“Anarchism is a political philosophy which considers the state undesirable, unnecessary, and harmful, and instead promotes a stateless society, or anarchy. Any information relating to anarchists should be reported to your local police.”

That was Sunday. The swell of internet-driven murmuring rage brought Project Griffin’s 33-word definition of anarchism and its appeal to dob in your Chomsky-reading neighbours to front page news on the Guardian.

Twitter tweeps retweeted shortened URLs prefixed with disbelief and Facebook folk guffawed about handing themselves in to Belgravia police station. Here was a document from the Metropolitan Police that, in one dinky box decorated with clip art, pushed McCarthyism to the local businesses and public institutions the newsletter went out to. The reds under your bed were back. But this time they wanted a smaller state. No state. A bigger society. A Big Societ…oh. Erm.

Queue the crash of arguments pointing out that the likes of Alan Greenspan, the American Tea Party and David Cameron are proponents of smaller states and stateless societies. Running alongside that is the Orwellian scenario of thought crime. Because you are an anarchist, you should be reported as dangerous. You are here being mentioned alongside Anders Breivik –– the bad man who killed all those people in Norway. You are here mentioned alongside terrorism. It says so. Right here.

Within 24 hours, police issued a climbdown blaming bad wording. “The Metropolitan Police service does not seek to stigmatise those people with legitimate political views. People purporting to be anarchists have caused criminal damage this year to business premises, and government buildings in Westminster. The message we were trying to convey was to gather information on criminal acts to help us prevent crime and bring offenders to justice.”

Here was a document that seemed to have copied and pasted its definition of anarchism from the first line of Wikipedia. Here was a document that, on the same page, asked people to report all sightings of a yellow dot topped with Arabic script as an Al-Qaeda symbol and misspelled “beach volleyball”. Like a badly designed school handout that’s gone a bit wild with a text box, it would be laughable if the consequences weren’t so serious.

Okay. It’s still laughable. But the subtext of their climbdown isn’t. It’s nose-on-face clear that policing priorities lie in the protection of commercial interests and business. Project Griffin is a “product” for raising “awareness of crime and terrorism issues within the business community”.

Opening a document by declaring the UK’s threat level from international terrorism as “substantial” in bold red letters and closing it with the mantra “if you suspect it, report it” in a bright red box cements paranoia. What the Counter Terrorist Focus Desk has done is equate anarchism with terrorism –– a calculation that criminalises a philosophy. By doing that, they have engendered fear. And to do that is an act of terrorism.

As threatening as the word seems, anarchy is rooted in unwavering optimism because it trusts individuals to come up with ethics and freedoms collectively. At the heart of the myriad of anarchist philosophies is a fundamental belief in fairness.

What Project Griffin has taught the wider public is that there is a section of the establishment with dangerously simplistic views of politics. It is the section concerned with running around the yard like a dog barking at anything that moves in the name of vigilance.

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This article was first published on the Index on Censorship, 02 August 2011

Adam Curtis is a documentary filmmaker and academic who is best known for his use of videomontage to relay sociopolitical analyses of the modern age. His films include The Century of the Self and The Power of Nightmares. His latest project is a three-part BBC internet series called All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace. Leah Borromeo is a journalist and filmmaker who quite likes Curtis but, unlike him, would never have the balls to carry a bag that featured pictures of Westmoreland terriers. The irony of writing for a magazine called Tank has not escaped her.

Leah Borromeo: How important is popular culture to your filmmaking?

Adam Curtis: I don’t actually use popular culture, I use popular-culture techniques. I once did a story about how radical psychotherapy theories of the 1960s became the basis for modern consumer capitalism. It was part of my series The Century of the Self, about the relationship between ideas of psychology and ideas of marketing and politics. I took radical encounter groups and showed how those ideas morphed through the 1970s until they became what we call “values and lifestyles marketing”.

