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Recent articles by Anarkismo network
Η πολεμική το&#... Jan 16 17 Χρήσιμες βυζ ... Jan 11 17 The Vision of Revolutionary Anarchism Dec 29 16 Considerations of the Anarkismo network about the accusations against Michael Schmidt![]() ![]() ![]() ![]() The Anarkismo network has already published a statement that it would wait until all parts of the accusations by Reid Ross and Stephens were published, as well as the answers of M. Schmidt, before making any judgements on the case. Now that this has been forthcoming, as well as two more responses by Reid Ross, we are issuing a second statement to make public our intentions regarding the present situation. It is difficult for us to draw definitive conclusions about this case based on the evidence provided so far by both sides. This is because to do so would require translating all the material, accusations and defence, into numerous languages in order to allow debate in each organisation, with organisations then debating each other through their delegates to the Anarkismo network. This is impossible to carry out with our current capacity – especially for organisations with daily militancy and work of social insertion and/or operating under difficult social contexts – without sacrificing other daily activities. However, the accusations against Schmidt are extremely serious and we take the issue of fighting racism and white supremacy as high priority. Therefore, the Anarkismo network has decided to call for a commission of enquiry to investigate more closely both the accusations and the defence, and to make recommendations to the broader anarchist movement based on their findings. As it is well known that Schmidt was a former militant in one of our member organizations and both helped to found and contributed extensively to the anarkismo.net website, it is our intention that the commission should include members of other tendencies and non-affiliated anarchists in order to avoid partiality. |
Front pageSolidaridad y Defensa de las Comunidades Frente al Avance del Paramilitarismo en el Cauca A Conservative Threat Offers New Opportunities for Working Class Feminism De las colectivizaciones al 15M: 80 años de lucha por la autogestión en España False hope, broken promises: Obama’s belligerent legacy Primer encuentro feminista Solidaridad – Federación Comunista Libertaria Devrimci Anarşist Tutsak Umut Fırat Süvarioğulları Açlık Grevinin 39 Gününde Recordando a César Roa, luchador de la caña Prison Sentence to Managing Editor of Anarchist Meydan Newspaper in Turkey American Anarchist and Wobbly killed by Turkey while fighting ISIS in Rojava Attaque fasciste sur la Croix Rousse et contre la librairie libertaire la Plume Noire Red November, Black November – An Anarchist Response to the Election 1986-2016: 30° anniversario di Alternativa Libertaria/fdca El feminismo es cuestión de vida o muerte International | Anarchist movement | Press Release | en Sun 05 Mar, 12:43
This is a solidarity Statement For Rojava from an old group that is reviving itself somewhat: Neither East Nor West-NYC
We are very pleased to be able to congratulate you on the realisation of your First Congress as a specific anarchist political organisation. In light of the disbanding of the Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina we believe that this is a very important step both for our shared especifista tendency as well as for the development of anarchism in general, both in Argentina and the region. The Black Flame blog has just been updated. The blog collates news, views and reviews of Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt's book, "Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism". The Zabalaza Books pages have moved to the new ZB site. On the weekend of 26-27 February 2011, delegates representing organizations from the UK, France, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Ireland and Italy met to discuss how they could work more closely together. [Dansk] [Deutsch] [Italiano] [Ελληνικά] [Nederlands]
In the last few years, Anonymous has gained increasing notoriety for its action against websites, agencies and organizations that promote censorship and control. It has helped spread information and supported protestors demanding freedoms and rights. But the popularity of the movement, the attention it brings along, and the structure it has engendered threaten to push Anonymous away from the decentralized, collective movement it has been. As decisions become more centralized and newcomers jump on the bandwagon, Anonymous risks becoming yet another ineffective reformist group, fueled by well-meaning rethoric but subject to third party interests and paralyzed by its fear of authority... Anarchism & Socialism: Reformism or Revolution? Announce the new Anarchist Platform Archive. The Anarchist Platform Archive is an archive of texts relating to the publishing of the Organisational Platform of the General Union of Anarchists (Draft) by the Group of Russian Anarchists Abroad (“Delo Truda” Group) in 1926. The Black Flame blog has just been updated. The blog collates news, views and reviews of Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt's book, Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism' . As of 7 January 2010 the Zabalaza Books website has just been updated with the following: more >>
Under the title, "The Two Main Trends in Anarchism," a selection of my writings has been published in Greek. ΟΙ ΔΥΟ ΚΥΡΙΕΣ ΤΑΣΕΙΣ ΤΟΥ ΑΝΑΡΧΙΣΜΟΥ. The writings are taken from Anarkismo, except for the following, which was written originally for the new book. It focuses on the centrality of a vision of freedom, cooperation, and happiness in the program of anarchist-socialism.
There are many people from leftists, communists , socialists and some of the anarchists believe that Marxism and Leninism are two different things . They think that Lenin has distorted Marxism. My article here explains with evidence that whatever Lenin said and did have been originated from Marx . It tells you that Marxism has contributed greatly in damaging the socialist/ anarchist movement as much as the rightwing did.
Since 9th of March, across the French territory, an important and combative social-class struggle is taking place against the “labor law” by which the French Government attempts to impose a total restructuring of labor relations. By constant squatting in schools, colleges and public buildings, through reappropriation of public spaces on a daily level, with strikes and sit-ins in factories and in conflict with the forces of repression, French society ‒ especially the youth ‒ holds strong resistance against the attack unleashed by the bosses and the State.
Today’s attack on society is the result of the endless effort made by the state and bosses to transform it into a sweat-shop and a prison. Within conditions of an overall profound systemic crisis and de-legitimation of the political system, this attack is escalating. In the process, it is revealing the incurable contradictions of the state-capitalist organizational structure, as much as the absolute weakness to produce from above any coherent social vision, perspective or hope.
"Africa today lies prostrate, bleeding, and embattled on all fronts, a victim of capitalist and, to a great extent, state socialist ambitions. The heart-rending misery of its peoples, the conditions of abject poverty, squalor and disease in which they live, exist side by side with the wanton luxury, rapacity, and corruption of its leaders." Sam Mbah and I.E. Igariwey, 1997, African Anarchism: The History of a Movement, Sharp Press: Tucson, Arizona. Our vast continent, Africa, is the poorest in the world, host to dozens of wars and conflicts, and marked by instability and inequality. The root causes of the instability lie in political corruption and the profiteering system run by local and international elites. The local ruling classes are interested in making profits and getting wealthy, by any means necessary. The elites are not promoting the development of the working class and peasants (small farmers), but only worsening our conditions. If the choice is between building a road in a poor area or pocketing the money, they will pocket the money. more >>
This is a solidarity Statement For Rojava from an old group that is reviving itself somewhat: Neither East Nor West-NYC
We are very pleased to be able to congratulate you on the realisation of your First Congress as a specific anarchist political organisation. In light of the disbanding of the Federación Anarco-Comunista Argentina we believe that this is a very important step both for our shared especifista tendency as well as for the development of anarchism in general, both in Argentina and the region.
The Black Flame blog has just been updated. The blog collates news, views and reviews of Lucien van der Walt and Michael Schmidt's book, "Black Flame: the revolutionary class politics of anarchism and syndicalism".
The Zabalaza Books pages have moved to the new ZB site.
On the weekend of 26-27 February 2011, delegates representing organizations from the UK, France, Switzerland, Norway, Denmark, Ireland and Italy met to discuss how they could work more closely together. [Dansk] [Deutsch] [Italiano] [Ελληνικά] [Nederlands] more >> |
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Jump To Comment: 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23I applaud the intent to create a broad-based Commission of Inquiry. Four things: 1) i agree that Anarkismo can usefully consider, prior to the commission's seating, questions of scope and methodology. However, it is vital that these considerations/decisions be viewed by all as tentative; the commission itself MUST have carte blanche to define itself, or the commission's work will be vulnerable to suspicion, rendering it worse than useless ; 2) I also feel that the Commission must feature, and be led by, person(s) of acknowledged honesty and impartiality, in addition to being representative, as far as numbers allow, of--excuse the phrase--"the broad anarchist tradition"; 3) I would also urge the possibility that non-anarchists be seated, Seriousness, investigative skills, and impartiality are all FAR more important than that all organizations or tendencies have a chair, or that the commission be anarchist-only…….…4) I recommend Noam Chomsky as the Chair. His analytical skills are second to none, he exhibits even-handedness virtually to a fault; his stature, internationally, is unmatched.
