The Liberal Capture of Anarchism

From The Polar Bl@st - Anarchist Class War News & Views for Aotearoa

For the past few years, a peculiar current has swept through parts of the anarchist milieu, particularly those corners closest to academia, the NGO apparatus, and the broad “social justice” ecosystems of the liberal left. It goes something like this: “we don’t live in revolutionary times”. The line is always delivered with a kind of weary resignation, as if the speaker has grown too sophisticated, too worldly, too traumatised or too professional to still believe in any of the old principles.

TOTW: Recuperation and Social Signaling

Been reading and listening to people (notably Naomi Klein in Doppleganger but some youtubers as well) talk about how there is a growing tendency for valuable words and concepts to be coopted by our enemies or at least our non-friends. Fake news, The Other/othering, woke, and mutual aid are just a few of the ideas that have been (or are being) made into signifiers for people who we strongly disagree with.

Two part question then:

There’s No Liberty Under Fascism and No Alternative In Trump

From It's Going Down

On Saturday, May 25th, to jeers and boos, Donald Trump addressed the Libertarian Party conference, a testament to the far-Right turn that the third largest political party in the United States has made following the takeover by the Alt-Right aligned Mises Caucus.

Beer punks and anarchist cafes: politics for profit

from Freedom News UK

Many could be forgiven for thinking it was a belated April Fools prank when, at the beginning of the month, Freedom Press released a statement reading that close to their premises in Whitechapel and out with their knowledge, the colossal Hilton hotel group had opened an upmarket cocktail bar bearing the name ‘Freedom Café’. Marketed towards “independent thinkers and coffee drinkers”, in true anti-consumerist fashion, the bar sells £14 cocktails named after book titles from the publishing house. Their menu comes in the style of an old pamphlet titled “Anarchist Weekly” and references the historic founding of the publishing house. Readers are enticed inside to find “anarchy, coffee, drinks, and comfort food”. Believe it or not, this appears not to be a joke.

TOTW: Recuperation

While it’s easy to place emphasis on the more exciting forms of state violence—baton-wielding, armor-clad riot cops through a teargas haze—it’s equally important to be mindful of another ever-present and much more boring reality: recuperation. The murky ways in which once-radical acts are disarmed, defanged, redirected, or otherwise rendered ineffective of their original purpose.

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