A text dump on various library publishing ethoses
10 Years Later, A Reflection And A Response
AnarchistLibraries.Net – About this project
Lib.Anarhija.Net – About this project
The Anarchist Library
10 Years Later, A Reflection And A Response
Subtitle: On An English Language Anarchist Library Project
Author: An Anarchist Librarian From North America
Date: Aug 26, 2018
A Reflection
The Anarchist Library project in English is alive and well. We have a new IRC channel for the English language project hosted over at the anarchist server irc.anarchyplanet.org channel #library and can still be reached by emailing library@angrylists.com. The “about us” has always said that The Anarchist Library “is (despite its URL) an archive focusing on anarchism, anarchist texts, and texts of interest for anarchists.”
I’m writing this as an individual who has been around since the start of the project. A little more than ten years ago a help wanted sign of sorts was posted to the Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed website (if I remember correctly), announcing the creation of the project and looking for people to help out. It linked to an Internet Relay Chat (IRC) channel where people met (most had never met each other in real life before, although a handful did know each other face-to-face). From the IRC chat, a group of participants from all over the world created what has today become the English branch of the anarchist library. We discussed many ideas and the “about us” at length, went back and forth over images, a possible logo, and exactly what an anarchist library is and how it could work. There was a solid base of expectations and a definition of the project that for the most part, hasn’t changed over 10 years later.
Since then, a few things have changed. For example, the online chat has gone from IRC to XMPP, to SILC-IRC, to nothing, back to IRC but hosted on Freenode servers, and now, finally back on an anarchist IRC server. You can still find the other languages on the Freenode IRC #anarchistlibrary channel. Lots of people have come and gone from the English project, but a core group has remained and kept one of the largest archives of anarchist texts online sailing strong. We plan to keep it going for many years to come.
Looking back on relationships and the comings and goings of individuals, here are a couple of thoughts. One of the reasons that it’s difficult to find a solid core of people in long-term projects like the library is because it takes a lot of work. An online archival project like the library is often thankless, although the kindness and appreciation from people around the world in regards to the overall project has been tremendously positive, a big motivation to keep going (at least, for me). In some ways, I’m surprised that the site has become so popular and well-respected internationally and continues to be even after some bad press here and there. And finally, we’re anarchists so there is the choice about who we work with; some people can be more difficult to work with than others, on a project that is mostly conversations online. From the very start, it was not always a smooth ride, but one filled with turbulence and disagreements about everything and anything, as all meaningful anarchist projects can be; yet at the same time we’ve managed to mostly keep it together, be resilient, and create a long-standing archive of anarchist and related texts.
At the start of the library, we worked with the site offline until we had posted something like 100 texts from various other archives and locations across the web. Spunk library, the Kate Sharpley Library, Anarchy Archives (dwardmac) and pretty much anything we could find and edit. Since then, a lot of those original sources like Angelfire domains have disappeared from the Internet. This was one of the original reasons for the library, as we saw anarchist texts from the digital age going into the dark void of nothing and disappearance. Today, the English library has over 3,500 texts. Over the years, the library has received around 3 DMCA take-down requests from publishers and agents of a few popular writers, which we’ve complied with. More than a few academic institutions and related have reached out and offered support, but we’ve chosen to keep the project outside of the academy, other than sharing some texts from within it.
Originally the site ran the Drupal content management system, which was a bit of a pain for a library site. Soon, the project changed to a home brew designed by an anarchist librarian, which has gone on to become AmuseWiki. One of the great things about this archiving and publishing platform is that it gives high quality files in .epub and PDF (letter and A4). One can download a book as .epub and put it on their eReader / mobile or take the imposed PDF and print it out, staple it together, and start their own distro, or load up the LaTeX file and edit it with Emacs, into some gorgeous new design for an upcoming text.
The librarian and programmer behind the AmuseWiki archival and publishing platform has left the English language project, taking most of the other languages libraries with them, and disowned the original English library project[1]. Having said that, the original English language project continues on as strong as ever across the vast digital seas of anarchist texts.
A Response
We still find a great deal of love and joy working on this anarchist library. In the following, I talk about our choices, and what a library is, and reaffirm our support for the project and for helping others create anarchist libraries.
For many years, texts from an eco-extremist (EE) group calling themselves “Individuals Tending toward the Wild” or ITS, were on the library, as they once claimed to be anarchist-influenced. No problems were raised over those years. The library stopped publishing the ITS communiques and related texts once they stopped calling themselves anarchists and started claiming indiscriminate attacks against hikers, and there were some attacks in Mexico City. The library has not had writings by ITS since then.
Another example: Not very many people have submitted Michael Schmidt texts to the library, but he can still be found there, at least one of his texts[2]. Would we publish more from him if people submitted them? Sure, maybe. Apparently, Schmidt didn’t do much of the writing though and it was mostly Lucien van der Walt it turns out. It’s a conversation we would have, like previously when we decided to just leave Schmidt’s text up after everything came out. This is an archival anarchist library project.
Coming back to EE and ITS: We have an entire tag / category called “not anarchist”[3] that currently includes 33 different texts, including some ITS texts. The library has almost all of Ted Kaczynski’s texts[4], who is definitely not an anarchist thinker, but his writings are archived due to their relationship with anarchist thought. We have texts about kneecapping scientists, various acts of propaganda of the deed, and all sorts of violence, that have not drawn the same ire and amount of attention that the older ITS texts have. ITS came out of the anarchist space and how far from it they’ve found (or removed) themselves from it is of interest to some anarchists. It is part of our history and is completely appropriate for it to appear on an archival project documenting anarchist and related texts.
Reading things by people we disagree with (or making such readings accessible to other people) is not condoning the things we disagree with, much less supporting them. Anyone who insists on banning particular texts from the library because they personally disagree with the content is acting to indoctrinate, not allowing people to make up their own minds.
The branch off also lists an English language archive that claims to have been around since 2009, however it was created this year, 2018. Who knows what direction that new website will take, but currently it is just a mirror of the original English language project site, sans one text from Atassa on indiscriminate anarchists[5] that wasn’t on the original library during the conversations about the split, nor is it a text by ITS. Everything else on their new English library is the same, except it hasn’t been updated recently (and you can’t submit txts there, so it’s just a static page). It would be unfortunate if there are two competing English libraries with the same content, which seems like the direction things are going.
Of course, more anarchist libraries are always better, than fewer anarchist libraries – I just worry of the fallout that this split and the resulting confusion will have and from those anonymous people that have helped submit and edit texts and keep the original English library alive. I also worry that someday soon the English project will no longer find itself supported by AmuseWiki, as the main creator left a project on a poor note and the CMS will eventually break. By writing this I’m drawing attention to the situation, which could be good or bad. People disagree, and that’s okay, and especially healthy for having critical conversations, although there are also good and bad ways to have conflict that perhaps matters the most.
We have always agreed that we want to help other anarchist libraries be successful.
Also in their announcement, they talk about each library being their own project. While this is true and sounds great, there is another reality to this statement. I’d be very curious to know, if the other languages will run into problems when they publish a text that the library.net admins disagree with. What happens then? Do they actively monitor all the languages? That seems like a lot of work. On a positive note, there are a lot of great things happening behind the scenes at AmuseWiki in the other languages; for example the recent support for right-to-left (RTL) languages, which could be huge for providing support to languages like Chinese and other RTL language-speakers who have reached out for help in creating an anarchist library.
This is perhaps a bit more of a reply than I had originally imagined. It’s never fun to air out the dirty laundry, and who likes arguing over a library or spending energy on things like this, but in the end I thought it was important to present another side to the ongoing narrative. Please continue to support the original English language project and understand that our editorial decisions are open to discussion. For a library of 20+ years next time around!
Interview
Title: The Anarchist Library talk at 2020 London Anarchist Bookfair
Date: October 18, 2020
Source: <anarchistbookfair.london>
On October 18th, 2020 The Anarchist Library project participated in an interview that was featured during the London Anarchist Bookfair
The conversation covered some of the libraries past, a brief how to of sorts, and more.
Reader: Hello, anarchists. Welcome to the London Book Fair 2020. I am a reader and I’m here with a librarian all the way from across the pond. Hello!
Librarian: Hello there. Thanks for having me.
Reader: You’re welcome. How’s the weather?
Librarian: Oh, it’s a bit chilly. This morning had some frosts last night, but Suns out.
Reader: Same here, same here. Right. Let’s get into it theanarchistlibrary.org. We’ve all used it. It seems to have been around forever. Where did it come from?
Librarian: Yes, so. This has gotta be around 13 years ago. At this point. And at that moment in time, there was a IRC Internet relay chat, which is a protocol that’s over 30 years old and people use it to converse and chat over the Internet. So there was an IRC server. Hosted by some anarchists and participating in. There was a general call up by guests or an idea shared about a project to create an archive of anarchist texts. That would be the largest archive eventually on the Internet. With the specific focus of being a site for high quality texts, so in the past you could visit other websites like the Spunk Library, the Kate Sharpley Library. Well, Kate sharply is very high quality, actually, but the anarchy archives like Deward Mac and you’d go there. And there was you could read a text, but often there was a lot of errors and texts were just scattered around everywhere. So yes, that’s the origins. Back in 13 years ago, Aragorn. One of the founders of the project. Along with a handful of other people from across North America, but also the worlds here, often I find well these days. Sometimes people call the library a specifically USA project, but that is definitely not true, even though who I am speaking from. New York. Yeah. So it’s participants around the world and it certainly was at the origins as well. People have come and gone since that started. But we still have a handful of the founders here, including myself, so. Feel free to jump into with the questions I feel.
Reader: Yeah I did want to just say for. People who don’t know in in the UK, Aragon, whose name was mentioned, was an indigenous North American anarchist who died earlier this year. If you are not familiar with his work, I would recommend the brilliant podcast. That was another project of his yeah, and the library. The library was another. Let’s just. Say OK, let’s say I’m on the Internet. I’m looking around and I find an essay. Aragon somewhere out there, not on the library, and I would like to add it to the library so that I can, you know, print it off, share it, etc. How do I do that?
Librarian: OK. Yeah. Do you, I mean we can jump right to that question like I could add a little more about the. The history of the library as well here.
Reader: OK. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Consent. Yeah.
Librarian: If you don’t. Mind just will not do that. Cool. Yeah, cause I mean, why not?
Reader: It has a long history it seems.
Librarian: Yeah, well, I’ve been 13 years, so you’re not too. Much, but yeah.
Reader: OK, OK. So so the the. Call out. It went out. You were there, Aragon, with lots of other people were there. And yeah, I mean, what’s the tech behind this because.
Librarian: So originally we it was offline for just a couple of months. I want to say maybe. Even more. And so we had collected around like 500 texts and we made sure the texts were like all really nicely edited up and, you know, uploaded there. So that was all offline. And then we launched with those like 500 texts or so like 405 hundred and the CMS, the content management system. Of the website you know, so how? You like interact with. It was originally a Drupal. Which is, you know, a. Quite a popular CMS, but it was just so cumbersome and I mean there was just a lot of work to. Upload texts and edit and it wasn’t. It definitely wasn’t the website that one might know today. So over some time there, one of the main participants in the library. Homebrewed content management system that has since become known as. A muse wiki. And that is a whole a separate project. That the library uses that content management system to. Publish share edit texts. So that’s kind of how things started there and one of the really cool things about it about a Muse wiki is that you can find the PDF. You can find the letter imposed PDF, the A4 imposed. The epub for your E readers HTML source and you know you can even fire up Emacs. And download the latex files and added it up and designed something. Beautiful like that.
Reader: See that would. Be that would be why, yeah, so. You find the text it’s on. A blog? You know, it looks very nice on the screen, you know. On on, on your laptop or your your tablet or whatever, but. If you want to get that in. Out into the real world. I mean, that’s what I’m used. One of the things that Musiki is for, right?
Librarian: Yes indeed. So you could, you know, download any of those formats and files, print them out and share it, create your own distro, create your own little Info shop archive, or just put something together like that. And it does. Have some really cool features like the book builder that I just. Want to give a quick shout out for? Where you can just like take a text and take some other texts, throw them all together and really customise your how it looks and make something really cool to share with your friends. Right now there’s over 7000 texts on the English library, so starting from that original date like 13 years ago, like 400 or so 500, there’s like 7000 now, and there’s also 13 different languages that are all. Separate projects, so right this is the English language anarchist library calling in right now, so I can’t speak for any of the other projects, but there’s 13 and you can all find them there and under the languages tab and they’re all separate projects. Their own ideas. But you know anarchist texts, yeah. So you can start your own language library. I just a quick disclaimer, it is a lot of work you have to and you know I won’t get into how to do that. But if your language or. Language that you’re interested in, that you’re fluent in. And able to do something like that. You can reach out to us at the project. And we can. You know the English language library can help you set up a domain, provide some server space, some technical side of things, and you do the rest of the project yourself with your. Friends and your. Your group.
Reader: The idea is, isn’t it? Once the once the infrastructure is there that readers like myself will will contribute will, will, will find texts that they’re interested in and add them to the library. That’s, I mean it’s set up so that people could do that, right? It’s meant to be user friendly and open open. Oh, and people can also edit. You know, if they find an error in the text or something, but. Let’s say I don’t know how to do that, but I I do have a text I wanted to share. It’s on no blogs or somewhere like that. How do I go about getting it from? From node blogs to theanarchistlibrary.org.
Librarian: So there’s. Well, here’s. The the workflow, the first thing you know you definitely want to read the fine manual and there’s some you know about us there and you know, finding just checking that out, reading a little bit about the A amuse. Wiki markup, but to be honest you could kind of just jump in so you have a text on another website. That you want. To upload. So first thing that you want to do is cheque and see if it’s already on the library. We get, like I said, so like you mentioned as well, anyone can you know add text to a library. It’s not just librarians adding texts, right? You can go right. Anyone around there the world and just add a text. So just search to make sure that it’s not on the library first. And the library search function works, it can. Be a little. Tricky, so perhaps also fire up your favourite search engine and just search the domain that way as well. Well, and if it’s not on there. Then you know what does. How is the text? Is it a website like HTML text or is it a PDF? So let’s talk about just like the text and the the website first. So you’re going to, you know, copy and paste it, and you could even use your favourite editor of choice. Uhm, go back to the library website. And click on the archive, click on add text. And the library uses a wizzywig editor which is, uh, you know what you see is what you get, which is if you’re familiar with Chumbawamba. And I just say that because this is London bookfair you know?
Librarian: That’s the name of one of their albums, Wizzywig.
Reader: Yes, it is. Yeah.
Librarian: So you know it’s the what you see is. What you get out of there? And you can just taste.
Reader: So as as you’re editing it, you see. How it will look when it will be finished?
Librarian: Yeah. Yeah. So you just copy and paste it there, make sure that you include the relevant fields like you know the some topics, the author notes, any other stuff that’s very important that you can include there, the topics will. Just pop up if you type some in there, or you can add some new ones as well. Very bit of a mess, but that’s one thing for certain that needs some some work. So then you click. Everything’s good. You know, you looked at the text and you. Click create text screen modes up and there’s another. A jump to another page. So at this page you just want to double cheque it again, and then there’s a little box where you can include a note. What you did like added this text and. It’s really nice if people include the reason why they added a text if it could be something that’s not as well known and maybe a a little more controversial or like someone would see it like, let me do some digging to see if this should be up or no. So any information that you can provide is really appreciated. UM, along with you don’t have to include an e-mail or anything like that, but if there’s a field for emails as well. So you know, if we. Do have a question for you. We can e-mail you back and. Be like oh, this text needs some work. On this area. The footnotes are broken. Here’s how you do it. Could you help us out here? We’ll a librarian. We’ll get to it when they have some moments. And yeah, so after you do that, you just submit it and the text will be put into a queue of library, and the librarians will cheque that out in a reasonable time frame. Hopefully there’s not too much else going on in their lives, and it will. Possibly might show up on the front page eventually. So yeah.
Reader: Are there are there any extra steps if it’s? So my example of the Aragon essay would would just be just on a HTML page I guess, but if it’s a PDF, you know if it’s, say, an episode of Return Fire or something, is there any extra steps to take it from? PDF into the editor like.
Librarian: Yeah, there are. And the PDFs are. A bit more tricky and require some more work. Without a doubt so. What the best? Practise for PDF because if you just go to a PDF and you copy and paste it, you know like with your mouse and stuff, you’re going to miss all the the fine formatting like the italics, the bolds, the sections, stuff like that and. Often a lot of PDFs have these. You know the footnotes can be set up differently in the subscript and all that. So what you what? I recommend the best practise workflow is you’re going to want to use an optical character recognition programme.
Reader: Ah yes.
Librarian: So I call it OC. Well, we people call it OCR. Yeah. So optical character recognition and there’s a handful of programmes out there. On the Internet, some of them work a lot better than other programmes. And I don’t want to give any shout outs to any like corporate programmes obviously, but you know those in my experience have them. The best results, but you know you can test out stuff on your own and there’s some open source proprietary stuff, but there’s also corporate paid ones that you can find and everything. So you feed the PDF into this programme and what it does is it basically reads the image. Yeah, and it turns that PDF image into editable text. And so you take that text and you put it into your favourite editor. And then edit it from there, convert it to the Muse markup just by copying and pasting it into the library submission queue and then. Do any further editing from there so it is a bit more cumbersome for sure to do the PDFs and it takes a lot more work, but often those are, you know, some of the. Best texts that we get.
Reader: Thank you. And I presume if what if it’s in a magazine, so you’re reading a Joe, you know, and a kitchen or desire armed and something Andy Robinson or something you want to get it out of the magazine of the paper onto the library. I mean, how? How through. What are your options here?
Librarian: Yeah, they’re well, the easiest option, you know, without any. Buying fancy stuff is just if you have a cell phone, take a picture of the page with your cell phone or a digital camera and then. Upload that image to your computer and take that image and feed it into your OCR programme. I found that dot TIF files are the best for saving stuff like that as so you know use your cell phone camera or if you’re. Have a little more. Access to fancy materials. You could use a scanner and you know scan. The magazine. And you can look on the Internet there and find some really cool scanning devices that like, you know, will are able or visit some place in the world that you can see the stuff that unis and universities where they can just scan pages ridiculously fast.
