Todd P just sent out an epic missive explaining why 285 Kent won’t be among the venues canceling Cold Cave shows due to the addition of controversial opening act Boyd Rice. Patrick says that since Cold Cave added the provocative noise musician to the bill of tomorrow night’s show, 285 Kent has been subject to a “small uproar” involving “multiple oblique threats, several curse-laden late night crank calls, anonymous threatening text messages.”
But even though Rice, per Patrick, is a “washed up 80’s era troll” who “has spent the last 30 or so years saying truly disgusting things – everything from palling around with the KKK to wearing Nazi uniforms to advocating the subjugation of women and the efficacy of rape,” the show must go on in the interest of free speech. There will, however, be “literature at tables set up in the lobby, explaining who Boyd Rice is and what his shameful history entails.” Read the entire letter for yourself — it’s a doozy.
There has been a small uproar about Boyd Rice joining Cold Cave’s show at 285 Kent this Saturday. After a handful of venues in other cities canceled tour dates due to Rice’s inclusion, and notices appeared on a couple of websites, we’ve received about 9 emails imploring us to cancel, as well as 3 recommending we do not cancel. There has been some additional chatter on Twitter and Tumblr, etc.
Boyd Rice recently reappeared after many years absence, and has performed on bills this year at Europa and at Saint Vitus, without incident or protest. The controversy has come up because Boyd Rice is a character who has spent the last 30 or so years saying truly disgusting things – everything from palling around with the KKK to wearing Nazi uniforms to advocating the subjugation of women and the efficacy of rape. The guy revels in offensiveness and whether or not his statements are meant sincerely, or as schtick – he completely sucks as a human being and as an artist he employs abuse imagery and hate rhetoric for shock – a practice we find despicable.
So that leaves the question – why is this asshole playing 285 Kent (which I help run with Ric Leichtung)? Well, Ric booked Cold Cave to perform – a popular cold wave pop band. The show sold out with only Cold Cave’s listing, after which time Cold Cave’s frontman – Wes Eisold – announced he was adding Boyd Rice as his opener for Cold Cave’s entire tour. We were left with a show booking that now included a noxious character.
We find Boyd Rice reprehensible and would never curate him or any of his acts to perform. However, he was booked and that is that. We believe passionately in free speech and artistic license (in this case Cold Cave’s) and we will not actively censor someone else’s curation. We also believe that Boyd Rice’s notoriety would only be increased by martyring him in a high profile show cancellation.
We’ve heard a lot of concerns that allowing this man to take the stage will “endanger” the community or will “endorse” what the guy says. We couldn’t disagree more. First of all, this guy is a washed up 80’s era troll. He poses no realistic threat to our community. Attempts to puff his rhetoric up into “danger” are laughable – this guy is a joke. We have straightforwardly said we abhor what he has to say. We are far more concerned about the message sent by censorship than whatever this washed up relic gets out of our allowing him to perform.
On a more philosophical level, speech is speech and action is action. We live in a free society and while artistic license and free speech are different things, they both speak to the belief system that anyone can say anything in the public forum and “right” ideas will win out over those that are evil.
Passions have run high among some, and it is altogether possible that there could be an attempt at direct action to “sabotage” the event on Saturday – there has been some conjecture that this fear contributed to the cancellations in other cities. We have already received multiple oblique threats, several curse-laden late night crank calls, anonymous threatening text messages, etc. These sort of thug tactics only strengthen our resolve, however. We will not be bullied, and frankly we wish this same level of passion was instead directed at undoing the fascistic NSA’s surveillance structure recently revealed to be infiltrating all of our lives, rather than freaking out over a pathetic old hack saying bullshit that is designed to offend.
We encourage anyone who wishes to attend the show but does not wish to watch Boyd Rice to leave the room when Boyd Rice performs. We will issue refunds to anyone at the door who purchased a ticket but has now chosen to skip the show (and we won’t be releasing new tickets to replace those that are refunded).
For what it’s worth, we will be challenging Boyd Rice’s views on site, night of show, by distributing literature at tables set up in the lobby, explaining who Boyd Rice is and what his shameful history entails, as well as information about how to get involved in anti-fascist activism, support for the victims of domestic abuse and sexual assault, and the cause of freedom of expression.
We at 285 Kent don’t expect this decision or explanation to fully please those individuals who wanted us to cancel. We respect your views, even if we disagree about tactics, and we hope you can extend us the same respect.
Hey, remember the 90s? It was this magical time before YOU were Big Brother, and we lived free of Collective Moral Terror over some a-hole, some a-hole-where having an a-hole good time!
“and frankly we wish this same level of passion was instead directed at undoing the fascistic NSA’s surveillance structure recently revealed to be infiltrating all of our lives, rather than freaking out over a pathetic old hack saying bullshit that is designed to offend.” So people can’t do both?! What a silly argument / assumption – what do you know about what else people get up to? Maybe your “wish” will come true!
http://antifascistnetwork.wordpress.com/tag/n-platform/
Why no platform is still relevant, and the trouble with liberal “anti-fascism”
5 01 2013
“There is a distinct difference between the right to free speech and the right to organise. Racist comments and ideas should be challenged and opposed, but a distinction must be drawn between this and incitement to violence/active recruitment to fascist organisations. […] Attempts by fascist groups to recruit members to fascism cannot be tolerated by an anarchist organisation. If such groups are not smashed when they are small, they will inevitably grow to a size where they will feel confident enough to attack immigrants, workers’ organisations, etc.”
This is what militants mean by no platform – using all physical and direct action means to prevent fascists from organising and from putting their ideas into practice. It’s not easy and it’s not pretty. But it’s not outdated either, and it willmake them think twice about attacking minorities and make it more difficult for them to recruit and organise.
