Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Leroy Maisiri - Burkina Faso: Revolution, authoritarianism and the crisis of African emancipation politics

 

at 5/8/25 11:08pm

Author: Leroy MaisiriTitle: Burkina Faso: Revolution, authoritarianism and the crisis of African emancipation politicsDate: 8 May 2025Source: Retrieved on 2025-05-09 from <mg.co.za/thought-leader/2025-05-08-burkina-faso-revolution-authoritarianism-and-the-crisis-of-african-emancipation-politics> There was a time when Robert Mugabe stood as the towering figure of African liberation. Raised fists, Pan-Africanist banners, and chants of self-rule marked Zimbabwe’s emergence from white settler colonialism. Mugabe, like many of his generation, represented the victory of the oppressed against imperial domination. But history, with its ruthless clarity, would later mark him not only as a liberator but as an authoritarian. His early heroism curdled into repression, corruption, and the suffocation of dissent. This trajectory is not unique to Mugabe, nor to Zimbabwe. Across the African continent, a grim pattern repeats itself: liberation movements, once anchored in popular struggle and dreams of self-determination, morph into bureaucratic, militarised and often repressive regimes. Today, a new face of revolution is emerging in Burkina Faso under the youthful and charismatic Captain Ibrahim Traoré. His image is cast in the mould of Thomas Sankara, evoking the anti-imperialist spirit of the 1980s, and his language is resolute: “This is not a democracy. This is a revolution.” But what kind of revolution dismisses democracy? What are we to make of yet another seizure of power by men in uniform, claiming to act on behalf of the people? If history is to be our teacher, then we must ask: can a revolution built on authoritarian foundations ever birth true liberation? Or are we merely witnessing the replay of a tragic cycle in which the people are always betrayed? In answering this, anarchist theory offers a sobering and necessary critique, particularly the principle of “prefiguration”. Loosely this means what we want our society to become in the future is literally shaped by what we do today. Therefore the means to transform society and used to achieve liberation must reflect the liberated society we seek to build. Dictatorship in the name of the people is not a contradiction; it is a betrayal. Africa’s liberation paradox In 1980, Mugabe took the reins of an independent Zimbabwe amid jubilation. A fierce critic of apartheid South Africa and a stalwart of African nationalism, Mugabe embodied the hopes of a continent still shaking off colonial chains. His government expanded access to education and health, undertook land redistribution (albeit slowly at first), and positioned Zimbabwe as a regional beacon. Yet beneath the surface of national pride lurked the seeds of authoritarian rule. The Gukurahundi massacres in Matabeleland state-directed violence that left thousands dead was the first major crack in the façade. By the 1990s and 2000s, the promise had largely faded. Economic mismanagement, systematic attacks on the opposition, the use of war veterans as enforcers and rigged elections turned Zimbabwe into a cautionary tale. Mugabe had become the very figure he once fought against: a ruler deaf to the cries of his people. What went wrong? The problem was not merely Mugabe’s personality or age, but a structural one: a centralised, hierarchical, militarised politics that concentrated power in the hands of a few. The masses, once mobilised for liberation, were now reduced to spectators of state-led nationalism. The logic of domination, inherited from colonial rule, remained intact. The African continent is filled with liberation leaders who later ossified into authoritarian rulers. In the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Laurent-Désiré Kabila rose to power after deposing the infamous Mobutu Sese Seko. Hailed as a reformer, he quickly silenced dissent, suspended democratic institutions, and entrenched cronyism. In Eritrea, Isaias Afwerki’s led the Eritrean People’s Liberation Front (EPLF) to independence from Ethiopia in 1993, since then the government has abolished elections, outlawed dissent, and turned the country into a prison state. In Uganda, Yoweri Museveni, once a progressive voice with an ambitious reform agenda who came into power in 1986 after a guerrilla war, promising to end dictatorship and restore democracy has clung to power for decades, repressing opposition and manipulating constitutional term limits. What binds these cases is not simply the betrayal of early ideals but the structure of the revolutionary movements themselves: the dominance of military actors, the centralisation of decision-making and the erasure of grassroots democratic input. Liberation became a state project, not a people’s movement. The result was not freedom but domination by a different set of elites. Ibrahim Traoré and the Burkina Faso moment It is in this historical context that we must understand the rise of Ibrahim Traoré in Burkina Faso. In September 2022, Traoré seized power from a fellow military officer, citing the government’s failure to contain jihadist violence and its lingering ties to French neocolonial interests. Young, fiery and armed with Pan-African rhetoric, Traoré has been embraced by many across Africa as a new kind of revolutionary. His speeches decry imperialism, his posture rejects Western control and his persona taps into the Sankarist legacy. ...

[Link to media]

— Tsuji Jun - Notsudoru Nudoru

 

at 5/8/25 8:52pm

Author: Tsuji JunTitle: Notsudoru NudoruSource: Retrieved on 01/10/2024 https://ja.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tsuji-jun-notsudoru-nuudoru Translator’s Preface: This is my first time translating anything into English from Japanese so there are bound to be more than a few mistakes in this translation. I’m also pretty stupid so there may be parts where I have misinterpreted the meaning of a sentence and warped it into something completely different. But I think I’ve gotten the general gist of this thing correct. If you see any mistakes, just correct it for me. Translator’s preface: As you can probably tell by the title, this is a new translation that fixes all of the errors that were present in the original. Most of this had to be completely rewritten so it is highly recommended for people who read v1 to read v2 since this is the best version. The bothersome aspects of living aren’t new. If you don’t like that, then there’s no better idea than just dying. From the point of view of someone like me, I cannot help but lament at how desolate even people who seem to have an abundance of free time are when they get to calm down and do something like read a book. But I’m alive right now so obviously I don’t want to die. I mostly eat twice a day, but sometimes I don’t eat at all. There are times where I wash my face, times where I don’t wash my face, times where I make my bed and times where I don’t make it. There are times where I read the newspaper and times where I don’t read the newspaper. There are times where people think that I’ve been drinking in the morning. Sometimes I actually do drink in the morning. There are times where I drink for three days straight and times where it’s as if I don’t drink at all. Writing letters, going to the bathroom, talking to guests, thinking about how good it would feel to have thousands of a currency called pounds deposited into the British bank; there are times where I think about things like these. At the end of the day, I need to be able to get money somehow so the fact that writing manuscript won’t necessarily make me money is extremely troubling. But I have no other abilities so there’s nothing I can do besides writing things. The fact that human beings have trouble getting food is both comical and extremely unpleasant. If you consider that all of the work humans do is simply so that they can live, you truly feel how pathetic all of this is. I don’t how many tens of thousands of years you’ve lived, but I can’t help but think that the current state of things wouldn’t even suit a monkey. However you think about it, human beings are worthy of contempt. Despite this, there are people who are babbling about how this is the apex of creation. If this is the apex, then I would certainly like for it act that way. Last year I made a magazine called “Nihil,” but it got scrapped after its third edition. A truly stupid thing. I tried making this piece of shit called “Chameleon” even though it may be abandoned after its first edition. Anyways, I’ve decided to make it. Speaking only for myself, all significant problems have gone away. While I get to have the quiet life that I want, it’s only a matter of living until my death. The only thing that I can do is leave behind a few sheets of writing. If the people who read it can show me some sympathy and feel a bit of comfort upon remembering it, then I’m more than satisfied. Even though I think of myself as very ordinary and commonplace person, the Tsuji Jun reflected in socially tinted glasses appears peculiar. This is probably something brought about from my inclination towards drinking. Everyone, when drunk, becomes irrational and crazy. It isn’t at all something that is exclusive to me. Neither do I think that I particularly surpass being ordinary. If it’s about riding on the horse’s ass of everything corporations, bankers, city councilors, teachers and all of those other philistines, then I would have long since thrown away “literature” and become a husband sprinkling water on his lawn or a mailman or something. If someone where to ask me why I’m not an anarchist or a Marxist, it’s because unlike those people, I can’t hold an excellent “ideal.” Or rather than not being able to hold an ideal, it’s because I can’t obtain one. In the past, even I have done as much as had a dream of a utopia, but now that’s long since disappeared from my grasp. I actually even believe that the actions human beings have taken as a result of dreaming of useless utopias has only unnecessarily made life more unfortunate. If there is something like an “ideal” in me, it’s “no ideals”; it would only be the ability of human beings to become aware of the fact that they are “animals,” and innocently and freely hop around the world without spouting sophism. Though whether such a thing is possible is something that I don’t know. I’m not a poet, but my tendency towards daydreaming is extremely strong, and worldly affairs do not interest me much. As a member of society, I am zero. But there’s nothing I can do about the fact that I was born like this. That I was able to come to live this far is close to a miracle. ...

[Link to media]

— Decolonize Anarchism - Anti-imperialism of the Idiots

 

at 5/7/25 10:14pm

Author: Decolonize AnarchismTitle: Anti-imperialism of the IdiotsSubtitle: How Western Campists and Tankies Align with the Axis of ResistanceDate: January 25, 2025Source: Retrieved on May 8, 2025 from muntjacmag.noblogs.org/post/2025/01/24/decolonize-anarchism-anti-imperialism-of-the-idiots/ Following Iran’s rocket and drone strikes on the Israeli apartheid regime on April 13th, authoritarian leftists in the Global North once again turned a blind eye to the struggles of oppressed peoples. Instead of focusing on the class struggles of the people, they centered their political analysis on states, offering support to oppressive regimes, and extolled the Iranian regime and the Axis of Resistance. For these authoritarian leftists (campists and tankies), Iran is praised as the leader of the “Axis of Resistance” against both the US Empire and Zionism, disregarding the regime’s history of torturing, raping, and killing hundreds of thousands of its own people. During the 2022 “Jin Jiyan Azadî” uprising, at least 550 protesters were killed by the Iranian regime, including 49 women and 68 children, and thousands were injured. In detention, state authorities tortured, and raped protestors to extract confessions or punish them. More than 700 executions occurred in Iran between January and November 2023, predominantly affecting individuals from the Kurdistan and Baluchistan regions. During this uprising, at least 82 Baloch protesters and bystanders were killed by the state in a crackdown known as Bloody Friday. The Baloch people in Iran live in absolute poverty and are denied fundamental human rights. They are stateless people in their own country; they do not have access to birth certificates, water, education, and healthcare. Baloch children drown in Hootag (water ditches) daily while trying to get water for their families. The lack of employment prospects forces people to turn to smuggling fuel. During the April 13th attack, the regime launched widespread drone and missile attacks from within its cities, causing panic among the Iranian populace, compelling people to flee, and preventing potential uprisings in the event of war. Concurrently, during this attack, the regime intensified its suppression and arrest of women disobeying the mandatory hijab law. This law is not only the state’s apparatus to control women’s bodies but also to increase the presence of security forces, quashing any possible revolts. Authoritarian leftists in the West lack nuance and fail to grasp the historical and political dialectics of Southwest Asia. As a result, they overlook the crimes of authoritarian and theocratic states like Iran, glorifying them for their anti-imperialism. This phenomenon, termed “The Anti-imperialism of the Idiots” by British-Syrian author and activist Leila Al-Shami, highlights the activity of a large part of the Western “anti-war” left during the Syrian war. They only opposed Western interference while ignoring or even supporting the engagement of Russia and Iran. “For this authoritarian left, support is extended to the Assad regime in the name of “anti-imperialism.” Assad is seen as part of the Axis of Resistance against both the US Empire and Zionism. It matters little that the Assad regime itself supported the first Gulf War or participated in the US illegal rendition program where suspected terrorists were tortured in Syria on the CIA’s behalf. This pro-fascist left seems blind to any form of imperialism that is non-western in origin. It combines identity politics with egoism. Everything that happens is viewed through the prism of what it means for westerners – only white men have the power to make history.” The “campist” views the US, Europe, and the Israeli occupation government as the “imperialist camp,” while Russia, China, Iran, Syria, North Korea, Venezuela, and other countries are the “anti-imperialist camp.” Regardless of how much their regimes abuse human rights or how totalitarian they are, the latter camp is always backed. Everyone who rhetorically challenges the imperialist narrative is viewed as an ally. Therefore, in the perspective of campists, it is frequently sufficient for a cause to be rhetorically “supported” by the United States in order for it to be immediately discredited. Within this framework, many failed to support the popular revolution that occurred in Syria in 2011 or Iran in 2022, instead supporting the tyrants in Syria and Iran, who were falsely depicted as opposing U.S.- engineered regime change. The anti-imperialist left took at face value the Syrian and Iranian regime’s claims that it is one of the last bastions of resistance against Western and Israeli hegemony. On October 17, 2019, the people of Lebanon took to the streets to challenge the country’s sectarian political system, calling for an overhaul of the regime. In response, Hezbollah and its allies, often working alongside government forces, suppressed the demonstrators. Despite the broader scope of the Lebanese protests, Hezbollah, under Nasrallah’s leadership, was quick to defend the sectarian status quo, discrediting the demonstrators by accusing them of being manipulated by foreign interests. This scenario is familiar to Iranians, who endure similar repression from a regime that supports Hezbollah’s influence. Following the brutal killing of Jina Amini by the Iran’s morality police ignited a nationwide revolt against the regime, marked by direct confrontations with government officials. ...

