TOTW: 2023 - The year past, the year ahead

TOTW: 2023 - The year past, the year ahead

Topic of the week - As 2023 comes to a close, let’s take a look back at the ongoing social upheavals worldwide, inspiring anarchist actions, and the multimedia that have kept you going through it all. 2023, a year in review and the year ahead.

What have been your favorite anarchist actions, communiques, new projects, and events (IRL & AFK) from this past year? On the opposite end, is there a specific anarchist critique of things that stands out or a list of embarrassments for the anarchist milieu that happened over the year? What anarchist projects and spaces are you looking forward to for the future? What inspiring new anarchist spaces have you traveled?

What have been the most intriguing anarchist texts, books, videos, music, and other multimedia to come out over the past year? Why? At risk of creating a comment thread of lonely links, add some information and perhaps a little sentiment to help readers understand the importance to you.

We’d also like to celebrate, pay homage, and remember by sharing a list of 61 anarchists who have passed away over the 2023 year or had their passing announced:

Klee Benally, Marsy, Matta, Alfredo Maria Bonanno, Benjamin Zephaniah, Richard Martin, David Poole, Pope Fred, Nicolas Trifon, Ian Liebenberg, Mari Luz Braojos, Maurizio Antonioli, Natalí Cardozo Guiñazu, Ronald Creagh, Paolo Bruscino, Dmitry Petrov, Nicole, Elefteria Hambi, Marinella Bragagnini, Andrea Cianel, Rafael Cigüenza, Horacio Suarez, Julio Mancebo, Luis Garcia Pastor, Kota, Sergei “Banana” Ilchenko, Sergio Starace, Enrico Di Cola, Luigi Ancona, Roy Emery, Roy St Pierre, Ted Kaczynski, Alfredo Salerni, Yoli, Gérard Lagorce, Torres Ramos, Paula Palamartchuk, Helen Harris, Luiz Rendeiro, Cooper Andrews, Rosa Musetti, Tito Pulsinelli, Horacio Ricardo Silva, Jacques Lefort, Alberto Gazzarri, Neala J. Schleuning, Jean Coulardeau, Keith Nathan, Brian Biggins, Carlos Saura, René Scherer, Sue Jeffers, Claude Bouchot, Claude Guillon, Filip Rusina, JM Pabiziak, Carlos Pimpão, Tortuguita

Prior The year past, the year ahead links:

TOTW: 2022 – The year past, the year ahead
https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-2022-year-past-year-ahead

TOTW: 2021 – The year past, the year ahead
https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-2021-year-past-year-ahead

TOTW: 2020 - The year past, the year ahead
https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-2020-year-past-year-ahead

TOTW: [2019] The year past, the year ahead
https://anarchistnews.org/content/totw-year-past-year-ahead

TOTW: 2018 - The year past, the year ahead [ether pad link only, pre-ANews crash]
https://pad.anarchistnews.org/p/year_past_year_ahead_2018

LISTEN TO THE CONVERSATION HERE!

There are 31 Comments

2023 was certainly one of the years of all time

2023 was quite a year.

I don't know about particular events or actions but I feel like 2023 had some latent anarchy bubbling under the surface. It almost feels like there's growing cultural hints that anarchist ideas will be welcome and influential in the next USA uprising, wherever that might break out. That started to click for me when I read an article about Gen Z vs Millenials: the younger generation consider themselves more radical and anti-system than their elders. How will this play out the next time things really pop off? I think a lot of dynamics in 2023 were in holding patterns, but this new year beginning will have breaking points aplenty, especially as the interlinked wars around the world intensify..

hate to break it to you, but self-perception and self-reporting can be terribly distorted. take the Dunning-Kruger effect, for example. it could be something similar where the more radical someone is, the more they doubt they are actually radical, while relatively more naive and conformist people might consider themselves to be more radical. would explain how some pro-establishment politicians have managed to win the young votes with merely a veneer or a mild gesture of subverting some performative parameter.

oh do you? do you really "hate to break it to" triviabot?

cuz it seems a lot like you enjoyed it

go fuck yourself lumpy. do you have a barometer up my ass to tell me what i enjoy or don't? and i know that's not how barometers work. stop taking figures of speech so literally.

yes, a sincerity barometer in your ass. didn't want you to find out this way but here we are.

Just uses this creepy place for gotcha moments...oh well, i dont blame you trolls, netflix kinda sucks

i work with the materials in front of me, it's like found art? mostly in the sense that it's lazy and underwhelming

lumpy is the self-appointed white knight of leftism and bad arguments

i just like fighting. how bout you? ;)

your pretentious bullshit notwithstanding...

Admit I don't think generations mean anything either. I'm supposedly millennial, people thought we radical commies when we got upset about "wall street greed causing the recession", the generations thing is basically media garbage.

Respectfully disagree, I think anarchist ideas *were* influential in the 2020 USA uprising and the lack of anarchist infrastructure just makes the anarchic edge to the uprising all the more impressive. I have no proof, just my own stubborn understanding/perception of things. Anarchy is relevant even when anarchists aren't! Of course, I'm using the term uprising and anarchy almost interchangeably here. I also think this is a point on which many anti-anarchists formations like socialists or conservatives are happy to rewrite history and try to muddy the waters about--- whether anarchic behaviors drove the uprising or not. I have no proof, just my own stubborn understanding/perception of things.

Without existing anarchist culture and infrastructure whether our ideas are relevant in the next uprising or not is worthless. 2020 has already shown that very clearly.

There's a recent history of failure here.

earthquakes are more anarchist than anarchist infrastructure

Lol

Nothing will ever really change 'cos human nature. I'm waiting for the richest most famous celebrity to just give away all their wealth to the starving children of the world and to take up residence in a trailer park. That would be a revolutionary individual moment.

'cos would expand to becos which is not a word. 'cause would render to because which is what you mean. Nothing will ever change unless you are able to communicate clearly.

No, 'cos human nature don't need words, just "sighs" and "screams" an "laughin' " and "cryin'" oh yep it dos that!

The future year will see expontential frequency of climate catastrophies and volcanic activity as the melting Arctic and Antarctic poles melt and act cause tectonic plates rising and activating long dormant volcanoes, many like the humungous Tonga undersea volcano. The ash and gases will blanket the Earth and reflect solar heat and trigger a rapid atomic-esque winters causing global famine, crop failures and extinction of multiple biospheres.

Thanks for reposting my text about her and mentioning her again here, but Matta passed away in 2022. What I wrote this year for her was for the one year anniversary of her passing (but also published a couple weeks after the anniversary). Sorry for any confusion I may have caused.

Thanks for the heads up about the date and what a lovely obituary you wrote for your friend. I have changed the wording of the TOTW to make it work for obituary announcements shared in 2023.
-thecollective_1.8

How much longer till the US descends into a total civil war and the world war heats up? How should we as anarchists prepare and organize in these times? Where have we failed and where have we succeeded?

We have neither failed nor succeeded, but we foretold this outcome. We can hunker down with some basic supplies of food and water, even enough for 1 month, and hide in an underground basement, with guns and ammo. Set booby traps if you are really paranoid, have opioids for pain and some good bud for relaxation. Read some Neech and enjoy your fate ;)

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