TotW: People Not Commonly Thought of as Anarchist

There are some people who have been claimed by my favorite anarchists, but who never called themselves that: Stirner and Nietzsche are two who leap to mind, Foucault's probably in there somewhere.

Ignoring (or not?) the ahistoricity of naming people something they wouldn't have called themselves, who have been your favorite non-anarchist influences, and why? What did they do or make or write or say or show or prove or all of the above that encouraged your anarchist thought and practice? What do you think they would say if they were alive to hear themselves claimed by anarchists (or at least an anarchist)? Would Nietzsche appreciate the love, or be irritated because mostly anarchists are still regrettable in the ways he called out during his life?

Definitely extra black stars for folks introducing new names to us! And for crying out loud, say why and what!

There are 211 Comments

Unfortunately i dont have any new names for you, but i will comment on what was said above:

I dont really under why Nietzche is seen as an anarchist, to me hes a mystic and his words veer towards both anarchy and cult of personality authority which is why hitler was able to use him.

Stirner, o n the other hand, will always have my support and i will always see his work as a major contribution to anarchist culture. It really is thorough in its ability to rip apart the bogus arguments people use to control other people's bodies and enslave them. How one lives their life in accordance to their ideas is another thing, stirner did that and payed the price for it, as anyone whos serious about anarchism will end up sacrificing at least a few privledges that society would otherwise grant them.

Nietzsche's sister Elizabeth's funeral was attended by Hitler. Why?

Elizabeth and her husband were early anti-semites, and had even started an anti-semitic commune in Paraguay. These boneheads are all "the Jews are invading Germany" so let's go be white folks invading some brown lands? Always contradictory these folks.

Anyway, as Nietzsche got sick, Elizabeth took over his estate. He was not a fan of anti-semites. He did not like her husband, or anything they were up to. However, she was able to help her husband go through his work and alter parts to fit their philosophy. "Will to Power" was NOT his creation. It was theirs. He had no control or say over it. Wonderful assholes, taking advantage of the sick to co-opt your own brother's work!

yeah, there's an amazing podcast episode from the unquiet dead series about this

they argue freddy saw the danger a bit too late and basically died protesting "the antisemitic swindle" as he watched them steal and misrepresent his ideas. that is to say, he probably should have foreseen how vulnerable some of his ideas were to being co-opted by the fash.

I really do like nietszche overall, i just am unable to interpret alot of what he said, all translations are questionable, its even worse when the person doing it has some sort of an agenda

... "As I see: Nietsche" by Stephanus Fabianovic... While Shanin and also other works can actually be ignored as postacademic or superficial...

omg huge fan! tell everyone involved with that project that they're awesome pls

The Stanford translations are good. Not trying to hide stuff that's politically incorrect today, nor any agenda like that - Kaufman often guilty of this. And the notes in the back are fascinating.

secondly, antifash trying to claim everyone they like as "just about to know how important antifash is" is some demagogery all up in here.

Nietzsche would definitely be irritated by police discrimination against black people, so would Stirner. They would both be appalled!!

Fredy Perlman. Pal of plenty of anarchists (hard to get more dyed-in-the-wool anarchist than Federico Arcos), wrote some of the most important anarchist books of the 20th century, but accepted no labels but cellist. Lorraine Perlman also remains a beacon of light.

Also: Henry David Thoreau, radical elements of the Abolitionist movement, Tolstoy, Brethren of the Free Spirit & other antinomian spiritual movements, William Blake

I read LBCs biography of fredy, i thought he seemed real smart but i wasnt terribly impressed by how he lived. Really liked "the continuing appeal of nationalism" though

Anyone talking about not being impressed by how someone lived - to write off their contribution to anti-civ critique - has Beautiful Soul Syndrome up the wazoo.

Shit, the entire Hobbyist Anarchy scene has it so bad that it becomes a constant consumerism Cold War searching for puritanical perfect positions.

Ironically that's never going to happen in an age of hypocrisy like global warming.

"Shit, the entire Hobbyist Anarchy scene has it so bad"

Do you mean as opposed to the Professional Anarchy scene?

Tell us more about your very strong opinions, Vampire Warfare.

has the beautiful soul syndrome he's talking about.

I never asked anyone to be impressed with how i live, I'm not. If Fredy Pearlman expected that out of other people then sorry, he was a narcissistic piece of shit. Yet, having read about him, I don't think he had beautiful soul syndrome. He just knew how to enjoy his life and critique other rebels. I particularly loved some of his swipes at the situationists, he saw them as being the mealy mouthed self-absorbed "artist revolutionaries" they tended to be.

Basically the reason i don't bother coming here a lot, or listening to Greg and Chisel's decent show, is simply due to the fact the comment section is all about accommodating trolls and douschebags.

Vampire Warfare, i fucking love that. Part of the reason i get addicted to coming here when i do is some of the flippant responses are like punch in the gut of comedy.

What, exactly, could he have done to "impress" you? He acted like a human in an inhuman world, trying to live out his ideas in ways that made sense to him. In doing so, he created well-crafted, diverse, beautiful books that continue to affect anarchist ideas half a century later. (Find a copy of Danielle Aubert's book on the Detroit Printing Co-op to see the range of things he helped create; it extends far beyond Black & Red titles.) He translated Debord into English & was in the streets in May '68. He maintained relationships with veterans of the Spanish Revolution, artists of the Living Theater, and the nascent anti-civilization tendency. He wrote visionary essays, critical theory, history, theater, novels.

Did he not break enough windows? Join enough mass organizations? Have the right politically correct politics? Or have the right incendiary anti-politics? What impresses you?

I don't mean to romanticize Fredy, but just want to challenge these sorts of dismissive attitudes that paint everyone as not good enough based on impossible and inconsistent standards. But this is the internet, so I'm probably better off talking to a wall.

"But this is the internet, so I'm probably better off talking to a wall."

Join the club, I really hate it how i can't say the things i just want to say without getting taunted, mocked, criticized, canceled on anarchist forums.

I am impressed by the fact that fredy pearlman managed to do what he loved without feeling too sorry for himself about it. To be honest with you, I'm only every impressed by people who can militantly confront some of the shittiest elements of the prison society we live in and live to tell about it. I'm also impressed by people who get raped in prison and manage to get out of there alive. I'm impressed by people who can get away with robbing 20 banks before getting caught. I'm impressed by women who have gotten fucked with and harassed by men on a regular basis yet who don't end up as total misandrists. I like craziness, excitement, humor. Don't try to either put me on a pedestal or whine about how I'm not good enough, cuz I'm tired of that shit. I'm also really sick of the story of "the american hero", give me more stories of psychopaths. Give me some new names, I'll do my best to learn about them. I knew that crap about Elliot Smith being a hipster was coming, and it was funny. It was also interesting to hear the perspective that maybe he was a psuedo-stirnerist...yet i doubt it cuz Stirner's writing is really dense and only a few of us enjoy it...

About me: My whole life I've been obsessed with philosophy and getting to understand the secrets of the universe, I'm also kind of an asshole too, sometimes my sense of humor and willingness to defend myself in conversations ends up making people feel like garbage. So just do me a favor and try to have compassion for every single creature on this planet. If you're on here to prop yourself up and torture people and laugh at those who "just don't get it" then PLEASE get the fuck off the internet. I want to see you do that to people in real life.

a crypto-stirnerite, not that he was a psuedo-stirnerist.

overall i've seen a lot of stirner's train of thought in a lot of other writing, which is something that made more more interested in stirnerism, and also the historical period he was in, John Henry McKay's biography is probably the best were going to get as stirner's history has largely been lost in time...