[Link to media]

— anonymous - You're Already An Anarchist

 

at 5/7/25 4:45pm

Author: anonymousTitle: You're Already An AnarchistSubtitle: Mutual Aid and The Gaza Solidarity EncampmentDate: 4/22/25Notes: This was written and and originally released in zine format by Black, Brown and Indigenous UCLA students who participated in the Gaza Solidarity Encampment.Source: https://www.instagram.com/p/DIxudKLxFkw/?utm_source=ig_web_copy_link&igsh=MzRlODBiNWFlZA== To start off, anarchists believe in the idea that no one knows what’s best for you better than you do. It rejects hierarchy, including those formed in organizing spaces which leave decision-making up to a handful of faceless “leads.” Anarchy is this idea that people have the autonomy to make decisions for themselves and cooperate with each other, and that this cooperation-also called mutual aid- is important for the health and organization of the larger community, especially when against larger systematic repression, which exploits hierarchy via counterinsurgency. The Gaza Solidarity Encampment The Gaza Solidarity Encampment at UCLA was initially started by UCLA SJP, and leads were assigned to operate the encampment with very minimal consideration of the community, including the students who would go on to face white supremacists on the frontlines, and protest veterans from the 2020 uprisings. However, in spite of this, the encampment began to operate on its own, as the LA community including students came together to coexist and work in tandem with one another. Food and supply donations came in droves, and people took on labor voluntarily in order to keep people fed and the camp secure. There were many problems, yes, but we can trace most of them to the hierarchal structure which put “leads” at the top, and community (bodies, as defined by “leads”) at the bottom of decision making. There were many times throughout the encampment where conflict sprung up. It’s understandable, we were being harassed constantly by white supremacists and losing sleep to constantly dealing with nightly violence. However, if we are to turn our sights back, there were many times where things agreed upon by the community came in conflict with the say-so of the “leads”. Specifically, one must recall the dilemma of violence vs non-violence. The “Don’t engage” principle. While many in the encampment were in agreement that self-defense was necessary, leads continuously enforced the “Don’t engage” principle with the likes of armed zionists and Proud Boys. But what exactly did that get us? Because at the end of the day, we ended up having to defend ourselves anyway. What does this have to do with me? If you were in the encampment, then you were engaging in Anarchy, whether you are an anarchist or not. If you helped with construction for no reason beyond keeping the group safe, then you engaged in Anarchy. If you formed autonomous affinity groups, then you engaged in Anarchy. If you tagged up Royce Hall despite the disapproval of the leads, you engaged in Anarchy. Any decision you made which was for the good of yourself, others, and/or the movement, whether it be mobilizing to the frontlines or serving some soup, was engaging in Anarchy. The point to be made is that we don’t need hierarchy, as hierarchy is the opium of the movement. Hierarchy is another form of policing which stamps on our ability to move as a revolutionary unit. We did not need leads to make sure people were fed, we did not need leads to check up on one another, we did not need leads to create art. We as the people are capable of our own movement and decision making. We are capable of active resistance and continuing the fight for liberation. We already did it, and we can do it again!

[Link to media]

— JudgeSabo - Why Anti-Capitalism?

 

at 5/7/25 12:21pm

Author: JudgeSaboTitle: Why Anti-Capitalism?Subtitle: Progressive Reformism and the Anarchist Critique of CapitalismDate: 04/27/2025Source: https://judgesabo.substack.com/p/why-anti-capitalism [T]he emancipation of the working classes must be conquered by the working classes themselves, that the struggle for the emancipation of the working classes means not a struggle for class privileges and monopolies, but for equal rights and duties, and the abolition of all class rule. — General Rules of the first International Workingmen’s Association The Reformist Challenge to Anarchism I have written several critiques of propertarianism, the ideologies which commonly disguises itself as a kind of libertarianism. As it defensed the most extreme and grotesque forms of capitalism, it frequently needs to defend itself using logical fallacies, taking absurd and self-contradictory stances which, if really examined, reveal its true authoritarian nature. So far I have examined the circularity of the non-aggression “principle,” Ayn Rand’s ridiculous notions of life and valuesupport for a neo-feudal dictatorship, and Murray Rothbard’s support for a neo-feudal dictatorship. But these examples are all of people who take their support for capitalism to the most absurd extreme. While my criticisms might highlight problematic tendencies within capitalism and the kind of ideologies it produces, they at best only hint towards a critique of capitalism itself. One could easily read these articles as an argument for why capitalism needs to be regulated rather than abolished. We do not need to be full-blown socialists to say “Hey, this Ayn Rand lady is kinda weird!” Many people recognize that there are serious issued associated with capitalism like wealth inequality, low wages, unsafe workplaces, environmental destruction and global warming, corruption, war, colonialism, mass incarceration, and the many ways we can see intersections between capitalism and bigotry, racism, patriarchy, queerphobia, etc. But do not throw the baby out with the bath water! Just because all of these problems exist doesn’t mean we need to get rid of capitalism all together. For all its faults, capitalism is resilient, and if we go on talking about revolutions and the violence that comes with it we risk ending up with something even worse. To use a quote frequently misattributed to Winston Churchill, “Capitalism is the worst economic system, except for all the others.” Instead of calling for ending capitalism, why can call for less extreme measures that help to address these issues like putting taxes on the rich, a higher minimum wage, workplace safety regulations, environmental regulations, greater transparency, greater international diplomacy, justice reform, and so on. [1] Other issues like racism, sexism, and homophobia predate the existence of capitalism. Even if they are associated with capitalism today, it’s not clear that any other economic mode of production would fix these issues, and therefore does not seem to move us past the call for mere reforms to capitalism. There is some truth to these points. For the moment, we may grant that many reforms and regulations could significantly reduce, if not solve, issues that arise within capitalism. We may ignore for the moment the failures to practically achieves these reforms at a sufficient level, as seen in the failure to address climate change despite decades of effort. Even if these problems could be solved, anarchists still have a good reason for opposing capitalism. Anarchists do not merely oppose capitalism because it is associated with these other evils, but because it is regarded as an evil itself. No matter how reformed, capitalism is incompatible with our values of liberty, equality, and solidarity. While reforms may reduce some of the harms that come with capitalism, they cannot solve all of them without abolishing capitalism itself. The anarchist Alexander Berkman expressed this position here: The reformer wants to ‘reform and improve.’ He is not sure what it is that he really wants to change: sometimes he says that ‘people are bad,’ and it is them that he wants to ‘reform’; at other times he means to ‘improve’ conditions. He does not believe in abolishing an evil altogether. Doing away with something that is rotten is ‘too radical’ for him. ‘For Heaven’s sake,’ he cautions you, ‘don’t be too hasty.’ He wants to change things gradually, little by little. If you should carry out his ideas in your personal life, you would not have a rotten tooth that aches pulled out all at once. You would have it pulled out a little to-day, some more next week for several months or years, and by then you would be ready to pull it out altogether, so it should not hurt so much. That is the logic of the reformer. Don’t be ‘too hasty,’ don’t pull a bad tooth out all at once. […] The great evil is not that politicians are corrupt and the administration of law unjust. If that were the only trouble then we might try, like the reformer, to ‘purify’ politics and to work for a more ‘just administration’. But it is not that which is the real trouble. The trouble is not with impure politics, but that the whole game of politics is rotten. The trouble is not with defects in the administration of the law, but that law itself is an instrument to subject and oppress the people. The whole system of law and government is a machine to keep the workers enslaved and to rob them of their toil. Every social ‘reform’ whose realization depends on law and government is already thereby doomed to failure. (Alexander Berkman, Now and After: The ABC of Communist Anarchism) ...

[Link to media]

— Muntjac Collective - Muntjac Magazine #2 Insurgency & Counter-Insurgency

 

at 5/6/25 11:44pm

Author: Muntjac CollectiveTitle: Muntjac Magazine #2 Insurgency & Counter-InsurgencyDate: 02/05/2025Source: Retrived on 05/05/2025 from https://muntjacmag.noblogs.org/post/2025/05/02/muntjac-issue-2/ <strong>Contents</strong> Mutt. — Editorial Zhachev — They Who Returned to the Rock Sidiq — Pengar / Hangover Mar — this poem is dedicated to uncle Margeret Kimblerly & Roddy Rod — Martinique’s History of Resistance Simoun Magsalin — The Anarchy of the Peripheries: Preliminary Notes to a Study of Rebel Peripheries Leonardo Torres Llerena — Toward an Indo-American Revolution: José Carlos Mariátegui’s Relevance for Decolonial Insurgencies CharlieBanga & Semiyah — Autonomous Submersion Anon — Our Burning Memory: Social War & The Combatants for Black Liberation Patrick Jonathan Derilus — The Immovable Black Lumpenproletariat Fawaz Murtada — Why Would You Become an Anarchist in Sudan? Daniel Adediran — Where is Black Anarchism in the UK? Anon — Principles for the coming Yankee invasion / Principios para la invasion gringa que se viene Decolonize Anarchism — May Day on Fire: Against Empire and Theocracy Group Of Informal Affinity — Reject the National Army law Muntjac Collective — Protect Yourself Anon — Alexa, take me to prison! Haraami — Follow the Fires: Insurgency Against Identity Mutt. — What Color Is The Smoke? (In conversation with <em>Follow The Fires</em>) Mar — An Introvert’s Guide to the Insurrection Anon — Selections From Disquietude Laboratory (2023) Anon — Selections from KOMPILASI PUIZINE (2025) poet of da soil — untitled Mutt. — Editorial What motivated us to theme this second issue of the magazine around Insurgency & Counterinsurgency is our desire to crystialize our dispersed experiences of betrayal, repression and defeat into not only a critique of the left and some sections of the anarchist scene but to present an alternative with teeth. We also want to draw more attention to the lessons we could be learning from the moments of refusal that do happen here and of course lessons from movements in Palestine, Kanaky, Martinique, Guadeloupe, Kenya, Greece, Indonesia, West Papua, Mexico, Argentina, Chile or elsewhere. Before we go any further, it’s important to define terms; Insurgency — an insurgency is a formation of lightly armed people waging asymmetrical warfare against a larger, centralized enemy. Typically, this enemy (to the insurgents) is the state which dominates the given territory or an occupying force that has moved into an area. The police here and elsewhere frame their study of the anarchist movement that separates itself from the theatre that is the left wing of capital through this lens, no matter what they call us, the state is the only terrorist. Further to this, we should point out that we’re not insurgency fetishists as we’re not inspired by the insurgencies of fascists but instead insurgencies against colonialism, capital and the state. Counterinsurgency — counterinsurgency is a term to define a range of tactics utilized by an occupying force to repress insurgences that have formed against them. There are a myriad of tactics used by occupiers to maintain their control, most of which are “direct” in nature: Blockades or Checkpoints to funnel insurgent traffic through regions the occupation has better control of. Surveillance Infrastructure, Patrols, or Quick Reaction Forces (highly mobile units equipped with “force multiplier” equipment, trained to respond to any attack on the occupations infrastructure) These are always complemented by tactics of a more “indirect” nature. The use of torture or bribes to gain information, the spreading of disease, the use of chemical weapons, psychological warfare, propaganda, byzantine regulation to mentally exhaust the people trying to etch out a way of life under occupation, the use of paramilitaries for plausible denability is often complemented with the creation of counter-gangs [1] (lightly armed groups trained by the occupation to both delegitimize the initial insurgency and to actively hunt them down and kill them) In the past few years, we’ve been witnesses to insurgent elements in uprisings against the state in Belarus, Hong Kong, the Black anti-police uprising across the so-called US in 2020, Indonesia, Kanaky, Martinique, Guadeloupe and elsewhere. A new stage of anti-colonial struggle in Palestine began with the Al-Aqsa Flood and despite heightened genocidal tactics by the occupation and its allies, the resistance has continued. In Myanmar, anti-junta insurgent groups still fight the Tatmadaw. In West Papua, Insurgent groups persist against the Indonesian armed forces. There are others, but I only have so many pages to spare. At the same time, we’ve seen a burgeoning arms race in counter-insurgent tactics to crush uprisings in their infancy or to wear them out at their heights. Here, the horizon looks bleak for those of us who rise in anger at the British state: In the prisons, more weapons are being introduced after an attack on prison guards, the punitive raid at HMP Garth still rings in the ears of prisoners once under the illusion that the wave of early releases has signaled a coming ease in the quality of life on the inside [2]. Stepping outside, you’ll likely come face to lens with the British pathological urge to film fucking everything, this will deepen as the police introduce permanent facial recognition technology installations to complement the preexisting checkpoint-style facial recognition vans. This combined with the prevalence of apps like PimEyes [3] is enough to make anyone anxious. ...

[Link to media]

— Laurance Labadie - Infantile Radicalism

 

at 5/6/25 11:24pm

Author: Laurance LabadieTitle: Infantile RadicalismDate: 1949Notes: Published in Vol. 8 No. 3 of the anarchist journal Resistance. Brackets used to mark small grammatical and spelling corrections where possible.Source: Retrieved on 4/3/23 from https://c4ss.org/content/58262 A mature person is one who has outgrown childish emotional impulses. He has learnt about himself and his environment thru personal experience, and has become able to control his emotional feelings in a rational manner. He has emerged from the sheltered dream world of childhood and been weaned to face reality. His reactions to people, situations in life, and ideas become reasonable, reflective, contemplative. He has, as we say, grown up, become an adult. Retarded or stunted development caused by pampering childishness, the instilling of delusional hope and fears, or by too abrupt facing of life’s obstacles result in a reversion to the safeties of childhood, to a psychic condition psychologists call infantilism. When we contemplate the fact that everyone instinctively aspires to a society in which he imagines he will be secure, we may readily understand man’s utopias, and his impulse to “abolish” everything he does not understand. We may discover the root of the aspiration that everyone (this means me) will be “free” to do as he pleases, and “free” to supply his “needs” from the “society” of which he is a part. In light of the foregoing, the highly charged feelingful reaction of most socialists and communists at the suggestion that liberty contemplates private property, exchange, competition, money and wages is highly significant. For what do these signify? Private property grants the individual the right to independence. Exchange implies reciprocity and equity (in contradiction to maternal and paternal benevolence). Competition is the freedom of choice to cooperate with whomever serves one best. The significance of money is that one pays for what he gets. And the meaning of wages is that one gets paid for what he does. In contrast to these aspects of maturity, collectivists of all shades aspire to abolish private property, because of the aversion to assuming independence. The communist abhors exchange, because it implies a calculation of benefit proportional to effort. He detests money, preferring “free distribution,” out of the common pot. He abhors competition, because it implies a comparison of effort of different value. He dislikes wages, because he demands a living on the strength of being human, not in accordance with what he produces. The communist motto is: From each according to his ability; to each according to his needs. What is this but the aspiration to live off the efforts of the able, emanating from the feelings of inadequacy of the childish? Why the aversion to having calculations of benefit proportional service? What prompts reversion to the economies of the family, wherein the helpless infant has all his needs satisfied from its parents? Now communism, or the complete divorce between ability and effort and corresponding benefits—and the benevolent paternalism of authority—is the necessary relation between parents and children. The very life of the helpless child depends solely on benevolence and love. The process of maturing consists in gradually reversing this relation. And the rational economic relation among adults is reciprocity, equity, the exchange of service for service, under the selectivity which promotes individual responsibility, competence, and personal worth. The child is incompetent and irresponsible. Weaning consists in overcoming these deficiencies. Thus the antipathy of the communist-minded to property, exchange, competition, etc.—that is to conditions thru which, or under which, calculations tending to uphold the natural relation of benefit proportional to efforts—is purely a feelingful response against responsibility. The subject has not completed the weaning process. Repression resulting in complexes and neuroses has stunted and warped the psyche and prevented arriving at adulthood. The analogy between child life and the aspirations of communists becomes obvious. Society is to become the group mother from which the individuals are to obtain sustenance thru benevolence. The authority of the State is analogous to the father. It is startling commentary on the educational influences which the child confronts in the family, the church, and the school, to observe the prevailing alacrity which our society displays in reverting to charity and the supposed benevolence of the paternalistic State for surcease from its aches and pains. What is one to say, then, of the emotional antipathy to individualism? (The more “scientific” our reformers and revolutionists claim to be, the more apparent becomes their deeply seated feelingful hopes and fears.) How can it be other than arrested emotional maturing—infantilism—a childishness dangerous because it inevitably culminates, whatever be the aspiration, in the authority of the supposedly benevolent Society (the State)? What is the psychological foundation for the universal superstition for the necessity of the State machine? Why the stampede to elect new and better papas to care for us? What are Monarchy, Democracy, Socialism, etc. but evidences of the universal usufructs of an effete “civilization”—the infantilism of the herd gone rampant? ...

