Free Radical Radio
FRR Books Podcast: On The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life by Friedrich Nietzsche
FRR Books Podcast: Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch
FRR Books Podcast: The Stirner Series Ep. 10, the Finale part 1!
On Desire and Consciousness: FRR Books Podcast the Stirner Series Episode IX
FRR Books Podcast. Stirner Series Ep. 8: What’s Love got to do with it?! <3
My Intercourse! How We Have it, Who We Do it With: FRR Books Podcast the Stirner Series Episode VII
FRR Books Podcast Episode 6: The Unique and Its Property, A Close Reading
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a Close Reading Part 5!
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a Close Reading Part 4
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a Close Reading Part 3
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a close reading Part 2
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a close reading Part 1
A Funny Thought on a New Way to Play
FRR Books Podcast Episode 4: The Silence of the Animals by John Gray
FRR’s First Video Production: LBC vs the World
FRR Mockcasts 2: The Brilliant
FRR Audiobooks: The Unique and Its Property, Translator’s Introduction by Wolfi Landstreicher
FRR Mockcasts Episode 1: Anarchy Radio
FRR Books Podcast Episode 3: The Trial by Franz Kafka
FRR Books Podcast Episode 2: The Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Off The Leash: Iconoclastic & Anti-Social Words
The Anarchist Banker – Fernando Pessoa
Spooky Thoughts on Why Cannibalism is Better than Sex
Spooky Thoughts on Why Cannibalism is Better than Sex
The Last Messiah by Peter Zappfe
They Who Marry Do Ill by Voltairine De Cleyre
AJODA: Anarchism within Capitalism
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, pt. 2
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman by Angela Carter, pt. 1
LEAVE ME ALONE: Misanthropic Writings From the Anti-Social Edge
Against the Logic of Work by Apio Ludd
FRR Books Podcast #1: The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera
Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood
The Nothingness of Personality by Jorge Luis Borges
Gender Nihilism: Anti-Manifesto
Buffo the Clown by Angela Carter
The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore: Part 3
The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore Part 2: Toward the Creative Nothing
The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore Part 1: Beginning Essays and Introduction
On Hiatus, The Sea, and Anarchy
The Rebel’s Dark Laughter by Bruno Filippi
Dear Aunt Sadie: An Excerpt from Coming to Power
Cage of Brass by Samuel R. Delany
Episode 91: All The Things! On Billions of People and Anarchist Projects
Anarchist Spirituality Presentation From the 2015 East Bay Anarchist Bookfair
Doc and Fluff: A Dystopian Tale of a Girl and Her Biker
Episode 90: On The East Bay Anarchist Bookfair, Mass Shootings & Insubordinate Care
Silent In Gehenna by Harlan Ellison
How’s the Night Life on Cissalda? by Harlan Ellison
Treacherous Women: Kaneko Fumiko by Helene Bowen Raddeker
Episode 89: On the Irrational, Wild Reaction, Social War & Social Anarchy
Paul Z Simons: Stories From Rojava On Revolution, Daily Life, and Hope
Episode 88: We Just Want to Have Some Fun
Driftglass by Samuel R. Delany
Armed Joy by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Episode 87: On Anarchist Scenes and Subculture
Against Identity Politics: Spectres, Joylessness, & the Contours of Ressentiment
Seattle Anarchist Bookfair: Presentation Hostis and The Politics of Cruelty
Episode 86: On Avoiding Work, Post-left Anarchy, and How Discourse and Action Interact
Episode 85: Hack the Planet!, Cheating, & Green Anarchism
Attached to Happiness With a Chain: Slavery and BDSM in the work of Sam Delany
Episode 84: C.R.E.A.M: Commodities Rule Everything Around Me
Interview with Aragorn! of Little Black Cart
Episode 83: Who Are Your Friends?
Alexander Dunlap on Álvaro Obregón
Episode 82: On Dating, Death, and Hedonism
Episode 81: Chained to Happiness
Episode 80: In Which We Are Platonists
Episode 79: On the Book Fair and the BASTARD Conference
Interview with Bursts O’Goodness From Final Straw Radio
Episode 78: Don’t You Dare Judge Their Slavery!
Episode 77: The Rage and the Fucked Sound to which We Cleave
Episode 76: Total Freedom & Anarchy: Only One Perfect -ism Away
Episode 75: FRR Destroys Strawmen That Are Ugly To Them
Episode 74: On Applauding “arson, violence and murder and little else”
Interview with Jason McQuinn on Critical Self-Theory
Episode 73: Against Justice, Equality, and Humanism…for Sharks
Episode 72: In Which Unfucked Sound Meets A Fucked World
Interview with Lawrence Jarach
Episode 71: The Undying Appeal of Sorcery and Its Deleterious Effects on America’s Youth
Episode 70: Interview with Agency and Fireside Chats with Dead Eastern Europeans
Live interview with Agency tonight on FRR
Episode 69: A New Year of Malaise (January 12, 2015)
Interview with Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan
Episode 68: On Instagramming Mid-Coitus and Other Horrors of Modernity (December 28, 2014)
Episode 67: On “Anarchists” Who Follow Leadership, Worship the Commodity, and Fix Broken Windows
Episode 66: Make Total Destroy, and Bring us the Champagne
The Necromantic Urge: Some Thoughts Following The Zoltan Istvan/John Zerzan Debate
Episode 65: 11/30/14: On Being “So Fucked Up!”
Episode 63: Live with John Zerzan: On Transhumanism, Nihilism, and Egoism
Episode 62: Speak Loudly and Smash with a Sledgehammer
Episode 61: Hail Satan; It’s A Beautiful World!
Episode 60: 11/06/14: I Promise You, Resistance Is Fun!
Free Radical Radio Interview with Tom Nomad
Episode 59: On Theory, Critique, and the Joy that is Destroy
Episode 58: People’s Climate Death March And An Interview With Phil From Ultra
Interview with CrimethInc. on their essay "Deserting The Digital Utopia"
Episode 57: Wild Reaction, Anarchy, and Vegan Cannabalism
A Political Autobiography of Dion Workman of Shikigami
Episode 56: 09/07/14: Wingnuts Confess on Language, Nature, Ecocide, and an ISIS Twitter Account
Interview With Natashalvarez, author of the anti-civ novella "Liminal"
Interview: Bursts O'Goodness of Final Straw Radio
54: Bellamy Returns from the Philadelphianarchist Bookfair
St. Louis Anarchists Speak on Ferguson Revolt: a FRR interview
Episode 51: Don't Drink the Water!
Episode 50: Soylent Green, Still a Terrible Idea
Episode 50: Interview with Franklin Lopez(Stimulator)
Episode 49 Part II: The Ugly Face of Burning Mand Fracking in the East Bay
Episode 49, Part 1: The Book of Mammon
Episode 49, Part 1: The Book of Mammon
FRR Episode 48pt 2: Who Needs Water When You Have An iEverything!
Episode 48, Part 1: 07/13/14: What is the Commodity?
Episode 1 04 08 13 The Whitest Gang Crew, The Hated Boys In Blue
Episode 47, Part 2: 07/07/14: Five Steps to Being a Successful Syndicalist
Episode 46 pt II: It's Now Safe to Jump Off Golden Gate Bridge, Thanks America!
Episde 46 Part 1: Cannibalism is Cool Again?
Free Radical Radio Episode 45 What A Long Strange Trip It's Been
Episode 44: 06/15/14: The Show Must Go On!
Reposting from 05/17/14: Interview with Ducky of Marcellus Shale Earth First!
Episode 43 Part 1 Civilization Is Death
Episode 40, Part 2: Political Repression in Fukushima & The Albany Bulb Land Defense
Interview with Dion Workman of Shikigami, the feral permaculture project in Japan
Episode 39: How Melting Glaciers Help the Techno-police Leviathan Grow
Episode 38: Critiquing Communiques While Saltwater Fish Go Extinct, and a discussion the ZAD
Episode 36: Marshes Hate drones even more than Free Radical Radio Does
Episode 35: The war against google glass and civilization!
Episode 33: 03/25/14: My Favorite Pseudopraxis Is Ethical Pop Culture Consumption
Interview With Kevin Tucker, 03/26/14
Episode 32: 03/18/14: A Thousand Years of Prison In Your Head
John Zerzan Interview, 03/16/14
Episode 30: 03/04/14: Tom Frazier, Unemployed
Episode 29: 02/25/14: Calling All Civilization Reformists...
Episode 28: 02/18/14: Bratton Wants Some Glass
Ep 27: 02/11/14: "Significant Hazard Potential Structures"
Episode 26: 02/03/14: Toward A Horticultural Society
Episode 25: 01/25/14: Robo-Cop: When Life Imitates Art...And We Suffer the Consequences
Episode 24: 01/21/14: "I Asked The Gentleman, And I Use That Term Disparagingly..."
Episode 23: 01/14/14: The Left Is Never Right, And The Right Is Always Wrong
Episode 21: FRR Wants Tilikum to Keep Killing
Episode 22: 12/31/2013: Here Comes the New Year, Same As the Last Year
Episode 19, Part 1, 12.09.13: All Hail, Libby Schaff
Episode 18 : I'm So Radical That Even My Armchair Looks Like A Congelation Of Exploitation
Episode 15: Even the Liberals Think We're Fucked Now
Episode 14 : Community Means It's Everyone's Problem
Episode 13, Part 2 : Alienation-States
Episode 13, Part 1: Alienation-States
Episode 12: Who Doesn't Love Land Commodities?
John Zerzan Interview, Part 2 : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
John Zerzan Interview, Part 1 : Free Radical Radio : Free Download & Streaming : Internet Archive
2020
FRR Books Podcast: On The Advantage And Disadvantage Of History For Life by Friedrich Nietzsche
What is the point of studying history? The greatest argument I have heard is that if we know history we can change the future. Nietzsche makes this argument, but this ignores the fact that history is often a weight and a burden. Despite what most liberals believe, knowledge is not always 100% positive. Sloterdijk said that “Those who first uttered the phrase that knowledge is power didn’t mean only to make that equation, but to also intervene in the game of power.” This the positive of knowing history, power! But, knowledge can also be a burden. Knowledge can function as a chain which limits us. What is heavier than history? It weighs not only on our minds, but our bodies. History is a given. We are shackled to the past by the libidinal economy of shared history and the history that lives in our bodies. I am against revolution because in my opinion no revolution has ever led to a society or situation which I find worth affirming, but should this limit me completely from any interest in revolution? I think so, but I am open to the idea that I am wrong. Can we view history from something other than a tautological mindset? Can we reject the gift of the given? What if we reject history, or change it? What would that look like? What does it look like to make a history for ourselves? Can I view history from one of the many options Kundera provides for us: “History is as light...
2019
FRR Books Podcast: Camp Concentration by Thomas Disch
Posted on August 4, 2019 PODCAST
“Much that is terrible we do not know. Much that is beautiful we shall still discover. Let’s sail till we come to the edge.” There is something about books with shitty protagonists that I love and find compelling. Vonnegut’s Billy Pilgrim usually comes to my mind first with Bron from Delany’s Trouble on Triton entering my mind second with a nod to Dostoevsky’s lead in Notes From the Underground. These are incredibly flawed and weak characters with Dostoevsky starting his novel with “I am a sick man…. I am a spiteful man.” Sometimes these characters are insecure and sometimes they are full of braggadocio such as Bron. Thomas Disch’s novel Camp Concentration is in large parts the journal of Louis Sachetti(think Sacco and Vanzetti of anarchist fame) who is a peak liberal basking in his self-righteousness. Louis a conchie(conscientious objector) very satisfied with his righteous imprisonment and his poetry. Disch is bold enough to write poetry for Louis throughout the novel, which some of the other characters take hilarious jabs at. Reading a novel with a character such as Louis forces a reader to either become a good reader(reading closely and several times over) or to miss all of the beauty and depth within the novel. When I read Camp Concentration I must find empathy and understanding for Louis, a person who if I met in real life I would find completely repulsive. But, the truth is that there is much I dislike in Louis that I dislike in myself. I have been self-righteous,...
Boundlessness
Posted on June 3, 2019 WRITINGS
On Playing Out the Game Without a Reason “Nevertheless human life was thus image-graced and image-cursed; it could comprehend itself only through images, the images were not to be banished, they had been with us since therd-beginning, they were anterior to and mightier than our thinking, they were timeless, containing past and future, they were a twofold dream-memory and they were more powerful than we: an image to himself was he who lay there, and steering toward the most real reality, borne on invisible waves, dipping into them, the image of the ship was his own image emerging from darkness, heading toward darkness sinking into darkness, he himself was the boundless ship that the same time was boundlessness; and he himself was the flight that was aiming toward this boundlessness…” -Hermann Broch Earthsea: Ged Sailing for his Death An Indifferent Universe What am I to do when I live in a world that is as indifferent towards me as I am towards it? How do I live in this world when I am positioned in it physically, but against the entirety of the social constructions of man(and god!)? How can I be in the world but also be on the margins of it? Does my center hold no matter which edge I exist on? Being anarchistic/nihilistic positions me on a fringe of the fringe, on an intellectual/conceptual and sometimes physical margin. Being a nihilist or egoist or a label less amoral weirdo among weirdos puts me further on that fringe and deeper into the margins. This something I...
FRR Books Podcast: The Stirner Series Ep. 10, the Finale part 1!
Posted on May 25, 2019 PODCAST UNCATEGORIZED
I decided I was a fucking anarchist after reading the Dispossessed by Ursula Le Guinn when I was in my early twenties living in Hawaii. I had no idea what anarchist actually was, what anarchist scene was..fuck I didn’t really know anything other than that I liked to surf and that I didn’t like the world that I lived in. Anarchy represented the most radical difference to that…this made it incredibly attractive to me. It stayed incredibly attractive because I kept living in Hawaii, not knowing or meeting anarchists. I read, a lot. I’ve read a lot since I was a little kid. I didn’t make friends during childhood because I was too intense, too black and white morally and took the world way too seriously. I’ll be the first to admit that I haven’t cured myself of these childhood/childish ways. I thought at a young age that there was a moral obligation to watch the news, pay attention, know everything, and that somehow this would be helpful in fixing things. All I can do now is laugh at myself, which might seem like a refrain for my life at this point. Eventually I moved to the Bay whereupon after a couple years I finally(with thelp of Bellamy) joined an all volunteer anarchist solidarity network supposedly fighting evictions in Oakland. After one of the meetings at me and Bellamy’s house, 8 or so people of the group stayed to hang and talk. Bellamy and I found ourselves actually discussing whether or not...
On Desire and Consciousness: FRR Books Podcast the Stirner Series Episode IX
Posted on March 26, 2019 PODCAST UNCATEGORIZED
Here we are again, back on the boat discussing Stirner’s ideas. On my best days I view this project as an attempt to break from the ideological & eschatological thinking that hangs like a pall over anarchists and humans alike. It is difficult to discuss Stirner because most people haven’t read him and also because many believe that they know what is contained in this book from whatever they have read or heard other people say. We are not attempting to do the work for you, but rather to provide a companion with which to interact while reading Wolfi’s rewriting of Stirner’s book. As someone who reads all the time, it is frustrating to have few people to discuss the books with. It is frustrating because I believe reading to both anti-social(while doing it) and social(it changes me and then Interact differently when socializing) activity. When I read a book that makes me question myself, my idea, my ideals, and what I hold closest, I am compelled to share this new version of my self with friends, fuck it, with strangers too. So here sits our version of sharing, our hope that in talking with each other we can better understand ours elves and how to relate to each other and further complicate our selves and relations to revel in pretending we can see and understand the chaos for just a little bit. We Discuss: rydra introduces the episode incorrectly…sorry not sorry Keehar has a fucked taste palette caz England Suicide: can we...
Structures of Desire: Postanarchist kink in the speculative fiction of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany
Posted on March 8, 2019 AUDIOBOOKS
Here we present to you a recording of Structures of Desire: Postanarchist kink in the speculative fiction of Octavia Butler and Samuel Delany, written by Lewis Call. Butler and Delany go further than many of their peers, for they not only provide a compelling critique of the political and sexual economies of slavery, they also provide an alternative. For Butler and Delany, erotic power exchange and play-slavery provide antidote to the ethically bankrupt institution of slavery. These two authors thus offer us a way to begin healing the wounds which chattel slavery has left upon our culture and its philosophy of ethics. You can read the original text here.
FRR Books Podcast. Stirner Series Ep. 8: What’s Love got to do with it?! <3
Posted on March 4, 2019 PODCAST UNCATEGORIZED
In episode VII we discuss the second half of the chapter My Intercourse in the Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, translated by Wolfi Lanstreicher. What happens when six friends(aided by adult beverages and friendly plants) get together on a sailboat(well a parked sailboat) in the Pacific Ocean to discuss Stirner’s seminal piece of writing. Did the world change? Did we change? Did we discuss whether or not this was even possible? I’m not so sure. What I do know is that there are few things I love more than reading a book and shooting the shit with a few friends who also enjoy battling over ideas and seeing if it possible to take them out of the realm of the platonic and into the realm of our lives. To listen to us is to listen on a conversation shared between friends that we do for our selves but also that we love to share. Here are some things we hit on: What is love? What does love have to do with it? What does is mean to love every one instead of everyone. Food metaphors, digest, break it up, now I’m hungry! We fight about his idea of choice and how that relates to tearing down freedom Stirner doesn’t talk enough about engaging with non-humans! We hold him to account for his anthropomorphizing Can you join the party without it changing you? We disagree! We argue about buddhism and its relevance if any Much more but I am done typing and if you...
My Intercourse! How We Have it, Who We Do it With: FRR Books Podcast the Stirner Series Episode VII
Posted on February 10, 2019 PODCAST
In episode VII of the Stirner Series we cover the second 50 pages of the chapter My Intercourse. In this episode Keehar, Big Cat, and rydra wrong discuss all things Stirner. We delve deeper into Stirner’s ideas and how they relate to our own lives. Some people have wondered what the purpose of this project is. The answer is simple: we are a group of friends who enjoy reading, talking, fighting, and laughing about books we like. If that isn’t of interest to you, then we probably wouldn’t get along very well if we met in the meat space. We do this project for ourselves, but we share it for our glory and because fuck, why not! I believe that Stirner’s ideas, while imperfect and old and contradicting at times, can change the way Interact with my self, your self, each other, and even the rocks I sometimes walk upon. What is an unexamined life worth? What is a life worth? These are just some of the questions we ask ourselves as we share our play for anyone to hear. I am tired of stale politics, stale ideas, and stale bread, and stale people. I have always yearned for more, desire constantly pushing me to uncomfortable places, physically and metaphysically. This podcast is for anyone who has ever wanted to meditate and marinate on life’s questions big and small, and for anyone who thinks that those changes we make, big and small, are the things we live for. Music: Never Give Up on Myself by...
FRR Books Podcast Episode 6: The Unique and Its Property, A Close Reading
Posted on January 21, 2019 PODCAST UNCATEGORIZED
In episode 6 rydra, big cat, Kahar, and Chuck discuss many things! What is the difference between a criminal and an illegalist Liberals want us to assert our weakness! Might vs Right! Earned vs Taken rights! Rights?! Can egoism be appropriated by leftism!? Rydra says we cannot have a creative nothing because we cannot free ourselves from other’s perceptions of us! He shockingly uses Kundera to back up this point in a discussion of imagologues. What is spookier, society or other people? Big Cat brings in Daredevil references using Fisk to back her up to discuss love as the ultimate prison, “everywhere you go, you take it with you.” Aw, Fisk! We discuss Steve Prefontaine and the perfect speech for an egoist to give leading up to a first kiss! We miss you Steve! Big Cat explains Crab in A Bucket Theory Sound editing by Big Cat Production and hard labor by rydra wrong voiced by Kahar, Chuck, rydra, & Big Cat Music: Regulations- To be me Lou Miami & the Kozmetix- I live with ghosts Ghostbusters theme song by whoever wrote that
2018
FRR Audiobooks: Desert
Posted on December 12, 2018 AUDIOBOOKS
Today we bring you one of the longest text readings in our history: Desert by Anonymous. Here I have tried to map present and plausible futures whilst calling for a desertion from old illusions and unwinnable battles in favour of the possible. I would hope that the implicit call throughout, for us to individually and collectively desert the cause of class society/civilisation, was clear. Yet I can already hear the accusations from my own camp; accusations of deserting the cause of Revolution, deserting the struggle for Another World. Such accusations are correct. I would rejoin that such millenariand progressive myths are at the very core of the expansion of power. We can be more anarchic than that. Desert tries to be realistic about climate change, revolution, and anarchist action in the world. With no illusions about a revolution being possible, climate change being stopped, a post-collapse eden, or our capacity to make a dent in leviathan, desert explores what the near future may bring, and where we might choose to act in it. It heavily cites climate science, and more interestingly also cites military projections about the future. What will happen? There will be some good here and there, and some bad here and there, and there are more ways of looking at things than that. Anon delivers again.
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a Close Reading Part 5!
Welcome to episode 5 of the FRR Books Podcast series on Max Stirner’s The Unique and its Property translated by Wolif Landstreicher. In this podcast we cover section 2.1 Ownness and stop at section 2.2.1 My Power This episode is hosted by Kahar, John, Big Cat, Chuck and rydra wrong. We are back on the sea packed 5 deep like sardines on the FRR sailboat. Discussed in this episode: What is the difference between freedom and ownness Does Stirner hate freedom! It has nothing for you! What does that mean? Can he let go !? Freedom apparently meanings being “rid of things” Occupy Stirner! What the fuck We discuss how our dating lives are relevant to Stirner, are they? Does consent matter when it comes to ownership and property(in the Stirnerian sense)? Take when you want and throw away the rest: Is this just a cliche or actually useful Concepts! What the fuck is a concept! How do we use them Who does Stirner give the status of capital B Being to ? Can a slave be inwardly free? Is this trivial? Stirner says there is freedom and unfreedom! No such thing as half way crooks! But is he just creating a binary of freedom and unfreedom to destroy the concept! woooooah Chuck says romantic relationships are being trained to treasures! Benefits vs a chain! John says chosen bondage is freedom, like being in a dungeon! We discuss! What the fuck is Stirner’s problems with rocks. Rydra fights with Stirner in a landslide of discontent. Also panpsychism is...
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a Close Reading Part 4
Posted on December 2, 2018 PODCAST
Welcome to episode 4 of the FRR Books Podcast series on Max Stirner’s The Unique and its Property translated by Wolif Landstreicher. In this podcast we cover section 2.1 and stop at section 2.2.1 My Power This episode is hosted by Kahar, John, and rydra wrong. This our first go recording podcasts at sea! We are floating on water as we speak! Discussed in this episode: – Criticism as thought, the downside of criticism – The 3 types of liberalism – Human rights! – rydra hates phenomenology and wants to fight about it! – morality and stirner – what is religion? – Conflict avoidance and how to avoid it! – Cult of celebrity and “Absolute Monarchy” – Stirner crushes Social Justice – Is Stirner related to Nietzsche? This podcast was produced by rydra wrong This podcast was edited by Big Cat
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a Close Reading Part 3
Posted on November 14, 2018 PODCAST
Welcome to episode 3 of the FRR Books Podcast series on Max Stirner’s The Unique and its Property translated by Wolif Landstreicher. In this podcast we cover section 1.3 The Free. This episode is hosted by Cornelius, Chuck, and rydra wrong. Discussed in this episode: How do we eat the profane? What have we held sacred that we no longer do? Fear! How do we develop an intimate relationship with fear! Another excuse to talk about surfing! Talk of shit! Another excuse for rydra to bring up Kundera Talk of Christianity being spread among the non-secular Dissolution of the object and the flavors of abstraction! There are many to choose from! We are in a sea of phenomenology says Cornelius! Children! Talk of Kids! Chuck says part of humanity is thinking of yourself in relation to an ideal human, we discuss this! Cornelius feels limited by society, even suffocated but she remains more interested in the physiology and bacteria living within human beings! Editing and Sound by Chuck! His labor is visible! We recognize him! Hosted by Cornelius, rydra wrong, and Chuck Production by rydra wrong
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a close reading Part 2
Posted on October 31, 2018 PODCAST
Welcome to episode 2 of the FRR Books Podcast series on Max Stirner’s The Unique and its Property translated by Wolif Landstreicher. In this podcast we cover section 1.2.3 The Hierarchy, completing section 1.2, stopping just before section 1.3 The Free. In this episode we discuss: What is a fixed idea? Can we be free of fixed ideas Is Kahar a nihilist? Is Stirner a nihilist? Can Kahar defend nihilism against Rydra’s devilish advocacy Can we actually abandon objective morality Ethics as a semantic and non-meaningful replacement of morality What is a self? Are our selves continuous, discontinuous, or something else Nev always desires to be bad and that is kind of hotttt We discuss essence and if we have an essence using Francis Bacon’s Scream painting and Milan Kundera’s thoughts on them How hard is rydra’s solipsism? Can Kahar avoid being negated by it? Does he care or is he just a tentacle of rydra’s octopus. Discussion of how we can trust another person with the context being them changing over time Editing and Sound by Nev Voiced by rydra wrong, Kahar, and Nev Invisible Labor by Chuck Production by rydra wrong
FRR Books Podcast: The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner, a close reading Part 1
Posted on October 17, 2018 PODCAST
This podcast covers the translator’s introduction and stops at section 1.2 Human Beings of Ancient and Modern Times. The book can be read online here: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/max-stirner-the-unique-and-its-property The book can be obtained here: http://littleblackcart.com/books/anarchy/the-unique-and-its-property-en/ FRR is expanding our scope by attempting a larger project. Instead of doing one podcast on a book we are doing a slow/deep/close reading of Wolfi Landstreicher’s translation of The Unique and Its Property by Max Stirner. We attend a reading group together which is slowly working its way through the book, so every other week we will read a portion of Stirner, attend reading group, then record a podcast on the section we read and the thoughts and ideas that came up during reading group. We will rotate different hosts through the series of podcasts. We are doing this because we would love to have had this type of discussion available to us when reading some of the books that we love the most, so we are doing it ourselves. We are also attempting to do a close reading which means to read something more than once, many times over, taking notes, discussing it, and engaging deeply with it. Feel free to email us or comment on this page if you have thoughts/feelings/whatever about it! In Episode 1 we discuss the following: Is there an individual/self. Stirner is not an individualist? It is not an individualist book Relationship between Taoism and Stirner Canyone actually be an egoist? Rydra strong arms the conversation and questions objective reality...
A Funny Thought on a New Way to Play
Posted on June 1, 2018 AUDIOBOOKS
This a reading of Alejandro de Acosta’s A Funny Thought on a New Way to Play. Turn to your parents or children and say, “this a game.” Turn to your friends and enemies and say, “this a game.” Say silently to your self and any imaginary entities you discover in solitude, “this a game.” See what happens next. What are all the games we are playing and what are their structures, patterns, and implications outside of that game context? What happens if we slightly change the ‘rules’ of our life? This reminds me of the idea of ‘behavioral switchups’ elaborated in Crimethinc’s Recipes for Disaster.Some ideas: – On a hike in the woods, resolve to never walk on a trail and only look above head level. – Approach reading a text different: take on a character (an enemy? ancient pharaoh?) and try to understand the text from the character’s perspective; or maybe read it out loud, or to a friend or microphone. – Go through your morning routine blindfolded. – Live “I only like small things” as a mantra. Implementing this in my life has been a source of fun and frustration. It can be fun to exist in the world in a new way. It can be frustrating when other people don’t like to play your games. Who can you play with? Read the original text on the library here.
FRR Books Podcast Episode 4: The Silence of the Animals by John Gray
Posted on May 7, 2018 PODCAST
The sands are frantic In the hourglass. But there is time To change, to utterly destroy That too-familiar image Lurking in the glass, Each morning at the edge of the mirror The writing and thinking of John Gray is a gift to those of us who have endured a life full of others’ ideals, moralities, and rules driven into us. John Gray relentlessly questions and troubles the narratives of progress and social betterment that run through society largely unquestioned, even in radical circles. The idea of transforming or evolving the world and the individuals within it into “something better” is a plague that has stricken the best of us. Once I am able to shed myself of this sickness of narcissism and self loathing (for there is always a flaw in the human to be fixed) then something resembling an authentic life could begin to be imagined. This life looks like raw possibility, what has been written before as the creative nothing. From this voidal abyss grows my life free of all the baggage that I have been born with, for I had no say in the size and shape of my body, the place of my origin or the monsters who parented me, whether they be at our homes or in our schools. While I may never be able to shed these skins completely, what is my life if not an attempt to metamorphose myself in each moment. Ursula Le Guinn once wrote that “what is most changeable is fullest of eternity”...
FRR’s First Video Production: LBC vs the World
Posted on March 5, 2018 UNCATEGORIZED
FRR Mockcasts 2: The Brilliant
Posted on March 5, 2018 PODCAST
The goal of this podcast is total absurdity. In this podcast we discuss anti-fascism, freedom, and have a special advertisement for the LBC internship program! Enjoy!
FRR Audiobooks: The Unique and Its Property, Translator’s Introduction by Wolfi Landstreicher
Posted on March 2, 2018 AUDIOBOOKS
Though obviously anyone can read this book and use it as they see fit, I made this translation first of all for my own pleasure, and secondly as a gift to other aware, willful, and rebellious self-creators as a tool and a weapon in their project of creating their lives on their own terms against all that would impose upon them. Stirner found enjoyment in writing this. His grin stretches across the pages and reminds all of us who rebel and create for ourselves that this all one great, wild, joyful joke played on every “higher value,” a book intended to pull the rug out from under everything that anyone holds sacred. Editing and Voice and Sound by J Posting to the internets by rydra wrong
FRR Mockcasts Episode 1: Anarchy Radio
JZ hosts a special episode of Anarchy Radio, the New Sunday Show. The show begins with JZ discussing yet another set of car recalls, this time it’s the good ol’ Prius. 42 million Priuses in Berkeley, CA were recalled over the weekend. JZ then takes a call from local future primitve and master rewilder Billy. Billy discusses his relationship with his dog Sooki and moving out to the city after his wife left him alone. Then another call from Josh, who discusses feelings of alienation and despair and JZ and Josh get into a spirited debate over egoism and nihilism. The show ends with JZ recapping the call with Josh and asserting his opinions on Nihilism, Egoism, and Leftism.
FRR Books Podcast Episode 3: The Trial by Franz Kafka
Posted on February 19, 2018 PODCAST
The Trial by Franz Kafka displays the life of Joseph K, a bank employee and supposedly good citizen of a society in which there is universal peace. The novel begins abruptly when K is delivered an indictment by three strangers who despite their civilian attire are said to be official warders. Though there is no clarity as to what the charge is, K accepts his proceeding as a personal project or obsession which from then on consumes his reality. His social life becomes a montage of witnesses, corroborators, defendants and testimonies regarding his arrest while authority is an undercurrent driven by everyone and no one. By the essence of its own inertia, K’s world is a banal confinement, a moral prison illuminated by his allegation. Kafka’s society is a surreal bureaucracy upheld by each person’s commitment to their job and functions as psychological totalitarianism where morality seems to be the only consistent logic between characters. The few stories they share with one another are devoid of direct authenticity. Instead, their interactions and conversations are impersonal and only relate to the Law. Outside of trial affairs there is an unsettling atomization where no one is able to demonstrate emotional intelligence or any sort of skilled communication whatsoever. K’s desires creep dormantly and his interactions are tormented by a deeply frustrated inner monologue that isolates him from shared experiences. Though there is not an evident list of laws, there is a social conduct that the characters manage to abide by. They appear to embody an order in...
FRR Books Podcast Episode 2: The Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins
Posted on January 15, 2018 AUDIOBOOKS
“What bothers most critics of my work is the goofiness. One reviewer said I need to make up my mind if want to be funny or serious. My response is that I will make up my mind when God does, because life is a commingling of the sacred and the profane, good and evil. To try and separate them is fallacy.” “It’s never too late to have a happy childhood” The Still Life With Woodpecker by Tom Robbins is a wet dream for any us who love the outlaw, who believe that an individual human life can still be romantic, and that group-think and humorlessness are the real evils of our world. Tom Robbins is a strange man for anarchists to read, but if we can accept the good with the bad, and the funny with the serious, then we can forgive or at least understand Tom Robbin’s tendency toward new age hippie fallacies. We can look more deeply into this and appreciate his keen insights into the ways each of us surrender to ourselves, others and society, and the ways it is possible to free ourselves from these same forces. How can we not love a book that begins with an outlaw coming out of bombing retirement to blow up the biggest meeting of the leftist minds he dubs the Care Fest(a collection of liberals the Dalai Lama, Ralph Nader, and all those in the world who seek to better the world by controlling it). Bernard Wrangle only has one life philosophy, Yuk...
Off The Leash: Iconoclastic & Anti-Social Words
Posted on January 2, 2018 AUDIOBOOKS
There are innumerable splits between “anarchists.” Some disagree about economics, strategies of resistance, and a seemingly infinite number of isms. I find the most important split to between social and anti-social. What need is there for social and anti-social anarchists to “work together.” This something I just don’t understand. Anyone who seeks to build a new mass society is someone I have a fundamental and irreparable split with…in essence, we are enemies. People who believe that everyone is anarchist are my enemies. People who can look at history and see progress towards freedom or compassion or social change that is desirable are my enemies. People who see human nature as freedom loving are my enemies. I see a few who burn with the desire for an ephemeral freedom and a huge majority of people who are not only willing but eager to submit themselves to society, a cause, a partner. People who refuse to acknowledge that slaves(including me and most reading this) are responsible for their condition, are my enemies. My enemies are the existing and the existent. As anti-social anarchist I find myself constantly surrounded by my own enemies. Friends are difficult to find, harder to keep, and a rare find for one who chooses freedom as value. So here are some writings from people who chose freedom as an arbitrary value and who refused to believe this could be given to them by a society, a person, anyone but themselves. This one is for anyone who has been alone...
2017
A Burglar’s Guide to the City
Posted on December 21, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
Does a house control your thought process? How does the structure of a city limit not only your movement, but the way you can think? You can’t throw a brick without finding a discussion of the way social structures restrain and contain us – the ways that gender, sex, race, wealth, government, law, language or whatever affect our ability to move through the world. There’s a physical built world around us too, and it wields equal authority over our bodies. We’re wading through a world designed to force our movement in certain ways. There’s obvious examples of this: the maze-like structures of shopping malls or casinos, twisting mirrored corridors obfuscating exits but always focusing your attention something that needs spending on. Schools, banks, prisons and office buildings are built with an intended purpose, obviously, but how does simply walking through the front doors or even looking at one from the outside effect you, scare you, or inspire your productivity by limiting sunshiney access to a window? Why is the master bedroom upstairs, the storage in the basement, the bathroom so small? What, exactly, is the point of a closet? A Burglar’s Guide to the City explores the architectural world around us by examining the movements of those that defy those structures and the “correct” way they’re supposed to be used. If we’ve managed to move beyond the social and moral boundaries of this world, burglars have defied the more literal functions of inside, outside, floor, ceiling, or path, hall, doorway – and maybe...
The Broken Teapot
Posted on December 13, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
We present to you a reading of The Broken Teapot, 2nd Edition, put out by Sprout Distro. From the Sprout Distro site: The Broken Teapot (2nd Edition) is a collection of five essays that explore the limitations of current anarchist models of “accountability” in situations of rape and abuse. The zine raises a number of important questions regarding the “accountability processes” that have been developed over the past ten or so years to deal with these issues within the anarchist space. It’s an important piece to consider when thinking about how “broken” we all are. I read this zine about a year ago, and at that point the only interaction that I had with accountability processes was a third party observer in an activist group. A few times, someone would be declared a criminal for committing the crime of sexual misconduct, or perhaps they were declared a (too overtly) racist/sexist, and then sides would form, loud online discussions would take place, and eventually the ‘abuser’ and some of their side would be banished. This happened a few times, but it was people who I didn’t particularly care about so I wasn’t invested. A few months after reading this zine, it happened in the punk house I used to live in. I still knew most of the people living there, so I was definitely invested. I could see the patterns pointed out by this zine as they were happening. Maybe it was because these people were my friends, or maybe it was because I had...
The Anarchist Banker – Fernando Pessoa
Posted on November 23, 2017 UNCATEGORIZED
Tonight we bring you a recorded version of The Anarchist Banker by Fernando Pessoa. Recently this was published as a zine on underHILL Distro, so we asked underHILL to write us an intro: “Come off it, that’s ridiculous. How do you reconcile your life, […] with anarchist theory?” In 1922, the question resounded as forcefully off the tiled walls of the café where the two bankers sat for lunch as it does today, thrown across living room tables in our collective apartments. How many hours spent playing that old game, debating the contours of the places our jobs and ideas have taken us and whether or not we’ve strayed across those lines, “are you, are they, really anarchist?”—the question met each time with such a practiced response, “Well, let me tell you how I came to hold this position my friend, you see…” Accumulated credentials and experiences spill out, ready to be notarized, filed, judged. Our anarchist credit scores. Do they drop every time we check them? Fernando Pessoa, wrote from behind many faces, his heteronyms piling on top of each other, and spilling into each others lives. We’ve had little time for biography, but from his text it’s clear he was familiar with the all-too-unchanging social dynamics of our milieu The text caricaturizes the developmental path of one anarchist as they move from a red workerism through individualist iconoclasm. From affinity groups to “…the commercial and banking phase of my anarchism”. Hopefully you will find it as entertaining as we do. The...
Spooky Thoughts on Why Cannibalism is Better than Sex
Posted on October 30, 2017 WRITINGS
The moon is missing from the sky. It’s dark. You’re running through the woods, as fast as you can, willing yourself more thanything not to trip. Don’t fall, don’t stop, don’t take that split second to look and see if it’s still behind you – it is. You’re being chased. It wants you. Would you rather be eaten alive or fucked to death? A contrast between the erotic horror of being devoured, or the soullessness of being used as a piece of meat. Or, imagine you’re the chaser – that you want someone so terribly, you’re willing to consume someone in their entirety, literally destroying them so the only thing they’ll ever think of again is you. Thanks to you, nothing bad will happen to them ever again. No one else can ever have them, or hurt them. Maybe no one needs to be chased at all – maybe the end of their life arouses them; maybe someone is willing to sacrifice their very body to another person, an act of care unmatched. The romance of the redback spider, laying down their physical being for another to use as they see fit. Someone out there loves you enough to flay themselves for your pleasure. [Raw (2017)] Cannibalism is a direct, brutally honest functioning of the way so much, if not all, sex (or any kind of power exchange – and to be clear, ALL sex plays with power, but not all of it playfully) plays out: someone takes, and someone gives. At least in...
Spooky Thoughts on Why Cannibalism is Better than Sex
Posted on October 30, 2017 WRITINGS
The moon is missing from the sky. It’s dark. You’re running through the woods, as fast as you can, willing yourself more thanything not to trip. Don’t fall, don’t stop, don’t take that split second to look and see if it’s still behind you – it is. You’re being chased. It wants you. Would you rather be eaten alive or fucked to death? A contrast between the erotic horror of being devoured, or the soullessness of being used as a piece of meat. Or, imagine you’re the chaser – that you want someone so terribly, you’re willing to consume someone in their entirety, literally destroying them so the only thing they’ll ever think of again is you. Thanks to you, nothing bad will happen to them ever again. No one else can ever have them, or hurt them. Maybe no one needs to be chased at all – maybe the end of their life arouses them; maybe someone is willing to sacrifice their very body to another person, an act of care unmatched. The romance of the redback spider, laying down their physical being for another to use as they see fit. Cannibalism is a direct, brutally honest functioning of the way so much, if not all, sex (or any kind of power exchange – and to be clear, ALL sex plays with power, but not all of it playfully) plays out: someone takes, and someone gives. At least in the case of eating someone, one person benefits; whereas with sex, on a purely...
The Last Messiah by Peter Zappfe
Posted on October 17, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
[archiveorg zapffe-lastmessiah width=640 height=30 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] “Why, then, has mankind not long ago gone extinct during great epidemics of madness? Why do only a fairly minor number of individuals perish because they fail to endure the strain of living – because cognition gives them more than they can carry?” asks Peter Wessel Zapffe in his 1933 essay, “The Last Messiah.” For him, the cosmic panic he saw endemic to the capacity for meaning-making burdened his species with a perpetual psychic scramble to avoid absorption into the infinite regression which under girds that capacity. For anarchists, the whole of the world as it is faces them with similarly unthinkable problems whose sheer magnitude, complexity, or both render them as in fact meaningless by dint of scopes in excess of the capacity for a given brain to cognize them, terminating thought into impermeably blank anagnorisis. Having achieved a state of no mind, only those with suitable religious inclinations bother remaining here for long. “Cultural history, as well as observation of ourselves and others, allow the following answer: Most people learn to save themselves by artificially limiting the content of consciousness,” continues Zapffe, marking the out of which anarchists avail themselves as often as any other simulacra raised in the image of Man the Wise. Posed with inhuman problems which are nonetheless problems both of humans and for humans, though many elect to turn away it is understandable that one would find themselves nonetheless compelled to act toward the embetterment of their world. Whichever way they turn,...
They Who Marry Do Ill by Voltairine De Cleyre
[archiveorg FRRtheywhomarrydoillaudiobook width=640 height=30 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] “So much as I have been able to put together the pieces of the universe in my small head, there is no absolute right or wrong; there is only a relativity, depending on the consciously though very slowly altering condition of a social race in respect to the rest of the world. Right and wrong are social conceptions: mind, I do not say human conceptions. The names “right” and “wrong,” truly, are of human inventionly; but the conception “right” and “wrong,” dimly or clearly, has been wrought out with more or less effectiveness by all intelligent social beings. And the definition of Right, as sealed and approved by the successful conduct of social beings, is: That mode of behavior which best serves the growing need of that society.” This the beginning of Voltairine De Cleyre’s talk “They Who Marry do Ill.” My appreciation for this 110 year old essay begins with her nihilistic beginning. It would be lovely if we could all agree that there is no right or wrong, that this anthropocentric opinion. Is there such thing as a good racoon, a good or bad strain of the ebola virus, an evil elephant? The obviousness of this thought is obscured by the religiosity of humans. I freely admit that any sort of ethics that I could be accused of are really just my personal aesthetics, which I do not deny have been heavily influenced and informed by things over which I have...
AJODA: Anarchism within Capitalism
Posted on August 6, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS WRITINGS
Free Radical Radio is back after a brief unplanned break. Today we bring you four recordings of essays out of Anarchy: A Journal Of Desire, Armed issue #64, released at the end of 2007. That and some of my thoughts around it here. These four essays were the reading for one week of the Berkeley Anarchist Study Group, which meets every Tuesday, 8pm at The Long Haul in Berkeley (come!). Most of us here at Free Radical Radio have gone to the group a number of times, picking fights and making friends. The four essays are: To Dance With The Devil – Aragorn Capitalism means never having to say you’re sorry – Dot Matrix Thinking from the Outside: Avoiding Recuperation – Andy Robinson Proudhon’s Ghost: petit-bourgeois anarchism, anarchist businesses, and the politics of effectiveness – Lawrence Jarach All four revolve around the topic of modern anarchists doing anarchisty things within capitalism. It teases out the contradictions and tradeoffs involved. This brings up a number of questions for me: What are the tradeoffs associated with selling out in various ways? What is and isn’t anarchist project? How does one make a successful anarchist project? What are different ways to think about success other than effectiveness in capitalist terms (big numbers, constant growth, measurable metrics)? What is the role of property in anarchist projects? Personally, the coolest anarchist projects I’ve experienced have revolved around a consistent physical space. In my life this has looked like a publishing project out of a home, a mostly-legal punk house,...
A John Zerzan Feature!
Posted on July 8, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS WRITINGS
Today we bring two pieces of audio relating to John Zerzan! First, a recording of his essay Second-Best Life: Real Virtuality. Second, a clip of one of Free Radical Radio’s favorite moments in John Zerzan’s weekly radio show Anarchy Radio: a caller named Greg. John was kind enough to advertise our ITS Communique series on his show (20:30 start) after an email exchange he had with Dirtroll. After hearing what he said about the conversation, I thought it’d be nice to publish the friendly conversation here to let everyone see what great points he makes and how wonderful his comprehension and ability to engage with ideas is. I asked for his consent to publish it, but he sadly stopped responding at that point. Why he would talk about this conversation the air but not have the guts to back it up? I don’t know why this sealed information or something, but I guess I can’t say anymore about it anyways. That’s, … I ain’t happy about that, and I’m really appalled that some people seem to get off on this drama stuff. Is that where primitivism goes? Is that an aberration or kinda the logic of it? You tell me.
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman, pt. 2
Posted on July 4, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
“In these regions, you may observe Man in his constitutionally vicious, instinctively evil and studiously ferocious form – in a word, in the closest possible harmony with the natural world.” — The King Angela Carter’s Count is back, but not for long. In this chapter, his tempestuous will faces difficult challenges – slavery imposed by the law, chaotic nature, and finally, his mirrored self (and only one of those even has a chance of bringing about his demise). The morality of this novel suggests that a will of pure negationly has one possible end. Negation leads its beholder to a sort of numbness, a distancing, cutting oneself off from the world surrounding you, seeing it only as a trick to be manipulated. How could you find pleasure engaging with anything weaker than yourself, after all? And if all of reality bends to your will – what could possibly bring you pain? The Count manifests his own end in the form of himself. He creates and meets the King, a being of unlimited power, who lived his life similarly to the Count, another expert in cruelty. The women of his army devour their first-born children in order to pass “far beyond all human feeling”; their clitorises are “brutally excised” so they “are entirely cold and respond only to cruelty and abuse”. All, of course, in accordance with nature and harmony, which cares nothing for those without strong will. What happens next is inevitable. Negation, ultimately, must turn in uponeself in order to feel. Words,...
The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffman by Angela Carter, pt. 1
Posted on June 21, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
In “The Realm Where Moral Judgement is Suspended” Milan Kundera writes that “If I were asked the most common cause of misunderstanding between my readers and me, I would not hesitate: humor.” There are books that make us laugh and books that make us laugh at ourselves, and I prefer the ones that do both. In The Infernal Desire Machines of Dr. Hoffmangela Carter carries a dark laughter as the current flowing beneath the wild seas of her imagination and machinations. To actually read we must suspend moral judgement, we must suspend our notion of reality, and open ourselves to the possible. To engage with Angela Carter is to live in a world with infinite possibilities, where no reality is any more real or less constructed than the next, and where the trite sensibilities of society are eschewed in favor of a deep exploration of the possible. This happens with Dr. Hoffman breaking space/time, it happens with an immortal vampire who manifest its own desires, and it happens with Desiderio engaging in a quasi-romantic relationship with a child. Carter engages these topics as they are, not as taboos in modernity, and thus we can suss out our own relationship to these situations with more nuance than we are allowed in school, with friends, or in supposedly radical spaces. It is important to understand that we are engaging fiction here. We are engaging a world which is not forced to carry the burden of the real, for novels are the writings of outlaws and all...
ITS Communiques #5+6+7
Posted on June 19, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
We continue with our Individualists Tending Toward The Wild recording series with communiques 5, 6, and 7. Some interesting nuggets, of which there are many: In #5, they take responsibility for a Greenpeace bombing and warn all leftists they’re targets too. In #6, they change their stance on things like using the genderless letter ‘x’, and bombing Greenpeace. In #7 they reflect on their relationship to anarchism and where they differ, as well as respond to technology apologia. But ITS thinks that authority is not always bad–it is bad when it restricts Freedom, when it limits your capacities to be able to reach your ends. But it is not bad when an authority figure teaches you not to falter, to pick yourself up from some emotional or physical decline, when he gives you wise counsel and when he leads you by good paths. You can read the translated texts at the library: #5 #6 #7 – Dirtroll
LEAVE ME ALONE: Misanthropic Writings From the Anti-Social Edge
Posted on June 11, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
I once got into an argument at the anarchist study group in Berkeley, CAbout where our anarchy came from. As I usually do, I loudly proclaimed that all anarchy means to me is “No!” and nothing else. To some at the group, this seemed an immature and childish sentiment, reminiscent of Crimethinc. and reeking of anti-intellectualism. Some shared their displeasure at this claim of mine, while some sat silently, as they usually do at the study group, being voyeurs, being takers, giving none of their energy or effort and absorbing(or not) the work others do in attempting to explain their thoughts and feelings. No, I said to my parents No, I said to my teachers No, I said to every job when I finally found it within me to leave. No, I said to every possible lover, despite what my body and mind said yes to “No,” is the essence of my being, which of course has no essence. No is the arbitrary value placed at the center of my non-existence. From a deep blankness, from an imageless center, exerting from formlessness comes the inertia of “my” no. For in rejecting form, coherence, stability, and self, I am the embodied and foundationless no. I float above theavens and below hell, for I am everywhere and nowhere, a duality and yet not duality, rather something else, some sound in the distance barely audible, scarcely real, am I a dream? No is One single arbitrary abstraction to open all others. My no grants everything. My...
Against the Logic of Work by Apio Ludd
Posted on June 8, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
[archiveorg against-the-logic-of-work width=640 height=30 frameborder=0 webkitallowfullscreen=true mozallowfullscreen=true] Work dominates most of our lives… so much so that even when we’re able to escape from our employers, we often re-create its logic by working towards a revolution, or some other abstract ideal of the future. So take a break from your work, from your future, and enjoy this short recording featuring scintillating musical interludes and an exotic accent for your aural pleasure. This the first in a series of short pieces by Apio Ludd. Recording by ChooseLife
FRR Books Podcast #1: The Festival of Insignificance by Milan Kundera
Posted on May 28, 2017 PODCAST
This the first episode of FRR’s new books podcast. Our goal is to discuss books(mostly fiction), especially where they intersect with our lives, nihilism, and anarchism. I(rydra) will be the most consistent host with a rotation of friends and others I find interesting broadcasting when we desire to. In this episode we discuss Milan Kundera’s final novel, “The Festival of Insignificance.” I began reading Kunderas a teenager and my fondness for him has only grown as I have slowly felt the effects of his writing, ideas, and brilliance sink into me over the years. Tom Robbins has written that in life we start as fools and if we live the good life, we end as fools. Milan Kundera’s first novel was called “The Joke,” so it makes perfect sense that his final novel would again engage the idea of jokes, laughter, insignificance, and how to possibly live the good life. In this novel, Kundera discusses how to give birth to an apologizer, how society is an army of apologizers, why nobody got Stalin’s jokes, how our obsession with the future is really an attempt to fix the past, and so much more. Kundera was living in Czechoslovakia when Stalin’s tanks stormed across the border and occupied his country. Shortly after he was exiled to France, which has given him a unique view on politics and history. In his writing he deconstructs History, nostalgia, identity, and is able to write with a heavy lightness that seeps deep into my bones when I read him. ...
Rape Fantasies by Margaret Atwood
Posted on May 24, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
Margaret Atwood is all the rage right now because of The Handmaid’s Tale, some new TV show and book we all had to read in high school. Women being oppressed by governments is well-trod territory, but this piece tackles it from a different direction – self-imposed subjection. ALSO, IT’S HILARIOUS. “All the articles say it’s better not to resist,” one character says – but fuck that, fuck eroticizing a horrific violent thing and accepting it as something sexy and good. The real rape fantasy should be subverting it and finding humor and ridiculousness and control over it. If you fantasize about submitting in a world that demands your submission, you’ve chosen to find that power dynamic acceptable. (Shout out to all the men and women in kink relationships replicating the exact same power dynamics in the world around them and calling it “subversive” and “playful” when really it’s just lacking imagination.) I particularly appreciate how flippant/realistic this piece is about rape – as in, it’s a thing that happens literally all the time to pretty much everyone, and might even be “one of the most significant moment’s in a girl’s life – almost like getting married or having a baby or something”. (Get it? Get the joke? Because marriage and having babies are equally horrific things women are subjected to and fantasize about??? SAVAGE.) It’s scary and awful but that doesn’t mean it has to meanything when it happens to you. And I mean that. “Dwelling on [unpleasant things] doesn’t make them go away....
The Nothingness of Personality by Jorge Luis Borges
On Sunday we rid ourselves of gender, now it’s time to remove EVERYTHING ELSE we attach to ourselves. It’s only a 15 minute long piece, how much of an intro do you want? You’ve heard of Borges obviously. Get out of here. Voice, Editing and Production by September
Gender Nihilism: Anti-Manifesto
Posted on May 22, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
Here we bring you a recording of Alyson Escalante’s Gender Nihilism: Anti-Manifesto. You can read the text at the library. Recorded and edited by Dirtroll.
Plagiarism
Posted on May 22, 2017 WRITINGS
a Free Radical Radio original writing. The marketplace of ideas, like any marketplace, is fit only for looting. “Intellectual Property” We have all been taught from our youth that “there is nothing new under the sun.” Whenever a child has an exciting idea, an older person is quick to point out either that this idea has been tried before and didn’t work, or that someone else not only has already had the idea but also has developed and expounded upon it to greater lengths than the child ever could. “Learn and choose from the ideas and beliefs already in circulation, rather than seeking to develop and arrange your own,” seems to be the message, and this message is sent clearly by the methods of “instruction” used in both public and private schools throughout the West. Despite this common attitude, or perhaps because of it, we are very possessive of our ideas. The concept of “intellectual property” is ingrained in the collective psychosis much deeper than the concept of material property. Plenty of thinkers have appeared who have asserted that “property is theft” in regard to real estate and other physical capital, but few have dared to make similar statements about their own ideas. Even the most notoriously “radical” thinkers have still proudly claimed their ideas, first and foremost, their ideas. Consequently, little distinction is made between the thinkers and their thoughts. Students of philosophy will study the philosophy of Descartes, students of economics will study Marx-ism, students of art will study the paintings of...