Reader: Yeah, well, it turns the page for you.
Librarian: Exactly. Yeah. I mean, not that we have. I’m doing anything like that. I’m just using the flatbed scanner. And so you scan the image, I save it. As a TIF. File and then I fire up the OCR programme and. Edit it from. There. So that’s the basic workflow is you just. Find something that. You like get an image of it and then go from there.
Reader: OK. Thank you. What?
Librarian: I do want to add just.
Reader: Go on. Yeah, go.
Librarian: Audio. You know, that’s one thing I haven’t mentioned yet.
Reader: Right. Yeah, yeah.
Librarian: But let’s say like. You’re listening to your favourite podcast. Like let’s say you know a news or the final straw radio, and then have a shansen segment on there so you know you could.
Reader: OK. Yeah.
Librarian: Technically you can. Use some transcription application and then take that text, edit it up and upload it as well, and that is probably the most difficult in my experience at least the one that have the least amount of time being successful. The same thing.
Reader: That’s quite near, as I’ve seen a few uploads going up on a library where where people from YouTube, et cetera, have transcribed one of their recordings. And that’s really interesting. I mean that would that. Would be great if people. If if people. Had the time to, like, say, interviews, you know, like they’re they’re because they’re they’re kind of lost. If they’re just. There as a recording, you know there’s no there’s no way of other than telling people to listen to that recording, as long as it’s still being hosted, it’s quite difficult to share. OK so. Aside from from those you know. Those ways, what other ways are? There of getting involved in. The library other than uploading new content.
Librarian: Yes. So let’s say you’re sitting down and you’re reading some texts off the library on your E on your e-reader, and you notice an error in some format in there. So you could, you know. Write that down, save it or and when you get a chance, go back to. Your computer. And actually go to the text and at the top of the screen there there’s a icon and it looks like a pad of paper with a pencil. And you click on that and you can go to the text and you can edit it. So then you you know, Scroll down to the error fix it. Then go down to the next field and say what you did and then submit it and it will go into the queue and librarians will cheque it out and be like, Oh yes, this edit looks good or this edit is just. It doesn’t make sense and you know, so just helping edit texts like that on the library is a really great help. And as I I threw out at the. Start there, hopefully most of. The texts are. Quite beautiful and finely tuned already, but you know.
Reader: Yeah. Hey you’re really human.
Librarian: And things slip through. So that’s one way to become involved there. You can also join the IRC, the Internet relay chat. It also has a bridge from the Matrix Protocol, so you can join that and say hello and. Talk to some librarians. If they’re around. I just want to do. I do want to mention proper IRC etiquette is having some patience. And after you. Say hello. Stick around for a while because. It’s so it’s so funny. I get a kick. Out of it, people will come. And then expect. I don’t know if they expect an immediate response, but they come in the IRC and say. Hey, what’s up? And then like 30 seconds later, no one says high and they’re gone. I often wonder who they are, but.
Reader: It’s the same person. It’s the same person. Discovering again and again. Can I I have a. Suggestion for the wanting to get involved, I think the. I guess it’s what we would call. Tags. You know if it was on Instagram or something. It would be a hashtag. I think it’s called topics on the library. Yeah. So that’s how you find texts where you don’t know the title or where you don’t even really know what you want to read. You just know I want. To read something about insurrectionary. So there will be a topic. Insurrection and insurrection area, insurrection area and because maybe all three of them. And I I do, I have found quite a few texts that are missing topics that would make it. Much easier to find, you know, or to browse even. You know if every if everything was kind of indexed with these topics then you could just as an example, say desert desert. I think only has the one topic I think. I think it’s tagged as nihilist well. You know what? If you wanted to read green texts from the UK, I mean that desert should be coming up really with that kind of search but it but it won’t because it’s it. It’s missing the topics. So if. Someone is reading. The text like desert and they think OK. This is a green text and they notice that it doesn’t have the green topic at the top of the text. How do they? How do they add that?
Librarian: Yes, the topics are a disaster without a doubt. And part of that is just because. It’s, you know. It’s opened up to everybody. So so when we’ll submit a text and we’ll add their own topics there so that I really stress like checking the topics and sometimes it’ll pop up like as you’re typing it on most browsers. I feel like if a topic already exists. So yeah. So going through and adding topics or helping. You know. Fine tune them and delete topics and merging topics is something that we really need some help on and over the year. Well, how you do it is you do the same. You just do edit text and then there’s a topic sort topics field. Within that text edit. And you could add some stuff there. So I just, I do want to really quickly mention that you know, when the library had started and one of the people involved with it was working on something that it’s more like a academic. Kind of university aspect, but the anarchist decimal classification system or as I like to call it, the AD CS so you know we were trying to like classify and you know they’ll do decimal system and create this like and just like having a system like that seems a bit absurd and ridiculous. But there has been some efforts of the past that haven’t gone too far. Are and so we’re just back at the normal topics now and like, oh, you put green or, you know, nihilism or anti saver whatever topic. That’s what we’re doing.
Reader: It could work. That could really work if it. If I think if the text you know if it’s more it, it would be nice to browse I think to be able. To browse and know that. Not missing anything if just because you don’t know the names of the authors. Yeah, I would. That seems to me like that would be the simplest way to contribute would be to just find some texts you like and make them easier for other people to find by. Adding some topics.
Librarian: And there’s the on the wiki. Or, well, the. It’s called the library bookshelf, which is basically. Like the wiki. The library. There’s some work being done already on this, and you could you know, cheque that out and there’s some ideas about the topics and tags and where to go from there.
Reader: Thank you. OK, last. Last I I did want to talk about. The torrent, but maybe I think we should let people explore that themselves, you know? But but I. Mean what is? There is a. Anarchists library torrent for the book there. Right.
Librarian: Yes. Yeah. And it’s just. A collection of text there we. Threw in do or die. Do you want me to list some things?
Reader: Ah, you could you could.
Librarian: There just the general things.
Reader: Tempt people in with. Yeah, let’s do or die. Ah, Sweden.
Librarian: Yes, your diet Anarchist Federation UK Anarchist Studies UK freedom Press Solidarity Federation elephant edition. Some linen faxes, texts. Anonymous. Ruth, Kinner ERICO, Ian McKay, Colin Ward, Andy Robinson. Monsieur frere. DuPont desert. Plus some critiques. Review commentary. And you know, so we did the the UK focus there tried to just you know UK tax and. It’s not all their texts, so I mentioned, you know, like Colin Ward or Ruth Kinna. All the texts on the library are not included in the torrent, but they they’ve just curated some of the text there and usually the the longer texts and can all you can even find some. Lorraine and Freddy Perlman.
Reader: Ah, there you go. I’m sure they visited the UK at some point. OK, so.
Librarian: On as well.
Reader: How do people get that sorry. So they have a torrent programme. Qubit, torrent or whatever? And how did they get? It for off.
Librarian: So you can go to the library bookshelf and it doesn’t look like well. I need to update the front page and we could put a little link on the front page of the library there, but you’d go to the library bookshelf under the top drop down archives. And it’s it’s posted right there, library torn and it’s the most recent one that just says the the London Book Fair Torrent and it’s it’s about 80 texts all the formats so PDF A4 imposed everything epub, HTML, latex, plaintext, you name it. It’s on there.
Reader: Right.
Reader: Yeah, go and have a look. See what you can find. Oh yeah, I.
Librarian: Think that’s actually returned? Fires on there as. Well, too.
Reader: Brilliant. Yeah. OK. Last question plans for the future for the library, you said it’s been going 13 years. That’s a long time, 13 more I. Mean what’s the plan?
Librarian: Yes, the plan is to stick around. We’re not going anywhere. You know, our as you mentioned, great friends are going passed away earlier this year and with that. You know, it was someone that provided the infrastructure and. So many things for the project. So it took us a while, but we’ve we’ve gotten back on our feet here and. I would say that the English language projects Library has, you know, never been more active than it has been in these last couple years currently. So we’re just going to keep on trucking as they say and. No, really big plans other than just kind of I was. I was thinking about it would be really cool if there was like audio links to texts as well or like an like a like an anarchist library audio that you could, you know click on it and then you could hear like a MP3 or podcast of some text. Being read something along those lines, so other another thing too. Like I mentioned earlier, but other languages if people are interested in your you know and you really want to put forth some time and become involved in like an online anarchist archival project. Yes, we can help you out and some know how the technical aspects and you know your project is otherwise autonomous from that and you can e-mail us at library at angrylists.com. Yeah, so it’s library angrylists.com. Also, right on the website. There, yeah.
Reader: OK. All right. Thank you. So 7000 more texts in up and coming then, right?
Librarian: Indeed, hopefully so.
Reader: High quality text Sonic please. Thank you so much for your time librarian.
Librarian: Yeah. Thank you so much Reader.
Reader: Keep up the good work. Yeah. Take care.
Librarian: It’s been a pleasure. Cheers.
Reader: OK. Bye bye.
Shh! This is a Library! Forum
About the Library
Date: 11/14/2022
Source: <shh.anarchyplanet.org/node/39>
Anonymous: I’m writing an essay for uni about archival practices and using T@L as an example, to be compared against critiques of the Library and Archives Canada offered in Karina Vernon’s “Invisibility Exhibit,” so I have a couple of questions about the library as an archive and would greatly appreciate the information.
-Who created the archive (i.e. professional/personal backgrounds) and who generally moderates it now?
-What were the main reasons for its creation?
-Why do you believe it became so successful?
-Is the library entirely digital or are there physical operations/archives as well?
-Does the library include only published texts or also self-submitted writings?
-What are some main areas of improvement for the archive as a whole (anything ranging from digital formatting to accessibility outside anarchist communities etc.)?
-What is the library’s approach towards diverse inclusion of texts? I know users are able to submit texts, but does the archive itself seek out intersectional writings, such as about gender or racial issues?
Thanks!
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/15/2022 — 05:45
Nice try, FBI
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 11/15/2022 — 22:20
Following-up:
I found this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VKFhumgPox8) which answered quite a few of my questions but I’m still interested in the last one (What is the library’s approach towards diverse inclusion of texts?) if possible.
Thanks!
rocinante Tue, 11/15/2022 — 22:56
In reply to Following-up: I found this … by Anonymous (not verified)
Nice, glad you found that YouTube link — I was actually coming here to share the same thing, but with a library link found here:
https://bookshelf.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/librarian-the-anarchist-library-talk-at-2020-london-anarchist-bookfair-en
-What is the library’s approach towards diverse inclusion of texts? I know users are able to submit texts, but does the archive itself seek out intersectional writings, such as about gender or racial issues?
The library aims to include a diverse array of anarchist texts and has tried to do this from the start (non-sectarian). I imagine that librarians and anonymous uploaders have sometimes chosen to upload certain texts because they resonate with the ideas found within the writing. It’s also a lot more fun to curate texts that you find an interest in. Their is no official policy of the library, the impossible aim of the archive starting off was all the anarchist texts (within anarchist criteria) in the world as mentioned on the podcast.
Ted K
Date: 09/12/2022
Source: <shh.anarchyplanet.org/node/15>
Anonymous: Before people were complaining about Foucault, before people were complaining about Black Seed 6 (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-black-seed-issu…), before people were complaining about ITS (https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-t…), before people were complaining about all the things that people were complaining about that I missed, people were complaining about this guy: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/ted-kaczynski
Love him or hate him, there he is. His manifesto is consistently at the top of this list https://theanarchistlibrary.org/stats/popular The first upload was in 2009 and as recently as May this year his writing is still being added to The Anarchist Library.
Thoughts? Feelings? Words?
https://vid.puffyan.us/watch?v=2wCd7D4FuAU [clip from Ted K, 2022]
echodaisy: Ted K. exorcised the beast in an involuntary and unconscious autobiography. In the manifesto he was a pioneer in recognizing that “leftism” is at odds with anarchism (coming in a few years before Anarchy After Leftism), except Ted K. was never all too comfortable (or familiar) with anarchism either. As far as critiques of technology go, his certainly complement the more systematic approach of Jacques Ellul, but other than a few quotable lines it ultimately doesn’t add much.
As long as Chomsky, Bookchin and Graeber are considered of interest for anarchists, I’m happy to have Ted K on the library as well.
As far as entertainment goes, I’ll admit I enjoyed Manhunt (2017) and the docu-miniseries Unabomber: In His Own Words (2020). Turns out he sounds a lot like Terence McKenna. Can’t recommend Ted K (2022), that one was just slow and shallow.
al (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 12:31
In reply to thinks by echodaisy (not verified)
is the implication with your “As long as Chomsky, Bookchin and Graeber are considered of interest for anarchists, I’m happy to have Ted K on the library as well” that the aforementioned authors are also not anarchists?
echodaisy (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 12:58
In reply to is the implication with your… by al (not verified)
Yes. Graeber is debatable, but Chomsky is most certainly not an anarchist and Bookchin was an absolute goof.
Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/25/2022 — 16:01
In reply to is the implication with your… by al (not verified)
ill give graeber a pass, bc i liked him personally the times i met him and ive heard anarchists who dont write say some absurd shit.
but i think theres a point where someone is cited enough by anarchists that including them becomes a good idea. how we curate a library is a pretty interesting conversation. what about things of interest to anarchists? what about anarchist fiction or personal essays, which i wish we wrote more of.
TED Z, sorry, K — Know your misanthropic enemy
Buttdarling Mon, 09/12/2022 — 10:35
Teds scattershot targeting and failure to define what “ Left “ meant to him ( or anyone ) made him an abysmal failure as an activist. Most of the anarchist interest in him appears to trace back to Frankfurt-School, Marxist misanthrope, John Zerzan.
Blunderbuss Zerzan’s been an ugly parasite on anarchism since the battle of Seattle. Too stupid to be an activist let alone anarchist. Beware the walking dead.
Any kind of meaningful post-left-anarchism will exclude all Marxist morons like John Zerzan.
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 15:49
In reply to TED Z, sorry, K — Know your misanthropic enemy by Buttdarling
“Teds scattershot targeting and failure to define what “ Left “ meant to him ( or anyone ) made him an abysmal failure as an activist.”
I realise you’re trolling or just incredible uninformed, but: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/fc-industrial-society-and-its-f…
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 17:53
In reply to TED Z, sorry, K — Know your misanthropic enemy by Buttdarling
“Most of the anarchist interest in him appears to trace back to Frankfurt-School, Marxist misanthrope, John Zerzan”
So anarchists aren’t interested in Ted because the guy literally blackmailed the US government into publishing his manifesto in both The Washington Post and The New York Times (making it the most read anarchist text ever), but because of a few essays Zerzan wrote in the 90s?
newkidonthebloc (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 10:48
I can only respect failing as an activist. Also, Zerzan the Marxist? lol.
A little birdy (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 17:07
Ted K. did not in fact work alone and there’s evidence they tried to assassinate Judy Bari and also might have been an FBI informant
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 18:04
In reply to Ted K. did not in fact work… by A little birdy (not verified)
“Ted K. did not in fact work alone”
In fact, he, in fact, did, in fact, work, in fact, alone.
“there’s evidence they tried to assassinate Judy Bari”
There really isn’t.
“also might have been an FBI informant”
The guy has been in a max security prison longer than you’ve been alive. Try harder.
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 21:21
In reply to “Ted K. did not in fact work… by Anonymous (not verified)
Actually, as far as evidence goes, there’s in fact publicly available newspaper ads of someone involved with ecoterrorism communicating with the FBI with cyphers but there’s no way it could be Uncle Ted. No way. Nope. Also ITS are totally not cops either. Just real life floppy taco murderers.
EVERYONE I DON’T LIKE IS LITERALLY A COP
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/13/2022 — 08:26
In reply to Actually, as far as evidence… by Anonymous (not verified)
Your Q theories re. Ted K and ITS are somewhat undermined by:
1) The fact, in fact, that Ted has served more prison time than you have been alive, and
2) ITS’s first 8 communiques, which were lauded by much of the anarchist world (including 325) for their sharp analysis: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-t…
a friendly reminder about the quality of comments
rocinante Mon, 09/12/2022 — 23:02
As was feared, there have been a handful of one-liners and just terrible comments that are less than a sentence long and take like 30 seconds to submit (not just on this post). One goal of this forum is to have genuine meaningful conversations about texts on the library projects. My recommendation is that if you don’t care about having thoughtful conversations that you find another website to share your commentary with.
Perhaps it is what the Internet has become, but we are anarchists here trying to experiment with registered users and anonymous comments to discuss, critique, and learn from each other — not spend time calling each other names and just leaving troll comments for your own personal lulz. I imagine this comment might just disappear into the void to those who it is actually addressed to, but for other participants I wanted to share that the idea is light moderation, but I do hope commentators put a little more thought into their words instead of just saying something terrible.
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/12/2022 — 23:50
In reply to a friendly reminder about the quality of comments by rocinante
Appreciate you addressing this, although I’m not optimistic, personally. Read something by Hume today that feels timely and sums the situation up concisely:
Disputes with men, pertinaciously obstinate in their principles, are, of all others, the most irksome, except, perhaps, those with persons, entirely disingenuous, who really do not believe the opinions they defend, but engage in the controversy, from affectation, from a spirit of opposition, or from a desire of showing wit and ingenuity, superior to
the rest of mankind.
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/13/2022 — 00:33
In reply to Appreciate you addressing… by Anonymous (not verified)
I’d like to counterpoise your Hume quote with something from Clastres — someone I will assume you despise for being an anthropologist; don’t read to deeply into it if that’s the case.
“[S]ocial being is a being-for-war.”