"Max Stirner's Political Spectrography" by Fabián Ludueña makes a fascinating story of the secret afterlife of Stirnerian thought in other philosophy. Basically his anti-specter thought itself becomes a kind of specter that haunts a series of philosophers after him: Nietzsche, Foucault, etc. He argues that they have read Stirner and are well aware that they are in dialogue with him, but for some reason none of the philosophers can say his name. Weird stuff.

It's been a while since I've read it, but the last part of it was basically a warning, that the spectres will return!

Another reason I like being anonymous, other than anxiously keeping other people from using my momentary thought patterns against me, is knowing that I'm nothing feels more honest than saying "I am a _____"

Fredy would be commonly considered an anarchist, though. It's an interesting question adjacent to the TOTW - people commonly considered anarchists but didn't call themselves such. Ursula K. LeGuinn maybe. Biófilo Panclasta? Anyone else?

Also FWIW I think saying I'm not an anarchist in the way Fredy or Biófilo did... is very anarchist :)

"I Love Love, and I Hate Hate."

the appreciation of poetry in a nutshell...

"I am not an anarchist. I am I. I do not abandon one religion for another, one party for another, one sacrifice for another. I am a freed, egoist spirit. I do as I feel. I have no cause but my own.
People in Pamplona say that in the final days of his life, Biófilo Panclasta was escaping the old folks’ home and, with much pain and difficulty, climbing the church tower. Once there, with shaking hands and a nostalgic gaze, he withheld the movement of the clock’s hands, which so carefully marked the passage of time. The people looked, and said mechanically: “It’s that crazy Biófilo again, trying to stop time!” - Seven Years Buried Alive

great image.

that's the part of the book i most clearly remember...

if there was an anarchist who i would like to emulate in my old age...

Zapata is at least as interesting to look at as far as what anarchist adjacent revolutions might look like, and barely more disappointing than Makhno. I particularly like the story of how after storming the president's palace Pancho Villa was trying to pose in his special chair while Zapata wanted to burn it down, "to put an end to ambitions".

Krishnamurti gets brought up a lot, from reading him pre-anarchy what recollections I have definitely square with that.

Krishnamurti was a big fan of Nietzsche. My granma had a few of Krishie's books which I used to read when I was in my early teens. Cool guy, creepy looking spooky eyes though, like he's spaced out on acid, if you know what I mean ? ;)

Krishnamurti was not an anarchist, didn't believe in anarchy and used the word anarchy in a derogatory way.
Same with Nietzsche.

If someone uses the word anarchy pejoratively then they obviously don't understand what anarchy means in the political sense. Either that, or they simply don't believe in or subscribe to anarchism, and therefore would not identify themselves as an anarchist.

There are numerous quotes from K demonstrating he doesn't think highly of anarchy, which he equates with violence and chaos. He was educated in Britain and knew at least something about political ideologies, so there's no excuse for him not knowing what anarchism was in the political sense. When using the word anarchy in a political context, he must have been aware of its double meaning. But he chose over and over to use it only in its violent and chaotic sense.

Just a few examples:

"What is a human being to do? Is the crisis intellectual, economic or national with all the poverty, confusion, anarchy, lawlessness, terrorism and always the threat of the bomb in the street? " -- The Flame of Attention

"If man had set out deliberately to bring about chaos in the world he could not possibly have succeeded as much as the present actual state of destruction, hatred and anarchy. This is the result of past generations; the lives, the attitudes, the values and the superstitions of the past generations are responsible for this chaos. " -- Public talk in New Delhi 1973

"Also we went into the question of why does this constant conflict between man and man exist, what is the root of it, what is the cause of all this chaos, anarchy, near anarchy, bad governments, each nation preparing for wars, one guru more important than the other, and so on." -- Public talk in Bombay 1983

"Each one of us has contributed to that chaos, to the mess, the disorder, the anarchy that is going on." -- Public talk in Madras 1982

I don't see any authoritarian, or even republican democrat, advocating such a principle.

Krishnamurti clearly did not understand or use the word anarchy in the same way you or I would. No biggie. Anything he appears to be hostile to in those quotes is not aimed at an individual identity, such as anarchist or revolutionary (though there is a conversation with David Bohm where he does talk about the of-the-time-'revolutionaries' and how they wouldn't understand what he and Bohm were talking about because of attachment to identity). In the supplied quotes, K is using a loose net of words that may or may not make sense to his listeners; convey a whiff of what he is pointing at with words. Given that most of his quotes are from dialogues given in non-native-english speaking locales, K very well may be recognizing that there is translation involved to the non-native english speaking folks. He is casting a wide net with words basically listing "things that I think are 'bad' in the world" (that could be its own conversation). Regardless, this thread is about non-anarchists, which you are helping prove that he was not one. Thank you.

On a related but different note, one of the aspects of Krishnamurti's thinking I find most analogous to anarchist theory is Krishnamurti's position on identity. He is quite like Stirner in his conception.

Wow, you are really reaching for excuses. People in India in the 1970s-80s knew perfectly well what anarchy and anarchism meant. There was no translation problem.

I studied K's teachings for 15 years, went to talks in Ojai, Victoria, Canada, and Brockwood Park, UK. and was close friends with people who knew him well. The authority he talks about is almost always in the context of spiritual and religious authority. He only rarely railed against political authority, and only because he saw that politicians were not 'enlightened' and had no love in their hearts. Which essentially circles back to spirituality. He always told the students in his K schools that they must obey their teachers. The curriculum of his schools included his own teachings, but he also insisted on academic excellence so that his students were well prepared to get good jobs. This was his idea of revolution. It's safe to say that not one of his schools has ever produced an enlightened teacher like K supposedly was.

So much for being against all forms of authority.

K is against anarchy, but is just talking about it as something that people don't want and are concerned about...the second one overall indicates he doesn't think anarchy is good. I don't necessarily think anarchy is good either, i just consider civilization overall to be unjustifiable unless we are talking only in terms of human survival...

and global warming may even call that into question.

"i just consider civilization overall to be unjustifiable unless we are talking only in terms of human survival.."

so you think civilization guarantees - or even gives a real assist to - human survival? (even leaving out human caused climate change)

not criticizing, just find it interesting.

don't call me names or shitjacket me, the things i do are pretty unpredictable when that hits the right soft spot for the moment ;-)

what i was saying is that in terms of rationality and logic, civilization makes total sense when you think of it like that. Collectivism, the greater good, sacrificing the weak for the strong. I think that's why all civilizations came about, harsh survival conditions, opportunists taking advantage of a general feeling of weakness, normally a patriarch as the authority symbol (manliness, strength, nationalism, etc.). For example, think of how christopher columbus (spaniards being pretty advanced in terms of civ progression) thought the islanders were stupid because they just gave him so much cool stuff. They gave him the stuff cuz life was fine for them, they didn't care. And just overall observing how in my current era protestant desires for "work" sooner or later gives birth to a very misery psychology, on a larger scale "the logic of scarcity" more removed from that colonialism of the europeans...

that's probably the last de-colonizer rant you'll get out of me!

one things for certain, only a fucked up civilization would make jackets out of shit!

thanks for staying here, you are a tuff and cynical old man!

The concept of "debt" is a capitalist construct and should be deleted from the collective psyche of all Westerners.
-the Economic-nihìlist

thats cute and almost funny but not what I meant, troll on!

That you can repay us by learning to stay away from the keyboard.

- your best friend, EVER

Straight-jackets are worse. Its pretty well the end of the road if you get put in one of those, unless you are Houdini or double jointed.

That's not evidence K was a fan of Nietzsche, that's just a comparison of a few similar ideas. K never mentions Nietzsche and it's highly unlikely he ever read Nietzsche.

He did when he was educated in England. Every English library and college had Nietzsche's books, and he was on every philosophy degree carriculum as compulsory reading. He was one of the Big5 thinkers that philosophy 101 requires its students to read. Give me some more time and I'll search for definite proof, thanks for not doubting me in retrospect.

you think those people were "disappointing"? what must you think of all us never-done-do-nothings?
maybe your standards are a bit high?

