A Quick Explosion of Anger

Fuck the anarchist movement, or at least a chunk of it. My latest proof?

Just fucking read this. Also another version here.

I must admit that I'm more interested in the comments than the initial piece. They express what I've come to hate about the movement, a bullshit game of "who's more radical" that lacks a basis in reality and uses not-so-sneaky techniques to shut down dissenting viewpoints. What's great is that there are whole conversations that basically consist of someone going "You've gotta check your privilege and here's why" and someone else replying "No, you've gotta check yours and here's why." With all this privilege-checking (a masturbatory game that basically boils down to a hip new PC version of the prolier-than-thou of the Marxists) is anyone actually out there doing anything? With all this internal discussion about whether or not we should put newspaper boxes in the street or take them out, I'm wondering what exactly it is that any of this shit means.

Autonomous cells in affinity with a points of unity? Anarcho-liberals? ? What the fuck does any of this shit mean? Literally, every other response on BashBack.org and Infoshop are telling people to fuck off because whatever their opinion is, it is "oppressive" or "authoritarian" or "patriarchical." I'll take one quote verbatim: Someone made a point that this poster had correllated "rowdyness" with masculinity and passivity with femininity. To which the reply went "Thanks for your critiques. That's a good point...However, I hold that my experience of machismo and being othered and womaned as a female-bodied genderqueer is valid. Please do not try to negate my experience, because that’s patriarchal." I basically agree that there is more to it than just pointing out the constructedness of machismo, it's still a functioning social structure that educates women and men to act differently. But what a sneaky rhetorical trick. This person's argument basically boils down to "I don't agree with the point you are making and because it is something involving my feelings, you telling me that I am wrong is authoritarian." I can't see any escape from this trap of self-indulgent argumentative method, and it's what I see all over this milleu. Instead of discussion based on furthering our understandings and strategies, we see a bunch of cheap tricks to avoid debate and a few well-worn cliches ("diversity of tactics" immediately springs to mind as the most flagarent example.)

On Infoshop, someone says "But let's face it-- Bash Back! as we once knew it is dead." I can't help but not be surprised. While it's disappointing when an anarchist project that so many people have spent so much time working on is heading towards irrelevance or collapse, but the way that BB! has operated makes me pretty neutral towards its end. For a group (or whatever, since I guess I can't call it a group) that spends so much time talking about privilege and identity, I'm pretty impressed with how little work I've seen them do. Was BB! working in queer communities to help fight internal problems like substance abuse and racism? Was BB! organizing for rights and benefits for sex workers? What exactly were they doing besides throwing protests at churches and at the Human Rights Campaign? Of course those douches deserve it, but I don't think that stuff is the same as organizing for the concrete liberation of LGBTQ folks. Maybe I just missed the real work because it didn't show up on the 5 o'clock news. Still, my impression is that on the whole BB! has not really done anything concrete to fix this broken society besides a couple of interventions and protests. But who am I to say so? I guess I'm just being authoritarian and patriachical.

Blah blah blah

Okay, let's get real here.

I'm totally tired of reading communiques/statements/expositions about short actions that run on for four paragraphs. There's this tendency to write these great pieces and delivery them during the course of a direct action, or even a symbolic but danger-zone actions. But no one is listening to you talk about the war in Iraq or political prisoners or whatever, while all your nearby buddies are locking down the building or tossing agitational pamphlets from a third story balcony. They are watching people do cool/weird shit. I respect well-worded statements and I think they can be powerful and affect people. But I've been in discussions which drag on for hours about the precise wording of a specific phrase for a statement during an action which assures that no one will ever listen to the speaker.

It's not a big deal ya'll, just read a few sentences and let everybody dig the cool shit you're doing.

Additionally, writing a three paragraph manifesto for some sneaky late night DA is equally lame. The most egregious recent example is a video called "19 segundos de guerra social" that's swirling around the anarchosphere. It breaks all my rules of things I like (smashing banks and thinking you're super-revolutionary, using the phrase "social war," being the same group that attacks people at the bullfights here in Mexico City.) Seriously gang. Go ahead, fuck up a bank if you feel like it. But post a long release about how hard you are and how you're fighting the system? And then get it translated? Self-important much? Sheesh...

