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Via FillerPGH

Communique from a UPitt Anarchy affiliate, originally published to UPitt Anarchy on 04.07.23

We exist in a place of contradiction. Obviously, our counter-information site is a propaganda outlet. Who exactly are we propagandizing to, though? By situating ourselves in direct opposition to the institution of schooling in general and the Institution of the University of Pittsburgh in particular, we already alienate a vast majority of students and staff. Obviously, we are aware of this. We would love to sway them, but by no means do we expect to, nor is it our intention to.

UPitt Anarchy is not anything in particular. To call it a club is wholly inaccurate. UPitt Anarchy does not have a list of members, nor does it have a leader. The discussion group has consistent participants; students and community members, both within and outside of the anarchist milieu. Just the same, it has visitors who come once, ask questions, and never return. All of them talking in a circle about their perspectives and whatever that week’s reading is are UPitt Anarchy in that moment. The website is maintained by about ten people, who post submissions that we receive anonymously, as well as advertising whatever events people choose to organize with “UPitt Anarchy” on the flyer. We are also UPitt Anarchy. The stickers and flyers are put up around campus by roughly three dozen people at their own discretion; we print a shitload, and people take them and put them up. There very well could be- and probably are- more, and I genuinely wouldn’t know. Lots of people like putting stickers on things, anarchists and non-anarchists alike. Regardless of how down they actually are with us, when they put a UPitt Anarchy sticker on something, they are UPitt Anarchy. Fifteen or so people (probably more) have the login to the UPitt Anarchy social media pages, and they all post at their own discretion. These groups overlap, but they are distinct. They are our affiliates to various degrees; they are all UPitt Anarchy, but none of them are UPitt Anarchy all of the time.So, any time an anarchist on campus does anarchy, they’re UPitt Anarchy?If they choose to be! Pittsburgh has a lot of anarchists. The University itself probably has more than the average large university, but by no means do we have a large presence as a milieu outside of certain academic departments. Active “crews” with a visible presence may be few and far-between, but there are a good number of self-identified anarchists among the student body. Lots of them don’t like UPitt Anarchy! Many of those outside of our milieu, (henceforth referred to as “the uninitiated,”) seem to be under the impression that any visibly anarchist act on campus is UPitt Anarchy by default, which is untrue. However, UPitt Anarchy is loosely organized enough that one of us could do something- creative or destructive- acting as UPitt Anarchy, and none of the rest of us would know. UPitt Anarchy does not claim responsibility for actions in general. I will say on a personal note, however, that I have heard assumptions among the uninitiated that certain visibly anarchist activities were the work of our collective, when I know that to be untrue.What’s the deal with the reading group?We host discussion groups at the local infoshop, and anyone is welcome to come. It is not meant to be a space where we proselytize or “recruit.” The discussion is a social event. Most of our discussions are centered around particular readings. These readings are not texts that we abide by dogmatically and seek to teach people. We are not teaching people theory. Most of what we read isn’t really even “theory,” and a fair bit of it is only of vague relevance to anarchy. The point of having a reading is to engage with it, and to discuss. Personally, I don’t like most of the readings. It has actually become a pretty regular occurrence that we will have a reading that no one present at the discussion group actually agrees with the position of. Until recently, our readings were determined by a jar that anyone, in or outside of the group, could add titles of readings to, which were selected at random from a hat.The discussion group itself functions, more than anything else, as a social space for ideas to be exchanged, with the intent of also getting like-minded people to get to know each other. We aim in part to be a jumping-off point for those interested in living and acting autonomously.So, what do any of you actually do?We, as individuals and a loosely-associated collective, act according to our desires. None of our close affiliates are only “being UPitt Anarchy” when we “do anarchy.” Often, we “do anarchy” as UPitt Anarchy in ways that go intentionally unnoticed by others. As a collective situated within the post-left milieu, many of us are habitual criminals in various ways; to live autonomously in this way requires a degree of secrecy. To the uninitiated: most of the time, you won’t know when or how we act. Security culture is of utmost importance, and loose lips sink ships.Why do you favor chaos and disruption over expressing your worldview civilly in the free marketplace of ideas?As agents of our own free will, we reject the framing of the question. Our contribution to the discourse comes in the form of chaos and disruption. We seek no peace or civility with people who call for our deaths, or who seek to restrict our autonomy. They are our enemies, and to do so only benefits them. It isn’t that we don’t want to listen. We hear them loud and clear. This is simply how we respond.Why won’t you talk to the press?Our actions and our words speak for themselves. The press, by and large, seek to discredit the efforts of anarchists. The construction of the “outside agitator” narrative around anarchist involvement in the George Floyd uprising is evidence enough of this.