Nah, Zapata's just disappointing if you're looking for the story of a consistent anarchist, but that if Makhno's worth anarchist attention despite his own contradictions, Zapata is too.

"consistent anarchist" lololol

good one!

Are what come to mind. Some people here have lashed out at me for using their names, one of the things i really love about these ancient writings is they seem to calm me down everytime i read them, they're magical.

One finds as they age people's hot air is often nothing personal, just projection.

There are a few taoist-anarchists in these parts. Wu-wei is anarchic. Humans were never in control. Even if there was one, humans do not have access to a God's Eye view of reality. It appears there is no central intelligence. Reality just continually unfolds without beginning or end.

then be sure read either of these magical masters the next time you feel compelled to unleash a flood of spam comments onto your fellow anarchists

i second j. krishnamurti. green anarchy highlighted him in one of their "reclaiming ... for anarchy" pieces.

george carlin acknowledged being an anarchist toward the end of his life (he argued with his daughter over it), but most would not think of him as such.

i know john lennon leaned harder to the left than many anarchists (myself included) would have affinity with, but "imagine there's no country...imagine no religion...imagine no possessions" sure sounds like a critique of the 3 primary pillars of civilization (imo): state/governance, religion, capitalism/economics.

thoreau maybe.

check out this clip of the definitely anarchist-adjacent George Carlin
this is clearly based on an anarchist essay that appeared in anarchy magazine, to which Carlin subscribed for many years. of course there's no way to prove that he got the basic idea (if you vote, you have no right to complain) from the magazine, but his routine appeared after that article.

Krishnamurti sure is the most underrated unofficial anarchist in recent history. He started the idea of intentional eco-communities at his own gardens, before any hippie douche published books about it, and maybe the hippie movement is what sucked in his gigantic influence the most.

Also a major thorn on the side of OTO cultists.

He never started the eco-community movement. That was started by the Diggers in the 17th century. Krishnamurti was also never an anarchist.

Not sure where people are getting this nonsense about Krishnamurti from.

He didn't formally declare that he was an anarchist, he wasn't into using Western political terminology. Sociology was his field and he used the term "anarchy" in its simplest definition meaning chaotic social arrangement. Likewise he never used the term "capitalist" however his speeches and writing describe them as power hungry and greedy materialists lacking in compassion who authoritatively manipulate humanity and nature.

In Central and South America there is a non Anarchist group called Individualists Tending Toward the Wild that could be claimed by Anarchists. I realise that they were Anarchists originally. They like nature.

Are they Maoists? My MLM comrades keep telling me Mao used to be an anarchist and loved nature too so that'd make a lot of sense!

elliott smith has been a huge influence on me for his diy ethos and stubborn yet quiet way of doing what he wanted. no idea if he ever engaged with anarchist ideas. his song "everything means nothing to me" is similar to stirner's chapter "all things are nothing to me," so maybe he read stirner? i know he had a self-designed bachelor's degree in "politics." also his love of ferdinand the bull.

Sorry I just didn't yet realized how "DIY" had anything to do with extreme levels of socially-induced self-hatred, depression and suicide. He looks more like a proto-millenial emo, 20 years ahead of his time... out of tune guitars, crappy garage sound, '60s soft chorus vocals, hipster aesthetics...

"out of tune guitars, crappy garage sound"

Not that Elliott was an anarchist, but you have clearly never listened to Elliott Smith or are just so deep into your own fartbong that you're trying to emphasize your incorrect point with nonsense thinking nobody will notice. Shame on you.

this is really good in my opinion, i'm a guitarist and the guitars are not out of tune. Might be a hipster, who cares. Not a perfect singer but that doesn't really matter either. Before i had heard some of his stuff on spotify and it wasn't too attractive to me but that doesn't really mean anything because my feelings about music tend to be pretty momentary overall.

Forget about the guitar work of Elliot's, its the mood that's conveyed, one of depressing whining surrender. AARGH makes me wanna SCREEEEEEEEEEAM STFUUUUUUU.
Give my John Lydon anytime.

Pol Pot comes to mind as a purist anarchist, really deconsructed bourgeois values to the max, was a tad violent though towards the end.

definitely not an anarchist, but her urge to "stay with the trouble," and her rejection of purity, and her (academically-trained, but still) connecting of things, certainly remind me of many anarchists i care about. the reminders that we are always in relation...
can't say i "like" her, exactly, but she provokes me in anarchist ways.

My mom was the greatest anarchist influence for me. She fed me snacky food and drinks in the basement, paid the internet fees, always screamed "FUCK THE GOVERNMENT" when politicians came on the TV. She was a great inspiration for me .

doug stanhope is not anarchist per se, but i find his perspective strongly aligned. his critiques are usually spot on, he disses left and right non-stop, super anti-pc and cancel culture. his critique of, and suggestions for, the occupy movement was fantastic.

Here's some.

Grant Morrison. If you haven't read The Invisibles, just do it. Anarchy and order are in conflict at a cosmic, magical level. Simply awesome, cannot recommend more highly. He may actually consider himself an anarchist, I dunno. But I don't think many people think "anarchist" when they think Morrison, in the way they do with Alan Moore for example.

Artaud, obviously. I need to read more Artaud.

Oscar Wilde.

Walter Benjamin is not widely considered anarchist, but if you really read him it becomes clear how anarchic he is. Sad how uncontested the Marxist appropriation has been. The most transparently anarchist text is the Critique of Violence, but I recommend reading him in labrythine ways, and stuff will pop out at you all over. Especially anything that touches on Jewish mysticism -- this is where the anarchy comes through for me more so than the political-cultural writing (not that you can cleanly separate these at all).

On a related note, Kafka cannot fail to appear in this thread. He was involved in anarchist stuff in his early 20s or so, but is not at all widely considered an anarchist, and most of his life outside of work and family was in Jewish religious life, so I think he counts. If the The Trial, The Castle, and (especially) The Zurau Aphorisms (!!!) don't illuminate for you the concordance between anarchy and messianic Judaism, then nothing will short of the coming of the messiah.

Nietzsche, most of all. Let's not diminish the fact (as I think the Nietzche and Anarchy book did!) that not only did he write poorly of anarchists, it would not be wrong to consider him elitist, pro-aristocratic, or pro-monarchist. But those who don't read him -- and most of those who do -- are doomed to misunderstand him. For the purposes of this teeny tiny paragraph I'll just say that I think Emma Goldman got it right: anarchists should read Nietzsche because anarchists are also aristocrats of the spirit. Or as Novatore clarified: communization of material wealth, individualization of spiritual wealth. Will leave it here but happy to engage w/ comments.

People are not commonly thought of as anarchist.
People do not commonly think of themselves as anarchists.
People who commonly think of themselves as anarchists are commonly not thought of as anarchists by others who may or may not think of themselves as anarchists.
People do not commonly think of anarchism or anarchists or anarchy.
People who think of themselves as anarchists commonly want to think of others who did not think of themselves as anarchist to have been anarchists of sorts so that they feel in good company, or validated, or at least not so alone since people who think of themselves as anarchists are uncommon and thinking of people who think of themselves as anarchists is uncommon even among anarchists who commonly think of people who did not think of themselves as anarchists since these are more common and that is also a more common activity.

Animals, plants and other life-forms are not commonly thought of as anarchists and many of them are even more anarchistic than many people who think of themselves as anarchists.

