TOTW: Wheel of Pain

For the more clearly I perceive in nature those omnipotent art impulses, and in them an ardent longing for illusion, the more I feel myself impelled to the metaphysical assumption that the truly existent primal unity, eternally suffering and contradictory, also needs the rapturous vision, the pleasurable illusion, for its continuous redemption

For many Anarchy begins with a particular impulse, to change what is. When this impulse takes form, the results vary from activism to insurrection, free love, intentional living, etc. Yet what seemingly every form requires is a vision, a bright point of light one rushes towards, maybe not a better world, but at least a different way of living which we share with others, a dream. As with all dreams, someday these visions end too. Groups split, activism fails, friendships turn sour, love turns to hate. And, when these illusions are shattered, individuals are left to pick up the pieces with which to either build a new Anarchist life or melt back into society at large. The longer one claims the title of Anarchist the more times this cycle likely repeats, always painful, but nevertheless vital.

And now the questions: what has your experience of this cycle been? How did you experience the first shattering of your Anarchist dream? What changes did this cause in your Anarchy? In your life? How did you pick up the pieces, find new comrades, find the will to carry on?

There are 80 Comments

Quote is so vague and pompuous... Was it written by yet another pedantic pseudo-intellectual of the pan-academic ilk? Let's head what this guy had to say about art and nature:

"Art is not merely an imitation of the reality of nature, but in truth a metaphysical supplement to the reality of nature, placed alongside thereof for its conquest." - Freddy Nietzsche

But on to this text. You are the one who's assuming that anarchy is some illumination projected into another time/space, like the light at the end of a tunnel. I reject this idealist, abstract view.

My anarchy, if an impulse, lies in my condition of conflict with the group, or human society. All its absurdity, incoherence, arbitrariness is rooted in herd dynamics, that rely on authoritarian patterns. This web of deception -set up by control freaks- is what alienates us from WHAT IS, not from what things should/could be.

Anarchy is there, already, in nature. So my impulse has to do with the anger at people abstracting themselves from nature in order to seek to dominate it. Any civilization built upon this principle of abstraction is wrong, deceitful and deserves to be negated. The need for anarchy exists because of its order. Here's why there used to be no "anarchism" before the industrial era, even if there were some clearly anarchistic/democratic tendencies.

My anarchy comes from being a vagabond, a thief, a swindler of bureaucracies, a squatter and occasional saboteur/vandal. I can't think of any other lived anarchy within this society that makes any sense, has any credibility.

Bro living anarchy is advocating center-left liberal values on reddit and fantasizing about your ideal society. I doubt you're even a comrade.

Your anarchy is rooted in herd dynamics? I think you’re doing it wrong 11:16. Nietzsche is displeased.

False.

“All [your anarchy’s] absurdity, incoherence, arbitrariness is rooted in herd dynamics, that rely on authoritarian patterns.”

Sad, Untermensch is sad.

There is no "üntermensch" in Nietzsche's realm! This is a Nazi bullshit concept taken from a misreading of him by some gigantic abysmal asshole (i.e. your Führer) whose inferiority complex likely emanated from his inability to get over the condition of having a ridiculously tiny penis and just one testicle.

So a recap: Freddy said there is only Man, and then there's the "Man Beyond", or the "Man Above", or "Over-man" (übermensch). The Man who goes above and beyond resentment, herd mentality, slave morality and... pointless petty rivalries, that is the character of the weak and the enslaved.

But don't ya feel targeted... you're just too human, that's all!

My anarchy comes from being a vagabond, a thief, a swindler of bureaucracies, a squatter and occasional saboteur/vandal. I can't think of any other lived anarchy within this society that makes any sense, has any credibility.

Yeah, right. The anarchy of the Yeats poem -- the only kind on tap around here -- rock on, dude! U-S-A! U-S-A! U-S-A!

There's no anarchy in Yeats poems, dude. Yeats was a fash.

Vagabonds, thieves and squatters were always among those persecuted by the police forces of feudal and capitalist regimes alike. It's fucking dumb to be equating them with US nationalism... when it's eattirely founded on the reification and sacralization of private property (especially LAND PROPERTY) through the most violent repressive means. Which part have you missed with US colonial history?

Sob story:

I live in a small college town with a large anarchist presence. Over a decade ago most of my friends moved away to bigger cities and I was left with these weirder, more moralistic (although they would argue that) new gung-ho insurrectionary arrivals to the college, which, frankly, sucked. I had a kid and felt like this place was a better place to raise them then moving to a ghetto in a bigger city, which is where most of my friends could afford to move to when they left, so I stayed.

