How intelligence agents hijacked the U.S. anarchist movement

From Winter Oak

How intelligence agents hijacked the U.S. anarchist movement and steered it into a dead end

by Crow Qu’appelle

For years, it has been undeniable that there has been a concerted COINTELPRO-style campaign targeting the anarchist left in the U.S.

This has been an incontrovertible fact since at least 2021, when the Grayzone published an expose of Alexander Reid Ross, former editor of the Earth First! Journal, author of Against the Fascist Creep, and leading antifa ideologue.

(FULL DISCLOSURE – I contributed to the Earth First! Journal for years, but I got involved after ARR’s tenure as editor. I have never had any direct contact with this despicable creep.)

THE SMOKING GUN

In March of 2021, the Grayzone published an expose of Alexander Reid Ross by Ben Norton and Max Blumenthal.

The piece is important, as it is basically the “smoking gun” which proves my point – Alexander Reid Ross is a spook.

The Grayzone previously exposed Alexander Reid Ross’s audition for the Integrity Initiative, an information warfare operation aimed at generating hostility with Russia and targeting dovish officials that get in the way. The now-defunct Integrity Initiative was overseen by British military-intelligence operatives and covertly funded by the UK Foreign Office. Its existence had been hidden from British taxpayers until a series of leaks exposed the disturbing project, triggering a national scandal and outrage in the UK’s parliament.

Ross was invited to speak at what the Integrity Initiative called its “main event,” in Seattle, Washington in December 2018. There, he delivered a typically incoherent talk laying out a furtive network of “red-brown” alliances and “syncretic” communist-fascist media outlets. His presentation ended by accusing Zero Hedge, an alternative financial and news outlet, of inspiring anti-migrant militia violence on the US-Mexico border.

In January 2021, Ross was named a “senior research fellow” by the Network Contagion Research Institute (NCRI), a think tank funded by billionaires including right-wing oligarch Charles Koch. NCRI proclaims its mission is “to track, expose, and combat misinformation, deception, manipulation, and hate across social media channels.”

At the NCRI, Ross has co-authored reports with former top officials of the US national security state whom any self-respecting anarchist would undoubtedly view as an existential threat and absolute menace.

On March 11, the NCRI published a report on “Viral Disinformation of the COVID Vaccine.” The first contributor named in the list of co-authors was Alexander Reid Ross. Collaborating on the project with Ross was Kelli Holden, the former chief of operations for counterintelligence at the CIA.

Alexander Reid Ross Network Contagion Research Institute CIA DHS report

THE ANARCHIST LEFT HAS NOT COME TO TERMS OF THE IMPLICATIONS OF THE REVELATION THAT ARR WAS A SPOOK

It annoys me to no end that the soul-searching that should have happened after ARR was exposed has not occurred.

Alexander Reid Ross was influential within the anarchist left in the U.S., and he worked closely with other authors with similarly divisive, dubious politics.

Most notably amongst these are Shane Burley and Spencer Sunshine. More on that later.

ARR was involved in the AK Press collective, and I have yet to see any sign that AK Press has distanced themselves from him or his collaborators, who represent a very distinct political faction.

You would think that AK Press, as an anarchist publisher, would want people to know that someone whose work they have promoted is an intelligence agent.

Yet AK Press continues to sell ARR;’s book Against the Fascist Creep, which we now know was part of a campaign of ideological subversion undertaken by intelligence agents in order to sow division amongst Leftists and lead potential revolutionaries into a dead end.

Why hasn’t AK Press followed the example of Southern Poverty Law Centre, who made it clear as far back as 2018 that ARR was a malicious actor?

The Grayzone explains:

Ross’ blog posts were so full of errors and slanderous attacks that the Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) was forced to delete his entire archive. In March 2018, after the SPLC scrubbed Ross’s work from its website in humiliation, it issued an effusive apology to his many targets, including the authors of this article. When Ross’ disgrace became the subject of national embarrassment and widespread mockery, he blamed “pro-Russia trolls” and cried that he had been “censored.”

Alexander Reid Ross SPLC multipolar fascists

The SPLC issued a similar apology in April [2021], after retracting Ross’ libelous hatchet job targeting Cohen, the former Princeton professor and renowned Russia expert. “We take this opportunity to emphasize that the opinions expressed in it are those of the author, not SPLC, and we regret any confusion that our posting it may have caused,” the organization stressed…

Alexander Reid Ross SPLC apology Stephen Cohen

Another apology issued after the SPLC retracted a lie-filled smear piece by Alexander Reid-Ross

The article continues:

[N]ever one to let a bit of inconvenient fact-checking get in the way of his fanatical war on the anti-imperialist left, Ross continued. This February, he sat down at his laptop and fired off a series of emails to numerous prominent left-wing media personalities, probing them about right-wing connections that existed primarily in his own imagination.

It should have been clear as far back as 2018 (if not earlier) that ARR was working for the enemy.

Indeed, some of the more perceptive anarchists did comment on ARR at that time.

In an April 2018 article, Paul Cudenec wrote that:

[Ross] is trying to use the bludgeon of an alleged ideological association with the far right as a way of silencing voices on the left who challenge the US imperialist narrative…

With hindsight, it’s clear that the aim behind Alexander Reid Ross’s book Against the Fascist Creep was not to counter actual fascism, nor even to warn the left of the dangers of fascist infiltration, but to attack and undermine anti-capitalism by claiming its beliefs are tainted with fascist associations.

The real problem faced by anarchists and anti-capitalists is Neoliberal Creep – or, in fact, a whole network of neoliberal creeps, hell-bent on ideological sabotage.

That was 2018. Now it’s 2023, and there has been far too little effort put into reflecting upon why an intelligence agent would want to promote divisive “intersectional” politics, and how deep this campaign of ideological subversion goes.

The fact of the matter is that ARR did not work alone.

One of his closest collaborators was Shane Burley, author of Fascism Today – What It Is and How to End It, which was also published by AK Press.

The page on the AK Press website promoting Burley’s book is telling:

SHANE BURLEY IS WORKING FROM THE EXACT SAME PLAYBOOK AS ALEXANDER REID ROSS AND IS ALMOST CERTAINLY ALSO A SPOOK

The fact is that Alexander Reid Ross did not act alone. He worked as part of a team, and by all appearances, that team involved Shane Burley and Spencer Sunshine.

A little bit of research will yield countless connections between these three authors; it is so plain to see that I won’t spend much time proving it. If the reader wishes to know the truth, they will have no difficulty discovering it.

This is important because Shane Burley continues to harass anarchists in the name of anti-fascism.

I personally suspect that the ARR/Burley/Sunshine goof troop was responsible for an anonymous hit piece on me called On Crow, Fascist Drifts, and People Who Are Not Comrades, which was published by It’s Going Down, Montreal Counter-Info, North Shore Counter-Info, and Anarchist News, all of which are websites I have contributed to over the years.


Because the piece was submitted anonymously, however, I have thus far been unable to confirm these suspicions.

We do have proof, however, that Shane Burley continues to harass my fellow Nevermore collective member David Rovics, who is one of the leading Leftist critics of cancel culture.

David Rovics has also written very extensively about this harassment, including in this blog post from two year ago:

Shane Burley’s Anarcho-Puritan Cancellation Campaigning, Explained

In that piece, Rovics explains:

Shane Burley is a cancellation campaigner who masquerades as an antifascism researcher.  The main purpose of his “research” seems to be to divide and otherwise undermine left and anarchist groups, networks, and individuals, particularly those who are critical of Israel, and then label us antisemites, while denying the whole time that he is engaging in a cancellation campaign or that he is attacking us for being critical of Israel…

Shane and his fellow fraudulent “researchers” — active cancellation campaigners Spencer Sunshine and Alexander Reid Ross — have become the de facto intellectual leadership of a bizarre cult.  While striving to position themselves as representing the general opinion of contemporary anarchists and antifascists, they are actually leading a tendency which is a very marginal one, obsessed with exposing antisemitism on the left.

The harassment continues. Just a few months ago, Burley succeeded in getting a Portland radio station to cancel an appearance in which David Rovics was scheduled to speak on the subject of cancel culture.

You can’t make this shit up.

Paul Cudenec has also written about the harassment campaign against David Rovics in a piece entitled Phoney anti-fascists target the real thing.·

Phoney anti-fascists target the real thing

In that piece, Cudenec reports:

More shocking evidence has emerged of the way in which genuine anti-system dissidents are being maliciously smeared and “cancelled” by pseudo-leftists with a suspicious agenda.

The latest target for the trolls is someone whose work I have been enjoying for years, an anti-fascist folk singer/songwriter from the USA who also regularly tours in Europe and is a familiar figure on the anarchist scene.

David Rovics also happens to be Jewish – but that hasn’t stopped him from being publicly branded an “antisemite” by the fake-left Thought Police.

He writes: “They put flyers on car windshields all over my neighborhood in Portland, Oregon, with my picture and a picture of my car and with my home address, denouncing me as an antisemite, holocaust-denier, and harasser of homeless people, all completely bizarre and completely unfounded accusations”.

David explains the groupthink by which these attacks are launched. First, an anonymous post on social media or an outlet like It’s Going Down names someone deemed to be politically incorrect.

Eager unpaid volunteers then crawl through the web looking for any scrap of information, association or opinion that might be distorted and amplifed to make this person appear bad.

After the overwhelmingly anonymous members of this group of “researchers” have done their “research,” the next step is contacting anyone related to the person under attack on a very regular basis to make sure they know about the transgressions in question, he says.

“So in my case this means contacting gig organizers, venues, and anyone else I might be performing with on a tour, and letting them know that I am a Nazi, an antisemite, a holocaust-denier, fascist-platformer, and other nonsense”…

The Canceller-in-Chief targeting David is a character by the name of Shane Burley, who has positioned himself as an influencer on the American anarchist scene.

WHY DO WEBSITES LIKE IT’S GOING DOWN ALLOW ANONYMOUS DENUNCIATIONS OF GRASSROOTS ACTIVISTS?

There are many suspicious aspects of the campaign against David Rovics.

One of them is why so many anonymous activists are willing to dedicate so much time to participating in it.

With all of the injustices in the world, how is it that there is such a focused campaign against a peace-loving anarchist folk singer?

Could it be that some of them are in fact professional trolls on the payroll of some police department, intelligence agency or private contractor? The possibility needs to be taken seriously.

Another question is why websites like It’s Going Down continue to publish anonymous smears against grassroots activists.

WHO IS BEHIND IT’S GOING DOWN?

There is a lot tradition of anarchists choosing to be anonymous.

Indeed, I used to be part of this tradition. Part of the reason that I went by the name Crow for so many years was to preserve some degree of anonymity. Eventually my legal name (Anton Bueckert) became common knowledge due to a series of arrests.

A CULTURE OF ANONYMITY CREATES VULNERABILITY TO MALICIOUS ACTORS

But there’s a flipside to anonymity. It allows malicious actors to preserve their anonymity and to pretend to be something they’re not for years on end.

Although I contributed to It’s Going Down for years, I still don’t have the slightest clue about who’s behind it, what their backgrounds are, or what IRL organizing (if any) they’ve been involved with. Nor does anyone else I’ve talked to.

The fact of the matter is that no one I know can tell me anything about who’s behind It’s Going Down.

Whereas I have known people over the years who have been associated with most American anarchist media outlets, including the Earth First! Journal, Slingshot, Fifth Estate, Crimethinc, and Final Straw, I have never met anyone who has been directly involved with It’s Going Down.