Bread Santa's Britannica article on Anarchism has that great paragraph at the end on "the penetration, on the one hand, of anarchist ideas into modern literature, and the influence, on the other hand, which the libertarian ideas of the best contemporary writers have exercised upon the development of anarchism." That may be where I first encountered Jean-Marie Guyau and Alfred Fouillée. Guyau's "Sketch of Morality Independent of Obligation or Sanction" is fascinating—and not so heavy on "morality" in the senses we usually kick about. And Walt Whitman always tops my personal list of not-quite-anarchists.

"Harned said something which disparaged my politics. W[alt Whitman] said: 'Horace [Traubel] is a good deal of an anarchist.' 'And you, Walt—what are you?' He laughed but answered at once: 'I must be a good deal of an anarchist, too—though anarchist only tells a part of the story.'" (With Walt Whitman in Camden, V. 2)

Gabriel Dumont. Contemporary of Bakunin, except in the Canadian west before it was Canada. Strong defender of autonomy for the peoples of the area, led an armed rebellion against the expansion of Canada and built an anti-state confederacy of native nations. Attempted to develop conservation measures to protect buffalo populations.

Very good novel about Dumont, written by an anarchist: Gabriel Dumont in Paris by Jordan Zinovich (University of Toronto, 1999). Another interesting figure from the North West Rebellion is Honore Jaxon, who was sent to an insane asylum after the rebellion, escaped into the US, championed the Metis cause, befriended Voltairine de Cleyre, campaigned for the Haymarket defendants, and was later a radical organizer for the Western Federation of Miners in western Canada. Good bio: Honore Jaxon: Prairie Visionary by Donald Smith (Coteau Books, 2007). Also mentioned in the Haymarket Scrapbook.

Its interesting how much the oldest roots of anarchism in canada, and the only uninterrupted tradition from the classical days until now, is from the northwestern métis. Big shout out to all métis anarchists still holding it down across the country

Not really friendly to anarchists, but someone who managed that much attempted merging of the low and high brow. Making theory more accessible and popular culture more interesting. I think many here will, like me, find his conclusions and proposals unappealing but find his critiques insightful. Like everything else, take what is useful, discard what is not.

Just curious. I would think that he would be since a lot of his personal beef was with mass society and systems of control, as is the case with a lot of green anarchists.

I actually was the one who said he was a "tech-fascist" and "primitivist-fascist" in the eco-fascism TOTW, I only say this because in his essay, he talks about "revolutionaries having as many babies as possible", he seems to only attribute the inferiority complex to leftists, and his use of violence was not defensive but there to draw attention to his essay, as he admits. Certain leftists have accused him of being homophobic but i didn't see any evidence of that.

A couple months ago i watched the documentary "Unabomber in His Own Words", i thought overall was pretty good and entertaining but contained only a couple snippets of the interview they recently did with him. Funnily enough John Zerzan is interviewed in clean cut glory. Was not expecting that since this website left the impression on me that he was basically just a grouchy scenester, lol. I think I'm gonna look and see if theres a whole recording of that interview or a transcript.

I was actually before you in the comments on the TOTW calling TK an eco-fascist, adding psychopath.

I've always considered Kaczynski an anarchist, and thought it was pretty commonly accepted until a couple years back. I've heard Anti-Tech Revolution gets kind of weirdly tankie but it sounds like nobody took that one too seriously.

he just wasn't very good at it, in part of the documentary one of the things that he says during the interview reminds me more of fascism than any part of his essay: he talks about how it's not necessary to convince the majority, but he only needs a committed minority to combat the technological system.

It also makes me reflect on this: if we as anarchists remain dedicated to be ideologically pure and principled, isn't this already the death knell for any sort of large scale changes/destructions to the system that are required for us to have any sort of meaningful escape from fascism, money cults, alienation?

The only thing i really want to keep more fully dedicating myself to is being a happy non-sadistic/masochistic egoist, i don't really know how to pull this off but i guess that's alright.

Ted is definitely an anarchist in terms of the world he'd like to see - he is just willing to kill a lot of people to get there. To be fair, I think this is at least implicitly true of all revolutionary politics (which is why I am not for violent rev). Also, being anti-left doesn't make you non-anarchist, since there is such a thing as right-wing anarchism whether people like it or not. And Ted does dunk on conservatives by saying they are morons who can't see that traditional values are incompatible with limitless technological and economic growth.

agree with you about "the rev" but isn't there a place for those of us who understand violent power enough to know the rivers of blood would be hypothetically necessary but don't see why that means we should accept the currently also gushing rivers of blood?!

Speaking quite so clearly about "the gushing rivers of blood" is that if that shall come to pass, it most likely will not be anarchists doing it.

I do think in nature, violence has a very clear purpose, and the fact that "normies" cant come to terms with that is actually very scary to me.

The best text I've seen on violence is "might is right", its actually a lot more educational than anything written by eco-extremists, but I guess now adays it would just get misconstrued as fascist.

more deets pls? "might is right" by who? links perhaps? thankless work on behalf of internet strangers if you're in the mood?

"might is right" is fascist garbage by ragnar redbeard that is adored exclusively by garbage fascist neckbeards.

But the fascists know way more about the practical uses of violence than the left anarchists and the scenester rejects known as the EEs. I vould recommend you learn from us my darling, or ve might CRUSH you like squealing little pig!

substantiate your claim that "fascists know way more about the practical uses of violence than the left anarchists and the scenester rejects known as the EEs."

this narrative that fascists and "the rightwing" are all super soldier masters of violence and highly organized militia is a spooky story liberals tell their children and each other to psych themselves out of joyful resistance.

most of these neckbeard ubermensch are just hateful larpers more worried about their blood thinner prescriptions and how they're going to pay off their credit card bills for all the purchases of tactical gear they will never use except when larping with their buddies on the weekends playing paint ball or standing around in the hot sun with their fashy flags for photo ops to share on Facebook.

way to spread the myth, tough guy

Yup, nihilists have the monopoly in violence, always have.

going to have to agree with that piece of shit. don't think it's a "myth" that the vast majority of the modern left and its anarchist offshoots* are woefully unprepared for the practicalities and realities of violence. what do you even gain by pretending it's a myth?

*(I won't bother including those of you who love your books and theories but disavow the leftist legacy entirely because you're so few that it's completely irrelevant and yes, I said this to piss you off but its also true)

The reactionaries almost completely orient their identities around violence, even when they're just poseur LARPers who wouldn't ever actually do shit. Compare and contrast with the tangible activity of most of the bernie soc dems, environmentalists and even the majority of anarchists and antifascists. Would you describe them as ruthless and credible threats to their enemies or … no? lol

Now everyone, let it be said that i do not mean the churchianity that christianity is today, I'M TALKING ABOUT REBEL JESUS who was calling for a life beyond good and evil, who was alot like Nietzsche and told everyone that god did not exist in the external world but was inside all of us. The original individualist.

But I will also add Vine Deloria Jr. Because his article on anthropologists was super clarifying for me about how we all are agents in a moving space, and he also talks about the difference between space-based worldview and time-based ones, which I'd never thought about before.

it seems that male authors seem to get promoted and popularized more heavily than the female ones. I've been wanting to read emma goldman's autobiography for a while since some of the quotes i've seen of hers really resonated with me.

no one is just talking about authors - musicians, poets, activists, scientists, people in your life... and emma is an anarchist, so still not addressing the question. have some coffee and try again.

On the stove was cranked up.