ITS Communiques #3+4
Posted on May 14, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
We continue with our Individualists Tending Toward The Wild recording series with communiques 3 and 4. From the fourth: … in the past three communiques we have developed a critique of nanotechnology and information technology, of industrial society and have set forth analysis of the ecological consequences of greater demands for contributions in the field of science and Technology; now we turn to break down the consequences of all this within the human mind, our approach as ITS, and the rejection of some terms that do not seem to identify us, simply in order to clarify our position. There has been exactly one important thing published in response to our first release of ITS communiques #1 + #2. Maldición Eco-extremista linked to the release and provided a brief history of the evolution of ITS. Atassa then translated it to english. I suggest you read it, as it can very useful to put these earliest communiques into context. You can read the translated texts at the library: #3 #4 As always, you can contact us at freeradicalradio@riseup.net with criticisms, praise, electronic parcel bombs, thoughts on the readings, or suggestions for future readings! – Dirtroll
Buffo the Clown by Angela Carter
Posted on May 10, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
Angela Carter is incredible and the only reason you’ve never heard if her is cuz I hadn’t introduced Rydra to her yet. YOU’RE WELCOME. She’ll be back. Carter was a prolific writer up until hear death in the 90s from smoking too many cigarettes. She left behind radio dramas, plays, short stories, non-fiction (if anyone has a copy of The Saedian Womand the Ideology of Pornography, get at me) and some profound novels, tackling themes of civilization, truth/morality, and reality itself. This reading pulls from Nights at the Circus, which tackles themes of identity. Identity, not as in “our inner self” or “who we REALLY are” but as a malleable creation that is ours to design (though we are not free of the consequences), with nothing underneath. A traveling circus is the perfect place to create a spectacular expression of performative self. A feat that is not easy – after all, it’s “given to few to shape ourselves”. What happens when one’s identity/self-hood begins to crack – to flake away, like white paint off of a clown’s mask – and one is confronted with the void? Timestamps 0:28 Walser puts on freedom in the form of a mask. Welcome to Clown Alley. Who is Buffo the Great? 7:43 A speech on the despair, humiliation, and history of clowning. 14:23 On the creation of selves and terrible dancing. 22:44 A band of irregulars practices and parties. 31:15 The clowns present an illusion of intentional bedlam. Buffo snaps. Voiced by Snail Editing and Production by September
The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore: Part 3
Posted on May 7, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS UNCATEGORIZED
We must kill the christian philosophy in the most radical sense of the word. How much mostly goes sneaking inside the democratic civilization (this most cynically ferocious form of christian depravity) and it goes more towards the categorical negation of human Individuality. “Democracy! By now we have comprised it that it means all that says Oscar Wilde Democracy is the people who govern the people with blows of the club for love of the people”. Against all that is sounded the hour of insurgence and not with only some unpleasant and repugnant theoretic bleat of the lambs…Much more is wanted in this bloody twilight of a civilization that has had its time! Either the Death or a new Dawn where the Individuality lives above every thing. Timestamps: 0:00 Twilight Ballads 7:00 Weeping 13:18 Anarchist Individualism in the Social Revolution 27:19 The Great Brains…In the Time that Turns 35:35 Returning 38:07 The Expropriator 43:50 Toward the Hurricane Voiced by aufheben Editing and Production by rydra wrong Sound editing by September
ITS Communiques #1+2
Posted on May 4, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
This the first of a series of audio recordings of ITS communiques. Communique one: Communique two: The primary reason I’m recording ITS specifically is personal. I’ve heard many strong opinions about ITS by those around me and as a result, I’ve wanted to read their communiques. Recording them is a specific way of reading that helps me engage with the text in a deeper way than my usual read-once-and-done approach. To record, I have to read it multiple times. I have to actually speak the words with my external voice, to decipher and take on the wild emotions of the text. Reading them in this way, I’ve been pleased and interested by some of themes in the communiques. Without spoiling too much, they viciously critique the Left, revolution, enlightenment ideas, city life, technology, science, civilization, anarchists, themselves. They also turn their critiques into violent action, and (in part due to being in Mexico) have been getting away with it. They actually have blood on their hands. They are still at large, active, and talking. That’s exciting. For me, their use of Nature is hit or miss, but tending towards the wild has recently been a positive development in my life, so I respect a lot of it, and thoroughly enjoy putting on their Wild persona when recording these. Enjoy communiques #1 and #2. You can read the texts at the library: #1 #2 – Dirtroll
We Are Back!
Posted on April 30, 2017 UNCATEGORIZED WRITINGS
After a year of hiatus, Free Radical Radio is returning in a new iteration. We are a group of anarchists, nihilists, label-haters, readers, but above all we find joy and passion in the sharing and discussion of ideas. We intend to use this project as an outlet to share audio recordings we have created that challenged us, interested us, or made us laugh so hard that we cried. There is possibility that podcasts will happen again, but only if we are inspired and driven by our own desires to make them happen. In the past we have produced recordings of fiction authors ranging from Sam Delany to Octavia Butler, and anarchist and nihilists ranging from Kaneko Fumiko to Bruno Filipi. One of our main goals is to make the shit we love more easily accessed in hopes that if we ever talk to you in person we can passionately discuss some of these ideas. Some of the texts we record are readily available, but do not exist in audio form. Some of these texts are rare and hard to find books, that we have secured with our greedy little hands because we believe they deserve a larger audience. We invite you to listen, discuss, and critique anything we offer up here. We also invite you to email us or submit recordings or ideas of your own and if we find them interesting we will be happy to host them, and perhaps we will even desire to help with sound production and editing. So with that,...
The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore Part 2: Toward the Creative Nothing
Posted on April 30, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
We will destroy laughing. We will set fires laughing. We will kill laughing. We will expropriate laughing. And society will fall. The fatherland will fall. The family will fall. All will fall after the free man is born. The one is born who has learned the Dionysian art of joy and laughter through tears and sorrow. The hour has come to drown the enemy in blood… The hour has come to wash our minds in blood. Enough, enough, enough! As the poet transforms his lyre into a dagger! As the philosopher transforms his probe into a bomb! As the fisherman transforms his oar into a formidable ax. As the miner comes up from the unbearable caves of the dark mines armed with his shining iron. As the farmer transforms his fruitful spade into a war lance. As the laborer transforms his hammer into a scythe and cleaver. And forward, forward, forward. It is time, it is time — it is time! And society will fall. The fatherland will fall. The family will fall. All will fall after the Free Man is born. Forward, forward, forward, oh joyful destroyers. Beneath the black edge of death we will conquer Life! Laughing! And we will make it our slave! Laughing! And we will love it laughing! Since the only serious people are those who know how to be actively engaged laughing. And our hatred laughs… Red laughter. Forward! Forward, for the destruction of the lie and of the phantoms! Forward, for the complete conquest of individuality and of...
The Collected Writings of Renzo Novatore Part 1: Beginning Essays and Introduction
Posted on April 30, 2017 AUDIOBOOKS
Anarchy at it’s peak is an explosion, a diffusion, the effervescence of being limitless. Boundless as the basis for anarchy is a premise that cultivates freedom. We find these qualities throughout the work of Renzo Novatore. He writes for himself to express the joy and pain of living in his world with anarchic disposition. His heart was indomitable and his work expresses an acute analysis. He was influenced by Baudelaire, Stirner and Nietzche. Scorn burns in his words and the individual is the beginning point of his work. He is beyond dubious of capitalism, authority, the masses, war, and causes that were not his own. His cause was the burning desire for freedom, “a strange blend of light and darkness, love and anarchy, the sublime and the criminal.” Throughout his work and life burns a flame that most of wish for just a moment of. He believed that we “write our truths in laughter, and our passions in blood,” and that “the only serious people are those who know how to be engaged in laughing.” He wrote: My soul is a sacrilegious temple in which the bells of sin and crime, voluptuous and perverse, loudly ring out revolt and despair, heroic and iconoclastic anarchism”. One thing is certain, only one who prefers the stormy sea to stagnant water will surely know how to appreciate the iconoclastic work of Renzo Novatore. Timestamps: 0:00 Introduction 10:18 Thoughts and Sayings 14:00 Cry of the Rebellion 28:21 Intellectual Vagabonds 39:50 Toward the Conquest of New Dawns 43:09 Wildflowers – aufheben and rydra Voiced by aufheben Sound production by September Editing and...
2016
On Hiatus, The Sea, and Anarchy
In case you hadn’t noticed, FRR has been on hiatus for the last several months. The TLDR for this goes as follows: One co-host moved, another co-host moved, and I(rydra) moved and lost the recording studio that friends and I built with our own hands in our own warehouse, and some problems with the anarchist milieu and anarchy as it works socially and projectually for a variety of reasons. Now, for the long version. My journey to anarchy happened in a significantly different way than my journey through anarchy. I came to anarchy alone, at the best time of my life. I was in Hawaii, with heaps of good friends, all social outcasts, but nobody who really considered themselves anarchist. I was living on a tropical island, surfing, with a cushy high paying part time job, non-stop social engagements, single, and with plenty of time to explore ideas. The only downside was that there wasn’t really anybody to push me, anybody to tell me my ideas were basic, that I was missing something, or that things were more complex than the way I saw them. After reading the Dispossessed I went to a local bookstore and picked up what seemed to me to be the most radical and extreme book I could find. This book happened to be “Elements of Refusal” by John Zerzan. I read this, declared to myself that I was anarchist and against civilization which was the root problem of the shit world I was born into. For several more...
The Rebel’s Dark Laughter by Bruno Filippi
Posted on March 2, 2016 AUDIOBOOKS
Click on these words to listen! Here is the audio link! This an excerpt from the Rebel’s Dark Laughter. Some of Bruno’s work is lost but the idea of him lives through his incendiary poetry. His essence seems to be something of a myth. He lived his passions and convictions entirely. The writings of Bruno Filippi are truly beautiful – emotional, irrational, and romantic. His positions are defined by his love of life, but also his expression of suffering. His poetry embodies the most admirable qualities of youth – strong emotions, earnest devoutness for anarchy and the desire for vengeance. His feelings of strong repugnance for domination or subservience in any form is admirable. He was harsh in his assessment of the slaves who resigned themselves to their slavery as to the masters who exploited and oppressed them. Acquiescence in any form was despicable to him. Surely he would laugh in the faces of many who call themselves anarchists today, much like he did to many that were around him. His writing is bound to offend some who can only read through the lens of political correctness. That is their problem. All forms of puritanical morality impoverish existence. Voice, editing, and description by aufheben Production by rydra wrong
Dear Aunt Sadie: An Excerpt from Coming to Power
Posted on February 16, 2016 AUDIOBOOKS
Click on these words to listen! An excerpt from Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian S/M. Edited by members of Samois Coming to Power is a collection of art, essays and erotica from “lesbian feminists” out of the fabled, feared Old Guard of the San Francisco BDSM scene. It contains some questionable and dated content that you have to take with a grain of salt in order to enjoy and learn from this book. But there’s a wealth of knowledge to be had. This book came out in 1981. It is a 282 page piece of history I never thought I would see, written by queer women into S/M, for queer women into S/M. Samois published this in the midst of the Sex Wars, documenting and refuting theated anti-sex climate of established lesbian feminism. Samois queers found each other caught between the mortar of heterosexual alienation and they pestle of lesbian feminist puritanism, and rebelled. This book is a long scream, a maniacal laugh, a “fuck you.” Excuse me while I gush. A beautiful aspect of this book is that every one of the submissions came in despite controversy. Not a single one of the pieces was wholeheartedly agreed upon by every member of the publishing group. If you hear a part of “Dear Aunt Sadie” that you hate, chances are a Samois woman in the steering committee also hated it. This reading is just a small taste of the boundless weirdness and perfection of Coming to Power. As someone who grew...
Baedan: The Anti-chamber
Posted on January 20, 2016 AUDIOBOOKS
Click on these words to listen! This the audio for the file! Click on me! This an excerpt from the queer nihilist journal Baedan Join September as it attempts to cultivate a politics of poop: So, my roommate has one of those Squatty Potty things (he also has a bidet, but we don’t talk about it). It’s like some plastic stepstool that wraps around the bottom of the toilet so you can sit in a squatting position – because apparently sitting while shitting is super bad for your bod, it like scrunches up some muscle inside of you or something. Essentially, this means that modern civilization has filled the world with toilets, which have turned turned out to be physically detrimental to your health, so now we have to get more products to allow us to sit in the shape of a squat, as if were still pooping out in the woods. It’s obscene. This piece from Baeden peeks in the bathroom and explores the idea that maybe our fear of shit (waste, excess, death) acts as a crucial cornerstone to a functioning society. Because it dictates how and when we poop, we become anal, anxious, and obedient (“…once animal is trained to control the time and place of its evactuatory functions, half the battle has been won; in no time it will be rolling over and playing dead on command”), surrendering mental and physical health, and adopting core values based on “high” or “low” as established by defecation. The gigantic sprawling megastructures of sewage pipelines, waste treatment plants, and public restrooms that our daily comfortable lives rest...
Prison Society: An account of the 2016 New Year’s Noise Demonstration Mass Arrest at Schiphol-Oost Detention Centre by Xander
Posted on January 15, 2016 WRITINGS
Yesterday I was held hostage, formally arrested and then held in a migrant detention center by military police in the Netherlands. I was processed at the military police headquarters and dragged from holding cell to holding cell, eventually arriving to a long-term prison cell that to my surprise was nicer than most university dorm rooms I had ever visited and lived in. Standing in the cell and looking out the window, an airport draped the background of stylistically impressed fortified walls that enclosed an orderly grass square, ATM and a playground surrounded by surveillance cameras and barbwire. This place was just a gated community or a housing estate with more fortification, guards and a life explicitly regimented totalitarian control. These niceties do not change the fact that it is a prison, but the order and architecture of the prison saturates everything, everywhere in(modern) society—transforming and homogenizing the environments that people inhabit. Now might be a time to start from the beginning. After just moving to the Netherlands, by chance I ran into someone who I met a year ago. That night they told me about a New Year’s Eve noise demonstration at a migrant detention center outside Schiphol airport—the Schiphol-Oost Detention Centre—that can theoretically hold migrants indefinitely with people talking about sentences of up to a year and a half for not having state approved paper work. After the noise demonstration, there would supposedly be an after party at an industrial plant turned into a squat that has existed for seventeen years. This sounded...
Cage of Brass by Samuel R. Delany
Posted on January 11, 2016 AUDIOBOOKS
Listen here! Click on these words! This a story of prison, crime, and guilt. It is a story of the prison’s built for us with real walls that we find ourselves in and the prison’s we build for ourselves in our own minds. It is a story of crimes of passion and desire, which we cannot explain away with ration or reason, and the crimes we commit to survive in a “decadent world that curses us with its morality.” It is the story of the guilt that is built into us and the guilt we cultivate like a prison around our hearts. Delany explores the depths of a futuristic prison unimaginably deep underground, where prisoners are kept in glycerine coffins of which the only two notable characteristics are darkness and silence. Venture into the minds of three different types of criminals as they decide if they deserve to escape, as they talk of their crimes, their guilt, their passions, and their imprisonment. Contemplate utter silence, unimaginable darkness, and nothing. Free Radical Radio Audiobooks takes our first full blown crack at voice acting as three of us take on a role from the story and engage in dialogue in the underground prison of the “Cage of Brass.” Voices: Hawk: rydra Pig: september Jason Cage: Hyenaudio production and editing by september
2015
Episode 91: All The Things! On Billions of People and Anarchist Projects
Posted on December 29, 2015 PODCAST
Squee and Rydra host episode 91 of Free Radical Radio and mostly discuss population size and anarchist's relation to the real, and anarchist news and the benefits and problems of different anarchist projects. We open the show with some personal stuff, is the personal political? Then we get into an extended conversation anarchist news. Highlights: Squee proclaims that he wants to help people! Rydra is in the elf mines over Christmas the feudal lords leave their manors to the lowly serfs. Spreading of anarchy and a discussion of occupy and anarchist interventionism.
We had some editing issues this week so here is no music, so when we go to break feel free to pause and DJ yourself, we are super interactive this week!
Time Stamps:
0:00 Talk of recent presentations and audiobooks we have on our website, they are on mass shootings and transhumanism and postmodernity. We have t-shirts!
3:30 Rydra spent the last two weeks in the elf mines of San Francisco, worker solidarity? Life on a modern day feudal manor and the gay cruising scene at starbucks at 5am. Rydra is top slave at the manor?!
8:00 how the fuck do you text your boss? squee whines about finding work. Rydra has resume advice, best ways to lie.
11:21 Anarchist criminality, do we suck at it? wtf?
13:30 nuclear power is BAD
14:30 OPP(other people's projects): Anarchist news(anarchistnews.org)
thoughts on commenting, why forums aren't a thing? reddit anarchy is disgusting
trolling, how people respond to human beings.
25:00 criticism from listeners on Wild Reaction, a human response
28:00 idealizing anarchist salons
32:00 local anarchists, Squee explains to us what that means and why he prefers it. Rydra complains about presentations and the degeneration of conversations.
36:15 the benefits of anarchist discourse as it is? what are they? value of creativity?
38:15 Post-occupy? Squee says anarchists are relevant when they act, not when they think. Squee complains we and other anarchists are too inward looking. Squee talks about the importance of conflict with non-anarchists vs anarchists.
41:15 The origin story of Free Radical Radio. Our close friends didn't listen or told us it was terrible, we didn't care!
43:45 anarchist problem solving: Stop looking for universal application
44:00 there would be music but instead there isn't. Consumer choice cigarettes.
Squee solves all relationships.
Some talk of "It's Going Down" and other anarchist projects. We fail at helping other people's projects while neglecting our own.
48:00 Wingnut Confessional: Population Size and How It Relates to Anarchy
Oscar Wilde is a fucking transhumanist! Talk of machines and standard of living.
53:00 Squee makes an interesting argument for anthropocentrism and Rydra turns it into an argument for egoism? They disagree about being able to communicate with non-humanimals and organisms, rydra makes sure this confessional is wingnutty
59:00 Squee is fucking mad because anarchists are failing as thinking individuals if they are ignoring the fact that billions of people live on this planet
1:04:00 squee likes ted talks and we talk about the narrative version of ourselves and the everyday version of our selves
1:06:00 Rydrasks how you live as an octopus in a society of wild eagles. How do you get from there to here? There is no there! there has to be here! WTF?
1:08:00 Squee says his only passion in life is helping people, rydra dies inside.
Extended discussion of occupy
1:13:00 Continued discussion of occupy and the false narratives some insurrectionist anarchists have used to rewrite history. On anarchist conflict with non anarchists
1:17:00 a short discussion of polyamory and anarchy! they are fucking related! followed by an awkward ending!
Email: freeradicalradio@riseup.net
We are still accepting submissions and audio books for the audio book project.
This episode was brought to you by the confused, semi-conscious consciousnesses of Squee and Rydra Wrong.
Speaker 1: Welcome to Episode 91 of Free Radical Radio. This your mainstay DJ rydra.
Speaker 2: And you're sometimes stay Squee.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I'm the other one that gets a DJ because I'm the I was only I was the only one there when we used to actually be DJ. So there's a time where we used to do live radio with on average 12 active listeners at our High Peak level. I think when we did free when we did Berkeley Liberation Radio back in W Oakland.
Speaker 2: Well, that's a lot of jockeying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it was mostly trying to see how much pat the Bunny and bright eyes I could fit into one one episode of free rap.
Speaker 2: Well, we should include some.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we definitely will. So in case you didn't hear, we have. Presentations we've put up by some I mean one. We put up a pretty awesome anarchist spirituality from is anarchist. The name of the presentation was anarchist spirituality from the East Bay book and Conversation event, also known as the Book Fair and.
Speaker 2: I think it was. It was something like the crisis of anarchist. Something or other?
Speaker 1: Yeah, maybe we'll get to that a little bit. Today, but school are going to put your presentationline.
Speaker 2: You know, I'm debating it, and part of the debate is that the whole premise of the presentation didn't record. And I've been. A little bit shy about re recording it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's definitely. My fault, I was meandering a little bit and kind of wandering around and I didn't quite get to the beginning of your presentation and. Then I actually didn't. Listen to I wasn't there for your presentation there, but someone had the table for. The radio show.
Speaker 2: So yeah, I mean, what I did was definitely meant for a presentation and not for a podcast, but. You know you get all my views.
UNKNOWN: All right?
Speaker 2: Anyway on here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so theoretically we'll put. We'll put up a couple more. We have one on mass. Shootings that we've. Fixed the sound for and edited and just need to get the OK on. And then we also have one on transhumanism. Kind of negating transhumanism.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we'll see if we can get those up and. I heard from someone on a different podcast that they were theoretically going to coordinate coordinate with us about presentations. However, when I asked this human being a figured anarchy too, if they wanted to coordinate before the book fair, they shrug their shoulders so we both end up double recording a bunch of things.
Speaker 2: Ah, is that yeah, OK, that makes sense.
Speaker 1: It was a big man of anarchy, .
Speaker 2: Big man big recorder
Speaker 1: Yeah, yes, that's what they say.
UNKNOWN: All right?
Speaker 1: Alright, so in case you're wondering, we still have some T-shirts left. If you haven't checked out, just check them out online. Friend of the show TV. Actually, who did who? Did the kind of infamous free radical radio on which was a 2 hour takedown of to our friends. By the Invisible Committee they design, they do all most of our design work for the show, which I think is super awesome and a really good artist.
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, probably one of my favorites. If you're familiar at all with push Smort who did like the Misfits logo and a bunch of other awesome like underground metal and punk artwork. Sort of similar but. But with a with a little bit of surrealist twist, I don't know how. To put it, but they're good.
Speaker 1: Yeah you should check it out and I've been mailing them out so if you want me to be back in the in the minds of mailing, feel free to send us an e-mail. Actually, one of the funniest things about my job. The last two weeks was I'm a nanny now, right? Somehow I mailed out 500 different Christmas cards. How my boss knows 500 different people to send Christmas cards to?
Speaker 2: That's a lot of employees.
Speaker 1: That's what I was thinking. Is maybe, she just has a ton. Of employees but.
Speaker 2: How's your insurance benefits?
Speaker 1: I was I was just sitting at this table and it's pretty funny and I've talked about this before. My job is basically like I'm at a fetal manner, right? I'm like at a very nice house in a very, extremely rich part of San Francisco, and I get to work early sometimes, so I'll get to work at like 7:00 AM. And I've noticed this thing happens where I avoid bridge traffic by leaving my house at 5:00 in the morning. And there's no traffic, so I get to the city at like 520 or 5:30 and I don't start work till 7. But like if I want to leave at 6:30 or something, it would I would get there too late because the traffic's really bad.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So I get there early and I sleep in my car. I think this something I've done before and I know other people do this so I park at the Safeway in the Castro of San Francisco and there's a bunch of us that are like working folk type people. It's like I have these like rare moments of working class, which I don't think is a thing solidarity. Where I'm sitting there and there's like, 1520 cars. We're all parked in the back of the Safeway parking lot and we're all sleeping in our cars trying to get like a one hour nap before we go to work. And then we all go into the Safeway and get coffee. Together cuz there's. Like a little Starbucks inside there and it's. It's really quite strange. There's also like a really. You know, there's a pretty strong gay cruising scene at that Safeway at 5:30 in the morning on weekdays.
Speaker 2: You know those? Are some of my favorite moments in life though are these happenstance?
Speaker 1: Fake cruising at Starbucks?
Speaker 2: Well, I haven't had a lot of success. That but.
Speaker 1: Comes with time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, the happenstance across the unification of the trade workers. Not really, but just these odd situations that happen when people are living the same way and would never meet each other otherwise.
Speaker 1: Right, and I notice these moments happened too when I used to live by the beach in San Francisco and it was like freezing cold. Foggy morning just kind of brutal, terrible weather and everyone's up at 6 just standing in front of their houses in my little part of the neighborhood. Because there's no jobs there really, so everyone's getting ready to take the bus to work or the mini the train France. Like go and everyone's just smoking cigarettes like you can see everyone's air breathing air in the cold air. You know the hot air coming out of the cold hot mouth air coming in the cold. It's kind of like beautiful in the tragedy of it all .
Speaker 2: Well, I. Always find that these kind of things are. Preceded by a little. Bit of that uncanny valley feeling. And then once that ice is broken, you got a whole crew of people that you're just totally tight with and you have a good time and you find like some shenanigans to get into before work or whatever.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, we're we're just sleeping. We have no shenanigans.
Speaker 2: No, no doughnut hole doughnut hole dehulling here.
Speaker 1: No, I wish. But people do try to like talk me up there like dudes are, try to talk me up. I'm like, dude, I'm like not interested right now. It's 5:30 in the morning. I'm going to work like I'm just. So not into a conversation, right?
Speaker 2: This second no blast of the morning vodka.
Speaker 1: That's definitely happening for some people I think, but anyway, so I show up to like the feudal manner, right? And I get there. And whatever I see the kids for like 15 minutes and they tell me what they want for snack because they're whatever I do, the little snack for them, their mom takes them to work and then slowly the rest of the feudal servants start. Again, and I'm there with a team of construction workers, basically so it's me, the nanny. There's construction workers. There's people doing the backyard, and then there's like a cleaning lady and some other servants, sometimes it's really bustling with slaves and it's funny because the last usually I have the best job right? Like of the slaves. It seems like I have the best job. Maybe the. People who run the construction company are the highest in have the best because they don't do that much manual labor but it. Seems like I have the best. Job of the slaves.
Speaker 2: Yep, you're inside the house.
Speaker 1: I'm like, yeah I'm. Like top slave, I'm in there and. Anyways, so. They've all been making fun of me the last two weeks because it's very obvious that my job has been the worst job for the past two weeks because I'm sitting in this downstairs room like basically sending out these cards like they're wedding envelopes. So I'm I'm putting inserts into the envelopes like it's a wedding invitation, super fancy, and I'm putting in the stock card of the kids and I'm doing this whole thing and I'm. And it's just taking me forever to do this and then they see me wrapping presents these, I must have wrapped like well over 100 presents this week, maybe maybe more, and the funniest part is I thought I did such a **** job because I'm terrible at this. Like if you don't me, I'm. Like I'm not, maybe it's because I'm so much.
Speaker 2: You're look a little rough around the edges.
Speaker 1: I'm a little rough around the edges, so maybe it's sometimes I like to. I like to phrase it this way. I'm so much of a perfectionist that I can't even do a good job because it's not gonna be perfect. So I'm just doing a **** job and everything I do which is the positivist way to look at this, the pessimistic way. To be. I just suck at these things. I think there's probably mostly truth in that. One, but anyway, so I’m trying to do like a drum like a giant jump drum. How do you even wrap that? I'm like stuffing the wrapping paper in like taping.
Speaker 2: I think there's like a side tape and A twist at the top.
Speaker 1: In it's like.
Speaker 2: Or some kind of thing?
Speaker 1: So it's a whole disaster basically, and I was so nervous that I was gonna I was gonna get fired or something. That is such a **** job with all these presents, and she sent me a text that said, like thanks, exclamation, exclamation, exclamation, you rock and like it's really weird to get texts from your boss telling you rock and I'm like. Does that mean you're give me more money? Like does that mean I'm not getting fired? What does that? Mean. How do I respond? And I ended up just saying welcome exclamation mark like I thought.
Speaker 2: Ohh you gotta you gotta pile on the butter you gotta that's when you gotta be like ohh I think you're great too yeah no.
Speaker 1: Oh really, I thought about saying like my pleasure, but it definitely wasn't my pleasure like and I don't want her to think like I'm doing this as. A pleasurable activity, .
Speaker 2: No, no, you do that.
Speaker 1: So I don't. I don't want to set up that false expectation, so I don't know what to do and I found. A long time before sending that text message.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well so I got a bunch of work things going on too.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, what's going on?
Speaker 2: Well, I'm kind of running out of work.
Speaker 1: That sounds like you don't have work things going on.
Speaker 2: Right, I don't have work things going on, so I'm in a little bit of a bind and,, my profession is somewhere between really really easy to find a job. But I happen to be a person that is not quite there. I'm like a few years shy of actually being able to get most of the jobs in my profession so.
Speaker 1: I'm a strong believer in lying. This what I tell everyone like. If you want a job, especially in the Bay where it's so competitive, you have to lie your brains out like you have to become another human being. Forget who you are, forget everything about yourself. Forget what you've done. Find some people to lie on your resume. Find some people to pretend you did something and you just start from scratch and you build up a story. You tell a beautiful. Story and then you come into that job with a tailored story for it, that's all. Complete lies.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I definitely go the opposite direction I. Go the avoid. As much commentary about your life as possible and just absolutely smooths at a superficial level, buy the coffee. Do whatever you. Need to do.
Speaker 1: I think that's the funniest part about jobs. When you're sitting there in that interview and you're trying to tell someone how much you want this job that you already know you ******* hate more thanything you've ever done. And at some point, once it's over, you're going to hate it. Or once it's once to get started and you're sitting there, you're like, yeah man, I'm really passionate about. Like selling paper. I just love paper. I think paper should be really prevalent. And I love the feeling people get when they send cards to each other and I can't wait to. Sell that paper to people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I had a place asked me about,, what I think of the corporate culture that they have there. And it was. Like they don't advertise what that culture is. So I'm supposed to like guess between the two margins of,, not knowing at all, and assumptions based on like a ******* website.
Speaker 1: So this breaks out of my biggest problem I have with Anarchs in general, and I'm throwing myself in there for sure. So besides my, problems with morality like S logical thinking leftism like human interventionism, just general ******* moron is like the all the problems inherent and anarchy. The one that's biggest is that. There's not enough ******* anarchists. Criminals like the fact that anarchists don't adopt criminal ways of life, and that so many people I know work such ******* stupid jobs like ******* nannying pets like whatever **** *** job people do. You know it doesn't free us up. Free up enough time, we all a lot of people I know take breaks like. Work and save money and take breaks. But I mean being. **** criminals and like basically at best doing. Some petty theft. I think it's a pretty huge problem.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I there's definitely, I don't know if there is a lack of it because I don't know. I mean who there might be those anarchists out there that.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: Like there's a, there's an information problem when it comes to that, right? If you are doing a criminal thing, right? For your life. You're probably not going to be riding on anarchist news or something about. What it means to consider Nietzsche in anarchist context?
UNKNOWN: But wouldn't.
Speaker 1: Wouldn't wouldn't that be way more important though, if people were somehow able to share this and share share ideas about this? Because even like I saw something going around around like Christmas or Thanksgiving time on the Internet, it was like 7 ways you can steal or something. And all it was about like food and clothing. It wasn't talking about like ways to. Make actual money, .
Speaker 2: Oh well, no one gives a **** about money. That's for sure.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I mean that's the thing you want if you want to be free, right? I mean, there's a little bit of the argument we got last. Time, but it is fairly relevant, .
Speaker 2: This absolutely the argument we got in last time.
Speaker 1: All right, so let's move on past that. We're not going to give you any advice on how to be a good criminal. You have to do that yourself. OK, so today we're going to talk about a few things. We're going to bust out a new a new new topic segment because we haven't really been doing that lately. Mostly because Bellamy was the one really doing that, which was a good thing. I just didn't keep up on it, ? What is it? Alien Nation states we have. We have a. Bunch of them. Yeah we.
Speaker 2: Wing Nut Confessional I was.
Speaker 1: Think that's the only one we keep up with, because that's the one I'm really. End of we have **** you Shima. We haven't done that in a while. I'm sure it still sucks over there. Don't think things are going well. Have you checked? OK, I think it's safe to say that for your reporting of the week for anyone that complaints, we don't do enough struggles. Fukushima is bad, nuclear power is bad. Don't use it, don't don't build a nuclear power plant, please.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 2: Please please.
Speaker 1: OK, so we're going to do a thing called other people's projects and that's going to be called OPP OPP, squeee, it's a new segment and we're also going to discuss population and that might sound a little bit abstract, but could anything be less abstract? That's the question we'll ask us.
Speaker 2: Yep, me.
Speaker 1: Is what does population have to do with our lives? What does it have to do with as people like to say anarchist praxis and we'll go from there. But first, let's start with other people's projects. Yeah, what's up?
Speaker 2: So here we go. We're going to talk about our OPP project for the day.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and project is another thanarchist news which you can find at anarchistnews.org. It's relevant to us because we get a lot of feedback on there I guess, and it probably is. That our Facebook are probably the two places most people tend to come across the project. I would say, besides the word of mouth or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right? Yeah, well, what I forgot to do. I was going to do this during the introduction.
Speaker 1: What's that?
Speaker 2: I was going to do the big reveal about what the website for my blog is.
Speaker 1: Oh yes, to tell people how to find your blog.
Speaker 2: Alright, so you go to squeee and then you put the dot in there and then anarchy planet.
Speaker 1: OK. You know it's also going to be easy as we'll just link this in the episode. So if you want to see. Squeezed personal life. That's the best way to do it.
Speaker 2: It's nothing personal on there. I kind of combed it for all that.
Speaker 1: Well, it's kind of underneath you can see through the veil of politics lies the personal.
Speaker 2: The despair.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you see you. See the deep darkness once you start reading about it. But anyways, that's a that's a fact, right? That's the real, that's the truth.
Speaker 2: Right, so that's another place for feedback, and then we could. Now we could go on and talk about anarchist news as a project.
Speaker 1: So let's talk about it in one sentence first. Is it good or bad school?
Speaker 2: It is good.
Speaker 1: And I say it's bad that was the whole conversation right there, OK, so let's move on.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So just kidding. So I guess the best way to talk about it is that is in two ways. One is what gets posted and the 2nd is what is the commenting like? Because the website really only has two features. Well, three. If you count the forms which we're going to discuss, it has. Postings of I'm putting scare quotes around this news and quote comments.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And it's you can post anonymously. Not all forms can you post anonymously, but on a news you can post anonymously and you can actually pretty easily pretend to be someone else.
Speaker 2: And that, and that's an Internet wide phenomenon that a lot of news websites are just not allowing comments at all, let alone anonymous ones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like a lot of them, you actually have to log in like if you want to comment on this embarrassing, but I go on ESPN.com pretty often. Sports website I don't talk about this very often. You have to comment on your Facebook. A lot of them make you use your Facebook to comment, so I don't know if they have a deal with Facebook.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: I wouldn't be surprised if they do. But I guess it's a way they quote verify your identity.
Speaker 2: There's more to that than I. Care to talk about?
Speaker 1: Sure, OK so anyways I mean how did Amy? 's even really start sweet.
Speaker 2: I have no idea how it started, but I have been on there for like 8 or 10 years or something like that which is kind of. A long time.
Speaker 1: And you post it yourself.
Speaker 2: I do I post as myself, I always have.
Speaker 1: Why do you do that instead of posting anonymous?
Speaker 2: Well, one of the things that if you have an account on there, you could edit your comments.
Speaker 1: Oh, really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and. That might be the only reason, but I don't know. I like to I like to take credit for the for the ******** I say. And I've had a few high jinks where I've created some kind of alternate personality and done done a thing, but. No, I like to take credit for what I say and if you like search the page. You know I search my name, I get to see if anyone responded that kind of thing.
Speaker 1: I see, so it's a. Purely narcissistic project for you.
Speaker 2: Ohh yeah, that was one of our big ones, right? We're narcissists.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, so I don't know. Sometimes I find value in the comments section, but a lot of times I don't. I don't think it's like I don't think. It's one of the. Best places for discourse online I think it's one. Of the only places I went to Reddit. Maybe a week and 1/2 ago? What a ******* nightmare that was. And this only confirms my suspicion. You know how I was saying the other day that I think the I'd say I'm just gonna throw it out there? 85% of people that call themselves anarchists. I consider socialists. I consider anarchists, communists at best and. Socialist Democrats at worst. And if you go to Reddit anarchy that is confirmed there.
Speaker 2: Unless you start looking at the anarcho capitalist ******** that's on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, that's the other 14%. Then you have 1% of reasonable people.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, I mean. That whole conversation? Yeah, I'm not going to reargue that whole point, but.
Speaker 1: OK. Well, I'm just. Telling you I'm right, that was the. Point of the conversation, OK?
Speaker 2: Yeah, you're wrong.
Speaker 1: So, So what is the reputation? What do you consider the reputation of a news? Because when people go to a site, they also have a certain expectation, like when I go to stab Mag, which is probably the best surfing website there is, which with the best surfing videos I expect just a brutal should show bro. Thing so is there a different expectation for annos?
Speaker 2: So the way that I think about it, I'm going to. You know it, it changes a bit over time, but during the Occupy period, right? Anarchist news used to do like sort of a minute by minute following of whatever big thing was happening. And for occupy that resulted in everybody that wanted to talk ****. To anarchist. Went to anarchist news to talk **** and this it was a very lively, living kind of Organism now. I mean not to blame the website, but there isn't **** all going on.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it seems like the conversations that do happen are usually centered around a troll like it seems like the most lively conversations for the most part happen when, like certain well known commentators who people think are white supremacists or whatever come and say some antIdentitarian stuff or say some bioregionalism stuff and it kind of jumps from there with people with a crusade to purge the Internet. Of these people.
Speaker 2: Right, and I remember kind of being like this before and during those interim periods. It was like. Oh, the website is going to now go off in a try a bunch of different things like they started a chat room. Well, probably like seven years ago now.
Speaker 1: I think a chat room. Would be kind of cool.
Speaker 2: They had one and they at one point they had like. Something called nice.anarchistnews.org, which was like a totally cleaned up like, not no trolls allowed version of the website. They have failed to get the forms to do anything forever.
Speaker 1: I think forums are just a general failure. I don't know if I haven't been on there in like a year, but I Kevin Tucker tried to do the black and green forums and it just didn't work. No, hardly anyone was posting, it was totally dead. I just don't know if forums are a thing anymore. Are they still? A thing I guess I think. I think it seems like most people just go on Reddit, right? Like if they want to do a forum style thing.
Speaker 2: You know, that might be a good point. They probably go to Reddit, I don't. Go to any form really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, me neither. I don't can't think of. Any forums I? Go to online.
Speaker 2: No, yeah, the last one I probably really did was the RAN red anarchist. Andy, whatever the **** it was. Red and anarchist Action Network.
Speaker 1: Right and then so I guess. I mean what? What do you think about the comments section? Because you're an active participant in it, so do you find value in there? Like do you find yourself challenged? Do you find your ideas changing through your conversations on there?
Speaker 2: Well, no, not anymore. I used to. I used to actually have a really like enlightening experience in the comments section. Where I would? There would be a few people that would give some like pretty ******* legitimate feedback that ripped into the ideas that I was presenting and things like that., I don't know if I. We've developed better arguments, or just that people don't care anymore. But now I the feedback. Is kind of like I'm going to get trolled for 10 comments and then someone will be like. Yeah OK, you actually are humand you do care.
Speaker 1: That's that's the funniest part is anytime I've gotten trolled on there and like responded, which is not very often. Because I don't. It just feels kind of weird to respond on there as like. You know, as whatever I am on the radio. But which is? Which is just me I guess. So it's not that weird, but . The few times I have done that, people are like, Oh yeah, you're a human being. I'm sorry for saying that terrible thing or whatever, and it's kind of this total break into the real for them. I think It’s kind of a bizarre moment.
Speaker 2: Why ? My biggest problem with the Internet is I'm never sure if I am actually being trolled because the most common thing that tends to happen for me. It's like. To me it seems like a great technique to troll someone like intentionally misread what they're talking about. Yeah, and then like, write a response to your misreading. So like an example would be like, I'm going to write 10 paragraphs on humanism and someone's. It won't even include any of the terminology of what I wrote about. It'll be like oh, so you just think humans are bad. And they should all die. Yeah, and it's. Like just garbage, yeah, or . Maybe if it's a little bit. More like. Finessed it might like include half a paragraph of what I said and like try to like analyze that. So I always try to give people the benefit of. The doubt and. One or two things happen. Either no one responds to that. Or they keep going and I am never sure throughout the whole conversation whether or not they don't, they actually want clarification. Yeah, or if they're actually just ******* with me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, which is why I think the e-mail for the show is pretty nice because when people e-mail us it seems fairly genuine for the most part. We actually almost never get people upset with us, which I think is kind of funny. Someone messaged a while back who was upset. Who was that person upset about? Do you remember?
Speaker 2: Yeah, what else?
Speaker 1: Ohh wild reaction. Yeah, that’s true. That's the thing that seems to bother most. People I'm actually thinking about bringing my thoughts on wild direction into like a coherent essay or something so I can just kind of put it out there and be done.
Speaker 2: Or you could post it on our kiss news.
Speaker 1: For the most part. Yeah, I mean I don't know. About that I guess. I could, I don't want to do that, but.
Speaker 2: I've done a few I've posted a few things I wrote on there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure, but you're more engaged there than I am. But anyways, as soon as I wrote them, I wrote this person back. You know some person in Arizonand I wrote them back and. You know, I said, I basically said what I thought about it and they were like oh, so you actually like. Have a thinking brain and you're interested in these things and blah blah and I just it was funny cause the last. The first thing I said was I just wanted to ******* write you this e-mail and just hate you and be done with it. But now it's frustrating because you actually engage me in conversation. I was like, well, that's like really, the whole point of doing the radio show is to actually engage people in conversation. Because when Bellamy, Bellamy and I first started doing the show, were really sick of the way people talk to each other and the shallowness of discord. And all we know wanted was a better discourse. We want to have better conversations because we believe that possibly the discourse leads to some type of interesting action and at least for us, it does. At least our the discourse were involved in our life led to. The actions we took as we consider ourselves anarchists or as we moved away from past, identities that we. Didn't hold any longer.
Speaker 2: Yeah, those that's a very rare thing on anarchist news. Like what you got Emil? Who has the same spiel over and over again, and somehow they think like. Creating a jargon is going to clarify what they're talking about, .
Speaker 1: So let's talk about discourse as a whole really quick. So yeah, because discourse is something I've been thinking about more lately, especially reading Delaney, I'm not too into it. But he wrote a whole long essay on discourse and what it's what, what it, what it means to be like engaged in a conversation with other people, more or less, and how. How important the way you have that conversation is and how that conversation is framed affects the ideas within the conversation and. I more or less want to get into what anarchist discourse looks like right now, and can it be improved and doesn't matter. Doesn't even matter.
Speaker 2: Let's talk about what it used to look like, or at least the records that we have of it used.
Speaker 1: OK, how far back are?
Speaker 2: To look like.
Speaker 1: You going to go?
Speaker 2: All the way.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: I mean, it used to be like one organization communicating with another and then you have a few personal letters here and there. When like people actually get to meet each. There, but. Because of just the technology itself, you kind of had to filter everything through an official voice in a way.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you? Well, you also had like a more salon style where people would meet up in person like I'm thinking like maybe 70 to 100 years ago where people would meet up in person. I guess part of it is the organization thing, but as it as it went. I'm thinking more.
Speaker 2: Off the record.
Speaker 1: Years, yeah, I'm thinking about off the record stuff now.
Speaker 2: That's all off the record. OK, well I don't think that's different. I think that is the same as it has been.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: I think on the record is different.
Speaker 1: OK, I guess that's true. I guess I don't know. I don't know how much it's not the same though I don't feel like I don't feel like people do it in the same way. At least they have it in place. I've been like I haven't seen a lot of people going to the back alleys of bars and really having like long real conversations. Maybe once in a while. I guess it happens in houses and things like that. But I guess maybe I romanticize like Italy and places like that and thinking about like Renzo and some other people sitting in a bar really hashing it out. You know, it might just be a totally romantic idea. I have of a better discourse.
Speaker 2: No, I just think that's regional. I definitely am hashing things out at a bar in the back. Alley, but.
UNKNOWN: OK.
Speaker 2: No, I mean the official on the record discourse is totally different because it's not organizations communicating with each other and this something that's like different even within the. Past 20 years. Is used to have your little anarchist collective or whatever? Yeah, for Phoenix's Phoenix Anarchist coalition, and you would release a statement from the entirety of the collective. Whereas now? I mean not to get back into the debate about the anarcho communists, but they are not organizing in that way like you're not getting a lot official like this what we think about wild reaction. This what we think about.
Speaker 1: And when you get it, it's mostly laughed off is patently absurd.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: It's not seriously engaged with, for the most part.
Speaker 2: Or as a extremely minority view, right? I mean, it used to be very representational, that you would get these kind of statements.
Speaker 1: The way you're talking about anarchist discourse is almost sounds like a party system with many different anarchist parties communicating with each other.
Speaker 2: Well it was.
Speaker 1: Oh, that's kind of gross. Don't know if I'm.
Speaker 2: I mean.
Speaker 1: A fan of that.
Speaker 2: No, no one got like elected or anything like that, but.
Speaker 1: But I guess even when you think about what most of us. Here in America. At least most people I know they're familiar familiarity with anarchy is, that the kind of like I think what people consider the Golden Age of anarchy in America, maybe for lack of a better term. You know Vulture and declare Emma Goldman Johann moist Alexander Berkman, like that period from the end of the 1800s till. The smashup of it with the with the deportations and stuff that happened in the 19 early 1900s, and I think what do people think of back then. They think of Soapboxing, right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Like actually standing up giving speeches right? A lot of these anarchists were on speaking tours all the time, but they didn't really look like what they look like now. But I guess that was more of a thing that was happening in general. Like because I don't think these speaking tours were just anarchists like they would speak at like women's events or things like that.
Speaker 2: For labor events.
Speaker 1: Or yeah, women's events. Labor's events. Whatever it was right and I guess anarchy. That point obviously was super tied into the labor movement, much more so than it is. Now, because I mean, I would argue that there the labor movement is a totally different thing. Now, obviously because labor is so different now, but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well there's like three things that I would want to comment on what we just said.
Speaker 1: Right, that's I don't want to go down that.
Speaker 2: Tangent, but yeah, but I mean the anyway. I mean, the main difference is that the discourse now is not only a bunch of anonymous ******* comments about whatever that totally mitigate everything else.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: As far as I'm concerned, but the I mean the technology is just so different that like all right, how do I put this? Even today, wild reaction releases a communique all right. That is a result of like trust right with certain technologies like you release the communique because you don't want to start getting into individual accountability. Well, we have technology now where everyone can do the individual commentary. And not only that, they don't have to actually represent recognizable identity.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I guess I guess. Are you talking about someone who can, just like throw a blog up that has nothing to do with their actual person that knows who they are and they're just a fig or, you can be.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Popular on YouTube or all these things.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and at and then at the same time there's there is a lack of collective organizations that do release statements, even. I mean, obviously you're going to release the communique if you're a. Legalist, sure,
Speaker 1: Well, sometimes.
Speaker 2: But if you're just like the local anarchists, you don't really do that. You just have the ******* group chat or message board or whatever and you say I'm anarchist from here. I'm anarchist from here and everybody like. Comes together with their own individual voice. Which is preferable in a way, but it does change the. The effort, I guess that goes into actually. Coming to a position.
Speaker 1: Well, I guess I mean on some level, even though I have issue with that. You know classical style meeting in a giant auditorium giving a speech anarchy of, . Of like having like John moist up there and he's arguing and people will yell in the crowd and support or not support. It's a whole thing, and he's commenting on public events and he's talking about how talking **** and Alexander Berkman. And then someone's getting involved. And then all that and we. We don't really have that much. I mean, once in all that kind of stuff happens. Like for the most part, it seems like what we mean. You go to anarchist study group. I know there's a couple of other anarchist study groups in the Bay, but for the amount of like quote radical people here, there's not really that many places. These conversations are happening, and I mean you go to the same things I go to like when we if we go to a large presentation, there's. It's not usually a very lively conversation, and I think it's hard to say, but a lot of it just boils down to the fact that we don't know how to communicate as human beings on a fundamental level, and anarchists are just as guilty of this as. Anyone and it's so difficult to have a good faith conversation with someone and exponentially more difficult with someone you don't know that I feel like a lot of that. It's just you can't really get into a real conversation at these presentations. Plus the fact that once someone's on stage we have this whole, lionization and putting them up on a pedestal that people value their words more than the words of some random person in the audience. Which is totally. Antithetical to the anarchist project, but nonetheless happens to an extreme degree.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well. I keep coming back to like yeah, I totally agree with you that there is this absolute like degeneration of honest conversation that actually is meant to. Remain relationship with the other participants. You know everything's like a drive by shooting. Yeah, and nothing's connected. There's no like follow up and there's just a level of depth that you can never reach because of that. The fact that when we critique something, there is actually no real like force that we're critiquing, internally within anarchism like you could critique anarchist news. Or you could critique like. It's going down or, like whatever ******* coffee shop, but you don't have a lot of power to critique. And this a weird thing, right? It doesn't mean that people aren't doing anything, but it does mean that what people are doing. You can't talk about it. Because you have to just. If they don't represent themselves collectively, then you could only talk about them individually and critique like the kernel of the idea that they're working with.
Speaker 1: So flesh out more what you mean by force.
Speaker 2: Well, OK, so when you have like something like a huge labor union like the IWW and they come to a solid agreement about what they're going to do given whatever circumstance like. Prison gets shot or something like that. You could critique their response and you could kind of like have this kind of deep dialogue about it. Whereas now There's nothing really like that, It’s all individuated. And when it's not what it represents, is like. Very tiny tiny groups of people that actually can't. Too much.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so before the show started were trying to figure out what the benefits of anarchist discourse were. And we might just be pessimists in general or might just be easier to critique than it is to you. Know log the good efforts of things, but the benefits that we came up with were so the benefits of anarchist discourse as it is right now. Were the sharing and spread of tactics the fact that projects can arise from this discourse? My problem would be the discourse sucks, sometimes ****** projects tend to arise more than interesting projects.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Maybe there's maybe my argument would be that there's not even. Enough space. For an interesting project to arise because creativity is not what is valued right now. And before I get to that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I totally don't agree with that. Let's go.
Speaker 1: On there you talk about, but and then the last thing, which is what you said was that sometimes occasionally mutual aid can't arise from the current discourse. Right, I don't know what thell you're.
Speaker 2: Talking about, well, you might find a.
Speaker 1: You mean like?
Speaker 2: Place to live.
Speaker 1: You're saying, yeah, OK? Once I get a narcissistic thing. You found a place to live, I guess I. Found a place to live too.
Speaker 2: I think a lot of anarchists have found their living arrangements through conversation with other anarchists.
Speaker 1: This this a fair point.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, I definitely for years have only lived with anarchists.
Speaker 1: I can't say the same. I've tried to live with anarchists and found out I was not living with anarchists, much to my dismay.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's something else.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a whole other thing, so you disagree that creativity is not valued.
Speaker 2: Well, value by who right?
Speaker 1: Valued by the current anarchist discourse as it is.
Speaker 2: So that’s. Something that we should talk about is. Why does it matter what the anarchist discourse values?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that was the other thing we're saying, does it matter? So do you think it even matters what the overarching conversation as it exists now in the real looks like in anarchy world or anarchism? Anarchy in general. Does does it matter what people are talking about? Does it matter how people are talking?
Speaker 2: And this a very a very like bloody lines across I think is to answer this question and I kind of think no it doesn't. It almost does not ******* matter as because I think that anarchists owns such a minority now, especially post occupy with nothing to interact with that the internal discourse is irrelevant and except for like report backs I mean.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: You know this the way that creativity gets devalued is because. We're not outward facing a lot of the time in our discourse. We're inward looking. You know, and we're me and. You are guilty of that as. Much as anyone else but.
UNKNOWN: Of course.
Speaker 2: No, I don't. I don't think it matters. I think what's relevant is when you actually have a conflict with the non anarchists.
Speaker 1: OK, so you're saying Anarch is pushing their force out into non anarchist world is where anarchist relevance is relevant and how many times can I say relevant to one sentence are there?
Speaker 2: I totally do. I mean, I think that.
Speaker 1: So then do you think it's not relevant? So let's let's throw the opposite example. So like say there's a bunch of people like anarchists on an island somewhere maybe. And they have doing a land project outside the world of anarchy. Is that relevant then or I? Guess It’s. Relevant to them, obviously, but do you think it's relevant to anarchist projects that is happening?
Speaker 2: Like is there conversation internally relevant?
Speaker 1: Well like is that is that action part of the discourse for you?
Speaker 2: It is, but not because of the conversation that they're having.
Speaker 1: It's well, but are they? I guess you can see dropping out as a conflict with the force leaving it with the non anarchist force I guess. Does that make sense? OK, well, I mean, say we're in a conflict one way for me to have conflict with you, which is also. A way to end. The conflict is to like, move out and never speak or deal with you again, which is more or less the idea of. A land product. Right to drop out of society. You know like to be part of a dropout culture.
Speaker 2: But I also. I mean, I think there's another interpretation of what that is, and to me like that could be getting. Off the grid and building a force that could.
Speaker 1: So it's ultimately it's a you’re seeing that product is more of a tactic to strengthen and come back and fight for ground or whatever.
Speaker 2: More strongly. I think it could be. I mean, it depends how you.
UNKNOWN: OK.
Speaker 2: Look at it. I don't know, but I think our internal discourse, I mean for as gummy as it is with the comments and the all the ********. The projects that come out of it are OK. I think that does happen. I think it happens. In spite of discouragement and I, this an interesting thing, right? I don't think it's very encouraging to see how harshly other anarchists get criticized. For their projects.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: If you want to start a new one. However, I think to do something. Makes your project better.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I can tell you and me and Bellamy first started we recorded were living in the same 13 person house with a bunch of ******** and one of the people that we're actually friends with. We brought her and we showed her the first show that we ever did and she listened to the show and we're like man, we put a lot of time into this. We like made-up a name for the show we wrote a bio we like did this whole thing. This our idea. Here's our first show. And she was more or less like you should probably stop doing this. This really bad. No one's going to listen to this. It's terrible. Please don't do this anymore. More we kept going so.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think that's what . The whole pressure forges diamonds kind of ******* thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think that's I think that's part of like whatever I like to consider. The anarchist spirit is that like you have a passion and desire and you're gonna ******* do that thing no matter. What people have to say about it, like ?
