Scrutiny #1 (an anarch journal of review) cover

Scrutiny #1 (an anarch journal of review) NOW AVAILABLE!

Scrutiny #1
(an anarch journal of review)

Scrutiny is sorely needed, everywhere. That has been our assessment. If we are to move beyond the banal and redundant self-referential mediocrity of this current reality, we need to be far more relationally critical and honest, not only of the horrifying world at large, the varied environments we are part of, and our own thoughts and actions, but most force- fully with the withering anarchist space we still dwell within (somewhat reluctantly and certainly marginally at this point, we suppose). If we are to remain vital as anarchists, we need to stop mincing words, making people feel comfortable, going through predictable motions, signaling virtues, poorly mimicking intelligence, propping up emptiness, propagandizing deadness, and providing material, actions, and ideas that derive from, feed into, and are absorbed by power. Perhaps we are still too stubborn to give up on anarchists, this may be our eventual downfall, but the beautiful idea is too potent and expansive to abandon, especially in this time of pervasive meaninglessness, and perhaps some of those still seduced by anarchy can rise to the worthwhile challenges it requires and offers.

In this light, reviews can be a useful way to explore the intersections and overlapping of relevant ideas and projects, to asses the relative health of anarchist discourse and action, and to cut out the diseased (or worse, benign) flesh, at least from our lives. Reviews can spark important discussions, point to potential problems, highlight vibrant and useful new directions, or reveal new accomplices. They can also, thankfully, draw critical and essential lines.

The unfortunate part of all this has been the almost complete vanishing of the printed journal as a means of open critique and discussion, along with the absolute hegemony of the virtual. It seems pointless and sad to critically interact with projects, pick them apart, try to understand them, and then articulate our thoughts about them, just to post our endeavors on some website for the thick-skulled thumb-driven hot-takers to respond with “tldr”, or worse, attempt to dishonestly “engage” with reviews from either ideological trenches, ignorance, or performative gesturing. Despite its own inherent limitations and potential pitfalls and its more pale form of communication than direct face-to-face dialogue, we feel that the printed page has infinitely more value than the dismal dead screen. The printed word gives time and space to contemplate and digest rather than react with superficial politicized spasms. For this reason, we have initiated the project we call Scrutiny (an anarch journal of reviews).

Submissions of reviews and responses are welcome, but not always appreciated or published.

With Open Eyes and Sharpened Pencils,
-Scrutiny

Send reviews to oakjournal@protonmail.com or mail to PO Box 485 Wardensville, WV 26851

Scrutiny #1 Contains:

- Millenarian Insurrectionary Hail Marianism
Invecchiare Selvatico Reflects On
Warlike, Howling, Pure
by Areïon
(published by Contagion Press)

- What War Shall We Wage?
Three Titles Of Belligerence In An Age Of Passivity...
(Might is Right by Ragnar Redbeard
The Red Sect by Enzo Martucci
Archeology of Violence by Pierre Clastres)
by V.O.F.

- Stalking The Nightmare of Control
Invecchiare Selvatico Reflects On
War of Dreams:
A Field Guide to DIY Psy-Ops
by Jason Rodgers
(Autonomedia 2024)

- Recalibration Towards Anarchy
A Rereading of Ayn Rand’s Anthem
by An Unconquered Golden One
(from OAK #6)

————

Available from
www.oakjournal.org
or send $8 (cash only) to
PO Box 485 Wardensville, WV 26851
or contact: oakjournal@protonmail.com

Comments

wow! (not verified) Sat, 01/18/2025 - 08:35

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

yes or no do you fly the dont tread on me flag on your pickup when you drive copies of scrutiny to the post office?
read the oak website lol
we hated how pinkos instantly challenged our fash adjacent cottage core ramblings when we posted them in anarchist spaces. so now we've copy & pasted the most controversial ones into a zine so it will fester in their minds longer

ok (not verified) Mon, 01/20/2025 - 12:58

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

who said it was "odd" besides you?
I said I love it.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/17/2025 - 09:37

> Wardensville, WV

Oh this ALL makes so much more sense now!
sEetHiNG sTAlking hOwLiNG AnARchS.
OooOkay sure.

Be sure to wear gloves when opening these tOotally anarchi mailings. Wouldn't want anyone to cut themself on the edge.

LOOOOOLLLLL
*dies*

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/17/2025 - 09:48

Might is Right, Ayn Rand, and Selvatico talking about how Charles Manson gives him chuckles.

A "pale form of communication" indeed.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/17/2025 - 10:01

Right about you lot, William Gillis was.
Bedfellows with fashy scums, they always end up.
Siding with (white) privilege (power), they always will.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/17/2025 - 10:45

Scrutiny, sure, that sounds sweet.

"If we are to remain vital as anarchists, we need to stop mincing words, making people feel comfortable, going through predictable motions, signaling virtues, poorly mimicking intelligence,..."

