TOTW: Conflicto-bolo

In the non-utopic utopia of bolo’bolo, no ibu (person more or less) can be expelled from a bolo (an autonomous, autarkic collection of 300-500 ibu). Within that imagined world of interdependence, where the 300-500 people in your immediate vicinity rely on you and you them for daily survival, there is of course disagreement, hurt feelings, violence and conflict. And so, with that combination of interdependence and lack of banishment comes “Yaka”, a ritualized duel, but a duel:

Almost never be linked to winning material advantages, since they’re very costly and since the parties will be obliged to live together afterwards. Most motivations for duels will therefore be in the field of emotional, cultural or personal contradictions. They might serve to diminish or increase someone’s reputation (munu)

This is clearly not how most of us experience conflict on a day to day basis, and not only in the sense that formalized duels have fallen out of favor among most classes. As I conjure examples of conflict in my mind, instead of meaning filled experiences which ultimately allow disagreements, transgressions, or other ruptures to come to a place of suture and where people still see each other the next day; I instead hear the frictionless shuffling of feet as they head out the door, onto another scene, another town, another life. This reaction is completely understandable, our world promotes if not demands rootlessness, we haven’t been given the tools to see those we disagree with or who harm us as other than monsters, and without any kind of meaningful sense of support it’s all too easy to leave. But I’m interested in other, more complicated ways that we might experience conflict with each other, beyond exile, self or other imposed.

And so, the questions. What have conflicts in your scene, milieu, groupuscule looked like? When has it been particularly successful? Unsuccessful? What defined success or lack there of? What could have been done better? Differently? What are methods, models, modalities beyond banishment that you’ve seen or thought of when it comes to handling conflict among anarchists? In even the most egregious cases of conflict, what options do anarchists have for dealing with each other beyond banishment? Can one once banished ever be allowed to return?

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i have a friend who did security for a moving protest (traveling by foot through states) that was at times thousands of people. there was at least one time when a rapist was not expunged from the (nomadic) space, but was attended by someone (or multiple people) at all times, to allow him no space/time to hurt anyone physically.

that example has stayed with me, especially in the ways it is both do-able and not do-able now (at least for me).

"there was at least one time when a rapist was not expunged from the (nomadic) space, but was attended by someone (or multiple people) at all times, to allow him no space/time to hurt anyone physically."
Oh great, a nomadic prison system, just what anarchy needs, employing "members" to maintain surveillance and guarding duties upon another human, How do you define rape and is there any redemption in your nomadic world?

that's not how prison works ... they were presumably free to leave. are you being deliberately dense?

"they were presumably free to leave."
Oh, like after they are ostracized and made to feel unwelcomed they wouldn't feel like leaving? More like they were excluded and decided on voluntary exile to seek more forgiving companions!

Oh right, now its reactionary to assume innocence before guilt. So you believe any gossip upon first hearing it and start spreading untruths until some poor innocent dude is found guilty of rape?

you might want to take a logic class, assuming you're not just trying to start baseless fights randomly.

Oh, so now I'm an illogical aggressive instigator and calling out dishonesty is now a strawman argument, tsk tsk! I suppose I'm a rape apologist huh?!

Clearly you are. So kindly fuck off back to your MRA troll hole.

But as someone who has seen multiple sexual assault/rape allegations in the @ space eventually come out as bs, I have to say I tentatively have to agree with the anon you’re arguing with. I hate to say it, but due to the way in which the definition of rape/assault has been made so broad in anarchy, I’ve reached the conclusion that... if someone /outside/ the @ space claims they’ve been assaulted, of course I 100% totally believe them. But if that same claim were to come from /within/ the anarcho-activist sphere... then no. Sorry but its usually false.

Dont get mad at me. Thats just what happens when people ‘cry wolf’ too many times.

Statistically you are wrong. Statistically you're the same contrarian rape-apologist MRA troll.

What I said a few comments up isn’t just me using lowbrow ad hominem tactics. What I said actually bears a scientifically-determined correlation.

Source:

https://m.washingtontimes.com/news/2021/apr/22/white-liberals-more-likel...

According to a survey conducted by the Pew Research institute, over 50% of white women under the age of 30 who identify as culturally left/progressive/woke/antifa, etc. self-reported as being diagnosed with a mental illness. Statistically (bc I know you love statistics so much, anon) this just is what it is.

