The thrust of this critique is not pointed towards individual convictions, ideas and desires. As always, the greater the scope of our generalizations, the more exceptions we leave outside. These are responses to general trends and tendencies observed in the North American anarchist milieu. (United States and Canada - because there is a context that exists that is more than the addition of these two countries, but that is, of course, quite different in Mexico.) It is quite likely that many of these trends do exist elsewhere in the world, as do many products of American culture. That being said, I believe that many of these tendencies are particularly North American, even if their resonance is felt beyond these borders. Many of these statements and points have been said elsewhere, at different times and by different voices. The point lies that critiques ill-heard bear repeating. Will some be offended, feel targeted? I hope that if this is the case, those offended will not take their indignation as an excuse to throw this piece in the garbage, to rail against it. We are already too few, and too isolated. Yet no numbers or figures could be justification for silence. Cooperation and camaraderie in struggle become meaningless if they are conditional on thin-lipped nodding and pats on the back, if they refuse reflection and debate. Forgive the assumption, but we did not become anarchists in an effort to seek support and acceptance on all sides, to paint glue over cracks and inconsistencies. To be cliché, radical means seeking out the roots of any problem, situation, social or political form. If we cannot see aspects of society that are reproduced in our own circles, then any attempt at radical change is hopeless, no matter how large or how militant. That, or the more radical consequences of the anarchist project will be taken up by others before they are taken up by anarchists themselves. Of course, this is already happening, as it has happened before.
Lastly, if your response to this text is merely, ‘but we’re working hard!’ then accept the response that any good boss will give you. ‘Work harder.’
Openings
I.
The anarchist current in North America (esp. the US) has all the trappings of a social movement, without the movement. The what of a social struggle, with little to no conception of the how, or the why. We ask ourselves what makes sense in terms of action and organizational form, with little attention given to the context, or the conditions in which it makes sense to do anything at all. We seek blanket solutions, models and forms, things that could be applied everywhere—and are effective nowhere. We build models for resistance and solidarity, with no concept of how these things could be weapons. We seek answers where there is merely the silent face of the world that confronts us.
We have isolated attacks and acts of sabotage. We have groups supporting those targeted by repression, suspected, charged, convicted and locked up for acts of resistance. Yet even these seem to have shrunk within recent years. We have occasional black blocs and convergences, nearly each time preceding a fallout replete with months of debate and venom over what we call tactics.
And beyond? We have punks serving oddly textured stews in public parks, wondering why on earth people don’t eat their food. We have groups meeting in dingy union offices and campus-based non-profits. We have infoshops in towns and cities all over the place, opening, closing, opening, closing. We have teenagers doing the same things we did five, ten, twenty years ago, and still we are unaware of each other. We had an anti-war movement to try to “push” in a radical direction, and now we don’t even have that. We speak of the necessity of working together with liberals, when we can barely work together amongst ourselves.
We have crew changes, maps and enough hitchhiking stories to fill the Library of Congress. We have armies of friends and houseguests and “do your own dishes” signs above the sink.
Where we could have relationships, we have internet forums. Where we could have meaningful debate, we have mud-slinging. Where we could analyze liberal (and other forms of) dogma, we remain silent, only to talk shit later. Where we could deepen critiques of social movements and struggles, we seek “openness” and “diversity of opinion,” as if liberals will be tricked into becoming anarchists by our non-threatening discourse.
When we could gain understanding and perspective from particular struggles, in North America or abroad, too often we instead find only fetishism. When we could develop techniques with intent, when we could prepare, learn, adapt, and expand upon moments of resistance, we instead rush into ill-defined situations with ill-formed expectations (viz. to view rioting as a tactic, and not an event)—only to repeat the same process at the next opportunity.
We often see theory as a thing of the past. When we could be striving to understand the context we live in, and what it means to us as anarchists, we instead turn to ideas and modes from a hundred years’ past, as if there still exists a labor movement today, or even workers, as such; or, we shut out theory entirely, seeing it as a foreign and near-imperial imposition on “the movement” itself. As if acting without reflection, repetition of certain events and organizing forms, and a proliferation of different groups to address every minor aspect and consequence of the society we live in today, will inevitably drive domination out of our world—like a miracle in kitchen chemistry.
Where we encounter intellectualism, too often we reject it in favor of simplistic and “accessible” dogmas, or embrace it on the assumption that all thought is by nature intellectual—when we could be attacking the ivory tower from a position of thought, reflection, self-critique, and confidence in our own ideas.
Where there is capital, power and repression, we see an ever-growing tide of issues, each one demanding its own unique organized response.
Where issue-based organizing is critiqued, we hear the same response screamed: I will not wait until after your revolution...! As if we must each have our own unique, pre-packaged revolution. As if my revolution is right around the corner. To say that most forms of oppression and exploitation could be eradicated through non-revolutionary means, through mere organizing—or worse yet, advocacy.
After Fredy Villanueva’s murder at the hand of pigs, in the wake of mass rioting in Montréal-Nord, Montréal anarchists sought representatives of local organizations in an effort to build “alliances of solidarity.”
In the absence of solid communities, we create semblances, as if certain events or institutions could make a community; hence taking on the worst characteristics of intentional communities (insularity, distrust or distaste for the “outside world,” self-congratulation and an inflated sense of comfort, protracted internal arguments remaining forever invisible and irrelevant to the uninitiated), nearly always indistinguishable from cults to the outside observer. In so doing, we absorb the colonizer’s mentality of always seeking representatives and forms, ever blind to the thing itself, ignorant of the relations that truly form a community. We find ourselves barely cognizant of one major consequence of modern society, the rabid destruction of communities. All the while shouting no cops in our communities!, but never asking: what community?
We are wordless to speak of alienation, as if weekly meetings and collective houses are some sort of cure-all; no surprise that we grow ever more irrelevant to people who feel the visceral pains of exploitation and self-hatred, whose only answer to their rage is a growing detachment from the world.
We see impassioned comrades disappearing from “the scene,” absorbed in work life or home life, in substances and depression. Or turning to clandestinity, arson and bombings through uncontainable impatience for a self-styled movement that fails to move anything. (Not to dismiss these actions, but the desperation that sometimes motivates them.) And when these rifts are addressed, it is only through reactive measures: support for prisoners and people on trial, mental health collectives, external projects and efforts to “stay in contact” with or support older comrades and those who have left the scene. The notion of solidarity has disappeared, or returns as a mere specter, a word with no weight or substance, much like anti-globalization or people power.
We critique institutions of power through one side of the mouth, with the other speaking of the need to build our own institutions, ignoring the dynamics of power that will infect any institution.
We speak of actions and dynamics at home and in our spaces, always in contrast to what we do as anarchists in the “outside world”—as if we are missionaries to an idea, and must represent this idea to others, as if we must maintain two protocols and two standards, as if we cannot merely be anarchists, and act accordingly.
We speak of eradicating oppression in our communities, as if oppression is created merely by individuals, by choices, behaviors and social dynamics, and not also by capitalism, by cities, by the state and by technology.
We speak of solidarity as a special commodity, reserved for token groups of people, and not a basic and fundamental anarchist principle, essential to all forms and aspects of our struggle.
We speak of many things, often forgetting what it is to listen. We read and read, forgetting that learning is not a matter of social credibility, that anarchism is not a quantity.
We swallow social capital and alienated relations hook, line and sinker, digging ever deeper into our cliques’ private trenches, making a hollow joke out of the word “expansive.” Meanwhile, we dismiss attempts to challenge the way we are socialized to relate and interact as “lifestyle anarchism.” Or we address the issues around relationships and interactions in the most alienated way, through categories and specialized terms, all the while reinforcing the solid walls around our social circles. In so doing, we see “working on dynamics” as a reasonable alternative to struggle. When we reject activism, we so often see cynical hedonism as a reasonable alternative, accepting the rarity of any real anarchist possibilities, and lacking the initiative to create them.
We stand on a precipice over a vast, gaping trench with “the revolution” on the other side, blind to the mass of potentials that stand between “here” and “there.”
On forms
II.
Much ado has been made about the false debate between summit-hopping and local organizing. We find in the end two tendencies each in desperate need of critique.
On the one side, we don’t expect to find anyone who will defend “summit-hopping” as a viable revolutionary strategy in itself. However, the arguments in favor of organizing countersummits and convergences often return to a few points, mainly meeting each other and gaining experience in the streets. The strongest counterpoint is the repression that inevitably surrounds such events.
That being said, there is no strong argument against anarchists meeting each other and acting together. As long as we do not put absolute safety above the impulse to fight against the state, capital and domination in all its forms, there will always be repression. The more potency a struggle gains, the more desperate and vicious the response of the state will be, depending on the means and resources available to it.
Hence, the question becomes less one of convergence, and more of the summit itself. Here is where the bottom falls out. Opposing summits is based on the notion of showing resistance to the state’s plans, to whatever group is meeting, whatever project is being discussed (free trade agreements, WTO, World Bank, economic forums, etc). In anti-globalization mythology, a degree of victory is observed in the moment when summits are organized in remote, easily fortified locations far from metropolitan centers. To wit, they are scared of us. Victory?
And the question morphs again: how difficult is it for world political and financial leaders, arriving in their private planes, to meet in Kananaskis, Alberta, rather than Calgary? Or, how difficult to meet by phone or video conference, rather than in person? Or, how difficult to hold a secret meeting, or a teleconference, in lieu of a publicly announced summit? How difficult to say Plan X is scrapped, and go on to carry out the same plan, only without a name? These things happen all the time. So in the end, what is a meeting in the grand scope of power structures, of capital and the state?
Yet for the permanent traveler, little more is possible than to confront a meeting, to move from convergence to convergence. Even in the absence of summits, any event is in some sense a meeting to one who is always arriving—every impression a first impression, even when revisiting old haunts. A mass of people in perpetual motion is as useless as an isolate community, equal in their failure to become relevant, to develop any sort of force.
And the alternative: local organizing. At first glance, the argument is seductive. But what substance do the oft-repeated critiques of summithopping give us? Infoshops, Food not Bombs, bike co-ops, coalitions with liberal groups and NGOs; in other words, a thousand ways to build a semi-functional “radical” sub-society with pretensions toward autonomy. Building a new world in the shell of the old. Ignoring the fact that the “old world” is far from a shell, that industrial capitalism continues to function, utterly untouched by whatever radical institutions we might build inside of it.