Small town group dynamics are a fucking nightmare for people in general, but with how incestuous and rigid some anarchist spaces can become, it can be especially hard for people who have had years-long legitimate beefs with certain people over ideas and organization (ie, student activism vs. not that or ParEcon vs. not that ). When I spoke out against these kind of liberal student activisty anarcho-types, I made some enemies, and a lot of that came down to just not being able to argue or debate ideas. I would try to cut down their beliefs and hoped they'd do the same to me, but instead of critiquing my critiques of their critiques, they critiqued me as a person and their critiques devolved into insults and rumor-mill.

When the friends I did have left and this new group of students moved in, even though we could kind of share ideas, there was a huge pull for them to build bridges with these activisty anarcho-types. The way they did that was with demonizing the individuals who the activist-types deemed to be social pariahs. So, for example, couples who had bad break-ups and one of whom was with the 'in-group' (Cabal-Argot) then the other might have their house attacked or have their band's show posters ripped down all over town by these enforcer types. It was fucking odd.

Anyways, my friends left and I was left with the left-leaning (although, again, they would argue that) enforcer types. Because of the endless rotating door that is a small college town, I was kind of stuck with them because superficially we shared similar ideas (which isn't the best basis for friendship). But eventually I had my own moment when the pack turned on me.

Since then, I've worked on anarchist adjacent creative projects, like parenting. Also, comics, wildlife identification, stories, scripts, jokes, etc. Rarely, I'll write an article or post a comment directly to anarchist platforms or publications. If I do share my anarchist ideas, it's mostly with socialist-leaning neighbors and if they seem interested then I'll print them out copies of bolo'bolo because I'm too lazy to try to explain what an anarchist society would look like.

"I would try to cut down their beliefs [and expected them to be chill about it]." FTFY

But seriously tho, I can relate. Good conflict is rare and hard.
Petty infighting is easy and nourishes the ego with a false sense of power.

To 13:52:

Dear red white and blue dolt:

Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world
Yeats isn't the only thing you don't know jack about.

Nietzsche is merely proposing that the illusion or facade of aesthetics, or art, can be comforting when confronted with the harsh nihilistic reality of existence and can make life have significance.
There is nothing really profound with this choice, only that there is at least an acceptance of one's base meaningless condition, and of Vagabond Brah's, and ironically without his actual own awareness of his living in that condition of ignorant bliss, actually upholding Nietzsche's proposed lifestyle. What a beautiful magnificent fool you are!

How did you experience the first shattering of your Anarchist dream?

The baton, while we ran from a fight we were woefully unprepared for.

What changes did this cause in your Anarchy?

I realized none of my friends or I knew anything real about fighting.

How did you pick up the pieces, find new comrades, find the will to carry on?

By eating humble pie for years and then grounding everything I did in reality from that point onward.
Also, I started picking friends who did the same. At least sometimes?

The driving force of the desire for anarchy is the gap between reality experienced at a bodily level and/or in the imaginal realm, and the dominant social system. When the drive is lost, this usually means the connection between the "higher" parts of the self (head and heart) and the "lower" root of desires in the belly has been severed. This happens because of traumas and repression, or because someone becomes captured in the Spectacle (world of spooks), or because the sources of life and joy are cut off. Freud's work on mourning and melancholy is very relevant here: the loss of an inspiring ideal can be turned back against the self, as depression and self-flagellation.

I've felt a strong loss of lived anarchy mainly since the conversion of most anarchist scenes to authoritarian identity politics over the last decade. However, the ultimate failure of the anti-capitalist movement to prevent the dystopia we now live in is also an enormous blow. Neither has affected my own desire for anarchy but both have made it far harder to act on the impulse.

Some of us *need* anarchy (at least in the broad sense articulated by Colin Ward and Hakim Bey) to have any kind of worthwhile life. Others in the anarchist milieu are there for other reasons and all too easily move sideways into idpol or drop out entirely, because they were in it for the ego-boost or the group belonging or the "policy impact". The Invisible Committee's distinction between milieus and communes is relevant here.