[Link to media]

— Osamu Dazai - About Factions

 

at 5/6/25 2:27pm

Author: Osamu DazaiTitle: About FactionsDate: 1948Notes: Translated by the Panty Sniffers InternationalSource: https://ja.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/dazai-osamu-totou Factions are governments. By the looks of things, governments also seem to be power. Well if that’s the case, then maybe factions are organizations created with power as an objective. What’s more is that such power possibly only finds hope within the “majority,” at the end of the day. Nevertheless, in the case of government, 300 votes are even more absolute than 200 votes, and as if left before the judgment of god, victory may be achieved; however when it comes to literature I think that things are a little bit different. Independence. A tactless word of flattery that has been overused for a long time; if you try to meet the magnificent people who have been offered such flattery, you will find that they are just unpleasant, and anybody would gladly pass up an opportunity to stick around such a person. It seems like there are a lot of people like this. That these so-called “independent” people twist their mouth open and wildly attack the “crowd” while bragging about their own “independence” is something that has been told through legends featuring such amazing people both overseas and in Japan, and by doing this it also looks like they’re trying to repress their own misery. You should always be careful around people who call themselves “independent.” First of all, it’s pretentious. Almost without exception, they are “hypocrites close to being exposed.” There has never been such a thing as “independence.” Perhaps there is such a thing as isolation. Nah, it rather looks like “isolation” is more common. Speaking from my current position, I desperately want some good friends, yet nobody will play with me and so I am stuck in loneliness. Well, actually that’s a lie; I get hunches about the suffering of “factions” and have intentionally chosen “loneliness” although that is absolutely not a good thing; I have chosen not to mingle with close friends only because I think it will make my life easier. Once again, I want to start talking about “factions”; To me (I don’t care about how it is for other people), the most painful thing is not being able to talk about the stupidity of my fellow members and instead having to go through the painful duty of sending them words of praise. If you look at it from the outside, and sorry for generalizing like this, they seem to be connected through so-called friendship; They happily walk, talk and clap with each other in sync, even though the people that they hate the most are those within their very same “faction.” Conversely, the people who they secretly rely on within their hearts are actually the enemies of their own “faction.” There’s nothing harder to deal with than people in your own “faction” who you dislike. I know that it’s the cause of life-long melancholy. A new form of clique could begin when comrades openly betray each other. Friendship. Trust. I’ve never seen these things in “factions.”

[Link to media]

— Laurance Labadie - Is Credulity Sweeping the World?

 

at 5/6/25 12:34pm

Author: Laurance LabadieTitle: Is Credulity Sweeping the World?Date: 1937Notes: Originally published in Vol. 1 No. 6 of Labadie’s own publication Discussion: A Journal of Free Spirits. Brackets used to mark small grammatical and spelling corrections where possible.Source: Retrieved on 5/6/25 from https://c4ss.org/content/60239 Somewhere in his book, What is Property[?], Proudhon tells of a Parisian of the 17th century who heard it said that in Venice they had no king. This struck him as so absurd and ridiculous that he nearly killed himself from laughing. He wondered, I suppose, what sort of chaos existed in that king-forsaken city. We of today are apt to also laugh at that simple-minded Parisian. For we know that it is possible to get along with but a president, or perhaps only a fuhrer, a duce, or a comrade. But after all, what is the difference? Have we really advanced at all over the credulous Frenchman? I have just received an eight page folder gotten out by the National Association of Manufacturers in which a half-dozen of our liberals bemoan the increasing enhancement of the Roosevelt dictatorship. Take a look at their names: Hugh S. Johnson (!!), Frank R. Kent, David Lawrence, Walter Lippmann, Westbrook Pegler, and Dorothy Thompson. Reading over the sapient remarks of this imposing array of national talent, I gather that the government is going a little bit too far, at least quite too fast. Hugh Johnson! Well, I’ll pass him up. You may have my share of this gentleman. Miss Thompson thinks we should not “take steps which never again can be retraced,” evidently unaware that the nature of government itself is to enhance its power at the expense of the governed. That we should take steps, indeed, as if the very inauguration of government was not the first step and as tho the process of federal enhancement of power hasn’t continually accelerated since that time! Lippmann of course believes we ought to talk it over more, not so fast, not so fast. Kent and Lawrence see plainly that we are heading toward the fascist state, which is not so good. And the doughty Pegler saves his shafts for the CIO. All good enough stuff, if one cares for the milk and water variety. But while the communists wail at our economic dictatorship, and the liberals at our political dictatorship, we are merrily “on our way”—into the abyss of totalitarianism. We await the dawn of the idea that dictatorship is dictatorship irrespective of whether it is “political” or “economic.” For property and control are synonymous; and our whole social policy is steeped in a misuse of the property principle. But who says anything about that? Property and control synonymous! What difference is there, I ask, between Proprietor Ford and Dictator Stalin? Would it make any difference if Mr. Ford said to his workers, “All this is yours, I am merely directing it for you”; and Mr. Stalin said, “All Russia is mine.”? They are both running the works, aren’t they? What has the worker to say in either event? We see the delegation of control in both cases. And how about the disgruntled, have they the opportunity to secede and go on their own, independently? Well, fortunately, in America they have some option in the matter. Mr. Ford has competitors and respects them; But there is only one dictator for the [B]olshevist totalitarian State. The delegating of control, over the involuntary—that is the essence of the governmental superstition. It is deeply ingrained in us that the idea of a non-governmental society seems as absurd as a no-king society did to the Frenchman. From the cradle to the grave the exploits of rulers are dinned into our heads as very important concerns. Conventional history is but a record of those in command of the State. And we argue, not about whether being kicked about is a good thing or not, but over who is going to do the kicking, and how. I see by the papers that the great city of New York is about to have another election. I expect the people therein will soon make much ado over who is to be the next mayor. Rather let them squabble over who’s going to be the next gang to mulct New York’s populace. If all the political maneuvering means anything more than a scramble over who are to get soft berths in the new regime, I’m greatly mistaken. And those naive dupes of their own ignorance, the socialist and communist politicians, will do their utmost in trying to climb on the bandwagon. (Did you ever notice that the more ignorant one is the more eager he is to “fix” things?) I’ve often wondered what was the origin of the political superstition, read books about it, I guess it happened just about like this. Before man had progressed to the tool making age—when he just took for a living—and when nature at times furnished not enough for all—life was often pretty precarious. Men soon found out they could take from one another. But there arose a natural enmity between the taker and the takee, and taking was found to proceed better by ganging up. The successful takers became the bosses, the aristocracy, and the losers did the work. Society became divided into the rulers, the fighters, and the workers. And it still is! What is the State today but an evolution of violent parasitism? How can this parasitic organization exist without the credulity of its dupes? Slaves having been bossed about for ages—how can they conceive of a condition wherein there is no one to tell them what to do, what they may do and what they may not. Tell such a man that you do not believe in a governmental society and he will think you’re crazy. Indeed, ‘tis likely that he will think you’re dangerous and might like [like] to bash your head in for wanting to do away with what he believes he cannot live without—dictators and rulers. Such are the poor wretches who think Comrade Stalin is a hero, as well as [our] patriots who whoop for “100% Americanism.” And I doubt not that most of the liberals aforementioned are just as solicitous about saving “our form of government.” ...

[Link to media]

— E.B. Maple (Peter Werbe) and George Bradford (David Watson) - Blood and Soil Ideologies

 

at 5/5/25 11:28am

Author: E.B. Maple (Peter Werbe) and George Bradford (David Watson)Title: Blood and Soil IdeologiesSubtitle: Excerpt-ReprintDate: 2018, SummerSource: Accessed May 5, 2025 at https://www.fifthestate.org/archive/401-summer-2018/blood-and-soil-ideologies/ The following is an excerpt from an article commenting on the 1993 Palestine Liberation Organization/Israel peace agreement, “The PLO/Israeli Treaty: Another Defeat for the Palestinians,” from Fifth Estate #343, Fall/Winter 1993. ( https://www.fifthestate.org/343-fall-winter-1993/the-plo-israeli-treaty/ ) Few realize that in the 45 years of Israeli existence, fewer than 700 Israeli civilians have been killed by Palestinian guerrillas. In the same period, Israel has slaughtered tens of thousands of Palestinian and Lebanese civilians (including scores of children whose “crime” was throwing stones), wiped out 400 villages, imprisoned thousands without trial, dynamited houses, cut down thousands of trees in orchards, and engaged in collective punishment in an attempt to terrorize the “natives” into submission. To anyone clear-headed enough to notice such hideous historic ironies, all of this starkly evokes the Nazi policy of ten-to-one retaliation, though in many aspects it is the same policy pursued throughout history by all expansionist empires based on blood-and-soil ideologies. A Jewish nationalist statism inevitably had to turn out to be as foul and irrational as all the others. So insane became the Israeli attempts to repress signs of that other nationalism in the occupied territories that their policy of forbidding the display of the Palestinian flag led youth in the Gaza strip to taunt Israeli soldiers with slices of watermelon which contained the red and green colors of their flag. For this violation they often met the same fate as those engaging in more militant acts. Despite the poignant images of celebrating Jewish and Palestinian crowds celebrating the Accord, peace and reconciliation appear to be as remote as ever. It was rather the sagging fortunes of the PLO, coupled with the desperation of an Israeli state plagued by economic stagnation, political crisis, and a relentless cycle of polarization and violence, that compelled both camps to sign a treaty which is so problematic it may never get off the ground. When one considers the model of Bosnia, the authentic human choice of dropping all borders and creating a secular, multi-ethnic, classless community seems even less possible. Outside of the PLO and the Israeli state machinery there exist glimmers of communities and projects paying allegiance to neither racket. It is there where the only hope lies.

[Link to media]

— Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. V. No. 24.

 

at 5/5/25 6:02am

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 24.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: July 7, 1888Notes: Whole No. 128. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on May 5, 2025 from http://www.readliberty.org “For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.” John Hay. On Picket Duty. A man can have no more despicable enemies than those who, pretending to be his “warm friends and admirers,” make their praise the vehicle of insidious attempts to injure or belittle him in others’ eyes. A. B. Westrup’s lecture on “The National Banking System,” begun in this issue, was given in Chicago, in reply to Banker Lyman B. Gage’s defence of that system at one of the “Economic Conferences” held in that city, and made a marked impression. Ella Wheeler Wilcox is credited with this remark: “The chivalry of the average man consists in protecting a woman against every man save himself.” And the men-made laws for “protecting” women protect them against sexual abuse from every man except their “legal” husbands. Now the question suggests itself: Is the law such because of man’s alleged notion of chivalry, or are the men made brutally egotistic by the evil effect of the law? Whatever the answer, abolition of legal marriage is necessary for the elevation of sexual relations. The Socialistic municipality of St. Etienne, France, has abolished the common grave to which heretofore have been consigned all bodies buried at the public expense. Why those whose dearest wish is to institute Communism in everything this side the grave should object to it in the grave itself is incomprehensible to an Anarchist. One would suppose that, if Communism must be accepted at all, it would be found less intolerable than anywhere else in the common dust of earth to which we all return. But it seems to be the aim of the Communists and State Socialists to destroy all individuality that exists and make a pretence of it after it has gone,— to murder men and worship their ghosts. To Edward Atkinson’s perfectly sound argument that the present accumulation of money in the United States treasury does not constitute a surplus revenue, inasmuch as there are $250,000,000 of demand notes outstanding against the United States for the payment of which no provision has been made, Henry George’s “Standard” makes answer by asking if any private corporation would “ever acknowledge that it had any surplus revenue if it possessed an unlimited power of levying taxes on sixty odd millions of people.” If Mr. Atkinson were not as blind as Mr. George himself to the wickedness of this power of taxation, he would doubtless retort with the question: “Would any highwayman ever acknowledge that he had any surplus revenue if he possessed an unlimited power of robbing travellers with impunity?” A California friend sends me a copy of the “Weekly Star” of San Francisco containing an article which, if a tenth part of it be true, shows that city and State to be under the pestilent control of a band of felons. At the end of the article, the writer, regardless of the fact that this state of things is the direct outgrowth of the government of man by man, proposes to add to the powers of this government the exclusive management of the telegraph system, of the banking system, and of corporate enterprises, as well as a vast new field of judicature. To this political servant who has not even the grace to hide in the earth the talent entrusted to him, but insists on using it as a scourge upon mankind, the editor of the “Weekly Star” says: “Thou hast been unfaithful over a few things; I will make thee ruler over many things.” I am not surprised to find from another column of the same paper that the editor looks upon Anarchists as pestilent mischief-makers and noisy blatherskites. Abram Hewitt, who was elected mayor of New York in 1886 to “save society,” now confesses, not only that he has failed to save it, but that there is no hope for it in the old method of salvation. It is impossible to be honest in administering public affairs in New York without destroying forever one’s chances of political advancement. No one is more bitterly persecuted than an official who tries to fulfill his duty and refuses his sanction to the all-pervading rascality. In making these charges Mayor Hewitt seems to imagine himself superior to and more virtuous than his brother “saviours,” but when he says that he was well aware of this prior to his nomination and election, and only accepted office because, having entertained no political ambition, he had no occasion to fear possible regrets, he really proves himself to be far worse than the rest. The striking Anarchistic definitions of the many familiar things given elsewhere in the paper under the heading “From the Dictionary of the Future,” are reproduced from the K. of L. paper, “Journal of United Labor,” where they appeared together with many others (of an indifferent nature), without a word of reference or explanation, under another caption. I take it that no editor or contributor or supporter of that paper is to be suspected of being the guilty father of these heretical definitions. Supposing them to be the illegitimate offspring of some wretch as shameless and remorseless as those who write for the atheistic and Anarchistic organs, I still cannot account for their reproduction in such a devout and “conservative” organ as the “Journal of United Labor.” To say nothing of seriously countenancing such blasphemous treatment of the sacred institutions of government, marriage, taxation, etc. (which would be simply the most heinous of offences), even to smile at such profanity is unpardonable and impossible in a truly moral and religious soul. Let the “Journal” hasten to explain and apologize, or there will be a damaging doubt thrown upon its innocence. ...