Unfortunately, this discourse on the part of anarchists serves to reinforce the logic that conflictuality is the domain of a specific subcultural group, i.e. young, white, middle-class, male-bodied anarchists. In the name of inclusiveness and anti-oppression politics, the conflictuality of anarchist “others” is erased, as well as that of non-anarchist exploited individuals—a mass that eclipses the North American anarchist milieu, no matter how we look at it.
This discourse also creates the mythology of two types of anarchists. One type, with no engagement whatsoever in social relationships or any particular place, merely lying in wait for the next convergence, the next riot or black bloc call-out, to engage their violent fantasies and write their literary communiqués; the other type, abhorrent of conflict, living in so-called communities, building alternative institutions, and systems of mediation and direct democracy. The first type resembles a kind of inhuman monster; the second type is composed of alleged real people, who actually live somewhere, generally reflecting middle-class values, rendering anarchism palatable to a certain projection of what popular opinion is.
In the end, the whole debate becomes more an impediment to anarchist struggle than anything else.
III.
So what is wrong with local organizing?
This is a loaded question, as the construction of what we call local organizing is itself loaded. In one sense, the answer is quite simple. Nothing is wrong with it. In fact, local organizing is the most important piece of any resistance. It is the only form in which we may act directly from our relationships and experiences, forming collectives in our immediate contexts. Organizing on a larger scale, and over distances, immediately introduces representation, problems of communication, technological mediation, etc. Any action becomes more complicated, any process more difficult.
In this sense, the critique is levelled not toward the pure notion of local organizing in itself, but the paradigm of local organizing as a nonconflictual, directly democratic, charity-oriented endeavor (even as we hear the screams, solidarity not charity!). To fill this frame, we have the usual anarchist social services of Food not Bombs, community bike shops and Really Really Free Markets; then we get into the less charity-oriented projects such as co-op bars and cafés, collective houses and autonomous camps, which permit us to supposedly create direct democracy now, destroy hierarchy in our immediate lives, or even live anarchy. But let us dig a little deeper. Is it true that we really do want local organizing, only in a more pointed, antagonistic form?
And here we stumble upon the other problem. It is not a problem with the local itself, but with localism. By this we mean a fetishism with one’s local context, an obsession with its uniqueness, a drive to organize an authentic struggle from that place, for that place. It is the notion of fighting where you stand taken to an extreme, in which one shuts out influences from the outside world, ignoring the forms of resistance practiced in other parts of the world. It fits nicely with the sustainability discourse: eat local, buy local, etc. To wit, if one can build up a cooperative, self-sufficient community, it would be effectively liberated from the state’s machinations.
The logic can be expanded somewhat, to counter the critique of isolation. A federation of autonomous communities, each one populated by horizontal institutions, groups of people taking care of each others’ needs, be it in terms of physical health, mental health, food, shelter, transportation. Bike co-ops next to community gardens, next to herbalist collectives, mental health support centers, and so on. Communication networks set up between these communities, to share information and knowledge. Finally, the vision becomes a somewhat expanded, more institutionalized version of the anarchist scene already existing in North America. Or, a slightly radicalized version of the “fifty mile diet.”
Underlying this notion of localism, even in the expanded federationist localism, is the assumption that the state and capital can be erased by eliminating our dependence on their infrastructure. One would do well to recall that long before the state became as entrenched in our everyday lives as a dispensary of services, it still profited from land, labor and the lives of its subjects through taxation, slavery, war, conscription, mining, fishing, forestry, and myriad forms of extortion—and that in many places in the world, this feudal relationship still exists to a large degree. As much in prison labor as in the “Third World.”
Here we find the limit of localism as a radical discourse, at the precise point in which solidarity and struggle disappear from the lexicon of a certain anarchist milieu. Localism draws force from a misuse of certain radical ideas. The notion of revolt as therapy, articulated by situationists (viz. the absence of suicide in May ‘68 Paris), inverted and distorted into a pure discourse of mental and physical health. To see subsistence and “being autonomous” as revolt is little different from seeing self-therapy as revolt. To the contrary, communities of revolt on a certain level must be communities of support, but this doesn’t mean that communities of support are by nature revolutionary.
Communities of squatters and punks are as prone to narrowing the scope of resistance as Eat Local advocates. “Resist to exist”’ as a rallying call gives up all potency when resistance becomes solely focused on the protection and maintenance of certain spaces—spaces which are only radical insofar as they act as springboards toward exterior struggle, and toward radical transformation of the individuals who participate in them (and radical transformation cannot be tied to a certain space, or a certain scene).
The anarchist project is one of constant dialogue between one’s own position, and the world beyond. From the individual body, to the relations between individuals, the communities we form, the cities we live in, to the political boundaries that surround us and divide the world, to the world entire. The problem of localism is not with putting energy into one’s local context, but with a preoccupation for a certain scale, a fetishism for a certain context. As individuals who wish to eradicate domination at every scale and in every corner of the world, knowing that different manifestations of authority are interactive and interdependent, that power does not stop at borders and boundaries—we must recognize the futility of overcoming power in certain places or forms, as much in discourse as in action. Not to suggest that it is impossible to win some level of autonomy, to prevail in certain conflicts in one space; but that as long as capital and power still operate globally, any liberated space (even a country or continent) will always be threatened and attacked from without, as long as armed power structures still exist in the world.
We find the relevance of locality to anarchist struggle, while avoiding the traps of localism. The places we find ourselves, the relations we develop, the familiar alleys and fire escapes, the people we recognize on the street. Deepening connections and familiarities, developing affinities into modi operandi for action, these are building blocks for resistance. Without falling into the commonly Marxian mythology of an international revolution, we must be international in thrust, even as we develop our capacities to fight locally.
This means being enemies of power everywhere as we contest its manifestations around us. This means insofar as we interest ourselves in issues and events elsewhere in the world, we find and attack the myths and discourses of authority in those places (viz. Venezuela as proletarian paradise). It means finding deep affinities with forms of resistance in other places. Without creating chauvinistic standards, like saying that only self-identified anarchists are worthy of solidarity, it means breaking down double standards all too common in left and anarchist milieus, in which resistance group X in the “Global South” deserves our solidarity without an examination of their politics (and thus moving down the vague and slippery slope of anti-imperialism as a faux-ideology).
IV.
As North American anarchists fall into traps of liberal representation and misguided attempts to understand other cultures, notions of revolutionary solidarity (fundamental to anarchist practice) stretch farther into the distance.
As far as this relates to international solidarity, we can find countless examples. Support for and excitement following the “Arab Spring” while barely looking beyond mainstream sources and the media narrative of events. Sending cash to Stalinist groups in Oaxaca to aid the struggle, when anarchist groups exist but are simply less well-known. Uncritical support of Zapatistas or the landless workers’ movement in Brazil. The at-times fetishistic support for any resistance movement in so-called developing countries can be compared, if not traced, to the anti-globalization movement narrative of a “movement of movements,” a loose, yet interconnected array of social movements against neoliberal capitalist reforms, spread across the world. This illusion, largely purveyed by the Academy and lefty Western publishing houses, paints a picture of collaboration between vastly different groups and milieus who have nothing to do with each other, typically have not encountered each other, and may even be unaware of each other’s existence despite their apparent association. In addition to drawing lines on paper between unrelated struggles, this narrative paints with a broad brush a spectrum of groups ranging from anarchists to authoritarian leftists to apologists for a glorified pre- 1980’s capitalism. Depending on whose narrative we follow, this grouping may include many nationalists, including conservative and right-wing nationalists.
Even where there have been international encounters of anti-globalization groups and movements, little has ever suggested that these would not be easily recuperated by a reformist, “pro-democracy” milieu, eager to draw nationalism and industrial development into their arsenal, flipping the coin of US imperialism to find the same structures on the other side. It is not too surprising that the Left would seek to paint this picture of a broad and meaninglessly vague global movement against certain facets of modern capitalism. But for anarchists to fall for it? Really? The global economic equivalent of “anybody but Bush”?
The examples of vague “developing world” solidarity are the most prevalent and clear, but even in the West, even in North America we find the same phenomenon. As the recent 2012 Quebec student strike was happening, solidarity actions occurred in a number of US and Canadian cities; but what did they cling to? The casserole demonstrations, a theme copied from Chile where people came out on their balconies and banged on pots and pans to express dissent during the dictatorship. These actions quickly morphed into street marches full of people banging pots in various Montréal neighborhoods, and were specifically endorsed by a Liberal government minister as an admirable form of dissent. So, North American radicals copy the most iconic and media-friendly action in the whole strike, the one which served most to pacify the streets of Montreal. Solidarity with who?
Or the notion that “sometimes nationalism is acceptable.” Like a population that has been oppressed is right to want their own State. Again, anarchists fall into the schoolyard logic of “justice” and “righting wrongs,” ignoring the evidence that State apparatuses and nationalist formations always involve repression, coercion and exclusion, that these are not consequences of “right” or “wrong” but are intrinsic to these social structures.
Solidarity is only possible knowing where one stands. If being anarchist is to each person to define, then solidarity is to each person to define, and between us it means nothing. To participate in a movement or struggle, or to contribute to a certain group or alliance, without a clear analysis of where one stands in that context, and how contributing to that group or struggle will aid one’s own struggle—this is charity. It is “doing a good thing,” and fits neatly in the construct of the responsible citizen.
Revolutionary solidarity is many things. It is writing to prisoners and supporting people facing repression, as much as it is direct attacks on the state and systems of repression, as much as it is communication (beyond anarchist circles) about anarchist struggle and repression. Not one of these is complete without the others. Revolutionary solidarity cannot be a purely defensive endeavor, nor one of support only, anymore than a revolutionary project in itself can be composed of merely defense and support.
V.
An anarchist movement—does it exist, can it exist?
The question lies on the tail of another question: what is a social movement? Like many questions of definition, it is subjective, and whole books could be and have been written on it. Yet at the same time, the answer seems deceptively simple. A social movement is a popular current that manifests in some way against the society we inhabit, and for a different kind of society. It is not an isolated group, armed or not; it is not a religion; it is not a political party.