What *should* happen after defeats and movement decay is more like what happens in science: the empirical result feeds into the next phase by providing more precise information on the situation, problems, etc. People all too easily default to claims like, "we failed because too many of the others were not true radicals" or "we failed because the movement was too white and male and middle-class" or "we failed because there's no way we can fight the state with its overwhelming power" or "we failed because we tried to act on things outside our control". These kinds of responses are either melancholic (self-flagellation of ego by superego) or a blame-game corrosive of further cooperation. While we need to question previous assumptions of our strength and any compromises made to ally with non-anarchists, it's much more helpful to think that we *could* have won, but came up against some contingent hurdle which we need to make sense of and find a way around, over, through, etc. For example, high-tech police surveillance was a new threat in the 2000s, and often seemed to make revolt impossible, but it's already being countered with new innovations and there's much more potential to develop new counter-technologies.

One of the tricks the state uses to sustain power is to encourage confusion between itself/the dominant social system and reality-as-such, or even the cosmic order. For example, laws are analogous to "natural laws" - except that the former can be (and are frequently) broken, whereas the latter can't. This is sustained by mechanisms making the state (or other power-holders: today it is also the social media hivemind) seem all-powerful, mostly through spectacular displays of overwhelming force. To the extent that we are able to reconceive/re-experience the state as *just a bunch of human actors*, it's entire status both socially and "morally" is undermined. Of course this is easiest when we are able to evade or defy its rules without retaliation. And in moments of revolt, the state's affective hold breaks down. It's precisely the feeling of "magical" power to do the impossible (i.e. state-forbidden) which sustains effective movements, and the loss of this is also a loss of the imaginal/desiring side of activism. This feeling is hard to sustain when movements are in decline or have sold-out to the idea of (only) working within the system. The trauma of police raids, imprisonment, torture etc is designed precisely to produce a sense of the state as all-powerful and imminently threatening annihilation, so its rules have to be obeyed (modelled on Oedipal family relations). One resists this by reclaiming power - first in small ways, then larger ones. Anything that seizes back a bit of space and agency helps to break the spell of statist omnipotence.

Today I think we need to recompose by forming autonomous zones in remote regions worldwide, and drawing in as many drop-outs as we can. One of the biggest problems is that the spell of statist omnipotence is sustained both by intense paramilitary policing of known hubs of dissent, and massive surveillance which is set to expand further with smart cities and smart tech. One needs the room to breathe in order to not feel trapped in the state's grips, and this means finding or creating zones the state is unable to control.

and how much time have you spent in remote autonomous zones full of the poor and mentally ill? it's no picnic, in my experience. certainly more about survival than anything else. not disagreeing with you btw but this isn't a new idea you're pointing to.

I've spent alot of time in remote dysfunctional social conglomerations as an on the ground service provider and you must be a snowflake lacking communication skills because if you display and follow through with motivating and positive projects with outcomes you can do anything with the untapped potentiality.

yeah, guess I was just an actual poor person who you would be incredibly condescending to while presuming to "provide service".

I would have questioned the relevance of your claim that you had native blood coursing through your veins, just the fact that you clung to the expectation of receiving sympathy I don't know?? It puzzles me the type of person who plays the victim ticket, very unanarchistic. Now I'm starting to believe that rumor getting around about you, but I'll be a just person, this is not the time to air dirty laundry.

the "expectation of receiving sympathy", that's rich. not generally how poverty works in this world.

how bout I just continue to expect you'll be an asshole? based on prior data?

Not a new idea but not one that's being done much at the moment. & yeah finding ways to meet basic needs where "services" are not so easily available is one of the difficulties. The trouble is, the alternative is to sit round while anarchy (political and everyday) gets policed, micromanaged, CCTV'ed, social-credited and smart-citied out of existence.

Would be interested to know where you spent time and what happened BTW. I'm only aware of a handful of projects of this type, though to be fair a lot of them keep a low profile.

I'm just talking about being broke as fuck in various rural setting after getting forced out of the urban centers. people would attempt to do intentional land projects as an escape hatch from at least some of the wage slave grind and I would pass through or visit or try and make a go of it and long story short, utopia isn't just over the horizon beyond the edge of the city. you can certainly find an oasis here and there but it's got a different set of limitations that seem comparable to the limits of the city, imo.

that depends on what your desires, priorities, capabilities, etc are. i bailed on urban life 20+ years ago (after 40 years living in the belly of the beast), found some undesirable land to squat on, figured out how to catch and store rainwater, obtain minimal electricity from the sun, build a solid structure, cut firewood, grow food and medicine, etc. i happened to find a place where the state is very minimally present. i've not made more than $600 in a month (as little as $0), which qualifies as rather poor in the u.s. the only think lacking is more folks to share aspects of a relatively free life with. which i readily accept as a slam dunk tradeoff for not having to deal with the horrors (to me at this point) of urban life. fortunately i am not a creature starved for shallow social interaction.

utopia does not exist. the goal is to create a life that you do not need a vacation from. love the city? live in it. love the solitude and space of rural living? live it.

