The purpose of this piece is to better understanding of mass media’s relationship to rebels (including anarchists of all stripes), in general as well as in the context of a repressive atmosphere in Bristol. As well as raising local specifics, it hopes to encourage stronger awareness around wider issues of representation and counter-insurgency…
… even in the best-case scenario, on the level of sheer pragmatism, the mass media cannot be made to serve liberatory purposes. It works by systematically removing events, ideas or proposals from their context, to then re-package and re-serve them as fragments so we can consume them while never actually living them. What sense can critiques with the depth of anarchist ones make when presented as a 60-second jumble sandwiched between ten others in contradiction, how can anything meaningful take root in an environment dedicated to keeping everything restricted to surface level only?