BASTARD CONFERENCE 2023

The Berkeley Anarchist Study Group will present the 2023 BASTARD Conference on Saturday, November 11th from 12-9pm at the Omni Commons (4799 Shattuck Ave in Oakland). BASTARD is an annual gathering of presentations and conversations about anarchy. It functions as a setting for participants in the study group along with friends and accomplices to share their reflections on the beautiful idea. It also serves as a place for anarchists to encounter each other amidst the ruins, with a view towards new friendships and endeavors.

Our 2023 theme is “The Hydra”. Two heads for every one severed, the golden sword of wisdom, poisonous atrabile, apparent defeat… What do this myth and its resonances have to say for anarchists? Come find out!

Free to all, though donations to benefit the Omni and the Study Group are appreciated. Presentations starting every hour, so drop by any time during the day. Food too! See you there…

SCHEDULE

12-1pm

Lew Finzel: “Echidna – Mother of Monsters!” [Entrance Hall]

Jason McQuinn: “Preparing for the End of Empire – Where are the Anarchists?” [Disco Room]

1-2pm

Hieronymus/Natterjack/Winston Smith: “Anarchist Antimilitarism and the Ukrainian War” [Entrance Hall]

John Henri Nolette: “Polycephalous Sexuality” [Disco Room]

2-3pm

LD & Craig: “SOMA: Embodied Play for Anarchists” [Entrance Hall]

Magazine: “Waste unto Waste” [Disco Room]

3-4pm

Anika Grangle: “Music is the Enemy” [Entrance Hall]

4-5pm

Dysnomia Strophalos: “Anarchic Acts and Alegitimacy” [Entrance Hall]

Dane Gerus: “Anarchistic Ways of Relating to One Another and the Related Roles of the Architectural Ecology of Communication & Linguistic Relativity” [Disco Room]

5-6pm

Big Cat: “On Cosmic Criminality” [Entrance Hall]

6-7pm

radlibs & dinner break [Entrance Hall]

7-8pm

Andrew Culp: “Antinomia – The Anarchaeology of Politics” [Entrance Hall]

8-9pm

Eduardo Subirats: “Quixote – Trickster and Mad Lover” [Entrance Hall]

There are 83 Comments

Only if you denounce the church authority and heterosexual monogamy and engage in amoral anarchic intercourse, both social AND sexual!

no hacky sack unfortunately but an assembly of ham poets will be convened and another group will gather in the bathrooms to pick through their dejecta and get really excited about all the new things they’re able to complain about!

nowhere near as interesting as what was happening in the bathrooms at acab

Jason got excited by the 2008 financial crisis and thought it was going to bring down the state, iir the crisis c.

It's been hard to take him seriously since then.

Jason has been around the anarchist scene since to '80's, he's said a lot of different things over time.

Jason must have made so much anarchy after all these years. Jason sweats anarchy and pees and poops it.

I disowned my stepdaughter for succumbingto the trap of technology by literally getting stuck in the washing machine too often.

It's been hard to take the A-News podcast seriously for a long time....

jason seems to be one of the only post-left anarchists from his time still standing, and still applying his critique to the contemporary reality. while most anarchists have become rabid leftists who bark all day long to their master's whistles, he still has a bite. wish i could be there.

So you know FOR A FACT that Jason did this? Present your evidence NOW or stop slandering Jason!

From "what you heard", huh? So Jason FACTUALLY did this? You PERSONALLY SAW THIS? If so, let's hear your blow-by-blow firsthand account or else, maybe cite your credible sources. Or shut the fuck up!
P.S. It's interesting that the A-News "moderators" allow defamatory posts about Jason McGuinn and Wolfi Landstreicher to remain up, while anything that calls "lumpy" out as a liberal humanist or communist sympathizer (which he is) gets immediately deleted. It makes me wonder if the "collective" just has some personal beef with those two individuals and doesn't mind their names being dragged through the mud. A-News has lost all relevance and integrity and now falls into the category of that old AJODA collumn: Biggest Embarressments To The Anarchist Milieu...

oh fred. the fact that you dont seem to understand when something is obviously a joke is the real embarrassing.

glad that you find the site so useless and so clearely wont bother to spend time here any more.

cya!

*as if anyone leaves anarchist news*

IMNSHO, anarchists are among the most serious of the youthful/vigorous politicians. They don't understand the social purposes of humor in keeping a group fit and healthy. We should have a humor education workshop, because that will be our path to improving the local corner of our of our tolerant and anti-imperial anarchosphere.

real talk: i like PRIMITIVE communism, at most! i get strawmanned all the time from both directions

the pushy platform commies hate me for always pointing out their shitty ideas are shit and the a-historical anarchists always call me a commie for ... understanding anything at all about economics or how i'm clearly not a millionaire, therefore, should obviously keep the class war as vulgar as possible

at which point, i drunkenly threaten to fight everybody because i'm doing well and everything's FINE thx!

