TotW: Armed Joy? or the Joy in Taking Up Arms?

Guest submission by alex

There has been an onslaught of imagery from Palestine since October 7, a day that was defined in part by the images of resistance fighters bulldozing through the wall of their great open-air concentration camp juxtaposed with images of a crowd of men spitting on the motionless body of a woman, incidentally framed in a way to make her appear more naked and injured than she was. People an ocean away ran with both, of course, and the media front of the war opened with fury.

In this image, taken from a video posted on twitter, we see an IDF soldier turn to his comrade-in-arms, perhaps to make sure he is recording, stalk over to the door of a mosque as the call to prayer sounds, and throw what appears to be some variety of flashbang grenade inside where it detonates.

This of course is not the first time that we as the audience of these horrors have seen the dogs of the state gleefully, happily, joyfully brutalizing the populations that their masters have set them loose upon. Nor is it the only place that is happening right now.

My concern today is not primarily the spectacle, or our consumption of it. Rather, my concern is the production of it--the very concrete acts and choices that make it up. I am not interested in exporting this question to the people of Palestine, or litigating on their behalf the character of their resistance to genocide from the comfort of my desk in America. I'm interested in what the language of violence means for dissidents of all stripes here, at the heart of empire.

Some years ago, Little Black Cart distributed the journal Atassa, which was an anthology of responses and reflections to violence that contextualized the activities of the eco-extremists known as ITS, a purported network of anti-humanist insurgents who probably need no introduction or elaboration here. From what I can tell, this was done as a tactical confrontation of all of the various tendencies and ideological traditions that call, either explicitly or implicitly, for violent confrontation with the state, or society, or civilization, or the entire species. The critique, I believe, boiled down to: do we understand what violence is, when we call for it? or are we merely playing with fire? If we don't understand it, if we're only playing with it, would we be able to direct it against our enemies when the mythical battle occurs - or would it rebound on us, serve our enemies, consolidate their power when the dust settles - as it has, over and over again, throughout the historical record.

Needless to say, this message was not received well, or kindly. The critique did not come home, the cruel joke at its heart did not land. Anarchists fly off to fight and die for Ukraine here, show up to stop a boat from moving and let themselves be corralled by professional activists there. Life goes on.

So here is the question: what does it mean for there to be an “armed joy”? How is that different than taking joy in arms - which must in the final instance mean taking joy in killing? Can we face it when that is demonstrated by our enemies, and can we then turn back to ourselves and locate any kind of clarity there? What does it mean for “joy” to be politicized at all, to be instrumentalized, to be called for–which must result in its performance, for the camera, for the audience, for digestion by and absorption into and shitting out of the community? Is that really the kind of joy that we can be happy with?

Listen to the conversation here!

There are 84 Comments

attassa was that "the message" was a lot more clear than you are making it out to be: "this is our excuse not to make better decisions", "the beauty of rhetoric and our intelligence", "people dont understand us",etc, etc. People on here have a tendency to lump people who don't agree with attassa in the SJW camp, which to me is pretty disgusting...a lot more disgusting than anything in either of the attassas, because people are pitiful AND stupid.

yet again, someone complaining incoherntly about atassa. where are those quoted sentences coming from? what is the context?

perhaps you all wouldn'get lumped togethr if you distinguished yourselves with any clarity about what the problems are.

In the overwhelming majoriity of armed confrontations I have been in, I have been able to deter and drive off attackers without anyone firing a shot. The more capable you are perceived as being, the fewer enemies will try to prese matters.

Those who sweat the most in peace bleed the least in war.

"Those who sweat the most in peace bleed the least in war."
Wow, that is such a corny slogan that activist leftists say after a bloody nosed confrontation. When analysed, ione realises that it was really the poor working laborer class who sweated the most in peace AND ACTUALLY were the one's who bled the most in all wars.

There are no oppressors, Luke... at least not as long as there aren't literal masters and slaves. There's people playing relational games where they become the "oppressors", or the "oppressed", or the "tourist bystanders". The fact of being Israeli or Palestinian doesn't make any of the first two... and that's what authoritarians, including the Leftie ones, still are struggling to understand.

