Why We Won't go to the ABC Festival this Year

From Barrikade
April 28, 2023

Dear organizers and participants of ABC-Fest Vienna 2023,

This year, we would have actually held the lecture with subsequent discussion "Zerstören wir den Leviathan - Über die Unvereinbarkeit von Anarchie und Zivilisation", but we have been forced to cancel it at short notice and will not participate in the ABC festival this year. We were shocked to read in the event program that "activists" of the network "Solidarity Collectives" are offered a platform at an explicitly anarchist event. Shocking because despite the presentation of this network as "anti-authoritarian", one thing is clear to us: Anarchism can never have anything to do with directly or indirectly supporting nation-states, nationalism and the military.

Nothing less, however, is the self-understanding of the invited "activists" and their supporters, which is explained and supported in numerous statements, lectures and actions by members of the "Solidarity Collectives". To organize support for (allegedly "anarchist") parts of the Ukrainian military, which blatantly (and in view of the fact that anarchists realistically do not have the necessary means and connections, even ridiculously boastful) claims to supply and deliver to the Front ("provide the anti-authoritarian activists who joined military units with everything they needed." Quote from the website of the Solidarity Collectives) is incompatible with those of us with anarchist ideas! That the same network openly allows war propaganda to be carried out in an anarchist milieus ("People discuss the "Ukrainian question" all over the world. Explaining why all anti-authoritarian forces, despite everything, should support the Ukrainian resistance movement is our primary task today. Therefore, we are always ready to take part in conferences, debates or share our vision with journalists.”) is just the tip of the iceberg. We are disgusted by the fact that on the part of those "activists" of the "Solidarity Collectives", who should be offered a platform here at the ABC-Fest, in interviews, at events and above all in the vastness of the Internet, mood has been repeatedly made against deserters became, nationalist positions,

We believe that anarchist interventions against war can take many forms. It can range from the support of deserters to (armed) sabotage against the infrastructures of war to armed fights against all state powers, to name just a few examples. However, it is always indispensable for us that alliances - even if they are only temporary - with all states are rigorously rejected, that we as anarchists stand by the side of all oppressed populations and are not swayed by nationalist propaganda against the populations of other countries let - and certainly not run them ourselves - and aim our activities at mere humanist/humanitarian aid services just as much as in times of peace, which benefit the state and the government rather than destroying it. Seek, however, to enter the ranks of the military, not to incite mutinies there, to revive the practice of fragging, or simply to obtain arms, in order to desert with them and henceforth direct them against all states, but to defend a territory to participate in favor of the prevailing state occupying power, in our view this cannot yet be brought into line with anarchist ideas and on top of that the history of all wars confirms (as well as actually already "common sense") that this "strategy" has no prospects of success.

In the past year, we have unfortunately observed far too often how anarchists nevertheless participated in this pro-nationalist support of Ukraine in the war against Russia. We have had numerous discussions with the advocates of these "anarchist" warmongers and found that according to the stated intention of the "Solidarity Collectives" it is not at all in the interest of these "anarchist" warmongers to discuss their point of view, but they exclusively The goal is to bring anti-authoritarian forces to support them and thereby support the war ("Explaining why all anti-authoritarian forces, despite everything, should support the Ukrainian resistance movement is our primary task today." - Website of the "Solidarity Collectives" ). In the knowledge of this strategy and with the experience of previous discussions, we are convinced that these people, who want to applaud the anarchists' authoritarian ideas (war mongering), should not be offered a platform by the anarchists. Who, with manipulative means (e.g. an affected-non-affected rhetoric, selective and twisted information, images of the misery of the war, which are then used to justify the war itself, as well as a more than paradoxical "privilege" accusation against all, who do not share their opinion) works to stifle debates and at the same time strives to mobilize anarchists into war, in our opinion, had no place at an anarchist event. that these people, who want to cheer anarchist authoritarian ideas (war mongering), should not be offered a platform by anarchists. Who, with manipulative means (e.g. an affected-non-affected rhetoric, selective and twisted information, images of the misery of the war, which are then used to justify the war itself, as well as a more than paradoxical "privilege" accusation against all, who do not share their opinion) works to stifle debates and at the same time strives to mobilize anarchists into war, in our opinion, had no place at an anarchist event. that these people, who want to cheer anarchist authoritarian ideas (war mongering), should not be offered a platform by anarchists. Who, with manipulative means (e.g. an affected-non-affected rhetoric, selective and twisted information, images of the misery of the war, which are then used to justify the war itself, as well as a more than paradoxical "privilege" accusation against all, who do not share their opinion) works to stifle debates and at the same time strives to mobilize anarchists into war, in our opinion, had no place at an anarchist event.

