Really good analysis of the past few years here

Mutt. – Editorial Looking at the broad counterinsurgent tactics in babylon and across the world – from funding and surveillance to police-friendly A–B marches – Mutt. tells us why it’s important to know your enemy.

Zhachev – They Who Returned to the Rock Zhachev draws connections between ancient Nabataeans, historical Indigenous resistance, and deep knowledge of the land as he proposes a critical decolonial reading of ‘Dune’.

Mar – this poem is dedicated to uncle Mar dedicates, with the incandescent clarity of the midday sun, a poem to uncle – and all the aunties, NGOs, beckies and bootlickers, too.

Sidiq – Pengar / Hangover Sidiq shares a poem in defiance of colonial civilisation. Sidiq is part of two publishing collectives: ___contemplative [Instagram] andtalaspress [Instagram], and his prisoner support group is taking donations: einzine16@gmail.com

Margeret Kimblerly & Roddy Rod – Martinique’s History of Resistance Abridged transcript of a discussion between Margaret Kimberley and Roddy Rod on the situation in Martinique, including its past and present colonial relations with France, internal Martinican politics, and ongoing insurrection.

Simoun Magsalin – The Anarchy of the Peripheries Simoun Magsalin takes us through landscapes of peripheries and asks what anarchisms might be created there. What can we learn from the specificities of failures and successes of anarchist projects? Where do we go from here, wherever we currently are?

Leonardo Torres Llerena – Toward an Indo-American Revolution With generosity and criticality, Leonardo Torres Llerena examines the legacy of José Carlos Mariátegui, an early C20th Peruvian Marxist writer and activist, and why his work is relevant for contemporary anarchist tendencies with regard to Indigenous-led uprisings.

CharlieBanga & Semiyah – Autonomous Submersion CharlieBanga & Semiyah discuss ‘autonomous submersion’, a term they originated to foreground Black autonomy as refusal to submit to enslavement by instead choosing death. ‘May we all be as brave and resilient as the original black autonomists.’

Anon – Our Burning Memory Unflinchingly looking at fear, cowardice victimhood as constituting whiteness, Anon urges us to remember our capacity for wielding power and to consciously recognise our revolutionary fighting spirit.

Patrick Jonathan Derilus – The Immovable Black Lumpenproletariat Looking at Black social formations that resist the State and its white colonial violence, Patrick Jonathan Derilus shares a critical history of Black factions and gangs that foreground abolitionist responses.

Fawaz Murtada – Why Would You Become an Anarchist in Sudan? An anarchist in Sudan explains why anarchism offers clarity in the struggle against multiple failed social systems, and how the anarchist movement in Sudan has contributed to community aid and education during war.

Daniel Adediran – Where is Black Anarchism in the UK? Contextualising the means and ends of anarchism within historical African societies and modern Black radical traditions, Daniel Adediran proposes Espicifismo as a way forward for Black Anarchism in the UK.

Anon – Principles for the coming Yankee invasion / Principios para la invasion gringa que se viene A Mexican anarchist predicts what will happen in the coming year if the Trump government is not stopped.

Decolonize Anarchism – May Day on Fire: Against Empire and Theocracy The Western left will march on May 1st under red banners, chanting slogans of internationalism and workers’ power. But SWANA anarchist project Decolonize Anarchism ask – is there room for Iranian workers in your May Day?

Group Of Informal Affinity – Reject the National Army law A fiery communiqué from insurrectionists resisting the Indonesian state.

Muntjac Collective – Protect Yourself We have two suggestions on how you and your groups can prepare yourselves.

Anon – Alexa, take me to prison! An analysis of how hostile technology is embedded in counterinsurgency, plus tactics and experimental ideas for what anarchists can do to create alternative cultures of operational security.

Haraami – Follow the Fires A diagnosis of how counter-insurgent forms of identity politics leverage scenes and milieus as incubators of insular and fickle social competition and calls upon revolutionaries to focus instead on fidelity to uprisings and practical questions of revolution.

