January 6: A Mass Base for Fascism?

from CrimethInc.

Meanwhile, as the Republicans Fracture, a New Political Center Emerges—Further to the Right

As a consequence of Donald Trump’s supporters occupying the Capitol building in Washington, DC after a rally promoting his baseless claims of election fraud, the Republican Party is fracturing, setting the stage for the consolidation of a new bipartisan political center—albeit much further to the right than before. Yet this also paves the way for massive sections of Trump’s base to break away from representative democracy altogether, embracing an explicitly fascist alternative. The events of January 6 offer them martyrs and a revanchist narrative that will serve them for years to come, providing an internal mythos for recruitment and a justification whenever they need to use force.

The events of January 6 will discredit Trump supporters in the eyes of centrists and force some Republicans to shift their allegiances to the center, but they will also push the envelope regarding what is acceptable. This may help the far right recruit locally countrywide and could normalize similar actions in the future.


This is actually a very old problem that never went away.


But this is not the only danger ahead. In the name of a war against extremism, centrists are going to demand to expand the same machinery of state repression that the next Trump will inevitably use against us. This is essentially what happened in Weimar Germany, setting the stage for the rise of the Third Reich. Likewise, Trump’s chief weapon throughout 2020 has been the Department of Homeland Security, created under Bush in response to the September 11 attacks, and he has also benefitted from further centralization under Obama. Centrist appeals to fight “chaos” will serve to draw many of our former allies out of the streets, while justifying new crackdowns that will target us as well as the far right.

The state clampdown after this will suppress freedoms across the board, targeting all forms of dissent. In Turkey, when Erdoğan put down a right-wing military coup, that paved the way for him to repress every form of protest. State repression of the right will follow the playbook they use against our movements—incorporating reformist elements while isolating and destroying “extreme” elements. If the only pressure on the government is from the far right, the state will make concessions to them.

We are already seeing our former allies withdrawal from the streets in the events of January 6. Liberals urged people not to go to DC, counting on the authorities to deal with Trump supporters. This was a miscalculation. Security forces are not particularly inclined to stand up to the part of the population they sympathize with most—and even when they choose to do so, their hands are effectively tied by the deeply engrained institutional habits of treating conservative white people much more respectfully than they treat people of color, poor people, and anti-capitalists.

In short, no one is coming to save us. We have to prepare for the possibility that an emboldened fascist movement will continue to carry out attacks around the United States while a new centrist consensus in government enacts measures that target us as well as them. If our movements are to survive, this will necessitate community organizing and solidarity on a scale we have not seen yet.

We have already seen signs of a bipartisan shift towards repressing anarchists and anti-fascists. For example, after winning reelection, Portland mayor Ted Wheeler—a Democrat—announced new efforts to target, discredit, and repress anti-fascists and anarchists, using the same language that Trump uses. The New York Times did the same thing to us three months ago, parroting Trump’s talking points almost verbatim.

Trump himself threatened anti-fascists ahead of January 6, urging them to stay out of Washington, DC lest they interfere with the show he was preparing to stage-manage. The far right has made opposing “antifa” into almost the entirety of their platform—not just because negative points of unity are most expedient in a time of political polarization, but also because anti-fascists have won so many victories up until this point, slowing their growth. On January 5, a White House memo copied straight out of the fascist playbook announced that they were trying to back the Anarchist Exclusion Act of 1903/1918, seeking to exclude people from the US for opposing fascism. Such policies, begun under Trump, could continue under Biden—for example, if his former Republican supporters join the political center on the condition that it adopts planks from their preexisting agenda.



“The tradition of the oppressed teaches us that the ‘state of emergency’ in which we live is the rule. We must arrive at a concept of history which corresponds to this. Then it will become clear that the task before us is the introduction of a real state of emergency; and our position in the struggle against Fascism will thereby improve.”

-Walter Benjamin, On the Concept of History


The Events of January 6: A Rough Timeline

For the sake of posterity, we have compiled documentation of some of the important scenes that played out yesterday. Later, when this narrative is contested, it may be helpful to have these all in one place.

This footage depicts the beginning of the incursion. Reportedly, many of the those at the front of the charge were longtime fascists:

Some have exaggerated how willingly the police opened the gates for Trump supporters. Here’s another view of the initial clashes:

Confused scenes unfolded as some Trump supporters attempted to protect officers from other Trump supporters, while continuing to push back the police:

This aerial view shows a line of police struggling and failing to hold back much larger numbers of Trump supporters:

Trump supporters storming the north side of the Capitol building:

They got into the building from the first floor and pushed as far as the outside of the Senate chamber:

Here we see them arriving in the Rotunda. As many people remarked, these velvet ropes held them back more effectively than the police had:

Trump supporters discharged a fire extinguisher inside the Capitol building and proceeded to clash further with police.

Officers drew their guns to defend the floor of the House of Representatives.

The Trump supporters who entered the empty Senate found a vacuum at the epicenter of power—they had seized the temple, only to find God absent. Power does not rest in fetishized physical locations; rather, it is comprised of all the different ways that we are accustomed to obey, the countless thoughtless gestures with which we cede agency to the authorities every hour, every day.

Meanwhile, the New York Times was reporting that explosive devices had been found at the Republican and Democratic headquarters.

A “source close to the White House” who was in contact with the Trump supporters who had penetrated the building spread the word that the participants intended to remain inside the Capitol through the night. However, clashes with police inside the building made this impossible. It appears that the participants had gotten further than they had expected to, and—surprised by their initial success—were not able to consolidate their advantage to hold territory.

Secret service agents had barricaded a door; when Trump supporters attempted to break through it, one of them fired a single shot at the one in front—Ashli Babbitt, a former police officer—killing her. Police were on the other side of the door, immediately behind Babbitt. This disturbing video captures the moment when police shot her.