This shit narrative they go by also racializes politics and politicizes ethnicity. Like the most vampiric, despotic, nefarious Western-like power in the Middle-East these days lies in *Dubai*, not Misrael. It's led by a bunch of overtly-patriarchic oil barons that are conducting mass slavery to build all this flashy infrastructure; their dirty billions coming out of big oil and wars, partly jihads, is what's been driving this fake futuristic megalopolis pipedream. And it's very pro-Palestine interests, btw. This is far worst than any capitalism you've seen in Muhrikah, at least for the past 100 years. The oil princes are far worst than the Israeli state.

oppressor would post, rather than somebody who was already in a slavish situation...because it's often the people putting up with some sort of powerful opposition who are trying to run away, or in the case of ukranians who joined the nationalist forces in response to the ware, trying to kill the invaders, and make them run...but in terms of what exists that's always subjective.

ha! i see you focus on feelings rather than power dynamics. do better.

separating feeling from strategy and action so neatly (isn't this whole website about self-validating neo-liberal identities, you fucking idiot) is an old remnant of rationalism, and doesn't have any relevance to a perhaps latent desire to fight enemies or kill people. Is that good enough for you, you fucking idiot?

more on power structures:

I'm really curious if either of you un-decorated dweebos can figure out how to destroy the white supremacy, the trauma, the corporation, iteration, etc. It's really interesting to me that subjectivity is somehow "irrelevant feeling" in your book, while the doctrine of structural critique is rational and exciting.You and Luke are brave heart, i get it! You KNOW, the moral uses of anarchist violence, and won't reveal them!

*runs out of breath*

oh, i've just talking to an internet troll. It was nice to sweat in "peace" for a change, thank you sir!

"separating feeling from strategy and action so neatly (isn't this whole website about self-validating neo-liberal identities, you fucking idiot) is an old remnant of rationalism"

no and no. the first is kind of fair but no, with attitudes towards political violence, it's more than a "remnant of rationalism". the stakes are way too high to mix feelings with strategy. you will pay dearly if you insist on that. as for the website, just no. flat no.

do you think you escaped material reality just cuz you critiqued rationalism? THEORY FAIL

uses of violence shouldn't have anything to do with "morality" either. i suspect your egoist theory doesn't serve you well here...

violence takes place in material reality, outside of the self. you might want to locate your methods for understanding it and justifying it outside of the self too?

mostly psuedo-theoretical jibberish. Are you having fun with your little therapy exercise?

Anybody who has ANY experience with american academia knows that it's rationalistic as hell, that there's always an insistence that knowledge can be put in these neat little boxes. That's r-a-t-i-o-n-a-l-i-s-m, not a calm understanding of different vantage points and perspectives, and if you think your reasons for posting on here are irrelevant to your emotions, then yes you are JUST a troll! I don't even have anything else to say about that, especially considering the amount of time you have spent reading the comment on this site and "reflecting".

". the stakes are way too high to mix feelings with strategy. you will pay dearly if you insist on that. as for the website, just no. flat no."

It's not that emotions are good, and nobody here said that...you fucking clown. It's that decisions are inherently related to emotion, despite whatever life advice people think they are entitled to believe about "controlling emotion" or "not letting emotion cloud your judgement". This even applies to animals. Your clowning marxist jibberish about "material reality" is unbelievable, especially considering that I am not the only person to see how empty it is on here. So yeah, i'm probably retarded, and need my sippy cup, and smiling anarchist trolls to point me in the right direction so that I avoid the terrors of homelessness. Gasp! If i had to live on the street...you're right man, it's a dangerous world and you are protecting me from myself, and you have lots of smart perspectives that I am too dumb to understand.

Cheap thrillz and beer are superior to talking about any of this stuff, isn't that right, you little internet trolly-woll?

^ appears i touched a nerve! you're doing a LOT of projecting in this post but it doesn't change a thing.