When Queer anarchists appeared at the rally for trans rights in front of the Cathedral of Learning on March 24th with a zine spread and a banner reading “These faggots kill fascists,” Pitt News “journalist” Punya Bhasin tweeted, “The Pitt anarchy club just showed up to the trans rights rally with a sign containing a homophobic slur. They passed out pamphlets about ‘surveillance and fascism.’ They were swiftly met with trans rights supporters outnumbering the size of the anarchy club counter protests.” This is an obvious lie, and an attempt to discredit UPitt Anarchy as transphobes using an action carried out by trans anarchists who were not acting as UPitt Anarchy. We don’t need to talk to the press for them to lie about us. It is not in their interest to portray us favorably.Do you really attempt to be taken seriously?No! We engage with the theater of politics and public discourse as the clownshows that they are. They are frivolous institutions that are granted undue social legitimacy and we will engage with them frivolously. In some ways, UPitt Anarchy itself is a meme. We take anarchism seriously, but we don’t really take ourselves seriously. We’re called “UPitt Anarchy,” for fuck’s sake!

An Anarchist Critique of “UPitt Anarchy is Cringe!!”

Posted by Filler Collective on April 10, 2023April 10, 2023

[Anonymous submission received on 04.09.23]

[Editor’s note: “An Anarchist Critique of ‘UPitt Anarchy is Cringe!!'” was originally titled: “I wasted 10 minutes writing a critique these kids are probably too caught up in their edgy identities to even read.”]

What are they even saying here?

“It’s not a tendency. It’s not a group. We don’t agree on anything in particular. I don’t even like the writing. Everything is done by some amorphous group of people. I could be anyone of 3 different people right now even! There’s not that many “crews” but there’s so many self-identified anarchists around.

You think this is text, but it’s actually just random pixels. I may look like a human but I’m just a collection of particles. Anarchy isn’t a social movement but more like some people bumping into eachother at a party and going “bro? bro!”. I don’t know what I’m saying I’m so fucking high haha You think you heard my voice but it was just a momentary happenstance chatter of birds on the wind. You think you’re in a room talking to anarchists right now but actually you’re already at the end of your life on your deathbed. You have no loved ones so the one nurse on staff is watching your body push out its last prolonged groan as your brain floods with chemicals and you’re hallucinating being young and social at a party right now. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust…”

When Aragorn! came to town on his final tour, he was urging people to put skin in the game. Own something. Define it. Name it. Defend it.

Anti-organizationalist stuff is like jazz. It’s one thing for a skilled and trained musician to just let themselves go and cry through their instrument, forgetting all they’ve learned, because if they’re *really skilled*, their prowess is so ingrained that it’s evident in everything they do; and by trying to forget it, all they really do is push themselves out of old stolid habits. But the problem is that it takes a trained ear to even hear the difference between what they’re doing and actual random wailing that a novice would do. Jazz died in part because of that. Promoters could just pay any schmuck off the street to hit random keys and blow as hard as they could on a horn and enough of the audience couldn’t tell a difference that there was no reason to pay bigger bills for a real great musician anymore.

It’s one thing to be not defining anything as part of a particular strategy in a particular context. It’s another thing to not define anything because you can’t, but to then own it and act like your ignorance is a practiced stance.

Wake me up when there’s a platformist group in pgh again. Then there will be a reason for anti-organizationalism. In the meantime, anti-organizationalism is just an anarchronism. Fighting yesteryear’s battles, without having even been there to understand why they started in the first place.

The problem today isn’t an over-definition, it’s a complete and utter lack of definition which just creates an open field into which people bring all of the pre-existing ideology of the professional managerial class. All politics is just harm reduction. There’s no material changes in society to define as a goal, aside from harm reduction, because they don’t know what society is. They just were handed off from the care of their parents to the guardianship of the college administrators. The biggest oppression in their life is that they got officials telling them when to go to class so they’re against authorities and against rules. Then they pick up the texts from 15 years ago that they have no context for and try mimic the same stances.

It’s all cosplay of shit that doesn’t matter anymore.

They’re picking out a battle that was already won. My managers already ask for my pronouns in meetings. MSNBC editors are hip to colonialism. Startup founders agree that unions are anti-revolutionary. Non-profit orgs encourage breakout “affinity groups.” Coca-cola clapped back on twitter at people who saw riots during BLM protests as “too violent.”

There’s nothing anti-authoritarian here in any deeper, meaningful way. It’s against the perennial shadow of the In Loco Parentis guardian, but that’s just a natural expression of childhood (that our society prolongs because acquiring professional credentials requires such an extended period of training).

It’s not a counterculture, it’s a triumphalism. They’re cosplaying and singling out the backwoods hicks and rural christians who haven’t had the training in professional-managerial speech that college kids get (or rather, they’re singling out the public figures who try to corral such hicks into a voting block).

But there will always be hicks. And the professional classes will always have a fetishized identity group to define and yell at people trying to corral hicks about.

Pitt Anarchy is just consumer politics as usual. It’s the status quo.

– a millennial anarchist. go ahead, call me a boomer

You can send your report-backs, zine submissions, critiques, graffiti/action photos, demo tapes, hate mail, & memes to

Filler_PGH@protonmail.com

We’ll try to get back to you in a reasonable amount of punk time.

