Aragorn! Five Years Later
It's been five years since our friend Aragorn! passed. 
 
Five years ago on February 13, 2020 Aragorn! walked on. Gone are the days of Aragorn! reading every single ANews comment. The immediate time of the world and moments of life are somewhat etched into memory with A! passing and the covid-19 pandemic starting soon after. To paint a brief picture, Aragorn! was the founder of Anarchist News dot org and worked on this website as worker for many years before retiring and passing it along to thecollective; although A! continued to work on the project alongside thecollective till his death. 
 
We're creating and sharing this list of Aragorn! memories, podcasts, radioshows, texts, and projects as a way of remembering. May his contributions to the anarchist galaxy continue to multiply after his passing.
 

Here are some memories to share:

 
The memorial on ANews for Aragorn!
 
An Obituary for Aragorn!
 

Podcasts:

The Brilliant
105 episodes of anarchists conversations from 2015-2020.
The past few years have been depressing for those who would shake the world. Our friends have been hunted and jailed and the resistance to this overt state repression has been meager. Those who have noticed have looked around themselves and realized how few others there are. Maybe the rest are on the Internet?
- "And For the Heroes, Something!" by The Brilliant (2007)
 
Anarchy Bang
48 episodes of anarchist call in radio and talk show 2018-2019.
 

Texts:

Aragorn!
40 texts by Aragorn! on The Anarchist Library (t@l). 
 
Little Black Cart
Real anarchists have day jobs. (LBC motto)
[See also: Now that LBC has closed up, take a look at Open Distro or how to make LBC books and other anarchist publications)
 
 
Black Seed (2014-2020)
8 issues of green indigenous anarchy. Aragorn! was a founder, participant, and a part of the editorial group.
 
The Anarchist Library
Aragorn! was a founder of t@l and their memory lives on through the project.
 

Anarchy Planet

After the 2001 attacks on the Twin Towers in New York City, Aragorn! started the Angry Nerds project, which is known today as Anarchy Planet. 
Anarchy Planet does this by building and maintaining communication infrastructure that anarchists use to communicate with each other and to the world. Our infrastructure includes blogs, chat, email, social platforms, audio and video platforms, and web sites that connect us to each other.

Comments

the-brilliant (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 17:46

"Our ideas are brilliant. We will wear no masks when we tear your creations asunder. They stand in our way. They stand in the way of the brilliant! "

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 20:06

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Can't waste any opportunity to try normalizing the N word online, rite, coward? But of cooourse you're a Black Trans-women poster on a wheelchair! Just WHO wouldn't know this for a fact!?

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 20:46

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Time to throw away your dumpster poutines, braAhh. They have obviously turnt and are harming your brains. This is a memorial for Aragorn! not your weird shaming of black people.

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 21:30

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Who is shaming "black" people and how?

Don't wanna spoil it to you, doxer tuff boi... but pretty sure using the N word totally is.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 06:10

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Black people aren't capable enough to use the internet. /s

Everyone knows this.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 08:49

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

I'm acrually a queer neurodivergent non binary half black half latinx from the Bronx, so fuck you and fuck your mother, nigga

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 20:21

I called him King Aaron Gorm and he called me Bella. We sang Grateful Dead songs in the bathtub. His a cappella rendition of Casey Jones was frightening. Before he passed he asked me to help make sure that Anews didn't turn into "an over-moderated authoritarian shit show". Unfortunately, I failed. Rest easy, King.

The Real Happy (not verified) Thu, 02/13/2025 - 20:33

RIP Aragorn!

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 02:40

I hope there aren't dishes wherever he is or isn't. Can you imagine an afterlife with penitence through dishwashing?

Cero (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 06:47

I came into Anarchism after the pandemic got underway. I found the Anarchist Library and other Aragorn! projects shortly thereafter in the desert we call America. Aragorn! is definitely the most interesting public figure related to Anarchism I've found on this side of the pond. The conversations and framing of those conversations he had (Anarchy Bang, The Brilliant) are something I continually think about as I find my Anarchism. I even got my children a copy of his 'A Childs Guide to Nihilism' ❤️ 💙 💜 Aragorns! reach will be felt for generations to come in our house.

In Solidarity,

Cero

GiggyMantis Fri, 02/14/2025 - 09:49

I got into anarchism a few years after his death. Shame that I was never able to interact in any way. Read a lot of his stuff, very good. The Anarchist Library was my main resource for learning to think like an anarchist.

underHILL (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 14:56

Aragorn! though you are gone, our conversations have not stopped. When you were here with me they were earthshaking. The kind of tumult that only a brilliant contrarian could bring. Ideas that I howled to avoid, that I belittled or sidestepped, desperately hoping to preserve the fragile matchsticks of my young anarchist beliefs. And yes, sometimes they were actually just bad ideas too. You were of course just an ornery dude on a motorcycle. But they were ideas that challenged me and continue to live with me. Ideas that I didn't have before you spoke them to me.
Now, those same ideas remain, and I dialogue with them constantly. You float beside me commenting on the ways this hellworld has changed since you wisely left it. Though nightmarish fascism and the absolute embarrassment that the post-covid left has made of their world might sting, it's nice to laugh together. And your ideas are still powerful enough to keep me questioning the things I hold as sacred today.
Greedily, I wish I had more. I wish new ideas outside of my experience could light up our conversations like they once did. I wish we could just hang out and laugh about every new embarrassment of the milieu, while we gossip about our shared world.
I miss you, A!, I'm so glad you remain a part of my life