[Link to media]

— Haraami - Follow the Fires

 

at 5/4/25 8:49pm

Author: HaraamiTitle: Follow the FiresSubtitle: Insurgency Against IdentityDate: June 2024Source: https://livingandfighting.net/Follow-the-Fires “Unlearn the identity and ally politics you learned at colleges and non-profits, or from people who work at colleges and nonprofits. They are tools of counterinsurgency and make you really fucking annoying.” —Wendy Trevino 1. BIPOC radicalism is an imprecise name for a number of slippery dynamics and tendencies that foster repressive habits, discourses, and patterns of acting in our movements. It does not name a coherent political identity or bloc, some external force or conspiracy to be countered, but is an element of the social landscape of counterinsurgency that can flow through all of us in different forms and combinations across time and place. Where it emerges, it suffocates and snuffs out the fires that sustain militant culture. BIPOC radicalism is not synonymous with any non-white radicalism, radicalisms that take seriously the question of race at political, strategic, personal, and communal levels, or radicalisms drawing on non-Western ways of being and lineages of resistance. It names a particular mix of elements of identitarian politics--essentialism, a rhetoric of safety and vulnerability, and a politics of deference--with tendencies of more rigid radicalisms--moralism, destructive critique, internal policing, and the formation of enclosed milieus bound by an insular shared language. BIPOC radicalism shares many characteristics with previous waves of radicalism emerging out of queer and feminist subcultures, and often overlaps with them, though the specificity of racial identity fosters unique dynamics and obstacles. While it is most often concerned and speaks for the category of “BIPOC,” it can also speak for any related subcategory at any given moment--Black, Brown, Indigenous, Palestinian, immigrant, and so on. It might otherwise be recognized as “BIPOC radical liberalism,” “identitarian or racial authoritarianism,” “radical racial essentialism,” or “racial identitarian counterinsurgency” (even when enacted by genuine participants of a movement). While each name emphasizes different aspects of this tendency, and each has its own limitations, I use “BIPOC radicalism” to emphasize two things: first, how this politics coalesces around a particular set of identities under the umbrella of “BIPOC” and the taxonomic view of racial identity this relies on. Second, how it claims to represent genuine radical politics, perhaps even the most radical, in ways that make it harder to confront than its more ideologically liberal counterparts. At the intersection of “BIPOC” and “radicalism” emerges a set of ideas that claims to represent the most radical faction of non-white political actors, and thus to represent anti-colonial insurgency itself. Whether these tendencies manifest as internalized policing of other participants in a movement or our self-cannibalizing impulses towards conflict and critique, they act as force multipliers for the actively repressive maneuvers of our enemies in the state and ruling classes. In the name of liberation they smuggle back in the very framework of racial identity, one of the originary moves of counterinsurgency that inaugurated the modern/colonial world, that turned life-worlds and relations into populations and bodies, subjects or objects of power and violence. Disguised in the mask of radicalism, these tendencies exploit real contradictions and fault lines in our movements in self-repressive ways. Most importantly, BIPOC radicalism is repressive of those of us named as “BIPOC,” locking us in a cycle of impotence that stifles the growth of autonomous anti-colonial insurgency. 2. BIPOC radicalism has not overcome the fatal limitations of (white) radicalisms, and often intensifies or replays the same dramas. It is not a movement connected to the autonomous self organization of the colonized, but a scene within a scene. It is defined by impotent rage against the existing scene and resentment of others for things that we do not feel capable of ourselves. Limited to a critique of others, BIPOC radicalism avoids the task of tracing a positive vision of what a revolutionary process looks like, of how to overcome the limits that each cycle of struggles and uprisings hit. This tendency implicitly or explicitly adopts language—“directly impacted,” “centering,” “safety,” “allyship”—coming from university and nonprofit lineages, from politics meant to protect the middle class (including the BIPOC middle class or class-aspirational). BIPOC radicalism has inherited a political language that is a product of the limits and defeats of the revolutionary possibilities of the twentieth century—the counterinsurgency doctrines that dismembered revolutionary movements globally and the diversion of the revolutionary self-organization of the colonized into the designs of national bourgeoisies that built the current era of multi-national capital and authoritarian states. While these political frameworks previously belonged more exclusively to liberals, the post-2020 explosion of the Instagram-Infographic-Industrial-Complex has produced a new wave of BIPOC radicals who mix this more liberal identitarian framework with more anarchistic political positions on non-profits, the state, and mutual aid. ...

[Link to media]

— Tsuji Jun - My Strange Mind

 

at 5/4/25 4:29pm

Author: Tsuji JunTitle: My Strange MindSubtitle: Talking about my recent state of mindDate: This was published in 1970 after his death. I can’t find the exact date, but it had to have been written after 1932 since this takes place after he got institutionalized.Notes: Translated by the Anarchist Hikikomori KyoukaiSource: https://ja.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/tsuji-jun-hen-na-atama Translator’s Preface Will Tsuji Jun ever get out of the mental hospital? Will he ever get a job and stop being an intelligensia tramp? Will he ever finally reach enlightenment? Unfortunately, we all know the answers to these questions. After the war was lost, the dogs of the state took over Japan and forced poor Tsuji into a cramped apartment where the only thing he could do was drink and play eroge. When he finally succumbed, his last words were: “If somebody like me was in Shanghai he would definitely be living in an opium den.” Rest in pururin. As always, I implore anyone who finds any mistakes to correct them. I’ve gone through this multiple times to make sure that there isn’t anything I’m unsure of, but I may still miss something so watch out.   “Talking about my recent state of mind” is the topic that I’ve given this, but as of now, I don’t feel anything as coherent as a “state of mind,” so I’m just going to keep writing without thinking much about it. In other words, my head is so vacant that being absentminded is unmistakably my “state of mind,” yet leaving it at that would feel too disappointing, so I’m going to talk about just how vacant and absentminded I am. Ever since I left the hospital in June of this year, the only thing that I’ve written that can be called literature is 10 sheets of something close to a “newspaper.” It’s not as if I don’t occasionally feel the urge to write something, but when I do, I get anxious that what I’m writing is strange and end up abruptly stopping. That’s how severely I’ve lost confidence in myself. As of now, I’ve become a complete “cripple.” If there really was no way for me to get out of this place, I would either still be another retard in a mental hospital, or I may have been transferred to a rearing facility. Fortunately, I’ll be able to keep living without anything like that happening, which I am grateful for. In any case, it seems that insanity is caused by your nerves receiving too much stress and excitement, recovering from that condition and then as a reaction becoming flaccid. I think that the reason why I’ve been so absentminded for so long is because of that. I’ve also had to significantly lower my drinking which has been a habit of mine for so many years, and because of that I am going through many physiological changes which have not made me feel very good. I definitely think that the reason why I now quickly get colds and then sleep even though I rarely got them in the past is because I have stopped drinking. Although if I go back to drinking the way I was before I may worry people and then once more end up as a resident of the mental hospital, so it depends on how discretely I-fuck, this has really become a pain in the ass for me. Well, the world seems to be only getting more and more complex every day, but truthfully as long as human beings continue to exist, it will only proportionally go up and down with not much of a difference to how annoying people are, and if only in this light, wherever we fall at the end of the day, it doesn’t seem like things will get any better for either of us. I too, when I was young, strangled my feeble mind and tried my best to be anxious about myself and other people, but recently my patience has ran out and I now no longer think about anything. In other words, nothing will happen even if I try to think, and so I have given up. It’s really pathetic, but I’ve just completely took off my helmet. But troubling enough as it is, if things turn out this way, everything would become meaningless and valueless to me, and at the same time even if the tiny existence that is me would be begin to be treated as completely useless by the rest of the world, I would have no way to make any further complaints, and then eventually I would become alienated from my friends and become completely alone, no longer understanding how I should keep on living. On top of that, putting aside the fact that I don’t have a fortune that I can leisurely sit on, I, who am of a standing close to owning nothing, would start to trouble everyone around me. At least if, like up until now, I could keep writing and make a little bit of money off it, then I could be satisfied, but I’ve become unable to devote myself to writing. Basically, on top of my head becoming empty, my interest in writing has lowered dramatically. The ruins of mind, which have become completely vacant, are in a condition where it uselessly continues to breathe. I want to get rid of this condition as fast as I can, but even if I try to rush out of it, I don’t think that it will be of any use. This can also be proof that my mental illness has not yet recovered enough. If only I began to overflow with health and energy could it have not come to something like this. Anyways, If I keep complaining like this my readers will get bored and I’m also not very interested in all of this, but this is what happens when I honestly try to describe my “state of mind,” so even though I never felt like doing it, I’m being forced to write this and so I have no choice. Just when I sometimes think I’ve begun to get better, I go insane again, so really there is no saving me at this point. ...

[Link to media]

— Fawaz Murtada - Why Would You Become an Anarchist in Sudan?

 

at 5/4/25 7:24am

Author: Fawaz MurtadaTitle: Why Would You Become an Anarchist in Sudan?Date: 16 April 2025Source: Retrieved on 4th May 2025 from muntjacmag.noblogs.org Friends in the Kurdish-speaking Anarchist Forum (KAF) have recently received this communication from an anarchist comrade in Sudan. We wanted to share here, so people can know the situation for anarchists in Sudan. Why Would You Become an Anarchist in Sudan? This question has always haunted me at many moments in a country of ideological, cultural, ethnic, tribal, and political diversity—where countless choices exist, yet none can be freely made. The moment you are born, your identity in Sudan is determined by religion, while your tribe plays a crucial role in shaping your culture and even your fate. To become an anarchist in Sudan, you must have already escaped all these imposed identities and the suffocating constraints that push us into the furnace of the state. Sudan is a country where war, crises, and disease have never ceased. Its people, saturated with military, religious, and tribal ideologies, serve as perfect fuel to ignite conflicts. In such a country, I have always looked at my life with amazement. Our struggles often resemble action films—perhaps bizarre or unbelievable to outsiders—where survival means constantly fleeing from warring factions, dodging a hail of bullets fired directly at you. Bullets of the state, religion, tribe, sect, and armed factions. Choosing to be an anarchist is an expression of true awareness of the failures of these systems. It is a consciousness that pushes you to the limits of both practical struggle and the deeply complex human experience. And this path leads to only two possible outcomes: you either survive as a true revolutionary resister, or you are consumed by the spiral of power. Just as authority in Sudan takes many forms, so does opposition. There are political resistance movements, parties, mercenary armed groups, so-called revolutionary and liberal militias built on tribal structures, and cultural factions engaged in deep propaganda-driven Authoritarianism. These intertwined hierarchies form the crises of Sudanese peoples. Sudan is, in reality, a collection of small peoples trapped within a state that wields brutal power, recognizing no human rights beyond its own interests. Furthermore, the ideology of extremist Islamists has been another tool for deepening ignorance and backwardness in Sudan. Striving to confront all of this as a lone anarchist is like fighting as a wolf among packs of hyenas. If they find a single weakness in you, it will mean your inevitable destruction. The path forward begins with seeking out those who share your ideas, developing them, and offering them knowledge and education. As an anarchist, you carry the feeling that wherever you are, and whatever your capacity, your mission is to spread freedom. The price of that freedom may be high—it may even cost you your life. Yet, all of this is just a small contribution to the scale of liberation that people need to live a dignified human life. Freedom is the highest state of being, and anarchism shows us how to achieve and practice it. Freedom is not just a poetic word to express aspirations—it is an effort, a commitment to being free with yourself and others, and a struggle to make freedom a reality. To be an anarchist is a blessing that cannot be monopolized or hidden. To be free is to be an anarchist, and to be an anarchist is to be free. Why Should Anarchists in Sudan Be Supported? Every day, we witness global conflicts over resources, power, and ideology, with peoples divided into camps—either supporting the existing authority in their countries or seeking to seize control of the state. In Sudan, the struggle for resources and power has long been the driving force behind conflicts, culminating in the catastrophe that befell the country on April 15, 2023. These events starkly revealed the truth behind the slogans of the December Revolution, which anarchists actively worked to clarify. When the Janjaweed were an integral part of the military state and participated in the violent dispersal of sit-ins, comrades bravely opposed them, demanding their popular dismantling, recognizing them as a threat to the revolution and society. Later, the Rapid Support Forces (RSF) emerged as an independent power based on tribal foundations, wielding their authority and weapons to impose dominance through explicit racial supremacy. In Sudan, organized tribal conflict is visibly fueled by the state, with ignorance serving as the primary tool for igniting division among communities for the benefit of the ruling powers. Anarchists have rejected tribal authority, which remains the primary driver of conflict in Sudan, and are fighting to spread awareness of freedom, independent thought, and liberation from state and tribal propaganda to prevent people from becoming pawns in the power struggle. In a country exhausted by poverty, underdevelopment, and wars—where resistance has become increasingly difficult, and comrades face unimaginable repression—Sudanese anarchists have insisted on their presence and continued struggle. Their role extends beyond resistance; they have become a mirror reflecting the true reality of the ...