Al (not verified) Tue, 09/13/2022 — 03:33
In reply to a friendly reminder about the quality of comments by rocinante
Kindly, go fuck yourself, dork
rocinante Tue, 09/13/2022 — 22:16
In reply to Kindly, go fuck yourself,… by Al (not verified)
Hi Al,
I’m not exactly sure what you’re problem is, but I would suggest taking your very critical, engaging, and thoughtful conversation over to your Facebook or something. /sarcasm.
I’ve already had to moderate some of your terrible comments and to be honest — I’m quite sure it has been only you so far. My kind suggestion is to slow down, take a little more time and thoughtfulness in your reply if you are really set on participating in this website. Otherwise kindly logoff and throw your computer into the river or something.
al (not verified) Mon, 09/19/2022 — 01:14
In reply to u mad? by rocinante
I’m not the only one fucking around on this forum, and I sign my posts. You know what they say about the journey of a thousand miles, right?
I suggest, if you want higher quality engagement with this site, you could start by not being such a shit mod.
rocinante Mon, 09/19/2022 — 22:53
In reply to I’m not the only one fucking… by al (not verified)
Just to be clear — you’re one of the few visitors leaving terrible comments that I have moderated as they have said nothing, but if I want better quality engagement then I need to stop being a shit mod by doing what exactly... leaving up some terrible comments from you?
I’m curious, do you call yourself an anarchist? Or are you just here to try and cause problems?
Different Anon (not verified) Tue, 09/20/2022 — 00:39
In reply to lol by rocinante
You question if they’re an anarchist because they disagree with your moderating conversation? What do you mean you want “better quality engagement”? Maybe you should be specific with what you want or lower your expectations and control over others, your majesty.
Concerning moderation and quality
Vinnie Tue, 12/13/2022 — 13:15
In reply to a friendly reminder about the quality of comments by rocinante
In my opinion your doing a great job. Light moderation seems more than enough to me, especially because most people around are truly interested in the library and share the concern over the quality of discussions. The forum (and therefore its community) are yet in early stages, trolling will eventually fade away among the activity of more serious visitors. Also worth notice Ted K is quite a controversial topic, so some toxicity is expected. Maybe I’m being too naive to think this way, but I prefer to believe I’m just optimistic.
Admin (not verified) Fri, 12/16/2022 — 17:30
In reply to Concerning moderation and quality by Vinnie
Flattery will get you everywhere. Post details to receive complimentary handjob.
DDoS (not verified) Tue, 09/13/2022 — 01:08
Please stop moderating so sloppily. Either be explicit on what is/is not acceptable or stop being such limp dicks about it and remove all non-library-item related discussion including speculation, conspiracy theories, bad jacketing, etc.
The only truthful comment on this entire Forum was removed because it had do do with the enormity of John Zerzan’s penis which is huge.
Love spectacular terror or hate it, PoD is part of us.
Buttdarling Tue, 09/13/2022 — 02:42
Between the dangerous high-peaks of spectacular terror and the teeming flood-plains of pacifism lies the variegated terrain of the threat.
Propaganda of the deed breakthrough eluded us then but that’s no matter — tomorrow we’ll run faster — stretch out our arms further.
Armed with the net we can target more precisely than ever — force the corpse-media to carry their own obituaries.
Sure the net represents technological-society — so?
At this stage of the game retreating forward is the easiest path. Even Biggus Dickus uses radio.
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/13/2022 — 08:20
In reply to Love spectacular terror or hate it, PoD is part of us. by Buttdarling
“Armed with the net we can target more precisely than ever — force the corpse-media to carry their own obituaries. Sure the net represents technological-society — so?”
Armed with cars and roads we can target faster than ever. Sure cars and roads represent technological-society — so?”
The only target you’re aiming at with the internet is your own technoaddicted brain.
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/13/2022 — 08:27
In reply to WtF is PoD by Anonymous (not verified)
PoD = Poopaganda of Doodoo
It’s where brainlets think cars are kewl but internets and vaccines are satan
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 09/13/2022 — 10:55
In reply to PoD = Poopaganda of Doodoo… by Anonymous (not verified)
Different anon here.
Surely the anon is saying computers and the internet are no different to cars and roads? No doubt there were some anarchists who were excited about cars back in the day, believing they’d be able to oRgAniZe further and faster. The other anon is saying the same about the internet, that this is how we go further and faster, that this is how we undermine the mainstream, or something. Funny to claim that in 2022, in my opinion, but there it is.
Real easy way found to fight technoaddiction
Buttdarling Tue, 09/13/2022 — 13:55
Get off the internet
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 10/08/2022 — 15:04
In reply to Real easy way found to fight technoaddiction by Buttdarling
Then you are still in a technological society
Frankly, technology is human, and to be human is destructive and transformative. Anything which can sustain us, is liable to transform us. Gaining autonomy over that is going to be a tricky and unreliable process. I would doubt anyone who has easy answers.
nonya (not verified) Wed, 09/14/2022 — 20:25
At the risk of meaningfully engaging with something on the internet, I’ve never quite understood the interest in ted k. It largely seems like an uncritical cheerleadering for the bombings and not the man, but as someone much smarter than me said many years ago “armed struggle is a strategy that can be put at the service of /any/ project.”
I’ve never found his critiques particularly compelling and he’s very clear in many of his writings that he is not an anarchist and doesn’t regard us very well — though its obvious some of us have a thing for others talking down to us or in some deep part of us also don’t actually want to be anarchists.
All in all hes very much the academic he tried not to be — much ink spilled with nothing in particular to say.
All that said i think his writing is worth keeping around, much in the same way I think bookchins writing is worth keeping around — so other’s can see for themselves how much of nothing it is.
Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/15/2022 — 06:45
In reply to At the risk of meaningfully… by nonya (not verified)
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-communiques-o…
To LWOD [Live Wild or Die]: This is a message from FC Anarchist Terror Group. We are the people who have been blowing up computer scientists, biotech specialists, public relations experts and so forth. The FBI calls us “Unabom.”
...
Letter to Warren Hoge of the New York Times (1995): In our previous letter to you we called ourselves anarchists. Since “anarchist” is a vague word that has been applied to a variety of attitudes, further explanation is needed. We call ourselves anarchists because we would like, ideally, to break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units. Regrettably, we don’t see any clear road to this goal, so we leave it to the indefinite future. Our more immediate goal, which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system. Through our bombings we hope to promote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system.
...
Letter to Warren Hoge (1993): We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC
etc
Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/15/2022 — 21:43
In reply to Ted the anarchist by Anonymous (not verified)
Sectarian/tribalist anarchism has no place on T@L as chisel and rocinante have made clear
chisel Wed, 09/14/2022 — 22:43
the only time i read ted k was when i was transcribing some letters for publication, and i promptly told people i wouldn’t be finishing them, or ever transcribe him again.
that said, i have heard plenty of stories of normies who were compelled by his reasoning that things really were That Bad, decades before (and more widely spread than) desert-the-book.
and yea, blackmailing the nyt to post your writing, which is then convincing to lots of norm-core folks, that’s pretty impressive. not that it did us any good. but that’s a different conversation.
Buttdarling Thu, 09/15/2022 — 18:53
Steelmanning Ted you could take that ‘ anarchists ‘ fragment and the fact he singlehandedly masterminded a successful enough propaganda-of-the-deed then run with that. ( as indeed Zerzan did — for years )
Then rust quickly sets in since his screed revealed a profound ignorance of the left in general, and anarchism in particular, while his targeting of a couple of civilians raises unpleasant memories of Nechaev and set the scene for the execrable ITS advocacy of random murder. Meh.
Shame if all this gasbagging and timewasting over an anti-social criminal detracted from enjoyment of an anarchist classic ( like “ The Spanish Anarchists Heroic Years “ )
And meanwhile the much needed ‘ Post Left Anarchism “ project stagnates for want of a definition of ‘ Left ‘. Sad!
Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/15/2022 — 19:13
In reply to Man of steel by Buttdarling
Thread your replies, “Buttdarling” ;-)
Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 09/15/2022 — 21:44
In reply to Thread your replies, … by Anonymous (not verified)
Holy shit. Le way lives
The revolutionary project for small autonomous units everywhere
Buttdarling Fri, 09/16/2022 — 10:20
This project is well underway online so all those A’s accepting online activism ( such as posting here ) might investigate it. Its called ‘ Cryptoanarchy “.
ONE major drawback though is an acceptance of money and markets is required at this early pre-luxury-communist phase.
So you will be accused of right-opportunism.
Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/16/2022 — 12:38
In reply to The revolutionary project for small autonomous units everywhere by Buttdarling
...the post-left is OUT, Ted K is OUT, eco-extremisim is OUT, but being an extremely-online techno-activist-overlord is IN?
Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/16/2022 — 14:56
In reply to So... by Anonymous (not verified)
“Non-sectarian”
Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 09/18/2022 — 15:54
In reply to “Non-sectarian” by Anonymous (not verified)
i am not part of the library project. my anarchism does not include industrial megaprojects. the internet is OUT, same as cars and nuclear power plants
Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 09/16/2022 — 15:00
In reply to The revolutionary project for small autonomous units everywhere by Buttdarling
Crypto-“anarchy”,,,,,,, fuck off!
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 11/28/2022 — 01:59
IDK I think ruminating on dramas over who is or isn’t, should or shouldn’t be included in the library isn’t very interesting and that’s the nicest thing I can say about these threads, of which this is the second I’ve read and is absolutely terrible...
IDK, it’s been most of this forum.
Exlurker Sat, 12/03/2022 — 00:33
In reply to IDK I think ruminating on… by Anonymous (not verified)
This is the stuff that this forum is made of and keeps this forum from dying like countless others.
I’m a regular on raddle and it’s pretty much dead unless we have a conflict between raddlers or some troll shows up.
The forum will do what it gotta do to keep going.
TheTedKArchive Tue, 11/29/2022 — 00:06
Definitely glad to see them on the website as he definitely identified as an anarchist in the 1990s at least. His first letter to the media, in June 1993, began with the words: “We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC.” A later communiqué from April 1995 repeated: “We call ourselves anarchists.” The Manifesto discusses “our particular brand of anarchism” in Note 34.
Ideally there’d be more disclaimers & potentially some popular sorting mechanisms directly under the main search box, next to where it says; “You can use the following prefixes to search a word in a specific field”. Such as a check box for only anarchist texts that would exclude texts labelled not-anarchist.
I understand there’s no easy answers though. I’m going to be wrestling with similar dilemmas on the website I built specifically to host Ted K documents, suggested reading & broader topics. I’m pro-tech myself, but I just find his life story and impact really interesting. So, I’m hoping the website can work to draw people in with similar politics to him and similar mental health issues frankly, and then for the suggested reading and discussion spaces connected to the website to have a deprogramming effect and be a mental health support.
Like a popular text on the website is simply ‘how to unfuck your friendships’ and the discord has already played host to a discussion between people encouraging each other to think rationally about their depression diagnosis.
Other things I’ve done is have a list of essays critiquing his politics on the front page of the website. And when collecting together research on the misanthropic terror ‘group’ ITS, I just titled the text ‘a text dump on eco-extremism’ rather than dignify many of their fictional stories by calling them communiques.
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 12/17/2022 — 10:46
In reply to Glad there’s Ted K texts. by TheTedKArchive
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-t…
The early and mid-stage ITS communiques and the attacks they relate were absolutely real.
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 12/26/2022 — 18:51
In reply to Glad there’s Ted K texts. by TheTedKArchive
I’m very surprised anarchistlibraries.net is hosting this. For every one Ted K text there are ten bullshit pieces with titles like ‘How to unfuck your relationships using science’. It’s basically just a textdump of everything one extremely-online liberal likes with a clickbait title, no doubt trying to capitalise on the recent Ted K film.
Communiques of ITS
Date: 01/28/2023
Source: <shh.anarchyplanet.org/node/48>
Anonymous: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-t…
Eight communiques (plus a brief note) over three years from Mexico. Things would never be the same again.
Thoughts?
The Ted K Archive (not verified) Sun, 01/29/2023 — 13:27
It’s psychologically interesting reading, seeing a group of people so slavishly invested in one person’s philosophy:
“Many parts of the group’s communiqués are merely paraphrases of [Ted K’s] Manifesto: ‘The essence of the power process has four parts: setting out of the goal, effort, attainment of the goal, and Autonomy’.”
I think they reflect Ted K when he was at his most hopeless, trying to bomb airplanes out the sky because of how annoyed he was by the noise of them flying over where he lived:
“Ted in prison has argued to the extent they are organising with others they should be working to bring about a primitivist revolution in going after riskier targets like electricity grid stations. But it’s almost as if ITS feel being able to do random attacks is what’s owed to them by being free and that to listen to Ted now would be helping serve his needs as a theorist from prison, to the detriment of their own desires.”
Further reading: Ted Kaczynski’s Various Ethical & Political Flirtations: https://www.thetedkarchive.com/library/various-ted-kaczynski-s-various-…
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 01/31/2023 — 10:57
In reply to It’s psychologically… by The Ted K Archive (not verified)
It’s psychologically interesting, seeing a person so slavishly invested in Psychology, the most bullshit of all bullshit sciences.
There were no ‘random attacks’ in the first (or second*) phase of ITS. Why not try actually reading the communiques?
* https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/wild-reaction-the-communiques-o…
rocinante Sun, 01/29/2023 — 18:18
Some initial thoughts here. The library is frequently critiqued by individuals and groups for including texts from ITS. Back in 2018 some librarians responded to this critique with the following:
“For many years, texts from an eco-extremist (EE) group calling themselves “Individuals Tending toward the Wild” or ITS, were on the library, as they once claimed to be anarchist-influenced. No problems were raised over those years. The library stopped publishing the ITS communiques and related texts once they stopped calling themselves anarchists and started claiming indiscriminate attacks against hikers, and there were some attacks in Mexico City. The library has not had writings by ITS since then.”
The part of the library no longer publishing texts by ITS is often left out of every single critique of the project for publishing ITS. Many of these, or practically every single one of these critics seems to portray the project as one that has published ITS texts about indiscriminate violence against hikers and the attacks in DF, even though the library has never published the texts. I imagine that the critiques often leave this out because they don’t take the time to actually read and look into the storied past of this or perhaps purposely to incite reactions and attempt to falsely prove their point. One of the exceptions to no longer publishing ITS texts comes from the recent “Los Hijos del Mencho” response text that was also published in the Black Seed journal, as it is relevant for the entire discussion. The text can be found here.
Going back to what some librarians wrote about this in 2018:
“ITS texts have. ITS came out of the anarchist space and how far from it they’ve found (or removed) themselves from it is of interest to some anarchists. It is part of our history and is completely appropriate for it to appear on an archival project documenting anarchist and related texts. Reading things by people we disagree with (or making such readings accessible to other people) is not condoning the things we disagree with, much less supporting them. Anyone who insists on banning particular texts from the library because they personally disagree with the content is acting to indoctrinate, not allowing people to make up their own minds. ”
It has been recommended by some that the library have canned responses about certain text that have been published on the website, which might be something to work on and include on the library wiki or these library forums in the future.
Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 07/09/2023 — 17:29
I have to say the reason why most people hate this is because it is indigenous people embracing the violence that our ancestors used against the colonizers and it scares them because black white left right cis or trans you all benefit from colonization of our people and anytime we rise up you mother fuckers try to fash jacket us or call us Nazi or eco-fascists
eco-extremism, as it is called or really Natives embracing their identity, scares people because we don’t care who you are, what your identity is, what your politics are, what your gender is, what your sex is, if you are benefiting from the colonization of our people you are an enemy, and even if we don’t attack you, if you are a casualty, we don’t give a fuck
Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 07/13/2023 — 05:36
In reply to I have to say the reason why… by Anonymous (not verified)
I’d point out that indiscriminate attacks by anarchists are nothing new. ITS were not the first nor are they the last. Devices have been left by anarchists in public places in Greece this year. I don’t remember anyone in our milieu losing their shit over that, do you?
What’s collections?
Date: 11/02/2023
Source: <shh.anarchyplanet.org/node/77>
Anonymous: I see there’s a feature being tested (?), something called collections
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/node
Probably too early to comment on any of it, but I worry this will be the beginning of a strong meta-narrative for the entire library, affirming some of the most persistent but nonsensical categories and stories about the anarchist tradition. Please tell me that’s not the path we’re going down here.
Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 02/02/2024 — 13:37
Different anon here. Also not pleased to see that. If librarians want to tell their story of anarchy, start a blog or something.
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/03/2024 — 01:05
IDK what ya’ll are crying about, its a great idea. The fact there aren’t more of them is whats unfortunate.
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/03/2024 — 10:38
In reply to IDK what ya’ll are crying… by Anonymous (not verified)
i notice that you don’t explain what is great about the idea.
the librarians’ first attempt shows what’s bad about it. how is stirner a classical anarchist? he never even used the word. nor does he have anything at all to do with the others on the list, who barely have anything to do with each other.
forcing authors and texts into neat categories stinks of the academy. i imagine the person behind it fancies themselves as a professor, if they’re not already one.
rocinante Sat, 02/03/2024 — 17:18
The Collections you reference for the moment are new and an experiment. There hasn’t been much conversation about the subject for the English language project since the new Amusewiki feature came out. It’s definitely a works in progress and I haven’t made up my mind about it all yet. I’m not the librarian that created the first collection, so perhaps they would like to chime in here with some of their thinking as well. I think it would be a good idea to put the collections feature on pause while we chat about it.
Here are some questions that I was thinking about: What do you like / dislike about collections? Do you think that topics / tags are different than collections? If so, how? How do you define what a collection is? What kind of library collections are out there in the world to compare and contrast with? What are some other anarchist collections you might imagine other than the current “classical” one? If the collections feature seems too “academic” how can this be subverted?
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/03/2024 — 17:28
In reply to pet rock collections by rocinante
I think categories like Montréal Counter-Information, Puget Sound Anarchists, etc. could be good, to collect things together that were posted on specific sites.
