[IMC-UK-Features] feature proposal: Go Indymedia, go! - Response to the SHIfT article

[Shiar]

Hi,

I would like to propose this response to the Shift article, which was
discussed at the network meeting, as a feature for the UK, Indymedia and
Palestine pages. It was written collectively by 4 UK IMCers (using irc and
a private wiki), is about Indymedia and has some links to newswire posts
and features, as well as some interesting, previously unpublished/unknown,
stats and figures about the site and its use.

Deadline: 48 hours (i.e. Fri afternoon).

-- 
Shiar


Title: Go Indymedia, go! - Response to the SHIfT article

Author: imc-uk-features

Pic: imc-uk logo

Abstract:

The following is a collective response by IMC UK to a defamatory article
by an anonymous author published in the Manchester-based magazine SHIFT
(issue 3, May-Sep 2008), under the title <em>"Go Hamas Go"? Why Indymedia
UK is losing support</em> [1].

Content:

===Editorials===

Before turning to the article, it is worth noting that the issue's
Editorial makes similar allegations about Indymedia UK. "For many of us,"
it starts, "a visit to Indymedia UK is a frustrating experience." "Most
exasperating," it then goes on, "are the countless posts obsessed with the
Israel-Palestine conflict, which are telling of some of the political
viewpoints we are happy to associate with." Countless?! Obsessed?!  Happy
to associate with?!!

During the 17 months since it was created in January 2007, the Palestine
topic has had an average of less than one feature per month (0.8). While
some months had no features at all about or related to Palestine-Israel
(Feb 2007, Apr 2007, Sep 2007 etc.), others had two (May 2007, Jul 2007,
Oct 2007 and Apr 2008). Some of these were UK features, which appeared on
the UK startpage, whilst some were only regional (e.g. about local
protests or actions) which appeared on regional IMCs startpages. The topic
also attracted around 45 posts per month on average (ranging between 27
and 61, depending on the political weather in Palestine-Israel). The only
exception was March 2008 (after the escalations in Gaza), which saw 84
posts. March 2008 was the only month when about 11% of all posts published
on Indymedia UK had the Palestine topic ticked (84 out of 763). For all
other months since January 2007, the percentage was somewhere between 5%
and 10%.

Although the editorial admits that the "conflict in the Middle East" is
"one of the major atrocities of our time, as the lives of ordinary
Palestinians are being destroyed by the bulldozers of a well-equipped
army," it claims that "the issues that are driving this conflict" are
"nationalism, religion [and] imperialism." So the Palestinian liberation
struggle is merely motivated by nationalistic and/or religious issues? And
the discriminatory and repressive Israeli policies are simply
"imperialism"?

"But to have a radical critique of those issues," the piece continues, "we
need to see beyond Israel=evil and Palestine=good." While no one in
Indymedia is advocating or endorsing such simplistic views, there a is big
danger in equating the oppressor and the oppressed. As a colonial, racist
state, Israel, as a state/system/project, is inherently evil, in the same
way that we say capitalism or imperialism is evil. And the victims'
self-defence methods, however 'uncivilised', cannot be just dismissed
because they do not fit our Western (liberal) activist models, when
resistance for them often means fighting for their very survival. "Mostly,
however," the editors then claim, "the opinions presented on Indymedia
make the problems of the world seem like one big Jewish conspiracy,"
ignoring the fact that such views are so obviously racist/reductionist and
have been consistently challenged and hidden on Indymedia.

Finally, the editors ask this loaded question, "What makes Indymedia UK so
appealing to conspiracy theorists?" and argue that "it's not just the open
publishing format" but, rather, "it's the familiarity of the view that the
world is run by a few multinationals, Americans and Israelis."

Indeed, conspiracy theories take a lot of activists' energy and could be
'harmful', in the sense that they paint the 'movement' in a bad/mad way
(as if its image, without that, is so clean and shiny!). But it is crucial
to remember that, in face of the states' and mainstream media's relentless
efforts to conceal the truth, people, and especially activists, often find
themselves forced to contemplate, speculate and doubt what they are being
sold, because they have lost, over the years, all faith in what those in
power tell them to believe to justify their crimes. Conspiracy theories
are thus an 'act of resistance'. To argue that 'we' do not really need
them to act and that they would not add anything 'we' do not already know,
is ignoring the sad reality that people usually do not act out of general
moral criticisms; they often need something shocking and disturbing to get
off their bums.

