this post was submitted on 30 Aug 2025
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Illegalism

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Illegalism is an anarchist philosophy which embraces criminality as a lifestyle. It's the second part of the renowned and enlightened charter: "Be Gay, Do Crime"

This is a place for exchanging tricks & experiences, discussing trends & events, sharing shitposts, and connecting criminality to theory & praxis.

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https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/illegalism

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Crime is Praxis (infosec.pub)
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I think people need to be more comfortable with illegalism and I’m not kidding. Of course the more legal something is, the safer and easier it is to do, but the more people who disregard the law, the harder it is to enforce. There are plenty of laws on the books that people just ignore and are never or rarely policed.

Becoming more comfortable with little illegal activities makes you more comfortable with bigger more important illegal activities. Additionally, it is crucial to build a wall of silence. Nobody talks everybody walks.

People who give out food without a permit, hold a march without a permit, grow a garden without a permit, are more likely to be people you could turn to to work with on preventing an eviction, or keeping people out of cop hands, or helping your friend Jane get crucial healthcare when it’s not legal in your state.

Communities comfortable with these acts won’t call the cops, and then nobody knows that it’s happening.

People have got to shift from both the idea that lawful = good/ illegal = bad, and that the illegality of something means that’s the end of it, and the only fight left is to make it legal again.

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[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 8 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It really depends. For example consumer level media piracy might be illegal, but you are not getting in trouble with the law for it (outside a few places like Germany, or narrow circumstances like torrenting porn videos produced by copyright trolls). Many other situations too where the consequences are only imaginary or vanishingly unlikely.

[–] sleepwave@lemmy.dbzer0.com 1 points 4 weeks ago (1 children)

As long as you don't somehow bumble into the rare role of being the person who they decide to parade around as the example with an absurd punishment, this seems mostly true. Most service providers punishment for piracy is to disconnect your service until you call them and listen to them scold you to get it turned back on.

[–] chicken@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 4 weeks ago

As long as you don’t somehow bumble into the rare role of being the person who they decide to parade around as the example with an absurd punishment

I could be wrong, but I researched it some years ago and I'm pretty sure even this has not happened since the early 2010s when industry groups were still using that strategy (though I'd welcome an example if you can cite one). They switched to the ISP letters thing, but those are not legal proceedings, even if you could get your internet shut off, and so I don't count it as getting in trouble with the law. Of course it's still undesirable and a good reason to bind your torrent client to a VPN.