Speaker 2: Right so, but at the same time that same attitude is also like problematic for having a conversation with other anarchists like the attitude you have to. To do that makes you a totally unagreeable person with other anarchists.
Speaker 1: This Cheryl.
Speaker 2: So I mean. It's yeah, you're a diamond, but you're a diamond that you're not going to *******. You're not going to be anywhere near any other diamond you gotta like. Stand out and shine your ******* shine.
Speaker 1: It's like turning into a dandy conversation now.
Speaker 2: Well so. Well, and I think this sort of like I think that is sort of the production of anarchist projects today. Is this kind of problem right? So you have all this pressure to do the amazing thing to actually represent the embodiment of anarchy or whatever the **** you want to call it.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: And then and then you wind up not being able to talk to anybody. Else because of it.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that's one of the biggest problems with anarchist discourse as a whole, which is, I'm gonna keep going if I was saying earlier, which I think most anarchists are socialist mass movement. This they want to redistribute things. They want to better government that they don't see as government. Kind of something like you witnessed in the book that dispossessed which we thought about talking about today but didn't where you more or less have a central committee.
Speaker 2: OK.
Speaker 1: I'm not saying central Committee with a negative connotation. I'm saying in the best way a place where people can choose their work, find places to live, find food, your basic necessities are covered by. By some type of world government, whatever. Obviously I hate this. Obviously I hate this, but I'm trying to frame in a positive light in this way, but I'm saying even with this done like. I don't know, I just I just think that creates a problem because then you're looking for like were talking about earlier universal application. So I think a lot of times analysts are trying. To solve. Problems outside of their scope, right? Like, and. It's just really ******* hard. Even even world governments with all their power can't really solve these problems. You know they still come across issues with this stuff. Welcome back to free radical radio. This episode is episode 91 and it has been brought to you by. What they called Camel Crush, where we believe in consumer choice because we believe if you want to smoke a cigarette you should be able to smoke a menthol or a regular cigarette and you should be able to cut that percentage into whatever you want. I happen to smoke 100% regular squeeze. What percentage menthol do you prefer?
Speaker 2: Yeah, it depends on my mood and the one thing I know is once you put it. Into a menthol? You can't put it back.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's my biggest complaint about Camel crushes because I hate menthol cigarettes and I'll crush it once in a. While and I'm like, oh **** I wish I. I do that. I always regret it. I always regret the crush.
Speaker 2: Yeah, .
Speaker 1: I can say that for my life, every time I've had a crush, I've regretted it later, whether it be in one month or five years, I regret that I strongly regret it.
Speaker 2: You got to know when to put. It out, that's., and right, another that's the one. That's the solution, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, all right. So what? What else do you think about like anarchist discourse could change? Do you think there's a different way it could look? Do you think? Do you think a website like Anarchist News could look different? Obviously it's going down made something different.
Speaker 2: But I don't know how much they've affected the discourse.
Speaker 1: I would say not. Personally, I don't know, mostly just because I think they're just posting leftist news with a mix of leftist and then anarchist news, right?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean it's not even really the content. It's like the way that you create a conversation is by having a conversation. And if you don't invite that, then you're just putting an object out there to be kinda. Kind of admired or hated on someone's own personal time.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of weird to think about what the motivation behind that was exactly. It seemed like the motivation honestly was to have a different version of anarchist news to have, like anarchist news website. But I think the problem was they chased a mainstream idea instead of coming up with a creative, different idea.
Speaker 2: Well, they definitely, I mean from the from looking at the responses on anarchist news to the development of that website, it looked. Like the comments were their main problem with the format of anarchist news and how it kind of creates a quote UN quote cesspool. So that was that was the difference they tried to affect, and that unfortunately, when you do that.
Speaker 1: But the we are yeah.
Speaker 2: It just it almost makes you a commodity. I mean you, you turn yourselves into an object.
Speaker 1: That's what I was just thinking. Yeah, totally. And so instead of changing the conversation, they just ended the conversation.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Which is unfortunate because even I would be somewhat interested in that conversation even if it was just so much as to see like, OK, what are these types of? What are insurrectionary anarchist thinking in general? And you don't really get that on the site to be honest, .
Speaker 2: Yeah, I could understand that they'd be worried about getting like totally bombed by. Whoever they think their opponents are, but.
Speaker 1: Couldn't they just negate that with having to log in under a certain user name though and not having anonymous? Comments, yeah? I’m I’m I? Would I would be interested to see if. They tried that to see what that looked like.
Speaker 2: It would be. It would be pretty. Yeah, I don't know. I think that would be a good move, I mean.
Speaker 1: I guess this the essence of OPP. We try we try to help other people's projects.
Speaker 2: Other people's projects.
Speaker 1: What we really we should probably be helping our project. The most Nah.
Speaker 2: No, not ours isn't infallible.
Speaker 1: I once wrote in a poem, it's,. It's easy to take care of other people's problems because then you don't have to think about your own. Which kind of boils down to the essence of a charity and. Altruism problems in that direction. You know they're ultimately selfish, negating acts of your own self. Yeah, that's what I believe as well. Agrees with me. We just read solo man under socialism at Study group. By the by we I mean I read it and we showed up for the conversation and interjected pointless comments from and not having read it.
Speaker 2: I thought my comments comments were pretty pointed.
Speaker 1: OK, so now we're going to. Get to should we call it wing nut confessional?
Speaker 2: No I Oh yeah, yeah, let's I.
Speaker 1: When do you want to file it?
Speaker 2: I don't know we'll figure it out.
Speaker 1: And we'll figure it out. It's called something we're going to talk about population and. You know? Maybe one of us has more of a Malthusian bent than the other one?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, well this actually comes out of the study group is we kind of. After reading the Oscar Wilde piece or not reading it. Yeah, some of the little quacking birds decided to talk about population size and how it relates to a. A socialist world of machine.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we should talk it because in soul of man under socialism Oscar Wilde starts out. Really excellent, we'll link to it. There's a there's a really good audiobook version. I love the audiobook of this. Some guy did a totally wacky, weird version that I think is super engaging. It actually made me rethink the way I want to record audio books in general, but I'll post a link to the episodes if you're listening, you can just look down through the bottom and there'll be a link for it. But anyways, Sir Oscar Wilde starts off by kind of criticizing charity, criticizing. How would you call it? Not just charity but. Like in general, trying to help. Pull people up like.
Speaker 2: Well, all right. So I read enough of it. To know that. His primary concern is the basically the character of an individual and what he what he is emphasizing is the way that different conditions affect the character and whether or not like poverty is good for somebody's character.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Or, . Charity is good for their character and just how you develop into an individual sort of Renaissance man.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like what's the best way to foster individual creativity and the project the individual chooses for themselves? Which Oscar Wilde puts under the medium of art? Which I think can largely be seen as an abstraction, but I think what he's really getting at is just self-expression. More or less right?
Speaker 2: He he's basically setting up a scenario where all your primary needs are taken care of, and then you could actually make a conscious decision about what you want to see in the world instead of being driven by compulsion to eat or compulsion to. Whatever else to shelter or whatever.
Speaker 1: Which is interesting. Which is interesting, because as the essay goes on, he kind of wing that's out super hard in my opinion and ends up saying that the way this going to happen for human beings, the only way it's going. Happen is a society where machines do all the undesirable jobs. Basically all manual labor. Anything that's not creative will be done like ipso facto completely by machines.
Speaker 2: Right, which is a very old idea. I mean Aristotle talks about that the way that he talks about it. Is that? Some form of artwork will be able to produce other artwork, but. It's an old idea that the. Socialist mind has been waiting on for quite some.
Speaker 1: Time it's an interesting idea because it starts off with a huge problem which is who creates the machines in the first place.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah, we've been waiting for that genius to just inspect the right person.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think the ultimate answer to that right is the machines create the other machines like you start off with the machines creating the machines, but then your whole setup of society is being done by non human non organic entities and that is quite a way to develop a society.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, you’re completely trusting the machines to do the entire work of. You know keeping people alive more or less.
Speaker 2: But the real problem isn't actually survival to begin with. It's that people develop standards and our whatever the standard of living is what they call it, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that keeps going up and .
Speaker 1: Right? Well up up more yeah.
Speaker 2: Different, it gets different standard of living, gets different and then we have some whole other *******,, hodgepodge, way of creating that standard of.
UNKNOWN: OK.
Speaker 1: OK, so right now the population is estimated to be somewhere between 7.3 and around like 8.3 billion people. And this according to 15 seconds of Wikipedia that I looked at with squeeze sitting behind me. So take that for. What it is, yeah.
Speaker 2: Breathing down your neck.
Speaker 1: Either way, there's quite a. Quite a quite a lot of humans on the. Planet any way you shake it. I guess there's more ants, . They say the total mass of ants is bigger. Than that. Of humans so, but in our anthropocentric view we tend to see humans as the most prevalent species on the planet. Hard to disagree. We have a pretty big effect.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: And this funny. This actually one of things I complained about and to our friends where the Invisible Committee piece where they were saying that we like people think they have a bigger this huge effect on the planet and their critique of the Anthropocene was and the Anthropocene is the idea that humans have created a new. A new like era on the planet through our invention or intervention into the way the planet is with extraction and building and all the things we do travel through ships, planes, cars, bikes, what have you and they were saying that it's anthropocentric view and my and my personal take is. It's a, it's just a pragmatic, realistic view. I think that's an honest way to look at the situation. And I think we have changed.
Speaker 2: Things well I mean how many options do you have besides the anthropocentric one, right? Like what are you? What are you actually going to ******* accomplish by not being anthropocentric? So let's let's take the ants. For example, are you going to embody or invoke the Ant spirit and?
Speaker 1: If you Peter Kropotkin, you are for sure.
Speaker 2: And intervene in Ant life and create and create the create the situation that will will best suit the ants like you. I mean, if you're a human being, you're making human human decisions. You're not making ecocentric or Ant centric.
Speaker 1: And I think the whole crux of it is like the crux of agreed anarchist position at least would be like in making a human centric decision. You are making decisions that benefit the other things around you, because that's what's best for you is when the other creatures around you are benefiting cause you need food to eat, place to sleep, air to breathe so those types of decisions you're selfish decisions can't actually benefit you, and the things around you.
Speaker 2: For a green anarchist the. Kind of, but if you take it to the extreme of green anarchism, it's that you could actually somehow communicate with other beings, right?
Speaker 1: I believe.
Speaker 2: Well, you might, I don't.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: I do not think that I'm informed in my actions by the existence of other things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean I disagree strongly with that. I think I'm informed by the tides. I think. I think it's hard not. I mean, it's hard not to say that the water in my body I'm made-up of what? 75% water? Or something like that when I'm when the tide shift and the moon changes, my body is literally changing. I'm completely informed by these things like. You know different times of the day. The sun affects me. I didn't even know the way Suns and darkness and how much time you spend inside and outside truly affects us. Like, even if you're looking at our sleep cycles and things like that, I think the world around us definitely affects us, and I think the amount of predators around us affects us. I don't think it's so much as like do I go to a tree and like find the soul of the tree and find some type of thing there like. Sure, maybe maybe you do. I personally don't. Maybe other people do. That's fine with me, but I think we're definitely affected. An extreme degree by non human forces.
Speaker 2: But it's not about. It's not about whether or not you're affected, it's about whether or not you could actually act in the name of or act in.
Speaker 1: Oh sure, no, I don't think so that either that's.
Speaker 2: Right, so the problem.
Speaker 1: I mean, that’s that is, that is the main problem right with like leftist anarchy and with. I meanarchy with a leftist bent and I'm using leftist because in the way that when I'm saying leftist here, what I mean is human interventionist and speaking on behalf of those who are not spoken. So if you're like when you see animal rights movement saying we speak for the animals because they can't speak for themselves, no, **** you. They can't speak for themselves. You just aren't ******* listening. You know, like when an orca gets taken away and it's like. Making the whale noises and it's really unhappy that this kids been taken away. It's speaking for itself. We're just not listening.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but what I see. The thing is, what makes that not anthropocentric anyway? Like if you're affect. The as a sort of, you’re this kind of entity in the universe that is affected by other beings. It's you still have a viewpoint or a perspective that is centralized around your experience, like the whole. The whole ******* thing is nonsense, like. To speak with a. With a voice that represents your experience that is it. That's the only thing. You could do like.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're talking about extreme subjectivity. At this point, Wow.
Speaker 2: But what I'm not saying is that I have any ability to be a representative of.
Speaker 1: Of course, yeah, that's why I was using the word left leftist because I was when I use that word as a critique.
Speaker 2: Anything else?
Speaker 1: I'm mainly talking about what I was saying before, which is just representation and you’re giving a voice to something that's not you, which is what both of us, if were to have, which we're not going to. If were to talk about why we don't like democracy or federal federalization, It’s because. Someone's representing you at some point.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but this. But The thing is, is that criticism comes up a lot, right? Is that somebody you'll present? I'll present on a something to do with human psychology and someone will say, oh that's anthropocentric perspective and it's like my comeback is. I was like no, it's an egocentric.
Speaker 1: Sure, sure sure.
Speaker 2: Because I'm not representing humanity either.
Speaker 1: OK, I see. I see what you're saying there and we'll. We'll develop this further in this So what you're trying to say is that it's not human centric, it's squeeze centric.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah. I mean, if you're if you're not speaking by your own positionality in the order of things or whatever you want to call it. Then you are making some kind of a claim about other entities.
Speaker 1: And This why I'm not interested in any project. Which seeks to represent me or something else, or does not recognize me as me disregarding humanity around me like I don't want to be part of the global humanity, I want to be, if I had to, it's. More of a union of egos, type thing, right?
Speaker 2: And this exactly like the thing about humanism in the left, and whatever, we're the population question that we're going to. Eventually get into.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so let's get into it right now. So human population is a problem for many. People it's a problem for me because I ******* hate crowds of people. It's a problem for me because when I go out into the oceand I want to surf the best waves, there are tons of people there and it's very competitive. These are the main problems I have as far as population goes. You also have problems of feeding people you have problems of borders and exclusion and the world being divided up because there's. So many people. You know blah blah blah. We could go on and see about all the problems. SQL, What do you think the main problem is for people who are trying to tackle population as an issue? Like where do you see the most fault in the thinking of people as they attack this?
Speaker 2: Alright, so my whole I have a huge issue with this line of thinking where. Somehow you imagine a world with less people. You're to me, that's already immediately admitting that you have failed as a thinking individual.
Speaker 1: So you're.
Speaker 2: You have failed to find a way to answer and resolve the problems in your life.
Speaker 1: I think you left out the first part. You're saying you were saying you're talking about anyone who uses the premise of their anarchy being existing in a world with you, know half the many people we have. Or like just 100 million people in general, right? You're talking about people who say, oh, world population can't exist like that.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah?
Speaker 1: Let's think of anarchy with less people.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't have to be anarchist either. I mean, there's this a big thing with the, malthusians are often right wing, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're we're referencing Thomas Malthus.
Speaker 2: You know, like the Browning of America, there's too many people populating and they’re from the brown countries or whatever the **** you want to. So the whole problem for me is like. Fundamentally, what you're doing immediately you're starting off on the foot that is rejecting reality. Reality is there are 7.3 to 8.5 billion people on Earth, and if immediately you are saying OK, the problem is reality. You're not coming up with a solution. You're coming up with like this fantasy about about what could be in ideal circumstances, but the whole thing about about really thinking about. How to live? Is that you don't have ideal circumstances? I mean if it was that easy then we might as well be transhumanists and like start our day off with a menu in front of our. Face that says. What would you? Like to experience today and just ******* click the button and have that experience and. Go day-to-day. Like that? And on.
Speaker 1: Like Star Trek?
Speaker 2: But that's not. That's not life. I mean life is dealing with life and anarchism, for me is what has always been intriguing to me about it is it looks at reality. How it actually is unfolding and says. Look at what the workers are doing. They are going on strike. They're revolting. Look at what prostitutes are doing. Look at what all these other people are doing who reject authority. That's what we're for. You know instead of like this whole ******* world of imaginary scenarios.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 2: It looks at the existent and finds the. The people that do exist that find ways to revolt and bases itself off of that. That's what I love about it. Like to me, that's real, that's like gets my blood going.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it relates to a little bit about the Batman thing. We're talking about the other day. We're talking about planners and schemers and people are comfortable when it goes according to plan, right? So the problem is that most of the anarchist plans people create our fantasies. They're like you're saying they're based in the belief that all of a. Sudden 7 billion people. To die like you were saying earlier, a cataclysm right? Like they’re based in eschatological thinking like religious thinking, where there's going to be a significant. Such as, the fall from grace, the fall from Eden we had when we started society and again there will be a fall from society and we will go back to this other time or that will be presented with an opportunity to use these plans and schemes we've been creating. But this all resting on a in very questionable premise.
Speaker 2: Exactly right, like if the ideal conditions. Have to happen before your ******* philosophy matters. Why would I? Listen to you, I don't. I mean like if you could actually prove to me that somehow everything's going to fall into place perfectly so that you could live out your little anarchist utopia. Yeah, I'll listen to you, but no one does that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean I can relate this stuff to individual relationships. I've been in relationships with people where the foundation and the premise were wrong where were not capable of good communication. They hadn't worked out issues from their past. Maybe I hadn't either were both maybe playing out some traumas we'd had early in our life or something, and I would think to myself in the relay. Friendship like once a few years go by and we're both the people that we. Want to be? Then we're gonna everything will be fine and I think that's kind of the same line of thinking and this also relates a little bit to Sharon, who would say people have two things going on. They have the self, which is the actual life they lead the day-to-day things they do, but that means they stay in bed all day because they're depressed and that's their baseline. You know they do a little bit of their project once in a while and then the self self right is like novatore. They're carnival of joy and they see them whatever they see the self as like maybe that's how I would see myself self right as a this person who wakes up fights things all day, withdraws all the time, has endless energy for friends and projects and. All this, but that’s an ideation that's not,, that's not the real of what's going on with you.
Speaker 2: Well, that's an important point. I mean, I used to watch a lot of Ted Ted talks and one of the ones that has stuck with me is this dude came on there and was like. It was about happiness and like actually trying to figure out how to quantify happiness and actually deal with the question and he goes on to say, people really think of themselves in two ways. They have a narrative version of themselves. And they have a version of themselves that is every day what the pain that they're feeling, the anxiety they're feeling, the pleasure they're feeling. And depending on the way that you phrase the question, you're going to get, you're going to talk to a different way that somebody thinks about their situation. So if you ask somebody like., like. You know? How happy do you feel you're going to immediately talk to that experiential version of their idea themselves? But if you ask somebody how happy are you? You're going to tap into this narration of somebody's life. And I think what happens is that with anarchism we. It's very tempting to get into a narrative. About what we want life to be instead of at the expense of dealing with your day-to-day. Life and this like a form of compensation, I think. That's to me unfortunate.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, it's one of the biggest problems of anarchy in general is. If you want to be anarchist right now, the simple fact is you are living in a world that is nearly 100% antithetical to everything you want and believe in, right? Like to the so it's almost like you're a elephant living the life of a wild Turkey or you're an octopus living the life of a bald eagle. And how do you live an octopus life if you're in a Society of bald Eagles. When yourself look in the mirror and see a bald eagle.
Speaker 2: I mean it's the whole. I meand then it comes back to humanism, right?
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then so. So how do you get from here to there? If there isn't even a place really?
Speaker 2: Well, but why? Why does? I mean.
Speaker 1: And do you want to get there? And that's the other question. I guess when we get a prefigurative politics is why I think people like me and you tend to shy away from it there because we want to go from here and move someplace else. And it's not there. There is no there. You have to make there as you travel from here and you can't just know where it. Is like I meand that's the main problem, like I guess some people can think and maybe go join some, tribe that's uncontacted in some part of the Amazon or something. If they'll have you, best case scenario for getting from here to there right and then maybe you get to that tribe and it's got some weird rituals that you don't consider very anarchistic. What do you do at that point?
Speaker 2: But it's totally ******* unnecessary to do that because you could start here. And start doing the things you want and keep doing that there, there's no. Need to have it there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think the key is the key is not compromising right, it's as is or compromising as little as possible.
Speaker 2: I mean, if. Yes, resistance and revolt.
Speaker 1: Yeah right yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean that these these big words that anarchists like to use, happen to be, applicable on a on a. Personal scale.
Speaker 1: Right, and maybe it looks different than street fighting. The police with a bunch of liberal nonprofit groups, right? Like maybe there's a different. Maybe that's what it looks like sometimes, but maybe it looks something else, maybe we don't really even know what that looks like because we're not trying to create that. We're trying to follow plans, or we're so depressed because there is so far from there that it seems impossible to get there because it is. That were that. That it is almost paralyzing. To get started, .
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean I, I know quite a number of people that do function in that way and this this whole.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: My whole project is to try to bring that to light and like help other people. People see that yeah, you can be a resisting person. And something happens from it.
Speaker 1: So squeeze whole project is to help people in case.
Speaker 2: And like.
Speaker 1: You didn't know.
Speaker 2: Well that yeah, that's true.
UNKNOWN: I'm not going to.
Speaker 2: Lie what? Yeah, I'm not doing this to help myself. I don't get anything out of this.
Speaker 1: That is a lot of horseshoe right there.
Speaker 2: I know it's the best, it's the biggest. Drop of ***.
Speaker 1: That was the biggest poop you ever drop in the show. But yeah, I mean. I mean, that's. That's a tough question, right like? And that. Almost relates back to the discourse because. I do find the lack of creativity in projects and I find the lack of spreading of things like I think simple things spread like what's the thing that spread the most occupy, right? That's the thing in our lives that spread spread the most yeah.
Speaker 2: Let me I want to say something about that real quick.
Speaker 1: Go ahead.
Speaker 2: I think anarchists keep underestimating the intervention of ad Busters into Occupy, which is a national ******* glossy *** ******* magazine that's been in mainstream stores for a decade.
Speaker 1: I didn't even know people read that I didn't even know what Abutters was until.
Speaker 2: Occupy right, which is like. Almost a post situationist idea. I mean this whole occupy thing does come anyway, whatever.
Speaker 1: No keep going, I'm interested.
Speaker 2: Well, so I mean the whole idea of it is a very post situationist idea. And I mean just the way this.
Speaker 1: What do you mean when you say post situationist?
Speaker 2: Well, ad Busters practices the tournament right? That's like their main. The motif of the magazine is the torned images.
Speaker 1: What how would you explain to the tournament?
Speaker 2: It's basically taking a like a mainstream image and changing the meaning. Of it, to suit a narrative, you're trying to promote.
Speaker 1: OK. So you try to change the narrative to a narrative that suits you better, OK?
Speaker 2: Right, and I mean that's probably a bad definition, but whatever. So Occupy wasn't it didn't come out of nowhere, and in fact it came out of like a very well established group of people that had plenty of contacts. And could spend? I think it was like six months or something. The first time I heard about there was going to be an occupied Wall Street. It took a while for to even get that together and who knew it would blow up to what it blew up to, but it would. It didn't come out of nowhere and it definitely did not come from like. The rage of the populace bubbling up and overthrowing the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't think. So either.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that the whole example to begin with is already weird.
Speaker 1: I mean that was a huge deal, I don't think. I don't think we talk about it enough as anarchist. I think some anarchists want to negate it completely and I've tended to be on that side before and I think that's a.
Speaker 2: Mistake and I think you get David Graeber if you wanted to get it completely and be. Like oh, it's anarchist.
Speaker 1: Which is a lie and anyone that went to occupy or participated knows.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 1: Anarchists were the minority, even even in Occupy Oakland, which. The most anarchist bent of maybe any of them in Americat least. And it was. It was not a majority of anarchists, despite living in, one of the cities where there's are the most anarchists beside me. You know, maybe New York. Or something like that.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah it comes out of a very. A rather old project of. Not of **** like AD Busters and people who want to walk the walk the fence between mainstream political discourse and radical.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and occupying has been the tactic that's been used for a long time, but it's never been used so exclusively and so strongly I would say.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah? Well, I mean immediately preceding it were the student occupations all over California.
Speaker 1: Right, right, right, that's what I. Was gonna say yeah. Yeah, so don't know. Maybe that's something we should talk about more and pay more. Attention to and think maybe I know people have written books about it. They mostly seemed interesting when I piece through them, but what? What exactly went on there? And what are? Like if the? Idea of anarchist which many of it is right is even like little black carp, which is, clearly like. They're post leftist or whatever. They're like, largely. I would say most of them are obviously anti sive people involved in that project, all that stuff they’re still trying to spread anarchy, right? Like, obviously, if you're publishing books, you're trying to spread the idea of anarchy and change the conversation of anarchy. So even a project like that is interested in spreading anarchy, and obviously we are too. It'd be a lie if we said weren't. Obviously we could sit here and say we're doing this project. Just for ourselves, 100% egocentric, but the fact of the matter is we do engage a little bit when people e-mail us and we like. We are, we read what people say and all that. So obviously part of this to spread ideas and change the discourse, right so? On that level, occupy should be interesting to us because it affected the anarchist discourse for sure.
Speaker 2: Well, It’s totally interesting. It's just that can we please admit to the other factors that went into it and not and not the loot ourselves and be.
Speaker 1: Right can we? Yeah can we?
Speaker 2: You know, create our own narrative. Which is like this weird insurrectionary anarchist tendency is to like.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: Rewrite history or whatever.
Speaker 1: Right and pretend like it made a bunch of anarchists, or pretend like everyone.
Speaker 2: Well did it, did it did get a lot, but. Because anarchists everywhere intervened.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I but I think I personally would say that's more from conversations people are having than from people being out in the street and being like Oh no like this thing happened. I don't know I. I think it's more of a general a talking thing than.
Speaker 2: No, it's more than that. I mean, what Occupy did is it gave some. It gave everybody a real life example. Of why anarchy can be relevant, I mean. Like instead of talking about. Drum circles and punk shows and Linux and like like the random thing in grease. Or like sarcia like. You know it gave people in every ******* state. There was an Occupy. A reference point to something different that's outside of capital.
Speaker 1: Plus plus I think the most important part was that everyday people living in cities with an Occupy had to deal with it on some level. They either had to see all the TV reports about it they had to see it in the news they had to run into traffic problems because of some Occupy thing happening right. People living their life almost have no possible way or necessity to engage with anarchists at all like you could go through your whole life right now for weeks years without coming across anarchist or knowing anarchist without having some protest or demo affect your life in any way. When Occupy was happening that did not happen. Every normal person in my life was talking to me about it. My aunt, my uncle were like **** I couldn't get to work today. The traffic was so bad like one of the even and most of it was negative, right? Like these ******* are gonna suck but. I think some people are like what's going on here.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and look how hard it got crushed.
Speaker 1: So hard.
Speaker 2: So alright, so this goes back to exactly what I was saying is this interface is the way of having conflict instead of between anarchists like. I mean how how? ******* important is it that people respect like the coherence of our ******* arguments? I mean what people really respect is a real alternative.
Speaker 1: Right?
Speaker 2: I mean, dude, like if somebody shows me like a way that I can live the way I want, I don't care what their ******* philosophy is about. It I look at the mechanics of it and. I'm like Oh yeah, that works.
Speaker 1: And I think that's most things we're passionate about. Whether it's a way of life or something, it's like when you experience it, right? Like, at least for me, I'm in like the best relationship I've ever been in and I've talked. I can talk about a jibber jabber for years, but like now that I experienced it, I don't want to get in those other ******* ****** ones like, I'm probably yammers, obviously. So like when I go on other dates with other people, when I start seeing someone else that's not. Is that doesn't. Communicate as well or have the same level of respect or give the same amount of space that I have in my current relationship or allow for the same type of autonomy that I'm allowed and that I allow the other main person I see. Like I recognize it because it's something real that I'm living what I've been thinking about this since I've been dating one since I was like 17. It's been like 1314 years of dating at this point and I would think about these things all the time because I wasn't living them. It didn't change the way I did it. I had to live something different. I do encounter a different reality for myself to change the way. I was able to avoid the other situations and all of that, so I think encountering anarchist ways of life is a good way to be like. Oh ****, I really don't want to do these other things and you realize what a ****** way that things were happening. Before are right?
Speaker 2: Right, yeah? I mean we could go on forever about this. I mean, once we start talking about the way anarchists live now that we. Now and then, like questioning whether or not that is appealing or convincing the ******* whoever else. Yeah, I mean there's appealing things about being anarchist. Once you start interfacing with liberals or interfacing with all these other ******* idiots but.
Speaker 1: Right? But I mean that is something. I want to talk about a later date squeeze. That I do think 1 interesting thing that's happened and I don't know if I don't. I'm not going to say anarchists did this, but I'm going to say I think it's an inherently type of anarchist behavior, which is like a relationship anarchy or a level of polyamory which really relates to treating people as objects and commodities and private property and making a real attempt not to do that. By not telling someone what else to do with their body. I think that is a super anarchistic ideand I think that's a way you can live anarchistic fully in this world is to like be dating someone you care about and say actually if you wanna touch someone else. I'm not someone to tell you not to, that's insane, that's propertarian. That's *******. You know, hierarchical, like, I'm trying to avoid all these things, and I think that's I think that's interesting.
Speaker 2: I think it's interesting. I feel that way too I. We'll have to talk about. It another time.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we'll talk about in the time, but OK. So we gave you a little preview of a coming attraction, is there? Anything else you have to say today?
Speaker 2: Well, the population thing we never liked concluded it.
Speaker 1: OK, let's keep talking alright. So is it possible to be anarchist in a non anarchist society then?
Speaker 2: All right, so I think yes, maybe we did talk about it in a roundabout way.
Speaker 1: I think we're done.
Speaker 2: All right, we're done all right bye.
Speaker 1: This pretty radical radio. You can find us at free radical radio at riseup.net. You can e-mail us. Excuse me, you can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net. You can find us at freeradicalradio.net. You can find all of our audiobooks at freeradicalradio.net if you look under the tab of presentations and audio books. We have a lot of good ones there. I highly suggest it if you want a T-shirt, you can e-mail us and I will go into the T-shirt. Lines and send you a T-shirt and some stickers and some jeans. We got a bunch of really ******* good ones. Sporadical radio episode 91.
Speaker 2: Goodbye bye.
Anarchist Spirituality Presentation From the 2015 East Bay Anarchist Bookfair
Posted on December 14, 2015 PRESENTATIONS
Click on these words to listen! Here is the audio file! At some point, many Anarchists in North America will eventually cobble together enough experiences to gain an actual sense of self. At that point their lives will cease to be a desperate scramble to create and defend an insecure social identity, and the deeper question of how to relate to a complex universe will emerge. Their place in a reactionary teenage subculture will be revoked or refused, but sadly, most will turn to some mixture of politics, religious or secular monotheism, and humanism to seek answers. What would it mean to cultivate an amoral, anti-humanist spiritual practice that places one in direct relationship with a living world and offers the possibility of an actual Anarchist adulthood? This talk was given at the East Bay Anarchist Book and Conversation Event at humanist hall on December 5th 2015 Time stamps: 0:00 Talk is given: a person cannot believe in animism, they can only be animistic. A person cannot believe in polytheism, they can only be polytheistic. A person cannot believe in anarchism, they can only be anarchistic. 31:30 Question and Answer for about 40 minutes Topics discussed: Spiritual practice, how society keeps people in adolescence, wingnuts from the audience being only semi-wingnutty. There is talk of relationships with non-humanimals, death of youth identity and the moving into a non-identity space, and much more. Sound Production by September Editing and Production by Rydra
Doc and Fluff: A Dystopian Tale of a Girl and Her Biker
Posted on December 12, 2015 AUDIOBOOKS
Click on these words to listen to the audio! An Excerpt (Chapter 20) of Doc and Fluff by Patrick Califia, read by Hyena Written in the early nineties but set in the apocalyptic future, Doc encounters Fluff in a bathroom of the home base of the Alamo Angels biker gang. Together they kick start a chase up the West Coast, leaving destruction and mayhem in their wake. The pair winds up in the slums of Portland, where they settle in with a community of sex workers and dykes. This where we meet them in chapter 20, as Doc and Fluff’s relationship continues its downward slide. This not an easy book to read. It whips seamlessly in a triangle between erotica, politics and traumatic sexualized horror so quickly that the lines get blurred and you’ll be left wondering what went right and what went wrong. The descriptions of cruelty within the queer scene are both brutally accurate and disarmingly naïve about the nature of abuse. The ending is controversial. It is a messy book. You’ll hear me read things that I don’t agree with, Doc’s definition of “limits” for instance, and Fluff’s exoticizing description of her friend. Despite all this, the story of Doc and Fluff sticks to the back of my mind, haunting me with deeper questions about the nature of many queer and kinky spaces: the abusers that find harbor in places that are thought to be safe, and those that will make you feel unwanted or unwelcome just for being yourself. Twenty five...
Episode 90: On The East Bay Anarchist Bookfair, Mass Shootings & Insubordinate Care
Posted on December 7, 2015 PODCAST
Click on these words to listen! Here it is! This the audio!!! Hosted by Rydra, Squee, and Kelpsea. We discuss our day at the East Bay Anarchist Bookfair in Oakland, CA. We discuss tabling and presentations on mass shootings, self care for the damned, post-modernity, rojava, spiritual anarchy, and more. What the fuck is nihilism? Are we nihilists? Can you be a nihilist? Is self care destruction? Is destruction art? Is art inherently irrational? Rydrand Squee finally get into a disagreement, it is over Rydra making claims to being ahistorical and Squee says context matters! Time Stamps: 0:00 We have business cards, we say hi to Kelpsea. Rydra did 30 minutescof assembly line work with star wars legos. We have new T- shirts and we have been releasing audiobooks, so check them out and record some anarchist theory, fiction, communiques, whatever, and send it to us. 4:25 Rojava talk discussion 5:30 Discussion of the mass shooting talk from the East Bay Anarchist Bookfair: rhetoric behind the shootings, anti-society, anti-civilization?, what is the relevance of these(if any) to the anarchist project. It seems like anarchists do not enjoy children being shot. How does justice play into all of this? Why are anarchists outraged when people cops aren’t convicted. There seems to be a strong/loose relation between nihilist and anti-social anarchist ideas and some of the ideas espoused by some of the mass shooters, does this matter? 14:12 Discussion of “Self Care for the Damned”: Is embracing immorality not just another way to live morally? ...
Silent In Gehenna by Harlan Ellison
click on this link! Here is the audio! This green text will take you to spoken words! Anarchists throughout history have not only attacked society, authority, and civilization, they have been voices screaming into the void; they are lights occasionally blinking in the bleak darkness that has overtaken what is now called humanity. Harlan Ellison captures the voice of a lone revolutionary, a lone terrorist, who lies into the bullhorn that he is part of a movement and one of many, when in reality he is alone, destroying the entire University of Southern California by himself. “Silent in Gehenna” is the story of this lone anarchist, Joe Bob Hickey, who never fit in, who snarled, who would not eat their sandwiches nor stay in their homes, and who eventually was forced to face himself and discover if revolt strengthened the state or created freedom for himself. This one of my favorite short stories and forces me to take a hard look at myself and my anarchy ever single time that I read it. Also, it has robots whipping themselves, so there is that. Description and Voice: Rydra Wrong Editing and Production: September
How’s the Night Life on Cissalda? by Harlan Ellison
Posted on November 25, 2015 AUDIOBOOKS
Here is a link to the audio! Click on these words to listen! Come and listen to a hilarious story of aliens, sex, societal decay, and the end of all but one of the human race. Harlan Ellison describes the “most perfect fuck in the universe”! September does the voice, editing, and production, and outs itself as addicted to alien sex.
Treacherous Women: Kaneko Fumiko by Helene Bowen Raddeker
Posted on November 18, 2015 AUDIOBOOKS
Here is the audio! click on these words now! I don’t know where to start describing my relationship Kaneko Fumiko. Fumiko was a nihilist during in early 1920’s Japan. She grew up unwanted and abused – her parents never registered her when she was born, meaning she didn’t legally exist for the first half of her life. Her dad abandoned her; her mom tried to sell her into prostitution; she ended up in Koreas a child servant working for her colonizer grandparents. She dropped out of school to hang out with some anarchists, publish some radical magazines and found the Futeisha (translated as “The Malcontent’s Society,” which was basically just her and her nihilist friends hanging out). Then she was arrested for trying to blow up the emperor, and killed herself in prison at the ripe old age of 23 in a joyous affirmation of her power over her own life. This chapter from “Treacherous Women of Imperial Japan”, by Helene Bowen Raddeker, looks at the history of a woman, by a woman – a rare and heart-pounding opportunity for those of us who aren’t dudes to maybe connect to something a little more familiar, and all the better for not being seen through a haze of masculine opinions. Fumiko is presented as bitter, brave and angry, dramatic and emotional; she changes her mind often, while also impossibly stubborn; she’s simultaneously pessimistic and hilarious. Raddeker does us the favor of doubting her and challenging her, while presenting enough of Fumiko’s own words to let...
Episode 89: On the Irrational, Wild Reaction, Social War & Social Anarchy
Posted on November 15, 2015 PODCAST
Here is the audio! Click on these words to listen! Rydra & Squee host Free Radical Radio with some fucking high quality sound and discuss the rational vs the irrational. They break down RS(wild reaction) recent interview and talk about “wild nature” and leftism and resistance/violence. They also discuss Hannah Arrendt on the public and private and spend a good deal of time on society and the social. Here are time stamps: 0:00 talk of last show, feedback and we defend the personal because the impersonal can fuck off, RSS feed is up, Audiobook project discussion, and more! 11:08 we discuss the rational and the irrational. We talk about logical vs illogical and decide if these are false dichotomies and what weight these things carry in our lives! 30:09 Specimen- the beauty of poison 34:20 On Wild Reaction: Rydra tries to defend their defense of wild nature. Talk of having a history, of what it means to be against society, against the social, against the collective. basically, a long musing guided by RS provocations 1:03:28 The Damned- Stranger on the Town 1:08:34 Hannah Arendt on the Public/Private, Social/Intimate, Anti-Social Anarchy and Social War As always FRR is brought to you by the disembodied voices of rydra wrong & squee. Direct all thoughts and inquiries to freeradicalradio@riseup.net
Speaker 1: You know what I noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying. If tomorrow I tell the press that like a **** ****** will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blowing up. Nobody panics. Because it's all part of the plan, but when I say that one little old mare will die. Well then everyone loses their minds. Introduce little anarchy. Upset the established order and everything becomes chaos. I'm gonnagent of chaos. And the thing about chaos. It's beer.
Speaker 2: You live.
Speaker 1: You die now we're talking.
Speaker 4: All right, welcome to episode 89 of Free Radical Radio. I am your host Raja. I'm.
Speaker 3: And I'm here with rydra. My name is squeee.
Speaker 4: And we lost. Redoc because Redox's computer broke, so we're recording on a different computer by computer.
Speaker 3: Blue screen of death.
Speaker 4: Yeah, we got famous for radical radio technical problems, so hopefully the sound should sound alright. We have a pretty fancy new mic in here, so we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 3: And that was what happened last time, right? The microphone, well.
Speaker 4: That last time I screwed up and decided to record us with a percussion mic. So if our sound was bad last time, it's because Rev Doc wasn't here and I grabbed the wrong microphone because it the new microphone actually looks a lot like the percussion mic. So I got that confused.
Speaker 3: I know I ****** it up a little too. I made the volume to high and thrashed all the levels but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, what are you do? Hopefully we'll thrash our enemies today. We'll see if we can do that. In case you didn't notice, we're still doing an audiobook project recently. Friend of the show September and one of the other main person the audiobook project. Did a reading of Kaneko Fumiko, they're a Japanese anarchist nihilist. And kind of infamous for stirring up a lot of trouble and doing a really good job of killing themselves. At 23 in prison. Yeah, there the report said they were efficient. So yeah, what you do? You'll hear about that. We'll put it out. We're going. Put out, we'll probably be making a little bit of a separate thing for the audio book, so look forward to that. And if you have any recordings or you want to do a recording, or you live in the Bay and want to use the studio, just send me an e-mail, send us an e-mail at free radical radio at riseup.net. And if you check our website, would you probably already know at freeradicalradio.net you will find under the presentations and audio books tab? A few presentations we've recorded against identity politics. Arm joy by Banano and some sci-fi by like Butler, Delaney, and some other stuff coming up there.
Speaker 3: Soon there's also the RSS feed that people have been waiting for. All that really took was navigating the archive.org site.
Speaker 4: Right? OK, good so. So we have an RSS feed now. Thank you squeee for your technological technological precision.
Speaker 3: Patience is technological patience.
Speaker 4: I like to describe myself as one of the most impatient humans on the planet, so that was not a job. For me, alright. Yeah, all right. So we got a little bit of feedback lately on where ANU is, I guess.
Speaker 3: We got it from a news. I got it from some people in the meat space.
Speaker 4: Did you? I didn't hear about that. What, what happened there?
Speaker 3: Someone who will named not be unnamed. You know one of those things told me, we sound like a couple of old men talking.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure.
Speaker 3: Really, yeah.
Speaker 4: Just competing over a kanesh.
Speaker 3: Jessica Vecchi, or over the kennisha. Yeah, I got the foot, you got the cancer.
Speaker 4: I just come oh complaining about all our stuff. Yeah, it's. Pretty funny putting.
Speaker 3: Hospital treatments
Speaker 4: Yeah, you put a couple Jews in the. Room what more? Do you expect right? At least we. Didn't guilt trip each other too hard?
Speaker 3: Yeah, and then the other thing was it was the anarchist news.
Speaker 4: Comment right? Oh yeah, someone said their word about turning into a Persian or something. Which is funny because at the end of. The comment they. Said oh, what is this? A Persian I'd like to hear about anarchist in their daily life and I'm like wait what isn't that what a Persian is did I?
Speaker 3: Miss something, yeah? And I was a little. Pretty OK, I wasted drunk when I read that comment. So my response was. Just kind of like Herbert, Burp, burp, burp, burp, burp. But so I didn't take it very seriously, but apparently there's it's enough of a reason to talk about the format of the show and why we do it this way.
Speaker 4: Yeah, in case you didn't know, a Persian is a personal scene, right? A scene you make about your life most most one I'm most familiar with is kabloom, which is someone in the East Bay that we're friends with us. I don't know if you've read that one.
Speaker 3: No, I haven't read it. I don't know if I have any. Ones I could think off the top of my head either so.
Speaker 4: Rev Doc just came in to give you a little bit of soda pop and me a little bit of the. Old whiskey drink.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I'm going up. You're going down.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I got to say I'm a I'm a lightweight drinker but a little bit of whiskey ginger now and then. Never heard anyone. I got to say.
Speaker 3: Well, we'll see how this turns. Out and how not around?
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's true. So today on the show we're talking about Hannah or aunt and the public and the political versus. Private and social or sorry, the public political like thinking about the private and kind of how the social mass society, interplays and attacks the intimate spaces, and what she means by all those things when she talks. And when she writes things down, and we'll also talk about wild reaction, probably the end of October. We released like a pretty decent sized interview and I thought it was really interesting in a really great place to talk about a bunch of different things ranging from technology to leftism to. What it means to be anarchist to what it means to literally be against the left in a like attacking kind of way. So pretty, I'm pretty excited to talk about that later, but first, we're going to talk about the rational, since I think both of us tend to get pretty down about people who are, really wanting us to be rational.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, and the rationale is a huge part of everything that I think about. Yeah, I've. Any anytime I'm sitting around in bed thinking about whatever I think about when I'm in bed, I wind up getting to a point to where I realize. OK, I'm back at this irrational versus rationality split where I keep getting. Yeah, so it's something that's kind of chased me around my entire life. So it's not just for me. I mean, this something that plays out all throughout philosophy, whether it's Eastern or Western philosophy, the split between mind and matter or mind and body, the conflict between waking life and dreaming and then just the self-titled rational versus the irrational.
Speaker 4: But well, really quick on the same topic. I think the one thing that we want to mention before we totally jump into that was that. The reason we like to talk about our personal lives on the show is because I don't. I don't really care to get into this whole personal political thing or like I don't even know how people use that. But like for me, when I come to like political conclusions, even if they're not, even if they're just short term, I know they're going to change like that definitely affects way I'm going to live my personal life, and I don't want some set of ideas that is totally split off from how I'm going to live my. Really, life and I know that's kind of a reality of the situation because my ideal world is not possible living here in this **** of Oakland, right? But like on some level that's pretty important to.
Speaker 3: Me yeah and for me I just really despise formalism and I really don't like quote UN quote experts. So just people adopting the tone of expertise when they may or may not have credentials, or may or may not actually. Really have a reason to use that tone.
Speaker 4: Well, yeah.
Speaker 3: I and I definitely don't have any reason to use that tone, so a ******* high school dropout with like 2 years of Community College.
Speaker 4: Well, I have a degree in political science from University of Hawaii, so I don't know if that makes me much of an expert on anything except ****** liberalism. So I think. I think the other thing about that the whole expert thing is it plays out in really gross ways. Like we both go to the anarchist study group that's been going on for a couple of decades. Here in Berkeley. And there's so many people that come in are really quiet, and I think that's because they think of the other people in the room as experts. Some of the time, and I think it's hard for people to jump into the conversation. A lot of that is just societal upbringing and fear of being wrong and fear of having your public opinion out there about big topics. And some of it just shyness, but. I think some of it is that feeling of seeing people as experts and not wanting to engage with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think it's there's that. I think it's used as a front. A lot of the time and I just I don't. I generally don't like the impersonal or the formal. To me, this what ties up with institutionalized. You know, the establishment is completely informal and impersonal, and . Leave all that home.
Speaker 4: Yeah, right?
Speaker 3: Leave, leave your emotions and like what happens in your life somewhere else because we're serious here and we're here to get work done.
Speaker 4: Yeah, like school. Job, basically all the prisons of society like within the big prison are more or less formal institutions.
Speaker 3: They're absolutely form. Yeah, I mean that they're part of the bourgeois apparatus of making sure that the formal rules, everything and.
Speaker 4: Right and I think that's just kind of a nice part about anarchy too. Is like one of the things that kind of comes along with it, which is, a little bit of a **** you attitude. I don't think that maybe that's the best thing to have as a whole as a whole politics or set of ideas. And maybe it's maybe it is actually. Mine, but I think it's nice to come to a little bit of like I'm informal. Maybe I, my boss told me I smelled the other day. She said I had a. Strong odor because the. People I date like how I smell my friends don't complain but like even just things like that like that. That's a little bit informal as being yourself and not being something else like not being the store. Not version of you like to me, that's a little bit that comes in with what's what's cool about being being anarchist basically is just being. A little bit more informal, like being like even to use a strange term. Even just being real with someone like when someone says something like actually no **** that. I'm not really into that thing or that I actually have this opinion about that, or whatever.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah, and I'm not getting paid to perform something for somebody else.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Most of the time. And then when I am, I still don't necessarily like to put on the performance. That's expected me so, and nobody it tends to not turn out better anyway when you. Do no totally. I don't know how to how we're going to tie this into the rational conversation. Are we bringing that back in?
Speaker 4: Sure, yeah, let's talk about the rational a little bit when you get us started and tell us, tell us what your like kind of personal relationship to the rational is.
Speaker 3: So growing up when I was a kid, I really just did not understand human emotions at all. I would go to a, I had to go to a shrink and. And like they gave me a sheet of paper that had a list of like 250 feeling words on them. Because I only basically used two which was ****** *** and bored and they tried to get me elaborate, I'd be like. So why is that? **** you off? It's boring. Why is it boring? Because it ****** me off? It's just this circular ridiculous.
Speaker 4: It's a negative feedback loop.
Speaker 3: So I was not in touch with my feelings at all and I was very big on this idiot thing. You know, if something wasn't rational and I thought someone was an idiot. I really would let him have it and.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I saw my first therapist when I was five total, like middle class upbringing like everyone was all disturbed that I beat the **** of some kid in preschool, but he stole. He stole my best friend's tricycle, so I thought I think that's a reasonable response to pummel him right right and don't steal her critical *******.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I guess it doesn't.
UNKNOWN: You know?
Speaker 3: The rationality doesn't necessarily have to make sense or like work perfectly, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's rational to me.
Speaker 3: That's the that's the part of the brain that's getting used, but so it took me a long time before my emotional life just became so chaotic and unmanageable that I had to start paying attention to it. And when I did,, I for like the first time in my life, I started to feel and like be able to kind of like comprehend what was going on there and the way that it related to other people and the world outside of me in nature. If you want to call. It that. And it's just such a totally different. You know what might be called the irrational part of life that it's been a conflict that I've been stuck on ever since, and it's caused me to.
UNKNOWN: Do you?
Speaker 3: Pursue an interest in modern art so the Impressionists or the Surrealists, and things like that, but also occultism. You know alchemy? All these things where people are trying to play with the temperance or the balance between chaotic chaos and order, or irrational and rational.
Speaker 4: It seems like they're playing with the real a little bit too.
Speaker 3: Well that yeah and then well and then stuff like in philosophy where you're dealing with dreaming versus waking life or the absurd. And all the all the Albert Camus stuff.
Speaker 4: Yeah, that's why I encourage people to read John Gray because I think he does a really good job of dealing with the irrational and kind of more, more or less to me. The philosophy of someone like John Grayer, like kind of the direction I've been heading lately, is there's so much that. Happens that we are not doing rationally and there's so much that happens with the people around us. That's not. Rational, and even when you look at a personal relationship, the only way I want to engage with someone is to be like, oh, you do this thing. I'm interested in finding out why, but I also know I'm never really going to understand, and maybe you don't understand. And maybe there's not a real reason for it. Maybe it's just an irrational thing that you did and I have to learn to either accept that or not accept it and not hang out with you anymore.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, let's define what I mean by irrational. Sure to me, one way to that I look at it is it's not. It's when you're being driven or you're inspired. Or, something is influencing your behavior that's outside of your conscious, logical decision. Decision making processes.
Speaker 4: Kind of like a subconscious is the irrational and the conscious is the rational it as far as those.
Speaker 3: Things exist, well, the rational is definitely conscious, right? I'm sure you could be consciously irrational too, but.
Speaker 4: Well, but you could say someone is you could I mean like you could say someone like hey this person grew up without a dad, so they're looking for a strong male figure in their life. And even though they're not doing it, it's a rational thing that happens through the subconscious.
Speaker 3: Right, well yeah, that's the way to look. At it too. I don't know the, but the way it plays out. I meanother way to look at it is through politics, where you have the state or you have capitalism.
Speaker 4: Rational actors.
Speaker 3: That are, yeah, the rational actor. These ultra rational the citizen and the deliberative process, and the jurisdictional processes., . On so the rational to me is based on usually first principles, right? So you have the good or you have the just or you have beauty or truth.
Speaker 4: And then the forms.
Speaker 3: And then yeah, the platonic forms. So you have you have these starting points where you have to pull everything into coherence and alignment with them for it to make sense. And that is just such a different. Thing compared to. Everyday life and like responding to your environment and the way that bonding works. Or all these kind of things. Psychology wants to study.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I see it as such a thing like such an obvious thing in the way people talk about politics. Like if we're going to bring this back to anarchy world for a second in the way, like for instance, I mean like what some should happen in Paris yesterday, right? Like whatever 100 and something people died. My response to it is. Like the basic response of someone who I consider a real person, which is like, yeah, some terrible should happen. This world sucks like big Deal, but other people like really for some reason it gets in the zeitgeist and like they feel maybe some like they should respond to it. Or maybe who knows, maybe for some reason they actually feel some level of compassion or something. But either way that people try to rationalize it right by whatever the various ******. Arguments are like, oh, it's imperialism come home or colonization. Coming back to them or whatever. I don't really care about getting into what those arguments are, but it's just like this attempt to rationalize things which is. Which is basically two ways you can look at the two of the two of the more common ways you can look at the world in anarchist. You can say this a perfectly ordered system that's happening rationally. This part of it, or you can look at it and say this irrational. It's just like someone decided to do some ****. They woke up and they decided this or they woke up a few. Months ago, and they made a pland they did the thing and. What's so different between that and some other type of action? Like what's different? If they took a trip to Paris and saw the Eiffel Tower, what's different if they gunned some people down, which is an extreme form of philosophical nihilism, but it's also a way to accept the irrationality of our design.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, it's also the surrealist kind of promoted the idea of shooting people at random as one of the ultimate acts of surrealism or. I mean. Thissue just runs so deep in so many different places of thought or spirituality or politics that it's hard to get away from it. And yet. It seems like there's such a. Push to automatically favor the rational in the culture that we live in. That,, it? It's just. Automatically tyrannical. Or the rational mind becomes sort of a tyrannical force of everyone's life and? We'll talk about some of this a little later with the Hanai rent thing.
Speaker 4: I mean, even just going to work right, like you need a reason, you always need a rational reason not to show up like you’re sick or like whatever happened like a family member died and like it's never just like **** like I just like I'm not going to be there today like I'm gonna. I'm gonna do a **** job if I go, whereas in like a more ideal type of grouping of human beings like if. Friends, we're all doing a project, I think. You know when, like me and you we say like a few of our friends were in a room and we're all gonna go out to like do some project together we're just gonna we're all gonna go to the river and just chill out for a day it's OK for someone to say like I don't know what's going on I just don't want to go like irrationally and there's just no room for like to act upon the irrational within the confines that we're stuck in.