So basically you think people should stay in cities as they become more and more totalitarian, so as not to upset your purist fantasies? Even in countries that aren't settler colonies (that's most of them BTW)? And in settler colonies, where the cities are also on colonised land just as much as any other area?

You'll be sitting round getting colonised anyway, except it won't be harmless hippies or insurgents, it will be the tendrils of the police-state and capital. Hell, your type are the ones doing most of the colonising.

My "purist fantasies" of preventing further displacement and genocide of Indigenous people makes me an idpol? Okay, colonizer. Enjoy your colonizer fantasy. Bring guns.

Like, no, moving to a rural area doesn't have to imply the displacement of indigenous people (that anyways most of your cities are based on, btw), or even private property.

I'm all for people concentrating instead of expanding in sprawl-like developments, but the urban spaces we got aren't exactly lovely places, and yes, like the other poster's saying, they make totalitarian developments like curfews way easier to enforce, and more painful to the people living these. Like at the moment anyone living in most rural areas can still enjoy doing stuff outside. Stark contrast with those super-policed urban hellholes.

First off, you have no idea if I'm Indigenous, Black, White, Hispanic, I could be a fucking Martian or a dog with good keyboard skills for all you know. You also don't know if I'm in America, Europe, Russia, South America, or motherfucking Christmas Island. So quit cramming everything into tiny little boxes.

Second, the relationship between drop-outs moving to an area and poor people already living there is not necessarily conflictual. It often is, but not always. The Zapatistas were urban Mestizas who moved to a remote Indigenous area and yeah they "brought guns" but I don't think you can call that colonisation. Nor the "tri-racial isolate" communities, nor the Maoist Long March, nor the Beghards migrating eastward en masse. We'd have to be especially careful about colonising and gentrifying if white European or American activists were moving to the global South, though even then, I wouldn't call the Atlantis commune or Jonestown "colonisation". Most often anarchists would have common concerns with existing locals in terms of improving quality of life in a subsistence or petty commodity setting, and fighting commodification and elite land grabs. & there isn't a race question in that case but I understand Tarnac got on pretty well with local farmers. The biggest problem would not so much be locals as not getting massacred by pigs, soldiers, paramilitaries or gangs IMO.

Thirdly, in Europe the normal pattern for land projects is that people either squat or buy cheap land in areas which are depopulated.

Fourthly, I think the biggest source of colonisation and commodification at the moment is self-colonisation by elite/middle-class members of racialised groups importing "global" capitalist patterns, who become leaders or figureheads of the less-integrated members of the group and come to define what is desirable within the group in dominant Eurocentric terms. A lot of these are "dewesternisers", meaning they explicitly reject colonialism, Eurocentrism, whiteness and so on, but still imitate them with a view to outdoing the colonisers at their own game. In India for example, there's far less colonisation involving free-party types who move to beach huts in Goa or wherever, than the type which comes from aggressive "modernisation" by the Hindu-communalist government: demonetisation, population registries, land registries, crackdowns on "encroachers", attacks on social movements, big development projects, "smart city" plans, etc. The Indian middle class idolises "modernity" and fantasises about total surveillance and cashless society in a country with a dirt-poor majority, which still has massive illiteracy, low electricity coverage and so on. It seems to me the same is going on on a smaller scale in Native American reservations and suchlike: a group of western-educated, transculturally-literate, liberal/Third Way types take most of the powerful positions and use them to further incorporate these areas into capitalism, often under the cover of a revivalist or idpol agenda. The first things they want are more schools (to westernise kids), more bureaucratic positions for their cronies, local police to enforce their will, development projects with benefits going "locally" (i.e. to their own businesses) and so on. But we're told it's "different" because this time it's not white people doing it. Big fucking deal. Real imperialism is the incorporation of peripheral areas into systems of capitalist exploitation serving the core. You don't have to be from a different race to be a coloniser.

@critic has a point here.

For how the pressure of real estate is huge in Western countries, and beyond, it's pretty absurd to believe the kind of aggressive, reckless colonization brought through suburban sprawls (for instance) is only a White people's thing, even if White capitalists started the whole game. We should be looking more at patterns and modes of conduct instead of the skin tone or ethnicity of people reproducing those.

What is systemic racism? How do it work? We know you “don’t see color” Fauvenoir but the people with all the power do.

Did I write anything anywhere that reads like I'm denying systematic racism?

