In 1997, nettime participants Andy Garcia and Geert Lovink wrote in their »Tactical Media Manifesto«: »Tactical Media are media of crisis, criticism and opposition. This is both the source of their power (›anger is an energy‹ - John Lydon), and also their limitation.«¹ At the time, Peter Lamborn Wilson answered that the gaps in which these tacticians operate could develop into a »network of castles,« and that » this would constitute not only (in itself) a pleasurable act of autonomy and self-organization, but also a ›strategic‹ structure«².

Two and a half years later, in the autumn of 1999, a large number of Indymedia Centers³ were founded in succession. Their international alliance can be seen as a strategic »network of castles« in Wilson’s sense. For, with Indymedia as a durable authority within the anti-globalisation movement, a new protest culture has emerged that has appropriated the potential of the internet »as a medium for dissident news.«⁴ Since then, a new form of activism, in the sense of an anti-globalisation »resistance movement,« has gained momentum. Here, the strategic locations of the web sites, combined with the tactical spaces of the relevant mailing lists, form a network that has not been seen before on this organisational scale. It recently proved its worth and underwent expansion in the wake of September 11, 2001. At the present time, events connected with the Israeli-Palestinian crisis are being documented and criticised within the same set-up; the digital resources of the anti-globalisation movement are being used and alliances forged with initiatives (such as the Palestinian-Israeli International Solidarity Movement in Palestine⁵ and other alternative news sites⁶) that explicitly try to intervene in the conflict.

On the Indymedia site Jerusalem⁷, initiated on March 28 2002 as a direct response to the situation in the Palestinian territories, the way the network functions is demonstrated, for one, by videos of solidarity demonstrations from Athens, Bueno Aires and San Francisco. Exchange between the two Indymedia sites in the region itself consists of a few links to individual files. On both sides, the statements and articles call for an end to occupation, although the Israeli side tends to reflect more on its own position, while the Palestinian side makes more direct demands. Both sites list acts of destruction carried out by the Israeli army. Israel\\\'s Indymedia web site⁸ also has a PDF file from the magazine »Khan,« which is put out by the Center. Its April edition brings together eyewitness accounts by Israeli soldiers and by Palestinians in the refugee camps: personal descriptions like those that circulated during the Kosovo crisis in the spring of 1999, especially on the Syndicate mailing list.

The resistance actions organised in association with Indymedia are not merely theoretical, but are put into concrete action: for example, the border camp »Tents for Resistance« in Lebanon, a petition to strip Yasser Arafat of his Nobel Peace Prize⁹, the call for volunteers to help in the Palestinian territories, and appeals for a boycott of Israeli products¹⁰.

Naomi Klein¹¹ describes the role of international networks in creating a differentiated examination of possible attitudes. »Nothing is going to erase anti-Semitism, but Jews outside and inside Israel might be a little safer if there was a campaign to distinguish between diverse Jewish positions and the actions of the Israeli state.« Here, for example, the conscientious objection of the »Refuseniks,« the 451 Israeli soldiers¹² that are refusing to carry out their duties in the occupied territories and joining forces with peace activists¹³, has a symbolic meaning.

In the final analysis, it is not only the »one resistance« that is of central importance, but the network of various web sites as a platform for a diversified concept of resistance: media that operate in a tactical space of resistance and function as a combination of online and onsite activities. Resistance exists in a comprehensive gathering of information, in the efficient distribution of this information, and in a sophisticated culture of communication serving the production of critical views.

 

Translated by Tim Jones

 

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