Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode 35 - Gun violence and anarchy

From Anarchy Bang

There have been 283 mass shootings in the US in 2019, so far. That is more than one a day. It is hard to contemplate an anarchy that solved big problems but what if we did? Let's start with this one. Do we think a total anarchist transformation would make AR-15s magically disappear? Would it make mass shootings impossible because a new society would be so goddam fair and equitable that all the broken men would put down rifles and pick up hope? Would the lack of police, in a new world, turn down the intensity of gun violence. What would change, what wouldn't, and how fast would it happen? This week there will be many guests and hopefully a useful and proactive conversation.

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There are 43 Comments

gun collectors don’t start shooting sprees, it’s white supremacist and misogynist young white men who do.

i bet the number of suicide by gun (not after mass shooting) and single murder is higher. so yes, a gun is a tool for killing and will get used for that, but what is it that drives people to do the style of mass shooting that’s prevalent in USA?

which is seemingly more worrisome to mainstream public than wars or gang or drug traffic related gun use because of its striking and spectacular quality of not business as usual. but it is an expression of racism and misogynist that’s business as usual, but it’s being challenged as it has been since forever

'white supremacist and misogynist young white men'

Isn't it almost exclusively disgruntled employees shooting up their workplaces? Huffington Post doesn't cover those, so maybe you've never heard of them, but it happens most days of the week. Your 4chan boogymen are relatively rare.

Several of the mass-murdering attacks have been committed by White supremacist brutes, who ARE disgruntled White suburban InCel types. People like, say, you... who've been trolling this place and waiting dormant for your day of glory when you finally stick it up to them cultural marxists and them "niggas".

we live in an age where mass shooters publish manifestos about how women and people of color are ruining their lives before they kill a bunch of people so your comment is making you seem out of touch and willing a different reality.. why exactly?

Because that asshole is from that crowd in the first place... defending "his" "own" turf.... unable to think for himself outside of his identity group think.

Franco Berardi wrote a really great book on the topic, Heroes. From a Vice interview about it:

"Well, I will ask: What is the core of neoliberal ideology? Firstly, that you are alone, that you are an individual competing with everybody else. Secondly, that the real distinction among human beings is between winners and losers, right? There's no more stable class identity, no more stable political identity – the real divide is between neoliberalism's winners and losers. And if you are a young person who has grown up in this capitalist environment, and you understand that actually you can never be a winner, what will you do?

In some cases, you decide that you are going to be a winner for a second, for an hour, for a moment. Because you feel like a winner when you kill all the people around you and then kill yourself. And this is not just my theory; it's not me saying all these horrible things. It's Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, the two young men who committed mass murder and killed themselves at Columbine High in 1999. They wrote in their diaries, which are available to read for anyone: "You gave me all this shit, telling me I am a loser, but I will be a winner for a minute." And so you see, it's not so much the neoliberal ideology [that motivates mass murderers]; it's much more the particular psychological effects of this neoliberal ideology.

...

There are two sides of this phenomenon. On one side, suffering and humiliation are pushing you to do the only thing that you see as possible. Killing yourself in order to cancel out the precariousness of your existence.

The second phase is the spectacularisation of the action. In many cases that I try to analyse in my book – particularly Seung-Hui Cho, the South Korean Virginia Tech killer, and Pekka-Eric Auvinen, who carried out the shooting at Jokela school – their spectacular consciousness is very clear. They take selfies before, during and after the event. They send videos and declarations to big broadcasting companies like CBS, they write their manifestoes on the internet.

They want to be a winner for a second, but at the same time they also want to be famous, they want to be known by everybody. So I think that the crucial point is the self-perception of the isolated individual who commits mass murder, and that this kind of isolation finds a way out in the spectacularisation of these kind of acts."

The transcript of the Sandy Hook shooter calling into Zerzan's show is pretty relevant for a green anarchist take on this as well.