To be clear: there exist two common notions of social movement. On the one hand are issue-based, time-specific social movements, against certain wars, against new laws, for certain specific rights (pro-choice, anti-CPE, etc). Such a movement could last a week or it could last forty years; its limits are not in time, but in the achievement of a specific end, or the exhaustion of will to fight for that end. In contrast are social movements with ongoing ends that cannot be achieved with a few concessions, in effect without broad social change—against patriarchy, against poverty, for the free movement of migrants. Of course, there are many groups and individuals, activists and theorists, in North America who attach themselves to these ideas. Yet a social movement requires not merely awareness of an issue or conflict, but active, visible opposition, and a certain degree of currency within the society in question.
The notion of an anarchist social movement often runs hand in hand with the attempt to show that anarchist values are values common in society, that we need to build bridges and show our true positive intentions to people, removing any hint of threat or danger, in order to dispel negative associations people have with anarchists as unruly, murderous, and without morals.
We do not do ourselves any favors in this way. While perhaps mutual aid and solidarity are things many people could relate to on some level, they are certainly not defining characteristics of our society. The opposite is far more true. Cheating, mutual exploitation and economic self-interest prevail—in material practices, if not always in word. The allure of wealth pervades every institution, so that poor and working people often identify more with the values of the rich than with those of their own class.
When we look at other anarchist notions, the disparity grows even wider. We are against private property, against control and repression, against colonization, against prisons, against work. These ideas are not reconcilable with the social order we live in. Sharing is taught to kids, and this may reflect certain anarchist practices—but so does expropriation.
The sooner we can give up illusions of what we are, and what support we have, the sooner we can determine who we really are, and where we stand. Surpassing idealized visions of bringing more and more masses into our circles, anarchists would do well to learn who their comrades are, and what they are capable of together. In the intense internal criticism that pushes toward accomodating a broader population, cowering at the mere thought of alienating the so-called public, one recalls the fin-de-siècle idea of propaganda by the deed. Through uncompromising attacks on this society of domination, a clear position is expressed; ideas are explored that would remain inert and seemingly impossible from the vantage of a tamed, orderly, polite social movement. The solidarity inspired by such acts is not one of words, but of more tangible sentiments, of a fluid interplay between empathy and acts of defiance.
Rebels hiding in the midst of this society, our ideas will never be accepted before the destruction of the social order around us. Yet the point is not to isolate ourselves or overemphasize the differences between anarchists and other segments of society, anymore than to erase existing differences in an attempt to merge our struggle with a much larger, more fluid and undefined milieu of “opposition.” We must be precise in our reflections, in knowing what we want, and how we may act toward such ends—in the immediate as much as in the long-term. For radical ideas to spread, we must be honest to ourselves about our positions, and clear to potential comrades about all we stand for, and why. Freed of the baggage of an illusory movement, for the free discussion of ideas, the sharing of techniques, and the initiative to move forward with what we have—so we may begin, once more.
VI.
If anarchists do not form a movement, then what? A school, a flock, a herd? A cult, a sect, a private club? A clique, a gang? A subculture?
The question is slightly complicated, in that there are many anarchists in North America who are not associated or implicated in its anarchist subculture, participating in its events and institutions. Likewise, in many places, the anarchist blends and blurs on the edges with punk, traveler, lefty activist, radical queer and various other identities or subcultures. Nevertheless, there is an anarchist subculture, with its houses, infoshops, benefit shows, convergences, Food not Bombs, and other projects.
Beyond its spaces and events, like any other subculture, the anarchist version carries a great deal of conventions, forms of behaving and interacting, rituals, assumptions, slang and specialized language, expected appearance. When challenged, these institutions are typically defended by attachment, by a certain feeling of comfort, a desire to feel at home and safe in our houses—much the same reasons for which many people work, watch TV, stay in relationships they question, maintain the same group of friends, never alter their sexuality after age eighteen.
Yet even as anarchists create certain spaces and uphold certain ways of relating for the same reasons as others do on their end, we have the added benefit of thinking our way of establishing these is revolutionary, that such codified practices steer us toward some kind of liberation.
Strangely, where the anarchist subculture is defended, it is often done so in the framework of organizing from within vs. attacking from without, maintaining one’s role in the system vs. abandoning it completely, to then act on one’s own autonomously from it. In this sense, living on welfare, dumpster diving, scamming, and squatting are seen to constitute one’s liberation from “the system”, and staying at home for days, or seeing the same friends around all the time at shows and political events, are seen to constitute one’s autonomy from “mainstream society.” Hence we arrive at revolutionary praxis as neatly pre-packaged deal, complete with a new socialization to cover up the first one.
Here, lines of flight are not uncharted adventures of individuals heading for the stars on stolen wings. These are paths clearly drawn, known distances, lines already mapped out, an easy trek from one’s previous life to the anarchist scene, with loads of beckoning hands on the other side. Or perhaps scowls, most often depending on first impressions, on how likely is a candidate to fit in.
At the end of this “flee to attack from afar” discourse, we find ourselves failing at both. The flight of the subculture is not one of destroying limits and stagnation, breaking down social categories and patterns of behavior within ourselves, or pulling apart alienated social relations—a total negation of the repressed, scarred, socialized self. Instead, it flees the context and places of mainstream alienation, in order to reproduce similar dynamics, similar feelings of guilt and silence, similar chopped-up ways of interacting, only with an altered vocabulary and a fresh set of boundaries. Hence we abandon the places where we might share ideas, inspire and be inspired, to live on a cloudy plain above the city, only to submit to many of the same self-destructive dynamics we originally fled. And when it comes time to attack from afar, more often than not, this amounts to a mob of rowdy strangers shouting gibberish from the limit of the square, quite incomprehensible to anyone who happens to pass by.
In the end, the question ought not be whether to flee to attack from afar, or to remain amidst ranks of society to share tools and attack from within it; but rather, how to perform either or both to effect? From where can we hit our targets; and get away? From where, and how, can we not just attack physically, but share the techniques, the rage, the reasons and wishes behind them? And where, and how, can we attack and break down the harmful relics of socialization we still carry within us, as one more facet of an insurgence against all forms of domination? To pursue these questions to their ends, without imposing a frame already over them, cannot be done within the confines of a subculture. These are questions that demand finally the abandon and destruction of subcultures, as surely as of society itself with all its pressures and cages.
This is not to say that the anarchist subculture is completely useless on all sides. Yet it is not merely the sum of its parts. To reject society does not mean destroying every person, every relationship, every ritual or practice that composes it; to wish to destroy capital does not mean the destruction of all tools, resources and homes, the scorching of the earth’s land, as all currently exist in the form of private property. Likewise, to wish destruction on the anarchist subculture is not for the loss or closing of all its resources, its spaces, its materials; the ending of all relationships developed in that context; the forgetting of skills gained; the deterioration of ties between comrades in different areas. It is to wish the destruction of this subculture as a structure and a context, in order to liberate all contained within from its confines and limits. And certain components—skills to design and produce propaganda, to speak indecipherably, to eat for free, to spot pigs, are valuable outside of a subcultural context. When they are understood and used with intent, all are tools that may aid us in our struggles; when practiced unintentionally or out of silent coercion, they become merely another set of alienating, self-reproducing rituals.
On the role of critique
VII.
It is not particularly out of pleasure that we launch such an expansive critique. We consider it a thing of necessity, though equally necessary to recognize the limits of this perspective. Critique and self-reflection are valuable, but they can only go so far. Too much critique is more likely to stifle than to inspire, no matter how well-reasoned the criticisms. Writing always fits into a game of power. By necessity it takes positions, places itself at certain points within existing conflicts. We are always prodding certain spots, pushing eyes to look in certain directions, opening holes to peer into, exposing contradictions; unless, of course, one tries to please all, but then this is not writing, and rather wallowing. We hope here to attack two forms: the activist tendency against thought and toward action, and the intellectual’s toward thought and away from action.
At the end of the day, proactive ideas, examples and proposals will yield more than pure criticism. Yet we do not live in a vacuum of purely positive action. We cannot say that all actions and all ideas are equal, that “everything helps,” that everything we don’t disagree with is a concrete step towards what we want. Failed attempts do not bear repeating; stagnant forms of organizing do not demand our energy. Ingrown scenes that fail to communicate beyond their borders will not grow by some act of magic.
Hence the need for critique.
Clearly there are many positive examples we can learn from. This is by no means intended to displace the value of lessons to be learned from existing and past anarchist struggles and strategies, insurrections and lesser forms of social rupture. Only, better to take the lessons from the actions of others with a clear view of ourselves, and where we stand. No formation, no matter how courageous, how militant, how organized, ought to be exempt from critique and reflection. Even in hotspots of anti-authoritarian struggle, there are mistakes, failures, and internal conflicts as much as in the tamest North American city. The difference is not in some more advanced or more perfect anarchists, but in the courage and desire to act, self-organize, learn, adapt, and spread sentiments and tactics, free of nostalgia and unwarranted attachment to failing strategies. Finally, the hope is that something said once, and well, is worth more than a thousand pieces of ideas coming out in different places at different times, forever leaving something to be amended. Though of course, no matter how thorough we might like to be, nothing is ever complete.
On futures
VIII.
Where can we go from here? What paths draw out into the abyss, dovetailing toward insurrections, revolutions, space to breath and think, communities where we can be ourselves, without fear of pigs or perpetrators, relations strong enough to hold the torrent of our desires?
As anarchists we cannot reject these bigger notions, these more distant articulations of a world free of domination. And yet to linger too long on these horizons, we run ever the greater risk of drowning, or drifting so far beyond this world that we lose sight of land. We mustn’t grow too lost in our utopian fantasies that we lose the ability to communicate, to relate, to collaborate with those whose views differ from our own, however slightly or greatly. Yet neither can we allow ourselves to fall into the trap of realism and practicality, sacrificing values for a handful of change, a slightly better wage, a less murderous police state, a prison cell to oneself.
This goes merely to describe one tension that we live as anarchists, whether we choose to own up to it or not. It does not offer us anything, beyond the space opened for reflection. It is the same as with any purely negative critique; there is no prescription, no list of possible actions. Such a critique merely opens space to breath where have lived illusions, repetitions, false notions of satisfaction or progress. Yet to overcome such obstacles is already an accomplishment.
