https://truthout.org/articles/why-misogynists-make-great-informants/ Inspired by this article.
TW: Misogyny, rape, abuse, pedophilia
In January 2009, Austin organizers were made aware that a white organizer named Brandon Darby was an FBI informant, who wore recording devices at planning meetings and encouraged Texas activists of making and possessing Molotov cocktails. Darby was not only politically active in numerous organizing spaces -- but he was widely considered to be dedicated, charistmatic, and radical, despite his frequent sexual abuses of women in organizing and his domineering, condescending manner of treating others.
Organizers might naively believe that there are "no" informants in their organizing spaces, that they are not being watched or surveilled by the police, that because they aren't "radical" enough, the state won't stalk them. This is wrong. It is a mistake that I and other comrades learned the hard way. And that same pattern of misogynists being informants repeats itself in organizing yet again -- in the form of pedophile, abuser, and former organizer -- Reiss Funicelli.
I
To understand how we got to this situation, we must circle back to April 2024. Around this time, two events occurred:
1) On April 24th, PSC organized an event to occupy the lawn for a day. This was not in truth an actual encampment, but a day-long event. The university cracked down and suppressed protestors. 2) On April 29th, anarchists organized their own encampment, after much infighting between several organizing leaders in Austin. This was an actual encampment and resulted in an even more violent crackdown -- but the community response to it this time was to fight against police, at one point pushing police off campus and kettling police.
The momentum around this moment was magnificent -- it felt like if we kept pushing, organized ourselves, and managed to sustain militancy, we could force the university to bend to our demands. However, due to organizational leadership's incompetency, general division, and the inability to properly harness the momentum of the movement and produce it into something sustainable long-term, the anger and militancy of the community fell apart.
In the following months, organizers struggled to build genuine organic momentum in the way that the April 2024 occupation and encampment had.
The People's Liberation Zone was an attempt at creating an alternative space outside of the Austin for Palestine Coalition -- a radical community space that wanted to continue the momentum and radicalism of the events of April 2024. The People's Liberation Zone underwent many name changes: it is sometimes referred to as Night School and now, it is called Red Triangle Edu. The social media for this organization/collective that I am discussing is redtriangleedu. The peoplesliberationzone Instagram is a separate entity and is not connected to this. For the sake of this statement, I will continuously refer to this space as Night School or NS. I entered the NS in Fall 2024 -- and from there, a set of patterns revealed itself.
I was the youngest person in the NS and with the exception of a few comrades who are no longer within that space, the way that I was treated was abysmal. Many of the people in the NS leadership were white or white-washed and were in their thirties and forties. Reiss Funicelli was also in this space and was 26 years old. For context, at the time, I was barely 20 years old.
After I had conducted a teach-in, community members who attended requested me to keep providing political education, requested me to be in leadership, and privately informed me that they had felt the NS space was 'passive', felt more of a social clique than a community space and that I had infused it with energy. I was pleased, but I didn't want to promote an individualized notion of leadership, so I and other comrades decided to hold a meeting where we would restructure the space, give it a direction and momentum. This meeting, at the time, seemed to have gone well, with organizers thanking me and my other comrades for holding the meeting and working towards a more democratic, horizontal-form leadership, while also centering Palestinians and specifically Gazans in our attempt to make an alternative organizing space.
However, I was wrong. The older organizers could tell that I was well-liked by the community members who attended -- and out of their own jealousy, racism, and misogyny, began to ostracize me.
NS organizers removed me from leadership, accused me of "taking over the space" despite being one singular person, decades younger than all of them, versus their group of around 5-6 people.
They did not hear my criticisms on their refusal to center Palestinians or Arabs affected by Zionist colonialism.
They accused me of being a liberal and that I weaponized identity politics because I rightfully pointed out that they were racist and misogynistic towards me.
Older organizers in this space constantly talked down to me, patronized me for being younger (Would refer to me as 'kiddo'), and were racist and misogynistic to me because I was an assertive young brown woman, would constantly accuse me of being "aggressive" and "commandist" because I was active in changing and channeling the space towards doing something radical.
They would patronize me but also take credit for the labor and time I put into teach-ins.
When I disliked the condescending manner in which Cliff, an NS organizer, spoke to me and criticized the NS space for their racism and misogyny, the group accused me of being a liberal and weaponizing identity politics.
When I decided to leave and refused to speak to them, one of them called me over 10 times, privately trying to corner me when I refused to speak to them.
