The Future of Indymedia?, by Terry Tuesday

This is the first part of three interlinked articles on the potential political role of net based alternative media

The first part looks at American autonomist Marxist Harry Cleaver’s account of how international solidarity networks were built up around the Chiapas revolt in 1994, ‘The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle’ and at the states’ response to on-line social movement organising, in particular at state actions against the Indymedia network.

The second article, An Historical Overview of Media and Class Struggle argues that the full potential of the Internet for political mobilisation has yet to be realised, as societies where Internet usage is currently widespread are pretty quiescent, with relatively little in the way of social protest and class struggle by comparison with say the 1960s and 70s. This argument is made by an historical overview of the role of the media and alternative media in various instances of protest and struggle.

Finally,The Internet, Communication and Horizontal Organisation looks at the role of the internet in communications, and argues that it can facilitate horizontal as opposed to hierarchal forms of social movement organising.

This has a pretty narrow focus looking at the role of the internet in the West, there are also many issues related to it and attempts by authoritarian regimes to suppress its political use in the South.

Furthermore, my argument is based on the assumption of a continuing growth in Internet usage, particularly in regard to the parts on communications and organising.

These articles began life as an essay written over a year ago, for academic purposes, I’ve it edited for indymedia.

A very reasonable criticism of it would be that it largely ignores the digital divide, that is more for reasons of space and time than anything else. Nonetheless the arguments in regard to the potential of alternative media on the net are sound.

The Electronic Fabric of Struggle
Cleaver’s central contention in The Zapatistas and the Electronic Fabric of Struggle is that: “While the state has all too effectively limited mass media coverage and serious discussion of Zapatista ideas, their supporters have been able, to an astonishing degree, to circumvent and offset this blockage through the use of electronic networks in conjunction with the more familiar tactics of solidarity movements”

Towards the end of his essay he admits that the mere presence of information on the Internet does not assure this effect, and earlier he argues that initially at least the electronic pro-Zapatista networks were built around earlier anti-NAFTA networks.

We might also consider that the E.Z.L.N. phenomenon occurred during the early 1990s crisis on the left, which made them particularly attractive to some international audiences. That is, that the E.Z.L.N.’s move away from Leninism due to the influence of the indigenous in Chiapas fitted with similar moves for different reasons from parts of what was to become their international network, most notably Italy’s Ya Basta!

Moreover this was a period when the Chiapas rising struck a particularly optimistic note (for some audiences), coming against the backdrop of a massive collapse in the left, and in things large parts of the left regarded as someways good, e.g. trade union power, the Soviet Union, the Sandinistas and most national liberation movements, and social democratic Keynesianism; not just the Internet then.

He argues that this national and international flow of information significantly hindered the Mexican state’s ability to isolate the Zapatistas as the first step to co-opting or destroying them.

As he writes in another article: “We now know that the Mexican government's position has actually been fairly consistent ever since: a public façade of negotiations behind which the state has elaborated a highly repressive counterinsurgency program of systematic terrorism against Zapatista communities using not only every available police and military agency of the state itself but including the financing, arming and cooperation with paramilitary groups that have murdered dozens and driven thousands from their homes and villages. Some time back the Mexican magazine Proceso published a 1994 internal military document outlining this strategy including the use of paramilitaries --and every month that passes has brought more evidence of its systematic and continuing nature. The primary constraint that national and international mobilization has placed on the Mexican government has been to sometimes halt overt military operations (Spring of 1994 and 1995) and sometimes force the state to pretend to negotiate.” (My emphasis)

In that article he further claims that out of the international solidarity networks for Chiapas grew the Zapatista Encounters Against Neoliberalism and For Humanity in 1996 and 1997, which were meetings gathering thousands of grassroots activists from across the world.
From this sprang the Peoples’ Global Action network, which spanned several continents and organised many of the earlier anti-globalisation demonstrations, most notably a caravan of Indian farmers across Europe and the June 18th 1999 international day of protest; all this possible, due to, to a large extent, the Internet.

The significance of all this I would say he overstates, most of the world’s anti-I.M.F. rioters having difficulty affording water, food and housing, let alone Internet access.

Indymedia and the State.
The next section will deal with how the state has attempted to hinder internet based alternative media, and following that the powerful role played by the mainstream media in social conflict and the possibilities for subverting that power through the internet.

I will now turn to look at state actions against the Indymedia network, which we might consider to demonstrate the significance to which the state gives to social movement organising on-line.

In the summer of 2004 Indymedia founding member Lenin Cali Najera of Equador was murdered. His colleagues suspect the robbery during which this killing took place was faked as cover for a political assassination carried out by right wing paramilitaries, such have employed this modus operandi in at least some South American states, Argentina at least, and whom, of course, usually act with the connivance of the authorities.

Meanwhile in Cyprus a major national scandal took place after police admitted to investigating Petros Evdokas at the behest of the C.I.A. due to his publication of material on Indymedia Cyprus claiming American interference in the process of the ‘peace plan’ referendum on the divided island.

Shortly before the protests at the Republican National Convention in New York in the fall several police agencies raided an Indymedia benefit film showing in the city.

Also in the run up to those events the service provider of Indymedia New York was subpoenaed to release connections logs, in an investigation into the posting of the already publicly available details of delegates to the convention.

On the 7th of October the hard drives of two Indymedia servers hosting 20 sites and a couple of radio stations were seized in London by an unknown law enforcement agency. The British government denies responsibility and the most likely suspect is the F.B.I., acting at the instigation of an Italian judge.

Previous to this in Genoa, Italy, in July 2001, the Indymedia Centre established for the duration of the anti-G8 demonstration there was subjected to a violent police raid, and similar, though with less violence, happened to the Indymedia Centre established in Geneva, France, during summit protests there.

In Ireland there have been several instances of the police singling for arrest and/or assault photographers/film makers, some of whom have been Indymedia volunteers.

This happened at the protests at the privatisation conference taking place in the Burlington Hotel in Dublin in the fall of 2001, it also happened during the Reclaim the Streets party in Dublin in May 2002. During a subsequent trial of one of the police officers involved the defence case was that Indymedia had orchestrated the entire episode.

In February 2003 one Indymedia film maker received a court injunction forbidding him from entering the environs of Shannon airport, this while he was making a documentary on military re-fuelling at the airport, and related protests.

In March 2003 one photographer was arrested at the airport and charged under a public order offence, the sum total of the evidence consisting of the assertion by the arresting officer that she found having her photograph taken while arresting someone to be an “aggressive and intimidating” experience.

Since this essay was originally penned over a year ago more of the same has happened, Bristol indymedia ran into trouble with the authorities, as did infoshop.org, and other cameria wielders were arrested at Shannon. In addition “our” “Justice” Minister has been denouncing indymedia.ie .

I consider this to be a pattern which speaks volumes. To see it clearer, consider that in Genoa the police had innumerable sites as potential targets for a raid, all of which were more crucial to actual organising (as opposed to dissemination of information) than the Indymedia Centre, many of which would have been far easier to attack away from the glare of cameras and several of which were actually being used for criminal purposes. Yet which did they select?

Obviously the distaste for being subject to public scrutiny extends further than just Garda in Co. Clare. The following article will look at the wider role of information provision.