It is important to stress here that Indymedia does reject all racially
based conspiracy theories (e.g. 'Jews control the world', 'Jews or Arabs
did 9/11' and the like). To argue whether 9/11 or the Iraq war were
planned or utilised by some cynical politicians and intelligence services
is a totally different argument. After all, history is full of cases like
this and it's not like it hasn't happened before and won't happen again
and again as long as a few morally corrupt and money-driven individuals
and institutions have so much power over people's lives.

===Unprofessional===

Turning to the article itself, the first thing one notices is its
provocative and misleading title. It employs the largely Western
mainstream media-constructed image of Hamas as a terrorist organisation
and suggests that Indymedia blindly supports it. The second bit of the
title declares, without any evidence throughout the article, that
Indymedia is "losing support" and promises its readers of explaining the
reason, which does not really happen.

"Go Hamas, Go!!!" was, in fact, the title of a comment on an article
published on Indymedia UK [2] about the 'darkness scenes' (candle-lit
meetings) staged by the Hamas-led Palestinian government to highlight the
suffering of Gazans due to the siege and sanctions imposed by Israel
earlier this year. The comment basically says that it is legitimate for
Hamas to "utilise [Israel's] war crime as a backdrop for a photoshoot."

The SHIFT article starts with a quote by Naomi Klein that goes, "Every
time I log on to activist news sites like Indymedia.org which practise
'open publishing', I am confronted with a string of Jewish conspiracy
theories about September 11 and excerpts from the Protocol of the Elders
of Zion." While Klein is not actually talking about Indymedia UK but the
global Indymedia site, which has far less and less active volunteers and
moderators, as well as Open Publishing in general, it is worth noting that
the quote is from an article published in The Guardian back in 2002 [3].
It is, indeed, one of Open Publishing's problems that contributors can
post all kind of rubbish, but whether the admin collective endorse, or
tolerate, that or not is a totally different question.

The first parts of the SHIFT article 'borrow' extensively from an
Indymedia UK feature [4] on the 'Atzmon-Greenstein affair', which the
article discusses in some detail drawing on that feature. It is, however,
surprising and unprofessional of the author that it does not mention the
feature. The reason is perhaps best understood when one tracks down the
ideological/editorial twists in the article and the differences between it
and the feature.

===Misleading===

Without any warrant or hesitation, the author declares from the beginning
that "in the past few few months the site Indymedia.org.uk has lost
support from many activists for letting anti-Semitic posts go
unchallenged." Not only does the author not cite any evidence that
Indymedia UK has "lost support", s/he also claims, without giving any
examples, that "anti-Semitic posts" went "unchallenged".

The average for hidden posts out of all posts published with the Palestine
topic ticked is 12% (95 out of 811 for the period Feb 2007-Apr 2008). This
is more or less the same as with other topics, such as Iraq (also 12%),
and is not very far from the UK hiding average (19%), taking into account
that a lot of spammers (mere links, commercial ads, announcements etc.)
usually use the UK publish form and do not always tick topics.

The only instance the article mentions is Gilad Atzmon's controversial
article "Saying NO to the Hunters of Goliath", which generated a lot of
discussion and disagreement exactly because moderators could not agree
that it was anti-Semitic.

A few lines later, the author again claims that "the Atzmon affair, as it
has become known, led to heated discussions, personal accusations, and a
loss of credibility for UK Indymedia amongst some of its moderators, in
activist circles and even in the wider leftist movement." Could it just be
the case that the author him/herself is generalising, or projecting,
his/her own opinion onto the "wider leftist movement"?

The article then continues with some distortion and/or misrepresentation
of what happened: "At the height of the affair, three active Indymedia
moderators resigned from the collective [they were, in fact, two; the
third had nothing to do with this affair] giving many readers [which
readers?] the impression that the obsession [what obsession?] with the
Palestine-Israel conflict had gained the upper hand [how exactly? Wasn't
the issue anti-Semitism?]."