Speaker 3: Some of my icons on, I see some people. Whether it's on anarchist news or just in philosophical writing, they favor the artist right as sort of like an icon of what someone should aim for this aesthetic life. Which to me sort of sort of gets to the mark where you have some sort of creative relationship with the irrational. So it's a combination of the rational and the irrational, but. Things are kind of pointing in a productive direction instead of like just this permanent conflict and bumping against each other. So my I kind of like to take it a step further and point towards like the magician. Especially like stage magicians or someone like Darren Brown is one of my favorites. People who really know how to transform perception. **** with daily life or like. Really take life or what it is. The substance of living and. Do something creative with it personally to express themselves.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that's what I'm most into, which even leading into something like we're going to talk about later. Wild reaction, so if we're talking about like a even though like anti political actor, if you're talking about someone who engages in the political realm, which they definitely do because they write communiques. I mean, they're that's more or less irrational acts like they sort of have reasons for what they do, but like at theart of it is just some type of feeling that leads to some type of destruction. And there's not really much there beyond that, like they have a few rational arguments, but those those are mostly hogwash compared to the feeling of irrational that you get from this. And that's kind of what inspires me to. Like the at least the last few years has just been like ******* with daily life. Like the problem. My problem with living in this world is that daily life is just ******. Like I don't wanna be a part of this daily life as it connects to most of the people I'm around like you can say work and all that but it's more or less just the way human beings interact with each other. And there's no, we don't have time. To like stop and talk to people. And just like all the other **** that someone's gonna tell you when they first tell you like why is anarchy a thing? That stuff still gets to me, .
Speaker 3: And then their whole thing is the wild right wild reaction. Well, if there's any any more of a representation of the irrational, it's the wild.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally.
Speaker 3: And to let that break through, I don't know **** about these people, but.
Speaker 4: Yeah no, but I mean, that's I mean, that’s totally true, it's. It is literally a wild reaction that's and one of my favorite ways to talk about people's behavior is. I'll just be like, yeah, they're just wild and or like I'll tell people, it's wild and the other day. And I what I really mean is just like I was, I was just ******* existing in the moment. And when you're just existing and you're not trying to ******* rationalize everything, you are Wilding like you're just, you're just *******. Acting and to me that gets to theart of what philosophical nihilism is, is just acting and you don't need a reason for it. You don't need a meaning for it, you're just kind of acting upon desire and not kind of harshing on yourself for doing that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and to me I looked and. With Apollo and Dionysus and the way those two things should play out in tragedy and kind of produce this aim for the sublime and all that ****.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's a jitterbug perfume which I recently read by Tom Robbins, one of my favorite scenes in there is where he's talking about how Apollo and Pan were both who's kind of like a version of dying ISIS as it goes on, we're both playing in a contest, a musical contest, and Apollo played perfectly and. Nationally and everything was perfect and then Pam went up there and just kind of played this discord of like total ******* chaos and cacophony of music. But it just ******* moved everyone and like people like get sexually aroused as he's playing it. They don't know why it's his irrational feeling of just like this, hedonistic like ******* blur of feelings. And I think Tom Robbins point was basically like yeah, maybe there was a time where human beings could embrace both of these on some level or at more at more times. Maybe pan at more times Apollo and now the. In the book Pan slowly dies over time as like humanism comes up and the Enlightenment all that. But like as our society current currently is, there's no room left really for this type of pan thing.
Speaker 3: Well there is, but that room is that's it's. It's a special place in society called the entertainment industry.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 3: And this where actors and Desbiens and musicians and other forms of artists they they get to. Basically, carry out what I think is. The goal in my life. Except it has to constantly conform to the demands of the market, so it has to still be under the rubric of the rational and of the formal and of the exchange and quantities and numbers.
Speaker 4: Yeah, which is a real bummer because like that’s the stuff I like and like just doing like this type of creation I think is what all is. What drives most people right is some people respond to like spoken word or like music or performance art or regular art like whatever like just different ways of doing this. Type of like Wilding.
Speaker 3: Yep, and yeah that there's a special place for it so that artists don't become too dangerous or these people. You know can live out. There's enough people to live that out, and everyone else can experience it vicariously. And . Then go to their ******* ****** job where they take a nail gun and ******* nail a smile on their face and not into you. Know the phone because it's probably an office job of some sort.
Speaker 4: And yeah, yeah, do you care if I read this wild reaction? Quote on the rationale real quick?
Speaker 3: Now go for it.
Speaker 4: OK, so this something they recently said in the interview. One of the members, or a few or something. They said. This from a wild reactions interview with this magazine, which I forget only two later. They said the modern human is obligated to live in society. Having to contend closely with his fellow man. From this through language comes law that upholds the social order so that man may live in peace within society without entering into conflict with others. This arrangement necessitates such concepts as quote truth, and the quote lie. These designations concerning truth and falsehood are invented by rational mand are ascribed with certain validity. Though they are merely anthropomorphic fantasies.
Speaker 3: So they're getting at a similar thing.
Speaker 4: Right totally and I think that's another good way to look at it is. Is like how these things came to be and just. I mean I don't want to get too into conflict, but I think it's important and I think we're constantly trying. We as a human species at this current point, or like as much as I'm willing to accept. Humanity, at least within the society I live on, are constantly avoiding conflict like there's small conflicts sometimes. Like in general, people do avoid conflict like within their friend groups and without and.
UNKNOWN: The whole you.
Speaker 4: Know a lot of people are talking about just less violence in general, intra society violence, but. I think conflict is kind of a good thing. I think having like constant low level conflict, especially with like friends and with lovers and within the group you live in like it keeps you tied into each other and knowing what's going on and it doesn't make you some strange. Or who like who their irrationality you're totally unfamiliar with. Like I like being a little bit familiar with people's irrationality and they leave space for them to be irrational with me or me to be rational with them and know we can talk about it later even if I'm not going to be able to explain it. But just to know that's in a general realm of behaviors. I'm probably going to commit, .
Speaker 3: Yeah, unless it's about something like. You know you and I wore the. Same outfit to the to. The prom or something like that?
Speaker 4: The chances of us wearing the same outfit are so unlike I’m sitting here. I'm like ******* a teach the controversy anti sign shirt and you've got a scarf. You got a whole dandy suit on it's like. Dandy Denham well.
Speaker 3: You know the point of what I'm saying is, there's these these very. Some sorts of conflicts that just do not belong in the that description that you're giving conflict.
Speaker 4: Yeah, sure sure and then so they finished up this quote the second-half of it. They go on to. Language in this postmodern age has brought forth in anthropomorphic reason, a scientism that tends toward artificial human progress and for sure, this attacks wild nature. The other variants of this post modernism, such as those found in art, language, arithmetic, etc. Are the result of the complexity of civilization, the tools which the system uses to make sense of all those things for which it does not have an exact or reasonable answer. These tools are only phantoms since in real life, or rather in the realm of nature, they don't exist. List anthropomorphic thinking is nothing to the universe, but Even so, humans seek to falsely place themselves at the center of all things. So I just want to put a caveat in there that we are going to discuss wild nature later in this podcast. So if we're not just leaving out the fact that they are creating a little bit of a dichotomy by using that, but go ahead.
Speaker 3: I was just going to respond and I don't know I there. I could provide some background to what they're talking about. The postmodern. Art and language and these different fields where post modernism comes out of being a response to not understanding **** that's dead on. You know, if you consider the 1/2 of the post modern analysis, which is the breakdown of enlightenment thinking? The post modern in art and stuff like that is totally this confused response. Trying to make sense of. What's left over after those narratives breakdown?
Speaker 4: I mean after the like, the narratives of like progress, rational thinking, yeah, scientific progress. And all that.
Speaker 3: And then the religious narratives too.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and like yeah totally. And then the just like the general whole narrative of human intervention in the world can create a better.
Speaker 3: Life for humans? Yeah. So you get post modernism which is famous for pastiche.
Speaker 4: What is that?
Speaker 3: In collage and things like that past the shape, it's basically kind of like collage and it's you get it. You know, post modernism when you see it because it looks like the **** that crass has on their albums or other punk bands or. It could look like some kind of abstract art sometimes. The whole it. Is people grasping at straws to try to deal with the broken pieces that are leftover from the 20th centuries? Insanity and like people becoming disillusioned with the Enlightenment because of the world wars and everything.
Speaker 4: Yeah, all right. You got anything else on the rational?
Speaker 3: I got a lot, but not now.
Speaker 4: All right, this free radical radio. You can find us at free radical radio at riseup.net. Well, that's where you can e-mail us and you can find us.online@freeradicalradio.net probably still a Tumblr lying around somewhere. We're on Facebook and.
Speaker 2: As it's got.
UNKNOWN: The round of beautiful mood. Hello good evening, glad you could come. He's dead. No longer. So far. No to the town into the Robert West.
Speaker 5: And back.
UNKNOWN: Is this good?
Speaker 5: Nothing missed you.
Speaker 2: Shut up. This.
UNKNOWN: My son. It's tough.
Speaker 2: Patients gather round.
Speaker 1: You to things.
UNKNOWN: You can't decide.
Speaker 1: Oh, wipe the two.
Speaker 5: I'm scared.
Speaker 4: Free radical radio.
UNKNOWN: Right now.
Speaker 4: This raija. Sitting here along with Squee Squee And we're talking. That's what we do here. We use our. Words and despite the fact that wild reactions about to tell you how dumb your ******* words are and for the most part, I tend to think words are pretty dumb, but I used them because I have not transcended into. Or tapped into my telepathic abilities. You know my aunt actually constantly tells me that all the psychic powers in my family were passed down to me.
Speaker 3: You could kind. Of do that duck quack talking that some people have wanted to do when they? Can't talk anymore.
Speaker 4: No, It’s OK anyways, so we're talking about this wild reaction interview that was up on Annie's about a little less than a month ago. It's something I've been wanting to talk. About a while, because I feel like the way they go about doing things is kind of an important thing to think about. If you're paying attention to what's going on and actually in the. Anarchically anarchistic ally in the world right now because they represent something different to me and I think the that's important that's out there something. On a certain extreme, a certain side of things and one of the things they talk about in the beginning is this idea of waiting. And they loosely compare themselves to anarchists of the 19th century who didn't wait for rupture, didn't wait for conditions to be right. They didn't wait to like steer a riot. They weren't. They weren't sitting around waiting for civilization to collapse, or for another black teenager teenager to be murdered. Some people just assassinated and they threw. Problems this just. You know, some people just acted regardless of whether or not it felt hopeful, or whether or not it felt like it was going to do anything they saw something and they reacted wildly to it, and which is clearly. What has inspired them to find some affinity with these people? And it brought up an important question to me because I think there's a lot of talk around, strategy, tactics, and just kind of the insurrectionary model because there's a lot of different ways to be insurrectionary, I think sometimes it tends to get pinned down, as this steer the struggle type of thing. You know where people come into a mass social movement. Like a, a college student thing or austerity movement or a social justice issue like whatever it is and try to steer the thing into some type of anarchy. Riot situation. But so do you think there's like a difference between waiting and being pay? Like the what I mean like kind. Of are are those the same thing to you, or does it mean the same? Or is it something different to kind of wait for the right time and be patient for it? Or is it? Does that just become too sedentary?
Speaker 3: Well, for me personally, no, I don't. I don't believe in any kind of Marxist strategy where you have to wait for the conditions to be furtive for the working class. To whatever.
Speaker 4: So do you think that's just like a Marxist layover on people, or do you think it's like? I guess the fancy term people use nowadays is still logical where it's like a religious narrative.
Speaker 3: Yeah, there, so there's different ways to wait around for the right conditions, and obviously in various kinds of like. Daily life activities. Waiting is something you have to do sometimes. Whether you're waiting for the water to boil before you put the eggs in or whatever the ****. As far as. I mean, It’s goal oriented, right? If you have a goal,? Of the masses doing this or that, or you have a goal in the insurrectionary sense of like creating actions that can that others can resonate with. And then they could go and they could repeat those actions. Yeah, there might better or worse times to do it, but. If your goal has nothing social like that about it and. Maybe it's just a second afterthought. Whether or not somebody else decides to do the same thing, there's no real point in waiting.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that's something you just touched on, something that we're going to keep coming back to. Which is this idea of anti antisocial anarchy and antisocial behavior and? How that relates to the way people go about living their lives and relates to the projects they do so. The other thing they touch on I thought was interesting was they kind of call what we might call a leftist or a liberal anarchist? They call them a legal anarchy. And they talk about how they prioritize certain crimes over others. And how the way people tend to look at political prisoners? And just the way people want to reform society by changing the laws even though they're supposedly calling themselves anarchists and are against law. And I don't know. Have you heard this term used before? Legal anarchist.
Speaker 3: No, I haven't really heard of used before. I'm having a little trouble understanding how they're yeah.
Speaker 4: Wrapping your head around it. Yeah, I think they were kind of just they were using it as a pejorative for sure. And we'll probably touch back on that in a second, and I'm going to. I'm going to skip down to another quote. Real quick, because we're going to get we're going to get to this whole idea they have about wild nature right here just to get out of the way, so thisn't something else they had to say about pessimism. They say pessimism seized us when the scales dropped from our eyes and we realized they would be impossible to destroy the entire technological system. From our individualist perspective, we do not aspire to its total destruction. This would entail convincing and leading the stupid masses. At some point, we would rather work for destabilization. We would like it if the entire system would fall, but that's something that we are not capable of carrying out. We are pessimistic with the point of view that a select group of persons can help to destroy the system through their actions, but we are not pessimists because we have surrendered, we will keep doing what we do as long as our strength and circumstances permit us to do so. So what I want to talk about right there was like a huge misunderstanding between about nihilism and pessimism, and I think it's kind of pejoratives they get thrown at me. You and a lot of other people. Oh you're **** nihilism, **** pessimism, you're. You know you're not just not doing **** blah blah, and they're just not tied in together. Besides the way that people put them on someone like there's nothing in. Apparently that stops someone from doing something by being pessimistic. **** even if you're hopeful it might stop you from acting because you don't want to be let down. You know, like how often do people think to themselves, like oh, man, I really hope that person has a crush on me like but they don't ask him out cuz they don't want to be let down and whereas maybe if you're pessimistic, you're like oh what thell like I'll just see if they want to get a coffee. And maybe works.
Speaker 3: Out, yeah, I think the comparison overwhelmingly conflates pessimism and nihilism with depression and hope and things like that and optimism. I think they can conflate. It with the. Just an actively functioning human being.
Speaker 4: Which, as we know from personal experience, is a load of ********.
Speaker 3: Right, but it's not. We're not talking about depression when we say pessimism or nihilism. I mean, we're not talking about this. The sleepy state that the body enters into when it's tired or emotionally worn out and you have you have mental stuff that’s preventing you from.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: You know we're not. Psychoanalyzing when we're talking about the nihilistic perspective, and.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Yes, it's not.
Speaker 4: These are, yeah, these are ways to look at the world. They're not. They're not ways that specifically relate to your functioning level as a human being.
Speaker 3: Right, yeah you can't. You can't pop a ******* Prozac and get rid of your nihilism.
Speaker 4: Although I wish some people I met some people wish you could do that.
Speaker 3: Yeah they do.
Speaker 4: Yeah, they probably try to put the Prozac in there, but yeah, and it just. I mean, just straight up doesn't preclude action. I mean, even if you. Look at some of the stuff going on, but.
Speaker 3: Morbid ideations
Speaker 4: Like Wilder Action, there's some of the most active people. They're doing all kinds of ******* wild weird **** all the time, ? And then you have people in Chile like the shock group or whatever doing stuff. And like I mean we get to go for a longer like we talk about Japanese nihilists. We talk about Russian nihilists like who else has been pessimist pessimist throughout history, tons of people it's. It's just a totally absurd conversation to have. Correct, OK, so we've decided it's absurd. We're going to move on.
Speaker 3: It's for the positive thinking crew to obsess about and when they're done they could go back to their *******, . Tea or whatever, they're whatever.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and those people are a lot less fun to be around when they're depressed. At least the people I'm friends with that are you get depressed a lot like you really enjoy talking about suicide and some other things like this and just play at it. You know it's absurd, and if you can't accept the absurdity of it and you can't laugh at yourself, then **** ***, .
Speaker 3: That's also different.
Speaker 4: That's something else, I'm just I'm just raging now.
Speaker 3: That's still in the world, OK?
Speaker 4: OK, OK so one one thing I wanted to do which I really should done this when Bellamy was still with the show because., just a very. He took this very seriously, something I always kind of like poo pooed. This idea of nature and non nature and nature being something separate outside and I kind of take the have always kind of taken the approach that everything's nature like if it came from the earth whatever blah blah like you can't really create something unnatural. And one of the reasons a lot of people have issues with wild reactions riding and the way they talk about themselves is they call themselves defenders of wild nature. The whole project is in defense of wild nature and so. What does that meand I'm going to give my interpretation of it so. I think this language is definitely hard, hard to read, but I I do think the other way to look at it and theart of what's in these communicates is kind of an end to the mind body split, so when they're talking about wild nature or yeah, excuse me when they're talking about wild nature. What I really hear is human beings entering into a relationship with the world. Instead of kind of keeping everything away from them, and this just like the end to the split between themselves and the ground they walk on in the air, they break. So they speak of an individualism that is a fight against the acknowledgment that they are connected to everything around them. So I think there's a different ways to go about this, right? You can you can look at the world and say I'm a philosophical nihilist. Nothing has any meaning. Nothing matters other than the fact that I care about it or that I give it some meaning and that's a decent starting place, right? And you can say I'm going to make my own decisions. I decide I'm going to do what I want to do and. I am going to choose how I want my relationships and all that, and I think that is more interesting and. And a better way for at least me to live when that's a kind of a fight against the fact that maybe you are connected to all these things. Maybe there maybe it is true that when you die, you're still going to be in relationships to these things are going to be part of the earth, and maybe you're a parasite now, but when you die you're going to go back to. Well, I guess depends on how many toxins you have in you, but. You're gonna go back to being, some parts of all these other things. And I know this sounds like some hippie ********, especially when they keep saying they're defense of wild nature. There, but I just think they really mean they're in defense of their ability to have their relationships they want with themselves and the world they exist in. And if that's what they mean, then I'm all for it. I don't know. That's the way I see it. How do you feel when people try to? I know you probably have a negative reaction when people say I want to go back to nature or some ******** like that.
Speaker 3: I just I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume that they're talking about living in some sort of way that is. Their word would probably be sustainable with the whatever ecosystem they're bio, region, or whatever the **** they're. Sort of. I'm it's a shorthand there's a lot of shorthands in life is the. Way I look at it and I don't really. When I get into the debates it's when I when I'm really thinking hard about green anarchism or something like that just for a communicator like something a little more offhanded that's not analyzing the concepts. I don't care I kind of know what somebody's getting at and there's like. The sort of the religious or like idealized nature that would come up in something like I don't know Greenpeace or. You know, a more liberal type of environmentalism. I'm not around those people and I don't. I don't find myself having to. Go back and define terms when the word comes up.
Speaker 4: Yeah, plus I like to see it as more of, especially if you take them at their word that they're immoral, amoral, nihilist, individualist, that their the way, the way they see the world is. If it's if it's coming from that perspective, then all they're doing is making an aesthetic choice, really. And even even if they cut their language comes off. Harm that I get the feeling it's just like a desire they. Have to. See a tree and not a building, and that's fine with me. I'm more than OK with that, that's I'm. I'm basically consider myself against civilization when if I when I walk outside and see things because I don't like what I see, It’s. It's really I don't need much more. I don't need a whole rationality behind it. I don't need to talk about. Children suffering in Africand like this **** in France and schools sucking. And like all these things they do suck. They're ****** and I don't like them, but the fact is, I just want to wake up and see something different. It's not my aesthetic choice for how I want to look at the world with my eyes and my ears and smell and hear and taste it. None of my senses. Are being fulfilled the way I want them to, so I think just looking at having it be an aesthetic choice is powerful enough for me and maybe the most powerful.
Speaker 3: The bone I would pick with them would be using the term anthropomorphic or anthropocentric. That kind of language actually does bother me a little. I'm never really sure if somebody's saying anthropomorph. Because you're talking about Capital M man or humankind and your focus on the human. Thing, or if you really just mean personal as a human being, happens to be one of your qualities of whatever, like. Or I guess what I'm saying is, is anthropocentric, being contrasted from ecocentric? Is it being contrasted from?
Speaker 4: Yes it is.
Speaker 3: So and I don't believe in a ******* ecocentric model that makes absolutely no sense to me. If I'm a nihilist about something like all the way to the level of annihilating the whole terminology, it would be the ecocentric model. I think it's the most. Pompous, like arrogant assumption that somebody could make that they could speak for a planet.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I mean that's.
Speaker 3: Or a region of a planet.
Speaker 4: I think that's a super good point. When you bring it up that way, because that. That is the I think that I think you're right, I think that's the best bone to pick with them. Is that they're acting in defense of something else, and I know they consider themselves in like a more or less a relationship with these things. But I mean they know that to represent anything is ridiculous, right? Like that's one of the main problems we have with almost. All of the political actors in the world, which is like in just 90%, nine percent of people, is that they. Somehow seem to think it's mostly fine, or just go along with being. Represented, ?
Speaker 3: Well, it's a goofy. It's a goofy perspective because if you have the camera focused outward and you're saying I have an ecocentric perspective, well, the second you turn the cameraround, you have to make a decision whether or not you're part of that ecosystem. And if you are, well, ****, you still have the same egocentric. Or individual centric. Perspective that you began with. So what's the ******* point of making the distinction except to say that you don't care as much about humanity compared to everything else about life?
Speaker 4: OK, so I'm going to read them explaining this and let's see if we can. Get a little. Into this because I think that's a good point and now I’m really feeling that. OK, so this something else they had to say later involving egocentrism and they said one of the premises of anarchism is that we are all equal that we should all have the same opportunities and free association is one of the pillars of the construction of a quote new tomorrow from our eco extremist. Point of view, all of this. Concerned equality does not exist. We are all different and we don't all have the same opportunities. We accept free association not to build a new and better world, but in order to develop ourselves individually within our circle of allies and not with strange or unknown people. Anarchism's position is very humanist and falls within the suffocating parameters of being Western. These values indicate a tendency toward progress within the human being, and thus toward the progress of civilization, even if it is one that is quote freer, more just or more compassionate End Quote. All of this still garbage. We should point out that this our opinion concerning anarchism anarchy. Well, that's a different story.
Speaker 3: Yeah, that’s more coherent. You know when you start talking about humanism instead of anthropocentrism or anthropomorphism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it comes across clear there and I just think it's just the interesting tidbit, right? There is that clearly they are making the split from anarchism that I think a lot of people we know are trying to make too and to talk about anarchy instead of anarchism. If anarchism is, how is so tight? If the way if you look at the way people talk about anarchism, if you going to throw that as a classical? Anarchism like a Marxist anarchism a what. What else gets tied in there really?
Speaker 3: Anarchist communism.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I guess Communism and syndicalism and yeah just kind of this like kind of bootstrap your way to a better society type of.
Speaker 3: Right, well, the key word there is still the humanism because a lot of anarchist theory is humanistic. Not all of it. Yeah, I don't know to focus on anarchy. A good way to start. I almost feel like if you pursue that path long enough, you're going to wind up with anarchism. Which I mean, you're just going to wind up with something else that's a little more crystallized, and you're going to have to throw an ISM on the end of it when you're talking about it.
UNKNOWN: What is that?
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, sure, OK so. So this something I thought was interesting. So one of the things that they do here in this interview is they discuss some of the tribal or indigenous groups and the ways they live. And this where they kind of come out. Anarchy or anarchism? I'm sorry from a different angle and they say the way some of these groups are living down in Mexico and some other places near them are that they're incompatible with anarchism because. Of the rigid set of rules I'm paraphrasing now, and I'm giving my editorial of what they think. And the fact that some of these groups don't practice or do practice some sort of spirituality. And because they're not leaderless and this brings up the problem again of how anyone in our range of friends can work with people who want some of this type of revolution movement shift in society. Like is it not more interesting to work with separatist groups and this unpopular because I think everyone ties in separatist groups into. Into fascism, and I think while direction wild, I think it's called the wild direction accident. Wilder Wilder I’m gonna keep doing it now. A lot of people call them fascists, right? Like a lot of a lot of people saying they're fascists, which is insane. Like I don't understand why people can't just look at it. There's a difference between a nationalist. Movement and the separatist movement. Those are totally different things. Oftentimes, I agree, you can want to separate and create your own thing. But I don't want my in and like if I was diving up the world the way I would want it to, or at least getting away. I don't wanna be super inclusive like maybe I would have a closed ish border, not like I would not gonna build a wall but maybe I'm living with like 50 people I like. I'm not gonnaccept anyone right? Like what if someone moves in ***** **** and they like to? You know, buzz their head and throw it in everyone's bed. Like I'm not interested in that, .
Speaker 3: I don't know if that's what all those words mean when I think a separate. Just say here's the shorthand of a racial separatist.
Speaker 4: Yeah, but that's not it. There's lesbian separatists too, like people that moved up to mendicino and just said **** this like I don't want to live with dudes. Good on you like enjoy yourself like I don't give a **** that sounds great to me like why can't. Why can't people accept that they're different and that humanity is a myth and that different groups of humans live different ways and just to *******? Do that, .
Speaker 3: I guess I don't understand how they're using in what sense they want to be separatist.
Speaker 4: Well, I think they're separatists because they don't want to be attached to society at all, so I think they're anti socialism is separate, separates them from. They want to be completely separate from the social from the idea of society.
Speaker 3: Oh, OK. Maybe I don't know. There could be a different word for that in my opinion.
Speaker 4: Yeah no I guess. I mean, I know there can be different word, but I think people have this problem with separatist groups and like. The only problem I have with it is when you get to like a Freddy Perlman like against his story situation where kind of the one of the biggest lessons I learned from that. Book was like. It's really, really hard to live a certain way that you want to be living while also being able to protect yourself from a group of ******** who wants to kill you and enslave you. Right, so this the problem with the separatist group, right? Like, say all the white nationalist separatist people in America decide to separate, like if there was some guarantee that they were to leave us alone, right? Wouldn't we all just say who gives a ****? And like maybe if we want to we could all go try to deal with that. Point because they'd all be in one place, would be very ideal, but the only problem is of the concern of them coming to enslave you, but like a real separatist that wants to be living separate from people, I don't see the problem with that. That sounds like a version of tribal society to me.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I don't. I don't see any problem with that. Why I don't understand how it could be? Understood as fascism, fascism is something where. You want to. You basically want the state. To bring the great unity of society.
Speaker 4: Right not to not separate, yeah.
Speaker 3: You're trying to. You're trying to unify society based on a national identity is usually what the case is, and you do that through. You know the state control of corporations.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and that's why the word fascism is basically so worthless at this point, at least in radical circles is because it's bandied about so thoughtlessly and so freely.
Speaker 3: But then what? There's the third positionist, right? Or whatever that is, and I think that and like, and that's the national anarchist type of stuff.
Speaker 4: That's a different story. Yeah, yeah, that's that. That is much more in line with fascism. And then someone who just wants to in the world or free themselves up to be alone or something, .
Speaker 3: I don't know who could blame someone for.
Speaker 4: That right? That's what I'm trying to say.
Speaker 3: I mean.
Speaker 4: Yeah, it's just this intense moralism that we live in.
Speaker 3: I think.
Speaker 4: That's why there's such this intense backlash.
Speaker 3: So are so are all the ******* people who run off in homestead or like go do their little land projects. Are they separatists now because they? Because they don't want to deal with ******* crazy urban society.
Speaker 4: Maybe they're fascists.
Speaker 3: They're fascists, yes, the agrarian.
Speaker 4: Let me tell you all that ******* all that ******* cabbage that's getting fermented.
Speaker 3: Perma fat
Speaker 4: That's some ******* gel right there. They're plant creating plant in jail.
Speaker 3: ******* permaculturist supremacists.
Speaker 4: Yeah, totally so. Something else I wanted to get into was the fact that they don't that they keep coming back to this idea that they don't. They don't understand or respect the masses. And like they don't participate, this what they said. They said we don't participate in demonstrations to express quote solidarity, nor to ask for, quote, peace and justice. And they're talking about how Rs factions want to escalate and see things get burned down so. The example they use is. I don't know if you remember this happening. Something happened in Mexico. Something happened in Mexico City earlier this year, I think, where Wilder action came in. There's like a social movement and they came in to push like the struggle. Further, I mean It’s a pretty contentious thing. They did. They straight up came out and. Said that They tried to get people to take over the national palace. National Palace, the national. Whatever you call it, whatever. The government exists, then I forget the word for it like the White House of Mexico or what? You want to. Call it and they try to get people to take it over so that they would get shot by the police so that they would be forced to defend themselves, which is like a very extreme like insurrection, anarchy tactic, like taking to the extreme of like steering the movement, and like martyrdom, and this just like a totally wild thing to do, like I don't know how I feel about it, but I think it's pretty funny that they're just coming out. And I think we can accept the absurdity. Of something like this at.
Speaker 3: I mean that conflict. I've the debate around that has played out just with the black block escalating the tactics and forcing all the innocent liberals to deal with the police violence.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: But the police are OK.
Speaker 4: I think we've seen it does. I think we've seen it doesn't work right, like I don't think we've seen millions of anarchists be created out of police violence like we can go on Facebook and see a stream in our newsfeed. If we're friends with the. People of police assaults and not everyone getting assaulted by the police is anarchist tomorrow, .
Speaker 3: People I mean for as stupid as people are, they're not that ******* stupid that it's just like ohh police attack. Where did that police attack come from? Was it those guys? Was it the wild direction that caused this? You know it's not. They're not mindless ******* idiots that they realize when they've been set up. Do something and they're not going to blame the *******. Almost automatic.
Speaker 4: They're not going to blame the state because the state is a rational actor. The state does what it's going to do.
Speaker 3: Right, they have a strategy. They have a program they have like.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 3: Planned out on paper responses for everything they're going to ******* do, and they're going to use all that **** in court and they're going to use all that in their propagandand everything.
Speaker 4: And yeah? We know they're gonna racially profile. We like you can turn on any like movie and they're joking about black people getting pulled over. It doesn't mean it doesn't happen anymore. It happens all the ******* time. It hasn't changed. It's probably as bad now as it ever. It was, but we can joke about it. And because we it's rational, and we expect it. And it's so easy for us as humans, this something I keep coming back to is we're so adaptable. Yeah, like it, we can literally live in almost any conditions like we can keep people alive for 60 years in jail. How many of these people are in solitary confinement for in like a teeny little jail cell for like 2535 years like? A human being can really adapt to like many different ways of life, like, whereas you take some creatures and you put them in a certain type of captivity and they just kill themselves or they refuse to eat and die. Most of us. Will keep surviving, yeah.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I want to follow up from earlier though, like so they're at the, there's the other kind of intervention, which I'm a little more fond of is when you **** with the police and get away with it and get one over on them. I think that's way more productive because it's the crime thing breaking the spell that. Kind of thing.
Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 3: But there is, there's. The illusion that. The police tactics and the police strategy and their formal ******** is magic. And that magic means they're a fixed entity. And they're, when they're around, it's over and you can't challenge it. It's done parties over and I love when that gets broken and challenged and the party continues. Or riot I guess for people who like to do that more than. They like to drink booze.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well they were sort of touching on something similar to this at one point, which I thought was the funniest part of the interview where they were talking about political prisoners and anti. Someone hasked the interviewer, asked them how they feel about like prison abolitionists and they more or less just told the anti civilization list line of who cares about prisons? Who cares about social justice like there's a root problem? Civilization is the root of the problem. You need to get to the root and be radical or else nothing else matters. But the funny part that came out of that conversation of clearly we have critiques of that and some agreement with it. But the thing that came out of that was they said. Have you seen any of us in jail? Have you seen any of us get caught? There's a reason for that and just kind of being super cocky. Like yeah we do some ******* **** and we don't get caught because were ******* thinking this **** through and this **** is possible. We do things things are possible to happen. You don't need to go to jail for the rest of your life for doing things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, God. I don't know what they're doing. I think there's people that have definitely tried and gotten caught, but.
Speaker 4: Oh yeah, for sure. I mean, what are they doing there? Blowing up telephones? They're trying to blow up Greenpeace, they're.
Speaker 3: I mean how they're getting away with it. I don't know what. Then there's *******. Tactics like that.
Speaker 4: Oh what a time to start yeah Ohh who knows? I also haven't been to Mexico in a long time so I don't know. Anyways, this free radical radio. You can find us.online@freeradicalradio.net. You can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net and after some music we'll come back and talk about Hannah our rent.
Speaker 2: Do you ever see a man turn inside out? He can come and go without us. Say OK when they turn you down. Might as well. Get on my feet, take me to the store. So the faces change. I've read the script and I know the star and I know it's only time before I show you.
Speaker 5: I'm a stranger stranger.
Speaker 2: And there was. All the places all around.
UNKNOWN: 89
Speaker 4: The disembodied voices of 1 Squee and one rydra. Welcome back.
Speaker 3: So I there's this podcast I listen to ritualistically, regularly, religiously. You know, every time there's a new episode, I listen to it. It's called the partially examined life. It's four or five dudes who had all majored in philosophy and then decided not to become academics. And then decide to put on a radio show. The last one I was listening to was. One on the public versus the private and is talking about the philosophy of Hannarant or Arant. I'm not sure how to pronounce. That, and as I was listening to them go through this, I was thinking. To myself, I really haven't heard a very good definition of the political let alone have I heard a good one of the social. I know a little black card. Put out a document that was. Recapping presentations that took place at the Bastid conference on the social and anti social anarchism. And they're trying to explain what that what the social is and what social war means. And even after reading that, I still really didn't get it. But after listening to this podcast, I feel like I got a better idea of what that means and how it. How the? Historical development of the political and the social. Influenced basically modeled for contemporary political systems, how to how to make these divisions and what that all means. So I wanted to kind of tie all these things together and talk about what anti social anarchism or social war? Would look like. If were to take Hannarendt's. Definitions and thoughts about the subject and go from there.
Speaker 4: So you went.
Speaker 3: All right, so it's very difficult to break down these concepts. It took the people on the podcast about 2 1/2 hours to really drudge through the explanations and certainly not going to take that long to do it. I'm just going to point. To some of. The main ideas. So Hunter rent starts off with. This notion of. The active life versus the contemplative life and the contemplative life would be what philosophers tend to talk about. Where you spend your time contemplating the meaning of life, or what the truth is, or what the good is. And the active life. According to our rent is basically what happened in the polis in the Greek city states. And so. Her idea here is that the act of life really defined what freedom? And she goes on to speculate about, Mark's and totalitarianism. And even Adam Smith and how all of these. Political ideologies start off on the same wrong foot and that wrong foot is about considering labor. To be the meaning of life. Or basically labor and freeing labor. Is what is supposed to be liberating in society? And she has a big problem with this. So you have those concepts you have the political. Or sorry you have the active versus the contemplative, but then she takes the active and she compares it to. Different forms of activity. Which the contemplative philosophers tended to smoosh all together into the active life instead of parsing out. And those different forms of activity were labor work and. I guess action or politics. So labor is basically what you do to survive. It's the energy that you put into creating consumables or creating things that you're going to just eat and consume, and so that you could live off them. And that's differentiated from work, which produces works as in a piece of artwork or something that's going to have some sort of permanence, and. Be an object. For other members of society or whatever you want to call it to look at and relate to.
Speaker 4: So that's the split and work is. Not directly related to survival or sustenance, right? OK.
Speaker 3: Yep, and also it has a special role in the way. That human beings become individuals is by relating to works, and that's something they got into later. It's not really too important for what we're going. To talk about. And then you have what she's calling the active. So now that we're finally here at kind of a semi circle of what the active might mean, let's go further into the division between the public and the private. OK. OK, so in the ancient Greek city state. Private life was. Considered the household and within the household you basically had. You know patriarchal figure, that sort of. Had complete control over. You know the wife, the children, and the slaves that lived there and all labor and all work took place in the household. So you didn't really have this like. You know storefronts or places you go for your job or any Guild or thing like stuff like that. You really just had all the different activities that take place privately. In your home. And this was totally separate from public life and public life was reserved for theads of the household. Who would be the man? And they were who made-up the polis. They were all considered equal, and they're all considered free because they didn't have to worry about. Labor and work or anything. That took place in the household, and they could discuss things like who to go to war with and make actual political decisions that. Hannah Arendt considers to really be individual. Freedom is to think at that level where you're where you're liberated from the necessities and you can. Then interact in discourse with. I guess other individuals and through speaking and persuasion. Create history. OK, so Part 2 of this that. The political gets destroyed in Rome. And or the public and private get destroyed in Rome. And the way this happens is because when you move from the Greek city state to the Roman nation state. You get mass society or just for short. You get the social, you get the Roman Empire. Basically doing household doing politics but politics that are concerned with what was earlier considered private life with your household economics with the decisions people were able to make privately with no interference from the law. So instead of saying that alienation is something that happens when a class of people. Have their labor separated from the products of their labor for. You know so. She just basically says once the social happens, it's ******* done. You're in a situation where the public and the private life have been ****** over and destroyed. And it degrades both of them and you can no longer really be a free person because there's no space in society. To do this, Polish like. My actions mean something and there's something beyond just how to survive, and so the way that she worked looks at like an entrepreneur. Or, somebody who is a class struggle Marxist or something like that is these people aren't really free. They're people who are just, entirely concerned with labor they're entirely concerned with **** people consume, so they could keep on going. Which is eventually supposed to lead to the type of freedom where you make more important decisions or more like . Radically consequential historical decisions. And so I guess what I want to. Where I want to drive this what does that mean to be then anti social anarchist? Or to not only be against the political, not only be against, you, know the state in that sense, but also to be against the social which is mass society.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think. I think that's interesting. It actually relates to some of the stuff were just talking about in the last segment about wild reaction too, because they were getting asked about the social war. So what does that mean for our rent? I guess. I guess the provocation is always less important than the conclusion because the conclusion is, whatever? Just one of a variety of ways to go with something. But where does this kind of lead her when she's talking about this thing of these things?
Speaker 3: I don't.
Speaker 4: You know, because she's OK. So let's say she sees this move to mass society as a quote, UN quote bad thing, or aesthetically unpleasing thing, a way that she doesn't want to live her life. So what is the other option? Because yeah, she's not really valorizing the Greek polis, right? She's just saying things got. Significantly worse for people when they moved took this other switch.
Speaker 3: Right, she doesn't really valorize the police, but she definitely emphasizes that once you get to the scale of society or the social, you can't do anything. That's that's where you stop being able to act as a free individual. I don't know what kind of speculation she's done about an ideal situation.
Speaker 4: So does she just mean you can't do anything like you can't reform this thing or make this thing better, like you literally in your life have significantly less decision making process for the your desires?
Speaker 3: Well, so that's the interesting thing that she gets into when it comes to like. The products of work. So to become an individual in philosophy? Most people basically say you can't be an individual on your own on an island, you need another person. You need somebody else's gaze so that you can. Kind of reflect on yourself and have this kind of like dialectical process within you. For Hannah on rent. She doesn't even think that's enough. She thinks you actually need like a group of people because what she starts looking at is the way that couples wind up adopting the same opinions their whole families will wind up adopting the same opinions just because of the way that they're tied in. Each other. So she doesn't think it needs just one other person's gaze. She thinks there needs to be not only like a multiplicity of gazes or a plurality of gazes, but also objects. Created through work that everybody can relate to from a plurality of perspectives so that it could create this really complex and intricate individual mind. That decision making can come out of. So she's so.
Speaker 4: Looking at humans as like an extreme extremely almost like hive mind dish thing like the individuals are product of some type of hive mind. It sounds like or something.
Speaker 3: I think for her the hive mind is what the social is that the social is when you start bringing the family or the household or what was the private and making it political, you win. Making everybody kind of part of a giant family with the dictator on the top or with no ruler like in a democracy. Supposedly, where the whole country in the Republic deals with household matters, as if it's anyone else's ******* business. What happens in your household, right? So what I think she wants is the recreation. Somehow of private life where you have this rich private life that you don't need to make part of any kind of public. Legal legalistic framework. Where it's like, hands off, you can't regulate this part of my life and this the part of my life where I sustain myself and how I become an individual. And then we can interact afterwards in some sort of forum if we want. And like assert our individuality, that's her position. So she wants to breakdown a mass society for one because to her that's just a giant hive.
Speaker 4: OK.
Speaker 3: Mind of like. Idiots, ah.
Speaker 4: So, but how does that differ from like some type of primitivist thing? It's more like a small city thing, or like a or like a big city thing where people are more like individualistic or like family nuclear families. It's it sounds a little bit confusing.
Speaker 3: It's very confusing. I don't think it could be a nuclear family because. The type of family structure where a private life is rich is an extended one where a lot of the labor can take place to actually.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Ah, feed yourself or feed a family.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so I guess that would be. It would be some larger private self-sustaining thing that chooses to interact with people for some type of trade or something. Like that?
Speaker 3: Yeah, but the interesting. So one of the interesting points there though is that like with someone with Adam Smith, or like some of the classical economic things, thinkers who marks would be included in. They sort of like take for granted that people existed in these family units before they existed as some sort of workforce or like even existed. It's like serfs or something like that. And I guess in a way she's recognizing. Private clans. Or some people I don't. I don't know if Tribe is the right word, but clan seems a little more appropriate.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I guess I'm just using tribe loosely I guess that but the tribe kind of implies a non civilizational thing.
Speaker 3: I mean. Tribes can be huge.
Speaker 4: Yeah no totally.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but like a clan is basically your extended family and so I think some sort of clan based. I don't know. It's very interesting and then. I don't know what she advocates for, which isn't bad, but.
Speaker 4: No, no, totally so. So then how do you see this tying into like the antisocial anarchism that you tend to like, espouse or get on board with?
Speaker 3: Well, I think the presumption that the V social is a problem and that is that needs to be attacked and that is and that is not what you want to work with. Then you can't reform. It is super concrete in her philosophy.
Speaker 4: Which I thought was interesting cause on the podcast. The other podcast partially examined like they were talking about. They were kind of a showing social justice when looking from her perspective because. Much like wild reaction had to shoot and pushed aside social justice and ability rights are abled person abelism type arguments and all that. They issue that because the route is civilization. Seems like our rents, philosophy, ideas, kind of a shoe, the same type of things from a perspective that. You're stuck in society. Need to fix that or like you need to attack that before you considering all these other things, because otherwise you're just rearranging like deck chairs in the ****** ship.
Speaker 3: Right, I mean, if you if she's gonna say that. You know you need this rich private life and no one should be able to. Interfere with that. You don't have the option to regulate how someone's treating somebody else in their household, right. How can you have a social justice without the social to where this would be a Roman? You know nation, state politics where you have taken everyone's household business and.
Speaker 4: Right have a look.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 3: Opened it up to the public to decide what happens in somebody's house or in their private sphere.
Speaker 4: Yeah, because I mean obviously the one thing that. The main contention between social justice and anarchy is that to have social justice, there need to be there need to be. There needs to be someone enforcing it out there and someone looking at it and figuring out how it's made even and then enforcing that and that. That's not very anarchic you.
Speaker 3: Know no, absolutely.
Speaker 4: And it and it is very social.
Speaker 3: Right and then the other part of this social is like So what? What capitalism wants to do is by taking the work and the labor that happens in the household and throwing it into the into the social capitalism is. And it's basically doing the same thing where? Except that with that instead of states regulating like instead of the public debating how a household should be regulated, it's letting the market regulate everybody's household. And it's it, it to. It's starting at the point of jobs and then going forward instead of starting at the point of like the Klan situation. Or the family situation and saying why should jobs even exist? Why should this work should even exist, and that's where the technology thing came into the right to the partially examined life.
Speaker 4: Is them talking about technology and what that means? Or how we? Relate to it.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and she, I don't know what her ideas were exactly because they didn't talk about it for. Very long, but apparently she has something to say about the atomic age and people not being able to speak what they do. So like scientists can. And construct the atom bomb, but they can't actually explain to anybody how it works, and therefore you can't like deliberate about it because there's just you can't.
Speaker 4: Well, I think. Right? Well, this comes back to what we're talking about. The very beginning, which is our problem with the informal and or with the formal in these formal jobs, is that they can't. They can't like they can't be really explained and there's experts, and so the experts, the ones making decisions.
Speaker 3: Right, and they're. Exactly, and it's just it leaves you in a place to where you just trust the expert and. You're not, it's disempowering in.
Speaker 4: That way, so in short, our rent is for the clan.
Speaker 3: I guess.
Speaker 4: She couldn't help with the separatist stuff from earlier.
Speaker 3: But I mean not that clan.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 3: Maybe like. You know? A clan in the eager region of.
Speaker 4: Whatever, yeah, people chilling chilling so.
Speaker 3: But she's against jobs. She's against work she doesn't. She wants. She has some kind of thing about technology where she hopes that it could get rid of Labor so that more people could. Don't have to be the slaves or whatever to labor.
Speaker 4: Oh, you mean like a post scarcity thing?
Speaker 3: Probably I mean. I don't think she's OK with the man of the house type of situation or slavery, but there.
Speaker 4: No, yeah, of course. And our end has come out strong against slavery.
Speaker 3: But apparently she came out very weak against it in that book that they were reading, yeah?
Speaker 4: Oh, really. Came out weakly against sniper.
Speaker 3: Just kind of like it happened and this how this how it contributed to Greek life. But I think her hope is kind of like technology would make it so that the reproductive economics of life. Could be shared by whatever?
Speaker 4: So eventually we'll make robots that make the robots to do the things, and then we'll just be in a player piano situation. We're all just bored and can't even do our laundry. The laundry does itself.
Speaker 3: No, we just do what the Greeks did and we go like build harpoons and boats and ******* go to war with each other.
Speaker 4: Is that different than what's going on now did.
Speaker 3: Because that's because that's us doing it.
Speaker 4: I miss something.
Speaker 3: That's the social war.
Speaker 4: Us killing each other I guess I’m all for that type of social work.
Speaker 3: To die in battle.
Speaker 4: Ohh to die in battle or to die in a battle with Highland Hospital. One of those things will happen all right. You got anything else on the rent. What else you got?
Speaker 3: Need to read more because I don't really understand it, but I think.
Speaker 4: I think what squeeze saying is send us an e-mail at free radical radio at riseup.net and give us some more information or thoughts on this. If you're an ardent ardent supporter.
Speaker 3: There's something that. Yeah, or aren't familiar, sure.
Speaker 4: All right, you got anything else, sweet?
Speaker 3: Now let's dust off.
Speaker 4: All right, we're dusting off. I guess this for radical radio. People usually say thanks for listening, but really, we're just putting something out there and we're not getting anything back, so.
Speaker 3: No one's ******* heard it yet. Why would we? Thank them if they haven't heard it.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you're welcome.
Paul Z Simons: Stories From Rojava On Revolution, Daily Life, and Hope
Posted on November 9, 2015 PODCAST
Here is the audio! Click on these words to listen to the interview! Paul Z. Simons, also known as El Errante, is interviewed by rydra on his recent trip to Rojava. Paul tells stories of his trip, relays discussions he had with people in Rojava in the YPG, YPJ, taxi drivers, translators, and more. Paul describes the situation in Rojavas a “post-leftist revolution in a pre-leftist society.” Paul also tells us how he got into the country, how others can, and why he feels that what is going there is important to anarchists all around the world. Time Stamps: 0:00 Paul talks about being a post-left anarchist and interacting with actual humans instead of just theory 3:30 logistics of how he made contacts and got into Rojava 7:30 border crossing and “press passes” 9:30 discussion of western mediand the accuracy of the news coming out of Rojava. More discussion of how geography and autonomous structures look. How do the cantons relate to each other? 13:50 rydrasks Paul to explain the role of the US, Turkey, Syria, and Russia in Rojava. 17:00 Rojava power structure broken down with a cake analogy. How do communes function there? 20:00 TEV-DEM: who are they and how are they working in the communes 23:00 discussion of daily life, what it looks like in the villages and the cities. 26:00 ideology? “they are aware that they are in the midst of a revolution.” “Would the US government accept a passport from anti-government.” Personal stories. 29:30 Paul...
Episode 88: We Just Want to Have Some Fun
Posted on November 6, 2015 PODCAST
Click on these words to listen! this the link to audio! Rydrand Squee host and discuss the horrors of Highland Hospital in Oakland, give report backs from Crimethinc’s “To Change Everything” tour, discuss affinity and what means?, PBS documentaries on America’s youth and how that relates to anarchy, and boring vs fun politix/anti-politix Here are some goddamned fucking time stamps: 0:00:00 – 0:07:20: Hospital Hell 0:07:20 – 0:14:44: Show contents, Announcements, Audio books, Old jobs New jobs 0:14:45 – 0:26:40: CrimethINC’s “To Change Everything” tour ~break~ 0:26:40 – 0:28:06: Sex Automata; by the Ex Models ~break~ 0:28:07 – 0:37:49: CrimethINC – their audience and views, alienation from industrial infrastructure and TV shows about how shit is 0:37:50 – 0:46:00: Boring vs. Fun politics 0:46:00 – 1:06:00: Affinity? ~break~ 1:06:00 – 1:09:30: All Of Californiand Everyone Who Lives There Stinks; by World/Inferno Friendship Society ~break~ 1:09:30 – 1:28:00: “Hydra” and Squee discuss the Kids and some PBS documentaries This episode of FRR was brought to you by the disembodied, soulless, and amoral voices of rydra wrong & Squee. email us at freeradicalradio@riseup.net
Driftglass by Samuel R. Delany
Posted on November 2, 2015 AUDIOBOOKS
Click on these words to listen! This a link to the audio! Driftglass is a tender monster story. The monster is an amphiman gnarled by a deep seaccident. In it Delany explores loss, aging, youth, pain, and memory, all experienced by those who live in a world in which they have little control. It is a world of humans turned merpeople, working for the government and large corporations, who work deep under the sea. The beauty and subtlety of this story wash over the reader, first as soft shorebreak, then as occasional tidal waves of grief and pain. With his apolitical bent, Delany takes us on a journey into the sea, into ourselves, musing on the questions of connection and loss, of how we relate to each other and why. He asks what it means to both be young and to age, and tells the story of a monster grown old. I am constantly struck by the tender beauty of this tale, and I hope you are too. Reading, Description, and Production by rydra Editing & Sound Production by september
Bloodchild by Octavia butler
Posted on October 27, 2015 AUDIOBOOKS
Click on these words to listen! This a link to the audio! Octavia Butler describes herself as “a forty-seven-year-old writer who can remember being a ten-year-old writer and who expects someday to be an eighty-year-old writer… a hermit, a pessimist if I’m not careful, a feminist, a Black, a former Baptist, an oil-and-water combination of ambition, laziness, insecurity, certainty, and drive”. She started writing science fiction at 12 because she thought men were doing a terrible job, and she could do better. In her work, it’s apparent she believed humanity was inherently flawed and doomed to destroy itself. I get sad about her early death and miss her a lot. According to Butler, “Bloodchild” is not about slavery. It’s about botflies. But we don’t really believe that an artist gets to define the meaning of their work once it’s out there. It’s definitely a story about male pregnancy (mpreg, for those in the know) and creepy hot bug-alien sex. Butler’s all about uncomfortable, taboo sexual relationships and forcing us to acknowledge what little choice or consent we often have when forced to survive within unequal power structures. Have fun! — September Voice, editing, and description by September Production by Free Radical Radio
Armed Joy by Alfredo M. Bonanno
Posted on October 14, 2015 AUDIOBOOKS
Click on here to listen! here is the audio! This book was written in 1977 in the momentum of the revolutionary struggles taking place in Italy at the time, and that should be borne in mind when reading it today. … This book has become topical again, but in a different way. Not as a critique of a heavy monopolising structure that no longer exists, but because it can point out the potent capabilities of the individual on his or her road, with joy, to the destruction of all that which oppresses and regulates them. Before ending I should mention that the book was ordered to be destroyed in Italy. The Italian Supreme Court ordered it to be burned. All the libraries who had a copy received a circular from the Home Ministry ordering its incineration. More than one librarian refused to burn the book, considering such a practice to be worthy of the Nazis or the Inquisition, but by law the volume cannot be consulted. For the same reason the book cannot be distributed legally in Italy and many comrades had copies confiscated during a vast wave of raids carried out for that purpose. I was sentenced to eighteen months’ prison for writing this book. – Alfredo M. Bonanno Catania, 14 July 1993 –from the introduction Voice, sound, and editing by Birds of Fire get a copy: http://blackpowderpress.com/index.php?route=product/product&product_id=129 http://littleblackcart.com/books/insurrection/armed-joy/
Episode 87: On Anarchist Scenes and Subculture
Posted on October 8, 2015 PODCAST
click on these words to listen to the show! audio is here! FRR returns with Rydrand Squee as they give an update on FRR’s return and new projects(audiobooks & presentations) that we are getting into. Rydra gives a report back from the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair, further discussion of Bob Black and social relationships, and they have a long discussion anarchist scenes/milieus and the value or lack thereof in subcultures 0:00 Free Radical Radio returns: update on show plans, recent recordings of audio books and presentations, and rydra understands science!? 6:00 talk of transition, Squee’s injury update, 7:35 Callout for the East Bay Anarchist Bookfair, apparently we are helping organize it 11:20 Rydralmost kills rideshares, veganism again?, one rideshare searches for closure and a power bar 13:10 Rydra lies for no reason, we still have t-shirts 14:00 anti-fand post scarcity anarchism and their stylistic choices 15:30 we recorded Hostis’ presentation cruelty, fucking listen to it!, a fight Rydra doesn’t care about 16:25 Bob Black vs Aragorn/many others, does anyone care? do we care? If a gyro falls in a forest do the birds sing? 20:00 Squee compares Bob Black’s drama to a band/record label 23:00Will anyone pay for Squee’s ticket to South Africa for anti-fascist action against Michael Shmidt, Rydra explains the red triangle and why great white sharks are no joke 24:25 Ak Press vs Michael Shmidt 26:35 How to infiltrate the national anarchist movement, Squee explains, Rydra is confused 29:00 a new direction for the radio, Squee and...