[Link to media]

— Anonymous - On the murder of Abdifatah Ahmed by Victoria Police

 

at 5/4/25 6:47am

Author: AnonymousTitle: On the murder of Abdifatah Ahmed by Victoria PoliceDate: 30th April 2025Source: https://antieverything.noblogs.org/post/2025/04/30/on-the-murder-of-abdifatah-ahmed-by-victoria-police/ Two accounts of a solidarity rally for Abdifatah Ahmed and its aftermath. The GoFundMe for Abdifatah’s family is here: https://www.gofundme.com/f/justice-for-abdifatah-ahmed-support-his-familys-fight ‘What does materially acting in solidarity for Black life look like?’ There was a moment of rupture that was defused at the Justice for Abdifatah Ahmed afternoon rally on Tuesday 22nd of April. This is an attempt to provide an account against the lies circulated by corporate media and people propagating counter-insurgent narratives. To be clear, this is written by non-Black settlers, but because these falsities are spreading in our networks, we want to clear them up. The rally started as a stock-standard community rally affair, initiated by Somali community networks. The anger was subdued but palpable: the cops had murdered 35-year-old Somali man Abdifatah Ahmed the Thursday before near Coles in Footscray. The killer cops according to witnesses acted ‘senselessly’, and immediately saw him as a ‘threat’ to them for having a knife. There was a whole gamut of milquetoast liberal politics at the rally. One speaker even led ‘aussie aussie aussie oi oi oi’; the Mayor spoke (thankfully dressed down for hypocrisy); and there was numerous injunctions to be ‘peaceful’ and report anyone ‘doing anything’ to the marshals in hi vis. That said many speakers got to the unjust core: this was an anti-Black, Afrophobic political murder by the cops in a lineage of racist, anti-poor policing. He was abandoned by the system, living on the streets, and there was no mental health support. After speeches, hundreds of us eventually marched to the Footscray cop shop. The turn-out was multiracial but mostly Black African networks, showing how our non-Black networks devalue Black life. A bit of traffic was disrupted. Some people wanting to act on their anger were counselled by others to not act. It was a contained anger vibe, as the cops stood passively protecting the cop shop or directing traffic. From the start, cops were in small groups, observing but facilitating a planned protest. After words died down at the cop shop, we were on the way back to Footscray, over the rail bridge on Nicholson St. Some of us heard a clang. A white cop had his baton out and was trying to bash a Black man. The initial context for this is missing, but we heard the man was yelling at the cop before the cop started bashing him. From here about 30 or so members of the crowd rushed the cops who had to retreat along Irving St all the way back to Footscray station. This moment felt necessary to stop the bashing. It was powerful to see the cops on the back foot. Some people got out some trash and dumped it in the street. Someone threw a glass bottle towards the cops. The Black man who was getting bashed resisted the racist cop further. Meanwhile, some of the bigger part of the crowd back near the bridge obstructed the movement of the highway patrol car trying to manoeuvre to contain the rupture. Cops had retreated into a formed line near the station. Simultaneously many protest initiators and crowd members quelled the rising anger much of the crowd acted on. They intervened into this resistive moment to defuse its potential. They held people back. They cleaned up the rubbish. They told people to sit down, not stand up. They disowned the Black man resisting the racist cop, as well as other people masked up who were accused of being ‘cops’. It was not what we were here for. Apparently. But what were we here for? The next day we learned this white cop was wearing a ‘Thin Blue Line’ patch, signalling his white supremacist politics more explicitly than other cops. Cops had deployed their contradictory ‘manage community tensions’ strategy. Normal clothes cops in small groups passively policed and facilitated the rally, before some cops escalated things. Meanwhile, there were riot cops out of sight but around the corner just in case things kicked off. They almost were deployed, but things fizzed just as quickly as they cracked open. After the rally, we noticed many members of our networks spreading this idea that people in ‘black bloc’ started shit in some fucked way at the rally. We note how similar this line was to how the Herald Scum narrated the brief moment of rupture. As much as it would of great for there to be 30 anarchists there in a bloc, there wasn’t. This says a lot about the whiteness of anarchism and antifascism here that a fucked anti-African police murder draws out a trickle of our networks. People there acted with the anger that was electric against the cops, but the spark was extinguished by counter-insurgency. This whole moment raises many questions. What does materially acting in solidarity for Black life look like? Against how our lives, our networks, through inheritance, gentrification and policing, benefit from ongoing violence against Black people? Why do we seem more prepared to follow and act with those leading with passivity, rather than act with those taking militant action? And why do so many of us rush to believe and spread pre-existing false ‘outside agitator’ narratives? ...

[Link to media]

— Anonymous - Bring the War Home

 

at 5/4/25 6:34am

Author: AnonymousTitle: Bring the War HomeSubtitle: Recovering Anti-ImperialismDate: 1st May 2025Source: https://antieverything.noblogs.org/post/2025/05/01/bring-the-war-home-recovering-anti-imperialism/ “We argued that the role of white people – just like our role vis a vis the Vietnam War was to find ourselves in alliance with the Vietnamese, in alliance with the black struggle, for self-determination. Not just for an end to the war, but the right to determine their own future.” – Bill Ayers, Ex-Leader of Weather Underground (This zine was originally written during the short-lived “ceasefire” period between Gaza and the Zionist entity which has now been shattered by Israel. But it seeks to confront something far more enduring within Western Palestine Solidarity.) This essay is for fellow travellers who feel stripped of dignity. For those who believe solidarity cannot be built from paternalism. Who have come to see the weakness and futility of boycotts, marches and writing. For those of us who now sit between radicalism and defeatism, I write this with the hope that our collective actions can become more than the sum of their parts. In the midst of the relief and triumphant responses to the declaration of a “ceasefire” in Gaza – while the Zionist enemy and Palestinian collaborators[2] rage through Jenin and the Zionist entity has now broken off hostage exchanges in favour of a continued holocaust by bombs in Gaza – I do not feel a sense of victory for my role in opposing Zionist colonial genocide, but one of failure. At the announcement of the short-lived “ceasefire” a woman in Gaza declared “We are the ones who endured and stood firm. There are no achievements to credit anyone, not any leader, not any official, not any country, the achievement is here.”[3] She exacts truth upon the hollow social rituals we have come to term “solidarity”. For all the talk of resistance, internationalism and the “interconnectedness” of struggle, the culmination of the Western Palestine Solidarity movement (outside of Palestine Action and a few Anarchist direct action cells) to face off against a Zionist apocalypse in Gaza can be summarised as: A to B marches sanctioned by the state, coordinated with cops and protest marshals to police ourselves into redundancy;[4] unions that attend public rallies while defending their own members complicity in loading weapons for Israel or working on military vessels which coordinate bombings on Gaza;[5] pickets which are not pickets but social club events; boat blockings where no boats are actually blocked;[6] and “weird camping”[7] on university lawns where, outside of specific examples of pig brutality against students and events – such as the courageous battle of Hinds Hall – were largely left alone for a few weeks and then dismantled with threats by university administrations without much pushback.[8] I also do not believe that the argument in regards to “there is more state/police repression now than there was” is an effective excuse (there are always ways to subvert repression), or that such a claim is actually true. Student encampments in the U.S. were violently put down in 2024 by pigs, but the U.S. military open fired at a number of Anti-Vietnam War student protests in the 1970s, with a handful of students injured and shot dead on their own campuses.[9] Infact the shooting dead of students was specifically cited by President Richard Nixon in response to the violent suppression of the Attica Prison Uprising a year after in 1971: “The president’s response: “This might have one hell of a salutary effect. They can talk all they want about the radicals. You know what stops them? Kill a few.” “Remember Kent State?” the president continues. “Didn’t it have one hell of an effect, the Kent State thing?” “Sure did,” replies Haldeman. “Gave them second thoughts.”[10] If bullets and mass caging did not stop Anti-Vietnam War protestors, White Anti-Imperialist and Black Liberation warriors, then it must be asked what does that say of how seriously we comprehend what constitutes a “struggle” today? The point of this essay is not to waste time chastising anyone because I think shame is not an effective motivator for action. What I wish to do is to convince you that we are in a moment that requires serious reflection and reorientation – and I respect the general feeling of burnout – where we must first honestly recognise our own failures before we can regroup. This is not about self-pity or blame, but to reflect on the fact that to face the material reality we are in, we must take this moment to reorganise ourselves for the coming battles ahead against Zionism, Imperialism and fascism. As George Jackson detailed on the eve of the counterrevolutions that would take his own life and the lives of many others within the Black Liberation movements of the early 1970s: “lt is not defeatist to acknowledge that we have lost a battle. How else can we “regroup” and even think of carrying on the fight. At the center of revolution is realism.”[11] This essay seeks to look at two examples of previous Anti-imperialist solidarity movements in the West so as to reintroduce radical history into our social movements. It seems that a lot of effort has gone into denying, erasing and forgetting the struggles of the past. Leaving us with theory and history that help to sustain counterinsurgency[12] practices within our movements, or which reinforce an ideological defeatism where people have come to accept that “nothing more can be done”. The point of radical theory is not to accumulate books, quotes and martyrs like they are Pokémon cards. Rather, theory must be realised as a weapon, as revolutionary Pan-Africanist Amilcar Cabral understood.[13] For the realization of theory adequate for the present moment, we must reconstruct our histories of struggle not for their own sake, but to understand it better on our own terms.[14] ...

[Link to media]

— Nishikant Sheorey - Society is Not a Machine

 

at 5/3/25 6:03pm

Author: Nishikant SheoreyTitle: Society is Not a MachineSubtitle: Reflections on Radical Social OrganisingDate: 02/02/2025Source: https://convivialmeans.noblogs.org/post/2025/02/02/society-is-not-a-machine/ Introduction Our world is on fire. In a sense, it always has been—there hasn’t ever been a time when there weren’t some systems of oppression in place, causing harm to someone. But this is a personal essay, and I have to admit that, through the entirety of my adult life, things have typically felt like they’ve been getting consistently worse, not better. And, not to put too fine a point on it, but it increasingly feels like we’re on borrowed time, as we hurtle towards a world where more and more of the Earth is functionally uninhabitable. This is undoubtedly a dire sentiment, but I bring it up for a point—and it’s not to elicit desperation or despair or to play up guilt. I bring it up because, in my experience, it’s a common sentiment, particularly among those deeply involved in forms of radical organising, and it’s one that plays a fundamental role in how we engage socially, politically, and ecologically with the world around us and shaping our analysis and approach to organising. I have engaged in political organising, in fits and stops, for the past fifteen years or so. This isn’t exceptional; there are those who have spent decades on end in pursuit of building a better world, but I have engaged in a lot of different contexts and have spent a lot of time thinking about these things. And, having experienced these varying contexts and noticed some recurrent trends, I’ve increasingly been feeling a sense of frustration with the organising and activism I’ve been involved with and feel the need to work through it. Unfortunately for everyone reading this, I usually go about that through writing. The purpose of this piece isn’t just to gripe, though; it’s really more about presenting alternatives. I want to reflect on my experiences organising, share observations about tendencies and patterns, put forward a few critiques, and talk about some relevant theory, but then, ultimately, make some general but concrete suggestions. It’s terrible to see people exhausted and burnt out; a significant reason for writing something like this is to illustrate how changing the way we approach organising can make us simultaneously more effective and more healthy, happy, and fulfilled. So yes, this piece comes, in part, from a place of frustration, and this genesis will probably be noticeable throughout the essay. There are definitely significant criticisms here that I want to voice, but I want to be clear that this is not directed at any individuals in particular—on the contrary, I have a massive amount of love and respect for the people I’ve organised with, the kind of people who have strong principles and actually put them into practice. We can all only work within the context in which we exist, and I know that most of us are genuinely doing the absolute best we can. I don’t mean for this piece to be an unproductive screed; there will be parts where it’s obvious I’m writing to work through my frustrations, but ultimately I want this to be a constructive provocation towards reflection, introspection and deepening critical analysis. Before we begin, I want to clarify a few things. First: who is this for? I am trying to write this for a general left/radical audience, but within that category I want it to appeal as broadly as possible. This piece is essentially meant to elicit a rethinking of what constitutes ‘organising’ across a large and often fragmented movement, and so it’s quite general. There’s a lot here that would benefit from additional detail and specificity and I think there’s a lot of value in analysing specific scenarios and suggesting concrete alternatives, or digging more deeply and rigorously into conceptual framings, but that’s beyond the scope of this essay. I may explore some of these ideas in more detail in future pieces but for now just be aware that this is mainly here to get as many people as possible thinking about how we organise in new and different ways. Secondly, it’ll become pretty obvious that I am coming at this from an anarchist perspective, and am advocating for more anarchic modes of analysis and organising. It may even be fairly clear that I align with specific viewpoints within the anarchist tradition. But I am going out of my way to avoid talking in terms of specific tendencies or ideologies, “-isms” and especially specific individual theorists. Not that there isn’t value in naming, critiquing, and teasing out notable differences, but I find those frameworks somewhat constraining, and I especially want to encourage people to consider the ideas I bring up within the context of their own organising and personal experiences, and not attempt to engage with this piece through the filter of trying to figure out what kind of leftism this aligns with and whether they are for or against it. To that end, I also want to make the point that this is no way a scholarly piece—it really is my thoughts and reflections. But, of course, my perspective and analysis didn’t evolve in a vacuum; there will be a few direct references sprinkled throughout this piece and then a general ‘further reading’ section at the end. ...

[Link to media]

— The Peer Review - Ten Theses on Science and Radicalism

 

at 5/3/25 8:54am

Author: The Peer ReviewTitle: Ten Theses on Science and RadicalismDate: 2025Notes: Issue #2 of The Peer Review zine. Letter from the Editor The anarchist response to the emergence of COVID-19 put divisions in the movement into stark relief. On the one hand, many recognized its severity and the resulting need for quarantine, social distancing, and vaccination. There was a strong moral imperative to protect those who were immunocompromised, elderly, or at heightened risk, even if it meant sacrificing some personal freedoms. On the other hand, many decried the state response to the pandemic as authoritarian, the enforcement of vaccine mandates as dictatorial, and the involvement of big pharmaceutical companies in producing and marketing the vaccine as encouraging the capitalist stranglehold on health. As the writer of Anathema put it, “In the name of ‘public health’ all sorts of security measures are coming together to create an authoritarian wet dream” (“COVID-19: A Fork in the Road,” 2020, p. 3). In many cases these are valid critiques. In the Philippines, for example, soldiers with assault rifles patrolled quarantine checkpoints during the early days of the pandemic (Magsalin, 2020), and the steps the Chinese Communist Party took enforce lockdown orders can only be described as despotic. Despite this, though, the pandemic offered opportunities for anarchists to organize—especially in mutual aid networks, eviction protests, and rent strikes (Firth, 2020). In the five years since the pandemic began, however, I fear these legitimate criticisms have morphed into a broader distrust of science and medicine in the anarchist space. An anonymous writer to Montreal Counter-Information feared that we as a society now demand that “experts tucked away in labs using esoteric methods act as the only voices in the room to generate one-size-fits-all policy declarations for entire nations” (Anonymous, 2021). Another anonymous writer to i giorni e le notti (reprinted in English in The Local Kids) accused the creators of the COVID-19 vaccine of being “eugenicists ––and sterilizers of poor women” (Anonymous, 2022, section iv). I’ve met anti-vax punks at shows, and I’ve heard rumors that others have encountered the same (three6666, 2023). And this is setting aside the existing critiques of science and technology posed by primitivists. All of this echoes the anti-science and anti-health sentiments that have engulfed the right wing. Years before the pandemic, William Gillis noted, “It’s no secret that a good portion of the left today considers science profoundly uncool” (2015). As our title suggests, The Peer Review runs contrary to that assertion. This issue is devoted to exploring ten theses about science and public health, as seen through a radical anarchist lens. 1. Every Anarchist Should Be a Scientist… In the article that provides the title for this thesis, Isis Lovecruft (2016) wrote, “We should never allow ourselves to become so rigid as to forget what makes us anarchists in the first place: childlike curiosity, incessant inquiry, and a radical love for taking things to their roots to further our understanding. We seek to dismantle the world around us, knowing that it does not function as well as it could. We want to understand ourselves, our environment, and each other. We want the blueprints for the social machine, so we can sledgehammer the fuck out of it, and build it back up from scratch” (p. 5). And, as she points out, that sounds quite a bit like science. In describing science, A.R. Prasanna reminds us that it “is not just a collection and collation of known facts,” but “a philosophy derived out of experience, innovation, and verification or validation” (2022, p. 6). It is not simply sterile empiricism or institutional authority, but rather a restless pursuit of understanding. In this light, the anarchist drive to dismantle the social machine and rebuild it “from scratch” echoes the foundations of science—it's not a dogma to follow blindly, but a process grounded in experience, exploration, and discovery. In that sense, it’s not that every anarchist should be a scientist—it’s that every anarchist is a scientist. 2. …and Every Scientist Should Be an Anarchist As William Gillis (2016) wrote in the article that—similar to Lovecruft—gave this thesis its name, “Control can only be achieved through disengagement and rigidity. And so any successful power structure must involve mechanisms to punish and suppress habits of inquiry” (p. 1). It is no secret that science, both as an area of study and a community, has its problems. Overreliance on funding either from private industry or from the government places restrictions—both overt and subtle—on what can and can’t be studied. It is exorbitantly expensive to publish in some of the most prestigious journals, with Nature charging authors as much as €9,500 ($10,800 in April 2025) for review and publication (Brainard, 2020). Women, persons with disabilities, and ethnic and racial minorities are disproportionately underrepresented in STEM careers (National Center for Science and Engineering Statistics, 2021). ...