Yeah he called in to praise a pet monkey that turned on the owner that domesticated it, almost killing them. He compared the monkey to mass shooters, who he saw as people lashing out against their domestication. Very chilling conversation in retrospect. Just google 'john zerzan Adam Lanza transcript'. Should be the first thing.

Lanza did have a point about the chimp rebelling, and it should have ended on that note, about domestication.
Go on, delete this, cause I said a psychopathic monster actually said something sensible. Why not also mention the decision to nuke Hiroshima, and how ideology and culture are all psychopathological.
DELETE THIS NOW!

"Go on, delete this, cause I said a psychopathic monster actually said something sensible. "

kind of an aside, but that statement points to the binary thinking that dominates modern human life, at least as far as i can see. most folks - especially left liberals/idpols and pretty much all folks that can only think politically - are incapable of detecting, much less embracing, such nuance. it doesn't even seem like nuance to me, much more obvious than that. but people sure seem to think in terms of black/white, good/evi, us/them.

"psychopaths existed in Neanderthal society"
[citation needed]

I left some proof, but it was deleted, just saying, this will probably be deleted also hahaa.

Shanidar was a Neanderthal guy, who lived sometime between 50,000 and 75,000 years, had a broken rib that indicated he had been struck in rib and died of a collapsed lung one to three weeks later. Some researchers argued that this was evidence of a man being stabbed to death or being badly beaten up by another Neanderthal. This is stabbing with a wooden stake.

Shanidar is a cave in Kurd Iraq where his remains were found. Please don't make light of this violence I'm seriously inquiring into pre-historical tendencies, cannibalism was very common, and there were some pathological repercussions as a result. The possibility of a connection existing between the frenzied slaughter by carnivores of their prey and the bloodlust of the mass killer, all the way up to the collective genocides or battlefield slaughters linked to instinctual impulses nurtured and politicized to empower the reign of a psychopathic dynasty, these things must be revealed.
This will probably be deleted for being stuff, unless you happen to reply within 2 hrs with a sentence of 8 words or more ;)

it's terrible how maybe more kill-y types killed off more chill-y types and then millions of years later we're left with the worst of the bunch. i know that's not how it works, too much of a simplification. murderyness is not hereditary, but institutions that last generations and inculcate murderiness are a thing

i agree with everything you said, but remain suspicious of things being branded as “neo-liberalism” as if it was something so new or distinct as what came before it.
i know it’s a matter of degrees and subtlety, but in many cases it’s not “neo-liberalism” or even “capitalism”, but a maladapted and (self)marginalized individual’s dysfunctional dynamic with their society or community.
there are examples of this type of act in many different cultural contexts and historical periods, a very old example being the one that gave birth to the phrase “running amok”

Sure, I'm suspicious of it too, but neoliberalism seems relevant in the current American context - at least as one contributing factor. Berardi finds many examples of it in various shooter manifestos, ie. a focus on winning, survival of the fittest, and the shooter's inability to do compete successfully. There's the obvious link there to patriarchy too, as most of these men are also lashing out at not being accepted by women.

I think the issue is a manifestation of all the worst of America's trends. Increasingly alienating & atomizing capitalism, patriarchy, militarism, a violent culture, widespread mental illness, technology, spectacle, etc. I don't think these actions can be prevented without fundamentally changing American culture.

yes, i agree with that as well. i think the increase or visibility of nonbinary and genderqueer people will give young assigned male at birth people examples and role models of how to behave that is not toxic masculinity. the macho runs out of fashion, the better it will be as a prevention, but also the more those who can't or won't stand by that will lash out against it, against equality and fluidity across genders. in the case of mass shooters, it's not that they've necessarily specifically lashed out against this, but that they can't abandon or see no way out their "man" narrative or way of being.