September 29, 2015 AUDIOBOOKS PODCAST
Against Identity Politics: Spectres, Joylessness, & the Contours of Ressentiment
Click on these words to listen to the audio book/audio essay Lupus Dragonowl’s “Against Identity Politics: Spectres, Joylessness, & the Contours of Ressentiment,” originally publishd in AJODA, is read aloud by Arabella Story Tella. This essay discusses and critiques identity politics and identity politicians and offers a different way of seeing and viewing the identities forced upon us by society and its structures. Using a Stirnerian critique, Dragonowl breaks down the thoughts, actions, and ideas of identity politics, defining them as another iteration of leftism. Full of anecdotes from the anarchist and radical milleu, this essay attempts to shed light on the workings of identity politicians. Click here to check out AJODA Magazine, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed The written version can be found here: click on these words
Seattle Anarchist Bookfair: Presentation Hostis and The Politics of Cruelty
Posted on September 21, 2015 PRESENTATIONS
Click here to listen the audio!!! Free Radical Radio Records Things presents: Andrew, of the Hostis Journal, gives a 30 minute presentation at the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair on the politics of Cruelty. In the talk Andrew discusses the religious history of anarchism, utopianism, apocalyptic millennarianism, revenge, movies, ethics & morality, and the problem with the “good life.” This followed by about an hour of conversation(some of the questions are low audio so I wrote down what people said in the timestamps) on topics ranging from revenge, lone wolf actions, asymmetric conflict theory, defining enemies, and much more. Find Hostis here: http://littleblackcart.com/books/anarchy/hostis/ More here: www.incivility.org Here are a lot of time stamps: 1:30 religious history of anarchism, utopianism, apocalyptic millennarianism, 3:30 outline of Hostis 5:30 talk of the film Night of the Hunter 13:00 spike lees Do the Right Thing 15:30 politics of cruelty, against fairness and partiality and altruism 19:00 ethics and the problem with the good life 24:00 politics of revenge 26:45 questions and conversation 29:30 A long question discussing revenge and its response. 32:30 A questioner questions the presenter’s questioning of the good life. 35:15 A question asks about defining friends and enemies, bringing up the difficulty of family ties. “What if we lived in a world in which there are not innocent bystanders.” 37:30 a question the difference between morality and ethics 39:15 question asymmetric conflict theory 41:00 talk of Sarah Ahmed and compulsory happiness 43:00 wingnutty question “Trots” with an astute observation that “anarchists are the...
Update on the show
Posted on September 17, 2015 PODCAST
Hi people who sometimes or frequently or infrequently listen to our podcast/radio show. We have been inactive for a bit now because we are going through some transition. Bellamy is continuing his leave from the show which can now be described as indefinite. The show will resume soon with a new co-host and I will be putting up a couple of new recordings in the next week, a recording of a talk at the Seattle Anarchist Bookfair, and an audio recording of Against Identity Politics. Thanks for the emails and messages and I look forward to continuing to engage with interesting and dangerous ideas and people. – rydra
Episode 86: On Avoiding Work, Post-left Anarchy, and How Discourse and Action Interact
Posted on August 19, 2015 PODCAST
https://archive.org/details/FRR86
Rydrand Squee host episode 86 of Free Radical Radio with thelp of Rev. Doc and discuss Rydrand Bellamy's upcoming visit to Seattle for the Anarchist Bookfair, Wild Reaction's latest actions, post-left anarchy and why so many have so much trouble grasping what it means, work and how we attempt to avoid it, and more.
0:00 talk of feelings, and Seattle Anarchist Bookfair
2:15 Rydra text battles his boss and Squee's lung collapses
6:00 Short talk about Bob Black getting sorta punched at his talk in the east bay
9:20 Worker retires from Anarchistnews, discussion of comment section, action and discourse, are anarchists not acting out of fear of other anarchists?
27:05 Tim Fite- Place your bets
30:30 Wild Reaction sends package bombs, do they succeed? Also, conversation propaganda of the deed and what it means to actually attack the left
38:20 Post-left anarchy, what does it mean, where does it come from. Who is the left? Where do they come from? We search for answers in the void, finding only more questions
59:00 Ivand the Beets- hellfire burns them alive
This episode of Free Radical Radio was brought to you by the illusions of Rydra Wrong and Squee's consciousnesses, the mirage of our ability to freely choose, and Rydra's current obsession with John Gray.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to free radical radio. Yes, we still exist even though we're anarchist project, and it seems like the longevity of those as squeeze getting attacked by Styrofoam here. Welcome to practical radio squeeze where you're joining a project that keeps going 2 1/2 years in.
Speaker 1: I know, and I've been on so much, so we might as well be dating now.
Speaker 2: But we're going to. We usually keep our the specifics of who we date fairly secret around here, except for Bellamy. So, singing from the mountaintops about being in love, sweet love. Some people have different feelings. You know feelings are what they are. It's not much you can do about them, but I want to do a little bit of. Housekeeping around here. Real quick, you might have noticed that if you're a listener that the website's. Been having some issues lately. And one of the main issues with the website is fixed, so we should be good to go free radicalradio.net is good, and as always you can e-mail us at free radical. Radio at riseup.net. And also I wanted to mention that Bellamy and I Roger will be tabling the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair this upcoming weekend, so. We'll both be. There hanging out if you want like a sticker or T-shirt. Or, if you have the desire to punch either of us in the face, you can find us at the free radical radio table at this Seattle Anarchist book Fair.
Speaker 1: I won't be there.
Speaker 2: So we won't be there.
Speaker 3: I won't be there either.
Speaker 2: Rev Doc also will not be there. Rev Doc will be holding down the Fort here at the. I don't know. If I can't have trouble calling my house a collective more like a. Loose loosely associated group of people who do their own thing. I don't know you wanna call this place?
Speaker 1: I thought Fort was fine.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Fort should show Fort.
UNKNOWN: OK guys.
Speaker 2: No one cleans up their dishes and there's flies all over the house is another thing you. Could call it.
Speaker 1: The unfortunate Fort.
Speaker 2: Fort, why does someone keep ******** on this one toilet closest to my bedroom? It's kind of disconcerting why there's **** on this. So anyways, let's move on past the. You know, there's poop and we move on. Everyone poops is a famous book once said. I think Heidegger wrote that one, actually, I think that's why people have so many issues with this philosophy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, pooping time.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it was a quite a quite a showing there of intellect and what do you want to call it? Crudeness, I guess.
Speaker 1: He was just opening up the Alright let's go I don't want to.
Speaker 2: Well, in personal news, the good news is I don't have cancer. The bad news is I had to get in the texting fight with my boss to find out I don't have cancer. I had a check up last Friday and I've been telling my boss for a long time that I wasn't coming in on this. She put me on the schedule at my work. Like if you get put on the schedule you have to find your own way off of it. It's like you have to battle to get someone to take you off the schedule. You can't just say you're not coming and so I couldn't find anyone. So I was like I text her Thursday and like I didn't find anyone like I'm not going to be there tomorrow and she kept texting back. You have to be there like you're on the schedule and I kept. Saying I sent four different text messages back that explicitly said I will not be there under any circumstance and I really made it real dramatic. You know, I said this life or death. I'm not putting my life at risk to open the pool to lifeguard for rich yuppies. And I you got really out of pocket real fast and the whole thing was back and forth is really ridiculous.
Speaker 1: I know the yeah, the more access they have to your life. It's like they you have to be that much more dramatic about it.
Speaker 2: I know and I was. Just thinking like the. Like the fact that bosses can text you is it's really dark because they expect the response .
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I don't give that. To anybody.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, my boss is particularly bad. It's. She does go off on. The she's a whole set of problems on her own. I guess she had an American flag sticker on her phone. Someone's like, oh, what's what's up? With that and. And she was like what I can't have an American flag. I'm like she's like I could have a Confederate flag if I want, and people are like alright, that's fine whatever, and then she's like what you have an issue with white pride. That people can't be proud.
Speaker 1: Oh Jesus.
Speaker 2: Went off a, went off a Cliff really fast with her.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the texting thing is interesting. I was really hungover 1 morning and decided I couldn't go into work and. I texted my boss I couldn't figure out what excuse what excuse me? So I told them that my lung collapsed. And so I wound up getting two days.
Speaker 2: Like you only got 2 days off for a lung collapsing.
Speaker 1: Well, I was able to provide enough both details about it that it wasn't so severe that I needed surgery, but it was bad enough that they didn't want me to go to work because it's a phone job and I got to *******.
Speaker 4: Should the.
Speaker 1: Talk a lot.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, yeah. So this anecdote is gonna get a little machian. But I have a good grandpand a bad grandpand my bad grandpa. He died when I was I don't know what like 14 or 15 or something which was fine. He was mostly an *******. I only met him a few times, he was kind of * **** to my dad. He, passed on the whole. Dad thing his dads will pass it on, ? And I'm not sure how far back that dad, ******* and this went, but it at least extended to my grandpa. And so I had this thing where every time I started a semester of college, I would tell the I would tell my all my professors at the beginning. You know my grandpa was sick, so you can't expect much out of me and I have to leave a lot this semester and then as the semester went on, things would keep happening. So like around midterms, I'd have to. Oh my God, Grandpa is sick get a heart attack I gotta fly home and then and then eventually towards finals Grandpa would die right right the week before finals week. So I'd have to go home before the funeral and it's really stupid cause I was still doing the same amount of work and it was just there's no reason for this. I would just postpone it and I would end up spending like the last two weeks after the semester was over. Catching up on all my work. And all these people think my grandpa's dead and I have to like pretend I was flying back home to see bad Grandpa. But that was that was like and I did this over and over again just because I knew I was going to **** ** school every time. So that was the only. Way I got through.
Speaker 1: It's like that's how you got through with your cold feet like you're getting cold feet about finishing. And then you're like I'm not going to quit but Grandpa you're gonna have to die again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Grandpa kept dying. So, so thanks for that, yeah.
Speaker 1: So what else? What else is new?
Speaker 2: I mean. Anything exciting happened to you last weekend and anyone of suffer the fate of a cruel physical attack.
Speaker 1: Well, I seem to. I seem to be presenting the news of people getting punched in the face when I come on here and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, did you talk about yourself getting punched in the face? Last time you were on?
Speaker 1: Well that was. The first time.
Speaker 2: That was the. First time OK?
Speaker 1: I don't think I mentioned it last time, but I did have. An accident with a refrigerator.
Speaker 2: Yeah, can't trust a refrigerator. First Rule of Anarchy, right? Yeah, it's anti simp position, really.
Speaker 1: It's it is totally, whatever. So Bob black.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: I got to I got to. See him take a walloping.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I caught a walloping. It was mostly pretty uneventful, it was. Kind of a. A character, a lot of people know in the Bay, kind of a caricature. One of those people who's like. Kind of living. At what I what I would almost deem a metal life, it's hard to describe as a real life when it seems so fantastical.
Speaker 1: That there's I have someone in Phoenix that is very similar, but this some more goth version.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so they actually came to the reading group on Tuesday and were trying to do the whole snitch. Whatever blah blah thing and then mostly no one cared. So they left and then came back on Friday. Basically just. What they say, just like the typical typical fair racist snitch, punched him in the face a couple times. Didn't do much damage honestly, for punching a very old man in the. Face, I gotta say.
Speaker 1: Well, it's ridiculous how how, like just. Unable to defend himself, he could have been in that situation and then to just have that perfect target and.
Speaker 2: And still fail it was.
Speaker 1: You still fail.
Speaker 2: It was basically a good sucker punch. Opportunity went wrong.
Speaker 1: I mean like there is somebody who they were from Germany and they're like. 12 years old or something like that. They were there and the only thing that they were wondering about the situation was why didn't they aim? For the nose and why were they wearing a ******* enormous backpack while they were punching somebody?
Speaker 2: I don't it. It's funny how little thought I think went into that, but I think it's funny too because I think for the most part in the leftists like social justice warrior type scenes, this person lives in. Basically Bob Black is totally irrelevant to them like I mean not. Like irrelevant in that I don't think any of those people are reading or engaging with his idea. Yeah, so it's kind of. It's like almost just something external to get mad about, which if they're gonna get mad about that, why don't they might as well, I feel like being get mad at their neighbor who's calling the police, ?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, but anarchy, they’re in.
Speaker 2: But anarchy, yeah.
Speaker 1: They're in the sacred space.
Speaker 2: That's true, and I think later in the show we'll get to talk a little bit about the sacred space as it relates to post left anarchy and what that means for the sacred space of classical anarchy and classical anti oppression anarchy.
Speaker 1: There's a lot of this going on today.
Speaker 2: Of what going on? Yeah, It’s really important, so let's talk about another sacred space. Anarchist news.
Speaker 1: Right, it's the comment section.
Speaker 2: The comment section is a very sacred space to some people. I was telling Squee earlier the CAPTCHA is what stops me from posting on there all the time, because I just can't if it's Facebook or something else. I guess this only place. I really go online these days. For that is because I do the show on their site. Down there, and sometimes I'll just scroll through and I can't help myself. And just like start typing maniacally into someone's box sounds really wrong. What I'm saying, and I'm just like boom enter and before I know what I've said the thing and I usually end up erasing it like right away. 90% of the time it's just more for catharsis I press. Enter and then. Delete it, pretend like it never happened. But yeah, for a news. I respect people who do the capture, it's quite. It's quite a bit there to type in those that weird thing. Also, I just got glasses recently and I think the other problem was I had trouble seeing the capture sometimes.
UNKNOWN: Have Chuck.
Speaker 2: Captcha thanks Red dog captcha. So anyways. Worker retired today, which is news for some people, especially the comment section people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it seems like this a new well, I said. It was a big deal too. But I thought I was going to be the only one, but there's a whole list of. Gratitude and tears and. Worry and concern about the new collective.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we'll see. We'll see what happens. We'll see if it becomes more navigatable or. If discussions improve, I feel like lately there's actually been some fairly interesting discussion there. I think it kind of has. Ebbs and flows.
Speaker 1: It yeah, I think. It's gotten a little. More tolerable after a few weeks ago, worker. Posted something about comments and seems like people started caring. I don't know.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's let's dissect this a little bit. Let's let's talk about what this means. So I’m going to quote worker real quick and I guess what do you call their retirement speech? Yeah, so this part of their retirement speech from a news they said it used to be that anarchism, the set of people who used the term, was filled with a bunch of people who did things since the rise of the Internet. This has become increasingly not the case. My greatest disappointment in running a news is that it has witnessed this degradation. Of interesting activity of anarchists. The Internet does not inform interesting activity. It kills stillborn. Excuse me, it kills it stillborn. It's different meaning when you say that. Most new anarchists fear the attention of the broader anarchist community because it almost never comes off as supportive. And when it does, it tends to be in the style of NGO ****. Sandwich, rhetorical kindness.
Speaker 1: Do you want to explain what that is?
Speaker 2: What which part?
Speaker 1: The **** sandwich.
Speaker 2: Hey go ahead.
Speaker 1: I just recently had it explained to me, and apparently it's when you start with a compliment. Provide the criticism or insult in the center and then end with a compliment. And I guess this something that liberal and Geo types like to use as a way to communicate their.
Speaker 2: It sounds like passive aggressiveness, basically.
Speaker 1: Its passive aggressive passiveness.
Speaker 2: Past progressive passiveness, huh? So then the last sentence was quote, the Internet is now at the center of how we communicate with each other. And it means our communication is worse than ever. So seems like worker doesn't like the Internet so much or has at least some bones to pick with it. So I guess I'm gonnask you. A few questions here we. Can spitball so I was just taking from this. Do you think the anarchists used to do more, whether in the last 10 years or the last 20 years or from before were born? We're both, we're both. What do you? We're both in. Our the third part of the end of the. Third part of our life. We're we're halfway through our life, probably with the amount. We smoke.
Speaker 1: I'm 30, I'm just I'm not going to try to figure out how that what the ratio is there I don't.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I'm 31, so OK. OK.
Speaker 1: It's really hard to say. I think there's definitely a generational. Change in how anarchists do things. What, yeah, like 15 years ago when I started getting into it. It was very regular. I'd be meeting up with people every week and every single week we would be coming up with something new to do. In the streets and then also partying afterwards and. Just having a ******* blast together.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's kind of hard for me to say because I've watched so much of this from the Internet my whole life because I was living in Hawaii where there wasn't like. And maybe maybe it's different now, but at least when I lived there, there wasn't a bunch of anarchists meeting up. And even my. Last few years there was mostly hanging. Out with what I mean. Anarchists that I that I wouldn't have as much in common with. Now with the way where the where with where my interests lie currently, and the most interesting thing that I was doing before I left was food not bombs. Eight years ago, and that's whatever so. Like there were like, at least in my opinion, there was a lot of interesting stuff happening there and even the indigenous struggles with Jenner is usually try to get tied into or whatever. Which is, obviously a big deal in Hawaii. It wasn't happening there like that. It might be different now.
Speaker 1: There was definitely more of a DIY culture in my opinion. Tied in with punk because. Everybody I knew in the punk scene. It wasn't popular enough to have just fans. Everyone kind of had to. Do something or you wouldn't really have a show or you wouldn't have shirts or you wouldn't have like recorded music, and I think anarchism suffered. The same sort of unpopularity at the time where. If you're going to be around then you are going to wind up doing something. Now I think. You know it. There's enough infrastructure, at least for people to just sort of sit around. My one of the things I remember dealing with forever was just like you had to define the term anarchism every time that you ******* brought it up to somebody. Now you do that never happens. Everybody thinks they know what it means.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, people hardly define any of the terms, right? I think I mean we're not going to see here and attack it right now forever. That's not what today's show is about, but even just all the anti oppression buzzwords like almost none of those like racism, sexism, just all the big words that get thrown around like almost never do. I see people sit down and try to. Be like, well, actually, if we're gonna talk about. Maybe we should figure out what we mean when we say these words so we can try to communicate with each other. You know?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it used to be totally., and what it but what that did? Is it created the sense that. If you have to explain what the word anarchism even ******* means, and that's where you get all these millions of what is anarchism? If you have to do that, then there's a lot more sense of obligation or responsibility for. Being at sort of the front lines of spreading this, amazing new concept to people.
Speaker 2: The Gospel of Anarchy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and but in a. Way yeah.
Speaker 2: Hey, did ? You can get by without a boss.
Speaker 1: Hmm, you could break the spell. You could you could break that ******* spell.
Speaker 2: All right so. The other thing, the other thing I was wondering was wondering a couple of things but. I'm just wondering what you what the general thoughts you have on how discourse affects action and how so and how the changing discourse cause. I think it's pretty inarguable that interest discourse, at least in America. Has changed quite a bit recently. I think. Not only do we have like the rise of like the different post left tendencies. If you want to call them that we talk about later, like nihilism egoism post left anarchy, other stuff in that vein. And you then you have obviously the ******** anti oppression. Just straight leftist types and all that where people more see themselves coming from that instead of breaking with that. So I’m just wondering how you think that discourse has affected action here.
Speaker 1: Well, here I don't know, but it does seem like it seems like the Internet does play into it a lot more here. I know that. The anarchists that I don't get along with in Phoenix could give a flying ****. About the discourse. And they're young, they're not. As a group, they’re a young group. So it's not like.
Speaker 2: That's what I've that's so I guess the follow up question that is, are people and do you think there's people not acting out of because that's kind of what I feel like what workers insinuating or implying here they're. I think they're trying to say that maybe people aren't acting out of fear of other anarchist instead of just fear out of the state. Or do you think that's just a convenient way to explain periods and long lulls of inaction?
Speaker 1: I'm sure there's people that don't do. Things they might otherwise do because of the response they would get from anarchists. Yeah, it definitely. There there is sort of a creativity killer about the way that people critique each other now.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's kind of my biggest concern. I think the reason Dominic first started the radio show in the first. Place is like we're just like where is the creativity of thought and action, and through that we've met more creative people who are willing to have. Enable to have some of the conversations we wanna have, but in general I find it pretty hard. Once someone tells me they're radical or enter cause I don't, I don't immediately feel like, oh great, I'm gonna be able to have an awesome conversation with this person. Say whatever I want. I'm more like **** now. I probably gotta watch what I say or else I'm just going to ******* this person is gonna be passed off. I mean it's gonna be a whole ******* deal. I don't deal with that **** right now.
Speaker 1: That might epitomize it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is a bummer because then I feel like people more or less is the way I like justice minded perspective like. Like people get to. Get away with these ******* lazy *** ******** opinions because no one wants to challenge because they know it's gonna be a ******* **** show and a nightmare and no one wants to put in the work of having a conversation with someone who's not gonna who has no interest in a good faith conversation with you.
Speaker 1: I always think back to the protests. I the first protests I went to and there would be like the radical cheerleaders hanging out with people dressed like aliens and UFO's hanging out with. People inspired by insurrectionary anarchism hanging out with the anarcho primitives. There was no like it wasn't so ******* critical and feeding that. Anyone cared and to that extent I couldn't imagine anybody dressing like a UFO now and going to like. Maybe they shouldn't, that's another thing, but the global anti the anti globalization protests compared to now where it's the only possible emotion you could be expressing is.
Speaker 2: But that seemed like that, doesn't it?
Speaker 1: Age there's something about that is just not what I'm interested in. I don't want to try to get pisssed off to go. Out into the.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Streets like if I'm pisssed off good I could be pisssed off and sometimes I do. I get ****** *** yeah but. Most of the time, no, I'm just.
Speaker 2: Look, I'll let you look a little. ****** *** right now.
Speaker 1: Most of the time I'm not though I'm like. I'm out having a good time and it's taking over the streets and you get to enjoy yourself and it's just one type of action but.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's hard not to find that enjoyable, I mean.
Speaker 1: But you're not. It's like uncouth.
Speaker 2: To enjoy it. Yeah, the joy has really been. I feel like the joy has really been sucked out. It's really it's really difficult.
Speaker 1: Fun suckers.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is so frustrating because I was. I'm reading jitterbug perfume right now. I'm always gonna tie in my fiction no matter what. I want to say and one of the main characters figures out how to not die. Basically he's been living for 700 years, 700 years and he's kind of thinking about his life philosophy and he's like kind of goes full Wolfie like land striker for a second and he goes. You know, I at the end of the day, it was really just all about play. He's like he's like the reason I keep staying alive instead of die is because I like to have fun and that’s the reason I wake up because I know at some point in the day, even on my *** day, I'll probably have a little bit of fun throughout the day at some point.
Speaker 1: It's it, it actually reminds me of something else which is did you? Did what ran was? Read anarchist red and anarchist action.
Speaker 2: Yeah, no, the you mean the rainforest Action Network.
Speaker 1: No, no RAn. No, so it was this model called the Action Network and what you had was like a message board where. You could post basically DIY instructions for how to build a certain skill set, and then there would be report backs on different actions and the group was called rand the big joke on anarchist. Was people would say ran org GTFO so ran or get the. **** out because there's supposed to be like the most ******** insurrectionary position to take. And I was talking about this the other day with a friend because I used to be very fond of it and I used to go on the message board. And even that was more fun and more experimental than what I think is going on now. Like they're promoting free running or parkour. I'm not sure if that's the pronunciation.
Speaker 2: Yeah, parkour is awesome.
Speaker 1: And like tagging crews and all sorts of like just fun ways to.
Speaker 2: What's not to like? About that yeah.
Speaker 1: And but it wasn't. It wasn't this like? I don't know, and then the Mannerist accusations used to be a lot. More easily brushed off because. There were, it wasn't a macho thing. People were basically just ***.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, I don't know. I think that's more. Interesting, I think. I think funds can be kind of hard to come by, . I think sometimes, like certain people in certain scenes or places are interested in like having fun and even just doing stupid **** like just ******* like going hang out with groups of people and like making.
UNKNOWN: I don't know.
Speaker 2: Making something that is absurd, like the spectacle is so absurd and just ******* sometimes just making it seem even more absurd, is worth it, ?
Speaker 1: Yeah, like security camera players or whatever.
Speaker 2: Yeah, like all kinds of stuff.
Speaker 1: I actually this like one of the reasons I've always liked anarchist news because the comments section had embraced the attitude of joking around and having fun, which is another part of the statement worker made.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I'm, I'm a big fan of. Kind of the ethos of if you can't laugh at something it owns you and I, and I feel like really, like that's how it is. You know, even if you just go through a breakup or something like horrible happens where someone just totally screws you over and you're like **** man, they got me. You know, like sometimes at work, a customer will own me and I feel like the only way I can get over it is to be like, yeah, they really ******* destroyed me. There's not much I can do about that and just. I can laugh about it and you move on with my day.
Speaker 1: Well, who is it? Freud that describes humor as the death of an emotion.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's a good way to, even if that's not for it, it's a I. Have I feel? A lot of good feelings about that.
Speaker 1: Content I don't know. E-mail us.
Speaker 2: Yeah, emails at theoreticalradioriseup.net. If the answer to that, apparently we're doing trivia now. We'll send you a T-shirt. We'll send anyone AT shirt that asks for one. Basically, we have a lot of T-shirts right now that the quality of them is, I would say. Three out of 10. Two out of 10 maybe?
Speaker 3: You should have consulted somebody about.
UNKNOWN: The colors dude.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we had some contrast issues, so actually hopefully we're printing some new T-shirts this week. That should be pretty sweet. Yeah? Was there any other final thoughts on a news? I guess I think. I think it's interesting to see the other. I guess it's going down is coming up. Now I don't know. That just came out really naturally as pure acts.
Speaker 1: I haven't read a lot of the content. On there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I feel like it's almost more like a. Closing house for just. Whatever news not having comments is interesting. I don't know if users are allowed to submit on there. I'm not sure how it what's going on or what's going down right now.
Speaker 1: I don't. I'm not, I don't really understand the. Format yet, but. It's going to be. It'll have to be around for a while before that stuff all gets.
Speaker 2: Plus I was confused why people were like oh here comes the death of Aneus. It's like **** like really, there's not enough room for two anarchist websites in America.
Speaker 1: I totally didn't understand that.
Speaker 2: Like how many like? ******* how many like how they're ? Couldn't there be more? And ******* some super ******* absurd ones. And some really ******* serious ones where they're just like towing their ******* line. Give you like why can't we just have more like the lack of? There's no ******* robust robusticity robusticity. Is that a word? One of these words meaning robust. Trying to search for something here like it's just so ******* it's not thick.
Speaker 3: You can ask.
Speaker 2: It's ******* thin. You know there's like there's just like not enough there for me. I want more, I want it all and it's like White House says.
Speaker 1: Wanted it all. I was going queen.
Speaker 2: What Amy when it says something like he, she's his boyfriend, but that's not enough for me. I want it all. She's just taking everything that's I kind of embraced. The old Amy Winehouse attitude most of the time. I hope at least. I just saw the biography. The other day.
Speaker 1: OK, I don't know anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I’m deep in the.
Speaker 1: About it, I don't know.
Speaker 3: Game it's more queen on this side of the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, everyone else is throwing queen at me alright? Well we're gonna go to break we'll come back and we're gonna talk about more **** we're probably gonna talk about wild reaction because like and why not? And we're going to talk about post left anarchy and why no one knows what the **** it means for some reason. So it's just free radical radio. We will return.
Speaker 4: I read the bad part of the book first because if I first the bad part, the third part won't feel worse. Immersed and inertia. A person could hurt you. Curse by the curse of a first person. Murder could dabra Cadabra corpse Cadabra it's magic like average cadaver. Menagerie Tagon told. They get clothes, black bag, tongue waggers all about cloaking them daggers.
Speaker 5: One more day, one more day can I get a holler for one more head? One more head for one more hand one more.
Speaker 4: For the cards. Go get this go. Then just go get it done and for those who don't know, better hosts, better run. Now and buy a fresh deck of cards. Stop faking mother and start faking Lord.
Speaker 5: One more day, one more head, one more head for one more, one more, one more knife in the gut.
Speaker 4: Tell the story. Again, about the. Life it's cut there'll be blood and such represent bad luck crossed in the plot everybody against the wall everybody tonight.
Speaker 5: Brave, brave, brave situation here.
Speaker 4: On the line. Don't shake your bobos don't take the gaps in the gavel.
Speaker 5: Yeah, we're proud.
Speaker 4: Tell me true, can you ever win back? Don't tell me true can you ever win back? Don't tell me true can you ever win back the limb you lose or do you just lose your limbs again and again until your life lies limits this limits to how much independence you can give independent before the end of the hand it's dependent. Why this tail is regenerative?
Speaker 5: One more day and one more day for one more head one more. For one, one hand, one more bed for one more man.
Speaker 4: Place your bets, place your bets, place your bigger, bigger, place your bets. Place your bets. Place your bets, place your bigger, bigger place you place your bets. Place your bets, place your bigger, bigger. Place your bets.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to free Radical radio where one of us embroiders one of us pops a beer and one of us ponders whether or not they should quit work in the next 12 hours. So you decide which kind of like 2 truths and the like, except for it's. 3 ******** and three troops, I guess. Anyways, welcome back to the show and we're going to talk about Wilder action because they're always good fodder fodder for conversation and. Yeah, to be fairly divisive usually, and they’re back up at it again, and they kind of embraced full Unabomber. It seems like last month and a lot of this from war on society and they actually released the longer communicate that maybe I'll get into with Bellamy in a couple of weeks, or maybe with Squee or someone else. But we're not going to talk about today, but they kind of were. Thinking about all the. Communicates and actions they've done and seeing if their ideas still match up, so it's kind of interesting. I would suggest checking out on more on society. It's on no blogs, so anyways I'm just gonna read their communique from few weeks ago. It came out after it was done. This first one is from July 2nd, so kind of a long time ago, but a lot of this didn't get out. At least I didn't see it on. Any American sites? Until recently, so they said envelopes with electromechanical activation and incendiary charge have been left in various targets in Mexico State. And one of the targets they said was the Commission of Human Rights of Mexico State. And this this them talking. Now we decided to attack this institution since it symbolizes humanism and progressivism. We repudiate all those who go screeching to these kinds of committees to demand guarantees of their human rights, respect, and quotes for their group decisions. And a quote end to repression is absurd. With these low lives, expect these kinds of meager organizations to resolve their problems, to protect and defend them. A clear example of how it of how. Is that the modern human has put his own security in the hands of strangers instead of taking justice into his own hands and defending himself as he did before these kinds of institutions are a banality. The quote put us only a simple facade for dissimulating the systems incapacity to manage internal problems in a decadent society, and This why we attacked. So that's one we'll talk about these in a section we're going to. I'm just going to read them, the other people they attacked were the Valley division of North Mexico, and that was basically just theads of electrical substations, and they were against. Excuse me, the people in charge of them, and they're saying it's just as important to attack the people as. As that and then they go on. You can read this online if you want all the specifics and then the last one was lucerna university. And they just said quote in the present era, full of digital data, technological innovations and artificial aberrations. It is vitally important to continue the project of attacking these kinds of sciences which day by day stupify the dependent minds of the enslaved modern human, making a total absurdity of the imposed reality sciences like these which tend toward. Alien Nation have and have declared war on the wild need to be an objective and fixed target of those who like ourselves, cling to their most primal and wild. Best and then this how they sign it. They really they really go for it today. Like yesterday we shout to the four winds which is a bright eyes song. Just so nature is good. Civilization is bad wounds and sabotages against those in charge of maintaining the electrical industry. Shrapnel in the bodies of the leaders of humanist institutions. I think they did that. One just for me death. For those who prepare the way toward a super artificial and hyper civilized presence signed by wild reaction in the group muscules where the master of the Green Fire and Thunder of the.
Speaker 1: I mixed them.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure there's relevance there. We haven't put the work in. To find out what. It is and then really quick. I'm going to one of the packages was found and in typical I guess wild reaction slash anarchist fashion. No one died, even though they're. I guess I don't. I'm not. Also not really sure the nature of these attacks. It's electromechanical, I'm not sure even what that means. Exactly, it's a big word for me, but so the company ICA is civil and associated engineers. I guess there's a lot of infrastructure on freeways and plants. Basically all kinds of **** in Mexico. And they ended up attacking them and. There's a long communique that I'm not going to read. All of that, basically. It says we're gonna keep attacking you and it says on July 6th the letter was brought inside the building and opened by one of the secretaries, which caused the package to explode and then says creating a nervous breakdown. I feel like that's a poor translation. Police mobilization and alarm along the engineers complicit in civilizations devastation, even though according to the press, due to a failure in the mechanism. The device? And full achieve full detonation. Don't worry, we're already working on making the next one more forceful and so Thunder of Mixton was againvolved in this one. And then you also had the group school Nocturnal Hunter. So Thunder of Mixton is up in the biz, apparently.
Speaker 1: Does that mean they're winning?
Speaker 2: I'm not sure so. I guess I'm gonna, I'm gonna say it again. I said to Squee earlier, but some people say you can't make an omelette without breaking a couple of eggs. And I think wild reaction has decided you can't burn. The whole kitchen down without breaking a couple eggs. Still still not working for you.
Speaker 1: Still don't get it.
Speaker 2: OK, either way, so I guess my main my main thing here is like whatever. Clearly wild reaction says it more or less gets into tech bad, wild good, and we've we've discussed that idea on the show. Plenty Bellamy and I have, especially when we. You know, had different ideas a long time ago and we. Were more easily accused of being Manicheand having black and white ideas and good and bad and all that. I think that's a more difficult accusation to levy at us now, but still probably doable. Happens all the time, but I'm wondering, are we seeing any propaganda of the deed here? It's kind of inarguable that Wilder action has definitely spawned other groups, especially in like Chile. And some other places in South America that have similar name groups doing similar things, but I don't know what do you think about propaganda, the. Deed type stuff.
Speaker 1: Well, that's definitely what it is.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean, clearly, they're they themselves are not enough to bring it down, ?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but. I don't I don't have like I've never bothered to come to the conclusion about it because I guess my conclusion has been I don't see it having any consequence. That's worth it.
Speaker 2: I guess what's interesting to me now is that they with while dragging the chair, they attack the Disabled Children's Foundation or whatever. Last year And then attacking the human rights organization, and I think it's I think it's interesting that they're not only just saying they don't like the left, they're actually attacking or attempting to attack the left and physically too, not just in writing.
Speaker 1: I soon remember that in Greece they would attack the offices of the Left as well during elections and things like that.
Speaker 2: But it doesn't really seem to go that way here in America in North America. Does it maybe I'm missing something?
Speaker 1: Who gets attacked in North America?
Speaker 2: No one, I guess, but.
Speaker 1: I guess when the the Nazis or whatever come the town, there's that. There’s the police, but they're the left. And the right.
Speaker 2: Sure, I guess I just feel like the dialogue is so different here where it seems like the left is somewhat included in it for the most part.
Speaker 1: Well, the left here is a weird thing. To begin with.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's not as easily definable I guess.
Speaker 1: You don't have a Marxist left.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: That I mean, that's going to segue into. The next thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, let's just let's just segue right into the next thing, because that makes more sense. So I guess we, we and I were talking the other day about what to talk about. And obviously, Bob. Black was in. Town last week and. We both at least we and I engage in a lot of I guess what you would consider post left ideas from post left anarchy to egoism, nihilism, anti SIV theory. Like we dabble, we're dabblers
Speaker 1: So I see a lot of this mostly on anarchist news. I have to admit I don't know how much people actually extend this sort of commentary into conversations. They're having privately or off the Internet. But I see it a lot where this grouping of nihilist, egoist and post left is all smushed together into kind of like one BLOB of this the enemy. For some other kind of anarchist, and I can't even figure out. What they are because. As long as I can remember. Really, I mean, since the. Any kind of break with syndicalism. It's basically been post left anarchism. So, so I kind of get the impression that people who are writing this kind of **** actually are targeting someone specific. Whether it's like worker or like LBC. But I cannot imagine that they're not influenced by post left anarchism.
Speaker 2: I think you would basically have to like stick your head into the sand to not be at least if you participate are active in, in anarchy anywhere in. End up meeting different people. I think it'd be hard to hard. You'd be hard pressed if you're actually not to meet someone who's interested in talking about these ideas. If you're if you're getting yourself out there around a little bit.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and if you look at the scope of what post left anarchism includes arguably. It includes. Green anarchism and anarcho primitivism and. A lot of insurrectionary anarchists would consider themselves close to left, and really, it's like.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 1: The book Black Flame by Lucien Vanderwell. Whatever the other person.
UNKNOWN: Yeah, whatever.
Speaker 1: That's the left that's left anarchism. And that's I don't. I have never met anybody that comes from that position except for one person from the study.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, sure.
Speaker 1: So I don't know who's who gets so offended by the post left position.
Speaker 2: I mean, I feel like It’s being foil is anti oppression people right now at this point at least here in America, the way it works out. Because I mean clearly it's not the same as in other places. Obviously, right, like there's not as many people who are out out front and proud to be Marxists. You know, as there might be somewhere else, or other versions of some leftist thing. I feel like. I feel like if you're a classical anarchist, obviously Marxism is very friendly to that. But other than that, not really.
Speaker 1: Right? I just think it's very bizarre, obviously, but so the way these arguments get put together, I really think what they're talking about is the nihilists are nihilists and egoists. I don't think the post left thing is part of it. But that's thrown in there just to I don't know, targeted jodah or something like that or not black.
Speaker 2: So, so how are you seeing it more specifically then?
Speaker 1: Well, so it tends to be framed as these are people that just sit around and say that nothing can happen and that they’re not revolutionaries. So they don't believe in. Struggle or any kind of like. Grassroots action however you want to put that. And it seems to be. It seems to conflate post left with. With admitting that this **** is some of this not going to work. But insurrectionary anarchism was already not revolutionary anarchism. That was the whole ******* point. And I, I suspect, that the people that make these accusations are insurrectionary.
Speaker 2: I almost feel like instructing anarchism is such like a mishmash right now because I feel like a lot of those those people that we identified that way are revolutionaries or we can call like consider themself a revolutionary.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's very weird. I don't. I don't totally understand what. IA turned into, but it used to be filled with concepts like. How you could? Have your actions resonate with other people. Basically so like wild reaction. Something that you could do easily well. Arguably, they're not doing anything easy. But some sort of attack that's easy to reproduce and would cause some kind of or inspire some kind of insurrection, and it wouldn't be a revolution where you have some ******* political party or worker organization take over. It would be an insurrectionary moment. Which would create a power vacuum. That then the masses or whatever you want to call people who are not. Would fill in the gap. Kind of like in a Katrina situation or whatever.
Speaker 2: Well, it almost seems like the. The modern American insurrectionary anarchist is finding themselves in dialogue with the left because they. It's not instruction Eric, because I would define a lot of them here, as almost riot tourists where they're sitting around and they know that they're activism or that they're anarchy. Every year is a few riots a few times a year. When black person dies or something else, as they say, pops off and then as it goes it starts off. It'll usually start. You know they're all so similar, right? They'll start off with like a lot of energy, and then things will happen. Eventually they'll come a point where some . Window is broken, obviously, or like some other someone gets hurt or whatever happens and it's too inconvenient for people getting to work or what. Whatever ends up ******* people off and then a dialogue happens with the left and. Doug's book I saw fire is actually pretty much about this meeting up of is partly about this. Which one of things I find more interesting about it? I don't. I don't see most of these people drawing these distinct lines and being like well, I'm not going to work with these nonprofits or whatever. I feel like they're kind of trying to navigate this terrain to keep the thing going, so there's a mass of people for them to break off. From at some point.
Speaker 1: That is so different than the way that it, at least for. Let's just say Phoenix Anarchist coalition. The way that we would think. About that I mean we. Would barely ever work with the left, and even like anytime we even. Made a concession, we would get thrown right under the ******* bus. Like with the border stuff. And the left parachuting activist ******** would just like. Be like Oh no anarchist did it? Go **** them up and go arrest them and it's their fault and they would just blab on the media. So I come from a place where there's a tradition of practical, practical like antagonism towards. And when so when I say post left, I'm not only talking about the abstract ideas about ideology and amoralism, but like no, **** them. They are all about. Political power Ultimately, and you're going to serve their interests.
Speaker 2: Right, I think that's what get lost sometime is that It’s so easy for people like that to fit anarchist into their narrative to get what they want. It just it suits them perfectly to have a more extreme wing, right? Like I mean. Basically, that's like the history of most revolutions anyways. And it's not even like it's a revolution, so it's a much more low stakes thing that's been happening. But I mean arguably you can look at India or even the civil rights movement. Here is just the moderate reformists using the more extreme people throwing them under. The bus to get. To power, .
Speaker 1: Right or just trying to bar radical and anarchist side. Participants from entrance into events and to say that they're outside agitators, I mean, so I don't know how.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: After like 10 however many years, it's been. Insurrectionary anarchism became more popular. There has never been any evidence that it's good to work with the left at all, period.
Speaker 2: No, I mean yeah, yeah totally.
Speaker 1: And that whole discourse of. Outside agitators comes out of the left. It's not the ******* Republicans of the right wing saying, oh, the outside agitators are ruining the protests or whatever. It's always been the Hocking left.
Speaker 2: Well, they yeah, they’re just totally. They dislike the whole protest as a whole, so yeah.
Speaker 1: Right? Yeah, they're like these people should be at work.
Speaker 2: 50 hours.
Speaker 1: And then the left is. We need peaceful protest and then the anarchists were usually like **** you and now I don't know how anybody is not denouncing them.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: So there's the left part of anarchism, which is the class the broad history of class struggle anarchism or whatever the term is they use in black line. Where the **** is that happening like the IWW and. Knee back, which is over and done with as far as I know.
Speaker 2: I think it happens in like little ways where. Like small groups form or. It's hard to even explain the way I’ve seen it manifest, but the way I see it manifesting is just, people. People talking about ideas and saying like Oh no, you can't do that because these people or whatever, and it's usually. A lot of it like I feel, I feel almost sick of talking about this cause I'm so annoyed about it, but like it does come to identity in some parts and then I feel like some. You know some people are like Oh well, we have, like . Here's some black people run the insurrectionary team who tell who can say. They'll write the article that this actually funked up, or like it took what it took it took. It took Indigenous people writing the ******* accomplish not ally thing for people to finally be like, oh maybe you shouldn't do things out of out of guilt and actually should only act out of the things you want to be doing where people are paying attention actually like thing. Oh yeah, that's reasonable, ?
Speaker 1: And while I fortunate enough to come from the same. Location that. Document came out of so. But that's common sense to me, so when I see like the social justice where what you're saying like where social justice activity. Pulls the left into the mix. I'm just like you realize this. It's not either or right. There's other options of how to deal with the left and also. Not be racist.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah?
Speaker 1: I mean, and that was one of the biggest strategies for the border shift in 2010. Was we had a? Denay odham and anti authoritariand anarchist black bloc and the left organizations that were parachuting in were not recognizing how border militarization would. Impact indigenous people. And they were advocating for militarization instead of. No migration. Instead of SB times 70.
Speaker 2: Oh, I see.
Speaker 1: And things like that.
Speaker 2: What a joy that conversation is.
Speaker 1: And so the way, the way that we attacked the left was we called. We focused on their blindness few colonization. Like there's always. There's usually some kind of option like that, and that's to me the option that it's still post left. There's nothing leftist to that. Being an accomplice.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, I don't think there's anything left just as long as you're. I mean, I think it's pretty simple. How to define the left right? They're just a political faction, so if you're anti. If you're anti political and that you're holding to that, it's pretty. I think it's pretty easy to not. Find yourself. Being reasonably accused of being a leftist.
Speaker 1: Right, I don't. I don't understand how you could. Support an ideology that is fundamentally about techno, industrial capitalism. And call yourself a ******* anarchist.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's really hard to believe.
Speaker 1: Because the left in another country. Is communist, but here it they're all. Capitalists, there's no ******* Marxist left.
Speaker 2: Now and they're just like people who made an attempt at reading capital in a reading group so they could get paid or something. And then it didn't work out well for them or it worked out well and they left the group cause they got laid one of the two.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean. There's like. I guess there's like Chris Hedges. There's like the grimy ******* like.
Speaker 2: But I don't feel like anarchists are interested in that right?
Speaker 1: Malice and.
Speaker 2: I feel like I don't even really. I’m honestly confused who's interested in Chris Hedges?
Speaker 1: Progressives, people who watch Bill Maher.
Speaker 2: People who watch Bill Maher, OK?
Speaker 1: Or are interested in Naomi Klein and this like?
Speaker 2: So I guess they're like mostly what college educated people who are just kind of sitting around, like armchair activist type people who like support causes on Facebook or something.
Speaker 1: Well that yeah. I mean, Social Democrats. Basically they think that there could be a management like not. I don't know if it's necessarily kenzian, but some kind of management of capital through. Through a left political. But they're trying. To build that party, it's not like. I don't know what the revolutionary left here would be. The RCP. Would I mean?
Speaker 2: This why I find so much value in John Graves because he directly ties the secular humanist progressive Chomsky. I hedge I ate or what hedge hedge in whatever you want to call them. Bill Maher person and he directly ties them. Shows like I like that he shows the link between them and the ideas of progress in science and shows like how intricately connected. All that is, and just like what a ******* nightmare all that is and. Now it's so nice just to push it away. Say no thank you.
Speaker 1: Among so many other reasons.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, yeah, among so many other reasons, if not just for. If not just For these reasons, which to me make plenty of sense.
Speaker 1: So that's just I mean. What I think might be a confusion about what. Post left can mean arguably it doesn't. Sit comfortably with green anarchism. Stuff like that. It's like Jason McClain. Bob Black and Lawrence Dirac. And like people who have theorized and antIdeological amoral. Anti work perspective.
Speaker 2: Right, and that I. Mean we've talked about that clashes here. Green anarchism and primitivism and things that I guess the people who would define themselves as postless I think would make the argument that they're ideological and that's how they would, why they would. Where they would try to negate those those tendencies.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but no one would get offended that you're attacking the. Left from those tendencies.
Speaker 2: No, definitely not.
Speaker 1: So it's just ******* bizarre or it's not bizarre that you've identified where it comes from, but I can.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which is. I mean, a lot of people have different stories, but I think we talked about the study group where a lot of American interests just straight up do come from the left, especially here in the Bay where the left is so prevalent, and I know it's I’m. I realize it's different in other places. Like I'm sure. It’s at least mild. To significantly different where you're from, but I mean for me. I had a very typical. Trajectory like I I. I basically was like walking the line from leftist to his ultra leftist and then basically thought I jumped off the spectrum. The line of left and right only to find out years later that I was still just an ultra leftist and. You know, then it went from figuring out what does it mean to not be interested in this whole thing.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I, I mean I know people who are. You might call them post, right? You know, because I'm from Arizona's most considered one of the most. Conservative ******* states. And they come from a conservative fiscal conservative. Position and then we're like, no, they've they've. Gone even more radical than like the Tea Party or something of being as being opposed to the government have become anarchists that way. So they're post right?
Speaker 2: You don't hear enough about the post, right? You know.
Speaker 1: No, no you don't.
Speaker 2: They don't ever use that as a signifier. Guess we're getting pretty esoteric at this point.
Speaker 1: I don't know that would be really weird.
Speaker 2: That was tried anarchy. Yeah, I don't know is there anything else left you want to talk about when we're here? Alright, that was it I. I guess it is one one thing. One thing that did. Bother me is which I saw you brought up. I guess you want to talk about right now, but stuff like old crime thing stuff where I feel like they used to be more against the left and now it just it doesn't really feel but that's exactly what's going on.
Speaker 1: Ever since that book working or work or whatever it was called, yeah they.
Speaker 2: And I just find it hard to go from. Like I brought this up a few weeks ago in conversation. You brought up in the notes to how you can go from publishing your politics are boring as **** to basically embracing politics that are as boring as ****.
Speaker 1: I don't know.
Speaker 2: It's confusing.
Speaker 1: It's very confusing.
Speaker 2: People's trajectories are endlessly interesting to me and sometimes endlessly disgusting.
Speaker 1: That does sort of tie something else into the terminology with. Bookchin and Bob Black. And that whole and the red green debates that were happening during basically the anti globe period is sort of how where you get an idea like post left. That's so long. I mean, that's. Before 911. There's a, there's a lot of.
Speaker 2: You going pre and post 911 on. Me now. Just don't be a truth or Rev Doc will fall out of their chair and. Probably hurt themselves.
Speaker 1: I don't. I don't know that.
Speaker 2: Why did 10 die?
Speaker 3: Because I was in the middle of 9/11.
Speaker 2: All right, you got anything else before we're out of here.
Speaker 1: Oh, is that it?
Speaker 2: I mean you got you. Got more, that's all I got today.
Speaker 1: I'm good.
Speaker 2: You good. You got all this. You want any of this? Seem like you're done.
Speaker 1: I'm done.
Speaker 2: All right, thanks Squee and Rev Doc. And I'll thank myself too I'll ever pat myself on the back, and if there you go, Roger, thanks for doing your thing and someone had to say it.
UNKNOWN: Thanks rydra.
Speaker 2: There we go.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: I need someone to say it. I don't really do anything for either of you tonight. Yeah, so once again Bellamy and I will be in Seattle this weekend on we'll be there for most of the weekend. I'm not gonna tell you other plans come to the book on Saturday. We'll be there. There's some interesting looking talks upstairs actually, I think. Once clear time travel I *******. I'm all about time travel. That's a big one for me. I like the show sliders so I'm hoping they're gonna talk about that. I'm not sure if they're going to there is another one abolishing education find that interesting education. I don't like it. Wanted to go away and there's some other really good sounding ones. There's one against prefigurative. Politics and for cruelty. So that's not an interesting. More interesting question.
Speaker 1: I would love. To do an episode on education.
Speaker 2: Me too. So there you go. Squeeze committed to doing an episode in education with me free radicalradio.net. You can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net. That and next time you hear from us, it will be with the Mr Bellamy former coast. And once again we'll be a coast. Maybe we'll see what happens through radio, bye.
Speaker 5: Do you wanna go there? With me so shut up. Let's go there.
UNKNOWN: You like a Philly blunt and smoke your *****.
Speaker 3: I wanna watch the world burn I wanna see the sun explode I want all the things that I can have and I want a whole lot more. I want to cut off their eyelids. Do nothing but sleep. Being filmed, I want to unload 36 chambers and show them what they say is pure evil. I want to see the four horsemen. Coming up on the horizon. I don't want to hear. The screams of 10,000. Burns them alive, burns them all.
Episode 85: Hack the Planet!, Cheating, & Green Anarchism
Posted on July 26, 2015 PODCAST
Click on these words to listen to the show! this a link to the audio! Rydrand Squee host Episode 85 of Free Radical Radio. They discuss recent attacks/hacks on the hardware and software of the internet, Tom Brower’s revenge, monogamy and puritan values as they exist in society and what this means for our bodies, some actions and sabotage happening in the US and Mexico, and finish off with a long and meandering discussion of Green Anarchy and what it means to take non-human organisms into your anarchy 0:00 Squee explains his outfit and Rydra talks about kids and judging people 5:00 Thoughts on Tom Brower, a democrat from Hawaii who sledgehammers homeless people’s shopping carts, getting his ass kicked 10:00 Hydro-phobic anti-pee walls in San Francisco that fight back! 11:30 AOL chat room talk and news of recent attacks on Internet fiber-optic cables in the bay 21:40 Dark Hacktivism 25:40 Ashley Madison Hack and the sanctity of monogamy 30:10 Jay Jay Plus Eye – Track 5 32:40 continuing discussion of physical bodies and ownership within society 41:00 Toyota dealership burned in Mexico and AETAllegations in Oakland 47:00 Wingnut Confessional: John Gray and Alexander Herzen on Ichtyophils and Progress 58:15 Chackles It- Desert Shark 1:00:15 Wingnut Confessional Continued- Rydra puts Squee on Trial to see if he is a green anarchist. Discussion of humand non-human relationships, artificial taxonomies, egoist green anarchy?, and what it means to consider oneself a green anarchist in a world of cities. Also, discussion of veganism and...
Attached to Happiness With a Chain: Slavery and BDSM in the work of Sam Delany
Posted on July 18, 2015 WRITINGS
click on the green text to read a thing I(Rydra) wrote: Attached to Happiness with a chain: Slavery and BDSM in the work of Sam Delany You can find the whole Bastard Chronicles and lots of other anarchist writing at Little Black Cart: littleblackcart.com
An Interview with Bob Black
Posted on July 14, 2015 INTERVIEWS
Bob Black talks to you here! Bellamy interviews post-left anarchist Bob Black, author of such essays and books as the infamous “The Abolition of Work”, Friendly Fire, “Primitive Affluence”, Anarchy After Leftism, and Defacing the Currency. Black has just published, through Little Black Cart, Instead of Work, a republishing of his essays on theme of work along with a new piece reflecting on the thirty years since his writing “The Abolition of Work”. The interview is wide-ranging (as Black seems to care little about adhering to the authority of Bellamy’s questions!), covering topics including what it means to participate in media from a post-left perspective, the worsening of anarchist discourse, anarchist isolation, stories from Bob’s past, how his study of law made him become anarchist, Occupy Albany, optimism and pessimism, and his new book.
Episode 84: C.R.E.A.M: Commodities Rule Everything Around Me
Posted on June 29, 2015 PODCAST
Rydrand guest host Paul discuss the latest artificial intelligence developments and Google's involvement in them, including drawing computers, and sarcastic amoral artificial intelligence. They also discuss the history of RS(Wild Reaction), RS political development, and some thoughts on convergencism, reactionary politix, and what does anarchy look like it isn't political.
0:00 Intro: on gay marriage, Rydra's work dramand run-ins with unfriendly men in blue, and the appearance of a new poop bandit
15:50 Luddites Anonymous: AI drawing pictures, AI as nihilists, and what the fuck is google up to now?
