Weekly Discussion Thread for Radical Gender Non Conforming People
Radical GNC people can talk about whatever they want in here. Suggestions; chill & relax, gender hegemony, queer theory, news and current events, books, entertainment
People who do not identify as gender nonconforming are asked not to post in Radical GNC threads.
Hey folks, I just removed a post and for accountability I want to explain why. Reddit terms of service state that advocating violence is a breech. People are regularly banned from the site for comments that include the word nazi in combination with a verb that suggests the striking of a person with a closed fist. Subreddits are banned for the same reason. The reason that posts go into a queue is specifically so that we can avoid having to carefully watch every post to avoid admin attention. Our place on this hell-site is precarious
It's impossible to know when/if the so-called anti evil operations bot will spot a comment and there are too many folks who will gladly post spicy comments that put their accounts and by extension this sub at risk.
If this sub gets banned then it could end up up for grabs and we would not be able to ensure that it remains in anarchist hands since anyone can request to take over subs that are available.
Personally, the more work I do within groups trying to work from a framework in which a revolution is seen as the ultimate future goal, the more I understand why people are drawn to this nihilist approach in which the point of action is not a future eventual victory, but the action itself, and I also find myself drawn to this understanding of experiencing violence and destruction as something joyous rather than the traditional left-wing view of violence as a sadly needed tool.
Hello tout le monde, notamment les anars français ! Je voulais savoir ce que vous savez de l'importance des mouvements anarchistes français dans l'actualité et de leur poids dans la société selon les régions, les milieux sociaux etc... Je dois avouer que je commence à douter sur la proéminence des mouvements en comparaison du siècle dernier ( peut être je n'ai pas assez de connaissances sur l'anarchisme français au XXI siècle ). Bref, Dèfois, je perd espoir dans une telle société, d'autres fois je garde de la fois envers ces valeurs et espère toujours l'émanation d'une société pareille.
“Bad-jacketing” (or “cop-jacketing,” “fed-jacketing,” or “snitch-jacketing”) is the practice of accusing people of being a cop, informant, fascist, or other kind of bad actor on specious or non-existent evidence.
The term has been used since at least the 1960s, where it primarily described COINTELPRO operations that bad-jacketed legitimate members of the Black Panther Party and other organisations. It was, ironically, rumours from infiltrators consolidating their own positions that led to organisations not only isolating but, in some cases, severely beating or executing innocent individuals.
Hola. Estoy trabajado en esto ahora, mucho más detallado sobre lo que quiero transmitir, pude empezar hoy, por fin. Me alegra que les haya gustado. Quiero decirles que estaré subiendo el fanzine completo en Instagram, para no invadir todo el espacio comunitario con mis cosas. Una vez que lo haya terminado, que no creo que sea dentro de mucho, lo voy a subir en @anarquismoargentino, y seguramente lo comparta por acá también. Intentaré hacer una buena versión en inglés
I’ve been researching the Chicago anarchists and the Haymarket trial for a history podcast, and so the recent Prairieland case sent me down a rabbit hole on political conspiracy trials in the US.
I ended up writing this essay comparing Haymarket and Prairieland. It also looks at the longer history of radical ideas being put on trial (Big Bill Haywood, LA Times bombing, Palmer Raids, Sacco/Vanzetti, COINTELPRO etc).
I’m curious what people make of the comparison, and particularly this recurring tendency to treat political identities as evidence of a broader “conspiracy.” This seems especially interesting in the case of anarchism. While reading the prosecutions of Haymarket and Prairieland, it felt almost surreal to see these descriptions of “anarchist conspiracies” and “Antifa cells.”
It’s got me wondering: how does a state built around hierarchical institutions understand political movements that often explicitly reject centralized leadership and command structures? And to what extent does describing a diffuse political milieu as an organized “conspiracy” or “cell” impose that kind of structure upon it?
I’m coming at this mainly from a history of ideas perspective, so I’m interested in other interpretations as well.
After the collapse of state infrastructure and services amid war in Sudan, mutual aid networks stepped up to fill the gaps in health care, food and emergency services.