...why the hell are you equating online posting with homelessness and violence? why do you bring up animals to prove decision making is emotional? wtf are you even talking about? and yes, beer is way more interesting than your gibberish

At least four of those who started shit with me only to bail after getting a closer look were cops. At my old house north of DC, at lrast three times cops showed up when I was home. First up was Detective Shinton in 2008. I charged out of the house in "snarling bobcat" mode, knowing he was out if jurisdiction. I ordered him to beat it and he complied. Same.drill twice with Secret Service in 2018, the second incident nearly blew up but they did retreat. That was them trrying to soften me up for the grand jury, it had the opposite effect. I got no further crap from them after burning the subpeona on the courthouse plaza w 20 friends standing with me. Those who know me know the full story.

There was also that bike cop in all black who tried to challenge me in Malcolm X Park in late 2004 or early 2005. I was in all black, had the pirate radio set up on the bike, parked so the antenna looked over that "cliff wall" for line of sight to most of downtown. was broadcssting promos for the 2005 Counterinaugural protests. Withi 20 minutes a bike cop showed up, also in all black. He nerviously asked "what frequency is that on?" referring to the little radio I was monitoring my signal on presumably. I told myself "I'm NOT going ro Gitmo." I stepped forward into his space, preparing to fight. He asked "what's in your other hand" pointing to a red soda can. I said "soda!' He said " I thought that was a beer," got back on his bike and rode away, leaving me with posession of the field and an automatic win.

I am told this is my eyes doing the talking. I am autistic so I use them differently.

Cops are oppressors, yes, but the police is a socio-political role, a position within a spectacular system of relations. So there's 2-3 kinds of people who get attracted by this kind of position, and sooner or later this position Society is a bunch of relations, defining situations, and the point with Debored is that these relations can be subverted, turned over, to other people's advantages.

Oppression is NOT subjective. Wife-beaters and rapists believe it so, but the oppression as a relationship is all about one-way violence, from dickheads and dogs thrown upon other people they perceive as toys or slaves. In some conditions there's even a few cops who'll be avoiding such dynamic, but the true meaning of ACAB is, imo, that it's aboutthe social role of the cop, i.e. what they *objectively* represent within society... the dangerous power they're given, including relative impunity and judicial privilege when standing in court (and getting paid for it)...

The more you sweat in training the less you'll bleed in combat or so they say but it only takes one sniper to ruin your day.

Or in the case of being assaulted over hair dos, a knife

in defence of the anarchists who've failed to relate to violence in a coherent or sophisticated way ... they're not the only political tendency that has this problem? i would argue that history is a continuous tsunami of careful-what-you-wish-for observations along these lines.

most people are bad at thinking about this, let alone doing it and when they're not clueless, it's because they've lived through truly terrible times. now they probably struggle to relate to the rest of us when we chirp about dire shit as if we know anything.

i agree with alex about what the intention of atassa was and i've learned enough to know that this critique came from somebody who understood exactly why most people's bad takes about political violence are the embarrassing hot air of foolish children.

and the kids responded as such.
and it was ... disappointing.

but the question stands! it's a very old one! step right up if you dare! answer the darkest question!
or if you're smart, maybe don't

is what chris dorner was looking for...? do you think he found it, or just more adrenaline ala traffic stops? Did those actions constitute a meaningful threat to empire?

or is armed joy what the curmudgeon ecomisandrist privileged right libertarian feels when he rushes out of his parents' 40 coastal acres to confront beachgoers with blustery death threats for having their dogs off leash?

or is armed joy what the free-lunches-at-tha-park guy feels when he performs an effective copwatch, armed with cell phone and battery pack, and prevents cop fuckery with the food or the eaters?

without making faith-based declarations, what kinds of processes/actions really do threaten developed world hegemony?

you realize your question runs in to why-would-we-talk-about-this-publicly problems... right?

the point of this thread is that people aren't very sophisticated on the topic, preferring to indulge in simple power fantasies, as if they're playing a video game. 2 of your 3 examples are just crude power fantasies and "cop watching" is worthwhile imo but very small scale, the act of an isolated individual.

