TOTW: Recruitment Drive!

If you’re talking about the recent crimethinc and IGD pieces (I’m sure there are other examples of the same genre or writing and activity) I agree that it’s very cringey but not really any more so than what they are doing the other 99% of the time. It reflects how many anarchists do politics in much the same shallow, spectacular/subjective/“cultural” way that most political types do any kind of politics in the US, shaped by mass culture and middle class backgrounds. It revolves around attracting people through emotional appeals, idealistic rhetoric, voluntarist demonstrations of goodwill (“solidarity and/or charity”) and then keeping people interested via whatever crumbs of “community” can be doled out in the context of trying to simulate little islands of utopia inside this sick world. It’s no surprise that given the relatively extreme circumstances that anarchists especially face (conflict with the state, each other, and society in general, not to mention high if unwritten standards of personal ethics) the new recruits tend to strike shallow roots and leave within a few years, while the biggest wingnuts hang on to become the pillars of the sad revolving door activist scenes they preach from.

It’s interesting you bring up Dupont; whatever you have to say about leftist vampirism, to play devils advocate, at least they have a goal. Dupont are not just anarchists but also communists, even if nihilist ones, and they have clearly spent a lot of time in the trenches as well as in their armchairs studying and refining their thoughts. Granted those thoughts tended toward the esoteric after a while and I couldn’t really follow it. But while there are big issues with prescriptivism/prefiguration, at this point I have a lot more respect and a lot more time for hearing someone out who has actually put in the time and effort to understand what they’re trying to do, how to get somewhere, and what the whole fucking point actually is, than the bookfair set and activist busybodies who again, are usually just shouting about whatever’s in the news to try to attract fresh meat to their “radical communities” because they have nothing else to offer. It’s sort of incredible to me how many so called radical extremists are just doing a more extreme version of the liberal who runs around trying to slap band aids on everything so they can feel like a good person and show their face at the book club or cafe or whatever. Or again, it would be incredible if not for the fact that sort of shallow bullshit is exactly how American culture has prepared us to approach politics, and the many material as well as spectacular reasons that channel people into the mindset of activist urgency.

John Zerzan was right. Cynic of surrender, the lot of you.

You've taken anarchist anti-politics, swallowed it whole, processed it with much churning indigestion, and have shat it back into the world in an entirely unrecognizable turd-form. You've somehow managed to turn the 'militant refusal of the compartmentalization of daily life into "politics"' into a refusal of daily life that involves doing anything beyond your smelly armchairs. When did the ideas of mutual aid and acts of care fall out of your brains and become a topic of seething ressentiment?

electoral disillusionment is a precipitating factor in rising social anger. because the spontaneous upsurge of millions of people is an essential component (but not the only component) of the insurrection, it makes sense to relate to widespread ideas about the world when they are in a period of fluctuation. this is actually quite basic, and no amount of nihilo-liberal "everyday life"-ism can conceal the historically-justified need to communicate with disenfranchised people. hidden just beneath the TOTW is actually contempt for everyday people, refusal to engage with their theories and concerns, and resentement toward anyone who is attempting to do so. perhaps the destruction of capitalism will emerge as a consequence of its own contradictions, or, better yet, of the quirky relationships and ideas of very small groups living in a handful of coastal cities. but i dont think so.

I'm thinking of forming The Seething With Ressentiment Party, basically, a dictatorship of common folk who follow leaders and can't think for themselves. Any thoughts?

"I am struck by the anxiety of anticipating the milieu's sad return to the big tent"

There's already a big tent... It's Palestine. You hardly can escape it if you're anywhere west or south of Germany, not at least without being labeled & profiled as a "Zionist" or traitor. That monarchist/nationalist flag is one hell of a drug.

Meet the Old Boss, same as the Old Boss. Trumpster just appointed a Jewish gangster as ambassador to France, home of unwashed postmodernist "philosophers." The convicted felons son bangs The Donald's shiksa daughter in the name of Hashem. Mostly swamp critters in the incoming admin. Drill baby drill! What a sick sack of ass is politics.

Any real anarchist hates all politics. Just like we hate government. I see myself as a modern mountain man. They lived off the land and married indigenous women. It's in my blood as descendant of original colonial settlers and also Native American. We must return to a wild state as much as we can.

Except -

"The land" is now Da Ruins. Reseed the scorched earth of industrial society with our sex, our violence, with righteous anger not agriculture. Fuck the mega machine. Sabotage and burn. Fuck politics and isms. Just LIVE.

Like our brute ancestors on the veldt ....

"We often decry the vampiric opportunism of socialist parties and progressive campaigns that feed upon the energy of the newly-radicalized masses, but is that a rejection of their methods or simply envy that their ground-game [...]"

the writer of the prompt seems to assume the answer is obviously the latter... that's incredibly damning? wtf ... if we're anarchists, it would be the method that we reject. if we're failed authoritarians and bitter about it, we would be envious.

sort yourselves accordingly and if you're just jealous of the big tent, mainstream left's efficacy at mass manipulation ... what a strange time in history to feel any envy of those toxic, lobotomized losers ...

Towards the end, we can see the inherent theoretical weakness of The Anti-Politics Canard

I don't use this "anti-politics" in my analysis, so i'm not forced through bad reasoning to constantly wonder if i'm sufficiently "escaping" or "negating" politics with everything i do. instead, i see politics in everything, everywhere, all the time, with special emphasis on group decision making as it scales up. you can't escape it except maybe by becoming a hermit, which is fine. don't blame ya, if so!

antithetical definitions can't tell you what to DO beyond opposition because how could they? they rely on the thing being opposed to define themselves, so they suck for building, dreaming, longterm strategizing, etc.

the term "anti-politics" was popularized by an anthropologist from stanford, talking about the contradictions of 90s capitalist liberalism as if people hadn't been saying these things for centuries already. it reeks of populism, it seems to be an intentional rejection of much better and older theories AND ... anarchists don't need it at all because we're the official anti-state position?!

so if anti-politics just means like, elections, then yeah, we're anti-state so therefore, obviously we wouldn't help the state legitimize itself by participating in their bullshit sham. that's a very old idea, nothing new or interesting there

and here, "anti-politics" has drifted all the way to being openly jealous of the biggest losers within that "politics"? what in the actual fuck ... what is this? who wrote this? get help. talk to smarter people. i'm sad for you. srsly...