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/03/2024 — 19:09
In reply to pet rock collections by rocinante
the anarchist library is an archive of texts uploaded by thousands of anarchists over the last decade. whoever wrote the “classical anarchism” list is overriding that, saying (on the front page) THESE are the texts to read, and they’re doing it in the name of the library as a whole.
the last new feature i saw on the library (“librarian’s picks”) was great and long overdue. this new feature is shockingly bad. i imagine whoever wrote it thinks they’re “guiding the anarcho-newbie” or something... i’d ask them why do they think anyone needs guiding? and why by you? what do you think might happen if you don’t guide them? would it be such a bad thing if someone read something from outside the canon?
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/03/2024 — 22:43
i mean, to begin with, the website should be called something like “ananarchistlibrary” and the domain with “the” in the beginning of it should be turned into a redirect. oh well. we can’t have it all, folks.
there’s already a metanarrative
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/05/2024 — 14:54
TAL (like any other library) already makes choices defining how people understand the shape & history of anarchist ideas via its choices to include or exclude certain texts. those choices have already been controversial enough to produce a split years ago:
https://anarchistlibraries.net/history
this also implicitly answers the commenter wondering about “the”, since that network was built specifically to challenge TAL’s presumed authority
https://anarchistlibraries.net/libraries
plus of course there are countless offline libraries etc.
Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 02/05/2024 — 15:31
In reply to there’s already a metanarrative by Anonymous (not verified)
adding a handful of controversial texts into the mix of thousands of others is not the same as handpicking a dozen and saying, on the front page, THIS IS ANARCHY
rocinante Sat, 02/17/2024 — 21:23
In reply to there’s already a metanarrative by Anonymous (not verified)
To be honest, when the library was founded it started off as THE Anarchist Library, but shortly after one librarian quipped that we made a mistake and it should have been called AN Anarchist Library. The person that mentioned this first is still part of the project, so this sentiment has been around since the very beginning. It has been discussed on social media over the years some as well. As for me, I like THE perhaps just because it has always been this way and AN just doesn’t sound the same. The library split mentioned above is resharing this idea that librarians mentioned who are still part of the project, I think is a key takeaway and somewhat of a rebuttle to their version of “history”.
Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 02/20/2024 — 11:34
if you’re going to insist on running with this idea then at least put it into draft form until it’s finished because as it stands you have a baby anarchist “‘my first collection”’ on your front page
Anonymous (not verified) Sun, 03/17/2024 — 10:17
In reply to if you’re going to insist on… by Anonymous (not verified)
No Godwin in this collection? Why publish a draft on your front page? Or is that your final list?
Anonymous (not verified) Sat, 02/24/2024 — 12:42
I’m with the OP on this. You are “affirming some of the most persistent but nonsensical categories and stories about the anarchist tradition”, nothing more.
rocinante Sun, 03/17/2024 — 14:23
“The Collections” draft has been deleted from the library for the moment.
Matrix
Source: matrix.to/#/#theanarchistlibrary:riot.anarchyplanet.org
July 25, 2022
eris: why does the library host ted k’s texts?
lucian: industrial society has been on there since the early days
most of the others were added by a librarian in 2017ish
on my way out now but can add more when i get back. in the mean time,
i’d ask: why not? :)
(for the conversation. obvs i know why not)
eris: there’s critique of the library based on the fact that it hosts these texts due to their not particularly anarchist nature
lucian: interested to hear yours and others thoughts
eris: i dont have any thoughts
magsalin: Personally I disagree with hosting Ted K and ITS texts
eris: yea, a lot do
hence me raising this
magsalin: But not only do I support keeping it up, when I see people uploading new Ted K. texts I approve it
The Anarchist Library was founded by anticiv nihilists
TEd K and ITS belong to this tradition
eris: hmm, fair
magsalin: However, because ITS turned anti-anarchist, there’s a sort of informal moratorium on new eco-extremist texts, especially eco-extremist texts that are explicitly hostile to anarchism
Eco-extremist texts are published on a case to case basis
eccodaisy: I think Ted K is as anarchist as Chomsky, Nietzsche, most of Bookchin’s work, most of Graeber’s work
Bookchin turned anti-anarchist as well
Öcalan, Fourier, Deleuze, Shelley
there’s a ton of non-anarchists on the library, but they’re all “of interest”
eris: perhaps there’s a line to be drawn between part of the ‘anarchist’ school of thought and part of the ‘anarchy’ school of thought
eccodaisy: fwiw, I’m fine with a rather extensive library, even if the amount of Chomsky seems excessive
where would you draw that line, eris?
eris: i dont know!
eccodaisy: fair
lucian: ‘there’s critique of the library based on the fact that it hosts these texts due to their not particularly anarchist nature’ — what do you think of this critique eris?
eris: i dont know
i’d like to hear the perspective of the library
lucian: there’s a variety :)
eris: fair enough!
whats your perspective on the inclusion of ted k texts on the library? why do you think they should stay up?
lucian: i think ted k is or at least was an anarchist as per https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/ted-kaczynski-the-communiques-of-freedom-club-ted-kaczynski
“To LWOD [Live Wild or Die]: This is a message from FC Anarchist Terror Group. We are the people who have been blowing up computer scientists, biotech specialists, public relations experts and so forth. The FBI calls us “Unabom.”’
lucian: ishkah was asking about ted k the other day too. they might have some thoughts to share
ishkah: I think it’s grand to host them, as they’re relevant to the history of anarchism, I’m going to post my own ‘communications of Ted K as part of his terror campaign’ collection soon that’s more complete. I just think anti-anarchist texts should be better tagged and displayed separately better, with signposts to critiques. So, finally I think effort should be made into finding those best critiques and uploading them to the library which I’m planning to do when I’ve finished writing this book anyways.
Here’s a list including a few good essays, I know most of these wouldn’t be suitable, just for people’s curiosity:
https://activistjourneys.wordpress.com/the-early-history-of-its-and-the-various-anarchist-critiques/
eris: yea, thats the critique
anti anarchist texts werent shown well
they werent marked as anti anarchist
lucian: idk why ted k and ITS are always conflated. ted k said he was an anarchist. prior to his arrest he was in correspondence with LWOD. his first prison interview was with the EF! journal. he’s had letters in green anarchist magazine, green anarchy magazine, and AJODA
like it or not, he’s anarchist. ITS, on the other hand, said as early as their 4th communique “Why do we not consider ourselves anarchists? Precisely because we do not share the anarchists’ vision about the “destruction” of this world to create a “new,” “self-managed” one within the clichés of mutual aid (to strangers) and (promiscuous) solidarity, which as we stated before is not natural.” https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-the-wild-communiques
ITS communiques are tagged as ‘not anarchist’ on the library
rocinante: Great responses lucian!
eris: thank you for clearing it up!
rocinante: A lot of the Ted K. critique nowadays comes from Kevin Tucker and John Zerzan, who at one point (correct me if I’m wrong), but Green Anarchy Magazine (USA) days, were publishing Ted K stuff.
William Gillis also has some Twitter threads on this subject, but I won’t look them up or refer more — but they are one who has brought this up a lot (continually) over time.
Just to follow up on an early comment too. The library was founded by anti-civ anarchists, nihilist anarchists, and a handful of other modifers. I’m one of these people and back then I would have called myself and did “anti-civ”. There were post-anarchists, anarchists without adjectives, and whatever. I think from the very start the library made a point as being a place to publish every single anarchist text every written (well kind of).
lucian: rocinante one problem with my response is that it’s the ITS interview that’s marked ‘not anarchist’, not the communiques :D https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-the-wild-interview-with-individualists-tending-toward-the-wild
rocinante: Obvi, please feel free to tag as such.
eris: perhaps they should be then
rocinante: The library has drawn a lot of criticism for publishing the earlier ITS communiques and some ppl who originally were part of the project left. I wrote along with other librarians a response to this. Since then, the library hasn’t really published many texts that would be tagged as EE
lucian: jz was all about ted k back in the day. he wrote an essay about him called ‘he means it, do you?’ (great title) that i really need to dig out and upload
rocinante: Many of the groups who critiqued the library for posting such EE texts, actually had links to the same communiques on their website too (and still do!).
lucian: re. the adjectives, i’d call 2010 era A! ‘post-left’ and M ‘insurrectionary’
rocinante: yeah, I was definitely — anti-civ / post-left (well still am) but I don’t really use those adjectives anymore
**eris:
lucian: jz was all about ted k back in the day. he wrote an essay about him called ‘he means it, do you?’ (great title) that i really need to dig out and upload
for some reason i remember reading something like that
rocinante: One of founders of library went on to become really well known post-anarchist writer / thinker (so very academic).
eris: whats a post anarchist?
rocinante: post-anarchism = academic anarchism imho, but that’s a bad definition
Wikipedia linkage: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Contemporary_anarchism#Post-anarchism
substack: post anarchism is when you send zines in the mail
rocinante: “Post-anarchism is a revision of classical anarchism through influence of post-structuralists such as Jean Baudrillard, Gilles Deleuze, Michel Foucault, and Jacques Lacan.[35] Post-anarchism is a contested term, with its prefix “post” referring to post-structuralism and/or postmodernism, which themselves are contested terms.[36] Many post-anarchist theorists (e.g., Jason Adams, Todd May, and Saul Newman) invoke post-structuralist writings. The postmodern aspect of post-anarchism involves rejection of universal values and grand theories in favor of plurality and hybridity.”
eris: bruh
rocinante: substack! Nice to see you joining the chat. :)
eris: who cares about deleuze
substack: yes hi
lucian: post anarchist is sometimes confusingly used to mean ex anarchist (as in ITS)
but usually means saul newman et al
who is definitely not a terrorist
afaik
eris: what even is post structuralism
seems very academic and obnoxious
can someone explain it in twenty words or less?
rocinante: post-structuralism — words over time and space using posts for structure. ;) best i got
lucian: so you’ve met saul then? :D
rocinante: My favorite post-anarchist thinker is DUAAAAAAAAAAAAAANNNE
Duane R.
eris: duran?
lucian: jk he’s great
bedtime here. catch you in the week
i liked having a conversation about ITS where no one calls anyone a fascist. let’s do that again sometime(edited)
rocinante: Duane = https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duane_Rousselle they have been on the Brilliant Podcast
rocinante: goodnight lucian! ttyl
eris: Duran D. Uran????
rocinante: (good tunes) :)
re: ITS conversation, I think it’s important to note again, that the library is only hosting the communiques from before they said they were no longer anarchists. There are some other texts from after the fact, but they are related to the bigger picture of the entire ITS critique. A lot of ppl who try to come at the project, don’t understand this and just assume (since William Gillis told them) that the library has published all the ITS indiscriminate attacks. The project hasn’t, but ppl are not careful readers, researchers, or knowledgeable about everything they hate — they just go in guns blazing, full attack mode — and miss everything.
eris if you haven’t seen this yet, you might appreciate: https://bookshelf.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/an-anarchist-librarian-from-north-america-10-years-later-a-reflection-and-a-response-en (It is the library response to EE back in 2018. I wrote this largely with the help of other librarians.)
rocinante: The response is the EE part.
It would probably make sense to have a librarian blog about such things, like a blanket template response somewhere on the wiki to your earlier questions
eris Perhaps with time.
I hear there might be a library forum in the works. IDK. lips sealed. shhhhhh. for conversations, outside of this IRC about such thing, opening it up to a wider audience. I think that would be pretty cool.
Jun 28, 2022
anon: Ted Kaczynski did nothing wrong.
magsalin: It’s also really weird to have trolls say “Unabomber was right” in a space that has an explicit anticiv sympathy. Like, are you hoping to find offense here?
Aug 9, 2022
vinnie: hey guys! i was just brushing through library’s popular texts and found a Ted Kaczynski article
gotta say I felt a bit uncomfortable because this guy is worshipped in some cesspool across the web
what you guys think about him? what’s the importance of having his texts available?
magsalin: I don’t like Ted K. I disagree with his theory and I don’t like his methods. But he is an important theorist in the anticiv tradition. We have to understand The Anarchist Library was founded by nihilists and anticivs. He has a place in the library because of this tradition.
eris: many consider him a part of anti civ, primitivist or insurrectionist anarchism
hmmm, that’s interesting
thx for pointing that out, folks
magsalin: Is the text satirical? What’s it trying to say? I’ve read it, but maybe my autism prevents me from reading its subtleties.
rocinante: The text isn’t satirical,. I think it is looking historically at the practices of infanticide in relation to morals. At the start it says “a majority of human societies in the past have openly accepted infanticide and have not regarded it as morally problematic.”
magsalin: Hmm when I read it it seemed intentionally ambiguous on infanticide ought to be done. I think that’s where the hostility comes from where people interpret it as being pro-infanticide.
Dec 16, 2022
magsalin: Iain McKay and Shawn P. Wilbur said they would rather that Konkin be removed from the Library
I’d appreciate it if you can put out the social media request to ask whether to keep or remove Konkin. I’d like more people to weigh in. So far, Konkin has not found good enough supporters
anon_0: Hi
ibu: what do you want to discuss?
anon_0: my post was rejected by mods with no deliberation
ibu: I am not among the people who decide about publication, but leave your issue here and you’ll probably get an answer. (Stay online or use matrix to read the backlog later.)
wave: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/action/text/edit/rai-ling-anarchism-and-cryptocurrency/21631/diff
I republished anyway
curious as to why this is labelled as “not anarchist”
it’s relevant to current discourse, clearly addresses “liberation” (from the state) and also has a section dedicated to anarchist context
ibu: I haven’t read the text, but broadly it argues that cryptocurrencies are anarchist, right?
wave: there is technical discussion and addressing of current talking points that is tangential to anarchism in later sections, but necessary to address potential counterarguments that come left of field (and currently dominate anarchist perspective on this issue)
broadly argues it has uses for anarchist praxis under capitalism and also as a tool in a stateless context
written from a mutualist perspective (anti-capitalist)
magsalin: What time is it where you are?
I think it can go up, but you’ll have to convince the one who unpublished it
wave: 1:48 PM rn
ibu: I understand that the decentralization of blockchain has advantages, but cryptocurrencies just transfer the power to those with mining resources or to those with most money and in the end just make power invisible. Apart from that my personal view is that money is not anarchist.
magsalin: Wait a few hours.
ibu, I don’t think it’s up to us to decide what is or what is not anarchist beyond a broad pluralism for opposition to capitalism, government, domination
I know Rai Ling’s reputation, I think the text can go up because it deals with anarchist topics written by an anarchist author (again, within a broad pluralism)
ibu: I am not against pluralism of ideas for emancipation. Money is just not part of my utopia.
magsalin: I agree with you, I’m also anti-money
Every day I wish we could live without money
wave: yeah, anarchism diverse with varying opinions on money. but historically it does seem mutualist/ left-wing market anarchist content that’s neutral or pro-money is allowed to go up
magsalin: Wdym historically go up
the library isn’t that old
wave: I mean in the past
personally speaking, would be difficult for me to convey preferences or interact without monetary transaction and not having alternatives where I don’t have to trust people which is why I think anarchy is pluralistic (outside of opposing hierarchy). But this is unrelated to the matter of course
difficult is an understatement actually
magsalin: Posting replies from various people on the Konkin issue
Shawn P. Wilbur:
Is there any specific reason to treat Konkin as an anarchist? Even the New Libertarian Manifesto claims that “the freest society yet envisioned is that of Robert LeFevre,” and then takes a step back from the autarchism that LeFevre contrasted with anarchism. “Agorism” has taken on a broader range of meanings since Konkin’s death, so there may indeed be anarchist texts out there identified with the agorist label, but I’m not sure Konkin went beyond voluntaryism.
Iain McKay:
I’ve not heard of that particular claim, but then I don’t frequent those circles — I do know that the guy who wrote Men Against the State indulged in a bit of holocaust denial. Is it possible that someone confused the two? Although I stress I don’t know regards Konkin and that is just a suggestion. In terms of Konkin, I was surprised to see him added to the Library — I don’t consider him as being that much better than Rothbard and he made a point of stressing how Rothbardian he was (not that Rothbard agreed...). Nothing I have read by him really seemed particularly striking or interesting (unlike the individualist anarchists), but then my opinions are well-known on the matter of “anarcho-capitalism” and its various off-shoots. Iain
William Gillis (yes..., him...):
I’m kinda neutral on this. I see the case for deletion because holocaust denial is pretty fucking vile and it would be nice if the anarchist library actually deleted outright reactionaries (like ITS and Ted K). I’m not an expert, and am open to learning horrible shit, but it seems equivalent to Chomsky and a bunch of other free speech absolutist 60s-80s era anarchists who got into “historical revisionism” widely defined.
I would be more than happy if TAL deleted Konkin and Chomsky, drawing a firm antifascist moral line that they applied consistently. But I also highly doubt that they’ll do such given the way they bend over backwards for figures the core folks in TAL see as within their “team” like good ol Uncle Ted, despite his repudiation of anarchism in debates with Zerzan. But then I think Stirner AND Bookchin should be excluded too because of their disassociation.
In fact my default assumption since I saw TAL started to include Konkin is that it’s a consciously intended rhetorical trap intended to get us into defending Konkin’s indefensible involvement in the publication of holocaust deniers and thus either assert some kind of hypocrisy or use Konkin as a “non-partisan” wedge to justify inclusion of Ted K, ITS, and whatever other reactionary content. But I simply prefer stronger lines PLUS non-partisan consistency.
I do want to say that there are, in any publication or library, inherent dynamics where you’re going to include imperfect content. I’m not without sympathy on the tightrope. I (from the limited knowledge I have of his involvement with holocaust deniers) as more or less morally on par with eg Wolfi’s (accidental) collab with fash and intentional child rape apologia,. So I can see the case for including Wolfi AND Konkin... OR the exclusion of both.
Personally in the direction of inclusion I would probably slightly skew towards including Wolfi, Chomsky and Konkin, awful shit and all. Including young Bookchin (despite 80s Bookchin sharing a stage with a fascist one time lmao on free speech debate grounds) but not post-90s anti-anarchist Bookchin, excluding Stirner but not anarchist stirnerites writing about him. Including Zerzan and Aragorn but not Ted K or Edward Abbey.