Here is another angle on the shooting. Again, the content is extremely disturbing.

Here is an interview with the Trump supporter who was standing beside Babbitt when she was shot:

Watching this interview, it’s hard to tell how much of it is artlessness and how much is artifice. It at once comes across as a work of self-conscious propaganda, and yet at the same time, strangely naive.

“Elizabeth was not ready for the revolution.”


Reportedly, by this time, the police were deploying tear gas:

Clashes continued as police attempted to recapture the rotunda:

Here, a large number of Trump supporters leave the Capitol with their faces exposed:

Meanwhile, similar scenes were playing out at other state capitals around the country:

Vice President Mike Pence approved the order to deploy the National Guard, not Trump. This seems to bolster speculation that Trump or his supporters may have arranged for security to be underprepared or otherwise delayed the response. In parts of Mexico, it is said that if the police or military are conspicuously absent, it is because paramilitaries are coming to do the dirty work for them. That remains speculation, but it is certain that Trump arranged to remove longtime officials from the Department of Defense and other agencies last November, replacing them with loyalists as soon as his loss to Biden was confirmed and restructuring the chain of command to concentrate power directly in his hands. At the risk of spreading conspiracy theories of our own, we recall how, at Fort Bragg on November 18, when Acting Defense Secretary Christopher C. Miller announced that from then on, Special Operations would report to him directly, he interrupted himself to say “This is an omen”:

As we implement the president’s orders, we also recognize that transitions and campaigns are fraught with risk and unexpected challenges and opportunities. That is why I am here today to announce this—this is an omen… I’m here today to announce that I directed the Special Operations civilian leadership to report directly to me instead of through the current bureaucratic channels.”

In any case, on January 6, after nightfall, a large number of officers were finally deployed:

In the darkness, Police pursued some Trump supporters with something more comparable to the sort of violence they habitually employ against Black Lives Matter demonstrations.

One eyewitness report claims that 15 vehicles with Trump bumper stickers that had been parked in a lot in the Fort Totten neighborhood in DC had their tires slashed—two per vehicle, so that spare tires wouldn’t solve the problem.

Afterwards, inside the Capitol building:

(Actually, all the statues in the Capitol building are soaked in blood—but the cameras only show the blood shed by white people.)


The Social Media Battlefield

For his part, Trump congratulated the participants, stopping just short of explicitly endorsing the incursion in order to retain plausible deniability: “These are the things and events that happen when a sacred [sic] landslide election victory is so unceremoniously & viciously stripped away from great patriots who have been badly & unfairly treated for so long.” He added a message identifying the event as a foundational step confirming the emergence of a new political current: “Remember this day forever!”

In response, Twitter and Facebook finally imposed embargoes on Trump’s accounts. The moderators for one of the online organizing spaces for the rally also faced pressure:

Facebook already banned many anarchists months ago—but all the same, while any misfortune that befalls Trump is a welcome obstacle to his totalitarian efforts, it is inevitable that this will ultimately lead to more corporate censorship of anarchists and other participants in social movements, as well. This makes it all the more pressing that we establish and promote alternatives now.

Will the Republicans Split?

As a result of this stunt, the Republicans have already effectively split into two camps, the pro-Trump far right and the “centrists” who have finally been forced to break with Trump, despite riding his coattails for the past four years.

One of Trump’s most ominous achievements in advancing the reactionary cause is that today, Republicans who have moved far to the right as a result of his influence can be hailed as heroes of democracy by a bipartisan base—simply for choosing not to support him in an explicitly anti-democratic coup attempt. While Democrats and Republicans who are withdrawing their support from Trump are consolidating a new bipartisan political centrism, the midpoint of that centrism would have been considered extreme right just a few years ago. Obama’s Republican adversary in the 2008 election, John McCain, is now hated by Trump’s base, but a hero to many Democrats.

In this regard, Trump’s exodus from the center of the Republican Party only consolidates far-right gains across the board, cleansing them of any association with his polarizing character. If the far right is now represented by rabid neo-Nazis in “Camp Auschwitz” paraphernalia engaging in outright armed insurgency, it will be easier for capitalists who want to deport millions of people and evict tens of millions to present themselves as eminently reasonable proponents of mainstream viewpoints. Yesterday’s chaos in Washington has already enabled far-right parties in Europe to position themselves as dismayed defenders of democracy.

It is entirely possible that some Trump supporters will experience the events of January 6 as a wake-up call. But it is unlikely that this change will be an improvement. Some of them may decide that they really believe in state democracy and the rule of law after all; in this case, they will shift their allegiances to the likes of Lindsay Graham and, at best, call for crackdowns on outright fascists as well as anti-fascists. Others—having finally learned what it’s like to be on the receiving end of police repression—will conclude that they hate democracy and cops, too, but for exactly the opposite reasons that anarchists do, and join explicitly fascist groups.

This rupture with other Republicans will inconvenience Trump supporters, as it separates them from much of their power and perceived legitimacy; but it is a necessary step for those who have been seeking to establish a mass base for outright fascism. They have established a fascist pole in US politics—complete with martyrs and a revanchist narrative—that will serve them for years to come, providing an internal mythos to recruit and a justification whenever they need to use force. As we argued when Trump came to power, if the state is not able to solve the problems ordinary people face today, then it could be strategic for them to position themselves as enemies of existing government, in order to recruit from desperate and disenfranchised white people whose racial privilege led them to believe that they should not be the ones abandoned by the state and exploited by the economy.

As we’ve argued elsewhere, in response to the George Floyd uprising, Trump and his supporters withdrew from the social contract, effectively declaring, “If we don’t retain our privileges, it’s civil war.”