Again, if my sister or my female cousins were to tell me they’ve been assaulted, I would 100% believe them because I know they’re normal people who can be trusted not to fuck around with serious shit like this. But to a radical 3rd waver acting like a hammer looking for nails and for whom everything is a nail... I would maybe consider dating a different type of extremist lol, or maybe just try to settle down with a nice conservative trad wifey.

love how you've dressed up your creepy generalizations about dating preferences with "science" here

troll on fellow troll!

"maybe just try to settle down with a nice conservative trad wifey."
I dunno, is it just me or is there a lazy subliminal sexist value at work here?

imagine choosing 'not all rape accusations are real' as the hill you want to die on lol

I don't see how this is prison-like. The rapist/accused person is not just able to leave but can carry on most activities unmolested. Presumably if they hooked up with someone consensually they could go off with them, but they can't get potential victims alone. If they're innocent or they aren't trying to rape anyone then the restrictions on what they can do are minimal/nonexistent. For comparison, a lot of projects for kids nowadays don't let ANY of the adults be alone with the kids, effectively treating every adult like the rapist in this scenario (though I think they're actually more worried about false accusations... which shows how superficial the "believing the victim" position is). Also having someone with/near you at all times is not at all "being ostracised".

Seems to me that most of the time we're dealing with accusations and sus, not just with rape and sex offences but all kinds of stuff. This is just the kind of approach which can handle sus without either criminalising/banishing or sweeping the accusation under the carpet.

Well to me its prison-esque. I live by the simple code of not talking about other people behind their back and only talking about someone to their face. If everyone lived by my code, there would be no cops, courts or prisons, no false accusations, no paranoid suspicious minds.
Prison is a subjective call, why, I even describe wage slavery and paying off a mortgage as a form of imprisonment.
"Prison" is not solely a physical manifestation of concrete and iron bars, there are psychological dungeons people willingly crawl into. Sorry, I go a bit post-modern sometimes.

Well, yeah, I suppose it's somewhat like tagging someone or putting them under surveillance, still a lot less coercive I think, at no point is the "suspect's" autonomy violated. I guess they could say they're being harassed/stalked, but at that point we get a paradox (OK, they think they're being stalked, but the same things stopping us reacting to rapes are stopping us reacting to stalking, so they can think what they like, if Mr. Anti-Rape wants to follow you around he's every right to). But there's nothing in the original post which says, "we heard a rumour he was a rapist and assumed he was and started following him around". For all we know, he'd been boasting about being a rapist and he's gonna rape some people on this march and there's nothing they can do about it. Maybe he has prior convictions from DNA evidence. Or maybe there's a hundred different accusations against him, same MO every time. You're jumping to conclusions that it's one of the grey-area cases.

Thanks for all the possible scenarios for the anti-rape/innocent-suspect social relationship, but part of my code fortunately includes the erasing of the word "maybe" from my personal lexicon. I voluntarily remove myself from an prison-esque society which functions and permits moral crusading and the invasion of thought-police into my pure existence. Thanks anyway!

Wow, no maybes? Is this like the Azande worldview, where things work the probable way 100% of the time, and if they don't it's witchcraft?

Also wondering how you'd handle someone bigger than you trying to rape you. Are you allowed to try to kick their ass? To take revenge later? To chase them out "your" forest or backyard or whatever? To tell your friends they're a dick? At what point does it become moral?

How about if it's a six-dicked tentacle monster and you need at least seven people to do the ritual to send it back to its own plane of existence?

How about if the feminists used their witchcraft to summon six-dicked tentacle monsters to hunt down all the MRA's and it takes a whole bunch of us to do the ritual, plus you already lost all your sanity points?

OK, this is getting silly, but you started it.

"If everyone lived by my code"

Behold the manarchist-narcissist in all his great glory! Brave defender of Falsely Accused Men and their unfair treatment at the hands of Mean Matriarchal Anarchists.

But you have to admit that its very noble of anon to not spread lies about people as gossip and unproven accusations regardless of hairbrained ethical codes or delusional thoughts about psychic self-empowerment.

Were all, most, some or none of the people in this scenario anarchists?