As a retraction, perhaps, the author then admits that "Indymedia.org.uk
has been the target for anti-Semitic posts before and many have been
hidden straight away with reference to the guidelines." However, s/he
follows that with another misrepresentation: "In this latest affair
however the guidelines did not seem conclusive enough to judge what is
anti-Semitism and what isn't." Again, the author fails to grasp the fact
that the racism guideline already covers anti-Semitism but the issue here
was that not all moderators agreed that the article was anti-Semitic, and
hence racist.

The article then dedicates a 6-paragraph section to discuss "The Atzmon
Affair". The 'summary', however, is clearly biased and misrepresenting (it
is worth comparing it with the Indymedia feature mentioned above). For
example, the author (intentionally?) misinterprets a statement by Atzmon,
which s/he wrongly ascribes to an audio interview conducted by a UK
Indymedia activist (it is actually from an article by Atzmon titled "On
Anti-Semitism", published in December 2003 [5]). The quote reads: "There
is no anti-Semitism any more. In the devastating reality created by the
Jewish state, anti-Semitism has been replaced by political reaction." The
author claims that, by this statement, Atzmon, "once again, affirmed that
the hatred of Jews and Israel is simply caused by themselves," without
explaining to us how "political reaction" to Israel is the same as "hatred
of Jews".

===Lies?===

In a section supposedly about the "Resignations and resolution attempts"
(following the Atzmon-Greenstein spat), the author claims that "many more
articles appeared, some promoted, some not, that attempted to prove that
Jews had built 'the last openly racist state on the planet' or that 'the
situation of the Palestinians is little different than the situation of
Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII'." A few lines later, s/he adds,
"Blog reposts about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict multiplied and have
since taken up a large part of the newswire." But since the author does
not reference any of these "many more articles" that were allegedly so
obviously racist but were not only kept showing but also promoted, it is
difficult to respond to such allegations.

In the period between 14 Feb and 31 Mar 2008, there were 220 posts on
Israel-Palestine. Of these, 31 were IMEMC reports, 22 on UK actions and
events and 12 reports from inside Palestine. That's almost 30% and most of
these were promoted/promotable. Some 65 appear to come from a persistent
disinformation troll and were mostly hidden; another 30 were posted by a
user who posts a lot of Israle-Palestine material to Indymedia sites
worldwide, usually reposts of corporate coverage with commentary; and 13
were complaints about moderation, which should take place on the
moderation list. Together these three categories constitute almost 50% of
the total. The rest (20%) was divided between Latuff cartoons,
commentaries and reposts from blogs or other media. So the claim that
"blog reposts [...] have since taken up a large part of the newswire" is
totally unfounded.

As to the two quotes above (still without any referencing or context), the
first is apparently from an article [6] about the Israeli policy in Gaza,
which the author says is "as evil as it is self-defeating". The article is
reposted from a blog called "The Vineyard of the Saker" [7] by someone
describing him/herself as "a 'legal alien' currently living in the
Imperial Homeland." The context within which the quote appears is this:
"The main, over-arching, issue Israel, as a self-described "Jewish state",
is facing today is not terrorism or Iranian nukes but demographics.
Israel, as the last openly racist state on the planet, considers it vital
to keep a Jewish majority within its borders. This is why a council of
rabbis gets to decide who qualifies as "Jew" and who does not, and why the
so-called law of return makes any Jew on the planet eligible for
relocation to Israel and Israeli citizenship (even if this Jew is
non-religious, does not speak Hebrew or Yiddish, and does not care in the
least about Israel) while those Arabs who were born in today's Israel and
who were expelled from their homes and towns are not allowed to return
even though such a right is enshrined in international law." This is
hardly racist or anti-Semitic unless one regards any criticism of Israel's
racial policies as racism.

