TOTW: Anarchists across time and space

photo: taken from my recent flight over my living room

Topic of the Week - Recently on the Anarchy Planet IRC*, an idea was shared by a participant there, of creating a network of spots for friends to stay as they travel in a specific direction. For example, spaces and places where traveling, touring, or whatever anarchists could stay for a period of time, plug in, and then journey onward to the next destination, and so on and so forth, until their own personal anarchist Mordor is reached.

It does sound rather idyllic, and let’s not forget when CrimethInc. expelled all traveler kids from anarchy. Outside of the traveler kids, oogles, and remembering the folly of the ever present summit hoppers, how do anarchists create, build, and maintain networks across time and space? Anarchists like Emma often were said to be holding tours of 1,000s+ of people and other anarchists in attendance; yet nowadays especially in times of Corona, anarchists traveling and touring with a specific goal of having talks and hanging out with other anarchists seem to be much less common. Is the traveling band of anarchists, music tours, adventures, and the like resigned to the days of yesteryear or is this growing up? If you were going to plan a trip across the distances life, would you care to and be able to meet up and connect with other anarchists, including people you’ve never met, along the way? Can you travel for fun, adventure, and enjoyment as an anarchist or will Bookchin come from the grave and strike you back to the factory floor? What Summer 2021 adventures (or whatever season it is where you are reading) are in store for you and friends?

[ Here is a recent example from Europe: BialysTurbo Caravan Travel Diary!
https://anarchistnews.org/content/bialysturbo-caravan-travel-diary ]

*IRC = Internet Relay Chat

There are 79 Comments

This TOTW reminds me of life many years ago, living in a punk house, and it being a known place for people to stay as they passed through town. This is a very specific example of a place far off the beaten trail of big cities and anarchist jurisdictions (Portland, Chicago, and NYC[really?]) where a specific community of people had contacts with each other to help each other while traveling. As one can imagine, this involved the people booking the show to set up, organize, and promote it, and then probably crashing at the house for a night or so, unless the bigger cities tour demanded a quick exit. In all, it wasn’t specifically anarchist in anyway, other than the occasional anarchist friend passing through. Most of the time, helping out the travelers involved aspects of their own livelihood, and it was more rare to find those just traveling for the sake of travel, but often the hanger on, roadie named Bart.

This summer, I’m hoping to make a 700 mile bike (as in bicycle, human powered) tour, that is mostly just for fun and adventuring, but along the way some of the stops might involve meeting up with anarchist friends. Being a human powered trip, the distances are more limited than traveling by vehicle and therefore going out of the way to meet the anarchist few and far between is not the easiest.

Here and there, I’ve been watching some sailing YouTube videos and others traveling by boat over vast distances. This seems pretty cool, but also you have to live among the great big lakes or the ocean, have a boat, which is not easy, and know how to brave the wild sea. So basically no one, although there do seem to be some anarchists doing this ( http://www.dinghydreams.com/ ).

I think one thing from preventing anarchists from setting up travel networks like mentioned in this TOTW, is the sheer lack of money anarchists often have. It takes a good deal of wealth to buy land, property, a house and these more stable places outside of squatting (at least in the North American context), not even to mention time. How do anarchists get land, a house without getting married, having kids, and dropping off the map completely? Five year plan is to report back on this.

yeah, a lot of the 90s era stuff doesn't translate well because the property speculating rich fucks have been tightening the noose around everyones necks for a long time now. like, these marginal lifestyles that seem so romantic from the golden age of punk (I know, I know, not really), they've been squeezed out hard. ruthlessly so!

in the city I know well, if you've been paying attention long enough, you could watch all the big old collective punk houses winking out of existence, one after another, dropping like flies. these places were like museums, with literally decades of lore written on the walls. those networks you're talking about would slowly develop over many years.

now, an attempt at an "intentional community" like that tends to have a reno-viction lifespan of maybe a year or 3.

the 90s may not have been the golden age of punk, but they were the golden age of being punk.

Learn a skilled trade, one that’s in high demand. One that’s useful to your cause, in establishing enclaves of small tight knit dropout communities/tight knit circles. The most revolutionary thing that you can possibly do, honestly, is to learn a skilled trade.

Currently I work as an electrician in construction while living out of my van. I am honing my craft and making decent money and I’m only a one year apprentice. Lots and lots of savings.