I daresay the organisers were anarchist (little- if not big-A) since otherwise they would either have banned the rapist/called the police, or (if they liked the guy) just left him to it.

this reminds me of fights in highschool, where guys would schedule their fights after school, outside of school grounds, so as not to get in trouble or get expelled. this could be fight from students from the same school, or between different schools.

it also reminds me of the cliched cowboy showdown at noon where one says to the other “this town is not big enough for the two of us”.
sometimes a house is not big enough for two people to co-exist, sometimes a small town, but usually anything bigger than that it’s pretty easy for people who hate each other’s guts to avoid each other. at the most extreme, the world is big enough for the two of them. would you rather they put distance between each other, or force them to coexist until they tear each other apart or only one survives?

but that only makes sense in the context of discussing these fantasy scenarios like bolo. between anarchists, usually the stakes are as low as a heated argument that they rather not have again, so they choose not to have it with each other again. there is no magical plot framing that can force them to try getting along.

Lol, "rumbles" hahahaa, that's like 50's -60's terminology, like the sound of throwing bricks at eachother.

Fuck all this “mean girls”-style shit talking where conflict drags on and on in ways that are slimy, underhanded, cowardly, brutal, festering and protracted. Bring back reconcialitory ritual combat. If mature, adult mediated resolution between shared relations falls apart, then bring back the formal duel with witnesses and an arbiter. Let it be consensual. Let both parties swear under oath to squash the beef no matter who wins or loses and let this explosive rupture put an end to it. Win — Lose — Forgive. Let both parties find new respect for one another as they clash as equals in the holy crucible of bare knuckle MMA. And with this new culture, let there come again a renewed interest in the value of martial arts, strength and conditioning, duty, honor, etc. in general.

There’s a neighborhood in Virginia that had one of the highest murder rates in the country, till this guy came up with an informal neighborhood MMA forum called “street beefs” a few years ago to allow locals to settle their scores. The murder rate in that neighborhood is essentially down to almost zero now. Vice did a documentary about them. You can also find all the Street Beefs up on YouTube, surprisingly. Check em out.

I also prefer open arguments/fights to passive-aggressive bullshit, and this would also be hilarious to watch unfold with idpols and managerial assholes.

Though to play devil's advocate a bit: won't the conflicts always be resolved to the liking of the stronger person/the better fighter? What if one of the plaintiffs (so to speak) is physically disabled, or elderly, or a 4-foot-6 pregnant woman? Like, suppose the conflict is about a man being accused of raping a physically weaker woman using force. Also there's a fair few of the worst idpols and other assholes who are combat-ready, so they could pull the same bullshit backed up by the fact that nobody weaker than them will challenge them. Like, if Mike Tyson says it's racist then it's racist, unless you wanna get pummelled. There's no incentive for the big guys to avoid conflict. I guess people solve this by nominating a "champion", or in more colloquial terms, it's up to the toughest of the young adult men to fight on behalf of the rest of the family/clan ("my dad's bigger than your dad"). But then we're back with patriarchal inequalities within the family/clan.

Also, will everyone be able to draw a line under conflicts after they've fought them out, particularly if they lose? I often find things eat at me even after I've consciously committed to drawing a line under a particular dispute.

The StreetBeefs thing is really inspiring, though I wonder if it worked so well partly because they were already solving their disputes by murdering each other. So persuading them to pass from lethal to non-lethal combat is not a big step.

I've found the majority of anarchist identifying people where I'm from to be so painfully and paralyzingly conflict averse and avoidant to the point that they assume there's some serious problem with even having to witness real conflict between two people, let alone engage in it themselves.

It's hilarious and pathetic and obviously answers any lingering questions you might have about whether deteriorating social conditions will automatically create a bunch of badasses. Apparently the opposite is true?

So that's what anarchist conflict has mostly "looked like" to me. Scared kids being scared.

Elsewhere, I've had great success with conflict resolution! Usually with simple assertiveness, sometimes with proportionate violence and I highly recommend both! Open locked doors with your forehead. The classics are still highly effective when you stfu about your feelings for a few minutes. Time and place for all things. Learn to take the respect from those who fail to offer that which you are reasonably owed. They should offer! So if not, take it.

"the decision to be peaceful is meaningless until you can defend yourself."

Anyway, a lot of the confusion in the @ discourse seems to stem from not even parsing extremely different kinds of conflict?

Like, you working out some hurt feelings amongst friends and acquaintances is pretty fukin different from banishing somebody who deserves it and these are completely different skillsets but it all gets lumped together as "conflict".

