Add new comment

Some initial thoughts here. The library is frequently critiqued by individuals and groups for including texts from ITS. Back in 2018 some librarians responded to this critique with the following:

“For many years, texts from an eco-extremist (EE) group calling themselves “Individuals Tending toward the Wild” or ITS, were on the library, as they once claimed to be anarchist-influenced. No problems were raised over those years. The library stopped publishing the ITS communiques and related texts once they stopped calling themselves anarchists and started claiming indiscriminate attacks against hikers, and there were some attacks in Mexico City. The library has not had writings by ITS since then.”

The part of the library no longer publishing texts by ITS is often left out of every single critique of the project for publishing ITS. Many of these, or practically every single one of these critics seems to portray the project as one that has published ITS texts about indiscriminate violence against hikers and the attacks in DF, even though the library has never published the texts. I imagine that the critiques often leave this out because they don’t take the time to actually read and look into the storied past of this or perhaps purposely to incite reactions and attempt to falsely prove their point. One of the exceptions to no longer publishing ITS texts comes from the recent “Los Hijos del Mencho” response text that was also published in the Black Seed journal, as it is relevant for the entire discussion. The text can be found here.

Going back to what some librarians wrote about this in 2018:

“ITS texts have. ITS came out of the anarchist space and how far from it they've found (or removed) themselves from it is of interest to some anarchists. It is part of our history and is completely appropriate for it to appear on an archival project documenting anarchist and related texts. Reading things by people we disagree with (or making such readings accessible to other people) is not condoning the things we disagree with, much less supporting them. Anyone who insists on banning particular texts from the library because they personally disagree with the content is acting to indoctrinate, not allowing people to make up their own minds. ”

It has been recommended by some that the library have canned responses about certain text that have been published on the website, which might be something to work on and include on the library wiki or these library forums in the future.