Crooked Bough News Round-up

— Iwona Janicka - Are These Bubbles Anarchist?

 

at 9/9/24 6:25pm

Author: Iwona JanickaTitle: Are These Bubbles Anarchist?Subtitle: Peter Sloterdijk’s Spherology and the Question of AnarchismDate: 2016Notes: Janicka, Iwona. (2016) Are These Bubbles Anarchist? Peter Sloterdijk’s Spherology and the Question of Anarchism. Anarchist Studies, 24 (1).Source: wrap.warwick.ac.uk Abstract The question of solidarity is an important one for anarchism. However, so far solidarity as a concept has not been given the philosophical attention it deserves. In this paper I wish to fill in this gap in the anarchist literature and discuss solidarity from the perspective of Peter Sloterdijk’s work. I will examine the key features of Sloterdijk’s theory of spheres and claim that his spherology can be useful for thinking about solidarity in the context of anarchism. Sloterdijk’s work also allows for a theoretical support of the anarchist idea of slow, everyday transformation that is often contrasted with its main counter model for social change – revolution. It also offers an alternative to the usual philosophical reference that anarchists turn to in order to describe anarchist collectives, that is, Gilles Deleuze’s rhizomes. Although not an anarchist himself, Sloterdijk provides a theoretical framework to understand and constructively think about anarchism and contemporary anarchist movements. Introduction In her contribution to The Continuum Companion to Anarchism entitled ‘Where to Now? Future Directions for Anarchist Research’ Ruth Kinna pointed out a gap in anarchist literature concerning the question of solidarity (Kinna 2012: 316). Little has been written about anarchism with a key focus on solidarity and virtually nothing can be found on a philosophical concept of solidarity in relation to anarchism. In this paper I will attempt to fill in this gap in anarchist literature and discuss solidarity from the perspective of Peter Sloterdijk’s work. His Spheres project (1998–2004) and his You must change your life (2009) are the key foci of this paper.[1] I will examine selected features of Sloterdijk’s theory of spheres that are relevant to anarchism. Here I will work with Uri Gordon’s definition of contemporary anarchism in practice that he elaborates in Anarchy Alive! (2007). My claim is that Sloterdijk’s spherology can be useful for thinking about solidarity in the context of anarchism, and in particular for eco-anarchist movements. Sloterdijk’s work also allows for a theoretical support of the anarchist idea of slow, everyday transformation that is often contrasted with the model of social change achieved through the means of a revolution. As his description of society is based on the concept of mimesis and training – defined as a bodily repetition of available models – Sloterdijk’s ideas can be useful for thinking about anarchist collectivities. These collectivities try to introduce alternative, daily practices into their micro social structures as a way to permanently change the surrounding world. I will show that this is where Sloterdijk’s mimetic concept of training can be used as a valuable conceptual tool towards understanding anarchist collectives. My claim throughout this paper is that contemporary anarchism in practice is an effective form of harnessing mimesis towards a more habitable world. What is more, Sloterdijk’s theory of spheres offers an alternative structure to the usual philosophical model that anarchists use in order to describe anarchist collectives, that is, Gilles Deleuze’s rhizomes (see Gordon 2008). Although rhizomes are a powerful image, they emphasize the network links between entities rather than the spaces in which these entities are embedded. I wish to argue that spaces, which anarchists create through their practices and which they inhabit, are crucial for understanding contemporary anarchism in practice. Sloterdijk’s structure has a form of bubbles and foams and is based on the concept of immunity that we share not only with other human beings but also with the environment, the plants, the animals, architectural structures, meta-narratives, technology. I wish to demonstrate that although Sloterdijk himself is not an anarchist, [2] he provides a valuable theoretical framework to understand and think about contemporary anarchist movements. Before we begin, it is relevant to briefly describe Sloterdijk’s position both in the Anglophone academic world and in Germany. Peter Sloterdijk, besides Jürgen Habermas, is the most important contemporary German philosopher, yet he remains less well known among the Anglophone academic audience. This is partly because only few of his books have been translated into English so far. Among the works that I am going to discuss here, only the first two volumes of his trilogy Spheres are available in English and the translation of Du mußt dein Leben ändern (2009) (You must change your life) was published in 2013. In Germany, Sloterdijk does not receive the deserved scholarly attention even though he is the most widely read philosopher by the German general public. On the one hand, this might be due to the fact that he blurs the distinctions between philosophy and literature in his style of writing and his style of thinking. This makes it particularly challenging for academic scholars to engage with him on a strictly philosophical level. On the other hand, the scholarly silence around Sloterdijk among his German colleagues might be due to the infamous ‘Sloterdijk-Habermas’ scandal at the end of the 1990s. Since then the philosophical sides have been picked, scholarly war zones established and for the time being it seems that Habermas holds the upper hand in the German academia. Sloterdijk however strongly appeals to the general public that is interested in philosophy. This is clear considering that he is the most commercially successful contemporary philosopher in Germany since the war and his Critique of Cynical Reason from 1983 is the bestseller among philosophical books in Europe. In the German academia he is however a highly problematic and undeservedly neglected figure that, in my view, is valuable for thinking about contemporary anarchism in practice. Below I will focus on two aspects relevant to anarchism: the question of solidarity and the everyday, ‘slow’ social transformation in anarchist collectivities.[3] ...

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— Friends of Russell Maroon Shoatz - Anarchists Against Counter-Revolution

 

at 9/9/24 6:10pm

Author: Friends of Russell Maroon ShoatzTitle: Anarchists Against Counter-RevolutionDate: 9/7/2024Source: Retrieved on 9/7/2024 from https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/09/07/anarchists-against-counter-revolution/ There has been a disturbing trend within anarchism in the last few years. It could be called the right wing of anarchism, liberal anarchism, anarchism in name only, or reformism. Whatever it is called, people who believe that they are anarchists have taken positions that side with colonizers, nation-states, and western hegemony. The most glaring of these positions are: 1) the Resistance in Palestine should not be supported or should only be partially supported because Hamas is not sufficiently 'anarchist.' 2) Money and solidarity should be sent to 'anarchist' battalions in Ukraine which fight alongside fascist battalions and under the direction of the Ukrainian State and the United States. 3) Armed struggle against the US is a foolhardy endeavor. Let's look at each of the three examples in more detail to explore their specific contradictions. The Resistance in Palestine: While once the leftist Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) was one of the strongest Resistance factions in Palestine, Hamas has become the most prominent. This marks a shift from leftists at the forefront of the Resistance to a group that is known for its focus on Islam. Islamic Jihad (PIJ),“a national Palestinian Resistance movement which is rooted in our people’s faith, culture and belief, namely Islam,”[1] bridges the gap between leftism and Islam. Dr. Mohammed Al-Hindi of PIJ[2] has explained that this transition was not imposed, but rather rose out of a desire from the people. During this transition period, Palestinians were looking for Islamic groups to play an active role in the Resistance and when they did not initially find recourse through the Muslim Brotherhood and other Islamic groups. Groups like Islamic Jihad and Hamas arose to fulfill the need. Despite the differences in ideology, all of the Resistance factions (from the PFLP to Islamic Jihad to Hamas and others) have committed to working together in Al Aqsa Flood. The Palestinian struggle is a massively significant struggle against one of the most egregious colonizers in the region, an agent and ally of the US and the west. The entire takeover of the region and creation of the Zionist entity was facilitated by the original colonization of the area by England. Armed settlers of the area come predominantly from the US and Europe and are highly visible Western agents of its hegemony. People in struggle are literally fighting the right-wing neighbors of those of us who live in the west. When people in the west (purportedly as part of a liberatory movement) evaluate Hamas based on their own narrow definitions of what is the right and wrong way to build a movement, they are ironically bringing a western measuring stick to a struggle against the west. They form the second tier of colonization: measuring and categorizing a people's struggle to judge and decide if it is worthy of their solidarity. This process reinforces differences between us. It is the same process of 'othering' that creates acceptance for colonization within civil society to occur in the first place. The colonized people are designated as the 'other,' a concept the allows for a process of dehumanization: to use the differences of culture as a wedge that forces them out of our shared humanity and into a new category that allows for exploitation. If people are different from us, should they be colonized? Any anarchist would adamantly say, no! The people of Palestine want to fight back against torture and attempted genocide and out of this desire groups like PIJ and Hamas were born. As anarchists it is our duty to understand why our politics are not the unique driving force behind oppressed people as it once was. In Palestine, while having some adherents to traditional revolutionary left politics, in PFLP and DFLP, the left has generally faded as the main oppositional ideology. If we want to become relevant again, our role, as anarchists, is to understand how Hamas has become so relevant to people there and what role Islam plays in the Resistance. Furthermore, withholding support while the Resistance factions are being bombed and shot at does not put your movement in a strong position to make suggestions after the war. The strongest bonds are forged through struggle and the connections between those who fight side by side will continue after the fighting is over. There is a reason Aaron Bushnell's[3] likeness is spread throughout the Resistance areas. His action speaks loudly over the din of naysayers critiquing the Resistance and with his action he has brought anarchism to the forefront of the struggle by showing unequivocal solidarity. May he rest in peace. Russia-Ukraine War: Contradictorily, while now questioning the legitimacy of Hamas, liberal anarchists had been rallying support for the Resistance Committees of Ukraine, which were nominally anarchist battalions that fought with the Ukrainian military and even within fascist battalions. What was clear from the start of the Russia-Ukraine conflict was that the pressures and overtures of the west had pushed the Russian state to its breaking point. Since the end of Cold War, the United States promised Russia that NATO, an aggressive military alliance, wouldn't move past Germany. Since then, there have been several expansions of NATO, under Clinton and then Bush. The red line for Russia was always the inclusion of Georgia and Ukraine in NATO. In 2008 at the Bucharest Summit, the US announced that Georgia and Ukraine would join NATO - a direct provocation. In 2014 the Maidan uprising occurred in Ukraine, with protagonists being funded on one side by the United States and on the other by Russia. Simultaneously a conflict was brewing in the Donbas region, between Russian separatists and the Ukrainian State. Some Ukrainian anarchists joined the state in fighting against the separatists[4]. Anti-fascists from Europe arrived to fight on the side of the Russians. This area became the center point of the conflict, as Russia sought to bring it back within its fold and Ukraine, with the support and at the bidding of the West, fought to keep the region. ...