A Foothold in Power

At the same time, as we argued last month, though the far-right militias describe themselves as rebels against the status quo, it is a mistake to understand them as opposing the state itself. On the contrary—paradoxically, participants in the movement around Trump have sought to brand themselves both enemies of the “deep state” and proponents of state power. Consequently, they have support from within the state even as they pretend to contest it.

Seven senators and fully 121 House Republicans—more than half the Republicans in the House, and well over a quarter of the House of Representatives altogether—supported the challenge to certifying the election, after yesterday’s incursion—when it had become clear that, in doing so, they were intentionally providing narrative cover for what was either an extremely clumsy coup attempt or the founding of a new fascist party. At least one elected officeholder, a member of West Virginia’s House of Delegates, participated in storming the Capitol. All this is evidence enough that the movement around Trump is not going away any time soon, and it will be very difficult for the authorities to bring the sort of force to bear against it that it would take to halt its momentum.

Taking a page from Trump’s playbook, Representative Matt Gaetz and other Republicans have spread the absurd fabrication that the unruly activity at the Capitol was somehow the work of false-flag “antifa” actors. Of course, there is plenty of evidence that confirms that the incursion was comprised of avowed Trump supporters. In boldly spreading barefaced lies, Gaetz and his ilk are building a base that willfully believes and spreads falsehoods as a way to demonstrate their loyalty and spit in the eyes of old-fashioned politicians and journalists who still take credibility seriously. They aim to hasten the arrival of a day when what people consider to be the truth will only be a factor of their political affiliations, and not the other way around.

Unfortunately, Gaetz is just one of a large number of people from a variety of positions across the political spectrum who are attempting to muddy the waters regarding the political identity of the Trump supporters who invaded the Capitol. Pundits Erin Burnett and Dana Bash joined Fox News and Vanity Fair and politicians Marco Rubio and Elaine Luria in describing Trump supporters as “anarchists”—jumping the gun on the inevitable forthcoming effort to implicate “both sides,” fascist and anti-fascist, as equally to blame for the problems plaguing the United States.

And Anarchists?

Having learned from the last two gatherings of Trump supporters in DC, anarchists and anti-fascists circulating downtown DC in affinity groups were able to prevent brutal attacks on activists of color and others at risk of being randomly targeted by fascists and other Trump supporters. But there was very little good news on this bleak day.

Anarchists face a double bind in responding to the events of January 6. It doesn’t make sense to risk our lives to defend the institutions that preside over state oppression, nor to provide fascists with easy opportunities to kill or harm us. At the same time, if we cede the entire terrain of conflict to an insurgent far right and a repressive police state, however much harm they do each other, the political horizon will shrink to be small indeed. As a minimum program, we should stake out an anti-authoritarian alternative to both of these forces, establishing new models for action and finding points of intervention that minimize vulnerability.

It will probably not be possible for Trump’s supporters to do the same thing twice. On January 20, when Joe Biden is inaugurated president, we anticipate that there will be a tremendous police and military presence in Washington, DC. On the other hand, Trump supporters may attempt to duplicate what they did in DC at state capital buildings around the country. Those who oppose both fascism and state repression may have to go back to the drawing board to identify the most strategic goals in this new scenario.

One mistake we must not make is to assume that all the pieces are already on the playing board. This is not true—there are still massive sectors of society that have not yet cast their lot with one side or the other. The rush to escalate towards civil war increases the likelihood that we arrive at that point before we are ready. Civil war may be inevitable, but if it is, that is all the more reason to focus on building networks and appealing to those who have not yet taken a side while there is still time.


There are 70 Comments

Nihilist communism is not opposed to anything. Opposition assumes the capacity for force, which is absolutely absent from nihilist communism, as it is from all formations of the ultra-left. The absence of capacity is the defining characteristic of the ultraleft. Therefore, nihilist communism Is incapable of opposing anti-fascism but it does desire to escape its categories. In this sense, nihilist communism seeks to resist becoming implicated in all moral crusades and identifies anti-fascism as one of the most pernicious. As it already rejects involvement in state power, class domination and the abstraction of existence by capitalist expropriation, it argues that the question of anti-fascism may only appear as a step back into a compromise with existing conditions.

Nihilist communism, after Wilhelm Reich, asks itself what in this world is not fascist? Certainly, it assumes that anti-fascism is always, if not already operationally fascistic, then on the cusp, as it seeks unconsciously for the perfect rationalisation for justifying its own fascistic measures. To be sure, fascism typically includes a leftist moment, soldier socialism, barrack room egalitarianism, and that is absent from actually existing, or environmentalised, fascism which is characterised by the process of ultra-instrumentalisation, a surplus mobilisation, of all existent functions.

Historical fascism asked a question, and set out its problematic, at the point of emergence of the workers' movement's sudden inarticulacy. Actually existing fascism sets no such questions. But, what fascism really is is of less concern here than what anti-fascism is. Even so, it is appropriate to reset our own question: what in the world is not fascist? The ultra-nationalist Russian separatists fighting against the Ukraine are 'anti-fascist; the bombing of Iraq in 2003 was anti-fascist; the mass rape of German women in 1945 was anti-fascist; the carpet bombing of Dresden was anti-fascist; the nuclear bombs dropped on Japan were anti-fascist. We might then ask ourselves, what in the world of mechanised horror is not anti-fascist?

Anti-fascism becomes operative as one more register of political activity, it too is designed to bury the bad news of its own mobilisation, it too wishes to be judged on its enemies and not on its complicities. As the state has its 'terrorists' as a figleaf pretext, so the left has its 'far right'. Anti-fascism demands acceptance of its exceptionality. It proposes that of all the social formations constrained by forces hidden to themselves, formations befogged by their delusions of subjective agency, of all these only anti-fascism is excepted - it alone secures the right to award itself its motivation. And, in a global context where so many programmes of extermination are implemented at so many levels of existence, against so many populations and so many sets of relations, and against so many species, it is plain bizarre that anti-fascists are so sensitised to marginal street manifestations of 'the far right'.