[Link to media]

— Simoun Magsalin - Rebel Peripheries

 

at 5/3/25 4:00am

Author: Simoun MagsalinTitle: Rebel PeripheriesDate: May 1, 2025Source: Muntjac Magazine. Retrieved on May 3, 2025 from <muntjacmag.noblogs.org/post/2025/05/02/rebel-peripheries> and <bandilangitim.xyz/library/simoun-magsalin-rebel-peripheries-en>.   ~Dedicated to the anarchists and abolitionists in the Philippines that we’ve met along the way, including those who have moved on or fallen out of touch   When anarchism (or any other idea for that matter) is brought into new contexts, it necessarily enters into dialogue with the histories and traditions of that new context. When Mao Zedong Thought was all the rage during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., this new idea was re-contextualized in the context of the history of revolutionary nationalism of the Katipunan, Andres Bonifacio, and the resistance to the American colonial State. Anarchism in the Philippines necessarily indigenizes itself into the Philippine context, something I’ve written about in the past on various libertarian elements in the Philippines.[1] My purpose here isn’t to restate what I’ve already written on previously but to expand the re-contextualization of the potentiality of anarchism in rebel peripheries to a distinctly anti-anarchist project: that of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). As a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad says “Seek knowledge even in China,” China being the furthest and most remote place in the ancient Arab imagination, urging that we ought to seek knowledge even from the most remote—or in this case, the strangest—of places. The CPP, its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), and its front the National Democratic Front (NDF) have been waging Maoist armed struggle in the Philippines since 1969. In doing so, it has created a number of rebel peripheries in the countryside that exist outside the control of the Philippine State—in the anarchy of the peripheries. However, the longstanding second communist rebellion in the Philippines has to be placed in the historical context of anarchic and rebel peripheries in the archipelago. Once we move past and sublate the experiences of the Maoists for the revolutionary project of anarchism, we can then move on understanding the insurrectionary project of mamundok-in-place. To build up to this thesis of mamundok-in-place, I first start with a discussion of the anarchy of the peripheries, a condition by which State power cannot cohere and territorialize in the internal peripheries of a country. I touch here on the question of why Marxist guerrillas, rather than anarchists, are often found in anarchic peripheries. These anarchic peripheries act as refugia for political projects. Then I move to the second section on desertion and marronage which sees peoples and rebels move to peripheries out of the politics of escape and how this can transform into the politics of rebellion, as with the case of the maroons. I also discuss the notions of dragons and hydras in terms of organizational form as developed by Russell Maroon Shoatz. In the third section, I situate concepts of the politics of escape and the politics of rebellion in the Philippines with concepts such as remontar and mamundok. It is in this tradition that I contextualize the New Peoples Army and the communist insurgency. I move on to the fourth section to return to Shoatz’s dragon and hydra analogies to apply these to the Philippine experience. This is necessary to make an anarchist appraisal of the second communist insurgency which feeds onto a broader political project of appraising Maoism and its use of rebel peripheries. I extend this discussion of Maoism in the fifth section to critique the Marxist project using Shoatz’s analysis. Through this, I develop a notion of “post-Maoism” that learns from the mistakes and defeats in the Marxist and Maoist projects. I return to rebel peripheries in the sixth section in order to problematize rebel peripheries in the context of the revolutionary and insurrectionary project. Rebel peripheries are ultimately projects that suffer from problems of isolation and marginalization. This isolation clashes with the revolutionary project of wanting the whole world. In the seventh section and building upon these problems in the previous section, I unpack rebel peripheries to make sense of what aspects of rebel peripheries are pertinent for anarchists and revolutionaries today. It is here that we can begin to see the contours for the development of autonomous projects in the Twenty-First Century that learns from the deficiencies of rebel peripheries while also affirming the politics of care forwarded by the Black radical tradition. It is here that mamundok-in-place begins to make sense. In the penultimate section, I return again to the Philippines and the rebel peripheries of the Maoists to make sense of what is being subverted. The contours of mamundok-in-place are outlined in precisely what is not being subverted and what could be subverted in its place: organized abandonment and proletarianization. In the final section, I further sketch the contours of what mamundok-in-place could be, understanding that lines of desertion are found everywhere and that the insurrectionary project can find its reality when we see the whole world is our mountain. ...

[Link to media]

— Organise!, Peter Ó Máille - Mayday 2025. Some Thoughts.

 

at 5/3/25 12:51am

Author: Organise!, Peter Ó MáilleTitle: Mayday 2025. Some Thoughts.Date: May 1st, 2025 (May Day)Source: https://organisemagazine.org.uk/2025/05/01/mayday-2025-editorial/ “It is not murder, however, of which you have convicted me. The judge has stated that much only this morning in his resume of the case, and Grinnell has repeatedly asserted that we were being tried not for murder, but for anarchy, so the condemnation is—that I am an anarchist!” — Louis Lingg addressing the court. The International Workers’ Day is for most people in Britain, just another holiday given to us from the government. For some it means you can nurse your hangover for another day, for others it means an annoying obligation to take the kids to Rhyl for the weekend. For significantly less — those who pick up the discarded Metro on the way into town and other “in touch” types who vote and the like — it’s a liberal celebration of everything the workers have done, something like Mother’s day. It is little more than a day for our capitalist system to pat itself on the back for overcoming itself and (eventually) giving all them workers the weekends their deserve. Good on you pleb, have a day off, you’ve earnt it. It is laced with all the revision they afford the likes of Gandhi for the Indian independence struggle and Mandela for the struggle against apartheid. It has been consumed by the platitudes and accomadations the electoral socialists exchange with the state and capital for slight improvements to the horrific realities we are all crushed beneath. The day is entirely disconnected from struggle. It is a holiday. They did the same thing to pride. Maybe they’ll scroll the annual BBC round up of some of the more spicy actions aroudn the world, everyone loves a bit of riot porn, thank heavens we’re not so uncouth! For the perishingly few statist-communists of various flavours, ie “The Reds”, active resistance and labour organising has long been exchanged for a bit of a march, some fucking samba band, and droning speeches by forgettable politicians looking for nice additions to their show reel. It is a pantomime appropriated from Soviet flag waving. I’m not sure it does little more than convince ageing Trots they are still a part of a movement and — more odiously — convince angry youth and soak away their most capable years. If you step off that parade route, if you ignore the stewards, if you step even a hair out of the remit of the acceptable face of labour rights, if you struggle even an iota against capitalism in any meaningful way, breach the official permissions granted, even you can get past the high-vis stewards and actually for a moment pose a threat to capital... the police will facilitate your right to protest by smashing your face in. Almost every rebellion, revolution, uprising, and insurgency has been mirrored by some moderate, reformist, liberal counter point. Usually it preaches solidarity while undermining the cause, it argues against any radical dream of freedom in favour of a more viable accommodation with the bosses and state. The story of May Day is a story of these two juxtaposed labour movements. One from the grassroots, radical and in service of the working class. The other, various iterations of “rational reform” and the liberal labour movement, which, while occasionally dressed up with socialist airs, stems from above and only seeks to rise up the working class out of the filth we have been consigned to since the dawn of time to more presentable level to ensure loyalty, capitulation and a social order more beneficial to capital. The party politicians don’t care about the poor, they care about the working class who turn to crime that affects the middle class, or worse, the desperate and vunerable who mess up the pretty high streets with their tents or sit on benches outside shops looking like...that. Still they’ll sing songs of solidarity, shuffle some money into a benevolent scheme and later sent the police and council workers to shift them on and chuck peoples entire belongings into a bin lorry. They are rank hypocrits. The Anarchists? We have a thousand pretty words to say on May Day, I’m sure a dozen statements will be posted, maybe there will be a few black flags in the sea of blood, maybe someone will do SOMETHING this year. I don’t know. Up and down the UK there are a number of events, both liberal and radical, Anarchists mostly gathering on the edge of the acceptance resistances marches, or in the night for a variety of talks and gigs. The last few keeping the flame of active resistance and a genuine desire for liberation for all from beneath the boot of capitalist paymasters, we look fondly around the world at movements less corrupted, less pacified and dream of a better future, one when May Day is a day returned to the workers’ struggle and no longer just another labour holiday. In the UK, we’re struggling. Ineffectual networks that exist for a couple of years, pop up, thrive in anger, and burn out. The “traditional” organisations talk a big game but are overwhelmingly populated with paper members, while the rest locked behind a beaurocratic barriers they have inherited. For nearly ten years we’ve cut a tragic gulf between us on the issue of solidarity. On one periphery actual bigots masked themselves as mearly class reductionist, on the other a variety of single-issue, and cross-class movements position identity as purpose. Both declaring everyone not them is the most extreme parody of the other. Just one animosity amongst many. ...

[Link to media]

— K. C. Sinclair - May Day and Colonialism

 

at 5/2/25 11:25am

Author: K. C. SinclairTitle: May Day and ColonialismDate: 2025Source: Retrieved on May 2, 2025 from historyiswhat.noblogs.org May Day honours the Chicago Haymarket anarchists who were martyred by the State of Illinois in 1887 in the struggle for the eight-hour day and communist anarchism. A couple of years before they were executed, the Chicago anarchists had honoured some of the social rebels martyred before them, including Louis Riel, a leader of the Métis people. Riel had been executed by the Canadian state in 1885 for treason, despite the fact that he was by then an American citizen and had been born in what’s now Winnipeg two decades before the country of Canada itself was brought into the world. A memorial event in Chicago in November of 1885 paid “homage to the martyred heroes to human liberty, Julius Lieske and Louis Riel,” reported Albert Parson’s anarchist journal 'The Alarm'. The soon to be martyred anarchists August Spies and Parsons spoke on the occasion, as did their soon to be co-accused Samuel Fielden, who compared Riel to the infamous American abolitionist John Brown. “There is need of such rebels today,” claimed Fielden. 'The Alarm' paraphrased Parsons and other speakers as having said that “In the fate of these martyrs we could all read our own doom at the hands of those who exploit and enslave their fellow men.” In hindsight, this turned out to be a sadly accurate case of forward thinking. This was also not the first time that the Chicago anarchists had addressed Indigenous peoples’ struggles or the character of colonialism. The Chicago comrades even had a direct connection to the Métis uprising via the person of Honoré Jaxon, who had been born to Euro-Canadian family but had been invited by the Métis to take part in the resistance in a secretarial capacity. After fleeing an insane asylum in Canada, Jaxon eventually made his way to Chicago and joined the workers’ movement there. 'The Alarm' had already published articles on the resistance as it was happening in 1885. The Chicago anarchists were unambiguous well-wishers for the Métis side of the fight. “They are struggling to retain their homes of which the statute laws and chicanery of modern capitalism seeks to dispossess them,” one could read in 'The Alarm', “May their trusted rifles and steady aim make the robbers bite the dust.” The year prior to this, 'The Alarm' had already made clear its stance on Indigenous autonomy. “Left to themselves, left to the exercise of free will and personal liberty — anarchy — the red man would be alive and prospering, dwelling in peace and fellowship with his Caucasian brothers.” Notwithstanding a dash of the ‘vanishing Indian’ trope, the stance of these non-Native anarchists on Indigenous autonomy was beyond any quibbling. It was only right that Native peoples keep their land and freedom. The invading capitalist society of private property was a scourge, not just to each individual American worker, but also to Indigenous communities and persons. Forward by Way of Glancing Backward Attention, for better or worse, to Indigenous peoples and the character of colonialism was not the domain of the Chicago anarchists alone. Honoré Jaxon, before arriving in Chicago, had met the anarchist Charles Leigh James in Eau Claire, Wisconsin. In their discussion, James had drawn upon “his military reading for a remarkably farsighted discussion of the tactics which, in case of a renewal of the Metis struggle, might profitably be employed by a people weak in numbers, but possessing the facility of movement developed by the nomadic life,” according to Jaxon’s retelling. It was James, in fact, who then arranged Jaxon’s contact with Albert Parsons in Chicago. In his 1886 pamphlet ‘Anarchy: A Tract for the Times,’ James wrote that “governments are not of universal institution,” adding that “many primitive nations are without them.” “One of these is the Esquimaux,” said James, “but there are also numerous others.” Besides his use of an inappropriate exonym for the Inuit, James also claimed that they were more intelligent and civilized than other Native peoples that do have governments. He went on to assert, sweepingly and wrongly, that “savages” are “very warlike, often living on human flesh, by the slave trade, or by pillage,” that Natives are further back in the timeline of the “progress of civilization.” Yet, James held few illusions about the history of the American state. He suggested that his reader should follow up by reading books and articles that show that “our government, like others, sprang from war and oppression; that it was organized to drive out the Indians, to enslave the negroes, and to prevent others from sharing the spoil; that for a hundred years our flag enjoyed the honor of being the only one which fostered the growth and extension of slavery; and that since this accursed evil was abolished (because it did not suit northern capitalists so well as tenant farming) the same flag has the proud exception of being the only one under which landlordism is increasing.” One of James’ suggested books was Helen Hunt Jackson’s 1881 ‘A Century of Dishonor,’ a book that would later also be quoted by Chicago anarchist Emily G. Taylor in 1901 in an article for the anarchist periodical ‘Discontent’, which was based out of the Home Colony in the State of Washington. ...