I recognize the boundaries are inherently amorphous. I think a clear bright line should be “renounced or explicitly chose not to identify as an anarchist” which excludes Ted K, Stirner, and post-90s Bookchin.
I think more latitude should occur around self-identified folks, but not without any boundaries. Abbey’s extreme racism/misogyny/etc should exclude him, and similarly for Rothbard and ITS.
Now that’s just deranged
Here’s what I said to this:
I can ensure you there’s no such trap. I was the one who cleaned and formatted Konkin’s New Libertarian Manifesto for the library even if I am not an agorist or mutualist. Another mutualist unaffiliated with the library uploaded Konkin’s other texts. We approved them. There isn’t some conspiracy about.
wave: I guess there is some sort of precedent to support publication then. looking forward to seeing responses later
magsalin: Don’t be too pleased with yourself, you should still make your case
this room is linked to a matrix chat
meaning history will be preserved. If you write your case and leave your email that would help I think
or you can wait
wave: I think I made my case with those initial messages, but I’ll elaborate if needed
basically the piece clearly mentions how crypto is a tool for liberation from the state, which I presume is relevant to anarchists (and the essay states this) regardless of whether they think it has a place in anarchy. there is also a section outlining it’s place in anarchy. rest of the counter arguments against to crypto that come from other anarc
hists/ leftists. Conclusion addresses anarchists and also takes anarchist position. the title also references anarchists, the author has anarchist history.
the economic framework referenced, namely the understanding of rent, draws from Kevin Carson/ Mutualism/ LWMA
I think merits of the article itself should not be relevant to publication. what’s important is that the piece is broadly related to anarchism as opposition to authority/ anti-capitalism. given precedent, relation to anarchism can also be broadly interpreted to groups associated with anarchism by certain anarchists but aren’t anarchists and even re
ject it, such as Konkin, Ted K, etc.
but the broad interpretation of “related to anarchism” need not even apply here, so shouldn’t be all that controversial from my pov
there is a lot of technical stuff on how crypto works but that is necessary context for why it’s useful and why some of the popular points of opposition may be wrong
Each of the sections that address arguments against crypto focus on anarchist concerns and how they relate to authority (the thing anarchists oppose)
magsalin: without involving social media, I think the replies from McKay and Wilbur (who are not part of the project) but are very knowledgeable is enough for me.
I pulled the crypto text from the bin and publishing (since you know author and they stopped by here)
rocinante: I did repost your message though to the library social media
rai ling left a nice msg for us: “Maybe try to understand the perspectives being represented instead of defaulting to the kneejerk Western anarchist narrative (coming from a someone who was forced to leave the West and benefitted greatly from crypto during the transition).”
kneejerk reaction much. all in a day.
magsalin: The submitter wasn’t Rai Ling
wave: basically the piece clearly mentions how crypto is a tool for liberation from the state, which I presume is relevant to anarchists (and the essay states this) regardless of whether they think it has a place in anarchy. there is also a section outlining it’s place in anarchy. rest of the counter arguments against to crypto that come from other anarc
The submitter was this person
rocinante: okay, my bad. it’s published now. rocinante
wow, there are a lot of responses to Konkin III, that’s pretty cool
magsalin: Yes, some in support of keeping Konkin as well
More input from people on Konkin
“Konkin also wrote and edited for a holocaust denying journal”
REMOVE THAT MOTHERFVCKER !
I haven’t read konkins other texts but the new libertarian manifesto doesn’t indicate konkins views on this issue. I think there is value in his philosophy and I’m glad it’s available for people to read.
I wouldn’t care either way but I’ve very skeptical as to why it’s konkins that is getting the boot as this seems to be a far lessor issue compared to other texts. So the issue is having a writer who platformed Holocaust deniers which is very bad. But considering feral fawns text on child “love” is still available having a text of a author who platformed a Holocaust deniers seems kinda tepid.
One is platforming someone who platformed bad ideas but doesn’t link to it in any way. While the other is outright linking to advocacy and encouragement of causing great harm.
So I’d say I’m very skeptical why konkin in getting the boot. I can’t help but feel this is more so to potential ideological bias than an actual problem. Cuz if I was going to chop texts for their outright harm konkin wouldn’t be even close.
I’d say I would normally be fine with this but considering the anarchist library platforms a text directly advocating for rape getting rid of konkin feels to be a tepid problem in comparison.
So I would say I don’t care either way but if people are going to get rid of konkin they should be getting rid a quite a few other texts too.
Konkin is available at ithe replaces so this is a unimportant issue and the library should do whatever. I won’t complain. But I think it’s quite odd that out of all the controversial texts konkin is getting the axe.
sooo this isn’t a case for inclusion at all but I wonder what the value vs. problem might be for something like “here are a list of authors we explicitly don’t include and why”? it would obviously be a whole new chunk of work someone would have to do, but it would be cool to have a list of like, here’s who to avoid from other sources because they’re secretly racist/ecofash/whatever.
I’m happy to have been reminded of your site, and thank you for the work you do!
are we really still allowing people to use free speech absolutist and get away with it. You gotta be fucking kidding me
Perhaps inclusion but with editorial notes bracketing his writing which explains his involvement and writings for said journal?
If the purpose of the Anarchist Library is to document anarchist thinking, it seems like it is worth it to add, rather than subtract. “Here is an important agorist writer, here is what he wrote that was anarchist, and here is the sort of dodgy fascist paper he was willing to write for. Make of that what you will.”
It does seem to matter that an influential agorist writer was at one point comfortable with the sort of “free speech absolutism” that made him comfortable enough to write for holocaust deniers. That’s valuable information in and of itself, at least because it tells us something about Konkin and where his thought was coming from.
I mean, there could always be implemented some kind of CW to his content on the library.
We could all benefit from stuff like that tbh, like doing something similar with Bakunin and adding notes to his content explaining that we was pretty antisemitic.
I still read Bakunin’s work, but with the knowledge that he was like that and I can analize better his content
I’m not heavy for keeping them. To me, it is nice having ready access to the body of works, for better or worse, that influenced anarchism even if the author was a bad person. If ya’ll decide to keep them up you could include a context warning about the author in the header of their works or put them in a special subsection of the website. I would also add caution about taking this too far, a lot of good foundational ideas in anarchism came from people with very bad positions or ideas in other regards. Where do you possibly draw that line without obliterating the library?
i don’t have a strong opinion on this particular author; agorism doesn’t seem at all anarchist to me, but if anarchists find it useful, it doesn’t do any harm having it here.
but, in general, i’m very dubious about the idea of removing works because their author had bad ideas or associated with people who had bad ideas.
as far as i know, being published on the library is not an endorsement of the work or its author, or even a statement that a particular text is ‘anarchist’ (whatever arbitrary meaning we assign to that word); the site’s purpose is simply to collect texts that are in some way related to anarchy or interesting to anarchists, not to use its centralised nature to act as an authority on who is allowed to speak about anarchy (which would be a rather unanarchist thing to do).
there’s already someone here suggesting that Stirner should be removed, which is such a laughable idea i can’t even tell if it’s serious — but i do hope the library can take a more sensible approach to its task than that.
Critical reading is critical. Provide context in the catalogue, sure... But reading problematic writers is vital. There is nothing I hate more than parents stopping their children from reading problematic authors because they’re too lazy to have a conversation or provide context, or worse, think their own child couldn’t be trusted to identify the issues. Extending that logic to libraries making similar decisions is even worse.
I think we always have to engage critically and look for useful insights in works of authors with dodgy histories (which includes most classical anarchists and many contemporary ones). Bakunin for example descirbed banking as a jewish conspiracy but i doubt the idea of deleting his works will be even considered.
Surely the “good case for his inclusion” is the free speech case and the case that anarchists are not moral judges? If Konkin has reprehensible views then those views will speak for themselves.
Add to this that if having dubious or controversial views is a criterion for being erased from the library then lots of people currently on there are in trouble and the librarians become censors.
More than this, however, the library should not fall prey to every tweeter with a grudge.
So long story short, we have a lot of new voices arguing for inclusion with content warnings
We never did content warnings before
eris: reminscent of the ted K discussion
the argument was for the responsibility of hosts, and an example was brought that marxists.org did something similar?
magsalin: Ah yeah? Like with whom?
eris: i believe it was Blessed Is The Flame but i can’t recall
probably not, it seems
someone with search access should be able to find it
magsalin: Why would people dislike BLESSED IS THE FLAME?
Is it because they celebrated ITS?
It is isn’t it. ://
Also what happened with Marxists.org?
eris: i dont think its hosted on marxists
magsalin: ah
eris: but there is a text hosted there with a disclaimer, iirc, just can’t rember what it is ^^’
magsalin: It’s too recent for the MIA
They do historical stuff, not contemporary stuff
eris: ah
toorslice: I’ve never had cause to speak up here, but would feel remiss if I failed to in regards to this topic. Do what you wish with the library, but I would be sad to see attempts to remove authors or to offer context/warnings.
A library is free. The only question, imho, is whether a text discusses anarchism as a sufficiently central theme to warrant inclusion.
Trying to provide context necessarily makes for historians, not librarians, and is not possible without controversy regarding interpretation. The risks of fracturing community through disagreement over interpretation here are far greater than those of a simple and unambiguous decision; even if some people take offense at the results.
If there is a serious issue over context, the example I’d prefer to see would be a universal reminder that every person has their own unique views and history, along with encouragement to do your own homework and draw your own conclusions.
kočka: Thanks for posting those full comments here. I think this is an important & intriguing discussion to have
elias: libraries don’t have content warnings
seems like konkin was maybe not the best addition to the library, but whatever, he’s in there now. i’d advise just not adding any more texts by him
the ppl at the complaints desk will move on to something else sooner or later
‘If there is a serious issue over context, the example I’d prefer to see would be a universal reminder that every person has their own unique views and history, along with encouragement to do your own homework and draw your own conclusions.’ — i’d have thought that went without saying tbh, @toorslice:matrix.org
that’s what a library is. i’ve never been to a library with disclaimers on the covers of their books
eris: yea, actually
libraries carry far worse books without noting who they are
elias: btw magsalin “But considering feral fawns text on child “love” is still available” — it’s not available on t@l. not because the library censored it, but because the author didn’t want it up (the library presumed)
eris: huh, fawn wanted that removed?
elias: we don’t know. wolfi doesn’t use the internet
but we can presume that, because he left it out of every reprint of that collection, he didn’t want it out there
not that fawn has anything to do with anything. it’s really frustrating that every time someone wants to talk about a text’s inclusion they have to bring up wolfi, bey, black etc etc etc
eris: the discourse gets trotted out and out and out again
elias: there’s also an irony in using TWITTER to complain about anarchists flirting with the right, associating with Bad People etc. could librarians with access to twitter redirect people to either the IRC, the mailing list, shh.anarchyplanet.org, or one of our other platforms?
anarchistnews.org general forum, the fediverse instance
solonovamax:
libraries don’t have content warnings
rather than necessarily, it could be a “yo check this out to see where this persons’ biases lie”
because, the biases people have can influence the content they produce, so because the anarchist’s library is specifically positioned as an educational tool. how it’s presented would depend a lot on the UI/UX, but I feel it might be interesting for some people to read about. it could also be specifically positioned at the end of the content, rather than the start in like a “more about this author” kinda way
though, I also have literally zero clue what this is exactly about, so it could be completely overkill for this lol
elias: “ it could be a “yo check this out to see where this persons’ biases lie” “ — still a disclaimer and totally inappropriate for a library, imo
idk what this is exactly about either. i think someone who has recently had a few pieces go up on the library also had a piece in a journal that also a piece of holocaust denial in it, or something
fucking weak sauce, if you ask me. again, only speaking for myself here, not the library
solonovamax: see, it’s quite important how it’s presented
so rather than being presented as a “disclaimer” it’s presented as a way to learn more about some of what they’ve said/believe in (probably not phrasing it right because I woke up at 6 am today)
that’s why I specifically suggested instead placing it at the bottom rather than the top
magsalin:
eris: libraries carry far worse books without noting who they are
I know. Though it was actually an article critiquing that text but the title stayed. Also people were pissed af because they couldn’t read beyond the title, so it had to be removed
elias: idk what this is exactly about either. i think someone who has recently had a few pieces go up on the library also had a piece in a journal that also a piece of holocaust denial in it, or something
I’ve removed all articles from the holocaust denial journal already. It doesn’t look good, but Konkin wasn’t a denialist himself
elias: magsalin, i trust your judgement on this (and on most everything, tbh) but i would say, for future reference: younger anarchists are very naive about how hard it was to have anarchist writing published pre-internet, pre-AK Press, pre-LBC etc. there was a time when if you were an anarchist and a journal offered to print your writing and ship it around the world, you said yes, regardless of what else was going to appear in the journal
magsalin: Alright, thanks
@translator25:riot.anarchyplanet.org: Regarding free speech, libraries should be approached differently than social media, as the former does not have ‘endorsement/engagement’ in its very foundations
I.e. it is ok to put a statue in a museum but not a town square
magsalin: You saying Konkin should stay?
@translator25:riot.anarchyplanet.org: If the articles fit in the criteria
and wouldn’t turn anyone else into Nazism
magsalin: Makes sense, so an argument for inclusion
solonovamax: imo even if they would, so long as they fit the inclusion criteria, they should be kept in
as a library, it shouldn’t necessarily be attempting to gate the content
i.e. you can still find hilter’s mein kampf in libraries, regardless of its harmful views and antisemitic agenda.
A library shouldn’t be a curator of content, rather simply an aggregator. However, if a certain work warrants it, I do think a notice of some sort could be added. (though, looking over the basics of this situation, I think a notice isn’t particularly needed for this instance)
however, this instance will set a precedent for future instances
elias: the library already has a way to do this. find a critique of konkin or whoever, upload it and add the tag/topic ‘samuel edward konkin.’ if all konkin’s texts also have the same tag/topic, readers are now only one click away from hearing how terrible this person is (or isn’t, idk) whenever they read a text by him
as for the librarians interfering with texts, adding bits at the beginning or end or whatever, that’s gonna be the hardest of hard no’s from me
i heard a podcast earlier this month by two anarchists going on and on about how desert (possibly the library’s most read text) is ‘a dangerous book’, how is ‘demoralizes the movement’, blah blah blah... are we gonna link them at the end of desert? everyone is always complaining about bob black (possibly the library’s most read author)... are we gonna put something at the end of all his uploads? i find the transhumanist milieu creepy as hell... do i get to link my own writing at the end of every gillis text?
toorslice: I very much agree, Elias. We can tag stuff and upload critiques, which promotes discourse, is optional, and doesn’t leave anyone in the position of editorializing others’ works.
Personally I don’t see this as optional. If we take even a soft approach to moderation, it is compromising fundamental principles of anarchism. I am not a fan of Nazis, but it has nothing to do with the word, and everything to do with whether they are actively imposing their views on other people.
Moderation is an imposition of view, and I have never seen it fail to degenerate to endless splitting of hairs. We don’t want to go there. Criticize it when people suggest action that imposes on others. Fight it directly when they engage in such action. Otherwise leave it be, there are more important things to do, not least simply enjoying life.
A couple more points that I see as important. First, there is the “know thy enemy” principle. We won’t put a dent in authoritarianism with comments on it being in poor taste. We’d best understand why someone is thinking that way, so we can identify the emotions or self deceptions that perpetuate their stance. Then we are armed to turn enemies to friends at best, or minimally to engage the threat more effectively. This applies to most, perhaps all topics of concern.
Second, this brave new world means we’ve gotta deal with, for lack of a better way to put it, novel psyops. Both the military and the political are learning new ways to divide and control populations through refined use of language and technology. A favorite method seems to be the loading of phrases to trigger emotional reactions without clear thought. These become media weapons, and can be used in complex ways to disrupt movements. Mark my words — if we start moderating, these phrases (and games with language in the public sphere in general) will become a heavy burden and a dividing force that waters down our shared goals. Anarchism looks to be experiencing renewed attention, and there will be sophisticated attempts to discredit, discourage, and disempower us. Library is a cultural hub, thus a prime target.
Nerdy Anarchist: I’d just say that the whole point (as far as I’m aware) of t@l is that is is moderated/curated to be specifically anarchist content. I’m not making a call here as to whether or not the piece(s) in question are anarchist or not, but more toward this general idea that there should never be any moderation, etc. By that measure — or specifically taking the “know thy enemy” principle at face value — do we start posting explicitly fascist content to the library? Capitalist propaganda? The answer is pretty obviously a resounding “no” to me.
I don’t know that my comment is necessarily helpful in the overall debate about this author/piece, but I feel like it’s important to push back against the idea of a completely “hands off” approach or dogmatic position against any and all moderation/curation whatsoever.
is that it is moderated/curated*
toorslice: Yea I am with you there, I am not suggesting that we ought to simply allow any and all texts. It’s t@l precisely because of the goal to restrict it to anarchist content. So no, I don’t see a good reason to publish The Wealth of Nations here simply as a reference to better understand what we probably all don’t want. Rather, that if there is any debate about content that is claiming to be anarchist (and not clearly a troll), default to permissive. In a way anarchism works because its most basic premise is simple, people ought not impose authority on one another. That simplicity allows for huge diversity to unite around the shared cause of resisting that which most undermines all of their unique interests. Since people change and life is complex, we need a simple metric that focuses on what is immediately visible. If a text is opposing authority of people over each other and claiming to speak of anarchist ideas, that’s gotta be good enough, even if the author’s behaved in ways that do not align before or since the writing. It’s very easy to find ways that a text or its author is somehow associated with concepts that will upset some subset of people, and thus coerce those people to reject the ideas presented. I’m trying to raise awareness that this tactic exists and prevent good ideas from falling victim to it.
elias: there’s no nazi shit in t@l. no one is submitting/publishing that
actually someone said there’s a new anarchistlibraries.net project that hosts evola, hitler etc, but that’s a different site
and it’s probably not true anyway. i haven’t seen it myself
elias:
actually someone said there’s a new anarchistlibraries.net project that hosts evola, hitler etc, but that’s a different site
bruh
elias: i think the question is ‘do we publish texts from X anarchist even though X anarchist wrote anti-anarchist shit’
and the answer has to be yes, we do
because bakunin etc
toorslice: I very much agree, Elias. We can tag stuff and upload critiques, which promotes discourse, is optional, and doesn’t leave anyone in the position of editorializing others’ works.