I discovered this group of Californian nuns who were encouraged to go through group therapy. They ended up challenging each other – challenging authority. The convent split and you ended up with a bunch of radical lesbian nuns who are still there. It made me laugh. It illustrates a funny, touching truth about the ridiculousness of it all. It shows the shift from collectivism to individualism. Then I found footage in the BBC archive of the nuns before the therapy and suddenly I had a story!

LB: So you’re a storyteller?

AC: There are lots of wonderful things on the internet, but the one thing that can never, ever die is, “I want to tell you a story.”

In All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace, I have a go at internet utopias. Internet utopians think we can make our own stories up, or have multiple endings in which you make the choice. That’s naïve. What you see on Twitter and Facebook is the modern equivalent of what, under Stalin’s time, was socialist realism.

LB: I’m not sure I understand – you mean instead of buxom fieldworkers and strapping steelworkers we now have lots of people communicating in 140-character thought bubbles?

AC: Twitter is a happy little universe where everything is incredibly innocent and comes from within you. Well, no it doesn’t! What shapes your feelings are the structures of power around you. The tubes down which your feelings go are built by large businesses – these businesses shape how you see the world. It’s not manipulation, it’s just the way the world works. The way we see the world is as much shaped by the structures of power around us as the feelings we have within us. What shapes those feelings is reflected by the ideology of our time: that there is nothing more sacrosanct than our inner feelings. These days, the idea of immersing yourself in something grander than yourself is alien.

LB: So there’s no chance of changing power structures?

AC: The most intelligent way to tell a story is to show how individuals play – like the radical lesbian nuns. Then you pull back and show the circumstances in which people find themselves and show the architecture of power. You should look at Tolstoy, because he writes detailed scenes about individuals and their feelings but, in the next chapter, pulls back and shows how those feelings are contexualised in the bigger picture. He shows how the two play against each other. He shows a battle from a character’s perspective and then shows it as being part of the mass of history. I find that very exciting. You’re only really going to write good stories on the internet or invent new ways of storytelling if you pull back and do a Tolstoy. What we need is a little less Wes Anderson and his miniaturist style, a little more Tolstoy.

LB: So what about the revolutions where we all join together thanks to the internet?

AC: I went back and looked at the revolutions where the internet rose up as a voice: Georgia, then the Ukraine, then Kyrgyzstan. Those revolutions have absolutely failed. The people in those countries are actually less free than they were in 2003. In Ukraine, for example, [Viktor] Yanukovych is back in power and dismantling the structure of democracy. Well done the internet!

The problem with the internet is that they think that just organising something will lead to revolution. You don’t create revolutions like that, you create revolutions by organising for ideologies and beliefs that people fight for.

LB: What are your politics?

AC: I don’t have politics. I’m completely modern. I have none.

LB: So power obsesses you?

AC: I grew up in an age where society got more complicated and power stopped flowing through Westminster politics, but moved instead through areas like science, psychology, consumerism. They all shape the way we think and feel about ourselves. All I’ve ever really wanted to do is pull back and show people how power flows through those things.

LB: If you don’t have a political agenda, why do you do what you do?

AC: Because I like telling stories. I like showing off that you can take boring, abstract things and make them larky and fun.

LB: And you turned to videomontage because?

AC: It’s fun. Trash. Pop. That’s all it is. It also means I don’t have to go and film things myself. It’s a good discipline because it’s all you’ve got. The way I work is that I know the area I’m working in and I know the stories I want to tell. I sit down with the material I’ve got and cut something I like and then think, “How can I use that?” And that product changes how I tell the story.

LB: Do power structures keep you in a job?

AC: Yeah. We live in an age where we’re encouraged to believe that the individual is the centre of the universe – “Where do you want to go to today?” is the great slogan of our time. You’re unaware of the powerful forces going on around you. I point that out to people. I don’t have an agenda, because I don’t think anyone has an agenda these days.

LB: Really? Even the student protests in the UK and the marchers against cuts?