The second quote is from a short comment [8] on an article about the UN
condemning the Israeli collective punishment of Gaza (the brutal siege and
sanctions). The comment says that "the situation of the Palestinians in
Gaza (and even in the West Bank) is little different than the situation of
the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto during WWII." Now this might be an
exaggeration and it is not really funny seeing people 'competing for
victimhood', but 'monopolising victimhood' the way Zionists do, for
example, is not funny either (see the following comments on the same
thread).

It is worth noting that both articles/comments were published in January
2008, i.e. during the Israeli siege of Gaza and the worldwide protests
condemning it. So, to respond to the SHIFT article's complaint that posts
about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict "multiplied", this can be explained
as the site users' reacting to world political events, which is pretty
normal and true of all other topics on Indymedia UK.

That month (January 2008), the Palestine topic saw 51 posts, slightly
above the average (45). The number increased steadily during the following
months, with the Gaza crisis unfolding and protests taking place
throughout the world, culminating in 84 posts for March 2008. The same is
probably true for comments but, unfortunately, we do not have any
statistics for these at the moment to back that up.

The SHIFT article then goes on to complain that "comments such as 'Long
live Palestine' or even 'Go Hamas Go' were no longer hidden," without
enlightening us when they used to get hidden and why they should be. As
mentioned above, the "Go Hamas Go" comment mainly argued that it is
legitimate for Hamas to "utilise [Israel's] war crime as a backdrop for a
photoshoot." It does not suggest any support for Hamas or cheering for the
killing of Israelis. As to the SHIFT author's rant about Hamas, one can
probably only raise eyebrows at how a supposedly radical, alternative
writer in a supposedly radical, alternative magazine could reiterate such
mainstream propaganda crap, with a typical Western  activist's patronising
value-judgement that takes 'others' struggles out of their
political/historical contexts.

The second 'worrying' quote ("Long live Palestine") [9] seems to come from
a 'Western' activist and merely concludes with that slogan (almost like a
signature) after congratulating the author of a report (incidentally about
an Atzmon event in Brighton) on the "great summing up of the background to
this latest debacle in Greenstein's vicious campaign."

The article further claims that "many" of these comments "were posted [by]
agitators based in Canada and the US, who have recognised Indymedia UK's
willingness to host their posts." Besides asking the author how did s/he
got to know this, given the near-total anonymity of posters on Indymedia,
one cannot help wondering what s/he understands from Open Publishing?

==="'Nazimedia'?"?!!===

In fact, the author does appear to understand that well but seems to have
other things in mind. In a section provocatively titled
<em>"Nazimedia"?</em>, s/he declares, "It thus became evident that the
problem did not just lie with the open publishing format. Some Indymedia
activists began to pursue an agenda that belittled anti-Semitism." And
what is this agenda that "belittled anti-Semitism"? Well, the publishing
of a feature about the siege on Gaza titled <em>"Israel keeps its promise
of a 'Holocaust' in Gaza"</em> [10].

But before we go into that, it is worth mentioning that the total number
of Palestine-related features during the 17 months since the topic was
created is 15 out of 134 UK startpage features or, more accurately, out of
324 UK and regional features. That is just 4.6%. In comparison, the Iraq
topic, for example, has received 20 features during the same period.

The feature's title was somehow turned in the article to "Israel keeps its
promise of a Holocaust upon the Palestinians". Not only is this a careless
mistake, the omission of the quotation marks surrounding the word
"Holocaust" -which indicate the feature's authors' reservation and the
fact that it was the word used by Israeli deputy Defense Minister
threatening Palestinians before the escalation in Gaza in February this
year- that omission might well be ill-intended and in line with the image
the author has been trying to paint of Indymedia UK throughout the
article. The full paragraph where this is explained in the feature reads:
"On February 29th, the Israeli deputy Defense Minister provoked outrage
after threatening Palestinians with a "holocaust". Matan Vilnai told the
Israeli army radio that "the more [rocket] fire intensifies and the
rockets reach a longer range, they [the Palestinians] will bring upon
themselves a bigger holocaust because we will use all our might to defend
ourselves." The same twisted logic is used by the far-right and Holocaust
deniers to blame Jewish people for the Nazi Holocaust."