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— Cypriot Anarchist Kernel - RESISTANCE AGAINST THE PLANS OF THE DOMINATORS

 

at 9/9/24 5:25pm

Author: Cypriot Anarchist KernelTitle: RESISTANCE AGAINST THE PLANS OF THE DOMINATORSDate: 2003Source: https://movementsarchive.org/doku.php?id=en:leaflets:anarxikospirinas:anarxikospirinas_antistasi Note: The present passage was written on 11-16 December 2002 (period of the Cyprus entry into the European Union) by anarchist prisoner Giorgos Garakasian in the jails of free Cypriot democracy. Through the general secretary of United Criminals Kofi Annan the Americans and British have been attempting for some time now to impose a ‘fair and viable solution’ upon the inhabitants of Cyprus. The period that we are living in is characterized by the reorganization of global dominion, which has completed its first phase of ‘anti-terrorist’ hysteria with the devastating intervention in Afghanistan, the prisoners of war in Guantanamo as well as the intensification of submission in the abyss of social stratification. In the next phase we await further developments of dominion in light of the war against Iraq. This is also justifies the last extension of the Nato alliance during the EU Summit in Prague (20-22 /11/ 02) with the addition of new allies (Estonia, Lithuania, Letonia, Slovenia, Slovakia, Romania and Bulgaria). The words of infamous murderer Bush and his clan are verified once again (you’re either with us or you are with the terrorists) as well as the intentions of the powers that be to gain the complicity of more States in their military raids of global dominion, preserving a point of contact between the USA, Europe and Russia where they will arm themselves and effect exchanges in the arms industry and ‘new technologies’. In this time frame there is a growing need for accession into the European empire of two competing countries, Cyprus and Turkey who are hoping to benefit from negotiations in the Copenhagen summit (12-13/12/02). In the eventuality of accession of the two states to the European Union the long-term plans of the U.S.A. and the multinational powers concerning the favorable control of the Eastern Mediterranean will be fulfilled. In this way the geographical piece of the puzzle that includes the area from the Caspian oil wells to the Suez canal will fall into place. This does not of course mean the accession of the ongoing partition of Cyprus which has been a headache to most regimes for the past 28 years. In this effort to enforce a ‘Fair Solution’, the original ‘Annan Plan’ that has been given is being revised since the rulers of both States have brought objections concerning regional ‘demands’. Both the revision of the plan and the imposed time limit for the ‘solution’ (28/3/2003) are considered final. The question that stands is whether the will and the way exists for the people to overthrow the continuing deprivation of free movement and settlement, communication and symbiosis that have been formulated by the authoritarian relations at their expense. ‘Greek-’ and ‘Turkish-Cypriot’ Relations The most recent bi-communal activities (epanaproseggisi, Social Forum for Peace 1/9/2002) have shown that a substantial percentage desire the reunification of the island and the symbiosis of all its inhabitants. Even though rapprochement activities are organised and supervised by the United Nations they are, for the time being, a meeting and communication ground between ‘Greek-’ and ‘Turkish-Cypriots’. However we must beware not to be fooled by these activities, organised through the dominant propaganda and carried out to highlight the ‘leading’ role of the U.N., behind which is concealed the rotten ‘peace’ of authority, the aim being the consensus of the Cypriot society. It would be desirable to contribute to an effort to promote self-organised meetings between ‘Greek-’ and ‘Turkish-Cypriots’, both in the present and in the future, without mediators and party-dogs who, in feigning monopolize ‘peace’ to their own advantage. For example, e-mail and/or telecommunication could be used to organize at a favorable spot frequent meetings of people who are against the partition and the imposing of a new world order. Sadly we would like to point out the fact that the overwhelming majority of people who attend these activities are ‘Turkish-Cypriots’. It appears that the living conditions of each person directly influence their way of thought. Examining the situation which prevails in the northern part of the island, we see that the ‘Turkish-Cypriot State’ intensifies oppression and misery, intimidating the ‘Turkish-Cypriot’ minority. The fact that nationalistic-neo-fascist elements (TMT B’, VOLKAN, K.G.), which in the past took a decisive part in the separation of and the spreading of hate among people (e.g. executions of ‘Turkish-Cypriot’ workers), are regrouped is not coincidental. We come to the conclusion that Statist-totalitarianism is solely responsible for the great massacres of the past few years. The ‘Annan Plan’ and reactions in favor of it. The ‘Greek-Cypriot’ side The immediate reaction of the Greek Cypriot leadership is considered to be the most reactionary of the past decade. On the basis of the history of the Greek Cypriot right who have always held highly nationalist positions, is now being presented as the most compromising, for this surely serves the interests of its pimps. The ‘right’ accepts the pioneers of the plan(from Clerides to Yasilion). They will also ensure the immense economic interests of merchants and industrialists which are administered by the nouveau riche and those who look forward to the legal rule of the new ‘federal State’. ...

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— Anonymous - The Cell Phone and Its Double

 

at 9/8/24 6:26pm

Author: AnonymousTitle: The Cell Phone and Its DoubleDate: 09/02/2024Source: https://unravel.noblogs.org/the-cell-phone-and-its-double/ Cellular phones are common targets for digital surveillance, along with all the software and applications they enable. These phones can be purchased anonymously — in person, in cash, with a covid mask and hat, and with a car parked far away — meaning only surveillance footage of the purchase is available once you walk out of the store. Yet, after purchasing these devices, we often bring them to houses, apartments, squats, camps, and hideouts. Cellular phones can be tracked using GPS or triangulation information from the cellular network provider, to determine your identity after purchase. Here we discuss a method to minimize the risk of unintentionally revealing your identity and location to law enforcement through use of a cellular phone. Before getting to the main method, we recommend first reviewing digital security techniques described in prior zines, such as this one https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-how-and-why-to-use-a-burner-phone. Among other things, we assume your phone's GPS and location history is turned off, private browsing is always used with all browsing data cleared upon closing the browser, emails or other information in the phone are not tied to government identity (except for limited cases with the civ phone), VPNs are always used, and TOR or VPNs are used when researching or sending communiques. Most importantly, you communicate on a need-to-know basis, using coded language, and never discuss sensitive topics near digital devices, buildings, or cars. Digital Doppleganger Ideally we would not interact with our government names at all, but in practice this becomes quite difficult. Our method is designed to handle the case when an individual must have some information related to their phone tied to their government name. For example, the person needs a phone to call a parole officer, bail bondsman, medical doctor, or do banking. The idea is to have two phones, a civilian phone or "civ phone", that uses only Wi-Fi, and is limited in use to specific times and places away from the individual's place where they typically sleep (their dwelling) and any other digital signatures, including their other burner phone and phones of friends. The purpose of the civ phone is to allow you to make contact with untrustworthy entities, particularly entities that require your government name and related information. Banking, medical appointments, and untrustworthy family are common ones. The civ phone user might frame their periodic responses to family and government entities as daily or weekly or monthly "check-ins." The civ phone is purchased anonymously and only Wi-Fi calling is used, so you do not need a phone plan. Use Signal for texting and VPN whenever you can, just like a burner phone. The important idea is to only use this phone at specific places and during specific times away from your other digital devices. This limits the ability of nefarious entities to track your location, particularly the location of your dwelling where they would love to wake you up in the early hours of the morning and put you in handcuffs. One might choose a single hour a week to check email that might be associated with your government identity, and make calls to family. Do this in a coffee shop, away from where you normally spend time. When you are not in the coffee shop for that hour, take the battery out of the civ phone and store it in a safe place, using a password and encryption. The Burner Phone The burner phone provides complementary functionality outside of your civilian life. The burner phone is only used to stay in touch with trusted friends using secure messaging apps like Signal, VPNs are always used, and TOR is used when appropriate. It is never associated with any entity, application, or device, that knows your government name. The burner phone must never be used near your civ phone, not physically or in time. The two phones should be separated by at least a half hour and several miles. This strategy of separation protects the user by preventing the compromised civ phone from leaking information about the burner phone. Because the civ phone and burner phone are never in close proximity, law enforcement cannot make an association between them, and because the civ phone is never close to your dwelling, law enforcement can never associate your government name to your dwelling location. What a Typical Week Might Look Like A simple example shows what a typical week might look like for a user who only needs to use their civ phone for 2 one hour "check-in" sessions per week. The user keeps their civ phone off most of the time, with the battery out. Only on Thursdays and Sundays does the user turn the phone on for about an hour, and this is only done at a coffee shop or library that are away from the user's dwelling. During the rest of the time, the user has their burner phone on to communicate with trusted entities. A Story Imagine a location where there are two plots of land separated by a creek. On one side the user only uses their burner phone, which is only connected to an affinity group who are also using burner phones. Before crossing the creek, the user turns the burner phone off, and pulls the battery out of the phone. A bit past the creek, the user grabs their civ phone, which is turned off with its battery out and located in a secret stash spot. From there, the user bicycles to a local library wearing a mask and hat, puts the battery in the civ phone and turns it on, and uses the civ phone for calling family, dealing with banking and government-id-related email, among other things, but never for calling or texting the affinity group. The user does this once or twice a week, and more or less frequently depending on need. ...

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— David Graeber - The Wisdom of Kandiaronk

 

at 9/5/24 12:36am

Author: David GraeberTitle: The Wisdom of KandiaronkSubtitle: The Indigenous Critique, the Myth of Progress and the Birth of the LeftDate: 2019Notes: Article publié le 28 septembre 2019 Pour citer cet article : David Graeber , « La sagesse de Kandiaronk : la critique indigène, le mythe du progrès et la naissance de la Gauche », Revue du MAUSS permanente, 28 septembre 2019 [en ligne].Source: Original: journaldumauss.net/?La-sagesse-de-Kandiaronk-la-critique-indigene-le-mythe-du-progres-et-la Translated at: nevermoremedia.substack.com/i/140700070/the-wisdom-of-kandiaronk-the-indigenous-critique-the-myth-of-progress-and-the-birth-of-the-left   Anthropologist David Graeber has been working for seven years, with archaeologist David Wengrow, on a work devoted to a history of inequality. A first excerpt from this work was published online in 2018. This excerpt showed that the usual narrative, according to which human inequality was the price to pay for developed societies and their comfort, is a lie. Indeed, in an analysis of very long-term history, over approximately 50,000 years, David Graeber and David Wengrow [1] show that there existed both small societies of unequal hunter-gatherers and large, extremely egalitarian cities. Even more astonishingly, there were societies that could be egalitarian in the summer and unequal in the winter, or vice versa. This extract had been widely commented on in intellectual circles and particularly in France by Emmanuel Todd [2] . This second excerpt from the same work, still unpublished in French and English, deals with the influence of Native American societies on Enlightenment thinkers in the West. It appears that the founding texts of the Enlightenment and the French Revolution, and in particular Rousseau’s text on the origin of inequality among men, were strongly influenced by books which related the criticism of the American Indians vis-à-vis -towards Western society. Among these American Indians, the figure of Kandiaronk stands out as that of a sort of Native American Socrates, a brilliant orator who fascinated the French elite and who perverted Western youth as his critiques of Western society and of the Christian religion spread within the aforementioned society. The text shows that the Myth of Progress then appears as a conservative reaction against the diffusion of these ideas, in order to justify Western inequalities since according to this ideology, the inequality of men would be the price to pay for technical progress and the comfort it brings. We will comment on this excerpt soon and we invite interested people to offer their analyzes in order to try to open a friendly debate worthy of the dizzying height of this text. Christophe Petit   In the last chapter, we described something of the legacy of Jean-Jacques Rousseau — whose story about the origins of social inequality continues to be told in endless variations to the present day. What we wish to explore here is how this story came about. Historians of ideas have never really abandoned the Great Man theory of history. They often write as if all the important ideas of a given era could be traced to an extraordinary individual, whether Plato, or Confucius, Adam Smith, or Karl Marx, rather than seeing their writings as particularly brilliant interventions on topics already widely discussed in taverns or parties or public gardens, or any other place. […] All this is entirely true for Rousseau. Historians of ideas sometimes write as if Rousseau had personally launched the debate on social inequality with his essay. In fact, Rousseau wrote it for an essay competition on that subject. In March 1754, the Dijon Academy of Arts and Sciences had announced a national essay competition on the question ‘What is the origin of inequality between men, and is it authorized by natural law?’ What we would like to do in this chapter is to ask ourselves the following question: why would a group of Ancien Régime academics organizing a national essay competition have judged this to be an appropriate question in the first place? The way the question is asked assumes, after all, that social inequality has an origin; that is, that it stands to reason that there was a time when human beings were equal, and that something then happened to change this situation, which is actually quite a surprising thing to think about for people living under the absolute monarchy of Louis XV. After all, it’s not as if anyone in France at the time had any personal experience of living in a society of equals. It was a culture in which almost every aspect of human interaction, from eating, to drinking, to working, to socializing, was marked by elaborate hierarchical orders along with rituals to ensure that everyone was aware of the respective ranks of those present. The authors of the essays were men who had spent their lives having their every need attended to by servants. They lived on the patronage of dukes and archbishops and they rarely entered a building without knowing the precise order of the importance of each individual person. Rousseau himself was an ambitious young philosopher, and was at the time engaged in an elaborate project of trying to exert his influence at court. […] Despite all this, however, it seems that everyone agreed that this situation was not natural, and that things had not always been this way. If we want to understand why this was the case, we need to look not only at France, but also at France’s place in a much larger world. The fascination with the issue of social inequality is relatively new, and it has everything to do with the shock and confusion that followed Europe’s sudden integration into a global economy in which it had long been a very minor player. ...