AC: To be ruthless, what are they marching for? They’re marching to keep the world they’ve got there. It’s not a revolutionary idea about how to change the structure of power. What’s happening is a bureaucratic row about how you keep the diminished proceeds of a broken system better allocated. That has been the distinguishing feature of our politics since Tony Blair. It’s a managerial, bureaucratic politics that says, “This is the only system we have; there is no alternative. How do we manage it best?” The difference between the parties is their definition of best. It was a wonderful march, but it was a bureaucratic row.

LB: Were you on it?

AC: Yes.

LB: Does individualism bother you?

AC: Well, yes, it’s static. It sells the idea that “it’s just me”. You don’t change the world through “just me”. You can reorganise the world through “just me”, but not change it. We’re all librarians now, whether on Flickr, when you upload and tag your photos, or on Facebook. I find this narrowness depressing. Because I like ideas. I like ideas that inspire you and take you somewhere else.

LB: We haven’t really had many “ideas” of late though, have we?

AC: Good or bad, the last radical politicians you had were Thatcher and Reagan. What they did was tear down the middle-class elites who had grown up as a result of the state in post-war years. They allowed a powerfully aspirational class to break through. That class is perfectly happy now and they want everything to quiet down and be all right. Just like France in the 1830s. We had a big revolution, let’s settle down. Periods of conservativism are also periods of great hypocrisy. And out of great hypocrisy comes great art. I’m still waiting for the new Madame Bovary to come along.

LB: You wouldn’t think of coming up with those ideas yourself?

AC: That’s not a journalist’s job.

LB: A hundred years from now, how will we be viewed?

AC: Ayn Rand believed that there was nothing but the individual and reason. At the end of her life, a journalist asked if she was scared of death. She replied, “You don’t understand. I won’t die. The world will cease to exist.” What she meant by that was that the world is in your own head, your own creation. It will be said that this was an age that had no consolation beyond the death of its own people. We’re frightened of change because we fear our own death and that hampers political change. They will ask why these people are so frightened.

==

This interview was originally published in Tank Magazine’s Summer 2011 edition.

A major survey show of his work has opened at London’s Lisson Gallery joining his first public installation at Somerset House — “Circle of Animals”. As one of the leading cultural figures of his generation, Ai is a political artist in work and in deed. With work that juxtaposes the antiquity and craft of Chinese culture with modern techniques and multimedia platforms, his work has a voice that resonates through histories.

From a junkyard assemblage of domestic doors made from pristine slabs of marble to Han Dynasty vases covered in bold industrial paint to a marble CCTV camera pointed into the streets of London, the Lisson’s compilation of Weiwei’s work from the past six years shows the activism in his art and the artistry in his activism.

Wheatpasted on the walls outside the gallery are words from Ai himself:

“Liberty is about our rights to question everything.”

“Say what you need to say plainly and take responsibility for it.”

“Creativity is the power to reject the past, to change the status quo and to seek new potential.”

“Words can be deleted, but the facts won’t be deleted with them.”

The Lisson’s founder and director Nicholas Logsdail argues that Weiwei’s work “has become politicised because of his position. The genius lies in politically gentle forms that are open to interpretation — only when you look into what constitutes the work can you see he’s rebaptised antiquity with a message.”

In the days of the Young British Artists, established galleries like the Lisson and larger institutions like Tate and the Guggenheim were depoliticised. Should political art be shown it was obfuscated beneath layers of visual rhetoric or in historical retrospectives where the immediacy of the message passed its dateline. Thanks to Ai Weiwei and his disappearance at the hands of his own state, an art world already politicised by funding cuts is speaking out. We’ve all become agit-prop. Tate Modern stencilled “Free Ai Weiwei” across the top of its building. Anish Kapoor dedicated his Leviathan sculpture in Paris to Ai Weiwei. Bob and Roberta Smith held a reading of names to remind people that dozens of other artists, writers, and supporters of free expression have either been detained or gone missing at the hands of the Chinese. The Guggenheim has launched an online petition for his release and the Lisson is inviting all visitors to its show to be photographed with a “Free Ai Weiwei” placard that will be broadcast on the internet. There is no scope to be subtle when freedom is at stake.