This is one of many of their racist and misogynistic patterns of behavior towards me but we must understand the space and the numerous problematic patterns as a whole to understand how Reiss Funicelli was successfully able to infiltrate and thrive as a misogynistic abuser.
The first and most predominant example was that the NS space did not prioritize having Palestinians and Arabs directly affected by Zionist colonialism as leadership unless they were their friends. The second was that when we attempted to give a space for Palestinians to discuss in our meeting, Cliff (Mid forties), an NS organizer who is also a white liberal in Democrats for Palestine, attempted speaking over them and I had to tell him to be quiet. Now, there are no Palestinians involved in the NS space and Cliff as a white settler man dominates political education on a national oppression he has no understanding of.
Other white organizers such as Chance (Early to mid thirties) from the NS space (Who also runs Monday School at Alienated Majesty) were aggressive and rude in another organizing setting.
Chance caused a fight in the planning process for a Divestment Rally in November 2024.
He first began to send erratic and angry messages in organizing chats, distressing people, and throwing out allegations of comrades being “liberal”. He then attempted to pressure a teenage comrade of color into getting arrested and when said comrade was not comfortable, began to accuse him of being a liberal.
When I attempted to diffuse this and ask to cease arguing and aggression, Chance was angry with me and told me that just because I didn’t want to talk didn’t mean I could censor others.
Chance’s aggression was extremely uncomfortable for many organizers and comrades I spoke with, particularly due to his behavior as an angry older white man in an overwhelmingly POC space making many of us feel unsafe.
His girlfriend, Nabiha (35), an NS organizer and a white-washed brown woman, not only tolerated this behavior, but legitimized him, slandering our comrades as “liberals” — the so-called liberals being a teenager not wanting to be arrested for no reason.
This brings us to Nabiha’s extremely misogynistic and racist patterns of behavior that will play a crucial role in the NS space’s incompetency in handling Reiss Funicelli as an infiltrator and later when outed as a rapist and abuser.
Nabiha would frequently support and center white men in these spaces, especially because of her internalized racism:
a. She at one point said she preferred white people because "white people were more radical than brown people.” b. Would romanticize white men and denigrate people of color. She referred to Reiss as more radical than I and other comrades because we believed in building sustainable infrastructure for militancy which she found unexciting as compared to Reiss’s random and pointless acts of vandalism and wheatpasting.
Internalized Islamophobia: a. Regarded me as inferior to her because I was religious and she wasn’t. b. She at one point referred to never wanting to wear the hijab and said that she was too “rebellious” for it which is a liberal feminist narrative.
Inappropriate behavior with younger comrades: a. Would overshare about her personal and sexual life to an excessive degree. b. Would treat younger comrades as her servants and therapists — going to them for emotional support and at one point asking them to take care of her cat for an entire month without any pay. She would condescendingly refer to I and other younger comrades as her “minions” — which seemed amusing at the time but in retrospect, not so much. c. Would frequently trash talk, slander, and spread rumors about comrades decades younger than her. She would also act as if she was personally victimized if younger comrades were angry, upset, or set firm boundaries with her despite our large age gap.
Inappropriate behavior in organizing a. Would trash-talk and gossip about comrades — when she was requested to stop, she would act extremely angrily and explosively, would become very defensive, and would level accusations of liberalism against much younger organizers such as myself for setting a firm boundary. b. She would make unwarranted sexual comments about organizers without their knowledge or consent — in the presence of much younger comrades who requested her to stop. c. She would dismiss anti-blackness and engage in it — accusing a black comrade of being liberal (They were not) because she disliked them and would consistently defend Cliff despite his membership in Democrats for Palestine and his behavior as a white liberal.
We can examine the failure of the space from this following quote:
"A pattern of organizers forming social cliques with their close friends and refusing to allow comrades outside of this clique to partake in decision-making. This is a popular trend in Austin organizing amongst white anarchists and their self-hating whitewashed POC minions in particular who claim to disavow hierarchal and structural leadership but then create hierarchies within their own organizing groups that follow patterns of prioritizing white and male leadership and isolating marginalized community members." -- On Criticism, Part 2.
I left the space as I refused to be in a place where I was so patronized and talked down to because of my race, my gender, and my age. In comparison, Reiss Funicelli was an oft-welcomed member of this space, praised for his radicalism, and infantilized despite his numerous problematic behaviors.
Firstly, Reiss was famously known in organizing spaces for being hot-tempered, would frequently have outbursts and leave groupchats, and would get upset with people for not being "radical" enough.