The article (intentionally?) misrepresents both what happened in Gaza and
the feature itself. The feature, it claims, "argued that Israel's deadly
military raids aimed at some Hamas officials and Gaza gunmen amounted to
plans to unleash a 'Holocaust' and a 'full-scale war' on Palestine." It
also does not support with any evidence its claim that the feature was
published "despite obvious discontent amongst many Indymedia users." The
feature was proposed on 4 March 2008 [11] and not a single objection or
reservation was posted to the imc-uk-features list, so it was published
the following day after the usual 24 hours waiting period. Of course, the
feature, like anything else about Palestine, did attract quite a few
comments later on (36 in total), 10 of which were hidden as complaints
about moderation, which should take place on the moderation list, or
simply because they were abusive or discriminatory, which breach the
Editorial Guidelines.

The suggestion in the subtitle that Indymedia has become or is becoming
"Nazimedia" is cheap and defamatory, to say the least. To put that word in
quotation marks and follow it with a question mark does not really spare
the author or editors the responsibility, especially that none of the
comments, showing or hidden, on that particular feature used the word
"Nazimedia", although it has been used by some trolls in the past [12].
And despite 'assuring' readers that "Indymedia Uk is not run by a
collective of anti-Semites", the article further claims that the
collective has tried to "redefine the Holocaust" and that comments
supporting that "remained on the newswire", while "all complaints were
hidden within minutes."

It is also worth noting that most of these allegations/accusations were
posted by well known trolls/disinfo agents who get hidden straight away
all the time. So the whole theory in the article that Indymedia UK has
"lost support" seems to be based on hidden disinfo posts and comments (see
the Atzmon-Greenstein feature mentioned above for more details). As an
edited print magazine, the editors of SHIFT and the author of the article
haven't probably had much experience with full-time trolls and organised
disinformation campaigns, which they simply dismiss as another conspiracy
theory by some Indymedia admins with a secret agenda!

===Yes, really, what is anti-Semitism?===

Towards the end of the article, the author contends that there is "nothing
new" about the allegations against Indymedia admins of "being blind to
anti-Semitrism." S/he further concludes that "the Indymedia UK collective
is unlikely to agree whether Atzmon or Latuff are anti-semitic" and that
"in many ways it would be a futile endeavour." More important, s/he
continues, "is the question why controversial and provocative posts that
compare Israeli policies to those of Nazi Germany find their way onto
Indymedia newswires in the first place" and "what attracts anti-semites to
the website?"

After repeating the problem with Open Publishing and that the Editorial
Guidelines might not be "up to date with current developments in radical
politics," s/he has this to say: "Sadly, Indymedia offers a platform to
invent caricutures of the Israeli state and of its policies. Instead of
recognising the political context, it helps to perpetuate an image of
Israel, and of Jews, as sinister conspirators with a secret plan to turn
the worlds into one massive settlement." Really?! Where did Indymedia UK
do that other than some anti-Semitic posts that get "immediately hidden or
deleted", in the author's own words. Perhaps he or she, along with the
SHIFT editors, need to sit down and reread the 'Holocaust' and Atzmon
features carefully without prejugements and hasty accusations. Or better
even, post their complaints to the appropriate lists and join the
collective discussions about what is anti-Semitism and what is Zionism and
how to deal with them.

===Notes:===

[1]  http://www.shiftmag.co.uk

[2] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/390275.html?c=on#c188459

[3]  http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2002/apr/25/comment.guardiancolumnists

[4]  http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/02/392188.html

[5] http://www.gilad.co.uk/html%20files/onanti.html

[6] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/389886.html

[7] http://vineyardsaker.blogspot.com

[8] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/389757.html?c=on#c187974

[9] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/01/388930.html?c=on#c187195

[10] http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2008/03/393065.html

[11]
http://lists.indymedia.org/pipermail/imc-uk-features/2008-March/0304-cv.html

[12]
http://indymediawatch.blogspot.com/2006/06/why-is-it-called-nazimedia_12.html

[13] All the site statistics and figures above were gathered by IMC UK
techies on 20 May, 2008, for the purpose of this article.

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