Winning the Battle to Lose the War

It seems sometimes (sometimes?) that the Left has everything upside-down. I've been thinking recently specifically of abortion rights, but these thoughts could apply to a variety of other issues.

Since Roe v. Wade was first passed down, the Left has been single-minded in its quest to save it. Note the difference between saving Roe v. Wade and pursuing abortion rights. Saving Roe v. Wade is a matter of electing presidents who will appoint Supreme Court justices who will continue to uphold abortion rights and putting pressure on right-wing presidents not to appoint anti-choice justices. Pursuing an abortion rights agenda is a far wider platform, embracing legal tactics as well as building structures to support abortion rights and consciousness building.

Everyone left of Dick Cheney believes, or pretends to believe, that power flows from "the people," or "the workers," or some variation of that old leftist cliche. So why is it that the Left, in fighting one of the most important battles in defense of women's rights in the latter half of the 20th century and beyond, has chosen to fight that battle on the terrain of 9 people? If power truly flows from below, why not spend all that money that they're lobbying and campaigning on encouraging pro-choice consciousness.?

Now, I can already hear the criticisms: "Brendan, this is ultraleftist and impossible." But is it? I think the example of the Civil Rights Movement which immediately preceded it is a powerful counterexample to the so-called Pro-Choice Movement. Black Americans used a variety of tactics, from, yes, lobbying the president, to direct action and armed self-defense to protect themselves from violence and to demand equal rights. Thousands probably died, but what was produced was a powerful black consciousness that threatened, and at times still does, to actually stand up to the racist power structure of our country. Every white leftist and his cousin fell all over themselves to fight that battle in the streets, yet after 1972, they simply forgot what they'd been doing in '68.

I'm not sure exactly why this happened, but I can think of a couple of reasons. One good one is plain old sexism. Sure, white straight men (TM) were willing to think that the descendants of slaves could constitute a force that could be radical and stand up to the system, but women? Good Lord, they should stay in the kitchen. (See the subsequent white leftist valorization of black men in the Civil Rights Movement and ignorance of women, except the cleaned-up, sanitized "tired, old" Rosa Parks)

Another is the fact that abortion rights aren't included in the Constitution and everybody knows it. Roe v. Wade is the most preposterous legal fiction that the Supreme Court has ever ruled on (okay, maybe not, there are some doozies) and it just happens to be the only one that's been ruled in favor of the Left. So all this energy has to be spent on convincing us that this ridiculous ruling is legitimate, instead of convincing us that abortion rights are essential regardless of what some fucking piece of paper says. The problem facing the Left after the end of the 60's was one that I've written on before, that we'd basically achieved the welfare state, (more or less, although Prop 8 stands as a pretty solid challenge) but we realized it wasn't good enough. Suddenly, every Harvard liberal and Popular Front commie realized, without saying it of course, that we dirty anarchists were right all along and that the problem wasn't that the state and capital weren't good enough, it was that they weren't good at all. Of course, we all know what happened next: the eventual decline of the Left into the intellectual abyss of postmodernism and the rise of neoliberalism and subsequent neoconservatism.

So why haven't we picked up on this? Is it because it's too hard to convince "stupid working class people" that a women's body is her own? I think underlying the rationale of the Left's abandonment of the issues of abortion rights on a mass scale is an indication of a strong elitist perspective that's also a tragic remnant of the New Left.

The fact is, we're going to lose Roe v. Wade one day. It's inevitable. In some places, it's already de facto happened. When that happens, we'll have to rebuild the abortion rights movement from below, with a populace largely hostile to it, because of what they see as government intervention. We don't have much time to refashion the debate about abortion rights, but I fear it's already too late.

White Bicycles

Just finished Richard Kempton's really cool Provo: Amsterdam's Anarchist Revolt. Fascinating. I'd only heard about the Provo's in passing, mostly in Rosemont and Radcliffe's fucking sweet Dancin' In The Streets!: Anarchists, IWWs, Surrealists, Situationists & Provos In The 1960's. (Despite the title, the Provos are mentioned in only one short piece.)

