Ecoterrorism or barbarism.
(a couple climate change points by Jason Hickel.)
Ecoterrorism or barbarism.
(a couple climate change points by Jason Hickel.)
Intel GPU drivers now collect telemetry data on "which types of websites you visit, which Intel says are dumped into 30 categories and logged without URLs or information that identifies you, including how long and how often you visit certain types of sites". It also snitches details on your computer *and* "other devices in your environment", as well as "how you use your computer" (no clarification provided).
looking at the Vox election in Spain and the face of De Santis over a Sonnenrad I'm thinking of this pattern. I mean it's not a brilliant observation or anything but it's interesting how recurring it is, isn't in? elections in the 2020s compared to the 2010s and early, in almost every liberal democracy, are charaterised by:
1. The presence of an openly fascist party.
2. Much higher (70%+) turnover than previous decades, as people perceive the fascists as a threat (or, if you buy into their propaganda, as the hope of regaining former glory).
3. Very tight races, where the fascists either win by a small margin, or lose by a small margin.
4. Alliances of traditional center-right conservatives / neolibs with the fascists to form coalitions, in EU-style multi-party systems, or as wings of same party to get votes in the USA's FPTP anti-system.
5. Moral panics around queer people and immigrants/Muslims being the wedge issue of choice in the fascists' open/public campaigns.
6. The electoralist Left in shambles, despised and untrusted by the working class.
7. The liberal candidates universally hated and only ever elected as lesser-of-two-evils.
4. We stay together.
We are comrades. We know who is the enemy, and we distinguish internal conflict from the enemy. We strive to make every comrade feel seen, welcome, and treasured. Our bond is the metal of identity and ethics and shared dreams; our bond is tempered by the fire of the struggle and the pressure of oppression; our bond is stronger than nation, stronger than family, stronger than individual relationships. Our community survives heartbreak.
5. We build meaning.
We remind one another of how our lived experiences are part of a larger struggle. We talk of our ancestors and our goals so that we can find ourselves here, between past and future, carrying the torch of rebellion. We look at one another and we stan.
6. We are visible.
When we spot our symbols in another body we feel calmer and safer, we drop the tension of our jaws and breathe with relief, for we know we found someone we can count on. When our enemies see our symbols they tremble, for they know that harm to one will mobilise all.
7. We occupy territory.
We do not hide in our concrete cages but take to the streets, we meet visibly in our hangout spots, and in doing so make our hangout spots ours. Our allies know they are safer in our territory; our enemies shiver and hide their emblems of oppression.
8. We empower.
Our meetings do not drain energy; they energise. Our meetings are abundant: they abound with fun and joy, with music and laughter, with crying and mourning, our voices lift with emotion, with belief, with life. Our meetings reject the logic of capitalism, of work culture, our politics is not a second job, our politics is a feast and a party and a rage and a hug in the long night. We hype.
9. We call upon our ancestors.
We learn the stories of those who came before us in the struggle, those who carried us to where we are. In remembering the dead we bring them to life in our bodies, we live the lives that they fought to let us have. We remember our dead in mourning, yes, but also in celebration and power, we do not remember them merely for the tragedy of their oppression, but for the joy and freedom of their lives in defiance, fully aware that there are no heroes and that their glory is our glory, that we today in our bodies are nothing but power and glory.
10. We are reliable.
Our meetings happen regularly and we can trust ourselves to show up. We know we will show up, because we want to show up, we look forward to showing up, because our meetings build up, rather than grind down. We understand the power of ritual, of regularity, of rhythm, because it is in rhythm that we can dance.
11. We do not take these rules too seriously.
We will not forget that the human spirit cannot be predicted in words, theories, and systems. We bow to no authority, least of all the authority of the dead letter. We will never let an ideology trample a human heart. We are big kids and we can question ourselves.
Inspirations for this text / recommended reading (on a Tor browser)
Most of these can be found at the Anarchist Library or otherwise online.
- Malatesta, Let Us Be Of Good Cheer!
- The group formerly know as “Bash Back”, I Don’t Bash Back I Shoot First: On Queer Gangs
- Institute For The Study of Insurgent Warfare, Nine Theses On Insurgency
- Basically every communiqué from the EZLN but see especially the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle
- adrienne maree brown, We Will Not Cancel Us ; and Pleasure Activism
- Aragorn!, Toward a non European Anarchism or Why a movement is the last thing that people of color need
- Margaret Killjoy, (podcast) Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff: Gay Resistance to Nazis, 2022-05-30 and 2022-06-01
- Kaneko Fumiko, A Work of My Own! (in: The Prison Memoirs of a Japanese Woman )
- Sylvia Rivera & Marsha P. Johnson’s interviews, quoted in the zine Street Transvestite Action Revolutionaries: Survival, Revolt, and Queer Antagonist Struggle
Permanent / shareable URL for this manifesto: https://anarcholatina.blackblogs.org/11-easy-steps-to-politics-like-a-marginal/
*edit*: renamed the manifesto to something cooler
ok criticising is easy, building is hard. it's time to build our own political group, and supply the lacks I found in the groups around me. but before getting to that, I want to do a little manifesto of sorts not about *what* are our politics, but *how* to politics. what are the mechanics of a political group we want to find, and since we couldn't find, we want to build.
1. We don’t do demos.
We prioritise organisation over mobilisation. Most of our political energy goes to building autonomy from an injust world, not in perpetual reaction to punctual injustices.