As for "restorative justice" and all that hippy crap, I've seen it done well and I'd prefer to live and let live in 9 out of 10 cases BUUUT ...

none of that matters if you or your group lacks the basic ability to ferociously assert and defend boundaries against transgression in the first place. respect is always either given or taken. so take it! LEARN HOW

I largely agree, the degree of conflict-aversion nowadays is fucking infuriating. But yeah: deteriorating social conditions might create badasses if they were based on physical hardship, but the current regime is based on psychological intimidation and dependence (backed-up by physical abuse as threat). First off, people are conditioned from early on, to believe that all rights are earned privileges and to develop a need for approval by authority. Second off, expressions of anger and forthright assertion of rights are Not Acceptable. Decisions are not negotiated, free space is not allowed for the development of hidden transcripts and infrapolitics. Any self-assertion will be met by overwhelming force followed by isolation and humiliation. This functions in childhood as a conditional-love dynamic in which the child's fears of abuse and abandonment are weaponised to produce docility and "compliance". But the current generation carry this through into adulthood. Conflict then carries a high anxiety load because they're expecting imminent annihilation or abandonment. In other words, they're still reacting like a very young child afraid of an angry parent. Third off, people get used to displacing the anger and assertion into passive-aggressive power-games. Add to this a ban on questioning emotional reactions, and an utter failure of current psychologists to see what's happening, and we have a machine for mass-producing extremely conflict-averse people. This is not just specific to the anarchist scene BTW, it's how modern workplaces work, the dominant paradigm of parenting, schooling, the MO of the various social-policy apparatuses, widely used in prisons alongside the traditional brutality, a key mechanism of psychological torture even in the most extreme cases (like Guantanamo)... it works very well at grinding people down, particularly if they're already vulnerable in some way or they've been exposed to this shit since birth. On the other hand, I've seen the cunts in power try this shit on (for example) ex-soldiers once or twice and it has no effect. If you aren't inside this whole mindset where the point is to gain approval from parent-substitutes and conflict carries a threat of annihilation, it all seems rather absurd, though at this point you're likely running up against the extreme violence the system reserves for those who haven't been broken-in.

A Marxist-Leninist, a Trostkyist, a Maoist, an Ultra-left, a liberal and an anarchist walk into a bar.
They get into a big fight, the anarchist dies from multiple stabs.
Trotskyist newspaper headline the next day: "At least one anarchist dead in interanarchist conflict"
Tankies tweet: "All this sectarian in-fighting is why anarchists tear themselves apart"

All this didn't happen and it's very silly. What's a real example of an interanarchist conflict?
I can only think of discursive examples, that anarchist smackdown video that was shared recently comes to mind.

Lots of different scenarios. Some of these are things that happened in my scene(s), some of them things I've read about on the internet, some of them made-up.

Two people are dating, they break up, one (or both) says the other abused them.

Alternatively, two people are dating, they break up, and can't stand each other afterwards.

Someone keeps committing to do things then not following through.

Someone takes a lot from a project but doesn't put anything in.

Other people are unhappy that one person or group seems to be dominating a joint project because they take all the important roles.

One person speaks out for a campaign without consulting the rest of the group.

People have a shouting match because one of them says something the other considers authoritarian, liberal, racist, sexist, etc.

People are living together in a house, intentional community, squat, camp, etc., and some of them are keeping others awake by partying all night. Or, one person always ends up doing the cleaning because nobody else gives a fuck, and they're fed up about it. Or, Mr Eco-Warrior is unhappy that Ms Radical Feminist keeps overfilling the kettle.

Someone keeps stealing from a social centre's bar or cafe till, or from housemates at a squat.

People are running a street play group and disagree about calling the session off because the kids are uncontrollable.

Someone calls someone else an "oppressive" name (such as "retard" or "fag") and the other person takes it very personally, and/or feels the person using the name is bigoted, genocidal, etc.

Someone in a rented place keeps not paying their share of the rent. If they're challenged on this, they call it out as classist/racist ("I just don't have as much money as you guys").

One person won't go to a particular space because their ex goes there and was abusive and it's too triggering/feels unsafe. Alternatively, the ex isn't able to go there because they're banned or they have a restraining order.

Someone has particular needs which other people know about, but keep "forgetting".

People disagree over whether a particular space (social centre, squat, flat...) should be vegan, or whether it's OK to do drugs there.

Someone has a mental breakdown in front of others in the scene and it scares them.

Someone in the scene has called the police after someone else in the scene pulled a gun on them.

Someone falls asleep drunk on the social centre doorstep, and gets aggressive when someone else wakes them up.

Kids from the social centre kids' group keep turning up out of hours, and other people are irritated because they're causing damage or disrupting events.