i was hoping to illustrate that for someone adopting a subjectivity of "attack," there are ways to go more futile and ways to go less futile. unfortunately, the present shapes the future, and actions today can encourage the continued development of the surveillance state. otoh, fortunately, the present shapes the future, and actions today can shape people’s (and self's) agency and stimulate their imaginations.
it would be nice to have more venues for discussions in this vein without having to choose between 1-on-1 or "everyone here is pretty drunk/stoned and just wants to go to the next punk show this weekend..."

fair enough!

i break that problem down like this, not that you necessarily need a 101

learn to defend before you attack because attack is hard mode and not for beginners.
attack from positions of strength, not desperate weakness.
the 90s era anarchist emphasis on attack came out of the old left tendencies and they're mostly gone now.
we need new spaces to stage from.
attacking from atomized weakness is mostly just throwing away our younger anarchists like trash.
we can not afford to do this, nor is it anarchist to dehumanize them like that.

"resistance fighters"

LOL. This is such an empty term. Does it only apply to fighters whom are on the losing side? Are we all not resistance fighters against Death? Joy is

"what does it mean for there to be an “armed joy”?"

Not doing your reading for you, buddy. Hurry!

Tell us what makes trained killers, torturers and rapists into such romantic, heroic characterization. There's such a thin line between these resistance fighters and some psycho like Breivik, so next time define it well? Tho not sure it can ever be defined at all when it's all about national flags.

normies, and don't want some psycho swingin' their big dick all over the place. It's time that as americans, we learned to communicate with each other again, and bring peace! Neoliberalism isn't a disease, but a step in the right direction!

;-)

i heard he used to be pretty weird about his boners? gandhi i mean? fukin creepy weirdo!

The Spanish revolution is the best image I can conjure up of armed takeover of a territory.
Kwai Chang Caine is the best individualist example of armed joy that I can think of. I downloaded a torrent file of all 3 seasons of Kung Fu and watched 1 episode a day because that was one of my favorite shows and I never saw all of them.

I don't know much about Mahkno and the free territories I'd have to read a book but I've read stuff about Rojava and Zapatistas that sounded cool. Even some of the biography of Che Guevara is good too. I think May 68 in France is one of the best laboratories for looking at how the application of force can get you what you want and I don't think there were even any firefights. They did shut the country down and De Gaulle fled to Germany but the leaders dropped the ball in the political arena. Gun play might have been counter productive in that situation because the military might have put it down forcefully. I think you have to look at your situation and decide how much force will get what you want and how much will just get you killed. Discretion is the better part of valor maybe?

expect the state to win a gun fight...or, if the rebels got away, the use of the guns probably wouldn't have been much of an instrument towards their goals. The cops are very used to attempting to think 5 steps ahead of anyone who wants to use violence, and if the "sweat in peace" expression applies at all, it certainly applies to how the cops and the military already have threat level metrics and triage which makes up for the fact that people are not always very level headed.

violence (which to me doesn't look anymore disturbing than actually participating in the wars), and to actual have a less alienated stake in The Gaza Strip and Ukraine (the anarchists terrains of the oppressed that radicals want to conquer) , they would have to become more like state level actors involved in this struggle...and given that everything under the "radical" umbrella is about "finding your place in the world" and "figuring out who you are" (some call these practices identity politics, others call it "philosophizing"), then the way that internet users continue to relate to these wars will continue, and it's hard to prepare for dangers in a situation such as this. Social media certainly isn't the best place to do this if you are sentimental about protecting activists, or your friends , or "spreading anarchist revolution" which is sadly still a real goal...