2. We help one another.
Our core work is mutual aid. Our politics is the tangible, material, bodily politics of the every day. Our politics is to help one another with food, a job, a place to stay, emotional support, collective defence, access to hormones, abortions, handling bureaucracies, childcare, elder care, sickcare, we care.
3. We will not cancel us.
We reject all police, including the cop in our heads. We are calm and confident in our collective power to protect and heal the targets of harm while transforming the patterns of harm in the doer. We build this trust in our power by constant study and practice of transformative justice. We practice how to handle conflict, harm and abuse before they happen. We do not kick people out of our group only for them to do harm to other people, less equipped to deal with them. We handle our own messes because we are strong enough to take collective responsibility.
I never seen so much fury in the grafitti wars as the nazis have re: #LinaE. Where normal (toothless, widely discredited as innofensive) antifa symbology is ignored, Lina's name gets overwritten angrily with base misogynist threats; in one wall I've observed, someone actually broke the wall rather than let it stand.
Lina was singled retroactively as a "leader" of an autonomous scene without leaders and explicitly picked to be made an example of, no doubt due to her gender. In doing so, the State inadvertently created a bogeywoman. The idea of a young pretty white girl bashing nazi heads with hammers bothers them to no end. They whisper her name on Twitter with hate and paranoia, afraid that she represents the start of a left which fights with more than slogans, of antifaschistischen that, for a change, do in fact aktion.
Lina doesn't represent anything she's a living woman with her own life, dreams, inner complexity, severely punished for trying to protect her community and standing up to the worst. But the bogeywoman Lina, the Lina of whispers, is there living in their heads. We should encourage nazis to think that yes, any random girl can become a Lina, yes it's a trend now. And what better argument than the truth?
#wirSindAlleLina 🔨🔨🔨
Government means authority. Authority means rules coerced from above, obedience mandatory. Doesn't matter if the government is so-called "democratic" or "Communist", obedience necessarily implies punishment to infractors. Punishment entails a punishing force. Thus government means police.
The anarchist position is, if you need armed goons to force the people to obey your rules, your rules aren't worth obeying anyway, and your system isn't worth maintaining. Attempts to produce social order by force will always result in abuse from above and transgression from below. An imposed order is no order. No police force in history has ever been succesful at what they purport to do, and there's no reason to suppose the next one will be an unprecedented exception.
The reason for this is discussed in Malatesta's theory of action: action--doing things in the world--doesn't just change the world, it changes the doer. People sometimes try to explain police by claiming it's a job that attracts bullies, but it's much worse than that. The job *is* bullying; even the most bright-eyed detective-novel reader will be transformed into an abuser when they're required to be merciless.
(because being an abuser isn't "sociopathy" or "narcissism", it's not some bad essence: it's a thing you do.)
leftist spaces that regulate female-presenting nipples are acting purely out of puritanical feelings, masquerading as safe-space concern for sex-repulsed folk. (breasts are not inherently sexual, and going topless is not inherently an act of exhibitionism).
this message brought to you by I am forced to cover my trans body more in certain leftist events than the literal cops force me to cover it on the streets of Germany.
Goddamit I'm getting real burnout from the German scene, it's nigh impossible to get activists to do anything other than plenums and demos
aaaaa
I think I'll have to start my own group, innit?
None of the groups, orgs, and spaces I asked will give me the space or support I need to run a single tourniquet workshop. If I want to get out of the plenum-demo cycle and find mates to actually do things I'll need to start my own crew. If you're in the Ruhrgebiet and want to do things ping me for matrix
@dantescanline ok so do you know the improv theatre technique of "yes, and?" I present you the First World Left tehcnique of "yes, totally!"
it goes like this:
me: "I literally had my head bashed open and one month later nazis drew a gun on people at the squat. You have to understand, the chances that you or someone next to you end up stabbed or shot is only going to keep increasing. so what I want is to normalise in the German scene that people carry tourniquets and trauma kits and the knowledge of how to use them"
they: "yes, totally!"
me: "and for that I need help, I can give talks and workshops but only in English, and also I don't have a medical background. this org sounds like a great space for it, it would be great if your org could fundraise to send a German speaker to the stopthebleed.de course, then share this knowledge, and maybe advertise to find a paramedic willing to advise us..."
they: "yes, totally!"
me: (so, are we going to get down to it, or...?)
(cricket noises)
(tumbleweed rolls by)
then someone says that this is taking too much time and this is a plenum not a discussion round, three other people twinkle hands, and someone else complains that we have to work tomorrow and let's move on with the agenda
Queer Latina migrant in Europe. Anarchist antifa.Content note: fascists, fascist violence, and violence at fascists.into: rewilding, animal liberation, decolonisation, transformative justice.supports: EZLN, AANES/Rojava, end of Russian and Israeli occupations.opposes: Marxism-Leninism, tankies, swerfs, antideutsche.punches: fash.social: white privilege, middle class, noncitizen.avatar: a black kite with the anarchy symbol (by: Frente Anarquista da Periferia).banner: "anger in dignity: the challenge", by Masklin8 https://www.deviantart.com/masklin8/art/Digna-Rabia-El-Desafio-106884661#nobot
GNU social JP is a social network, courtesy of GNU social JP管理人. It runs on GNU social, version 2.0.2-dev, available under the GNU Affero General Public License.
All GNU social JP content and data are available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license.