People are organising a demonstration, mutual aid project, poster or flyer campaign, zine, music event, etc., and they disagree about how it should be done. For example, one person keeps kicking off when everyone else wants to keep it fluffy. Someone from a particular background decides the content is too white or middle-class or male. Some people are fine with working within official regulations but others aren't.

Somebody in a supposedly monogamous relationship has an affair with someone else in the scene, it comes out and they hate each other.

Someone in an intentional community devoted to homeschooling sends their kids to secondary school.

Two anarchists have a fight at a social centre bar because they're both drunk and one of them spills the other's drink.

Three women have accused a man in the local scene of raping them.

People are trying to have a meeting and a homeless person keeps wandering in spouting conspiracy theories, then wandering out again.

One person keeps shouting down other people at meetings.

Several people are suspicious a particular individual is an undercover cop.

I've heard of conflicts being settled in the "fight room" in squats associated with the freight train riders. That's kinda like a duel. I guess what soccer hooligans get up to is kinda a group duel as well, though I think that's just for the thrills. There's also a few indigenous groups who have "hit whoever you like" days. Like, the Guarani just take a few days out to bash each other with sticks. I wouldn't like to advance too much analysis here because it's hard to tell the boundaries between fighting as conflict resolution, as thrill-seeking, as machismo, and as dominance. I'd add there's a literature on "peacebuilding" and "conflict transformation" which comes from the research on civil wars and overlaps with NVC and NVDA stuff. Main takeaways from this AFAIK are the importance of addressing root grievances and unmet needs, and the importance of people feeling they've been listened to and their concerns addressed. As well as the familiar restorative stuff (see: Bob Black on indigenous justice) there seems to be a pattern of (indigenous, medieval, ancient...) people seeing conflicts in terms of cosmic balance, "karma", etc - like there's some invisible harmony of forces which gets imbalanced when a grievance arises, and the balance can only be restored by tipping the balance equally the other way. This is probably where ideas of revenge and justice come from, though at root it's restorative.

I've had lots of experiences of conflict but not many of conflicts being worked-out well. Some of conflicts being patched-up to restore a working relationship with a lower level of trust. Lots of verbal duels which go nowhere because the other side plays dirty. Lots of getting ostracised or banned, especially online. I'm generally banishment-averse but also find it hard to get over grudges. Within the IRL anarchist scene: In the old days people would fall out, then either talk it through and make it up, or just stop working on the same projects. The really serious stuff, they would tend to monitor the person in the way suggested above (not leave them with newbies), and would also tend to warn people if someone had a rep (then it's also up to them to be careful). I remember a lot of ad hoc stuff, people close to a person talking to them and acting as intermediaries. In very extreme cases someone might be banished. Mostly it worked OK. Though, you'd get people self-excluding because they don't like this or that person, are scared of them, etc. I remember a situation in a squat where some assholes took over, physically bullied other people, and everyone else left. Straightforward case where we could have done with someone fighting them. Other cases where there probably should have been conflict resolution but wasn't. Like, someone who thought other people in their squat were doing a bunch of nasty stuff they probably weren't, felt unsafe to stay there but didn't want to give their room up. The others just voted to assume they left and take the room, a friend stood up for them, but it wasn't really resolved.

After the rise of cancel culture, it gets a lot more messy. Started with purges of serial abusers and such, but extended to thought-crimes, rumours and "microaggressions" by mission-creep. It's never worked well and has driven away a lot of people beyond those who were actually purged, mostly without the people who self-exclude feeling any safer. At one point my local scene had a big-shot who tended to dominate everything. He was top of the do-ocracy, physically intimidating, and good at mean-girls shit as well. He had a band of shy inquisitorial mice who took orders from him (based on a mix of idpol and charisma) and couldn't be levered away unless he made the mistake of bullying them too openly. A lot of the conflicts were basically him starting shit to shift things his own way, which often meant his own benefit.

By this time there were formal procedures but no way to use them against him. This carried on until his followers burnt-out, his projects imploded and he fucked off. I've also seen bullshit in intentional communities, with middle-class control-freaks making false accusations and starting rumour-mills against people they fall out with. This happens in the more rulesy places; the others just seem to get the odd asshole who constantly starts conflicts, never really resolves them, infuriates/burns-out everyone else and eventually fucks off.

