Reproduced below, in order of original appearance, are three anonymously authored posts from the now defunct blog Scenes From The Atlanta Forest. While the blog facilitated a long-running discussion on the politics & practices of appelists (also called tiqqunists), the selections all appeared in August 2023, largely in response to the publication of “Ten Theses on Anti-(((Tiqqunism)))” at the end of July.
More background on appelism is available on the website Dimanche Aprèm & in the article “On Tiqqunism (Definitive Best Edition)”.
About Tiqqunism
Hello,
I saw the article “Theses on Anti-(((Tiqqunism)))” and I wanted to react to it.
I don’t think all the things said in the pieces are false or irrelevant but a lot are. I speak from the french context where the situation seems more clear. Here, the “tiqqunists” are called “appelistes”, from the book “L’appel”.
1) They don’t call themselves anarchists or distribute anarchist propaganda or very few. They usually call themselves “autonomes” or don’t identify themselves using precise lingo. It’s been theorized on their publication (https://lundi.am/Contre-l-anarchisme-Un-apport-au-debat-sur-les-identites) : ” Se proclamer anarchiste ou d’une quelconque autre identité révolutionnaire ne nous facilite absolument rien, cela n’augmente pas notre potentiel révolutionnaire et ne nous aide pas à nous organiser. De plus, cela nous isole et fait de nous une cible facile pour la répression. Les identités idéologiques sont un pilier sur lequel l’ennemi s’appuie et c’est donc à nous d’y renoncer.”
So if you have trouble to see who is a tiqqunist or not, it’s normal, it’s part of their strategy. They doesn’t expose their goal or their ideological frame.
2) “Les soulèvements de la terre” are a reformist organization. They work and cooperate with reformists, non revolutionary unions, political parties and have reformist goals. For example, after St-Soline they asked that the police stopped using a particular grenade. And after the imprisonment of some, they asked for their release and didn’t used this moment to express anti-prison position.
3) The procedure against “Les soulèvements de la terre” (dissolution) is not an “unprecedented juridical instrument”. It has been used since decades against ennemy of the state in France. And it’s been used or menaced to be in the past two years against leftist, antifascist and anarchist groups. And it’s used against islamist and fascist organization as well.
4) If you don’t understand why people celebrate an arson attack, maybe you should do the effort to read about what happened on the ex-ZAD. There are a lot of text about it. And if you can’t do this effort, maybe don’t speak about something that you don’t know.
5) The attack about anti-semitism is absurd. Because as we can see in the article linked before, Tiqqun is still quoted and used as a reference in their propaganda. Why it is a problem to designate them by their main and oldest publication, that they keep bringing up ? Like, how are we supposed to call them if any attempt to use a clear term is frowned upon ?
6) This piece is a misrepresentation of the ongoing debates about anarchism intervention, about “quality and quantity” and other interesting things. But the author of this piece are not interested in this debate. So as always, it’s come down to empty string of words, no references, no experiences and no goals.
For exemple, i think that local struggle against some structure (cop city, an airport or “mega bassines) is an opportunity to advance a more radical and global critique. The local struggle is, for me, like a kind of starting point for developing and sharing our ideas and conceptions. Because, everyday big projects are abandoned. Sometime due to struggle (from reformist, liberals or/and revolutionary) and sometime without. If in this struggle we cooperate with reformist and are not able to propose and expose our anarchist vision, i don’t think it’s a win. Because at the end, we just reinforced the power of the reformists.
P.S. : If you want maybe i can add some french references.
IDK WHO TIQQUN IS
but me and my friends were tiqqun a walk and came across a nationwide insurance salesman’s office and we messed it up with rocks and paint. nationwide is insuring cop city.
less talk more rock!
death to cop city by 1000 cuts
More Talk More Rock!
To the individuals who wrote the theses on “anti-tiqqunism”, we don’t want to spend a lot of time on you, because there’s better things we could all be doing like actually defending the forest, and we are glad some French comrades who have had horrible experiences with appelistes (the French tiqqunists who sold out anarchists at the Zad in order to negotiate for state-sanctioned land projects 🙄) got to you first on here. We hope people check out the links they shared about the history of the Zad, in reading these pieces we see familiar parallels to the specific ways militants have already been fucked over in Atlanta.
