Anarchy Bang: Introducing Episode Seven - Occupy

From Anarchy Bang

Anarchy Bang is a weekly call in talk show where we sit around the digital campfire and talk about our favorite topics. This week we will try to have an conversation about Occupy, The Occupy Movement, and what anarchists learned by participating in it. Beware before we begin that I edited a book at the very end of 2011 called Occupy Everything: Anarchists in the Occupy Movement so I may be biting my tongue more than usual. I do not think all the anarchist tools were deployed in an expression of People Power in 2011 but instead that there were amazing anarchistic things done in a very constrained environment and that the anarchist rhetoric was largely responsible for the particular burnout suffered by many of our anarchist friends. I'd like to believe that another occupy would bring a new generation of enthusiastic people out of their homes, off their screens, and into face to face collision but I'd also like to believe that a new event would be tactical rather than strategic, more universal in its attitudes against the police (against but also against cop logic more generally), and more fun!

Join us!

Sunday at noon (PST or -8 UTC) at https://anarchybang.com/
Email questions ahead if you like
The real time IRC is a chaotic mess (and pleasure). There are better ways to connect to IRC but it involves some reading
The call in number is (646) 787-8464
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There are 22 Comments

who was the u of m prof bellamy mentioned in one of the last episodes?

layla abdelrahim i think..? at least that’s the person from mtl that he interviewed for backwoods.

The book was metaphysics of technology

and get real if she can be so naïve regarding technology, particularly her belief that 'ordinary' folk can be empowered by it. The fact that we believe crypto (hiding our identity) is normal says it all really

"You have been permanently banned from Anarchyplanet IRC. Reason: you must be Zhachev or JZ. Please do not come again or else."

Tho I ain't sure he realized this requires a computer for using it. Intellectuals in general tend to have dead angles for structures, devices and infrastructure. The liberal ones at least.

uhhh...gee...why would you...uhhhh...think I was this John Zerzan fellow...uuhh...from right here in Eugene...I’m just here listening to some of that new ASMR business...have you heard of the ASMR...it’s quite something, isn’t it...

I just added Skrbina to my top-10 kill list, a above PewDiePie but right below Peter Thiel. Sorry, Gillis you ain't high-profile enough for it. Yet.

That occupy book was terrible btw. If by "edit" you mean "threaten to re-publish articles from the internet containing grammatical errors and factual inaccuracies in order to coerce submissions," and by "book" you mean "a loosely glued together assemblage of pages that falls apart after a few uses," then I guess you can say you "edited a book." In reality it was a shameful attempt to compete with AK/PM and in general an embarrassment. But so were a lot of things that came out around that time, so you shouldn't feel too bad about it. Just don't go using it to boost your cred or whatever.

Occupy Oakland, where the anarcho-liberals were cop-jacketing, snitching, and standing in front of "property" to protect the sacred "proletariats"

so is it property or not? why the use of always authoritarian ironic quotation marks?

the term you’re scrambling for is *proletarians*; proletariat refers to the entire class, while a proletarian is a single member of said class

Occupy Everything was a valiant attempt to undermine the soon-to-be dominant progressive discourse around the occupy phenomenon with a deliberately radical agenda. no, it was not great, and yes, too many copies of LBC merch have a tendency to come unglued, but pointing out the origins of this particular wave of takeovers of (semi)public space in the explicitly radical and often anarchist practices of folks at UC and the New School was a welcome antidote to the handwringing anti-vandalism pacifism it so many post-Occupy commentators.

Wow. Way to glamorize still more embarrassing stuff from the past. When I was in the tombs after getting arrested during the new school occupation everyone else in there was totally confused. They couldn't understand why we had done what we had done for/with a bunch of spoiled rich kids, and to be honest I had no real answers for them either. Of the times I've been arrested, that's the one I have the hardest time explaining why I was even there.

I mean when anarchists were going around cop-jacketing people, snitching and standing in front of the property to protect it and save the community and the *proletarians* was the telling sign of the majority of so-called american anarchists are nothing more than liberals, and Occupy was a liberal meaningless action

Will keep listening . But skipping this one. Topic is not of personal interest.

For a moment I was afraid this was another lecture by some generic Graeber-wannabe academic... but then my sigmoid colon was relieved!

call anarchybang as they have so much to say? Come on ziggy, let's hear your voice to make sure you actually exist!

question: Are (we) as anarchists just people who are waiting for the collapse/end of the world (seeing that it is basically what most anarchists are doing) is the most honest point made throughout the whole broadcast which then broadened out into individualism (as an escape? as an excuse for piss poor levels of autonomy? Myself, I would describe myself as a loner/would be anarchist. The loner aspect has found its way to me as I tried to live my life free from the domination of others. It can be lonely of course. However, the loner existence has many positives (for the given context of mass society). Each Loner will discover this for themselves. The idea of organising with others fills me with dread: all that bullshit and wasted energy. I am a Loner waiting for the collapse. The idea of work with its inherent bullshit also fills me with dread. Being in another relationship also fills me with dread as the other surreptitiously tries to dominate...eventually. So maybe, the Anarchy Bang episode on individualism also needs to include (irony) The Loner? As a pedestrian loner, life is much slower and thus, this pace of life provides much for the senses which is off limits for the a faster pace. The Loner eventually realises there is no boredom :-)

Wait fr your Second Coming as much as any Christian would. This only more separation, distancing and opposition (i.e. Othering) of your self from the world you can create (or destroy). The Promised Land is around us... look at what settlers have done to bring its imagined reflection to reality, and destroy the real Promised Land in the process. Their imaginary reified world still can be destroyed. Everywhere.

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