After figuring out how much work goes into starting and running a website which is in some ways similar, I find it extremely likely that IGD has a budget and staff.

I’m all for respecting the principle of “Let and Let Live”, but IGD has not respected that principle in regards to me, David Rovics, or countless other genuine anarchist activists who have been smeared by them.

Given that IGD has fucked with me and my friends, I think that it’s high time we started scrutinized these anonymous anti-hate haters who seem to think that punching nazis is a political program.

A quick search on IGD for “Alexander Reid Ross” turns up 24 results, none of which appear to focus on the fact that he is an exposed spook.

Indeed, the most critical thing I came across in a quick search was this, which was published in May 2021, shortly after the Gray Zone published its “smoking gun” expose of ARR.

Let me be clear – I am by no means sure that IGD is being run by professional disinformation specialists.

I am presenting this piece to publicly state that it is an active research topic. I am putting this out there in the hopes that others will come forward with information that will help me get to the heart of the matter faster.

The fact of the matter is that proving this would be a very big job indeed, and I’m going to need some help.

I am definitely not the best researcher in the world, but I know I’m onto something. Max Blumenthal, Paul Cudenec, David Rovics and others have done good work on this issue, but there’s more to be done.

Personally, I wish that a more qualified anarchist author, like Kristian Williams, Scott Crow, Gord Hill, Zoe Baker, or Peter Gelderloos, would take on the question of what impact ARR’s ideological subversion campaign has had on the U.S. Left, but I have yet to see them tackle this question.

Probably the perfect person for the job would be Will Potter, who wrote the book on the FBI’s Green Scare campaign against Earth First!, the Earth Liberation Front, and the radical animal rights movement.

WHERE’S WARD CHURCHILL WHEN YOU NEED HIM?

Or perhaps the even-more-perfect person would be Ward Churchill, the famed AIM warrior, who has written multiple books about counter-insurgency, including The COINTELPRO Papers and Agents of Repression.

The Lesser Known But More Horrible American Holocaust By Sukumaran C. V.

The COINTELPRO Papers: Documents from the FBI's Secret Wars Against ...

COINTELPRO | Events | LibraryThing

THE FIRST STEP IS ADMITTING WE’VE GOT A PROBLEM

My hope in publishing this piece is that it kickstarts a much-needed conversation.

We now know that the U.S. anarchist movement has been successfully divided by a campaign of ideological subversion.

It’s time to admit that we’ve got a problem, and to start doing something about it.

IT’S TIME TO FIGHT BACK AGAINST THE SHANE BURLEY SPOOK TROOP

For at least a year, it has been obvious to me that the Left has lost the culture war.

Leftists have no one to blame but themselves for this. Over the course of the past decade, they betrayed their own values, including commitment to freedom of speech, freedom of assembly, freedom of conscience, freedom of religion, freedom of movement, and bodily autonomy.

Personally, I suspect that this is due in no small part to COINTELPRO-type tactics implemented in the wake of the Occupy movement.

I suspect that the Powers That Shouldn’t Be feared a populist movement uniting liberals and conservatives against the 2008 bank bailouts and sought to divide people along partisan lines through a variety of means.

I suspect that part of this involved the repurposing of the anti-anarchist task force created during the Green Scare, and that this led to the infiltration of AK Press and possibly, the creation of It’s Going Down.

Time will tell whether I’m right of not, but it is important to do a serious post-mortem on the Antifa phenomenon in the light of the ARR revelations.

This should have happened five years ago, but it didn’t.

Better late than never, I guess.

TOWARDS A NEW BASIS OF UNITY

Even more important is the creation of a new basis of unity for those left politically homeless by the descent of the Left into wackadoodled dumbfuckery.

In this, David Rovics is leading the way

The Newest Member of the Nevermore Team is World-Famous! (At least amongst anarchists, that is.)

Not long ago, the anarchist folk singer published a declaration entitled A Statement of Principles.

In it, he lists 10 principles that he proposes as a basis of unity for a reconstituted political movement assembled from the remnants of the Left which remain committed to values such as freedom, mutual aid, truth and justice.

Because I think this effort is important, I will quote it in its entirety:

What gets called “the left” in US society, and others, is a contradictory and confusing phenomenon.  People who identify their political orientation with words like anarchism, communism, socialism, social democracy, may support exclusive and even authoritarian policies and organizing tactics, while others identifying with supposedly the same ideologies engage in inclusive forms of organizing and support things like open discourse and free expression.

What gets called “the left” may include people involved with organizing workers, tenants, or members of other communities of people to stand up against the nefarious plans of the capitalists.  But it also will tend to include a lot of people engaged in grandstanding, showboating, virtue-signaling, and cancellation campaigning on corporate social media platforms.

Who are the people that believe in and are maybe even engaged in effective organizing, and who are the ones throwing virtual bombs into every space where such organizing is trying to happen?  The corporate advertisers and political dividers know who we all are, but we don’t know each other.

If you agree with the basic orientation represented by the 10 no-brainer points below and you’d like to put your name to a public statement to that effect, email me at david@davidrovics.com with your name and any other relevant info to put along with it, such as your occupation, or organization you may represent.  When we’ve got a good collection of names we’ll add them to this statement and publish it in other places.

In case it’s not abundantly obvious already, if you have come to agree with these points only very recently and up until last month you were acting like a horrible troll on Twitter, you’re just as beautiful a human being, and we want you!

Also, if you’re generally in support of these points but have suggestions for improving the presentation or content of them, or if you have profound disagreements with any of them that you might like to tell me about in an email, I’m interested in those emails, too.

1) We embrace organizing for a purpose and reject showboating and performative virtue-signaling.  Organizing is about building networks, finding common ground, establishing common goals.  Posting about who is pure enough for you to have contact with and who isn’t has nothing to do with organizing, and much better serves the purpose of dis-organizing.

2) We embrace real justice and reject anonymous attacks intended to smear people.  Although people may commit terrible offenses and holding people accountable for their behavior may be very important, anonymous attacks, smear campaigns, and vigilante justice is a terrible way to try to seek justice or accountability, and is a perfect tool for use by nefarious actors, especially when broadly accepted by a kneejerk “believe the victim no matter what” mentality that has been instilled in much of the population.

3) We embrace diversity and we reject identitarianism.  Diversity of all kinds in society is a wonderful thing, to be celebrated, not just tolerated.  And that has nothing to do with the tokenistic Oppression Olympics that has taken over left discourse.  We must not let our diversity get used against us like this, as a tool for divide and conquer, as a means of getting us all to squabble over crumbs dropped from the tables of the billionaires.

4) We embrace free discourse and reject no-platforming.  No-platforming is a longstanding, inherently authoritarian tendency rife in certain areas of the left over the past century or so, in modern times more known by variations to the theme such as cancellation campaigning or cancel culture.  It is a sort of grassroots form of censorship, it has consistently backfired everywhere from a purely pragmatic standpoint, it’s a tactic easily exploited by nefarious actors, and it’s morally repugnant for anyone who believes in free speech.

5) We embrace free expression while rejecting corporate control.  Freedom of speech is not some bourgeois idea that we should throw out along with imperialism.  Freedom of speech is a radical concept that we embrace as the thing that is obviously preferable to the alternative (censorship).  We don’t want to kick anyone off of any platform for having the wrong opinions.  But this is not an endorsement of Big Tech or their plans for world domination!  Their monopolistic practices and conflict-producing algorithms need to be exposed and opposed — but not by making the whole situation worse by calling for people or outlets to be banned from platforms.

6) We embrace being the media and reject censorship campaigns.  The fact that a handful of gigantic corporations control our means of communication and most of the news we consume is a terrifying fact.  We need to do a lot about that, by taking on these corporations and the governments that facilitate them in all kinds of ways — but not by passing laws allowing governments to censor or throttle content on social media platforms or anywhere else on the internet.

7) We embrace finding common ground and reject efforts to polarize, divide, and cancel.  The main point in talking about things that divide us is not to make some people feel guilty and others feel virtuous.  The point is to find ways to work together to achieve common goals despite these divides, and perhaps even to overcome these divides in that process.  This is very different from forming sub-groups within sub-groups in order to further highlight divisions within divisions, for no apparent purpose aside from claiming some amorphous form of higher ground.

8) We embrace communication and education and reject harassment, vilification, doxxing and other personal attacks.  Nobody learns from being attacked and harassed.  In fact, attacking and harassing people tends to just make them angry, and cause them to become more entrenched in their feelings or positions.  How did the notion become so widespread that harassing and vilifying rightwingers or other people you don’t like is useful in any possible way?  It’s not.  It’s the opposite, in fact.  It’s completely counter-productive.  We need to find common ground, build bridges, understand how we’re being used, not shout at each other, either online or downtown.

9) We embrace real organizing and reject word policing and other forms of elitism.  Real, effective, useful organizing means diverse people working together to achieve common goals, such as organizing a union at a workplace to collectively demand higher wages or organizing tenants into a tenant union to collectively demand lower rent.  Any such group will inherently involve people with all kinds of differences.  In order for a group to function, it can’t have some kind of vetting process where anyone getting involved has to know all the right vocabulary words to use in order not to offend the modern liberal.  This is not the way forward.  Popular education does not occur in the process of calling people out for using the wrong pronoun or acronym.

10) We embrace differences of viewpoints and reject ostracizing people who don’t share ours.  Yes, we can actually form a union with millions of people all calling for the same demands, even though they have different views on who killed Jesus, who invaded Ukraine, who should or shouldn’t get to have an abortion, whether there should ever be drag shows at their local libraries, and all kinds of other vitally important issues.  And, in fact, this kind of coalition is the only way anything useful ever happens anywhere.  Opposing such coalitions on the basis of someone or some group within it having the wrong views on something is a means of dividing and conquering unions, not a way to build anything, and not a way to win hearts and minds of all of those whose hearts and minds we — and hopefully not the capitalists and imperialists hellbent on global domination — need to win.

Since this piece was published, the statement of principles has been refined, and we are working on an open letter, which will feature the signatures of:

David Rovics

David Rovics is the Woody Guthrie of our times, interviews on China ...

Ward Churchill

(AIM warrior and author of The COINTELPRO Papers, Agents of Repression, and many other books)

Professor Ward Churchill on COINTELPRO & Leonard Peltier - YouTube

Keith McHenry

(founder of Food Not Bombs)

Food Not Bombs celebrates global effort's 39th year - Santa Cruz Sentinel

Tom Keefer

(co-founder of Real Peoples Media, Dispensing Freedom, Upping the Anti, and the Two Row Times)

Marxism, Anarchism, & the Genealogy of "Socialism From Below"

Paul Cudenec

(Winter Oak Press)

Paul Cudenec bw

Crow Qu’appelle

(co-founder of Rebel! Rebuild! Rewild! and Nevermore Media)

Margaret Anna Alice

Jordan Henderson

Kit Colt

+ MORE!

(If you would like to sign onto the letter, please get in touch with us at nevermore_media@riseup.net.)

Stay tuned!

Also, please let me drive home that investigating a surreptitious campaign undertaken by intelligence agents is sure to be a difficult task.

We can’t do this alone – we will need assistance from other researchers.

If you are in a position to be able to help with this effort, we would greatly appreciate it!

You can reach out to us at nevermore_media@riseup.net if you have useful information, or if you wish to volunteer your services.