Correction: I do see "color"... just not the racial categorizations INHERITED FROM THE VERY SAME IMPERIALIST SLAVE SYSTEM that you seem to be against, that I'm equally against. This slave system is the source of the systemic racism.

And this systemic racism is (in my own words) when a bunch of guys of the same racial identity (often due to being part of a same consanguineous family circle, like, you know, royal and aristocratic families) set up a control grid to maintain their racial privilege and exclude different others from it, so to keep profiting from their labor, among other things.

Or according to Cambridge dictionary:

"policies and practices that exist throughout a whole society or organization, and that result in and support a continued unfair advantage to some people and unfair or harmful treatment of others based on race"

Yet let's recognize that we aren't in the '50s-'60s North America. The lines aren't drawn the exact same way. The system that was previously based on stiff, hardcore systemic racism (like when Canada used to have a law forbidding non-White immigrants) has subsided to more inclusive, (neo)liberal elitist powers, like with Chinese or Arabic capitalism, or with aspects of the corporate world being less "White" (the Toronto financial district's general demographics definitely aren't *purely* White, today).

What I understood from @critic's comment is how neoliberalism, due to its imperative of globalization of capital (and workforce), has allowed for a LEVEL of ethnic "neutrality", with people from different backgrounds like from China, the Indian subcontinent, the Arab world, will get in the game and become billionaires as well. Like are Dubai or Shanghai White-dominated centers of capitalist power? Not really.

The liberal view of it would tell me "well, they got the right to be a counter-power, right?". As far as capitalism goes, yes of course. But what'd be the view of a radically anticap here? Back to the real-estate example, I obviously don't care about non-White people going into this awful business, speculating on gentrification, developments and becoming landlords. I despise the system of it, BASED ON LAND PROPERTY SCHEMES.

Regardless, it's certain that the trendiest sectors of big business are vastly White dominated. Hence my frequent finger-pointing at the big tech feudalists, as along with top-tier finance capitalists, this is where you'll find the most cohesive White (and non-color-blind) power. So, yes, a level of systematic racism was maintained. It just ain't as straightforward as back in the Fordist era.

The world is shades of... brown.

It is above that dominated by gang/herd/tribe politics. You know I oppose these politics. I support the best I can individuals that seek grow through the cracks in the pavement.

I wanted to add on my rantwall above, as I just noticed the "don't see color" claim came straight from an accusation thrown at me over the fediverse or the Fediblock. No, I don't see anyone's "color" over the internet, unless it is made pretty obvious in some way.

But enough about what I think... let's say what you think of it. Or not!

anyone that does not see color is colorblind. the issue is not seeing color, it is generalizing and associating color with specific behavior. i see color, i just don't pre-judge based on it. i guess growing up around all kinds of people makes that seem like a complete no-brainer. that people can "hate" someone they do not even know, based on anything but known behavior, is bizarre and sad.

That was kinda like my point, too. I see colors, but ain't too fond of maintaining these racializing territorializations inherited from old-school racism, tho I can't ignore them.

Now imagine if you didn't have white skin privilege and live in a world where people DO "see color" and DO generalize and associate specific behavior with color and DO hate people of that color and DO have all the power and design the world around this hate.

Inb4 "stfu idpol!"

Plenty of White meth head guys in the streets nowadays. Now they're forced to be into night prisons (shelters) due to curfews. Feel free to go tell them about their "White skin privilege" and have fun with that.

Like I and someone else here has been saying, socio-economic privilege ain't limited to skin color. Which isn't saying that systemic racism was erased in '68, but that socio-economic privilege has somewhat grown beyond ethnicity, and it's still in flux. I'll repeat again that I'm not denying systemic White racism is still a thing. Especially a unassumed thing. Like White liberal petty bourgie fucks ganging up exclusively between people of same characteristics.

Tho there's also such a thing as status-based prejudice and exclusion between White people, and it's been around for as long as capitalism exists, and it is somehow historically related to actual racism, as the aristocrats used to perceive lower-classes as racial inferior to them, same as women used to be perceived (and still are by some guys) as inferior to White men. And you know these patterns are perpetuating.

I'm the one of the few here who's been often living in non-White dominated neighborhoods of a city due to the trendy gentrified neighborhoods vastly dominated by White petty bourgeois liberal hipsters that were just too damn expensive, exclusive, and led by these judgmental ID pols herd politics thinly-hiding their trustfundie higher caste contempt for everyone down the ladder. But I was fine with that! Being from a somewhat lower-middle-class fam that I consider "poor", I grew up in multi-ethnic poor neighborhoods with buddies with different skin complexions, and this is first place where I learned why racism is just abysmal absurdity. But then there's nothing intelligent or rational with a system; you can't argue with it. It is a conspiracy that we support, don't support, or fight against. Speaking of which... I can afford to brag about having done crazy shit in the dark for opposing the spread of (informally) White-exclusive suburbs. In some cases it worked, but of course that wasn't enough.

