William Gillis

From Stirner to Mussolini

From Gillis to Trump, the anarchist mutualist origins of the Republican Party

From C4SS by William Gillis

Review: The Anarchist-Individualist Origins of Italian Fascism

In 1910 Luigi Fabbri and Armando Borghi abducted an anarchist woman who had shamed their friend by divorcing him. Together, they forced her into a gynecological exam so the doctor could publicly pronounce her deformed and incapable of sex.

Partition & Entanglement

stickers

from Center for a Stateless Society by William Gillis

Many years ago a latinx friend of mine designed stickers that simply read “Migrants Welcome, Against Borders” (versions in English and Spanish) under a circle-A and the two of us covered the Bay Area with hundreds of them. Amusingly, this provoked the ire of a prominent white anarchist who denounced the phrase as pro-gentrification. She emphatically preferred “Refugees Welcome” because it distinguished those who are coercively displaced from their proper homes by various forms of western imperialism in contrast to those who voluntarily choose to migrate, like (her example) those moving to the bay for tech jobs.

Anti-Engels (or Anti-Anti-Duhring Aktion)

Take that, Engels!

from Center for a Stateless Society

by William Gillis

Recent years have seen a resurrection of a Great Man Of History Marxist scholasticism that fixates on some (easily accessible) Original Core Texts of supposed genius and discards all the complicated stuff afterwards, certainly everything in recent decades. This impulse is the product of a mass flocking to radical leftism wherein new recruits have little interest in assimilating to existing discourses. A “return to the masters” thus serves as a run-around of various gatekeepers and a shrinking of required reading lists. It also enables people to use online historical archives on their own, without much social immersion. Onboarding to the tacit knowledge, prefigurative experience, and diffuse zine-based discourses of anarchism has always been a many-years long process. The onboarding process to academic Marxism — while more hierarchically structured — is likewise similarly involved.

The Superior Race of Good People

CW: In-depth discussion of Willy Gilly's writing.

from Page of Swords by Jack

On William Gillis' "Bad people"

"Contrary to the assertions of some leftists there are in fact thoroughly monstrous people who are not just victims of their social conditions."

That’s how starts "Bad people", a bizarre essay published in The Anarchist Library last August by the scientist, writer and activist William Gillis, where he both advocates for the ostracism of abusers as a good anarchist praxis, and… errr… proposes a way to prevent ex-cops from forming urban gangs in the post-state anarchist society to come.

A Letter to Conservatives

From Center for a Stateless Society

by William Gillis

It’s Red Dawn! It’s here! Sprinkle around some more memes where AOC’s eyes bug out and you can seriously imagine her sending people off to gulags for playing golf or whatever. Never mind the actual concentration camps, the actual secret police, the actual mass surveillance, the actual military on our streets. Communists!

Introducing The Left Market Anarchist Zinelibrary

welcome to my dojo

From C4SS by William Gillis

The great advantage of the anarchist movement is our decentralization, but without resilient protocols and networks we’re always at risk of losing pieces of our history and knowledge. There have been a number of compilations of anarchist and left-market anarchist pamphlets and zines over the years, and unfortunately most of them have decayed or fallen into obscurity.

To My Critics: My Own Peculiar Albatross

To My Critics: My Own Peculiar Albatross

From Bellamy Fitzpatrick dot com by Bellamy Fitzpatrick

Under different circumstances, I would not have brought this issue up so early in my blog, and perhaps would never have brought it up, but the recent mention of me on The Solecast has made me think it is necessary to lay this issue to rest once and for all. My hope is that I will never have to comment on it again, but will be able to reference this blog entry and the podcast links associated with it to any and all future critics.

Insurrection in Omelas

From C4SS by William Gillis

In Ursula K Le Guin’s classic short “The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas” she considers a prosperous and happy society whose success is somehow purchased through a dark bargain — the torture and abject immiseration of a single child. Despite the positive good won for the many, a few starry-eyed children of Omelas refuse to temper their hunger for a better deal, and reject this otherwise utopian society, albeit with no alternative blueprint in hand. Simply insisting that there must be something better, or that their lives should be devoted to at least searching for it.

The Mall or the Agora? Revitalizing the Anarchist Bookfair

From C4SS by William Gillis

Anarchist bookfairs are one of the most interesting features of anarchist life.

A bookfair is immediately recognizable as hierarchical. There are the booksellers and there are the consumers. What separates the two is not merely the physicality of a table, but the capital investment it represents. Those distroing have usually been required to purchase space in the bookfair. But moreover they have had to invest in the things they are now trying to sell.

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