The web is good for spreading memetic contagions of violence like ACAB and "no war but class war" and also idpol memes. The way I understand identity politics is after May 68 and a perceived failure of proletarian revolution the New Left opened internal fronts against power along identitarian lines which keeps the blood flowing. Meanwhile the neo-liberal era undermined the gains of the labor movement and dismantled the welfare state leading to weakening of leftist movements. This leaves us in the present state of capitalist realism where it's almost embarrassing to talk about alternatives to capitalism. I think something dialectical will come out of identity politics even better than interesectionality once the issues have been addressed and history takes it's course.

calling ACAB and "no war but class war" "memetic contagions of violence" is absurd. they are dumbed down rhetoric that mean absolutely nothing. say what you mean, don't share or regurgitate stupidity. i see these abbreviated farts all over, on everything from bumpers to hoodies. my daughter told me they sell ACAB stickers at Hot Topic. not only is it ridiculously over-simplistic, but also, where’s the so-called insurrectionary “memetic contagious violence that follows the??? it doesn’t. its radical virtue signaling and fronting. be quiet. do violence.

Lifestylists are the gene pool and slogans and propaganda raise awareness and elevate consciousness. Anarchy is a worldwide mass movement that includes all types from the softest quilts to the hardest street fighters. They have to come from somewhere and posers don't hurt you they normalize it. Politicians won't criminalize the circle A if their kids are wearing it. So open the gate a little bit.

When these ideas enter public discourse the Ovaltine window is expanded in our direction. Terrorism is counter revolutionary and only increases repression. My definition of terrorism is attacking civilians and indiscriminate attack.

so if a cop is working as a cop, and i attack him, then it's appropriate anarcho-revolutionary attack, but if i dicide to wait until he is un-armed and vulnerable, then that's terrorism??

So basically, anarchists must engage in violence to further the revolution, but they must die...GENIUS! Sounds like a way to win people over to "anarchy".

Dood, I ain't GO3 but there's a lot you didn't read from the comment you're replying to. Attacking cops, for starters, is totally not indiscriminate attacks.

The conventional notion of terrorism is something that is counter-revolutionary in the way that it's using rando people as mass deaths for max tension-building. But then again "terrorism" is a very elastic term that's also been used by fascists against the radical Left at many times, so for this reason it's pretty dumb and foolhardy to advocate it literally as a strategy.

GO3 could have meant, but my knee-jerk irritation about the fact that there isn't a clear division between "civilian" and "not civilian", to the cops, if a cop is not working, or a military personel is off duty, then they are civilians. Elon musk walking down the street is also a civilian through eyes of people who want to re-enforce the state, would that make killing elon musk wrong to revolutionary anarchists? I think a portion of even the US would disagree...and would mass be sending them letters of praise in to a hypothetical anarchist in prison who could pull that off...

Deciding to use "terrorist" is obviously strange in terms of deciding the correct anarchist violence...for a lot of reasons...on an etymological basis, you could say an internet troll is a "terrorist" because they strike fear and anger into the hearts of "innocent internet users". Maybe terrorism isn't bad at all, even though it doesn't seem to help people refrain from supporting authoritarian movements.

Omfg... so it's not the usual reading comprehension issue, but some extraordinary moronism?

As a brain aid to u:

"random" =/= "targeted"

The moment someone targets specific agents of a hierarchy, the fact the latter were off-duty still doesn't make it a random, *indiscriminate* attack. If some decides spanks Elon, instead of some rando, that is a targeted attack, not random.

Potatoes are not tomatoes...

A and B don't make C by default...

On and on...

make total sense of the GO3 post?

They said "cilivian" = "terrorist attack"

They said "indiscriminate" = "terrorist attack"

but they didn't say all targeted/discriminate attacks were not terrorism. Looks like you've got the issue in understanding logic, not me. And i also didn't say anything about indiscriminate/targeting, GO3 did, I was just perhaps seeking an explanation of what they meant by "civilian"...nevermind, no hope in that, now we've "LGBTBBQ" pointing out my "extraordinary moronism", which certainly adds some real sharp-witted combat prowess to the conversation.

I use terms like civilian and terrorism because we don't exist in a vacuum. Anarchists have their own Ovaltine window where they decide what is acceptable discourse and the status quo has its own. There is also a dialectic between the anarchist consensus and public opinion. Anarchists may not not be subject to terms like terror and civilian because these are generally defined by the ruling class but the world is watching. So what are your goals? Are you just an angry scene kid who wants to hurt someone or do you want to make the world a better place?

is really that bad when you compare it to the fact that anarchists, of all people, want to control the way other people do their hair and dress...based on it maybe being "cultural appropriation". I think it's pretty offensive to consider that such people think of themselves as "anarchists". In that context, a lot of other atrocious things (like murder) don't really seem all that bad.

