interesting e-mail

So, we got this e-mail about our doc. a few days ago, but we thought we should post it up here because it is ... well, interesting.

Hi,

I just received notice on a local SF Bay Area anarchist email/discussion list of your infoshop movie showing in SF this coming Friday, 3/3. I hope to be able to attend the showing.

I also hope (albeit with some trepidation) that you've tried to create a critical examination of various aspects of the infoshop phenomenon, and that the movie is not mere trendy hype or PC agitprop.

I'm sending a PDF of an article of mine in the current issue of Anarchy magazine that attempts to examine and criticize some of the aspects of in-group dynamics and social and cultural insularity that (despite all tstrident rhetoric to the contrary [that methinks protesteth too much]) have made infoshops (in my experience, observation, and opinion) a venue for niche-marketing a political subculture to the very sorts of elite youth that then turn around and decry their "privilege" (one signifier of the niche-market itself!).

Full disclosure: I've found myself banned from the Long Haul for, among other things, challenging the implicit hierarchy (particularly in disrespecting Jesse Palmer, a corporate lawyer and the de facto leaseholder there) and the highly prescriptive mores and cultural conformity demanded of those frequenting the place. (At times, I've wondered whether the ban, sub rosa, might even have something to do with my challenging the FBI's penetration of a queer youth group in New York when I was an investigative reporter there in the 1980s. Such agencies, after all, have long memories and a long record of "divide and conquer" tactics; furthermore, the Long Haul, after all, must also be recognized for its potential as a safety valve and listening post for the ruling class.)

As for accusations (made by some remaining at the Long Haul) that I'm "disruptive," I'd only refer you (as with many other issues) to the pertinent passages addressing this subject in the attached article. And as for any danger I could be imagined to pose, I can only point out that those making the accusation have yet to find my instruments of mass destruction.

But still, I wish I'd been interviewed for your film -- among others with dissenting or unorthodox views. I suspect there's a reason that in this society, a "TAZ" (unlike infoshops) must be temporary: until humanity evolves a reality beyond the choice between politicized governance and markets, the only alternatives to temporary "zones" or interests arranged to check and-balance each other (as even the authors of "The Federalist" realized) seem to be the mere development of entrenched factional (political or commercial) interests (and the concommitant concentrations of power and mini-fiefdoms) -- ultimately compatible with a pluralism of hierarchies, and contrary to the larger interest of liberation.

Interestingly, the philosophers and theorists you cite on your website are predominantly those of a marxist or third-worldist variety, for whom "anarchism" is merely a means toward the end of mobilizing the "multitude" (seen, as any "multitude" obviously [by its very nature] must be, from above) and enlisting it for the next phase of bourgeois-hypocritical hierarchicalism: highly constricting behavior codes and governance by a pervasive, ostensibly non-statist, non-profit NGO bureaucracy. (What a great way for a ruling class to camouflage itself! I might point out, too, that [whether nominally "for profit" or not] the most successful contemporary NGO format remains that which I believe forms the basis for the tenure of the Long Haul: a corporation.)

I view anarchy, convesely, as the absence of governance; instead of "bottom-up" governance, we need to lose the very notion of "bottom" and "top" in the first place -- and completely. Foucault might not agree that this is possible, but I comment on this in my article, too (and incidentally, at 56, still alive and kicking, I'm every bit as queer [and, I'd argue, at least as aware of contemporary reality] as he was). In his own way (in denying that it's possible to eliminate power relationships) Foucault was resigned to a variety of the notion that "there is no alternative" other than rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic...
In any event, I look forward to viewing your contribution to the Spectacle (and lest I seem too snide, I hope you attend one or another stop on my book tour if and when I complete my memoir, currently in progress)... ;-)

-- Mitchell Halberstadt