For this reason, we have decided to cancel our own participation in this year's ABC-Fest, because we do not want to contribute to this dynamic (even if it may take place at the same time in more and more supposedly anarchist spaces).

We stand by the side of all those affected by the war, regardless of which state occupies the territory, whether Ukraine or Russia, as well as everywhere in the world, and declare our solidarity with all those who fight with libertarian intentions against the slaughter in the interests of various capitalist ruling factions , whether anarchists or not!

No solidarity with those who want to fight for their country, their "people" or the supposedly lesser democratic evil, regardless of whether they call themselves "anarchists" or not!

There are 61 Comments

The comrades at Barrikade declare that "we as anarchists stand by the side of all oppressed populations." They do not, however, stand by the side of the Ukrainian workers, farmers, middle class, and poor--the Ukrainian population--who have been invaded by the imperialist Russian forces, their land occupied, their villages and cities blown into rubble, their people massacred, raped, tortured, and their children kidnapped--and their very country threatened with being absorbed into Greater Russia against their wishes. With complete moral obtuseness Barrikade equates the oppressor and the oppressed, and urges the Ukrainians to stop fighting back.

Yes, Ukraine is organized as a capitalist nation state. Revolutionary anarchists work to change that. But the Ukrainian people accept this at this time and it is not the job of the job of the Russian army or Wagner mercenaries to change this. They themselves must come to the realization that a stateless socialism is the best program. And we who believe in freedom must support their right to determine their own future.

The writers blame the anarchist supporters of the Ukrainian people as "work[ing] to stifle debate." Meanwhile they withdraw themselves from an anarchist conference because their opponents will be present--in short, they are "working to stifle debate."

Almost all (non-pacifist) Ukrainian anarchists are supporting the Ukrainian side in one way or another. And so are most Russian and Belarusian anarchists. But with great arrogance and smugness, Barrikade seeks to expel all revolutionaries from the "anarchist" fold if they agree with most of the anarchists of Ukraine and Russia.

"Almost all (non-pacifist) Ukrainian anarchists are supporting the Ukrainian side in one way or another. And so are most Russian and Belarusian anarchists."

OoOooo unprovable assertions! Let me try!

Almost all (non-bootlicking) anarchists oppose war and NATO entirely! And so do even most bootlicking anarchists (except for Wayne Price).

Yay I'm a revOluTiOnARY!

I almost agree with you, in that it would have been interesting to see what that debate would have looked like. But, maybe these people wanted to spend their time doing something more productive than trying to explain basic anarchist ideas to people who should already understand them. Refusing to share a platform is not the same thing as deplatforming or “stifling debate” and the same question can be posed to those who criticize their choice: why and when and where do you draw the lines , first, around your own choices of free association and second, around what should or should not be up for debate within anarchist spaces?

I very much want to see this debated because people who call themselves anarchists are willing to give their lives for this nato proxy war. The lack of a geopolitical analysis- or whatever makes people think that is a good idea- is literally killing people. If it’s worth dying over than it’s definitely worth debating.

Thousands of Western anarchists are missing out on a STATELESS SOCIALIST REVOLUTION happening in UKRAINE as we speak. Popular assemblies are raving! Legitimate authority of the workers councils are overthrowing the Kiev capitalist power, in unison with MASSES of revolutionary socialist insurgents in Russia!

The Ukrianian People's revolution is on its way... heralded 100 years ago by the Makhnovschina and now through the might of the Territorial Defense Units and the national Heroes in our fighting Batallions and Regiments.

Let's fight together against the Russian invader for the Great Nation! For the Land and the People and the Leader Zelensky. Then when we will succeed... Western capitalists, the CIA, NATO will wither away, largely content with their victory against Russian Imperialism, and all the attack drones will fall under Worker's control of the popular assemblies.

National liberation is a key step to revolt against oppressive capitalist states! See how it worked all across history.. like here and there... and over there too.

For Democracy! Obey.