However, nothing stops here. In dispelling an attachment to ineffectual tactics, it is up to us to surpass them. The desire for an uncompromising, inspired and courageous anarchist struggle is nothing if it stops at the production of text. To make more of it requires complicity, shared passion, a willingness to act. It demands also a desire for the struggle to grow, spread, find allies and accomplices. In this sense, complicity is not limited to relations between individuals, nor to collaboration among anarchists. This is a big part of it, but it also means that we collectively, as anarchists, may seek out accomplices in our struggles against domination, the state and capital.
What does this mean? Is this not already common practice? It might seem. However, by seeking complicity outside of a certain political strain, we don’t mean anarchists joining mainstream activist or community groups, or seeking allies in leftist or reformist organizations. For anarchists to work with organizations only serves to reinforce the notion of anarchists as activists, as political specialists, removed and distant from the everyday lives of proletarians, immigrants, indigenous, marginalized people generally. To struggle for the exploited, while removing oneself from their (and our own) day-to-day life, is to reproduce the same kind of representation we see in the media and in politics, while drifting always farther from concrete practices of autonomy and solidarity.
More concretely: for anarchists to seek complicity outside their circles in struggles against police or surveillance, in sabotage of pay-booths, in attacking development projects, is to recognize a common interest in living safe from police violence and repression, a common desire not to be watched everywhere, a desire not to pay always more and more to go work, study or visit friends or family; a desire not to be surrounded always by more rich people, paying higher rents, facing more frequent patrols, increased vigilance against graffiti, loitering, drug use, soliciting, or the simple crimes of being young, poor, of color, or in some way a sore thumb sticking out of the developer’s vision of a safe, clean, proper city.
In this way, complicity means recognizing that much of society is oppressive, alienating and hateful to many people in this world; that it doesn’t require an anarchist as Platonic hero to “see the light of truth.” And recognizing that many of the things we love, the autonomy and self-determination we hunger for so fervently, are not bizarre fetishes uniquely valued by anarchists.
Solidarity means finding these complicities, these points of tension where exist already partisans beyond our own circles. At the same time, it means not stretching the anti-authoritarian elements that exist outside of politicized scenes into broad fictions, telling ourselves that people are intrinsically anarchist, or anti-capitalist, and just don’t realize it. We cannot hide from the fact that, although in certain contexts we may find many sympathetic to anarchist analysis or tactics, in the bigger picture many if not most people are hostile to revolutionary ideas. Yet to turn inward, to avoid communicating beyond anarchist or other counter-cultural scenes, is the worst mistake. We may seek accomplices where we can, and assert anti-authoritarian perspectives where they are not already a known quantity (with a willingness to explain and defend them), all the while deepening the affinities we have, and acting together.
Compare these notions to another example, in which a radical environmental group composed mainly of anarchists, attempting to expand its base of support in a certain campaign, makes links to various mainstream environmental groups who are opposing the same timber sale. In content, it is similar: anarchists fighting against a certain project going beyond their own scene to build allies for the struggle. However, this interaction occurs entirely in the political sphere, between organizations and people already aligned, already “politically active” in one way or another. The possibility for this struggle to spill out of the “activist” sphere, to grow and spread, to become conscious of its strength, to find new terrains of struggle, or to directly confront the state and capital in themselves—is effectively nil.
Of course, an encompassing social revolution is a terribly distant and unlikely possibility. Without completely renouncing our desire for it, we have to face our tangible context, and work with the reality we live in. (Even in a more revolutionary context, we could not ignore the deep rifts that exist among anarchists—to wit, it is not any anti-state social revolution that will yield the world in which we wish to live, though greater explanation is beyond the scope of this critique.) Jokes about “the rev” may be funny for a while, but self-denigrating humor is rarely constructive in the long run. Faced with the seemingly monolithic impossibility of revolution, we often fall into either pessimistic apathy, nihilist abandon, or a compromised notion of struggle as damage control—complete with a cognitive dissonance to ignore the futility of combating domination on the whole through a proliferation of reforms and safe spaces.
Alternately, the impassioned insurrectionist, disillusioned with an anarchist current that has already given up, turning to arson, bombings, armed struggle; perhaps inspired by Jensen’s philosophy in which a small number of people, skilled, intelligent and capable of carrying out “strategic actions” can bring down civilization by themselves. We don’t think a small number of people, no matter how skilled or dedicated, can face and defeat the state, capitalism, or civilization by themselves. However, the widespread activist discourse that tags armed struggle as desperate, isolationist, and doomed to fail, serves only to create further divisions and enforce our sense of weakness. It says we are not ready yet, we do not have a strong enough movement to support armed groups or arson. Yet we don’t ask the question, how a “movement” that refuses combativeness beyond the occasional counter-summit or black bloc (and even then...), will ever become strong enough to support armed actions? And how does this differ from the sleeping Marxists, ever still waiting for the revolution?
IX.
The question stands. What directions remain toward ends that we desire as anarchists? And to formulate a more preliminary question: if there is no path straight to a world free of domination, what directions lead toward an expansive struggle, toward relations that fulfill us, not in isolation from society but in conflict with it, toward actions that identify the structures of domination, and not merely some bad apples; toward a force that opposes and attacks the state and capital, patriarchy and privilege, alienation and representation—not in certain forms that appear new or more atrocious, but in all their forms; toward an assault that is an open invitation, but not a compromise?
At base, we need an orientation toward and desire to fight. A desire to build struggle out of broad lines of opposition, a willingness to express anti-authoritarian critiques; neither hiding radical ideas in a patronizing effort to work with other groups, nor an elitist clique-based tendency to act only with other anarchists, excluding those “not radical enough,” even from discussion. There is no anarchist movement as such, and we are better without the hopes contained in such illusions. The notion of building a widespread movement is a perfect self-defeating strategy. Instead, we might focus on spreading revolt.
Covering the streets with anarchist propaganda, with ink, paint, and glue, with words that express the fullness of a struggle against domination, that are comprehensible and free of academic and subcultural jargon. As well, messages that emphasize existing social tensions and render them impossible to ignore, that express solidarity with the exploited and excluded, and that urge on self-organization, autonomy and conflict with the dominant classes.
Production and diffusion of texts to inspire revolt and class antipathy, expose and underline structures of domination and oppression, and give tools and ideas for resistance and sabotage. Diffusion: not just anarchist websites, infoshops, and pseudo-radical spaces, but also métros, buses, schools, cafés, fast food joints, bookstores, libraries, street fairs, markets, places of work. As long as the thrust of radical propaganda is join us (at the infoshop, at the demo, etc.), we are forever in a position of weakness, burdened by the same curse as the panhandler or OXFAM solicitor. We are not seeking conscripts or recruits, but comrades in struggle. Here we speak of text, but the same ideas can and ought be applied to other media: music, photos, art, and video.
Willingness to act within moments of revolt or popular aggression against property, police, the architecture of the city, the state, etc., not as distant supporters but as accomplices in the shared desire to destroy what makes us miserable—and hence, to understand solidarity not as a vague term but as a tangible bond.
Desire and preparedness to intervene in broader social movements and struggles, strikes, occupations, mass demonstrations, blockades—not as mute supporters and allies, but as anarchists—interested in the growth and strength of such movements, with our own interests, critiques, strategies and tactics to share. And simultaneously, learning to act as anarchists in the absence of social movements, creating and pushing conflict and self-organization in periods of low struggle, avoiding the trap of playing reformist in order to build a social movement.
To organize with broader groups of individuals to oppose specific developments or projects, on the condition of permanent conflictuality against the project, of no negotiations with the state, strong stances against police intervention, against collaboration, against snitching, and in solidarity with individuals targeted for repression, imprisoned, etc. To challenge widespread anti-neoliberal and anti-globalization perspectives, take apart myths of a better capitalist past, to defend the facts that exploitation, colonialism and ecological devastation are nothing new, that revamped state regulations and “green” business will not serve to create a free, just or sustainable world—and that the DIY, self-styled autonomous version of these ideas is little better, offering us some pieces of a theorized “post-capitalist” world, with no notions of how to create such a world.
To study the proper use of a sledgehammer, the specific fragility of machines and materials, the futility of too few eyes spread too thin to effectively watch anything, in face of a patient, practiced opposition. To spread techniques and tools for sabotage and expropriation, attacking the properties of the rich, bosses, gentrifiers, developers, and other scum. To attack property and capital, the state and its police, with all the means available to us—as much in the virtual realm as the physical, as much in actions as discourses, as much in hidden offices as the streets, as much in words and passion as in tooth and claw, fire and paint, poison and brick.
To fight patriarchy, white supremacy and other forms of racial hierarchy, sexual norms and other abject features of our socialization; these things via direct confrontation, in communication, and in self-reflection, never forgetting the self-destructive consequences of guilt. To know that destroying systems of domination cannot pass by tacit agreement to a uniform code of certain anti-oppressive behaviors, that there is no “free” system to replace a system of exploitation, no laws that liberate to replace laws that coerce. Creating informal hierarchies of awareness and sensitivity serves largely to build higher walls around already isolated cliques, when fighting any coercive structure, internal or external, requires thought and exploration, time and will.
To break down barriers of insecurity and discomfort, codes of behavior and presentation, the self-loathing and judgment that we are socialized into, that exist as much in radical scenes as in mainstream society. Accounting for the coercion that defines “normal” self-expression, we see the openings to act differently, to define our social and individual lives, our personae and possibilities. Seeing the madness and courage that lie on the fringes of our social relations, leaping into risk and the unknown with a hunger to rip through limits previously accepted, as easily questioned as destroyed.
In being willing to be vulnerable, breaking down barriers within ourselves, building relationships where we can grow stronger together, in support and critique, in ideas and action. Recognizing that force and confidence do not come from the ease of patterns and habits, the comforts of predictable relationships where “everything is fine,” the pleasures of shallow compliments and meaningless connections—but from the raw, uncontainable desire to communicate, the knowledge that sheer honesty and unflinching debate are in the end so much more than a thousand forms of consensus, that such communications are a natural bridge into acting.
The joy in bursting subordinate roleplay is contagious—tearing out of the roles and frames we’ve been conditioned to revisit all our lives—not only in explicitly submissive roles, as the whole game requires a great deal of internalized repression, even in the role of leader or dominant. Deep relations may blur the bounds of individuals, while never making us weaker, ever combating the armed categories of friendship and love relations—the shallow choices and limits society offers us for lasting affinities, categories which will not disappear merely because we wish it.
