Trigger warning: subject matter deals with murder, assault, and sexual assault

The anarchist sub-culture values transformative justice and non-participation with the Justice system. As someone who isn’t into the anarchist sub-culture, but is herself an anarchist, I watch with sadness at how anti-snitch culture ends up backfiring and ends up causing more harm than good.

By anti-snitch culture I mean the anarchist community dictating when, where, how, and why someone can call the cops. As a woman, I am made to feel like walking prey every day. If I were grabbed on the street at night, I wouldn’t hesitate to use force. I’m not going down without a fight. If I felt like I wouldn’t be able to defend myself (e.g. if I wasn’t sober and didn’t have anyone to trust to protect me), I wouldn’t hesitate to call the police either if I had the chance.

I’ve been living in Brooklyn for almost 7 years now, and since I first came here I’ve been amazed at the cultural diversity, the number of communities, the many immigrant communities especially, and how they function. I’ve learned a lot about different struggles that affects these different groups. All of them deal with sexual assault, and there’s one in particular that comes to mind when I think of dealing with this issue.

When I first saw the bearded men with long black suits and fur hats, the women with long skirts and thick stockings, I wondered how such a culture could survive and thrive in such a diverse place as New York City. The South Williamsburg section of Brooklyn (not to be confused with the over-colonized North Williamsburg section) is home to tens of thousands of Hasidic Jews. The two things that stand out the most for me is their strong anti-snitch culture and the notorious pandemic of sexual assault within their communities.

Jews don’t call the cops on Jews. Or at least they’re not supposed to. In the Hasidic communities, this is taken very seriously. Reports of sexual assault by teachers or Rabbis aren’t taken seriously and are often actively silenced when they’re heard by family members or other community members. When the cops are called, they are met with a wall of silence. If a rapist is brought to court, the community’s response is often to blame the victim.*

The Hasidic Jews also stand out because they have their own community watch force that works in tandem with the NYPD. A few years ago, a man with mental issues molested and dismembered a young boy that he abducted. It was plastered all over the news, and offered a window into the tight-knit Hasidic community. It offered chance for a dialogue, and made many question the way that the Hasidic community deals with sexual assault within their communities and their particular anti-snitch culture.

Within the anarchist sub-culture, anti-snitch culture leads to harm when victims are discouraged from talking to the cops to remove rapists from their scene, for example. These rapists remain in the scene, and find more victims to prey upon. Or, put another way, anarchists fail to protect each other by continually allowing known rapists to be in their scene.

In the mainstream world, if the police were to be called, rapists would serve years in prison. The rapists in the anarchist scene get away with an accountability process that fails to instill the same severity of the rupture of social relationships that prison provides. They take full advantage of anti-snitch culture, anything to not go to prison. Baseball bat vigilantism doesn’t seem to be working on these people.

Assault between roommates/housemates is another not-uncommon occurrence in the anarchist scene. Since the anti-snitch culture means that no one is going to call the cops, people behave like cops, using force to get their way (one infamously stated that he didn’t care about behaving like an anarchist anymore, he was a “terrorist”). Poisonous living situations go on for months, years even, until the last violent altercation makes people say, enough is enough. The cops are called, sometimes by the neighbors, sometimes by anarchists.

Rapists and those who threaten others with violence, those whose mere presence is threatening and triggering, take advantage of anti-snitch culture, and destroy the energy within the anarchist scene, intentionally or not. It’s time we protect ourselves, our friends, comrades and loved ones, and call the cops on the cops. Turning two enemies against each other is a win.

*I use the term victim, and not survivor, a term which I reserve for when I feel like my life was seriously threatened. I understand and respect other definitions and uses of the term survivor.