Also, if you wish to support what we here at Nevermore do, please considering becoming a paid subscriber or at least signing up to our email list:

ALL ABOUT ALEXANDER REID ROSS:

FAKE-LEFT PRO-WAR NEOLIBERALS BREAK COVER

BY PAUL CUDENEC – April 24, 2018

DOES OPPOSING U.S. IMPERIALISM AND WARS MEAN YOU’RE NOT REALLY AN ANARCHIST?

BY PAUL CUDENEC – June 22, 2018

Covert British military-intelligence smear machine is meddling in American politics, documents reveal

BY MAX BLUMENTHAL AND MARK AMES – JANUARY 8, 2019

Alexander Reid Ross, disgraced author of several retracted articles, works with ex-cops, CIA spies, and DHS agents

BY BEN NORTON AND MAX BLUMENTHAL – MARCH 14, 2021

FASCIST SMEARS: WHAT THEY TELL US

BY PAUL CUDENEC – October 9, 2021

Mission Creep: Exorcising the “Antifascism” of Alexander Reid Ross

RHYD WILDERMUTH -MARCH 16, 2021

ALL ABOUT SHANE BURLEY:

Phoney anti-fascists target the real thing

Shane Burley’s Anarcho-Puritan Cancellation Campaigning, Explained

Embracing Reality and Finding Solutions vs. Sowing Division and Spreading Disinformation

Cancellation Campaigner Gets Cancel Culture Discussion on KBOO Cancelled

There are 169 Comments

HOW INTELLIGENCE AGENTS HIJACKED THE U.S. ANARCHIST MOVEMENT

Are they kidding? What's to hijack?

ARR is a fucking leftarded clown but I don’t think he’s a spook. Is he a distant assemblant and adjacent to liberal order, probably, but I don’t think it’s anything conspiratorial.

Also, the answer to ARR is not populists fools like Blumenthal.

But yes there’s nothing to hijack. @ discourse hasn’t been relevant since musical youth culture gave way to video game mimetic youth culture. It declined with the decline of the zine scene.

The dude works for companies directly tied to the state department defining anti extremism laws. Has for years. Stopped identifying as an anarchist.

He's not a spook cause he's not hiding it.

There is something substantive to the allegations against Reid Ross, but those all came out many years ago. The rest of the text is pure fedjacketing of the stupidest and most despicable kind.

This trash should not be on anews.

Cudenec (who is Winter Oak) and Crow are transphobic anti-vaxxers who burned all their bridges with anarchists a long time ago. Crow specifically has been trying to spread conspiracy theories and advocating for alliances with fascists for years. If you read Crow's text closely, it's just a laundry list of personal grudges.

He is using the Gray Zone not only as his chief source of information but as a playbook to copy. The Gray Zone always played "two truths and a lie" with information, taking some things that are true and mixing them together with speculation and falsehoods in order to push the most divisive and toxic narrative. The Gray Zone was transparently state-funded and state-directed propaganda; it ultimately split because one of the founders started taking Chinese money while the other kept taking Russian money (you can look up the evidence showing this and the conflict between the two founders, etc.). Citing the Gray Zone uncritically in 2023 is laughable.

But this isn't just a question of the source of information. Crow is using the Gray Zone model to try to create fractures. This is his most sophisticated effort thus far (which isn't saying much)—you can see him trying to figure out how to doxx the people behind IGD and call anonymity itself into question.

I guess anews published it because they also have beef with AK Press and IGD, and they like drama for its own sake, but it's a bad look.

Hey Anews moderators—could I post an article how Aragorn is clearly a fed because I never met him? The citations are all to Alex Jones, but I got Noam Chomsky to sign on to the statement from his deathbed.

That's basically exactly what you have above, just swapping out a couple proper names.

ARR admits most of the actual facts this silly article has in his Twitter and website bio. It's not a conspiracy theory. "Anarchists" are just generally too fucking stupid to realize one of their own *antifa* has been like this for 8 years and has tricked them all because he wrote a book based on their confirmation bias.

It's probably Portlands fault. How did they get so dumb up there?

"i don't think"
who cares what you think when you give no rationale nor evidence. why do people think anyone cares about their opinions like they're influencers talking about a candidate.

give reasons or shut the fuck up.

do i need to give a reason for that opinion? it's that we need to pay attention to verifiable or at least checkable things especially on line.

I'm with 08:32. Requesting evidence is not an anti-anarchist position.

Here's something verifiable:

https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/toppling-the-taboos-of-technik/com...

That's Crow explicitly spreading anti-Semitic falsehoods. Here, I'll quote from it:

"I read None Dare Call it Conspiracy by Gary Allen, which blew my fucking mind. Its not actually that great a book, and I can summarize in one sentence - Marxism was a Rothschild-sponsored plot."

"I am a survivor of genocide, and the people responsible for that genocide were Jewish bankers."

"Suck my fucking dick if you want to make excuses for the likes of the Rothschilds."

You know what's especially interesting in that link? Crow claims to have written for IGD, even though in the above article, he says he's never had contact with anyone involved in it.

Here:

> For years, I had been writing for various anarchist publications, such as the Earth First! Journal, Slingshot, It´s Going Down, Montreal Counter-Info, Northshore Counter-Info, Anarchist News, Attaque, and others.

https://nevermoremedia.substack.com/p/toppling-the-taboos-of-technik

To me, it seems clear that this screed about ARR and IGD is just the rantings of a very lonely person who is lonely for an obvious reason. He lacks integrity and he has a very weak grip on reality.

Stop trying to get people confused about whether ARR is doing this shit. He is. Everyone knows it and he admits it openly. You are the one that is straight up lying here.

SirEinzige is a fucking rightarded incel but I don’t think he’s a nazi. Is he a distant assemblant and adjacent to reactionary order, probably, but I don’t think it’s anything conspiratorial.

Also, the answer to SirEinzige is not populists fools like Trump.

But yes there’s nothing to hijack. Incel discourse hasn’t been relevant since chan culture gave way to TikTok mimetic youth culture. It declined with the decline of the WoW scene.

Another poster here, by just inverting someone else's posts by switching names to an opposite binary doesn't work, everyone knows this, it's called reverse parroting.
Anyway, intelligence agents wouldn't have gotten their foot in the door of any individualist anarch association because individualists can sniff a right or left State stooge from a mile away just by their body language and vocabulary.

You might want to look into Winter Oak before you start posting his brainworm fueled stuff.

you might want to read the article before you jump to the defence of special agent reid ross

If you don't get that ARR is working for companies directly tied to the state department now after 5 years you are totally fucking useless. People who actually understand what the fuck is going on out there have been warning about it for years now.

It's impossible for me to take USA anarchists seriously at all when someone who said something off on Twitter 10 years ago is banned from a bookfair and you can still buy fascist creep at a table. It's total fucking nonsense.

The hypocrisy is such a lopsided joke.

"before you jump to the defence of special agent reid ross"

That didn't happen. Oh no! You're making shit up!

Of course ARR is a pig fucker working with the enemy. But nobody was defending him you insecure little turd.

Winter Oak wrote something I didn't like once therefore I won't read a word of theirs ever again AND NOR SHOULD ANYONE ELSE is exactly the kind of liberal arts college insanity that ARR and co brought to anarchism in the US

Yeah, I agree, we should welcome transphobes and anti-Semites with open arms while fedjacketing everyone else. Hey, if it's good enough for Putin's journalists, it should be good enough for us!

He seems to have axed or abandoned most of his social media profiles recently. My guess is he will popup soon doing something way worse than even before.

One of the big issues with this conversation is that people who fell for fascist creep bullshit refuse to come to terms that they were taken on a very obvious ride.

Like have some humility and take it as a learning experience.

So you’re saying the same pro-Israeli and Zionist ideologies used to divide the anarchists and autonomen in Germany a couple decades back and creating the insanity of anti-deutsch idiots , also through “antifa”, has been happening in the us as well? Hmmm…

So we are seriously supposed to believe that IGD was created by the CIA? I'm no big fan of ARR or Burley or Spencer Sunshine but there is something a bit wackadoodle about this article!

Yeah the IGD stuff is bizarre but I do think some of the mentioned people are or were involved.

The only thing I like about this article is that the writer is asking why specific people haven't said shit about this. Apart from Gelderloos who I believe has mentioned it at least online.

Wackadoodle perhaps but there's ARR and the former head of CIA's counterintelligence names on the same tiny NCRI list.
If ARR's still involved in counterextremism he should be ostracized from the rest of the anarchist community and AK must publish an open letter explaining their relationship with him.

I think its strongly possible Ross is a fed and the dude is an asshole who throws off accusations half cocked. Citing the Grey Zone is quite suspect however especially against someone who writes about fascist creep on the left. I think Winter Oak is a little bit cooky and the people signing off on this (some) are anti-vaxxers. I think this article sucks but that Ross is very suspicious and the fact this hasn't been addressed for over two years isn't comforting.

I mean, the Gray Zone people are explicitly pro red-brown alliance. There is plenty of documentation of them promoting authoritarian dictators and speaking alongside outright fascists, etc.

I'm not sure why someone would use them as a source to accuse someone else of being in the pocket of the state

Whether Grayzone are or are not red-brown doesn't preclude their opponents being politically suspect or having fascist tendencies themselves.

The Feds always lead radical movements that way they know where they're going. Return to your lifestylist roots. Free the circle A from institutional capture.

I too was caught up in the antifa craze. I made a local antifa Twitter page with some cool images and news items from the progressive left. Soon I had over 1000 followers. Then someone from Eugene slid into my DMs and told me there were enemies in my follower list and asked me to curate. I loathed this task and asked if they would help, I even offered the password to the account. Alas they declined and put my page on a blacklist of possible "fakes" for not weeding out the wicked. Eventually I deleted the page and moved on. The height of the fervor was when we marched down Main Sreet in solidarity over the Charlottesville shenanigans. I didn't march I just showed up on my bike and rode along. They'll try to get you to fill out a form and pay $5 to walk with them here and make you a parade marshall with a safety vest. That's not me but I like to go where the action is.

but i dgaf whether a writer is an op or whatever, either their words are coherent and helpful or don't contribute meaningfully. so much liberal or settler culture writing is also garbage, so what's wrong with having to filter through the words of alleged other anarchists? this structure is part of what makes this field of study unintelligible to feds and makes individuals irreducible.

"The idea that there is a fascist creep on the left is a CIA Psy-op"

*posts an article citing Greyzone and David Rovics as a credible source*

You realize that wasn't the gist of the book right? It wasn't about "the left," what does it say when admittingly shitty sources are the only ones writing about actual serious issues with the anarchist movement?

I mean everyone gets behind a call-out about some bullshit but when it comes to actual people who are trying to attack anarchism underhandedly it's just like eh whatever.

On the list of "actual people who are trying to attack anarchism underhandedly" the author of the above article is exhibit A.

I went and read the text about him that he links to, the one he's trying to refute, and it is wayyyyy more credible than this tinfoil hat nonsense.

Seriously? Some goofball quoting the grey zone is more dangerous than a liberal who called themselves an anarchist, wrote a book calling half the anarchist movement fascists while now or possibly even then working for anti extremism think tanks?

Spencer Sunshine is that you? Cause nobody else is this dumb.

that's not what anon just said ... the point was the article about anton's "theory issues" has better sourced, much more serious problems in it.

whereas anton's writing feels like he's thrashing around in the dark

Why do so many comments in this thread make me keep laughing though xD

Because real anarchs have a sense of humor and love teasing the antifa struggilismos into eternity.