The partial application of the designation 'fascist' is itself irrational to a degree that it is almost unexaminable - so many atrocities fail to register with, never mind mobilise, an 'anti-fascist' response that for integrity's sake we must further conclude that the sole political purpose of anti-fascism is to misdirect attention from any atrocity that is not directly attributable to 'fascists'. Inevitably, as is the way of things, good people fight for bad causes, and those caught in the convolutions of anti-fascist ideology are amongst the best of us, and are no doubt motivated by the sincerest of available personal motives. Even so, even at its best, antifascism is constrained as a palliative, symptomatic, treatment for a pathology it is structured not to comprehend. It is impelled to manifest as yet another iteration of policing by populist appeal.

But nihilist communism is a form of anti-politics, it has already taken into consideration the futility of confronting, never mind arguing with, liberal and leftist ideological sacred cows. It serves no purpose to oppose anti-fascism politically, and thereby further populate the discursive field with yet more bifurcating specialisations. A hundred years of fascism is proof enough of the inadequacy of anti-fascism to its object. And no critique of anti-fascism will ever defuse the revenger's thrill in recognising the bad other; when the blood is up, and the hunt is on, nothing will prevent the inevitable outcome. Anti-fascism is the crusades, the last crusade, the one crusade without troubling ambiguity and tortuous self-questioning. The anti-fascist gives himself up, without reserve, to the last great true enthusiasm. Then, we must avoid the field of conflict and let the forces gathered there play out eternally. We must skulk in the undergrowth like little brown jobs, dunnocks perhaps, until the field itself collapses beneath a meteor or plague.

But, as we 'give it up' and let it go, we should also take a last 'backward half look, over the shoulder' at an iconic, or at least for us 'telling', moment and consider what moves it when the obvious has been filtered out. A photograph circulated in the mass media captures the moment when a conventionally beautiful young woman (sometimes designated as 'brown', sometimes as 'Asian') under the supervision of a police officer casts a disdainful glance at a 'fascist' protester. Undoubtedly, even taking into consideration the police presence, the woman's intervention was courageous and selfless but that is of less concern here than the specifics of the anti-fascist use of the photograph, and what it tells of the image-repertoire constraining it.

The woman's conventional beauty becomes a synonym of moral courage. She is apparently relatively tall and this also proves her right to exist. In contrast, the man she looks down upon is small, we are told he is 'runty', it is observed that he is poorly dressed and that he cannot grow a proper moustache, and as is usual in such images it is ironically observed that here stands an example of 'the master race'. In short, the woman is well made and conforms to bourgeois ideals of moral health, and the man conforms to bourgeois representations of the degeneracy of the undeserving poor. In the iconodulic representation of their confrontation, we begin to make out the movement of class hatred... anti-fascism is deployed here as a weapon of actually existing fascism to secure the rational ordering of its own ideological power. Under its gaze, the man appears badly made, he is typical of the good for nothing scum emerging from growing surplus populations, and therefore as a 'type', we are required to judge him as morally repugnent.

"But nihilist communism is a form of anti-politics"

So says the hypocrite running his urban communes delving in ID politics and other sorts of horizontal social control patterns.

Furthermore, I don't see ANY communism being "anti-politics". The mere fact that it's anti-electoral and non-State paradigm for you doesn't even make it "anti-politics". But communism as ideology (how can it NOT be ideology?) presupposes in itself a form of politics... just more "grassroots" or horizontal collective politics, maybe. Logic? Communist relations function accordingly with a set of principles, or premises, without which it'd be pointless to call these relations "communist(ic)". i.e. communism is an order, and you cannot have any stable, sustained order without politics.

This obsession with some people around here of sticking to communism is endemic of a lack of being able to organize with others (but more with yourself)

And once again, the fact you won't oppose the dominant system in any sort of way makes your very claim at "communism" a joke, or perhaps a way to make yourself interesting to a certain crowd. Rejecting strenght (or capacity) is also self-defeating... why would anyone be weak and disabled? Even actual disabled people seek to overcome their limitations!

This shit is sooo wrong, through and through. Rethink your shit, bro.

Umm, my 2 cents, I believe @critic is referring to the pre-political primitive communism similar to some of the indigenous mutual gift economy arrangements prolific before the written word, but I may be corrected,,,

Primitive communism never existed as primitive societies din't organize around an ideology. Communism, as anarchism is a very modern concept.

I would say that that's an oxymoron as well. Society is basically an extra dunbarian meme no more real then the world of Arnold Wesker in the Batman mythos. Bands and Tribes are cultures not societies which corresponds with states. With Chiefdoms are grey areas that can go either way.

a simple glance at wikipedia would correct your kneejerk american anti-commie bullshit. for one thing, there's a common use of the term that basically has nothing to do with marx. it's just a catch-all phrase for hundreds of early gift economy models ... but you're both dyed in the wool reactionaries that start tearing off your shirt sleeves when you get triggered by the word so I'm sure this won't lead to interesting discussion.

I'm arguing that it's a bad use of language. Just because it's on wikipedia and just because anthros use it does not make it a sensical term. Most intellectuals and people in general don't have a proper critique and analysis of society and its conjunction to the state as well as its extra dunbarian reified character. A term like band society is simply silly as band is simple enough to explain a persistent minimum scale human social grouping. The social and societal ARE NOT the same thing from my and other anti-societal analysis. You also don't have to be anti-commie(though communism is a societal form just like propertarianism and thus it sucks and is not anarchy).

and yeah ziggy, you don't HAVE to be anti-communist ... you've just been here for many years with your hysterical anti-communist views, frequently very broad and vague and pretty incoherent, which is that "american flavour" I was talking bout, even tho you claim to be from eastern canada. there's plenty of rabid anti-commie sentiment north of the 49th parallel.