In seeing technology manifest as a social relation, and innovation as a form of constructed dependency; breaking down barriers of mediated interaction; building affinities, community, solidarity and struggle out of real physical space and relating; but not as a rejection of the hardware itself (even if many of us would like that), and all the while maintaining that we ought use all tools at our disposal as long as they are useful.
Entering the debate over social media’s role in struggle, not to vote or choose sides, but to demolish the entire context in which such questions arise. Knowing that new technologies can be useful to resistance, yet always contesting the tyranny of necessity, that the ends sought through certain means may always be pursued through other channels, that usefulness can only go so far, and that a framework of domination does not cease to dominate when it becomes a tool for insurgents.
Toward the establishment and proliferation of spaces, not for the pure quantity of such spaces, nor to reinforce the ubiquitous image of an imaginary “anarchist movement,” but as space to discuss, to share ideas and techniques, to meet each other, to connect different struggles and circles, to render public radical ideas and critiques, beyond the limited space of people who already know each other. Not for some pure value of anarchists knowing other anarchists, but for the affinities, the acts and initiatives that may come out of such encounters.
To recognize that anarchist space is neither limited nor defined by names, signs, numbers, rent paid or square footage; that physical space has a use, much as webspace, or newspaper space, but that what is sought is space opened between individuals, space created for sharing and strengthening of ideas, sharpening of skills, forming of complicities and acting, alone and together, in armed defiance to the world. Such space cannot be measured or counted, and can only be known by the force of sentiment we unearth in ourselves.
To openly discuss and debate different tendencies and tensions among anarchists, abandoning the election-hall farce of attempting to convince or convert the other, and finding common ground where we can, without lumping all into the “big tent” that blunts the edge of all disagreements, creating false notions of consensus.
To recognize that even if today we shirk risks, seek pleasure and the familiar, and assure ourselves in the necessity of certain roles and forms of support—that anarchist struggle is ultimately not a creature of comfort, that opposing domination demands courage, and that context is only relevant insofar as we fail to change it—but that changing one’s context is not the same thing as erasing or ignoring it, pretending that historical conditions are purely mythical, pretending that any action in any place at any time is the full depth of an anarchist approach to resistance.
To move beyond the realization of failures, to imagine and create forms of resistance we desire, to bulldoze the inhibitions that keep us back— from who we want to be, how we want to act, the relations we wish to have, the new forms of self-organization before unseen and unimagined, the flames of revolt appearing in new colors and places, the cackles of an unrepentant will to liberty bouncing between the empty shells of skyscrapers.
Ever deeper into the night, the moon gazing down on free-willed insurgents dancing on a graveyard of old contracts and the rotten hulks of a thousand faces of domination—humans learning to become wolves.

Comments
very good. go.
very good. go.
people still talk about
people still talk about "summit-hopping"?
crimethinc
crimethinc
"To move beyond the
"To move beyond the realization of failures, to imagine and create forms of resistance we desire, to bulldoze the inhibitions that keep us back— from who we want to be, how we want to act, the relations we wish to have, the new forms of self-organization before unseen and unimagined, the flames of revolt appearing in new colors and places, the cackles of an unrepentant will to liberty bouncing between the empty shells of skyscrapers.
Ever deeper into the night, the moon gazing down on free-willed insurgents dancing on a graveyard of old contracts and the rotten hulks of a thousand faces of domination—humans learning to become wolves."
This is bad romantic writing. Whatever you think of them, crimethinc does good romantic writing.
As for the critiques, who's still summit-hopping, or dumpstering or whatever? Really?
"who's still summit-hopping,
"who's still summit-hopping, or dumpstering"
yes summit-hopping is lame but I never knew that free shit was trend. I suppose I'm just out of style or perhaps a broke ass motherfucker and yes, it's because I'm fucking lazy
Maybe shit is sucky in Canada
Maybe shit is sucky in Canada, but I don't know a single person that could use these critiques. False dichotomies abound.
there are a lot of great
there are a lot of great points here, especially about the subcultural echo chamber and its view on the world. i haven't read the entire thing but i want to bring up a few points.
the notion that increasing levels of violence and repression are correlated with the proximity of some singular revolution. one can't discount these things, but to focus on them is the province of the political specialist. a long view ought to see the end of capitalist civilization also through the dimensions of desertion, depletion, implosion, collapse, abandonment. a disarticulation of all subjects rather than the summoning together of revolutionary subjects; an embrace of the situation that makes subjectivity as stable condition impossible. ironic that you have so much to say about the 'spread of ideas', making things 'impossible to ignore' when you are ignoring the truth of the deepening disaster that is already all around us. there is no society to be revolutionized; there is no society. stop looking for it, let the house of cards fall. it will all be over sooner than you think and where will you and your 'social movement' be then? probably, just where they've been for the past couple decades.
People on the east coast need
People on the east coast need to read this shit!
I don't know about anyone
I don't know about anyone else, but I am printing this out and distributing it at my local inforshop.
you ever check a news, man?
you ever check a news, man?
"Without falling into the
"Without falling into the commonly Marxian mythology of an international revolution"
Someone please tell me what the fuck this is supposed to mean...
I think they meant
I think they meant Trotskyistish
is it 1999 again?
is it 1999 again?
Whoever wrote this,
Whoever wrote this, interested in doing an interview/excerpt reading for Inconsiderate Audio?
inconsiderateaudio.anarchyplanet.org
Excellent piece. Not boring.
Excellent piece. Not boring. Don't think it was crimethinc - they tend to be a little more romantic and a bit more mind-fucky than this, which is more like a critique than a mind-bender. Ineveitably though, it bends the mind. At least, mine. I find parallels for me. Look. I radicalized while being beaten in the face with a baton (got away, thanks black bloc). Year later and I've moved through the liberalism phase, the professional rioter phase, and then on to having a rifle, tactical gear and knowledge ready and waiting for armed rebellion. Considered initiating... I think a lot of us have. Hell, so do the republicans that are off-right either patriots (don't have so much a problem with them) and the nationalists (wouldn't even let them engage in pre-marital oral activities). So what am I hung up on? Why aren't I busy attacking? Well, for one, I'm not a Unabomber, not a aggro-suicidal-vest wearer, not a Dark Knight Rises shooty-spoiler. But the crux of this critique for me, the crux of my inaction, is feeling isolated from solidarity, feeling unsupported by the so-called milieu, questioning timing (is right now the best time to shoot? later? when? too late? After the next bill? Ever? Should I sell the gun?) but most importantly lacking comrades-in-arms. To act alone is foolish, in my opinion. It's incredibly easy to say one was a deranged homicidal terrorist, especially once said person is incarcerated, dead, or in other ways incapable of defending themselves from State and Media onslaught. It is incredbily hard to say the Free Syrian Army are all deranged homicidal terrorists. Well, how'd they start? No, it wasn't one person. It was a group of defectors, of which included a high-ranking officer, who put out a call for more defectors to join and declared war on the Assad forces. Well what about the IRA? They didn't start out as one person either. In the face of British occupation, the nationalist republican party of Sinn Féin helped organize the autonomous assembly of Ireland (a pro-proletariat assembly, leaning towards socialism but without consolidating power from the people) forming Dáil Éireann - who then authorized and created the Irish Republican Army as the sanctioned military arm of the republican resistance and movement. Well. Not just one person. And it wasn't just one person who started the French Resistance, which was responsible for the drafting of some of the most pivotal articles of the Geneva Conventions. It wasn't just one person who set up Tahrir Square to depose a dictator and initiate the Arab Spring. It wasn't just one anarchist that began Occupy Wall Street (although the anarchists in question were summarily kicked out by liberals or were coerced into abandoning principles). It wasn't just one South African miner who refused to work, and it wasn't a single mineros of Spain that shut down the mines.
Get the picture?
Here's the problem - the number one problem - that I face.
When you're ready for insurrection, and need a team assembled... how do you do it? If you speak on such terms, you're either demented or an agent. If you try to create bonds with people, how could you even hide you're ready to go right now, pushing people who don't agree away by your very presence as a just-so-close-to-insurrectionary? Can you schedule dates and rallies and raise forces, or will people just not show up, like usual? Will you hint around at it, or won't you be shut down on sites like this for allegations of romanticizing, fetishizing, or "playing with fire" when the only true allegation is the desire to declare war, and act accordingly? This is my problem with the anarchist milieu. We spend all this time trying to grow, subvert, sustain, and incite... but when we've grown, been pushed to, or arrived at the boundaries of non-violent conflict and/or reformism, then where do we turn? Many anarchists will fight to keep actual, willing, and equipped insurrectionists away fearing infiltration. And yet, you cannot disarm, because then you've committed counter-revolution? What do you do in the corner? Many of us go underground, but then wait, wait, wait for "grand" moment that will never arrive. There is no golden moment to attack. There won't be. The US government excels at pushing buttons in just the right way so that even genocide and mass internment can be justified (see Japanese internment camps and what the fuck happened to Afghanistan - which used to be a wealthy country with thriving culture) without so much as a peep from the people. Even now, "fiscal cliff" is being thrown around every 5 seconds on mainstream media so that austerity (they'll simply call it "budget-cuts" so as to avert riot) will be welcomed by the poor and already suffering. Even now, the breakdown of congressional filibuster is being hushed by the "oh that silly man!" childishness of democratic-republican "bickering". What's true? The US is already over the "fiscal cliff" and denies it's falling as the wind brushes through our hair at terminal velocity. What else? The federal government is incapable of functioning because of the textbook-perfect social polarization of poor countries (anarchists vs. golden dawn, for perspective, as a major polar divide in Greek cultural and ideological standing) and specifically because the republican and democratic parties have been hit hard enough that the republic system of the US (not a democracy, stop kidding) has made it so no government can function without the manipulation of mainstream thought (fox news, anyone? CNN for supper?) and then the paramilitary surveillance and thwarting of fictional villany (DHS, FBI, grand jury and a heaping dose of COINTELPRO?)... And now at which point do we rise up? At which point do we shout YA BASTA in the tone of the Zapatistas? At which point do we take the streets with rifle in hand and return first, confederacy, and then, collectivism, and finally, autonomy? It is time for a Black Army. I will fight in it. Provisional by nature, autonomous and fleeting - but massive and free... that's what I want for it. It doesn't exist right now. I want it to. By all rights, it should. Who will join me? Can we talk about this, or is this, like the above article states, taboo? The Black Army won't have commanders. It will be led by affinity groups. Autonomous spats of action. We'll strive for the note of beligerent - until then, insurgents, and as such no jargon can stick. I'm ready. There's go to be someone else out there who is too. Maybe it isn't best to say such things in the open - but then, maybe it is. If resistance doesn't happen in the open, perhaps resistance has no place in action.