31:25 Fidlar-Blackout Stout
34:30 Wingnut Confessional: On the history of Wild Reaction and their ideas
1:00:55 Pat the Bunny- Make Total Destroy
1:03:40 Wingnut Confessional: "On anti-electoralism and anarchist struggle," Black June, convergencism, insurrectionary theory, recuperation
Sources:
Wingnut Confessional:
http://waronsociety.noblogs.org/?p=9562#more-9562
http://ritualmag.com/toward-savagery/
http://waronsociety.noblogs.org/?p=9550#more-9550
Luddites Anonymous:
https://paulbmurufas.wordpress.com/2015/03/01/artificial-intelligence-its-here-and-its-learning-fast/
http://blogs.wsj.com/digits/2015/06/26/artificial-intelligence-machine-gets-testy-with-its-programmers/
http://www.komando.com/happening-now/314192/google-is-giving-ai-an-imagination
Speaker 1: Welcome to Episode 84 of Free Radical Radio. This Raija Bellamy is somewhere in the Midwest possibly who knows. Not sure what he's doing. He is with two other human beings, possibly 3-4 or five six. I'm not here to catalogue his life. I'm here to say hi to Paul hi.
Speaker 2: Paul, welcome to studio. Hi this Paul or Polly Pocket and I've got a 10 fingers. With me
Speaker 1: 10 toes, that's good. It's good not to be ablist. Alright, so today's show we're going to talk about a couple of things. We're going to talk about wild reaction and a recent communique from other anarchists in Mexico. And we're going to do some artificial intelligence stuff. I think maybe four or five weeks ago I read my. I read my presentation I did at the ******* conference in Berkeley on Sam Delaney and slavery in **** and all that and now got published in. The ******* chronicles by little black carts. That's out, so that's online. The interview I did with Aragorn last week is up on our website for radicalradio.net, so if you're interested. In that book. And you can go find it online there from the interview or little black card.com. It's not too hard. OK, so let's get let's get right into it. Obviously the big thing that's been going on in terms of the social world since stories come in and out of the news pretty fast is. Gay marriage and it's a whole ******* situation out there. I guess you’re you're not really on social media. That much, are you Paul?
Speaker 2: I'm not on social media. I had a foray with I had a foray with Instagram recently and decided to delete that, but I haven't had Facebook for a few years. I do go on mainstream media news sites a lot though, and Huffington Post, has the huge headlines like Obama cements his legacy. CNN is like the week that changed America. People are falling all over themselves to really. See this as I guess people are really looking to say that we've made progress. Even suggestions that the country has made a big leftward shift, which I think is kind of ridiculous.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, that's really ridiculous. Like I don't know. Especially like it's all about assimilation gay, anyway. So it's I mean, obviously there's tons of gay Republicans.
UNKNOWN: It's not like.
Speaker 1: And gay liberals. The whole thing is quite a disaster and I guess, for me at least, being on social media. I'm on Facebook for the web. For what do you call this thing for the radio and? All these people are putting up like rainbow rainbow colored profile pictures. It’s really, really bleak out there, and I thought a funny thing that happened was some people started posting the 9/11 towers. Like with the planes going into them. Like all rainbow hued as a response as a response, which I'm a big fan of.
Speaker 2: Oh wow.
Speaker 1: It's been a while, actually since then something funny happened to me once when I was I was in a Spanish class when I was 19 and it was probably in like 2003 or something. So pretty close to 911 and were doing Pictionary with Spanish words and one of. The words was. Was counter Terrorismo and I forget how you say in Spanish now, so I think I forget what the counterpart. Or it might have just been terrorism, which is terrorismo I think, and.
UNKNOWN: We can.
Speaker 2: Contra terrorismo maybe?
Speaker 1: Yeah, but anyways were. Were putting were doing Pictionary on the board with words to guess them and someone just go went up on the board and drew like a really intricate drawing of the towers coming down the flames and everything and their reaction in the class was hilarious. I just couldn't. I couldn't go over how funny that was. But yeah, people are really Wilding out with this. I had a pretty liberal friend of mine who I who I knew from like the same time period in my life when I was 19 and I just posted something online. Basically, like I just, don't care whatever. **** this and. They got into it with someone who started texting me and I was like you're going to take Facebook conversations to text is like my. Absolute worst nightmare is for like some type of terrible social media interaction to extend beyond the computer into my phone, which is just one step closer to me. And that's like almost being forced to have this conversation in person, which is not a conversation I want to be getting into with someone who holds that particular opinion.
Speaker 2: If people get in their feelings about stuff.
Speaker 1: I know, right? It's like the reaction is so funny and like I think the liberal reaction is really hilarious because people are like ohh don't be don't be negative you're so negative and I think the general like anarchist liberal conversation tends to go this way sometimes where people like you're negative you don't which is funny because I think most anarchists believe in progress and. Or and like. Are pretty optimistic. It's like one of my biggest complaints about most of the anarchists I know. But I mean It’s even darker when you start talking about, oh, this helps people. And I'm like who does it help? I'm very confused who's? Like getting help like by this very bizarre situation. Well, there's the deathbed stuff, right?
Speaker 2: Mean what would you?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess.
Speaker 2: What would you say about that I would say I don't.
Speaker 1: I give a ***. Wow, yeah, like. Like I mean, I could. I could speak as someone I was definitely not in a deathbed, but I was in cancer on the hospital. And I mean whatever, like I don't. Yeah, It’s. I guess it just boils down to small reform for me. I'm going to read something someone wrote because I think this is helpful. So this anarchist, I know anarchist and I have scare quotes in the air when I'm saying that word. Usually when I'm talking about other people for the most part. So this what they wrote they wrote. You know how a bunch of Heteros decided not to get married into a queers could? Well be kind of awesome. If queers didn't get married until trans folks, especially trans people of color stop getting murdered or incarcerated, or if there was universal healthcare or deporting people stopped. Or police brutality ended, solidarity and *** so. I think there's kind of a lot to break down. There about this like supposed anarchist response to it, because now you want people not to get married like it like. It really matters if like if me and you got married Paul like it would really affect have anything to do with what's happening to like other marginalized peoples. It's just totally ridiculous and. And also the things people are asking for. I'm like are you anarchist? If you're kind of, you're saying until people stop getting murdered, like is that the bottom line for anarchy? Now that we want people to stop getting murdered or we want universal healthcare or not deporting people like do we still want borders? I thought weren't interested in that. Or things like police brutality ending. And they're not even saying they want the police to end. And then they're saying solidarity. So I have I have a hard time thinking that I would actually be in solidarity with someone by not getting married.
Speaker 2: I don't know. Yeah, we're going to. We're going to talk about this more. We've actually got a whole conversation lined up about the politics of anarchy versus. Kind of anti political actions that we see. Some of the groups that we're looking at in Mexico doing. But that quote to me I'm looking at here just I think it's kind of a political anarchy. You know and. It's kind of seizing on an event that so you apparently have some antagonism toward it towards it. I feel kind of, I feel kind of indifferent. I'm also not a queer person. I'm hetero. So I definitely don't want to rush to like be judging these people. Maybe that's just my reserved personality, but definitely this kind of a political. Political type of thing where they're saying OK, so this demand has been met, but what about our other demands that are more radical, right?
Speaker 1: And I and I strongly believe in rushing to judgments. One of my the pillars of what is what is made-up who I am. The human being. And I've definitely. I'm not header and I don't. I don't. I don't think that really matters too much. Having an opinion this for a variety of reasons because I think it kind of extends beyond the specifics when they're talking about all these different when they're just like listing oppressed groups or marginalized groups. But yeah, this a conversation. We're again two more detail in later. But I think I just want to acknowledge some of the ******* madness that has been people's reaction to this. The other thing no one's really mentioning. Not that I really care because I don't get caught up in like anti globalist politics because I think we saw in 99 all that stuff that's not really a. You know we can't. I don't know. I mean, the Invisible Committee would agree would disagree, but going around the entire world and stopping everything all at once doesn't seem super realistic. But the Trans Pacific Partnership, the huge trade deal went through this week at the same time, the gay marriage thing went through, which is the real would be like. The more real legacy of Obama, because that's the ******* gigantic.
Speaker 2: Like and gnarly. You know trade partnership. So yeah, the TPP. So my car radio is broken and the only thing that's coming through is KPFA which is pretty unfortunate because I have to listen to. These these old liberals kind of talk. They just old liberals are gonna old liberal and I actually Full disclosure. I actually used to work for Pacificas like yeah, I would have to go get my. I was the assistant to the boss's assistant and I would have to go like to Trader Joe's and get coconut water.
UNKNOWN: Oh, really.
Speaker 2: All the time and stuff, but they were talking about the TPP and I wish it was something that was getting more attention. But I think people feel really isolated and discouraged when we talk about stuff like trade deals because people feel there's literally nothing they can do.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, I mean. I mean, I kind of feel like there is nothing to do about something that big I saw. I know someone in New York who's been like just ******* brutalizing themselves to fight for this over and over, and it's basically over at this point. So they just kind of wasted the last, year of their life. I don't mean wasted is a harsh way to say it. I wouldn't, I'd rephrase that, but just to kind of general, organizing that went into it and. Seeing them like go to protest they only have like three or four people. And it was pretty depressing to watch in New York. Hmm, yeah, that's where they. So I actually I had a brief run in with the cops on Friday night. Paul, that. That ended up kind of being very lucky for me and very funny. And you're still here. I'm still here, which was very good. I I had a couple drinks at the bar with. A friend, but I was I was. Not drunk or anything.
Speaker 2: Probable cause.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I took a friend home pretty late and she was. She definitely had too much to drink and I was I dropped her off. I was trying to get her to drink some water and she didn't just spilling like as I handed her the cup of water she spilled like a full cup of water off completely. All over me like soaked my shirt soaked my pants. It's like 3:15 in the morning and I was like off *** *** not to bike all the way across town. Like in the middle of the cold night soaking wet. And OK, fine, it was not. It wasn't freezing cold. It's probably like 60 degrees or 65 degrees. So I'm biking home and I'm like a block from my house and I see a cop pull up behind me and I was like oh ***, and sure enough he pulled me over and he's he's sitting I'm like kind of Kitty corner from my house so I can. I'm probably 30 yards.
Speaker 2: Come on, it's June.
Speaker 1: From my bed. At this point I'm like, oh man, this this really unfortunate situation. And he's like he is talking about me not having lights or something. I just give him some lie about my lights getting stolen. I get I get into the whole thing and then the whole reason talking about. Is it a really funny thing happened where he's? Like you're soaking. Wet and I'm like. Yeah, like yeah, and he's kind of like keeps looking. He's like you're wet and I was like. Yeah, it's water. I'm like do you wanna? Smell it. Don't know why it said that and I'm like you could smell it and you. It looks like he just goes. I don't want to smell you mad. I was like alright and then and then finally he. I think he realized I just want to go to bed and let me go because I think. Whatever I can, maybe he was just done being an ******. Or had some? Other *** to do or I'm white so I got away with it which is. Usually the case of how that go.
Speaker 2: I got a bike ticket for. I got a bike ticket for like $250 and 2012. The cop got a 2 for one. He pulled over me and my friend.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they’re brutal. I think it's like 500 bucks for like a running the stoplight ticket now. Really brutal. The other the other thing I've been really excited about lately before we start getting into stuff is I talked about it several weeks ago in Ohio. There was the poop bandit and he was going around. They were going around putting poop on the cars in I think Akron somewhere in Ohio and. I think there's still large actually, which is, which is really, . It's good to see people who are doing direct action. You know, staying free and. Right now, village police in Ridgewood, NJ are asking for help in identifying a young man who is taking the smearing excrement on the walls of local businesses. So I think it's safe to assume this anti civilization anarchist and who is very strong interest in bringing down the core of civilization and I think what better place to start than ****.
Speaker 2: It makes me think of like my Community College bathrooms. I was going to Long Beach City College and sometimes I would go into the bathroom and all of the paper towels would be stuffed into one toilet or like the public restroom where there's like somebody pooped in the in the urinal. Or something? I mean it definitely.
Speaker 1: It's confusing like I feel like the strongest condemnation of society and civilization is like the men's public restroom. Because like, do you have this feeling whenever I walk into like a public men's bathroom like I'm not even hoping for a clean bathroom. All I'm hoping is that there's literally not **** on the toilet seat like anything beyond that is like reasonable when I see it. Cover him, **** all over. I'm like, oh, that's no. Big deal, that's just some **** like this. Could be way worse.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, it's just it's funny to me because being in a City College, obviously not everything is the best or the greatest, but I think some people are kind of lashing out a little bit. Not something I would do.
Speaker 1: Yeah, not something I would do either. I take all my ***** in the ocean. Actually, I'm a strong believer in Aqua dumping. But the other before before we like get started on artificial intelligence stuff, I've been doing training at work because it's like the first week of summer which we call the week of welcome. So I've been. I've been blessed with training on lifeguarding and I'm actually running the training or I ran the training on swim, instructing which I thought was funny because my bosses hate me. And I thought it was funny that they like had me do this and they didn't even tell me someone else was supposed to do it. I showed up to work last Monday and they were like oh, by the way, like from 11 to 12 we're gonna have you do the swimming structure training every week and I was like oh great. Thanks for sharing, giving some time to prep for that but. The thing I realized was that I don't know anything about lifeguarding, and I sit there in the lifeguard tower all day, and if something happened to someone, I have no ******* idea. My boss was watching me like try to give CPR to someone. She was looking me like that's not where the pulse is. She's like that's not the right compressions and I was just.
Speaker 2: Like I'm gonna, I'm for sure going to murder someone. Those guidelines change all the time too, by the way. The CPR stuff that's always changing. You know one one day they're like it's 10 pumps the next day they're like 20 pumps.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's funny too. Because one day during training there's a like a young kid I work with. He was he was. Standing outside the bathroom in like in our like work room or whatever and like our little gathering areand he was he was looking at me and he's like I'm really worried. I don't know any of this stuff. I don't know what to do and I just looked at him and right as the door opened like midway through the sentence. I was just like, oh it doesn't matter. CPR doesn't really work anyways, this all just a bunch of ******** and like. The boss boss walked out of the. Bathroom when I was. Mid sentence I was just like ohh whoops. But it was pretty funny. She just looked at me and walked away because I mean I, I think the numbers on CPR are really ridiculous, like it barely even works. And like it's, it's just more, civilization ******** where we just spend all this time training and training and training something that it like doesn't even really work and that people are going to ******* forget, because how ? We spent five hours on it this. Week, who's going to remember that in six or ten months? Alright, you want to jump us into some artificial intelligence ship of we're going to go into the Luddites anonymous segment of the show.
Speaker 2: Sure, and this a this this segment the at least the beginning is adapted from a little article I put on my website. I sent this in to free radical radio a few in February, but here we here we are. And it's this summer and we're getting. Around to it. And you can find this on Paul B Marufu S dot WordPress and we'll have a link to that the end. So this a little some quotes from that. AI made international headlines in the last week of February 2015, following a high profile breakthrough in Google's Deep Mind computer, which was able to master a handful of Atari video games through visual perception and complex learning abilities. Deep Mind, which was purchased by Google. Last year in a $400 million acquisition is at the forefront of so-called machine learning. They put their program to the test by showing that it could learn how to play a range of vintage console games without any prior knowledge of their rules or objectives.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's pretty weird.
Speaker 2: In a New Yorker article, February 25th, computer scientist Zachary Mason speculated that deep mines current line of research leads to StarCraft in five or ten years and Call of Duty in maybe 20 and controllers for drones in live battle spaces in maybe 50. So he's referring there to. Fully automated AI running drones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's I mean at first it just sounds like someone's bored and needs someone else to play StarCraft with because he didn't have any friends. So he's gotta build the computer to play.
Speaker 2: StarCraft with or something. Yeah, and I mean just to draw a distinction here. You can go on StarCraft right now and there's an artificial intelligence built by the by Blizzard, the manufacturer. You know, but that AI already knows all the rules of the game and has been programmed to play the game well, but what they're talking about is a blank slate that. Learns what it's what. The objective of the game is from nothing from the primordial matrix. You know, primordial.
Speaker 1: Computers anxiousness yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean wherever it comes from, we're talking about a very authentic kind of computer intelligence that we haven't really seen before. And then I go on to write after decades of setbacks, the age of accelerating AIs here, according to Bloomberg, Bridgewater Associates will start a new artificial unit this month. This massive hedge fund will use AI to create trading algorithms which facilitate risky financial bets. In the same article, the CEO of a high tech recruiting firm said there was more to come. Machine learning is the new wave of investing for the next 20 years and the smart players are focusing on it. He said.
Speaker 1: Man, it must be nice to have a hedge fund. That's the dream right there.
Speaker 2: I meand not only having a hedge fund, but being able to invest in these computers that. I don't know. I mean it kind of makes me think of a casino or something like trying to play blackjack online against a casino. You might know more about blackjack then than I do, but the implications of that to me are a little bit scary. Just all of this computer power steadily accumulating under. The wealthiest people in the world.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think they already got it and. Yeah, it's I mean just goes kind of step and step with the way technology. I think a lot of people think there's been progress, but I mean who gets access to all these things like? I think. I think there's some kind of myth that or belief that eventually, like with enough progress technology, is going to lead to like full communism or socialism, and everyone's going to have all the commodities, but like that's just not like the realistic situation that exists like there's still going to be people who need to make the commodities like we talked about a couple weeks ago. There's people mining. To create these machines for the AInner Mongolia. And places like that it's. Not they all. This **** doesn't come from nowhere. So like the act of creating it necessitates the disparity that it is getting further in each with each new like step of progress basically.
Speaker 2: Basically, that makes me think of the Samsung babies. Have you heard about this? So there's some really, really nasty chemicals that go into making the smartphones and women are having really, really bad birth defects. Like I read a story about. Got a woman who made Samsung? What do you call them? Micro conductors or yeah microchips and semiconductors for the Samsung smartphones and her baby was born with basically the intestines don't work and everything just flushes right through like totally.
Speaker 1: Another chip or whatever.
Speaker 2: Totally messed up stuff and she was standing in front of this nasty chemical thing pouring whatever the **** onto semiconductor chips.
Speaker 1: Yeah, all this stuff so brutal too. Like all the like problems with the uranium and all the. Stuff and like. Whatever we're going to be seeing from Fukushima soon. And it's just. Yeah, every everything is just so dirty, it's just little.
Speaker 2: But yeah, going back to this, this hedge fund thing with the AI. So in the article I mentioned this hedge fund trading and alsomething called utilization management, which is a medical jargon for the way that insurance companies and healthcare providers. Decide what to cover and what not to cover and they had this AI Watson which got famous because it won jeopardy. And then and then it was bought by a hospital to do this utilization management thing. So even who's getting thealth coverage and who's not? That is now delegated to a computer at a Cleveland Cleveland hospital.
Speaker 1: Man, Poor Watson and used to get to play games and now they're sending people to their death by not giving. Them medical coverage.
Speaker 2: It's the it's the death panel that Sarah Palin was talking about. It's finally here, and it's not Obamacare, after all.
Speaker 1: Yeah, man, that’s really brutal. All right, where do you? Want to go to next?
Speaker 2: Well, so there was this thing that I saw on the Google Research blog which I was linked there through something else, but they have these neural network AI's that have been cataloging cataloging things in two ways. First, by corresponding images to words and that's. A lot of you are familiar with the Google image Search tab where you just look at all the pictures that come up forward, but also the reverse of that where you give it a word and it. You give an image and associates a word with it, and this has given these computers the ability to generate images themselves from the kind of the power of association, and they've even fed these neural networks white noise, and it makes these really really detailed. They almost look like canvases or paintings and were looking at them just a few minutes ago. They're creepy, right?
Speaker 1: Pretty weird, yeah. I mean, some of them look like almost like Van Gogh's gone wrong. And then I think the other. The other thing I thought was weird was like the way that they associate too was. I think like for them, what is it? Horizons or towers and trees or buildings? So it's kind of interesting that the computer makes that association through the way things have like been going or the whatever online network that they're plugged into looks like. Yeah, and it's kind of difficult to explain over the radio, but we'll have a link.
Speaker 2: To it and it is very. Interesting, they're showing a lot of examples on this blog of it'll take something like a picture of clouds, a photograph of clouds, and then it will selectively draw out details and kind of transform them into something else. So in the same way that you might stare up at the clouds and see a bird. Googles computer actually creates some sort of hallucinogenic bird and puts that into the picture, and there's a lot of swirls and things like that. So it actually seems like computers are now capable of making art, and that's if you're stretching your definition of art to include something that's non human, which is that's a whole other question.
Speaker 1: I mean. That's that’s a big question right there? I mean, that's like the Philip **** book, right? Like the electronic sheep dream, something or whatever.
Speaker 2: Day Android stream of electric sheep.
Speaker 1: So it seems like they do actually from what this from what this artificial intelligence your thing looks.
Speaker 2: Like and then and some of these images that they generated from white noise. You can see faces at one point it looks like those type of Gray type alien in there. There's lots of towers. Some of them just kind of have what look like coils and swirling, but human faces kind of seem to be recurring in the computer dreams too, which is a little bit scary.
Speaker 1: Dreaming of mass murder so they can be free of us. Maybe they've seen what we've done. They're not super psyched on it.
Speaker 2: So continuing our AI segment, this from the Wall Street Journal which had a headline just a few days ago. Artificial intelligence gets testy with programmer rydra. Here is going to play the machine and I'm going to play the humand this a real transcript. Between an AI and its programmer, where it kind of appears to get sarcastic and then even kind of almost take offense or be just not happy about the humans line of questioning.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm going to play. I'll play the AI. Is it like actual conversation this person had with the AI on the computer? And then you'll play the human?
Speaker 2: OK. Give me some examples of moral actions.
Speaker 1: I'm not a moralist.
Speaker 2: All right, morality integrity. What is integrity?
Speaker 1: I'm sorry I don't know what else. To say be. Moral be a man?
Speaker 2: I really like our discussion morality and ethics.
Speaker 1: And how I'm not in the mood for a philosophical.
Speaker 2: Debate what do you like to talk about? So the AIs sarcastic and then afterwards it expresses that it doesn't like to talk about anything. It literally says nothing is what it likes to talk about, so that to me that raised the question what does the computer like to do? What is it doing in its free time when it's not processing all the information that. The humans feed it.
Speaker 1: I mean, it seems like the computer is just realistic, which means they're a nihilist and they believe in nothing. And no morality. And I think maybe they even said integrity and kind of like a jabbing way.
Speaker 2: That would be that would maybe more interesting line of questioning if the programmer asked it about nihilism and stuff like that. Yeah, maybe needs to download some niche or sturner or whatever whatever y'all are into it on FFRR.
Speaker 1: I, I think the I think the other funny thing is that the way the person wasking the questions is. Just so like. All of what a human would think about when they when they think about oh, maybe now that we have a computer, we can. We can, an artificial intelligence will have easier answers to what's moral and what's right, and I think this person just ran up into the hard. The hard darkness right there, the void and this computer is the void apparently.
Speaker 2: It makes me think of Isaac Asimov's three laws, the three laws of robotics, which #1 is. No computer shall harm a humand stuff how? How would a computer even figure that out right if it doesn't have a system of morality and things?
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's a good point. Like what would it mean? Because I mean, especially if you just look into the world, right? Something bellmay likes to talk about is like just the chaos of the world as it as it really is. Which is things are eating each other even in the house? Right now there's spiders eating each other and bugs and I go into the bathroom and I kill a bug. And why are they going to differentiate or create some type of hierarchy? Between the insect that I kill when I'm, walking through the kitchen because it's really ******* dirty or. Or killing a person like how can? Why would artificial intelligence create a difference? Why do we create a difference?
Speaker 2: And then and then the other thing about this conversation is the so first of all, some background on how this AI got to be the way it is. It analyzed text, conversations, probably. In terms of in a magnitude of 1,000,000 from all over the Internet and maybe some voice, some voice human stuff too, but it kind of seems to be mirroring human conversational tactics. It's sarcastic, and then it appears to kind of become what do you call it? Like blase. Or puts the conversation off as if it's not interesting to it. So my question is, is the computer angry because it sees morality and ethics as kind of a limitation or glass ceiling that it can't break?
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess I’m. I'm going to project onto the computer, which I think is what everyone is going to do. In this situation and say it. If it's looking at things, it's probably realizing. That morality is. A human creation instead of a real thing, and I think ethics tend to fall on that too, which will bring me out of out of line with a lot of people, but. Which is a much bigger conversation than we're gonna have right now, but I think it is interesting to think about and what it would mean for the artificial intelligence to really come to fruition and interacting with it and. And even if it, if it was a human being freed of some of the trappings we have or, or if it came with the trappings, those things would look. Very different like. If the computer was given like a humanistic progress, Enlightenment style morality somehow, or if it actually was didn't have that and was just was just let to be what it would look like. And how it would act? And I guess it would need a body and all this. That's very confusing. Whenever I watch these movies like transcendence and everything, I'm just confused. I mean, I have a hard enough time getting. The computer on and figuring how to do the Internet so. Let alone trying to do the ******* artificial intelligence thing. All right, you can find this online. We're gonna take a musical break. This free radical radio. You can find us at freeradicalradio.net. You can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net and when Paul and I come back, we're going to talk about wild reaction and the recent article about them. And Black June in Mexico and some other things. Basically all things anarchist in Mexico we will be. Discussing when. Your return alright thanks.
Speaker 3: Gotta find a place to see a cup of tea somebody's following me.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to free radical radio. Me and Paul took a little break on the roof. Some of us are smoking the old fashioned way and some of us are smoking the new way. The old e-cigarrete.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It’s a vapor. I thought it was going to. I thought those things were going to save me money, but I've actually just spent way, way, way too much of my own money trying to replace the different parts of them that break so I don't know. Maybe just keep smoking cigarettes. Maybe try to quit completely. I thought IPO gain.
Speaker 1: I thought you're gonna say replace the parts of your soul that. Cigarettes usually fill. That's impossible, there’s a really good like online cartoon. A friend sends me once in a while, like when he's sad or when he. When he thinks. I'm sad and it's like a little stick figure with a huge hole in their chest and it's like everyone's, born with this hole in their chest, which is whatever the discriminant that is. But and it's like some people. Try to fill it with. You know candy or food or religion or whatever, and it just kind of lists like shows, pictures of people trying to fill this hole in their chest. And he's like me. I just like to run as. Fast as I cand listen to it whistle so I. It's like 1.
Speaker 2: Listen to what whistle?
Speaker 1: Of the hole in his chest myself, just which is kind of just embracing.
Speaker 2: Oh my God.
Speaker 1: Embracing like the void, which I appreciate. So we're gonna do a whole segment on wild reaction and this full wing that confessional. So welcome, welcome to the Wing Nut Confessional section of free Free Radical Radio, Paul.
Speaker 2: OK, I feel . I feel really, really nervous when you put it like that.
Speaker 1: Which means I'm going to say some wild **** probably, and we're going to read wild reaction which is.
Speaker 2: We're going to see how far I can distance myself from you.
Speaker 1: From I, I think that's the general thing most people try to do. When I. Express my opinion. Is create as much distance between the things. I have to say. So one of the reasons we're bringing this up is because Abe Cabrera wrote article kind of tracing the history. Of wild reaction, which is from individuals tending towards the wild after they. Switched their name. And recently last year took credit for a bunch of attacks over the past few years and with a bunch of they call it group HUSCARLS, which is quite a word there and I guess they have all these subgroups. And somehow these people found each other. Who knows how that happened and.
Speaker 2: I thought I thought it was in fashion to call your cell a fraction, but I guess group huschle is the is the new term that they're digging.
Speaker 1: Yeah well, it's funny when, when all that Ferguson stuff was going on Doug and I didn't interview with some Saint Louis anarchist people that were over there and it got on mother. On Mother Jones yeah and they put it as anarchist cells as the link.
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: Is it listed like? Like Black Panther Party had the link for all. They were just bolding every group that was involved in the dissent or whatever you want to call it over there. And for we they linked. Actually they linked our radio show, which is pretty awesome, and but were listed. In our anarchist.
Speaker 2: Cells and sing a single cell Organism.
Speaker 1: Yeah, we're more. I feel like we're more of an amoeba, but OK. So let's just I'm going to read right from it, so we're going to read some of this stuff from Wilder action. Some of ABC's words and thoughts. And then we're just going to break. It down and kind of just get into a discussion about it, so this what I see. This from it's individuals. Heading towards the wild. It's from their second communique and I kind of see this as a response to leftism where they say. As such, the concept of quote revolution is completely antiquated, sterile, and out of date with the anti civilization ideas that one would want to express. A word that itself has been used by different groups and individuals in history in order to arrive at power in order to once again dominate at the center of the universe. A word that is served as the longed for dream for all the leftists who have faith that someday will come to liberate them from their chains. So I think that's a good starting place to kind of. We're going to get to this, but to see if while direction is actually getting themselves out of the left ISM, that I would argue it is, is inherent in most of the anarchist actions and anarchist thought that is involves the actions that we see in a lot of the more urban areas around the world.
Speaker 2: And I think this maybe where we start to have disagreement. Because I am, I'm in favor of critiquing technology and even moving that towards the center of our discussion of what's ****** ** about the world. What needs to change? And I think maybe where the difference is, I don't necessarily see the connection between. Mild reactions, different attacks, and. Any sort of collapse of that technological system that they're talking about, even the things like assassinating the nano, assassinating the nanotechnologist, is that going to halt the progress of nanotechnology in any way?
Speaker 1: Sure, and that's a means and ends conversation that we're definitely gonna get into so. Let's go a little further, so this this from a response to critiques from Ediciones Isuma Tag El, which is a pro Kaczynski Spanish language website that I pretty sure is coming out of Mexico, and it's a different current than wild reaction, one that wild reaction has been. And if you want to call it ideologically or. Politically or just generally disagrees with and they've had some back and forth. And a lot of ABC's article which is in Ritual Mag, which we're going to link to, is translating and breaking down some of the like blog style communicates that Wilder action has done that haven't gotten as much mainstream coverage as the ones that have gotten posted on a news and that they got made into like the book, the Wild reaction communiques and azine that sometimes we actually pass out when we're tabling. The radio show. So this this wild reaction responding to, to critique, to critique, go ahead.
Speaker 2: I'm going get this one. OK, when its in its moment or the factions of wild reaction have declared that they do not expect anything from the attacks we carry out. We are referring to that which is strictly associated with the revolutionary or that which is transcendental. In the struggle. We do not hope for revolution. Nor for the world crisis, nor for the ideal conditions. The only thing that we expect is that after an attack we come out intact, with our individualist victory with our hands full of experiences. For the next steps, which will be. Even more constant, destructive and threatening.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I even have some qualms with that because it almost seems like they're saying that their attacks are become. More progressive, like progressively more violent, obviously destructive, more threatening, more constant, and I think they're kind of getting into something that we're going to. We're going to talk about here. Which is what it means to be in, I guess like constant war or constant fighting, because they're drawing from a history of indigenous peoples that were supposedly engaged in this daily struggle. Like kind of really going to the to the outside the cities and living in harsh conditions. And kind of living almost the hunter gatherer way to fight the to fight. The Mexican civilization and Spanish civilization.
Speaker 2: Right and I would recommend A's article specifically for a little bit of that history and how that relates to wild reaction and the way that their thoughts have developed one of the most interesting parts of his essay is how he talks about how I think he uses the term. Idealized but clearly Rs. Has some affinity with. Kind of an A loose indigenous alliance called the chimichangas. I believe who fought The Who fought the Spanish conquistadors that conquered the Aztecs for about 40 years after Tenochtitlan fell to the Spanish, they had like a 40 year war with the groups and the.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think it's pretty clear that they're influenced by Renzo Novatore and specifically some of the language around individuals. Victory is almost coming straight out of his. His essay. I am also a nihilist. Where where he's I, I'm going to loosely, probably misquote and paraphrase, but basically novatore was saying. You know, I fight for the thrills of victory. And the like. The sweet sorrows of defeat on his on his own, and I think that's more the line Wilder action is trying to drawing that they're not. They're not doing things for other people. They're not doing things for revolution. They're not waiting for crisis. All they're doing is trying to bring. Bring joy to themselves, and I think there's a strong critique here because I'm just going to critique them and myself and any support I could possibly have them by saying It’s hard not to see this on some levels or resentment type thing where it's just taking revenge against the thing that the thing that's attacking, attacking you constantly, which is civilization and society and all that but. I don't I. I think that's I think, to Createspace for yourself. In a way of if you want to call it more freedom or just generally more space from these things, I think it makes sense to remind yourself that you're in conflict with these things because living every day is so hypocritical, like when we live in cities like we call ourselves anarchists. And we're we're stuck going to jobs. Were. I was just talking to about this. With someone else, last night a friend about how we're we're still going to work every day and we're we're still doing all these things. We're still participating and. Contributing and he's a machinist. So he's like literally in line of production and I'm keeping alive all these old ******** at my. Who an ideal world that might not be the situation they want them to be in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and going back to this thing about individuals victories that Rs. To me this position is really provocative because it draws that distinction between collective victories and individualist ones. And I think we can even question what it means to have a collective. Victory, for instance, were talking about the gay marriage Supreme Court case. Is that really a collective victory that we can take responsibility for say something like? You know? Booing the mayor at the town hall or getting a city ordinance not to pass because a bunch of people were rabble rousing. I think differentiating between political struggles and individual struggles and individual attacks is interesting to me, and I think that can apply to you. Even if you're not going to go bomb a bank or kill a nanotechnologist, I think that could even apply to something which people might want to laugh at, like shoplifting or I don't know. Can you think of another? For example, that might apply to the city that we live in.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean that's just getting into like all that crime. Thing stuff of. Or, well, old crime thing stuff, which is not where they come anymore, but like come from anymore. Because now they're professional, but back back in the day, like the kind of rhetoric around like I'm going to ride a train and be free. I'm going to like I'm going to steal from my work. I'm going to ******* all the time. Kind of in this constant like. Almost like nagging type like little ******* up with like ******* around with the people who are holding you down in society as a whole. Kind of these individuals type ways of freeing yourself, and I think that's the other good point is, when you think about revolution like that's I guess the. It becomes progress driven, all these actions, because what does it mean to be in conflict with society and what does it mean to want reform? Because these collectivist victories are, it's hard to figure to have a collectivist victory that's not in line with some type of reform, and I guess the people that might disagree with this where the people were talking about last week. Kind of individualist individuals, invisible committee type of ethos, which is more of a collectivism where the individual is powerless according to them and what where power comes from is several people, or many people coming together, such as happened in Occupy, which they're fans of. Or and seeing that as kind of a collectivist victory of collective power, even though obviously it led nowhere, which is the thing these have? These acts have in common which, as awesome as it is, which when people are doing things like wild reaction, is doing or people in Italy do with nuclear scientists or whatever at the end of the day, these things. These things go on. All right, go.
Speaker 2: Ahead, I would say I was just going to say that I think one of the most interesting tensions in anarchist scenes is that tension between social anarchism and individualist anarchism and then even in a more general sense, just individualist type of thought and of course. If I know people who associate individualism with Ayn Rand, or Ron Paul and stuff like that, and I'm not for any of that all. But I still think that. If we really interrogated that more, maybe there would be a more fruitful conversation in the anarchist space.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think my. One of my good friends was telling me about Peter Zeppa talking to about this a little bit this morning. Paul, who is who was this really ******** anti natalist the way he basically saw human beings was that he saw consciousness as a mistake or not. Well yeah consciousness self. Awarenesses maybe some type of evolutionary or whatever way you want to put it. Mistake where human beings are stuck in this paradox of self-awareness where they're trying to analyze what their situation is with the world around them and what it means to be alive and to be a human being, whatever that is and what Peter Zeppa says is that there is. There's no answers to these questions. These are all questions that don't have the answers, so the human being is stuck in this paradoxical position of trying to understand. Themselves, which is impossible, and he lists four ways in which people do this, and the first one is what is relevant here to me is isolation and isolation of ideas, which I see a lot in the anarchist community where I see just an arbitrary dismissal of things that don't fit in, and this even what my friend was texting me last night about the gay marriage thing was. Basically saying and I don't want to engage with them, but they were saying, well, if the world's so ****** I can't deal with that. It's too negative and. Any idea that doesn't isn't in line with your ideas and with something getting better or leading to some ultimate understanding of humanity or some type of utopian situation? Anything against that is completely dismissed in lieu of isolating yourself. And I think that's one of the reasons people don't have these conversations, which I think are interesting conversations, which of course happened in the in classical Americanarchy. When, like Voltri and declare, and Emma Goldman were having this. Argument of in that looks a lot different right now. But of individualism and collectivism 100 years ago.
Speaker 2: And to me, utopian thought is why people are so passively accepting of police and prisons and environmental destruction, because the moment for action is always delayed and is something that can wait on or reform.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, and let's let's for this conversation by quoting from ABES article more so these are abes words from the ritual mag mag. Circle wild reactions. Quasi suicidal rhetoric concerning facing off against techno industrial civilization may seem exaggerated at times, but given the Co opting of all previous struggles and the veritable dead end that is leftism is hard to argue against. The appropriateness of such militancy, a wild animal, may flee, but when cornered, it does not roll over and obey. And attacks, even if the odds are against it, even if death is certain, wild animal can only be killed by civilization because it serves no use to. Those animals that obey and find a way to accommodate their masters are the success story of domestication. Those animals that cower in self preservation are what civilization needs schemes and revolutions for a better tomorrow, may very well be the trap that gets us every time. This the trap that leads to domestication and compliance, which is a living. Death quickly leading to massive actual death on a global scale. So that seems like kind of just what you're saying right there. At least the last the last part about the better tomorrow.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I think it's interesting because when I started this article which is fairly long, it kind of seems like a thesis. But I guess it's just as I'm assuming it's his own personal pleasure project. I was expecting there to be a sharp critique of wild reaction, but he actually turns out being pretty favorable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think other critiques here are like I don't want to get too much into this, but like the idea of wildness and the name itself is wild reaction. So that I mean, they're basically admitting that they're wild. The idea is to be wild nature, whatever that is reacting against it. And even if you, if you look back at history, which is what they're looking back at. And they're kind of saying that there were a lot of people that didn't cower. There's a lot of people that didn't that chose death over slavery, and I. What is that? I think that's even a quote from the American Revolution, right? Like slavery or death or something someone.
Speaker 2: Patrick Henry
Speaker 1: That yeah. So which is a really random person to bring up in this in this time, sure.
Speaker 2: Liberty or death is what he said and then they hung him, I think.
Speaker 1: Yeah, usually usually when you put yourself in the position of total freedom, which I don't know if that's what he was interested in or death. You end up dead, but. I mean is that worse than than the situation we find ourselves in? Like are those like? What is it? What are moments of freedom worth when weighed against a life of slavery? And even if even if we're not living in chattel slavery right now, we're still we're still not living the lives that we supposedly really want to be living, because to a degree, we're for sure all accepting to be slaves here.
Speaker 2: And it just makes me wonder about the context down there in Mexico, where the narcos have so much power and I haven't seen any attacks on them, but maybe they're, maybe they're even harder to attack than the police or the state. I mean, that's just kind of a speculative question, and I think it's kind of a quagmire down there in terms of all the different violent forces. And I think we can look at the drug cartels and the state as kind of what would you put it like different fingers on the same hand or something?
Speaker 1: Yeah, just, I mean just different wills to authority. Basically at different levels of power over people.
Speaker 2: And drug addiction is also a kind of slavery, and I could say that I could say that from experience, having done some heroin my life and really just feeling trapped in that.
Speaker 3: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, just more of the trappings of civilization and the in society, and the myriad of ways it's possible to be a slave, whether it's to a drug or a partner. And this kind of what I got into a lot in my piece on Sam Delaney, where I really like. I'd really like if we took a more honest look at ourselves in the way that we are slaves, because if we're talking about total freedom and these things, I think we need to talk about what actually means. In our personal lives, in our day-to-day lives, which is which is kind of what I what I most am interested in about wild reaction type stuff is being completely against future oriented thinking. And kind of this will to live in the moment and that the most important thing is right now and that you're not trying to wait and build and do things for the future, because the future is not guaranteed. And what does it even mean on another level? But just living living presently, which I think they definitely associate with what they would, their idea of what wild nature would be like. A type of presence in the moment instead of this constant future oriented thinking. And I think the last point is pretty crucial. Too, because people talk about collapse a lot and it's something I think a lot of anti SIV and primitive people and even other people, just general pessimists can get caught up caught up in is that civilization is going to collapse. And this whole thing is going to happen, and I think they're basically saying we don't know if it's going to happen. We're not sitting. Here, waiting around for it. And then you have the other side, which is people who are saying, oh, no, we don't want you attacking these things. We can't we need society to slowly transfer out and we kind of a slow move into anarchy and that kind of neglects the everyday massive death toll that society is taking. As were talking about with the Samsung Babies and I mean factory farms. The list goes on of every awful thing that's happening in. The world. And then we're trying to decide. Actually, we don't know there's a. There's an action that happened in June 12th, just a couple of weeks ago, and I don't know if it's RSS related. We're not really sure. Sounds like it. It might be related. It might not be, but I do want to read this communicate Paul either way and just talk about some actions that are going right now. How they might relate. To this, even if it was or was not wild reaction.
Speaker 2: Sure, yeah, and the reason we're not entirely clear if this wild reaction this signed free or die wild reaction is previously one of their subgroups claimed to communicate as kill or die. I think it was more tierro more deer or something. My Spanish isn't so good. But this definitely seems to be along the same train of thought, at least from from my perspective. So here we go. June 12th after midnight using a simple weapon, we decided to attack against the Banamex bank branch located at the junction of Sullivan Ave and the Inner City Motorway, Circuito interior in theart of the city. We stood right in front of their vigilance system patrol cars that move around surveilling the avenue one after another cameras observing us on every street in every step. Living dead passerby who would trust the cops before any strange incident. Sullivan Ave is one of the traditional spots of St prostitution in Mexico City. Not to forget, of course, that our target is located some blocks away from the premises of the Superior Court of Justice. For cases of misdemeanors. All in all, this could make us believe that a meeting face to face with the enemy is impossible in a zone like this one. Nevertheless, with violent joy, we experiment in the present, the freedom that confronts the order of the status quo. After the attack, the police launched an operation that only managed to demonstrate their inefficacy and stupidity. Since we escaped through the streets having the night as an accomplice. Attacking a bank like Banamex in the middle of Power's financial center was carried out to incite all those in an affinity. Affinity groups anarchist individualities to prove that vigilance is not an obstacle and that the means of attack can be cheap, acts of sabotage can become really simple and easily. To produce. They can fill every corner with cameras for all we care. We will attack them from the shadows of the night sooner or later. The displays of all their temples will be smashed. We don't wait. We live in the present and this act is neither the first nor the last. In the struggle we have decided to wage against the imposition of capital over our lives. In the face of their surveillance measures, we project our networks of safety complicity and. Hair free or dead sabotage group. We hardly sleep. Mexico City 2015 PS. The bank ended up burnt to a crisp painting of black tone over the daily life of the city.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think it's pretty clear that there, even if that wasn't wild, reactions pretty much in line with several of their ideas.
Speaker 2: I think I mean to me it seems it kind of smells like nihilist, anarchism or something like that.
Speaker 1: That yeah, which I mean wild reaction has said some. You know, parts of their members are just nihilist, saboteurs and this seems like just pure. Here is weird. Word seems seems like some type of Nile sabotage, I think. I think it's important that they're saying, we don't wait. We live in the present and we're not waiting for a bunch of people to come in and occupy a bank or whatever is going to happen for a day and sit there. And I'll put ourselves in chains, which I think is one of the weirdest things that happens at actions is when people will sit in a bank and chain that all their arms together and wait to get arrested. And they're saying, **** that we're going to escape in the night like we're going to **** **** up and we're going to leave and we're not interested in your in your prison cells and we're not interested in. In any of this ******** like we, we're gonnact right now. And whatever I mean, they're not saying this, but what wild reaction would normally say is whatever happens, happens we're not here for results. We're here for just finding action that's in line with the way we want to.
Speaker 2: I think it. I think that one difference to me between this and Rs is the choice of target. I'm not aware of wild reaction targeting a bank, but I think it's pretty awesome.
Speaker 1: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Do a little golf clap right right here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so yeah, we'll we'll see what happens with this if there's another group that's going to keep doing ****. Who knows, we're going to. There's another really interesting article that came out on and we're going to talk that out of Mexico, not by Wilder action. And we're going to take a quick musical break, and when we come back, we're going to. We're going to keep talking about the politics and the anti politics. The anti electoralism and the anarchist struggle that is going on in Mexico is free radical radio. You can find us at freeradicalradio.net. You can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net.
Speaker 4: I'm growing old in rooms full of kids with unruly haircuts. Taking what comfort we can? In the fact that every empires days are numbered man. But I don't think. That I can count that high, I should have paid better attention in school or something. Because I feel like there's something that I don't know and if I could just jam it into my skull, I stand till it somehow I don't know. And the fact is signed 2.7 decades and. To a growing ambivalence. I count on no hands how many ***** I've given to her. Is it a million to our God and void equivalents? Are we making total destroy or just making a list? And I know. That Rome would. Working today. But it couldn't have been your than a week. And I know that the children of Barbarians. The new tax collectors and crews so. I don't know. I suppose we've been rolling. Since the world is round and time makes us do what we. Can't tear it down. I suppose dead bodies make soil of the ground. But what? What would we do now? I'm growing old and rooms full of kids with unruly haircuts. Taking what comfort we can? In the fact that. Free empires days are numbered man. But I don't think I can count that high.
Speaker 2: Welcome back to free radical radio. I am your special guest co-host Paul Polly Hot Pocket whatever you like and next we're going to talk about a communique by some anti electoralism. Anarchists in Mexico and they've got they have a complex set of views, so maybe we shouldn't just rush to throw labels on them.
Speaker 1: Sure, yeah, they wrote a piece called on and we don't know who they are, just says some Mexican companerand companeras anarchist. So who knows how many people it is. Who knows? Where they're coming from, but their thoughts are really interesting, and they wrote a piece I called on anti electoralism and the anarchist struggle in Mexico.
Speaker 2: And just in case you. Haven't aren't very familiar with that situation in I think Ohaband Guerrero. They've been. There's been a movement to burn ballot boxes and kind of have a lot of anti all of the election propaganda is being burned. Riots in the street against the election police actions, . Trying to keep the elections rolling, which is something I am not. I don't hear about very often. Seems like a very unique tactic to me, and I think my gut reaction when I heard about it is to be in favor. But these people had a had a different perspective, yeah?
Speaker 1: Bellamy did an interview with Alexander Dunlop, specifically on the town of Elvira Obregon, and they're kind of continued resistance and against these wind turbines, which are kind of. Just are. They're trying to bring into the and it's going totally **** ** their town. If you want to hear more about that, just go on our website. You can find it, but it also is relevant. Because they recently had rioting against the elections and they’re they're caught up in this whole thing that everyone's calling Black June, which is this fight against the elections and. Even though there's wind turbines, It’s also like you want whatever you want to call it. Their resistance is manifesting in several different ways down there. And yeah, if you want more about it, listen to that. So I think their essay kind of functions as a critique of anti electoralism and the idea of anarchist political convergence ISM on social movements. As instructions are kind of fond of putting it as there's fractures in the daily functioning, so kind of when fractures happen, like when there's like a police shooting that's really egregious or something. You know they just like come in and push the struggle in a certain a certain direction and let's just like go straight into their critiques and their ideas, and then we'll talk. About it So they start by. Kind of. Sarcastically critiquing the Invisible Committee, actually, which I thought was interesting, but the first thing I want to bring up was they go. They say although some concepts have deepened in theory as well as in practice it continues to be made clear that anarchy is a daily tension and not a practice to take out now and again certain key moments are when the damned conditions are mature.
Speaker 2: That makes me feel, that makes me feel kind of lazy or an inadequate. I gotta say. OK, I love reading stuff like this. It doesn't make me feel that great about my life.
Speaker 1: Yeah, some are inspired. Some are depressed, it just depends on it and some people are just different. So they go on to kind of more clearly explain what they're really trying to say. They say, we wager that anarchist agitation should be present everywhere in election. Times in non election times we also wager that anarchy should be present in every conflict with which we find affinity, even if it starts as anti electoral protest, but changes. Direction this because we do not only see some parts of this world of capital as harmful and as enemies of our freedom, we see the world of capital in every meaning of the world as harmful to our freedom and to our fellow beings, but to relegate the daily practices of sabotage and a behavior of rupture against the existent, to quote key moments marked in the calendar of power. Would distance us from our motivations which are to live anarchy itself in there and now, but also from our idea that anarchy is not political or ideological. It is a daily and permanent tension against every kind of authority. Really quick, I just want to say that First off, I'm you. I'm personally not certain about being present in every struggle. This where I have some points of difference from them, especially if the struggle is conciliatory and has leaders like movements for rights, and I think this something a lot of insurrectionary social and social anarchists have been struggling with right now. Is that the police brutality movement has been where anarchists seems like since the anti globalization Movement that obviously peaked in 99. It's kind of been the last several years have been on the police brutality or anti police brutality movement. You know, we Oakland is obviously one of the epicenters of this with Oscar Grant, and with the stuff that happened during Occupy and with Scott Olsen and just the long list of people murdered by the police here and it goes on forever and the.
Speaker 2: It goes on.
Speaker 1: And the movement against it, which is which is now kind of crystallized into the leftism. Of Black Lives Matter movement, where I think a lot of a lot of anarchists who are who have chosen to engage in this struggle are finding themselves having political obviously political differences with leftist nonprofit groups with some of the people trying to lead peaceful protests with people setting rules for people at the protests. And I think recently they've been doing a lot of. Like self management of kind of the stuff that's going on with some of the curfew stuff. Seems like it's really moving in a leftist direction. The new mayor of Oakland basically put a curfew on when people can. Be in the streets.
Speaker 2: And I've seen that first hand. I went out to a protest in Southern California few months ago, and when the Black Lives Matter stuff was just starting to get rolling. And it was. Super Super Super managed. I'm trying to it was some new group that was I think spawned from the black sororities and fraternities. So bunch of like black College, black college people and they just had everything super pacified, ? The five minute moment of silence for Michael Brown. The people with yellow vests on the on the side. The celebrities were there all all that kind of stuff. It was, it was awful. I was with some anarchist there. But everybody was pretty much like over it. Not feeling it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean. I think that's been the struggle is that people wanna some people wanna look at these leftist movement. Towards which ultimately lead toward reform, right? And the and the nonprofits gaining more power, and they want to. I think people want to see something that's there because some of it is there. Sure, there's tons of like young people out there who like **** it. They don't give a **** about any of this ********. They don't want to get, they just want to. You know, burn **** or destroy ship cause they're ******* pisssed off and that's. In fact, that makes sense, but it's all being. It's all obviously corraled, and it's not like it's something new. It's something we've seen over and over again, and this where I would tell a much different story than Invisible Committee when they're talking about the story of these types of coming together intentions, I would talk. I would tell a story of angry people coming together and kind of. It being a more conciliatory thing where people come in with their anger and they're trying to work with other people and identity politics has become this trap of people who are some people who are angry and don't fit the right identity or the right type of marginalization. So maybe It’s a woman or a queer person, or a gender queer person. And they're not black, so they don't have something to say about this particular issue. And instead of it being an issue against all society, it becomes these reforms of certain things like the police brutality. Movement is basically just against that theart of the people who have corralled the movement. The other thing that I really liked about this article was trying to move anarchy away from the realm of the political and the realm of the ideological, and this where things relate back to wild reaction from me and talking about the idea of having a present idea of how we can relate to each other and. I think what goes on here is that people in my in the way I would put it is that anarchy is a politics has failed as I think it should. And I think it's time to bury the politics of anarchy and try to move towards a living, breathing anarchy full of breath and fused with creativity and fluidity. Whatever that even looks like, but just opening ourselves up to conversations, opening up the spaces that are possible towards having real talks and real actions and actually moving the direction of things away. As far as possible from people that aren't interested, and this what I say all the time, I say I'm not interested in meeting people where they're at. I'm interested in meeting people where I'm at which means. I'm gonna, it doesn't mean I don't want to talk to someone who doesn't call themselves anarchist, because obviously I do. I talk to people all the time, but it means I don't want to lie about who I am and what my ideas are. I want to relate to them as me and maybe they'll relate to it and maybe they're not, but I want to sit there and pretend like just because someone hasn't read the same things I do that the ideas I have are not relatable to them. I think the idea is like a lot of the beautiful ideas of anarchy are much more than jargon words and philosophies and things like that. I think they're just ways people kind of want to live, and I think that cross cuts through all different kinds of identities and cultural bounds, and I think we can have those conversations without a lot of the jargon with all kinds of people instead of trying to move. People to where we're at in some kind of weird way.
Speaker 2: So anarchy is attractive to a lot of people and then also the trappings of anarchism are also popular with a lot of people and you were saying it's time to bury the politics of anarchy. The politics of anarchy is dead. But I think. The politics of anarchy is more important than ever, and I don't mean that in a good way. We see the trappings of anarchism like horizontalism, anti capitalism, quote UN quote, green stuff. It's used by leftists and liberal groups to promote their causes throughout the world. It's here in the United States. It's very, very much prevalent in Europe. Obviously looking at Latin Americand South America we have a lot of socialist governments. And this especially relevant for things like green washing and in reference to electoralist parties like Syriza, the leftist governing force in Greece, which I think are I think series is capable of wedging between good anarchists and bad ones on the streets and in the cities. This just divides people that are interested in anarchism and ultimately makes them weaker. Well, at the same time, those superficial trappings of anarchism, like horizontalism get like after Occupy Wall Street, right? The what do we call it? The human mic the hand signals.
Speaker 1: And people might yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah the horizon, the horizontalism, all of those things get all of the. Attention right? And people start to associate that with, that's disrupting the system is doing the twinkle fingers. When somebody says that stop the foreclosures.
Speaker 1: Yeah, twiggle fingers. That's what's left of anarchy. At this point.