Anarchists throughout history have always supported and allied themselves to their national war efforts. During WWI and WWII anarchists of the world fought for all nations, for Britain, USA, Russia, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Yugoslavia, China, Philipines, Korea, Peru, India, Turkey, Iceland, eskimoes in the Arctic, Apache Indians, Chile, Bulgaria, Holland, Swaziland, Congo, Malaya, Australia, Argentina, Ecuador all fought for the international invisible anarchist armies who had infiltrated all of the armies of the world!
We will fight amongst the capitalists to rid the world of capitalists!

We fought for Muhmuhmuhrikah in Vietnam and Iraq and for Dubya during the War on Terror! Also we fought for the BOER against British IMPERIALISM who were the only White racists! And we also fought for the CIA in a gazillion covert wars as well as for the Nazis on the Eastern... *disc scratch sound* No wait.

Hail Spartacus, we were there fighting for Spartacus against the Romans and as anarch bootlicking Roman slaves against Spartacus. The Pope is an anarch because of us!

Anarchists were at Trafalgar old boy, and did a stirling job fighting beside Nelson against the Napolean totalitarian empire!

I pointed out the fact that almost all anarchists in Ukraine (and Russia and Belarusia) support the Ukrainian side of the war. Anon (Almost All) writes that this is an "unprovable assertion." Apparent you haven't been reading the reports of anarchist activities in Ukraine (etc.) published on this site. Instead of being proud of your ignorance, do some background checking.

Anon (Welcome to) choses to make a joke out of the suffering of millions of Ukrainians (and Russian soldiers). No, I never suggested that Ukraine is currently having a libertarian socialist revolution. Do you think that it is wrong to support any struggle that is less than an all out socialist revolution? Do you think that if anarchists sit on their hands during this war of national liberation that this would bring s closer to one?

The next Anon claims that "Anarchists throughout history have always supported and allied themselves to their national war efforts." This is a lie. During WW I most anarchists opposed all sides (with the exception of a few, such as Kropotkin). This was unlike the Marxists who mostly supported their imperialist governments. WWII was more complex (with one side being the Nazis) but many anarchists did not support either side. Nor did most anarchists take sides in the Cold War (which included Korea and Vietnam).

Most anarchists could distinguish between taking sides in a war between two imperialists (wrong) and taking sides in a war between an imperialist power and an oppressed people (even if the oppressed still have a state and capitalism).

Anon (YEES) also lies in saying that anarchists "fought for [Amerika] in Vietnam." No, anarchists opposed the US imperialists in Vietnam. In the Vietnamese war we were on the side of the Vietnamese people, even though they were misled by Stalinists and even though they got military aid from imperialist and Stalinist USSR and Maoist China. I suppose you would have had us be neutral between the Vietnamese and the US army?

Are any of you aware that most revolutionary "anarchists thought out history" have supported national liberation struggles, and distinguished them from wars between imperialists?? Bakunin, Malatesta, Guerin, and many others may be cited.

Yes Wayne, and I was an anarch concentration camp guard during WWII in Ukraine/German border!

Wayne, instead of asserting "Almost all (non-pacifist) Ukrainian anarchists” and “most Russian and Belarusian anarchists….” you could simply have added, “whose articles that I (Wayne Price) have selectively read on Anews and mistakenly took to speaking for ‘almost all’”.

Almost all the Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian anarchists that I am in communication with oppose the war entirely and are using the opportunity to sabotage their own state capitalists, cops, etc. Many others are simply opting-out because they are anarchists that want no part of it so they are underground doing all kinds of fun stuff in spite of their state’s bullshit.

Be less pompous. You are out of touch and shoild stop pretending like you know what is going on because you read sone communications on Anews.

You write, "Almost all the Ukrainian, Russian, and Belarusian anarchists that I am in communication with oppose the war entirely and are using the opportunity to sabotage their own state capitalists, cops, etc."

Of course, the Russian and Belarusian anarchists are entirely correct to oppose their governments in this war and to sabotage their own military and political forces. The question is whether they are for the Ukrainians against the Russian and Belarusian states. You are are an anonymous writer citing an unknown number of also anonymous anarchists to back up your assertion, against the consistent reports about Ukrainian anarchists which have appeared on this and other sites.

