When we speak, it should be clear, to show reality and not to obscure it and/or reduce it to a spectacle.
We issue a warning about suspicious, manipulative and reckless individual(s) behind the “FAI ARCHIVE” – just set up by the “No War But My War” blog and Instagram, who have been trying to contact admins and sites in the international counter-information networks and anti-repression solidarity groups in a duplicitous way and spreading misinformations and smears. We note that FAI/FRI* has been recently designated as a foreign terrorist organisation by the American administration for which they also target “Antifa Ost“, etc, as part of a hyped and aggressive move against domestic and foreign radical-left and anti-state anarchist movements and tendencies of all sorts, including single-issue unrelated subjects to anarchism.
This individual(s) claims to be in contact and know others in the international anarchist networks, when it has been investigated and found that they are lying, which is deeply suspect. Claiming to be in contact and to have the confidence of others when you do not is unacceptable and treacherous. It is the way of the undercover cop, the infiltrator or, in the “best” case, the self-aggrandizing fantasist.
This individual(s) purports to be building an “archive” of actions claimed by FAI/FRI, the anarchist-insurrectionalist open platform and network for direct action. The individual(s) has spent considerable time and energy in researching little-known obscure media clips of the attacks from many different places all over the world, so their claim that they did not know the dates that they are failing to provide on any (missing) notes to the attacks is misleading and false. There are even some actions which were never claimed by FAI that are being reframed as “FAI” actions by this site, using journalistic reasoning. This is always the form with “propaganda”, it becomes a means of disassociation. In fact, we know that “No War But My War” claimed to be in contact with the VICE journalist and general scummy untrustable piece of shit, Jake Hanrahan, who now runs a grift called Popular Front. We know that “No War But My War” approached Palang Hitam (Anarchist Black Cross Indonesia) trying to ask out an interview on Jake’s behalf, we know this because we talk to our comrades.
Do not communicate with this email address [nowarbutmywar@proton.me + pammalaysia@proton.me], blog or Instagram account and be aware that not only are there a lot of fools with smartphones, there are also cyber-operations taking place. This confirms to a pattern of electronic disruption and infiltration that has been taking place in Indonesia by the counter-terrorist unit “Densus 88” and that we believe has been informed by the policing tactics of the American, British and European states. It is known that the Indonesian state has been pursuing a violent campaign using systematic torture against the anarchist movement and using special technical spyware and trolling campaigns along with typical surveillance, infiltration and provocation methods.
One thing that alerted us to the possible problematic nature of “No War But My War” was their identical lines of thinking to American state narratives, for example, connecting the “Prairieland defendants” with “our prisoners” as European “Antifa” or as “FAI networks”, when there is no connection, not in the sense of a specific terrorist organization nor even between any supposed “extreme-left movement”, which can contain such differing realities as what happened at the ICE Prairieland Immigration Detention Centre, and what passes as “Antifa” in Europe, but what happened in Texas was a tragic consequence of the dangerous and unpredictable social war which is taking place there, and was a political trial to shore up the repression. Certainly, it is absurd to put any FAI cell next to what happened in Texas, or a stretch at least, and one that seems more a fantasy of the prosecutors. We covered the Prairieland trial on our counter-info site, not because they are accused “Antifa” “anarchists” or anything else: we see and recognise the people on the streets of the United Snakes of America who are fighting back against the state. They don’t need to be “far-left”, “anarchists”, “Antifas” etc.
Using this premise of creating a “FAI Archive”, this admin(s) contacted us and others, and has sent “propaganda videos” which were initially posted on our site since we didn’t have any problem with it, despite finding the content open to our criticism as mere spectacle, “propaganda”. Recently, “No War But My War” sent us an overblown “propaganda” video which featured an American state official, Marco Rubio, speaking about their plans to focus their counter-terrorism infrastructure on “radical-left terrorism”. FAI/FRI does not need propagandists and will see Marco Rubio come and go as an insignificant politician. The actions and the communiques are the primary world of FAI/FRI.
What we have seen practiced by this site is not genuine archiving. Each action or claim has been decontextualised, the dates and sources of the original counter-info site it was taken from are removed entirely and it is never stated which site translated it or first published it, or if it was from the corporate media. The context is removed by deleting the dates of the revolutionary attacks and then what we are seeing is that this admin(s) of “No War But My War” is then posting these actions as if they happened last week, and also sending them to other counter-info sites, which proliferates this kind of noise and fake signal. Allowing this type of behaviour to spread is unacceptable in the counter-information networks.
Not only does it lead to a situation where the counter-info sites are not able to be trusted whenever anything happens, it promotes a way of looking at the world which is narrow and utilitarian, even if we could trust the motives of this dubious blog. We don’t want to read regurgitated slop masquerading as “news”.
Several times we told “No War But My War” to cease these practices and they never responded directly to these criticisms with anything other than arrogance and deflection.
It cannot continue like this. The international network of counter information and translation has been weakening in general over the last decade and allowing such behaviour to reoccur will open the door to more idiocy. To reiterate, the values and ethics of the counter-info sites as regarding what is true and false has to be scrupulous. To open the way towards manipulation and the spreading of false narratives and contexts is not in accordance with our concepts.
Dark Nights & co
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* For background on the origins of the FAI, Federazione Anarchica Informale, and anarchist discussion at the time, read: ‘Escalation’ on the 325 archive.org + 1, 2 & 3.
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Also see: ‘Caught in the Web of Deception: Anarchists and the Media‘ (Venomous Butterfly)