* PDF version: http://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/01/27/michael-schmidt-s...reed/
* MarkDown source: http://pastebin.com/zFsEdJdE
"Strandwolf's Creed" by Michael Schmidt
=======
The Black Battlefront Manifesto
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### Introduction
These are ideological blog posts by prominent anarcho-fascist writer Michael Schmidt from 2010 and 2011. These posts were once published at [strandwolf.blogspot.com](http://strandwolf.blogspot.com) but were taken down by Schmidt in 2015 once his identity as the writer was revealed. Before being outed as a white supremacist, Schmidt was best known for co-authoring the controversial anarchist history [Black Flame](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Flame:_The_Revoluti..._1%29) with longtime friend and collaborator [Lucien van der Walt](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucien_van_der_walt).
"Strandwolf's Creed" is deeply personal, revealing the author's political vision as the product of his proud Afrikaner heritage. Schmidt's outline for Boer progress is steeped in history, providing a racist, elitist, and deterministic view of not only human evolution, but human progress well into the 21st Century. Through his writings as "Strandwolf" (or, early on, "Ardent Vinlander"), Schmidt is building the plan for his movement, a red-brown admixture of anarchism and white power.
Black Battlefront, the militant group fueled by this manifesto, would be the culmination of decades of activism for Schmidt, allowing him to recruit activists into a whites-only organization with aggressive racism at its core (curiously an "anti-racist" concept to the author). Schmidt's calls for racial segregation closely mirror his recommendations for the Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Front (ZACF), revealed in a [leaked internal memo](http://www.pdf-archive.com/2015/10/12/schmidt-memo/schm...o.pdf).
These writings coincide with posts by Schmidt as "Karelianblue" (in the white supremacist Stormfront forums) and "Françoise Le Sueur" (on Facebook), where Schmidt was actively recruiting for Black Battlefront. For background, see Schmidt's posts [here](http://filepi.com/i/S5r9NDz) or [here](http://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/01/26/michael-schmidt-k...t-00/).
"Strandwolf's Creed" has been reassembled for clarity and legibility, but the original text has not been altered (even misspellings and typos have been kept). There are bound to be other minor formatting errors from the OCR/transcribing process; feel free to download the text as [MarkDown](http://pastebin.com) or [PDF](http://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/01/27/michael-schmidt-s...reed/) and fix these bugs.
See screenshots of the original posts, complete with white nationalist imagery, [here](http://filepi.com/i/P2OoSTj) or [here](http://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/01/26/michael-schmidt-a...ront/).
about me
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### White African National-Anarchist
The Strandwolf ("beach wolf") is the brown hyaena found on the lonely Atlantic beaches of the Namib desert: with more powerful jaws and greater stamina than a lion, the hyaena hunt in matriarchal packs and, inverting their clitori, are impossible to rape. They are viewed by the indigenous people as spirit-animals. Strandwolf is the blog of Black Battlefront, an anti-racist revolutionary cadre network of White African politico-social soldiers in Southern Africa who aim at defending our unique culture, under the anarchist black flag! We take our inspiration from militants and cultural warriors of the calibre of Nestor Makhno, Kai Murros, Jim Goad and Troy Southgate. Strandwolf is a ghost in the machine of the African night, a spectral flicker on the shores of the Skeleton Coast, a low-slung hunter on the night-time highway that stretches forever away from the roiling smokes of Johannesburg into the bleach-and-acetate reaches of the platteland where gaunt windpompe scratch stars in the sky.
MY CREED PART I: CONQUEST – by Ardent Vinlander
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### Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 4:48am
1. The white (wo)man is in Africa by conquest. This is inescapable; that gunpowder beats spear, wolves rule over sheep. And yet we are human and not animals, thus we mark our territory not with urine but blood.
2. This right of conquest may not be ethically "right" but it is the forge of history – and the alloy that results, its temper and strength are then set. How we deal with that is both rooted in, and starts, now.
3. The implication is that primitivism, Africanism or any qualified or absolute return to a pre-colonial "state of grace" is impossible. Also clear is that redress and reparations for past wrongs, grievous though they may be, are impossible. Thus may the Herero seek apology from the Germans for genocide, but not redress.
4. And so, only those directly guilty of actual crimes can be held responsible; future generations cannot be made to pay for the "sins of their fathers".
5. The Xhosa nation was a formidable foe – the Battle of Amatola being the supreme example – and it took nine wars to suppress them. The Zulu nation was a formidable foe – the Battle of Isandlwana being the supreme example – but shortly they too were reduced, as others before them. There is no shame in going down fighting to superior forces.
6. Our enemies are not those who fight us in the open, hoping to mark their territory with our blood, but those who rot us from within, corrupting the will.
7. The inescapable lot of the defeated is humility and servitude, but there is no shame in lowly status, for all parts need to function for the good of the whole.
8. Gunpowder and the lash are not in themselves progress, but they disciplined fractious hordes to a common purpose, for the good of the whole.
9. That purpose was civilisation, as the white (wo)man brought electric light, roads, canals, plantations, mines, engines, aircraft, automobiles, schooling, faith – both inspiration and aspiration, without which all peoples go to seed.
MY CREED PART II: CULTURE – by Ardent Vinlander
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### Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 4:51am
1. Cultural identity is not fixed – and often involves "sub-cultural" norms defined by peer group education and experience, locality, dialect and so forth.
2. So there are no cultural absolutes, no "pure" culture. The example of the West African origins of rock 'n roll is evidence of this.
3. And yet cultural identity proves exceptionally strong – determinant of identity, adherence, cleavage, and ultimately of a people's fate.
4. In the age of the Internet and mobile communications, one's "community" is often no longer localised or even restricted to much more than a dialect group or interest group. Thus while some communities are entirely "virtual", others are very much bound by real-time/space.
5. In this period of flux, then, cultural currents and sub-cultural undertows pull in various directions – towards fragmentation and specialisation, the niche, and towards consolidation and universalism, the global.
6. Both are "artificial" to the extent that they are intentionally striven for, yet both are "natural" to the extent that they are instinctually driven.
7. This may manifest both – and often simultaneously – in autarch-individualism and in mob-mentality herd instinct.
8. Culture then cannot be assessed as "reactionary" merely because it seeks to conserve, artificially or naturally, a set of values, beliefs, practices and artefacts. In the same light, a culture cannot be assessed as "progressive" merely because it seeks to change, artificially or naturally, a set of values, beliefs, practices and artefacts.
9. Progress and reaction only have meaning in relation to human rights and ethics, in other words, in relation to the standard of the Golden Rule. But the Golden Rule is rusted by weakness: it allows no place for defensive actions aimed at supporting a culture's right to life, limb and liberty. In other words, ethics need to come armed.
MY CREED PART III: AGGRESSION – by Ardent Vinlander
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### Wednesday, February 17, 2010, 6:00am
1. Aggression is a natural and artificial human capability. In other words, it is both an instinctive fighting mechanism, defending life, limb and liberty – and a conscious defence of higher values, Including territory, beliefs, practices and artefacts.
2. Aggression is not always expressed as violence although it always contains within it the threat of violence – as it is also expressed as territory, authority, ability and consciousness, all of which are a combination of both artificial and natural prerogatives.
3. Natural prerogatives are essentially grounded in biological warfare, the defence of the species and of its ability to survive and propagate, its instinctive motor ability to grasp and shape the physical realm; they are the flint-tipped spears by which our ancient ancestors routed bears from the caves which became our shelters.
4. Artificial prerogatives are essentially grounded in psychological (some would call it spiritual) warfare, the defence of the species' ability to interpret and predict, its learned diagnostic ability to intuit and give shape to our dreams; they are the ochred cave paintings of Lascaux and other Palaeolithic sites
5. The origins of these ingrained prerogatives are shrouded in the emergence of consciousness within the fog of pre-history – those unrecorded centuries of our coming into being.
6. And yet we know that the development of speech, the root of both natural and especially of artificial prerogatives, was driven by the need to communicate defence against the sabre-toothed which stalked our early kind.
7. Forged in the fires of social defence against our racial enemies, speech gave flight to consciousness. Thus was aggression the foundation on which we were able to later erect the flying buttresses of philosophical thought.
8. So equipped with social organisation, communication, the tools of biological and psychological warfare, and higher consciousness, we ascended from the status of animals undifferentiated from the natural landscape to the Colossus which stands astride the world.
9. And yet we retain our binary nature: our feet planted in the soil of our origins, our eyes searching deep into the far reaches of interstellar space, knowing we are not the measure of all things – and yet measuring all things, knowing we conquer by understanding.
10. Thus social aggression is the foundation of our racial consciousness and our racial consciousness is the tool by which we conquer.
MY CREED PART IV: RACE
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### Sunday, September 26, 2010, 2:08am
1. Homo Sapiens Sapiens is the sole survivor of discrete, parallel yet seldom contemporaneous and only sometimes competing human strains of development. It is in reference to this sole survivor that we incorrectly speak of the "human race" which outiasted other proto-human races including the Neanderthals, Homo Erectus and Homo Robustus.