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— Margaret Killjoy - Anti-Communist communists

 

at 8/29/24 3:46am

Author: Margaret KilljoyTitle: Anti-Communist communistsSubtitle: Or: on capitalization and capitalismDate: August 28, 2024Source: Retrieved on 29th August 2024 from margaretkilljoy.substack.com It feels like two years ago but it was probably five. I drove from one side of North Carolina to another side of North Carolina because the “neo-confederates” were planning some kind of armed march through some small town and we needed all the numbers we could get to confront them. It worked, and we outnumbered them, and the people in town seemed grateful for our presence. After a few hours, it devolved into a strange shouting match alongside a rural road. The confederates on one side of the road, the anti-fascists on the other. We probably called them Nazis. They called us communists. “It’s complicated!” my friend shouted back. Because… it is. The other place I’ve been involved in shouting matches with my ideological opponents about “communism” is on the internet, of course. I’m regularly accused of anti-Communism when I talk about the history of authoritarianism and the counter-revolution led by the Bolsheviks in Russia. The hard truth of it is that I’m anti-Communist. I’m also, when push comes to shove, a communist. In this case, the capital-C matters quite a lot. Words have multiple meanings, depending on the context in which they’re used, and one of the most mishandled words in history is the word “communist.” I don’t even want to say it’s one of the most “misunderstood,” because that implies there’s a single correct meaning of the word, and there isn’t. If a communist is someone who seeks a stateless, classless, moneyless society in which decisions are made at the local level by various councils and then larger federations organize that decentralized social structure, then I’m a communist. This is the original sense of the word. About once a year I ponder getting the words “according to ability / according to need” tattooed on my body before I decide that I already have too many words tattooed on me. If a Communist is someone who supports one-party rule and totalitarian governments that promise to do what’s right by “the workers,” then I am absolutely opposed to it. If a Communist is someone who believes that only the United States and its allies are capable of evil, and that any government that opposes the US is therefore inherently good, then I am absolutely opposed to it. If a Communist is someone who takes orders from their Party and not from their conscience, then I am absolutely opposed to it. The conflation of these two concepts, communism (little-c) and Communism (big-C) frankly fucked up a lot of the Left in the 20th century and still does damage today. That conflation started, as best as I can tell, in March 1918, when the Bolshevik Party in Russia changed its name to the Russian Communist Party. From this point forward, to say you were a communist implied you were a Communist. That is to say, you were a party member or in allegiance with that party. One of the greatest swindles perpetrated against humanity was authored by both sides of the cold war–when they convinced people that capitalism and Communism were the only options available to humanity. The west convinced people that capitalism was synonymous with freedom and democracy. The Soviet bloc convinced people that the Communist Party was synonymous with worker’s power and equality. Both sides worked together, though, to convince people that authoritarianism was synonymous with communism. If you hate authoritarianism, accept capitalism. If you hate capitalism, accept authoritarianism. Frankly, it worked. I don’t call myself a communist, nearly ever. Its original definition applies to me, sure, but the word is too tainted by the 20th century for me. Maybe it’s because I was born before the fall of the Soviet Union, that I grew up with friends who escaped totalitarianism. Or that I was fed anti-Communist propaganda and it got to me. To me, there’s little point in attempting to recuperate the word communism. Other friends of mine disagree. The word “authoritarian” has negative connotations, and it should, but it’s also just a technical distinction. For a hundred and fifty years or so, socialism has been divided between “authoritarian” and “libertarian” elements. Between the Communists and the anarchists. (Social democrats form a sort of third position within this, in a way that is complicated because early Marxists were more social democrats, in what’s now called “orthodox Marxism” to compare it to the Bolshevik / Leninist methods that developed later, but modern social democrats aren’t necessarily as caught up in this lineage. Frankly, I know less about this throughline though.) When I call Communists authoritarians, I mean it both in a technical sense and a derogatory sense. I believe it is a shameful thing to be. I dislike calling myself an anti-Communist, I suppose, but it’s technically true. Technically, I’m an anti-Communist communist. Marx claimed time and time again that his approach was scientific. Of course, “scientific” also meant something different in his era than it does today, but let’s go with it for a second regardless. Marx presented a hypothesis: “if a vanguard party seizes centralized power to create the dictatorship of the proletariat, they will be able to wither the state away and create a communist society–that is, a stateless, classless society.” He had some even wackier ideas than that, of course. He believed that you couldn’t jump straight to the communist revolution, but that you actually had to have a bourgeois revolution first to empower the capitalists and industrialize society so that you could later have a communist revolution to empower the working class. ...

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— Ignacy Jóźwiak - Interview with Denys Pankratov, organizer of the Crane Operators Union of the Lviv Region — Ukraine

 

at 8/28/24 2:28pm

Author: Ignacy JóźwiakTitle: Interview with Denys Pankratov, organizer of the Crane Operators Union of the Lviv Region — UkraineSubtitle: Comrades from the Polish trade union OZZ IP, a member of the International Labour Network of Solidarity and Struggles give a voice to trade unionists from UkraineDate: March 5, 2022Source: Retrieved on 28th August 2024 from laboursolidarity.org We met Denys and members of the Crane Operators Union in spring 2021, during online meetings and exchange of experience between unionised operators in Poland and Ukraine. At the time, protests were underway in both countries over pay rises and improved workplace safety in this sector. Ukrainian operators regularly informed about our actions and expressed solidarity in their social media. We wrote about the struggle of Ukrainian operators in the IP Bulletin and on our website, while the materials on Polish operators appeared on the website of the Ukrainian Social Movement organization. Denys, first of all, tell us what the situation in Lviv is [Western Ukraine] now? The situation in Lviv is relatively calm. There have been only two alarms in the last two days. There have been no provocations, no explosions and no armed actions in the Lviv area. People are organising themselves, strong voluntary networks are forming. The authorities are also involved, but there are also grassroots initiatives that operate independently from the authorities. Public transport works, as do the shops. Fortunately, there are still some groceries in the shops. What is missing in Lviv are medical supplies, power banks, phone chargers. There is a lack of such critical items and military supplies. So, tell us about these grassroots initiatives, how do they work, what specifically do you do in Lviv? The grassroots, anti-authoritarian initiatives that I belong to include preparing vegetarian food. From the morning we cook food for 50–60 to 80 people. First, we distribute it to the places where the refugees are relocated, then we cook or take what is left over and take it to the train station, where there are now many people. I will give you the contact for this initiative, people are working openly there. Apart from that, there are three people from the Social Movement organisation, I am also one of those people. We try to support our comrades from the Anti-Authoritarian Union who have gone to the front. We try to give them medical supplies and tactical equipment: bulletproof vests, helmets, gloves. There is also the anarchist organisation called Black Banner. As far as I know, some of them went to the front, to Kiev, where they joined territorial defence. Others signed up for local territorial defence in Lviv. Nevertheless, the Ecological Platform and the Black Banner still feed people on Saturdays. The homeless and others in need of food. And the trade union of crane operators, with which you are associated? We stay in touch all the time; we organised a fundraising for the Ukrainian army. From the union’s budget and with our own efforts, we are also helping one union member who was mobilised to the front line. He worked as a mechanic, and now we are helping him to collect various necessary equipment and medical supplies. In the near future, some of the trade unionists will go to Kyiv to help people defend the city. And what is the general situation of working people in Ukraine now, under these war conditions, if such a question can be posed? In general, people have received their wages, although I have heard of more than one case where they did not receive them and were left with nothing. Of course, construction sites are not working now. Now all forces are directed towards supporting the defence potential of the city, the region and Ukraine. And what would you like to say to people from trade unions and social organisations in Poland and in other countries? We have a concrete request from the Social Movement for the cancellation of Ukraine’s foreign debt, there is a petition on this issue. The Federation of Trade Unions of Ukraine has asked the International Trade Union Confederation to exclude the Federation of Independent Trade Unions of Russia, which openly supported Putin’s aggression against Ukraine. The Federation also donated its infrastructure, in those cities where this was possible, to the refugees. I mean hotels, tourist bases and the like. A lot of people are now going abroad, these are women, because men are not allowed to leave. We hope that the trade unions will help them to find work and organise their lives. Is there anything else you would like to say? Follow what’s happening here and spread the word. I hope that you will have enough strength in Poland to take care of the Ukrainian working people.

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— Whitney Kimball - Revenge: Spectrum Workers on Strike Build Their Own ISP

 

at 8/28/24 2:23pm

Author: Whitney KimballTitle: Revenge: Spectrum Workers on Strike Build Their Own ISPDate: April 14, 2021Source: Retrieved on 28th August 2024 from gizmodo.com If, for any number of reasons, you’d like to burn telecoms to the ground and build a new internet service provider on their smoldering remains, good news for you. New York City Spectrum workers, who’ve weathered an anguishing four-year strike, have built their own internet service provider. If the city throws its support behind it, People’s Choice Communications could liberate New Yorkers from cable gangsters once and for all. The city itself is almost constantly fighting Spectrum. With its rise to dominance in New York, Gov. Andrew Cuomo has tried to evict it; attorneys general had to chase it around for allegedly defrauding 2.2 million New York customers; and the company was accused of putting employees in harm’s way just one month into the pandemic. Unionized Spectrum workers just hit the four-year anniversary of their strike, during which time Spectrum’s parent company Charter made its CEO the third-highest-compensated executive in America. The Spectrum workers behind the co-op, members of IBEW Local 3, have been on strike practically since Charter showed up in 2016 and bought Time Warner. Workers have said that the company showed no interest in good faith bargaining over the contract it inherited, attempting to jettison pensions and health insurance. “Their goal was to try to eliminate the union, and we could see that from the first time they came to the bargaining table,” survey technician, striker, and IBEW Local 3 steward Troy Walcott told Gizmodo. “They presented us with an offer that was impossible for us to accept.” Walcott told Gizmodo that, while some have been forced to go back to Spectrum, about 1,200 of the 1,800 strikers are still holding the line and making ends meet with odd jobs. Walcott said that people are still losing homes, and the strain has broken up families, while media attention has dissipated. “Everybody kind of looks past it,” he said. “We’re kind of a ghost in the city.” After attempting to convince the city to establish a municipal network, organizers turned to the idea of a cooperatively owned model, the kind of radical concept recently in the realm of activist dreams. Workers co-own the company; the building residents own the network; the C-Suite doesn’t extract a cent. Residents pay for the installation fee in monthly increments, which organizers believe might range from $300-$400 per apartment. But residents cover the cost similar to a mortgage, in monthly payments of around $10-$20, which also covers service. By comparison, Spectrum’s lowest-priced offering is $50, with packages going up to $150—which represents over a quarter of a public housing resident’s monthly rent. People’s Choice operates light, scalable infrastructure. The fixed wireless network is enabled by a “mesh network”: antennas are installed on individual buildings, which receive a wireless signal from the co-op’s central hub. Building residents then connect routers via ethernet cables and operate as normal. Sascha Meinrath, a mesh network pioneer who helped architect People’s Choice, compared the system to a spider web. In the event of a link break, building antennas can connect and reroute through each other, reducing the likelihood of large-scale outages. The co-op makes a radical proposal in the business structure itself. Parsing out the network to customers and the ISP company to workers implies that both groups get an equal share of bargaining power. Customers who own the infrastructure will be promised the option to bring in a new service provider; the reverse is true for workers, who can pull their services. “It means people will have to collaborate, and I think that’s really interesting,” Meinrath told Gizmodo. “It means that you’re going to pay fair wages,” he said. “It means that customer service is going to be really important.” “This is not a charity,” Meinrath added. “This is a sustainable social enterprise.” It also means that speeds get faster and service gets cheaper as more customers sign-on. “Once you get critical mass of people, you will be able to buy more bandwidth in bulk, which drops the cost per megabit dramatically,” Meinrath said. “By dramatically, I mean, it can drop by multiple orders of magnitude. The difference between one and two gigs is very different than the difference between ten and one hundred gigs. It’s remarkable how cheap bandwidth gets when you buy it in bulk.” They still haven’t worked out all the costs, but they’ll certainly offer a better return on any co-owners’ investment. We rarely get a hard metric to define how much telecoms are charging through the nose, but a 2015 investigation found that Comcast was pocketing 97 percent profit margins. Co-ownership necessitates transparency. The money left over from anticipated minimal monthly payments is meant to fund community services and payback co-owners in dividends. “Having ownership of something as big as a cable system is definitely going to be a game-changer in the community that we’re serving,” Troy Walcott said. ...