Greg Hilty, the Lisson’s curatorial director, said that after Weiwei’s disappearance there was “no question” of whether to continue with the show. “Ai Weiwei consistently places himself at great risk for his art. We are showing that his art and activism goes beyond China. He’s an example for social criticism and free expression around the world. To Weiwei, there are no sacred cows.”

Logsdail says: “If you don’t support Ai Weiwei, you’re mental. Freedom to express yourself is what it means to be an artist.”

Believing in total transparency, truth and openness in a society obsessed with micromanaging the lives of its 1.3billion inhabitants is a problem for Ai Weiwei. China’s schizophrenic relationship with maintaining repressive regime structures whilst successfully engaging with a free market economy are themes that Weiwei’s work show. A compulsive communicator, his Twitter account logged the artist’s candid thoughts and movements. His belief is that if you have nothing to hide, you have nothing to spy on.

A documentary about Ai by Alison Klayman asks “Can an artist change China?”. Not just an artist, this artist. An artist that photographed himself flashing his middle finger at Tiananmen Square. An artist whose studio was trashed by Chinese authorities and beaten when he investigated the deaths of schoolchildren in post-earthquake Sichuan. An artist with a voice and a worldwide audience that China is scared of.

Ai Weiwei is not a revolutionary. He is an artist who shows us what it is to be human by example. He is the bridge between China’s past and its future.

www.freeaiweiwei.org

www.lissongallery.com

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This article was originally published in the Index on Censorship, 13 May 2011, 40 days into Ai Weiwei’s captivity.

Although the premise for netroots was admirable [how to get from clicktivism to activism], I didn’t find the sessions or the crowd representative or challenging. There was an overwhelming acceptance of existing power structures [party-political government as opposed to the idea of exploring other means of living] and far too much SWP-like muesli-driven bickering [something not helped by including speakers that rarely challenged convention].

Although there was a strong presence from student occupations and anti-cuts groups, this event seemed like bandwagon-jumping by a left that’s been caught on the back foot by an organically-grown, social media based movement. The old left [event was held at the TUC] desperate to be seen as ‘doing something’. Then again, I’m always suspicious of anything that schedules in a ‘plenary’ or invites speakers that use the word ‘comrade’.

There’s one thing worse than Hampstead Labour – and that’s aspirant Hampstead Labour. There was an overwhelming feeling that people attended because they thought they ought to attend. A much more varied and representative event was held the night before at the University of London Union – the launch of The Equality Movement.

[edit: lordy...people actually read this thing....]

©Leah Borromeo – if you want access for non-commercial purposes and reposting, link to me and tell me. If you want access for commercial purposes, ask me.

The march eventually reached Millbank Tower – once the Labour party’s headquarters – now home to the Conservative party.

Some people managed to get to the roof. One person had a fire extinguisher which was set off and eventually dropped, narrowly missing the crowd below.

Sky News have said they know who the suspect is because he is caught on tape doing naughty things:

I have an idea this man might be….

or

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These days Tony Blair cuts a tragicomic figure who embodies the oxymoron. He’s charged with bringing about Middle East peace when his actions fueled fires in those deserts. He’s pulled out of public events due to “threats of protest” from a gaggle of anti-war activists yet was cloth-eared to the millions shouting against an Iraq invasion before a single shock had been awed.

The demonstrations in Dublin set a precedent but would you have expected anything less? Hundreds of thousands of war dead may have been wiped off this earth but the violence that brought those deaths have scarred the skin of our humanity. The world was screaming “stop” but the men who held the guns still shot. We’ll never forgive Blair or Bush for that.