Mutt. – What Color Is The Smoke? (In conversation with Follow The Fires) A embrace and criticism of a recent article on counter-insurgent forms of identity politics, plus reflections and memories of farcical moments in POC anarchist projects of the past and a Black anarchist project in the UK.

Mar – An Introvert’s Guide to the Insurrection Want to do insurgency but are put off by large social gatherings? Don’t worry, Mar is here with a light-hearted DIY guide on how to make revolution happen.

poet of da soil – untitled poet of da soil shares a poem that calls for rebellion in the form of life.

Anon – Selections From Disquietude Laboratory Three poems from an Indonesian language egoist anarchist zine.

Anon – Selections from Kompilasi Puizine A powerful introductory note and three poems pulled from a huge compilation of Indonesian-language anarchist poems, published during the ongoing clashes with the state.

<Read it here>

What binds these cases is not simply the betrayal of early ideals but the structure of the revolutionary movements themselves: the dominance of military actors, the centralisation of decision-making and the erasure of grassroots democratic input. Liberation became a state project, not a people’s movement. The result was not freedom but domination by a different set of elites.

In the current evolution of the so-called radical left in the so-called United States, one concerning trend is the growing popularity of Marxist-Leninist organizations, particularly among newly-activated young people. One organization that has been a major beneficiary of such a surge has been the Freedom Road Socialist Organization (FRSO), which, though around for decades, has become more visible and active on the ground and online in recent years. FRSO’s article on their 2022 congress states that “[r]eflecting the rapid growth of FRSO over the last four years, this was the first congress for most attendees. While some of the participants were veterans of the communist movement with many decades of experience, the overwhelming majority were under 35 years old.” [1] This trend has continued.

FRSO’s program presents their goals and principles in an easily digestible format, divided into six sections. It is a quite basic Marxist-Leninist program and, as such, contains the flaws inherent to this organizational model, making for an uninspiring document outdated in its ideas and of little use. Fundamentally, it is stuck in a fetishized statist framework that conflates socialism with a planned state-capitalist economy, reinforces the colonial foundations on which the so-called United States is built, and spreads false information about its populations. We should criticize this anti-revolutionary program and challenge its growing influence.

My love, these experiences together are as seamless as every wave in an ocean. To others this is just a tale of two mercury switch hearts ignited by the spark of a first kiss. I look forward to whatever we may encounter under this black rainbow called life. We'll ride the waves of every hurricane that makes landfall. Until their bullets turn our blood into confetti during a shoot-out, or we simply grow old and sing each other to sleep with a shared death rattle... More riots! Vandalism! Anarchy!

When anarchism (or any other idea for that matter) is brought into new contexts, it necessarily enters into dialogue with the histories and traditions of that new context. When Mao Zedong Thought was all the rage during the dictatorship of Ferdinand Marcos Sr., this new idea was re-contextualized in the context of the history of revolutionary nationalism of the Katipunan, Andres Bonifacio, and the resistance to the American colonial State. Anarchism in the Philippines necessarily indigenizes itself into the Philippine context, something I’ve written about in the past on various libertarian elements in the Philippines.[1] My purpose here isn’t to restate what I’ve already written on previously but to expand the re-contextualization of the potentiality of anarchism in rebel peripheries to a distinctly anti-anarchist project: that of the Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP). As a Hadith of the Prophet Muhammad says “Seek knowledge even in China,” China being the furthest and most remote place in the ancient Arab imagination, urging that we ought to seek knowledge even from the most remote—or in this case, the strangest—of places.

The CPP, its armed wing the New People’s Army (NPA), and its front the National Democratic Front (NDF) have been waging Maoist armed struggle in the Philippines since 1969. In doing so, it has created a number of rebel peripheries in the countryside that exist outside the control of the Philippine State—in the anarchy of the peripheries. However, the longstanding second communist rebellion in the Philippines has to be placed in the historical context of anarchic and rebel peripheries in the archipelago. Once we move past and sublate the experiences of the Maoists for the revolutionary project of anarchism, we can then move on understanding the insurrectionary project of mamundok-in-place.