Confederacy?
Confederacy?
I see a path of
I see a path of decentralization to autonomy, if autonomy can't be seen as "just 'round the bend".
I think armed insurrection
I think armed insurrection with a small band of maniacs in the US is a suicide mission. Self-defense yes because you have no choice and it makes sense to the senses to push all the chips forward. Where to attack? Where do you start with something like that? We can't even camp in the park without getting our butts kicked. I want to live, I enjoy life even amidst the oppression. It's ok to talk about it, there may even come a time when it makes sense to go to war, real war. Insurgency makes way more sense and you could probably find more buddies to go along with it too and possibly stay alive and have some fun.
I think the hope here is that
I think the hope here is that it isn't a small band of maniacs. I think first, "maniacs" is a derogatory and jargon term in the same vein as "terrorist" and "radical". I think we should do away with those terms - they stifle initiative, drive, humanity, and very legitimate sense of one's goals and fighting points. We shouldn't minimize what even a small group can do, armed or not. However, there is a large contingent of people who are insurrectionists - they're not all anarchists. There are millions who believe "the south will rise again", and are prepped and ready for insurrection but yet lack the "green light" or otherwise fear initiation. While southern rights don't hold much sway in the anarchist "scene", these secessionists and patriot militias stand for, at the core, the same principles as us. Liberty, anti-establishment, and individualism. Just like the traditional left grades from reformist to hippie to anarchists, the right grades from reformist to nationalist to patriots. In the end, the anarchists and patriots have much in common. What grinds them is that patriots still hold on to the social ideas of the nationalists - but it is no more destructive than the ruling-party led socialist ideas of the hippies and reformists. As we fight to remember what actual communism (having not seen it since Lenin's shift from straight-up Marxism to party-style dictatorship in a self proclaimed "communist holding pattern") is, the patriots fight to remember the difference between the articles of confederation (the first constitution) and the new federal constitution - and then it is only small stretch from confederation to total decentralization - and if they want to know what that looks like, then all they have to do is be introduced to the anarchist commune without Fox news taking their hand through propaganda. If we can work through their social issues and let them work through our ways, then we can work together. They've been waiting for a fight just like us and I'm not convinced we're set on opposing sides. If we can unite with the militias, we will have broad support on both ends of the so-called political spectrum, enough support to maintain provisional guerrilla warfare and in the numbers necessary to undermine the federal government and state institutions, leaving us all free to raise the number of communes, replacing the need for government policies and programs while at the same time fighting to make that space, instead of the double-edged sword that subversion by commune is described in this zine piece. We would have thousands, not a small affinity group. The US military is not large enough to wipe out such a force, and even if they were, what must be taken into account is that it is no easy task to engage in american-vs-american warfare, particularly once it is undeniable that this is no terrorist cult or religious sect responsible for hostilities, which would by every definition meet Geneva convention criteria as a belligerent in the same vein as the FSA, which we see now gains broad international support from The People et al. The Black Army won't work by command but by leadership and initiative. By that, I mean that affinity groups are started up all over the country, the continent, the world eventually and operate independently under either vague support by other Black Army groups or by simple autonomy - acts in solidarity with the vision of free society having had the space cleared of the feds and paramilitary police units by the provisional force. Provisional - that the Black Army has no business claiming land or territory, and moves only to free up space and engage common enemy, and only until that end. At that point, perhaps the rightful conversation will be that in the absence of the Black Army, how will communes thrive while at first foreign and domestic counter-revolution or capture is a danger - but I believe the discussion of that is moot until the space is made in the first place. We have no space for autonomy or direct democracy - like you said, Occupy was the most recent proof of that. Occupy couldn't hold the parks because the sum of the defense was at most a subdued riot - which is a reactionary and non-sustainable event... no riot could win back the public square, and if we take Tahrir as an example, such spaces under threat can only serve as launching pads for broader action to leap forth from. It is not that 10,000 people gathered in Tahrir that made Morsi flee yesterday, it is that from there 10,000 stormed his palace.
In the context of the zine piece, we cannot fetishize what the Egyptians, Syrians, or Zapatistas do... we're not them, the circumstances aren't the same, and they're not always innocent. Most people forget that resistance is extremely dirty and disparaging work. There's nothing romantic about it - save for perhaps the ideals that drive people to war in the first place. The Egyptians harnessed massive support from the population, and using mass diversity of tactics they were completely capable of storming whatever and whoever they wanted until the government cracked. I think this is a good thing. We should strive for such support so long as we do not sacrifice principle for popularity. On the other hand, after they cleared their dictator, they went home to rest, and left the constitution to the Islamic nationalists that simply complicated democracy, and did not provide it. By the time they realized that, they were too tired to hit the streets again until now, as "Pharaoh Morsi" seized ultimate power. Even now, the numbers are nowhere near Mubarak levels. The FSA are rebels, but the underlying inner conflict is between defector troops and those who volunteered, and have yet to be able to unify their tactics and methods in the eyes of the International Court of Justice - who takes issue with the killing of civillians and torture or killing of the captured (while we shouldn't idolize the ICJ, some of the FSA acts have isolated the rebellion - is that good, or bad? I don't know...). The FSA though has done some truly revolutionary work in their practice of not taking or holding territory, but simply liberating it from the Syrian govt. and then moving on to the next engagement once they got their shit back together. They're also a provisional force - they're only concerned with the engagement of the Syrian army, and do not seek or take power. The Zapatistas did great work in their movement for indigenous rights and liberation of tribal lands for Chiapas valley, but were self-limiting in scope and while extremely effective at turning Chiapas into an autonomous state, they become a distant example of autonomy far removed from the current struggle of the proletariat and impoverished of the heat of Mexico - the EZLN cannot be used as a primary resource for new brands of resistance to be formed, because the EZLN was made with such specific goals. That said, I pity the fool who challenges the sovereignty of the people of Chiapas, and wouldn't dare rule out the possibility of resurgence in the face of government encroachment into EZLN territory.
Back to your point. Pushing the chips forward. Good. Enjoyment of life, good. Stay alive and have fun, good. But, where to attack? Well, I'm not completely sure. The Black Army will be acting in self-defense, but not in the immediate kind. Every day our liberties dwindle under the flame of the state - so any act against the state is an act of self-defense. If the US Marshall knocks on your door and you open fire in face of a raid for political repression, this is immediate self-defense. The two are two veins of the same artery. The artery - self-defense. What we must talk about is whether one vein is worth more than the other. I don't think so. I think it is colonized American tradition to say that all things must be perfectly justified else they are irrelevant. The crux - fear of initiation. You don't want to be called crazy for starting rebellion and neither do I. But we get all of us worrywarts together, and the fear is abated. First we must tackle our illogical desire to be perfectly understood and to be backed up by others. After that, the actual engagement with other insurrectionists is no longer an act of desperation, but actual rebellion. Rebellion defeats itself if it is always going to be paranoid that nobody will support them. If this website is any indicator of support, then any mounting act will be critiqued first and praised later, if even. You must act and thrive with or without that support. The reality is that at this rate, we're all going to die by firing squad. If you're not sure of your convictions, then by all means, let fear drive you away from insurrection. If you are sure of your convictions, then don't assume authority over your popularity. You can't control it. Social movements, which we often base our experience in (as there have been many) are actually very fickle things at best. That is why they are so ineffective. We're always concerned about popularity, justification, and diversity, when we should place the mission first and damn what the other pricks think. If there is worth in your actions and ideology, then the worth will be manifest naturally, even at the behest of your oppressor. Likewise if you have deluded yourself and acted based on the delusion, then it will manifest even faster.
Insurgency does make way more sense, and we can find buddies to go along with it too and all that. I agree. But. Here we are. How do you band together, when security culture makes it prohibitive, and when the resignations of may are so great that they would rather someone else take the fall and strike the match than be the ignitor?
"While southern rights don't
"While southern rights don't hold much sway in the anarchist "scene", these secessionists and patriot militias stand for, at the core, the same principles as us. Liberty, anti-establishment, individualism and FUCK BLACK PEOPLE."
Fixed that for ya. Let me know how your anarcho-Klan uprising goes.
Not the Op here, but the
Not the Op here, but the whole "fuck black people" bit is horse shit. It is obvious you have never been to the south or ever associated with anyone outside of your liberal middle class culture. you might not be a liberal but I bet your fam and all your non-@ friends are.
These people are not just from the south either and most are not secessionist. More often than not their politics extend as far as "I love my country but hate my government" and that all politicians are nothing but "whores liars and thieves". Simplistic yes. but if you don't see the common thread we share, then you're a hopeless fucking hipster.
This is the biggest problem with the scene, being that is precisely what it is, a fucking scene. Unable to work with other anti-statist because they believe in god ,guns and whiskey and unwilling to work with gangs because their black.....oops!! What I meant to say is because there ghetto capitalist and everyone gives way to much credit to their hierarchical structure, when more often than not, it's nothing but poor mother fuckers clicked up.
But fuck it, after all, all it will take to bring down the empire and civilization is a couple dozen university bred white kids going around breaking windows in any given city. you know, anarchists. at least the ideologically pure ones that is.
Seriously? Patriot militias?
Seriously? Patriot militias? Obv, there are always gonna be people anywhere, wherever you look, whose desires conflict, or at least have the potential to come into conflict, with the logic of capital and the state. I just think it's funny when anarchists specifically get hardons for the ones with the most guns.
Yeah well I think anarchists
Yeah well I think anarchists masturbate over the idea of other people arming themselves but once they're armed too, it's more like very rewarding sex and the orgasm is liberty.
Who doesn't think working
Who doesn't think working with gangs is cool? Crime is cool period.
Thank you. Yeah well let's
Thank you. Yeah well let's see. First, we must awknowledge that racism exists. I think though it is safe to say that the bulk of aggression is directed at Latin-Americans at the moment - there are militia border guard units that do nothing but walk the border and shoot border runners on sight. Are those people that should be part of a Black Army? Absolutely not. I would hope not - I can't commission or warrant participants - everyone in the Black Army must be volunteering autonomous peoples. The fact is that racists probably wouldn't see value in the Black Army (and I don't mind that, we're on opposite sides) because the Black Army is about liberation of autonomous spaces for the development of unhindered anti-political total democratic consensus and free-barter communal trade, and the active engagement of federal agents and paramilitary forces in support of federal agents.