"I like primitive communism" --lumpy
^confirmation we have a seething leftist malcontent contributing to 25% of the comments on this site. (sock-puppets included)

Well umm no, I got to the second sentence after 4 seconds and stopped, 'cos of THIS >> "it is also a concept (often credited to Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels), that describes hunter-gatherer societies as traditionally being based on egalitarian social relations and common ownership."
Now get the hell back to your hobocracy!
*levitates and floats away*

"music is the enemy", is this going to be a critique about the specialist role of art, some sort of coupling of music with white colonialism, or a tyrade against the music industry? Maybe she doesn't like music and prefers nature sounds instead.

The siren songs of the culture industry capture desire and commodify it in the form of a musical instance that captivates the consumer and nullifies the inertia of real movement.

Due to new Covid-19 policies driven by recent area reports, we're asking BASTARD attendees to please mask while inside. Masks will be provided if you need.

Thanks for understanding. See you there!

this is a joke, right?

if not, oh no, they got them too....those bastards!

Deadly, airborne, respiratory viruses are no joke. Not doing the minimum to help protect the most vulnerable within our communities from them is also no joke.

When the AIDS crisis first hit and was killing and destroying the lives of so many, there were reactionary voices exactly like yours (always coming from outside the milieu) telling people to not practice safer sex.

Don't think for a second that we don't know exactly who you are and what you're doing.

"communities"...

"deadly, airborne viruses"...

Comparing Covid to AIDS...

So many spooks!

Yes.

Yes.

That's not what happened. #readingcomprehensionfail

Your reactionary agenda is a spook. Your incel lifestyle is a spook.

It only ever effected certain people with structural oxidation and premature immunosenescence predispositions. Covid(while overreacted to by ordained experts) arguably affected more people.

fuck you. you don't know who i am, or we are, and to compare this to that is fucked up too.

i don't wear masks or condoms unless i want. i usually don't wear either. i would wear a mask if i was worried about covid right now. i would use a condom if i was having unsafe sex. i would also, as a matter of fact, have an abortion when i wanted, my body my choice. end of story. keep your moralism outside of anarchy.
you are the reactionary ones, not people who speak up for personal autonomy. aren't we anarchists?

If covid is truly a "deadly airbourne virus", then why does the CDC concede that its overall fatality rate is something absurd like <2%

I've basically taken zero precautions against covid, and same goes for pretty much everyone in my community, and yet, we're all still here (...besides the ones who killed themselves / died of drug overdoses as a result of draconian lockdown measures...) healthier than ever.

If covid is SOOOO deadly, then shouldn't I and everyone I know who also never went along with anything... shouldn't we be dead?

No?

Fucking answer me already you Democratic Party glowie shill.

"Draconian Lockdown Measures" are probably not the primary cause of overdoses and suicides (more likely fentanyl and mass culturaL ALIENATION/ iMMISERATION), but yeah, your points about the over-exageratted Covid death statistics are well-taken....A healthy and strong immune system (and not becoming a genetically-modified organism via the "safe" MRNA vaccine) seemed to keep almost everyone I know not only alive, but never even sick at all. Of course, maintaining a healthy immune system is a matter of personal initiative and DIRECT ACTION

As if all these anti-life, anti-joy lockdown measures didn't just take the already existing ALIENATION / IMMMISERATION that you speak of and put it on steroids...

Steroids are civ and an example of how they control our bodies by creating unachievable body image through natural processes and then implement draconian restriction on steroid usage. Look, I would be perfectly content in my community to eat venison and lift heavy but the Democratic Party is making it next to impossible by changing everyone's MRNA through vaccines. It's no wonder there's so much immiseration in my natural bodybuilding community.

That is very true, and most deceased were only still alive due to drugs, pace makers for hearts, antibiotics, immunizations, modern industrial medicine. Covid is Nature's cleanser, it takes out those who have reached their use by date, and are already suffering from a plethors of diseases.

In the spirit of creativity and fun we will be holding a contest for the Best BASTARD Covering (BBC). The attendees who present masks that scream "The Hydra" better than all the others will win free prizes. Craft supplies to decorate your covering will be provided in the Disco Room. See you there!

can someone please answer whether this was a joke about requiring masking or not. seriously. i was planing on taking off work and making a trip up there for it, but need to know if i am required to play silly little performative games by those who might be post-left in name only.

I’m organizing the conference and haven’t received any communication from the Omni saying they’ll be asking folks to mask. So it was probably just the usual @news theater. Jason had a big tantrum at the book fair last month when the welcome table asked him to wear a mask for an hour, so that might have something to do with it. You should come!