What binds these cases is not simply the betrayal of early ideals but the structure of the revolutionary movements themselves: the dominance of military actors, the centralisation of decision-making and the erasure of grassroots democratic input. Liberation became a state project, not a people’s movement. The result was not freedom but domination by a different set of elites.

The point where people say, well, you know, it's No big deal, it's just their stuff. You gotta remember, this technology is keeping tabs on you, even though somebody else has one of these phones or AI nonsense. If you associate with that person, it takes that and keeps that. You might as well get a shovel and dig your grave if you're not going to mis-behave. The lack of privacy rights in this country is making me see red.

Apologies if this post doesn’t fit well here, this has a personal element but is ultimately a moral and political discussion.

Personal context:

I’ve lived with no/low income as a disabled person my whole adult life with no end in sight. I try to follow best personal finance practices to try and ensure my survival as I can’t simply look to make more money. As I understand it, the advice I’ve read would be to begin investing (commonly in equity ETFs) once you have saved enough of an emergency fund and are ready to put away assets for the long-term. Due to a unique situation, I might manage to save enough money to begin investing before I go back to living paycheck to paycheck.

Concerns:

A) Is it unethical? On one hand, I’d be investing into truly evil companies. On the other, there’s no ethical survival under captialism and my minuscule investment won’t make or break a megacorps’ ability to do evil shit. Taking a silent stand won’t have an impact and I may just be hurting my own personal finances in the process. In turn, that ironically may make it harder for me to safely save and spend money on things like community organizing.

B) Isn’t it contradictory and unsafe? Investing in equities means I'd be betting on continued “growth” for decades to come. This is the system I’d be working to dismantle and investing in it would be like I’m betting against myself. Considering the impending climate crisis and foreseeable global instability, investing in equities feels like more of a gamble and less of a sound financial decision, but I’m not sure what that means for how I should manage my finances.

is one of the most common responses I get when I talk to people (usually liberals) about horizontal power structures. It comes down to some version of "Well, that sounds nice, but what about the bad actors?" I think the logic that follows from that fact is backwards. The standard response to this issue is to build vertical power structures. To appoint a ruling class that can supposedly "manage" the bad actors. But this ignores the obvious: vertical power structures are magnets for narcissists. They don’t neutralize those people. They empower them. They give them legitimacy and insulation from consequences. They concentrate power precisely where it’s most dangerous. Horizontal societies have always had ways of handling antisocial behavior. (Highly recommend Hierarchy in the Forest: The Evolution of Egalitarian Behavior by Christopher Boehm. He studied hundreds of forager societies, overall done amazing work.) Exile, public shaming, revocable leadership, and distributed decision-making all worked and often worked better than what we do now. Pre-civilized societies didn’t let power-hungry individuals take over. They stopped them. We used to know how to deal with bad actors. The idea of a "power vacuum" only makes sense if you believe power must be held at the top. If you diffuse power horizontally, there is no vacuum to fill. There’s just shared responsibility. That may feel unfamiliar, but it’s not impossible. We’ve done it before. Most of human history was built on it. The real question isn't whether bad actors exist. It's how we choose to deal with them. Do we build systems that make it harder for them to dominate others, or ones that practically roll out the red carpet? I think this opens up a more useful conversation.

What if we started seriously discussing tactics for dealing with domination-seeking behavior?

What mechanisms help us identify and isolate that kind of behavior without reproducing the same old coercive structures?

How do we build systems that are resilient to sabotage without falling into authoritarian logic?

I’d love to hear your guys’ thoughts.

Edit: It seems as though the conversation has diverted in this comment section. That's alright, I'll clarify.

This thread was meant to be about learning how to detect domination-seek behavior and repelling narcissists. This was meant to be a discussion on how anarchism works socially in order to circumvent individuals from sabotaging or otherwise seeking to consolidate power for themselves.