[Link to media]

— Ted Grimsrud - The anarchistic appeal of the Bible

 

at 5/1/25 1:57pm

Author: Ted GrimsrudTitle: The anarchistic appeal of the BibleSubtitle: A needed story for human wellbeingDate: 2021Source: Retrieved on May 1, 2025 from https://thinkingpacifism.net/2021/02/16/the-anarchistic-appeal-of-the-bible-a-needed-story-for-human-wellbeing-theological-memoir-11/ I would say that I got politicized in the mid-1970s, about the time I finished college. I grew up paying attention to the news. My dad was a high school social studies teacher, so keeping up on current affairs was part of his job—and that spilled over to me, too. However, when I started college in 1972, I was pretty apolitical. My Christian conversion when I was 17 had actually influenced me to pay less attention to politics. Radical Christianity and politics Still, these were turbulent times. I remember that terrible spring and summer of 1968 when Martin Luther King and Robert Kennedy both were assassinated, and so much else was deeply chaotic. I registered for the draft when I was 18 in 1972 and thought it likely that I would have to go to Vietnam. I’m sure I was paying more attention than I remember, and within a few years I was highly engaged. The key factor for me, it turned out, was my exposure to the “radical evangelical Christians” affiliated with several magazines—The Other Side on the East Coast, Post American in the Midwest (then Sojourners when the community moved to DC), and Radix out West. Just as fundamentalist Christianity depoliticized me in the early 1970s, radical evangelical Christianity had the opposite effect a few years later. I would read each of those magazines as soon as possible when it arrived. After voting for Richard Nixon in 1972, I grudgingly voted for Jimmy Carter in 1976—grudging because I thought he was too conservative, especially too pro-military, but preferable to Gerald Ford. Carter proved my fears well-founded, and by 1980 I was ready to go third party. One of Carter’s acts that got my wife Kathleen and me on the streets was his reinitiating registration for the draft. We joined the protests and met another young couple who introduced us to a political philosophy of which we had been ignorant. Karl and Linda were young radicals who had recently moved to Eugene, Oregon, where we lived at the time. They moved specifically to join with an emerging community of anarchists. We had numerous lengthy conversations with them about anarchism, Christian pacifism, nonviolent resistance, violent resistance, and other related issues. Karl and, especially, Linda were smart, compassionate, deeply committed to social justice, and thoroughly against war. We discovered the appeal of anarchism. For Kathleen and me, the path toward anarchism had mostly to do with war. Centralized, territorial nation-states have become a curse. The 20th century was the century of mass war and was showing littles signs of changing. In 1980, a rising tide of opposition to nuclear weapons was heightening awareness of the link between centralized government, large corporations, and the likelihood of the destruction of the earth. Kathleen and I weren’t ready to go full anarchist, largely because of our commitment to working in the church. When the anti-draft movement petered out, we lost touch with Karl and Linda and our interest in anarchism moved to the back burner. We certainly didn’t get any encouragement to pursue it from the Mennonites we were by then hanging out with. Nonetheless, ever since those discussions I have pretty much thought of myself as an anarchist sympathizer or as an anarchistic pacifist or something of that sort. I turned toward church work and theological writing and teaching and never actually became deeply immersed in politics—remaining always on the edge as an observer and theorist. I did do a bit of reading back in the late 1970s and early 1980s that reinforced my anarchistic inclinations. George Woodcock’s history of anarchism a useful overview. I took a graduate seminar on the history of political thought that had a sympathetic unit on anarchism. I immersed myself deeply in the writings of Christian social thinker Jacques Ellul, who was inclined toward anarchism and whose critique of technology included sharp opposition to centralized power. E.F. Schumacher’s Small is Beautiful didn’t refer to anarchism overtly but it presented a pretty anarchistic sense of “economics as if people matter.” However, my main focus in those days—and ever since—has been on the Bible and theology and their relevance for our social ethics. As I look back now, I don’t understand why I didn’t sense a stronger connection between what I was learning about the Bible and the core ideas of the anarchists. A central biblical theme that I encountered came from my Mennonite seminary Old Testament professor, Millard Lind. Lind taught a class on the “theology of warfare in the Old Testament.” A big part of his argument was how from the beginning the Old Testament story told of an alternative to the “power politics” of the great empires that surrounded the Hebrews. The Old Testament law codes actually presented an alternative politics centered on God’s compassion and restorative justice as opposed to the self-interests of kings and the power elites. I don’t know why I didn’t make a stronger connection between Lind’s “theo-politics” and anarchistic ideas. ...

[Link to media]

— Ted Grimsrud - John Howard Yoder and anarchism

 

at 5/1/25 1:43pm

Author: Ted GrimsrudTitle: John Howard Yoder and anarchismDate: 2013Source: Retrieved on May 1, 2025 from https://thinkingpacifism.net/2013/07/10/john-howard-yoder-and-anarchism/ A number of years ago when I read George Woodcock’s classic history of Anarchism, I found the thinking he described quite attractive. I spent some time considering how compatible anarchism would be with my Christian pacifism. I have believed it would be, but never quite found time to pursue the issue in more depth. At some point, though, I was struck with the thought that John Howard Yoder’s “politics of Jesus” could perhaps be understood as a version of anarchism. I have resolved to spend some time pursuing this line of thought in the months to come. I just started reading a massive, well-written, wide-ranging and fascinating history of anarchism, Peter Marshall’s Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. I plan to write more about that book as I read through it. This fall, when I teach my “Biblical Theology of Peace and Justice” class (which includes reading Yoder’s Politics and Walter Wink’s Engaging the Powers: Discernment and Resistance in a World of Domination), I expect to devote quite a bit of attention to thinking about anarchism in relation to Yoder’s and Wink’s ways of reading the Bible. Happily, I encountered a recent article that encourages me to pursue this project. This article (Ted Troxell, “Christian Theology: Postanarchism, Theology, and John Howard Yoder,” Journal for the Study of Radicalism 7.1 [2013], 37–59) came to my attention at just the right time. It’s already one of my favorite essays on Yoder’s thought. Troxell helps me understand quite a bit about the current terrain in discussions about anarchism, and better yet confirms my sense that bringing Yoder and anarchism together is a good idea. What is anarchism? The term “anarchism,” similarly to “nonviolence,” is a negative term that in its most profound sense speaks of a positive approach to human social life. It’s not simply against “authority” (arché); it is for freedom and for decentralized ways of organizing social life that enhance human well-being. Anarchism has an unfair, though not totally unfounded, reputation for being violent, even terrorist. There indeed have been numerous acts of violence in the name of anarchism, perhaps most notably in the United States the 1901 assassination of President William McKinley at the hand of a self-proclaimed anarchist (though one who seemingly had few links with other anarchists). The great thinkers in the anarchist tradition, however, generally were not people of violence and did not advocate terrorist tactics. Late 19th and early 20th century writers and visionaries such as Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Michael Bakunin (perhaps the most pro-violence of the lot), Peter Kropotkin, and Emma Goldman had ambivalent feelings about violence, but for all of them, the main concern was imagining how human life might be organized in ways that enhance human freedom and self-determination. Still, what probably unites classical anarchists as much as anything is a strong antipathy toward the state. There is a sense that the spirit of anarchism is not unfairly described as a spirit of rebellion versus centralized nation states as much as any one commitment. To achieve political life that is genuinely free and un-self-determined, the state must go—root and branch. However, Troxell suggests that current discussions about anarchism are pushing toward redefining the philosophy in ways that are less state-centric. Two variants he spends significant time on are “postanarchism” and “Christian anarchism.” He suggests that attention to Yoder’s thought might be useful for both and might help them to find more common cause. Postanarchism “Postanarchism” is a term that has arisen in the 21st century to refer to attempts to bring apply postmodern or poststructuralist thought to anarchism. Troxell writes, “this term does not mean ‘to be finished with anarchism,’ or that anarchism’s moment has definitively passed, but instead denotes the introduction of poststructuralist and postmodern critiques into anarchist theory” (38). One important postanarchist thinker, Todd May, differentiates between what he calls “strategic” and “tactical” thinking. A strategic-thinking-oriented anarchism focuses on a “single problematic” (i.e., the state), while a more tactical-thinking-oriented approach “questions the strategic calculus by which a single site becomes the focus of resistance” (Troxell, 39). Troxell welcomes this increased flexibility, partly because it allows anarchism better to respond “to neoliberalism, in which the state is no longer the primary political actor” (39). In general, a more tactical approach creates possibilities of heightened creativity in navigating the particular issues facing people seeking a more humane politics in the contemporary world. Postanarchism, as presented by Troxell, also makes a closer link between Christianity and anarchism more possible. One aspect of this dynamic, the growth of the sense that we are living in a time of “postsecularity”—challenging the “presumption of secularity as the background for anarchist resistance” (40). ...

[Link to media]

— The Peer Review - The Anarchist's Guide to Critical Thinking

 

at 5/1/25 7:15am

Author: The Peer ReviewTitle: The Anarchist's Guide to Critical ThinkingDate: 2025Notes: Issue #1 of The Peer Review zine. First things first What is critical thinking… Some writers and philosophers have approach defining it broad strokes: Robert Ennis, who spent six decades writing about the topic, claimed that critical thinking is simply “reasonable reflective thinking that is focused on deciding what to believe or do.” (1991, p. 8). Similarly, Sharon Bailin and her colleagues identified only three characteristics that make thinking critical: (1) it is done to determine what to believe about something; (2) the thinker is trying to meet some standards of adequacy in their thinking; and (3) the thinker does meet those standards to an appropriate degree (1999). Others have focused more specifically on critical thinking as applied to argumentation. Mark Battersby, for example, defines it as “the ability and inclination to assess claims and arguments” (2016, p. 7), and stresses the importance of evaluating evidence to expose false claims. Regardless of whether the definition is generic or specific, though, most writers agree that critical thinking is a habit that requires practice to master. …and why should you give a fuck? Far from a bourgeois ideology, critical thinking is a necessary tool for anarchists. Anarchism demands that individuals be able to think accurately and effectively. From being able to spot exploitative power structures to understanding the minutiae of alternative economic theories, anarchism is far more than just tossing pipe bombs at cop cars. Even the most aware anarchist is in danger of falling for misinformation, conspiracy theories, and cults of personality—and before you think you’re immune, remember that you have identical brain structures to the people who fall for it all the time. To avoid those traps, anarchists need to be able to think for themselves. When done right, critical thinking is a necessary step in the path to liberated, individual thinking. Here’s the plan There’s a longstanding debate about whether critical thinking skills are generalizable (in that there is a single skillset that applies to all areas of inquiry) or if it’s domain-specific (in that each discipline—math, science, history, philosophy, etc.—has its own set of critical thinking skills). I’m choosing to split the difference. In Part One, we’ll address two generalizable skills: first, we’ll discuss evidence gathering and assessment, and second, we’ll talk about heuristics, biases, and fallacies. In Part Two, I’ll present a guide to critical thinking specifically designed for anarchists, based on Daniel Willingham’s 2019 paper “How to Teach Critical Thinking.” Willingham outlines four steps that should be taken when teaching critical thinking about any topic: first, identify what “critical thinking” means in that domain; second, identify the knowledge that is necessary for each understanding of critical thinking; third, create a sequence in which that knowledge should be learned; and fourth, revisit and relearn. With that, let’s get started. Part I Evidence When assessing any proposition, argument, or problem, a good thing to ask is: how good is the evidence? Every argument requires evidence: if someone were to claim that leprechauns are real, we shouldn’t take their claims at face value. Rather, we should ask for the proof. After that, we should assess if the evidence they provide is adequate. In his book Is That a Fact? Mark Battersby divides the assessment process into two steps. First, ask if the evidence supports the determination. He uses the example of a letter to the editor published in Time, in which the author claims that her “85-year-old mother power-walks two miles each day, drives her car (safely), climbs stairs, does crosswords, reads the daily paper and could probably beat [your columnist] at almost anything.” Thus, so the writer believes, people in this era must be “living to a healthy and ripe old age” (2016, p. 14). As Battersby points out, however, just because the writer’s grandmother does these things does not mean that all elderly people can do these things—the premise does nothing to support the conclusion. Whether or not the evidence is true, you should be skeptical of an argument if the evidence doesn’t provide any basis for the conclusion. Second, you should ask if the evidence is credible. If the abovementioned writer had cited a study instead of using her own grandmother as an example, you should ask if the sample size was adequate and if the study was funded by organizations that may have an interest in promoting its conclusion. Or if she had cited a poll conducted among senior citizens, you should pay attention to question bias (when the phrasing of the poll questions influences the responses) and context bias (when the context of the poll, such as a preliminary introduction by the researchers or the environment of the responder, influences the responses) (Battersby, 2016, pp. 29 & 52). Above all, you should seek to verify that the information being given to you is correct—if the premise is false it could point to an invalid or unfounded conclusion. ...

