Walking into a small room in a communal house in north London, I'm confronted by a poster depicting an Egyptian protester hurling himself into a line of riot shields, with a message in huge capitals: "WE WILL FIGHT, WE WILL KISS/LONDON CAIRO ROME TUNIS". Elsewhere books on radical philosophy are stacked alongside photocopied "FIGHT FOR YOUR EMA" flyers and other design scraps. I'm here to meet – on condition of anonymity – two members of the shadowy Deterritorial Support Group (DSG), who use the names Pablo and Nick, and, via Skype from somewhere outside the M25, a third whom we'll call Jamie. "I'd make you dinner, but I'm skint," apologises Pablo, as they set up the laptop. "I wasn't paid this week."
At various points DSG – named as an antithesis to the Territorial Support Group, the Met's public order riot police, and kettling specialists – will identify themselves as "Ikea anarchists", "autonomist Marxists", "humorous provocateurs", "cartoonish materialists" and an "ultra-left propaganda machine" (their official description). These tongue-in-cheek/silly labels might mark them as determined outsiders hectoring from the fringes, but they have cast a long shadow over politics in 2011, infiltrating mainstream debate via the virus-like spread of their internet memes. Since the student protests a year ago, they have become know for a stream of provocative political posters; for timely polemics about internet activists Anonymous, political policing and the Occupy movement; for sparking journalist Johann Hari's downfall; and for spreading across the global media an astonishing hoax about radical philosopher Slavoj Žižek offering his endorsement of Lady Gaga.
