Anews Podcast 226 – 9.3.21

Anews Podcast 226 – 9.3.21

From Anews Podcast

Welcome to the anews podcast. This podcast is on anarchist activity, ideas, and conversations from the previous week on anarchistnews.org.

Sound editing by Greg.

What’s New written by chisel, read by chisel and Ariel.

Thanks to Octox and Max for conversation on TotW: confluences and oppositions

Two The Anarchist Library readings by Octox –
1. What Is The Difference Between Anarchists and Other Men by Le Bandit du Nord
2. Our Enemy is the Slave by Noël Demeure

Music:
1. Man on Man – 1983
2. The Blacksmith Blues – Bing Crosby
3. Spaghetti – Lavaa Man

There are 4 Comments

Great episode, i really liked the discussion, though the metaphors didn't really clarify anything for me. A couple points you discussed stood out to me and I wanted to offer a few more examples to challenge a few of them.

1. In relation to context and interpretation I think Derrick Jensen, or at least my reading of him, stands out a bit. Jensen has earned himself a reputation as a transphobe however his lecture on his book end game, particularly where he talks about violence as a hierarchy, I think is a great explanation for and argument against his transphobia (cis people being above trans people in the hierarchy of violence). So in this way the context and the text are opposed to eachother.

2. Kind of tying into the Schmidt example but also the notion that reading people you cemetery disagree with isn't helpful: I think Aragorns brilliant episodes on national anarchists stand out. As A! and others point out there is an eerie similarity between the national anarchists nationalism and A!'s/bolo bolos tribalism. In these similarities I think there is a much deeper critique of tribalism then what is fully explored in these episodes and represents a way in which engaging with texts you completely disagree with can reveal things you disagree with in your own thoughts.

3. Sort of related to not wanting to read people you completely disagree with j believe you mention not wanting to read "disgusting" things. This made me thknkbof my recent listening to "Buyer's Market" and other work by Sotos. Most of the comments on Buyer's Market are from people who say it is the most vile, repulsive thing they have ever heard. However for many, including myself, Sotos work in its vileness has deep messages especially around the pornographic nature of media (which if one is generous could be directly connected to the idea of spectacle).

perhaps you should change the name from topic of the week, to favorite thing to put on bread ( book). I'm allergic to peanut butter and I found the overall lack of a trigger warning for those with nut allergies to not only be incredibly repulsive but also biased against other toppings like the far superior fluffernutter, vegemite, and nuntella.

Yeah, good discussion of the totw.

I'm the Buddhist-ish commenter from that thread and I want to add, I see anarchism and Buddhism as roughly getting at the same thing, by which I mean liberation. I do understand that the vast majority of anarchists and Buddhists probably disagree with my take, and that's fine. I'm not really interested in converting anyone or convincing anyone of anything. So, according to the now beaten to death metaphor, I see both as chocolate.

And, the commenter who had good, provocative things to say about using ideas from anywhere made some fine points. When I said I grab ideas from a lot of people I did not have in mind actual fascists. More so I meant people such as Robin Wall Kimmerer, David Bohm, Donna Haraway & a lot of Buddhists. Along with tools for thinking such as Afropessimism, Critical Race theory and non-duality.

But your conversation brought to mind other thinkers who I've liked but who subsequently develop their thought in directions that are antithetical to anarchism. So, like, Derrick Jensen or Rhyd Wildermuth or Paul Kingsnorth, who co-founded the Dark Mountain project. He was never an anarchist but had some interesting ideas along with criticism of mainstream environmentalism that felt pertinent. But now PK has been baptized into the Orthodox Christian church and is quite a terf.

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