As a reminder, I dont come here to feel like I'm a student in class. If I wanted that, I would start trying to figure out if it was worth my time to attend my local university.

no women? i guess Donna Haraway doesn't count?

but there's something provocative about your question nonetheless. anarchist women often get overlooked even among anarchist nerds. so here's a shout out to a few of my personal favorites...
Voltairine de Cleyre
Louise Michel
Emma Goldman
Kaneko Fumiko

non-anarchist women who are interesting:
Michelle Bernstein
Leonora Carrington
Penelope Rosemont

A lot of women in the early socialist movements were anti-authoritarian, but didn't adopt the anarchist label. Among the more interesting historical figures on the margins of anarchism: Jenny P. d'Héricourt, Jeanne Deroin, André Léo (Victoire Léodile Béra), Séverine (Caroline Rémy), Flora Tristan. But there were also lots of women who expressed anarchist beliefs, and were even fairly widely published, who are still almost entirely unknown.

one woman (donna h) doesn't count as "women." and neither of the responses answer the question either, but merely prove that you know some names. good for you?
the question includes, what about them was meaningful for you.
if the readers on anews mostly don't have non-anarchist women who were meaningful to them, then that is what it is, and perhaps that's a good thing to know about ourselves.

Dora Marsden. not sure if they identified as anarchist specifically, but was influenced heavily by Stirner.
Saidiya Hartman has written about ungovernability, a synonym often used by those sharing critiques with anarchists (usually in the academy), but not explicitly identifying as such, like their colleague Fred Moten.

since other people are making my point for me better than I could myself:
meaningful TO YOU, what and/or why?
and now I'm moving on. thank you all for playing.

many witches, herbalists, and healers of all sorts not written about in His-story?

I believe chisel gave us a name earlier? Not willing to be cautious about generalizations today?

chick is only one to give name of chick. and you post that as some kind of rebuttal.
fucking awesome.

Unfortunately it was hosted by a dude

I don't miss him horribly b/c I only met him once but he was definitely an inspiration for me and how I deal with my often dissatisfying life

charles baudelaire: other than being a visionary poet who threatened the very essence of french society through his writing—which has been influential on pretty much every poet since him—baudelaire took part in working-class uprisings and in the resistance to the bonapartist military coup. also... baudelaire was a flâneur (without which no concept of dérive would exist (says me!)!!).

the crowd is his element, as the air is that of birds and water of fishes. his passion and his profession are to become one flesh with the crowd. for the perfect flâneur, for the passionate spectator, it is an immense joy to set up house in the heart of the multitude, amid the ebb and flow of movement, in the midst of the fugitive and the infinite. —baudelaire

of course i'll add arthur rimbaud (shut up, "buT hE lAtEr trAdED cOffEE fROm Africa!1!" guy), percy shelley (shut up, "bUt hE sTarTed wItH fAmILY wEALth!1!" guy), and (obvs) mary wollstonecraft to the list. also thumbs up to the anon that mentioned kafka and wilde in the same list. let's be frens.

yay poets! :D

That was I who put kafka and wilde together in the list. I hail the monsterous poet!

I agree with most romantic-era poets being unassumed anarchos, including the RimBeaudelaire infernal duo. And Blake... Shelley... Sand... even Byron....Those were fantastic minds with boundless imaginaries, and the French poets especially were flaming nihilistic warriors.

Tho do not overrate poets, as what came up later in the 20th century, with the likes of Proust, Yeats, Pound, Eliot was more on the fascistic or at least pro-establishment side of things. The troubadours of the State somewhat took over the milieus at some point, and only the neo-nihilistic charges of Dada and surrealism could rival them.

The growth of leftist totalitarianism of the early 20th century produced a counter right expansion which enveloped otherwise neutral poetic/alternative camps into their fold as pro-establishment, that's what the self-preservation instinct tends to do during apocalyptic events such as WWI and WWII, so "troubadours of the State" is a tad excessive description, though the neo-nihilist tag is spot-on. That's where I place Dali.

and very likely THE usual blowhard on this site.

Troubadour of the State was entirely accurate for fascist "poets" like Pound and Yeats, and Dali wasn't neo-nihilist, but a reactionary, self-absorbed megalomaniac who took the side of the Franco regime.

The events in Spain were dominated by Stalinists on one side and Fascists on the other, both totalitarian, and the alternative for any Spaniard caught in the crossfire was to take sides, OR BECOME YOUR OWN AUTHORITY. Dali was merely apolitical and amoral and an individualist, and if neo-nihilism isn't accommodating to these qualities, we have a different scope upon the cosmos. Orwell said that the biggest recollection he had about the Spanish Civil War was of excrement in the syndicalist anarchist camp.
If you can define "reactionary" more,,,,but no, you can't, its a clarion call for leftists because the term is ambiguous and vacant of any significant values outside of being used to describe an enemy.
Dali's paintings were revolutionary and superior to anything ever done by previous decorative and imitation bourgeois paint brush hackers.

Dali was a talented artist, i'll give you that. But have you ever read his book on modern art where he shits on all of his old homies calling them evil anarchists out to destroy beauty and praises himself for standing up for catholicism and tradition? That is reactionary (yearning and exaltation for an idealized past ) by definition bucko. Miró, Ernst, Picasso, Man Ray, Buñuel were much better examples of practical anarchism in art, and much better people than Sr. Avida Dollars.

>denouncing people for being arrogant and vain

>being a Stirner sheep

gotta choose one, my snowflake

Interesting bit of anarchist history: Some of the modernists, including I think some that you mentioned, were published in Marsden's The Egoist. The full scans of the paper are online somewhere. Loads of Joyce, Pound, Eliot if I recall correctly. Some egoist writing, but more literature than anything else. I guess Pound was also steering the ship along with Marsden.

I look to myself, at myself, for the anarchist. I AM MY OWN GREATEST INSPIRATION FOR MY ANARCHY!!
Why should I read other's words and ideas which suits THEIR situation? WHAT ABOUT MY OWN UNIQUE SITUATION?
No, don't expect to miraculously gain the anarch spirit of life by reading about it. LIVE THE DAMN ANARCHIST WAY AND EXPERIENCE IT YOURSELVES!

did he ever call himself an anarchist, or was that just the fans/historians who took an interest in how he lived. Just curious.

I believe Proudhon first used the title, so its as recent of the modern political epoch. Previously it was a scarcely used referrence to a riotous and chaotic social event, unless the ancient Greeks used the term it has derived from, "anarkic" to describe gangs or wild clans of natives without a chief or leader.
AND THAT IS I, WHO BOW TO NO AUTHORITY, or don't read tooo much into the left/right binary mindsets common in democracies.

explicitly anarchic figures, i believe he died in the 20's. I'm pretty sure he was inspired by stirner in his writing. One of the things i like about him in particularly was that he wasn't a mobster, yet he was certainly someone you wouldn't want to fuck with.

Greek philosophers overall are very interesting to me, because it seems like they layed the foundation for a lot of our current western ideologies and concepts...some anarchists, especially the person who wrote this one very interesting article for the Anvil, have a thing for the cynics.

Yeaa he knew about stirner. There's alot common between cynicism and anarchism, from wiki ---
" Cynics, the purpose of life is to live in virtue, in agreement with nature. As reasoning creatures, people can gain happiness by rigorous training and by living in a way which is natural for themselves, rejecting all conventional desires for wealth, power, and fame. Instead, they were to lead a simple life free from all possessions."
Also its similar to many indigenous lifestyles.

That gets me to thinking who exactly Thoreau had in mind when he talked about the "no government men" in Civil Disobedience. Never heard anything about him being in contact with anarchists though timelines are about right for him to know people like Warren and Spooner. He uses the term in a way that suggests his audience will be familiar with some crowd of state abolitionists, whether history's written em down or not.

and recluses are bound to say more anarchisty thingies, look at TK. He was well aware of the fact that people sorta don't control technology, even though i think a lot of the people who go around spray painting "TK was right" are little sheeple. About what was he right about? Fucking turn off your misanthropy for a second and listen more closely to your heroes.

A lot of people come to anarchist conclusion on their own, like when i was younger i was just so fucking mad at the school i was forced to go to, my parents, my peers, constantly, but i had no understanding of bureaucracy or technology. Being a 90's child i was getting a heavy dose of education on both. So i resorted to stereotypical bullying/inferiority complex when i could get away with it.