Honestly I want an answer to the titular question as well. My tiny local scene doesn’t give me much of an idea. I do hear things occasionally- that a friend of a friend went over there- but less often than I see bougie liberals coming in my work, proudly swaddled in Ukrainian and Polish souvenir apparel. I read about anarchists going to fight and die in Ukraine and I imagine people who are just stuck on the far left side of the liberal infosphere, or maybe just overcome with whatever drives young men to foreign wars.

I also think of an interview I read here between some western and some Ukrainian anarchists, not long after maidan, where the interviewers (crimethinc maybe?) seemed desperate for the locals to tell them the seeds of freedom were growing- apologies for paraphrasing from memory but the gist was like-

Q: but the maidan was pretty cool right?
A: uh no not once it was completely taken over by fascists who brutally beat us

Q: but surely something good and anarchist-y is coming out of this whole anti-Putin revolution??
A: by the time working class people are turning on each other in increasingly organized militias fighting over language and ethnicity, it’s too late to talk about liberatory change…

I also remember that interview and shared your ... sense of dread?

at the time, i remember making direct comparisons to canada and the US, seeing this edgy, abstract accelerationism from some leftists and anarchists and thinkin ... that's not going to work out well at all for most of them

Dread, yes.
I want to hear from anarchists who have actually been there, both since 2014, and since last year. Where are the reportbacks?

I'm also aware how Mussolini used to be part of the International and ended up bending radical socialism toward full-blown nationalism.

"Anon (YEES) also lies in saying that anarchists "fought for [Amerika] in Vietnam." No, anarchists opposed the US imperialists in Vietnam. In the Vietnamese war we were on the side of the Vietnamese people, even though they were misled by Stalinists and even though they got military aid from imperialist and Stalinist USSR and Maoist China. I suppose you would have had us be neutral between the Vietnamese and the US army?"

It's not a lie, it's sarcasm, you tool. In reference to that apparent idiot who claimed that anarchists have been supporting nationalist struggle "throughout history", which is the big stupid lie. But there's no evidence of Malatesta being a national hero of Italy and neither Bakunin struggling for Russia, or even Russians. Bakunin was an internationalist to the bone and this is why a lot of the people he organized with weren't Russians. Best examples of anarchos supporting national liberation struggle were the pre-WW2 Korean anarchists and Emilio Zapata, as the few others seem to me like anarchists doing strategic and philosophical mistakes, getting caught within populist and nationalist bullshit narratives that ALWAYS end up working against themselves... to the prisons of the same countries they fought for.

Yes, you had several anarchists fighting on the Ally side in WW2. Not over national liberation crap, but to defeat what was CLEARLY and definitely a common enemy for the whole world, i.e. fascism. But turns out your Heroes of the Ukrainian nationalist insurgency, btw, didn't pick the same side. :-(

"Bakunin, Malatesta, Guerin, and many others may be cited!!!" --- Wayne Price
Bakunin, Malatesta, Guerin, oh my!
Bakunin, Malatesta, Guerin, oh my!

Oh the ol commie's, "Jesus, Ghandi, MLK!" mantra equivalent.

Folks like Wayne believe if they repeat it enough they can convince actual contemporary anarchists to lick the same boot they've chosen to lick.

This is absurd. How many anarchists have supported war efforts by states founded with major participation by a fascist uprising? Only 'anarchists' today make these errors.

or at least some of them. anarchists do not support countries. the "ukrainian side of the war" is still a national side, by definition. supporting the people in russia and ukraine is different. putin/=russia, and other basic anarchist concepts.

this really isn't as complicated as you're making it wayne. sad to see you triple/quadruple down on this.

I WAS A JAPANESE ANARCHIST KAMIKAZE PILOT DURING WWII WHO DITCHED HIS PLANE COS IMMA PACIFIST IN THE PACIFIC OCEAN!!

"Casual racism on Anews??? It's funny because it's Asian. Leave it undeleted. Ha ha ha." --- Anews

everybody knows asians are basically white-adjacent anyway, so who cares.

"so who cares"?

Not the moderators!

uh... who did the Japanese side with during WW2?

Yeah exactly. Cry more.

I WAS AN ANARCH INDIVIDUALIST JAPANESE KAMIKAZE PILOT AND I SIDED WITH STIRNERIANS!!

"Bakunin was an internationalist to the bone." And that is why he supported national liberation struggles. Must I dig up quotations?

