a politics of care and need. I am but one person, however. I have strived to push my fellow contributors to be better but ultimately if April and I are the principal active writers grounded in the anarchist movement, our viewpoint will not be the one that is dominant. We deeply appreciate your letter and will continue in our attempts to implement its advice, but more than anything else we wish for more likeminded comrades to aid us in our work.

In Solidarity,

Alex