One of my lefty friends around my age critiqued Thoreau in saying that he had his mom wash his clothes, i believe i was talking to him about the problem with the self-sufficiency mindset. I can't stand his writing to be honest, too 19th century academic.

But idk, i kinda want to start my own anarchist history hub because psychology to me is the shit, and spooks...

I think your friend hit the nail on the head. Thoreau the "quaintly eccentric" rich kid neckbeard, squatting on the back of his parent's property while they rolled their eyes and did his laundry, is probably pretty close to the mark.

You're completely wrong about all of this, though I doubt the goal was to add any critical thought or facts to the discussion.

Thoreau lived on Emerson's property for a time; Walden was always seen as a temporary experiment. Thoreau helped keep his family afloat economically after his father died. The "his mom did his laundry / cooked his meals" thing is absurd and false. Thoreau maintained a relationship with his family, so I'm sure they shared food, particularly when his sisters came to Abolitionist meetings held at his cabin. Read Rebecca Solnit's essay "Mysteries of Thoreau, Unsolved" for a more thorough debunking of these falsities.

I bother to defend Thoreau because these lies are thrown at him every generation, so that people can ignore his words. These attempts to discredit him are idiotic logical fallacies and nothing more. The latest iteration is that he needs to be cancelled because he's a man and "what about the women." Never mind that Thoreau never married and therefore had no wife whose unpaid labor made his writing possible, unlike almost every other male writer of the time (cancel Melville, Hawthorne, Poe!); or that Thoreau had positive, collaborative relationships with his sisters, who were active abolitionists (& Sophia edited Thoreau's works after his death).

But, sure, keep name calling and spouting ignorance.

Okay, maybe the details were incorrect, but Thoreau still comes across as a DAMNED BORINĢ liberal missionary.

In what way was he a liberal? A missionary? I'm not sure where the "missionary" accusation is coming from. You offer no substantial argument, only vague language like "comes across as" (to whom? based on what?) and caps-lock emphasis because the previous attempt at making false claims was refuted.

As far as "boring" goes: why is this a common word thrown at writers and artists by critics? As if the purpose of Walden is to entertain. People's brains have been so warped by entertainment and social media that complex or difficult ideas, older films/books/music, etc are all deemed boring because people lack patience to assess art and literature with any rubric but base mass media values.

I read his complete works, and his essays WERE LIKE SERMONS. And the anecdotes, which count for 80% of his content, are copied out of libraries where he spent most of his bourgeois days. His belief in democracy SEALED THE VERDICT! A liberal by association.

Excuse me, but do you mean boring in the Dickensian or Agathie Christie way?

truth is I don't know that much about it so, I'm just talking out my ass

thx for the info, I will reshuffle my shitty assumptions about dead people!

Whoa, the dude had tuberculosis and had experienced hardtimes, and died at 44, cut some slack!

Thoreau used to admire Emerson and those Romantic writers who extolled the simple pastoral pleasures and noble savagery, very idealistic and a yuppy/trendy if viewed by todays values, and which extreme academical verbage. Reminds me of another admirer of Emerson and the transcendental school of thinkers at the time who posted on this site named Emile, who was very fond of lengthy rambling marathons.

Had some good kinda green-anarchic poetry, but transcendentalism kinda feels like early 20th new age drivel, just the name by itself...

It seems very likely that Thoreau at least knew of Spooner; they both personally knew John Brown. There were a lot of antinomian ideas (some being, in everything but name, Christian anarchism) coming out of the Abolitionist movement that Thoreau could be referring to.

Phillip K. Dick is probably the writer I've read the most of. I don't think he ever called himself an anarchist, but he was extremely distrustful of the state and was wildly imaginitive in his writing. Clans of the Alphane Moon is my favorite, it's about an insane asylum moon colony twenty years after all the doctors fled or were killed, and a resulting caste system based on diagnoses of mental illness. Radio Free Albemuth is also great, if I remember correctly it's about alien transmissions attempting to overthrow the American government. I think his writing provides a departure point for ontological anarchism in the same way Ursula le Guin's Lathe of Heaven does, which is to say it can re-validate the intimate relationship between psyche (for lack of a better term) and reality (for lack of a better term).

While it doesn't hold the same allure to me anymore, Phil Hine, and a lot of the chaos magic tendency, is pretty anarchic. The tendency I like is a kind of radical agnosticism that uses positionality/belief as an explicitly temporary tool. There aren't really any rules about what you're allowed to do or how to do things, the question is what's effective. If you want to try to lose your mind just to see, I'd suggest the Psuedonomicon.

I move that Houdini be regarded as an individualist anarchist because he could showed us we can escape from handcuffs, and he exposed fake spooks and myths.

you are so right anon 11:36. these anarchists' time would be so much better spent on important 2020 things like: 24/7 activism and complaining to non-activists about not doing activism 24/7. because it is a KNOWN FACT of ANARCHIST SCIENCE that it is impossible to do more than one thing at once. one can not discuss 19th century non-anarchists AND also be properly anarcho-struggling at the *same time*!!!!

Who said anarchists had to do anything with importance?
Free to do whatever, fuck your priorities.

Since nobody has mentioned them already, Jean-Paul Sartre and Wilhelm Reich are some notable writers that significantly contributed to anti-authoritarian thought: Reich for his psychological analysis of the sexually repressed reactionary mindset and the vicious cycle of patriarchal authoritarianism; Sartre for his ruminations on the meaning and consequences of personal freedom and the impetus for revolt. There are countless others that could rightly be considered as "anarchists" in spirit as well, like "marxist" writers Paul Lafargue or Alexander Bogdanov, avant-garde cultural figures like Antonin Artaud or George Bataille, and even official Anarchist Federation members like the chanson singer Georges Brassens and the horror-sexploitation director Jean Rollin. I could go on but those are just a few personal favs worth exploring.

And above all the divine marquis Donatien Alphonse François de Sade.

An obvious one who is not generally considered to be an Anarchist is Marx. I don't agree with him about what needs to be done, but he nailed down the problem very well. He also explicitly envisioned a stateless society as the end goal.

Obviously Marx was not an "anarchist" but to simply dismiss him as a statist is just ignorant. His work informed all of the central figures of the early anarchist movement from the beginning and a solid understanding of the essential aspects of his critique on capitalism is fundamental for anyone that really wants to put an end to capitalism and the state and ensure that they don't return under another form. I recommend at the very least reading the summary of Das Kapital written by the insurrectionary anarchist Carlo Cafiero:

Sorry he just was. For one thing he ended up being key figure in scientific managed states through his fetish for scientific solutions. If you support the state as a means to an end you are a statist, no getting around this. Proudhon and his derivatives rightfully put the emphasis on statism and not capitalism. When it comes to the wither away, it should be capital and not state that you count on withering away as those forces represent more marginal human affairs that you can take on or reject on marginal levels. If a state is still in play it will not wither away.

Hmmm, this is for the teenage kid who's into reading sci-fi pulp fiction, gothic fantasy cartoons or for someone who grew up with a tribe of workaholics in the Amazon jungle. Anyway, its assumptions concerning exchange values are only relevant to an industrialized society and its path out via proletariat dictatorship to some vague future Utopianist society.

This was meant for the crypto-Marxist anarchist who left the link to some toxic essays.

don't you open up a lot of hypothetical problems by trying to argue that people are responsible for the poorly thought-out portions of their ideas that other people do great harm with? *cough* nietzsche *cough*

I don't remember any Nietzcheans cheering on the Nazis, if that's what you're referring to. Marxists, on the other hand, not only cheered on mass slaughter but continue to make excuses for it to this day.