Personally I don’t see this as optional. If we take even a soft approach to moderation, it is compromising fundamental principles of anarchism. I am not a fan of Nazis, but it has nothing to do with the word, and everything to do with whether they are actively imposing their views on other people.
Moderation is an imposition of view, and I have never seen it fail to degenerate to endless splitting of hairs. We don’t want to go there. Criticize it when people suggest action that imposes on others. Fight it directly when they engage in such action. Otherwise leave it be, there are more important things to do, not least simply enjoying life.
A couple more points that I see as important. First, there is the “know thy enemy” principle. We won’t put a dent in authoritarianism with comments on it being in poor taste. We’d best understand why someone is thinking that way, so we can identify the emotions or self deceptions that perpetuate their stance. Then we are armed to turn enemies to friends at best, or minimally to engage the threat more effectively. This applies to most, perhaps all topics of concern.
Second, this brave new world means we’ve gotta deal with, for lack of a better way to put it, novel psyops. Both the military and the political are learning new ways to divide and control populations through refined use of language and technology. A favorite method seems to be the loading of phrases to trigger emotional reactions without clear thought. These become media weapons, and can be used in complex ways to disrupt movements. Mark my words — if we start moderating, these phrases (and games with language in the public sphere in general) will become a heavy burden and a dividing force that waters down our shared goals. Anarchism looks to be experiencing renewed attention, and there will be sophisticated attempts to discredit, discourage, and disempower us. Library is a cultural hub, thus a prime target. Agreed, there are “novel psyops”. They optimize traditional ways of control. But the new quality (since a few decades already) is the pervasiveness of cybernetics as hidden mindset (hidden because it seems so natural in our times), which includes self-control (self-optimization) and control among peers (e.g. moderation). Resistance requires building a radically and intentionally different culture (of communication, in the first place; and not a new subculture).
The practical questions of whether to publish a text or not can be easily solved, I think, if one does not conceive of the library as an imaginary instance: Publishing a text comes with some effort and someone (or at least N people) needs to take that, if they like the text. In case of controversy they should tell why they like it. — Just my ideas as an outsider.
Jan 7, 2023
rocinante: library projects use Amusewiki
Here are some basic instructions about starting your own project: https://www.anarchistlibraries.net/howto however there are some differences I can talk about
that website is a totally different project than ours, but has good instructions for translating the software as it was made by the person who created Amusewiki (the software which our projects use)
Hopefully that makes sense... if not, plz feel free to ask
We can provide a subdomain for you like sa.theanarchistlibrary.org and the server which is maintained on anarchist infrastructure
or you can buy your own domain and use your own server, but we could still link up to your project and share it on the other languages
arunannow: is there any reason you guys use amusewiki in particular?
rocinante: You wouldn’t get root access to the sever unless you host your own (obviously), but you would get access to everything you need to manage your project and we can provide other things like a cloud service we host and and email list.
Anarchy Planet --> https://anarchyplanet.org/ are our anarchist friends who maintain all the tech (I’m part of the Anarchy Planet collective and also a librarian)
arunannow: also i found a bug: https://sea.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/emma-goldman-minorities-versus-majorities-mya.pdf
rocinante: We use Amusewiki because back when this project started — the English project which was the first library, it the code was homebrewed by the developer specifically for the library. They are an anarchist
re: bug — oh okay, I can take a look — it might need the PDFs to be rebuilt, or I can’t specifically remember if that language has support yet. What language was it?
arunannow: it’s burmese
rocinante: also ping magsalin (they are a librarian for SEA)
For South Asia, are those languages left-to-right or right-to-left?
arunannow: most of the languages are LTR, but there are languages like Urdu and Dhivehi which are RTL
rocinante: Gotcha.
Amusewiki was designed in Pearl, so it’s like revisiting the 90s — but it was created by anarchists and is actively maintained. Currently there are no better options imho
arunannow: also it’s not a bug with that one PDF i noticed, I think burmese language support isn’t there in the PDF generation: https://sea.theanarchistlibrary.org/library/he-zhen-womens-liberation-mya.a4.pdf
rocinante: Yeah, that must be it.
It’s a works in progress
labour of love
arunannow: could you put me in touch with the creators of the original software?
I’d like to pick their brain a little bit
rocinante: Of course, their contact information is on the Amusewiki website: info at amusewiki dot org)
my email is rocinante (at) blackmail (dot) sh if you prefer email
The Amusewiki creator hosts the anarchistlibraries dot net project — right now you are chatting with theanarchistlibrary.org and related projects (they are two separate projects)
this is the original project
they could also help host your project, if interested — so you have a couple of choices. Either way, if you create it I would be willing to promote it and share it on the English project
arunannow: do they usually come in to the IRC/Matrix chat?
rocinante: They have their own IRC linked on the website. We host our own IRC and they use libera IRC servers
so no, they don’t come here.
they also don’t host their own server and maintain it, they buy it from a provider
if that is important to you
arunannow: I can’t seem to find the server on the website
rocinante: Here you go: https://amusewiki.org/special/contact :)
irc.libera.chat and the channel is #amusewiki
or #anarchistlibraries
(two channels)
to my knowledge they don’t use Matrix, but just IRC
arunannow: alright i’ll see what I can do
rocinante: That’s awesome! Happy to help answer any questions you have and clear up any confusion if any
If you translate the interface, the best practice would be to send it along to Amusewiki and they will upload it upstream — and then we could do the rest — or technically we could do that as well, but then it wouldn’t be upstream on Amusewiki and instead just t@l (The Anarchist Library)
May 23, 2023
anonkneemousse: hi sorry I have only been listening to the podcast, and just now thought I’d take a look at the site..... is Jan 15th 2019 really the first entry in anarchistnews.org?
notnull: no, there was a server failure that destroyed the database. you can find old entries on archive.org
anonkneemousse: oof that sucks
is there any project/effort to recover entries from archive.org? I’d volunteer
notnull: that’s an interesting idea. you should give it a try!
I think the recovery efforts were centered around recovering the (corrupt?) innodb MySQL database. but I don’t think much progress was made
rocinante: ANews has been online since 2004. Before the crash in 2019 there was a previous one some years earlier as well. I believe ANews friends have all the stuff still however it is locked away on bad drive that was damaged when power went out. There hasn’t been much effort to retrieve these old posts.
as mentioned above though, you can see many of them on archive dot org
I’m a close friend of thecollective and I can tell you that restoring ANews would be wonderful, but it is on bottom of list of things, especially manually by using archive dot org. The best method would be to have a tech person who knows how to restore the database / server / whatever fix that, but that is also not happening currently, nor has there been a lot of conversation between ANews tech folks.
anonkneemousse I think you efforts would be best, if you come across a quality ANews text that you think can be on the library, then to share it to the library. Definitely no need to post all the old stuff, but for sure — there have been some gems lost over time (especially in the comments, not joking).
You can think of the ANews reboot as just starting fresh, start(ing) today, and something that wasn’t intended, but it’s okay to live with and let the past go easily (in some cases, like this)
Aragorn! was doing the tech for ANews server when this happened and they have since passed. It sounds like notnull remembers exactly what happened, but my memory is foggy when it comes to specifics about how it broke, and therefore ways to fix it
power outage. and when it was coming back online, because the way to database was setup everything broke, and to fix it, a big tech wizard is needed to spend some time on stuff. the way things start up on ANews have since been changed to something else, so it won’t happen again.
new ANews is in the works, i have heard through the grapevine — so once that launches, maybe some more focus on the old stuff, but for now no worries. although it would be awesome to see some of this stuff on the library
(also not sure if clear, but thecollective is the group that does ANews)
also, i didn’t mean posting old ANews comments to the library, but that there have been some really good ones down the memory hole. and when ppl complain about anews, the first thing is usually the comments
an anarchist website that has doesn’t log info and allows anonymous comments... it’s like one of last bastions on the Internet
anonkneemousse: I think you efforts would be best, if you come across a quality ANews text that you think can be on the library, then to share it to the library. Definitely no need to post all the old stuff, but for sure — there have been some gems lost over time (especially in the comments, not joking).
well I don’t have any experience with innodb, but if there’s a backup file I can download somewhere, I can try my hand at figuring it out, if that’s the best method.
I just feel a bit sad is all, that such a great resource has such a wound
magsalin: Let the dead bury the dead. ANews is not an archive, meanwhile the Anarchist Library is.
May 24, 2023
rocinante: Welcome to the library chat! :)
Creating your library account right now, will email information over very soon.
you’ve got mail.
thatanarchistdyke: Oh, amazing :) I have “pending revisions” that folx are trying to publish...should I go through and publish whatever looks semi-normal and isn’t full of typos?
so the pending revisions is the main queue of submissions added by ppl and texts that might have some edits made to them, you have to be really careful about publishing stuff.
but, yes — that is where you also want to ATTACK
and I will add you to the library email list now and if there are questions you can ask there. you can also ask here, but this is a much more public channel
it has to be an anarchist author. good quality submission, no errors that you can find. all the necessary information
the email list provides the real time information about submissions and revisions
i would prefer you take it slow to start, but also feel free to dive right in.
a lot, or all of the queue right now — those 23 texts are the controversial ones or stuff that needs more eyes, further review, and research
thatanarchistdyke: So what you’re saying is, those 23 things aren’t ready to publish right away and we should chat about them as a group?
rocinante: for example, i added the two Atassa books to the queue as you can see. but, I also emailed the library list about it because these texts have been extremely controversial and will cause a lot of drama for the library if and once published, so conversation about that. so I have just left in the queue for now, until I have the energy to deal with it all, plus they need some fine quality edits.
re: your above question, yes — exactly. I’m leading with the drama again... my bad.
May 25, 2023
thatanarchistdyke: It was also helpful for the Le Libertaire text—for the whole thing, I did GPT, then grammarly, then a hand-edit.
Also...how do we feel about the “atassa” texts? They seem to be formatted okay
magsalin: Interesting workflow
AH
Well hold off first
Might be better if you first form an opinion about the whole Atassa controversy before you decide to publish it
Perhaps you can search around and learn about why it’s a controversial text first?
The controversy is related to Aragorn!, so perhaps check the controversy around him as well. Aragorn! was one of the founders of the Anarchist Library. Unfortunately I joined after he died, so I never got the chance to meet him.
Some people hated Aragorn!‘s guts. If you read his obituaries you can get a sense of the Atassa controversy
chn: Did he used to come to this channel, via IRC?
magsalin: Presumably yes while he still lived
I wouldn’t know tbh
June 15, 2023
magsalin: Hmm the anti-Ted anarchos are upset about Ted on the Library.
Personally I don’t like the guy, and I’m anti-Ted too, but he was on the library well before I joined so I feel like my personal feelings on the matter isn’t as important to me as TAL’s pluralism.
Honestly I find the man insufferable for his anticommunism, misogyny, and trans misogyny. Also the people he bombed could have been chosen better. He could have bombed powerful people instead. novatore (IRC)
toorslice: Ok.. I don’t have time to debate it, and don’t usually philosophize on t@l channel, so consider this a contribution regarding the librarian community as a whole, and attitudes towards books and their authors. It seems to me that anarchism dies without the constant exploration of changes to the status quo, in an attempt to find patterns of concentual cooperation that minimize the harms we otherwise inflict on one another.
I propose that a similar process takes place within each person, as many aspects of our “self”, views, emotions, narratives, goals, etc. attempt to seek a similar ideal. The process must involve conflict as changes are required to lead to an “self-adjusting inner anarchist pattern” of personal alignment.
Most people will be fragmented, so to judge them as a whole for a single or collection of attributes is not useful for understanding what we might learn from their own failures and success in the inner war. This is tragic, as just such people who aspired to create the type of external anarachist conditions that we aspire to may have contributed missing pieces, both for understanding ourselves, and for understanding the parallels within interpersonal patterns. We throw the good out with the bad when we judge a person by a fraction of themselves.
This may be valuable when choosing who we associate with in person, but it is a loss when we consider it in our blanket disregard for the writing of someone, when we’ve only witness fractions of their inner world, expressed in ways that must be interpreted by our own (likely) fragmented lens as we search for meaning and knowledge.
I respect those who don’t like Ted K — my best to you. Your opinion on him is but one aspect of yourself as an individual. Please do not take it as an attempt to maliciously criticize or disrespect.
I hope this message finds its way into minds where it can provide new perspectives on their own inner cohesion.
magsalin: A fraction? Bro, Ted K’s anticommunist is an integral part of his political philosophy. I don’t want to debate this. It’s off topic. Let’s not speak more about it. The issue with Ted K and the library concerns is whether the Theo Slade texts can go up.
Jan 29, 2024
thatanarchistdyke: I have to say, this text is...weirdly ableist. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alfredo-cospito-the-autism-of-the-insurrectionists
dobody: could you TLDR the text? I’m sorry I haven’t read it, i highlighted “autism” but couldn’t find whatever Cospito means by this
thatanarchistdyke: They use “autism” to mean being insurrectionary and decentralized, which they consider a problem.
(These are the times when being AuDHD and an insurrectionary anarchist is...interesting, lol)
dobody: I get ya, can’t say I get ya to a full extent but I know hearing your condition (is that term ok?) being blasted out there as an allegory is disbalancing at least, or much worse
thatanarchistdyke: Not a condition, just a neurodivergence—also, what about my critique do you not understand? I’m happy to talk about this
dobody: I don’t understand the connection between autism and insurrection and decentralisation though.
thatanarchistdyke: Me neither. This article is critiquing insurrection in part by comparing it to ND experiences.
I’m not saying I agree with this person or think the connection is apt...
dobody: thanks for correcting me! Yeah I don’t get basically how Cospito even uses the term, it’s really weird. I’ll try to read a paragraph or two
alice: yeah this text is wild. this use of “autism” is absolutely meaningless and ableist. and the fact that it’s in quotes every time also makes it seem like the author either knows they’re being ableist and trying to get some plausible deniability, or they’re just using it because they couldn’t think of anything better (and then put it in their title as well)
either way it doesn’t reflect well on the author or this text
dobody: Ok what I understood so far is he critiques the opposition and distancing of the practices of claiming on one part and anonymous action on the other. He’s on about how this is closeminded, dogmatic, to consider them opposed and to only adhere to one or the other. And “autism” would be some inherent quality he attributes to autistic people, I’m not even gonna try guessing which.
It’s clearly essentialising autistic people and he clearly knows it is, but as alice said pretty sure he just couldn’t find a better word. Or he was too lazy to find one. Ableist it is, methinks
thatanarchistdyke: I think he assumes all autistic people are decentralist/insurrectionary, and that we derail “real’ (i.e. ableist) anarchist movements. Which isn’t itself a problem, but the assumption that centralization is necessary is, in itself, ableist.
alice: i mean, it looks like they’re using it to mean “closeminded and dogmatic” just like you say, which is absolutely in line with some ableist tropes
thatanarchistdyke: ^^This
dobody: alice i mean, it looks like they’re using it to mean “closeminded and dogmatic” just like you say, which is absolutely in line with some ableist tropes
yeah perceived as strictly adhering to a set of rules however personal etc etc. Man you’re a writer, find a better word...
thatanarchistdyke: He could literally just talk about people who are nominally insurrectionary, yet very dogmatic—most people I’ve met like this are actually cis, allistic, and have ML tendencies.
dobody: I’ve met my share of anarchists tending to the repsect and following of such and such libertaire tradition and refusing criticism so I wouldn’t put it past the anar community/scene.
thatanarchistdyke: Oh, totally—what I’m saying is that it’s often rooted in ableism and the institution of neurotypicality.
dobody: anyways thanks for pointing that out. Part of the compromise you gotta have with a big central hosting place is that now and then you’ll stumble upon very disbalancing stuff, for the sake of conservation. ThoughT about what that implies a while back, and alternative ideas are welcome.
thatanarchistdyke: I think keeping this up is ok for historical purposes, but could it be worth starting a conversation about it on “SHH THIS IS A LIBRARY” or other anarchist forums?