It was not meant as a discussion on if anarchism works. There is plenty of research out on the internet that shows anarchism has the potential to work. Of course, arguing a case for or against anarchism should be allowed, however that drifts away from what I initially wanted to get at in this thread. It's always good to hear some "what ifs", but if it completely misses the main point then it derails the discussion and makes it harder for folks who are engaging with the core idea.

So to reiterate: this isn’t a debate about whether anarchism is valid. It’s a focused conversation about the internal dynamics of anarchist spaces, and how we can build practices and awareness that make those spaces resilient against narcissistic or coercive tendencies.

Thanks to everyone who’s contributed in good faith so far -- let’s keep it on track.

EDIT: fixed the video url

Murray Bookchin talks about his history in various communist and anarchist movements, discusses trends in anarchism and libertarian socialism (taking positions against anarcho-primitivism and lifestyle anarchism), talks about the working class' need for free time to even begin to engage with politics (as distinct from "statecraft"), predicts the rise of the right in the 21st century, and more.

(The link skips the first 35 minutes of the video, in which he reads a lifestyle anarchist pamphlet being distributed as part of a mini-protest outside his talk and has a very brief interaction with the folks distributing it.)

Invidious link: https://inv.nadeko.net/LFswTGgDG-E?t=2095

Thought this was an interesting and well reasoned critque of some aspects of the Dawn of Everything, particularly how Graeber's conclusions could lead one to take a misinformed wrong path toward changing modern society that may give poor results.

The Institute for Social Ecology is in conversation with author Eleanor Finley about her newly published book - Practicing Social Ecology: From Bookchin to Rojava and Beyond! Eleanor is a longtime friend of the ISE and her book is an excellent contribution to social ecology as a living theory and practice. This event includes a talk from the author as well as audience Q&A.

Purchase Eleanor's book from the publisher Pluto Press: https://www.plutobooks.com/9780745346908/practicing-social-ecology/

Author Bio:

Eleanor Finley is a researcher at the University of Massachusetts, an associate of the Institute for Social Ecology (ISE), and an affiliated researcher at George Mason University, Next System Studies. She has published numerous articles on social ecology and related themes, such as Kurdish democratic confederalism, energy and environmental justice, and degrowth, and conducted dozens of workshops, talks, and lectures to diverse audiences in North America and Europe. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia.

Book Description:

How can we harness society's potential to change the trajectory of the climate crisis? So many of us feel helpless in the face of corporate environmental destruction, however, in Practicing Social Ecology Eleanor Finley shows that there is an amazing well of untapped power in our communities, we just need to know how to use it.

Drawing from her experience of working in democratic ecology movements from the revolution in Rojava to Barcelona's municipalist movement and beyond, she shows how to develop assemblies, confederations, study groups, and permaculture projects.

Looking to history, she maps out how social ecologists, such as Murray Bookchin, have led inspirational struggles around climate and energy, agriculture and biotechnology, globalisation and economic inequality. This guide is perfect for anyone curious about how to challenge unending capitalist growth through the democratic power of social ecology.

Members of the Indigenous Waorani village of Kiwaro looked skyward as a helicopter hovered over the rainforest canopy in the center of Ecuador and landed in a nearby clearing. Out stepped government officials, there to inform the community about an impending auction of oil rights on their land.

The Ecuadorian government announced earlier, in November 2011 from the capital city Quito, that it would open up for drilling millions of hectares of Amazon rainforest—including the ancestral territories of Waorani communities like Kiwaro.

Following the meetings, Ecuador’s then minister of non-renewable resources opened the oil auction, later telling the media that oil companies’ investments in Ecuador could be worth $700 million.

The paltry consultation process, and the threat oil operations posed to their lands and culture, galvanized Indigenous groups to fight back. In 2019, sixteen Waorani communities and a provincial ombudsman filed a lawsuit in a local court against multiple federal ministries, alleging that the communities’ rights to free, prior and informed consultation were violated.

