TOTW: What is post-left?

What is post-Left? Various groups, projects, etc. including anarchistnews are referred to as 'post-Left." What does that actually mean, what does it signify or include? Others (e.g. JZ) feel that anti-Left is a required orientation. Is post-Left a substantive designation?

Guest TOTW post by submitted via email by John Zerzan

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who gives a shit what this self-marginalized sectarian dinosaur believes about a topic that - as with anything he doesn't understand - just confuses him? no matter how many times post-left anarchists try to explain it, he merely throws up his hands and says "you're doing it wrong." his inability to listen to others with differing views has increased along with his age. in other words, a typical old man.

You appear to give a lot of shits, it appears to be making you angry.

"typical old man" is a lame way to describe this situation, but the rest isn't far off. he has always been like this, unfortunately, and is the last person to be talking about post- or anti- left, since he is basically a dogmatic green progressive

John, i wonder if you have read Black's musings on the origins & meaning of "post-left"?

"What is post-left anarchism? I’m not sure who coined the phrase, but it looks like I did. At some point, I asked several of the people most likely to know (including John Zerzan, Lawrence Jarach and Jason McQuinn), and no one was aware of anyone using the phrase before I did. Jason McQuinn confirms this in a recent letter.[2] The first known use of the phrase is in the last sentence of my book Anarchy after Leftism,[3] which was written in 1996 and published in 1997. This is the book’s last paragraph: “There is life after the left. And there is anarchy after anarchism. Post-left anarchists are striking off in many directions. Some may find the way – better yet, the ways – to a free future.”[4] At the time, I assumed that post-left anarchism was a phrase in current circulation.

Be that as it may, the phrase was taken up here and there by various radical anarchists. Jason writes to me “that, inspired by your Anarchy after Leftism text, I characterized your text as part of a theoretical and practical anarchist critique that grew out of historical anarchist practices, the1960s rebellions and situationist influences (and that was the original inspiration behind AJODA [Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed]) as ‘post-left anarchist,’ when I called for contributions to the ‘Post-Left Anarchy’ issue of Anarchy magazine [no. 48 (Fall/Winter 2001–2002].”[5]

What follows is part memoir, part history, and part critique. The memoir part, regarded as part of the history part, would exaggerate my personal role. The essay should be read with this in mind. And, written as it is from my parochial perspective, it concentrates on North America almost exclusively, although the phenomena I describe have, and had, counterparts in Britain, the Netherlands, India, and elsewhere.

The phrase post-left anarchism (or anarchy) now enjoys the dubious distinction of a Wikipedia entry, which amounts to an ontological seal of approval. Until the collapse of civilization, it will never go away. I could not now fully reconstruct the original meaning, for me, of an expression which I didn’t think was original. Instead I shall begin by, in a small way, deconstructing it.

“Post-“ originally is a temporal signifier. It means “after.” Post-left anarchism, whatever it means, refers to an anarchism which has, by and large, come after, and largely out of, anarcho-leftism.[6] In my case, I was receptive to exactly the influences which Jason McQuinn mentions. When I use the phrase (I don’t use it a lot), I think of anarchists writing in the last 40 or 50 years who have taken up, or taken on, matters which the traditional anarcho-leftists never considered; or if they occasionally did consider them, their reactions – variously stereotyped, superficial, mocking, and dismissive — called for critique."

from the beginning of that essay.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-notes-on-post-left-ana...

just going to point out this essay again.

this is not, as Artxmis suggested, from Anarchy after Leftism, but is from 2015. the library says "author correspondence" but it has been up on the library for a while now.

this is the relevant bit — "“Post-“ originally is a temporal signifier. It means “after.” Post-left anarchism, whatever it means, refers to an anarchism which has, by and large, come after, and largely out of, anarcho-leftism. "

Black goes on at length in his usual thorough manner to explore and flesh out various meanings of post-left, but to me, this temporality is the most of it. post-left comes AFTER and OUT OF the left.

after some pondering, maybe that isn't the relevant bit. the relevant bit is that someone answered your question, John, way back in 2015. Agree or not with its content, it is an answer.
maybe move on.

Excellent topic.

I think that like so many other things, initially and after a time, it means nothing. At the time it was simply a rvocabulary and esponse to a previous (dominant?) way of thinking that many in a milieu thought should be left behind (pun intended) but whose lessons could still be valuable. Since that time others have reached conclusions that even those lessons can or should be jettisoned too, like so much previous baggage.

In time, perhaps after another round of failures, other thinkers will reach a different response entirely and choose to abandon or oppose what replaced the previous--ad infinitum.

All this is delusion from attachment and the idea that Our thoughtful activity can improve Our lives.

Ask a whale what the whales need to be doing to solve the problems of whalekind. Ask a mother eagle.

Ask a tree.

When you're hungry, eat; when you're tired, sleep.

while i could not agree more with your assessment, the point of totw is not necessarily to cater to the asker, but to ponder the question.

what is the point of changing jargon? does "anti-left" cater instead to a different set of our enemies? how do we maintain distinctions between others calling themselves post-left who are in fact just joining the maga crew (or whatever)?
those seem like a few meaningful directions to take, regardless of jz and his attempt to categorize anews.

also nettle, lol. SNAP

OoOooh I thought that "the point of totw" was to pee on the poop? So many rules, bro.

I do like your question about distinction tho!