"i know it’s a matter of degrees and subtlety, but in many cases it’s not “neo-liberalism” or even “capitalism”, but a maladapted and (self)marginalized individual’s dysfunctional dynamic with their society or community."

do you think that individual's maladaptation and marginalization is unrelated to capitalism and modern human mass society? i think they are inseparable.

no doubt there are/would be/have been individuals in any population (human and otherwise) that are somehow wired differently, and might exhibit those kinds of destructive (to themselves and others) behaviors. but it is my strong suspicion that the mas society humans have created makes it very easy for individuals to develop "anti-social" (?) desires and behaviors that somehow give them a means to fight against whatever it is they see as their enemies. of course i feel that way myself, and some of my behaviors would be considered "anti-social" and not at all in line with the dominant ideological paradigms.

for me, choosing to live autonomously outside those paradigms as much as possible is a very different thing from choosing to mow down scores of individuals i don't even know personally with that bump-stock equipped ar-15 (whatever the fuck). but i don't really have a judgement about people that choose the latter. i wish they weren't pushed to that point by whatever they see in their world. but i understand that everyone is unique, with their own unique history and makeup, and how they respond to the horrors of this world is not something i can judge. i'd rather see a different "world" than to wish away all who don't act in some acceptable way in response to it.

"i know it’s a matter of degrees and subtlety, but in many cases it’s not “neo-liberalism” or even “capitalism”, but a maladapted and (self)marginalized individual’s dysfunctional dynamic with their society or community."

Which is like... 360 degrees back to the same question. Why is this individual misadapted and (self-)marginalized? Because of society's *very functional* dynamics of capital accumulation and exclusion that results.

What is a rapist or abuser? The exact same than the mass-shooter. He wants to have it his ways with women or kids, but since he does't have either the socio-cultural position of privilege or the adequate, proper social skills and etiquette, he'll just take the shortcut of going for the grabs, avoid the most basic, obvious requirement of consent of the other, where the other is seen as a piece of meat, marketed everywhere as a luxury commodity.

Talking is supposedly cheap, yet also very complicated for some. It's not just about chatting with women, but chatting with them with an approach that'll make them stick to you, like you, go to bed with you. Many guys got it "naturally", i.e. in their specific psycholinguistic programming, their approach, their attitude, their pheromones... so they feel like they're doing nothing and they're just picking up women on the way. So others are waking up in the morning with the awful thought that there are privileged jackasses like Riley Stearns who have it their way in life while even succeeding passing off as intelligent, talented, original and relevant for any reason. They get lauded by beautiful liberal women as they make their millions. How not to violently hate such a context, to the point of wanting a bloodbath that makes yourself a star for a moment, and beat Riley Stearns on the front page?

So where it comes a becomes problematic is when a layer of win/lose is added to these dynamics, where there is that intense pressure to succeed. To get what others have and you don't, as you are constantly exposed to people who have that, while you're licking your wounds in isolation. That intense view of winner vs loser is fairly recent... through the deterioration of more traditional social institutions and safety nets that make people not exactly "win", but simply have a healthy, normal life they can be content with.

What is perceived as the basic conditions of living has been commodified as the institutions collapse, so therefore an object of acquisition, or exclusion from. So yeah, in a way this has indeed to do with neoliberalism, but is more accurately

...the current capitalist configuration. I won't call it "late stage capitalism" coz I'm not a marxian evolutonist. There is only one stage and it's all over the place, and the players are everyone willing to become an actor-ess. And the deep fundamental question of anarchy is how to win without playing in it. So many people get fooled into it, at every new cohort/generation. It's even more true with the advent of zoomers, as since the boomers parents are now out of the picture but their money lies into the trust funds, then the kids are the new cast! And to me it's very surprising as a Gen-Xer how the kids have it easy... just surfin the Apple conveyor belt, gettin their local brewery startup. Yee. Haw.

This stage is where where the capitalist system has brought us since the post-war times. It's not evolution; it's just an accumulation, of plastic shit. They call neoliberalism the "post-war global order", which ain't inaccurate. The whole issue with the narrative on neoliberalism is how it casts a shadow on the past centuries of global capitalist development. So yeah... Liberals vs neoliberals, and both factions not willing to look at the elephant in the room.

I been asking you, readers, before... Where are the radicals? More importantly... What/where are their outlets for existing in this world? Are we now just a bunch of doomers like me?