OH Look at this program with no Lawrence on it. So brave for Lawrence J to present without being on the schedule for people to know ahead of time. So brave for the organizers to give a heads up to anyone who wanted to know.

So intresting that people at the study group make a big deal about WLs supposed misdoings, but actually promote LJ's participation in the movement.

Hypocrisy and cowardince. Pathetic.

yes this bit of information would have been nice to have beforehand.

as an anarchist i want to believe people can change, that repair can happen, that for those who violently transgress there can be a way, or ways, to truly heal the damage they do.

maybe this has happened in Lawrence's situation, maybe not. all i know is that the last time i spoke to him he lied through his teeth about it, which doesn't instill confidence that currently anything is different.

& a presentation on "The Unknown Paris Commune" also seems to indicate not much has changed.

For the first time we actually agree on something Nettle: Lawrence sucks

Geez LJ's defenders, BASTARD, the study group, scums everywhere are sweating and taking to the comments to defend their underhanded shit decision. Sockpuppets unite to defend!

Y'all need to get the fuck out the Baybubble and into some actual real anarchy (TM) happening all across Turtle Island

just curious: what would you have done had you known the dastardly LJ was participating in BASTARD? would you and your own sockpuppets have gathered outside as a picket or phalanx to keep him out of the Omni? would you and your two or three allies have waited patiently for your chance to pie him? would you have written an angry letter to the organizers protesting LJ's presence? would you have tried to provoke some kind of physical altercation that might have landed one or more of you tough guys in the hospital? I'm genuinely interested to know what your canceling would've looked like, and if you think the organizers would have just sat by and watched.

apparently you're the only curious one, since the organizers and presumably LJ clearly didn't want to find out

man does grievous bodily harm to his girlfriend. his friends try to defend him by threatening grievous bodily harm.

nice try, but self-defense is a lot different from domestic violence. LJ has been threatened with physical violence from certain alleged anarchists before, so were they to initiate some kind of altercation, they'd be met with a response. you're trying to muddy the waters.

Uh, maybe make other plans and/or alert others who would have preferred to make other plans had they been aware? Not macho enough of an answer for you, sockboi? Uh, how about, uh molotov! Does that give you the seething comment boner you need to waste more of everyone's time?

oh, SE, don't you know about "call out culture" or "cancel culture"? it's all the rage in the states. you can't do or say anything outside the limited boundaries of anarchist behavior without being shunned, excluded, deplatformed, and otherwise made into a non-person. the existence of a scapegoat makes all their own shit behavior invisible because all attention is put on the unpopular person. it's a brilliant strategy for maintaining and enforcing cultural conformism.

yeah, you nitwit. LJ is clearly being made into a non-erson. whch is why he's doing a presentation at an event. and people should definitely ignore crappy behavior once enough years have gone by, regrdless of whether someone has actually changed their perspective or nto.

anarchists are even more spiteful, vindictive and punishment-oriented than the state.

OooOooh nOooo the anarchists are holding me accountable for my shitty actions! OooOoh nOooo!

oh no, if only the anarchists had been brave and/or smart enough to do anything other than total exclusion/shunning as if that would be the strategy to retain the integrity of the milieu. What a fucking joke. There are any number of creepy anarchist predators and domestic abusers, but only LJ had the bad taste to get arrested and sent to jail; all the other ones get to rely on the cowardice of local anarchists who continually escape accountability. And what does that infamous accountability actually look like? As far as I know, LJ hasn't been through any accountability process coming from within the local scene. They are all smugly satisfied with the state holding him accountable, which leaves them free from making any effort to get his side of the story. What a bunch of weaklings.

his bst friends at the time, who definitely had his side of the story, were some of the people saying he was bad newsz.

apparently their statute of limitations isup now tho

keep thrwing mud tho, eventually pple will get tired of correctng your misconceptions/defenses

His "best friends" among whom was one particular asshole who was such a great friend that he threatened LJ with physical violence if he dared show his face at any @ event? His "best friends" who disappeared him and ajoda from Wikipedia? His "best friends" who reached around the globe via social media to make sure anyone who knew these "best friends" would also shun and exclude him? His "best friends" who never set up an accountability process, preferring gossip, innuendo, and dog piling? With "friends" like that, who needs cops?

I heard LJ went to jail once for burning down all the black churches.

Is this true?

well is the argument that people didn't know his side of the story? or that people didn't drop their ethics and stand by him when he did somethin terrible?

make up your mind anons

You're presuming that there are anarchists who have ethics that they abide by. If that were true with the issue of domestic violence, then a few more locals besides LJ would have been shunned/excluded/deplatformed. Singling out LJ because his abuse happened more publicly and so couldn't be swept under the rug is just so much hypocrisy.