Anarchy should just agree to be anti-direction (left, right, up, down). Can we agree on that and get back to doing dope shit??

it isn't left as in a direction, but left as in we've left this world behind and have gone on to better things, lol jk or maybe i mean it.

whether one says post or anti i think many anarchists are on the same page in that there is a rejection of the type of politics that engendered the left / right dichotomy to begin with. yes? yes. so, for myself, and generously, it seems like we mean more or less the same thing. but, again, for myself, saying anti left plays out as meaning right for a lot of non anarchists, or for people unfamiliar with the past 30 years of discourse around this very thing. that seems like it could come back to bite one in the ass if not explicitly fleshed out that one does not mean right.
so, for myself, i don't use post-left or anti-left because both have issues when trying to communicate with others not familiar with the history.

Anarchy's neither left nor right.
No gods, no masters, fight! fight! fight!

you shouldn’t use post- or anti-left because so much of what you post here is leftist. only a reactionary or an idiot would assume if you are anti-left, you must be right. anarchists don’t need to explain themselves to reactionaries or idiots.

anarchists get to decide who they/we want to talk to/explain things to. there are plenty of people who claim to be anti-left WITHOUT BEING CLEAR about what that means. sometimes the lack of clarity comes from a deluge of text with lots of allusions and references that require careful parsing. sometimes it comes from comments or writings that mostly involve calling people names. sometimes both.

simplifying nettle's comments here over the threads to being leftist is not demonstrating either your good faith, reading comprehension, or willingness to hear other perspectives.

"only...an idiot would assume..."

so i will not assume i know which sentences you are referring to, anon.

Who is “joining the maga crew”? what does that even mean?
are you referring to the only anarchists remaining who haven’t been marinating in identity politics for so long that they cannot see its affect on them and their own supposed “post-left” politics? this question is too little too late, and quite ironic coming from jz, who has his own very specific limitations here.

In the case of the people around the no longer extant 'Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed' magazine, 'post-left anarchism' means people in the U.S. anarchist scene who are -- or were -- extremely full of themselves for reading the Situationists. They felt an intense need to make an extremely big deal out of this, and in doing so inadvertently call attention to the fact that they didn't learn anything substantive from this reading. It was just an excuse to act foolishly haughty at the expense of other U.S. anarchist subculture scenesters in the style of middle school playground pedants.

'Post-left anarchism' came into being roughly 30 years ago and after all this time it doesn't get noticed by anyone outside of a microscopically tiny number of people who have an intense emotional engagement with applying this label to themselves. Unlike anarchism elsewhere in the world before World War Two, it is not a force to be reckoned with in the larger world around us, none of them aspire to make it this, or get that this is the sole acid test of its credibility. 'Post-left anarchism' ideologues climbed out on a high and thin branch of a tree, sawed the limb off behind them, and expected the tree to fall down in response.

even fewer people are talking about your favorite Hungarian blood purging left bolsheviks. fuck off Keating.

Post left anarchist ideas are now basically the ideas of the entire anarchist movement. So, what the fuck are you talking about? Like, the intervention worked at least most of the way. It was never meant to get the liberals out but maybe what's next will finally cleanse them from anarchy.

To sum up, you've got to be delusional or like 16 years old to not believe post left was a successful intervention.

What "anarchist movement" are you talking about? This is a fringe phenomena. It is a self-licking ice cream cone. It is completely invisible to the larger world outside of this subculture.

You are on the website anarchist news you dumb shit lmao.

really? no, really, you’ve got to be fucking kidding. unfortunately, this is so far from the case. at best, contemporary anarchists can pay temporary and situational lip service to the post-left intervention without actually changing their stupid politics. the complete cesspool of IDpols shows that. post-left didn’t go far enough and got assimilated into the north american pseudo-theory anarchist scene. anti-left is even too late.

JZ chums the anews waters and all the seething ressentimentismos craw in from the Bay.

This is pleasurable entertainment to me.

I think anti-Left is a great idea. Didn't Flower Bomb write something about it? Is based John Zerzan listening to the dirty vegan ah ah train kidz? Impressive!

think the far right already beat you there? similar to the math of "anti-antifa", it's a double negative

Such binary thinking, lumpy. You know damn well that anti-Left does not equal pro-Right.

Just like being anti-Republican does not mean you are pro-Democrat (or in your case being anti-Conservative-Party does not equal pro-Liberal-Party).

MOVE ON, YOU DINGUS. There's real (TM) shit to worry about.

Every anarchist who knows that Neech died long before the Nazis existed knows this.

you keep thinking you're telling me anything, it's funny!

i'm the one doing the nuance here, as the other anon says below, there's an inherent danger in not noticing when you're gravitating towards reactionary politics, even just by rhetorical myopia. i know this because ain't my first rodeo and i don't live in relative isolation from the discourse, which form of shortsightedness do you think you're suffering from? j/k, i don't care

Lumpy is worried about...the fascist creep.

Themods, Why must you delete useful AND funny comments? Be free

sort of? i prefer to assign individual responsibility tho, for each personal failing of theory ;)

rather than vague, hand waving demagoguery like special agent alexander reid ross

" i prefer to assign individual responsibility tho, for each personal failing of theory ;)"

Will you accept individual responsibility for your bad faith, fictitious impossibly false assertions regarding our prophet Freddy Neech?

you can gargle that dead dude's balls all you want?

how many times are you going to pretend you're too stupid to understand, the seeds of what became the german fascist movement were planted long before they took power?