- White skin privileged guy

I don’t think it is. Privilege to me is a marginal extra social phenomenon. There maybe socioeconomic cultural ethnic preferences and preferential positions in those areas but the difference between preference and privilege is negative avoidance of a placement or predicament vs a marginal enjoyment pleasure or wealth access. Being white historically does not entail the latter. Privilege is a marginal affair.

> Privilege phenomenon preferences preferential positions preference privilege placement predicament pleasure Privilege

You utter clown.

Agreed, privilege is not determined so much by socio-economic positioning but by the good fortune of the characteristics and empathy of ones parents and people associated with your upbringing. Likewise the excessive use of the term privilege, like racism, has caused its misuse to extreme absurd contextual arguments. For example, the Idpol are mostly capitalists and measure success as high in the socio-economic and material status hierarchy, whereas a true egalitarian society measures success by the humanity and compassionate characteristics. The poorer one is, often the kinder and more successful that person is as being privileged with the knowledge of human perfection. Poverty is a privilege, thus overturning the capitalist-Idpol overuse and misuse of the term "privilege".

"The excessive use of the term privilege, like racism has ..." --Privileged Racists

I don't know what you are saying, it doesn't make sense. To make it easier for you, I posit that privilege is a multifaceted term which needs elaboration. There may be positive or negative privilege, or material or psychological privilege. The present dominant use of privilege is used in the context of a positive or negative material opportunism, or a socio-economic condition. This ignores the positive or negative psychological factors, or metaphysics if thay's not too long for you, get my drìft :) A positive material and a negative psychological produces a wealthy capitalist or a serial killer. A negative materialism with a positive psychology produces a nice person like me. A negative material and a negative psychology produces a nasty meth addict type mmk?

Privilege only makes sense as a marginal access term and not a general one. Having more opportunities in life does not mean you have privilege especially when someone may not even identify with the societal game structure to begin with. Remember that there is an inherent subjectivity to positive and negative as well as pretty much everything else. I'm nominal when it comes to reality. Even being born a white prince is not necessarily a privilege on a personal level for some though at least in that case you have the marginal wealth factor that makes the term tenable on an objective level.

This simply does not apply to ethnicity however, not even white USA during the bad ole days if you happened to be born on the white side. You might have been born on the preferential side of things when it comes to the basic needs of life, but privilege is about getting more then the basic needs.

Mmmkay, I see the nuance concerning thresholds of needs and opportunities, and yes, there's a large subjective co-efficient in the whole equation. Just wish the term wasn't thrown around so haphazardly. I'll view Prince Harry and Princess Markel through different lens now ;)

Did you just #AllLivesMatter in this thread because you were a poor white therefore racism doesn't exist because it's like white people using meth? Wow.

intersectionalwha? white identity + meth = racism negated <--- bad math

*sighs* You're looking at the wrong direction for finding an AllLivesMatter, as clearly you know Jack Shit about my on and offline engagements against racist scum over the years. Like there's a few creeps hanging around this site that are just that, and atm are likely giving themselves high fives as an antiracist is trying to shame another antiracist for being a White racist. Just saying.

Buuuut, also likely I'm being trolled by these same creeps, meaning that you're one of them... ABRACADABRAH! The internet is magik!

Also thanks but no thanks for not reading my comments! I got so much time for you.

Is that on a large enough societal continuum the idea that one is privileged by 'race' is absurd. Of course racism exists(and yes this includes white hating blacks to leftards-non of that racism is prejudice+power nonsense) but it has not been shown to be a through on and throughout problem beyond about 3 percent of the population. People like Wilfred Reilly have shown the systemic racism idea to be nonsensical at this point.

The other poster here, I don't see color and I'm not color blind. When I engage with black, brown, yellow, purple whatever, I only see the aura of neutral acceptance shrouding the being, I am not such a moronic conditioned moron to prejudge a person by their color. This is not new, and goes back to my school days when I learnt not to judge a book by its cover.

I, for one, am glad that someone is finally standing up for oppressed white colonizers by calling indigenous revolutionaries idpols. They will not erase you, “@acritic”

I, for one, am glad that some brave maoist is taking a stand against le evil whiteboy revolutionaries to ensure that wahmens and POC have their turn to rule the world as ruthless billionaire imperialist psychopaths!