Important observations about the role of creativity and joy in movements. I continue to read about these fantastic creative protests in the '60s, and I can't help but wonder where are their contemporaries today? The Provos and their allies threatened the power of the Dutch state while engaging in absurd antics. Today, absurdity is dismissed as being "out of touch". Instead, radicals seem to try to emulate the bourgeois "professionalism" of the politicians or fulfill media stereotypes of subcultural ghettos haunted by the déclassé.

Anyone have any ideas? Where is the socially conscious avante-garde? Where are the working class poets? 'Cause inspired as I am by the joyful resistance of the Provos and their contemporaries, I can't find their traces present in our movement these days.

Bonus point: In a true anarcho-fanboy moment, I emailed David Graeber a question today and I'm excited to hear back from him. I've gotta start realizing that our movement is too small for me to be nervous reaching out to people who've written good books.

Yuck

So I'm listening to a podcast from a member of the Workers World Party (our good friends who founded FIST) about the Chinese earthquake and the response to it.

It basically amounts to a confused love letter to the Chinese government. I don't know if you can sit through the whole 45 minutes (I didn't), because it's really horrible, but the speaker loves the Chinese response to the disaster (yay China!) but hates the fact that China has a lot of capitalists (boo China!) but points out that the private companies in China produce half of China's GDP, even though they employ way less than half the workers (yay capitalism!) But the Chinese revolution was a worker's revolution (yay China!)

Ugh. I can't stand these people. They are not only confused, but they are just not on our side.

The Poverty of Secrecy

Interesting article about strategic organizing. Definitely very "lefty," but I can dig most of it. It's a troublesome analysis at times, particularly the over-valorization of the Civil Rights movement's more pacifistic elements at the expense of its more confrontational pieces like Deacons for Defense and Justice. (This seems to be a common disease that anti-racist white people on the Left contend with.)

My favorite part though, discusses the failure of security culture to accomplish anything other than scare us.

Adopting a discipline of secrecy may at some times and places be useful, but it is a choice that needs careful thought, especially when we consider that it is often not necessary even in police states. In the US., which as Otpur [anti-Milosovic youth group that helped bring him down] can tell you is far from a police state, security culture hurts the movement in several ways.
...
However, because security culture generates trustlessness, protesters have a hard time trusting allies. They sometimes enter a confrontation with authority politically isolated, having failed to reach out and open up the communication channels with people busy on other projects. Where all this comes crashing down is at the moment of state repression, which is when allies are often most needed and also when there is most confusion in the air. That’s when some radicals, who refused to reach out and trust their potential allies, say to the allies: “Trust us and do X, Y, and Z!” When the allies don’t immediately come to attention and salute, the beleaguered protesters become disappointed and even angry!

Worthwhile observations and overall a solid read. Much suggested for those interested in building a larger movement. (Not, of course, the be-all and end-all of anarchist practice, but it's still pretty important, as anarchists seem to forget sometimes.)

Going in Circles

A message to my fellow revolutionaries, brought to you by common sense:

Obama will not do anything to help the Left. If he gets elected, he will not "open space" for us to organize. He will not create discursive locations where we can begin enacting our agenda. If anything, history shows us the opposite is true; it is the ruling class's fear of the radical left that permits liberals to get elected.

Obama's comments this week where he repudiated Bill Ayers is a clear indication of how he will treat us. What's ironic is that when I met Bill in January, he sounded like he would be voting Obama. Barack's attempt to out-McCarthy Hillary will become old news to excited "revolutionaries" if he gets elected.

I've seen many people, including a big crew in SDS, foretelling the coming of a new age when we can "project" our agenda upon Obama. These folks believe that Obama's "Everyman" personality will allow us to try and push authentic leftist demands through him. We can demand change and when he doesn't give it to us, we can say "See, he's not the Obama you thought he was!" and gain the moral edge.

This, of course, is patently stupid. Obama is not just an easel. He is a human being, who can say "Fuck off, radicals." He has done so. He will continue to do so.

We already have the moral edge. We're fucking revolutionaries! We're fighting the worst, most detestable empire the world has ever known. And it's people like Barack Obama that make it so. If we only had to deal with straight-up evil fucks like Bush all the time, we would already have blown the roof of this farcical democracy. Obama comes from a long line of contemptible co-opters, the Democratic Party. He will change nothing, he will be nothing new, you cannot use him, he will use you. Yet somehow, every 4 years we somehow think things have changed. No, and they never will.