You seriously think ideology is what created German Fascism? Someone had to write a book to get there?

Not how this all works. Something special agent Reid Ross and the rest of Portland "antifa" should think about.

ah ha! i see we've arrived at your massive assertion. you think fascist writing and thought didn't play any role?

CUTE!

You're talking to 2 different anons, lumpy. Keep up.

Neech had no more to do with the seeding of German fascism than Plato did. You seriously can't be that ignorant can you? Can you name the logical fallacy you're representing? Try!

this is ... not controversial except with you fukin weirdos. fred influenced the german fascist movement, like a LOT. they claimed him and he rejected that claim.

i'm saying that as a neutral observation, i think he's an interesting and tragic figure. i'm not dismissing him as "a bad", i think he's much more interesting as complicated (clearly mentally ill) master of the circular, self aggrandizing argument. later, he made observations about the "antisemitic swindle", even this stuff, right at the end!

https://www.jta.org/archive/all-anti-semites-ought-to-be-shot-nietzsche-...

so! he's a cautionary tale, if you ask me.

people claiming someone does not make the person/work that is claimed responsible. people who are looking to sell their ideas are almost always opportunistic about grabbing things that other people say as a way to say, "look, this person agrees with us."
that doesn't make FN either significant or not significant to the fascists.
another fact, lumpy, is that FN's sister was married to a nazi, and was the main person getting FN's writing out, and she basically lied about some of his points. so sources here are indeed important.

the two of you (or three, whatever), can all be correct in your facts, but in your simplified conclusions, you're misleading. at least that's my take.

yeah? well that's just like ... your opinion maaan.

in fact, you seem a bit invested in avoiding the notion that the written word has power and therefore responsibility

what's with that? publish some edgy shit or something? i'm totally gonna cancel you and put marbles in your motorcycle

j/k, i'm not about that

i think your equating power with responsibility is thought provoking.
is that always true? how do we determine whether something is powerful or not? if something being powerful means that the creator of it has some responsibility, what does that responsibility actually mean? in this example, what do you think FN should've done to "take responsibility", if we accept that he was in fact very against an anti-semitic reading of his works (for the sake of argument, even if you disagree with that premise)... if people who read our writings are going to claim things for them that are antithetical to what we meant, does that mean we should never create anything? or only things that have no nuance, or subtlety, or complexity?

thx! and yes, it's always true imo but no, i'm not being prescriptive like that

more of a "buyer beware" observation about how we put things out in to the world and then OTHER PEOPLE happen. you ever notice that? you create something and then other people use it to teach you regret?

anyway, buy the ticket, take the ride

why ignore some quest ions here? would like to understand what you think FN should've done, for example.

as i said, he rejected their claim to his ideas. repeatedly.

the issue isn't what he did or didn't do, i'm not trying to should some dead guy, i don't even like shoulding people who are still alive because i'm an anarchist but i'm talking about why certain ways of thinking attract fascists like moths to a flame from a candle made of bullshit. that's what interests me, styles of rhetoric, tendencies of thought that "pave the road", if you know what i mean

'Nobody should ever say or write anything because decades after your death horrible people could use it and claim you and then it's all your fault, maaaaan!'

*misuse it (after purposely and nefariously misinterpreting it).

'member when TK read JZ and then wrote and did some baaad shit and then ITS read TK and did some baaaad shit and JZ disavowed them both and everyone blamed JZ? Let's blame Marcuse, that monster is responsible for the death of that poor Mexican hiker. Lumpy 'members.

It's like you're saying that the Marquis de Sade caused the -Rape of Nankin-! Thanks for making me think of the dumbest most cringeworthy analogy I've ever thought of for years! I can't unthink that now, thx not!

antifa think?
yeah right.
search out and destroy is more like it. they are a bunch of jugheads who would have joined the military if they had't accidentally walked into hot topic.

WWI Versailles treaty and capitalism and the 30's economic Depression were the main contributing conditions which created the masse unrest which was siezed upon by Hitler and expressed openly in Mein Kampf and for which he was imprisoned for. Every knowledgeable anarch knows this.

Hums... fashy fash is rounding corners a lot in here.

Before the paramilitary organization known as the Freikorps even attempted a ridiculous putsch with Adolf trying to convince two major state officials -with a gun as his best argument- to support his absurd regime...there was indeed a mass uprising and revolutionary movement happening in Germany. But that was led by the Spartakists, not that bunch of retrograde proto-Nazis who got helped by the Socialists to do an overnight mass-slaughter of communists. There was civil unrest in the early 30s that was thwarted, not seized upon by Hitler, who got put in place by a demented Chancellor. The Nazis believed themselves tobe some kind of revolutionaries but they were really just reactionaries with a brutal, retrograde ethno-nationalist agenda.