The laying on of hands seems to me a greater evil than the cultural appropriation. Is this PC identity policing a common practice or an isolated incident?

GO3, i don't know if you need to couch a statement like that with "seems to me", you know?

i don't believe in "evil" really but like ... there's no fukin way scalping off some dreads isn't worse.

of course it's a bigger deal to lay hands!
everyone who isn't in an identity cult or a total dumbass should be able to agree on that.

Its okay to shame people for "cultural appropriation" in the bash back discussion, and lumpy argued with me about it, so apparently its important to people in anarchist scenes whether or not "the appropriators" are playing their part in the scene correctly

wha..?! shaming is not scalping

point to the place on the doll where they shamed you. was it the scalp area?

for you to assume that "physical" is in a separate sanctioned off category from "feeling". Since I don't have to talk to anarchists...then no, their guilt complex related to history isn't that big of a deal...but the stupidity of those standards makes murder, scalping, rape, etc. seem less important to me...than the stupidity of the standards.

Let me put it this way: if you could choose between a group of people who don't shame you for your looks, hair style, clothes, skin color...and one that didn't...which one of those groups would you spend your time around?

yeah, i don't have to "assume" it. it's reality.

one the other hand, live up your own ass if you want, just dont ask the rest of us to join you in there

HARD NO

would realize that "projecting" is a default aspect of the human imagination, and everyone does it...but when having a discussion with other people requires totally mis-interpreting them (for example, i never was insinuating that i need other people to be exactly like me, or "live up my ass" because that's not even possible), then it does show the person commenting does just want to argue or troll.

Okay lumpy, feel bad for yourself, project that onto other people by screaming "cultural appropriation" every time there are two cultural artifacts that haven't found an adequate academic label describing how they relate to each other. Indulge in your need to feel better rather than respect the fact that other people also want that. I don't see how cultural appropriation is relevant to people who want less hierarchy and authority in their lives. Maybe anarchism will always be the vangaurd of the armed revolutionary struggle, and "the normies" should just "get the fuck out of the way"!

I'll answer for lumpy, he gravitates towards hobos and their rough unkempt alcoholic burnt-out demeanor. Now picture him at a keyboard charged up on some moonshine at 8am and typing smart-ass cynical rebukes of anyone who has a glimmer of cheerful optimistic individualism in them!

cry more! wish i could get some decent shine these days

anyway, trolls are the true victims here, no doubt, no doubt!

I envy the minimalist individualistic lifestyle of hobos, but when I made my first foray into the romantic world of jumping freight trains and sleeping under bridges, I wasn't expecting "romantic" to be translated as a gang rape by drunken hobos thrusting their unwashed penises into my fleshy butthole. They must have been desperate, I'm an obese 24 yr old guy with acne.

Is CA still a thing? I was always moderate about it like being totally against egregious examples like the Redskins logo but dreads and mohawks seems trifling to me. I was actually shocked when I heard about the dreads being cut off and seems like an assault to me but maybe this is normal in some subculture. My statement on the Bash Back! thread was somewhat ironic since I wasn't there I played devil's advocate to provoke other opinions. Seems to have worked.

feeling peeved by a Redskin logo (since you can't separate a racial slur from how it was originally used very easily, unless you appropriate it, like with black people appropriating "nigger" as "nigga"), yet trying to say any hair-style or set of clothing is particularly shameful is a very slippery slope. To me someone wearing a red skins t-shirt is not "cultural appropriation", and anarchists should probably not waste their time calling out people who wear redskins t-shirts. It just makes redskins t-shirts seem really provocative and sexy, and turns younger people into easy targets for white nationalism. Not everyone tries to make a statement with clothes, tatoos, hair styles, etc. I sure as fuck am not going to interrogate someone over why they are wearing a redskins t-shirt, if someone else were to do it, i would totally separate myself from the conflict.