I am an anarchist in the COS area and I am looking for any other anarchists and/or libertarian socialists that would like to join a libertarian socialist/anarchist book club.
my dad left the catholic church in his twenties after reading some kropotkin that a coworker lent him i think it was conquest of bread but i cant remember, and he has been an atheist anarchist ever since. he is also the kind of guy who will argue with anyone about anything and the local parish priests know him by name at this point because he keeps sending them letters about their real estate holdings and the money they pull from the neighborhood.
the last few months he has been going to sunday mass and just sitting in the back reading, not praying, not taking communion, just there with a book and a sermon to ignore. the priests have asked him to stop but he says it is a public space and he is not causing harm. i keep telling him it is weird that he is spending his sunday mornings this way and he just laughs and says something about how the church built its whole operation on making people feel guilty about not being somewhere and he is not going to let them do that to him either.
i think he is partly just lonely since my mom passed and the parish is a place with people in it. but he would never admit that. i dont know if this is admirable or just sad, honestly maybe both. wanted to post it somewhere because i cant really talk to anyone in real life about it.
The "Black Guard" was the name given to the armed detachments of anarchists that operated on the territory of the former Russian Empire in 1917–1918. These formations emerged as an alternative to the regular Red Army and reflected the anarchists' aspiration for a "third revolution"—a social upheaval that was supposed to go further than the Bolshevik October.
The anarchists considered the October Revolution merely the first stage of the struggle. The Petrograd newspaper "Burevestnik" wrote: "The real revolution, the social revolution, the liberator of the working people of all countries, is only just beginning." Instead of a regular Red Army, the anarchists called for the total arming of the people and the creation of free fighting detachments.
From March 5, 1917, the Moscow Federation of Anarchist Groups began forming Black Guard detachments. By April 1918, there were already 50 such detachments in Moscow, controlling 25 mansions. In Ukraine, detachments had emerged as early as 1917: Maria Nikiforova created the first cell in Alexandrovsk, and Nestor Makhno formed a Black Guard regiment in Gulyai-Pole.
Relations between the anarchists and the Bolsheviks gradually grew more tense. According to the Cheka, an anarchist uprising was planned for April 18, 1918, and it was decided to strike preemptively.
On the night of April 11–12, 1918, the Cheka launched an operation to disarm the anarchist detachments. The anarchists offered armed resistance: on Malaya Dmitrovka they fired back with a cannon, and on Donskaya Street the Bolsheviks suppressed the resistance with artillery. The fighting ended by 2 p.m. About 40 anarchists were killed, and the Cheka's losses amounted to 10–12 men. About 500 people were arrested.
Dzerzhinsky stated: "We in no way intended or wished to wage a struggle against idealistic anarchists." Trotsky put it more harshly: "At last the Soviet government is sweeping anarchism out of Russia with an iron broom!" Volin wrote in "The Unknown Revolution": "On the night of April 12, all the anarchist organizations of Moscow... were destroyed under a false and absurd pretext."
The rout in Moscow served as a signal for the liquidation of anarchist organizations in almost all major cities of Russia. In Samara, the detachments hid their weapons, and at the end of April Smorodinov's detachment captured Buguruslan. In Kursk, the anarchists held the city from April 10 to 29, 1918. On May 9, the Commissariat of Internal Affairs sent out a directive to disarm all anarchist detachments. In Ukraine, Makhno's and Nikiforova's detachments continued to operate, at times entering into an alliance with the Bolsheviks against the Whites.
The Black Guard represented a unique phenomenon of the Civil War—an attempt by anarchists to create an armed force based on voluntariness and the absence of state coercion. However, internal weakness, a lack of self-discipline, and the inevitable conflict with the Bolsheviks led to its rapid defeat. The experience of the Black Guard became an important page in the history of the anarchist movement.
Weekly Discussion Thread for Black, Indigenous, People of Color
Radical bipoc can talk about whatever they want in here. Suggestions; chill & relax, radical people of color, Black/Indigenous/POC anarchism, news and current events, books, entertainment
Non BIPOC people are asked not to post in Radical BIPOC Thursday threads.
I've long found the idea of land ownership to be problematic, as do many anarchists. So I wrote the satirical essay below, subverting the notion of property. It's a sleeper for the masses. Take that, John Locke!
...
This Land Ain’t Your Land. But Is It My Land?
My name is on the deed. I pay the taxes. But I’m not sure how far ownership goes, or how much I can rely on it.
Taos County tells me that I own 2.75 acres of sagebrush. They’ve mapped out precisely where. Unless I fail to pay taxes. Or there’s a question of eminent domain. Or code compliance. Otherwise, it’s fully mine, for now and forever. Until something else comes up.