I'm not "fashy fash" I'm a creative thinker who gets bored by politics and makes large blanket statements instezd. Basically, all of the global unrest in the early 20th century was an increase in the proletariat awareness of capitalist exploitation,, yes, even soft Marxist propaganda from groups like the Fabian society, pamphleteering throughout Western societies, the kickback from capitalist families such as the Rockefellers, the disintegration of colonialist Empires etc, ALL these myriad events especially after WWII flagrant exploitation of the working class as cannon fodder by industrialist Monarchies, all these combines into a general malaise and ressentiment worldwide. Sure, Hitler's thugs exploited these feelings and as you very adroitly informed me I was forgetting the more inside sinister skullduggery of German politics at the time (quite boring actually) , I concede my errors in historical knowledge AND would like an apology from you anon for referring to me as a fashy fash! Thx ;)

Typo WWI

I've told you before I generalize about political history because I find it dull and not worth perfecting my knowledge of. They eere socialists, and oddly enough even into eugenics and nationalists, does that bring up any fascist like values,? Ok, not Marxists, but I generally put all these socialistic left-leaning ideologies under the general Marxist category. Sorry if I offended your academic perfectionist ideals!
Now how about that apology huh?

I don't need to find out what I'm talking about before voicing an ill-informed opinion about it.

Signed, everybody in the United States of America.

It's characteristic of the U.S. anarchist subculture, and of the U.S. society that spawns it, to presume the God-given right to have ill-informed opinions about stuff that you brag about being completely ignorant of.

It's no coincidence that this global ressentiment also existed in America at the same time in the 1930's. The Bonnie and Clyde outlaw gang, artists, readers of Neech and socialists were hailed as heros by many of the poor working class in midwestern America, when an elected Fascist President, friend of the Rockefellers, reigned during that period.

This seething ressentiment was what Neech discussed, and how only amor fati cured it. I don't see how it's connected to cop-killing Bonnie and Clyde, nor to Nazism or socialism in all its forms. Only the ubermansch individualist could rise above this gross mental condition, of which lumpy has no comprehension.

are you the "creative thinker" above?

the person who just concedes when you don't know your facts that you're too lazy to bother checking if your bullshit is accurate?
cuz if you're that person, might want to either do better or stop admitting that it's just laziness?

Different anon here to say: lumpy, you're describing yourself with your fictitious assertions about Nietzsche and your tantrums then vanishings when given facts. You need to stop being such a hoser, eh. You're truly embarrassing yourself in front of all anews. You should really pick a new handle in this new year because 'lumpy' is a laughing stock.

so you didn't read this thread either huh?

that's so weird and sad how you perceive that people coming and going from an online space is you successfully "vanquishing them" with your big cool special guy badass ideas. you should probably mention this to your therapist?

How can you be this stupid or this stubborn?

All of them comes from your unfounded and unsourced assertions that Nietzsche was a Nazi which you then altered after you learned he died decades before Nazis were even an idea. You continue to double down and refuse to accept that you blurted out a falsity and are afraid to lose face. Just fucking stop. You can't win this argument as there are centuries of proof from excellent thinkers that definitively prove contrary to what you're asserting. The burden of proof is on you and you have provided none. So, like, go have a poutine or something, brah.

your poor reading comprehension is your problem, not mine, k?

you don't read very carefully and get yourself all upset and it's awkward

Lol, I'm the lazy creative anon who initiated this thread, and it has been encouraging to see so many other folk with a true understanding of Neech joining in to confront the absurd claim lumpy made that Nazism was Neech's creation, when in fact he was of the opposite societal tendency concerning authority and preferred individual power and self-reliance.
I'm actually quite proud of my laziness, I see it as my first line of defence against work as a wage slave, premature arthritic and ligament damage and boring conversations about 20th century German fascist politics. (still awaiting apology )
Laziness gives me time to develop broad sweeping summaries about life, love and fate and the solutions to the problems facing the seething enslaved hordes on this planet. There you have it lumpy, you should read more in your liesure time.

you're right, i completely agree about your "laziness" and i withdraw that criticism and apologize for it.

however, i never said "neech created nazis", i would put it more like, he's a major influencer in the broader river of reactionary gibberish upstream from what EVENTUALLY became dominated by the nazis as fashy ecosystems tend to ... ya know, endgame in very similar places. this is the thing with hero myths and power fantasies ...

individual power and self reliance are major themes throughout a lot of reactionary myth making, that's like THE crackpipe of modern american fascism. anyway, i realized that i probably read that extremely nasty bertrand russell quote about fred a long time ago, saves us going back and forth on this because he absolutely slaughters your boy, far more eloquently than i ever could.

Lumpy,

Just because you're too smoothbrained to understand Nietzsche does not make his philosophy "gibberish". There have been thousands of extremely intelligent people that do understand it and unfortunately you're just not one of them. Accept your limitations and do not, literally, express so much ressentiment as Nietzsche described.

That Nazis and the whole "fashy ecosystem" took from and pulled influence from Nietzsche's thought does not make Nietzsche--who was literally opposed to this type of thinking and who died decades before those idea misunderstanders took from him--an "influencer"--a knowing participant.

You are literally blaming and haunted by the specter of a philosopher you have never read nor understand. Your argumentation basis was loosely cherrypicked from a very British authoritarian filled with ressentiment against all things Continental and of the Nietzschean lineage.

There are plenty of philosophers who were influencers of the rising or present German fascism and yes some of them were also influenced by Nietzsche. This does not make Nietzsche a participating influencer even if his philosophy had influencer.

