IAF-FAI Imposters: The FAImujer Saga

Since very early in the history of the Indigenous Anarchist Federation - Federación Anarquista Indígena (IAF-FAI), we have been plagued by an imposter. We have received many questions about why we would support MLM movements, brutal dictatorships, and repressive state apparatus, only to find out that these posts originated from a fake account entitled @/FAImujer. In order to put all of this saga into one article, we have compiled this piece (which is sure to grow), as Twitter has done little to stop this fake account. Let’s set the record straight.

The IAF-FAI was founded on June 1st of 2018. A comrade by the pseudonym Insurgente Eepa contacted Bad Salish Girl and The Green City about forming an organization to center Indigenous anarchism. Together they started building the IAF-FAI. At the time, all three of these comrades had pages with personal information that were used to write posts and express thoughts. Little to our knowledge, FAImujer started a page on June 24th, stealing the header and logo of the IAF-FAI, and falsely claiming that their logo was stolen and that the IAF-FAI was run by a white man.

When we discovered this on July 2nd, 2018 and after discussing, we reached out to the FAImujer account to offer to have them speak with us about what we had done that supposedly run counter to a strong Anarchist empowerment of women. Silence. To this day, this post and offer to clear up any misconceptions has gone unanswered.

We decided to try to positively interact with the FAImujer account to try to mend the unknown wound that FAImujer purported to have. It wasn’t until posts supporting Ortega and other authoritarian powers that we started to get messages from confused followers. It was at this point that we started to tell people that FAImujer was definitely not affiliated with the IAF-FAI. When organizations like BRRN or accounts like @libcomorg reached out, we told them we were fine with them informing their followers of the imposter account.

FAImujer then began to help doxx one of the founding members who had switched to a pseudonym at the advice of elders who were involved with AIM. This doxing and harassment continued with FAImujer even contacting the tribe of an IAF-FAI admin who works with his tribe’s cultural preservation programs.

We started making the moves to change our logo in January 2019 with the incredible talents of Barb Radical graphic design. It was always the plan to change from the first logo which was hastily made as a placeholder by an admin. The use of our logo to confuse and siphon followers by FAImujer accelerated our need to adopt a new logo.

Some suggested delaying this adoption so that our complaints to twitter might go answered, but we decided to press forward without resolution and adopted the new logo on March 2nd, 2019. Our old logo still appears on some of our flyers in circulation, but we are updating as time goes on.

As we have been struggling to deal with the confusion caused by FAImujer, we have posted proof several times showing the claims FAImujer has made are categorically untrue. Here are a few false claims that FAImujer has claimed and some proof to refute their lies:

The logo/header were stolen.’

  • Here we can see that the logo and header were created a few days after the founding of the IAF-FAI on June 3rd, 2018. This logo design was done with a combination of programs and had two versions, a bilingual primary logo and a English compact logo. The header was simple. FAImujer claimed that this was stolen, but their page didn’t start until June 24th. One twitter user, @ThaumPenguin, brought to our attention that their version of the logo is fuzzy from being run through the twitter compression algorithm multiple times. FAImujer has been asked to produce the metadata for the logo, but they have refused.

The Black Rose Rosa Negra Federation runs IAF-FAI.’

  • We do have a few members who are a part of this organization, but our founding members were not affiliated. BRRN uses a Platformist organizing structure and has somewhat rigid requirements for membership. IAF-FAI does not follow this structure and prefers to bring together diverse Indigenous Anarchists who reflect their communities instead of an organization. We prefer for our members to create cells in their own backyard., which gives them the freedom to affiliate fluidly and to act organically. We enjoy the work of BRRN, but we are different in a lot of ways.

‘IAF-FAI is run by one man.’

  • One of the most common conspiracy theories pushed by FAImujer has been that we are run by one white man, but from the beginning, we were run by three anarchists, only one a man. Now our number of admins is ever-expanding. Some help with running the twitter account, some help with media appearances, and some help with mailing counter-propaganda for IAF-FAI organizers on the ground. It would be physically impossible for one person to do all of the work needed to run the IAF-FAI. We have had at least four admins comfortable enough with being recorded go on podcasts including RevLeftRadio, The Final Straw, and Coffee with Comrades. Most of our members are non cis-male. That’s a good thing for IAF-FAI as an organization. Most of the admins keep their identities quiet to help prevent doxing. Unfortunately, FAImujer has been responsible for almost the same level of harassment as Alt-Right fascist trolls.

We are still not sure whether FAImujer is actually an indigenous person who is too obsessed with conspiracy theories to actually speak with the people, if they are a non-native troll account, or if they are an actively malicious attempt to discredit the growing Indigenous Anarchist movement at large. FAImujer claims to be run by one Indigenous Marxist woman, but they have provided no proof that they are indigenous or what people claim them.

At the end of the day, FAImujer has been a nuisance to our organizing, but is something we can overcome. Seeing IAF-FAI flags at parades, seeing IAF-FAI shirts on the streets, seeing anti-colonial IAF-FAI stickers from Brazil to Canada to Denmark, seeing comrades for the first time at actions, makes it all makes it worth it. The relationships we have built in this organization has been a process of love and mutual creativity, and these relationships will carry Indigenous Anarchism through this century and on to the next.

In parting, we want to offer these words, as we have in the past, to FAImujer. We are still willing to talk. A lot of people like your posts and you have potential to create your own organization. If you ever feel like giving up this crusade against the people of IAF-FAI, perhaps we can mend broken bridges. Until then, we ask that you stop using our original logo, stop using half of our name, and stop confusing people. Indigenous Anarchism can’t grow with these pointless feuds.