"this really isn't as complicated as you're making it ." Right. An imperialist state invades and occupies and wages war against a weaker, capitalist but non-imperialist country. It is simple: lovers of freedom (anarchists) should be on the side of the oppressed and invaded people. Period. Even if they have a state and capitalism (and the majority of the population accepts this now) and even if they get arms aid from rival imperialist powers.

I am not going to get into a statistical dispute of how many Ukrainian anarchists support the Ukrainian people in their war of self-defense. Yes, I am relying on the reports which have appeared for months on this site and elsewhere. I don't how many Ukrainian anarchists you are in touch with (besides the anarchist group Assembly). If they are working to spread anarchist ideas during the war, then I salute them despite other differences. But if they are deliberately sabotaging the armed resistance to the Russian invasion, that would be a disgrace.

Wayne, do you believe the US and the other states and institutions that are part of its side are “lovers of freedom”? Isn’t it kind of obvious that Ukraine right now is a proxy element of NATO, subsisting on western funds and fighting with western weapons? Why should anarchists go over there to die for NATO’s goals- do you really think it matters more than a drop in the ocean of blood and tears? Why is that better to do than to organize against the militarism of our own societies from within?

No I do not regard NATO as lovers of freedom. They are imperialists and following their own imperial interests. It is the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their freedom, freedom from foreign invasion and occupation and having their cities blown up and their people killed en masse and tortured and raped. And we anarchists are lovers of freedom and should be on the side of the people (not their state but the people). I did not call on anarchists to go to Ukraine. I spoke of the Ukrainian anarchists, most of whom support their people against the invasion, in whatever ways they can.

The Palestinians are oppressed and exploited by the Israeli state, which is backed by US imperialism. Russia and China give some support to the Palestinians (not much these days). Shall anarchists refuse to support the Palestinians (who are led by nationalist opportunists and crazed Islamicists)? Inquiring minds want to know.

"Shall anarchists refuse to support the Palestinians (who are led by nationalist opportunists and crazed Islamicists)?"

We took a vote, Wayne and have decreed:

1. Anarchists shall refuse to support the states of Israel AND Palestinian.
2. Anarchists shall support individual people if they choose, but NEVER nation states.
3. Anarchists will no longer entertain Wayne Price's nation-state loving bootlickingness.

Motion passes. Hail democracy!

Palestine*

Typographical revision approved.

I WAS A PALESTINIAN SUICIDE BOMBER WHO DEFUSED HIS BOMB AND BECAME AN INDIVIDUALIST STIRNERIAN AND LIVED HAPPILY EVER AFTER!!

So not only do thecollective approve of and promote anti-Japanese racism they also promote anti-Palestinian stereotyping. Because I suppose they find it funny?

These are harmful stereotypes of Japanese kamakazi and Palestinisn suicide bomber that otherizes and diminishes entire groups of people not as individuals but as something lesser than.

Then thecollective deletes comments that point out these problematic comments and leaves the problematic comments?

Not very anarchist if you ask me.

Who were the Japanese kamikaze and Palestinian jihadists siding with during WW2? Not the anarchists.

This whole glorification of Japanese imperialism and Palestinian antisemitism is rather sus...

Wow

Do you mean to say it's "glorification" to NOT be racist or Islamophobic? Wow indeed.

It's called SATIRE you humorless and witless bunch of self-righteous puritans. Lighten up!

"No I do not regard NATO as lovers of freedom. They are imperialists and following their own imperial interests. It is the Ukrainian people who are fighting for their freedom,

Ah yes, with NATO's weapons and funding, by the billions, as well as all the boycotting and stonewalling. Good mind job, Wayne. Ukwaynians are literally fighting all on their own!

"if [Ukrainian anarchists] are deliberately sabotaging the armed resistance to the Russian invasion, that would be a disgrace." ~Wayne Price

You actually mean to say that if Ukrainian anarchists are attacking and sabotaging their own state's (and NATO's) military, police, institutions of capital it would be disgraceful??? Are you fucking serious, Wayne Price?

Oh and you're combining a number of different anons into the same anon again. There are AT LEAST two people in these comments that despise you and your dogshit, bootlicking interpretation of anarchy. I know because I am only one of them and there are many more then just my replies.