When a comrade or friend does something horrible (domestic violence is horrible) and it can't be ignored or kept secret inside your little clique, anarchists have a few choices. 1. Call out/accountability process. This almost always looks like exclusion/expulsion. One time in Santa Cruz it also included a beating. 2. Call in/accountability/restorative justice. This is a lot more difficult and requires a level of compassion and empathy sorely lacking among most anarchists. 3. Let the state take care of it. This usually means anarchists can avoid the first two, and the state's function of increasingly intruding into people's lives continues unchallenged.

In LJ's case, the local scene allowed one dude to make a unilateral pronouncement of expulsion under threat of violence. LJ didn't get the opportunity to express regret or remorse to his victim or his "community" or tell anyone what the consequences of his violence were or what he'd started doing to address it. For the weak "community" it was easier to expel him and be done with it. Nobody is interested in whether or not he has accepted responsibility for his violence. Nobody is interested in whether or not he has learned anything about how his violence is part of patriarchal conditioning. Nobody was even interested in what it's like to go to jail for a non-anarchist crime.

It's a wonder he actually decided to participate in BASTARD given how hostile the local scene is.

it's not a wonder at all, as he is trying to recreate a network that he clearly can't find elsewhere.

the continuing response to people talking about lawrence that "other peole do it too" is nutty cuckoo. so because pple don't know about other folks,t hat means that lawrence's known behavior shoud be exucsed?

what wackko "equality of consequences" or some such is this an appeal to? how does it make any anarchist sense at all

FFS, nobody is saying he shouldn't have to deal with the consequences of his shitty actions and nobody is excusing what he did. Some people are rightly annoyed by what looks like he's been singled out from the other predators and abusers among local anarchists, people whose shitty actions have gone unnoticed or covered up or ignored. That's where the hypocrisy lies. When the cops are involved you can't keep secrets any more, which is what happened. Then because everyone gets to/has to talk about it, he became a convenient scapegoat for all the other predators, abusers, and the other who cover for them. Bringing this up has nothing to do with some bullshit "equality of consequences" or with a desire for some milieu-wide investigation of every allegation of abuse. It's enough to notice that there are predators and abusers in the milieu; then it's up to you to decide if there should be consequences. But as the comment above rightly pointed out: anarchists are content to do nothing.

real question.

what do you propose people do to abusers. in this case, what do you propose people do to law jar?

depends on the situation. and, nothing unless you are involved.

unless you are noisy little brat with nothing better to do but control other people and act self-righteous, so, most anarchists

there are always more than a "few choices" in dealing with anything. the problem here is that "anarchists" want to have an endorsed process rather than the people involved dealing with hit how they see fit.....fuckin' petty authoritarians most of you!

sure, there are innumerable choices that could made and processes implemented. the obnoxious, ironic, hypocritical (fill in the rest on your own) part of this particular situation is that virtually every last local self-declared anarchist chose to deal with it by doing what almost every anarchist always chooses, and did precisely - nothing.

or maybe they've been waiting to see how LJ would comport himself. and now we have seen enough to say something.

or do you want us to make judgements based on something other than LJ's on-going behavior?

Is he beating anyone now? I mean, that’s what ultimately matters. You’re basically creating the equivalent of a criminal record which completely goes against anything anarchy.

Well, as has been pointed out before, some of these supposed anarchists are even more vindictive and punishment-hungry than the state. Foisting a criminal record on LJ or anyone else who transgresses community norms is the way authoritarians and (wannabe) despots engage with people. You're quite right that it has precious little to do with anarchy.

GooooOoood point, brah. This one time I needed to hire a sitter for my elderly special needs dog so I found a nice looking brah on Craigslist but checked with my local ALF friends and they told me he was a know abuser that had a long history of abusing non-human animals. I said, "but is he abusing or killing any animals now," and when they couldn't give me a logically sound argument to counter my winning point I went ahead and hired him. He did end up torturing and beating my dog to death which is VERY sad but I know I was correct on this one from an anarchy perspective and that's what ultimately matters.

Anarchy is about second chances. Egregores knows this. Sure that one cop imprisoned and raped a bunch of hoes but is he imprisoning and raping any hoes now?!?

SoOoooo true! The day after a monstrous person does a monstrous thing they are absolved and any "anarchist" that holds a grudge is simply a retarded libcuck. Every radical centrist egregore knows this!

why don't you find out for us. since you are engaging in a conversation that you say no one needs to be having except the people who know.

The BASTARD thing has been LJ's hobby for decades and decades. Let the man have his hobby. Sheesh!

LJ hasn't participated in BASTARD for over a decade until last weekend.

in the burning of every single MF'in black church without exception in the Bay Area since at least last weekend OK? LEAVE LAWJAR ALONE GODDAMMIT!!!!!!

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