A-Infos (en) France, OCL: Enough with the thought police and control society in activist circles! (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

One of our comrades from Ariège was verbally threatened and physically 
intimidated during the Résistances festival in Foix because she 
allegedly made remarks deemed transphobic by rumor at a meeting against 
landmines... --- As this situation is not isolated, we are publishing 
the following statement:
Enough with the thought police and control society in activist circles!
For several years now, we have witnessed, within so-called radical 
circles, a proliferation of methods used to ostracize groups or 
individuals under the pretext of deviant conduct or thought. We condemn 
the practice of defaming or spreading rumors about a person in order to 
disqualify them from political debate. Unfounded accusations, unrelated 
to the objective of the struggle, are launched to avoid debate. This 
takes us back to the dark days of Stalinism, regardless of the ideology 
to which the accusers refer.

These attacks do nothing to advance the struggles, contrary to what some 
might think, believing that a movement is strengthened by purging 
itself. These are tactics found in authoritarian circles, and which we 
fiercely oppose as libertarians. This ostracism and this way of thinking 
about the individual at the center of political concerns are perfectly 
compatible with the atomization that capitalism fosters, and are merely 
a variation on the state's strategy of demonizing opposing forces in 
order to discredit them (e.g., "ecoterrorism," "LFI's antisemitism"). 
These practices feed on and exacerbate the decline of the struggles, 
which reinforces the tendency to render the class struggle invisible.

Let us remember that social struggles are by definition impure and 
contain contradictions that must be accepted while simultaneously being 
open to discussion within the movement. For the movement is a dynamic 
process, and while discussions, debates, and arguments certainly lead to 
individual progress, we must not lose sight of the collective interest 
and the building of power dynamics.

Burning books, slandering, physically intimidating people, and 
vandalizing places under the pretext of disagreements are unacceptable. 
"No freedom for the enemies of freedom" can only lead to totalitarianism 
and silence all critical thought because, on the contrary, freedom is 
first and foremost the freedom of those who think differently.

Libertarian Communist Organization

https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4753
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