*had influence

i'm not a scholar of the topic, that's true. i don't have much of an investment here. but at least two of you have been strawmanning me a lot, ignoring half of what i wrote.

so if i were somebody who'd sunk a lot in to this particular dead german philosopher, i might go long and hard and never concede any of nietzsche's flaws. what would that prove? other than i turned a blind eye to half the implications of one of my favorite thinkers?

you want to separate him out and claim there's no interesting through line with the far right reactionary movements that he was surrounded by, heavily influenced, had to fight with and disavow, etc. why you want to die on that hill, it's baffling to me but it's clear you feel strongly about it

lumpy, what would you say the limits are on the responsibility of a creator? at what point does responding to bad faith/manipulative reading just encourage the bad faith and manipulation?

anon(s) invested here, what would you say the responsibility is of a creator? is saying "that's not what i meant" adequate? we live in a world in which many people lie about what they meant, or at least use the confusion for themselves...

i don't think that's the issue tho, fred's thinking is intrinsically reactionary in at least several obvious ways. do you want a list?

i get if you're saying he shouldn't be dismissed entirely, i'm not saying that either. i read monarchists and self described super fascists and find all this stuff fascinating but i also call it what it is.

"fred's thinking is intrinsically reactionary in at least several obvious ways."

Nietzsche's thinking was anti-reactionary. It fundamentally called for the smashing of all those things. What are you even talking about?

"do you want a list?""

Sure please list and source your claims.

one of the most airtight things would be the misogyny but wait, lets lay down some terms before i do a bunch of work for you.

are we going to have to have a long debate about what constitutes "reactionary" as well? because, you'll have to forgive me if i don't feel like wasting time, setting up dart boards for you, when the spoiler is this is your sacred cow and you're never gonna move or concede any of his flaws anyway

Different anarch here. lumpo, you just "moved the goal posts." Can you recognise it? I am too lazy to simply invert your subject with your exact text but what you wrote in your second paragraph is describing yourself. See it?

only if the goalposts were "neech created fascism" which i never said, was pretty clear about clarifying and these two chucklefucks keep trying to jam those words in my mouth.

here's my goalposts: can somebody reasonably argue that a quacking duck that came to hate most of the other ducks because of the particulars of their quacking, can that duck somehow posthumously be argued to have never been a duck in the first place?

and AGAIN, he's not a fascist, he's a reactionary. the ducks are reactionaries lol

You literally said he was a proto-fascist, seeded fascists, and did 'fascist writing'. Search this page for your morsels of exposed whole ass.

But since you insist on moving the goal posts, you do realize that the only trolls that insist he was "reactionary" are socialist-loving Marxoids and British analytical authoritarians, right? This has been happening for over a century and we know your Marxist background, lumpy.

Your duck drama makes no sense. What you're doing, and have been doing for years, is claiming that the first duck who taught other ducks about the truth of quacking is somehow responsible for the bad behavior of pigeons who shit on Red Square.

yeah ... except the last one. that's how influencing works. his writing can't BE "fascist" by definition because he wrote before that. but the seeding and the "proto" are my point. keeping in mind i've also clarified about how i'm not "blaming" or cancelling or any of that.

just talking about cause and effect and how it's interesting to me

from your link, regarding the "politicization" of the will to power, by Baumler, long after fred wrote it

"Another supposition remains possible: Nietzsche could not see his experiences and perceptions as useful; instead, he saw them as an end."

perhaps this is our fundamental disgreement? i don't care what fred thought his motivations were, i don't place much emphasis on intention, preferring to focus on outcomes and draw conclusions there. hmm?

Jesus fucking Christ. So you truly do believe that Lucy the first homo sapien is responsible for the actions of Dylann Roof. Got it.

didn't he oppose the fucking french revolution for reducing social stratification lol? that would make him like one of the original reactionaries.

Sorry, bro. That would not, like, make him like one of the original reactionaries

I'm afraid opposition to reduction of social stratification would be, like, you know, pretty reactionary.

Creative lazy anon here, I acknowledge one of Neech's flaws, his mystical turn regarding 'eternal recurrence' In lawman term's, whilst God is dead, yet a spiritual metaphysics exists which recuperates individual souls. Add this to Zarathustra and ubermensch identity, we are bordering on a messianic substitute figure.
On the other hand I believe Neech's critique of a non-stratified society was that it negated the inequality of fate and circumstance. His inequity was countered by amor fati and the negation of ressentiment, and that material status and class were irrelevant conditions in attaining and living a full and joyful life.

OoOoh the irony though, how the mystique attached to "living a full and joyful life" is the goal of liberalism, and that its democratic manifestation united in WWII to be the only force capable of defezting a global fascist hegemony. Would have anarchists succeeded in defeating Hitler? It seems that Neechean values are common features which are opposed to fascist ones.

So how to win an argument over historical details according to anon above: if it's fun, you're right; if laaame, you're wrong.

It's magik!

Flower Bomb didn't write shit: It was the introduction to the "Anti_Left" section of the Green Anarchy book anthology "Uncivilized": The section was entitled "Anti-Left Anarchy: Hunting Leftism With Intent To Kill"....I wrote it (i'm a former editor of Green Anarchy") and don't really care that Flower Bomb appropriated it and tweaked it ( who "owns" words, after all?), I was just surprised that it got reproduced at all because it was just a hastily thrown together "section intro" and never really intended to be a "stand alone" essay...

Sorry I'm gonna need to see some evidence on your very bold statement. Show us your balls and prove it. My friends told me it was written by Flower Bomb and I trust them more than some rando anon on Anews. But don't be mad tho, GreenAnarchyEditorBro, I'm sure if it was a reprint it was merely a sincere form of flattery, that the kids could better understand, packaged with a little youthful swag.

why not go to the source and read the book bro. i don't think staplecide seems made, just adding context bro, brah, bro.

