Tom Phillips: State Violence and Autonomy

From The Polar Blast - Anarchist Class War News & Views for Aotearoa

In early September 2025, the long and tangled saga of Tom Phillips came to a violent conclusion on a quiet road in rural Waikato. After nearly four years of living as a fugitive in the bush with his three children, Phillips was shot dead by police following an attempted burglary that spiralled into armed confrontation. One of his children was recovered at the scene and placed into state care. Two remain missing, their fate uncertain. What began in 2021 as a custody dispute that saw a father disappear with his children has ended with gunfire, death, and three young lives marked by trauma.

Burkina Faso: Revolution, authoritarianism & the crisis of African emancipation politics

From Mail & Guardian

Today, a new face of revolution is emerging in Burkina Faso under the youthful and charismatic Captain Ibrahim Traoré. His image is cast in the mould of Thomas Sankara, evoking the anti-imperialist spirit of the 1980s... What are we to make of yet another seizure of power by men in uniform, claiming to act on behalf of the people? If history is to be our teacher, then we must ask... Are we merely witnessing the replay of a tragic cycle in which the people are always betrayed?... In answering this, anarchist theory offers a sobering and necessary critique, particularly the principle of “prefiguration”. Loosely this means what we want our society to become in the future is literally shaped by what we do today

Shifting Trends in Policing Dissent with Kristian Williams & Garrett

From Outlaw Podcast

In this episode we are joined by Kristian Williams, anarchist historian and author of Our Enemies in Blue: Police and Power in America, and Garrett, an anti-repression activist and anarchist legal worker who resisted repression as one of the RNC 8.

Why Trump’s 2025 USA Is Not Fascist: An Anarcho-Communist Analysis

From The Polar Bl@st

In 2025, as Donald Trump re-enters the White House, a familiar discourse reignites across left-leaning and liberal spaces: “Trump is a fascist.” For many, especially in the mainstream, it’s an emotionally satisfying shorthand for what they experience as authoritarian, cruel, and dangerous leadership. And to be fair, much of what the Trump regime has done—both in the past and now in its return—has been undeniably authoritarian and reactionary.

Against the Behemoth

From Autonomies

The scandal that is Donald Trump’s administration – from the gutting and/or paralysing of federal government agencies, justified in the name of eliminating and controlling government waste of public monies due to indulgent, corrupt government workers and government policies, to budget plans for rampant privatisation and parallel tax benefits for the private companies that will substitute for government agencies, to an ideological war against the already modest US “welfare state”, to mass racist deportations, to a foreign policy driven by a logic of “strong men” competing for spheres of influence irrespective of the resulting human sacrifices – is shocking only to liberal sensibilities enamoured of the rule of law.

Open letter from Return Fire magazine

From Return Fire

Original title: Open letter from Return Fire magazine to the 2024.03.29-31 International Anti-Prison / Anti-Repression Gathering

We welcome this initiative, and send our love and gratitude to all gathering in Brighton with the aim of together building a more durable and combative struggle against the authoritarian nightmare of the present-day. From the limits of our own capacity, we’d like to offer some thoughts; reflections that have been born from decades of shared struggle and over 10 years of publishing our magazines with a strong presence of anti-repression/anti-prison documentation and agitation.

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