It has just come to my attention that a couple weeks ago one Michael Pugliese has claimed on your well-known listserve that the anarcho-primitivist journal ‘Green Anarchy’published an article by Nick Griffin, the head of the racist right-wing party the BNP. (see the thread below which I pulled from your list archives)
Now, it should be obvious to anyone who could read that the article was a straight-up anti-fascist research piece, and Mr Griffin’s name was used as a joke.
Incredibly, however, some people are using this piece of information to smear ‘Green Anarchy,’ by falsely claiming that it was indeed the BNP’s Griffin. (in Michael Pugliese's own words: “The Green Anarchy piece was by Griffin of the BNP.”) GA told me that on other lists and discussion boards people were using this to smear them with.
The truth is, however, that it wasn’t – and if anyone’s in a position to know, it’s me, since I wrote the piece. In fact, I am queer, race-mixing, jewish anarchist: it would be pretty hard to mistake me for a jailed crypto-fascist authoritarian Party leader.
In fact, ‘Green Anarchy’ - much to their credit - asked me to write the article for them after someone known to them in Eugene, Oregon was outed as being a National Anarchist. Michael Pugliese -- instead of wanting to alert people to the danger that fascists (or more accurately, post-Third Positionists) are cross-recruiting anarchists and Marxists -- has used my piece to smear the primitivists, who /in turn have shown themselves to be staunch anti-fascists. (Personally, I'm not interested in primitivism or insurrectionism and only wrote for GA because they asked me to). Not just is this underhanded and manipulative of Michael, it is disrupting our own anti-fascist work by discrediting our attempts to warn people about a really-existing danger.
I have no idea who this Michael Pugliese is, but he owes this list, myself and ‘Green Anarchy’ a retraction and an apology.
Sasha (aka Nick G)
+/+/+
Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com
Would it have been authoritarian to draw attn. to and slam, the "Green Anarchy" primitivists for printing Nick Griffin of the racist BNP in issue #19 of their rag, from which this screed was drawn, Chuck?
Chuck0 chuck at mutualaid.org Why don't you take it up with them? I'm not involved with Green Anarchy.
Chuck
Etienne tim_boetie at fastmail.fm
Erm, surely this article is by someone else who happens to be called Nick Griffin? Why would the head of the BNP write an article warning anarchists about fascists using anarchist-sounding ideas to recruit to nationalist groups?
Michael Pugliese michael.098762001 at gmail.com Wed May 18 14:07:26 PDT 2005
Yes, click all the URL's. The Green Anarchy piece was by Griffin of the BNP. The anarchist polemic vs. the Green Anarchy loons was in the indymedia webpg.