You can literally save up $20k then use it to swing penny stocks like these parasites on Wall Street do. Start with even less if you’re good. A tiny 5% return once a week (which is not hard at all studying price movements) will yield you $1000.

For literally clicking a few buttons on a screen once a week with the right stock you make a livable middle class wage. Reinvest most of your earnings and/or get a bigger return then you make even more over time obviously. You gotta think like these parasites to escape their system. Play their hokey little numbers game.

Real wealth though comes from material possesions of value like land, animals, guns, etc. The plan I offer you is just a simple outline to escape the wage slavery quicker. It took me a while to see the wisdom in it but I’m a big proponent of learning a trade. It helps you make good money and makes you valuable as an individual and whatever tribe/community you belong to for the purpose of total system dropout.

I am probably the most multi-faceted anarch in the Western world, I can do anything except brain surgery and designing computer software and flying aircraft. Pretty good when you consider I am self-taught AND solipsistic as well.
You name it, I can do it!

What is the normie, life advice dogshit doing on my beloved anarchist news? It don’t even have anything to do with the topic.

Regarding the topic: Squats! Crime! Anarchy!

Goddamn!

Someone posted higher up about how anarchists lack the money and property to make happen what this totw is about.

So I would argue that it is related.

Not that I’d ever recommend living in a city, but, incidentally, if you WERE hypothetically squatting a building in a North American major city, you’d probably want to have a plumber and an electrician on your team anyways, you know what I mean? In the end, a network of land projects run by competent homesteaders would be more interesting and effective IMO than the urban hipster lofts and punk houses that disappear in 3 - 5 years, tops. Travellers could come thru, help tend the gardens and the animals in return for room and board as they pass along their merry way, bringing news and tidings from the other homesteads.

Don’t you see? It is related.

Now stop getting busted shoplifting Pokémon cards from Walmart and go learn something useful instead.

hey! you're just three ancaps in a trench coat... HEY THIS GUY IS JUST ANCAPS IN A TRENCHCOAT!!!

I said learn a skilled trade. ‘A job’ is where you’re telling vacuous yuppies to “have a nice day, sir” and if you’re here, then that’s not what I want for you. It should be stressed that I’m also not talking about the ‘fancy jobs’ like office work and middle management. While those activities indeed produce $$$, they also don’t teach you anything valuable or practical in terms of achieving total system dropout.

dude ... now you're just moving the goalposts on what a "job" is... is this what you tell yourself? the boot you're licking isn't a boot at all?

how am I licking boots if I’m self employed and doing small jobs here and there thru a referral network?

How do you make your money and how is that not “licking boots”, LT?

the point being made is about wage labour in general, friendo. much has been written about this? I take it you don't wash up on the beach of anarchy from the left?

anyway, you're entitled to your opinion that slightly better wages and working conditions is the same thing as not having to lick the boot but many writers and thinkers disagree with you, not just me.

Being self employed =\= being a wagie. But let’s back up...

Yes, money shouldn’t exist, along with banking, finance, capitalism and all the rest. But, this is the world we have to deal with. As someone else a few comments down pointed out, prefiguration between means and ends is a juvenile fantasy we’re better off dropping like wednesdays trash. Being an electrician, in my case, isn’t the end goal. The end goal is autonomy, and this is just a stepping stone. These skills and tools will empower (literally) and stay with me for the rest of my life and help me achieve my goals.

Who’s to say I don’t do this for a while just so I can buy land. Once I buy land and build my own homestead on it, who’s to say I don’t start growing micro greens or producing mulch or vermicompost to sell and further support myself all the while raising chickens, growing a garden and just in general removing myself as much as possible from having to depend on system supply chains? Next thing you know I’m having a well dug. Boom. Now I have my own water supply.

And you? You think you’re gonna buy land from out of your job as a waiter telling yuppies to “have a nice day, sir”?

Wait, hold up. Does your ideology even permit you to buy land or would that be too “CoLoNiAl” for your poor little heart? So what’s your alternative? Stay working poor, and renting an overpriced 1 bedroom apartment in a shithole city 100% dependent on the system and it’s supply chains, all out of a misplaced sense of purity and self righteousness?

Does it make you feel “trve” and “pr0le” for working as a dishwasher well into your 30s and 40s?

Is it worth it?

Your position highlights two very big problems with anarchy today:

1. A self-defeating obsession with ideological purity that just hems you up from achieving anything of value, and...

2. This very American and shortsighted impulse for instant gratification bc Netflix, porn, social media and video games have turned you into a dopamine-fried addict. You want it all, you want it now, but you’re too entitled, lacking patience, dedication, focus and for that you’re never going to accomplish anything.