There's rules of engagement in any war. I would look at the consensus of anarchists around the world to know what's acceptable to them. Otherwise if your actions fall outside the consensus they will disown you and make pronouncements against you.

...which is basically what CCF has done, and legitimately, in response to that awful subway bomb in Santiago and to the ITS looneys. And then they get defamed for it by some shady NA rah-rah-rah insurrectos... who might as well be glowie normies, or just tools with zero actual engagement in anarchist insurgency.

this is about the lamest shit i have read in a long time. normalize anarchy?
you mean let it be co-opted by non-anarchists so some kid thinks they are an anarchist for a few years (probably being generous) and meanwhile anarchist discourse is more similar to a bernie rally? fuck off!

There to be a true/elite anarchy is definetly the most juvenile/naive thing i have seen in this TOTW so far...anarchy doesn't have anyone to define it, which is why leftists and anarchists can't agree on their terms.

The anarchism discourse isnt the bernie discourse. Theres a huge difference between an ACAB sticker and people who understand why cops dont have any place in any beautiful utopia...

no one said elite, because that is part of your populist way of looking at society, one that seeks a movement, i want a radically decentralized tribal outlook.

i also don't think GO3 was actually advocating anything in his post...

...but it appeared to me you were invoking some elitism since you were invoking non-conformism and the mainstream. I do not think there will ever be much of a meaningful separation between mainstream culture, and anarchist culture...as long as we keep using the internet and money, at least. There's also no reason to be worried about politically mainstream people adopting anarchists ideas, or being influenced by them. I personally don't like the ACAB acronym because it's not totally true [assuming that policing is an institution, and can be differentiated to a small degree from the people who are cops]. I personally have not known cops very well, but there are some who foolishly join in order to "do good", and if they quite because they realize being a cop isn't really about that then I wouldn't judge for it.

However, i do agree that a "normalized anarchy", one that didn't challenge the law and capitalist work, would go against what total anarchy implies.

If anarchism isn't something that everyone should do then you're admitting that it's just some subcultural niche BS for you and your friends so you can feel different and special and radical. Everyone should question authority and develop critical thinking skills and stand against what is wrong. But if everyone was anarchist then you wouldn't be special anymore.

I believe the whole world should be anarchist and we should organize society in ways that flatten the pyramid of hierarchy and erase the borders and boundaries that divide human beings. These ideas have to spread somehow and they do, because some of these ideas are not exclusive to anarchists but awaken in the hearts and minds of people every day and others get it through propaganda and education.

Ok Hair Gel Oberon 3... you got your right to express these views here, but this approach of making society anarchist is dumb and self-defeating regardless. Not only despite all the imaginable efforts you would put into it, such change will not happen during your lifetime (so why caring at this point?).

Two... this is reformist. Admit it.

Three... this is setting the bar so high, making any other anarchy unworthy, as you got big expectations for anarchy to become a vast global change (that won't be happening soon anyways).

So realize how such position is discretely reactionary in a way, as it is always pushing away the True Anarchy you wanna have.

How about doing something different for a change... like building anarchy from the ground up? Anarchist societies not society?

Say my name, say my name!

1. Revolutions are just big reforms.

2. These ideas are already in everyone's head.

3. Think globally act locally.

Love GO3

"So much of left-wing thought is a kind of playing with fire by people who don't even know that fire is hot." ― George Orwell

nailed it george!
if only your average "anarchist" could understand why they are continually getting burnt.

George was a true anarch without the "-ist". An original individual critical thinker.