He quickly got a reputation as being "militant" (despite never having done anything beyond impulsive actions of vandalism and wheatpasting), and he was widely praised by organizers such as Chance and Nabiha in the NS space. Reiss would foment division and cause conflict, accusing other organizers in the NS space of being liberals and pushing them out.
During Divestment Rally planning, after Chance began to get angry and upset with younger comrades, Reiss took advantage of this to create further division and ineffectivity: leaving the planning groupchat, arguing with people, trash talking certain comrades in private settings, accusing organizations and specific comrades of being "useless" and "liberal" in an attempt to push them out of leadership, and mocking comrades who had drove in from outside of Austin to aid in organizing.
Reiss once threw a tantrum in the NS groupchat because organizers wouldn't let him hold a bomb-making workshop.
Angry and upset, he left the groupchat (again) in an attempt to manipulate and sway people into listening to him. Instead of being seriously concerned with this, organizers such as Chance, Nabiha, and Cliff would trivialize his behavior, infantilize him, joke about it, that he was "hot-headed but had a good heart", and would not do anything to remove him from organizing spaces or hold him accountable.
As demonstrated above, we can see how this space cultivated misogyny, centered white men and their anger, and how Reiss Funicelli being an abusive rapist was not a shocking revelation, but rather a natural occurence in a space that did not prioritize supporting women.
When the evidence of Reiss being a pedophile came out, Nabiha and Chance instantly denied it.
Organizers were arguing with Nabiha for hours who kept on regurgitating ridiculous rhetoric that "Reiss was being targeted by the state for his radical pro-Palestine activism", and that Chance did not believe in the allegations at all, saying that "due process was necessary".
The state was not prosecuting Reiss for being a "radical" activist for Palestine. The state focuses the brunt of its violence on the marginalized -- on vulnerable targets and on those who are legitimately and actually militant in the struggle for a free Palestine.
Secondly, the absurdity to think that the state would put child pornography on an organizer's person to prosecute them is idiotic. If the state wants to prosecute people for activism: they kidnap them, they kill them, they force them into exile, and they prosecute them on excessive charges. Did Assata Shakur have child pornography on her? Did Mumia Abu-Jamal have child pornography on him? Did Mahmoud Khalil have child pornography on him? You can even examine my instance, did I have child pornography on my person when my visa was revoked?
Lastly, "due process" is an unprincipled and incorrect way of viewing sexual abuse allegations -- sexual abuse is an extremely difficult thing to discuss or come forward about, and to denigrate the testimonies of survivors is carceral and liberal. People rarely lie about rape and sexual assault -- and situations where they have are typically influenced and predicated on certain events and factors.
Nabiha went one step further and attempted to contact Reiss's previous partners to interrogate them into giving an explanation -- not for once thinking that these women could also be potential victims of Reiss's sexually abusive behavior.
What about the children Reiss might have raped and abused? What about the women who bore the brunt of his misogyny? What about the innocent children (Reiss had 50+ counts of pornography.) who were raped, whose bodies were mutilated and hurt, who these worthless organizers did not think of for a single second -- were their lives and their bodies not worth the sanctity of respect and life? Why was it that Reiss was honored as a victim and not the children whose lives were ruined by him?
After much convincing from other organizers, the NS space reluctantly accepted the reality of the situation but in a manner that deflected any accountability away from them. To this day, the NS space still has not publicly apologized for their initial support and defense of Reiss, held an accountability/restructuring process, and discuss the events that occurred. In fact, they held a community conversation where they claimed to hold themselves accountable but did not, even trying to defend Reiss and in other instances, use a manipulative argument that they were "distressed".
When you have received information your comrade is a rapist, what you do is to act to protect people from him, not deflect and make the situation about your "feelings". Your feelings do not matter or are a priority when children and women have been harmed.
In fact, their priorities weren't investigating who Reiss might have harmed or hurt, or their own complicity in a misogynist and pedophile freely thriving in their space. Nabiha and Chance's priority was ensuring that they didn't say they supported "arresting" people, even if it was for rape or abuse. This is a disgusting belief so here is what is true: there is nothing wrong with survivors using legal means against their abusers and rapists if there are no existing community infrastructures to protect and fight against their abusers. After the half-hearted engagement with this situation, these organizers moved on from the situation as if nothing had ever happened.
In Spring 2024, my comrades and I received information that Reiss Funicelli was an informant. Suddenly -- previous events began to make sense.
