An Open Secret

I am not a fancy writer.
I’m not even going to bother.

There is an open secret in London, and in fact the UK.

The Anarchist Communist Group are soft as fuck on transphobia, it’s members have embedded themselves into transphobic positions politically and they believe the issue of trans rights is secondary to that of working class politics. They offer lip sync solidarity with the issue of the day while in reality making absolutely no real step to improve their understanding or solidarity.

Every involved Anarchist in the UK knows this, and they either loath the ACG, are keenly supportive or simply cannot be arsed with the drama, with a lean either to “fuck them fuckers” or , “meh trans is IDPOL drama.”

They were ousted from the AFED back in 2018 after the shit show that was the London Bookfair 2017. That doesn’t need going into again, but in the fall out, 15 members of the AFED, including all it’s leaders, got together and wrote a statement denouncing (the vocally trans positive) Edinburgh AF’s signing of a statement on the bookfair calling for improvements.

This statement of the soon to be ACG lot was laden with transphobic talking points and dogwhistles. The rest of the membership of the AFED, blew their lid and went mental at them. So they bailed and later set up their own Anarchist group, with CIS people, platformism and so many fucking pamphlets about shit no one cares about.

They went about trashing the name of the AFED as liberals, lifestylers and degenerates in general while the AFED shut it’s gob, doubled down on trans-solidarity and announced it was going to be Intersectional in all it’s matters.

Like bickering school kids they stopped talking to each other and both felt hard done by and with all the self importance of Communist parties went about pretending that they were the big daddy Anarchist org in the UK, even tho in truth the AFED has 100 members and ACG a bakers dozen at that.

ACG went on to make friends with all the other Anarchist orgs after the IAF told them fuck off, nope. In 2019 they went and made up a load of bollocks in their interview with Die Platform, in which they pretend they left AFED because it was getting “big tent” and they simply inherited the “best of” AFED and set out a new without all the scene kids and lifestylers.

https://enoughisenough14.org/2019/05/27/interview-mit-der-anarchist-communist-group-acg-from-the-british-territory/

In April they reissued their “trans-solidarity statement” a mild improvement upon the previous iteration, it still maintains the “we should listen to both sides” dogwhistle, which the 2019 version kept even after two attempts to edit it and cover it up in a layer of waffle.

There is no unity with bigots.

It’s absolutely fucked up and very telling that even now you continue to delude yourself that you hold any solidarity with the trans community when you so keenly point out that you want to work with transphobes in the great endevour of working class anarchism.

Their characterisation of Feminism and Tran-rights as two separate entities’ show how much they’ve drank the terf talking points, but hey, They apparently just want to help transies and the women who hate them get along eh?

Perhaps their new found need to reaffirm the myth that they give two shits is due to their new found bedding of the wider Platformist anarchist scene? Some of whom are absolutely fucking legends others less soo…. for example AWSM, essentially a couple of mates in Aotearoa/New Zealand got their public marching orders on twitter from the Anarchist community when they were outed as TERFS who shared terfy media and when called out, double downed on it. Eventually leaving the platform to get away from all those damn SJWs and their you know, belief in trans rights.

Back to 2020 and they were absent from the London Bookfair, did they even ask to join? Did the LABC tell them to fuck off IDK, I do know that three members of ACG were in a thread with a member of the bookfair collective on Urban75 where the collective member constantly battles open and overt transphobia and none of the ACG bods bothered to pipe in. Accepting the transphobia in their complicit silence.

It’s a bit ofa pattern for them, talking lofty ideas and solidarity while in actuality doing aboslutely jack fucking shit. I suppose it wouldn’t of been “Sensitivity and understanding” to tell the bigot to shut the fuck up… even with one of their classic essays that read like stale Jacob’s crackers.

So despite all this, if you walk into any distro, in the real world and online, you’ll see the ACG shite. Despite massive words of anti-transphobic sentiment from groups like the North East Anarchist Group, they still “follow” them on social media eh.

Heck aside from Full Stop Affinity, no one seems bothered. Ok, so their were a bunch of idiot kids who have to much beef with bus stops and seemed to think FLAF were an on it Anarchist org instead of a loose network of people who like footie and fighting fascists but their’s is the only other real statement I could find addressing ACG’s bullshit and the fact that everyone knows it and stays silent.

https://greenanticapitalist.org/fsa-final-statement/

Take a look on ACG’s Twitter…. LAFA, AFN, FDA, Black Rose, LibCom, It’s Going Down, Plan C, Freedom Press, Solfed, Enough 14, Active all fucking there… pretending like they aren’t complicit in the spread of transphobia within Anarchist circles.

If they were soft of racism you’d rightly kick off, trans-rights tho? Hey fuck it. Let’s listen to both sides, is that really your position? Are you really comfortable just accepting what you know to be lip service solidarity to an issue which is spreading like wildfire and becoming more in bed with the right wing?

Look, I get that it’s uncomfy to be called out, to have your mates questioned and to have to deal with this stuff. Drama is bad, it harms the scene and burns everyone out, but you know what does this more? Casually accepting transphobes and those with a soft and tolerate approach to bigotry.

If the Anarchist scene in the UK wants to be worth a damn at any point, it needs to actually stand up to this shit instead of rolling over coz it’s too much bother. I’m looking at you AFED.

Yours
— Concerned in Clapton