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/15/2025 - 12:24

In reply to by Rob LosCULOS (not verified)

I will make my own zine and make my own music and my own tv and movies and automobiles and never give praise or interact with others whose work I've enjoyed.
I suppose I will have to make my own anarchist discussion internet forum too since apparently asking questions is too much for the moderators.
Enjoy your hand, when you're not working the fields to grow your own crops and instead of waiting for celeb farmers to grow it for your enjoyment.
Get fucked.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 16:14

Did Aragorn do anything that would be of interest to grown-ups? In the world outside of your hermetically sealed feedback loop? Or was it all just for the Circle-A-subculture playpen?

Rob LosCULOS!!! (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 16:35

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

I think A! was kinda like a total grown-up having a rather normie life, but writing and publishing for the @ subculture playpen. And that ever since he left, (some of) the playpen people might have become grown ups in his place... but for whom they're going to write and publish, now???

lumpy (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 17:05

In reply to by Rob LosCULOS!!! (not verified)

not to mention "the playpen" of anarchy (and it pains me to validate that crap) is actually just a wart on the buttcheek of the progressive activist left.

the anarchist tradition in the US (and beyond) has this gross, deeply toxic, revolving door situationship with the historically defeated, completely co-opted and toothless progressive activist left. the kids try to do something with their ideals, get betrayed and backstabbed by the radlibs and then a bunch of them rebound in to anarchyland or at least end up anarco-curious

they tend to show up with heads full of truly terrible theory from the radlibs and i believe that aragorn was relentlessly trying to drag those discussions somewhere more useful and interesting, even if i didn't always agree with their takes

it's like the anarchist library is setup in a random gas station in the middle of nowhere, next to the highway for everyone who ever tried to do anything besides voting, often in a very unreliable old cars with bald tires! i love the library and every time i show it to new people, they're often gobsmacked at the size and quality of it, it's hilarious and tragic and perfect

lumpy (not verified) Sat, 02/15/2025 - 12:01

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

i'm specifically and only talking about offline, except for the library part

you're just having a compulsive episode of saying no like a toddler or what?

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/14/2025 - 17:28

To 17:05

You are talking here about nesting Russian dolls of self-involvement and real world abject irrelevance:

1. The left - really, the left-wing of Capital, and,

2. The smaller and even less visible to the larger world what-gets-called-anarchism-in-the-U.S. subculture.

triviabot (not verified) Mon, 02/17/2025 - 14:02

Aragorn!'s contribution to this site helped steer me into a life long love affair with anarchy. Thank you and we miss you still.

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/17/2025 - 22:08

he was a philiosoher. anarchist but not left. beyond Hegel. yes to shopenhauer maybe to Spinoza no to Marx. yes to cybernetics but not those xybernetics. of a race but not that race

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/18/2025 - 05:58

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

philosophasters*

dude couldn't even properly describe basic concepts, like nihilism. he will be relegated to the annals of obscurity. certainly not minting new concepts. USA anarchism remains a meme of an idea

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/18/2025 - 14:31

since your passing, it has become all too clear to me that the anarchist space did not deserve the life you gave for it. i wish you could have gotten away from its unworthy clutches and got to live more of that beautiful idea you cherished dearly. miss ya.

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/18/2025 - 16:11

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

this is irritating. he did not "give his life for anarchist space". and he did get away from it, and kept coming back, because it gave him something he didn't get elsewhere. 

just because you didn't get those things, doesn't mean he was in error or sacrificing himself. 

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/18/2025 - 16:17

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

yes he did and he was. and it killed him. that's my true feelings. i could tell it to be true when i talked to him face-to-face. you cannot say my feelings are not as true as yours. both can be true.

(i keep coming back too because the beautiful idea is what motivates me, but the space usually makes me sick more than it feeds me, so the times get shorter and fewer, for my own health)

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/18/2025 - 18:06

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

My interpretation of what they're trying to say is that all the drama, gossip and BS must have caused him a toxic level of chronic distress and that this lead to a premature death.

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 02/19/2025 - 08:39

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

once again, some people disregard the comments because of what?? style, typos, pretend writing standards that somehow only get applied to comments you don't like??? i see right through you....

i agree, A! drove himself too hard in a place undeserving of his brilliance and energy.

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/18/2025 - 15:59

I didn't like when you be came vulnerable. and when you were overpowering. I see you reading over my shoulder and I think about how much I loved your infrastructure and your face to my face. and I know knowing you means building things and touching faces. and its not unmarxist or non-sitting bull.

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