Of course, a content warning on this piece is long overdue (especially because it looks, on first glance, like it’s about neurodivergent forms of insurrectionary anarchy)
dobody: Now I’m thinking more about what it would take to add an “articles mentioning this text” section under the text to allow for decentralised, long-form commentary and discussions about merits and pitfalls of a text
thatanarchistdyke: Yeah, that could be a good solution too.
dobody: def not hard to create, but we’d have to message the dev team.
thatanarchistdyke: Want me to bring it up in the librarian chat?
dobody: sure! if we get enough people behind the feature maybe devs would be more open to take the time to implement it. i’m personally not in the librarian chat
is that the mailing list?
thatanarchistdyke: No, it’s an Element chat for the ✨inner circle✨
I just brought up this idea
dobody: alright thanks for that :)
alice: i’m just a passer-by here but that’d be awesome. I’ve often googled for links to see where else a text has been discussed
thatanarchistdyke: kaotikk wasn’t there a book on infancide on the library for a while
i don’t think so? but i’ve only been here for a couple years
notnull:
Unable to load event that was replied to, it either does not exist or you do not have permission to view it.
this is a good idea.
dobody: Now I’m thinking more about what it would take to add an “articles mentioning this text” section under the text to allow for decentralised, long-form commentary and discussions about merits and pitfalls of a text
I might be able to write a script to do this
dobody:
notnull: I might be able to write a script to do this should be a few php lines tbh, the inteeresting thing will be implementing it into the underlying wiki software structure
should be a few php lines tbh, the inteeresting thing will be implementing it into the underlying wiki software structure
kaotikk: wasn’t there a book on infancide on the library for a while
i remember it got taken down after time
i saw it like 2 years ago
there were even memes about it for a while
okay i found the writing
there may be a tw for it
it’s from mallory Wournos
oh it’s still on the site btw
thatanarchistdyke: oh no...
kaotik: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-black-seed-issue-6#toc8
thatanarchistdyke: As a teenager and youth-liberationist, this disgusts me. And also—they’re comparing abortion to infanticide. IT’S NOT THE SAME. This is so awful:(
kaotikk: it’s horrible and triggering for me. it gives tips and tricks on “how to do it”
like detailed one
what is a good idea?
notnull: kaotik: I suppose on gomuks threads don’t work. the good idea was starting conversations about texts on SHHH
Guest19509: gomuks has some delay right now
notnull: https://shh.anarchyplanet.org/
Guest19509: ah now it came
should i open a thread regarding the “eleven ways to k/ll children”?
notnull: if you want to, yes! of course you’re welcome to discuss here, but the forums could be a good idea too, for a more long-term discussion (as opposed to the fleeting nature of the chat room)
kaotikk: we may actually regarding certain “problematic writings
problematic as in how to kill instructions
dobody: this sh*t is like “rather unalive my child than see them have fun using skype thus being giga capitalist fans”
it’s like a mix and match of utilitarianism and primitivism tf
kaotikk: it’s like antinatalism but with infanticide and late-stage abortion
i believe it is an “authority” too kill newborn children as it’s kinda a projection of power
projection of power is authority and if you call yourself anti-authoritarian/anarchist i don’t it’s best to support it
anon_67: What did I find? I missed the start of this conversation, so I’m pretty sure I’m missing some important context.
dobody: doesn’t even need to be an authority to be vile and violent and a murder
kaotikk: it’s regarding a text in the site
anon_67: OK
aah
kaotikk: ah you just joined after i sent it
it’s a text regarding how to kill children on the library
dobody: for context: less how-to (although including methods) and more just about doing it, but the structure and phrasing of the text doesn’t give it anything else than a very pro-killing stench
kaotikk: there are 11 ways on the text
with not so vague information
dobody: definitely
Guest19509: “ For educational purposes only. The author of this piece cannot be held responsible for any deaths influenced by this article. ”
dobody: I’m not defending the thing, just saying this doesn’t encapsulate the article, as it does much more: defends infanticide, contextualises uses etc etc
Guest19509: deeply disgusted by this lmao
kaotikk: it’s vile imo
rocinante: I see the continued discussion of Black Seed, issue #6 carries on
as notnull mentioned, I would love to see this more long term conversations and thoughts as posts on SHH! instead of so fleeting IRC, but also that is part of fun
black seed had an editorial board btw and this text was read and approved. The next issue of Black Seed, the journal started calling itself “A Journal of Indigenous Anarchy”
so Black Seed 6 can be seen, perhaps as move in this direction away from Journal Of Green Anarchy as it previously was in issue 5 (issue 6 was “Songs of Creation and Destruction”)
my bias: Black Seed published my photography in an issue and I’m close to the project that printed it originally
it’s a powerful text for sure. there have been a lot of quick conversations over the years about it on social media, it’s often citied as a quick gotcha “anarchists” text as well I have found
Black Seed stopped after issue #8, there were rumours that Klee Benally was going to take over the journal name and continue publishing it, largely without the original editors, although perhaps one or so. Klee has now passed, so not sure what might be happening there.
it started as journal of green anarchy and transformed into journal of indigenous anarchy
Ishkah: ‘There are encouraging signs of polarisation’.
I like biting the bullet on novel positions, like that millions of years from now I think it would be cool if humans have voluntarily decided to build huge marble towers that are weather resistant and form whole new floor levels of wildlife habitat.
And I’m happy when other anarchists do the same, in being honest about desiring moving in the direction of some novel goal, like a 100% hunter-gatherer world.
I’m also grateful to the ex-anarchists who acknowledge when biting the bullet on unique intuitions or goals puts them outside the limits of anarchist philosophy. Like when they begin admiring tribal dominance hierarchies and/or enjoy hearing news of primitivist school shooters doing their small bit to reduce the world population/ending innocent life.
I think the former creates a vibrant discourse that inspires people to join the conversation and give their two cents. While the latter clarifies a clear line in the sand of principles that fall outside the bounds of anarchist philosophy.
The only weird detractors to this valuable dynamic are the hangers on who weirdly desire to still think of themselves as anarchist despite holding such absurdly domineering positions. But, I guess even those people are good practice to develop one’s arguments against.
rocinante: a lot to digest in your comment, but my quick first reaction is that i do not enjoy hearing more stories of mass shootings. I think we might be approaching this differently
Ishkah: I’m sure we do approach the subject differently, but to clarify I wasn’t saying you or I would enjoy hearing more stories of mass shootings. I was referring to how I think people like Mallory Wournos get a weird enjoyment out of hearing about some new murders and mass shootings.
magsalin:
thatanarchistdyke: As a teenager and youth-liberationist, this disgusts me. And also—they’re comparing abortion to infanticide. IT’S NOT THE SAME. This is so awful:(
Oh I see you found THAT article. Yeah. It’s not good.
Also yeah the autism article is kinda gross and ableist in its casual use of autism like that. Like isn’t autism a good thing? Hyperfocus certainly helps me on preparing stuff for the library
thatanarchistdyke: It really is! My AuDHD synaesthesia and hyperempathy is, like, most of the reason I’m an anarchist.
magsalin: As for the infanticide article... it’s a longstanding controversy in the library.
We can’t really ask Aragorn! about it so I guess we can’t remove it
The anarchist library is pretty well done. Clean, good enough search function, nice palette. Though the tag system could be a little better.
The anarchist library makes me so so happy, few movements are this willing and open to spread knowledge. Recently one of my friends started getting into radfem (I know) and she got on a discussion group at her school, she mentioned they had a very big and complete online library on feminism in general and when I asked her for a link to check it out, she mentioned that they do not share that kind of information to anybody, especially men, and I was astonished with that and made me appreciate anarchy even more.
The Anarchist Library is hard to navigate and has even more ideological diversity— tread carefully and read about the authors in conjunction with their works or you might find yourself nodding along with Uncle Ted 😬. I think the easiest thing to do here is search or browse for topics you’re interested in.
I personally got into my theory through a Marxist pal of mine. Ended up reading quite a bit of Marx and enjoying him a bunch before getting into anarchism and falling in love with Malatestas work. I mainly read stuff from Marxists.org and the Anarchist Library. Both are fantastic resources. I would suggest Malatesta. His work Anarchy is quite good and I really like At the Cafe as well. Rudolf Rocker with Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice is fantastic as well. For Marx I would suggest starting with the manifesto and than taking a detour into Engels with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific before going into Critique of the Gotha Program. Good luck with your journey and hopefully this helped!
I have been reading some anarcho-communist writings and stuff from the anarchist library and the more I read the dumber it gets. Saying all crime is a result of heirarchies and capitalism so crime will not exist under anarchy and repeating for every ill of society is not terribly convincing.
Libcom and the anarchist library are wonderful websites that archive an enormous amount of anarchic political thought and discussion. The Anarchist Library is really robust, has a lot of documents, speeches, pamphlets, plays, transcripts, manifestos, essays.
There’s a reason one of the greatest anarchist sites online is called The Anarchist Library. Libraries are tools of the people. Librarians are keepers of knowledge, and so often, guardians of the weak, innocent, forgotten, and downtrodden.
The Anarchist Library is a great and free archive of tons of socialist texts on all kinds of subjects. My personal recommendations would be An Anarchist Program by Errico Malatesta, Mutual Aid by Pyotr Kropotkin and My Disillusionment In Russia by Emma Goldman.
Raddle
The Anarchist Library is a really good resource for learning about anarchy but it has archived lots of weird and terrible books/publications in the past. Sometimes this is corrected, sometimes not. Like there are other pretty terrible publications on there from Leninists, the PKK and fuck knows what else.
In the library chat and between librarians there’s regular conversation about what should or shouldn’t be on the library. It’s mostly an open conversation with precedents based on librarians having curated the space for years. You can join the IRC and follow some of the chats.
It’s common for people to submit work and for it to be rejected, for example, because there’s a requirement that it’s published somewhere else and not just something somebody thought up and posted like the library is their personal blog. But I also know people who have gotten their work on there and who arranged to remove their work from there, for multiple reasons.
Just imagine a small collective of librarians with various anarchist politics doing what they can to maintain and curate the biggest anarchist library in history, usually as just one part of multiple anarchist projects they participate in.
The bitter book burners trying to turn librarians into censors need to stfu. The only criteria should be if the piece is anti-authority or related to anarchist culture / history. So obviously, pieces talking about diddling kids don’t belong on there because that’s pro-authority af. But if the diddler also wrote other pieces that are actually anti-authority, those pieces don’t need to be retroactively removed or have disclaimers placed on them.
The recent case of a diddler who stole some random woman’s face, used it to promote kiddy diddling and then faked that woman’s death is another story because that harms the real unknowing person who was used in his creepy game. And he also fucked over the librarians by trying to manipulate them into posting a fake obituary and kiddy diddling apologia, so they should absolutely retaliate by wiping his whole archive. That’s completely justified when someone uses you as a pawn to promote authoritarian shit like diddling and the demonization of an innocent woman whose image and identity was stolen to sell books. Letting the guy roll over them and muddy their credibility as an anarchist library would be counter to any anarchy I’m familiar with.
Jun 2, 2020
I have my issues with The Anarchist Library (they continue to maintain ITS communiques despite it driving off the original developer and editor) but you can download their whole 1.6 GB archive as a torrent
August 29 2021
Source: archive.org
Gregg: I would use this as an example why @AnarchistLib doesn’t need to worry about Foucault. The works we need to focus archiving could disappear from this earth if we aren’t careful. That’s never happening to Foucault.
Rechelon: Anyway, a fuck ton of anarchist texts only survived because a pacifist mutualist labor organizer named Jo Labadie comprehensively archived every anarchist zine and book in his attic and managed to get UofM Ann Arbor to preserve them through the dark red scare period.
Rechelon: I remain absolutely pissy about the continued inclusion of ITS, but if you’re prioritizing shit Arlian had like hundreds of anarchist zines on feminism and accountability processes rotting in her bedroom. Or like The Big Idea had crates of zines containing lost shit from ’99 etc.
Gregg: I think, like it or not, ITS is historically significant
Rechelon: So’s Mao (a former anarchist) and the New Testament (claimed by many to be anarchist). That’s a completely bullshit argument.
I could easily extend this further: there are national-anarchists who used to be anarchists (or at least involved in IWW, Love & Rage, etc), but it’s self-evident that they shouldn’t be included, no matter how influential or notable they are.
Also last time I checked yall didn’t have Black Flame, despite the fact that it is very clearly & inarguably a major influential modern anarchist text that platformists were bible thumping for years. Yall excluded it because of naked partisanship, but it’s also fash cuz Schmidt.
The Anarchist Library: Hi William @rechelon plz feel free to add Black Flame if you’d like (texts don’t magically appear on the library, there is some work involved). If interested and you have questions, happy to help.
Aug 15, 2023
If you go to an anarchist infoshop you expect to find either exclusively anarchists or a spread of ideas that reflects who’s inside and outside the circle of discourse anarchists take as legitimate.
If there’s a wall of Maoist texts that’s just a Maoist bookstore doing entryism.
If, for instance, you’re a certain anarchist bookstore in the 80s and you stock NAMBLA periodicals, that’s not mere decontextualized “provision of information,” that’s a social statement around affinities and norms that is read loud and clear by new anarchists that wander in.
It says “we might disagree with NAMBLA but they are an established part of our discursive circle and subcultural space.” Endorsement, normalization, and legitimization is inherent. Texts are not read in isolation, they are presented in contexts that declare and enforce norms.
I’ve shared a literal stage with people whose politics I’ve vehemently opposed, but who were validly within the movement.
I’ve also repeatedly refused to debate tankies on a stage or at an event. And I’ve repeatedly made fun of Bookchin for having debated nazis on a stage.
When organizers scheduled me to debate a fascist at a transhumanist conference in 2015 I raised hell, got the panel canceled and organized attendees to leave early.
I also checked in with a couple venerable antifascist groups and asked for insight and feedback on strategy.
No Platform absolutely does not mean Don’t Read Fascists. Antifascists endlessly beg you to actually read fascists. It’s actually really annoying that anti-antifa folks don’t know much about what fascists believe and argue!
But there are ethics around how to go about that.
For instance, everyone should know about and read Bronze Age Mindset (by Bronze Age Pervert / Costin Alamariu), as it’s one of the most influential and widely read fascist texts today, shared virally among young republicans.
But you shouldn’t fucking BUY it and give him money!
Ted K has strong overlap with fascist movements and has been explicitly opposed to anarchism for decades. Yet you should know what he argues and there’s a website with a complete archive of his works, but the entire site’s framing is clearly hostile to and critical of him.
Framing matters. When you put Ted K in an “anarchist library” you’re declaring “Ted K is inside anarchism”. If you put a unnoticeable “non-anarchist” tag on it you’re declaring “still within the circle of texts we think are anarchist-adjacent, in-group and respectable enough”
There are, after all, infinite “anarchist-adjacent” things. Mao came from anarchism, but if your “anarchist” library contains every maoist text you’re normalizing maoism.
There are tons of marxists, libertarians and liberals that anarchists engage with or are influenced by...
If an “anarchist” bookstore puts The Many Headed Hydra or Mumford in the window no one’s gonna blink but if they put Mao, that’s a fucking maoist bookstore. And if they put Hayek, that’s an ancap bookstore. If you put Ted K in the window you’re gonna get a lot of fascist vistors.
Antifascists have spent decades working out the ethics and the norms around No Platforming through consideration and worldwide trial and error.
Unfortunately there were some “radicals” who studiously ignored them and then got surprised to encounter those norms in 2016.
AnarchistLibraries.Net
AnarchistLibraries.Net – About this project
Source: Anarchist Libraries — About this project
Republished on:
Behind every project there is one or more individuals. Fairly large projects don’t grow by themselves. They need love and passion. When there is no more love, it’s time to move on and build something else.
This project, AnarchistLibraries.net, forks off from The Anarchist Libraryproject, and serves as an international platform for anarchist sites focusing on publishing and archiving texts.
I’ve been involved with The Anarchist Library since the very beginning, formatting texts, building the libraries’ software and assisting in the creation of new ones in languages other than English.
When the people based in the United States involved in the library project decided to publish so-called eco-extremist material, despite the objections which were raised, existing problems and divergences came to light. What to publish? Where is the line drawn? Who decides and on what ground? With whom does one want to work? The U.S. group decided that they are the library and they have the final word.
At this point, I’m not comfortable anymore with the English speaking library claiming to be THE anarchist library and being the project’s flagship: anarchistlibraries.net was born. This name should better express the spirit of the project (a net of anarchist libraries) as I’ve always seen it.
Each library has always been its own project, regardless of the domain name. Each library takes responsibility for its publishing choices.
I think that idea of building THE anarchist library is flawed. I prefer the idea of having smaller libraries (or even sites) loosely connected, even in the same language but maintained by different people, than having THE library. The global search function provided by this site is a step forward in this direction: let’s keep the sites (and the folks) separated, but keep them together for the comrades searching for anarchist texts.
If you want to create an anarchist library in a new or in an existing language, or even a small anarchist site where you would like to have the same set of features as the libraries (EPUB/PDF generation, bookbuilder, mirroring, etc.) you are welcome to write to the mailing list anarchistlibraries@inventati.org (for a library) or to me directly (for a site) so we can discuss it and make it happen.
June 9th, 2018,
marco — at- anarhija -dot — net
AnarchistLibraries.net
Tags: AnarchistLibraries, Counter-info, Eco-Extremism
This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2018 at 11:10 pm and is filed under Library.
Lib.Anarhija.Net – About this project
We live in the age of the inflation of the word. Its presence is so ubiquitous, its quantity is so overwhelming that its value tends to be zero, carrying no meaning. Technology has made publishing easy and inflated. The idea this library is built upon is not to collect everything coming out from the internet, but instead to save from this deluge meaningful, purposeful, useful texts, texts with live ideas, texts which could be printed and which wouldn’t feel off on the tables of an anarchist distribution. The outcome of this endeavour is still unclear.
This project was forked from theanarchistlibrary.org by some substantial contributors embarrassed by what is being published there. The archive has been cleaned up, new texts are being added, the mess of topics sorted out as much as possible.
That said, this library goes elsewhere. It is not going to be an echo chamber of news or “social” sites, nor a catch-all site. The selection strives to be strict. There is no place for blog posts, rants, academic exercises, internet fights. It is not meant to please everyone. Instead, be assured that it is the product of the passion and the efforts of few individuals.
The library is in English because English is the modern lingua franca. As a side effect, texts coming from the USA are over-represented while other very interesting regions are under-represented, if not missing at all. This is a major problem.
There is no automated submission process. If you think a text deserves to be published here, please contact a-library-en@inventati.org.
This library wants to be a tool, or a weapon if you prefer. Its purpose is to provide quality anarchist literature to individuals and to distributions, focusing on printing and diffusion of anarchist ideas, also serving as a long term hosting solution for valuable texts.
Please contact a-library-en@inventati.org if you think a text should not be here.
This project is part of the net of anarchist libraries.
Existing Anarchist Libraries
Each library is its own project, regardless of the domain name, and you may want to join one of them.
