HORIZONTAL ARMIES AND VERTICAL NETWORKS

We, the international working group on resistance against the next G8, are just a group of people sitting in a field, wanting to change the world. (International Working Group on Resistance Against the G8 2007)

Anti-summit Mobilisations

An Army Descends

I am stood with an umbrella, holding it above the head of an activist who is 'locked on' outside the Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base. We have been here for over five hours in the burning sun, and everyone is starting to wonder why. I am the one holding the umbrella because the person locked on has both of his arms locked inside two metal tubes through which he is attached to five other people. Together they form a circle, lying on the ground, chained to each other in front of the Faslane Nuclear Submarine Base. It is day one of a week of protests organised against the 2005 G8 summit in Scotland.

The blockades have been scheduled to last until 5 p.m., but there is still an hour to go and many people have already gone home. We would really like to go home too and are thinking of giving up, but just before the pressure of the day takes its toll, we are swept away to an alternative universe. Suddenly, as if out of thin air, an army appears. Yes, an army, but this is not your average army. This army has red noses and is wearing mismatched furry pink and green fatigues. They stand in formation in front of the blockade announcing that they have come as part of operation 'HA, HA, HAA' (Helping Authorities House Arrest Half-witted Authoritarian Androids) as they laugh in unison. General Mayhem (or was it Kolonel Klepto?) rings his whistle and the troops stand tall, saluting him with their thumbs to their nose and wiggling their fingers. Then, they break formation and start to run everywhere chaotically. These clown-soldiers each take an umbrella and hold it above the activists lying on the ground, telling jokes and making everyone laugh. Other clowns are performing a military stand- up comedy act as the deep sound of drums swells in the distance. Slowly, the rhythm of the 'samba band' draws nearer. When they finally arrive at the gate, the pink-and-silver clad dancers swirl through the clown army, and the pink, camouflaged clowns dance with the samba band to the Brazilian beats in an unchoreographed but synchronised routine. The entire space is transformed from a hot, empty, exhausted moment to the centre of an absurdly surreal world of laughter and music.

In this chapter I present a small portion of some of the actors I met during my fieldwork, focusing on the relationships they create. The main aim of this chapter is to map out the dynamics between these diverse groups of people and to offer a sense of how the various groups relate to one another and to the democratic praxis outlined in this book. To this end, I describe the people I worked with primarily in terms of the roles they fulfilled and how these activities placed them in relation to one another. I begin with the Clown Army as a semiotic tool for introducing some of the ideas underlying the autonomous strands of the alterglobalisation movement. I then briefly introduce the Dissent! network and the movement structure of 'affinity groups'. Using examples from G8 mobilisations in 2003, 2004 and 2005, I outline the relationships between the various networks in anti-G8 mobilisations, highlighting both commonalities to all settings and peculiarities to each setting. I argue that in social fora organising processes we find divisions and tensions within a singular process, while in anti- summit mobilisations, we see the coming together of diverse networks in parallel processes. Below I describe the political backgrounds of movement actors that will underlie the descriptions of conflict in the chapters to come, especially, the conflict between the 'verticals'and the 'horizontals'. Finally, although not directly relevant to a discussion of the collective spaces of global networks which are the subject of this book, I briefly introduce and locate the Narmada Bachao Andolan (NBA) within the framework of the alterglobalisation movement to highlight the relationship between the alterglobalisation movement itself and the many movements that constitute it.

The Clown Army

I start with the Clown Army, not because they are the most important or the largest section of the alterglobalisation movement, but because they are hilarious. Conveniently, they also embody many of the most important values of the alterglobalisation movement. In the UK the Clown Army's official name is the Clandestine Insurgent Rebel Clown Army (CIRCA). The significance of this name, in their own words, is as follows: We are clandestine because we refuse the spectacle of celebrity and we are everyone ...

We are insurgent because we have risen up from nowhere and are everywhere ...

We are rebels because we love life and happiness more than 'revolution'. Because no revolution is ever complete and rebellion continues forever. Because we will dismantle the ghost-machine of abstraction with means that are indistinguishable from ends. Because we don't want to change 'the' world, but 'our' world. Because we will always desert and disobey those who abuse and accumulate power. Because rebels transform everything – the way they live, create, love, eat, laugh, play, learn, trade, listen, think and most of all the way they rebel.

We are clowns because what else can one be in such a stupid world ...

Because buffoons always succeed in failing, always say yes, always hope and always feel things deeply ...

We are an army because we live on a planet in permanent war – a war of money against life, of profit against dignity, of progress against the future ...

We are circa because we are approximate and ambivalent, neither here nor there, but in the most powerful of all places, the place in-between order and chaos. (Clown Army n.d.)

The Clown Army's sentiment is echoed in many other sections of the movement. In this abbreviated version of their raison d'être, we see some of the major ideas underlying the autonomous sections of the anti- summit mobilisations: the refusal of fame, leadership and uniformity; the idea that they come from nowhere and are now everywhere as symbolic for the unpredictability and open, indeterminate nature of the struggle; the replacement of 'revolution' with prefigurative rebellion in which the accumulation of power is undermined through refusal to acknowledge it; the element of mockery as a way to undermine authority; and the idea that despite valuing unpredictability and chaos, some form of order or organisation is...