This Is America #142

Write an anarchist desert today!

from It's Going Down

This Is America #142: Resisting the Curfew in NYC; A Discussion on ‘Desert’

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Welcome, to This Is America, June 25th, 2021.

On today’s show, first we feature an interview with Black House News, about the ongoing resistance to curfews happening in New York and attempts by the State to hold onto control of the streets in a post-pandemic and post-rebellion world. We also discuss how the terrain in DC has changed following the attempted far-Right coup. We then play a recorded text from Perilous Chronicle, about surveillance of teenage activists in so-called Tucson by local police.

We then switch to our discussion, where we cover the horrific realities of climate change and the implications raised in the book Desert for the anarchist movement in an epoch of global warming.

All this and more, but first, let’s get to the news!

Living and Fighting

  • A riot broke out in Rock Hill, South Carolina after a video tape was released of two African-American men being brutally arrested by police earlier in the day. People flooded into the streets on Wednesday night, lighting fires and blocking roadways for hours. More protests are expected.
  • The Defend the Forest campaign in Atlanta continues full swing ahead, with actions gaining steam around a ‘Week of Action.’ Residents are fighting to prevent the construction of a new massive police training facility and defend one of the last remaining green spaces in the area.
  • Antifascists in Oregon City outside of Portland threw down against Proud Boys last week, bravely standing up to the gang of far-Right thugs with well documented connections to white supremacists, the GOP, and the police. In response to the violence from the far-Right, city officials moved to cancel upcoming permits by the Proud Boys. Also in Denver, around 50 anti-capitalist and antifascist protesters rallied outside of the Trumpian, “Western Conservative Conference.”
  • Wildcat strikes and walkouts continue across the US. According to Payday Report, “At Family Dollar [in Pittsburgh]…workers walked out to protest poor working conditions and erratic scheduling. In a Houston suburb, “workers at Hooters walked out…protesting the lack of A/C in the establishment.” Lastly in Florida, nurses hit the streets to protest short staffing and lack of access to supplies during the pandemic.

Upcoming Events

  • June 20th – 26th: Week of Action to Defend the Forest in Atlanta. More info here.
  • June 26th – July 1st: Earth First! Summer Gathering in so-called Minnesota. More info here.
  • August 21st – September 9th: Call for abolitionist actions in support of prisoner struggles. More info here.
  • November 12th – 14th: Protest against white nationalist ‘American Renaissance’ conference in Burns, Tennessee.

It’s Going Down

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There are 18 Comments

desert segment starts 41 minutes in

"Attempted right-wing coup" -- please. The Jan. 6th Mook-a-palloza at the U.S. Capitol was more like a riot than a credible attempt to overthrow the government. The slobs who took part in it couldn't overthrow their Mom with help from their Dad. But if your lack of rudimentary critical thinking skills leads you to see each and every large and small protest march as full-scale righteous insurrection throwin' down against The Man your fantasy projection net will often cast its reach wide.

It was a "credible attempt to overthrow the government" as this was the CLEARLY STATED intent and aim of the insurgents in this walk on the Capitol, regardless of their stupidity and delusions. You equally can say the same of any crackpot attempting to stage a coup on his own with toy guns. The strategic effectiveness of any coup attempt is insignificant criteria to designate it as an "attempt to overthrow" or not.

“Attempted coup d’état” + “insurgents” ???

Lmao holy hell! The narrative larping is real! You nerds act like your lives are like the movies or something.

Yes + yes.

You look at the definition of "insurgency", you asshat. You'll realize it's very inclusive, even to a bunch of morons, off-duty cops and failed gay porn stars storming the Capitol.

So were the striking teachers and BPP insurgent terrorizers, as per your definition of insurgency, when they occupied the capitol, yes or no?

Lol yeah bro, the J6 people (who brandished no weapons and killed no one) totally deserve to rot in gitmo for their scary scary “insurgence”. That’s a stretch, to say the least, but ok. You don’t think that’s setting a bad precedent? But more
chillingly, it’s this desire to throw around this language of “terrorism” over a big fat nothingburger like J6 that says a lot about what would happen if the IGD crowd ever took over society. Just goes to show every starry-eyed mass society anarchist take eventually mutates into Maoist-Leninist monster.

two people died. pretty different from your standard leftist occupation. not sure what you're calling a nothingburger, here?