Anyway, I was always assuming nobody was making you do that? it's just how you choose to spend a significant chunk of your time?

because reasons.

Has no baring on my rejecting the concept of society outside of abstraction. I would hardly call it vague however. The simple reason why I reject communism is that it is, for the most part, a reified collectivistic mono system conception of human affairs. Property is a societal form based system in the atomistic direction. The two major postulators of anarchism/anarchy(Proudhon and Stirner) both rejected communism for their own different and very good reasons. This was later elaborated on by the likes of Armand and Novatore/Martucci(after the Russian collectivist/communist modern disease took hold) in very convincing ways that I simply repeat. Nothing vague about it.

yeah, sure and I'm not defending communism. I'm also not interested in the content of your repetitive screeds. the pattern of behaviour is morbidly fascinating tho!

well I happen to be somewhere in "canada", ziggles probably doesn't even exist so he doesn't require citizenship

When is lumptrolly gonna rid himself of his binary objectification of politics. Everytime he sees a neolithic stone spearhead he thinks of unChristian sin, unhygenic bacterial infestation and a 30 word vocabulary...

Anti-fascism operates as the exceptional framing through which we are asked to suspend our social explanation of dysfunction, and the manufacture of criminality; we are asked to abandon our comprehension of the processes by which irredeemable bastards, life's embodiment of unremitting failings, are formed. Instead, it is required that we adopt the state's gaze and judge this particular end-result as the cause of itself. Of all the socially conditioned ideological formations in the world, the fascist is the only one held responsible for its own existence. The figure of the fascist becomes the pretext for the left's suspension of its account of deprivation and the exertion of its right to expropriate punitive power. From the anti-fascist standpoint, there is is nothing to be said of 'fascists', the only available response is to drop bombs on them. In other contexts, type-profiling is repudiated as 'body shaming' and 'normalisation' but anti-fascism is an assumption of extraordinary powers... over the bad other, it awards itself the right to use all available fascistic measures. Where fascists are registered as a 'type', a set of fixed and identifiable, categorised traits, then it seems only logical within the frame of its policing discourse that they should be liquidated as a type. All means of dehumanisation are legitimate under the exigent pressure of the state of exception.

To be sure, the man in the photograph, like a lot of us, is relatively ill-made and physically articulates the impoverishment of his circumstances. It must be assumed that his failure in life is the reason he has attended a fascist demonstration. Damage and suffering, unprocessable loss and humiliation, the compulsion to repeat a return to types and orderings, all the character traits of Reich's 'little man' and of critical theory's 'authoritarian personality', are present in him. They are the traits that collectively act as the sine qua non of subjective fascism, this is what industrialisation and the trauma of industrialised war does to people. We learn without surprise for example that those voting Le Pen in the French presendential elections, once voted communist... and we also learn, again without surprise, that the leftist candidate Mélenchon is 'capturing' votes from Le Pen. The 'little men' thrown up by industrial democracy are ever-responsive to the most recent stimuli of ideology - as raw material for leftism and fascism they are qualitatively interchangeable. Nobody with a living soul will shed a tear for a punched fascist, or a fascist looked down upon with disdain, or a stabbed fascist or a summarily executed fascist but the question set by nihilist communism remains: what is it that constitutes subjective anti-fascism as an instrument of actually existing fascism?

what the crap @critic? did this get rejected as a submission and now you're nailing it to the front door of the @church?

That was fire. You should start a blog.

Joke 1 : What is small, a failure in their own eyes, yells YEEHAA, gets maced, waves Confederate flags, let's off fire-extinguishers and plays AC/DC's Back in Black?
--- Dumbass fascist redneck Trump supporters storming Congress.

There is no mass base for fascism, for one thing when you look at the rises in the past it was in countries with tertiary party options and proportional representation. This along with historically hot 20th century corporatism and early 20th century autarky.

What you are seeing is the last hurrah of the old foundational white western propertarian structure of the USA. They are acting like any dying leviathan constructed demographic takes it. Keith Preston's analysis is more correct that in a generation or so they will simply be a minority power bloc. If you want to look at what could be a threat in the future it would be something like Erdogan in Turkey, but that is a different beast from what Hitler and Mussolini were.

This attack upon the steering wheel stupidly didn't comprehend the engine and computer control system behind the power. The train moves on unhindered. Afterwards, even beginning now, pundits will be praising the resilience of the system and claim a victory for freedom, and this will be the beginning of a 20 year period of consolidating the machine, a new neoliberal Maoist-esque social panopticon operating system will be installed to synchronize the State surveilance data bank.
Similar to the Snowpiercer structuring system where restraints and taxes will be excuses for surviving the coming climate catastrophe which it is ironically the cause of.

And that's why I can't rejoice at this ridiculous pretend coup, even if the joy of anti-imperialists, commies and some anarchists -of watching these clowns fight each other- is understandable, but also the result of shortsightedness. Or an incapacity/carelessness to understand the wider geopolitical dynamics behind it.

As of now, the Qanon idiots were an excessively successful propaganda trick to play in the hands of a new level of totalitarism. They shut down most opposition to Covid measures in many countries, by becoming this opposition. They hit all the right buttons to bad-mouth any sort of critics; they took over the liberal Left as the false, controlled opposition. I feel fatalistic here, but that's at least an aspect of what's happening.

Democrats, neoliberals -especially the tech feudal interests they represent- will only get mightier with this, more than they ever were in decades, they'll give proper treatment to the tools that (intentionally or not) served their agenda... and don't fucking think for a second they'll keep the Covid Death Cult from spreading to your area, unopposed, and always growing in power. They'll enforce it, ruthlessly. And YOU, being a boiling frog just like everyone else... (except some billionaires, and Comrade Xi). This is another coup....