Now kiss

Winter Oak is the Alex Jones of anarchy-adjacent blog brahs.
Hates trans people more than a DGR terf on a pie bender!
GrEAt rEsET!!!!!!!!
mUh RNA!

Because not calling out the WEF is way less cringe.
And, oh yeah, fuck your bodily autonomy. Take your state mandated “vaccines” that do fuck all to keep you from getting sick.
There is a global conspiracy. It’s called capitalism and state control through brainwashing and double speak.
Anarchists used to fight against it, but now somehow they’ve become the little authoritarians demanding everyone fall in line, or else.

hahaha oh shit

> Take your state mandated “vaccines” that do fuck all to keep you from getting sick.

Paul Cudenec has entered the chat, everyone!

Hello Paul. Pretty fucking bottom of the barrel you have to be in the comments section of this shit hole trying to defend yourself and your stupid, archaic bigotry.

Winter Oak = Alex Jones, Bob Black = Donald Trump, Renzo Novatore = Benito Mussolini, Anews = literally Breitbart.

Signed,
Alex Reid Ross, author of How Fascists Court Everyone Except Me

So when does a "respected" anarchist actually commit to writing about this? Like if this is the problem and people aren't doing it....seems like an issue.

The defence of Zero Hedge as an alternative financial news source is a weird red flag here.

'Trans antifascist are the real fascists here to replace freedom with a vaccine based RNA Great Reset!!! We must wake up sheeple to the truth! It's all an op maaan" ~Paul Cudenec Master Race

There does seem to be a version of Hanlon's Razor that could be applied in this case.

but I will. I just want to offer this about the author, Crow: https://mtlcounterinfo.org/on-crow-fascist-drifts-and-people-who-are-not...

I respect that Anarchist News loves drama and hates ARR. I am exactly identical in both of these regards. I also understand that, once in a while, a clearinghouse like Anarchist News is going to post some fascist shit - because, well, that's what a clearinghouse does! In the past, I remember this happening at least twice with posts from Attack the System making it onto here, and of course there was the whole ITS/Atassa thing. In the case of Attack the System, I remember at least one occasion where Anarchist News actually took the post down, which was cool.

I am not the author of the MTL Counter-info hit piece but I am a person who hung out with Crow many times between 2011 and, I want to say, 2017. I don't think he is "a fascist" but I certainly think a lot of what he says online these days is pretty fascist in its implications. Although his own website, Nevermore Media, claims to be "anarchism for grown-ups", I think he is clearly in a solidly post-anarchist space, at least insofar as I think he'd struggle to find much affinity with almost anyone who actually is an anarchist, including those anarchists who do, like, similar types of activism as he does (to be very simple about, pro-indigenous sovereignty and ecological stuff, in large part).

Consider this a registered disapproval of posting his stuff on Anarchist News.

A final word: I put Crow's story in a larger context. There are lots of other men who had negative experiences in anarchyland - probably at least in part because they were the engineers of negative experiences for other people. He definitely has a lot of resentments, a lot of feelings of having been treated unfairly, and I am sure a good chunk of it is justified. But that's not a good reason to believe in, or repeat, nonsense (which Crow has done a lot of, regardless of what is written in the article I haven't read yet), and it's not a good reason to be vengeful towards the whole milieu that you feel did you wrong.

Counterpoint. Post adolf Hitler screeds against ARR until actual anarchists get their heads out of their ass and do it themselves. I'm beyond sick of people just writing this shit off or wanting to ignore it.

It's either I pooped on a childrens playground by a Portland "anarchist" or hey there's a dude literally doing federal government work who has purposely influenced the anarchist movement written by a questionable person in Canada.

That crow guy literally writes articles about how banks are run by Satanic Jews and that the CIA is out to hurt him personally, that the reason anarchists don't like him is that he is the only real anarchist because he refuses to wear a mask. Even just reading this article David Rovics sounds like a nutjob who basically picked out a few random Jewish people to attack because no one likes him any more. Like, there is not one piece of this that makes any fucking sense. What a fucking stupid article, I can't believe people actually listen to this.

and you sound exactly like just one more name-caller with nothing to back you up.

surely we all understand at this point that people who just make empty claims online are only adding to the static?

I'm not the person you're responding to, but... Empty claims? The takedown piece about Crow is way better cited — quoting Crow's own words — than Crow's dumbass fedjacketing speculations, above. It is idiotic (there's no nicer word for it) to accuse people criticizing Crow's decidedly empty claims of making "empty claims online." Come on.

You seriously saying ARR isn't working at least in part with the feds? It's in his Twitter bio. He might not be on their payroll but the dude works for anti terror think tanks. Again, openly.

Still seeing Jewish anarchists and leftists attending Rovics gigs. Scam Burley's orcs may be making a lot of noise but Jews are voting with their feet.

I don’t know any of the people involved but I have to question a little bit whether people like ARR are “spooks” or just sincere anarcho-liberals. This is a distinct if related question that should confuse no one when capitalistic tendencies run through the entire history of anarchism from Proudhon to the current TOTW. Liberalism is a specific stream of ideas, a political and philosophical tradition, I think the connection between anarchism and liberalism stands to be explored more freely, in all its manifestations. Personally I highly criticize this association but we have to acknowledge that it’s there. whereas a lot of anarchists seem to use the term in a very vague way, mocking as “anarcho-liberal” those who don’t embrace more extreme practices. I don’t think much of most of these myself, but I don’t think this term is being deployed in a particularly useful way, confusing ideological and practical criticism.

For instance, I’ve commented a few times when people on this site were promoting the work of Robert Evans, an “anarchist” who seems to mostly work with liberals (as in big-D democrats) and the NED-funded Bellingcat. He used to be a big-L Libertarian, now as a small-L he has no problem taking US government funds to do his “journalism” and some anarchists can apparently swallow this as radical media activism. I have had a lot to say about anarchists fighting for Ukraine, deploying ultra radical tactics in alliance with the global neoliberal project… but enough about that.

Anyway this Crow person doesn’t seem much better to me. Crow, stop trying to hide behind David Rovics. As far as I can tell DR has not engaged in bashing trans people while you and Cudenec not only continue to do so but now make a big deal about your own “martyrdom” on this and other issues. DR , afaik, was criticized as antisemitic for his platforming of Heimbach and Atzmon, which without having heard his show, are I think both defensible to different extents and for different reasons, and is not the same as you talking about “Jewish bankers”. If like Cudenec you need to talk about the Rothschilds and the “trans industry” to understand capitalism or explain why people don’t like you, you have definitely lost the plot as far as capitalism has concerned and you are shoring up the perception of green anarchists as right-adjacent.

Or again, you could locate a kind of “existential liberalism” (to appropriate a phrase) in the kind of uncertain anarchism whose advocate can find themselves at times, “it just so happens,” aligning with capitalist militarism or socially regressive conspiracism. As if our political existence means only picking and choosing ideas in an abstracted, ungrounded way, as a “rational individual” in the “marketplace of ideas.” I may not get a lot of respect on this site because I am comfortable identifying myself with the Left, but at least I know where I stand and why I’d never, even “coincidentally”, stand with forces like those.

ARR has been doing work for think tanks defining what is basically extremism horseshoe theory, which has been used by right/left whatever liberal democracies to go after anyone that isn't within their grasp.

Liberalism? Absolutely, you can look at the European academics working with the same organizations to understand exactly who these people are. Yes, ARR is one of these academics 100% and generally most of them are center left types. I know this because I have looked into it.

So, you can very easily make the connection that the fascist creep (a book criticized by just about anyone) was a reaction to or a way to move away from the anarchist movement for him. From my understanding he no longer identifies as an anarchist, hence the problem is his continuing influence.

With all that said, is he what should actually be called an anarcho liberal? I am not sure. Is he a spook in the classic sense? No, but would it really even matter? Whatever he is imo, is worse.

Maybe the answer is that, the anarcho liberal has a trajectory and that trajectory could easily be an ARR?

screeching technocrats tending toward policy making

Finally Spencer sunshine is being pointed to as being an enemy. His politics are fundamentally reactionary and he should be treated as such. He's absolute scum.

I have read some of his research on the far-right, I don’t think I’ve ever read him talking about anything else? Does he write about anything else? while they may not be spooks out to poison the well it does stand to question why people, even if of a “radical-left”/punk/etc bent, who are working on a fairly specific subject like that, should ever have been influential on anarchists in general? I mean were/are they? If people have work on some relevant subject, and if it stands on its own merits, it shouldn’t really matter whether they are anarchists or whatever, and if their work doesn’t make sense, then chuck it no matter who they are. (Tbf, I guess I missed a lot of the “antifaism” discourse due to living in a region where none of that really happened.)

I think the main issue is that these people have all been sidelined or sidelined themselves but their bullshit remains and it isn't getting reckoned with. I could give a shit less about these dudes other than that they are good examples of what to actually watch out for

Yea it definitely shouldn't matter if someone is an anarchist or not. But what does matter about this guy is clearly a racist, and a pro western, zionist apologizing liberal and that colors his writing and politics. It can take a bit to see if you don't follow closely, which is wise. But anyone who knows this clown or his views knows he's the absolute worst.

“There is no reason that Zionism and anti-Zionism – like secular identity versus religious observance, Hebrew versus Ladino language, and Ashkenazi versus Sephardic liturgy – should not just be another difference within a tradition that has retained cohesion even after several millennia of communal disagreements.”

Wow dude what the fuck? Yeah racist genocide is exactly the same as eating kitniyot during Passover…

Is this really the thing that is getting you all to all ARR a racist and Zionist apologist? This is clearly saying that there are a lot of disagreements and differences amongst Jews. I guess if you are the type of person who reduces Zionism to "racist genocide" then it's a bit hard for you to recognize distinctions to begin with. ARR isn't much better with his shit about fascist creep, but you just make yourself as full of shit as he is when you go around implying that Jews support racism and genocide when they advocate for national self-determination in their ancestral homeland.

The comment you're replying to, my esteemed Dandy, is extremely off-base. I think your comment is less off-base, however, in a way that continues this cycle of stupidity. Not denouncing, just offering in the hope of helping get out of the cycle

Zionism did not have to be what it is (which means, in a conversation about history or theology, we can talk about other meanings of the word), but what it is today - and since sometime before 1967 for sure - is indeed something racist and genocidal. I am not saying every person who is "a Zionist" holds Meir Kahane-level views about Palestinians, but actually that the project of Zionism has comprehensively failed to be anything but what it is. As Barack Obama said (lol), "We are all complicit." The implications of this complicity do not have to suggest any particular path forward (this is not a defense of Al-Aqsa Flood's inherent morality), but I think that just because it's uncomfortable to a lot of Jews to suggest doesn't mean it's not true that Zionism (the kind that exists in the world) is, well, a bad idea. Liberal Zionism might be less bad than the alternative, like constitutional monarchy, Salazar-style fascism, or truth and reconciliation Canada, but yeah, not quite up to snuff.

I'm not trying to put this all on you, but I feel like there's a whole identity politics discourse thing going on that is just so toxic. Like, on the one hand, there are people just saying wildly uninformed and uncool things about, let's say, Jewish topics, including Zionism. And then there's people coming in with ostensibly authentic knowledge, which in a lot of cases just has the clear rhetorical purpose of distracting from the central issues that people are actually concerned with. It thus becomes impossible to talk about the gentrification of Vancouver because that would mean talking about rich Chinese people and it becomes impossible to talk about the 100-year-long project of colonialism in Palestine because that means being antisemitic.

