TOTW: Never Been Done

Rodney Mullen

At the moment, I’m reading ‘Plant Anarchy’ by Sascha Engel. There he characterizes ‘classical anarchists’ as a typology of anarchists whose projects and aspirations merely iterate the canon of classical European philosophy. This is inscribed within a longer point that argues that iteration itself is authoritarian. The proposed ways to defy and break away from iteration are much too complex for me to understand, summarize, and make into short and fun Topic of the Week at the moment.

In the meantime, this week we’ll talk about anarchist NBDs! In skateboarding slang, at least in some circles, NBD is shouted when a trick is done for the first time, and it stands for ‘Never Been Done’. Novelty for its own sake is not necessarily beneficial, as can be said of anything; including variety, routines, iteration. Nevertheless, let’s discuss what are some things that anarchists have never done before. Use your imagination to come up with acts that defy expectation, and go beyond what we routinely see reported in anarchist media and counter-info sites. Sounds simple enough, but knowing a bit of anarchist history will let you know that anarchists have already done a lot of things.

How do we call an anarchist NBD? Is it enough that an anarchist hasn't done it yet, even though non-anarchists have done it before? Or does it have to be something truly no one else has done, because it's something only an anarchist would do? I think it shouldn't be something no anarchist has done specifically because it goes against what they desire. Anyway, the point is to be imaginative and break out of ruts, so even uncommon acts with some few known precedents are welcome if they are exceedingly rare nowadays. Inb4 the usual bores complain that anarchists aren't doubling down on routine activities, dismissing attempts to be imaginative as a trivial pursuit.

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First punk "attitude"? Now skateboarding slang? Hasn't all this been done before? @ News seems to really be scraping the bottom of the barrel lately with "Topics of the Weak"....How about addressing something substantial like AI, technology or overpopulation?

Those topics have been done as well, and will likely be done again sooner than later. Try coming up with something novel yourself.

The point of countering iteration is that every person, every thing, and every moment remains unique and new 'never been done' before, in fact, even unnamed as an instance of a category, which 'person', 'thing', and 'moment' would be nouns and deixis.

So an anarchist NBD would be to stop doing deixis?

"doubling down on routine activities"

Routine activities like writing a Topic of the Week every single week on Anews for a hundred years? SoOooo imaginative!

NBD: no Anews moderators

You never step in the same river twice so nothing is ever the same right? This magic moment so different and so new. Every day a new beginning.

That depends, what if all rivers have become drains without diverse lifeforms living in them, But instead cloned simulations?

Even simulated rivers are never the same because of time, entropy and quantum uncertainty.

I meant in the present moment in Western capitalist consumerist digital culture where cosmetic surgery and the myth of eternal life in heaven attempt to thwart entropy and dasein self-awareness. The AI screen everyone gazes into is quantum unawareness (ignorance)

NBD: leaving up unpopular, transgressive, or cynical takes on anews

NBDs:
Bonnot Gang using a car to leave after doing a crime
Mario Buda using a vehicle to deliver a bomb

The Bonnot one isnt true. They were the first to use it for a bank robbery but afaik the original first was robbing gold and silver from a church in Spain.

NBD 24:-
Using an electric scooter to escape a bank robbery!

How about an anarchist head of state? Can't think of one but sadly think it may have been done.

Seen it done: In Springl 2003 as the 2nd Iraw war cranked up , we had a black bloc in a huge ANSWER/antiwar march. All day the cops tried to hem us into the march. As we marched past the white House on 17th st, we suddently made a hard left turn though the police lines and charged west. Not a single cop was between the police line we had just pierced and the World Bank's headquarters. I was on bike, so I rode at the head of the charge and got out front a bit. I figured we were going to the sidewalk there but NO! the charge burst through the doors of the World Bank and went inside. I could not lock the bike up fast enough to go in with them and not lose it, so I missed that part of the party.

World Bank security tried to lock them in, so they had to break a window to get out but that worked. Cops marched everyone around the World Bank three times, then forced everyone right back to the ANSWER march.

Thus we can scratch "black bloc storming the World Bank" off the never-been-done list

NBD... escaping riot police through the sewers. stealing a flag and leaping over a police line into a black bloc. Convincing multiple people to sing against me's baby im an anarchist while arrested.

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!!

we can even be cyborg intergalactic hobos who mate with fire ants if we want!

ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE!!!

my mommy told me so.

How about a Furry Insurrection on Phone Free Friday!

what about making friends with AI, we could all use someone to tell us what we want.

How about Phone Free Friday and Critical Mass on the same day!

here's a serious suggestion for you guys: Power.

The movement/insurrection/revolution is all about power. We have seen a degeneration of legit demolition wave turned into abolition wave turned into defunding wave turned into DEI wave turned into vote harder wave.

So we have a serious discussion about power. What it is and isn't, how is it gained, and how it is lost, and the laughable attempt at acting as if it's still around when it isn't

art, originality, when does sheer novelty become really boring and stale? I doubt that the subject line and first sentence of this post have ever been done exactly the same way I have done them, but that is meaningless, and certainly doesn't merit any sort of glamorous award in my book. You can of course praise it through attack or praise all you want, but that doesn't change how I feel about novelty or repitition.

That's generally how I felt about "Plant Anarchy" in terms of the conclusions I made about Sascha Engels ideas. Like all typical accadademicoloid anarchists, he assumes that words are more powerful than they actually are, and he also assumes that it is possible to define the totality. No, iteration and change are just part of life...the processing mechanisms of civilization are miserable and brutal, yet I laugh at this idea of "attacking iteration", or scribbling some Phoenician text as anything beyond an art project.

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