We evil nature-loving whiteboy patriarch shitlords must dutifully stay put in our polluted open air prisons where we are easier to monitor, track and control!

Congrats, @critic, 10:53 is the exact type of shitlord that’s gonna support and populate you colonialist project. Why do your words appeal to such assholes?

They’re appealing because 20th century basicbitch idpol is boring af and protects the state.

Okay so recognizing Indigenous people, colonialism, systemic racism, and white supremacy is “20th century basicbitch idpol” and “is boring af and protects the state”? Am I understanding you correctly, 13:52 and @critic? If so what do you call this version of anarchism? Might I suggest: alt-anarchism?

Ask yourself this: who benefits the most from disallowing white anarchists (or anyone, really) from building a life for themselves outside the AI-dominated megacity police states of the near-future?

The state, obviously.

Are you just here to make anarchists look stupid or are you just stupid?

“My vapid sloganeering didn’t work! I’m flustered and don’t have a good answer, so let me engage in childish insults to mask the poverty of my ridiculous liberal politics!”

Or idk maybe you’re just shitposting. If so, then I can’t rly judge.

Anyways, all my organizing rn is about gettin a place “innawoods”.

Sorry/Not sorry.

Honestly, this is how I see you —-

Leftist:

Hm? Oh yeah I predict climate change/civil war/coronapocalypse will totally cause liberal democratic institutions to collapse in my life time, giving way to a hi-tech police state.

Also Leftist:

And so that’s why my life plan is...

1. Live in a big city (bc guilt or something).
2. Specialize in artsy or white collar type work.
3. Learn zero practical skills.

Great idea, genius.

I would suggest though that there needs to be a new emergent anarchism fit for greater 21st century analysis that is beyond this post-colonial counter-capital/state project. All it ever was was a adjunct to non western national liberation ideology which simply represented a shedding of skin of the old representations of capital and state.

What is coming up is a cybernetic world of INTENSE control and mediation and post-colonial ideology has played a role in this emergent power structure. An anarchy fit to take this on will-to some degree-be neo-19th century driven but with fresh critiques of technology among other things. The old problems were reification and repression. The newer problems are mediation and control.

Yeah I often ponder the juxtaposition of modern tech into a 19Century Bohemian aesthetic. Some aspects of a free internet minus planet colonialization space technology would reduce rocket size and frequenzy by 75%. Let's face it, a move towards sustainable electric/solar hybridization for transport because humanity will always travel, however horse and bicycles are reemerging. Decentralization and virus siege adaption will have people becoming proud parochial sedentary beings content with their own little patch and the jet travel culture will reduce. This reduction of spectacular culture and its materialist distractions will have a positive qualitative effect which comes with most negative quantitative aspirations. People will become more autonomous, empathetic and connect deeply with eachother and their environment.

Don't mistake this with the crass "Bohemian aesthetic" marketed fashion pop art kitsch. I mean the earthy down to earth frugal permacultural wifi connected farmlet.

No idea if anyone's still here, but whether or not I or anyone else will "recognize" these systems/facts you posit likely depends what you mean by them. You lot (idpols) seem systematically unable to define your terms or tell us what you mean by something's being "systemic". You're using concepts of a motte-and-bailey kind, a consensus/obvious core used to validate a very contentious or outright false periphery. Does "white supremacy exist" in the sense that the pigs are racist as fuck, there's still economic inequalities and there's a bunch of Nazis about? Yeah. Does this mean setting up land projects, having a mohican or not voting for Obama is racist? No, fuck off. Same kinda thing with all your slogans.

Another commenter here, IdPol is a state of consciousness, it is a way of thinking about oneself within a similar group of thinkers. Its anti-individualist and for those who are IdPol are basically following the familiar opportunistic herd instinct. IdPol phenomena are not new, they have emerged in history as patriotism and nationalism in various intensities and sizes, but in recent decadex IdPol main characters have become internalized as racial or gender identification which is a more specialized and narcissistic version of self-identity.

identity - sometimes useful in understanding the historical context of how you're getting screwed

identity politics - the liberal co-optation and misuse of the tool of identity

you don't know what a liberal is? these days, it's the center-right, pro-capitalist, pro-law-and-order status quo that masks itself with superficial concessions to "progressive values". the cynical use of those values is basically a bribe to a certain percentage of the population, which includes the misuse of identity, to confuse and create divisions.

i don't know wtf that other shit is. sounds like troll nonsense. no further questions pls

sure, you're winning your little game and stuff. good for you

Are tenuous and questionable to varying degrees. There is no unified peopling under indigenous or other minority identity categories. Colonialism is a branching problem of statism and not a root problem.