Let's settle something. Patriotism and Nationalism are not the same things. In Emma Goldman's piece on patriotism, it was assumed that the two were one and the same. They are not mutually exclusive, and thus it is easy for the line to be drawn between the two, but it is not correct to say that the two are one. Sounds confusing? Well, it's not a conversation we have very often. Nationalism is the greatest threat to liberty and life in the world. It leads people to be like raging sports fans for their nation - fanatical devotion to cause, fanatical war for the cause, and fanatical abasement of rights for the cause. The cause is the nation, and whatever endeavor it engages in. Nationalism is the biggest threat, not just because of it's danger, but because it is also the most popular threat. Almost all the land on Earth is drawn into nations. The extent of nationalism is not always widespread, but nationalism will be fed to the insolent so long as there are borders. Borders need to go.
Patriots can be patriots for their country, but then, aren't they actually just nationalists picking a nicer name? Patriots are in love with the people, with the abstract notion of the land, with the ideas and the life of your commons. Like anon said above - "their politics extend as far as 'I love my country but hate my government'". Is it bad to be a patriot? Well, go to the core of why anarchists act in the first place. Do we not strive for freedom so that we can enjoy it? Do we not love our home? Do we not wish the best for our home? Do we not wish the first place we kissed, the first restaurant we dated at, the best nook by the ocean to lay at - do we not wish those places last forever as perfect as the first time we laid eyes on it? The first time we bonded with it? That's patriotism. It's not that you are a flag-waving nationalist partisan, it's that for better or worse you bonded with your environs, and wish it the best.
So to neo-nazi groups... they appeal to nationalists. If there are militias that are racist, and there are, then they are not patriot militias, they are nationalist fascists. It is likely that they will be opposed by the Black Army. Does the Black Army want to be the sum of militias? No. A militia is a paramilitary force that acts as police vanguards. The test of character is whether a militia will work with the Black Army not as vanguardists, but as provisional freedom fighters and liberators the same as everyone else. Nationalists have no place with the BA and are unlikely to seek it. The Black Army, in a historical point from which it is based, was an anarchist army mainly of poor and proletariat forces originating in Ukraine during the Bolshevik revolution. It was led by Nestor Mahkno - who certainly had his own problems, but the army was still effective in battle against the Red and White armies until ultimately the fact that Mahkno had consolidated power from a place of leadership led him into a coup that easily crushed the Black Army with a lack of remaining leadership. The Black Army rising in the United States has no central leadership, so as it grows, it becomes impossible to eliminate. Unlike the Weathermen Underground, Black Panthers, Earth Liberation Front, and other organizations, the Black Army is all-inclusive so long as three general ideas are held. 1. Don't wear what your enemy wears. 2. You only get protection by the Geneva conventions if you fight for it too. 3. Nobody has any claim to land, which is why we need to kick the federal agents and their puppets out.
Obviously, those are suggestions. If you take them, you're setting yourself apart from previously designated terrorist organizations or radicalists because you're fighting on the grounds of insurgency and belligerent status according to the ICJ and thus you cannot simply be wiped out and eradicated like vermin.
Back to race. Everybody is racist. I said earlier that the most aggressive racism is against Latin-Americans right now. Thank the conservatives, republicans, and the news for that. The most prevalent racism though, is against black people. What? How?! Because white people and asians and even latin people engage in vicious racism by means of cultural suppression and cultural assimilation. White people especially love to deny black people their culture - because in the white man's mind, all black people should be like white people. Then, white people are not satisfied. They then percieve that they should domesticate the black man by breeding only the most white children, and killing or incarcerating the rest. What is left is a black culture which has been left whiter than any generation before, more liberal and pacifist, having been convinced that they can really make something of themselves if they just follow all the laws, get a high-earning job, and have enough hoarded benefits to fill their large white house during their old age. This is sickening. This is horrible and it is the white man's fault. The asians and the latin people in the US contribute to the whiteness of it all by keeping the blacks in line - if anyone escapes the eye of the white man, it is the other races that turn them in. Asians are subject to racism as well, they are victims of a frequent stutter-step by white people who don't know how to react with them, do not feel attracted to them, are slightly threatened by them, and so corner themselves and either behave like idiots or like biggots. Latin people are seen as threats to nationalism, and by numbers threats to the white man. They're also not white enough for the white man, but rather than try to whiten them up like they do to the blacks, they take a more offensive position and consider them more as savages than as humans, and reinforce this belief by idolizing latin gangs and drug cartels as the example of what every latin person is capable of and not only, but likely to do.
I would rather the Black Army seek to do what Tupac was trying to do - unite the gangs against a common enemy. Gangs are good. (Did you just gasp?) They're good because in the ghetto, in places of poverty, in the slums, the only way you can survive is to join a gang. Protection, food, sustenance. By all means, those are essential things that are not provided for the impoverished. What a gang has to do to keep those things going for it's members can be or seem inhuman, but little choice is left. When it comes to drugs, drugs are the self-medications of poor and disabled society, or those traumatized, stigmatized, or forced to find destructive means to cope or have fun when they have been desensitized to sanity through constant barrage of death and hell through media, propaganda, and every corner of society. With everyone hurting, self-medicating, striving to thrive, and fighting hard for it, no wonder gang life can be hard. But what puts gangs in that position? Middle-class gatekeeping society - preventing the poor from ever being anything but. From the state government, providing only enough to keep one alive and then double-dealing the persecution for asking for help. The federal government, in direct and armed conflict with the poor for the raw nerve to even attempt to live when the poor are supposed to die out quickly and without a fight.
Again, the Black Army grows. The enemy of your enemy is your friend. Gangs, patriot militias, insurrectionists, insurrectionary anarchists, anti-corporate tea partiers, anti-reformist occupiers... a possible sample. Possible - they are all now extended a welcome hand to join, but they must take the hand on their own. By no means is this all-inclusive - these are just some people who may at this moment be waiting for a fight. I want to give it to them, if they'd like. There are hundreds of thousands of people who are ready to fight in America. The tricky bit is to narrow down the one thing we all will fight for. Life, liberty? We're growing.
We can even create a Rainbow
We can even create a Rainbow Division in the Black Army for people with special needs or sensitivities to look after each other and protect from abuse.
Purple cell of Rainbow
Purple cell of Rainbow Division might be entirely composed of trans people who in recent events have distinguished themselves as especially fierce fighters. The X-men a special team of straight edgers who lacking chemical dependencies can operate far from base for extended periods with little support, similar to long range reconnaissance marines.
Someone should write a book
Someone should write a book or pamphlet along the lines of TheTurner Diaries depicting what an anarchist revolution in America might look like.
Purple Cell Diary could be a
Purple Cell Diary could be a detailed account of the events of the revolution told from the vantage point of a trans member of PC.
In all seriousness, you can
In all seriousness, you can do whatever you want in the Black Army as long as you make an attempt at following the 3 basic suggestions and actually do something. Even a rainbow straightedge genderqueer quadriplegic can help the insurrection.
Just remember for every
Just remember for every Querfront there's a Night of Long Knives so watch your ass!
While I understand your
While I understand your feelings, please be careful about posting such things on line. If you're not a cop, you're very close to, if not actually violating various laws with this post. I hope that you use precautions like an anonymizer and vpn, and do not post such things from your own internet subscription.
Anyhow, there is much to say about your post, many people have adressed ideas of armed insurrection. I would really invite you to study the history of such things. For example, read Gilles Duave's "When insurrections die" for an example of why fighting a war of position, as you describe, will fail in the face of global capitalism. Look at history. Also look at the numbers. Research the military. The US has well over a million active-duty troops and millions more in reserve, not to mention paramilitary police. The disparity in numbers does not begin to even aproximate the disparity in resources and materiel. Also look at the history of armed revolutions. Much of what you have been referencing have been national struggles (read : nationalism) or situations with very weak states. The US is not weak. Revolutions also tend to not defeat military forces directly, but rather depend most often on defections or at least neutrality on the part of the military. Please read a lot more, seriously. Also, consider global strategies. You cannot expect to destroy capitalism. Instead, capitalism will creat its own crisis and only then do you take advantage of the situation to kick it while it's down. But it takes a lot more than armed insurrection to succeed. Sociological studies of wars and revolutions suggest that people will choose the side that will meet their needs. If you fail to offer an alternative infrastructure and instead merely destroy the existing one, they will turn to fascist alternatives that give them bread. Please study war and insurrection and revolution a lot more!
I am secure.
I am secure.
But.
Am I to be a historian, or a fighter.
To history, we study our failure.
To fight, we make our OWN destiny.
Thank you for your suggestions, but the world isn't so black and white and I hope you wake up from that dreary lie that all is one or the other; that the odds are this versus that, and we must do this and not that.
Free up a little.
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Was this written in the early
Was this written in the early 2000s?
who had time to read the
who had time to read the whole thing? o m gosh, what a load of wasted time, coulda been out there buying a gun and makin' that chedda stack
Let go.
Let go.
Do all the things!
Do all the things!
"When challenged, these
"When challenged, these institutions are typically defended by attachment, by a certain feeling of comfort, a desire to feel at home and safe in our houses—much the same reasons for which many people work, watch TV, stay in relationships they question, maintain the same group of friends, never alter their sexuality after age eighteen. "
Lol, I like the implication that we should just switch up our sexual orientation every six months or so.
"self-denigrating humor is rarely constructive in the long run."
Well, that's my contribution fucked.
Every 6 months ain't what's
Every 6 months ain't what's implied.
Dance, when you're broken
Dance, when you're broken open.
Dance, if you've torn the bandage off.
Dance in the middle of the fighting.
Dance in your blood.
Dance, when you're perfectly free.
~ Rumi
Dance, if you want to
Dance, if you want to
- Men With Hats
Please get over the Food Not
Please get over the Food Not Bombs as charity critique. Feeding hungry people is fucking rad no matter what it calls itself; solidarity, charity or neither. No one I know in FNB claims they are doing anything to end capitalism, most of them just like feeding people. Find something else in U.S. anarchist subculture to rally against. (Or find something other than U.S. anarchist subculture all together to waste your time criticizing.)