I always felt that post-left was a position from a point in time, that is no longer applicable. But then people keep picking up the label and placing definition to it.

Post-left shows learning from the left, but ultimately it ties one's philosophy to the left in a way should only be relevant to the left. This position should only be brought up in relation to a leftist that calls themself anarchist.

Anti-left I find even worse, a hostility that goes beyond something that needs to be said. Yes, Anarchism should inherently be against the left as one of the facets of authority, but by specifically labelling one's self or one's philosophy as anti-left, then it sends a message that the left deserves more scorn than the right or the centrists.

Indeed, "anti-left" shares thai Venn Diagram with the Far Right bigots and the hardcore centrists as well... so this is why when declaring yourself Anti-Left you might wanna consider also goijg through how you aren't from any opposite part of the imaginary spectrum... or just call yourself Post-Left and win extra points by looking more clever and less obnoxious, maybe?

The United States is in accelerating irreversible decline. This social order is circling the drain. The once large expanding aspirational middle class, a bulwark of political torpor and social peace, is fast disappearing. With the exception of the U.K. the U.S. has a more extreme inequality of wealth distribution than what’s seen in other advanced industrialized nations and in this serves as a model for a relentless upward redistribution of wealth for the exploiter classes of other First World nations. We endure mass impoverishment and attendant social ills on a scale not seen in other industrialized societies. No political or economic mechanisms of the reigning market order will slow this down or reverse it. The United States is owned and ruled by an awe-inspiringly incompetent, venal and short-sighted elite and more importantly than anything else liberal democracy no longer commands the political and emotional allegiance of the vast majority of the populace.

In abolishing historical consciousness among the people they exploit and rule, the rich and their political, academic and media servants have also largely abolished it among themselves. This is going to pay substantial negative dividends. A decades-long relentless upward redistribution of wealth has not been an intelligent long-term survival strategy for the owners and rulers of the United States. Some of the sharpest among them know this. In a lengthy piece in the January 2017 New Yorker, the co-founder and CEO of Reddit, valued at that point at 600 million dollars, is quoted as being “concerned about basic American political stability and the risk of large-scale unrest.”

"...awkward conversations have been unfolding in some financial circles. Robert H. Dugger worked as a lobbyist for the financial industry before he became a partner at the global hedge fund Tudor Investment Corporation, in 1993. After 17 years, he retired to focus on philanthropy and his investments.

“Anyone who’s in this community knows people who are worried that America is heading toward something like the Russian Revolution…"
(“Doomsday Prep for the Super-Rich,” Evan Osnos, The New Yorker, January 30, 2017)

Today’s fast-unfolding domestic situation is unprecedented. Our rulers are weak. Their power is in sharp decline. A new period of protracted social upheaval will soon begin. There has never been a better time for subversion in capitalist America. The events in Chile, the Yellow Vests in France and Occupy in the U.S. all sprang into being quickly and unexpectedly; there is much to learn from here. And quickly doesn’t mean completely spontaneous. A small number of people -- I believe it was exactly one with the Yellow Vests -- tries something new, or tries something that isn’t completely new and something unexpected bursts to life.

Imagine a new movement quickly taking off like Occupy, but with sharp teeth and claws, emerging out of the most unglamorous mundane everyday life concerns of mainstream wage-earners and not tailored to the entertainment needs and illusions of professional protesters, college students and lumpens.

Nothing seems as impossible as a revolution ten minutes before it begins. Be realistic - demand the impossible...

to me post-left means more or less that such-and-such perspective, project, person, etc. recognizes that the basis of power for the historical or classical left is largely gone, was absorbed by the bureaucratic state, and/or has always resulted in simple failure or the reconstitution of the state/capital in some form anyway. i can't imagine how "anti-left" would be useful because it seems to assert that there is something left to be specifically opposed, rather than an amalgam of confused idealists, professional activists, bureaucrats, and the young people whose energy and attention they jockey for. perhaps they tend to use similar buzzwords and so on and share various sympathies and antipathies, or just annoying habits, but there is nothing remaining like the historical left they hearken to.

"anti-left" seems to grant the same kind of mythical, transhistorical cohesion that people like that use to deflect any serious interrogation of their projects and priorities. doing so doesnt make you a reactionary so much as a useful idiot i would say, though maybe less so than the people claiming "post-left" as a personal license to go become some dork fascist or trad or whatever as chisel refers to above. either way, where is this left to be opposed?

the reason ant-left is helpful is because the right has had almost no influence on anarchists, while the left has been dragging us down like a 1000lb tumor since the beginning. so many anarchists, now more then ever, fail to see its influence. cultural marxism is what right-wingers call it, and in this regard, they are not far off. without a critical lobotomy from the left, anarchy will not survive except in name only. AINO.

this is not true. i know various anarchists who i agree with about many things, who came to anarchy through what is commonly known as the right wing.

there might be more anarcho-capitalists these days than there are any other kind. listen to cyber dandy for specifics; they cite things like most popular books and podcasts with anarchy in the name, for example.

speaking of which, would be good to know where you're getting your assessments from, 11:33

true, there are a lot of anarcho-capitalists, but i think they just like using the name anarchist. i am mostly speaking of the supposed "post-left" orbit....anti-civ, insurrectionary, etc. and it can be seen in how they interact with idpols, harm reduction, mutual aid, inclusivity, etc.