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— Patrick Le Tréhondat - “I, Kostya, Ukrainian high school student, member of the Direct Action union”

 

at 8/28/24 2:17pm

Author: Patrick Le TréhondatTitle: “I, Kostya, Ukrainian high school student, member of the Direct Action union”Subtitle: Interview by Patrick Le TréhondatDate: April 19, 2023Source: Retrieved on 28th August 2024 from laboursolidarity.org Please introduce yourself to our readers My name is Kostya, I am a student of the second grade. [Kostya lives in the Volyn region in northwestern Ukraine.] How did you experience the beginning of the war? In fact, I sensed that a full-scale invasion would soon occur, but I did not expect it to be so large and destructive. I remember the beginning very well. My mother asked me to buy food, which was practically non-existent, and told me to stay at home. The first week was very scary, nobody knew what was going to happen. We were just hoping for the best after that. My mental state became critical, I was very anxious, I was afraid of my future life and I became very pessimistic. What has changed in your life in the last year? In the past year, many things have changed. As I said above, my psyche became very unstable, I lost people for various reasons — one went abroad and another was killed by an enemy bullet during the “dfenazification”. Prices in the shops have become very high and my family had to give up many things that were common a year ago. I must also mention that our people are very united towards each other. Under what conditions are you continuing your studies now? We study full time, but one day a week we take e-learning courses. When an air raid starts, we get ready and go to the shelter (in the basement). What about your leisure time in this time of war? Music helps me to distract myself. I listen to a lot of things, the band I like the most is “Grazhdanskaya oborona”. I also sometimes watch various historical videos and films. You are a member of the Direct Action trade union (Priama Diia). Why are you a member? I have been interested in left-wing ideas, especially anarchism, for a year. After I finally realised that I was an anarchist, or rather an anarcho-communist, I started to look for an organisation. At that time, Direct Action started again and I was able to join it. There are several left-wing and anarchist organisations in Ukraine, but I chose Direct Action because it is composed of almost all students who have the same problems and complaints about our government. In this organisation I can help people and receive help from my brothers and sisters. What are your activities as a member of Priama Diia? Because of some problems I have not been actively involved in the union, but a week ago I took part in the first meeting of the members of the organisation. I am trying to spend more time with the union and get involved in some activities. Are high school students protesting against government policy? If so, on what issues and how? Ukrainian high school students are quite divided, many are dissatisfied with our government, very often supporters of left-wing ideas, another part, after the large-scale invasion, supported nationalist and right-wing ideas, and often supports our government. Finally, there is a third group that doesn’t care about anything, including the government, but they are not numerous. We protest against the arbitrariness of the authorities, illegal arrests, violations of students’ rights, corruption, etc. We disseminate information, organise rallies and protest. How do you see your future? I plan to enter the faculty of history or philosophy in Kyiv. I also hope to be active in left-wing organisations. I also have the possibility to join the Ukrainian armed forces if the situation at the front becomes critical and I have to defend my people. Thank you for your interest in the problems of ordinary Ukrainians.

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— Volodya Vagner - Builders in Solidarity

 

at 8/28/24 2:13pm

Author: Volodya VagnerTitle: Builders in SolidaritySubtitle: A rambunctious Russian-speaking union shakes up Sweden’s labor movementDate: August 16, 2024Source: Retrieved on 28th August 2024 from meduza.io Sweden is usually outside of The Beet’s purview, but the migrant workers at the heart of its growing shadow economy are not. In the construction sector in particular, many of these migrants hail from the countries that emerged from the Soviet Union’s collapse and they still use Russian as their lingua franca. To fight for their rights and combat exploitation, hundreds of these workers have formed Builders in Solidarity (Solidariska Byggare, in Swedish). Freelance journalist Volodya Vagner reports on this rapidly growing Russian-speaking union shaking up the Swedish labor movement. “I’ll happily distribute some of your flyers, but only if they’re translated into Ukrainian,” proclaims a middle-aged woman sitting in a packed meeting hall in central Stockholm. The man she addresses, 46-year-old construction worker Ivan Semenov, stands on stage in front of the crowd, holding up a Russian-language leaflet with information about labor rights in Sweden. He had just asked the roughly 100 attendees of this Russian-language union meeting to distribute the pamphlet in their neighborhoods. “Okay, how about this,” Semenov suggests calmly. “Anyone who wants to translate it into their preferred language is welcome to do so. And in the meantime, those who want to can start spreading this Russian version.” As the meeting ends, several workers from various corners of Eastern Europe, the Caucasus, and Central Asia grab copies of the flyer as they shuffle past. Born in Mariupol, Semenov used to work as a business developer in Donetsk. When war came to Ukraine in 2014, he and his family were forced to flee due to his involvement in pro-Maidan activism. In one traumatic episode early in the conflict, Semenov was almost busted at a separatist checkpoint. Luckily for him, the 500 Ukrainian flags in the trunk of his car remained undiscovered. After stopovers in Kyiv, western Ukraine, and Estonia, Semenov moved to Sweden with his wife and daughter in 2021. Now, he works as a roofer in a Swedish construction sector where the exploitation of migrant workers, like himself, is an increasingly rampant problem. “To put it in plain Russian, there’s a whole industry of screwing people over,” Semenov says. Builders in Solidarity In some sectors of the Swedish economy, particularly in construction, what’s commonly referred to as “labor market criminality” has become endemic, and the question of how to combat it is near the top of the country’s political agenda. Migrant workers often fall prey to subcontractors who have learned to game the system, exploiting their employees’ lack of familiarity with the local language and rules. Often hired under informal arrangements, workers are paid in cash, frequently cheated out of wages entirely, fired on a whim, and denied legally mandated benefits. Migrants from former Soviet countries are frequently found among both the culprits and victims of such exploitation. A peculiarity of the Swedish system facilitates these schemes: traditionally, the state doesn’t oversee labor relations. Instead, the country’s labor unions are supposed to collaborate with employer organizations to regulate wages, ensure decent working conditions, and enforce compliance. This so-called “Swedish model” is meant to ensure that organized labor holds the power rather than politicians. But for migrants who have been cheated or mistreated on the job, it means they can rarely expect support from the police. Instead, the authorities typically refer those seeking help to labor unions. Sweden’s more well-established and powerful unions, however, have long forgotten how to handle informal, precarious labor and have done little to organize migrants, who, in turn, often don’t see the point of joining a union. This is especially true of migrants from post-Soviet countries who seldom have had positive experiences of unions helping them achieve justice. Semenov had never belonged to a labor union before coming to Sweden. Now, he sits on the board of the country’s most rapidly growing and undoubtedly most unique labor union: Builders in Solidarity. Founded in 2021, it unites migrant construction workers, most of whom hail from post-Soviet countries and have no previous labor organizing experience. The project came about after Russian-speaking Swedish writer and activist Pelle Sunvisson posed as a migrant from Moldova and spent several months working construction while researching for a novel. Appalled by the exploitation he witnessed, Sunvisson turned to the Stockholm chapter of SAC, a small but feisty syndicalist union guided by libertarian socialist ideals, which has been around for more than a century. Aided by Sunvisson’s language skills and contacts among workers, the syndicalists soon attracted a growing number of exploited migrants. And as their cases piled up, Builders in Solidarity was founded as an independent chapter. By confronting exploitative employers with aggressive litigation and long-forgotten methods of struggle, like blockading the construction sites of contractors with wage debts, the union has managed to redistribute millions of dollars in unpaid wages and damages. With nearly 1,000 members, Swedish labor market experts are celebrating Builders in Solidarity as a model for how to tackle the issue of migrant labor exploitation. ...

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— Fritz Brupbacher - Bakunin and his Confession

 

at 8/28/24 8:54am

Author: Fritz BrupbacherTitle: Bakunin and his ConfessionDate: 1929Notes: Original title: *Bakunin e la sua Confessione Fritz Brupbacher Témoins, III, n. 10–11, autunno-inverno 1955–56 via: finimondo.org/node/2118 Michael Bakunin: Der Satan der Revolte by Fritz Brupbacher First published in 1929Source: Retrieved on August 28, 2024 from https://www.elephanteditions.net/library/bakunin-and-his-confession?v=1724822630 I For most contemporaries, Michail Bakunin is unknown. If a certain number of people only know him by name, that is enough to hate and slander him. But there are some who love him with fervour. Once Bakunin was truly a great name. While one would search in vain in the edition of the great encyclopedic dictionary published in 1866 for the name of Karl Marx, that same work of 1864 consecrates Bakunin, a contemporary of Marx, almost an entire page that ends with these words: «Bakunin has a personality suggestive of brilliant intellectual faculties accompanied by a rare energy, but also by a fanatic passion ». And this is not by chance. Bakunin is one of the men who participated in the bourgeois revolution of 1848–1849: but the bourgeois have long forgotten that they were revolutionaries; they have therefore forgotten their heroes; they have therefore forgotten Bakunin. Yes, but also Karl Marx was a Forty-Eighter and yet he is one of the most famous men of our times. More than one will say: “If Marx had been only a bourgeois revolutionary, he would certainly have been forgotten. But what survives of Marx is not the man of 48, he is the theorist of the proletarian revolution ». To this we will reply that Bakunin was also, after 1860 and 1870, one of the spirits who dominated the International Workingmen’s Association and when Marx excluded him, this exclusion resulted in the death of the International. Marx was forced to kill the First International to prevent it from falling into the hands of the Bakuninists. This was actually the situation in 1872. Currently, only Spain and South America have a fairly large number of Bakunin’s disciples, while in all the countries of the world Marxists are as numerous as the grains of sand of the sea. When Bakunin was excluded from the First International, the national Federations of Belgium, Holland, Spain and England followed him, as did considerable minorities from other countries. Bakunin was then a force in the proletarian revolutionary movement. Today among the proletarians the same Bakunin, and with him anarchism, are almost completely forgotten. The memory of Bakunin disappeared as certain psychological tendencies in the proletariat disappeared. Let’s say it right away: as big industry developed, the proletariat’s aspiration to freedom, to personality, disappeared; the libertarian and anarchist tendencies of Bakuninism have gradually cancelled themselves, along with the memory of Bakunin. Not only has the desire for freedom disappeared, but a real hatred has been reserved for all those who continue to want the freedom of the individual: this hatred is consequently directed against Bakunin and his doctrines. It is the same hatred that generated the slanders spread against his person. As big industry has killed the will to be free, slavery has generated the will to power in proletarians, not only the will to exercise political power at the expense of the bourgeoisie, but the will to power in itself, the thirst to impose one’s power on all that has a human aspect. Every individual dominated by the will to power, and in particular the politically active proletariat, comes to consider anyone who retains the will to be free his mortal enemy; and all the more so because an extremely rigorous discipline has become truly necessary in the struggle that the proletariat carries out against its enemies. The anti-authoritarian phase of socialism was followed by an authoritarian socialism which defeated, in that form, feudalism and bourgeois society in Russia. Anyone who aspires to freedom becomes a counter-revolutionary and deserves hatred and slander. Bakunin being the anti-authoritarian par excellence, he deserves slander and hatred par excellence. Thus, slandered by the contemporary proletariat, forgotten by a bourgeoisie that has ceased to be revolutionary, Bakunin has to be content with being loved by those who, however distant from him and after so many circumnavigations through the psychology of the different classes, foresee the coming of a time in which the luxury of freedom will begin to be considered one of humanity’s greatest assets again. We have seen why Bakunin is unknown, why he is hated and slandered and why, nevertheless, some friends love him with fervour. It is now a matter of presenting him to those who do not know him or who know only the lying figure invented by slander. II Not much is lost in not knowing anything about Karl Marx’s life, almost everything is lost when Bakunin’s is ignored. First of all, his very life is a novel; a novel which, thanks first to Max Nettlau and then to Kornilow and last Polonsky, he has been the subject of tireless research. Bakunin’s existence has inspired more than one writer: Turgenev and Dostoevsky used him in their novels, while Ricarda Huch, great German novelist, wrote a Bakunin, and finally Lucien Descaves and Maurice Donnay staged him. Anyone who is not prisoner of a doctrinaire armour, anyone who has not, once and for all, decided to belong to a militant orthodoxy, or is not blinded by the particular situation of his class, will find Bakunin’s personality extremely seductive. ...