Send reports in email form, as an attachment, or better yet, on an easy to use (and free) Riseup Pad or CryptPad.

Comments

anon (not verified) Thu, 04/13/2023 - 16:21

Hilarious that the implicitly "anti-organizational" and hyper individualist Filler PGH is pearl clutching this much over the precise brand of ideology they've been hawking for as long as they've been around. Play stupid games...

anon (not verified) Thu, 04/13/2023 - 23:57

In reply to by anon (not verified)

filler pgh is not hyper individualist, you must have them confused for someone else. they are autonomists. also, they’re not pearl clutching, this is all a meme

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/16/2023 - 20:22

In reply to by anon (not verified)

I think upitt@ wrote the first part trying to do the make fun of yourself before someone else can make fun of you thing, someone else wrote back to say no you actually are cringe, and filler is hosting the back and forth because it’s an anarchist discourse relevant to their local scene

anon (not verified) Mon, 04/17/2023 - 03:56

In reply to by anon (not verified)

Of this debate, then read the arguments back-and-forth from there, this seems to be a debate about platforming and something "queer", ijdfk...

Maybe i'll try to piece all this together later, it's 6:55 am where i live, these people live a few hours srive from me, lol

anon (not verified) Mon, 04/17/2023 - 09:12

In reply to by anon (not verified)

this doesn't seem that hard to understand to me. upitt is saying that, like other spontaneous models, people are upitt when they do things in the name of upitt, that doesn't mean that the actions (or the people) will necessarily agree with each other, that there are problems with organizations so upitt both is and isn't one (it has a name, but not a lot of coherence)... and so on, right?

and the response is, that's too incoherent.

anon (not verified) Mon, 04/17/2023 - 12:04

In reply to by anon (not verified)

We host discussion groups at the local infoshop, and anyone is welcome to come. It is not meant to be a space where we proselytize or "recruit." The discussion is a social event. Most of our discussions are centered around particular readings. These readings are not texts that we abide by dogmatically and seek to teach people. We are not teaching people theory. Most of what we read isn't really even "theory," and a fair bit of it is only of vague relevance to anarchy. The point of having a reading is to engage with it, and to discuss. Personally, I don't like most of the readings. It has actually become a pretty regular occurrence that we will have a reading that no one present at the discussion group actually agrees with the position of. Until recently, our readings were determined by a jar that anyone, in or outside of the group, could add titles of readings to, which were selected at random from a hat.

So basically, this is just a reading group from the University of Pittsburgh who loosely supports some anti-fa type street actions, but seem to be some chill reading group that i would have liked to have been a part of when I was originally interested in the LBC books.

It's pretty clear to me from the communique that they have been targeted by some sort of non-anarchist transgender support group, to me it's sad that a lot of transgender activists now a days are just these hostile bullies who call out anything that seemingly denigrates their identities. An example is the whole Dave Chappelle fiasco that took place over the past the couple of years. I personally am a fan of Dave Chapelle, he knows how to make me laugh...i pirate his performances and watch them on Netflix. None of the performances that these trans folks targeted struck me as being hateful of transexuals or "transphobic". To me he is harder on white people and black people, to society i am a white male. HE MAKES FUN OF EVERYONE! Another example of this lame activism style is how recently he made fun of Kanye West for his dumb anti-semitic rantings, but for some reason all these lefty culture warriors got on the horn and started attacking him for being an anti-semite. So much disgusting taking of someone's words out of context and weaponizing politics in an ugly way. If comedians make can't make fun of people, then wtf? Just throw your phone in the trash. I personally have had issues with a few of Dave Chapelle's and Louis C.K.'s stunts, but they still make me laugh, so I'm still open to hearing their jokes.

And Filler DIstro, responding to Upitt anarchy in the above communique, you seem to be missing the purpose of opposing organizational politics. Genuine organizations, with corporate hierarchies, communist intelligencia, NGOs, nation states...do more harm to us and the planet than just angry/violent individuals can. Maybe you are just hosting the confused response, idk. I personally have interest in some of the stuff you do online [as Filler Distro] because you are from pittsburg and i like hardcore punk and metal, and feel anarchist most of the time.

However, i don't want to get involved with the anti-fa politics stuff, it's appealing at times but i'm getting older and i just want to have a good time, drink my beer, play music, watch Dave Chapelle, think about what i can do to feed myself while not submitting wholesale to corporate culture and media. That's all. I personally had an easier time reasing the OG message on the UPitt anarchy page, the text on @news is kinda cluttered and is more frustrating for me to read with my astigmatism in my eyes:

https://upittanarchy.org/

anon (not verified) Sun, 04/16/2023 - 20:23

“Then they pick up the texts from 15 years ago that they have no context for and try mimic the same stances.”

Sadly I think a lot of those texts have similar contexts.

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