I also think theres two different kinds of situations, but in contrast to other commentators I think they're hard to tell apart, and they don't hinge on the seriousness of the issue. Among most kinds of people, conflicts can be resolved to some degree by meeting needs, resolving causes of grievances and carrying on. Often people either split into different sub-scenes, compromise, or restrict their cooperation to stuff they agree on. It's rarer to get a full "transformation" where both appreciate each other's positions, though it happens. What makes things more complicated is that there's certain kinds of people who are particularly prone to power-play and manipulation, and are very good at disguising the sources of conflict, confabulating, spinning discourses to their own advantage, and manipulating others into taking their side. At root I think what's going on is they have real grievances directed towards some past person or situation, which get transferred endlessly to new situations and are insoluble because no possible resolution reaches the root grievance; they are also operating through a persona, so no matter how NVC-ish they are, they never show their real selves/needs. The grievances/conflicts involve the persona attempting to establish power; this again is felt as compensation for some past wounding, but is never enough (so there are grounds for compassion with them, but not on the basis of their posited grievances which are always "strategic"). Because of these roots, the conflicts aren't soluble using conflict resolution and these people tend to burn down the projects they're involved in and eventually fuck off, leaving a wasteland. They're chameleons, so it's very hard to tell their bullshit from actual grievances, needs, etc; they will adapt to whatever the prevailing sources of status are (do-ocracy, ultra-radicalism, street cred, fighting prowess, oppression olympics, pacifism, etc). They're the most obvious candidates for banishment in anarchist scenes but also the most likely to try banishing someone. Formal meetings and procedures help these types because they can focus the manipulation on particular times and places. Strong rules or norms against banishing, or high thresholds for doing so, along with informal processes where there isn't a "decision" as such, make things harder for them. Other people in the scene having the confidence and courage to stand up to them, makes things harder. If there's procedures then the various norms of due process, consensus/direct democracy, standards of proof and so on reduce their ability to manipulate procedures (I think this is why these kinds of things have evolved within formal institutions, which also don't want this kind of slash-and-burn warlordism), though often their strategy is to raise the conflict level and burn-out adversaries rather than to actually win a "decision". I suspect there's simple ways to deal with these types, their power dissipates when people see through them and they aren't able to manipulate, at which point they usually fuck off. If they don't, then their ability to exploit or hurt people dissipates because people see through it. They're thus fairly well-checked in persistent small-scale communities with high levels of intimate knowledge of one another. Sadly this doesn't apply either to anarchist scenes or to intentional communities in their current form.

I've also heard there are types of community or group they self-select out of, but don't know the details of how these work.

Surely there is more you can add to this discussion? Maybe a discription in detail about how these work hmm?

I love topics that bring out all the tough guy experts and big brained analysts, who clearly have never been in physical altercations, giving their expert solutions. More mano y mano combat!! Can't even handle their own miserable lives but think they have answers for everybody else.

“how are you any different?”

I have been in many physical altercations and offer no solutions.

What’s wrong with mano y mano fighting? I assume your comment is aimed at the proposal for reconciliatory ritual combat? I don’t think anyone is saying that it should be the end all be all, but rather one tool within a larger depository of avenues to achieve conflict resolution. Maybe you could elaborate on what your deal is? As for your assumptions: I actually train and spar constantly and have about 2 or 3 serious altercations a year on average. Not that that makes me an “expert” or the “the toughest dude in the world, roar!” Lmao I am well aware that there are others who are leaps and bounds above me in the martial hierarchy, but my point about duelling still stands. I guess you’re probably one of those passive aggressive weaklings and the altercations you’ve experienced were more... cat-fight tier?

If you attack me I'm gonna retaliate with a peaceful demo against you with my Friends and the whole leftist crowd from college and we gonna SMASH windows!!! Got that? So you'd better not mess with US.

Such an unfortunate saying. Have you ever seen two cats fight? It is quite viciouso although I wouldn’t think it resolved conflict in an anarchic way.

Did you see the video of the Portland antifascist and fascist shake hands after dueling a year or so ago? Is this what you have in mind?

"Portland antifascist and fascist shake hands after dueling " Hums... I'd be really surprised it's for real. Neither camps are about shaking hands with the other after a ritualized fight, duh. Didn't see the video but this reads like liberal BS set up.

Never again try to fool people living far away from Portland into thinking you're bullshitting with claims about videos without posting the actual video. As if... everyone around the planet's supposed to know what's going on in liberal shithole Portland.

What happened here was a contract bout, where any side has taken an engagement to fuck off if one of them loses the fight. It's a stupid thing to do in the context of such ideologically-charged fight, and also very early high school type of street fight.

You can’t recover from this, 17:39. You got clowned. Best walk away and save what little dignity you can. The lesson here is don’t front like you know what’s up when you don’t.