Was it Nietzsche or Hegel who said, “be like water, my friend”? I forget, but anyways, the gist of that expression is to essentially craft your strategy to the existing contours of the world for maximum effect.

so that was a long rant at nobody. do you feel better?

I too am at the mercy of those with all the land and capital. most of us are, that's my whole point: you can pretend you'll be able to carve off a piece someday, maybe you'll even manage it!!! but the whole deal being offered is still a fundamentally condescending, shitty deal from smug fucks who don't deserve that land that you'll have to bust your ass, just for their permission to live on it.

if all your little ancap dreams come true, it's still just a carrot on a stick so who's holding the stick?

Your trade as an electrician hems you into a hierarchical world of apprentice and journeyman and master all licensed by the fucking state in your quest for cushy paydays and eventual retirement in your magical homesteads that you will never procure because you are too busy dying of heart disease and cancer as you continue to perpetuate the consumption of the natural world through your powergrid, by trade. You are a monster. Best to do shoddy work that results in electrical fires and the destruction of techno industrial civilization. I’m a master electrician, trust me.

As someone who has worked in both the trades and agriculture, both for wages and for the actual food and electricity, I have to warn you. If you switch from electrician to farmer you are going to take a significant pay cut. Farming is a LOT more work for the amount of reward you get than electrical work is, however you are receiving that reward.

I'm pretty sure it was Ali, who could have kicked Lee's ass anyway. Lee was a materialistic capitalist entrepreneur.

Its just basic physics, you put a pitbull (Ali) against a cat (Lee) and the cat may run circles around the dog, jump over it, deliver multiple slaps and make wierd vocal sounds but in the end just one hit and its over.
And that's part of the whole phýsics of time and space for anarchy. Imagine the analogy of the mass of Leviathan represented by a huge heavyweight martial artist and the anarchist is a vocal (activist protester) contender to the crown of social dominance yelling and slapping (street marching and rock throwing) whilst the Leviathan heavyweight champ (capitalist hegemony) just stand there mocking and condescending to the protesters who leave the ring defeated everytime.

Was it Nietzsche or Hegel who said, “be like water, my friend”?

Haha wat? This was Lao Tze who said that, like 2500 years prior.

From what I understand, Bruce Lee was greatly influenced by the Tao and tookinspiratation from an old Lao Tzu poem, but the actual quote is from Lee:

Empty your mind, be formless. Shapeless, like water. If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup. You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle. You put it in a teapot, it becomes the teapot. Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.

The Lao Tzu poem:

Supreme Goodness Is Like Water
Who favors everything and does not compete with anything.
By occupying the position despised by every human,
She is very close to Tao.
Its position is favorable.
Her heart is deep.
Her gift is generous.
Its word is faithful.
Her government is in perfect order.
She fulfills her task.
She is acting.
By not competing with anyone, she is irreproachable

Dear gweilo,

Please stop. Daode jing is the text by Laozi. The chapters are not poems.

Bruce Lee mixed daoist philosophy with western philosophy when writing his own. He also did this mixing of Eastern and Western with his jeet kun do.

The end.

ok, sorry to bother you, and i will never refer to the Tao as poetry again! thanks for the authoritative last word!

"Water is the softest thing, yet it can penetrate mountains and earth. This shows clearly the principle of softness overcoming hardness."

"Water is fluid, soft, and yielding. But water will wear away rock, which is rigid and cannot yield. As a rule, whatever is fluid, soft, and yielding will overcome whatever is rigid and hard. This is another paradox: what is soft is strong."

"The best people are like water, which benefits all things and does not compete with them. It stays in lowly places that others reject. This is why it is so similar to the Way. (Dao)"

Dear culture cop,

Tao Te Ching/Dao De Jing and Lao Tzu/Lao Tze/Laozi are interchangeable spellings based on which romanization system you opt to use. Why couldn't (shouldn't?) the chapters of the text be considered poetry? How do you know the writer (writers?) didn't consider it so? What culture is not mixed, and what is wrong with cultural mixing to begin with?

The beginning of the end.

Dear gweilo,

Pinyin is the only acceptable romanization. You would know this if you weren’t a gweilo. Your Western imperialism and cultural appropriation are showing.