His misogyny, his penchance for dangerous adventurism (bomb-making workshop) and encouraging others to join him, his fixation on pushing people out of organizing by accusing them of being liberals, -- and a specific event in Fall 2024.
A comrade had announced in a groupchat that they were going to attend a protest. At the protest, comrades overheard police discussing kidnapping this comrade and they had received information from a groupchat. Upon hearing this, I and other comrades quickly called this comrade to get them out of the area, then immediately shut down the groupchat, and had concluded affirmatively there was at least (1) informant in organizing spaces. Naturally, I informed PSC, but there was never any follow-up.
There were other incidents that occurred: comrades being stalked by the police after demonstrations, the university having an excessive amount of information on them, (one that only a comrade that was in the same spaces as them would have known), and the police being far too aware of which organizers to target. This was not just Reiss Funicelli, I and my comrades concluded, -- but many more informants that infiltrated Austin organizing. We of course could not rely on Austin organizing leadership (See part 2) -- so it was left to us, young comrades barely in their twenties to discuss how to deal with the situation of the federal government spying, surveilling, and stalking us.
I want to call back to the piece I was inspired by in the beginning.
"Time and time again, heterosexual men in radical movements have been allowed to assert their privilege and subordinate others. Despite all that we say to the contrary, the fact is that radical social movements and organizations in the United States have refused to seriously address gender violence as a threat to the survival of our struggles."
"The state has already understood a fact that the Left has struggled to accept: misogynists make great informants. Before or regardless of whether they are ever recruited by the state to disrupt a movement or destabilize an organization, they’ve likely become well versed in practices of disruptive behavior. They require almost no training and can start the work immediately. What’s more paralyzing to our work than when women and/or queer folks leave our movements because they have been repeatedly lied to, humiliated, physically/verbally/emotionally/sexually abused? Or when you have to postpone conversations about the work so that you can devote group meetings to addressing an individual member’s most recent offense? Or when that person spreads misinformation, creating confusion and friction among radical groups? Nothing slows down movement building like a misogynist."
I shall leave this information to my comrades: be careful.
Those who do not take gender violence seriously - or dismiss concerns of women are not to be trusted. Intentionally or unintentionally -- misogyny destroys movements. We saw this in the Black Panthers and in so many organizing spaces -- the combination of state repression and misogynistic abuse towards women culminated in an environment that was not conducive to liberation.
And of course -- wherever a space normalizes misogyny and abuse, an informant is almost always eagerly ready to take over, to divide and conquer, in the same manner that Reiss did.
As I said before in On PSL DFW (Part 8):
"We are bystanders when we refuse to actually prioritize the following: actively work in supporting survivors, in making spaces safe for women and children, in speaking out in our daily interactions when people engage in misogynistic rhetoric or behavior, in holding open accountability processes, in recognizing our spaces being indundated with abusers and misogynists, in not having mandatory guidelines and principles in the issue of misogyny and fighting against sexual violence, in not prioritizing the liberation of gender-oppressed people from sexual exploitation... If these were prioritized -- we would not be seeing so many disparate and serious cases of abuse, rape, and harassment proliferate through organizing..."
I urge you to be careful as the political situation in the imperial core worsens -- there are infiltrators, there are informants, and they are all too willing to become your friends, your lovers, and your leaders as people continue organizing. Austin organizing from the situation in PSC regarding Ryan to PYM Austin to PSL and now this “alternative” space have proven themselves unable to handle serious issues of sexual abuse, rape and misogyny. To interpret Reiss as an individual event and not a pattern of behavior in the entirety of Austin organizing is abysmally wrong.
Reiss was not the only one -- and this must be your reminder to take issues of gender violence, operational security, and accountability far more seriously.
Accountability procedures:
- The NS space should be dissolved. Once Over Cafe should be immediately made aware of this situation.
- The NS organizers should leave organizing and all organizations should have a process of how to interact in interpersonal interactions with these individuals. I have named Chance, Nabiha, and Cliff -- simply because I am not aware of the names of the other organizers involved who have allowed such reckless and dangerous behavior. There is no organizing with such dangerous individuals that repeatedly put peoples lives in danger, risked women's safety, and have shown no remorse for their actions. You cultivated a space for a misogynistic informant to ostracize comrades, prey on vulnerable people, and the state to surveill and spy on comrades.
- Investigation into the NS organizers, their relationships, and how they might have caused/conducted harm to others. Supporters of misogyny and defenders of rapists often commit such acts themselves.
Part 10 coming soon. I was sick a month ago when I wrote this piece, so the quality has degraded. Apologies.