So here's a quote of the original anon that was so much talking about what they don't know:

"I'd be really surprised it's for real. Neither camps are about shaking hands with the other after a ritualized fight, duh. Didn't see the video but this reads like liberal BS set up."

Where is the pretense of knowing what they don't?

Spend more time outside of a screen, plz.

Huh, interesting. I never heard about that. No, RRC is intended for people who share a culture and live in the same community. It’s designed to ritualistically purge strong negative feelings between folk who have to share space and for whom unresolved conflict would just be disruptive to their situations.

That said, I do think the fascists and the anti fascists should have intermittent team-based MMA competitions similar to the multi-athlete combat sports which are popular in Russia, so they can purge their mutual enmity, set aside their differences and focus on the REAL scourge among us all...

I’m referring, of course, to the centrist.

Centrists are scum who stand for nothing and have no convictions. Centrists, normies, moderates, liberals/conservatives, whatever you want to call them, are a MENACE.

Society needs to change. As radicals, we do all the heavy lifting in terms of moving the Overton window while the centrists just drag their feet, tiptoeing this way or that as it suits them. What this has resulted in is a political situation that never changes. We move back and forth, left and right, up and down, and get nowhere. Too many people aren’t picking a side. Too many people are sitting on a fence, politically, and we don’t have much time.

We must, metaphorically, burn the fence down.

Throw a brick through the Overton window! If all the extremists stopped fighting each other and fought the centrists instead, we could actually maybe get rid of them all in a scheme I’m calling: “the moderate solution”.

Listen, I’m not saying we should “[REDACTED] all centrists”. I’m saying we should START [REDACTED] all centrists... in minecraft, of course. Basically all you have to do is find someone, ask them a political question and if they give you a wishy washy type of answer, you [REDACTED] them.

Now, some of you may be thinking “Ohh, that sounds a lot like genocide :( “ and some of you may be thinking “Ohh, that sounds a lot like genocide :) “. Don’t worry, it’s not genocide. Think of it as a more palatable politicide, or more accurately: “centricide”.

How it works: as more and more centrists get [REDACTED], more and more of them will become increasingly polarized until all the centrists have become extremists themselves or have gotten [REDACTED]. Once there are no centrists left there will just be a giant black hole where the Overton window used to be. That’s when all the extremists get sucked into that void and THEN get to battle it out for supremacy until only one ideology remains, and then we can finally stop culture warrin’ and get to fixing problems... like Climate Change and stuff.

Some might say “but Anon, we shouldn’t get everyone to agree with each other” and “Anon, differences of opinion are a good thing!” and etc.

Those people, are centrists. And we’re gonna [REDACTED] them.

Until then: every Extreme! on the same Team! Forward! Radical anti-centrism!

...

(lol jk guys)

Not sure how seriously to take this, but the center is as totalitarian as the "extremes" nowadays, and getting rid of the Overton window and especially the taboos on "violence" and direct action (including strikes, NVDA, road blocking, etc) would benefit anarchists a lot. Main difficulty: neither the fascists nor the idpols (who are probably the majority on our side now) want to destroy the Overton window, just to shift it to their own advantage. Things get even worse if the far-right especially manage to shift it their way.

The centrist ideology at the moment is "democracy consolidation", which is basically, run the state as a multi-party variant of a one-party state. Elites agree to transition power among different elite fractions, in return for agreeing to never challenge the institutional structure or support extra-institutional direct action of any kind (whether that's armed opposition, riots, NVDA, occupations, strikes, etc). Everyone in the elite must bootlick the police and courts, condemn direct action and "violence", and concede gracefully. The role of this ideology is fourfold: firstly, take all effective power away from social movements and dismantle the previous power-coalitions which gave some rights to unions etc; secondly, depoliticise the police and courts and let them do what they like; thirdly, impose totalitarian social measures under the guise of "defending democracy"; and fourthly, concentrate power in the hands of *only* the elite, even while the non-elite keep the right to vote. The usual discursive trick is to associate any dissent with danger and blame all the risk on protesters, who aren't respecting the utter disempowerment of the population as "for your own safety". It's a totalitarian ideology and a totalitarian regime-type and needs to be fought as such, and this is a much bigger deal today than whether some Trumpies scare some libs in the Capitol.