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— Aragorn Eloff - Do Anarchists Dream of Emancipated Sheep?

 

at 8/25/24 7:18am

Author: Aragorn EloffTitle: Do Anarchists Dream of Emancipated Sheep?Subtitle: Contemporary Anarchism, Animal Liberation and the Implications of New PhilosophySource: Chapter from ‘Anarchism and Animal Liberation: Essays on Complementary Elements of Total Liberation’ (ISBN: 0786494573). <academia.edu> Everything fits together, from the bird whose brood is crushed to the humans whose nest is destroyed by war. —Louise Michel In this essay I explore the relations between contemporary anarchism and animal rights/liberation through the lens of Deleuze/Guattari-inflected complex systems theory. Specifically, I look at the liberalism and normative practices endemic to the mainstream animal rights movement, engaging with some of the more salient critiques that have emerged from Leftist and radical (anti-)political milieus and exploring the ways in which the theory and practice of anarchism—including its post- and nihilist strains—suggests an alternative, possibly more effective way of conceiving of animal liberation. In mid-2010 a friend and I conducted an informal online survey of anarchists (Knoll S. and A. Eloff 2010). The survey took the form of an extended questionnaire containing around 60 questions. We were hoping that the results would provide us with a cursory sense of the composition and internal dynamics of the contemporary anarchist milieu. While the results of the survey, which was completed by around 2,500 people, were inevitably slanted due to its English language bias, mode of promotion and delivery (Anglophone anarchist internet channels) and structure (neither of us were experienced in this form of research), they are also highly suggestive; in many instances our key findings were strengthened by our subsequent meetings with anarchists from around the globe, including many from South America and various nonAnglophone European countries. One of the most striking findings, although to some extent anticipated, was the number of vegans in the anarchist milieu. While general surveys of the U.S., UK and so on usually put the number of vegans at around 0.2–1.4 percent of the general population, over 11 percent of those taking our survey described their diet/lifestyle as vegan. While to some extent this can be explained as the result of subcultural practices—rites of inclusion and exclusion forming in and out groups—the correlations between veganism and various strains within anarchism, as well as the reasons given for practicing veganism, suggests something slightly more interesting. Nineteen point six percent of self-identified anarcha-feminists, for instance, also identified as vegan, as did 19.4 percent of green anarchists. So-called ‘anarcho’-capitalists on the other hand, were only vegan 1.8 percent of the time, a percentage roughly in line with the general population. Given the intersectional work done by feminists exploring the parallels between the oppression of other animals and the oppression of women under patriarchy, the first figure is unsurprising. The negative correlations between animal agriculture and ecological destruction, as well as the way in which the subjugation of other animals within industrial society is antithetical to the free, thriving, dis-alienated life sought by green anarchists, also suggests why veganism would feature as strongly as it does for this group. The gender distribution of vegans within the anarchist milieu paints a similar picture: 7 percent of male-identi-fied participants described themselves as vegan, compared to 16.7 percent of female-identified participants and 25.7 percent of those identified as genderqueer/other (the survey had a free form gender box that we awkwardly summarized with this tentative descriptor). Finally, 76 percent of vegans surveyed saw a connection between their diet and anarchism, whereas only 24 percent of non-vegans did. Reasons given by vegans for their practice of a vegan diet/lifestyle included: “animal liberation” “total liberation,” “respect for all beings,” “no one is free while others are oppressed” “compassion establishing why we should care about equality in the first place” “veganism is an expression of anti-authoritarianism and personal empowerment through dietary choices; it directly divests from (and actively promotes an alternative to) a particularly barbarous and destructive sector of our society” “eating meat and other animal products is bad for the environment and represents another form of oppression” “extend the same ethics to non-human animals: no hierarchy, solidarity etc.,” “speciesism is another oppressive institution that we should consider and address as anarchists” and “opposition to all forms of domination requires a willingness to refuse oppression animals” Reasons given by non-vegans for their diet are equally illuminating: “I eat what I want” “anarchy is a life without structure or authority, therefore my diet follows neither of these” “I believe all things are equal and therefore anything goes” “I get sick if I don’t eat animal protein, how can I smash the state if I’m too tired to get out of bed?” “anarchism is about people; we eat what we want to eat; dictating that is fascist,” “a restrictive diet makes it very difficult to organize with community outside of the anarchist scene,” “all forms of consumption are related to the oppression of workers” “meat eating is natural and right for humans—naturalism and anarchism go hand in hand” and, notably, “I see that my diet stands in contradiction to my anarchist beliefs, and while I’m not willing to stop eating meat, I do wish to find ways to raise animals in a far more humane way than is the norm now.” ...

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— Auraj - People’s uprising against an autocratic state

 

at 8/25/24 2:53am

Author: AurajTitle: People’s uprising against an autocratic stateSubtitle: The present, past and future of BangladeshDate: 24 July 2024Notes: The writer is a member of the anarchist group Auraj network. Auraj (which means “anarchy” in Bangla) is an anarchist network of Bangladeshi students and other people from different professions. Auraj has published various translations of Anarchist thinkers such as Bakunin, Kropotkin, Rudolf Rocker, and others in Bangla. Auraj also frequently publishes articles on Bangladesh’s political and economic scenario. Auraj has shown solidarity with the recent labor movements (movements of garment workers, jute mill workers), student movements, and civil rights movements in Bangladesh. Although members of Auraj have individually taken part directly in many of these movements, including the ongoing current resistance, the activity of Auraj as a group is mainly limited to publication.Source: Retrieved on 25th August 2024 from www.iclcit.org As I am writing this statement, I don’t know the whereabouts of most of my comrades who participated in the ongoing protest of students in Bangladesh. All I know is that they were on the streets, trying to fight back against the police, against the fascist goons of the autocratic party. As only people from some parts of Bangladesh have regained internet access after five days of state- ordered nationwide internet blackout, connecting to people back home from abroad has been tough. As new photos and news unveil the unprecedented violence of the police, where they are torturing and killing unarmed people, I go through feelings of anguish and anger. I think about my comrades back in the country, but it’s not only about them, it’s about the entire country. I only know that my comrades are part of the resistance where thousands of others joined, where people are protesting against the fascist and autocratic state, which has killed at least 197 people, detained hundreds, and left thousands injured in the hospitals. All of this started with a peaceful protest by the students and government job seekers in demand for quota reformation. The quota system in Bangladesh reserves 30% of the jobs for the descendants of the freedom fighters who took part in the liberation war against Pakistan in 1971. This 30% quota leaves most general people with very little chance to secure a government job. The problem of unemployment and recent economic crises have made government jobs very competitive, and most people consider this 30% quota discriminatory and unfair. Even though the ruling party describes the quota system as a way to show respect to the family of freedom fighters, in reality, the ruling party used it to have an obedient group of people in bureaucracy. First of all, the liberation war of Bangladesh in 1971 against Pakistan was a people’s war; people from all walks of life helped the freedom fighters through various means. Second, many of the poor freedom fighters belonging to the working class couldn’t manage any certificate of being freedom fighters. Third, there have been claims of corruption and nepotism in issuing freedom fighter certificates by the ruling party. So, this 30% quota allows the government to consolidate their power. Furthermore, reserving 30 % of government jobs for the third generation of freedom fighters, which is less than 5% of the population, stands against the central ethos of the liberation war: equality, freedom, and justice. As anarchists, we supported the just demand of the students. Still, we also believed that mere quota reformation could not solve the problem of the capitalist economy maintained by an autocratic ruling party. However, things escalated when the government responded to the peaceful protest with unparallel violence from police and their fascist goons. The state violence against protesters completely transformed the current movement. Before, moving to this part of the current stage of the movement, it’s necessary to describe the current political scenario of Bangladesh. For the past 16 years, Bangladesh has been ruled by Prime Minister Sheikha Hasina and her party, Awami League. Even though they first came to power by gaining an electoral majority, they soon became an autocratic party and retained state power through three rigged or staged general elections. Furthermore, Sheikh Hasina and her party boast of being the only party in favor of the spirit of liberation war. In reality, they have appropriated the spirit and gains of liberation war from the masses. They have tried to portray the liberation war from only a nationalistic perspective while it was a peoples’ war led by aspiration for equality, freedom and justice. Post-independence, the class characteristics of the state did not transform, as one group of domestic rulers just replaced another group of foreign rulers. The state apparatus and legal systems also continued to carry the legacy of the Pakistani and British colonial ruling system. Awami league in their last 16 years of rule has utilized all of these organs of the state ruling system to wipe out opposing views. They have justified it by using their nationalistic rhetoric and tagging everyone else as anti-liberation force. Even though Bangladesh has achieved high GDP growth in the past decade, it mainly came through the expense of cheap labor in readymade garment sectors and exporting of low skilled labor in middle east. Both of these groups have suffered from inhumane working conditions. While the collapse of Rana Plaza, which killed 1134 people in 2013, managed to gain coverage in international media, other killings from fire and police crackdown have gone unnoticed. The government has cracked down on many labor unions (including the abduction of a union leader), took control of most of the other labor unions, and banned union activity in some areas. Even in the last year, garment workers were killed and arrested for demanding an increase in minimum age. Recently, Bangladesh’s economy has been facing a crisis as its short-term development strategy financed by borrowing money is having repercussions. Imperialist and expansionist powers such as the United States, China, and India consider Bangladesh to be a geopolitical region of interest. India, the country that shares borders with Bangladesh, has been most influential in the politics of Bangladesh as they offer the government “legitimacy” to the West in exchange for contracts that only satisfy the interest of the Indian government. Although the ruling party has managed to be reelected for another term without a fair or inclusive election, people are suffering from unemployment, inflation, inequality, and oppression by the ruling party. ...