2. And yet the Sapiens Sapiens species is diverse, with its greatest smorgasbord of genes pooled in the great mother-continent of Africa – which by the law of averages should thus have produced its highest levels of cultural diversity, consciousness and civilisation. And yet the brute tribalism that dominates from the Sahara to the Savannah is almost undifferentiated in its suffocating, stultified primitiveness, locked in to ancestor-worship voodoo and unquestioning authoritarianism. Even the physical features of the people have only slightly evolved, producing a narrow range almost entirely represented by the Nilotics and the Bantu.
3. Only the slender archaic haplogroup F strand of this great gene-pool proved adventurous, trekking further afield to leave Africa and establish a unique root-race in what is today the Middle East. It is from this root-race that the greatest physical-cultural diversity of the world emerged, from the blackest Papuan headhunters, to the reddest Pictish warriors.
4. These incredibly diverse haplogroup populations were differentiated by hundreds of thousands of years of genetic adaptation, mutation, in a word, evolution. The result was the great racial gene-pools of what would today be recognised as Asiatics, Native Americans, Australasians, South Asians – and our own race, the Europeans, in particular represented by the haplogroups R1a, R1b, and I1.
5. Each race is uniquely adapted to their environmental conditions, in other words, they have a genetic connection to the landscapes within which they developed. This is expressed in terms of the race's physique: stocky build, black skin, brown eyes and broad noses for the Aborigines of arid Australasia; tall build, white skin, pale eyes and narrow noses for the Nordics of icy Scandinavia. And it is also expressed in terms of culture: the Aboriginal cave paintings of Ayers Rock have the same function as the Cro Magnon cave paintings of Lascaux, the interpretation of the natural-physical world in spiritual-psycological terms; these expressions tie the race to the landscape, a landscape which very directly gave rise to their racial form; thus each modern race has a natural ancestral homeland.
6. Neccesity is indeed the mother of invention. The extreme environments into which proto-Europeans wandered demanded the utmost of their ingenuity, skill, cunning and inventiveness. We presume there were proto-Europeans who also tried to sit on their bums drinking maize-beer watching the women work, but that they were wiped out in their first winter. And yet we still find "21st Century Hunter-gatherers" – derived from the same root-race as the Europeans – who have clearly not been pressed by circumstance to evolve over the past 10,000 years; no hoes, no millet, no necessity, no invention.
7. Some of the tension in forming civilisations arises between sedentaries (those who build settlements, based on agricultural surplus), and nomads (who at the most, drive cattle). But there is a clear distinction between the wandering Vikings who built ships and roamed far and wide for plunder and women – establishing settlements with permanent structures and a written culture along the way in many cases, and the African herdsmen who simply chase the seasons from waterhole to waterhole. In other words, the Viking was never a true nomad.
8. Africans did build tribal-militarist kingdoms with some elements of civilisation and some attempt at building large-scale settlements: Ashante, Ulundi, Great Zimbabwe etc. But although the Portuguese, on first arriving in West Africa in the 1500s, treated the local king as equal because they had a standing army, a form of "university" and a bureaucracy, the West Africans had fallen from that quasi-Medieval state into savagely warring factions by the time European civilisation penetrated the interior – and never recovered.
9. So "Medieval" is the closest that blacks have come to civilisation, while some still today languish 10,000 years behind the Europeans who gave Africa its science, industry, infrastructure, education, medicine and large-scale agriculture, most of it fallen into terrible disrepair under black rule since the late 1950s. In order to, if not forestall this decay, at least build the bulwarks of a white redoubt strong enough to stand against this darkling tide, we require organisation.
MY CREED PART V
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_Editor's Note: There is no post with this title in known screenshots of strandwolf.blogspot.com. Keeping this placeholder in case the text surfaces._
MY CREED PART VI: NATIONAL-ANARCHISM
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### Tuesday, November 16, 2010, 9:54am
1. The form of organisation worst suited to the creation of intelligently-run, ergonomic, environmentally sustainable, progressive, innovative white communities is statist capitalism, capitalism because it is an alien Judeo-Christian system which lives parasitically off the social wealth created by all races, the white foremost among them, and statism because it is the armoured claw of the parasites, the enforcer of the inequality which keeps the majority of our people poor.
2. Previous forms of organisation aimed at creating a whole society have failed dismally, especially grand apartheid and its British, Dutch, and Afrikaner predecessors. The apartheid state was a corruption of white rule not only because of the abominable, inhuman way in which it treated its black neighbours – but because it lived parasitically off the white working class which it employed as its ultimately disposable enforcers of minority elite privilege. Likewise, white separatism such as the Orania project which are merely this system in miniature, are anathema to us, as is self-defeating white terrorism such as the Wit Wolve, devoid as it is of ethics or strategic thinking.
3. The form of organisation best suited to the creation of a white society of recognisably human and humane form is revolutionary anarchism, a progressive socio-political form which eschews the reactionary reinforcement of white supremacist state/capitalist oppression and exploitation, and which also avoids the pitfalls of either precipitate, terroristic adventurism or the seductions of a retreat into an unattainable mystical past – a form that boldly attacks privilege and parasitism on all fronts, the sweeping, multidimensional battlespace.
4. And the form of revolutionary anarchism that best suits the construction of an alternate, autogestive white society is one that draws on an eclectic set of principles derived from various leading-edge traditions. From Jim Goad we take the sensibility of a combative working class mentality that is plainspoken and honest. From Nestor Makhno we take the military-tactical lessons of locating ourselves within the heartlands of our communities, and of being internally of one mind yet externally pluralistic in our alliances. From Troy Southgate we take the metapolitical lessons of our spiritual-psychological ties to the landscape of Africa, land we won by right of conquest.
5. These ideological wellsprings enable us to ground our battle in an actual physical and mental space. An in order to be truly grounded, we need to be scrupulously egalitarian and what this means in the southern African battlespace is that we are compelled to judicially recognise the right of white anarchists and black anarchists to establish their own separate, culturally-distinct formal organisations and informal networks. For while African revolutionary anarchists, by the rationale of even the Bolshevik-tainted international anarchist movement, it is entirely legitimate to establish separate white anarchist organisations, based on the following three points:
6. Our status as a demographic / cultural minority (in the US that means blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Native Americans, but here it means whites, Asians, Coloureds and Indigenous). This might refer to a group being a minority in a specific geographic locality but also relates to white cultural hegemony which obviously no longer obtains in terms of primary cultural indicators such as the content of national public broadcasters. Secondary cultural indicators, such as the wearing of Western dress by most blacks, is not, however, evidence of the survival of white hegemony.
7. Our status as a vulnerable group. Here the driving factors range from the declining white population (about 500,000 white South Africans have emigrated since 1994, while fertility rates also decline), to the economic status, the class, of the white population group. According to a 2009 Unisa study, 1.5-million out of 4 million whites are poor, often unemployed, working class, another 1.8-million are in the better paid skilled section of the working class. Only 423,000 are middle class and only 310,000 are wealthy. This points to the necessity, with 3,3-million whites in the working class or unemployed underclass, of organising primarily among those classes.
8. Our status as a group suffering judicial or extrajudicial discrimination. Here the factors include the wave of largely unrecognised race-hate crimes against the farming community, especially in Zimbabwe and South Africa, and of course race-discriminatory legislation aimed at curbing the socio-economic mobility of whites, again marked in those two countries in particular.
9. So, in order to organise as a legitimate social-revolutionary force, grounded in southern African realities, and to fight in an ethically-armed, community-grounded manner against the extinction of the remnants of our hard-won geographic and cultural conquests in Africa, we form a revolutionary "black" (ie: anarchist) organisation, to engage on the multidimensional battlefront: Black Battlefront.
MY CREED PART VII: HEARTLAND
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### Sunday, April 17, 2011, 6:20am
1. In order for the Aryan African working class to adequately defend itself against its enemies, it is first necessary to define our territory and to be explicit about who those enemies are. Though the demographic demon of black genetic propagation is our acknowledged primary threat and challenge to our foothold on the continent, black people per se are not our enemies. In fact, in order to adequately argue in the court of international opinion our right to self-determination requires that we fundamentally acknowledge the black's equal right to those parts of Africa that they in turn won by right of conquest, however defined.
2. This in turn requires a Swiss-like cantonal policy of armed neutrality, of watchful good-neighbourliness, which will allow black and Aryan Africans to live peaceably according to their own separate traditions, in their agreed territories, and where necessary, naturally to conduct cordial, if not fraternal, bilateral diplomatic and commercial relations in an anti-imperialist fashion.