Yes, two people died.

One was an unarmed woman shot at point blank by a cop. The other was a cop who died of a heart attack.

Neither striking teachers and BPP have mobbed up and stormed the Capitol in direct response to their cult leader calling for it. So no, just gathering in front of the Capitol is not an insurrection of any sort, but a legal peaceful demonstration.

Bye Qanon filth, and spend more time training for those gymnastics IRL.

is it the violence, is it the cultyness, is it the explicit goals (to take over), an/or the racist/sexist/homohpobic/etc thinking of the j6 thing, that makes it an insurrection, and a teachers occupation not?
also, aren't you not against insurrections?
you could be right that the person you're responding to is an enemy, but express yourself for the others here, and for yourself.
aren't you for people fighting the state? doesn't it require some good argumentation to distinguish the good fighters from the bad fighters?

"that makes it an insurrection, and a teachers occupation not?"

Not. That teacher's occupation of the main lobby of the Capitol wasn't an insurrection in any way. It was just a way to put direct pressure on the crooked Senate to nullify their bill.

"aren't you for people fighting the state? "
"aren't you not against insurrection?"

Listen, you dumb brutish ignorant fuck... Anarchists are a disparate bunch of different people with different views and values, but none of them can call themselves as such when they're supporting a neonazi cult seeking to keep their leader into power, regardless of their means. Was the Chilean coup of 1973 also anti-State just coz it was an attack on the elect regime? Or the Military Junta in Greece?

No. That's because the simple act of insurrection or overthrow doesn't mean being "anti-state", you stupid. Like in the French or American or Bolchevik Revolutions, that was a gang of people overthrowing a regime to put their own regime in place.

It shouldn't take a PhD or Einstein's brain to realize this... so why is it so fucking hard for you to get it?

They totally wanted to freeze the Senate approval process in the vain hope of giving more time to the Trump admin to find ways to stay in power. Ergo, a coup attempt, no matter how retarded.

Btw marches on, and occupations at, state capitol buildings, are super common in American protest history. From striking teachers in Wisconsin to the BPP (who had actual fuckin guns with them) and more, lots of people have “stormed” a US capitol building, but it’s only now that we’re calling the latest people to do it (the maga crowd and assorted types) “terrorists”, “insurgents” and “domestic extremists” because it’s politically expedient for us to do so. Give me a fucking break.

Poor conservatives, reactionaries, and white supremacists getting called “terrorists” by the big bad state :-( The founding fathers would be so mad!

“…because it’s politically expedient for us to do so. Give me a fucking break.”

the funniest thing here is you trying to convince anyone that you’re an anarchist. give us a fucking break, you troll.

Yeah... I sometimes consider discontinuing the @ word to describe myself to people I meet but just because I cringe at the thought of being lumped in with naive liberal antifa whiners like you. But I still hold it down. And you, so you think you are anarchist? Haha No. You are become unrealized Maoist.

I’ll say this about the self aware maoists: at least they sincerely consider the true implications of a revolution in mass society. That’s why they have prison/work/death camps, firing squads and re-education centres built into the latter stages of their Protracted Peoples War. “Anarchists” tho, insofar as they are interested in revolution-making, operate according to a most childish type of magical thinking, not willing to acknowledge the sheer amount of brutality, oppression, and control it would take to start, maintain and secure a revolution in the context of massive depersonalized industrial societies.

Anyways tldr: revolutions are not what the IGD politburo say they are.

Read the Anarchist Myth.

It was mostly the fast-food, beer guzzling Qanon petitè bourgeoisie and working class who were inflamed and vented their ressentiments like politically naive brats.

This discussion of desert was much better than the other recently posted doomer v bloomer podcast but there were some things that were off about it. It seemed to forget about the points it made earlier, in that the text doesn't promote any kind of solution and expresses the impossibility of such a project given the state of the world. But by the end this was forgotten and it shifted into how we must fight capitalism, and how this is the most important thing, for some reason that I missed.

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