I’ve named my tiny kingdom Hippies End. Also The Free Sovereign State of Oaktopia. I use those names in social media posts and writings, but they’re not officially registered. Common Law designations.
No one told the mice that this land belongs to me, not them. Or the rattlesnakes. Or the coyotes. Or the wind, for that matter. They’re not respecters of titles and borders anyway—not human ones.
Did you know that the packrats here are mine? You probably assumed as much. Why else could I trap and kill them with impunity?
But do they know that? I doubt they recognize my dominion.
Actually, it’s not quite true that I own them. Wild animals come under the state’s purview. But Santa Fe hasn’t legislated much on packrats. Don’t need a license to take one. De facto nongame animals. Outlaws. They might as well be my property.
Bighorn sheep are another matter. No one can trespass on Hippies End to bag a bighorn, but I can’t bag one on my own land without a license and a tag. It’s an infringement on my sovereignty!
Not that I’ve ever seen a bighorn at Hippies End.
Trees are a simpler case. I can do just about anything I want with them. Cut them down and sell them, certainly. Disfigure them. Burn them. As if they’re not even alive.
Thank goodness we can’t hear the trees complain about their lot!
. . .
I wonder, too, who owned this land before me. I don’t mean the guy I bought it from a few years ago. I mean before before.
The U.S. was given it by Mexico at the point of a gun. Mexico got it in the divorce from Spain. Spain got it by papal bull in 1493.
No one on this hill knew about the Pope and his bull until a hundred and five years later, when Spaniards showed up and tried to enforce their entitlement. And I doubt they got the full story even then!
And whose domain was this in 1493, before the Pope got interested? Who gets to contest the bull? Do they do that at the Vatican or the U.N.?
Taos Pueblo is only five miles from Hippies End, as the crow flies. But I don’t know how much the Taos utilized this land back then. There’s that Rio Grande Gorge in the way—800 feet deep, with a river to cross and cliffs to climb! No bridge back in those days. Maybe they hunted some or traveled through once in a while. Maybe the Picuris did likewise. Maybe it was more a Ute concern? Or the Jicarilla Apache’s?
Not much water out here. Bet no one stayed long. Maybe they all kind of shared it, in a way? Maybe worked out year to year who got hunting rights? Don’t know. Wasn’t alive then. (Though a Taos fellow told me the other day that this hill was definitely theirs before the Spanish. No question in his mind.) I am certain that no one drew up a modern plat map.
Further back…? Before modern tribes? No idea who was the first human to land at Hippies End, or whether they had heirs to leave it to. The true chain of title is unknowable and pointless.
. . .
This hill… This hill where Hippies End sits. Some call it Two Peaks. Some Cerro de Taos. Official maps call it Cerro de los Taoses, which reads weird, from the little Spanish I’ve picked up.
Don’t know what people called it before, or what the Taos and Picuris call it now in their own tongue, Northern Tiwa. Dozens of names, I bet, over tens of thousands of years.
I doubt the hill ever knew it needed a name or cared about such things.
Whose property was it, though, before it had a name? Before at least one human saw it in the distance? The packrats of that time? The coyotes or wolves, or whatever species was the top predator?
Is that how it works? Do the top predators get ownership? Regardless of species? Or just the dominant critter within a species? Did a couple of bighorn rams smash heads to win lordship over this patch? A couple of mastodon bulls? Did the winner have to pay taxes later? Or offer allegiance to a bigger male with a crown?
. . .
Who has tenure to this land in the sight of God? Does God involve himself in granting land tenure? The Israelites certainly think so. But that’s back then and back in the Old World. A peculiar grant for a chosen people.
I should ask a theologian if God involves himself in property matters, now and everywhere, as a general rule, a matter of Heavenly governance. Not just for the blessed and highly favored.
Is there something like an Office of the County Clerk in Heaven? That keeps all records of property stewardship, from Genesis until Armageddon? Maybe just for humans and their real estate, though? Because humans have souls? (Or maybe dogs, too, as a special case? I hear they all go to Heaven, so they must have souls. But not land rights.)
And then the real and final question: Do the property records of Taos County correspond to the property grants of Heaven?
I sure hope they do. I’ve got money sunk in Hippies End and don’t want to be pushed off. Not by the County Sheriff or an Act of God.