Lots of people, who are less inclined to politeness and civility than I am, are just gonna reject what they perceive as censorship and distracting whataboutism, and they will say even more outrageous and reckless things. It's a pattern worth seeing, and disrupting

I just don't think that this is how terminology should be used when it comes to historical entities: Zionism, anarchism, Liberal, Jew...

If someone says something like "according to the laws of physics" then it makes sense to go by the most contemporary, broad-consensus view of what the laws of physics are. With historical entities it doesn't work that way because you're dealing with subjective entities that change over time in often unpredictable or unintended ways. If you're going to be honest about what any of these things mean, your best bet is really just to ask the person using the term what they mean by it. Your next best bet is to use surveys, documents, organizational decisions, and official definitions. The worst thing you can do is rely on a handful of statements from cherry-picked popular figures or resort to popular stereotypes.

When it comes to Zionism, it's a bit of a debate because you have a history going back to the late 19th Century, multiple individual thinkers and political parties that disagree on definitions, different goals from different organizations at different times, a nation-state that claims it represents it, and people outside that nation-state who define themselves by the term without accepting the nation-state's monopoly on its definition. But this complexity isn't weird for historical entities. That's why academics love writing mountains of texts that deal with them.

I think it's fucking dumb as shit for anarchists, who ostensibly reject state monopoly on anything, to grant the State of Israel a monopoly on what Zionism means - even if we also oppose Zionism. If you're for the mass anarchism stuff, then you should be defining Zionism based on what it means to the mass of people who consider themselves Zionists: current and past. If you're more on the individualist side, then you should be asking individual Zionists what they mean by the term. In any of these cases, it's bullshit to assume that most Jews are racists and support genocide because they consider themselves Zionists. You have to factor in what the fuck the living people calling themselves that mean by it and more often than not, what is consistently meant by the term is that they believe in national self-determination for Jews in their ancestral homeland. That is the basic, unifying theme. When someone calls themselves a Zionist today, that doesn't tell you if they are for one Jewish state, a bi-national state, no state, two states, one set of borders, another set of borders, orthodoxy, secularism, or are indeed a Khanist, genocidal piece of shit. It may be safe to assume that like most people who support national self-determination, that means national self-determination through a nation-state ...so, they think Israel should exist. But that doesn't say anything about the character of its existence, its borders, its policies, or the content of its national ideology.

The fact that there is also a history of bi-national and even stateless Zionism makes these kinds of claims even more absurd. Zionism didn't officially support the creation of a "commonwealth" until 1942 at the Biltmore Conference and even after that, there was a Zionist movement for a bi-national state represented by the Ihud Party and others. These were people that called themselves Zionists, not anti-Zionists. If Zionism was inherently racist, genocidal, settler-colonial, etc. then this history shouldn't have been possible - or at the very least - it indicates that those qualities are not essential features of Zionism. They are potential, secondary features.

When it comes to anti-Zionism, the huge fucking problem is obviously that it's a single-issue movement that brings a ton of different ideologies into it from across the political spectrum ...including neo-Nazis and other sorts of lovely folks. Any anarchist who can figure out that calling themselves "anti-Zionist" doesn't mean they're a neo-Nazi can figure out that a Jew calling themselves a "Zionist" doesn't mean they support the genocide of Palestinians. I don't know if there's a way to measure this, but the complexity of both Zionism and anti-Zionism seems to be of the same order to me. That also implies that there are a lot of people who don't understand all of the complexity and still use the term for themselves. Which means that if you're going to be honest about any of this, you should give people the benefit of the doubt and try to figure out what they mean by either term.

Anyway, as I talked about with Djene Bajalan in an episode I did, it would be better to start calling Israel's ideology "Israeli Nationalism" to avoid this fucking mess.

and I'll just focus on the points of disagreement to be annoying ;)

I think the history, mostly, does not matter. People will sometimes talk about the word "communism", for instance, and how it existed before Marx was even alive, and being used to describe... something else. But most of the time, it is pretty clear what people mean when they say "communism", especially when, well, this is the first time you're having the conversation with someone, and there is no reason to believe that they are familiar with more precise definitions.

Perhaps there's a conversation worth having about "communism" and what it means, but I dunno, I'm not convinced it's a good use of time and energy.

I think "Israeli nationalism" is not take off, as a term, because "Zionism" is already floating around in the vocabulary. This is a curiosity. We don't have a unique word in the English language to refer to most other kinds of nationalism; we say "[national adjective] nationalism". But if we DID have a word, that a lot of people were already familiar with, for let's say Greek nationalism (Hellenism?), well... I bet people would use that word cuz it's fewer syllables. Of course this odd situation only arises because of odd history, e.g. there are other possible meanings, and popular understandings, of the word, but those are buried in history. (Which is why the word "fascism" means what it does in English, rather than, I don't know, more or less left-wing and anarchist-ish syndicalism, which is how people were sometimes using the word in 1890s Italy.)

My point is: "Zionism" is the word that people know; whatever you want to say about other possible Zionisms, actually existing Zionism (similar to the "actually existing socialism" of 1980s Eastern Europe) is Israel; and Israel - the state? the society? both, actually! - is shit. I mean that in the same way that I say Canada is shit. It is possible you are more interested in talking about the neo-Nazis and other lovely people who would say Israel is shit, no matter what, and Canada is only shit insofar as it is not the version of Canada they want, but I'm just speaking for myself here.

You brought up, like, a "mass" lens versus an "individual" lens... I lean towards the latter, and am interested in what each individual actually thinks. I know that some self-styled Zionists don't believe in racism and genocide, but hm - I guess I don't think this matters much? Like, I don't care what you call yourself, you're PROBABLY a self-contradicting idiot. And returning to analogy: I don't care that you dream of a multicultural Canada where everyone has basic income because that's a fucking pipe dream; Canada is what it is, it only exists because of genocide, it is still doing genocide (by my definition!), and I really think we're in fantasyland when we talk about any perpetuation of Canada that is not also a perpetuation of genocide. The "abolish Canada" case is certainly stronger than the left-wing Canadian nationalist case for stopping the things that I think are bad.

I understand why it's tempting to define an ideology by the largest institution that claims to represent it, but there really is a fundamental difference between "national self-determination" and the official ideology of a nation-state. There is also a fundamental difference between "a people" and a "nationality". These are important distinctions in all cases of nationalism.

What is a nationality, exactly? It is a political entity. A people, or peoplehood, doesn't always understand itself as a nationality. The way people understand themselves can be based on all sorts of shit: ethnicity, culture, race, sexuality, religion, etc. What makes a nationality specific - what defines it - is that it is a political understanding that people have of themselves. So even though American nationality is based on American citizenship and not a lot else, it is still a nationality: a political understanding of people who are citizens of the United States. A lot (if not most) nationality have ethnic, linguistic, and cultural factors at the outset of determining who, exactly, the people are that may or may not constitute themselves as a national group. The next step after deciding who the people are, who is included and who is excluded from the people, is to decide if the people should make political decisions as a bloc. That is nationality and nationalism.

Ok, so this whole thing about "national self-determination" comes out of liberalism and the rights that liberals say should be protected for nationalities. This was made official and put into practice by the League of Nations and later, by the UN as a basic principle for all nationalities. So, not just for Jews, not just for Arabs, etc. When the Ottoman Empire lost its rule over Palestine and the League of Nations gave the mandate to rule to the British, part of that program was to eventually hand power over to national groups that could demonstrate a viable state. Again, the emphasis is on "national" self-determination, not residential self-determination, not vague collective self-determination. The series of assumptions was that nationality is legitimate and is then the legitimate basis for statehood.

Ok, so as we know from our own anarchist history, there isn't just one way for a people (anarchists) to do politics (syndicalism, communism, bolo'bolo, whatever). We have a history of opposition to anarchists who try to say otherwise. In the case of Zionism - even if you accept Israel as the legitimate form of national self-determination for the Jewish people - that doesn't prescribe what Israel should be: its borders, the nationalities it permits to decide policy, its domestic, nor its foreign policies. Actually existing Zionism, even if it is Israel (which I don't agree with), still doesn't mean that it supports anything Israel does. Israel isn't a one-party dictatorship. Netanyahu isn't sending Israelis to gulags and death camps if they oppose his policies and ideological views, at least not as much as he'd like to! It is entirely legitimate for Israelis who consider themselves Zionists to support a wide variety of positions. And if that's the case in Israel, it is even more the case outside of Israel.

So actually existing Zionism today doesn't even mean that the Zionist supports Netanyahu and others. From an anarchist perspective, that still isn't good since as anarchists, we aren't only opposed to one form of nationalism or one nation-state: we are opposed to the entire premise that "peoples" should constitute themselves as national groups to begin with. Nationality, without any addition, pushes for political decisions to be made amongst a specific group of people defined by their ethnicity, language, culture, race, religion, and other such things. Anarchists want political decisions to be made on mutual agreements between whatever individuals and people... sometimes among workers, or residents of a region, but not on the same basis as national groups do. So of course anarchists are opposed to Zionism, since we're opposed to nationalism in general and especially nationalism that has successfully created nation-states.

The problem is that we're fucking weirdos about this. People are pretty nationalistic, generally. Their form of nationalism tends to aspire towards statehood or maintain already existing states on a national basis. Part of that common nationalism is that a lot of the time, nationalists don't like each other. They compete with each other at the very least economically and very often kill each other and try to dominate each other. So when you have a movement that is specifically against one nationalist movement, you're inviting all of these other nationalists who have their own particular beef with that one nationalist movement. And it makes sense for common people to think that if you are against their specific national aspirations, you're against them in a bigoted way: for Jews, in an antisemitic way. For them, they think "why is it ok for every other nationality to have a right to self-determination, but there is a whole movement against Jews having this right?" And the anti-Zionists don't help the situation by assuming all Zionists support whatever Israel does. Nor does it help that a lot of anti-Zionists, historically and now, are actually antisemites.

I don’t think ideas do things. I think people and their organizations do things. So I think the whole framework of the statement is wrong. Zionism is shit people believe. It doesn’t do anything. Some people who believe it do. But I also don’t think Zionism is the major reason Israel does what it does. I think there are geopolitical and other reasons that are a huge factor.

Meanwhile Israel is committing genocide.

It is. And we can oppose that as anarchists instead of getting into yet another single-issue movement with our enemies so that we get tarred with the same brush as them. We can stand on our own feet.

Apart from Activestills and Palestine Action Palestine dropped off the radar for anarchists years ago, but this is a distraction from Winteroak's concerns regarding ARR and Burley.

Ugh right, that's how this all started. So what is it that Spencer Sunshine or ARR did/said that makes them racists who support genocide? That's what got this thing started... I don't know much about either of them, except that Spencer Sunshine I think considers himself a Bundist and ARR started a bunch of drama with his fucking book.

No it didn't say of imply that. It's an unnecessarily long read thatt essentially can be summed up by their initial sentence: "For years, it has been undeniable that there has been a concerted COINTELPRO-style campaign targeting the anarchist left in the U.S.", particularly highlightimg ARR/Burley and two others.

Zionism and Palestinian nationalism are both IdPol. IdPol has an inherent behavioral trajectory - it is irrational, violent, and authoritarian to totalitarian.

Does anyone truly believe that the Palestinians and the Arab-speaking states would have behaved any differently than Isreal if they had won militarily? Nasser openly spoke about "pushing the Jews into the sea".

