ANews Podcast 465 – 5.1.26

From ANews Podcast

Welcome to the ANews podcast. This podcast covers anarchist activity, ideas, and conversations from the previous week.

What’s New This Week
written by chisel and read by chisel and unprepared

Discussion of the Week: Maximalist Anarchism / Anarchist Maximalism by John Moore from “Anarchist Speculations” published by Little Black Cart, 2016
a conversation between Madison and Vic

Sound editing by rocinante
music samples:
Barbi Recanati – PUDIMOS TENERLO TODO
Safety Trance, Arca – the beat drops
Barbi Recanati – PUDIMOS TENERLO TODO

Comments

rocinante Sun, 05/03/2026 - 18:33

Hiyo Madison and Vic,

Thanks for the podcast chat, it was a good listen and intriguing conversation! I like the choice of the John Moore text, which is a text that I have also enjoyed and recommend that anarchists read, or read anything by John Moore.

I listened to it earlier this morning and just leaving this comment now, so I forgot the exact wording mentioned, but there was a comment towards the end about discovering or creating more anarchist text about “maximum anarchy” or something like that. I wanted to share first this text by M.Isidine that Moore references at the start of their text:

M. Isidine - The Problems of Tomorrow
published 1919
Part I — The Reasons for our “Maximalism”
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/m-isidine-the-problems-of-tomor…
There is an older translation on the library of it as well, if you’d like another translation.

Also around that same time, there was a Spanish language literary movement, known as the Ultraists, which I find related to this idea of maximalismo. This included a young Jorge Luis Borges (of short story fame) who would go around wheat-pasting his maximum ultraist text around the city at night. Unfortunately for Borges and friends, he later moved on from such things, desired to burn all his old texts from this period, and as he grew older became a conservative, an enemy of the anarchists. Texts from this literary movement might be of interest to read, or earlier Borges texts who I still have a soft spot for, even if they grew up to be an adult that sucks.

And finally, back in 2004 CrimethInc. wrote a text called “Maximum Ultraism” that I think can be related to this entire conversation. I remember it being one of my favorite reads back in 2004. You can read the PDF here:

Maximum Ultraism
from “Harbinger 5: For Anyone Who Has Ever Seen a Smokestack and Winced”
published 2004, text on page 6 of 7
https://cdn.crimethinc.com/assets/journals/harbinger-5/harbinger-5_scre…

funmaxxing non-haiku
fun or death,
have fun or die trying

xoxo,
- rocinante

pessimism (not verified) Tue, 05/05/2026 - 16:25

my anarchism is neither an "if only", nor a "what if", it's a "this is why we can't have nice things"

maximalist in its critique, nothingist in its proposal

it's basically just complaining, mostly as a mental note, infrequently expressed

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