Dear culture cop,

Maybe you would like to scold notable translators of Daoist texts Gia-Fu Feng and Eva Wong for using Wade-Giles? Any romanization system is but a limited semblance of the language. But no matter. Ignoring nuance, drawing arbitrary lines of acceptability, and issuing citations for imperialism and appropriation at the drop of a hat is to be expected by police.

Sorry, internet ID politician above you can only compute in binaries. There cannot be such a thing outside of imperialist cultural appropriation when it comes to cross-cultural exchanges.

Westerners like Alan Watts recognizing and promoting the value of Chinese philosophy was imperialist! Not like Hegelians and later Euro philosophy despots who literally have been demeaning the Chinese for their 2500 years old philosophy traditions. /s

Dear gweilo,

I wanted to tell you I am delighted you have taken an interest in me. And when I learned of your vast correspondence I thought "Dare I?" Of course I do. I don't believe you'd tell them who I am, even if you knew. Besides, what particular body I now occupy is trivia. The important thing is what I am BECOMING. I know that you alone can understand this. I have some things I'd love to show you. Someday, perhaps, if circumstances permit. I hope we can correspond...

Dear gweilo,

Impersonation of superior intelligence is an unfortunate sign of lesser imbeciles with minds as blank as farts. There is no BECOMING in mimicry. The shame.

the watered-down rhetoric
of washed-up activists
be like:
traditional rural adulting
for maximum effect

I am water now,
Plip plop plip plop plip plop plip,
Still enslaved by gravity.

You don't seem to understand how these penny stocks work. The old gimmick goes like: insider traders and other "market-makers" are pushing for a penny stock to go way up at opening. Then tons of people go into FOMO more trying to turn a profit, yet they arrived too late as the stock gets dumped just as they're buying. This is what's called the "Pump and Dump scheme", and this was the biggest game by Wall Street crooks.

WSB has been a game-changer for a while ('til they started removing GME/retail investors posts) allowing for everyone interested for a while, but now it's their mods have been paid or taken over by hedge fund firms, as the crap that's being pumped is not only feeding on FOMO but also feeding some shitty corporate interests (like real estate or bad tech industries). Like 1-2 a week you get a meme stock being pumped over there and it's becoming an unsafe bet to invest into these. Lotta Redditors got fooled the last few weeks by this gimmick, ending up having lost on a stock that's gone back to hell, while the market makers turned a profit on them, selling shares they didn't even purchased due to schemes like dark pools and share lending. It's a dangerous game so you gotta know what you put your money into.

The GME thing has been the safest. best bet this year and it looks like the game ain't over unlike the ridiculous bullshit what the mainstream media outlets are saying. Someone who bought shares at just 40$ in Feb would have turned 4x in profits a month later, but someone who bought the at 3$ last year would have got way richer. Tho as of now it seems to be a war of attrition going with counterfeit short attacks on a daily basis, so nobody knows when it's gonna squeeze, and well, this stonk ain't a penny stock anymore...

There's a good cause to go into weed or psilocybin stonks but these industries are, well, industries and still capitalistic, only somewhat more "ethical" than terrible big industries (tech and mortgages, mainly) that turn up gazillions in profits these days.

" allowing everyone interested to turn a crazy profit... literally out of hedge fund big gamers, instead of the opposite"

"One that’s useful to your cause, in establishing enclaves of small tight knit dropout communities/tight knit circles. The most revolutionary thing that you can possibly do, honestly, is to learn a skilled trade."

lol... so. fucking. liberal.

Define "revolutionary" plz.

All you MIGHT be just doing here is more private communal capital consolidation/building. Sounds more like reactionary than "revolutionary" to me, brah.

A "dropout community" can mean just about anything these days. That includes Zoomer startups and ridiculous tiny house private land projects. Zoomers especially, at least around here, don't seem to properly get the meaning of "openness" and fairness in dynamics, hence they always end up doing liberally reformed capitalism, when it's not fucking blatant neofeudalism. I'm looking in the direction of Bellamy, among oher well-knowns here.

The land belongs to no one. You belong to it. Or not.

Teach me yr ways of trading penny stocks. I've been making a bit of money trading small cap stuff but have stayed away from pennies but how are you finding the tickers that move +50%?

So says the comment at 11:05 you didn't seem to have read, this is mostly insider rackets. You'll have corporate bots on WSB pumping some penny stock, and every single time when they celebrate the gains it's exactly when they're starting to sell and you're getting ruined by buying a stock that's going down, so you get badly owned. Also most stocks are severely unethical businesses and you might just end up supporting their profits while staying poor. This is capitalism after all.