Both the Zionists and the Palestinians are now using "from the river to the sea" as slogans.

Yeah many folk apply a shallow interpretation of what IdPol is, they think it's a self-esteem issue, like being proud of your roots, your clothes and the food you eat. They don't realize the depth of political dogma and nationalism that it instigates amongst politicians of all nations, because it's an instant populist rally call.

Has shown that mass IdPol usually wins out over class consciousness. Especially in the last 40 years.

This bodes poorly for the U.S.A., which is far more likely to get a vast, bloody race-and-culture war than a glorious rising of a multiracial working class.

Worse, I suspect this is based in the Deep Structure of human nature. We evolved to be loyal to our band and tribe, not humans as a whole, or even an economic class.

Killing over 20,000 Palestinians in cold blood may well be idpol for genociders and their supporters but for those families being wiped out iidpol is probably the last thing on their minds.

"puberty blockers" and pronouns are probably also the last things on their minds.

Deliberately, calculatedly committed mass atrocities to provolk EXACTLY the response they have gotten from Israel.

In addition to 20,000 dead, 85% of Gaza's population displaced. The people are the pawns paying for the IdPol. While they are trying to survive, they may have the consolation that Israel is being isolated internationally for its mass atrocities.

Especially chapters 6, 8, 10 and 11. It makes what Israel is doing now look like restraint.

I am redneck/Scots Irish, and I'm sure my ancestors quoted the Book of Joshua profusely as they were ethnic cleansing and genociding the Native Americans. We ourselves had been ethnic cleansed out of our ancestral land after centuries of war with England.

I don't think words say things. Animals and their vocal chords say things.

I don't think matches burns things. Fire witches and their covens burn things.

I don't think jet fuel melts things. 9/11 was an inside job. Look into it.

Quite. It's as bizarre an idea as Chomsky's Universal Grammar

what is anarchism doing now? Lots of people believe in the ideas and don’t do shit. An anarchist ate a burger. Was it anarchism that ate the burger?

The reason anarchism is not doing much is that it is out of ideas. Incidentally I understand this is one of the issues Vincent Bevins raises in his current book If We Burn

I would *love* to see Anarchistnews interview Bevins on this.

Are you trying to stick to your guns on this bit that ideas do things by saying this? Have you met anarchists? You think they're not doing things because they need more ideas? Ideas are in abundance my friend.

I'm a lifelong anarchist and it seems to me that regardless of the number of ideas out there twenty years of pacification has gradually left most in a corner, not knowing what to do.

Within minutes of Bevins announcing the book I asked him if he would do a talk specifically for anarchists and he seemed to bottle it. I suspect he doesn't want to end up being in a 'don't shoot the messenger' situation.

This may be of particular interest to you. I suspect one trap anarchists are in is spectacle related. Throughout it's history Anarchy has always heavily relied on propaganda and it's interfering with what actually works. This is too long for online discussion but I even wonder if some misunderstood the SI as a programme rather than as a warning that it was something to inoculate oneself from. You must admit the SI really is heady stuff.

Not sure what you mean by, "Throughout it's history Anarchy has always heavily relied on propaganda and it's interfering with what actually works."

One of the themes of so-called classical anarchism is that ideas come from practices, which is why anarchists have been so concerned with the structures of organizations and society. This is found in anarchist thought going back to Proudhon. This is why anarchists looked at labor unions as educational institutions, since through the practice of organizing as a labor union, the workers were learning to fight the bosses. To this day, this argument is still made about insurrectionary struggle and participating in street protests. It's the whole means and ends argument.

I don't know when anarchists started thinking that capitalism, as an ideology, was the cause of people practicing capitalism... or likewise, Zionism as an ideology causing Israel to bomb Gaza. There is the whole "beautiful idea" thing, but I don't think anarchists have meant by this anything like "if more people believe in anarchism, will get an anarchist society" or something. The emphasis on practice, action, organization, and material conditions is still really important.

Cyberdandy: "Nor does it help that a lot of anti-Zionists, historically and now, are actually antisemites."
Israel is a far right military regime and it looks like Cyberdandy is stanning for them

No. This isn’t even worth responding to really but to be clear I’m an anarchist and opposed to Israel as an anarchist. Not as an anti-Zionist even though I am against Zionism.

What? No, why would I be denying that? This has been a problem in Israel for decades. The same regime around Netanyahu also shifted to capitalist economic policies with the explicit goal of generating enough revenue to become a regional great power. There's a lot of reasons to be opposed to Israel from even the most moderately liberal position. I just think that it makes more strategic sense to split Zionists on the question of Palestine instead of pushing the idea that Zionism is inherently anti-Palestinian. I think it makes sense to support opposition to the rightwing within Israel by citizens of different political positions. I think that this should be the approach to politics internal to Israel, including support for anarchist Israelis - Jewish and Palestinian. Outside of Israel, I think we need to come to terms with the geopolitics and recognize that it will take collaboration between a number of other countries, including Arab states, to make things better. As an anarchist I don't know if there is much to do about that. When it comes to United States discourse, I think that it's a huge mistake to throw our weight behind "anti-Zionism" as a specific movement and we should be articulating our own anarchist criticisms of all nationalism and all statism. Using Zionism and Israel as an object lesson is fine, but if we leave it at that then we're missing an opportunity to undermine nationalism in general.

The Arab states have carried a considerable burden. Hosting approximately over 70 years Palestinian refugees totalling something around five million now.
Something like half or Jordan's population are Palestinian. The responsibility is Israel's and it's main allies.

I'm talking about what I think the solution will need. Not who is most to blame or anything. Also, some of those Israeli allies are Arab states. Y'know Egypt just offered Hamas and Israel a plan: https://www.politico.com/news/2023/12/25/israel-hamas-egypt-gaza-plan-00...

This is the type of thing that I think will be needed.

I don't think the Israeli population, nor the combination of Western popular opposition to Israeli policies, can itself compel Israel to do better: two-state, binational state, federation of cantons, no state. I also think Palestinians will need Arab state backing to create something that they want and would work for them.

As far as both the Jewish and Palestinian diaspora goes, who the fuck knows. There are almost as many Palestinians in the world as there are Jews at this point. Encouraging countries where either live to provide security, equality, etc. is a good idea. Encouraging people in the United States to target Jews because they are "zionists" ...not such a great idea. What's the end-game, more Jews in Israel?

Apart from a one state solution where both sides have in practice full equal rights* I have no idea what else could act as a solution but next to Israel Egypt is the second largest beneficiary of US funding in the region and strictly control the Ragah border crossing.
*Outside the public eye the two-state solution is widely regarded as obsolete.

More "asylum seekers" passed through the U.S. border than that THIS YEAR

That's why Trump will most likely win the Presidency, cos he'll dare to build a wall and/or seperate families and/or other deterrants. It just can't keep going on, not that I support him,
Sheeple vote through their hip pocket and the drain on services and infrastructure puts more desperate people on the street, potential social unrest, riot, and in 20 yrs a civil war.

I'll put the lede in the subject line so it has a chance of not getting totally lost. I am the one who was exchanging with you earlier, dear Dandy, but I had to do other shit afterwards.

I just don't think this "not all Zionists" line is very helpful, at all. Again, what you're saying about "how words work" and how the aggregate group of people who may or may not call themselves "Zionists" don't necessarily share all of the same opinions... meh? And "Israel is the biggest institution claiming Zionism but it does not represent it"... also meh? You're right about all that, of course, but this convo is a distraction and a waste of time. The word has a restricted number of common meanings. In anarchist discourse, there is really one meaning that matters. There is nothing stopping anyone from having a more refined, specialized discussion about... the history. But that is not what people are talking about most of the time. If I say "this coin is made of metal" and you say "in astronomy, the word 'metal' actually refers to anything not composed of hydrogen or helium", I'd be like, "ok. cool man"

The purpose of this discourse largely seems to be to remind us that lots of anti-Zionists are antisemites. Cool man! Maybe someone needed to know that. But I already know that? I don't "identify as" an anti-Zionist, lol, which is to say, I don't privilege my opposition to the existence of the Israeli state (more than my opposition to, I dunno, the existence of the Republic of the Philippines) enough to put that shit on my business card.

I sympathize with many of your concerns (I too think attacking U.S. Jews is a bad idea) but I really think you're spinning in the mud with this one. It is evocative of other people, of other ethnicities, who have a chip on their shoulder about people talking about objective and uncomfortable facts about "their community", sort of a concern trolling thing. When old Chinese people get mugged in Berkeley, that might not be anti-Asian hate, that might be selecting a target for a mugging because that person is old and helpless (and close to Chinese New Year, possibly carrying an envelope of money for the grandkids). When a window gets smashed in the Gay Village, that might not be homophobia, that might be because the shitty business owners have been hostile to homeless folks in the neighbourhood. When people talk shit on Zionism, maybe it's less antisemitic (although it certainly can be that) than it is using a metonym that for both Israel and pro-Israel sentiment in other countries, widely promoted by the Israeli government and parts of civil society in question

All the best, genuinely

Let's sort this out here...

Even in the comments for this post, there is someone saying dumb shit like this:

"Zionism is a monolith, and should be referred to as such. Israel is the worst modern colonialist state in existence, and we should all be opposed to them. The Zionist quite literally believe they are god's racially superior "chosen people", for fuck's sake.
Obviously, not all jews are Zionists. Just being born into a religion/race/state doesn't determine one's feelings, but the vast majority of jews do support the Israeli state, and we should be able to address this as anarchists without being called fascist.
There is much power in the state of Israel. There is much power in the Jewish religion. So much awful shit is justified by Jewish scripture (much more than the shit anarchists have no issue calling out when it comes to, say, catholics for example)
We should be able to have honest and open discussions around these issues.
The Jews should be no more sacred to us than the Catholics, Baptists, Scientologists or Muslims. Let's call out bullshit when we see it."

This and similar absurd takes on Jews, Zionism, Israel, etc. are not uncommon right now in Left discourse, including anarchist discourse. This is largely the type of shit I'm responding to and the motivation is seeing news every day of Jews being attacked from an anti-Zionist direction. And this isn't just comments on the internet. There was a call to action published on this site with the following:

"First and foremost, every town and city will contain any number of people in power, businesses, non-profits, institutions, etc, that support Israel and push their propaganda. With some research these can be found and become prime targets. If nothing else we should make the territories we are in socially, and ideally physically, hostile to zionists. They’re certainly doing this to people who support Palestinian liberation with people losing jobs and being black-listed from various industries and institutions."

https://anarchistnews.org/content/salish-sea-intifada-%E2%80%93-notes-ex...

You say, "The purpose of this discourse largely seems to be to remind us that lots of anti-Zionists are antisemites. Cool man! Maybe someone needed to know that. But I already know that?"

Ok, I'm glad that you're informed, but who the fuck is "us" that you refer to here and what makes you think you can use your own insights as an example of what this "us" thinks? It doesn't seem at all obvious to me that anarchists and others realize that anti-Zionism, as both a historical and contemporary movement, includes a lot of antisemitic shit. It isn't just humanitarian decolonization advocates, it's also people who rant about the Zionist Occupied Government and reference the Protocols of the Elders of Zion.

You go on:

"I don't "identify as" an anti-Zionist, lol, which is to say, I don't privilege my opposition to the existence of the Israeli state (more than my opposition to, I dunno, the existence of the Republic of the Philippines) enough to put that shit on my business card."