Also, in my FNB experience, most folks dig healthy food. (No FNB I've been a part of has actually been strictly vegan.) The assumption that poor people only want to eat at McDonalds is pretty shitty, not to mention inaccurate.
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Most folks dig tasty food,
Most folks dig tasty food, which is often more commonly found at McDonalds than it is at FNB.
Thanks for your opinion on
Thanks for your opinion on what food is objectively tasty to most people.
Generally humans have evolved
Generally humans have evolved to like sugar, salt and fat, which are in fairly short supply at most FNBs I've ever been to.
Not the op but come on...
Not the op but come on...
FNB is naaasty! The food smells like dumpster, has a strange slime on it, the people are hippies, and the person cooking/serving are usually onion smelling oogles sporting dread mullets.
Nothing about that sounds appetizing.
Also... Yes, there is something very wrong with anarchists playing at charity.
well.....
well.....
That's part of the issue with Food Not Bombs. Are they just a charity ? I know when I have been involved I always worked towards making it a mutual oriented project of everyone helping out and not the usual server/served binary of charities.
But that's what usually happens. Many of the homeless men are extremely drug-addicted and hold very reactionary beliefs (got tired of hearing homophobic, sexist, racist comments from drunk men.)
Also, the other folks in the FNB type project I helped start turned out to be total democrats. It was embarrassing when a local electoral politics charade came along and they were all adamant that we get the homeless registered for the Democrat party and they pretended to be all "anarchist" the whole time with those stupid circle A tattoos, black flags, zines, and the like.
When they found out I wasn't the usual Anarcho-Democrat (capitalism is not to be destroyed but reformed !), they were all shocked even though we made fun of politicians prior to the elections.
I felt like I was sexually assaulted by Dennis Kucinich or Bernie Sanders or some shit...(or Tammy Baldwin or Ralph Nader...Insert lame liberal politico type)
I think Anarchists are
I think Anarchists are interested in putting mutual aid into practice and Foot Not Bombs is the usual vehicle...its a shame.
"We see impassioned comrades
"We see impassioned comrades disappearing from “the scene,” absorbed in work life or home life, in substances and depression. ...And when these rifts are addressed, it is only through reactive measures: support for prisoners and people on trial, mental health collectives, external projects and efforts to “stay in contact” with or support older comrades and those who have left the scene."
Anarchists are not super humans. Some people need jobs to survive. Some people are not fit, mentally and/or physically, to be a personable/effective organizer. We need to allow people who are not able to do the things we do the right to call themselves anarchists. Otherwise these critiques are relevant to so few.
I'm an older comrade and who
I'm an older comrade and who has left the scene and I'm feeling a little isolated, I would appreciate some support, thanks.
only 12% of you know what's
only 12% of you know what's going on.
DOWN WITH THE 12%!
DOWN WITH THE 12%!
This is really good, excited
This is really good, excited to read it in its entirety
This critique is good,
This critique is good, generally speaking.
The only short-coming is that it doesn't go for the kill about subculture.
Not that many people are punks anymore.
Not that many people care about Food Not Bombs anymore.
We need anarchist doctors. We need anarchist lawyers. We need anarchist elders and anarchist children. We need to be able to throw huge fucking fundraisers for imprisoned fighters that everyone in the city comes to because we are the awesome anarchist event promoters. We need support for anarchist parents. We need anarchist spaces. We need to blur the lines between attack and "building infrastructure."
Too many people stop being involved because they see themselves in relation to other peoples' activity. It seems like so many cities have a small group of people who are as active as they can be and then a bunch of people who kind of do their own thing but sometimes think of themselves as being "less central." We need to destroy that type of thinking. Whatever we are doing, we can do it as anarchists. We can divert resources and coordinate with people in our real lives; destroy politics!
We need to stop being activists! Why are activists are audience? Why do we engage in worthless arguments with liberals and socialists? They hate us. There are so many people out there who are down with creating autonomous spaces and events. There are vandals and hoodlums in every household. Every neighborhood is armed.
Down with activism up with real self-organization.
best comment. thanks.
best comment. thanks.
good comment but I hope you
good comment but I hope you don't think people pursuing careers as doctors, lawyers, and event is going to help us (!)
also event promoters are straight up terrible people and they do not help repair the social bond
I'm also a bit confused with
I'm also a bit confused with what you mean about the anarchist lawyers, drs, etc. But I really love what you were writing about people being less central and trying to break that down. Thanks for the thoughtful comments! I really enjoyed the original article, I think some re-stating how we've gotten to anti-political positions can be really useful, they have been for me to share with non-anarchist folks.
I'm not the original
I'm not the original commenter but I think having friends that re doctors n lawyers sounds good particularly the idea of comrades working for and with comrades out of the normal systemic arenas. Imagine an @dr. That was always around super educated, able and down to help out our broke asses. Health aint cheap. Neither is legal fees.
Oh, c'mon. The two things you
Oh, c'mon. The two things you need to know. THE TWO THINGS:
1. Put a bandaid on it, if that doesn't work, bigger bandaid.
2. Plead the 5th, and if they don't believe you, they probably just didn't hear you so plead louder and more often.
The old classic anarchists
The old classic anarchists are becoming things of the past, now recuperation and reform, once spurned and ridiculed by us real anarchists, is the flavour of the times, sad.
HA. No. You can suck your
HA. No. You can suck your elitist "CLASSIC anararchist" cock in the corner. Anarchists today are post-black scare and while growing, have a completely different struggle - not for relevancy or political reform - but in combating the psychological operations of the United States federation which has all but mastered the art of throttling it's people by the throat and still having the choked-out say "It's okay, I deserved it" between gasps. Emma Goldman never could have envisioned the completeness of the effected mentality, and while we should never forget our comrades before us, it does a disservice to us ALL to dote upon history as if history dictates the future. I do not canonize Nestor Mahkno for his Black Army, because he couldn't raise it the exact same way here today - so why pretend he has anything NEW to teach?
It's just that the
It's just that the psychological ops have REALLY lobotomized what was once an instinctual opposition to authority and indoctrination, not the choked-out saying they deserve it, but a violent self-defensive move is needed, not an occupation of second-hand terrain. These feelings become irretrievable, the absence of action precedes reform and compromise. Just saying.
Then start a Black Army
Then start a Black Army affinity or join an existing one
HAHAHA very fucking funny.
HAHAHA very fucking funny. First insult and then sarcasm. That's th century fantasy!!
Perhaps the best course of
Perhaps the best course of action is to not smear people in the first place, hun ;)
I can see the glorious Black
I can see the glorious Black Army marching off to battle armed with baseball bats, pick-axe handles, shivs, ornamental samurai swords, bow and arrows and wooden stakes to the sound of the Sex pistols I am an Anarchist.
I'm sorry you're such a
I'm sorry you're such a glutton for propaganda and fantasy.
I've got an AR and 90 rounds in the next room. I see somebody bringing a baseball bat to a gun fight, I'm going to off them first. Or enjoy having cannon fodder. Natural selection, comrades, will weed the idiots out by nature. Just stop trying to save them, and in the mean time, be ready. I've never heard Sex Pistols and I couldn't be bothered to give a fuck about targeted media bullshit.
D.R.I. - Stupid, Stupid War
D.R.I. - Stupid, Stupid War
http://youtu.be/dPicpF3Wzf8
It will not happen quickly.
It will not happen quickly.
It will not happen without desolation of the soul.
and, it will not happen without knowing exactly who you are...
our nation has we were taught, is dead.
do we die with the child,
walk around in our altered lives
stare at the checkstub a bit longer
adapt to contamination
live grieving for what isn't
or consider planning another?
most of the voices here
will most likely find themselves
mortally wounded,
offered up in exchange for food,
or make it to the place they desire enough
to fight for.
its up to you, alone, in the end.
This article is mostly banal
This article is mostly banal and obsolete, as others have said. It is essentially a weak, watered-down feel good version of recent insurrectionary texts without the theoretical argumentation. Furthermore, I do reject its dismissal of building dual power and alternative infrastructure in favor of pure insurrection. I think Greece is a great example of what happens when one has minor victories against Capital and the state, the former in retreat and the latter is nearly broken there. However, anarchists have no alternative infrastructure and no resources to solve the basic problems of everyday life and people are loosing hope and turning to fascism or the church as the olny viable options. Solidarity means attack but you also have to have an alternative, even if you expropriate everything you need to develop it.
Anarchism will never offer an
Anarchism will never offer an alternative infrastructure. That's the whole point, people need to become comfortable with ways of living that don't involve permanent infrastructure.
Anarchism also doesn't offer material resources. Those can only be offered by the people who have them when they're willing to share freely or else they can be created by people working together for their own use. But anarchism doesn't provide these, the people do.
So if your analysis is correct, anarchism will never be a viable option for most people.
You clearly have no
You clearly have no understanding of the Greek situation.... A largely insurrectionist milieu agitated to create a situation in which you're "dual power" God could breath. Did you not notice how the commities were formed AFTER days of ongoing riots and what some would name rupture? The embrace of dual power before true revolt is at best a liberal joke and at worst deliberate co-optation. Stop joking around with lipservice to "solidarity means attack" and fucking do something with anarchist spirit.
On comment 1. - anarchy /
On comment 1. - anarchy / anarchism is a way that people can interact and so I find the point about the people offering resources or creating them in an anarchistic way to be a mere difference in semantics of the word.
On comment 2 . i am not precluding insurrection as a medium-range strategy, but without at least being prepaired to practice replacing what one can of the functions of the state and capital, whether or not you have many resources to do so (and of course what limited resouces one can gather, are usually easier to accumulate before a general crisis), recuperation and despair is inevitable and the insurrection will fail. The culture of mutual aid and community self-reliance is a seperate skill set to develop than that of offensive insurrection, and you need both.
I'm ready for the
I'm ready for the insurrection to fail. I'm not ready to wait till "we're sure it will succeed."
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I believe in music; I believe
I believe in music; I believe in love.
You'd think that people would have had enough of silly love songs,
I look around me and I see it isn't so;
Some people want to fill the world with silly love songs.
What wrong with that, I'd like to know.
Language is a virus.
This page here is all infected.
Music is a hedonistic
Music is a hedonistic diversion from reality. Like sugar, it is best taken only in small doses
moralfag
moralfag
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