As a revolutionary union, the IWW has historically been opposed on principle to hierarchy: specifically, to executive power and to union bureaucracies. Rising above the control mentality of the status quo is the whole point of syndicalism; we create the facts of the future by learn how to act and relate to one another differently–typically in the context of autonomous, collective class struggle.
Bakunin was talking about this as an essential facet of the slogan of the First International, i.e. ‘the emancipation of the working class will be carried out by the workers themselves,’ long before the IWW came along. Alexandra Kollantai talked about much the same distinguishing between workers’ and peasants’ bureaucracies and workers’ self-activity . . . though as we now know, all this talk of ‘worker self-activity’ was evidence of a personality disorder, as is questioning the judgement of V.I. Lenin in general apparently.
Syndicalism vs AusROC
The entryist colonisation of the Australian IWW has been written about here and here and here. On a personal level, I have incorporated my experience of purging as the delegate for the Melbourne GMB and editor of the newspaper Direct Action–he most likely to resist entryism if he had been aware what was going on–into an extended screed about surviving Complex PTSD.
As I noted in that screed, entryism seems to appeal to unreconstructed Leninists, as they don’t need to advertise that they’re pushing their own barrow, but rather use personality wedges and revolutionary morality to impose themselves on radical milieus. Leninism naturally identifies itself with the revolution and the working class, and if you question the judgement of a judgemental authoritarian, you’re probably suffering from some kind of personality disorder.
This appears to be what passes for class struggle praxis in the offical Australian IWW. It is not surprising perhaps then that the entryists have managed to destroy the entire organisation; on this count, the entryist proof is in the pudding. The “Unite” entryists, in saving the IWW and the left more generally from bad apples, have also managed to split and destroy every last branch–not least of which being the Brisbane GMB, which had ballooned as a result of active participation in class struggle. It could not be controlled by the entryists, therefore it had to be destroyed.
The international has to find out the hard way
The IWW internationally can’t be told anything about entryism; bystanding and quiet assent to the morality-policing of infantile personality disorders amongst those of us who doubt the judgement of orthodox, ureconstructed Leninism has done the job of enforcing the authority of the AusROC vanguard. Types who mean well but are unwilling to challenge the informal hierarchies established through nominally radical policing of revolutionary morality propose mediation between perpetrators and victims, and then give up and assume the latter aren’t trying hard enough when we don’t want to negotiate with vicious thugs and perpetrators.
SE QLD thus has had to wait for AusROC to show its true face. Fortunately we have had moles in AusROC for some years now, and have their AGM minutes for the last few years (see attached below; these are the minutes for 2025, these are the minutes for 2024). The reader will note of both the 2024 and 2025 minutes that Tristan Bunner, personalty cult leader of AusROC, did not even bother to attend, even as he was being installed into the AusROC executive.
As FW Strodl has noted, AusROC (meaning Tristan Bunner) has changed the Constitution to give itself executive decision-making power, apparently with the help of Steve Wright of autonomist marxism fame. This apparently matters because who you know matters more to radical microcults than what you know or who you are. What is autonomist about executives through?
After changing the Constitution, it would appear that Bunner is moving not only to cement his control over a very rapidly dwindling organisation, but to bleed it for his own enrichment as well. As the AusROC minutes for 2025 (4 months late in coming out) reveal, Bunner has introduced successful motions to introduce paid officials:
Dissent: none
There appeared to be no dissent because the AGM was held in Wellington, New Zealand, apparently with the only wobs who will still work under Tristan Bunner’s executive. Bunner is the legitimate IWW because it’s not about what you know, it’s who you know.
There appears to be not a single functioning GMB in Australia. Indeed, the ‘Naarm GMB’ has not submitted reports for two years. Neither has Bunner. He does literally nothing that doesn’t serve his own ambition.
As we have seen also, AusROC has a sizable kitty–the product at least in part apparently of what happens when every last branch folds, and then returns moneys to the Regional Organising Committee. Apparently Tristan Bunner thinks he deserves all of it.
https://seqldiww.org/wp-content/uploads/2026/05/4th-Quarterly-Financial-Report.xlsx
We have already noted how Bunner let the Black Spark cultural centre in Melbourne close down with $56k in the kitty, a fact arguably indicative of his basic attitude towards the left. Both his vicious purity politics, introducing vanguardism through the back door, and his obvious corruption are perfectly tolerable to the international IWW. Indeed, GHQ itself, no doubt infected with Bunnerism, is now faced with a labour dispute over its inability to respect workers.
The facts surrounding the downward spiral of the post-colonisation AusROC point to the corruption of self-appointed arbiters of revolutionary morality who, in being surrounded by sycophants, enablers and bystanders, are free to destroy forms of autonomous collective working class action as they see fit. Movement narcissists are free to do so with impunity, as though they understand that they will be free even to install themselves as paid union bosses in a historically nonhierarchical union, because we will side with entryists, colonisers and usurpers in the destruction of our organisations before we stand up to judgmental thugs and bullies using progressive pretexts instead of reactionary ones, and risk being tarred with stigma ourselves.
Bunner’s undeniable success in twisting the IWW and large parts of the left around his little finger, as he destroys organisations and social ties, blackens names and perpetrates ability supremacism medicalising reactions to his endemic disrespect and abuse, is testament to the weakness common to both. It makes sense they need to invisibilise struggles so they have a folk demon they can essentialise and demonise, so they can reconstruct themselves solutions to problems of their own making as though this was not a problem with the capitalist status quo. The long-term destructive consequences are, at this point, similarly undeniable.
Nb. Tristan Bunner is North American also. Leave it to a Septic to assume to know better than the rest of us antipodean peasants.
2025 AGM minutes
2024 AGM minutes
AusROC Financials
Bastardised constitution
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