Even with no victory in sight, the tiqqunists and their liberal allies have still found ways to sell out more militant folks so they could play out their NVDA (“nonviolent direct action”) fantasies — too little too late after half the Atlanta Forest on the OPF (Cop City) side was already cut down. So tiqqunists, whatever excuse you need to tell yourself about why you didn’t defend the forest after militants were shoved out, fine, but stop gaslighting and demonizing anyone who dissents from your opinions and bad ideas.
First off, those of us replying to your statement here are also jewish, and we just want to say that just because people are critical of tiqqunism does not mean they are antisemitic… grow up. We don’t think you’re literally answering to some sinister cabal in France or anything. We like the concept of tikkun olam and feel the association is unfortunate. Maybe pick another name instead of pretending you don’t exist.
Some of the people within the tiqqunist milieu are real insurrectionary anarchists who we respect, but others are extremely counter-revolutionary, and will literally refer to on-the-ground militants as “purists”, or complain about how the movement has a “composition problem” because it’s not legible enough to liberal environmental NGOs outside of Atlanta. You sound ridiculous.
We can see that you started a new assembly just to manufacture consent for an NVDA proposal that wasn’t generating much enthusiasm or buy-in. One can be a good community organizer without defaulting to the lowest common denominator of liberalism in our words and actions and thus allowing liberals to feel like their reformist strategies are the reason we win anything, because they are not and they never will be.
It seems these arguments will never cease because at the end of the day we are simply different kinds of people — for example, there were MANY times after word got out that Georgia Power or AT&T vehicles and workers on the perimeter of the OPF forest were scared off with rocks, fireworks, etc., that tiqqunists and radlibs would want to have a “talk” about the “legibility” of these “violent” actions, and would even question some of the OPF forest dwellers sanity for attacking Georgia Power… this rang true yet again when forest dwellers attacked Georgia Power trying to mow the cut between the Cop City & Blackhall Studios/ICP side of forest, as forest dwellers from OPF saw that allowing them to cut & tame the brush would create a clear line of sight between the two sides of the woods to better surveil & attempt to catch forest defenders. Georgia Power also loaned heavy machinery to Atlanta SWAT & APD to habitually destroy the barricades at the North Gate on Key Road which led into the Cop City site.
Some of us don’t need a reason to despise Georgia Power or AT&T if we know that we simply hate civ and want to destroy it as well, in conjunction with oppressive shit like Cop City…. It also doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see that these companies are funders of the APF! Just because you are worried about something being “legible” to your liberal allies doesn’t mean it is not still a viable target….
Another scary parallel is that appelistes on the Zad captured, beat and left an individual in front of a mental health institution because they had allegedly sabotaged road construction… these themes of either demonizing or labeling someone “crazy” when they dont fit the more liberally legible paradigm are manipulative and dangerous. Also, fuck a road; as Edward Abbey said, “Roads are the beginning of the end.” There are those of us who want roads and those of us who want barricades.
Tiqqunists and their sympathizers were continuously opposed to barricading the entrance to Weelaunee People’s Park, as well as the RC field adjacent to it, even when the threat of cops invading and doing a raid was imminent. They were against those barricades on the basis that it made the forest seem less open and inviting, which to them outweighed the safety of forest dwellers. The RC field was where the police entered the woods the morning they killed our comrade Tortuguita. The barricade bought some time but sadly not enough; Tort helped build that barricade and if we had more people helping reinforce it instead of trying to dismantle it, things might have been different.
It often appears the housed tiqqunists and friends and the unhoused long-term forest dwellers had a lot of ideological differences. These differences wouldn’t be as much of a big deal if the tiqqunists actually embraced a diversity of tactics IRL, instead of devising plans to squash anything they think negates their long-term plan that must be legible to the liberals who were never coming to help us scout and hold down the forest long-term anyways.
So on that long-winded note, fuck legibility. And if choosing illegible targets made us “insane” anarcho-nihilists, then fuck it, we’ll lean into that you silly fucks.
-some “intractables”