Well, then what I'm talking about isn't directed at you. I'm very specifically talking about anarchists and others embracing the label "anti-Zionist" and sharing resources, talking points, and solidaristic sentiments with anti-Zionists. This is why I keep making the point that anarchists should critique Zionism as anarchists, not as "anti-Zionists". I actually have similar issues with Antifa and other single-issue sorts of movements where specifically anarchist positions get subsumed in a discourse that is watered-down or dominated by non-anarchists, including enemies of anarchists.

There is also some things to say about the relationship between Zionism and pro-Palestinian stuff. The assumption underlying the left/anarchist anti-Zionist discourse is that Zionism is fundamentally incompatible with Palestinian liberation. How true is that? If there are indeed Zionists whose Zionism is compatible with Palestinian liberation, why aren't leftists/anarchists trying to split the Zionists on the issue of Palestinian liberation?

To me, it seems like there are two splits worth pushing for: splitting the Zionists on the issue of Palestinian liberation and splitting the anti-Zionists on the issue of antisemitism. In other words, I think a general Anti-Authoritarian Palestinian Liberation position is worth articulating and supporting. But instead, what I see is something more like New Left idiots supporting any nationalist and/or separatist movement that gets into the spotlight, based on an "enemy of my enemies" perspective. Both actually existing Zionism and anti-Zionism should be subjected to an anarchist critique that doesn't pull punches from either target.

That was a quote from Spencer sunshine. It was not part of some abstract philosophical ramble about the nature of Zionism, what it might have been. It was from an article he wrote in 2019 on JTA about how there’s a new Jewish left that “ transcends” the question of Zionism. Yes, I know who Ahad HaAm, Martin Buber and Sholem Schwarzbard were, TYVM. They’ve all been dead for a long time. Zionism since 1948 basically means Israelism. There is no such thing as an Israeli left today, I don’t accept ethnic hegemony as a leftist ideology, left Zionism is literally national socialism, and it was all used up by the late 60s. I know our history. What is your fucking point exactly? Are you one of those “we’re indigenous to Palestine” types?

No, I'm one of those American Jews who knows a lot of other American Jews and understands that when they call themselves Zionists, they aren't saying they want to murder Palestinians.

As far as "indigenous to Palestine," I think what is usually meant is "native to Palestine," which is true. What I think that implies is another story. For me it just means that I can only understand the history of my family by also understanding that we come from a group of people who have a history together originating in Palestine and doing all sorts of other things since then.

Ok so this is about you wanting to make excuses for your family and friends. Well, words meaning whatever you want them to mean is one way to go. Personally I don’t talk to my family about politics except for one or two people who are cool. my involvement with the organized community revolves around anti Zionism and when I go to shul or something I don’t usually talk politics either. I do embrace the need to challenge our community from within, which like most of American society is deeply racist, even if in a “liberal” way, especially when it comes to Zionism. I think the way it invokes my, your, our lives and safety to justify oppression creates a duty to react, speak up and treat it as a huge problem, bringing all of our radical faculties to bear on the fascist project of actually existing Zionism… but then again waffling and coddling about what it actually means is a way to go too. Zionism does NOT mean simply Jewish people living in that part of the world. What’s “national self determination” mean to you here? Or is it just about your nice Israel supporting pals?

I’ve already replied so much on this that I don’t feel like repeating myself. I say a number of things in other comments, such as advocating against Zionism but from an anarchist position that uses Zionism as a lesson in a wider critique of nationalism. I define my shit up and down. Yeah I have compassion for family and friends along with all of that. It helps me learn what people actually mean when they call themselves something.

Your writing suggests Palestinians are an unfortunate inconvenience.

Do you have an example you can give me? That’s a pretty big claim to make for how little I’ve said about Palestinians.

Cyberdandy: "That’s a pretty big claim to make for how little I’ve said about Palestinians.".

My point exactly.

So your point is that the omission of Palestinians from my comments suggests I specifically think about Palestinians in some way? That makes hardly any sense to me, but if you want my thoughts on Palestinians, here you go:

Palestinians have a complicated history that I can’t even begin to grasp. In the mid-1800’s, when the Ottoman Empire modernized its land laws and began privatizing land, Palestinians were among a number of people under the Ottoman Empire who were slowly dispossessed of land rights. Though some notables obtained land titles, much of the land titles for land that was occupied and used by Palestinian tenant farmers were given to their bosses. Those bosses began selling the land out from underneath the tenant farmers feet and a lot of these sales were to the Jewish Colonization Association and the Jewish National Fund. By the time of the Second Aliyah (1904 - 1914), Zionists who acquired this land were laying off the tenant farmers because they adhered to a policy called “Hebrew Labor”. This was one of the primary causes of early Jewish-Palestinian conflict. Thousands of land purchases were disputed, labor protests were held, riots broke out and ultimately the Ottomans would step in to put down Palestinian rebellions and protect Zionist land acquisitions.

Beyond these specific conflicts between Jews and Palestinians, new conflicts emerged from promises that the British made to Arabs broadly in the context of WWI. These promises were made to inspire Arab revolt against the Ottoman Empire. There were the Hussein-McMahon Correspondence specifically, which suggest Arab (but not necessarily independent Palestinian) control over Palestine.

When the Ottoman Empire lost control over Palestine and the League of Nations gave mandates to the British and the French over former Ottoman territories, the land titles that had been established under the Ottoman Empire were retained by the British. The British maintained the Balfour Declaration, which seemed to contradict the promises made to Arab powers. Besides the earlier Hussein-McMahon Correspondence, the Palestine Arab Congress formed and demanded a renunciation of the Balfour Declaration and for Palestine to become ruled by Syria. However, around this time there were some ideas for an independent Palestine and Palestinian Nationalism began to develop in earnest.

As mentioned before, when we get to 1942 at the Biltmore Conference, the Zionists officially adopted a program to create a “commonwealth”. What I didn’t mention was that the Arab League adopted the Alexandria Protocol, with its “Special Resolution Concerning Palestine”:

“Special Resolution Concerning Palestine

A. The Committee is of the opinion that Palestine constitutes an important part of the Arab World and that the rights of the Arabs in Palestine cannot be touched without prejudice to peace and stability in the Arab World.

The Committee also is of the opinion that the pledges binding the British Government and providing for the cessation of Jewish immigration, the preservation of Arab lands, and the achievement of independence for Palestine are permanent Arab rights whose prompt implementation would constitute a step toward the desired goal and toward the stabilization of peace and security.

The Committee declares its support of the cause of the Arabs of Palestine and its willingness to work for the achievement of their legitimate aims and the safeguarding of their Just rights.

The Committee also declares that it is second to none in regretting the woes which have been inflicted upon the Jews of Europe by European dictatorial states. But the question of these Jews should not be confused with Zionism, for there can be no greater injustice and aggression than solving the problem of the Jews of Europe by another injustice, i.e., by inflicting injustice on the Arabs of Palestine of various religions and denominations.

B. The special proposal concerning the participation Of the Arab Governments and peoples in the "Arab National Fund" to safeguard the lands of the Arabs of Palestine shall be referred to the committee of financial and economic affairs to examine it from all its angles and to submit the result of that examination to the Preliminary Committee in its next meeting.”
https://avalon.law.yale.edu/20th_century/alex.asp

These two developments moved the conflict between Zionists and Palestinians into a wider context between Zionists and the Arab League. Once this happened and once the UN Partition Plan was rejected by the Arab League, the stage was set for the conflicts that followed…

So, no, I don’t think the Palestinians are just some kind of inconvenience. I think they were fucked over by numerous other people and their aspirations for an independent Palestinian state were overshadowed, ignored, crushed by others: Zionists, the British, the UN, pan-Arab Nationalists, etc. I despise the Zionists for adopting the Biltmore Program, let al one the Nakba and all of the other terrible things they did since then. Palestinians should have been included in Yishuv dicision-making, usufruct rights to land that they had lived with prior to Ottoman land reforms should have been maintained, and when it became clear that the Ottoman Empire was going to lose control over Palestine, the binational or anti-State Zionists and Palestinians who would agree with them would have made a much better history for both peoples.

Would never have happened. It was a settler colonial movement from the getgo.

I’m not going to debate this with you since you’ve already baited me with your bullshit about what I supposedly think about Palestinians. Bad faith as fuck. Obviously it couldn’t be a settler-colonial movement from the beginning since it began in 1881 before anyone had a clue the Ottoman Empire would lose control of Palestine. I’m sure you have all your typical talking points lined up about this and going through them with you isn’t worth my time.

Puzzled why Cyberdandy's so defensive about zionist settler colonialism. It's not as if the founding fathers had Jewish refugees best interests at heart either.

I got this quote verified:
'If I knew that it would be possible to save all the children in Germany by bringing them over to England and only half of them by transporting them to Eretz Israel, then I opt for the second alternative."
-David Ben-Gurion

That's the sort of fanaticism the Palestinians have had to deal with.

I’m not being defensive because I have some disagreement about Zionism as settler-colonialism. It was. I put the date it officially became so at 1942. It’s a minor point in the big picture. What I’m defensive about here is I feel like I’m putting a lot of effort into my comments and getting shit on by anonymous commenters in return. Bye.

Not one mention of capitalist oil investments and Israel as a capitalist proxy guardian state within the region huh?

What time period is that from and why do you think I should have mentioned it when giving my opinion of Palestinians?

Y’know forget it. This whole debate is way off topic and I’m not a historian. It’s all your turn to write walls of text on your position. Done with the explaining the minutiae of my position here.

In Palestine (Canaan)?

According to the Torah, at the time of Abram (later Abraham) the Israelites originated in southern Mesopotamia.

My ancestors originated in southern Scotland, much of it later annexed by England (which ethnic cleansed them). I think it would be rather difficult to send tens of millions of American rednecks back there. You would have a population density like Gaza or worse.

First of all, you’re mixing up terms:

Hebrews: The term "Hebrews" is believed to be one of the earliest names used to describe the ancestors of the Jewish people. It likely originates from the biblical figure Eber, an ancestor of Abraham. The term was primarily used to describe the people in a period before they established a kingdom in the land of Israel, particularly during the times of the patriarchs (Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob) and the Exodus.

Israelites: This term refers to the descendants of Jacob, who was also known as Israel. The Israelites were the twelve tribes that descended from Jacob's twelve sons. This term is mainly used to describe these people after they settled in the land of Israel, especially during the period of the united monarchy under Saul, David, and Solomon, and then during the divided kingdoms of Israel and Judah. It has a more national and political connotation, referring to the ancient inhabitants of the Kingdoms of Israel and Judah.

Jews: The term "Jews" originates from "Judah," one of the twelve tribes of Israel and the name of the southern kingdom of the divided Israelite monarchy (Kingdom of Judah). After the destruction of the northern Kingdom of Israel by the Assyrians, the term began to refer more specifically to the inhabitants of the Kingdom of Judah. Following the Babylonian exile and the subsequent diaspora, "Jew" became the term to describe all those who adhered to the Jewish faith, regardless of their tribal lineage. Today, it refers to both the religious group (those who practice Judaism) and the ethnic group descended from the ancient Israelites.

Second of all, I don’t know what the point of your second thing is.

Spencer Sunshine is a deranged blowhard. The last time Gaza was under sustained assault he tried to blame the Gazan population for it

That was a few years ago. Best go onto his twitter account and check it yourself.