Except "cultural.marxism" is dogshit analysis comign from bigots who can't point to Khazakstan on a map, or something. The term is heavily loaded by a tradition of Far Right demagogues. What they call as such is just Randian neoliberalism and its more recent update by progressive centrist Judith Butler.

you can write it off because some assholes use it, but that doesn't make the dynamic not accurate.

Not *just* because some assholes... but mainly because it's a conflation with *zero theorical foundation*, that just got big due to being a meme among cuckservative moralists like Far Rightards. There's nothing Marxist with the claimed tendency known as cultural Marxism... and how can Marxism even be "cultural". It's just same-old Right-wing Muhrikan anti-commie paranoia that got the Millenial Rebranding treatment.

Or at least show us how Cultural Marxism is even a thing... beyond just saying the Right is right, because!

And the fact anarchists are closer to the Left has more to do with liberals historically being more critical of hard authoritarian politics (liberal republicans -yelling from the Left side of Elizabethan legislative assemblies- were sharply anti-monarchy in the 19th century Europe, and that's how even Russian nihilists had a level of cooperation with early socialists), and a level of sensibility toward minority views and identities, that can often be supportive for big tents for the two, otherwise diverging positions.

Ergo, anarchy is not Left, yet might both might share a level of sensibilities over some things; whereas conservatives cower in fear of change, always folding back to romanticized imaginary pasts, sometimes to a point of ridicule (suburban Vikings raiding Antifa Trans pedo reeducation camps with their minivans anyone?).

I did observe a thin rapprochement between Far Right and anarchist trends of antiauthoritarianism since the Covid crisis, but the theorical grounds for the former got nothing to do with those of the latter, and anti-Covid politics anarchists made it sure they were not inclusive to Far Right groups in their few posters and publications.

The siding with the Left does preclude a predatorial Soft Power unlike the Right, and that partly the reason of being Post-Left, more than Anti-Left. To just not be associating with the Left doesn't have to mean being at war with them! Furthermore why such a waste of energy for a nearly-dead political tendency?

Fight for anarchist life instead, maybe maybe? In times when prominent anarchists are dying like flies this might be a much better way to commit time and energies...

How could you honestly claim that leftism is a "nearly-dead political tendency"? espescially within the "anarchist" milieu?

Coz it's got little outlet in mainstream politics these days, beyond the absurd, self-defeatibg corporate platforms that social media is.

Yes, the Left is a predatorial (if not parasitic) Soft Power for anarchism. That's what I wrote. What I am denying here? Also thanks but no thanks for not reading & thinking about the rest of my comment coz it didn't cause you a knee-jerk reaction?

The Left is a major force in mainstream politics and in mainstream culture and has HUGE media outlets pushing the cultural left's agenda (MSNBC, etc.) How can you not have noticed this?

As "left" is not how "left" has been understood until very recently. It is unconcerned with, even hostile to anything concerning the emancipation (or even ameleoration) of working people.

It has an almost exclusively yuppie and academic base, and it's preoccupation with Identity Politics (a.k.a. "woke") is a cover for its hatred for working class whites. Really it hates working class people of ALL colors and wants us all fighting over crumbs.

A Jacobin article title said it all: Liberal condescension to working class whites is code for an anti-working class agenda. Jacobin magazine could legitimately be called left.

I think that the term "post-left" is pretty much outdated now. Most of the various thinkers who were identified with that term are now either dead or otherwise out of the picture, and the publication where the term originated is now defunct. Plus, the world is different now from how it was in the late '90's when the term first appeared. Time for some new ideas and new concepts!

From the beginning of anarchism, the "founders" regarded themselves as "on the left," indeed the "left of the left." "Left" here being used to mean being in opposition to capitalism and the state and all oppression.

But also from the beginning, anarchists opposed state socialism, statist leftism, and authoritarian socialism (which in practice, they correctly predicted, would lead to state capitalism). They opposed the centralism, determinism, and statism of Marxism, in both its reformist (social democratic) and its"revolutionary" (Leninist-Trotskyist-Stalinist-Maoist) forms.

Frankly I don't see how post-left anarchism adds anything to what the classical anarchists had to say when critiquing statist leftism. It just decreases the revolutionary and oppositional character of anarchism.

You should call into John's show, AnarchyRadio, tomorrow night and discuss these thoughts, Wayne Price. Unless you're a coward.

Since the millennium change John Zerzan has been expressing his anti-civilization views on his one hour live radio show, "AnarchyRadio." By audio streaming (KWVA 88.1 FM) you can listen to "AnarchyRadio" live each week on Tuesdays at 7pm PST and express your views by calling 541-346-0645 during the live broadcast.

My understanding is that you can find rigorous anti-civilization views on primitivism.com, too.

(Cue sarcastic Harpo Marx rubber horn here)

Don King challenges me to call in to John Zerzan's program and make some comments, "Unless you're a coward." It is not so much cowardice as indifference.

I can see the point of some writers that anti-civ and/or primitivism are indeed different from classical anarchism. If they have anything to do with it (Zerzan came out of libertarian Marxism).

But the idea of criticizing modern industrialism, as developed by capitalism, is not entirely new. Read Paul Goodman, the most well-known anarchist in the 60s, who wrote Communitas. Also see the work of the libertarian bioregionalist Lewis Mumford. They did not propose a total abandonment of modern technology but a thorough critique and a communal and experimental choice of alternate approaches to technology.

