Necessary Secrecy

Disktree can perhaps be defined as a mutual benefit society for people with a common interest which is illegal or dangerously marginal — hence, the necessary secrecy.

If disktree is organized around a special interest (especially an illegal or risky or marginal interest) it certainly has the right to compose itself according to the affinity group principle. If secrecy means avoiding publicity and vetting possible members, the “secret society” can scarcely be accused of violating anarchist principles. In fact, such societies have a long and honorable history in the anti-authoritarian movement …

Many non-authoritarian organizations have foundered on the dubious principle of open membership, which frequently leads to a preponderance of assholes, yahoos, spoilers, whining neurotics and police agents. Some will call this an elitist attitude, but it is not, a small group which exercises power over non-insiders for its own aggrandizement. Immediatism does not concern itself with power-relations; it desires neither to be ruled nor to rule. The contemporary disktree therefore finds no pleasure in the degeneration of institutions into conspiracies. It wants power for its own purposes of mutuality. It is a association of individuals who have chosen each other as the subjects of the group’s generosity, its expansiveness. If this amounts to some kind of elitism, then so be it.