3. So then, who are our enemies? They include the propagators of abstraction: Jesus, Mohammed, Freud and other progenitors of the idea of an invisible, voodoo power that knows better than we, the living biological distillation of millions of years of real, hardcore survivalist evolution. This includes post-modernists like Deboard, zero-sum fanatics like Pol Pot and other obfuscators of real life as lived by real people. These enemies obscure clear thought among Aryan people.
4. The propagators of guilt: Mandela, Fanon, King, Guevara and other debasers of Aryan culture – plus their liberal media and marketing hacks, who push this crippling dogma via their footholds in insecure Western institutions of debased learning and culture. This includes feminists, Maoists and others who deny the right of conquest – and its uplifting, civilising mission. These enemies sap our will by denying our unassailable centuries of cultural, military, scientific and economic achievement.
5. The propagators of parasitism: Stalin, Rothschild, Oppenheimer, Rupert, Sexwale and other drum-majorettes of the capitalist dysfunction whereby the hard-working, honest majority in the Occident (most often Aryan) is regularly dispossessed by non-productive Oriental elements (sometimes Semitic – both Arab and Jew). This includes investment bankers and all supra-national expressions of parasitic, non-productive greed, usury and outright robbery of the public purse.
6. And in dispossessing our enemies, what then should our territory be? Our territories can historical be defined in numerous ways, and many resconstructionist projects look towards the old Boer Republics of the Transvall and Orange Free State – but these agrarian cultures have long been lost to British imperialism and their local comprador lackeys, swallowed up by liberal, multicultural industrialisation. Not that we reject industrialisation, but rather its deleterious effects: the compound system of impressed immigrant labour, the deliberate creation of a black underclass to undercut already slender white working class gains.
7. We can rather lay claim to the western portions of the Old Cape and its hinterland, settled from 1652: from Cape Town as far east as Graaf-Reinet, sweeping northwards to embrace the Karoo and Kalahari and further, across the Orange River into Old German South-West Africa, as far north as the Karas region's northern boundary and as far west as Lüderitz. Surrendering the gold- and coal-mining, industrial and financial heartland plus the eastern ports, farms and plantations to majority-black South Africa would nevertheless leave us with a coherent territory, predominantly Afrikaans-speaking, with a white and coloured majority, of hardy seafaring and farming folk, whose economic strength rests on the civil port of Cape Town, on wine and fruit growing, on diamond-mining, tourism, clothing mills, fishing, game and sheep farming, with its own university, hospitals and tertiary institutions, navy, air force, press, broadcasters and unique cultural traditions stretching back three and a half centuries.
8. But it is insufficient to simply lop off this historical Aryan African heartland: its civil, judicial, legislative and military powers must be decentralised to District level, all Districts to be federated horizontally and to be administered by regularly rotated, immediately-recallable delegates narrowly delegated by quarterly plenary District Conventions whereby residents hold all executive decision-making powers. And all Districts shall gather their delegates annually or as often as required to form a Convention of Districts which shall be narrowly mandated to decide on matters of national importance.
9. On the national question, while all black and Asian residents of the territory shall automatically be deemed without prejudice to be foreigners, most of the blacks presumed to be South African citizens, all Aryan, Coloured and Bushman residents of proven Old Cape / Karras heritage shall automatically be citizens, with preferred residency and citizenship offered to Aryans of any origin, provided that the four historic towns of Stellenbosch (1679), Franschhoek (1687), Swellendam (1743) and Graaf-Reinet (1786) be reserved exclusively for Aryans, and that each District Convention have the right to decide on racial zones of use and exclusion.
Appendix
-----------
### More strandwolf.blogspot.com posts by Michael Schmidt
1. Ode to a Dying Race (Saturday, February 13, 2010, 2:25am)
* http://www.youtube.com/thisissaga#p/a/f/1/1EQeR3nbO2k
2. Strandwolf is back in action! (Sunday, September 16, 2007, 3:36am)
* "mas vale morir de pie que vivir de rodillas! it is better to die on your feet than to live on your knees!" – praxedis guerrero, mexico, (1882-1910) killed while lighting the fuse on the mexican revolution, aged 28
3. Platform of the Anarchist Communists of Bulgaria, 1945
* check this out – this is the real deal! _Editor's note: The text that follows originates from [anarchistplatform.wordpress.com](https://anarchistplatform.wordpress.com/2010/04/21/plat...1945/)_
He's got far better things to do than sit on a commission that can't see the forest for the trees...
if I had to guess however, he'd either reject the invitation or take a quick glance at the pile of evidence out there and condemn Schmidt. he identifies and brushes off wackadoos, extremists, and charlatans pretty quickly.
Schmidt has already been condemned and banned by Anarchist Affinity, a website he was published at. It took them a few paragraphs to explain what is plainly obvious. See it here: http://www.anarchistaffinity.org/2015/11/motion-regardi...midt/
What is the need for a commission? For vile inexcusable racism? Amongst other things, Schmidt has:
(1) Written a deeply racist memo signed in his own name, and which he now says he was asking "difficult" but "politically incorrect" and said the memo was not racist minus a few sentences but actually "objected" to the non-incusion of blacks -- absolute nonsense. The memo is 7 pages which calls for a "distinct" white anarchist movement in SA, that if blacks "merge" or "blend" with whites this will "debase" the ideas of white anarchists, that they lack "discipline", and that if they can participate in the anarchist movement, it should only be on terms that whites "establish for them". The memo was deeply racist start to finish, and Schmidt denied that, instead pretending it had some racist comments and was actually inclusive of blacks.
(2) Schmidt's Creed, a manifesto published above (http://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/01/27/michael-schmidt-s...reed/) is a long racist screed written just 2 years after Schmidt's racist ZACF memo was rejected. This calls for a white-dominated white power Boerstaat in the Western Cape, and mixes together eugenics and fascism. He also actively tried to recruit white anarchists and Stormfront members to join his Black Battlefront "militant" group. Schmidt attempted to delete this after Ross-Stephens discovered it.
(3) Schmidt has repeatedly incited both violence and hatred on Stormfront. This includes telling white supremacists across the world to "flood" the World Cup and fly fascist neo-Nazi symbols (Lebensrune, Boer) on flags and wear them on shirts. Many Stormfront white supremacists are dangerous, some have been convicted of murdering people of color, and the Stormfront members where Schmidt posted spoke of the possibility of murder and race riots breaking out at the World Cup. Schmidt deleted his incitement to fascist white supremacist "flooding" the World Cup after Ross-Stephens discovered it.
Schmidt also created a new thread on Stormfront in 2009 calling for the brutal assassination of Zuma.
(4) Schmidt has and lied about his Nazi tattoo, a Lebensrune, pictured clearly on his left shoulder in Ross-Stephens (Chapter 2). In his bio, Schmidt says he has "NO racist tattoos", lists them, but leaves off the Lebensrune, and then pretends Ross-Stephens were talking about his "printer's mark" on his left shoulder, which he tells us is "not a runic tattoo", as if the printer's mark, not the Nazi Lebensrune, were the runic tattoo in question.
The Lebensrune is widely used on neo-Nazi flags (ex http://www.crwflags.com/fotw/flags/us%7Dnalln.html), by Stormfront white supremacist fascists, and Schmidt told South Africans to display it at the World Cup. It is one of a handful of symbols listed on Wikipedia under "Nazi symbols" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_symbols). Schmidt thinks he can get away with displaying it in public because, he explains on Stormfront, most non-white-supremacists (what he calls "dumbass darkies") don't recognize it, as it is not a Swastika! His Scythian chieftain tattoos and symbols are also shared white supremacist symbols on Stormfront (ex https://www.stormfront DOT org/forum/t256629/) yet he got them while he was on Stormfront. We know this because his bio defense shows a picture of his bare arms in 2008 without the tattoos yet inked.
(5) Schmidt lies and creates fantastic explanations time and again. His lie about his tattoo is a slap in the face. contradicting his own timelines and explanations (is Ardent Vindlander is his avatar? A person he met? Ardent Smith? etc) and basing claims on sickness and a secret private intelligence agent he cannot name.
There is more to pour on if you go through the extraneous details (his editor's denial, etc). What can ever be the justification for any of this? You need to form a "commission" to condemn vitriolic racism?
This is deeply damaging to blacks and people of color, Anarkismo, and the anarchist left. Anarkismo's inability to take a stand against this nasty racism as if a commission is shameful and an insult to people of color.
EDIT: *This is deeply damaging to blacks and people of color, Anarkismo, and the anarchist left. Anarkismo's inability to take a stand against this nasty racism as if a commission is needed is shameful and an insult to people of color.