That's the future if some kind of successful sabotage against this technomachinological statist/capitalist order is not done even on a relative level in terms of roll back or at least preventing the next reset or at the very least not letting it go off without some type of hitches.

There should be no reason why Anarchists don't protest Bidens Inauguration like they did Trumps

just curious: what is the purpose of "anarchists" protesting an (any) inauguration?

Coz if "dem anarchists" protest our leader Trump, then they should equally protest Biden or else. And yeah they should also team up with the Qanon meatheads and cripples as they the true anarchists now! /s

I guess there is no actual purpose besides showing you are against them?

Avoiding the embarrassed and overly stacked police force plus national guard that is on high alert since j6 looking to take it out on anarchists and the left is one reason. Catching a felony or death at the hands of angry embarrassed piggies is maybe not worth a ln announced parade in black.

No anarchists should fall in the trap set up by Trump and his clown army of cripples and paid shills. I say consider putting your efforts onto other things, elsewhere, like undermining Covid power grabs at local and wider level, instead of giving the Democrats more reasons to go after you.

It's not a fucking authoritarian internet bully who's gonna shame anarchos into working in the hands of fascists. Gtfo and get a real job. Or just gtfo.

That’s easy, anon.

It’s because most anarchists are simply crypto-statist liberals who want to lock you down forever under an 8pm curfew over a virus with a 98%+ survival rate.

Anarchy!

Does "most anarchists" includes your commie/ID pol comrades? Always fun to see them double standards, coming from edgy internet bullies who can't move around without car, lol. Buy gas fo molotovs, if yer so tuff!

“Does ‘most anarchists’ include your commie/idpol comrades?”

Yes.

98% might survive but about 25% carry on with whats called longcovid, -- 24/7 fatigue, loss of taste and smell, joint pain, asthma-esque disorders, depression.
You wanna never run down a beach on a beautiful beach with your partner and make love ever again because you've got LongCovid?
Or do you wish to maintain a stubborn fascist denial to reproduce for thè neoliberal global machine?
Your choice! * Dangles vaccine shot in front of Qanon member*

25% might get longcovid, but about 100% carry on with what’s known as indefinite lockdown, — 24/7 state-sponsored media brainwashing, surveillance, neighbors snitching on you, isolation, tech alienation, increasing mental/physical health deteriorating, poverty, etc.

You never wanna run down a long beautiful beach with your partner because you’ve got indefinite lockdown?

Or do you wish to maintain a stubborn liberal denial to reproduce for the neofeudalist tech machine?

Your choice!

*Dangles freedom in front of “riden 4 biden” member*

Oh no no no, I want to run down a beach painted blue and screaming "FREEEEEDOM"and holding the severed head of the Qanon shaman in Viking-esque parody of his insane paranoia AAAARGH!!!

‘Member back in the 2010s when anarchists used to be anti-state? I ‘member...

I had a really pointed and pithy response to the keatingtroll, but then his self-indulgent rant was deleted... Dang it!

@news used to have a crazier chan-style environment but the mods got stressed and annoyed with it...maybe you could just stop responding to people who make you really mad?? Stop using your anger as a basic life-giving fuel and cry for a change...

i swear...the amount of damage that can be done with eloquent half truths...you know that @news used to be an ITS publisher, but then of course everyone realized it was bullshit and misanthropic ideology failed to kill anybody.

isn't it pretty clear that crimethinc. now adays is just a representative for anti-trump reactionaries? They are like the biden extremists, and pretending to be opposed to the neo-liberal super ideology is a key part of this strategy. The trump isurrection basically ended up being a right wing clone of the french revolution. I'm sure there are other events that better resemble this, but there's certainly the "send them to the guillotine" thing that popped up again.

that's "clear" to you, huh? you don't see any difference between a wealthy real estate huckster sending his twitter zombies to selfie and steal AOC's shoes ... and the french revolution. No important differences there?

To what was said...

Yes, crime thinc. Is reactionary, They are reactionaries against trump...they see themselves as the representatives for all these different leftists but they are not. To me reactionaries are people who can't do anything but jerk their knees and react. You can't take that away from me.

But why am I talking to you? I already stated that the call for death was the only corralation between this insurrection and the French revolution. You are confusing me for a different person. Please stop.

I also want to politely ask crime thinc to stop pretending like they are representatives of everyone who has anarch-ish opinions. Their essays are really getting on my nerves.

to me “reactionary” means banana. therefore everyone should stop thinking differently than my potato. words have meaning that i give to them and you are insurrection. long live death to america!

a "reactionary" is not someone who reacts, but has concrete political meaning; it refers to people who wish for a return to some status quo ante where people knew their place, where the rich and powerful were accorded unquestioned deference and respect, where the unwashed masses knew they were to keep quiet, and where crazy ideas like justice and egalitarianism were the harmless pipedreams of professional philosophers, housebroken intellectuals, and other court jesters. being a reactionary does not necessarily mean that such a person has a plan of action for turning back the clock; it's more a wistful nostalgia for simpler times of rigid hierarchy and unchallenged physical and psychic domination by patricians over the proles. it is always a right-wing phenomenon. your use of the term has much more to do with what it sounds like (and how pop psychologists use it) and almost nothing to do with the way it's used as a political signifier. reactionaries are certainly reacting to something, but what? the term describes folks who are against progress -- specifically the many ameliorative policies promoted by progressives. The binary is Progress versus Reaction. reactionaries are not those who have an instinctive/emotional response/rebellion/refusal to something or someone (like your characterization of Crimestink and plenty of other people, anarchists of course included), but those who are reacting to the erosion of traditional values more at home in the Middle Ages. read better books.