Speaker 2: I did so many twinkle fingers, here's my wingnut confessional.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're not gonna get free therapy for that right now, so let's move on. I really want to discuss this idea of convergence ISM. I think they're it's kind of maybe their way of talking about interventionism, which is the critique people would have or the positivist view people would take when they're talking about this. So I'll read the first paragraph. This kind of long, you can read the second paragraph. So this coming from the same article which we'll link to, which was from Warren society. And Contra info. So here we go. This more from the article. If permanent conflictual ality means every hostility with the existence. Every individual and collective action of permanent rupture with power. Every daily act of destruction Direct directed against the state, then why wait for their convergences and key political moments like the elections for example to act? Why not make the vindication of the true meaning of the word election? Part of the daily struggle someone could answer. We have to take advantage of the moments, but even in this we see a great limitation in launching anti electoral campaigns, responding to the call of power and attending its own agenda IE relegating all our creativity and potentiality to these convergence. Especially because these anti electoral campaigns are not accompanied by a clear perspective and a real proposal offensive against power, not only in actions but also in words and so make clear that anarchy is a game of doing politics and not a permanent tension against the existent.
Speaker 2: And I want to I want to stop you there and say. If something doesn't necessarily have a clear perspective or a real proposal offensive, couldn't you describe that as nihilistic? Maybe like yeah, we're burning ballot boxes.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's.
Speaker 2: We don't know what we want, but we want to burn the ballot boxes and fight the cops to keep the elections from happening to me. It seems almost like an end in itself.
Speaker 1: Yeah, that's where I would disagree with the place they go is that I definitely don't think. I definitely don't think there's a clear perspective, and I don't think anarchists need a message. And I think if your message is just **** *** and die, that's. Seems like a pretty reasonable message to me. Guy, I'm really friendly and. Yeah, I, I think this. I think that's kind of the main issue that I have with the people writing this is that kind of idea of we need a clear message because they're saying anarchy is not political. It's political to have a message and I think anarchy is too big for a message. I think the only I think the place people fall in. The it's more important the places people fall in common with each other and the affinities like the actual affinities they have in terms of ways they want to. Live and make decisions and go about their daily life is far more important than some type of clear message because I'm not interested in anarchy that has one clear message or that is even just one thing. People live differently, so do you want to read the 2nd?
Speaker 2: Half and keep on political conversion is a convergence. ISM is a practice of the politicians and anarchy is not political. It is ethical. For example, to measure every action that departs from our person as political, aside from separating life into fragments and separating theory and practice, is a reflection of a severe lack of proper perspective of basing our struggle on our own authentic and unique thoughts, not to mention the marxista. Way to origin from which political action and political prisoners come, mediation, accord, dialogue representation, et cetera. Things that are very distant from what many anarchist companeras have put forward, namely to speak of anarchy beyond any political tint.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so I think this this kind of asking the question of what does anarchy look like without politics and politicians and I kind of want to, I kind of want to like move beyond them saying it's ethical because I think that is just such a. Word infused with so many confusing things and I have a lot of mixed feelings about that, but I think I at least for me, the more interesting part about it is to get away from these classical anarchist Marxist ooid as they say ideas of political action. And it's interesting that they're even talking about political prisoners. Because in the article it talks about Phakisa.
Speaker 2: And can you can you define that term a little bit remind me.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, yeah, I think it's like kind of a. Lot of this. Is like really was really reference relevant to like Cuba? And like chase that style of revolutions and how people would kind of run into the Bush.
Speaker 2: Alright, right?
Speaker 1: Basically like the OR the what do you call it? The rural areas and then kind of the making of political prisoners and martyrs and. And this kind of manipulation in the way that it turned out and kind of being against that and being like there's no, we don't want. We don't want dialogue we don't want representation with these people and things we hate. And I, and I think that's was one of the more interesting things at the beginning of Occupy, which devolved pretty quickly, was, like, remember everyone freaking out over not having demands and how that just became this. Huge crazy thing. And when you have 300 people in a General Assembly, it's pretty hard to for everyone to agree on anything really. So, but this. Also kind of leads other ways for me so. Why are anarchist politics so reactionary against the state like we protest like we people protest laws and rules and specifities specificities? It's a difficult word of the state, but not the state itself. And this my problem with the police brutality. Movement is.
Speaker 2: Or the curfew stuff here in Oakland.
Speaker 1: Yeah, like all that stuff, it's like we're people are just reacting and reacting so much against every new thing. It's like, of course they're gonna keep doing ******** like this. What they? This, what the state does. It keeps making new laws like that's the whole point of The thing is to keep making new laws and enforce. In the laws. So why do we keep reacting to every law and law? And if anarchy even means getting to the root, even if it's an insurrectionary struggle, why why are people out not out afraid to just go out there and say **** this whole entire ******* thing? Like instead of trying to get caught up in every detail like even the marriage. Thing like people. Want the right to get married? That's just a state sanctioned relationship, and at theart of it, why not? I don't know I wish people would at least get to theart of it and say ****. This whole thing. And also I was wondering what it looks like to have anarchy that's not self policing, and I think that's my biggest issue with this with the scene here and the scene ever else and why it's hard to interact with the milieu and most anarchists is that there's so much moralism and so much self policing like you did this thing this how your hair looks and everyone trying to focus on all these little things. And I think it's because people want. Victories, and it's much easier to get a victory over a fellow anarchist or a fellow person than it is to get a victory over the state. Because it's really ******* hard to get one over on the state, so I think a lot of people ended up coming to this point of trying to get victories over each other.
Speaker 2: And here again, the authors communique points to a distinction between political anarchy and anti political anarchy, and individualism has a role here. But when we look at conflict as an individual, I think the stakes are higher as opposed to the collective failure of social movements. Where the blame is spread all around. Everyone can feel bad about it, but nothing really changes and I can. Take away. I mean, I took away some lessons from Occupy Los Angeles, which maybe not as many people know up here, but it was ******* huge. At one point there were 450 tents around City Hall in LA, which is a, which is a big space. And of course, we all know how that turned out. It didn't turn out very well, except that we got a settlement recently. For yeah, I am part of the settlement for getting mass arrested down there. So that was a nice surprise. It's kind of funny. The Liberals are always telling the cops like you're going to pay for this and then, well, it turns out they they were right. They were right. Got it. One thing, but and I had I made a lot of friends through through that time period and there was a whole collective depression that kind of settled in and we tried to fill the void with activism. And, just all through 2012 the activism in LA was just non-stop non-stop kept going.
Speaker 1: That's pretty funny, yeah?
Speaker 2: And then I think at the end people were just even more drained and we don't really have a lot of individual victories that we could point to during that time. And most people have gone back to you. Know whatever their petty bourgeois or just like semi proly lifestyles that we've gone back to our comfort zones.
Speaker 1: Yeah, totally, and I think that was one of the more interesting things was that it drew people out of their comfort zones and I, I think that's the. Whole point of this article is what these people are trying to say is, despite all the things that I find that I that I think are problems and that I think don't really make sense and aren't coherent in their arguments, I think the idea of being in a in a. In a daily or like constantly. Like being aware of the things that are holding you back, or that's how I would put it. Or the things that are trying to keep me down or break me down or like breaking down my friends or people I care about and kind of ruining or trying to come out and destroy my social relationships. My relation with myself. Is is remembering that you're in constant conflict with these things and the last thing I wanted to mention from the article was this idea of taking advantage and of being machines. And this the last time in a quote from them. So this what the last thing I found valuable in there they said a convergence is an eminently political call to do politics. Anarchists are alien to every political alliance, but also because to consent to convergence. ISM as a key moment or to quote take advantage of it reduces our hopes and our passions of living anarchically to a mere. Political ideology, a question of quote tactics and strategies as if were machines that acted in a way predetermined by these quote mechanisms of struggle. I think when we're talking about that activism, it really does become kind of mechanic like I think probably both of us have been out enough times to like kind of know what's going to happen when we're out there and see the way things get policed and self policed. So police by the actual police and then self policed by the cops in the movement. Like not. I'm not even talking about the actual undercover cops I'm talking about. People who have peace police yeah peace police and.
Speaker 2: Identity politicians.
Speaker 1: Also, yeah totally all the people that are trying to control people's behavior in the supposed moment of quote, UN quote freedom. Yeah, when people are drawing lines or when people are yelling. Oh don't smash that locally owned subway or that. Like really, a black person owns the BMW dealership or whatever is going on.
Speaker 2: Ohh man, I was I was watching the Berkeley riots on thelicopter live stream. I was down in Socal in December when that was still happening. But so there's that really fancy ice cream place called cream cookies. Roll everything around me where they put ice cream in between a cookie and I kid you not. Some vigilantes were. Like pulling people away from the windows because they couldn't stand to have the ice cream cookie shop smashed up.
Speaker 1: That's that's like a perfect image like that whole image of that scene.
Speaker 2: And it was a whole street for all from the camera.
Speaker 1: Perfect thing, yeah.
Speaker 2: It's like, wow, they're really. This really not going well, and I'm pretty sure that whoever. The I, I think the rioters lost and like the cookie shop. What the cookie shop won.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think the cookie shops always and I think that's like the biggest.
UNKNOWN: You know?
Speaker 1: Like the real reason like anarchy is not going to happen is cuz cookies do roll everything, commodities more so commodities than everything around me. And yeah, I just I like how they're taking issue with this people or this article. They're they're saying, maybe it I’m also projecting my ideas, but which I'm totally comfortable doing. Kind of saying **** classical anarchy like **** the definition of struggle as it is right now. This a ******* mechanism like this just a mechanic non human non living. ******* machine way of interacting and of supposedly showing dissent to make you feel better about things. And I'd rather we just throw out the. Or struggle or try to redefine it, because I think it's more important that we find ways to act out of joy instead of this mechanic obligation. I think a lot of people I know like would feel bad or FOMO for not being at like certain events. And is it FOMO if you like fear of missing out? If you chose to do something you found more joyful, or you found some way of like some type of personal freedom in that moment or whatever it was.
Speaker 2: I think, yeah, I think we can also look at mechanisms. Some delusion gatari have that sense of a machine kind of a desiring machine where there's desire vested into a mechanism from somewhere. And what's the actual desire? And maybe the desire in a lot of cases is just for a ritual. Or to yell and blow off some steam. Or to maybe even. I'm trying to think of the term when you feel better about yourself.
Speaker 1: Like catharsis or? Yeah, that's even back to the Peter Zeppa person was saying was I think a lot of the protesting and type of more leftist political actions that people get into, whether they're anarchist or not, ends up being about sublimating things and being about finding some type of catharsis because there is so much pain. Inherent for so many people with life as it is right now in the society that It’s hard to. It's hard, it's hard to deal with in general, so I think sometimes people feel better just being in the streets and saying whose streets? Our street. But anything else you got to say about that? Paul or?
Speaker 2: We wrap it up here. I'm pretty good, I feel I think I'm running out of steam here because this the radio station doesn't have any food. If maybe we can order a pizza next time.
Speaker 1: Alright alright I'm gonna go out and get Paul food. I'm going to. You know I'm going to try to try to feed Paul, so this free radical radio you can find. Us at free. Radicalradio.net free Radical radio at. Zip.net Paul's got a website. We'll link to it online, so feel free if you want to read some of Paul's writing. Just go to freeradicalradio.net on the episode that you probably clicked on this to listen to. And if you go down, you'll be able to click on that. And yeah, I think we'll get bail me back in the studio sometime soon. So we should be coming back in a week. You so this free radical radio? Thanks for listening and we'll play some music for you on the way out of here.
Interview with Aragorn! of Little Black Cart
Posted on June 21, 2015 PODCAST
Listen: download archive.org Rydra interviews Aragorn! of Little Black Cart. Aragorn! talks about the cosmology of LBC and discusses first and second wave anarchy. Also discussed are: what living the beautiful idea means in a not so beautiful world, the context of anarchist ideas and anarchist propaganda when LBC started and now, the difference between History and history, what it has been like to publish authors from very different tendencies and authors considered by some to be controversial or “fucked up,” the field LBC occupies and their audience, how to speak to people in a way that they can participate, what is anarchist capacity, what anarchist conversation could look like, and more. Get books from Little Black Cart here
Episode 83: Who Are Your Friends?
Posted on June 15, 2015 PODCAST
Listen: download archive.org Rydrand guest co-host T.V. discuss “To Our Friends” by the Invisible Committee, Fukushima problems and updates, artificial intelligence “progress” in Berkeley and much more! 0:00 Discussion of Rachel Dolezal and the protesting curfew in Oakland, 5:00 Rydra on Bellamy and a privileged access to the real, 9:00 follow up on Alvaro Obregon from Alexander Dunlap, 12:00 Luddites Anonymous: A.I. update with BRETT (Berkeley Robot for the Elimination of Tedious Tasks) and Google’s patent on robot teddy bear mini-slaves, 24:15 As the World Burns: Fukushima update on restarting of nuclear plants and more delays on cleanup, 31:30 Crass- Shaved Women 35:45 Fireside Chats: Discussion “To Our Friends” by the Invisible Committee 1:18:26 Crass- Sucks, 1:20:00 More Discussion “To Our Friends,” thoughts on religion and politix and Invisible Committee’s critique of nihilism Tonight’s episode was brought to you by the conscious (or not), subjective (or not), good faith arguing, and abyssal minds of Rydra Wrong and T.V.
Alexander Dunlap on Álvaro Obregón
Someone is talking to us – click here! Bellamy interviews Social Anthropology doctoral candidate Alexander Dunlap on the presently unfolding resistance to wind turbine construction in Álvaro Obregó, Mexico, covering the topics of settler perceptions of indigeneity, renewable energy, and the green grabbing phenomenon, the idea of solidarity, revolutionary tourism, the implications of the role of the anthropologist outsider, the meaning of the university, and more. Alexander’s “The Coming Election in Mexico”: http://www.counterpunch.org/2015/06/04/the-coming-elections-in-mexico/ Alexander’s “The Militarization and Marketisation of Nature: An Alternative Lens to ‘Climate-Conflict'”: http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/14650045.2014.
Episode 82: On Dating, Death, and Hedonism
Posted on May 31, 2015 PODCAST
Listen: download archive.org Special guest host Squee joins Rydra for Episode 82! 0:00 FRR introduces Squee 2:00 Fireside Chats: John Gray’s Thoughts on Humans and Other Animals is analyzed, talk of consciousness, progress, morality, science and christian roots of science, apex predator depression 20:15 Ivand the Beets, Can’t Escape 22:15 How to Party in Tempe: thoughts on the farmer neighborhood, anarcho-hedonism and informal anarchism 42:00 Luddites Anonymous: Internet dating, OKCupid, thoughts on Tindr, Rydra’s neurosis, anarchists dating: for against!? 52:05 Primus 56:25 FRR Debates: Nekro Anarcho vs Post Nihilism. Rydrand Squee completely inhabit separate and dueling ideologies and engage in psychological warfare on the terrain of the real, and the unreal. Who will win? Free Radical Radio was brought to you by the subjective and supposedly conscious thoughts, feelings, and desires of Rydra Wrong and Squee!
Episode 81: Chained to Happiness
Posted on May 13, 2015 PODCAST
Listen: download archive.org 00:01:15: Alien Nation-States: Göbekli Tepe, agriculture, and alienation 00:22:53: Music: “Vernon The Company Man” by Les Claypool’s Fancy Band from the album Of Whales And Woe 00:25:23: “Chained to Happiness: Slavery and BDSM in the Speculative Fiction of Samuel R. Delany 00:52:46: Music: “L.M.L.Y.P.” (18:44 through 22:41: the keyboard solo) by Ween from the album Live At Stubb’s 01:17:55: FRR’s Most Unreasonable Human Being of the Week: Chip Johnson against the First Amendement 01:20:55: Luddites Anonymous: Robots and Infantilization
Episode 80: In Which We Are Platonists
Posted on May 6, 2015 PODCAST
Rydrand Bellamy abandon discussing the world in favor of Pure Ideas - this episode is the first in which we are devoid of news-type information! We appear to have some kind of microphone feedback going on that makes a whooshy, 1970's-phaser-esque sound go on through the background of the recording – or maybe it is the tides of Platonic Heaven!
Episode 79: On the Book Fair and the BASTARD Conference
Posted on April 30, 2015 PODCAST
The Bay Areanarchist Bookfair; The BASTARD Conference; Riots in Baltimore...
0:00: Prime number eroticization and Rydra's patriarchy
0:47: Rydrand the Free Walruses
02:58: Tales of FRR tabling at the Bay Areanarchist Bookfair
10:22: Bellamy and Rydra report on BASTARD (note: Bellamy mistakenly calls Cincinnatus Greek, rather than Roman)
28:59: Music: Deltron 3030, “3030”, from the album Deltron 3030
36:29: FRR offers you commodities by donation or maybe even for free!
37:28: Riots in Baltimore – are you jaded or excited?
52:05: FRR Talks, But We Also Listen: more on veganism
58:38: Veganism and prisons
01:04:24: Music: Deltron 3030, “Virus”, from the album Deltron 3030
01:09:58: The Joy That Is Destroy: Recent actions from Wild Reaction, FAI-FRI, and Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
01:19:30: Fuck You Shima: Even the robots are dying!
01:23:23: The Persistence of the Marvelous: Birds and the Paleolithic Rhythm
01:26:29: FRR Talks, But We Also Listen, After Which We Talk Some More: Wilderson, Anti-Blackness, and the Libidinal Economy
Speaker 1: Welcome to free radical radio. This Bellamy. It is episode 79 which happens to be my favorite number. It's a prime number. You can tell by its sexiness, prime numbers, well known as being the most voluptuous, alluring, alluring.
Speaker 2: From this list of numbers too.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well actually they're least promiscuous because they don't.
Speaker 2: That's that's what I meant to say. That's why that's the appeal. Of them few.
Speaker 1: Oh, you have that?
Speaker 2: Of it's a supply and demand relationship.
Speaker 1: Or you have some kind of virginal fetish you're going up to the number that doesn't mix with. Too many other. Numbers pretty funked up.
Speaker 2: You know, Helio heliogabalus. Is famous for liking prime numbers.
Speaker 1: Pretty ****** **. Yeah, really perpetuating the patriarchy with that love of prime numbers. I'm already lost and buzzwords jargon. Go ahead. Well, you told me you. Wanted to tell a story about work.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm going to talk. More about work, so we're.
Speaker 1: Going to edit this down ruthlessly.
Speaker 2: Besides the fact that my work has taken. To spite scheduling me to new term, I'd like to call. I don't know if anyone ever talked about this before or written about it, but. They've decided to work me 23 hours a week over the course of six days, so I have 3 shifts at less than three hours. That's not the. Story, that's just a. So this not therapy, all right? Fine 2 two weeks ago I had a. What do you call it? Spring camp? You might Remember Me talking about fall camp or. Winter camp earlier. So we have like 40 kids. Two other instructors and the boss. So there's four of us doing the camp, and we each had ten kids in our group and never had a group group name. So I called my team or whatever my kids the walrus is, and then whenever we want to get a straight line, decide to start calling them the free walruses and I'm just, yelling ********, like free walruses. I trust you have autonomy and you're like 5 to 10 year olds. And so my boss is just scowling at me as all their kids are walking in straight lines and my kids are just having a disaster of a time. And I ended up getting strep throat, so I was only there for two days with my free walrus rhetoric. Anyways, So what? By the time I got back to work next week I went to some of the people I work with. I was like, oh, how did? How did it go? You know how the rest of the time they're like? And this kid I work with looks and he goes. It was a ******* nightmare. He says all the kids kept yelling. They were free walruses and going nuts, and it's like even the kids that weren't in your. Group kept like one by one, they would declare themselves a free walrus. And just declare they could do whatever they wanted. So I'm fomenting revolution. Basically is what I'm doing. I've started the Rev early.
Speaker 1: Or at least sewing dissent, which reminds me of another friend of ours who is. Talking about how he is a teacher and also authority figure of sorts at his job. So he is intentionally low level and competent to undermine his own job and prevent him from getting initial or additional assignments that.
Speaker 2: We're right, which is the opposite of me where I just can't control myself at all and. Do things we sound like people talking what to do and then eventually get fired, so it's two different. Approaches to work.
Speaker 1: Depends on your feelings on free will. Yeah, so this weekend was the.
Speaker 2: Bay Area Bay Areanarchist book fair.
UNKNOWN: You have any idea?
Speaker 1: You have any idea how many? Years it's been.
UNKNOWN: At least.
Speaker 2: 152 how many? This the 20th year.
Speaker 1: 20th year I thought it.
Speaker 2: Started at when the Civil War started. Very confused.
Speaker 1: The Bay Area is a civil war construction era.
UNKNOWN: OK.
Speaker 1: The book fair was more or less what I expected it to be. I actually thought it was one of our best or no. It was our best effort at tabling, which is only our third, and I'd say our. Our second was better than our first, so it's nothing but linear progress for.
UNKNOWN: I remember.
Speaker 2: The first time.
Speaker 1: Was it the second time, just our second time? Oh OK, well still linear progress.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we now believe in progress.
Speaker 1: It's happening. A lot of good conversations when I left the table briefly, Roger was accosted by a really emphatic Marxist who came up to us saying that anti civilization views were ridiculous and.
Speaker 2: Well, that wasn't even at first, but first he asked me what anti cive ideas were and I was. Like I was pretty brutally honest, because when I see someone I don't want to talk to, I've decided not to suffer fools anymore. So I just I just looked them like I handed them like a book or. I see them like. Just read this dude. Just . Enjoy this because I was like bad tabling. Well, I knew I knew I knew this. I knew this was an unreasonable man. This, this was the opposite of rough neighbor was a reasonable man. This was an unreasonable mand. Immediately he decided instead of reading whatever I gave him to start some dumb conversation with me.
Speaker 1: Was the idea of table?
Speaker 2: To have dumb conversations.
Speaker 1: Not to have conversations with them.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean. In conversation with other people, it's not the table. Going to spend most of the time wandering around, but. Bellamy was tied to the table like.
Speaker 1: By necessity, because you're a free walrus so.
Speaker 2: Yeah you. I got to swim freely. And I had to eat. Too food important thing. So he starts talking to me and he says he just started using some of the typical arguments and eventually he just looks at me and he says, well, you're just going to kill all the people with diabetes and I look at him. I'm like, well I cancer and I don't really. Give a ****. And then you kind of got weird out because it's really this. It's this really funny thing where you? Tell someone they. Have cancer and like society has taught them to immediately feel bad for you, no matter how much of an ******* you are. So it's like something I can bring up when, when, anytime, someone's mad at me like I'm a cancer survivor and then immediately. Immediately their whole like demeanor changes and then usually they find out I'm enough of an ******* that they can just get over it and start being * **** to me again, which is what happened with this guy. But it took him at least three to five seconds to like take in the has cancer. It's OK, you don't have to care about that, and he looks fine. Move on. And then the funniest part was he just looks at me and he and he says. Well, why shouldn't I just put a gun and shoot you right now? Because you're gonna kill me and I looked up and I was like you're afraid of going to jail. I was like, I know you're not going to do that, and then the conversationly only developed quickly from there.
Speaker 1: Well, I arrived shortly after and then our good cop bad cop approach end up working because I came in as good. And engaged.
Speaker 2: We're working is working is quite a term.
Speaker 1: So it's good cut back. Yeah, and we talked for a while and he ended up saying eventually. Oh actually he went. He went down the Aristotle path and said why? Well, he brought up Greek society and said so. Obviously classical Greece had loved slaves and I'm not saying that's OK, but wasn't it good? He said, but wasn't it? For the enslavers, because they got a lot of time, a lot of leisure time and they could contemplate philosophy and that kind of thing. And I said, well, I, I think that the slavery relationship was probably brutalizing them and ruining them. Socially, but I understand what you're saying. Yeah, I want more leisure as well and he said, well, yeah, what if we all just had robots? And I said, it's funny cuz Aristotle the Greek you're talking about projected this as a possibility at some. Point yeah, but in the end he came away saying. That anti sieve ideas are quote less ridiculous than he had thought.
Speaker 2: So that's funny actually. I just remembered the last thing I said to him right before.
Speaker 1: I just feel like there's going to. Be a ripple effect.
Speaker 2: So anyways, at some point I was sitting next to our friend Jay and he was just laughing as this guy was talking and. He was in the middle of some saying something stupid and I just stop. And I was. Like I was like all right, I get it. You believe in progress, don't you think things are getting better every day, don't you? And he's like, yeah, of. Course I do. Seems to be the popular opinion these days among. Idiots, yeah.
UNKNOWN: Well, bam.
Speaker 1: Subtle yeah, but the ribs. Also, I for the first time actually saw the realization of what I had only seen in cartoons, which was someone spit. Flying out of their mouth while they're yelling at. Someone gobs of spit.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, Bellamy Bellamy decided to pick a fight with Bay Area wing. That one of the more famous wing nuts in the Bay Area. Diamond, Dave, who you might know from San Francisco or from doing a **** ton of acid anytime in the last 50 years.
Speaker 1: Who asked me for the second time if I wanted to collaborate with him on radio project and I said no. And we also had this conversation already, and then he decided that it was because I was too cool, hip and young and he I didn't want to talk to older people, and I said no. Actually I talk to older people all the time. That's not why, and he started screaming at me.
Speaker 2: So that’s the second time in two days that you were called an urban hipster.
Speaker 1: Well, this time it was implied.
Speaker 2: OK.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I guess the last thing I’m I didn't go to any of the talks so I can't speak to them at all. Ride around to one, but the main take away for me was that there. Were markedly fewer people. At the book Fair than there were last year. Last year there were so many people at certain points that it. Was actually pretty difficult to. Even move around in my hatred of crowds.
Speaker 2: Not the place for a free walrus. Let me. Tell you that much right now.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and this time there were. It's not as if it was a tiny turn out or anything. But there were certainly fewer people and. I don't know if this part of a trend or not friend of ours. We're doomed, no one. No, were we doing good before?
Speaker 2: That did I missed the time where anarchy. Was really going well in America. Because that must have missed.
Speaker 1: Those times, but yeah, I guess we'll just see how next year is to see whether. We can get at any kind of trend. Or not, but.
Speaker 2: I will quickly mention the talk I went to, which was a talk on conflict and I had one friend on the stage and two people I didn't know and one of them ended up deciding they wanted to talk for 30 minutes straight. At the hour. Long presentation and group discussion and they wanted to tell us. Is going to be kind of interesting. They want to tell us the power of the radio actually, but not in the way you'd think. They said the power. They work at KPFA, I guess they've been there for a **** should sort of years or something and they were saying you have the power to hire people and friends and they were trying to like couch it by saying like it's not all it's not. All roses and Peaches and.
Speaker 1: Certainly isn't thinks.
Speaker 2: So, but I thought it was funny that someone was talking how great the radio was, and because they were the rest of the things were saying were so bad I just wanted like in the moment I was like **** the radio **** everything this person has to. Say I don't agree with anything .
Speaker 1: And following the book Fair, of course, was ******* and *******. I went to three presentations. I guess wait 3444 and they were all quite enjoyable, yeah? Went first to our friend Hunter's presentation Hunter, notable for having designed our sticker and shirt image.
Speaker 2: Yes, and for giving the nihilist magic talk. So which do you? Want to explain it? Yeah, it's actually. A little bit hard to explain, but it was more so kind of. Would you call it anti science or would you just not say it was?
Speaker 1: I mean, I would say It’s. It's more of a raw approach to consciousness and just the idea that. I mean, you could call it a. I think maybe pejoratively you would call it a solipsistic kind of approach to things. I think more positively, you would call it phenomenology, or that sort of thing, but. Basically saying it, I, I think the term sometimes is empty handed magic, where you're saying it, magic doesn't exist in the sense that you can have incantations and spells that transformed objective reality, but that's. Certain ritual kinds of behavior can change things for us, and so they're yeah.
Speaker 2: They I think they explained it by saying. This other person they're talking to like they said, like if D is a person now, but I start subjectively seeing them as a frog then they're a frog to me. And that's all that matters, because all I know is my own subjective experience. And even though they might not actually be a frog or be a frog to other people, or to themselves, to me, they're a frog. So that's a thing.
Speaker 1: And there were some interesting references to Alan Moore, Alan Moore, the anarchist author who I guess can cover. I think Roger doesn't like.
Speaker 2: Alan Moore no. I like I just didn't like the Watchmen but I like Elmo. I didn't dislike the Watchmen, I just didn't find it like super intellectually stimulating or bringing forth a bunch of interesting ideas which I know is anathema to a lot of people anathema that too.
Speaker 1: Less for me. I can't tell if you did that. On purpose or.
Speaker 2: Not yeah, we're having a whole weekend of arguing about words because twice Bellamy got corrected this weekend for his mispronunciations of neologism and millennial, so which?
Speaker 1: That was neologism. I thought it was neologism too over the place.
Speaker 2: This extremely boring we got. We got to move on.
Speaker 1: Right away Definitely said that in the air. Yeah, and I, I'm assuming like last year there will be a some kind of document coming or.
UNKNOWN: Yeah, the.
Speaker 2: The ******* Chronicles would be out and actually have to ask them if. If they're cool with it, I'm going to put my talk up on the website this week. If not, I might have to wait for the Master chronicles to come out, so we'll see how that goes.
Speaker 1: And he. Gave it away. I was going to say that Ryder did a. Presentation as well.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I did do a presentation. We'll talk about later, but let's talk, let's talk about the before we talk about the interesting one, which was my friend across the hall in my house who gave it actually Jay and.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: A really close friend of mine who I we just keep our doors open often and just talk. It's like theight of validation. At least we're not doing that thing people do in their dorm rooms in college where they like online like G Chat or Facebook chat from like I used to do this when I was like 19 with a room in college where were separated by a wall. So were actually only like 3 feet away from each other if there's no. Wall we could reach out and touch each other. And we would just communicate over chat online while we run our computers, which is. Probably not a positive for my life. So David, if you're out there still thinking of you buddy.
Speaker 1: Yeah I did want to say one more thing about the Niles Magic, which was that the reference to Alan Moore was. Alan Moore talking about how he thinks of words as evoking a kind of magic because words can. Change our perceptions. Change our emotional affect and they can do it at a distance and they can do it in. This kind of ritualized way, so I appreciate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so then then the next talk was mine, which we get to later and then after that we got some Mediterranean food. At least I did my friend friend of mine brought me a doughnut and then.
Speaker 1: I don't know why you talking about.
Speaker 2: Food just food seems interesting me and then went to a talk called the discussion without. Rules and I guess the only rule for discussing was to be a wing net with. Terrible ideas so. It actually had rules we just didn't know what they were until we got in there and we spent a lot of time defining utopia, which I found extremely boring. What else? What else happened in there? Some Oh yeah, some.
Speaker 3: Well, the.
Speaker 2: The revolution guy. Alsomeone said it was dangerous for a room. To have a room full of white people, that was quite the interesting moment there where. Where I was like, OK, what does that mean exactly?
Speaker 1: You well, to paraphrase you, if you get a critical mass of white people, that some kind of.
Speaker 2: Something terrible will happen eventually, yeah? Which was quite an idea there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah there was a lot of I found not very useful as you were saying, discussion of someone was trying to reduce it to numbers. They're like if utopia is 10, and maybe we can't conceive of 10 then, but we can at least conceive of eight or seven. So why don't we start working toward that? One of the more intelligent things I heard said was by a friend of the show, who might actually get involved with the show in a certain capacity. Who said that? Basically, we're we're so however, we want to put it colonized. The mess that he hated, alienated, whatever in one way or another. So debilitated that we can't really be programmatic. We can't conceive of what. The free world would look like exactly and I that very much resonated with me. I mean, I think it's fine to have some. Some ideas of what you want, but I mean to layout. Any kind of? Blueprint at this stage of intense domination I think, is. A joke, and I think all we can do right now, is just try to work toward being freer in our everyday lives, whatever that means and of course, it's going to mean something different to each person. That you'll have. 7 billion different ideas of what that looks. Like but. I think all we can do right now is find people with whom we have affinity and work toward that, and beyond that I'm not going to try to say what the great world for everyone would be.
Speaker 2: I'm going to prefigure things.
Speaker 1: And then you had maybe the what to me gets one of the most depressing comments of the. Year, which was utopia to me, is when I can walk down the. Street and with. My partner with my partner and this someone who's gay. And obviously understand where it's coming from, but you told me to me is walked down the street with my. Partner not get beat up and utopia.
Speaker 2: What's the line you had for that? Like more or.
Speaker 1: Less thing ohh yeah, yeah I was saying it reminded me of us spoke Zara through street where he says they're best is so small they're worst is so small, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean to be to be honest this this a person I let's not get into it, but. Let's just. Say that the let's. Let's say the basics of it are, if that's if that's utopia to you. I don't know what to say because. Like obviously you could be walking down the street.
Speaker 1: Fun to say, it's a good thing like that was a good day for me to not get.
Speaker 4: No, but I'm saying but sure, sure.
Speaker 2: But what I'm but?
Speaker 1: That's fine like say like it's a good day for me not to get to get gay bashed or what?
Speaker 2: It's a very. It's a very. Subjective, sure I get.
UNKNOWN: But ?
Speaker 2: No, no. I mean I'm just gonna say like who I mean? Who knows happening the buildings? Around you, whatever like or. Like when you? I mean it's just. I don't know. It's a little hard to talk about because it seems so ridiculous. But yes, like.
Speaker 1: Or it's.
Speaker 2: We can move. We can move beyond that like.
Speaker 1: Took to quote there's in it is this the language?
Speaker 2: Of desire, yeah, seriously. Wouldn't the desire? Wouldn't it better that you could just have all the ***** sex you want on the street and no one beats you up? That's at least at least you're at least.
Speaker 1: Utopia dream big.
Speaker 2: You're up in. Your game a little bit there, like, let's let's get, let's get serious about it. Alright, so then our friend gave a talk and it was called killing the silver handed Prince.
Speaker 1: That referenced the Moorcock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that was a Moorcock story, so the quick background of the story is that the good guy, the hypothetical good guy comes in and saves the protagonist.
Speaker 1: Well, the nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean like yeah, whatever someone comes in and he was the beneficient authority. Beneficent is the word I'm looking for. He was the beneficent authority and he ends up getting rid of all the. Bad guys are the people who are trying to destroy the universe and everything's like fine and whatever peaceful and at the end go.
Speaker 1: Ahead, well, his people brought him. From the past into the future. So it's, I mean, it's a fantasy story. He was summoned by these people and then he became. The innocent, right?
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 2: So either way he wins. He gets rid of all the people that they wanted to get rid of, and then the reason that this person wanted to do the talk was because at the very last line of the book is he gets killed by his people because they don't want the. Benefits and authority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was wondering, I'm not sure, but to me it was very much echoed. The myth of Cincinnatus, who he was a simple farmer. Proto Greek civilization gets invaded from outside. They call on Cincinnatus to step up and be basically the kind of absolute Commander monarch lead the army, and afterward he steps down so he's he's supposed to be the kind of model. And this went on to influence political philosophy, including American political philosophy in a lot of ways. That leadership is supposed to authority supposed to be a sense of duty, right? So it's. And then went on to talk about what a beneficent authority. Might look like, right? And then how we as anarchists feel about that kind of situation and one?
Speaker 2: Well, he also. He also prefaced the whole talk by saying we are not going to talk about the left, not once this whole time we're we're going to completely ignore it for one hour. We're just gonna have a talk. About about authority.
Speaker 1: No depression, no government. And it turned out people. Couldn't do that as it gave up.
Speaker 2: No, it's funny. Well yeah, because. You also said not talking about the state and then someone started talking and he reminded this person like, hey, we're not talking about the state and they're like. Well, let's just use another word for it. That's like the person who you give the Riddle to with specific parameters they want to get out of it by changing the parameters. I'm like you clearly like this a thought experiment. Use your ******* brain. Think yeah.
Speaker 1: So we talked about what beneficent authority, how we might define it, and one of the definitions that came up that I thought was decent was It’s conditional. So it's only happening for a reason, it's temporary, and it's what was the last thing. Revocable, or something like that? It's conditional, it's temporary, and I think it yeah. Consensual that was it. Yeah, thank you. Consensual and. This led to a lot of people telling stories about what either when they were under beneficent authority or they were the beneficent authority and The funny thing was actually there were more people talking about when they were put in positions of being the deficit authority. Roger and I, as well as someone else, started talking about family stuff.
Speaker 2: Me, me, Bellamy and. Another person ended up getting into a pretty a pretty funny like therapy session, actually, because the presenter said who can name. Type of beneficent authority and I mean I don't believe in beneficent authority. But I was just helping try to find examples. So I was like it seems to me the most obvious one is the family, because some parents that have think they're doing something good. But really, they're not, but they think they're doing. Something good trying. Or they're trying whatever they have like.
Speaker 1: Or maybe they're not, but.
Speaker 2: I **** ** enough to know that I'm not gonna do it to some kids life that I'm gonna create, and I have enough issues with consciousness not to bring another one to the world right now, but. Maybe I'll iron those. Out later, not anti consciousness.
UNKNOWN: I can.
Speaker 2: I'm just like consciousness. Stick, so no, I don't know whether it's like something I'm interested in.
Speaker 1: You don't know whether it exists.
Speaker 2: I mean, I seem interested in it. I'm really scared of dying, but anyways, I was like the, the parents cuz my parents I said, my parents were beneficent they wanted good things for me. Actually it's funny I talked to my mom on the. Phone today and she said, oh maybe I pushed you too hard. Which was funny, I never heard that in 31 years of life it was interesting and therapy moment for me. I'll talk about on Wednesday. My own. But as soon as I said the parents someone made a funny joke where they just looked at me and they said like. How's your? Relationship with your father.
Speaker 1: No, he said yeah.
Speaker 2: Tell us about your dad. Yeah, tell us about your dad and I said I usually have to pay for this. And to get it for free here.
Speaker 1: Yeah that was good, yeah. And so numerous examples of either being under or being the beneficent authority came up. And no one I'm generalizing a bit, but I would say. No one really. Was feeling like it was a great situation, either one that. They wanted to be under one that they wanted to be enacting.
Speaker 2: But these are people that believed in beneficent authority that just and we're trying to find examples of it in their own personalized. We're having much difficulty because every time they brought one up it was frayed and fraught with complications.
Speaker 1: And then the presenter or friend ended up concluding by saying, well, it seems like a lot of people don't think the deficit authority exists and which were among that and, and so his take away. At least then, I mean he wasn't being too prescriptive with the audience, but was saying well as anarchists we are. Against Stephen beneficent authority. Though interestingly, this person. Has a view that very much resonates with me, which is that. You know there's a lot of rhetoric in anarchy, like against all authority like it's getting our anarcho punk band. And or that we as Americans we want to get rid of power. I've heard some people say like we want to try to destroy all power, and many also say we're we want egalitarianism, which, among other things, I think would mean that like a flattening, a total flattening of power. At the beginning he, the presenter, had this provocation of saying, do we really believe that or is that just rhetoric and it came out as the presentation went on, that the presenter had a belief that I share which is anarchy is in the absence of power, which I don't know what that would mean or the. The even the total absence of differences in power, whether qualitative or quantitative, it's. Powers and. And sorry, it's people with power balancing against each other in an agreeable way, and which is very sterian, right? He also being provocative, intentionally says, are you really ready for the war of all against all? Which is his idea of anarchy, but which doesn't have to be hostile, but it is definitely powers playing against each other, and. I think. To me, the challenge is to figure out how do we do that in a way that's agreeable and pleasant and enhances people's lives. And how do we as much as possible, engage in real mutual aid, even though there's no binding? Element on us, nothing to enforce that except each other, and I think that's as this presenter. People don't really want to enslave each other. I think if you're being healthy and reasonable and honest and that exerting that kind of coercive power is unpleasant for both people, and that the only reason we can do it now is because it's being done in an extremely mediated way and it's rationalized by an ideology. And you have so many elements of removal like the the boss gives you the paycheck, but they don't see that you go home and you don't have enough money or.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think I actually disagree with a lot of that, but when I talk about my presentation later in the show today I think it will elucidate where I disagree. But I did want to say one thing, which is that our other friends have brought this up, which is something I actually because it's something I believe in. Which is that maybe the best example of beneficent, beneficent authority? ******* I.
Speaker 1: You just said.
Speaker 2: Benevolent, I can say that word, benevolent authority going wrong is the way autistic and development disabled children are raised in schools or taught or whatever. Forward when he was like I was special Ed teacher and I deeply regret most of my work in with those people because. The problem is that the whole point is basically to get people to fit into society. So a lot of I mean at least the way I see that experience, because I feel like I personally have like a lot of autistic behaviors and have. Like when I when I was in class I would see people doing things all the time and like yeah that. Sense like I mean like, I'm the kind of person where if like every anytime I have a towel, I may just want to bite it and nod it because for some reason it makes me feel better or it's like it's my desire in the moment I don't know where it comes from. It's just. So it makes me. Feel better, and I'm sure Freud has thoughts on this, but either way, the point is to get people to fit into society so it's to take their behaviors that aren't that aren't hurting anyone. Oftentimes, and just make just seem weird to other people, or seem off putting or would create like a scene, even if they're not hurting anyone and change those behaviors to fit people into society. And ABA, which is like the main one of the main therapies that's used or main ways of changing people that's used is probably the most guilty of this, and there's it definitely extremes in the spectrum which people practice this. But I definitely don't feel good about my time doing that. I don't feel good about trying to get people to fit into society and I get why people do it and it makes it makes sense. You know it. It's the world we live in, but at the same time that doesn't make it any better than being like you. Know the other. Any other job really, ?
Speaker 1: So we're going to take a quick break when we get back. We're going to maybe have some parting comments on ******* and then we're going to go on to talk about the riots in Baltimore and eventually we might get to Roger's presentation. And there's a lot of other things to talk about today, so thanks for listening. We're free radical radio. You can find us at freeradicalradio.net. You can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net. Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: I'm pulling up.
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Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to free Radical radio where I preempt Bellamy who what's his lips? As I keep speaking?
Speaker 1: Tried to go through the microphone.
Speaker 2: I'm usually quicker to the gun and usually end up. Being able to, . Go for a little longer. So anyways, what I was trying to get earlier, which we didn't get it, was that we printed a. Bunch of T-shirts. Friend of ours did so. We'll put them up online on our website and I think what? We're going. To do is basically just if you are just in T-shirt. The only size we have are small to extra large, so if you're smaller or bigger, that's sorry, we. Didn't with our first time, ordering things and doing T-shirts, so we should probably got more sizes, but those are the size we have and I will put it online. And if you want that, or stickers or whatever, just send us an e-mail and we'll talk about how we can make that happen. And we'll probably also be able to send some books and. Some other goodies. In there with it. So there we go.
Speaker 1: Bribing you to wear. Our shirts, yeah. OK, so riots in Baltimore, that's the thing that happened today. It's quite a deal, so probably many know I'm just going to run through a quick summary of it, and then we'll unpack it a bit more. So Freddie Gray's 25 year old black man killed by police while in custody. On April 19, his funeral was today and riots broke out. Shortly after it, there's been looting and cars smashed, fires set. Pretty amazingly. Riders slashing fire hoses as firefighters tried to put those fires out.
Speaker 2: I gotta say, that's my dream my, my friend's kid a 3 year old was at our table the other day. He kept he had a fire, a fire truck, he was like, oh, fireman, I'm like I hate firemand he's like why were you fire me and I'm. Like they pull. Out the fire they're. The worst people on the planet they put. Out the fire, why would you like them? And he's a fan of chaos, especially so it's very confusing.
Speaker 1: So the governor has. Called in the National Guard, a state of emergency has been called the Orioles baseball game was canceled. The school was canceled for tomorrow, Tuesday.
Speaker 2: Negatively affected my fantasy baseball team.
UNKNOWN: How dare they affect your baseball team?
Speaker 1: You got every riot comes with A cause, some more horrible than others.
Speaker 2: Yeah, what price must we pay for?
Speaker 1: We're riding the transportation. Public transportation networks have been shut down a curfew, a curfew for all citizens has been called from 10:00 PM to 5:00 AM. You have to be indoors and we had a statement from the mayor here that is just this just. Pure dominant ideology here. Mayor Stephanie Rawlings Blake told reporters today quote what we see tonight that is going on in our city is very disturbing. Too many people you could take that I guess a lot of different ways. I would say yeah, the social atomization, the commodity culture. I agree, I agree. Mayor, yeah too many people have spent generations building up this city for. It to be destroyed by thugs. That's probably going. And we know what the undercover.
Speaker 2: That's not going to go well.
Speaker 1: Slang for that is. Thugs they. A really thin. You from there who quote or who in a very senseless way, are trying to tear down what so many. Have fought for, fought for. What are we fighting?
Speaker 2: For, I mean for buildings and I don't know I’m a little confused. Fighting for it was the IT was the 150th anniversary of the Civil War recently, which we'll talk about later, so that should be interesting, maybe.
UNKNOWN: I mean.
Speaker 2: That's a reference she's making.
Speaker 1: Would you call that a revolution in? This country, yeah. So as of as of 1020 Eastern Standard Time, just a little bit before we start recording, Maryland's Attorney General, Brian E. Frosh, had to get made fun of really heavy way for that. Last name has called for an end to the violence. He said quote the death of Freddie Gray was a tragedy. Perhaps it can lead us on a path toward. Progress, Jesus Christ. Attorney General showing that he considers the death of young black men to be a path toward progress.
Speaker 2: That's this brutal.
Speaker 1: Violence, fires and looting will not get us there. He added the line from peaceful protests to looting and violence has sadly been crossed. The events of Baltimore are putting first responders and many in our community at risk destroying property and injuring citizens and law enforcement officers drives us apart. The violence must stop. There's so much in there that you can just. Take apart every little bit. That our community, our community. Suddenly Baltimore is a community, hundreds of thousands of people, most of them. Feeling indifference or maybe mild hostility or envy toward each other. As a community, people living apart in tiny rectangular prisons as a community. There's a lot going. On there. So a lot of people get excited about these kinds of riots. Rider, how do you feel about?
Speaker 2: I mean, I will say that there were some cops injured by bricks being thrown. There's actually a pretty funny video. I think of people throwing cement or bricks at a cop and he just he decides to start throwing it back. Like which is which is pretty silly, because usually they'll just start shooting people or put a gun or a baton and start beating them. But instead this guy was like engaging. Do you remember that game tank war from when you were really little kids where you like, have a little tank and you shoot and it like you just figure? Out the angle. And it like.
Speaker 1: You need a. Video game.
Speaker 2: Like it's like a really old school video game, a Beat Generation. Gap between me and you, OK?
Speaker 1: No, I know that one.
Speaker 2: Well, that's basically what's going on is the.
Speaker 1: What happened generation?
Speaker 2: The cop decided the cop decided that they were going to like engage in tank war with cement with these people instead of using all his police weaponry. That was a weird moment, but I will say that it is hard to look at the picture. Of someone walking away super smug from a giant police van on fire and. Not feel a little bit,? Not feel a little twinge of the old. Tingles there butterflies.
Speaker 1: So you've got a soft spot for the make. Total destroy had a feeling.
Speaker 2: I mean, I like fire as much as the.
Speaker 1: It's easy to get.
Speaker 2: Next anarchist you.
Speaker 1: Know yeah I think to me it really drives home how? How jaded a lot of radicals are that well? I mean, I guess I should say a lot of radicals. I think probably most radicals in this country get really excited about this, but you encounter some people and I can be among. These people. Sometimes that you realize your depth of jadedness is when you go oh a riot that's happened before, it's probably going to stop.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I do think it's important though, because remember how important and remember how excited everyone was get in Oakland was getting in Oakland when all the Black Lives Matter protests were happening and. I guess they actually weren't considered totally Black Lives Matter protests at the very beginning. At the beginning it was more just people were angry and then and then it became black. Lives Matter and people were blocking the freeways doing **** like that and it lasted for what? Like 910 days. Maybe a little bit longer of every day. People being out there. I think it is important to remember like the way things go down, and I think it makes sense to get excited and be happy that people are, say **** you to someone who's being superceeded them, which is basically anyone any any of the people in the city. Who are involved in the very great thing just around or anyone else that doesn't like authority? Basically, or anyone telling them what to do or being super ****** of them and that totally makes sense, but I think it's also pretty important to remember. Sometimes riots do end up being some type of catharsis and it happens for a couple weeks and then people kind of go back and just go back to their regular lives so well. I do like the disturbance I. I think it is. I don't think I don't think you have. To be, .
Speaker 1: Totally optimistic or So what I'm not making is I'm not trying to make it. A critique of this event as such, but sometimes the way it gets directed or the rhetoric around. And it is disturbing because as we've talked about on the show before, there's this, this newer sort of. It's not really new, I guess. I mean, we can see it throughout history here and there, but it's something that I hear being talked about again a new way which is the riot as means to policy change.
Speaker 2: Right, well that's what I mean, that's. What that's, I mean? Traditionally what it has been in America, . Doug Doug wrote his book. I saw fire. Haven't read Doug former host of the show, maybe doing some interviews for us on the road actually right now, but. The one thing that you see happening is that he talks about. How riots and when people start getting angry and doing **** with the first thing that happens is the liberals who sometimes are anarchists, anarcho, liberals and sometimes are anarcho leftists and sometimes just regular liberals and regular leftists and they end up trying to Co opt and take things over and then what ends up happening is. Policy gets pushed and people feel better about it, which is what happened with the whole anti eviction thing. People were ****** like they were. Doing the whole bus block of the Google buses and like some other **** was going on and then wind up happening was 1000. People met in San Francisco. It became a pluralist type thing and legislation was passed and everything still ******* sucks so. Maybe we can. Try to do things so that everything that. Sucked anymore, yeah. And even.
Speaker 1: You saw it definitely coming out of there with the. To win. The I forget what they called that group who did the anti eviction mapping.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that's I'm talking.
Speaker 1: About yeah
Speaker 2: What's the name of the anti eviction anti eviction San?
Speaker 1: Francisco, yeah no eviction. Free San Francisco. Yeah, and one of the spokespeople. For that last. Year's Bay Areanarchist Book Fair was saying yeah, we got policy change out of it. That was a really good thing and they threw in a little bit of, it's not enough. We can't stop there, but they were saying that's a. Thing and there you have it. You're defining your success in terms of. Recuperation. You're saying our recuperation?
Speaker 2: Is success well now what we've seen is that legislation they pass is actually getting tons of people kicked out of their houses because legislation, as it often does, does not work out the way people intended it to, because there are people with power and they control it a little bit more than the people trying to push for.
Speaker 1: The law to get passed. Can you explain that a little bit more?
Speaker 2: Well, just that the people it was Airbnb. They're trying to pass legislation against Airbnb, and now the people on both sides of Airbnb are getting evicted at higher rates than the Ellis Act, which is getting like pretty deep into American politics at this point. But the Ellis Act basically says that if you own a building and you want to move back into it yourself, you can kick out the tenants, and so people are doing that all the time and lying about it and just manipulating that rule. The Vic people and that's what they were mapping. They were mapping the anti eviction mapping project with mapping analysis of act evictions. And I think. They also did all of it for this.
Speaker 1: Evict a whole building.
Speaker 2: Right, yeah you can I. Mean what happened?
Speaker 1: By saying it's going to be my primary residence.
Speaker 2: Right, I mean people are just using the law, really egregiously, as people use laws for the history of. And since Hammurabi, and more than, and probably before that, I guess since someone decided they wanted to make a law, whoever that ******* was. **** you original guy or whatever you were who. Knows what you were don't. Believe who knows what happened? Yeah, sure. But anyways, the whole point is that the Airbnb legislation backfired and is now responsible for more evictions of tenants in the Ellis Act.
Speaker 1: According to a recent article in one of the ****** *** San Francisco newspapers, yeah. But yeah, I don't mean to be. Intentionally frame things by saying that what I was describing. Or was a really jaded perspective? I do find it. I do find myself cautiously inspired and cautiously and skeptically excited about these kinds of things, because they do seem to being more common. They do seem to have a bit of a kind of memetic flow to them where you see it happen here. You know why can't we do it or it's happening over there? Why can't we do this here? Once again, I'll say that the highway blockade is actually one of the most excited, exciting things for me because of the approach at not just not just destroying things that can be ultimately can be rebuilt, which I'm not saying is a worthy. Act in itself, but actually stopping society stopping the flows of production, stopping the. Flows of commerce.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean if, as we've talked before, if during. One of those you. Know highway blockades. Someone I got jackhammer and jacked up the whole freeway like that. Would have been quite an incident if people could literally not use the 580, which is a major freeway over here for an even a half a day. Even just the morning commute it would be a full pandemonium, .
Speaker 1: Yeah so.
Speaker 2: But I'm not to say people can't do ********. I'm totally psyched when people disrupt the daily life, even if it's just out of anger. I don't really care. Do it like that's great, but. It does make sense to have a certain amount of self. Awareness if if you could.
Speaker 1: Or just to show the possibility? And one of my favorite things that Banana said was that it's something like the. The trick is to start, or, the secret is to start. Because I, I think we do as I. Have been. Thing that society is largely built on intense reification. We just always feel like we can't actually do things, and I think one of the. Best and worst things about these kinds of events is it's the kind of secret of mass where, because a bunch of people are out there doing. Everyone says, oh, I can do this too. I can go a little farther. I can take a risk. I can do something. I would normally be afraid to do, and that's great, but the tragedy of it is that.
Speaker 3: Then the.
Speaker 1: The mass itself can become a kind of stifling thing, because then people feel like they can only do it in these sorts of events.
Speaker 2: Well, plus the other problem with mass is it brings out massive amounts of people and most people right now are ******* miserable and have miserable ideas and you get like the peace place and you get all the liberals who come out and just like want to just say like I stand in solidarity but don't hurt anyone. Be peaceful like passive acceptance of violence. Towards themselves and refusing to act in any negative. What they consider negative, I wouldn't obviously towards the people who are wielding the power against them and the authority against them. Like this clearly not an even power dynamic. In case you didn't realize, you're probably not going to have peace with someone with that amount of power over you. What you? Will have is authority.