The Democrats are the enemy. Play with fire and you're going to get burned.

Look

I know that I'm supposed to blindly support everything which gets done in the name of "the movement," but I have to draw the line somewhere.

Blowing up buildings to stop military research? Okay, likely to get caught, but power to ya if you can get away with it.
Blowing up buildings to stop "genetic engineering of plants"? (as a suspected ELFer facing jail time is alleged to have done in 2001) Ridiculous! Indefensible! Misanthropic!

Okay, if she didn't do it, than she's another in a long line of political prisoners. But that seems unlikely to me.

I've noticed that primmies speak out of both sides of their mouths about the destruction of science. On one hand, they'll claim this woman is innocent. Which she could very well be. Let's face it, the State doesn't exactly have a good track record for treating radicals fairly. But while the defenders of the Green Scare arrestees are ranting and raving about how those cute white kids with a weird affinity for nature and firebombs have never done anything wrong in their lives, they let little smirks go by when you ask if they thought it was a good idea.

I can understand a response like that in public. It's pretty standard radical procedure to pretend that an imprisoned radical is a harmless liberal when soliciting money from rich liberals. Everybody pretended Rosa Parks was just a tired old lady, even though of course she was strategic and had a plan. But everybody in the Birmingham NAACP knew who she was and exactly what she was doing.

I mean, come on guys, everybody knows what you're doing. The FBI knows, Homeland Security knows, we know. You're trying to drag humanity back into the mystical past and aren't afraid to use firebombs to prove it. So why are you surprised when you get locked up? Because you didn't think that middle class white people could get nabbed? As to the innocent ones: maybe if your politics weren't centered around basically making lots of people die, you wouldn't get confused with your friends, err, one of those dirty terrorists.

Is this the same as rightwingers telling a rape victim that she should have expected it because she was wearing "provocative" clothing? I don't know. What do you think?

Finally!

An anonymous poster on the "anarchists" community on LiveJournal finally fucking says what I've been wanting to say for months:

Semantics is valuable, under certain circumstances. Colloquial language is too. When red anarchists here discuss "free trade" or "free market capitalism" or "laissez faire" or "privatization" in US economic policy, or in Euroimperial economic policy, or in WTO/GATT/NAFTA/LMNOP/QRSTUV... they're *almost never* discussing what you or [another anarcho-capitalist] refer to as market anarchy. They're referring, quite specifically, to a phenomenon in what you'd call mixed economies wherein clearly socialized (cost) states are manipulating a highly regulated, highly subsidized, highly protected market and calling it "free trade" by rewarding powerful private tyrannies (to borrow from Chomsky, since you cited him) with even greater power at the expense of the general public.

What drives me absolutely batty is *you fucking know* this is true. You know what's being discussed. There *are no valid semantic objections* because the words in use, while spelled and pronounced the same, are clearly different words with clearly different meanings. You don't like that these semirandom strings of vowels and consonants represent something other than what you'd want them to represent? Pick a new fucking set of vowels and consonants. You have a worse chance of reclaiming these terms than Buddhists in Europe have of reclaiming the swastika.

Thank you, anonymous wonder. Market anarchists shit a brick when we reds start railing against "capitalism," but of course they know exactly what we're talking about. We're not talking about their utopian "free market" without a government. We're talking about the very real, very oppressive market capitalist system of the present day. If they could get their heads out of their ideological asses for two seconds and acknowledge this, maybe we could start working together. But in the meantime, they'll just remain a pointless internet tendency.

The Failure of Idealism, or Ron Paul and Barack Obama are Evil

Okay, time to get a little self-righteous: Barack Obama is not going to save humanity. And Ron Paul is the Antichrist.

I'll explain.

Most of the liberals in this country, from spokespeople-for-oppressed-minority liberals to white-bourgeois-"radical" liberals, have jumped onto the Obama bandwagon, next stop Presidentville. Let's stop and consider for a moment. Even IF Obama gets elected, is he really gonna do anything? Aren't his hands tied by the financial interests that get him elected? Because, let's not mince words, everyone knows how dirty a game politics is. You simply can't get elected President of the United States unless you sell your soul to the Devil.