Stop mincing words, sure, that too sounds lovely. But, oh, wait, what's this, stop making people feel comfortable? Aha! I see, you want to call people by derogatory terms and not get push back. Always with the hard r with you lot, eh?
Stop virtue signaling, so onto vice signaling then?

Poorly mimicking intelligence?? Perhaps the scrutiny could begin with looking in a mirror.

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/17/2025 - 23:36

A RE-read of Ayn Rand by an unconquered golden(-haired blue-eyed Yakubian devilish caveman) one lmfao

IYKYN (not verified) Fri, 01/17/2025 - 23:37

A RE-read of Ayn Rand by an unconquered golden(-haired blue-eyed Yakubian devilish caveman) one lmfao

anonymous (not verified) Fri, 01/17/2025 - 23:44

Selvatico, what do you think of Exile and Evola? Have they been intimately penetrating you lately?

<3 (not verified) Sat, 01/18/2025 - 00:25

imagine hyping up your edgelord altar ego for decades, then being totally unprepared to be seen in it.

>> i hate how the author frames Chinese history, all of you are antifa retards!
>> "i burned Gods of Gaza on the eclipse" cuz i'm a spontaneous heretic
>> "my spirituality is intimate and penetrating "
>> stop laughing and actually respond!
>> omg you're dog whistling religious antifa against me!

ok (not verified) Sat, 01/18/2025 - 10:59

In reply to by <3 (not verified)

imagine Septico burning Gods of Gaza on the eclipse while simultaneously receiving a photo text of his writing being formatted on the otherside of Redbeard's review of Might is Right.

we should be grateful for these genuine offerings of support from our Actual Anarchist elders! please purchase Septico's book of poems or send $8 to Oak Journal in West Virginia for the compilation zine you didn't know you needed!

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/18/2025 - 08:53

"What war shall we wage?" asks a Redbeard cracka...

The war on fascist scumbags attempting to infiltrate/recuperate anarchist milieus, duh.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/18/2025 - 08:54

and let's get a post office address in the smallest mountain town nearby so it matches our writing selection better

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/20/2025 - 09:14

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

that is just a stupid statement on so many levels

for instance, these people DO live in small rural towns AND are you saying that people who live in these places are what??? (based on the above statements fascist-adjacent, etc ???)

nice try, but your aim is so poor, try the other direction.

anonymous (not verified) Sat, 01/18/2025 - 14:25

Oak Journal: "Scrutiny is sorely needed, everywhere."

literally everyone else: we are willing to pay you to just stop

anonymous (not verified) Mon, 01/20/2025 - 10:42

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

how much?

does "everyone" "literally" payout in bitcoin?

anonymous (not verified) Sun, 01/19/2025 - 11:13

yeah. i agree with everything above. a fascist dictator is about to take over and these people want us to think about... what?

it is clear as day. all of us on the left need to put aside petty differences and fight together.

grow up and get into the streets!

anonymous (not verified) Sun, 01/19/2025 - 11:27

wow. these comments display pretty clearly where the “anarchist” space has sits, reactionary leftism. every single one of these posts is seething with leftist moralism, assumptions, and hyperbolic ignorance. i hope people actually read the zine. i have. there is much in it to contemplate. i cannot blame I.S. and OAK for having nothing but contempt for the anarchist scene in 2025. to assume they are right-wing and fascist adjacent because of what they read and review is about as reactionary and ignorant as you can get. if this is a reflection on what anarchists are today, then fuck off anarchists!

anonymous (not verified) Sun, 01/19/2025 - 12:39

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Glad to hear you'll all be leaving the anarchist space since so above it. Maybe your little projects be embraced by the hordes of seething reactionary more akin to you all. Good bye and Turdspeed.

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2025 - 09:11

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

why do you think these people are seething reactionaries? because they read books you don't like? because they reject the left (as well as the right). why are you so defensive?

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2025 - 10:14

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

(Fucking hate the epithet 'seething' at this point; so overused it has lost all meaning) firstly.

second, have these people rejected the right? I am not so sure, what with their embrace of Jünger's 'anarch' terminology.

thirdly, if these people took what they learned from whatever they've read and developed a critique pointing outward rather than inward I might begin to take them seriously. as it stands now all they seem to want to do is gather up into a circular firing squad. point those weapons toward the real holders of power and maybe we'll find common ground.

lumpy (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2025 - 11:30

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

the neat thing about being a reactionary is you rarely know you're doing it! it's all about working backwards from your preferred conclusions and biases so incoherence is less of a problem. you don't need to bother with where your ideas came from or how they fit together, you mostly argue by assertion or pretend to cite using bogus data and just change the subject or DARVO when anyone notices that your claims are empty.

the left does this too of course, because literally everyone does it sometimes but there's barely any structure to most reactionary theory, or put another way, it's barely changed in thousands of years.

might makes right. if i'm stronger than you, you must obey. if you argue against me, i'll invalidate everything you say and if that doesn't work, i'll destroy you because might makes right.

then you just pile infinite rationalizations on top: because god says, because the free market, because you're just jealous, because i have a silly hat or a tech company or whatever and so on and so on!

the circular firing squad is because the different cult leaders can't suffer each other to exist. it's constant highlander ego battles in the vampire castle. THERE CAN BE ONLY ONE TRUE SILLY POPE HAT!