As one of the commenters mentions above this is a insult to people of color. Can't believe it's necessary to say on a supposed anarchist website -- #BlackLivesMatter
- White racist thugs and killers have a history of using Apartheid flags and images. Recently Dylann Storm Roof the South Carolina shooter http://qz.com/431703/emerging-details-about-the-apprehe...ions/
- Schmidt uses the same Apartheid flag as Roof but in the shape of an upsidedown cross in the first page of the Creed pasted above - http://picpaste.com/apartheid_flag-ghyoi5lY.png
- Schmidt threatens AK with a "whipping" in one of his responses to the takedown of his books, with a photo of him and a table full of guns and grenades. Also the exact same photo he used in his stormfront profile page -
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*uO68qoruvekjMErTLRodqg.png
https://d262ilb51hltx0.cloudfront.net/max/800/1*y03GFwAE6i8ZjFFNs-R6nQ.jpeg
- Schmidt talks about defending his neighborhood from "kaffirs" including an incident with a knife -- "vicious, curved Gurkha kuki" -- that he bragged about on facebook with a photo - https://medium.com/@rossstephens/about-schmidt-how-a-white-nationalist-seduced-anarchists-around-the-world-chapter-2-1849e232b943#.nlha0n1kt
- There are just too many references to weapons and racehate and violence against blacks to mention. Should be more than enough to convince any nonracist viewer of Schmidt's racism - http://filepi.com/i/S5r9NDz http://www.pdf-archive.com/2016/01/26/michael-schmidt-k...t-00/
- The world cup incident, the talk of necklacing -- ugly, nasty Apartheid era execution by fire, the constant talk of gathering other white supremacist veterans into a militant group..THIS GUY IS FUCKING DANGEROUS.
- Now add that to the outward racism in the 2008 ZACF memo, the Creed above, and all of the rest of the evidence compiled..why the need for a Commission? At the very least condemn the racism -- it's FACT that not even Schmidt loyalists are defending. Except perhaps the white Afrikaner Lucien Van Der Walt under his fake name on the internet defending that Neo-Nazi tattoo......
? accusation without proof?
here ya go: http://pastebin.com/JQ3qf7Vm
As a step toward transparency and "avoiding partiality" it would be great to see Anarkismo.net release the two (or more?) articles which Schmidt intended to publish here but were rejected. One we know was "Menace in Europe" a reference to the 2007 Muslim-bashing book by Claire Berlinski -mainly fueled by the wave of fear surrounding the 2005 riots outside Paris. From what we know, Schmidt was trying to warn us about the current wave of mostly-Arab migrants; such a "warning" is xenophobic and Islamophobic in the extreme.
Anyways, the author intended those works to be published and likely assumed they would be. I see no reason why Anarkismo should not release them and any others -except for fear of what such transparency might reveal; perhaps a lot about Anarkismo itself, its editorial process, and its failure to denounce outward racism/violence/etc.
I won't forget to ask again when/if the commission forms and I know others are concerned about those articles too.
http://www.ainfos.ca/en/
Am I missing something? Or not submitted for some reason?
feed is prob slower to a-infos those latest articles are from Wed. But keep an eye on it over next few days and see.
I think my title says it all.
Schmidt has the same Scythian chieftan tattoos as white supremacists on Stormfront
https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t256629-2/
https://medium.com/@rossstephens/about-schmidt-how-a-white-nationalist-seduced-anarchists-around-the-world-chapter-2-1849e232b943#.6fwsdvz89
Hopefully this can add a little clarity on this matter. Black Rose/Rosa Negra is part of the Anarkismo network and has been active in the discussions around these very serious accusations. Whatever our misgivings on the form and manner of how this was conveyed many of us see strong merit in what was raised and the significance of this to the international anarchist movement. We have supported an international commission as way to make an effective and collective determination that can be widely respected instead of being dismissed as partial for or against MS.
As to why this is even needed can be answered fairly easily: anarkismo is a multilingual network (majority non-English) and are spread over several continents. We are not a single group that exists in one city and all speak the same language. Therefore decisions take a fair amount of time. Further, MS is not a member or participant in any activities of member orgs so many do not see this as a burning issue that could cause active harm or put individuals in danger.
Hello.
This is Lucien van der Walt. In early December 2015, I posted several times online, under a once-well-known name I used to use, Red.Black.Writings, on the Schmidt issue. I had resolved not to post or debate online at all, but I got emotional.
I apologise sincerely and unreservedly for engaging the issues under the Red.Black.Writings identity without clearly identifying it as mine. I should have done so, from the start. I am sorry if it was misleading. I acted emotionally, and without care. I am truly sorry. I didn’t create the Red.Black.Writings identity to engage on the Schmidt issue (it has been around for years, and is fairly well-known as mine), and I was posting on a board where pretty much no-one uses their real names. But that does not excuse me.
In these posts I argued that Schmidt’s reply was pretty strong, and that his critics were missing some of its key claims, being a bit selective when using evidence (for example, skipping over Schmidt’s anarchist tattoos, highlighting instead a runic tattoo), not always considering other explanations, and so on. This was soon after Schmidt posted his second reply.
There was one positive outcome of this unhappy experience: I found some of the replies to my points difficult to answer. I left the board because I needed to think these through. I haven’t posted there since.
The fact is that I was forced to do some serious reflection by the exchanges, to recognise more problems in Schmidt’s actions and arguments (as my fuller statement, which I will post now, shows, while I continue to have a range of reservations about the Reid-Ross and Stephens arguments and actions, I have a range of reservations about Schmidt’s too).
I don’t particularly like the way many online debates about the Schmidt affair have been conducted, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize important points when they are made.
Anyway, I am deeply sorry. I am also sorry it has taken so long to reply, but I have stayed away from online debates on the Schmidt issue since mid-December.
Finally, I will be posting a fuller statement on the Schmidt affair after this message, called “Personal statement on the Michael Schmidt affair: Lucien van der Walt, 11 February 2016."
Apologies, again.
Yours sincerely,
Lucien van der Walt, Makana, South Africa, 11 February 2016
Personal statement on the Michael Schmidt affair: Lucien van der Walt, 11 February 2016
Many people have asked me to comment on the Schmidt affair, and to those who wrote to me, I said I would comment after all the articles were out, and after all Michael Schmidt’s replies were out. Those following the affair will know it centres on the claim that Schmidt was, from at least 2002, some sort of racist right-winger or fascist working inside the anarchist movement – a charge Schmidt has denied.
Now that what looks to be the final instalment in the series of seven articles by Alexander Reid-Ross and Joshua Stephens has appeared (24 December 2015), and that it seems Schmidt is not issuing a third reply to them (he did two in 2015), I have tried to put pen to paper to comment.
And I have found it very difficult.
The reasons are quite simple. I have mixed feelings, I am unsure what to think. I want to reach a final position, and have tried to do my best to hear all sides of the story, not just those that fit what I initially thought. My views have shifted over time, they shift daily.
I have problems with the actions and arguments of Reid-Ross and Stephens, but I also have problems with the actions and arguments of Schmidt.
I find it difficult to reconcile the Michael Schmidt I saw, with the statements he has admitted to posting online under fake personas. These include comments on boards, as well as what appears to be a longer manifesto, called the “Strandwolf’s Creed.”
I find those online statements to be deeply abhorrent, shocking – no matter what reason is given to explain them, in their own right they are just awful. I completely distance myself from those statements. They embody racist and fascist positions that I find appalling, and that I have opposed consistently, for decades, to the best of my abilities – and let me stress here that, despite my ethnic background, I reject Afrikaner nationalism, in all its forms, as an essentially reactionary current. The “Strandwolf’s Creed,” posted under one of Schmidt’s online fake personas, had clearly racist and fascist content, I reject it entirely. I also believe some of the online posts by these personas were inflammatory and irresponsible, going beyond, in my view, the ethics of journalism and social research.
I also completely reject a document that Schmidt authored in his own capacity, and circulated in 2008 in the South African anarchist political group, Zabalaza/ ZACF, called “Politico-Cultural Dynamics …” I was not part of that organisation at the time. I was not party to the discussions in Zabalaza over it. When I checked later, Zabalaza’s records showed that the organisation rejected the text, and that Schmidt recanted its worst formulations as “bordering on racism,” in 2008. Many years later, when I was informed of this text for the first time, by someone else, I asked Schmidt about it: he stated that he wrote it when disillusioned and burned-out, and that he distanced himself from it. But no matter what his intentions and situation may have been when he wrote it, I think it’s an irredeemable and unacceptable text.
