Acrimonious Acronyms

Leaked digital communications between various branches of Occupy reveal tensions within the movement, which celebrates its birthday this month. Three groups, Occupied Media (OM), Occupied News (ON) and Occupied Press (OP) are at the centre of a war of words, with spokespeople from each of the horizontally organised, non-hierarchical, leaderless groups exchanging insults and accusations.

According to one insider, ON considers itself more progressive than OM, whereas OM claims that ON has strayed from its roots. Both OM and ON have been criticised by OP, which sees itself as closest to Original Occupy (OO).

A source claiming to be a former member of OO, however, described how minutes from a General Assembly in May prove that the issue of contention was actually a database which OM refused to release, despite ON insisting that the information be shared for the benefit of all Occupiers. According to this account, OM countered that that there are plenty more cards to be found in phone boxes around central London. Another informant from Occupied Semaphore (OS), a one man working group based on a derelict oil rig in the North Sea, contacted us with the flags he normally uses for outreach with passing cargo ship captains. His decoded message mentioned nothing about databases, but traced the beginning of the conflict to a packet of biscuits that disappeared from the tea tent in January.

We also received a garbled email from OO@gmail.com about prefigurative politics and the perils of utopianism, but matters are complicated by a statement from Occupied Radio (OR), claiming that OO was never a working group. Rather, the informant described OO as a kind of theoretical and never-witnessed subatomic particle that emerges to seed a new division of Occupy, but, being stable only in an ideological vacuum, vanishes into the void almost as soon as it is created. Meanwhile, a spokesperson from Occupied Quabalah (OQ) – a group of dissident rabbis squatting an abandoned synagogue in Finchley – contacted one of our correspondents through his dreams, explaining that the differences between the factions are due to subtle energies dependent on the Hebrew transliterations of the various acronyms. OQ is not affiliated with the Occupied Jews Network (OJN), which has launched a media project involving various other working groups as an alternative to the Occupied News Network (ONN). The collaboration of OJS with the Occupied Screws Network (OSN), the Occupied Blues Network (OBN), the Occupied Views Network (OVN), the Occupied Cruise Network (OCN), the Occupied Snooze Network (OSN), and the Occupied Moos Network (OMN) features dozing correctional facility officers sleep-talking the news from cowpens on scenic yachts, to a soundtrack of downtempo klezmer played on slide guitar.

A Gallop poll reveals that 99.99999% of the British population are entirely unaware of any differences between the acrimonious acronyms, and, having spoken to OM, ON, OO, OP, OQ, OR and OS, we are indeed none the wiser.

Solidarity Amongst Vowels of the English Occupy (SAVE Occupy) issued a press release claiming that O is in A&E, and unless U and I get down there ASAP to give her a transfusion, O will soon be 0.

By Nev Remu