No it's more like most of what's being hyped is being shorted already. The famous GME stonk is believed to be overshorted by incredible magnitudes. This is how they crash companies, overshorting to crash their share value, then company has to file bankruptcy. Then if you got late on the game due to FOMO, your money's going to get zapped along with the stock.

So unless you're totally sure -not being told by completely uncaccountable Reddit users who don't back up their claims- that a penny stock is going to skyrocket at some point, don't jump into it.

become “a machinist”
make gun buy back zip guns
trade-in for cash or gift cards
talk about a “skilled trade”

Rank and file electricians occupy Land Securities offices as de-skilling dispute continues

Rank-and-file electricians continue to take action over attempts by major construction contractors to de-skill their trade, including occupying the offices of companies that have contracts with NG Baileys.

Throughout March and April and into May, "sparks" (electricians) have been carrying out regular actions targeting the construction companies Balfour Beatty and NG Baileys, in response to those companies trying to create a new grade of "Electrical Support Operatives".

The ESO grade would see vital electrical work carried out by workers who had only received a few weeks' training rather than by fully qualified electricians, and so has serious and potentially deadly health and safety implications, especially as Balfour Beatty and Baileys have tried to introduce it at Hinkley Point C, where a nuclear reactor is being built.

As the latest in a series of actions targeting these companies, on Wednesday May 5th sparks occupied the offices of Land Securities in London, who have a maintenance contract with NG Baileys.

https://youtu.be/HISRR_lZeaY

Summarising recent developments in the dispute, Reel News write:

Quote:

"Over the past two weeks, sparks have continued to target NG Baileys over their dangerous deskilling plans at Hinkley Point C. The other contractor, Balfour Beatty, seem to be wobbling after promising to issue a statement - but two weeks later that statement still hasn't appeared. Given their history of lying (particularly over blacklisting), the two week break the sparks have given them from targeted action won't be lasting much longer.

Meanwhile, the prime target is now Land Securities offices, for whom NG Baileys have the maintenance contract. Unless Land Securities take that contract away from NG Baileys immediately - or convince them to stop their deskilling plans - they will find their offices disrupted every week from now on."

For further analysis of the dispute, see "Over the Water, Sparks Fly" from Liverpool Anarchists.

"one thing from preventing anarchists from setting up travel networks like mentioned in this TOTW, is the sheer lack of money anarchists often have."

WHAT the hell are you talking about? I'm so sorry that some people in this crowd are still using the money argument as such a huge obstacle to projects. Or is 100% of the land so owned to a point you can't escape renting or buying? You're sure there's no abandoned shack, house or old wagon anywhere in this country? If you don't like these places, you may also look for some nice potential camp site with nearby amenities and resources. I can point you to at least five spots like these around town... and they will cost nothing.

Capitalist morality is so deeply ingrained...

How about making it one of the goals of your trip, for starters... like looking at what is doable and occupiable without the need for any bucks?

Remove a few social determinism in your head, first. That might help seeing the possibilities. As what we perceive is not the "things as they are", but what our preconceived notions allow us to see.

What's really in the way of networking this stuff? Trust.

With something as politically-charged as a "network of shelters for anarchists", there's little ways to how these "shelters" will turn out to be prison cells... or worse.

So you got two options if you wanna do this:

1- depoliticize it as much as possible. Remove any anarchist this and anarchist that.

2- do it obvious on the contrary, yet as a secretive network of "traveling masons", i.e. within a secret society. Like what the OTO have been doing internationally with their safe houses, but without the whole sex hype for old creeps, and dedicated to encouraging individual empowerment, free sharing of goodies, safety, healthcare, etc.

3- combo of 1 and 2 maybe? Dunno.

“Capitalist morality is so deeply ingrained...”

What? LMAO “capitalist morality”. Read a book, son, you’re embarrassing yourself.

And you think there's no dominant morality in the capitalist society? So why are many people still striving to get rich, own more shit, buy land and get so adamantly repressive on things like "destruction of property" and "thievery"? Also the deeper issue of owning partners in couple relationships, children as well as the notion of being indebted? All very capitalist morals here.

yeah so ... whenever anyone types out their elaborate scheme for HERES HOW YOU DO IT, IDIOTS!!!
(hundreds of times per year, just fyi)

the obvious response is - then why are you typing it here as a fantasy, instead of doing it?

don't tell us, show us ;)

There's nothing that makes sense here, LT. Are u sure you replied at the right place?

the anon posting about how poverty isn't the hurdle people think it is ... in the supersplain paragraph a few comments up ...