Schmidt’s core defense of the right-wing online statements and the “Creed” that he posted under false personas has been that the statements emphatically did not reflect his real views, but were as fake as the personas he created online. So he says that his online statements (through these personas) were certainly and definitely racist and fascist – but insists that they are inventions, used cynically as part of an undercover investigation into the radical white right, first as a journalist, and then for research towards a book called “Global Fire.” His real views, he insists, are those expressed in a long history of progressive and left-radical political work, and a social life, that locates him firmly in the camp of the country’s black working class.
Reid-Ross and Stephens argue, on the other hand, that Schmidt’s online statements through his various online right-wing personas are far too consistent with elements of his public persona and writings, and far too offensive, to be explained away as simply part of a research project. They also argue against the undercover-journalism defense on the grounds that he has, they insist, produced little in the way of research outputs as a result.
Versions of these claims and counter-claims have been in circulation for some time, at least back into 2011, in some circles. But never as detailed and extensive as now: it is only with Reid-Ross and Stephens’ articles, and the two Schmidt replies, that a fuller picture has started to emerge.
Where does the truth of the matter lie? Does it lie with one or other of the two main narratives that have been put forward? Does it fit uneasily with both?
Right now, I find it difficult to reach definite conclusions.
I was deeply disappointed to read, in Schmidt’s two replies to his accusers, his frank admission that he had not only concealed his claimed undercover journalism from Zabalaza and others for years – and it was even worse, to learn, from those replies, that he had continued to conceal the full scope of his online activities and personas even when he was confronted by Zabalaza and others, including me, from 2011.
I do think that there are important elements of the claims by Reid-Ross and Stephens that have not been clearly addressed by Schmidt’s replies. These are some examples. One is the claim Schmidt has a runic tattoo on one arm, of a symbol associated with the white radical right, and that he got this to signify a radical right position. Another is the allegation that he voted for the Afrikaner nationalist Freedom Front Plus in South Africa’s 2009 general elections. A third is the argument that some of his journalistic articles in the mainstream press show sympathies with the white radical right.
On the other hand, there are important elements of Schmidt’s replies that have not been adequately addressed by Reid-Ross and Stephens, in their responses. These are some examples. One is the claim Reid-Ross and Stephens skip over Schmidt’s tattoos that are clearly anarchist, like an Anarchist Black Cross tattoo, ignoring evidence that does not neatly fit. Another is the allegation that at least one of the major statements they attribute to Schmidt does not actually appear in the text they cite. A third is the argument that, even now, they have not engaged with the bulk of what Schmidt has written, skipping three of five books, various anarchist pamphlets, and most of the many hundreds of articles he’s written, anarchist as well as journalistic. A fourth claim is that they have acted at odds with journalistic ethics, interviewing with Schmidt under false pretenses, not giving him a right-of-reply before publication, displaying overt personal hostility, and making dubious claims to, for instance, treat the fact Schmidt had a black wife and friends as irrelevant, even damning.
Now, let me be clear. I hope that there are simple explanations, from both sides, for all these concerns. I really hope so. I’d like to see all these issues addressed, by both sides. I am not taking sides, because I am not sure what to think.
Well, that’s where I am today, unsure, with reservations about both Schmidt and Reid-Ross and Stephens, in turmoil, not sure how to proceed and hoping for the issues to be resolved.
I have tried to think through the issues, vacillated, changed my mind. Sometimes I have acted emotionally and foolishly – for which I apologize sincerely and unreservedly.
In early December 2015, for example, I posted a several times online, under a once-well-known name I used to use, Red.Black.Writings. I had resolved not to post or debate online at all, but I got emotional. This was soon after Schmidt posted his second reply. In these posts I argued that Schmidt’s reply was pretty strong, and that his critics were missing some of its key claims, being a bit selective when using evidence (for example, skipping over Schmidt’s anarchist tattoos, highlighting instead a runic tattoo), not always considering other explanations, and so on.
I apologise sincerely and unreservedly for engaging the issues under the Red.Black.Writings identity without clearly identifying it as mine. I should have done so, from the start. I am sorry if it was misleading. I acted emotionally, and without care. I am truly sorry. I didn’t create the Red.Black.Writings identity to engage on the Schmidt issue (it has been around for years, and is fairly well-known as mine), and I was posting on a board where pretty much no-one uses their real names. But that does not excuse me.
There was one positive outcome of this unhappy experience: I found some of the replies to my points difficult to answer. I left the board because I needed to think these through. I haven’t posted there since. The fact is that I was forced to do some serious reflection by the exchanges. I was forced to recognise more problems in Schmidt’s arguments. While I continue to have reservations about the Reid-Ross and Stephens arguments, I have, let me state it again, reservations about Schmidt’s arguments.
I don’t particularly like the way many online debates about the Schmidt affair have been conducted, but that doesn’t mean I can’t recognize important points when they are made.
To understand the emotional side of the issues, and my conflicted views, let me say something on a personal level: I have known Michael Schmidt for a long time, since the mid-1990s; I was in radical groups with Schmidt from 1995 until about ten years ago, 2007; and I was in contact with him when he got divorced in 2007, and burned-out, ill and depressed from 2008.
Also around ten years ago, my main written collaboration with Schmidt took place. This was, of course, the book “Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism.” Although “Black Flame” appeared in print in 2009, it was largely written in 2005-2006, the proofs for correction arriving late 2007. I was the primary author.
It was an effort at a global, non-Eurocentric account of mainstream anarchist and syndicalist history and theory – one with flaws, certainly, but one with many strengths too. The book went for peer-review, at my insistence, and no reviewer then, or critic later, made any allusion to right-wing themes in the book. Those who criticized the book tended to take issue with its stress on class-struggle, or its definition of anarchism.
Schmidt’s lengthy (second) reply to Reid-Ross and Stephens reminded me of his track record as an activist-writer, and reflected the person I saw. I saw a long history of non-racial action, and dedication to a black working class-based anarchism, which I find difficult just to forget. The Schmidt I saw dedicated a great part of his life to anarchism and syndicalism, in his writings, militancy and daily life. This is the Schmidt that many people, in South Africa and worldwide saw, not just me, a man involved in unions, protests, agitation, and radical publishing.
And in this long period, Michael Schmidt never expressed to me the sorts of views that Reid-Ross and Stephens insist he has held since at least 2002. I never saw him politically active in ways that suggested a radical right-wing agenda. I never saw, in any draft of what became “Black Flame,” or in the drafts that I saw of its successor “Global Fire” (which have been written by Schmidt), the sorts of views critics claim Schmidt has long held. Even when he was grappling, from 2007, with personal demons, job issues, divorce, and general disappointment, he did not express such views to me.
I also never saw the sort of manipulative, duplicitous and aggressive personality described by the Reid-Ross and Stephens’ articles, or some of the anonymous sources they cited. And again, I am not alone in this.
In the long period I have known Schmidt, we have had many disagreements on many issues, including political ones, but the side of himself he showed to me was always that of a pretty standard class-struggle anarchist.
But I say “showed to me,” very deliberately, because I knew his writing and research and militancy basically through his public anarchist and anarchist-related writings and activities in the 1990s and 2000s.
Our interaction was around left-radical projects. Sometimes I worked with him as a co-author. Sometimes he asked for feedback on drafts, on the understanding that he bore final responsibility for their content. I can’t say I followed his newspaper pieces articles very closely. And of course, he was his own man, and he did not run everything by me, as if I was his editor or commissar. Many of his articles I only saw after they were published – I can recall some I hotly rejected, including one on the late, unlamented Eugene Terre’blanche.
And I say “showed to me,” deliberately, because obviously a person can have different sides, not all visible. While I can say the Schmidt I saw seemed the genuine article, I can’t claim I saw every part of Schmidt, I can’t claim that I saw everything he said or did. But if he had another political persona, it was not shown to me.
And I say “showed to me,” deliberately, because the Reid-Ross and Stephens articles have drawn to my attention to a body of materials of which I was not previously aware, and made some criticisms about Schmidt’s explanation for his online fake personas that do need to be addressed – as I have indicated earlier.
And I also say “showed to me,” deliberately, because Schmidt did not inform me he was creating fake online personas, never shared with me the texts he posted through such personas, nor did he state to me and others in the 2000s that he was undertaking a claimed undercover-journalism / research on the radical white right. It’s not just that I did not see all of Schmidt: this activity, at least, was specifically kept under wraps by Schmidt.
It was in early 2011 that Zabalaza was informed, by other sources, that Schmidt was operating false personas on radical white right sites and showing affinities to the radical right. Schmidt had left Zabalaza a year before. I was not in Zabalaza, so I do not know all the details or the exact dates of this informing. I was soon approached by a member of Zabalaza about the matter, and I replied that Zabalaza needed to deal with the issue firmly, and confront Schmidt.