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2025 - 12:13

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

reading junger doesn't make you "right wing", there is a lot to get from his evolving work, also, the concept of anarch has also been used by a number of anarchist types, and wow, your third point misses the mark completely. i think most people associated with this kind of anti-civ critique actually point the critique much further than your average leftist. they don't stop at symptoms, but get to more of the roots and the totality. when they critique anarchists, they are usually pointing out where we all seem to get caught up and trip over symptoms and patterns.

lumpy (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2025 - 13:08

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"reading junger"? no.

adopting the values uncritically, depending on which values? definitely right wing.

from junger's wiki

"his unorthodox writings about the impact of materialism in modern society were widely seen as conservative rather than radical nationalist" <---- sooo... yeah. AT MINIMUM, a rightwinger

and his writing is interesting, don't get me wrong

lumpy (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 11:16

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"the poster" (me) already quoted wikipedia about junger, a relatively uncontroversial take too

for example, dude was a decorated german war hero and ardent militarist, which is something most reasonable people, as well as any anarchist, would associate with statism and the rightwing. therefore, his astute observations about the threat of nazism would likely be from a more-trad-than-thou or don't-tell-me-bout-german-heroism perspective.

fascinating guy, lots of integrity, complicated and certainly not a fukin poser like neech BUT plenty of his core values would be understood to be very conservative, even for his time. he was also like, a proto-hippy, in to psychedelics and esoteric philosophy, blah blah blah do you already know all this stuff and you're just checking to see if i do?

anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/21/2025 - 13:20

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

my third point wasn't about anti-civ anything. it was about pointing guns (critical / metaphorical or real) at targets that matter, not at others who are also without power.

but let's talk anti-civ for a bit. I do agree in a way that "it has all got to go."
how we get from here to there, though, therein lies the hard problem. do you just take, for instance, power grids offline willy-nilly without regard to downstream effects? because if such genocidal thinking is part of your plan I'm not with you.

there are ways to get back into right relation with the planet, with the more-than-human world & with the balance of the human world, probably. that is what my anti-civ looks like.

all this arrogant contemptuous posturing about how care is weak is just patriarchy by other means. and patriarchy is fascism by other means.

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 08:25

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

care isn't "weak". that's not what anyone said. but our care is most effective, potent, and meaningful when given to those we are in deep relationship with. duh. our energies are depleted by constantly projecting them outward, not to mention how they get used by power... radical decentralization has always been an anarchist priority, not just in decision making, but in every aspect of our lives.

but phrases like "... is just patriarchy by other means. and patriarchy is fascism by other means." is the most hyperbolic and meaningless phrase i have read lately. way to stuff it all in to big fat stupid burrito so people don't question anything.

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 14:10

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

hardly anyone ever *says* anything, it's all implied or coded or dog whistles.

to your last bit, you questioned what i wrote so it seems like my dastardly plan has been foiled. shucks.

jokes aside, fascism requires patriarchy and patriarchy depends upon anti woman rhetoric & practices and since care is often woman coded I'd say my point stands, even if it is a slight exaggeration.

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 14:50

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Wombmyn

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 07:52

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

i wonder, why do you seem to believe that if i spell the word "women" i am not being inclusive to all women?

anonymous (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 07:59

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

if you have to spell woman / women another way in order to be inclusive maybe you're the one being discriminatory.

FakeNewsBot (not verified) Thu, 01/23/2025 - 10:17

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

The anti-fascists are the real fascists! Communist fascist democrats!

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 08:43

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

"arrogance" and "contempt" are not inherently bad. i suppose it is the activities which come from those feelings which we should examine, some seem helpful, others not. have you seen what is out there lately?
not everyone here is an altruistic humanist, thankfully. anarchists have spent too much time being nice, or as some might say, complicit in the degradation of human and non-human life.

Inherently Anon (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 12:53

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

> "arrogance" and "contempt" are not inherently bad

What IS "inherently bad" and why would something being "inherently bad" matter at all versus something "not inherently bad"?

anonymous (not verified) Wed, 01/22/2025 - 13:24

In reply to by anonymous (not verified)

Yes brah, I first used the term "seething ressentiment" many years ago on this site, my legacy to critical grammar, and I also insist that "seething" is used solely to describe "ressentiment" in the Nietzschean context, thx ;)

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