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— Confederación Nacional del Trabajo - CNT on the re-foundation of the IWA

 

at 8/25/24 2:14am

Author: Confederación Nacional del TrabajoTitle: CNT on the re-foundation of the IWASubtitle: CNT-E’s XI Congress agreements on internationalismDate: 5 April 2016Source: Retrieved on 25th August 2024 from www.cnt.es The CNT would like to announce and explain the agreements made during our December 2015 Congress with regards to the current International Workers’ Association (IWA). We believe that it is necessary to explain our position on the drift of our international, so that this internal situation can be made publically known in order to openly and quickly begin the process of its re-foundation. In the CNT we consider international solidarity to be critical in this historical moment, marked by the global organization of capitalism. As expected, the economic crisis has served as an excuse to accelerate the process of dismantling the past achievements of the working class. While this phenomenon is not new, it has sped up and intensified in recent years. We understand that a global intervention is required to defend our interests, as workers, against this offensive of capitalism, a world-wide extension of the class struggle following the parameters of anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary unionism. However, we also believe that this global effort needs to be built upon the work of organization and struggle at the local level, carried out by organizations grounded and present in their own territory. International solidarity flows as an extension of these local struggles. To do the opposite would be putting the cart before the horse. Sadly, we have found sections in the current IWA to have very little commitment to union work in their local context. Rather, they exert enormous efforts to monitor the activities of other sections, larger or smaller, that do make this area a priority. Consequently, over the past few years, the IWA has become inoperative as a vehicle to promote anarcho-syndicalism and revolutionary unionism at an international level. We insist, so that it can be clear, that this is not an issue of the size of the sections. All of us are far smaller than we would like to be and than we should be. But there is an enormous difference between the sections that dedicate their efforts to increase their presence or relevance in their regions, experiment with new strategies, initiate and develop labor conflicts, and have an impact, small as it may be, in their immediate context, and those that go for years without union activities yet inquisitorially monitor and criticize the activities of others, lest in their eagerness to build a viable anarcho-syndicalist alternative commit some sin against the purity of the IWA. For some time, due to these contradictions, the IWA has experienced a considerable internal crisis that erupted with the expulsion of the German section, the FAU. This decision, made unilaterally by the current general secretary on completely unjustifiable motives, was ratified later in a special Congress in Oporto in 2014. At this congress it became clear that due to the peculiar structure of the decision-making within the IWA, a small group of sections, despite their scant presence in their own territories and total lack of orientation towards union activity, could impose their criteria upon the rest of the international. Since this congress, all attempts to address the situation have failed, due to the unwillingness of the current secretary to engage in dialogue (a basic duty of the office) and the complicity of a number of sections that only exist on the internet. It is therefore evident that this IWA is unable to progress beyond offering the most basic kind of solidarity in the occasional labor conflict. As valuable as this form of international solidarity can be, and as much as we can appreciate it, the truth is that it is ultimately always organized (as there is really no other way) at the local level. Thus the current structure of the IWA is rendered effectively redundant. The contrast between this reality of the IWA and its bureaucracy and infrastructure has reinforced the internal conflicts and attempts at ideological control which we referred to previously. This is far from the objectives we should aspire for in an international coordinating body. As a result of these factors, we have reached the point where the internal situation prevents any attempts to correct this drift, which makes it urgent that we reconsider both the internal operation and the working program of the IWA. To bring about concrete solutions to these questions, the CNT proposes to begin a process for the re-founding of an anarcho-syndicalist and revolutionary unionist international. To this end we are preparing a series of conferences and contacts with those sections of the IWA interested in a process of re-founding the International, and with other organizations that, while not currently members of the IWA, are interested in participating in the construction of a model for revolutionary unionism at the global level. These conferences and contacts will have as their aim the organization of a congress to re-found a radical unionist international. As a first step for these conferences, the CNT makes the following proposals as an organizational basis for the new IWA: ...

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— Liao - The Equality Society

 

at 8/23/24 2:54am

Author: LiaoTitle: The Equality SocietySubtitle: A Preliminary Archival Reconstruction of The Chinese American Anarchist MovementDate: 8/20Source: https://www.thecommoner.org.uk/the-equality-society-a-preliminary-archival-reconstruction-of-the-chinese-american-anarchist-movement/ “Anarchism is still the most beautiful ideal, and I think someday it will come,” wrote Lau Chung-Si (Ray Jones) from a small apartment in San Francisco. At the time he put these words to paper in 1974, he was a relic of another time. Jones was a Chinese man who, in 1909, immigrated to the United States and quickly became enamoured with the ideas of anarchism. He was involved in a collective of Chinese American anarchists in San Francisco named Pingsheh (Equality Society). He also attended meetings held by other anarchist organisations, as well as the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). To date, not much has been written about the Chinese anarchists in America, but what has been written has focused on Ray Jones and the Equality Society. While acknowledging and continuing to use the Equality Society as a focal point, I am putting forward a preliminary analysis of the beliefs and praxis of Chinese American anarchists and their international connections as a part of a broader project of conceptualising Asian anarchism. Information regarding Chinese American anarchists in America is fractured and spread far and wide. Most of the information analysed here was sourced from the Ray Jones Papers and the Him Mark Lai Collection at the UC Berkeley Ethnic Studies library. By cross-referencing of multiple sources, including first-hand accounts by the Chinese immigrants, newspapers distributed by the Chinese anarchist collectives, the writings of contemporaneous socialists and IWW members, and other miscellaneous materials, it is possible to reconstruct an image of the Chinese American anarchist movement, its involvement in the revolutionary struggle for anarchy, and their relationships to other political groups. Racism & Radicalization The Chinese American anarchist movement was born from the unique condition of being Asian immigrants who were exploited by American capitalists and unfairly excluded from unions by Marxists and reactionary trade unions such as the American Federation of Labor. It was the IWW’s acceptance of Chinese immigrants that ultimately led them to the philosophy of anarchism. These Chinese Americans deeply held anti-State and anti-capitalist principles and were in favour of anarchist communism, under which they engaged in the praxis of direct action. These Chinese American anarchists worked with groups within the larger anarchist movement on local, national, and international levels. Their adherence to anarchist principles and collaboration with other groups led to struggles locally with capitalist and State repression along with alienation from their homeland due to hostility from the Kuomintang (Chinese Nationalist Party) and the Chinese Communist Party. Chinese immigrants failed in their attempts to join labour unions to combat the abysmal material conditions and exploitation that they faced under capitalism. A dogmatic belief in perverted formulation of Marx’s theories led many Marxists and like-minded socialists to exclude the Chinese immigrant proletariat from socialist labour unions and movements. In the 1900s, the Socialist Party of America was one of the largest socialist organisations in the United States. Their stance on Asian labourers was made clear by the “Summary of the Majority Report” at the 1910 Socialist Conference, which advocated for the: ‘…unconditional exclusion of Chinese, Japanese, Coreans [sic] and Hindus, not as races per se, not as peoples with definite physiological characteristics—but for the evident reason that these peoples occupy definite portions of the earth which are so far behind the general modern development of industry, psychologically as well as economically, that they constitute a drawback, an obstacle and menace to the progress of the most aggressive, militant and intelligent elements of our working class population.’ This is indicative of how many Marxists and adjacent socialists grouped Asian labourers as impediments to the revolution due to some perceived underdeveloped psychological and economic conditions. This line of thinking can largely be attributed to their understanding of Marx’s theory of historical materialism, which posits that a society needed to reach a certain stage of capitalist development before widespread class consciousness and revolutionary potential is possible. Since Marxists did not see Asian countries as having already reached that state of capitalism, they viewed the incorporation of Asian labourers as “fruitless and reactionary” and against the interest of the American working class as it would only hamper their revolutionary potential. However, the refusal to accept Asian labourers into unions cannot solely be attributed to racist revisions to Marx’s theories. White supremacy was extremely prevalent in America which allowed those influenced by racism and xenophobia to add to the ongoing exclusion of Asian labourers. At the Socialist Conference, “Comrade Untermann … claimed that it was impossible to get the Asiatic laborers to understand the principles of labor organisation, much less of socialism.” This attitude demonstrates a belief of the racial inferiority of the Asian workers in comparison to their counterparts. While this supremacist view was common at the time, other socialists at the Socialist Conference challenged this thinking for being inherently racist — but to no avail. The anti-racist advocates were a minority at the Conference. ...

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— Uchiyama Gudō - Thoughts During Imprisonment

 

at 8/21/24 1:36am

Author: Uchiyama GudōTitle: Thoughts During ImprisonmentDate: Oct 26, 1909Source: Nihon Rekishi Issue 131 (1951) It is government suppression. It is tyranny. Even until now, I am unable to give a viewpoint on whether the ending of a human life is a good or bad thing, regardless of someone giving me a good or bad name for it. Daring to be brief about whether or not to end a human life, I am neither for nor against either choice, because I am for the sake of everybody’s happiness, with an unshakeable faith to stand on the impossible conviction of working for the freedom of any or even all people. I wish that I will behave in accordance with the demands of reason and not based on the demands of immediate emotions or instincts based on material desire. If this course of action is in accordance with the demands of reason, it is unfortunate. Our work is left unfinished and my discouragement is like tears on the chopping block while the moment continues to fade away. I am able to remain detached though, and have the audacity to even smile. Otherwise, I think it is just something I do sentimentally. And this probably isn’t going to lead to any favorable change, for the time being taking a stand leads to adversity. A person cries with bitterness to the heavens unable to escape this suffering, and I sympathize with this. In any case, how does one act in accordance with reason? Many ordinary people want to believe that if they were scholars it would be very easy, but this isn’t the case isn’t it? Incidentally it is perhaps unknowable. However, when it comes to acting in accordance with reason, and the infinitely various ways of doing so, as great scholars are great scholars, and middle schoolers are middle schoolers, I believe that even the uneducated can act appropriately according to reason remorselessly and with belief in their actions, which I would like to speak on and consider below. So what is reason? Well it’s about as complicated as a six sided square, but how much progress could humanity make if it were more familiar? Let us briefly examine this. To begin with from the standpoint of health, don’t we want to ensure that all have enough of the three necessities of life, i.e. food, clothing and shelter? Now that doesn’t mean everyone gets to live in a marble tower. Nor does it mean wearing a 1,000 yen sash. Nor does it mean wishing to always attend banquets, eating portions that cost 100 yen per person, but rather working 10 hours a day and exercising at least once a week, striving for our ideals even in the cold weather, moving towards those ideals one step at a time; this is a person’s duty. And so, the proper course of action is to examine one’s situation in life and look at its place in the current state of the world today. Why don’t we collectively envision a world in which we can be properly clothed in the heat, properly nourished when we are sick, and pursue educational entertainment and religious cultivation as we like on resting days? This is not necessarily only my wish. This is the wish of all peoples. But what is today’s world like? There are people who build houses for 300 yen per tsubo (~3.3sqm) on land that costs 100 yen per tsubo, renting a six tatami (~10sqm) room for 3 yen a month, some fitting a family of six into an old tenement house, and more and more and more; aren’t these conditions the case for laborers? Even that is impossible to live in for some, in this society there are people who must spend even the coldest winter nights after their daily labors under the eaves with the stars as friends for consolation. There are also people who can afford to wear clothes that cost 1000 or 2000 yen a piece, while others bear through the winter, working in just a thin haori (traditional winter coat). So this is the state of the laborer today, with even their infants having to be wrapped in soiled rags. Compulsory education is shouldered for six years. We should be immensely grateful for this favor that the magnificent imperial government has lain on us, but for the heimin (commoner social class) worker, they feel as though their lives are cruel, painful and bitter. Heimin children are born into a harsh life, where by the time they are age 9 or 10, they must start working in one way or another in order to support their parents. When parents compare this to the young men, innocent in the ways of the world, who have the privilege of deferring conscription and can just go to school until they are 25 or even 30, it must be infuriating. What kind of fate can it be that there are richer folk who can afford meals worth 5 or 10 yen but bemoan over poor digestion while working folk subsist off of bentos worth 5 sen (1 sen = 1/100th of a yen)? My father, who is over 60, has been lying in bed with an illness since February. Workers are unable to even buy non-prescription medicine, let alone receive a medical examination from a doctor. And yet there are many medical teachers and students at the university. No matter how many towering hospitals reach to the heavens, they are not for the benefit of the worker. So, one could accept that there is no other way to live in this world and must abandon hope, sleeping and waking in a pigsty, surviving on other people’s leftovers, living a life worse than that of a rich man’s dog; or year after year, with just a thin hanten coat, without a family, living alone the life of the low born laborer; or rather one could be that of the most courageous of men and seek out the roots of this unfair world and attempt to reform it. Our lives are halfway abandoned as it is. There are those who absorbed the solutions studied by scholars from all times and places, those who embark to bring them into reality, and even the strong-willed enduring the pain of prison amidst their misfortune; let us eradicate countless common peoples agony directly like the direct appeals to the shogun of Sakura Sogoro who was crucified for it, or like the meritorious deeds of Oshio Heihachiro, who, during unprecedented famine and resenting the inhumanity of the shogunate magistrates, destroyed the rice storehouse in Tenma, Osaka, satisfying the hunger of numerous poor people; this unshakeability of people’s belief that motivate action, truly this is what should be called people’s happiness. ...