I would not combine those approaches. The whole point of depoliticizing it is to spread it as widely as possible. It becomes something like a demonetized airB&B with people sharing spaces and rating one another to determine if they are trustworthy. Meanwhile the secret society works best if there are bonds of mutal obligation, shared secrets and ideology, etc.

It's all fun and games until some trust fund oogle on holiday eats all your food, clogs your toilets, gives you scabies, uses your toothbrush, and steals your hand-held electronics.

I'd say campgrounds are a much better option.

"Face to face is dead. Real anarchs pursue the life of the academia." - Giles Deleuze

yeah, hopefully we've all learned you don't just invite total strangers because anarchy and if your friends vouch for a real douche, they get throat punched by association.

not even campgrounds. blm land national forests. thats where ive been living a lot when not staying with people. its kinda nice but no substitute for the networks of punk houses. way too lonely. way too boring if you cant find an exceptionally pretty spot.

if you are bored in the forest unless it's exceptionally pretty you might want to rethink your relationship to the natural world. you could be surprised at the possibilities for active engagement and imagining if you are intentional and present in the moments. sometimes we just need to look closer and be open to seeing beyond our expectations to discover beauty.

I find it hard to imagine there being value in hosting anarchists in Southern Africa.

There are so few here, there would be no crowd for the visitors to engage. The level of need here makes a lot of the problems in the global north just seem silly in some respects, and generally the North/South hierarchy comes with visitors having a shitty understanding of this space, coming off like clueless tourists with nothing to offer. The language barrier would undermine the possibility of a lot of deep engagement.

Soundz of the South did an exchange with some South American anarchists (?) and they just seemed like they were on holiday here.

If people did come here, I think the way to make it work would be for the purpose of a specific project that helps them with a specific required skill set. Here I'm thinking about how Bellamy brought in a Japanese forest gardener to assist with setting up a project of theirs. I think that would be good.
But even that is really a very hugely privileged capacity here.

Which leads me to believe that in terms of the North/South divide, a lot of the time it's just preferable for the rich side to find groups they have affinity with and pump money to them so that they can make their own projects on their own terms.

But maybe I'm just not good at this stuff!

According to David Graeber Anarchism is much more common in Africa than it is in Europe or North America. It just doesn't use the same vocabulary so African Anarchists may not identify that way. They are still opposed to authority, coercion, and so forth. I have no idea how much interaction there is between South African Anarchists of European descent and the local traditional tribes, but that could be a good area to explore.

it's funny all these years later to log in here and see this sort of comment lobbed off for granted. some of the corniest, bandana wearing vegan activist type @s i saw at big actions across the country 20 years ago, by the late 00s a significant subset had morphed into snide, tough-talking, chainsmoking hipster "insurrectos" who were exactly the demographic that i first associated with this site, around that time.

maybe this sort of thing has been chewed over here already; who knews? i barely visit anymore...

Cool story bro! I bet it totally happened! Too bad you won’t read this because you totally barely visit here anymore!

lmao ok i knew someone would have a problem with that part. or was it the first part that struck a nerve? bro

So what now, you got a steady well paid gig wearing a football mascot suit?

Ok this gen z non sequitur shit is funnier than “cool story bro” which is so late 00s it immediately made me think you must be one of the exact people I was talking about. By the way I have to include myself more or less. U mad bro?

But yes in 2021 there are only two possibilities for human life: spending all day on @news or steadily paid football mascotry. Nailed it bro!

aren't zoomers supposed to know that dunking on a generalization is boring?

"remember when anarchists wore a lot of black and would be snide? fukin LOSERS amirite?!"

History through an archeological lens is probably the most honest way to consider anything through space and time, and anarchists must still suffer the predictability of humanity's inevitable fate, and it doesn't look good for them, unless they unleash their inate tendency to rebel within the confines of their own esoteric knowledge. This self-awareness could possibly steer them into a niche of immùnity from the diseases of cultural progress, and save them from the hysteria of anthropoid excess and decay.
Hold strong to your codes of immense inner self-power brave anarchist visionaries!

