If you join the Boston Indymedia Center, you may just receive an anonymous message like this:

"we have decided that it is clear that your frequently stated political beliefs are incompatible with the Global Principles of Unity"

Once you receive that message, you have been thrown out of BIMC because of your stated opinions, beliefs, or even disbeliefs. If you disbelieve in: male feminism, homosexism, white anglophobia, patronizing attitudes toward blacks, libel, socialism, communism, or anarchism, you will find your membership to Boston Indymedia Center revoked.

But why would one join such an organization in the first place? The answer is to be found in what BIMC claims to be. The answer is in the LIE of Indymedia and in the false invitation to "be the media" which they offer to the general public of Boston.

It is a the lie of being a "public media outlet" which they are not. (They are private but collecting charity.) It is the lie of "radical, passionate tellings of the truth." Radical perhaps, but frustrated, irrational, blathering propaganda. Spiffed-up stories cleverly separated from criticism, manicured and packaged as unquestionable free press items, deliberated upon by an inner cabal of tech keyholders, each with his own defeatist prejudice or strategy for cowing humanity into a dystopian stupidity allegedly called democracy. Not a shred of democracy exists at Indymedia Boston.

BIMC is called a collective. It is run under the general principles of collectivism and solidarism, those two faded ideas from the French Revolutionary period which stated that somehow a competitive utopia could be built where men contributed according to ability, received according to need, and survived by defending one another in any situation -- those nice sounding, but failed ideals which resurfaced as soviet communism failed again and resurfaced as neo-communism.

Theory and ideals aside, the facts of human nature remain. BIMC, the Indymedia Soviet is run by secret meeting and by coup. Coups compose every meeting and the email listserv. The only thing the members of this soviet can agree upon are the "Principles of Unity" content filter, which like the esoteric codes of Freemasonry, are the belief in an obtuse unitary principle. No one may express views which could be interpreted in any remote way to be offensive to the "protected groups" in society. It is open season, however on whites, people who own businesses, people with college educations, straight people, and people with the fearlessness to speak freely and without reservation.

The BIMC Principles of Unity are bunk not only because of their double standard. They are bunk because the general group (which meets at the Lucy Parsons Center) is led to believe the entire group are united as equals, when in reality the general meetings are just for show and for boring clerical task allocation. The real fun happens in the Web-Editorial Group, many of whose members never show their faces at a general meeting, knowing full well that the power is in the upper tier. Hence the neo-communist consensus-based paradigm is victim to the same old garbage bolshevism.

The alleged consensus process at BIMC is the collective's attempt to reason in borglike fashion. By coming to complete agreement in a time consuming way and by randomizing the ever changing website rules, they can plan protests to later report on, and give column-space to violent anarchist and communist groups while preventing other Bostonians from joining up and evening out the heavily left-skewed opinions.

General group consensus, however is trumped by secret or web-editorial consensus, since these meetings have selectively limited participation and decisions are made by wink and nudge before meetings take actually place (at the MIT Dome). With one man in charge of the listserv membership, two in charge of story posting, one same man in charge of censorhip, a total of three men effectively control all opinion on Boston Indymedia. Combined with a couple of lower ranking editorial members with their own triggerhappy deletions, the entire organization of Indymedia Boston is consolidated in the hands of five key technical administrators. Policy trickles down to the yes men in the general group, and opinion is then officially closed.

One could go into great depth on the intense personal rivalries and even crimes committed within this group in jealous bids to oust one another. Each core member has his or her particular style of passive aggression by which he "contributes according to his ability" to the mayhem at BIMC.

Pete Stidman, a senior editor and anarchist, goes into fits of offense, defensiveness, depression, name-calling, pleas for solidarity, and appeals to not "abuse" the procedural functions of Indymedia any time a new member presents new ideas, or challenges his de-facto leadership. He once accused this author of slander and libel, and was later defended by this same author against slander and libel by a fellow BIMC member. The other members (Eric) wanted to run him through a conflict resolution and brainwashing seminar.

Matthew Williams, a Boston College Gramcian communist, situationist, homosexist, and quite possibly the most absent, most powerful, and most obnoxious member of BIMC, is the chief censor, and the only real rival to Pete Stidman. Though they stab each other in the back routinely, they defend each other in cases where one inserts esoteric politics into the site, or the other squelches minor players or writes dubious news. The few times they challenged each other in any serious capacity, the group risked splintering.

Eric Ginsburg, a JuBu, is a psych/soc product of some local school. He is the de-facto mediator of general discussion groups. He is intensely averse to discussion, and uses neutrality to avoid responsibility where his judgement is necessary to punish crime, or uphold the stated principles of Indymedia. This feigned inability to decide quickly vanishes if a centrist or a capitalist decides to join a discussion. Then he is quick to say "shut up or get out!" His best trick is subtly to allocate speaking speaking time to those he feels are waging the minor side battle, regardless of correctness.

Sofia Jarrin-Thomas, an hispanic revolutionary wannabe and feminist poseur, has written scathing attacks against BIMC. She has written that she does not care if she commits slander if the said opponent is compromising the rights of illegal aliens hiding in the United States. Having failed once to oust Pete Stidman, she accused or implied that he was physically abusive and an embezzler. This was after she had been allowed to return after faking a resignation to write the scathing attack.

Svea Eppler, a gender marxist, also fake quit Boston Indymedia but lurks waiting to strike down Pete Stidman. Together with Sofia and Sharpie, they form a feminist bloc equal in power to either Eric, Pete, or Matthew.

Sharpie, a white-male-hating white male, is part of the bloc against Pete Stidman, is logically inept, and one of the primary proponents of increasing the secrecy of the allegedly open, public, and honest list keeping of the site. His particular prejudice against this author is that he wrote an article criticizing BAAM, the boston anarchist union of which Sharpie is a liason. Sharpie, the emissary of Sofia and Svea, routinely cries for anarchy when he is being asked to corroborate accusations, and cries for rules when the world sees his nefarious activity published on the web.

Joe Slag is a core technician and homosexist censor for BIMC.

Other IMC members include:

Tim Ledwith
Petrina Vegan
Andrew Mcleod
David Smith (davewreckoning)
Dana Moser
Jamie

Each of these members is a lesser member, or one with unclear role, avoiding hassle and going with the prescribed flow of the Indymedia Cabal.

It is important to note who is not censored at Boston Indymedia:

Revolutionary Communist Party USA chairman Bob Avakian
NEFAC Northeast Federation of Anarchist Communists MaRK Laskey.
(Pete has even asked to solicit more NEFAC posts).
Women's Fightback Network homosexist socialist Stephanie Simard.
The Anarchist Black Cross Network "Tree Monkey" aka Frances Little

There is also a situation which persists at Boston Indymedia where an anonymous censor named only "Zorro" deletes a large of the posts on the site. While the name of Zorro was originally linked to Michael Larson of Malden MA, the moniker Zorro is also a real idiot flamebaiter of Portland Indymedia and nearly every website with a comment section. His aliases are: NRA4Freedom, jade, jethro, mjk, skittles, get real, backdraft, arod, gerbil, twiggy, anon, devoy, kobe, the troll, ariel natan panko, dex, zed, daryle lamont jenkins -- some of which are identity thefts.

Between the allowable content, and the allowable trolls on the site, virtually nothing gets said except for an extremely narrow leftist bent. Ultimately, no one gets to "be the media" in this web-forward environment, save for at most six high level people with code access and those allowed by Soren Wigglia (sp?) into the UNITE Building at 33 Harrison Ave, a dilapidated low rise building in Chinatown, housing more of the same.

www.boston.indymedia.org