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— BOAK - Our Сomrade, Anarchist-Internationalist from Russia, Vladislav Iurchenko (“Pirate”), Became a Martyr Defending the Peoples of Ukraine

 

at 8/20/24 8:49am

Author: BOAKTitle: Our Сomrade, Anarchist-Internationalist from Russia, Vladislav Iurchenko (“Pirate”), Became a Martyr Defending the Peoples of UkraineDate: August 19, 2024Source: Retrieved on 20th August 2024 from telegra.ph and t.me Another fighter became a martyr. On August 9, our comrade and anarchist-internationalist from Russia, Vladislav Iurchenko (nom de guerre “Pirate”), was killed in battle. He was 22 years old. Vladislav was part of the “Siberian Battalion” of the International Legion, and he was martyred in a fight during a landing operation on the Kinburn Spit. Before coming to Ukraine, Vladislav participated in actions of solidarity with anarchist and other anti-government prisoners. He fought against Russian fascism and imperialism. Knowing that anarchists in Ukraine are organizing for self-defense against the occupiers, he was looking for the opportunity to join the comrades and take up arms. He decided to fight against the Russian colonial state in the ranks of the “Siberian Battalion” because, as a revolutionary, he believed that this unit would open up opportunities for the anarchist collective organizational activity — the activity which will lead to the radical transformation of society in the post -Soviet space and in the whole world, to the triumph of the ideals of freedom, equality and justice. Before the full-scale war, Vladislav worked on naval vessels, and maybe because of this he chose nom de guerre “Pirate”. He came to Ukraine in February 2024, was enormously enthusiastic during the training, and helped other comrades. He was an assault and special forces fighter. “Pirate” went to his first battle on May 10, 2024. Early morning of this day, on the border with the Russian Federation, his group met by fire the Russian troops advancing to the Kharkiv region. Later, he participated in the defense of the city Vovchansk. In his revolutionary struggle, “Pirate” was inspired by the path of our martyred comrade, one of the founders of BOAK, Dmitry Petrov. He had a great commitment to the example of Dima and he considered that not only the defense of the Ukrainian society from imperialism and occupation was important, but also the ideological self-defense of the anarchist movement from the destructive influence of the capitalist oppressive system. Therefore, in Ukraine, in addition to participating in battles, he was looking for possibilities to participate in the organizational activities of anarchists beyond the state armed structures. Also, Vladislav was inspired by the Kurdish revolution. He tried to learn as much as possible about the Revolution and its relevance for the international revolutionary movement. He read with great attention the book “Flowers of the Desert: 10 Years of the Rojava Revolution”, published with Dmitry Petrov’s participation. He was going to read “Life without a state: Revolution in Kurdistan” and one of the founders of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) Sakine Cansız’s memoirs “Sarah—My whole life was a struggle”. Recently, the comrades from the “Solidarity Collectives” asked Vladislav how they can help him materially, and he did not ask for anything else but these books. Now the comrade will never get this parcel with this revolutionary literature… Shortly before “Pirate” martyred , the telegram-channel Antifa Enternasyonal, connected with the Kurdish revolutionary movement, published his words about the motivation to protect Ukrainian and Russian societies from the Russian fascist colonial state. “Pirate” became a martyr while fighting heroically in landing operation on the Kinburn Spit on August 9, 2024. According to available information, he was injured in the battle. Later, the boat was hit by an anti-tank guided missile during the evacuation. Vladislav was a very kind, warm hearted, and optimistic person. But first of all, he was an anarchist and a revolutionary. He was killed at the very beginning of his revolutionary path, defending the society from fascism and imperialism. He became a martyr so early, but he will always be with us, in our struggle and our victories. We will remember the martyrs and continue to follow their path. Vladislav Iurchenko (19.09.2001 — 09.08.2024) Şehîd namirin! Martyrs are immortal! Greetings to all our comrades. My name is Vladislav, nom de guerre “Pirate”. I decided to leave this letter in the event of my death in the war against the Russian imperial regime, the war against the state in which I was born and raised, the war against the dictator who usurped power yet before my birth. I want this letter to remain as a historical document about the participation of anarchists-revolutionaries in the resistance of the Ukrainian people against the Russian tyranny. I, like all sane citizens of the Russian Federation, was shocked by the beginning of this war, terrible injustice, and crimes committed by the Russian army in Ukraine. From the first days of the full-scale invasion, I only thought about what I could do against this injustice, how I can stop the madness that my people made. When I got to know about the emergence of military units in the Armed Forces of Ukraine, in which the citizens of the Russian Federation were accepted, I immediately realized that I had to fight for the freedom of the Ukrainian people and our ideals in this way, with weapons in my hands. And even if I do not see the victory of the Ukrainian people over the occupiers, the bright future anarchist communism, justice and freedom for all people on Earth, I believe. I believe that the future will certainly come. While our comrades continue to fight, totalitarianism, authoritarianism and fascism will not capture humanity. I wish my comrades also not to lose confidence in the struggle for freedom. ...

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— Anarchists - The Hooligans, the Stingies, the Starved People and the Bad Asses

 

at 8/19/24 11:36am

Author: AnarchistsTitle: The Hooligans, the Stingies, the Starved People and the Bad AssesDate: 1985Notes: This is a translation of a leaflet written in 1985 by anarchists frequenting the Chrysallida social space in Limassol, Cyprus.Source: https://movementsarchive.org/doku.php?id=en:leaflets:xrisalllida:kakakakathkia The football league is over; the mass rallies of July have also passed. The Cuéllar initiative froze, as usual, and everything indicated that Cypriot society would remain for about a month without mass spectacles to organize its boredom. And suddenly “chaos” erupts in Germasogeia. A new “fruit” for the “Cypriot reality”; and the hysteria of the occasion is analogous. The newspapers are shouting about hooligans, they are searching for the “brains” (in this place it seems that spontaneity has been abolished), leftists and rightists demand increased policing, they worry about OUR state, for the room bookings of OUR hotels, for OUR post-war economic “miracle” (pay attention to that OUR). Let us not talk of the political parties and their supporters. They live –to the extent that they can live- in their own world. Within this entire phantasmagoric spectacle constructed by reporters, the State and the gossiping in the coffee shops, the attitude supporting an attack against a section of the youth started to be visible and materialize in practice. And this is not a random event. It has been under preparation for a long time, through all those bla bla bla about the youth that has “turned bad” and “gone astray”. That is, having escaped, in some way, from their direct control, re-locating its pursuits away from Greco-Christian potatoes and struggling cucumbers. How much pursuit there can be in Michael Jackson and catcalling is another story. Recently, the lords of Ayia Napa gathered to suggest an import ban on the motorcycles used by the “kamikaze” (Quite the imagination at the Ayia Napa municipal council – and we thought that fascism had its limits). With the last incidences in Germasogeia everyone broke out against the hooligans, the kamikaze, the anarchists (look at our note) – the “pests”, the “cancers”, the so-called “anti-social elements”. What then happened at Germasogeia? Mass release or racist hysteria? Probably both. However, these phenomena are neither foreign, nor that astonishing, regardless of how newspapers are presenting them. They were the explosion of the contradictions born by our hydrocephalus society. On the one side, a youth fed up, drifting in boredom, monotony, the fascism of the army and the authoritarianism of the Cypriot family. On the other side, the same youth that has to choose between puritanism and canned ideologies and ideals, between staying as a spectator of life and surrendering to the ultimate isolation of being a political party; or some other form of sheep, between marginalization and the sexual misery in front of a Europeanized luxurious display window. That is why what has occurred, occurred in Germasogeia. It is where the spectacle pushes the contradiction between a miserable, backward society and its European display, to the extreme. Within this context, the youth have every right to be fed up and revolt to claim its autonomy and its right to determine its own life. However, there was no social insurrection in Germasogeia – or even some conflict that demanded the overthrow of the old, to replace it with the new. In contrast, ideologically it was the expression of a hysterical racism and of a ridiculous attempt to rinse the shame of “male honor” of our equally ridiculous society (Of course!!! How can it be acceptable for the Arabs to fuck us?). The comedic-tragic element of this whole story was that the outburst of the youth emerged as the materialization of the hidden desires of the average Cypriot. Because the racism and disgraced machismo that provided the excuse and ideological direction of the outburst, has been born and nourished by our own society. They are the sick mindsets that emerge from everyday life and its traditional logic-irrationality. It is the mindset of the proper gentleman that sells his house to the Arabs and then turns and swears at them. It is at the same time the mindset of “male honor” of the macho man, who considers the penis the center of the universe. And this is not accidental. It originates directly from the patriarchal structure of a society that supports dowry, virginity, sexual repression, the oppression of women, of the youth etc. On Saturday, the youth became an instrument for the materialization of the fantasies of the social whole (And of course the Arabs were the easy target). Bravado, machismo and racism. The following day, a lot of proper ladies and gentlemen, rightists and leftists, bourgeoisie and proletariats, young and old, said: “what they did to them was fitting”. On Monday, power gritted its teeth – reporters, the State, the political parties ran to provide the line of the “condemnation of deviancy”. It is from this point that everyone began the search for scapegoats – and of course the easy target was the youth. Road blocks were raised; investigations and arrests began, as well as the policing of the youth (and not only). In Larnaca, on Monday, 45 youths were arrested in such anti-pest operations. No one is protesting. All those who kept on going on for democracies and liberties have shut up. They don’t even keep up the pretenses anymore. ...

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— Anonymous - A Friend of Mine or a Friend of Ours?