'His work informed all of the central figures of the early anarchist movement'

If this thread has taught you nothing else, it should have taught you that anarchist ideas are a lot older than Karl fucking Marx.

Funny how you would say that when vast majority of the names dropped ITT have been either contemporary or posterior to Marx. Also odd how nobody has even mentioned obvious antecedents like Ludd, Muntzer or Wintstanley.

being influenced by history is hardly a statement about anarchist thought over all. that said, only someone being very silly would deny marx's influence (even about things that didn't start with him and/or shouldn't be given his name).

my problem was with anon's claims about the 'early anarchist movement', meaning, i presume, bakunin, as if there was no anti-authoritarian theory before the anarcho-marxists came along

Or practically every pre feudal society, including quite a few surviving cultures in Africa, South America, and Asia. They don't use the word Anarchist though and pretty much everyone who did was heavily influenced by Marx.

marx is specific to capitalism, which is also a relatively recent economic model, depending on where you draw the line. In case you missed it, this simple observation resolves your stupid little non-conflict between team gargle-marx's-balls and team eat-shit-commies-cuz-MURIKA

you're welcome.

Nah... let's just talk about pre-feudal societies from 15,000 years ago pleaaaaze. The Mapuche look too close from my real-world pseudo-academic bubble for comfort.... Imagine if they'd gather support among my fuck partners what's gonna happen? Scare-y!

If we're talking Marx, one question I've never gotten a straight answer on is what exactly that huge influence he supposedly had on all the anarchists that came after was. As far as I can see the only new ideas he brought to anti capitalism were ones the anarchists defined themselves by rejecting but the rhetoric around the great debt all radicals have to him is inescapable. Legit curious and wanna know, but if you can't answer without saying "dialectical" I don't believe you or care.

There's a similar phenomenon with Jesus. To try to explain a pop song's popularity, just look at populism. Its like a culture's lowest common denominator in choosing the feelgood herd leader, and at the time of Marx's surge in popularity, the international capitalists had the workers of the world by the short and curlies, and along comes an average sociologist who points out the obvious villian after reading and plagiarizing anarchist thinkers. With Lenin and Stalin's propaganda and PR division pumping out Marx emblazened posters and banners he became the Kardashian of the early 20th century press.
The place and timing placed Marx at the pinnacle of the mass popularity ladder, and he still lingers unfortunately, to corrupt the minds of other popular nihilist-communists like Zhachev.

Marx's views overlapped with anarchists in his goals at least: a society without the state, classes, capitalism, wages, or any other form of oppression. But his strategy was for the working class and its allies among the oppressed to take centralized state power--either by getting elected to the existing state, or by overthrowing it and creating a new state, the "dictatorship of the proletariat." This was the point on which he split the First International with Bakunin. This doesn't mean that anarchists cannot learn from aspects of Marx's Marxism. Certainly Bakunin respected Marx's political economic analysis of how capitalism worked, his historical materialism (without the determinism), his class analysis, and other aspects--without agreeing to Marx's statism and centralism. And there has long been a libertarian-humanistic minority trend among Marxists who have politics similar to anarchism.

in other words, his critique of capitalism? good.
but what to do about it? more complicated.

Reading and believing in Marx is just pumping dirty industrially produced factory gas back up your ass and them belching it out like a reverse fart!

Wonder what would happen if you bonged Marxist reverse fart, how many braincells would die, would laughter become impossible, would fun become extinct?

uh … it's not a bible? you don't need old karl's nerdy tomes to notice capitalism is a nightmare. not about "belief".

Who else has done such an effort to actually look into the HOW of how this nightmare works, and how human society got into this?

You also seem to like other types of equally nerdy tomes...

State is worse then capital. Capital is a corrosive problem that is derivative of greater human reification and recursive psychomodern compulsivities. The state is a more acute problem then capital.

zig you win the award for most concise bit of useless and pretentious academic babble.


you mean, how this nightmare worked almost 200 years ago. so did the scientists that determined the world was flat, and the earth is the center of the universe, and black humans are inferior. time actually moves on, things change, and shit that made sense centuries ago don't necessarily make sense now.

when all you have is a hammer...

"The state is a more acute problem then capital." Really? Is it even possible to make such a distinction in practice. The state has always existed together with capitalism or some previous form of class society. And class society has always had a state.

Class society is conflictual and divided among competitive classes and fractions of classes (and none more so than capitalist society, whose internal conflicts makes feudalism look like a utopian paradise). To hold it together, in the overall interests of the ruling class, requires a state, the stronger the better.

The state is a body of armed people and bureaucrats standing over the rest of society. It cannot survive unless people are organized to produce goods and services (including food, clothing, shelter, and weapons). It needs a system of production and a way to squeeze a surplus out of the working people in order to keep the state machinery going. In short, it needs a class society, such as capitalism.

If you define the state along anthropological lines as an organized extra human scale apparatus it precedes class and modern capital. There is a type of ancient capital that I guess develops along with a formative state but, again, it is not the acute problem.

Class as such is an outgrowth of status and voluntary servitude. It has no existence outside of an intergenerational interepochal status game consisting of alienating surrogate activities. You don't actually have to go to war to end class you simply have to dissociate from the psychosomatic context that generates it.

The state does not stand over the rest of society, the state IS society. Once you have reified and scaled to a societal operating system you already have a problem. The state doesn't need a class society, it simply needs ANY society along with the twin sins of work(forced labor and compulsory production) and education(impersonal learning and alienated knowledge). The state along with capital is function that follows these deeper human problems. The former however is the more pertinent problem. Marx thought you attack class and capital and count on the state to fade away. He got it backward.


False. There are so many examples to the contrary and I can't be fucked to list 'em for you. Try Natufian culture to begin with.


Are you high on LSD?

This a great example of Stirner-ite fundamentalism. Everything is a spook! Let's all sing kumbaya, hold hands, and we can will Capital away!


You're both wrong, you and your pal Marx. You get rid of systems of repression/oppression/exploitation through the denial of energy. Capital and the State are two-of-a-kind. Redundant. They both must fall at the same time. Kill the lights or plague the industrial mining processes that is the (post)modern food and distribution system, and, viola.

Hell Yes, Commander! You are doing a huge kindness to teach these monist humanist word salad Stirnerean sheeple the truth. Once their eyes fully open we will begin our ASSAULT on BOTH Capital AND the State at the SAME TIME and they will never see it coming.

We await your orders,

Hurricane Good Squad Operative 27

while this is probably the most lucid Z has ever been ime, the dogma and condescension still shines through.

however, i agree that trying to separate the state and capital (or actually, economic systems in general) or define one as "worse" than the other is astoundingly stupid, and purely ideological.

I'm always lucid. I've studied more on the questions that bother me in the last two years than some have in a lifetime. Before becoming hostile with the Anews folks, I had a blog, which was mocked and ridiculed by SenileOldTroll, Rfa, and others. (Oddly enough, despite my animosity towards him, Aragorn! nearly always encouraged my writing, and theoretical explorations...)

Most of what I'm interested in is consider taboo in the activist/anarchist community. I write profusely but stopped sharing it until I find a group of like minded thinkers willing to take me seriously. My writings had been accept in a few notable journals but the editorial process is one of censorship and not maximalization and I ended up withdrawing my submissions after disputing activist editor types.

your memory betrays you even still...

i have never seen your blog unless you mean that short lived 'best anarchist news website on the internet' that you created to take down anews (then oddly announce on anews) because nobody wanted to publish your writing about hurricanes or how to savagely murder the "pussy anarchists," or whatever you were on about for that hour, that had like two whole posts, which came after over an entire year of you harassing people...... i mocked you not for your failed site but simply because there was no other way to get you to stop stalking, and threatening to rape and murder friendly anarchists and their young children for over two years simply for not wanting to hear about how awesome you were and your totally impressive thoughts 24/7 on the fucking irc because you felt it their place in life: to listen to you when you felt like it. anyway, enjoy the rest of your totally primal, totally not tech-obsessed, totally awesome life, but just because you pretend something to be true (whether about your genius, importance, other people's motivations as to why to encourage you of anything [hint it was to get your to go away]), that doesn't make it so.

lastly: beep.