'Only during times of peace are anarchists allowed to be anti-state and anti-capitalist',,,,, Wayne Price basically

“The supreme law of the State is self-preservation at any cost. And since all States, ever since they came to exist upon the earth, have been condemned to perpetual struggle — a struggle against their own populations, whom they oppress and ruin, a struggle against all foreign States, every one of which can be strong only if the others are weak — and since the States cannot hold their own in this struggle unless they constantly keep on augmenting their power against their own subjects as well as against the neighborhood States — it follows that the supreme law of the State is the augmentation of its power to the detriment of internal liberty and external justice.”

i.e. exactly what both Zelensky and Putin have been doing for their respective countries.

As for Bakunin's "nationalism", his Appeal to the Slavs, he was referring to the idea of "nations" as the traditional ethno-cultural groupings, not the nation-state formations like Ukraine. It is regardless a problem in Bakunin's theory (in addition to his antisemitism) that undermines his own claim to anarchism, as this is a view that still imposes the ethno-cultural (or worst, *racial*) line as the necessary step to liberation, while culture and ethnicity rather tend to be enclaves limiting the spread of an idea.

There's also the fact that Ukrainians were considered Russians back in the days of Bakunin. The Ukrainian identity is a DIRECT result of the very same Austro-Hungarian and German "Divide and rule" imperialist tactic that he opposed in this piece, in the first place, lol. The so-called Ukrainian People's Republic -i.e. the first known official nation-state formation happening in the region to be distinct from Russia- was an offshoot of this imperialism, as it collapsed at the end of WW1.

Oh btw, I think I wasn't clear enough on this: there is no separate, historical Ukrainian ethnic group; they were a subgroup of Rus people. But there are German, Hungarian and Polish people (like those in Romania as well) who claim being a specific "Ukrainian" ethnic group. A bit like the Polish Germans back in the '30s. This war is fought along racist lines.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/michail-bakunin-appeal-to-the-slavs

If alive today and if he had been stupid enough to root for a side in this war, Bakunin would have most likely taken the side of Russia.

A nationally-nihilist approach to imperialism is the only meaningful approach to international anarchism, even if it WILL be from a more specific ethno-cultural standpoint, the national territorializations are notions to overcome, not to affirm and reinforce... damnit.

Yeah especially in Europe where most of western Europe can be described ethnically as of ancient Gaulish and Celtic origin, the north of Slavic/Aryan, south of polyglot Mediterranean mixtures and the west of Arabic/Mongol ancestry. This is a broad brush and obviously misses the culdesacs of gene pool stagnated populations reminiscent of isolated xenophobic tribes.
As Bakunin describes in his -Appeal to the Slavs" these northern European "anarchists" are misinterpreting the idea of the quintessential anarch values which begin with relationships to other people on their human qualities and not on their nationalistic ideological political /religious belief systems. This region of Slavic cultural/linguistic Europe, steeped in medieval traditions and values, is renowned for its tribal-esque xenophobia,,,,one only has to remind ourselves of the Yugoslavia civil war, and then realise that they are still far removed from the post-modern liberalism that emerged in the 1970s. Alas, if Bakunin were alive today, he would be tearing out his beard in exasperation!

In Sam Dolgoff's Bakunin on Anarchism, the editor writes, "Bakunin argues that the nation-state is not a natural community. He defines the contrast between NATIONALITY, ones natural love for the place and the people...and PATRIOTISM, the absolute power of the state over its native subjects and conquered national minorities." (p. 401)

Then Michael Bakunin wrote, “Nationality, like individuality, is a natural fact. It denotes the inalienable right of individuals, groups, associations, and regions to their own way of life. And this way of life is the product of a long historical development [a confluence of human beings with a common history, language, and a common cultural background]. And this is why I will always champion the cause of oppressed nationalities struggling to liberate themselves from the domination of the state.” (Dolgoff, 1980, p. 401) By “nationality...is a natural fact,” he means, not that nationality is a biological fact, but that it is created mostly by unplanned, unpurposive, social history.

Bakunin also wrote, "Each individual, each association, commune, or province, each region and nation, has the absolute right to determine its own fate, to associate with others or not, to ally itself with whomever it will, or break any alliance....The right to unite freely and [to] separate with the same freedom is the most important of all political rights, without which confederation will always be disguised centralization.” (quoted in Guerin, Anarchism, 1970, p. 67) In his book on anarchism, Daniel Guerin commented on this statement, “True internationalism rests on self-determination, which implies the right of secession..”