 

at 8/18/24 10:15am

Author: AnonymousTitle: A Friend of Mine or a Friend of Ours?Subtitle: An Essay On VouchingDate: 2024/08/15Source: https://unravel.noblogs.org/a-friend-of-mine-or-a-friend-of-ours-an-essay-on-vouching/ Vouching means different things to different anarchists. For some, to vouch for a person means the vouchee is felt to be trustworthy and competent enough for an action. For others, vouching means that the voucher has concrete evidence of the trustworthiness and competence of the vouchee, and is willing to stake their reputation on that evidence. To agree on whether to vouch for someone or not, we need to be clear about what we mean by vouching. We propose three components of a vouch that might be helpful in discussing that meaning: trustworthiness, competence, and the voucher's reputation. Trustworthiness refers to whether or not the vouchee has or will intentionally or unintentionally assist law enforcement. This includes that the vouchee is not currently, and has never been, a law enforcement agent or worked for law enforcement as an infiltrator, that the vouchee has never been a confidential informant and is not currently one, that the vouchee will not intentionally or unintentionally reveal information to those not involved in the action, and that the vouchee will not cooperate with any investigation in the future, even if facing prison time. Competence refers to whether the vouchee is mentally and physically capable of doing the proposed action, including not abandoning the action before it starts, not having a panic attack during the action, and not becoming physically incapacitated during the action. Reputation refers to the consequence of giving a bad vouch. Depending on the severity of the violation, and risk of the action, the reputational consequences could range from not taking the voucher seriously in the future, to not doing actions with the voucher or vouchee ever again, to retribution against the voucher and the vouchee for deception or gross incompetence. Below we give additional detail on the strength of evidence that can be used to assess the trustworthiness and competence of a vouchee, along with a short discussion of the voucher's reputation, and the consequences of a bad vouch. Trustworthiness If someone is going to believe that a person you vouch for is trustworthy, it's worth considering what evidence might be brought forth to support your case. As the consequences for getting caught increase, so should the required strength of evidence for trustworthiness of a vouch. Some suggestions for evidence of trustworthiness of the vouchee, in order of strength: -From talking to this person, do you get the feeling that they are genuine in their attitudes and convictions? Talk is cheap, but one can often get a feeling from people about whether they care about what they're talking about. Reading Kropotkin, Stirner, the Invisible Committee, or Blessed is the Flame are not things that normal people enjoy, including law enforcement. Does this person seem, from their words, to be passionate about something? Does this person have a basic sense of security culture? Does this person propose activities, including illegal ones, that are appropriate for the relationship? Does this person talk about their criminal activities, and the activities of others, openly in a way that is inappropriate for the relationship? -Has this person done actions on their own, without the prompting of others? While the need-to-know principle would ideally exclude awareness of the criminal activities of others, sometimes two and two can be put together. When people take action without needing you or others to participate, this is an indication that their feelings are genuine, and if that action is destructive, then they are unlikely to be an infiltrator. However, although committing crimes is frowned upon by law enforcement agencies, undercover agents and infiltrators can get away with committing crimes, even if initiated on their own and done by themselves. -Has this person participated in actions with you, and kept their mouth shut to people who are not in law enforcement? A common mistake is getting excited about actions and their results, particularly when that action makes headlines, and bragging about the action to others. A strong vouch means that the vouchee has consistently kept discussions of their illegal activities to themself, particularly when they had the opportunity to brag about something but decided against it. -Have you done actions with this person where, if the person were a snitch, one would already know about it? Their participation in the action, and knowledge of who is involved in the action, is enough for serious convictions, yet nobody has ever been charged. This is a pretty strong indicator that the person is not currently an infiltrator or confidential informant, unless they are waiting to gain more information, for example to network map, or hoping to get more severe charges. A vouchee who has engaged in riskier actions, such as felonies, in many different contexts, over an extended period of time, where no information is leaked to law enforcement or anyone outside the action group, is an indicator of trustworthiness. ...

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— Margaret Killjoy - Why I Joined the Industrial Workers of the World

 

at 8/17/24 2:13am

Author: Margaret KilljoyTitle: Why I Joined the Industrial Workers of the WorldDate: August 14, 2024Source: Retrieved on 17th August 2024 from margaretkilljoy.substack.com Back in probably 2004, maybe 2005, I was working in Portland, Oregon as a landscaper. It was a small crew, just three of us and our boss. Our boss was, for the most part, pretty cool. He didn’t work us to the bone. He was flexible about time off. He was down to call me Magpie. He paid us under the table. Sometimes he’d cancel work to go surfing. That kind of guy. In fact, after my first week of work, I told him: “hey I’m going to leave for about a month to go block roads in Southern Oregon to stop this old growth timber sale, maybe do some treesitting. When I come back, can I have my job back?” and he said yes, and so I left for a month, and then I came back and got my job back. One morning, he called me before work and said “hey you don’t have to come into work today if you don’t want to, we’re going to be taking down a tree.” I told him my problem was with old-growth logging, not all cutting of trees, but I appreciated his concern. But one day, we discovered a problem. There were three of us on his crew. I wasn’t out as trans yet, so I was a boy, and there was another boy, and there was a girl. The girl was the tallest and the strongest of the three of us. We found out she was getting 25 cents less an hour than I was. This wouldn’t do. All three of us were anarchists, so we marched on down to the Red & Black Cafe, where we knew we’d find some wobblies… some people from the Industrial Workers of the World. “The anarchist union,” we saw it, though that’s only half true. “The anarchist-friendly, direct-action-focused union that was started by a combination of anarchists and socialists a hundred years ago” would be a more accurate, but wordy, way to describe it. We marched on down there, went up to the wobblies, and said “we are 100% of our workplace and we are ready to go on strike tomorrow to demand equal pay for women and men.” The wobblies looked over at us, and one of them said “yeah, cool, we have our open meetings for new members the first Sunday of every second month, and last one was next week, so come back in seven weeks and we’ll get you signed up.” So on that day, I didn’t become a wobbly. Instead, the next morning, the three of us reported to work and told our boss “you’ve got a choice. Either you pay her the same rate you pay Magpie, or you don’t have any employees anymore.” So she got a raise, and I went back to digging holes for $10 an hour, and I learned something simple and universally true: there is power in a union. Then, being me, I successfully saved up enough money for a plane ticket to the Netherlands, I quit my job, and flew across the ocean to live in a squat and try and fail to fall in love. The history of 19th century unionism in the United States is, frankly, appalling. As often as not, unions acted more as white supremacist organizations than as instruments to advance the interests of the working class. When you have a union that excludes non-white workers, which was most of the unions, you’ve got an organization whose purpose is to maintain the white supremacist power structure. It’s as simple as that. There were exceptions to this explicit racism, of course, but overall, the first unions in the US are not looking good. Then, in 1905, a group of socialists and anarchists met up in Chicago and formed the Industrial Workers of the World, a syndicalist, antiracist, anti-sexist union. They spread like wildfire, organizing people traditional unions had rejected or ignored–migrant laborers and hoboes and immigrant workers from the “bad” parts of europe countries like Italy and Eastern Europe as well as folks from China and Mexico. When I first heard about the IWW, I was confused by the name. I’d assumed they organized laborers who did “industrial” work. People who, I don’t know, melted metal in furnaces or hit things with hammers. People who listened to Nitzer Ebb and Nine Inch Nails, maybe, or at least the people who made nails. That’s not the idea behind industrial unionism at all. “Industrial” in this context means “entire industries.” This is compared to “trade unionism.” In trade unionism, you might have a brakeman’s union and a conductors union and “people who lay the railroad tracks” union that are all separate from each other. In industrial unionism, everyone who works at the railroad at all is in the same big union. This removes one of the primary means by which bosses can break the union. You can no longer negotiate separately with the conductors and therefore pit their interests against the brakemen. The antiracism and antisexism of the IWW functioned to stop one of the other ways in which the working class was divided: white supremacy has long been one of the most effective tools capitalism has to wield against the working class, and whenever white workers would strike, bosses would bring in Black (or Chinese, or Mexican, depending on which region of the country) strikebreakers and stir up a little race war. As a result of the IWW’s organizing, you have places like the Philly docks, where in the 1910s Black and white longshoremen organized together. Everyone who worked on the dock organized together, from those that worked the deep sea docks (who were previously paid the best) to the dock’s firefighters, all in Local 8 of the IWW. They were democratic, and they weren’t afraid of direct action, and they dramatically improved their own lives by working together. ...

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— Zhachev - Anarchy and the Mythic Path

 

at 8/16/24 3:07pm

Author: ZhachevTitle: Anarchy and the Mythic PathDate: 08/09/2024Source: <zhachev.substack.com/p/anarchy-and-the-mythic-path> Fluctuations within a continuum can be generated from diverging narratives. Uncertain climes, alternative timelines. Chronoflipping, retroswitching, taleshifting. An alterverse created via timeforge. Terra incognita. Narratives serve the function of temporal modulators, unbound by the shackles of progress and linearity. Vectors of radivergence. Distorting, disrupting, and corrupting conventional chronologies, conduits to alternative realities proliferate with every shift in narrative azimuth. Each story is a potential rupture in the continuum of time, a machinic assemblage capable of bearing a plethora of parallel existences. Through an intricate tango between character and plot, individual and fate, the long shadows of possibility are cast across the otherwise monolithic goosestepping of historical determinism. Stories are not made belief, not mere reflections of reality, but rather, active forces with the capacity to fracture and reshape any duration. Every possibility explored; every outcome reimagined. Yet together we have so far crafted banal narratives, not out of a love for the mundane, but as an act of incestuous self-replication within a cosmos totally indifferent to human and even earthly aspirations. The banal storylines we cobble are but feeble attempts to inoculate ourselves against the abyss of existential absurdity, a meager and cowardly attempt to impose semblances of order on the chaos the lurks at the periphery of our senses and consciousness. In these tedious narratives, we find pitiful solace, a self-deception that promises coherence where there is none, meaning where only void persists. Through this insipid storytelling we attempt to stave off the encroaching realization of our own futility, sheltering ourselves in the comforts of predictability, thus avoiding the tremors of reality too unsettling to look in the eye. In this dreary, pallid, dull-eyed procession of unquestionable self-replication, we indulge only in the trivial — not because it fulfills our desires, but because it is a necessary distraction from the vast, silent horror of existence itself. But mythopoesis, the divine art of crafting narratives, serves as the crucible for the ascent of the soul from the mires of mediocrity into the realm of the sublime and extraordinary. It is through the artistic forging of myth that the individual transcends the prosaic confines of this dominant reality, sculpting a uniquely personal universe from without the chaotic flux. By weaving these mythic threads, we establish the battleground where the dominion of viridity asserts itself; fashioning oneself anew in the image of their deepest aspirations. In this creative revolt, the individual encounters the sacred, the heroic, and the sublime, aligning oneself with the eternal dance of becoming rather than stagnating in the slumber of being. The ultimate act of anarchic defiance is mythopoesis. A bold insurgency against the stifling chains of conformity and the dreary predictability of the status quo. By conjuring myths, the individual ignites a fierce rebellion against the oppressive order of political and societal norms, seizing control of their own narrative and fashioning a reality born of pure viridity and imagination. It is through this anarchic creativity that one shatters the imposed boundaries of conventional existence, unleashing torrents of radical transformation. In this act of myth-making, the self becomes a liberated potential, free to mold its own path and challenge the extant. Mythopoesis is not just an escape from the banal but a profound assertion of anarchic freedom, a reawakening of the viridity in defiance of the constrictive dictates of the dominant world. Here, one embraces the exhilarating chaos of creation, forging a life unmoored by societal constraints and enshrining the individual as both architect and destroyer of their own destiny. If there are free spirits and anarchists left to speak of, myth-making is the very lifeblood of the movement. A crucial weapon in our arsenal against the monolithic tyranny of one-world society and the suffocating grips of its norms. It is through the creation of potent, liberatory myths that we dismantle the oppressive structures of Other-control and rekindle the flame of feral fervor. These myths are not mere tales but incendiary devices that inspire and mobilize, giving form to our collective aspirations and embodying the spirit of insurrection. In crafting these revolutionary narratives, we breathe vitality into our struggle, transforming abstract ideals into living, pulsating forces that challenge the dominant narratives. Myth-making infuses anarchist vision with a dynamic and compelling energy, empowering us to envision and strive for a world unbound by authority. It is the artistic and creative rebellion that energizes our movement, fostering a shared sense of purpose and igniting the passion needed to transcend the limitations imposed by oppressive systems. Through myth, we declare our defiance, amplify our voices, and carve out a path toward free association, forever casting off the chains of tyranny and embracing the boundless possibilities of a free will.

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As of 9/9/24 10:20pm. Last new 9/9/24 7:28pm.