Below is a post from Libcom – nice bit of theory for the weekend, there are also some interesting comments following the original article, they can be veiwed here.
Some on the liberal end of the anti-fascist movement have argued that “no platform” is dead and free speech the best antidote to the far-right. This argument rears its head time and time again, but it bears shooting down every time.
Today, a Robert Sharp posted a short blog on Liberal Conspiracy to argue against no platform. It is, he argues, “counter-productive” because when fascists have a platform “they expose themselves as incoherent and small-minded, and it gives the rest of us a chance to argue against them.” It’s actually a fairly standard liberal argument.
The reason that it’s more significant right now, at least in Sharp’s view, is that Hope not Hate mouthpiece Nick Lowles has argued similar in a Huffington Postpiece on free-speech:
Quote:
I think you have to look at the mindset at the person behind it. The tweets against Tom Daley were horrible, but some people’s lives are made an absolute misery every day by this abuse. We have to pay that attention.There’s been a long history in the anti-fascist movement of “no platform”, but a lot of those principles have become outdated, because of new technology, people have a platform online.
I’m not going to sign up to a Twitter debate with Griffin, that’s beyond the pale. But at the same time we need to do more to take on their ideas in the blogosphere, there are ideas are out there in swathes. Or we sit on the sidelines, condemn them, and refuse to engage, that’s when we look like the pro-censorship group.
The more controversial things they say, the more attention they get. It’s actually easier with people like Nick Griffin and David Irving. But there’s mainstream hatred of Muslims all over Twitter. We have to be in the argument, expose their ideas.
The genesis of this idea is in the Enlightenment. In essence, in the absence of censorship, all ideas have to be weighed up on their own merits and against one another. Those ideas with no basis in fact and reason are quickly shot down and people latch onto those which carry weight. Pure reason wins out, without any nasty censorship to tip the playing field.
From a militant anti-fascist standpoint, there are two problems with this argument. The first is that the aim of no platform isn’t actually to censor the ideas of the far-right but to prevent them from being put into practice. Which brings us to the second: that we are not merely talking about a “battle of ideas,” here, but the struggle against an ideology built upon violence which means to wipe out its opponents.
Taking on the first point, myself and other militant anti-fascists have explicitly argued on a number of occasions against using the state to get rid of fascism. For example, Tower Hamlets ALARM argued against banning an EDL march in their area two years ago. The reasoning, seemingly obvious, being that if the state gets a mandate to ban political groups or demonstrations, it will not limit itself to the fash.
Quote:
State intervention is a worrying turn, the State stepping in and banning EDL protests is not a sign of a left wing section of the State acting, or even an Islamic element gaining strength, it is a sign of a further move to a totalitarian State. We already have the camps in Yarlswood, thug police that get away with murder and an ever watching State gathering information on us. We don’t need to campaign for them to ban political groups. Today the EDL, tomorrow us.
Even before the march took place, this warning was proven to be remarkably prescient. Rather than ban that one march, the police banned all marches across five boroughs for the whole of September. Conveniently, alongside the EDL this caught out a Disarm DSEi protest against the world’s largest arms fair.
Militant anti-fascists have consistently argued against such bans every time they crop up. Because we believe, with good reason through long experience, that the state is not a reliable proxy for anti-fascism. That is the task of the organised working class, through direct action, something which the liberals who would “reason” with the Nazis baulk at. They baulk because for them the whole thing is an intellectual exercise, and they remain divorced from the reality of struggle against fascism.
It must be said, before moving on, that one element of that struggle is propaganda. Contrary to Lowles’ arguments, militant advocates of no platform don’t “refuse to engage” with fascist ideas but in fact do so in a way that he never would. By arguing against fascism on a class basis, on working class estates, and with the very people the far-right sees as their core recruits.
Because this is a material reality that makes taking of fascism through pure reason nigh-on impossible – class. The far-right, whether in more openly violent form or having traded boots for suits, preys upon the alienation and disenfranchisement of the white working class. We are alienated and disenfranchised because of capitalism, of course, as our communities are torn apart, our jobs go and we struggle to scrape by.
But the system itself uses racism and migration to both divide the class and distract from the real culprits behind our misery, whilst the left is nowhere to be seen. Pretty hard for reason to win out when those offering the wrong answers are the only ones offering answers. Militant anti-fascists do engage and challenge this situation, but it is an uphill struggle we face.
The other side of the coin, in terms of why anti-fascism cannot be boiled down to a battle of ideas is that fascism is an ideology rooted in violence. It is hard to reason with those kicking your head in or gunning you down as you run for your life. And of course it is the white, middle class liberal advocating freedom of speech for Nazis who is least likely to be on the receiving end of such attacks.
Bad ideas ought to be challenged, yes, and giving the state a mandate for repression is a bad idea in any case. However, this is not an argument against no platform but one in favour of it.
If this seems counter-intuitive, it is because outside of militant circles the concept of no platform has been boiled down to simply not letting Nazis air their views. To liberals, this means censorship. In practice, however, no platform is so much more – namely, direct action that prevents fascists from gaining a platform to organise.
This distinction is key. As the Workers Solidarity Movement put it:
Quote:
There is a distinct difference between the right to free speech and the right to organise. Racist comments and ideas should be challenged and opposed, but a distinction must be drawn between this and incitement to violence/active recruitment to fascist organisations. […] Attempts by fascist groups to recruit members to fascism cannot be tolerated by an anarchist organisation. If such groups are not smashed when they are small, they will inevitably grow to a size where they will feel confident enough to attack immigrants, workers’ organisations, etc.
This is what militants mean by no platform – using all physical and direct action means to prevent fascists from organising and from putting their ideas into practice. It’s not easy and it’s not pretty. But it’s not outdated either, and it willmake them think twice about attacking minorities and make it more difficult for them to recruit and organise.