The research focused on a model where small, interconnected subgroups operate within larger populations, allowing decisions to emerge through a structured, bottom-up process. This network-based model enables populations to make complex decisions efficiently while still reflecting the will of the broader group.

"Our findings highlight the value of decentralized, structured decision-making," noted Cohen, who is also associate professor of Environmental Health Sciences at Columbia Mailman School of Public Health. "The way these groups are organized -- and the connections between them -- can fundamentally shape the outcomes."

The world around us is breaking, and not by accident. Climate disasters, poisoned water, corrupt governments, rising inequality, all symptoms of a system built on domination: people over each other, people over nature.

Big promises from corporations and politicians won't save us. They were never meant to.

Real change doesn’t come from the top down. It grows from the bottom up - from our towns, our counties, our communities.

Right now across the U.S., people are already:

• Growing their own food in community gardens.

• Organizing mutual aid when disaster strikes.

• Taking back land through cooperatives and land trusts.

• Defending forests, rivers, and neighborhoods against destruction.

They aren't waiting for permission.

A truly ecological society — one rooted in freedom, care, and balance — doesn't start in Washington, D.C. It starts where you live.

• Local assemblies deciding what happens in your town.

• Community-controlled energy and food systems.

• Neighbors working together to protect land and life.

We can’t fix a broken system by begging it to change. We have to build something better — together, from the ground up.

What will you start reclaiming today?

cross-posted from: https://lemm.ee/post/62560258

Hello dear fellow human beings!

Let me clarify a few things.

We are one, all of us, all stardust, right from the belly of an exploding star, right to our shared evolution, history, & current technological & societal progress. All humanity and all life is one and connected, and so are all of our problems.

Poverty, hunger, homelessness, climate change, fascism, war, and even the global epidemic of loneliness & depression aren’t distinct disconnected problems. They are a singular globally connected problem. And it requires a singular globally connected solution.

All of these are problems of a skewed economy, aka wealth inequality. Those who don't have enough face poverty, hunger, homelessness, and a lifetime of financial insecurity. Those who have plenty, want even more, which leads to them dividing the masses by propaganda, eventually leading to fascism & war. Our collective mismanaged consumption is pushing us all towards climate catastrophe. All of these global issues are making us very lonely & depressed, and the overall society prone to crime & violence.

So how can we fix this skewed economy and our collective social issues? And is it even solvable?

Some might find the answer as obvious, some might consider it incorrect or impossible to achieve. Well, let me tell you folks, I've done the math, I've double checked my work, there is one and only one way out - Collectively!

Welcome to Collective Cake, a secular democratic global economic engine powered by all, and created for all. If we are the producers and if we are also the consumers, then we can manage our economy however we collectively want. It’s our Collective Cake, let’s take ownership and enjoy it best we can.

Is it a business? Or is it an cooperative? Is it a think tank? Or is it an economic union? Is it a democratically controlled, sustainability led unified global economy? It is anything & everything we want it to be. We get to collectively decide it!

Is it capitalism? Is it communism? Is it market socialism? All I will say about this is that capitalism is what exists right now, and market socialism is also capitalism, but the better kind. However, I want us all to refrain from using such labels while problem solving. Labels might help identify a sub-group, but it invariably causes division and we pick sides, we blindly love ours, and blindly hate theirs. An emotional response is not a well reasoned response. Lastly, if even one man cannot understand ambiguous or technical jargon, we have all collectively lost.

There's a lot for us talk about. Not a debate to be won, but a problem to be solved. Not using violence, but by strategy and collective action. Before we talk about the what or the how, we must talk more about the why. I have some thoughts that I'll share, but it doesn't matter for we can collectively decide and do anything we want. The matchstick has been lit.

Next week, I'll share my thoughts on our collective ethos or "our water".

Stay tuned!

Love, fakir

PS: enjoy this lovely animation that was released over 50 years ago!