When it comes to the claim of systemic racism(through on and throughout as opposed to official) people like Wilfred Reilly and Kmele Foster have made a very convincing case that these are not things that exist today(the former actually looks at hard stats and pops a lot of leftist talking point balloons). There’s not much evidence that racism is anything more then a 3 percent problem. The disparities that still exist have multifactoral explanations beyond hard racism.

The police problem is essentially a problem of class/property protection and enforcement along with the problem of the construct and concept of crime and the enforcement of law. There will always be demographics and psychographics that suffer from the spook of law order and crime as a consequence. White Supremacy was always a function not an intent of this.

This is basic bitch neo 19th century shit that needs to be done in a coming technocratic cybernetic age. Do like what the libertarian right have somewhat done in New Hampshire but make it more bohemian and interesting.

Yeah - ideally lots of such projects with circulation among them.

TBH I have mostly seen this done in cities, but these projects seem to have foundered on the new generation of control/policing technologies.

The big strategic problems are high vs low profile and avoidance vs confrontation. High-profile efforts will suffer repression (via media hysteria), low-profile efforts will not attract enough people and will tend not to have an impact. Similarly, outright insurgent communities will suffer much more repression than low-visibility, avoidance-based approaches, but will be more socially effective. One effective model would be a cluster of small communities plus individuals/households in surrounding areas, in an area with natural features conducive to disappearance and defense (e.g. forest, mountains). Efforts could be made to "harden" the area against repression while also avoiding local confrontations. People could then go do their spiky stuff somewhere else, then disappear back into the zone, hopefully becoming unsurveillable in the process. If the state figured out this was happening and tried to attack the zone, by this point it would be hardened enough to impose huge costs (this is one reason I think multiple zones would work better than a single big zone). We should also look into the kinds of community provision done by social movements in the South, particularly things like village clinics. And we need to experiment a bit regarding what an anarchist psychology support system would look like. There needs to be an active learning approach in terms of finding anarchist solutions to particular problems, as opposed to "it's not utopia so it failed". I mean, I'm still attracted to the idea of building utopia but right now there's a survival need for anarchists to create spaces where we aren't subjected to intensive control (where for example a lockdown would be impossible to enforce).

WTF are you on about? Tons of liberal anarchists vote left. Sure some of us give them shit for voting at all, but they always counter with “whatever is even incrementally better for the working class yadda yadda yadda.” and there’s really no sense in arguing about it at a certain point, you just move on.

That you think that a commenter on this site needs to be called out for it is ridiculous, just write your legit criticism of voting & post it somewhere, but this “let’s get ‘em” shit is odd, am I wrong?

liberal anarchists <--- afraid that's not a thing

Okay, semantics, thanks.

What do you call the student activist, progressive social justice based people who push for alternative institutions, holding the powerful accountable through continued pressure and legal strategies, bring up concepts like "the social contract" or work solely in making sure whatever non-profit they'er involved with actually tries to steer it to help (like Rainforest Action Network)?

Shit, a ton of old Wobblies still vote in every election. I've met lots of these people, they'll call themselves anti-authoritarians or will split hairs and go into "social ecology" or some other lefty ideology, but they'll still associate with anarchists in anarchist spaces. For shorthand I called them anarcho-liberals. Jeez, I get that these people are annoying but what else do you call them and why is it important to you that I don't call them that?

oh ok, as long as it's a derisive term, we're on the same page! lol

but yeah, it's mostly a semantic game, in all seriousness, you're right. although of course, I think those people's politics are embarrassingly incoherent.

"I oppose the state but I still like to kneel and lick the boot for luck every few years."

uh ... ok? weird fetish. who am I to judge? (totally judging)

I wouldn't be able to own and carry a gun if it wasn't for the anarcho-liberals in this wonderfull democracy!

> what has your experience of this cycle been?

Bad.

> How did you experience the first shattering of your Anarchist dream?

Seeing other anarchists interact with each other on anews.

> What changes did this cause in your Anarchy? In your life?

Uncomfortable changes,

> How did you pick up the pieces, find new comrades, find the will to carry on?

All the pieces, comrades, and the will to carry on are still shattered.

if you're serious, that does suck but uhm ... maybe expectations of people to be pleasant and get along was something to outgrow?

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