He also wrote, “Nationality is not a universal human principle: it is a historic, local fact....Every people and the smallest folk-unit has its own character, its own specific mode of existence, its own way of speaking, feeling, thinking, and acting; and it is this idiosyncrasy that constitutes the essence of nationality, which is...the sum total of the living conditions of that people....Every nationality, great or small, has the incontestable right to be itself, to live according to its own nature. This right is simply the corollary of the general principle of freedom.” (quoted in Bonanno, Anarchism and the National Liberation Struggle, 1990, pp. 20--21)

Nationality is an imagined community, that when enforced through statist institutions becomes cultural echo chambers, and a source of oppression or hindrances for the liberation of the ego. These are spooks thrown in the way of self-realization... of the emerging of the individual as the only entity that exists.

In such, all nation-states are anti-anarchic, and so you are, Mr Wank Prize.

I am sorry you "despise" me. I stand with the oppressed, invaded, and occupied working people of Ukraine against the imperialist invader. You do not support them but tell them not to fight the invader and to sabotage the war against the invasion (because the war is organized and led by the capitalist state, the anarchists not having yet persuaded the people of anarchist-communism you see).

Shall we despise those who are in solidarity with the oppressed and invaded, or those who tell them not to resist their oppression but to sabotage anyone who does resist? How cold-hearted are you anyway?

"I stand with the oppressed, invaded, and occupied working people of Ukraine against the imperialist invader"

Haha, no you're not, you fakester.

"It is simple: lovers of freedom (anarchists) should be on the side of the oppressed and invaded people."

Yes, so simple... for the simple-minded, it all makes so much sense.

This also is literally William J. and Dubya speaking here. Wayne Wayne... you never fail to disappoint. At least you can succeed at something in life!

I appreciate anarchists finally taking public stances against supporting the US/NATO proxy war with Russia.

All those supporting the war efforts (either side and in name of whatever fucking people) go fuck yourselves.

Frankly, white on white crime makes me smile. Of course that’s also why white folks are so turnt supporting the other white folks their own white folks told them to support so as to keep the white folks on top, armed and always read to continue fucking everyone else over. Now, with newer and upgraded weapons.

Aww ;-(

Nice try! White supremacy can’t be inverted. But it certainly can be internalized and reproduced, yeah even by anarchists or whatever label/identity you prefer.

For example, dumb ass ones supporting any side in any war between states.

Besides Bakunin, it is also worth noting what Makhno and his movement thought about national liberation and self-determination. This should be seen in the context of his Insurgent Army fighting off several nationalist armies, as well as fighting for independence from the Germans, Austrians, Poles, and, of course, the Russians (then the Communists).

The Makhnovist movement declared (in October 1919), “Each national group has a natural and indisputible entitlement to...maintain and develop its national culture in every sphere. It is clear that this...has nothing to do with narrow nationalism of the ‘separtist’ variety....We proclaim the right of the Ukrainian people (and every other nation) to self-determination, not in the narrow nationalist sense of a Petliura, but in the sense of the toilers’ right to self-determination.” (in Skirda, 2004, pp. 377-378)

For further discussion of the Ukrainian-Russian war and anarchism, see my recent essay, which goes beyond what can be covered in these brief posts. https://www.anarkismo.net/article32731search_text=Wayne+Price

THIS IS UNACCEPTABLE! Mistakes on the battlefield COST LIVES Wayne, and your incompittance means that you are now demoted to latrine duties in the rear echelon, away from the front line where your presence would only result in a total overun of our lines by capitalist nationalists!

Wayne Price is a psyop to simultaneously frustrate actual anarchists into abandoning anarchy and also to get would-be anarchists into enlisting into the military. Prove me wrong.

Wayne Price is an alias of thecollective to simultaneously frustrate actual anarchists into abandoning anarchy and also to get would-be anarchists into engaging more with anews. Prove me wrong.

all the worst anews trolls are just an engagement psyop, myself included

Ah, you found me out! How clever of you.

Now please tell us what agency hired you to persuade Ukrainian workers not to resist the Russian invaders and non-Ukrainians not to support the Ukrainians in their resistance.

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