But why speculate? Let's review Obama's fantastic track record: 1. He's down with economic globalization, that horror of the global South. The Economist has him wanting to work to "deal with globalization," not "slow it down." Well, fuck that! Anyone who has ever heard or seen a damn thing about what globalized capitalism has done to our brothers and sisters in the "Third World" knows that it's sick shit. Globalization is only inevitable? Hah, tell that to the Zapatistas in Mexico!

2. He wants to invade the Sudan. In the Washington Post, he and Sam Brownback (yes, good ol' Creationism Sammy) wrote a piece where they say: "It has become clear that a U.N. or NATO-led force is required." Awesome! Just what I wanted for Christmas! Another invasion, another occupation, another bombing campaign. We'll call it Bosnia Part II: The Revenge of the Imperialists. Lemme say what you don't want to hear: The West invading Sudan to solve the Darfur genocide is EXACTLY THE SAME THING as the U.S. invading Iraq to solve the Saddam horror show. Sorry hippies, no difference at all. There's gotta be a better solution than blowing people up.

3. He voted to build a fucking wall on the Mexican border. I don't think we really need to say anything more about that. (True story: I've never been to Mexico, my folks don't have the money to travel much. But I've heard stories from people who've flown over the border and not a single one of them has seen a giant red line in the desert, demarcating "us" from "them." Fuck the border, says I.)

Now, let's move on the that patron saint of angry white men, Ron Paul. Ah yes, Senator Paul. He opposed the war right from the start, his rabid fanboys pronounce. Too true, but let's think a wee bit about what else he's said and done: 1. He was one of the first Republican senators to endorse Ronald "The Butcher" Reagan over Gerald "The Baker" Ford in '76. (In case you're wondering, Nixon is the Candlestick Maker.) Not that this is really such a big deal, since they were both evil. But whereas Ford was slimy-plotting-henchman evil, Reagan was full-blown straight-from-hell brimstone-smelling bat-head-eating evil. I mean, fuck, he was Ronald fucking Reagan!

2. He introduced and supports legislation (the tragi-comically titled "Sanctity of Life Bill") which would effectively overturn Roe vs. Wade (describing himself as "unshakably opposed to abortion." Yikes! The only thing I'm unshakably opposed to is Everybody Loves Raymond.) Now, this is already terrible, but it's part of his larger campaign to return things from federal control to state control. Ah, state's rights. The ever-so-common distraction of libertarians. Lemme say this loud and clear: Just because the boss/master/leader has the same accent as you, or the same skin color as you, or knows your neighborhood, doesn't make them not your boss/master/leader! "Same shit, different name," as the enlightened say. State's rights are not progressive, but a distraction from the real problem with goern'ment: government. "My" politicians in state congress are just as incurably bourgeois as "my" politicians in national congress.

3. He hearts capitalism. No, but seriously. At least Obama is a bureaucrat-lovin' AFL-CIO-ass-lickin' social democrat. Under all of Paul's rhetoric railing against the corporations, he thinks that capitalism is a fundamentally good thing. Bootstraps, rising to the top, poor getting what they deserve, the whole shebang! He's a libertarian insofar as he doesn't recognize that capitalism inherently oppresses workers and minorities, no further. He likes free trade, school prayer, hates amnesty for illegals and placing environmental concerns over business property rights. He's a Republican, fer chrissakes!

Idealism sucks. Idealism is the alienated line of thought which says that the world will magically work out if we believe hard enough: boom! Kim Jong Il becomes a Buddhist monk, poof! George Bush comes out, zap! white guilt goes away! Idealism is for hippies and rich kids. The sad truth is that society has rules which are not voted upon and cannot be changed no matter how hard you believe or how many verses of "We Shall Overcome" you sing. Now, we may not like that, but I think that the way to overcome these problems is not to wait for some superhero to save us from the clutches of peril.

This is the part where I exhort you to vote for someone else. Having listed all the qualities of these two gentlemen that I think you will find distasteful, I'm about to turn you on to someone who lacks these qualities. Well, tough luck there. But maybe, if you're feeling up to a challenge, you could try your hand at running your own life and solving your problems with the help your friends, family, coworkers and community, rather than waiting for some dude in a suit to do it for you. It's harder, I know, but it presents the only realistic way of getting rid of this messed up structure once and for all.