So basically you’re saying the source of this claim is “Trust Me Bro”

SS ia convinced Jeremy Corbyn is an antisemite and I have yet to see any evidence of such, incidentally JC was in AFA.

What he actually says about Corbyn

https://x.com/transform6789/status/1472213642825326595
Corbyn himself admitted there was a problem on the party. If Labour had taken care of this years ago it would not have been an issue.

https://x.com/transform6789/status/1249340097939546112
I think there was a big problem in Labour, tho Corbyn himself was more like someone who turned a blind eye to it rather than being a terrible example.

A brief exchange about antisemitism in the British Labor Party, and you want to change the subject to Israel.

Do you think that Israeli atrocities justify antisemitism? Why else would Israel be relevant?

By the way, people who think that Israeli war crimes justify antisemitism . . . are antisemites.

I couldn't even get through this overly long, self-involved, giggle-producing whine-fest. The far left is their own worst enemy. No wonder Gen Z punks like Nick Fuentes are media super stars on the so-called "alt right, new right," (take your pick).

First of all, to give credence to the Zionist pig dogs at SPLC is an unfunny joke. They are as bad as the ADL, agents of Israel. If you belong to ANY organized movement with lots of funding you should be suspect. Academia is a cesspool of self-loathing Marxism, so if you teach (above grade school level) or belong to a "think tank" (academic or corporate) you are not merely a fraud and sellout, you are the insect-brained drone of the Megamachine itself. Regular paychecks are a sign of servitude.

Let's face it, "left" and "right" don't mean anything anymore, except to political hacks who enjoy the sorry spectacle. For those of us who wish to burn down the society of that spectacle, it's all the same to us: unimaginative, vicious, drool-inducing show biz. Might as well call it a day intellectually, spiritually and culturally and become a Swiftie.

Beating a dead horse seems to be the collective occupation of crybaby "activists" these days. I worked for Earth First! years ago and left in disgust, sick of the adolescent "social justice warriors" and their disdain for real earth defense. They would rather blog all day, posture on Youtube or own publishing empires like Missouri fatboy Kevin Tucker. Kill those trees in the name of rebellion!

Instead of naming names, intellectually swatting, calling out guys you have personal gripes with or stating the obvious - "hey, there are rat finks among us rat finks!" - try doing something manifest and ORIGINAL to save all species. We would appreciate it.

Gonna be a long, dark winter of whining .....

PS The worst "fascists" are always on the Left. I learned that my first time out among so-called anti-civ radicals who draw up long lists of rules to obey at the local forest gathering. FUCK ALL RULEZ!

though I didn't love the casual "Zionists" and "agents of Israel" bit. It speaks to a failure to understand what the real problem of Israel is. Yes, Israel has agents, but mostly they don't need any, except in hostile societies like Iran. Many people are willing to be agents of Israel without pay, because nationalism is commonsensical. (Being an anarchist, on the other hand, is about rejecting common sense.)

I also didn't like the comment about the worst fascists being on the left, or whatever. There were rules at a primmy gathering - ok? I feel like "the worst fascists" are probably not saying you can't be nude in the breakfast tent (which does suck, don't get me wrong), what they're doing is creating an authoritarian culture that you can't escape from because they have figured out dirt they can use on you to keep you in line forever

To be fair, the worst "fascists" (generally understood as authoritarians) I've seen or been around over the last five years have been leftists.
Let's not forget that Rasmussen reported in January of 2022, more than half of Democrats polled thought that those who refused the experimental mRNA Covid shots should be placed in camps, with an almost equal number favoring what amounted to house arrest for the same “offense”. Nearly the same amount thought that anyone who publicly questioned the efficacy of the untested “vaccines” should be fined and/or jailed.
This is way worse than somebody saying you can't be nude in the breakfast tent. The left was clamoring for people to be kicked out of their apartments, fired from their jobs, refused medical service, and put in camps, all for refusing to take a shot that at best did nothing (especially for young healthy people), and at worst, killed and/or maimed healthy people. (see the Yale School of Medicine LISTEN study, among others)
The reason this needs to be mentioned here is that one of the two main reasons people want to write off Cudenec or White Oak is because of their stance on vaccines. I don't think it's fair to call people "anti-vaxxer" based on their stance on one specific vaccine. My guess is that they've had several vaccines in the past.
The other reason people jump to write them off is their supposed anti-semitism.
Zionism is a monolith, and should be referred to as such. Israel is the worst modern colonialist state in existence, and we should all be opposed to them. The Zionist quite literally believe they are god's racially superior "chosen people", for fuck's sake.
Obviously, not all jews are Zionists. Just being born into a religion/race/state doesn't determine one's feelings, but the vast majority of jews do support the Israeli state, and we should be able to address this as anarchists without being called fascist.
There is much power in the state of Israel. There is much power in the Jewish religion. So much awful shit is justified by Jewish scripture (much more than the shit anarchists have no issue calling out when it comes to, say, catholics for example)
We should be able to have honest and open discussions around these issues.
The Jews should be no more sacred to us than the Catholics, Baptists, Scientologists or Muslims. Let's call out bullshit when we see it.

I've yet to see a definition of Zionism that would place it anywhere near something anarchists should support, though the ADL certainly tries. (they're obviously well versed in how words work)
I can use the term Israeli Nationalism if it makes you feel better, but I don't think it fully covers the issue at hand. Also, referring to Israel as Jews ancestral homeland is problematic, in and of itself. The Jews aren't the only people to claim the area is their ancestral homeland.

Why would you even bother looking for a definition of Zionism that anarchists would support? There was one anarchist who was also a Zionist that I know of: Gustav Landauer. Besides that, the two ideas are pretty incompatible. One is based on nationalism, which is a politics of nations making decisions as nations. The other doesn’t specify who should make the decisions (as long as they freely associate), it specifies how decisions should be made. Nationalism isn’t very compatible with freedom of association.

Anyway, it isn’t problematic to refer - not to Israel - but to Eretz Yisrael as the ancestral homeland of the Jewish people. Israel is a nation-state. Eretz Yisrael is “the Land of Israel” …a geographical location. That doesn’t exclude others from understanding the place as their ancestral homeland. Thinking it does would be like thinking it’s problematic for siblings to have the same mother, or cousins the same grandmother.

What?!! You mean to tell me there's a government?!! With agents?!!!

This, specifically the David Rovics inspired shit, is antisemitic cop jacketing. It is fucking worthless and I hope the people at Earth First! throw you to the fucking curb for writing and publishing this shit. Disgusting.

So good no one mentioned my name in this context.

-- Bob Black (pig ffffucker and Taylor Swift fan #1)

The issue here is ARR, Shane Burley, Spencer Sunshine and Robert Evans in one way or another look as dodgy AF.
Tell them they're not wanted. We don't want toxic scum policing everyone. Just fuck off to a faraway land and don't come back.
Crow and Rovics, are basically a distraction. Ignore them.

I worked with It's Going Down for several years until it was taken over by tiqqunists. They wanted to compete with Crimethinc until they finally took over them as well.

Hilarious Hitler --- leftist socialist + nationalism =nazi.
Naughty Netanyahu--- rightwing nationalism (Zionism) + capitalism = nazi.
Lololurghurgh

Yes. The majority of anarchists that practice anarchy outside of bookfair tHeORy. They're great.

Does anyone here want to stick up for ARR & Blurry?
So far it looks like even the crickets aren't interested in them.

I don't think Gillis is even sticking up for them these days...

Need a troll to come in and defend counter extremism. It can be done, if one is brave.

...a quick glace at the anews front page shows two articles by a 'pro-left, pro-tech anarchist' running a very duplicitous project called 'the ted k archive' which equates any green anarchist not in line with his pro-left, pro-tech programme with the US's most notorious domestic terrorist. all in the name of 'harm reduction', of course.

anarchism has not so much been hijacked by state agents as it has by the state's liberal values. unless we can overcome this, it's all over, folks.

The funny part here is that these characters are likely about to say/do some crazy shit(their social profiles are all locked down or abandoned recently) and anyone here even slightly defending them is gonna look dumber than they already are. The nutter who wrote this article is going to look smart. And the whole thing is gonna just be ridiculous.

Anews mods if ur gonna do your thing just delete the posts that even slightly defend ARR. That would be the right move.

Both ARR and Burley are working for the man. So far nobody here has contested that fact. What's more they behave like anarkiddies policing others and settling scores, working in the counterextremism industry which has some of our worst enemies, financed by governments with a lot to hide and shady funders cash funneled through think tanks who regard anarchists and environmental movement as threats.
The quest seems to be: do you want cunts like that around you?

As far as I know, I have never been in a room with either of them. Hence I find this article hard to relate to.

I found this article overall unconvincing, but maybe I can be convinced that one or both of them are, by one definition or another, spooks. Which would have implications for bookfairs and stuff, where I might see their titles.

As far as I know, it is worth noting that I think ARR is on the outs? And in the article above, there are complaints that AK Press was still selling his books... I dunno, I figure Bob Black's criticism of AK Press is more relevant here.

I personally found ARR's whole intellectual oeuvre a bit dubious from the get-go. Burley, on the other hand, seems like more of a run-of-the-mill academic, leftist, antifa whatever guy. I don't know him but I just imagine a guy who lives in my city, in his stead. I like that guy well enough but I also think he's a bit of an idiot. I assume Burley is a slightly smarter version. I am skeptical that such a character needs to be a spook?

Instead of focusing on these personalities, it's probably more important to do some research on the counter extremism/NGO/academic industry. Once you figure out what that is, what they've done, who they've influenced (think the current RICO and criminal organization charges in the USA and europe) you can understand quickly who is and isn't either admitting involvement or feigning ignorance.

To me the context here is wild cause it all connects back to the current massive wave of repression and austerity capitalism post 2007. It's fucked.

Anyhow, on the topic of these people yes, it's fucking wild that AK or anyone tables fascist creep. It's clear where this thinking comes from, counter terror.

even this wingnut conspiracy article doesn't show any evidence that Burley has anything to do with the "counterextremism" industry

1: Does Shame Burley gain an income from his antifacist work?
2: Of course he does. You think he writes books on anti-fascism for free?
3: Then there is no question that he's part of the counterextremism industry, but people who don't get cash renumeration can get paid in other ways (eg, status).
4: QED fuckface.

Nobody should earn an income from work!
People should write books for free!
The counterextremism industry will not replace us!
Ad incelnitum!

Money isn't everything in CT. Some get off on the prestige. In their different ways ARR and Shane Burley seem to have gone native, so to speak.

are we buying into grayzone articles now?! might as well cite from infowars, too. lmao

On Palestine Grayzone are better than all of the current anarchist media projects combined.

And it got posted here about 2 months later.

I don't think that's completely unprecedented on A-news, but given how shit this article is, I think it's worth bringing up as yet another reason that this shouldn't have been republished here in the first place, giving Crow more of a platform among the minority of fucking weirdos and freaks who actually will take him up on his Project 2025-esque research project into which anarchists are working for intelligence agencies

Perhaps someone felt it required additional attention. Something happening behind the scenes?

The article is dumb but the antifa academic researchers and ARR/counterterror issue is pretty much a consistent topic of discussion around these days. Despite how Portland might feel, there's a real critique of antifa and what it was and who promotes certain aspects of it.

I mean, there's clearly an issue here regarding what antifa has churned out considering some of its figureheads are connected to organizations far infinitely times worse than the latest neo bonehead nerd.

Do you have an idea what their overall take is on Zionism?

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