Also, we do occasionally get situations which cross left/right divides, notably the Arab Spring (Islamists with liberals, leftists, anarchists), the Hong Kong revolt, and the Yellow Vests. Sometimes the left/right cleavage echoes the use of sectarian/ethnic divide-and-rule in places like Lebanon, Nigeria, and Northern Ireland. Convincing as many people as possible that, no, "violence" is not "always wrong" (with the hidden exception of pig and army and capitalist violence of course), and no, NVDA is not "unacceptable" is absolutely vital to get out this current shithole. Even if it only goes as far as: workers have a right to strike, people have a right to stop governments breaking laws, people have a right to exercise basic rights even when banned from doing so, people have a right to self-defense when attacked by pigs - already this is a context far more favorable to building lived autonomy.

Lol,
"have about 2 or 3 serious altercations a year on average. Not that that makes me an “expert” or the “the toughest dude in the gym" lololol
Hey, I've been there done that, sooo gleeful to have moved on from the binary warfare mindset after reading Tzu's The Art of War.

2-3 serious fights per year might also indicate particular proneness to piss everyone off, or to resort to fighting. Also 2-3 is not many if someone does Black Bloc or Antifa.

Yes, if it was me, I'd look inwards and consider what it actually is which is raising my hackles to the point of fighting, and then intuit to my inner core values and code of behavior to pursue an alternative course of action, or just walking away with honor (not looking silly)

for a bunch of those tbh lmao, but nowadays I’ve chilled out some, and so far this year nothing has happened, but part of that is probably the pandemic making people less prone to get in each other’s faces, idk.

Oh and I definitely lost a few of them too btw lmao. For the love of god LEARN HOW TO SPRAWL bc some of these mfs out there have backgrounds in western-style wrestling and their takedown game is 100%

comparing monks to anarchists
"the abbot and monastery resort to prayer for the wayward monk, and if divine intervention fails, the
monk is excluded from the monastery. The consequence of disobedience is removal from the brotherhood.
When a monk offends another brother, he lays prostrate on the ground until the offended brother
blesses him, marking not just the enforcement of a broken rule but also the repairing of a damaged
relationship. The bottom line seems that obedience to the rule must be enforced internally: if you don’t
want to belong, no one is going to make you."

I guess maybe we can see part of why the @ discourse around conflict is so impoverished?

Maybe there's more smart analysis out there that tends to get drowned out? haha

useful conflict analysis that isn't just chest thumping bravado or subculture aesthetics being mistaken for skills and capacity?

but in all fairness to @news, these conversations are almost always bad without specific details. that's been my experience anyway.

> EAT RAW MEAT IN PUBLIC
> WALK AROUND SHIRTLESS
> DO LEG CALISTHENICS
> JUMP INTO A COLD ASS LAKE
> SCREAM RANDOMLY AT THE TOP OF YOUR LUNGS ABOUT SHIT THAT PISSES YOU THE FUCK OFF AS PEOPLE PASS YOU BY FROM TIME TO TIME
> AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!

halfway anarchists running scenes like halfway houses
shunning real ones to lay in bed with communist spouses
mutual aid red like Kool-Aid drank the rhetoric espouses
bigger tent than FEMA, there's no relief from this disaster
bigger front ANTIFA, schema for selling out faster
front if you want, kid, lay on your back
I don't fake anarchy, you know I bring it to you live
anarchy in the projects—my projectuality is what, kid?
you talk a good one, but you don't want it
you're all up in the game and don't deserve to be a player
don't make me have to call your name out
your crew is featherweight, my gunshots'll make you levitate
drama played by teens, but this conflict is old
and when the things get for real, my warm heart turns cold
another commie deceased, another story gets told
it ain't nothin' really, ayo Dun, spark the Philly
so I can get my mind off these paperback fillers
why they still alive? I don't know, go figure
meanwhile black anarchy the realness and foundation
if I die, I couldn't choose a better vocation
when the slugs penetrate, you feel a burnin' sensation
you're gettin' closer to Mao in a tight situation now
take these words home and think it through
or the next rhyme I write might be about you

son, they shook
'cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
scared to death, scared to look, they shook
'cause ain't no such things as halfway crooks
scared to death, scared to look
livin' in mud or victorious in the sun
there's numerous ways you can choose to earn funds
so some get shot, locked down, and turn nuns
cowardly hearts and straight up shook ones, shook ones
they ain't a crook, son, they just a shook one

criminal minds beyond recognition
i'm buggin', diggin' my ways out of holes by hustlin'
get that loot, kid, you know my function
'cause long as I'm alive, I'ma live illegal

If you are frightened MF go to church!

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