I appreciate you responding rather than censuring any comment made here that attempts to de-villainize me, as Anews mods have done continually.

I'm not sure what "news site" you're refering to? I haven't been involved with one. Around the time of the podcast I had a blog which I was posting to. I swear I remember you commenting there, but I could be mistaken.

This whole "rape and murder" business is total bullshit. Certain people in the IRC at the time justified their shitty attitudes and messages by writing it off as "hyperbole". Any referencing to violence of the sort you speak of was only to emphasize the limitations of "hyperbole" at the personal level and the hypocrisy of the censures and IRCops dictating what people can and can't say or discuss. Same with the alleged "stalking" that I supposedly took part in. Since trolling is fine when thecollective/Anews/IRCops do it, I wanted to give these people a run for their money. I was in NYC on unrelated business, took a photo in front of an anarcho-liberal social hub on a public street while I mean mugged, and that alone had the anarchyplanet crew terrified. I was never in Pennsylvania as I implied. Simply took a photo in front of a car with Pennsylvania plates. All this to show bullying isn't fun when you're the one getting bullied.

I honestly have no ill-will towards you, Rfa, or any other of your IRCops compatriots. My only real qualm is with the extremely low-level of discourse in the IRC and the potential it could have as an outlet for serious discussion about US anarchism.

And for the record, I find primitivism and "primal" anarchy to be near total shit and have very little interest in it. And we both know I'm on the Internet less than all the IRC regulars. I don't give a fuck about recognition of the sort you've mentioned and absolutely do not see myself as some sort of "genius".

Either way, wishing you all the best and I hope you will just let all this Zhachev/hurricane shit die and be forgotten.

OooOoh, the hurricane shit won't die cos we've just had to endure the wacky zhacky drama hour listening to your sickening narcisso-communist soap-opera!

It's a good thing that there isn't any sort of computerized record of text, pictures, and audio of all these threats compiled over the years because that would be bad! Just keep chanting "fake news" and it will all go away.

"All this to show bullying isn't fun when you're the one getting bullied."

So being told by a room full of many different people that they have no desire to discuss whatever bizarro topic that you want to discuss immediately until you are satisfied (what ITS could have done better, how to militarily defeat mine enemies with Maoist tactics but better, etc) or being kicked by the robot for flooding a channel with how much everyone was a pussy is the same level of "bullying" as threatening to rape and shoot them and their kids, friends and families, and anyone associated with them... and then then sending them photo of yourself in camo with a gun, or a photo outside of the place where they totally really lived? And when that doesn't get the response you want to keep doing similar threatening tactics for over a year like threatening to shoot up book fair because you had an imaginary beef with someone who was encouraging to you but not encouraging in the right way all of the time? Seems legit. Completely justified response.

Sounds fair


ROFLMAO+. Clearly you have spent too much time in the eco-fash, primmie, nihilist fartbong chamber. Even the youngest padawan knows the basic facts of the Law of Thermodynamics: Energy can not be created or destroyed. Like, a real Anarcho-Jedi would never even recommend this reformist "denial of energy" hypothetical. Not even back during the Minnesota Radical Accord of which I was present and drafted the St Paul Principles of Ethical Anarchist and Maoist Harmonious Protest. Not even on the holodeck!

Everybody knows this.

Probably by my term extra human scale which I mean broadly and not some dunbarian or band/tribal number. You're describing a fairly complex upper paleolithic culture that I would not consider a state based culture.

You don't have to be an lsd hippy to get what I'm saying. Dissociation means exactly what you think it means. You basically depart from the psychosomatic context that is integral the the existence of the state/civilization in question.

I don't entertain the concept of exploitation as a problem in itself but I don't disagree on energy denial in regards to this state of affairs. In the long run you want both C&S gone but capital is a corrosive problem not an acute problem like the state. It's defined at least partly by complicated human desires and compulsions. Your approach sounds like the usual Pol (tin)Pot approach that certain pathological uncivilizeds like to take. It doesn't end well and ends up with people rebuilding what you tried to take away from them.

Sorry for the apparently condescending tone in the initial reply. Inflammatory comments seem to do the most on the Web. It's habit I need to break.

SE, Have you read Ruth Kinnas review of Saul Newmans book Postanarchism? In it she writes:

At the end of the book Newman argues that the radical force of postanarchist theory lies in the contention that freedom is 'the ontological basis of all power' (p.107) and in the insight that we are free to think and act differently, as if power no longer existed. The will to freedom softens the grip that power has on our imagination. We become fearless in our insurrection, capable of facing down armed police and occupying public space. Newman's presentation of this argument is persuasive and appealing. But this conclusion begs a question about his analysis of power and the extent to which the postanarchist attribution of a zero-sum concept of state power in anarchism creates a tension in his own work. Newman's postanarchist critique of contemporary politics appears to cast the state as a monopoliser of power, yet his idea of indifference to power downplays the significance of this concentration. The presence of the state haunts the book, not only as a spook but also as a sociological reality. It is felt in 'ubiquitous apparatuses and measures of security', the 'most terroristic – draconian anti-terroristic and border control measures and exceptional police powers' (p.24) and the seductions of direct democracy which Newman describes as 'a totalizing regime of power – a form of state – which subordinate the self-will of the individual to an alien will' (p.133). But the state is not theorised and Newman's elision of La Boétie's analysis of the illusory power of the tyrant with Foucault's rejection of 'Power with a capital P' (p.105) leaves him little space to do so. Newman appears to acknowledge this tension. He twice notes that the indifference to power allows us to see that power has no substance without ridding us of power's effects (pp.105, 137). Applied as a descriptor of contemporary activism, insurrection looks empowering. Elaborated in postanarchist theory, it appears to leave us in an impasse, neither able to contemplate how revolutionary social transformation may be imagined nor encouraged to adopt methods of resistance that compel the state to engage with radical politics.

What are your thoughts on this? How are those interested supposed to overcome this tension?

I like him default to La Boétie when it comes to how repressive and controlling power power becomes constituted. I see the state as part of an integrated totality of power that was not created or constituted in a single historical bound but developed through corrosive compulsive human developments that were diffuse at their origin. Reified and recursive heavy language alone would have been one of the building blocks along with a lose of scale, relationship and place. You don't just 'attack' the results of that as an alien externality.

I actually like some of the concepts that Chad Haag(of pro-Kaczynsky youtube fame) uses, in particular his concept of soma as an ecological source of being and becoming. When I use the term psychosomatic I'm just integrating his concept with my idea that mind and body are never separate. I don't mean it as an acute induced psychological experience but a more general way conceptualizing the mind and it's ecological substance surroundings.

As he says you can really on break with the somatic context of a given existence in this case technological. It's easier said then done but that's the starting point. Revolutions require mass psychological agreement and that can be like herding cats when it comes to something libertarian and anti-leviathan.

SE how do you suggest departing a psychosomatic context without reseeding it wherever you land. i feel you missed the question of dissociation which isn’t really “what” but “how” (at least to me), you seem to be giving a very challenging task a very blithe treatment.

I define psychosomatic in a particular way to describe a mode of being related to an ecological human mind context. That's basically the how.

"If you define the state along anthropological lines"

what would be the alternative, exactly? to define it along bovine lines? or feline lines, perhaps?

Sociological lines.

As in... examining how power relations work, how institutions are maintained, how the dominant narratives are pushed.

Not 15,000 years ago, but closer to today's world.

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