Zabalaza did confront Schmidt in 2011 – as did I, in my own capacity – and he was confronted about these issues several times subsequently. His reply was always roughly the same as that he still maintains, that the fake personas were for undercover research purposes, and emphatically did not represent his real views. Remember also that he had rejected “Politico-Cultural Dynamics …” in 2008, so this matter was not brought into the discussion.
For my part, I took Schmidt’s explanation at face value, based on the Schmidt I knew, and the record of action, that I saw. And based, I must admit, on the fact I respected, trusted and liked him.
Maybe I am naïve, but I have been guided by a belief in human decency, and a trust in people, based on what I have experienced directly. When I express reservations about the case against Schmidt, it does not come from a stubborn effort to see only one side of the story, or to defend anything and everything that Schmidt may have ever done. It does not come from an effort to cover up. It certainly does not come from any sympathy for noxious views or from any hidden agenda.
Yet I warned Schmidt, on these occasions, that if there was substance to the claims that he had was affiliated to the radical white right he would face ostracism and lose friends, that people who did not like him would also actively try to ruin him.
And if now, after all, there is indeed substance to the claims, I and many other will feel deeply betrayed by him, and how he turned his back on his anarchist writings and militancy.
Where to now?
I understand that there is a non-partisan anarchist and syndicalist commission being called to look into the Schmidt affair.
Maybe that can lead to some resolution. Maybe the commission can help anarchism and syndicalism globally think through how to deal with matters like the Schmidt affair in a more constructive, comradely and movement-building manner.
And maybe, in the process, people can consider just what they want to achieve in affairs like this.
There will probably never be a consensus on this case, and people will need to decide how they deal with difference here, and how to move beyond what has become a very vitriolic debate, including insults, smears, and even hate-mail.
For me, for now, my feelings are mixed, my mind not made up, my emotions in turmoil, and my path unclear. I know some people want me to make a clearer statement, but this is where I am right now. Unsure.
So, for now, I wait. I wait for the commission, I discuss with comrades, colleagues and friends.
And I will take a final position after the commission.
Yours sincerely,
Lucien van der Walt, Makana, South Africa, 11 February 2016
much appreciated response, finally. heres my summary
1. strong apology for the RBW pseudonym posts Lucien was called out on
2. context for his actions and emotional turmoil
3. denouncement of scmidt strongly for the 'Creed' circulated widely, the ZACF memo, SF posts (and other activity of Michael?)
4. criticism of ARR and JS approach
5. criticism of Michaels responses as unconvincing but points to his anarchist writings as counterpoint
6. statement that lucien is still unsure, waiting on commission.
All everyone wanted was such a response and here it is. although I will say, Lucien still has a monolithic view of neo-nazis, cryptofascists, et al - just about the only thing clear from stormfront is that a loose idea of white supremacy binds them together. Even on that point, there is discussion about which whites are 'better' and what races are 'honorary whites' [maybe not all asians but just japanese, etc]. Michaels huge body of anarchist work is not hard to rectify with fascist ideology when you actually get rid of a preconceived, monolithic view of the awful ideas - there is diversity of thought even in the absolute gutter and vomit of the human mind.
Commission is not necessary in my opinion and others; just release the articles/evidence thats not yet out there and let others decide [menace in europe and neither fish-nor-fowl articles etc], denounce the racism and fascism and the obvious things [ as lucien did, even the tatoo etc], come up with a broad conclusion that [should be] uncontroversial for anarchists of all stripes,, and translate and circulate it as a draft for eventual publication [with a time window for comments]. I will quote this comment by Dannny on libcom here which explains what such a broad uncontroversial conclusion could be:
https://libcom.org/forums/general/ak-press-says-michael...72453
"Thanks for these comments, Lucien. I appreciate this must have been a shitty time for you.
On this point:
If Schmidt is a fascist then it seems to me that the anarchist activity, tattoos and writings can be explained by two possible factors: 1) he meant them sincerely at the time but changed his position. 2) the 'national anarchism' he advocates is an attempt to make racism and various other tenets of fascism compatible with anarchism, in which case knowledge of and credibility within anarchism are a plus for him, even if to achieve this he has to behave in contradictory ways and write things contrary to what he believes.
For someone who knows him, those explanations might not convince, but that's how it looks from the outside. And from here it looks like Schmidt is a fascist because what kind of undercover anti-fascist activity could feasibly, in a million years, involve advocating a 'black battlefront' that expicitly attempts to wed 'anarchism' to violent racism? So one of those above explanations must broadly suffice, regardless of the content of that activity and those texts. In that sense, the weaknesses of the investigation seem largely irrelevant at this point.
In any case, I hope that all those who were close to Schmidt get through this experience as best they can, without making any concessions to or excuses for racism and nationalism, and I'm glad and gratified to see that approach in your comments."
Hello Lucien, this is a good first step and would have been nice months ago but here we are. A few things to say on this:
a) Your logic is still a bit backwards in regard to ARR/JS. You may be correct that there are inadequacies in the investigation but as others point out, that is irrelevant at this point unless you just want to correspond with them over it. I don't like some of the way the story came out and was written either. But they should be lauded along with all the others working hard to bring Schmidt's abhorrent views to light including the aggressive posters here and libcom (some with original evidence that might never have gotten out otherwise). ARR/JS don't have the burden of proof on them and shouldn't have to read every iota of Schmidt's writing; as is they've gone through ~100 pieces and talked about whatever they thought was relevant. That's good enough, far more than necessary - Schmidt needs to answer for the shit writings, not have the good writings placed on the opposite end of a hypothetical scale, to see if he is "truly fascist'.
b) I assume you find it hard to applaud AK Press for what they did, but you can see how funding a fascist through book sales is a problem for them. Maybe edit and rerelease Black Flame for free again, with a foreword about this affair? I assume Global Fire will never see the light of day since Schmidt did most of the work; good luck keeping him from riding your coattails. Send letters to his current publisher HSRC BestRed and get them to stop publishing his garbage; he's got other books coming up which will likely be worse, has a fixation with Isandlwana on Stormfront.org and 'Creed' that seems to be carrying into his new writing. Also, let PEN SA know what's up so they don't run his articles promoting book sales.
c) There truly is, as posters above and in the past have pointed out, no need for a commission. It will likely descend into Monty Python-esque parody of platformism and take far too much time and energy.
from Jason:
from Danny:
I would do that but also add that the Anarchist Affinity statement is a good starting point:
d) You better work hard to keep Schmidt a mile away from everything you do, or the currently building wave of movements in your country will not be sympathetic to you.
e) One good way to do that is releasing document and information you have, which everyone knows you have (eg Anarkismo articles). Take time, ask for permission from other editors, or whatever. If there's no courage to publish maybe release on your own. This info needs to be in front of the not-yet-formed commission anyway. Do NOT make the same mistake ARR/JS did and not do a data dump along with their first articles.......that set things back substantially and drew out this affair needlessly.
Peace
Lucien's half-apology includes apologies for racism and critical omissions. Based on his response, we should wonder about Lucien as well.
- Lucien ignores that Schmidt's explanation of his racist 2008 memo is also racist, and revisionist, the document itself consistent with Schmidt's covert anarcho-fascism. Schmidt's 2015 response is a racist revisionist cover-up. We'll be happy to discuss this Lucien if you doubt it.
- Lucien only fell silent after his last post on Dec 13, when somebody outed him by name in Libcom and he realized his manipulative charade was over. He began defending Schmidt the day after Schmidt posted his 40,000 word biographical defense, starting Nov 27 on anarchistnews.org (see post "I could go on" in https://anarchistnews.org/content/michael-schmidt-afric...raphy).
- Schmidt provided 3 replies plus a threat to AK in 2015, not 2 as Lucien says. The first was on social media, where he called his 7-page racist ZACF memo "asking difficult questions" that are "politically incorrect" and called AK Press allegations "buffoonery" (http://antifascistnews.net/2015/10/14/as-expose-is-rele...deny/). It appears this was then taken down by Schmidt. The second was his "Two Swallows Don't Make A Summer", then his autobiographical defense. Finally, he made a violent threat to AK Press, telling them "a whipping awaits" alongside a picture of him with a table full of guns and grenades (https://medium.com/@areidross/michael-schmidt-and-the-fascist-creep-75256cca1f2).
- Lucien omits that Schmidt lied about the Lebensrune tattoo in his defense. (See Lucien's initial rationalizations on Libcom at https://libcom.org/forums/general/ak-press-says-michael...69657) Schmidt only mentioned his tattoos once, in a single paragraph in his 2008 response. Schmidt says he has "NO racist tattoos". He lists them but leaves out the Lebensrune and even worse, says the "printer's mark" tattoo on his left shoulder "is not a runic tattoo". This is like saying "my Mickey Mouse tattoo is not a swastika" when there's a swastika right next to it. This is not enough to convince Lucien, however.
