Infoshop.Org. Your Opinion?

[FinnMacCool]

I made a topic about this awhile ago but it got thrown in the trashcan by TAT. Hopefully, now that I've had a chance to calm down, this thread will actually lead to some legitmate discussion and hopefully won't be dumped.

Do you think Infoshop.org is a good resource for anarchists? Chuck0, who is the owner I believe, has been known to censors posts and decide what is good for anarchists to discuss and what is not. He also claims he runs the site through a collective but many people have siad that Chuck0 is the sole owner of this collective.

You can find information about this here (http://flag.blackened.net/forums/viewtopic.php?t=73099)

What do you think?

[Janus]

This belongs in Websites and not Theory.

[bayano]

you can move it to websites, but infoshop.org is one of the primary if not the primary online resource for anarchists in the us, and for many usa anarchists online resources are their only ones.

i like infoshop.org, have a blog there and post there. i also have some of the same frustrations you have with censorship there, a typical piece of anarchist evidence that theyre much worse at practicing those things that they claim moral superiority over leninism on than they are ranting about why leninism is evil and theyre the best. i really feel like infoshop does a lot of good, but i think critiques need to be made of everyone. ive had entire articles removed bcuz of short kind words about ANSWER, and i was only allowed to repost once i removed that. fucked up, id say. but that is the state of the north american left, and i dont think its worth attacking every leftist potential ally who is sectarian or controlling, cuz thats all of them/us

[Nachie]

I have a love/hate relationship with Infoshop, the love owing mainly I think to the fact that I have personally worked with Chuck in the past and definitely believe him to be genuinely committed. His age and economic condition leads him towards a focus on infrastructure projects such as housing, which I can definitely get behind.

At least some people in RAAN have problems with him that I think related to him making unsubstantiated comments against a comrade (who was not in RAAN) who we knew was solid. He also makes a point to include a lot of liberal garbage and mainstream media on the Inews "alternative" newswire, even if things like ANSWER do get criticized a lot.

Around 2003, Chuck proclaimed that he was not going to post any more theory pieces from RAAN, because the debates that raged in the comments section of the newswire whenever he did got so out of control that he didn't want to deal with it anymore. We all thought that was a pretty lame decision on his part, but since our work with Katrina relief he has expressed a little more interest in what we're up to. I think the last thing we posted up there was the text from the sixth issue of our newsletter, which unfortunately was posted in such a way as to disallow comments :angry:

Their editorial policy is definitely haphazard sometimes... I am 100% sure that they do have a "collective" that updates the website in various ways, but I've yet to see any evidence to suggest that Chuck doesn't maintain overall control.

It's an important resource, but don't take it as the be-all end-all of the anarchist movement. I can tell you very confidently that the majority of anarchists I've worked with on the street don't bother with Infoshop at all, and a good deal of those who do are never on the street.

[Leif]

While I havn't paid extremely close attention, I have posted on it before and I generally believe it to be a good source for any free radical.