To start a new one, write to anarchistlibraries@inventati.org
da.anarchistlibraries.net
Language: Danish
Since: 2016
anarchistischebibliothek.org
Language: German
Since: 2015
es.theanarchistlibrary.org
Language: Spanish
Since: 2012
fi.theanarchistlibrary.org
Language: Finnish
Since: 2012
fr.theanarchistlibrary.org
Language: French
Since: 2016
bibliotecaanarchica.org
Language: Italian
Since: 2017
www.anarhisticka-biblioteka.org
Language: Macedonian
Since: 2013
a-bieb.nl
Language: Dutch
Since: 2018
bibliotecaanarquista.org
Language: Portuguese
Since: 2019
ru.anarchistlibraries.net
Language: Russian
Since: 2011
anarhisticka-biblioteka.net
Language: Serbo-Croatian
Since: 2012
sv.theanarchistlibrary.org
Language: Swedish
Since: 2014
biblioteka-anarkiste.net
Language: Albanian
Since: 2016
tr.anarchistlibraries.net
Language: Turkish
Since: 2019
pl.anarchistlibraries.net
Language: Polish
Since: 2020
zh.anarchistlibraries.net
Language: Chinese
Since: 2022
lib.anarhija.net
Language: English
Since: 2009 (forked)
theanarchistlibrary.org
usa.anarchistlibraries.net(Mirror)
Language: English
Since: 2009
Other great sources of anarchist texts hosted here
Do you need a site for publishing anarchist texts with the same set of features? Write to anarchistlibraries@inventati.org
Elephant Editions’ Archive
Language: English
Since: 2016
Edizioni Anarchismo
Language: Italian
Full texts available on-line since 2015
Tabula Rasa
Language: French, Italian, Dutch, English, Serbo-Croatian, German, Spanish
2012–2015, project frozen.
Fifth Estate mirror
Language: English
Since: 2018
Partnered/Supportive Projects
Act for freedom now! — Noblogs.org
Contains an ‘about the anarchist libraries.net’ page in the main menu list:
Touchpaper Anarchist Library
Uses the same image as anarchistlibraries.net, includes disclaimers about problematic book publishers in the physical library and only links to mirrors of the anarchist library.
325 Collective/Dark Nights Collective
They promoted the anarchistlibraries.net creation announcement and in the sidebar of the Dark Nights website they promote the websites ‘Anarchist Libraries’ and ‘Library.Anarhija’, but not ‘The Anarchist Library’:
They made statements explaining they regretted a collective member/s past ITS promotion and promoted lots of critiques of ITS.
Anarhija.info
Closed it’s doors to new submissions in 2019, but it looked to be a great disseminator of anarchist translations, commentary and news. It’s useful as an archive and may start up again one day.
Aut Aut
Author: anarhija.info
Topics: anarchism, anarchist organization, individualism, insurrectionism
Date: 2016
Source: anarhija.info/library/anarhija-info-aut-aut-en
Archived on: lib.anarhija.net/library/anarhija-info-aut-aut
When I translated and published the pamphlet “Individuality and the anarchist group”, signed by one of the CCF cells, Guerilla Urbana Cell, I added in a note that I didn’t do it because I agree with the content, but to make public how much this project, in my opinion, has turned away from its original form of tension to propose (or re-propose) an anarchist individualism which, in some ways, can be found in the pages of a different insurrectionist theory, but in this case approaching or even in some points leading to formal ideas, that is the formal organization.
Similar proposals (informal platform, structured and specific organization) have already been criticized, both in the writing of comrade Alfredo Cospito addressed to the Greek comrades and in the text of some comrades who made up the CARI-PGG, and recently in the last reflection, about the mentioned text, by the comrade of RadioAzione.
This following is just a collection of random thoughts which crossed my mind when I was translating the text, random pieces that do not compose a figurative mosaic, but a personal abstract image open to interpretation, because I do not possess the truth to be transmitted, certainly not to be commodify.
This pamphlet discusses various issues and many of them, from my point of view, erode the concept of individualism itself (both on theoretical and practical level). And those (at least, the authors of the text) who embraced the idea of F.A.I., propagating the nihilistic version of anarchy, are now proposing to distort it, trying to redirect it in forms (structures) that are more appropriate, I dare say , to “communist insurrectionalism” than an anarchist one, perhaps more similar to the groups like 17N; trying to structuring the informal anarchy in platforms, fixed organizations, clusters, groups, sub-groups, test-groups etc. The text is an attempt to launch a proposal completely antithetical to F.A.I., but keeping the same adjective “informal”. Not because someone holds the “copyright” onto it, but because it eclipses everything informal and individualistic in this project. From my personal experience, if I think that a project does not meet my needs, I will be free create another one, without trying to convince others to adapt to my needs. In contrary, it would mean, for me, play politics.
I don’t want with these words, for the sake of anarchy, impose my ideas to someone. I just think it might be better for one who plans such a structured and fixed organization to give it, perhaps, more appropriate name. “Informal”, in document of F.A.I. in Italian language (”Open letter to the anarchist and anti-authoritarian movement”): “Furthermore, whoever takes part into the informal organization is a militant only when preparing and carrying out an action. The organization, therefore, does not affect the entire life and projects of the comrades (...) “. Then, if in some other language this concept has different meanings there were maybe some misunderstanding.
In this pamphlet individualism is corroded on several points, just to name a few, criticizing even the robberies done by anarchists for purely personal purposes, and not for the great cause. How selfish these anarchists are, those who satisfy their egos realizing their desires, simultaneously satisfying their material needs that the system imposes on us, and imprinting an attack on banking institution, that is capital.
Why are some anarchists focused only on the robbery, but not on the direct action too, the authors ask. But, I ask myself, is not the armed (anarchist) robbery also a form of direct action? Are we sliped into a debate about trivial issues such as the question: is it more radical send a letter bomb or make a robbery? Then the authors continue saying that comrades prefer robbery because the police is not so interested in investigation of it as in other types of actions. I do not know, maybe that’s the way it works in the territory of the authors (or maybe because this comment is addressed to someone particulary, but then I do not understand why to speak in general)... Personally, for me, it seems that the authors maybe do not take into account what a comrade risks in a armed robbery (I do not speak only from the legal point of view)... I’m not saying this because I possess a ranking list of direct action forms, maybe those who written the text (at least that’s the impression it leaves).
They say, “We are not satisfied with a general “label” [...] neither are we “Some anarchists” [...] whatever some people choose to put as a signature in their actions instead”. After the bigots of anonymity now appears the fundamentalism of fixed signature, of permanent specific membership. So much for the Stirner’s individualism and his “nothing.”
If someone decide to carry out an anonymous action or an action without a specific name, or even repetitive, I don’t think that she/he makes this choice due to some feeling of fear. With or without a signature, every anarchist who choose the direct action is armed with the same courage. And if someone do it in anonymity or signing, that is according to her/his ideas, beliefs and even circumstances (I hope). I think there should not be (as well as in nothing else) universal rules. To express such opinion is (I think) unfair to all those anarchists who expose themselves to the risks of direct action, anonymous or not, because if they had been haunted by doubts/fears they would have definitely not accomplished it. Those who need spectacle, to create a role, a long-lasting name in history, an image, identification, who are so “bold” and “brave”, they can even leave on the place name-surname-address, make a selfie and post it on some counter-information site, where you can find videos/pictures of, for example, clashes, made by the participants themselves. W porn-riot!
For me, all ideas are just tools, as the values, therefore even the words we use are mere appearances created by the human mind. In this context anarchy is just a label, just like any other. However, since we use these tools, the words, for communication I chose anarchy to describe my ideas, not my role. It could be every other word, but in this predetermined language the word “anarchy” is a predetermined word to express ideas and specific actions. This obviously does not mean I consider every anarchist my comrade or I identify myself with every anarchist action. My idea of anarchy is only mine, however it can be in affinity with others.
I did not choose anarchy because there were other anarchists around me (in fact, there were just no one), nor because I have read books and I identified myself with them. In anarchist and nihilist ideas I just found affinities. Today after so many years, anarchy for me, even if it is just a word is not a mere “label,” but the result of my ideas, positions, experiences, thoughts towards society, the system, the whole world . I could call it “xyz”, but I think it would not change much. I do not follow the “comrades” and the “sacred” texts of anarchism, I do not believe in revolutions and in the “great Cause” and I don’t want save anyone and anything (neither men nor animals nor nature). It is an attempt for personal liberation. I think this whole planet is actually insignificant, futile, as well as the human life. In my conception of my world the notions of “insignificant” and “significant” are interlaced. On the one hand I look at life and everything around me as something very insignificant compared to what we call Universe, whatever it is, nothing or life. But on the other hand my life is the most significant thing I possess, in its insignificance, and it is my cause (“I’ve set my cause on nothing”). A contradiction?
Because if I do not use my mind, my eyes, my experience to give the meaning to my life and its context, I will drown in determinism, in the abstract values of an ideology, built with the eyes of others. I do not feel the need to persuade someone into something, but at the same time I do not want to be persuaded. I just like to say what I think. I’m not interested in revolutionary curriculum vitae or to be/remain an important name in the anarchist milieu, it is just another kind of role. I do not feel weak because I’m not part of a group, because I’m alone. Sometimes I feel the loneliness, of course (but who does not feel it, if she/he is honest with herself?), but certainly the group would neither eliminate it nor would give me the strength to deal with life. If in the group (as usually happens) I have to hush part of me, if I have to agree with things that do not reflect me, I will feel even more alone, more weak because I will lose myself.
I think anarchy is something unique, individual, otherwise there is a danger that it could become an ideology to follow. Anarchy, as the other words in a world full of words, may be everything and may be nothing. It is individual.
Assert that a cell composed of two-three individuals (not members, because from my point of view “member” is one who belongs to something) or just of one is less worthless of e.g. ten people, in my opinion could say it only a person used to think in the form of group, actually of cell like a fixed structure over time, identifying herself with the group, instead of conceive the cell as an affinity encounter which tends, in that moment, towards the same goal, and after reaching it the cell dissolves itself to intertwine with other individuals in affinity or maybe with the same ones, without deterministic preconceptions. Since each individual has maintained its identity as a person and not as the concept.
I am not speaking about fixed deadlines (perhaps those who speak in these terms can not get out from the “fixed” frames) but neither about long-lasting solutions. I’m speaking about individual experiments, the ever-changing conditions and circumstances, to approach them informally, also to grasp better their nuances. It’s not about relations created for occasion at the table for the realization of a project (of any kind). The one who conceives the relations differently, in my opinion, she/he speaks from a point of view of political organization, and not from the standpoint of a free and spontaneous meetings between affinity comrades. I think we as anarchists are not looking for proselytes and recruits who should undergo an ordeal before become members of some kind of secret society (very nineteenth century, I must say), but in a world of normed space we are building free and spontaneous relationships, because spew out from free and affinity minds which then flow into equally free projects (not idolized).
Few concrete examples, I do not think that poor Lucheni needed the type of proposed structure to stab the monarch, or to not go that far, the “Nucleus Olga” to shoot Adinolfi.
But since the concept of “political prisoner” has become usual in anarchist milieu (in despite of attempts to open a discussion about this issue) it is not odd that from this amalgam emerge politics, or vice-versa. I wonder how can an anarchist feel comfortable in a concept (political) that she/he shares with communists? Maybe because the previous one is more concerned with politics than with destruction of moral/political concepts that are inculcated in us. I understand very well how difficult is to identify these concepts and to get rid of them, but if we drag them around as a legacy, what does it move us to act against the system which re-produces them? If someone wants to answer me “for the mere pleasure of attack”, I can only repeat I am not interested in action itself, but in its driving force, which creates the action. I do not think the anarchists possess the exclusive use of this pleasure. Indeed, why is the concept of “political prisoner” a privilege attributed to anarchists and communists only? Why not extend it to Islamists, fascists, nazis etc.? They are also persecuted and detained for their ideas. Why should I support a slogan “Freedom for all political prisoners” and not for all detainees in general? Maybe because some anarchist share some affinities with the communists? Who is interested in politics, for sure. As the saying goes, “Pares cum paribus...”
Based on my experience, and on the historical-political also, there is not a gap between fascism and communism. At least from an anarcho-nihilist perspective.
Someone will say I am trying to compare anarchists with fascists (it would not be the first time). What can I expect now, that the crowd of devoted to some group or ideology stone me in public square (or rather web site), that “crucify” me on the circle “A” because I have profaned the Sacred? To be excommunicated from the “Movement”? The fact is that I don’t give a fuck about this, I am not part of any group, of any movement.
What I want to say (who can or want to understand) is that I do not appreciate a person according to the roles that society/system labeled her (as a bar-code) to reproduce the dynamics useful for its reproducing, e.g. Islamist, terrorist, immigrants (the latter so dear to anarchist social services, as long as they come from Africa or Asia, as if on the European continent there are no borders, and within the EU as well, but some anarchists notice them only when they can identify themselves with the role of civilized westerner who helps the “noble savage”, preferably brownie). Even anarchists can not avoid this, with their duties to anarchy. If we have to begin our liberation with destroying idols (as is often repeated) then in this “twilight of the idols” should be included (sorry) even anarchy and consequently the anarchists themselves and actions, worshipped as deity in some cases, which lead us only to re-create the same patterns that we say to fight, and then reproduce them (who due to difficulty of understanding, someone to be part of the herd) in our milieu, without even realize how much we are impregnated with them. Get rid of them to create an own individual anarchy, not that one of the “best” anarchists , “experts” and similar, repeating others gestures and experiences, remaining alienated from ourselves in a world already alienated.
I appreciate a person not by the adjective but by her efforts to “liberate” the mind, emptying it from the meanings which various sectors of society/system impress in us, in order to materialize them, contributing to their conservation. It is pointless repeat the slogan “we have to destroy the prison inside us” if we think is sufficient to hate tangible institutions of system, and then express (therefore think) ourselves in the same, or similar, institutionalized language which leads us to embody it in our relationships.
I always thought that with anarchy is expressed the highest point of individual liberation (not only from the outside), mental, and as such a liberated mind can destroy both the imposed meanings and the emanations of these meanings, creating, trying starting from nothing (or from what is closest to it according to our ability), own values and experiences.
However, some people prefer to move along the well-trodden paths without the risk of stumble into chaos or fall into the abyss of nothing, grasp at the anarchist moral security in order to give a role to own life, as the sacred or secular religion teaches.
Three Niche Libraries
We took up the anarchistlibraries.net offer to help others with creating new radical libraries with amusewiki software. And so within a year we created:
We hoped that the anarchistlibraries.net people could potentially enjoy seeing our niche library projects as part of their “other great sources of anarchist texts hosted here” category.
But, after a year and a half they said hosting us on their servers had become too much of a hassle, so they helped us buy new servers and moved everything across. The 3 events, months apart, that had frustrated them were:
(1) The Ted K Archive hosting 50 or so anti-fascist texts + 10 or so fascist texts with disclaimers, as part of a section on anti-fascist research material. This included reading on fascism that Ted Kaczynski acknowledged reading when he was a young library loner, which lasted at least 3 years, and involved him having fantasies of being a fascist dictator sending his followers to kill people he hated.
(2) The Ted K Archive risking archiving a Kaczynskist zine called Garden with one section redacted. Someone then told the domain company, who then complained to the server owners saying it was illegal. We’re sure this isn’t the case and think it would be great if someone wished to fight a legal case over it, but never mind.
(3) Steal This Wiki digitizing the classic yippie text ‘Steal This Book’, which has one small section on (probably shitty) b*mb making instructions, but the text has remained in print since the 60s by established book distributors, and recently had a popular 50th anniversary reprinting. Then, the text was promoted on multiple platforms like reddit, raddle and r/ObscureMedia, a discussion was started in the comments of the r/ObscureMedia post about potential collaboration on digitizing more books by one of the publishers who used to sell Steal This Book, called Loompanics Unlimited, so a text dump was created of old Loompanics Unlimited book catalogs. Then, someone sent in a complaint to the server linking this text dump of Loompanics catalogs saying “Did you know that your server is hosting straight up HOW TO MAKE A B*MB texts?” But no such guide exists in the Loompanics catalogs they linked.
But yeah, big dignified win I’m sure for the people who made efforts to get us deplatformed from our servers by telling lies and just making it too much of a time sink for the server owner to sort through the claims: “The point is that I don’t have time/will/energy to dig this whole affair and understand if I agree with what you’re doing.”
Radical Libraries Forum
We’re in discussions with a few web developers now to help get a single classic forum board up and running that unites forum.stealthiswiki.com, forum.thelul.org & forum.thetedkarchive.com. Then we’ll buy a unique domain to host the forum also like radicallibraries.com.
We created an example of how a forum might look that focuses on only radical libraries, but in hindsight it was way too niche: https://anarchistlibraries.freeforums.net
The main groups of people we hope to bring together and recruit interest in includes people who like one or multiple of the below:
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Discussing new uploads to various radical libraries
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Collaborating on archiving texts
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E-book hoarding; sharing and requesting out-of-print books
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Hobby digitizing for travel e-reading, saving books before needing to sell them, etc.
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Hobby publishing
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Reading circles
Unique Position
We recognized from the beginning that that The Ted K Archive would be seen as doubly unsatisfactory to many people.
We make more non-anarchist texts accessible than the anarchist library does, which I’m sure the anarchist libraries.net people would especially not like doing themselves. But, we also add long disclaimers to the beginnings of texts which the anarchist library people have argued against doing.
One goal we had was desiring to have an easily searchable website people could use to research socially conservative primitivists and eco-fascists attempts to appeal to anarchists. But a website that was very openly highly critical of these attempts.
So, our middle ground suggestion for libraries, publishing houses, social centres, etc. who want to explore the emergence of some reactionary ideas, is just not to confuse a primary role the project serves in being ‘a place people can find anarchist texts’, but to spin off a separate research project, and advertise it as such.
Further Reading
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The rare Unabomber documents being kept hidden by a few zealots and rich people
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Responding to claims I’ve been attempting anarchist and/or anticiv entryism
[1] statement from Marco, https://www.anarchistlibraries.net/history
[2] ITS tag / category on the library, currently with 9 related texts. https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/its
[3] Not anarchist tag / category, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/topic/not-anarchist
[4] Ted Kaczynski, https://theanarchistlibrary.org/category/author/ted-kaczynski
[5] “Indiscriminate Anarchists” by Seminatore https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/seminatore-indiscriminate-anarchists