- Lucien backed Schmidt in alleging that his Scythian chieftain tattoos cannot be construed as racist. On Libcom, Lucien asked a forum member to "provide a single bit of evidence showing that "Scythian chieftain tattoos" (no, not vague online references to "Scythians" generally) are symbols of white pride in fascist circles." Evidence was then posted, including the exact same Scythian chieftain tattoos on Stormfront in 2006 (great response to Lucien at https://libcom.org/forums/general/ak-press-says-michael...69702).
We know Scythian tattoos are not necessarily linked to racism the way a Lebensrune is, but we also know Schmidt got them while on Stormfront because his arms are pictured without them in a photo Schmidt dates (in his defense) to 2008. We know that Schmidt calls the Scythian and Lebensrune tattoos "white pride" symbols on Stormfront (https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t1045520-3).
- Lucien ignores that Ross-Stephens characterize Schmidt a "national anarchist" that wants an anarchist government and economic system but in a white-dominated Boerstaate. This explains the anarchist and fascist tattoos. It also shifts the blame of explanation off Schmidt, when he lied and denied.
- Lucien's version of white supremacy is a caricatured, monolithic straw man of a community has diversity of opinion within its racist parameters. A browse around Stormfront illustrates that its members disagree on things from anarchism (https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t371876-3/) to American History X (Schmidt agrees with others that American History X is good for white supremacists to peddle their ideas, see https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t229019-63/).
- Lucien lacks basic understanding of racism. For example, having a few black friends or sexual partners does not preclude racism. This runs through the history of white supremacy. People of color understand this. Lucien clearly does not.
- Lucien points out "problems" on both sides, indicting both Ross-Stephens AND Schmidt, as if there's some sort of parity of wrong-doing or need to call out Ross-Stephens. As others have pointed out, Lucien should be thanking Ross-Stephens for their courageous work.
There is nothing to wonder about for a final assessment on Schmidt.
Schmidt created a Zuma thread, "Vote for Zuma! / Stem vir Zuma!", on Stormfront during the 2009 election. This is what he had to say with his white supremacist buddies (https://www.stormfront.org/forum/f113-40):
Necklacing? (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Necklacing) Starving 10 million blacks is "tempting"? This had over 1,000 views in a forum full of extremists with members many times convicted of murder and hate crimes (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/04/17/splc-rep...users).
Couple this with his incitement to "flood" the World Cup with white supremacists and symbols (post #5 above). This had over 16,00 views. Because, you know, whites are entitled to incite hatred and violence against people of color to an audience full of racist extremists with documented murderers (https://www.splcenter.org/hatewatch/2014/04/17/splc-rep...users), where black bodies might actually be victim or killed. All to "keep his finger on the pulse" (schmidt's explanation).
Couple Schmidt's racist incitement to hatred and violence to violent racists with his Strandwolf's Creed, timed just after he left ZACF, rejected for his white-dominated anarchism proposal,
AND his Lebensrune tattoo (which he lied about),
AND his Scythian chieftain tattoos,
AND his editor's denial,
AND his giant knife showcased in his Facebook profile pic, he says used to protect his white neighbors on Stormfront
AND his violent threat to AK Press,
AND his attempt to get "national anarchism" in an anarchism documentary,
AND his attempted recruitment of whites on Facebook and Stormfront to his white supremacist anarcho-fascist cause,
AND his view that whites form a "rearguard" to direct and fund blacks as "front-line action groups" (ie, whites fund blacks to fight the black state: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t502133-23/), echoed in his 2008 ZACF memo,
AND his Stormfront posts about Muslims, completely unnecessary
AND his use of the term "black racism" in his public writings (David Duke uses it in a thread Schmidt posted in: https://www.stormfront.org/forum/t703110/ and deleted https://web.archive.org/web/20100724091430/http://www.s...0-17/),
AND his two 2015 articles penned in his name, rejected by Anarkismo for concerns of racism, including an anti-Muslim one
AND Lucien still can't get it. Lucien, the white Afrikaner, critic of "white privilege". Can't see what's wrong here.
#BlackLivesMatter anyone?
Let us repeat: this is a giant fuck you to black people, Muslims, all people of color, and everyone with a brain.
From being a serious concern, Blacklivesmatters (seemingly a friend of Reid-Ross and Stephens) is turning the whole Schmidt affair into a past time for the idle. Lucien's response is well thought out, reflective and stays away from the toxic environment fostered by internet trolls like Blacklivesmatters. Lucien revealed his monicker, it would be interesting to see who is behind this monicker as well.
It is understandable that someone who worked with Schmidt for many years and who saw other aspects of him will have mixed feelings and will find difficult to come out to a definite conclusion. Instead of learning as a movement, Blacklivesmatter is only concerned with character assassination. Schmidt, to be sure, is no innocent victim of a Machiavellian plot, but the petty nature of some of this commentator, and their obssessive trolling reveals an agenda which is not been talked about.
"J" you do not engage a single point above. That is telling. Anyone reading Lucien's personal statement should also read the above posts listing how his statement if full of omissions and apologies for racism (with links).
The overwhelming majority of commentators have come to condemn Michael Schmidt and the deceptive manipulation and apologies for racism made by Lucien van der Walt. Read them at Anarkismo, Anarchistnews.org (linked above), and Libcom (Lucien as RedBlackWritings starting at page 24: https://libcom.org/forums/general/ak-press-says-michael...ge=24).
Reid Ross and Stephens own racial, Eurocentric and colonial bias, from the ZACF statement:
20. Reid Ross and Stephens’ inaccurate representation of ZACF is based on poor research and analysis, and serious factual and analytical problems, regarding not just ZACF but South Africa generally. Eurocentrism and an uncritical embrace by the two journalists of deeply problematic anti-left arguments associated with the South African state and ultra-nationalists, but rooted in the colonial geography of reason, are part of the problem.
21. No use was made of easily available ZACF source materials and archives, and the two journalists have failed to contact ZACF throughout the series to check facts or to provide right-of-reply to charges made. Their account of ZACF is almost entirely based on the views of one former member active for a relatively short period, outsider opinions, dubious inferences from an inaccurate document by Schmidt that was rejected by ZACF, and unsubstantiated and often demonstrably false assertions. The history of ZACF cannot be based on so few sources, especially given that claims made by these sources contradict a larger body of other evidence that has been ignored.
22. Silencing black and African voices, and the ZACF, has been central to the articles’ methodology. ZACF sources were ignored. Contradictory data and testimony was ignored. In particular this relates to one ZACF ex-member and founder member, comrade Mzamani Philip Nyalungu, who was made central to one article (in fact he is the only person we feel was insulted by name, besides Schmidt, in their seven articles.) His testimony, at odds with key claims by the journalists, was not cited, yet the testimony of two white ex-ZACF members was repeatedly presented as self-evidently true. This can be construed as racist: while Reid Ross and Stephens may argue that they have grounds to criticise Schmidt harshly, there is no justification for this treatment of a serious black working class militant.
23. Claims that we are unduly emotional about what we feel is an unjustifiable misrepresentation of the ZACF, that trivialise this misrepresentation, or that present ZACF as ill-informed or ill-motivated, reflect the same colonial and silencing outlook.
The ZACF lost their ability to frame the debate and the way an investigation would be conducted when they refused to acknowledge Michael Schmidt's racist and fascist views in 2011, if not much earlier. Instead, the main evidence of his racism and fascism that they cite as inexcusable, the so-called "Strandwolf Creed", was kept online for 4-5 years for all to see (including budding young White Power fascists). ZACF knew about it in 2011 (if not earlier), and could have handled it then, however they sought fit in the South African racial context. When they decided not to confront the issue at all, they lost all credibility to complain about how any subsequent investigation into Schmidt would occur. This is doubly reinforced by the fact that all of the corroborating evidence about Schmidt's fascism was readily available on the Web, and an afternoon of Googling away.
Clearly, there were uncomfortable truths that were either passively dismissed, or purposefully covered up. If the ZACF wanted to decide the matter on their own terms, with a commission or whatever structure they sought fit, they missed the boat by HALF A DECADE.
Now, as Schmidt apologists such as "J" make clear, this conversation is descending into deplorable territory, where those who exposed Schmidt and opened up the conversation (ARR/JS, AK Press, and the Web commentators who did research into Schmidt and leaks) are considered anti-black racists. Beyond that, it's even proposed that they don't understand white racism or white identity, and perhaps misunderstand Schmidt's calls for a Boer homeland carved out of the Western Cape and Namibia. The assumption that anonymous commentators are white Americans is even more deplorable, and exposes these posts as garbage, intended to bring identity politics to the forefront of the issue.