Perhaps the real issue is the abandonment of the working class as (at least) one of the central agents of a possible revolution--and, with it, the abandonment of the idea of revolution.

We have inherited from the last century - social democracy, Trotskyism, Stalinism, and classical anarchism - are all adaptively unfit.

Collapse is coming. This is a process, not an event, which I'm guessing will drag out over the next 50 to 90 years. It will be unlike anything we have ever seen.

A clue: decarbonizing the present energy consumption of the world economy would require 20X the known reserves of lithium. Never mind topsoil degradation/destruction, depletion and contamination of freshwater supplies (including aquifers), deforestation, biodiversity destruction (including beneficial insects).

Anarcho"primitivism" has a clue, but is mostly just a critique, an intellectual stance. Not a body of successful practice. Becoming independent of modern technology (in practice) is also a process, with transitional stages.

The known reserves of lithium is just for the 1st generation. There are a LOT more problems with "green" energy.

See the 985 page meta-analysis done by Simon Michaux on all this.

Yeah basically no more hot showers, private automobiles, air-conditioning, street lighting, jet travel, tourism, modern medicine and immunization, daily dairy and beef consumption, more than 2 changes of clothing etc. Fortified city/town States, moats, roaming gangs of nihilist adventurers and plunderers,,,back to dangerous harsh existence in about 80-100 yrs I agree.

earth is captured by technocapital singularity. stop deluding the world into believing that economic and technological process will be disrupted by "collapse." human potential is unlocked everywhere by the digital. the emergence of ai is beautiful, cope.

we're gonna abolish bread so no one has to die in any ukrainian wheat fields for it anymore! we're going to liberate ukraine, wayne!!

"From the beginning of anarchism, the "founders" regarded themselves as "on the left," indeed the "left of the left." "Left" here being used to mean being in opposition to capitalism and the state and all oppression."

No Wayne. Early so-called anarchists aren't to be taken as final and definite anarchist theory, as many of them just like Prudehon, Krapotkin, and your famed Bakoonin had some sketchy positions and affiliations that got later criticized by anarchist thinkers.

Also the designation of Left is essentially electoralist. The notion of Left, Right and Center come directly from the half-moon "Elizabethan" legislative assemblies of most governments. This is the Left where most Social-Democrats, Socialists and (the not-quite-revolutionary) Communists were sitting.

Anon (15:40) wrote, "Early so-called anarchists aren't to be taken as final and definite anarchist theory...." I never said they were.

I did write that the originators of anarchist theory, from Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin....to the anarchist communists and anarcho-syndicalists regarded themselves as anti-state socialists and leftists. And that they condemned the authoritarianism, centralism, determinism, and statism of the state-socialist left, long before "post-leftism" was a thing.

Makhno and Bakunin definately were, while Kropotkin was just naive and ultimately sided with State power during World War One; Syndicalism is inherently leftist, but since Wayne Price is a leftist himself he can't see this.

Wayne, since when have the Left been in opposition to the State and "all oppression"? You live in a pitiable dream world if you believe that!

Anon (18:16) misses the point of my argument. The anarchist-socialists (from Proudhon, Bakunin, etc. to the anarcho-syndicalists and anarchist-communists) condemned the state socialists (Marxists and others) for betraying their principles, their commitment to opposition to the state and capitalism. Instead they declared that only the revolutionary anarchists really stood for the principles of the far left and true socialism. (I am currently reading the latest volume of Malatesta's writings. This is his constant theme.)

Do elect politicians these days got any power to push whatever program their ideas presume? That's a better question imo. Perhaps in shittier chaotic governments like Mexico, Ecador and Argentina it's still possible... while difficult, but all I see in more developed countries are a bunch of rubber-stampers in office.

Totally irrelevant to the topic at hand: A better question to ask IMO is : Do YOU have any problems with the Left and do you see them as antithetical to Anarchy, or as "fellow travelers"?

I never met any fellow traveler who was "the Left"... but sure go ahead and live in the fear of such spook if that's a fun ride for you.

The Lefties I guess, and many liberals. They aren't irritating me any more than conservative normies that are equally dupes but maybe more bland when it comes to their conformism.

I said it once... Right-wingers are historically about Hard Power, or just blunt Power, where the Left-wingers are for the Soft Power, which is an equal if not bigger threat to anarchy. Are you listening it just being a Right-wing bigot/zealot (or... drums rolling... a new word I just invented: a "BEAGOT"!) so much that you only listen to what you wanna hear?

So I got about as many issues with "the Left" than with the Right. They just lie at different areas.

I am a firm believer that the average @news commenter should be deprived of access to the word "spook", or for that matter, any term from Stirner.

ok, this is all very interesting, but we all know what zerzan is talking about. primitivism=post-left. and we all also know this is bullshit. he will never change his myopic ideological games.

wow haha that was actually funny though almost made me laugh.

You know who is anti left? The right. It's not surprising that an old man would be conservative, just surprising that he'd consider himself an Anarchist.

That's just due to, apparently, the real anarchists all dying before they reach elderly age... :-(

yeah, well this is just moronic, ageist, and irrelevant. yeah brah, you can only be an anarchist if your young, inexperienced, and stupid i suppose. go biden!

....now you got me defending jz?

If only... if only all anarchists would be as Anti-Left as our man De Santis! /s

How about post Marxist
Can we just agree on that?

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