[Link to media]

— Basel al-Araj - Exiting Law and Entering Revolution

 

at 4/30/25 8:03pm

Author: Basel al-ArajTitle: Exiting Law and Entering RevolutionDate: 2024Notes: Translated by Bassem SaadSource: https://www.thebadside.net/tbs-2-exiting-law Foreword by The Bad Side The assassination of Basel al-Araj in 2017—caught on camera and shared, proudly, by the official Twitter account of the IDF—silenced one of the most fearless, inventive voices on the Palestinian radical left. He was thirty-one. A writer, teacher, and militant opponent of the Zionist state, he’d been in hiding for six months when Israeli soldiers stormed the house where he’d taken shelter in al-Bireh, on the outskirts of Ramallah. Al-Araj and five comrades had already served half a year in Palestinian Authority detention, during which they’d gone on hunger strike in protest of their torture. After public demonstrations, the men were released; but they knew their “freedom” wouldn’t last for long. Among the handful of al-Araj’s possessions found in his hideout—weapons, a keffiyeh, books by Antonio Gramsci and the Lebanese Marxist Mahdi Amel, and a stack of his own unpublished writings—was a letter, to be publicized in the event of his killing. It placed his sacrifice squarely within the history of Palestinian resistance. “I have read for many years the wills of martyrs and have always been puzzled by them: quick, brief, short on eloquence and without satisfying our search for answers to our questions about martyrdom,” he wrote. “I am now on the path to my fate satisfied and convinced that I have found my answers.” I Have Found My Answers: Thus Spoke the Martyr Basel al-Araj, a collection of al-Araj’s writings, was published in Arabic in 2018. The volume collects previously published pieces, tributes to al-Araj, social media posts, as well as a selection of the writing found after his death. (There is currently an effort to translate these texts into English; the complete works will be published by Maqam Books later this year.) The texts testify to the dynamism of al-Araj’s intellectual mission, and together execute a brisk, impressive synthesis of manifesto, conjunctural analysis, and political education. The style is frank, fierce; it isn’t surprising that this author gave radical walking tours and taught at the activist-run Popular University in the West Bank. Subjects range from episodes in Palestinian history to speculative, even psychological investigations into the meaning of resistance. There’s also a work of historical fiction, written from the perspective of a member of the al-Araj family born before the Nakba. The pieces share an absolute commitment to Palestinian freedom—and suggest a supple, even ecumenical ideological approach. Despite his vigorous defense of armed struggle, al-Araj never joined any faction and aimed, in his life and writing, to provide a shrewdly capacious sense of what Palestinian resistance is and can achieve. We are publishing the below translation of “Exiting Law and Entering Revolution” for three reasons. The first is to express, in our capacity as a group, our longstanding, deeply held solidarity with the struggle for Palestinian freedom and root-and-branch opposition to the Zionist project, one whose latest episode has amounted to the genocidal offensive on Gaza by the state of Israel. As we write, the mainstream media reports that over 33,000 Palestinians in Gaza have been killed; the real number is likely much higher, amounting to more than 41,000 when those missing under the rubble are accounted for. Our second reason follows from the first: we find it crucial, in the current profusion of reporting, diplomacy, debate, and lies, to translate and publish insurgent Palestinian writing. The decades-long assault on Palestine—by the various, interlocking means of genocide, ecocide, and politicide—has always included an element of “scholasticide.” This is an intellectual culture under fire; that every university in Gaza has been blasted to pieces in the last seven months is only the latest hateful proof of the colonial drive to murder knowledge. Our third reason corresponds to the essay itself. As the title suggests, “Exiting Law and Entering Revolution” inquires into the link between the figure of the outlaw or bandit, and the subjectivity of the revolutionary. We won’t summarize the piece here; al-Araj’s own exposition is lucid, and anyway proceeds by the suggestive juxtaposition of particular fragments and figures instead of cleaving to an explicit thesis. Among the allusions to the Palestinian revolutionary Sheikh Izz ad-Din al-Qassam, the Syrian writer Hanna Mina, and the Algerian rebel Ali La Pointe (whose death, reproduced at the end of Gillo Pontecorvo’s The Battle of Algiers, bears a striking resemblance to al-Araj’s own) there are also references to Malcolm X and Eric Hobsbawm—militant intellectuals of the Global North. Which is to say that as the Gaza catastrophe sends shock waves shooting across the world, compelling us to renew our essential commitment to liberation, we are not simply looking at Palestine; Palestine looks back at us. Exiting Law and Entering Revolution People ran at the sound of bullets. They partook in the fray, not asking why or how. The countrymen against the French. All is clear and it takes place even if the dispute is over a triviality or if the fight is between drunkards. The French colonizer is then an enemy, and resisting the enemy is a duty. In those days, as I moved from one house to the next, I understood the meaning of Ibrahim Al-Shankal’s words about resistance against the colonizer, about national spirit, enthusiasm, initiative, solidarity, about hatred in the eyes, mouths, and hands, the hatred for everything that is French and anyone who cooperates with the French, be they landowners or Aghas, commoners or those who are weak in spirit and conscience. As for those who fought in battle and escaped arrest, they were honored by the city and I was among them. I, the one who had been in one world and suddenly found himself in another. I, the one who became a patriot without understanding the meaning of patriotism as the others whom God had blessed with consciousness and courage had understood it. — The End of a Brave Man, Hanna Mina ...

[Link to media]

— Benjamin Tucker - Liberty Vol. V. No. 23.

 

at 4/28/25 11:52pm

Author: Benjamin TuckerTitle: Liberty Vol. V. No. 23.Subtitle: Not the Daughter but the Mother of OrderDate: June 13, 1888Notes: Whole No. 127. — Many thanks to www.readliberty.org for the readily-available transcription and www.libertarian-labyrinth.org for the original scans.Source: Retrieved on April 29, 2025 from http://www.readliberty.org “For always in thine eyes, O Liberty! Shines that high light whereby the world is saved; And though thou slay us, we will trust in thee.” John Hay. On Picket Duty. A very lively quarrel is in progress among Australian radicals. Joseph Symes, the high priest of Free-thought at Melbourne, finding himself unable to “boss” the Anarchistic element so rapidly growing under the fostering care of David A. Andrade, is trying to expel it from the organization of the Secularists. His task is proving not altogether an easy one. Excluded from the columns of Symes’s paper, the “Liberator,” the Anarchists are conducting the fight through the “Australian Radical,” which is itself becoming more and more Anarchistic with each new issue. It is not often that Liberty’s interpretation of the principle of equal liberty receives legal sanction. But its application of that principle to the matter of boycotting now has the clear endorsement of the California courts. The following decision has recently been rendered by Judge Maguire of the supreme court, who therein shows a knowledge of the doctrine of individual sovereignty which would make Eastern judges envious if they were not dishonest: “If each and all have the right to bestow their patronage or employment, or sell their labor to whomsoever they will, to commence and discontinue at will, then it would be absurd to say that, while each and all have the individual right, they cannot exercise it collectively, for that would be to assert that the exercise of one lawful right is legal, but that the exercise of two lawful rights is illegal; that while one right will not constitute a wrong, two rights, or ten rights, or one hundred rights will constitute a wrong, increasing in illegality with the number of rights collectively exercised, which is the reductio ad absurdum of the position that a combination among workmen to do collectively that which each has the individual and unquestioned right to do separately constitutes an unlawful act or an unlawful conspiracy.” The London “Freedom” says that the American Mutualist papers, with the exception of the “Alarm,” “zealously repudiate all but passive resistance to oppression, and cling to the peace-at-all-costs doctrine of George Fox, Godwin, Shelley, Proudhon, and Leo Tolstoi.” The truth of this assertion cannot be tested unless “Freedom” will be good enough to define the doctrine concerning peace which it imagines these five men to hold in common. I am not sufficiently familiar with Godwin’s writings to speak positively of that author’s views, but I am certain that no American Mutualist paper accepts the non-resistant teachings of Fox and Tolstoi. And what Shelley is this that is sandwiched thus between these men? And what Proudhon? Surely not the Shelley who said to the Men of England: “Forge arms, in your defence to bear.” Surely not the Proudhon who wrote two large volumes on “War and Peace,” which, while a prophecy of peace, were at the same time a justification of war. Neither Shelley nor Proudhon preached peace-at-all-costs, nor do the American Mutualist papers. Liberty prefers peace to war only when it is less costly than war, and has never based its preference on any other ground. Before “Freedom” can intelligently criticise Individualistic Anarchism, it will have to make a further and closer study of it. Ibo. Translated from the French of Victor Hugo by B. R. Tucker. Written at the aolmen of Rozel, January, 1853. Say, why, within the soundless deeps       And walls of brass, Within the fearful gloom where sleeps       The sky of glass, Why, ’neath that sacred temple’s dome,       Dumb, vast retreat, Within the infinite as tomb       And winding-sheet, Imprison your eternal laws       And your bright lights? O truths! my wings will never pause       Below your heights. Why hide yourselves within the shade       To us confound? Gloom-compassed mankind why evade       By flight profound? Let evil break, let evil build,       Be high, be low, You know, O justice! I have willed,       To you I’ll go! O beauty! pure ideal that lives       In germ ’mid woe, That to the mind new firmness gives       And makes hearts grow, You know it, you whom I adore,       O reason, love! Who, like the rising sun, must soar       And shine above, Faith, girdled with a belt of stars,       The right, the true, O liberty! I’ll break my bars,       I’ll go to you! In boundless space in vain do you,       O gleams of God! Inhabit dismal depths of blue       By feet untrod. Accustomed to the gulf, my soul       Is undeterred; I have no fear of cloud or goal;       I am a bird. I am a bird of such a sort       As Amos dreamed, As sought Mark’s bedside and athwart       His vision gleamed, Who, ’twixt a pair of eagle’s wings,       ’Mid rays that rain, O’er neck and forehead proudly flings       A lion’s mane. Wings I possess. I soar on high;       My flight is sure; Wings I possess for lurid sky       And azure pure. Innumerable steps I climb;       I wish to know, Though knowledge be as dark as crime       And bitter woe! You surely know the soul dare try       The blackest hill; If I must mount, however high,       Then mount I will. You surely know the soul is strong       And fears nought, so The breath of God bears it along!       You surely know I’ll climb pilasters azure-crowned,       And that my feet, Once on the ladder starward bound,       Will ne’er retreat! Plunged in this troublous epoch, man,       To pierce the dark, Must imitate Prometheus’ plan,       And Adam’s mark. From austere heaven he must seize       A fiery rod; To his own mystery find the keys,       And plunder God. Within his hut, by tempests torn,       Man needs the sight Of some high law in which is borne       His strength and light. Forever ignorance and need!       In vain man’s flight, From Fate’s tight grip he’s never freed!       Forever night! The people now must overthrow       The stern decree, And martyred man at last must know       The mystery. Upon this dying era’s grim       Retiring trace Is sketched by love, in outline dim,       The future’s face. The laws of human destiny       By God are signed; And, though these laws mysterious be,       I have a mind. I am the man who stops nowhere       And never falls, The man prepared to go whene’er       Jehovah calls; I am the man to duty bound,       The poet austere, The breath of grief, the lips to sound       A clarion drear; The seer whose gloomy scroll records       Those living still, Whose music freights the winds with words       That bode but ill; The dreamer winged, the athlete bold       With sinewy arm. And I the comet’s tail could hold,       Secure from harm. To solve our problem and its laws       Then I engage; I’ll go to them, nor further pause,       Bewildered sage! Why try to hide these laws profound?       Your walls are glass. Your flames and waves begird no ground       But through I’ll pass; I’ll go to read the bible grand;       I, nude, alone. Will in the tabernacle stand       Of the unknown; Into the darkness I will dash,       The deep abyss O’er which the lurid lightnings flash       With jealous hiss. I’ll go to the celestial gate,       Nor stop before, And, thunders! growl at whate’er rate,       I’ll louder roar. ...

[Link to media]

— Alexandre Christoyannopoulos - Tolstoy the peculiar Christian anarchist

 

at 4/27/25 11:25am

Author: Alexandre ChristoyannopoulosTitle: Tolstoy the peculiar Christian anarchistDate: 2006Source: Retrieved on April 27, 2025 from https://archive.org/details/TolstoyThePeculiarChristianAnarchist/mode/1up Christianity in its true sense puts an end to the State. It was so understood from its very beginning, and for that Christ was crucified. Leo Tolstoy Even for a Christian anarchist, Leo Tolstoy’s reading of the Bible was unusual. When he ‘converted’ to Christianity near his 50th birthday, he did not embrace the orthodox Christianity of the traditional church. For him, Jesus was no ‘son of God’, nor did he perform any supernatural miracles. Tolstoy was convinced that these superstitious stories in the Bible had been added by the church in order to keep ‘Christians’ hypnotised enough to ensure that they did not question the unjustifiable compromise that the church had reached with the state. He was convinced that an honest and full application of Christianity could only lead to a stateless and churchless society, and that all those who argued the contrary were devious hypocrites. Conversion to Christianity Tolstoy was born in a wealthy, aristocratic family in 1828. In the 1950s, he gradually established himself as a respected novel writer. His two most famous works, War and Peace and Anna Karenina, were written between 1863 and 1869 and between 1873 and 1877 respectively. In 1869, however, Tolstoy’s life started to change. During a trip to a distant Russian province, he underwent an agonising experience of human mortality. In the middle of the night, he was seized by a sense of futility of all endeavours given that death could be the only ultimate outcome. It was not death itself that horrified him, but the fact that life seemed to have no meaning if death was guaranteed to follow. This experience haunted him ever more forcefully over the next ten years. As he explains in A Confession, he increasingly restlessly sought the meaning of life in the great thinkers of science, religion and philosophy – all in vain. Nowhere could he find anything that gave meaning and value to life. He even contemplated suicide. Then came the breakthrough. He observed that the peasants around him – which as a proud aristocrat he had hitherto overlooked – seemed to approach death with calm and serenity. But why? What was it that helped them remain so serene in the face of the apparent futility of life? Tolstoy realised that what they had was ‘faith’. This intrigued Tolstoy, yet it also gave him hope. So he plunged into the Bible with renewed enthusiasm, in the hope that the meaning of life would finally be disclosed to him – and this time, it was. The Sermon on the Mount This revelation came to him suddenly, as he reflected on one specific and famous passage of Jesus’ Sermon on the Mount. This passage, Tolstoy declares in What I Believe, at once unlocked the whole meaning of the Bible, and with this his existential anxiety at last came to rest. These all-important words are in Matthew 5:38–42, and in the King James Version read as follows: Ye have heard that it hath been said, An eye for an eye, and a tooth for a tooth: But I say unto you, That ye resist not evil: but whosoever shall smite thee on thy right cheek, turn to him the other also. And if any man will sue thee at the law, and take away thy coat, let him have thy cloak also. And whosoever shall compel thee to go a mile, go with him twain. Give to him that asketh thee, and from him that would borrow of thee turn not thou away For Tolstoy, the implications of these instructions were nothing short of revolutionary. Jesus was proposing a new, radical and wiser method for human beings to respond to any form of ‘evil’. That is, when coerced or when treated unjustly, do not retaliate, but respond with love, forgiveness and generosity. Tolstoy reflected on Jesus’ advice and observed that mankind has always been caught in a vicious cycle of tit-for-tat evil and violence. Human beings constantly try to resist evil with evil, to deal violently with problems of violence, to wage war to preclude another war. But such responses succeed only in spreading bitterness, anger and resentment – and all that this guarantees is further evil and suffering further down the line. The only remedy to this vicious cycle of violence, Tolstoy now realised, was to juxtapose to it the virtuous cycle of love so well articulated by Jesus. The destructive cycle of evil, anger and revenge can only be overpowered by a patient cycle of love, forgiveness and sacrifice. Turning the other cheek does mean more suffering in the short term, but the hope is that eventually, the evildoer will repent and change his ways. Just as violence is contagious, so, too, is love. Yet as Tolstoy understood, this means that one must forego the desire to force others to behave in a certain way. There cannot be any difference between means and ends: violence breeds further violence, and only love can eventually bring about a society bound by charity, peace and love. And love can only be taught by example. This requires courage, because even when persecuted unjustly, the follower of Christ must patiently love and forgive – even, that is, when the ultimate price to pay is death (or crucifixion!). ...

[Link to media]

As of 5/9/25 1:29am. Last new 5/9/25 12:19am.