By publishing his book, he’s exercised his right to speak. He’s sated his ego by ensuring he won’t be forgotten. The people who planned to demonstrate at Waterstones and at Tate would’ve been exercising their right to protest. Both are freedoms of expression we should fight to protect. Both are freedoms the dead do not have.
Blair is having a crisis of conscience. He’s not having second thoughts about causing the deaths of soldiers and civilians and upsetting the balance of the Middle East for generations. Ever the considerate host, he feared a thousand people with placards calling him a war criminal would “hassle” his guests. Perhaps canceling his events is muzzling him. But it’s not censorship that stopped him. It’s cowardice.
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This article was originally published on the Index on Censorship, 09 September 2010.

Sergeant Smellie, known to some activists at Tombstone Face for his uncanny resemblance to graveyard furniture, walked out of Westminster Magistrates Court with a smile last seen on OJ Simpson. Nicola Fisher, for reasons of her own, chose not to give evidence at the four-day trial.

“That’s him walking free then,” said an activist when Twitter announced that Ms Fisher was staying at her Brighton home instead of giving evidence at the trial. Having sold her story to a national newspaper for £26,000, she must’ve bought a fair dose of cowardice for that sum.

There’s no guarantee Smellie wouldn’t have walked free if the animal rights activist took the stand. But it might have helped. Instead, the trial was heavily laden with testimonies from Smellie’s police colleagues saying that Fisher was acting aggressively brandishing a juice box. The towering TSG officer was obviously defending himself against vegan rage.

Peter Smyth of the Metropolitan Police Federation said that “a ten second clip on You Tube doesn’t tell the whole story”. It tells enough. Delroy Smellie assaulted Nicola Fisher. And she had the bruises to prove it. The Met Police recruitment website says that the position of police officer is one of “responsibility and trust, given only to law-abiding people with proven character and integrity”.

Nicola Fisher has said that she balked at giving evidence because she did not want to be subjected to a defence cross-examination. That she was suffering from depression and lacked confidence in the abilities of the prosecution. So a lawyer hired to defend an ultraviolent thug in uniform may have to ask some difficult questions of a woman who was exercising her democratic right to protest. Diddums. If you’re not ready to defend your actions in a court of law when you’ve obviously been assaulted and wronged, don’t run off to the newspapers and sell your story. Don’t bring it to court to allow the police to make a mockery of the justice system by showing that intimidation does work. Don’t insult everyone else who backed you when you were crying injustice.

Since my own arrest, my healthy mistrust of the police has been strengthened by the ridiculous farce played out in the courts involving ordinary citizens. One year on from the G20 protests and the death of Ian Tomlinson, we are still no closer to a decision from the Crown Prosecution Service as to whether they’ll prosecute anyone for that death. Over a year on from the demonstrations that saw thousands of young Muslims vent their anger at Israel’s wanton murder of Palestinian civilians in Gaza, we hear of police actions against teenagers that parallel military raids.

The anger over Sergeant Delroy Smellie’s acquittal is two-pronged. The first prong goes to Smellie, the police and the courts that are opening the door for future assaults. Smellie, after a suspension from service following his charge, is now on back the streets protecting the people of London. The second goes to Nicola Fisher who should have given evidence against the man who assaulted her. Her spinelessness makes her the Clare Short of activists.

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This article was originally published in the The Guardian, 01 April 2010.

Seems I’ve narked a few true blues by suggesting that Tories at CCHQ were melting at having to shake hands with a black man. I’m a vicious, pathetic, loony lefty cretin. It’s caused a minor hullabaloo, prompting statements that read “vicious bile that shouldn’t be allowed to pass” and “You used a really flattering pic of yourself on your Twitter page.  I thought you were hot til I Googled you. Corrrrrr what a moose!”.

So… you detest free speech, say I should get out of “your country” and are outrageously sexist. Are you a Tory?

Anyway. It’s Twitter, not the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Man up.