That words mean different things to different people, and one who claims that historians are the only ones who can make other uses of the pines for some very normal forms of order and control. Have you not figured out that pop psychologists also influence the words that everyone uses?

To me, crime thinc are reactionaries because they feel much more concerned with calling out Donald trump than addressing problems with their own essays and praxis. They are clinging to certain mind sets, and dont really care about the fact their project is stagnating and smelling terrible.

I overall have found that people who STRONGLY cling to this idea that they are anarchists tend to show the same level of ignorance as American conservatives, but generally are not as foolish and politically successful since they tend to be a little more open minded.

It's funny how accepted it is that fascist has a broad definition...but somehow because a standard dictionary doesn't support my views of other people, well its not legitimate. Need we have another shitty discussion about how identity doesn't really exist, and the right and left aren't that different? That's certainly one I'm tired of pointing.

But dont worry, Biden or Kamala will be president, so therefore crimethinc will eventually change the content of their essays.

tolerate imperfections nor who want to seriously contemplate anything:

*That words mean different things to different people, and one who claims that historians are the only ones who can be accurrate about politics pines for some very normal forms of order and control. Have you not figured out that pop psychologists also influence the words that everyone uses? *

i personally can't just discard the emotions i have when i'm formulating what i want to say...but it's okay, i am going to die eventually, maybe very soon, so you don't have to tolerate our differences of opinions forever.

sure, words often have fluid meanings attached to them. but look dipshit, in a forum like this, which is supposed to be about anarchism, it's only the wisest option to use terms that are maximally descriptive rather than vague and jargony. in the realm of political theory, reactionary means exactly what was outlined above: it's an ideology that is opposed to Progress (of whatever flavor, with whatever level of actual threat to the status quo it may or may not pose according to you, the subjective definer), not an ideology that is opposed to introspection and self-critique. your use of the term to apply to your analysis of Crimestink is simply incorrect in a context of political theory. it might be more relevant among pop psychologists if that's the kind of crowd you prefer to keep company with, but who the fuck cares? @news isn't a site for pop psychologists.
your issue with Crimestink is that they are reactive, their writings and interventions following after some political outrage. that's a problem that's plagued them for years -- activism. activists are always reactive and that's definitely a huge problem. you're not the first to point it out, but you might be the first to point it out with your own problem, that of political literacy.
as i said before, read a better book

I pay any attention to pop psychologists is really funny, I actually got that perspective from using anarchist news and comparing/contrasting what I read with modern right reactionaries, their conversational tactics are the same. Use words as emotional fire for people who agree with you, irritate your opponents with fuzzy generalizations.

For example, "only pop psychologists use it that way" obviously implies that if I use it that way, then i need to serve pop anarchism a little better. I'm only supposed use reactionary in reference to the right.

Over the past couple years, I've been pretty sympathetic to the left/anarchist cries against trumpian white nationalist style fascism, but when you observe how the political battles play out, it becomes clear there's a ton of LARPING going on, and we haven't really learned a whole lot about what the implications of right wing behavior actually are, and I do really want to know how the American right is going to continuing damaging other people and itself.

Crime thinc points out right wing politics have gotten more radical, but leftists and centrist Democrats have known this for many years this is totally not a new thing, and the reason crime thinc points this out is for click value. I learned more about the people who rioted against the Capitol building from talking to Democrats and visiting info wars. It just appears that the US is going to continue torturing people, not surprising...

But anyways...thanks for taking a moment to level with me, even if I don't like your line of argument. It helps not to use vague words, perhaps I'm not creative enough to be of use to people who more thoroughly oppose the state.

i'm not convinced of anything other than a use of vague and charged political language. your criticisms of Crimestink are totally valid, but the kind of argumentation they use that you're referring to (riling up emotions based on the simpleminded good/evil binary to skirt critical thinking) is more properly labeled moralism or demagoguery, which, as you correctly noted, can be deployed by anyone at any place along a political array. this kind of agitation is perfect for LARPers, as you also correctly note. but again, it has nothing to do with being anti-Progress or wanting to turn the political clock back to some earlier golden age of rigid social hierarchies.

that's funny, watching you two snark lords dancing around how one of you is too dim and arrogant to use a fucking dictionary, even tho you basically agree about your shitty strawman characterizations of crimethinc. with friends like these, huh? have fun you two!

Some of you still don't seem to get how a lot of the people who voted for Biden/Kamala weren't fans of them. The goal was to take out of office a dangerously unstable, retarded narcissist who's been empowering American neofascism while pushing more executions than ever, among other niceties. There's not many ways to overthrow a US admin outside of a by-the-book election process, but if you have a better idea in mind plz let us know!

The value of stability or reaching balance is something not to underestimate when it comes to mainstream politics, especially for such a dangerous country with dozens of nuke plants, hundreds of nuke silos and also JUST SO YOU KNOW, and also with such equally dangerous enemies like China and Russia. If you want to abolish mainstream politics, you'd better start taking that into consideration. Taking over D.C. is not like taking over Rome... there can be devastating, irreversible consequences for everyone who isn't people like Xi or Bill Gates.

Instead, work of building local free autonomy deprived of same old congenital CHUD feudal politics, so maybe even in the outcome of a mass-scale tragedy, you might have a chance to prevail.

That's what I've reading from this leftist fearmongering retardation. There is nothing the Trump admn had done that on the whole is an existential threat to everyone(specific people is a different story). He's balances out to be just another shitty leviathan prez unless you're some liberal leftist moron who has a phantom fear of non existent fascism.

Trump did give a boost to right wing populism and that comes with its own problems relative to presidents before him, but, again, there is nothing existentially dangerous about is presidency relative to others that came before him. He's not as bad as Bush 43 and is in the Obama ball part of badness(worse domestically but not so much foreign policy wise). He desecrated the office which is great from my standpoint.