Funny how I did a similar Euro trip roughly 1-2 years after his, tho in the more southern regions of Europe, which are I think the more interesting parts than those over-civilized northern Euro shitholes. I fell in love with the barren crustiness and chaos of some Med cities, and the rough bareness of East Europeans. Northern Europe tends to be so polite, so orderly and clean... also dense in hypocrisy, like White ppl in US & Canada. Netherlands especially. It's maybe an anarcho-leftist's dream environment tho surely not mine.

I wasn't as publish-y as a Gelderloos yet I experienced a more punkish, laymen's approach to Euro squatting. I don't think he neither went to real crusty punk squats where the life was usually the most fun. Dunno if any of you ever imagined waking up to a fiery Kurdish dude yelling all over the place as he's removing all the fucking doors in the house coz some petty-bougie bitch was stupid enough to claim the place isn't a squat"!

Also unlike "Shimson", the Greek anarchos have taught me the name they use for "comrade".

Regardless of the fascist troll and other pointless comments, I think this is a great thread that deserves to be given its own forum entry once the next TOTW takes over the front page, as this is a "long game" talk with the potential of creating something irl.

.... nope. please don't project your painful past on to everybody else?

Would be great to have more of these conversations, and see mature projects and a collective memory emerge.

We're not attached to a labor movement anymore. Somewhat attached to indigenous struggles, and some are pawns for Marxists and other activist projects.

What does it look like when you don't want to be a liberal or a humanist and think you can change the system from the inside? What does it look like when you don't want to be a professional militant, or an activist?

To me, one little part of my life is pulling the bolts out of the scaffolding of the Grand Narrative, inviting non-dual spiritual engagement with the earth. A sort of premeditating of a coming paradigm shift.

I no longer understand this juvenile attachment to notions of purity between means and ends. Play the system without illusions. Set up fronts, shells to achieve goals. Bakukin made up secret societies and bank accounts while hiding real funds. Severino di Giovanni ran a print shop. There were anarchist bakers, watch makers, etc...

The question of day to day life, and what makes a life worth living at a granular level (where one can have any sort of power at making change) is always present. Maybe there is no answer. Just playful experimentation.

Taking unused land with regular people gives everyone something to defend when regrowing topsoil and mutually. I've seen this first hand. I've heard stories from people talking about taking over abandoned gas stations for tool storage, and activities they had no idea were radical. Food costs are 63% of income. Taking land and growing food on it blocks development projects too. Think of the optics.

I think this way because I can't see anything else coming to the US but techno-feudalism that plays out as a banal democide: continued death by neglect of withdrawing social services. It's a chance to rise to the occasion. And it's not AI coming. We're the AI insofar as we're the experiment to make everything change to stay the same so we get mechanically routed into more predictable patterns and outcomes for easy management.

*and mutually benefit from the shared cultivation of food.

"To me, one little part of my life is pulling the bolts out of the scaffolding of the Grand Narrative, inviting non-dual spiritual engagement with the earth. A sort of premeditating of a coming paradigm shift."

I like this point. it reminds me of this piece attempting to hash out a non-dualistic direct spiritualism from a green anarchist perspective over other mediated forms of spiritualism. I prefer to drop spirit/spiritual altogether, and think that what they are trying to articulate isnt actually spirit/spiritualism, but something else. maybe soul/ensouled is closer.

"I no longer understand this juvenile attachment to notions of purity between means and ends. "

using children/juvenile/youth as a negative bugs me. as if adulthood/maturity is the ideal closer to truth, and is not where playful experimentation goes to die (at least where I live).

purity arguments also bug me, but I prefer to maintain an imperfect closeness with means and ends as much as possible. playing the system (in as many scenarios as I can imagine) rarely looks playful, often resulting in getting played instead. that being said, I gotta do something for a little money here and there, and your strategies are appealing.

"Taking land and growing food on it blocks development projects too."

Knowing about the issue by experience, no it doesn't block development projects BY ITSELF. Tho it can put the people involved in an interesting conflict with municipal and real estate crooks, especially if the former hold their ground and cause a mess. Think of the struggles around the Mohawk lands of Tyendinaga in the upper Great Lakes.

But there hasn't been enough of this... anti-development struggles aren't just about extractive industry or logging... it's first and foremost the sprawling suburbs that are the biggest problems and most devastating form of ecocide. They're both supported and supportive of the techno-industrial society. Extractivism is important to oppose, but the biggest elephant in the room has been far too overlooked.

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