Maybe your insistence on rejecting analytical tools and certain language is part of how you box yourself in as a "doomer"?

capitalism for sure. but when you add on top of that, the technological impositions on human life, the resulting "social media"/online existence of particularly younger generations, and the alienation and isolation of living primarily online...

one thing jz used to say (probably still does) that i agree with 100%: IT'S ALL GOTTA GO!

If you give a machine gun to a nazi, its not the machinegun that must be removed, but the nazi ideology, or as Bernardi said, by the neoliberal ideology which views existence through a winner vs loser lens.
Primitivism thinks its the gun and technologý which is at fault, when its actually the psychology associated with certain ideologies.
This will be deleted, like all my controversial comments.

actually you're right Le Way! shame you can't see the difference between this comment and the rest of your dreck but good for you champ! you got one!

I AM THE GOD OF HATE AND DAMN RIGHT LE WAY IT DOESNT MATTER ABOUT GUNS ITS ALL ABOUT HAAAAAAAATE DONT YOU ALL GET IT YOU MORONS, HATE HATE HATE !!!!! YOU'RE A FREAKIN PSYCHOPATH YOU'RE GONNA KILL KILL KILL WITH YOUR BARE FREAKIN HANDS HANDS BARE FREAKINHANDS OK GOT IT??!!

can you give reasons?
i find the primmie critique of technology convincing. there's no potential for mass shootings without guns. do certain technologies create the material/social/cultural conditions from which shitty ideologies arise? is this a chicken/egg scenario?

not sure if you're asking le way or myself but I always default to placing responsibility on the user, rather than the tool.

another way of saying this would be that even if you could magically cancel out tech developments like automatic rifles, society would very likely still be alienating people to the point of indiscriminate violence and if you open up the question to ALL technology, it get to broad to say anything meaningful about guns alone.

like, are we talking about why someone would kill strangers for seemingly no reason? or are we talking about how a machine-gun makes it more convenient? mixing those two questions together guarantees incoherency imo.

I don’t know what would change. What’s the point of this question even? Is anarchy a problemless utopian ideal? Is it even something we’ll ever see on a societal level?

you could always go play outside or maybe take out some crayons and paper if you find the discussion boring? maybe you just need a snack? you want juice? :)

"Is anarchy a problemless utopian ideal? Is it even something we’ll ever see on a societal level?"

Anarchy was never an ideal (anarchism has been... for a bunch of impressionable people or newbies). It's a relation that IS, exists all over the place. It doesn't need an utopia. It IS life. Within human interactions, I'd call it a form of communication. Not merely a "vocabulary", but more like a language, a way to engage. Children have it the easiest, as their contact with humans is fresh and naive; but like Lao Tse said it... people grow callous (like the tree example) as they get older, and communications becomes authoritarian, complex, walled, schizophrenic. People either get sucked in group bubbles where they are continuously distracted and swept away by the "thousand things", or remain in their sad lonely bubbles. Perhaps the lonely are closer to the Qi even in their misery as they are less distracted on a daily basis, but I cannot pretend.

But there's many problematic utopian ideals out there, and all of them are authoritarian as fuck.

nightmares from text come to life. where they a threat before they were written?
does oral tradition also create monsters?
yes, of a different kind.
not to mention those horrors which cannot be spoken of, and remain unnamed.

Presumably, an anarchist society would have abandoned industrialism. Over time, mass quantities of guns and ammo would deteriorate and no longer be produced. Until they were made obsolete by time, people would need to form groups for community self defense that would be able to repel attacks by bad actors with guns.

"...people would need to form groups for community self defense that would be able to repel attacks by bad actors with guns."

> the_State.exe is restarting...

there are many ways that state forms can arise and have risen
so you are right, but also not necessarily

anyone who does anything with others is moments away from state formation!

If you're not alone in a basement, YOURE PRACTICALLY THE STATE ALREADY!!! SMASH YOURSELF!!!

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