I agree with autonomy and anarchy, part of that is not caring too much about who is president and who votes for president.

The interpretation of reality asserted by butthurt incels is an endless series of self-mythologizing responses to dynamics that are always set into play by other butthurt incels. This can be seen in their deeply flawed analysis of why anews regulars think they are idiots.

It's breathtaking that a tiny gaggle of self-marginalizing, invisible to all the world fringe butthurt incels can talk about 'their feels' here. Correct me if I'm wrong, but I see no evidence anywhere that butthurt incels has ever done anything to assert his perspective other than being too nervous to show up wearing bowties at an infinite number of easily ignored MRA meetups.

On the other hand, the far right overlaps heavily with the cops/law enforcement, for obvious reasons. And since, unlike butthurt incels, they believe in their butthurt enough to put time and effort asserting it outside of their butts or butthurt penumbra they've also made some inroads -- who knows how many or how buttdeep -- among enlisted people in the Armed Forces. In some form or another various permutations of the far right have been at this since the 1970's.

It's a testament to the total absence of opposition to capitalism in an ever-more rapidly speeding towards collapse United States -- and the total lack of real-world credibility of the compulsively juvenile and asinine United States butthurt incel subculture -- that although resistance to the military by enlisted people during the Cowbow Bebop era helped massively mess up the war-fighting goals of our rulers, may have actually had a negative impact on their larger strategy, and in most cases did this with some sort of left-wing or at least nominal left-wing perspectives -- admittedly for the most part third-worldist/Leninoid basedness -- there has never been any sustained, credible effort to follow up on this in the half-century since by the supposed enemies of capitalism in the United States. What have butthurt incels. been up to on this front? Let me guess...

Applying medication to their hurt butts? Yes.

seem better suited to twitter and more profit-oriented media sources, but thanks to the anews team for keeping the flame of reverse-inceldom going!

"But he said they were outnumbered 10 to one, and described extraordinary scenes in which protesters holding Blue Lives Matter flags launched themselves at police officers."

Oookay!

Authoritarian stupidity often makes impressive returns.

And why is the above surprising to anyone? It's been know forever that cops have hard authoritarian tendencies.

Anywhere from pretend radicals cheerleading for MAGA insurrectionists, dumbfucks claiming that J6 was an anti-State uprising, to all-out White supremacists or Neonazis conflating their ideas with some sort of anarcho-friendly edgy struggle, coz they the ones with the guns and tessstostenoooones, and the Free-DUM.

The issue is nonsense claiming that it was a coordinated coupe with people such at lectern florida man taking part. I did get a kick out of seeing government halls unsettled, but that is hardly cheering on or even affirming the event.

I would request screenshot proof, but your claims are so asinine and the usual "anews is crypto _________" paranoid made up shit.

Since I'm not the type to take snitchshots to repost them, I don't yet have such material... but if you'd like me, from now on I can do so. We may now assume that anything posted by anyone anywhere on Aplanet's servers (save perhaps Anews) can and will likely be recorded for potential public release. Can't promise everyone on Aplanet's gonna like, tho, but this likely might improve the quality of discussion overall.

And no one here ever said Anews is crypto-(something). You're the one who starts sounding paranoid, atm, as in "persecution complex".

Careful, tough guy. You might cut yourself on that edge or float away from all that hot air!

You have underestimated my skills for the last time Anews anons. While you were discussing anarchy I was practicing the blade. While you were out enjoying life I was honing my screenshot doxing skills. There will be receipts!

*tips fedora*
*smoke bomb*
*microwaves more tendies*

I do think there's some validity to the MAGAnarchist meme tho! it's interesting to me, how much toxic confusion can flow from these diametrically opposed conceptions of freedom and especially the uniquely USA flavour of it.

it's incoherent and stupid or worse imo but it's very real and there's a LOT of folks who got swept up in the boogaloo thing who didn't realize they'd joined the facebook freikorps. i've met some of them and they seemed to genuinely believe the opposition to the state was the whole of it. they just didn't have the analysis of history to look behind the curtain and see who was the wiz really was.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freikorps

you seem like the type that can't discern nuance. joy at seeing the US capitol get shit smeared on it, a cop getting killed, etc does not necessarily equal OMG YOU MUST BE MAGA NOW CUZ THATS WHO DID THAT!!!

no tears for dead cops.

Except when a significant portion of the crowd were off-duty cops, as well as White supremacists, Qanon tards and Christian fanatics, I can't exactly see a reason for joy unless someone's like this TYPE of bird-brained edgy "radical" who sees everything at face value.

But sure, hey.. I definitely won't complain about this CHUD army being culled by the State's actual armies. A bit less idiots on the loose in Muh-muh-muhricah could only be good for having less non-White people assaulted and abortion clinics bombed by these jihadists.

Takfiri are no anarchy.

This very clever Statist script, like giant "god cop bad cop" routine, but with left cop right cop, or left activist right activist, left voter right voter, like great big Disney mickeymouse yoyo, up down up down over and over, left right left right, entertainment for the dumb hordes, still working sheep in the script, disney movie about dumb Muhrican family torn apart by capitalist right cattle baron with arrogant son (elvis) meets poor polyglot idpol girl whose family are losers but there's a dumb brawl in the couthouse (congress) girl declares she is pregnant to elvis guy, he sings sickening sentimental bourgeois song about melting hearts and the whole town peasants barons drunks thieves all dance down the street in clean expensive clothes fade out to distant blue mountains with snow on top which is actually the massacre site of an entire native tribe but no one mentions that and the only native in the whole movie is the wooden indian outside barber shop. Typical happy ending to bullshit lying narrative!

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