Something I've always found odd wrt LBC and affiliated post-left networks is this rejection of the left (okay, cool) but then uses the worst aspects of left wing militancy (sacrifice your self for the cause, except that now the cause is nihilism/nothing). Like there has to be a real coming to terms in what the left actually fails at and I think that writers like Carla Bergman really get closer to what I'm discussing in "Joyful Militancy" just some rambling thoughts tho

lbc is a network? lbc distros and publishes a range of thinkers who don't all agree with each other and certainly don't all agree with lbc.

if you have examples, then use them.

signed, sick of vague hand-waving references

People on this site do not study history of insurrections or of revolutions so why would they have ideas about this? Anarchists have been almost completely irrelevant in almost every major violent upheaval involving arms for just under a century. In order to change that, we will have to study the actions and memoirs of people who have different ideas than us

I'm surely not gong to get into an insurgency of reckless fools that see tendencies such as Islamic jihadism, or Far Right violence. or a bunch of hothead Mexican youngsters advocating random murder for some "ancestors" cult as examples to follow up upon. No thanks.

I'm interested in how a non-authoritarian and non-proprietarian movement can develop, gain strength and thrive despite the Existent and its forces. Sun Tsu will also agree that picking up a fight with a much larger force is unlikely to bring any good on the long run, and things like evasion or concealment are the way to go if you want any anti-systemic tendency to survive. That's at least how secretive societies made it to several centuries old, and IT'S ABOUT FUCKING TIME PEOPLE WITH A BRAIN THINK CAREFULLY ABOUT THIS OBSERVATION.

I don't want to make society anarchist, but I do want an Anarchist Society.

"Sun Tsu will also agree that picking up a fight with a much larger force is unlikely to bring any good on the long run, "

A good example might be Hamas attacking Israel which is costing the world a fortune and for what, a peace dividend and redevelopment of Gaza, maybe regime change in Israel? Asymmetrical warfare is a science that has to be studied carefully and requires extreme patience so hit the books.

The Hamas provocation attack has costed more than a fortune for people in Gaza already, before "the world"... But authoritarians like these thugs don't care about losses of life on either side, as it's all about agendas. Given how the accuracy of attacks on Kibbutz was suspicious -where the "resistance fighters" focused on shelter areas within encampments and gatherings, this reads like some Far Right thugs within the Israeli state ordered a false flag. But who knows... in the context of geopolitical tremors happening since the Covid pandemic and the Ukraine war it's hard to tell who's really calling the shots, so caution is advisable for any reading on the events.

Like the caution the Pro-Palestine crowd have totally *not* been using... save for Wayne Price, to some extent, surprisingly.

yeah, i think it's pretty face-palming to consider how the pro-palestine activists have been behaving in the US, a lot of them won't even blame hamas for murdering people, saying that it's all Israel since they are technically the invaders who greatly contributed to the situation over there. It pisses me off that the pro-palestine and pro-israel people are duking it out in the US on a regular basis, considering all the other problems people face here.

All the issues devolve into a 2 sided culture war here egged on by media spin doctors to make sensational TV shows that attract viewers. It's strange to watch mainstream news outlet opinions lag behind real critiques until public opinion pushes them in the right direction. It's not a football match you don't have to pick a team but if you're a partisan or a hooligan that's exactly what you do.

As a scholar of the history of insurrections and revolutions I will posit that ALL insurrections AND revolutions were seeded by anarchist thinking, influence, or "memes" if you will. Any time a violent upheaval involving arms has occurred throughout the past century, anarchists were responsible for the seed of descent. Anarchists, in fact, do not need to study the actions and memoirs of people different than us, but instead simply need to continue being anarchists.

This is just not true. Most insurrections are kick started by marxists, peasant religious millenarians, both, or fascists. Often there are a couple anarchists in the sidelines somewhere.

seed of dissent

and 9:39, the anon you're responding to doesn't say anarchists, says anarchist ideas. which presumably can be had by non anarchists too? idk.

"The only winning move is not to play the game."

sadly, many of us find ourselves smack dab in the very center of the field of play, which of course is not really play to the ones that started this, uh, mess. they are deadly serious about sucking dry the last drop of oil, digging up the last precious metal, chopping down the last tree. but, as Perlman points out, entering the fray with the notion of defeating them, eliminating them, turns out to be a sort of initiation into their clan. contact acts like a contagion. how to resist this without becoming this seems like what arming joy entails.

Add new comment