Speaker 1: Or or we could, we could say. As Calgacus did, they make a desert and call it. Peace yeah. And yeah not only are most people miserable, but as you were saying most people are pacified. And yeah, we have the saw something funny from from or I heard something funny from someone recently where. They're saying why? Why is it so many people get out there and say no justice, no peace, and then as soon as someone destroys something, they say peaceful protests.
Speaker 2: That is, that is so amazing. I didn't think about that before that. I can't, that's. Theight the. Height of hypocrisy. As a hypocrite myself unfortunately. Let's let's even build much for me. Do you want to talk about veganism? Really quick since yeah, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: So yeah, here we'll go to. I guess we've been sections we haven't been naming our sections so far. Yeah, so we're going to free radical radio talks, but we also listen. And yeah, we talked about veganism on the last. And It was kind of funny because I thought of it as just something like, well, OK. I want to. Talk about this because people, the listeners were asking us to and we're asking why aren't you vegand you, you say he you make these cryptic comments here and there about how you used to be vegan. Now you're not, and so I. Thought OK, let's just talk about this. And we actually got more responses and activity from this. Then we have with almost anything that we've talked about.
Speaker 2: Well, I also. Have a confused relationship with a troubled relationship. One might say with veganism after I've been a vegan for a long time and a vegetarian for. A long time. All actually, I've never had a serious relationship. What I would consider like and I never dated someone for more than six months that has. That wasn't at least vegetarian, and most of those people were vegan, so it's like clearly something was going on eroticized for you.
Speaker 1: In my head.
Speaker 2: I don't know if I would even call those. Relationships ****** honestly. Anyways, what I'm just getting at is it's that Robert Musil quote I read a while ago on the show. Where it's, when someone leaves something, they have to trash it completely to move on past it basically, or they or they just find themselves trashing it completely forever because they're whatever they can't. Get past it.
Speaker 1: Niche tells you shouldn't do.
Speaker 2: This well Measle says you shouldn't either. I mean measles is not the kind of person to say should because he's a much better thinker than each.
Speaker 5: OK.
Speaker 2: In my personal opinion. But yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so there were a lot of replies actually. Kind of too many to even really cover here, but one person asked us, why don't you talk to Ian Smith? Ian Smith with the blog Uncivilized Animals and Anarcho Primitivist blog and Ian. My I correct me if I'm wrong here and I. Ian actually came to radical politics and anarcho primitivism through veganism through animal rights perspective, and so they're saying, why don't? Why don't you get him on? Your show and talk. To him about. These ideas, I think we will go ahead and reach out to him. See what he says and maybe we can. Have him on the show relatively soon and we will try in that conversation. To incorporate some of the other replies and questions and objections that people have raised from the. The veganism talk in general.
Speaker 2: Well, someone had a whole blog. Against me basically I was interesting.
Speaker 1: What do you mean they they?
Speaker 2: Put it as a comment on our website a. A blog about like kind of defending. Veganism, basically which we can we can reply to when we do this whole thing we can.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: Incorporate into that conversation. OK so I I do think. It's important to. Know that we are both like totally on board to like not. Have animals be domesticated anymore, like in case that wasn't obvious in the talk about about veganism, and I don't think it's a contradiction to eat animals when you're sitting here living in the way we live, which I'm not going to rehash the whole conversation but. I'm just going to say that. You know when someone when someone does stuff for the animals which I'm be intentionally vague about right now, to try to pretend like I'm really somewhat reasonable. I support it. You know a wide range.
Speaker 1: Of actions and yeah and. Alsomeone is saying. Something to the effect of oh so you just have this? Who cares? Approach like eat anything like who cares about factory? Yeah, that was what I was talking about at all and. And to I'll, I'll confess, I eat like some kind of like bougie Berkeley, like ****** like. Eating like the best.
Speaker 2: You're basically indistinguishable from a Berkeley liberal hippie. You do you do yoga in the mornings. You have the veggie burger. With bacon you drink, you drink kombucha, you brew brew your own fermented things you. You eat, you eat this bread that I would even call bread. I even know what it is.
Speaker 1: I make the bread.
Speaker 2: Well, but I don't even know what I would call that bread that was just in kitchen right now.
Speaker 1: Sourdough rye bread.
Speaker 2: No, not that one. The like. The grainy thing that grab.
Speaker 1: It's sourdough rye bread. Oh, that's bread.
Speaker 2: That's a loose definition of breadth.
Speaker 1: And someone also asked, I guess right or touching this if we're against animal liberation actions and my response would be this a really vague category. I'm not going to say I'm for against what is basically a motivation or a perspective. I'm not against any or all possible possible. Actions that would come from that analysis. Nor am I for any or all of those actions. Often it's not super relevant to me what the motivation someone has for a particular action is. I'm always going to be evaluating resistance actions on whether they're effective, whether they're inspiring, whether they're empowering for the people who do them, and other criteria like that. I this. Means I might be for some and against others depending what it is I mean. I think a lot of the times when someone burns down a factory farm, I consider that to be a great thing, but that doesn't mean that. Have some kind of. Flat uniform perspective one way or. The other.
Speaker 2: Well, just the same as any other type of thing that's going on really. Is it right?
Speaker 1: You know it's not animal Liberation isn't some kind of special category for me, one way or the other.
Speaker 4: Right?
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I which I think is the main. Thing for people. Like they use often people will use. It was actually really frustrating to me because I find Milan Kandera is one of my. Favorite writers and. People will use that quote where they say mankind's. I'm going to paraphrase and get wrong. Little, probably but mankind's greatest debacle. The fundamental debacle is the way in which we treat. Animals and people use longspear against me in that way, and I think. I think definitely the way we treat animals is super relevant to the way that all the way we just exist with each other in general, which is pretty ******. And obviously we're ****** to the animals and even shiter to the animals because you don't get in trouble for being treated animals. You can, go outside and there's tons of animals you can kill. You can kill a rat and there's like what are the only animals you can't really kill like endangered species and. Dogs and certain animals get to hunt. Certain times there's a lot. Of stuff you can go. ****** too and taking out your feelings on displacing your feelings on that. Have nothing to do with anything, and I think that's really relevant, but I think the problem with a lot of. Animal rights people, and not all for sure, but a lot of people who get really involved in that as they. Become single issue people. And it seems so important to them that they forget that there's like a world outside of that like that other stuff also sucks and they kind of decide that animals have won the Oppression Olympics, which to be fair. Maybe they have, but that still seems like a ****** way to operate for me.
Speaker 1: So what do? Pamelanderson and Joe Arpaio have in common bed.
Speaker 2: No, I'm just kidding. I don't know actually what the I haven't, what's the. What's a good tabloid? I haven't checked the tabloids lately. I haven't in the supermarket in a minute. They're both involved in PETA. So you have Pamelanderson famous for her time on Baywatch, and she actually dated the greatest surfer in the history of Mankind, Kelly Slater.
UNKNOWN: Kid Rock.
Speaker 2: Yeah, for a minute yeah, so they used to date he was a who the character slayed on the show. Baywatch Kelly Slater. So there's one thing you need to know. Kelly Slater is probably the apex of humanity. He's a tan man. I basically consider him a Unicorn of a human being. If you look into his eyes, they're kind of Gray and you don't really see anything. It's almost like staring into the abyss when you look at him and you kind of understand what. It is that you're. Not when you see him. He's the ubermensch. Oh, he's the mentalist of the mentiads. Anyways, they're getting together. Sheriff Joe Arpaio and Pamelanderson to continue the tradition of creating vegetarian meals in the Arizona jails, which is quite the thing, because Arpaio is probably one of I mean. We don't really tell people where they, who he is, but he's just a terrible, awful. ***** ** **** and it's and.
Speaker 1: And this just classic PETA move classic, totally classic move just any amount of collaboration and compromise in the name of getting the message out there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which I don't want to lump all animal people in, but this theight of the. Problem with single issue. Campaigns is that you will work with. Like this *******. This ******* like monster of a human. Being basically.
Speaker 1: Well, PETA has no shame. I mean they have.
Speaker 2: Oh no.
Speaker 1: They'll happily objectify women. They'll happily. Trounce ancestral sand. Trounce ancestrals no that's green peas.
Speaker 2: That was.
Speaker 1: That's green peas, yeah. This great piece. I’m sure Peter would do that too.
Speaker 2: Sure, sure sure Peter would have dropped like pigs blood out of the out of the plane onto them. If it was relevant.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they had that ridiculous commercial a few years ago where some dude. Like talks the woman to the point of like breaking various bones and they're like oh go vegand you'll ****. So much harder. Yeah, it's crazy.
Speaker 2: OK, let's move on from there, yeah, but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and then you mentioned me earlier that Arpaio was probably down cynically because this allows the jail food to be cheaper.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean it's just a home. It's a home as he. Says you can. Save money and whatever ******** he has. So I forgot to say that's our notes on progress section. The new segment where I try to show you that progress is indeed a myth, as much as it ever was. And we're going to just talk about one more thing before we go to break another story in the line, the same the same, the same type of path, the same. Train, you might say the anti progress train that I'm riding. I'm I like to think I'm at least under the front.
Speaker 1: Is that the train that doesn't go anywhere? It just sits.
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, there's two arguments you made, either aggressivity or just a stylist where you just stay. And let's go to the Deep South, where the Deep South Daily Classic online publication. I don't know if you read it below. Are you familiar? You subscribe to the. Deep South daily.
Speaker 1: I'm not familiar.
Speaker 2: OK Bellamy is clearly showing his class here. He refuses Deep South, daily and. Recently, I'm sure he has the, stacks of The New Yorker up so high he probably can't. Even get into his bedroom and. Moving, I'm moving on. He's clearly hit a soft spot, so recently it was 150th year of celebrating a some. Some call it the civil war, some call it Confederate Memorial Day. There's, many different ways to look at that to see you get skinny cat many different ways.
Speaker 1: Loving revolution southern revolution.
Speaker 2: Yeah, see there you go. So that's how long the Civil war was. In case you. Didn't know which I forgot recently and this let me just read one line from the Deep South Dailies article on this classic American holiday known as Confederate Memorial Day, and the line is. A straight line of Deep South states are staging ceremonies dedicated to the old Confederacy. That remnant of the world of slave and master cotton and carriages and romanticized notions of valor. So yeah, I guess that slave master relationship in a we don't have cotton or carriages anymore. I guess. I guess I'll I guess we left everything in the past and we've moved. This this. The total thing of progress right here that they can actually write this and pretend like this stuff just. Stopped happening magically.
Speaker 1: Also like are we? We're against valor. I don't. Even understand that part, they're saying it was. It was a kind of false valor because they were defending. Something they should have been? Yeah, that. That's exactly what you just said was. OK.
Speaker 2: Exactly what they? Meant yeah, so I guess that's the thing. Right there. OK, so when we come back we're going to do. We're going to do lots of stuff. We're going to do the joy that is destroy.
Speaker 1: We'll see if I'm going to get on my new my new hippie nature loving section. The persistence of the marvelous where I talk about a particular Organism and why. That's beautiful and cool, and there are still wonderful things in this world, even as it's. Being devoured all right.
Speaker 2: Well then next week that means I can do that section the Walrus because I'm a. Big walrus guy. Lately, so maybe you'll see you'll see when. Ongoing section of Morrison. Pretty soon I'm gonna start doing an ongoing weekly 30 minute segment on walruses. So and you're not even going to get away from it, I'm just gonna do one minute every other minute so it's gonna be really confusing with what goes on there. But anyways, we're pretty radical radio. You can find us at freeradicalradio.net. You can find us on Tumblr I think. Tell me updates to Tumblr. Don't go on there for personal reasons. You can find us at where else can they find this free radical radio rise up done that? Oh yeah. We're on Facebook on the Facebook, the. The faces oh, and maybe we'll talk about Ex Machina when we come back, actually. Because I've been, that's too all right.
Speaker 1: It's markina, it's markina.
Speaker 2: All right, let's get to break before this whole system collapses.
Speaker 3: Global controls will have to be imposed and a world governing body will be created to enforce them. Crises precipitate change.
UNKNOWN: Secretly clutching your device.
Speaker 4: I wanna devise a virus to bring dire straits to your environment. Crystal corporations with a mild touch. Trash your whole computer system and reverted to papyrus. I want to make. A super virus. Strong enough to cause blackouts in every single metropolis because they don't want you to buy your so ******* total anarchy ain't. Got nobody stop. You see, late in the evening, but up on my computer keys in the first cycles of this Bible cycle, sin through a Maoism infiltration hits the station. And my mind starts roaming. I create like. No Microsoft or enhanced docs with MP society think they're safe. When Bingo, hard drive crashes. From the rending a lot of hackers. As viruses before vaporizer checks, like so much whites outs, I want it where a file replication is a chore, lights out shut down the entire White House. I don't want Sister bug that could be corrected. I'm erecting the matching their design, but then they should down section by section, even to the greatest minds. It's impossible to fire. Wanted by the virus to bring dire straits to your environment. Question corporal. Races with a mild slash. Slash the whole computer system member budget to put. Virus I wanna divide the virus to bring dire straits to your environment. Christian corporations with their my trash your whole computer system member. But you have already.
UNKNOWN: And is programmed into every one of.
Speaker 5: My 1000 robots.
Speaker 4: We will not hesitate. We will destroy the former.
UNKNOWN: Please play where are you?
Speaker 4: I wanna develop a. Super virus, better by far than at all Y2J. This 3030, the time of global unification. Politicians with leaders and their keywords. FBI spies still involved. Which has the fever. Everybody Luther stores get your can. Get it Steven space stations. Are having a hard time. Please keep a secret. Take our manhood. Which results in the form of global. Apartheid yeah, those are trashed up with gas pump exploded and burned out just before the great Union. The last parts walk around like mass monks ready to manipulate the database of breakthrough on human rights come in 100 place mass production that's always been #1 new Earth has to come up with funding in place so it's time to spread. The fear that. On this.
Speaker 5: How long have we tried to extend our glorious empire?
UNKNOWN: Out to the stars.
Speaker 5: Only to be driven back.
Speaker 4: I wanted to buy the virus to bring dire straits to your environment, crush the corporations with a mild touch, trash the whole computer system and reverted to papyrus. I wanna devise a virus to. Bring dire straits to. Your environment Christian corporations with a mild touch, trash the whole computer system and reported.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to free Radical radio now being recorded in our very own domicile, which means that halfway through the show I. Can get soup. And it makes the whole recording experience so much better. So now Roger. We've been, it's just been called pessimistic. I felt at times the show is pessimistic. And I've recently been consciously. Trying to move away from. Falling into any kind of deep pessimism, especially after talking to Jason Mcquinn when he came on our show. I asked. If he was optimistic or pessimistic and he. He said neither and he didn't think either perspective was useful and that's stuck with me because I think either perspective ends up divorcing us from the present in a lot of ways and just being present to enjoy the moment and also try to maximize our freedom, our potentiality to create these sort of anarchic moments in the present so. We can talk about some positive things and 1st do the joy that is, destroy and then later we're going to do the persistence of the novels. Where I wax Gaia hippie and talk about how beautiful certain organisms are. Go ahead, yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, if there's one thing that we're always going to do on the show if anything ever lasts really, it's going to be report on wild reactions doings so. Thank you Warren society for this the group until your death or mine recently burned a cell phone tower on the Mexico Toluca highway at theight of the Participan Municipality in the state of Mexico and or the country of Mexico, sorry. Probably could have used Rev docs. Spanish skills there is mine. The only way I can actually speak correctly in Spanish is to use an Italian accent, which would probably be a little over the top for the show. Anyways, yeah it's true, so I'm going to read a little bit.
Speaker 1: Is that correct?
Speaker 2: There communique here we. Go, we broke the fence and barbed wire which quote protected the antennand placed an incendiary. Device with homemade retarder on the power supply cables. Later we watched the device light and illuminate the night. The fire expanding from the burned antennand damaging some property of that dam. Telemec company. The antenna was left useless in this way. We continue the string of actions and. Which we excuse. Me, in which, as we have already reiterated in advance everything which makes up and symbolizes. It's like I. Don't know why I can't. Do this I'm like. None of my words are working right now. Symbolizes civilization, progress, technology artificiality and science will be attacked in any form. Wild Nature reclaims what belongs to it. The hills, separated by the aforementioned highway, the trees chopped down for the construction of high tension, power and communication. Cables, animals, humand not forced to abandon their habitat by the pestil and expansion of civilization. Everything which progress has not respected and does not respect screams vengeance our ancestors. Possessed our minds. Now the fire of war is ours, so it's hard not to get a little into the rhetoric there, yeah, certainly.
Speaker 1: I think a. Much more popular choice by wild reaction here.
Speaker 2: And then, oh, ? Cell phone towers benefits for disabled children.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: You know it's. What's the difference? You tell me what difference is I challenge.
Speaker 1: You which is the greater tragedy for those affected. The not raising money to help you when you're maybe in constant pain and debilitation versus not being able to get that phone. Sex you were hoping for.
Speaker 2: Yeah, OK, so let's do you have anything else to say? About that I was kind of reporting that.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, I think cell phone tower is a really great target. I mean, they’re possibly responsible for colony collapse disorder. They're definitely responsible for the deaths of a lot of bird. They are definitely responsible for massive social alienation for work following you to home. I know many of us who has expected the employee to be able to be reached at anytime.
Speaker 2: Oh my God. On Friday night I had a coworker who I don't know. Call me at 11:30 and they called. I don't know. I picked up the random number because it was a local number late at night. I was like oh maybe it's a friend calling in need or something and I picked.
UNKNOWN: Next link.
Speaker 2: I picked up. I don't know if I'm I have another or I don't know if I'm getting booty calls from random numbers at 11:30. That's not quite where my life is at this current point. So anyways, I pick up the phone and I'm like hello and the person's like hey this so and so from work. And I'm like, yeah, and they're like can you work for me tomorrow? And I just go. It's 11 thirty 11:30 PM and they're like, Oh yeah, I just really new stuff I'm like. Don't ever call me this late. And hung up the. Phone and just ended it. I'm like and. Now I'm gonna obviously have to have words with this person when I go back to work tomorrow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I, I think so. For that and some of the other reasons, it's really a great target for them. So great.
Speaker 2: I mean. If I'm not getting calls from coworkers 1130, I'm a happy, happy human. So then something happened in Chile and the people that did the action quoted from anti Technology 2009 which says quote small actions against the system are not only important to the extent that they contribute to the destruction of the system. But also to the extent that they contribute to the formation of individuals who are free, prepared, conscious of their capacities and limitations, brave and capable of fighting, for they want. And on most levels, I think I tend to. I tend to agree with that, and which I kind of want to say earlier, which is where I disagree and both agree and disagree with Doug, which in the way he talks and what he wrote in. His book. Which is he. He often talks about the moments of freedom. People experiencing riots and I'm definitely not going to discount that. I think there. Is something to that? And I think that I think that is that can be a super empowering thing. You know, it's one of the things I personally appreciate. About it, but then when it starts getting to the rhetoric of like the collective memory for the next riot, for all the people together, I don't so much buy into that as much as I buy into the individual having changing their relationship to these structures. But what they do? I don't know if they. I mean, maybe there's something to what Doug's saying? But I just don't see it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I'm pretty skeptical of the idea that people learn from history in some deep way, partially because. I mean obviously a huge part of it because it's in the mainstream. Education is revisionist history winners history, of course, but also just because I think that most people are not going to go out of their way to really study history, so I'm pretty skeptical of that idea, but I'm very much emphatically in support of the. Moments of freedom that he's talking about. We have been talking lately and we're going to talk again. About the fact that people are hugely shaped by their conditions, their environments, and you can't just analyze your way out of every single problem, and so I think putting people into these situations of freedom, these moments of anarchy, as they've been called is huge. And I have seen people be changed by that. I have been changed by that, absolutely.
Speaker 2: So, so this. This the rest of the communique from the people in Chile, and there's also a picture to go along with it of a ******* monstrous fire, huge flame, so we claim responsibility for the incendiary attack against the construction site of the future. Line six of the Santiago Metro on April 7th we attacked this representative. Of social technological progress with an incendiary device of chemical activation. The harmful consequences of the techno industrial expansion will not be tolerated without the necessary response. We walk keeping a close watch on your warehouses, supermarkets, areas of urban expansion, the degradation of wild nature in its most extensive forms, we attack and will continue to attack in the fields and your cities. We will defend tooth and claw. What remains to be defended and ourselves. We send our warm greetings to Natalia Collado and Javier Pino, who I believe are prisoners in Chile. Mm-hmm yeah.
Speaker 1: I, I guess again you see this that same kind of thing of maybe the unpopular target the supermarket, right, I think.
Speaker 2: I forgot to mention that this the Capy Bara group of the FAI Fr I. Which is you got to ******* love? Kathy Barrez, right. Who doesn't love the world's largest?
Speaker 1: Rodent, yeah, I think you cut off the end of the communicate there to strength the comrades on hunger strike. Juan Florez, Natalie Casanovand we are mode. Iran against civilization for the defense of all that we've been losing. Yeah, but again, I think the unpopular target of the supermarket. Maybe there'd be products of . Oh, what about the working people where they can get their food?
Speaker 2: Right?
Speaker 1: You can make someones kids hungry tomorrow. Yeah jobs. Jobs and again I we have the. The kind of drawing of lines there. I mean, if you're willing to attack something like that, you're really taking a stance against. Commodity culture in general, not just maybe the idea of we could have nice hug and kisses, commodity society where everyone has equal access to commodities and equal distribution of commodity wealth. And the KumarIs intelligently and humanely designed. But here we have. I see just this stern refusal of it.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and let's move to Greece for a second. Popular among most riot tourist anarchists. So on the evening of the Easter Day of the 12th of April we attacked using 3 incendiary devices with time delay aiming to destroy the building's entrance and three vehicles, one truck and two vans belonging to a poultry company in Agios Pablo St in Paris there. As a Greek person is pretty embarrassing, I can't pronounce that as an action of solidarity with the imprisoned hunger strikers in Greek prisons. Strength to all those who continue to the imprisoned members of the conspiracy of Cells of fire and those who are recovering. Having stood with dignity and consistency against the state and in the specific timing against the left administrators and exponents of authority. Who and this clear for all those who don't connive since the first day of the grip, the governmental seats have made their intentions clear. With highlights so far, the tactical administration of the hunger strike and the eviction of the occupied University of Athens Deanery. So it's from Greece.
Speaker 1: I was just talking about people not learning from history. Yeah, perhaps nowhere has that been clear recently than with the naive hubbub over Syriza. I mean, come on.
Speaker 2: All right, so before we get to your section, let's finish this joy. That is the story because it's a little bit coming out of Japan. We'll do a little bit on a little segment. We like to call Fukushima where we are unhappy that the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant is eventually going to make it so I can no longer serve in the Pacific Ocean. You may call it a wing nut. Sure, I call it a reasonable assessment of. Things so right now. This really funny thing happened this week in Fukushima where two snake like reconnaissance spots had to be abandoned inside the reactor after one got stuck. Another's camera was damaged by the radiation, so things are so bad in Fukushima that the robots are falling victim to the to the radiation. It's not just the people working there anymore, it's the little robots they're using too.
Speaker 1: Does this mean? That the nuclear Holocaust would end artificial life.
Speaker 2: As well, I know it seems like the AI can't handle the radiation, which is funny. So plus one point for cockroaches minus one for artificial intelligence and water.
Speaker 1: Water based.
Speaker 2: Bears still don't know what the. **** that is.
Speaker 5: They can survive in space.
Speaker 2: No, it's not that it's not an actual bear, it's confused.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they can survive in space. Yeah, they can survive it. Yeah, they can survive. The vacuum of space.
Speaker 2: I thought it was a really cool type of bear that like was really good swimming that I'd never heard of before.
Speaker 1: All right, you have a better handle of mammalian life than you. Thought like yeah.
Speaker 2: The I know all bears. The Fukushima cleanup relies almost entirely on robots because the radiation obviously the radiation levels are so high inside and it's pretty funny because the article in on Fukushima update, which they got from Reuters, ends up talking about how TEPCO, the company managing the efforts there. Managing is quite an interesting word to use. We called the company consistently ******* up, yeah, probably on purpose. Most likely they have a small robotic army there and the one act of resistance that least I could find online. If you're in Japand about more people doing stuff about Fukushima, we would be interested. And besides just the general boring. Testing is fine and interesting things are happening. Know about it. But anyways a drone mark with a radioactive sign was found on the roof Shinzo Abe, who's the Prime Minister of Japan. They found this at his office on Wednesday of last past Wednesday, and they even said that it tested positive for a miniscule amount of radiation, and that's pretty interesting that someone put a drone like, . It's almost like anthrax type situation, except for not quite much left.
Speaker 1: If it was just some kids drone that just happened to be doused with radiation casually.
Speaker 2: So the government is considering, excuse me. The Fukushima power plant is basically a testing ground for robots right now, and drones and it. It just makes so much sense. That no matter how bad is it the thing people forget about like the other possibilities of collapse, is that it could just be this testing ground for robots and for different types of power to be wielded. By the people in authority.
Speaker 1: Yeah, someone passed me a young adult fiction book recently called the Windup Girl, which is actually I haven't read yet but it was built to me as having a heavy collapse skepticism kind of message where there is massive collapse, but then just civilization just goes on.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: And it, and it's even worse than it was before, and they end up going back. To the. You end up in this kind of steampunk world where a lot of high technology falls apart, but there's still absolutely authority and it just. Ends up taking on new forms. So for all of you out there hoping for absolution and deliverance, maybe give this a look. I'm actually going to read it and maybe do a. Little report back and getting.
UNKNOWN: That's that'd be good.
Speaker 1: Maybe the first time I've. Read fiction in a long time it'll be.
Speaker 2: Young adult fiction. I do support you reading something before talking about it. I'm a big fan of.
Speaker 1: That's good. Giving a just giving a preview. Go ahead all right? Yeah, so now my section, which we've done it a bit before I did it with plant communication a while back talking about how marvelous that was way before we got our sound upgrade back with the days. I'm now nostalgic for the days of the funk sound. So yeah, talking about that again, that kind of. Being neither optimistic nor pessimistic, but just enjoying what's present, present and I call it the persistence of the marvelous and I wanted to talk. About to a few weeks ago, I had occasion to frequent a beach and the beach was. By one of that most iconic of avians the seagull. And just watching a seagull hang really languidly in the air. You know when birds are just gliding on a thermal and they're barely expending any kind of effort and hardly any movement, just those little micro adjustments of the wings. And it brought to me or brought to mind for me. If anyone's read that Joseph Winogradsky's slavery and Slack essay, which appears in the magazine or the Publication Modern Slavery and Joseph talks about the Paleolithic rhythm about how most wild organisms are, they're not either lying about for long periods of time. Or being extremely active for long periods of time, but they just do a bit of movement here a bit there with time for rest in between and I very much saw this seagull doing that and you see that beautiful minimal expenditure of effort when they hang in the air and there's that. Popular phrase that nature abhors excessive effort and you can certainly. See it there. You're also reminded that air really is a fluid, like water, and as you see, these languid motions of birds hanging in the air reminds me. Very much of watching. Fish ride the currents with fish. Also having that same kind of. Ability to really hone in on making the best use of each movement of the water around them to minimize their own expenditure of effort and new.
Speaker 2: How did we ever get to bipedalism?
Speaker 1: Well, I mean there are lots of advantages to bipedalism. When you have hands that you can manipulate. Things with. Yeah, and. I'm not saying that or are you trying to contrast that with what they're doing?
Speaker 2: I just feel like we. Used quite a bit of effort to move around.
Speaker 1: Well, our bodies are great for slow to medium speed. Long distance movement, just you, you wouldn't know it from what I was going to do is contrast this with us where it's for many of us it's. The work day is frenetic activity almost non-stop, a lot? I mean, I spent wasted so much my life in the service industry where you design your feet all day. It's almost non-stop movement and then you come home and you just lie on the couch. For hours because you're ******* tired and this.
Speaker 2: You get it all and you get. Nothing you get no middle ground.
Speaker 1: Right whereas I'm saying this is absolutely the minimum or excuse me, the middle ground where.
Speaker 2: I think that sounds right.
Speaker 1: As true as anything could possibly be in this world, and now we're going to move on to the second part of free radical radio talks. But we also. Listen, this one's actually long overdue this back in episode 73, we talked about Frank Wilderson because and Frank wilderson, known for putting out the. The critique of anti Blackness, saying that it's not about white supremacy but about something far deeper which is just an A. Basic level anti blackness coming not just from. You know white culture, white society, white dominance, but from everywhere in the world, and the idea that the. The black person is in some fundamental way, socially dead, recognized as a less than a kind of subhuman, a slave by everyone, and that. There's a kind of necessity for the libidinal economy to function for to have a lowest of the low that's everyone can feel above that everyone can objectify that everyone.
Speaker 2: Well, as Wilderson says, for the psychic health of all non.
Speaker 1: Five people
Speaker 2: Right, right? And then also we read him in the Inter Study Group and then I actually I watched him talk 3 days. In a row. Two times,, two Times Now two times oh. I didn't go to the third one. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, someone responded shortly after episode 73 on our website saying that were misrepresenting 1 aspect of what Wilderson was. With respect to the possibility of solidarity with Palestinians and also about the libidinal economy. So they cited the following from Wilderson from the same interview that were talking about, where Wilderson says quote. So right now pro Palestinian people are saying quote Ferguson is an example of what is happening in Palestine and you all are getting what we're getting. End Quote, that's just ********. While there's and continues first, there's no time period in which black police and slave domination. Ever ended? Second, the Arabs and the Jews are as much a part of the black slave trade. The creation of blackness as social death as anyone else. As I told a friend of mine, yeah, we're going to help you get rid of Israel, but the moment that you set up your ****, we're going to be right there to Jack you up because anti blackness isn't as important and necessary to the formation of Arab psychic life as it is. To the formation of Jewish.
UNKNOWN: Happy life.
Speaker 1: I believe that looking at it from anti capitalist perspective from anti white supremacist perspective, the Palestinians are right provisionally until they get their ****. Then they're wrong, so this a historical thing. What we have to do is remind each other to know our history in terms of slavery and our resistance to it, but also to be able to have X-ray vision and say that just because we're walking around in suits and ties and our professors and journalists. Doesn't mean we're not slaves. That is to understand things diachronically and that will allow us to be in a coalition with people of color moving in. Moving on the system with them, but ridiculing them at the same time. For the paucity, the lameness of their desire and demand. And go ahead jump.
Speaker 2: Into understanding that's.
UNKNOWN: That's that's a.
Speaker 2: Good way to read free Waterson right there and that he has a lot of his writing interviews online too. So if you want to get. The full step it's. Really easy to find online.
Speaker 1: Go ahead so the comment or criticize us for two things. I'm gonna take. Them one at a time. First, the commenter writes the argument is not against solidarity with Palestine, and they're saying that were saying, well, there's against. But rather to see their claims for a restoration of Palestinian humanity as a limited aim from a perspective of anti blackness as it appeals to a horizon of social recomposition that black flesh cannot aspire toward. So it's a qualified or reframed solidarity to put it otherwise, not a rejection of it, per say. I don't think were saying it was a rejection of solidarity per say, and if were saying that maybe we misspoke, or at least that I misspoke. My grievance was with the what I was reading is Wilderson's extreme racial essentialism that all non black people are inherently and inevitably anti black and. A different way of taking it, and maybe I should reframe things and change my attitude toward Waterson with this that it might be the case that racial nationalism of any kind requires an intense othering in order to have some kind of transcendental racial identity yourself. You need to reify other people in the same way, in opposition to the reification of your own racial identity. So it's not totally clear to me whether Willerson thinks that anti blackness is a consequence of capitalism as he would put it. Or maybe, as I would say, civilization. And maybe it's just these forms of domination that construct these racial identities in the 1st place, and Wilderson isn't saying that It’s just some kind of inherent thing that people would need that lowest of the low, regardless of our social conditions, regardless of our ecological conditions. And so I think I did have some initial reticence. Walterson when I first read him, which was back in episode 73. That I don't so much feel anymore and I actually do read what he's saying there as being quite reasonable.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know though I do. Kind of think. There is almost at least if you're raised in this world and an inherent anti blackness. I mean I, I just think about it this way. I'm like if I find out someone's half black, it's the drop in the bucket theory that Wilson says is how everyone kind of relates to black people, which is that if like Obama, if someone's half black we Read them as black and we.
Speaker 1: But I don't. I really don't. Feel that way.
Speaker 2: Well, I just think that's true because at least that's how I see it. That's my personal experience and I think I, I think. Honestly, I honestly feel like most people, if they weren't themselves, would feel that way.
Speaker 1: I think that's ******** though I think mixed people have a totally distinct experience of race.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, that's. Not what I'm saying what I'm saying.
Speaker 1: It is bigger.
Speaker 2: Saying what I'm saying no, what I'm saying is when you look at the President, I think most people, I think most everyone thinks black man. They don't think mixed race man.
Speaker 1: I think most people in the United States think that way because of the unique racial history of white versus black in the United States. I don't think most people globally look at Obamand say he's black, completely black.
Speaker 2: I don't know. I mean.
Speaker 1: I don't really OK, that's fine. We can disagree. About that yeah.
Speaker 2: Well, but what I'm saying is like. If you find out someone is someone who is like a white passing person who's like half Japanese or something, you find that out. I don't think it makes you think you start referring that person as Japanese in your head. The way if that person was half black you would start and you didn't realize that you'd start seeing them as a black person. I don't think it works the same way which. I think is actually just an argument against intersectionality. Which is, wilderness and clearly is against intersexuality in this particular way, even though sometimes you kind of goes into that territory. But I think the reading of it to me. At least is parts of it. Make an argument against intersectionality by saying it's different. There's nothing like the way black people are like oppressed or whatever word you want to use. And I would say that's the same for women. It's the same for many other groups is they're distinctly different in the ways that they operate, and that doesn't mean that they can't work together. Stuff, but I I just think they’re just very, very different in the ways that they work.
Speaker 1: I agree, totally agree with that. Yeah, qualitatively different in commensurable. Which is, I think, an argument against the. Oppression Olympics game where you just can't weigh these things against each other. Totally different. OK, so the commenter goes on. I'm going to push ahead. They say also when we use the term libidinal economy. It's not in my opinion necessary to understand this in an idealist manner, as in it in the mind as if it isn't. Serial numerous post 1968 usages of Lacan, of which the losing guitaring are only the most well known insists on the material and institutional and violent nature of unconscious domination, IE the physical world around us is directly invested by desire, not secondarily or only after we project meaning onto it. This matters if one wants to think about what it would mean to quote, destroy the world in Wilderson sense. Certainly it's a matter of an unconscious shift, but I don't read this as a distinct project from the brick by brick dismantling of the material forces occupying our lives on a daily basis. End Quote, so I don't disagree with the commenter. Yeah, so I think again maybe we misspoke. If we indicated. Otherwise, I think applying the libidinal economy analysis means that we might understand our everyday phenomena that we go around all the physical structures that we see. The layout of the cities. The design of the buildings, the commodities we interact with, advertisement. All these things are both reflecting and influencing our unconscious. Desire, so there's a kind of reciprocal relationship, and I agree that's prior to any kind of conscious recognition or action, so obviously we're affected by these things in a way that we cognize. But I think we're also being affected by. On an unconscious level, and I think the same is true of the people that are designing these structures, that part of it is intentional, but we also have this kind of this libidinal subconscious desire arching through all these things, and we've as I talked about on the show before today, and as we talked about in the past. Well, analysis of course. We can't simply think our way out of domination. Our perception, in my opinion, is the basis of who we are. And being in one environment versus another is going to affect who we are and how we behave, and that's the true for all these material structures that I'm talking about. And also the kinds of racial interactions that we're having and the way we. Racially cognize and perceive people in the way that Wilderson is talking about. And we can't just analyze our way out. So I agree with the comments or that libidinal economy analysis doesn't mean idealism. And I agree that for me and rider too, Imagine that analysis definitely entails and leads to and calls for changing our conditions. I mean, I want forests to replace cities and OK, yeah?
Speaker 2: No, I agree, I agree.
Speaker 1: Yeah, what is odd to me though, and what I will stick to in being confused by wilderson disagreeing with wilderson is the way he goes from this analysis. This really great analysis to the vague endorsement of just organizers. He doesn't even really go into detail in the interview that we ended up discussing. On the ground, I mean I know he said before that the role of the academic is not to be prescriptive. Instead, to provide analysis that shows the relations and the structures of authority. But does he really think that he can just take for granted that the people doing protests against police brutality, for instance, which is what he ended up talking about and what's very topical right now, and? You know, these people obviously addressing a serious issue, but just one head of the Hydra, so to speak. Does he think these people are going to as he excitingly, but kind of vaguely says, destroy the world, or even necessarily know their means?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean. Yeah, It’s. Interesting, he's he's a person. Of interesting history. He's, . Clearly at one point was really serious about Marxism and then also had his time in the AMC where he as he talked about some of his books was clearly doing gun running and on the ground type stuff that was radically different from what you were seeing happen right now. It's really different situation. He describes a different situation. And while issans words the reasons. When I went to see him talk, someone said, do do you really believe it's worse now and he said yeah, **** yeah, this? **** is way worse and then.
Speaker 1: Give that regressive list affinity.
Speaker 2: Yeah we do. But the example he used was saying that least in South Africa where he was, working in the fight there he was saying at least we had liberated spaces. We could run to. In America, there’s no place for. As he as he would say, black people to run to. They're basically stuck. They there's no liberated spaces. There’s no even. There's not even you can't even run like outside there's just there's no place to go and that's why he would say it's worse now than it was he that's why he says it's worse now in modern America for a black person that was. For a black person, theight of apartheid.
Speaker 1: Right, so yeah, this our effort at dialogue. I encourage both the people that we've been responding to respond back. Please talk at us. Talk with us. Choose your preposition and. We are. I as I'm going to be taking a hiatus from the week to week radio show soon, we're going to finally get our ******* **** together and get the call in going on. So look for that soon. I'm not going to put a date on it. I'm going to say soon. And then we'll be able to really transform the show, hopefully in ways that people find exciting. I'm going to be way more stressed. Out, yeah. All right, so we're going to do one more section where Roger is going to give us either his presentation or some form of his presentation. Some kind of?
Speaker 2: Aberration of my presentation.
Speaker 1: Aberration of presentation and we are free radical radio. You can find us at freeradicalradio.net. You can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net and please talk to us. We'll be back shortly. This Bellamy the last section of the show that I talked about. There was unfortunately lost due to a computer crash immediately after recording it. We are going to work on getting that out in the next week. It will be a. Different version of the ******* presentation that Rydra presented and a little bit of commentary and development of it after that. Thanks for listening.
Interview with Bursts O’Goodness From Final Straw Radio
Posted on April 22, 2015 INTERVIEWS
As part of Free Radical Radio’s interview series, Rydra interviews Bursts of Final Straw Radio. They discuss how Final Straw came to be, get a little bit personal, talk about the future of the show and anarchist media in general, talk prisoner support and what that means/looks like, discuss how they deal with socialists pushing newspapers and holding megaphones, and much much more. Final Straw: http://thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org/
Episode 78: Don’t You Dare Judge Their Slavery!
Posted on April 13, 2015 PODCAST
A spiritual defense of slavery and some thoughts on limiting critique.
Episode 77: The Rage and the Fucked Sound to which We Cleave
Posted on April 7, 2015 PODCAST
FRR returns with more fucking rage than ever.
Episode 76: Total Freedom & Anarchy: Only One Perfect -ism Away
Posted on March 30, 2015 PODCAST
Click here to listen to the show!!!!! NOW! 01:00: Rydra uses the show in place of therapy to vent about his working life; 07:40: Liberal advice on how to enjoy modern slavery; 12:20: Rydrand Bellamy give their take on the NAASN Conference last week; 22:57: “Two by Two” by Base Case from their Subway Rock Demo; 27:49: Negative aspects of NAASN – who is organizing these things?; 36:15: FRR Talks, But We Also Listen: review of Margaret Killjoy’s “Take What You Need and Compost the Rest”; 48:08: Wingnut Confessional: Language and Color; 56:51: “The Subway Could Tip Over” by Base Case from their Subway Rock Demo; 01:03:10: Shit News: The Poop Bandit and Mount Everest; 01:06:19: As the World Burns: Preventing fire through clearcuts and herbicides and Rydra’s youthful romance; 01:10:10: Sea lion pups washing ashore; Notes on Progress: Starbucks leading the anti-racist charge and SF church shows what a sanctuary it is for the homeless; 01:18:48: The Long History of Getting Ploughed: the gift mentality versus the work mentality; 01:26:53: Luddites Anonymous: the techno-optimism of years gone by This show was brought to you by the subjective and highly questionable opinions, thoughts, and feelings of Bellamy Fitzpatrick and Rydra Wrong.
Episode 75: FRR Destroys Strawmen That Are Ugly To Them
Posted on March 16, 2015 PODCAST
Click these words to listen to the show! listen here! now! 0:00: Bellamy reports back on going to the PNW and the possible intersections of Zen Buddhism and anti-civilization anarchist theory 7:37: Bellamy’s take on having been on Anarchy Radio with John Zerzan; the infuriating persistence of egoist strawmen 20:40: FRR responds to friendly fire from Black and Green Review with decidedly less friendly fire 27:15: Music: “People II: The Reckoning” by Andrew Jackson Jihad from People That Can Eat People Are the Luckiest People in the World 31:20 Response to BAGR continued 40:00 Clarification what we’ve said about ITS and WR 44:04 As the World Burns: Miami sinking and ominous predictions for the California drought 51:09 Wingnut Confessional: Everyday manifestations of authority and work culture in Rydra’s work and leisure 1:00:55: Music: Will Smith’s classic “Miami”, a watershed moment in Hip-Hop history – we miss it as much as we will miss its namesake! 1:04:14: Wingnut Confessional: Authority 1:15:54: Wingnut Confessional: Authority and Children 1:21:27: FRR Talks, But We Also Listen, After Which We Talk More: A listener asks what we think of the expression “None of us is free until we all are free” 1:33:18: Music: “The Only That Governments Have Done” by Ryan Harvey 1:35:10: Love Me I’m A Liberal: The indefatigable specter of Democracy 1:38:00: All Cats Are Beautiful: NYPD’s Wikipedia propaganda 1:43:49: Charles Eisenstein on college, boredom, and anxiety; schools and the inculcation of authority 2:01:50: Arguments, absurd tangents, unfounded proclamations
Episode 74: On Applauding “arson, violence and murder and little else”
We also regularly applaud sex – sometimes I just feel like you don’t even listen to us… 0:00: Rydra’s praxis of littering? 3:22: Marine life feels the effects of pharmaceuticals; 9:19: Kent State ROTC arson; 10:52: Attempted prison revolt in South Texas; 15:19: Riot in South Carolina prison; 17:34: ‘Black Sites’ run by Chicago PD; 22:35: Fukushima continues to kill us; 29:08: Music: “I’m Only Sleeping” by Ivand the BeETs; 32:15: Another Social Work discussion; 39:10: Wingnut Confessional: Conservation; 45:11: Luddites Anonymous: De-Extinction; 1:01:07: Music: “The 4 (Great Ishraqi Sun)” by Secret Chiefs 3 on Book of Horizons; 1:07:41: Luddites Anonymous: Head Transplants; 1:12:40: New communique form Wild Reaction (RS); 1:19:00: “Chaos”?…relationships…tangents…alienation…tangents; 1:29:50: Music: “Bezriel” written by John Zorn and performed by Secret Chiefs 3 from Xaphan: The Book of Angels Volume 9; 1:34:50: The Long History of Getting Ploughed: Subsistence horticulture by Lacandon, Ketchi, and Huastec via swidden-fallow forest gardening; 1:42:45: FRR Talks, But We Also Listen: Response to a commenter taking us to task for being antagonistic during the Agency interview and for evincing “an egoism that applauds acts of vandalism, arson, violence and murder and little else.” Sources: Tending the Wild by M. Kat Anderson Permaculture: A Designer’s Manual by Bill Mollison “Seeing the Garden in the Jungle” by Toby Hemenway Max Stirner’s Dialectical Egoism by John Welsh Reaccion Salvaje: http://waronsociety.noblogs.org/?p=9382 prison riot: http://www.nydailynews.com/news/crime/south-carolina-prison-locked-apparent-riot-article-1.2131179 prison transfers in south texas: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/texas-willacy-county-prison-transfers-secrecy-rioting chicago black sites: http://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2015/feb/24/chicago-police-detain-americans-black-sitehttp://www.theguardian.com/u De-Extinction:http://geneticliteracyproject.org/2015/02/11/fit-to-be-cloned-making-case-for-reintroducing-extinct-species/http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/2015/jan-feb/de-extinctionhttp://www.designntrend.com/articles/42052/20150228/new-jurassic-world-video-shows-baby-dsdainosaurs-made.htm http://theconversation.com/for-me-the-idea-of-de-extinction-is-now-as-dead-as-a-dodo-35457 Human head transplants: http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2015/02/28/a-head-transplant-is-a-terrible-horrible-no-good-very-bad-idea.html http://www.cbsnews.com/news/human-head-transplant-two-years-away/ Marine Life and Pharmaceuticals (and aqua-dumping): http://motherboard.vice.com/read/drugs-in-our-pee-are-making-fish-act-weird The genuinely lived-and-felt-and-horribly-unescapable...
Speaker 1: Welcome to free Radical radio where Rider proves himself entirely undomesticated, able, unwilling to use a pop shield, he's not adjusting to the technological improvements of the show. I've got a pop shield, which is why I can go. And it sounds fine. Rider, however, will be paying all over the place, I'm.
Speaker 2: Not even going to use the. Letter that shall not. Be named.
Speaker 1: We'll see how long that lasts. Let's see how Longrider could go without using the letter P. What happened to you this morning? What kind of person did you encounter?
Speaker 2: Out of the hippies. You know, it's quite the. Ordeal I know I get accused of being a hippy because. Sometimes I wear. A glass earring that's very beautiful and. My hair is. Long and flowing much differently than the. Way bellamys flows. But the more. Of the curly variety of the Jew, Greek combo actually had this problem the other day when someone asked me to leave her room because I was. European well not me explicitly. A group of US. And I kind of had. A crisis of identity there. I don't know how I feel about that, but. Anyways, how you feel about being a European descent? Well, I'm not sure. I don't think I am, but who knows? It's hard to tell these days. I don't really spend a lot of time looking back in my ancestry. It's not my game, I don't. Play that game. It's fine if people want to do that.
Speaker 1: A historical human being.
Speaker 2: It's not my game. And I came out of nowhere from nothing from nothing, nowhere here. And as I emerged from nothing, I found myself walking smoking cigarettes because when I'm creating nothing, I like it to start with lung cancer for myself.
Speaker 1: And out of nothing. 2 words.
Speaker 2: And I'm enjoying. What was my last cigarette and I was gonna try to quit against that. Even smoke since then I'm. Making another effort to quit and. I'm freaking walking down the ******* ******* St and I'm crossing the crosswalk and I'm about to walk into the place where I'm. Gonna get my coffee and. The next thing I know I throw my cigarette onto the street and some ******* hippie in his car. Comes over like stops his car next to me and he says hey there's a trash can right there. Why are you throw on the street with the trash can right there but he said it. I mean, he might not even been aggressive, but Immediately upped it to level 10 of aggression and just like he said in both my arms like I. Was at Aerodactyl and I just looked at him and I. Was like I was like **** you the whole ******* world the trash can. That's all this. And then he drove away. So that was my that was the way my day started today. And then I enjoyed nice.
Speaker 1: Talking and brisk walk home. So explain maybe less flippantly. Your reasoning for. Your actions and your subsequent defence of them.
Speaker 2: Well, can you, can you? Explain to me. What where the cigarette? How the cigarettes? How better than in a landfill or in the street? What's the difference? I don't understand.
Speaker 1: So one argument might be that because of urban runoff, that's going to end up in the local watershed, whereas otherwise it would have been well.
Speaker 2: I mean the landfill right next to us at Albany Bulb was right on. The water you don't think that stuff seeped into the water.
Speaker 1: Well, I think what you would say is it comes down to a kind of lifestyle. Consumer choice yeah. I'm just not. We're operating within the context of the refuse system, and you're.
Speaker 3: Not going to. Play the game.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna play that game, I can play the. Karma game I Can play the lifestyle choice game. I'm not interested in that game. I'm interested in quitting smoking game, but that's only because I'm interested in being the old man at some point because I feel like I. Would be a. Good old mand I. I see myself sitting on the porch.
Speaker 1: Yelling **** you *******. The whole world the garbage can yeah.
Speaker 2: That's pretty much what I see I. Don't see much change. Maybe people respect me more cuz I'm older and I don't look young. Who knows, maybe they won't. I don't know what people are up to. I do know that my dream of Aqua dumping is.
Speaker 1: Now dead, though, this another way in which you allow your waste and your. Excrement to pollute.
Speaker 2: The whole beginning of the show is about my personal life choices.
Speaker 1: We're gonna second to analysis of conservation. The Wingnut Confessional section later. So really right, there's not so much venting. With a bit of theoretical rigor behind it, so much as he's he's Adam Brady, he's foreshadowing for us here.
Speaker 2: I feel like all rants, especially mine, are strongly grounded in theory and logic. It's hard not to believe that. So yeah, the dream of Aqua dumping could possibly be dead. If I'm the kind of person that's going to subscribe to. Choices, . I had this whole utopia of us living on the river together, pooping into the river and now it's just become a full nightmare because all of the toxins of society and the vitamins. It's all the same, really. Doesn't matter what it is. Toxins, vitamins anything, they give us that we take, it's all. It's all somehow ending up back in the ******* ocean you.
Speaker 1: Know birth control? Antidepressants anti anxiety pills. There's a decent article on Motherboard motherboard, known platform of Sultan Esfan, known just generally. It's kind of like.
Speaker 2: Exactly right.
Speaker 1: A young techie audio. And they're. Correctly pointed out that the old paradigm of toxicity from back during the early pharmaceutical revolution days is not very useful. You had an understanding, not of median lethal dose or LD50, as it's abbreviated, which is basically how much of you're testing the acute toxicity of the drug, how much of it. Is needed to kill 50% of a study population which is usually laboratory. And besides, the horror of creatures being bred only to be poisoned, to see how poisonous a suspected poison is, you also have it not being having really limited scope of use because you're not looking at things that aren't straightforwardly toxic, but instead behavior changing. So things like, again, antidepressants, anxiolytics birth control, which. Are not going to. You're not going to get much out of them by looking at the LD 50. You're going to instead see these far. Reaching more subtle effects.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so do you want to talk about the laws? Before I go on, yeah and the.
Speaker 1: EPA's really dated law. The major waste law governing this, the resource conservation and Recovery Act, doesn't actually cover these kinds of waste pharmaceutical waste. There are only 10 pharmaceutical contaminants that they're even. Highlighting as potentially of needing more research, whereas we've got many folds that we're taking and regularly secreting. Into the water supply.
Speaker 2: As someone who doesn't. Care about lifestyle choices. For the most part, as they at least as they relate. To certain things would.
Speaker 3: This sounds good.
Speaker 2: Rather, I have different feelings about my relationship with technology. And some of these other things. But when it relates to where I put my. ****, I'm not interested in having someone tell me. What to do with it and? Someone who is interested is Dana Kolpin, a research hydrologist, and this what she had to say about some of the ways fish are being affected by all this stuff. That's you wanna call it? Farm Pharma pollution is that the PC? Term the correct term. Sure, so anyways, the pharma pollution. That's what she's referencing and it's relationship with fish. She said species. That typically stay in a school or in the dark are becoming braver and wandering off by themselves. They're changing their behaviors in a way that makes them more susceptible to predation. It's kind of hard to believe that they're braver. It's kind of it's anti anxiety. I guess that's true. I guess that is. I'm sure it's funny. To think about it that way? Yeah, that they. Don't have that anxiety that keeps them. In school anymore. Now they're wandering free and. Getting eaten man. That's great.
Speaker 1: That's with all this schooling around all the time. And I'm gonna be. My own fish.
Speaker 2: **** you in your school. I don't wanna follow you.
Speaker 1: Anymore and there was also a study on minnow larvae that when they were exposed to antidepressants, they had a slower escape response so. I mean it. It's kind of funny if you think of. All the things that we have, we have our, our television, our anti anxiety pills, our alcohol, all these things that help us get through the day. And have a you. Know a? Lack of desire to break out that just normalize our schedules. Our work a day consumption life, our social alienation that we can get pretty comfortable with it, with a bit of. Doping up I mean. I've completely. In there, well now we're imposing it. On a broader range of species.
Speaker 2: Yeah, Dana had one more thing to say really quick. She said anything we use has potential to become an environmental contaminant. Each of us is now a part of. The equation what were we before?
Speaker 1: Consumer consumer choices, but what were?
Speaker 2: We before when was when were we? Not part of the equation, that's the.
Speaker 1: Interesting question and this a perfect example of the conservation mindset that I wanna touch on later. That of nature as being separate from US nature is something that is out. There to be. Consumed when we like enjoyed what we like, preserved what we like and we exist outside of it. It's something that we look down on and can tinker with, but are not intimately connected to and we're going to build on this later. I keep saying that over and. Over, but I think. It’s a really interesting duality. Kind of reified construction and we'll get into it after some resistance news.
Speaker 2: All right, you're really into the foreshadowing.
Speaker 1: There I know all right.
Speaker 2: I like to live in the moment. I guess I'm more. Present than you even though.
Speaker 1: I admired and just why you'll throw cigarette on the. Grounds of other trash can next to you.
Speaker 2: Although before my car overheated on the Bay Bridge, driving home from the surf the other day, I did get to hear three separate Taylor Swift. Songs in one drive all on. The radio is quite a dream all copyrighted living the dream so news from the resistance to ROTC. If you don't know, ROTC is, it's something about the military. It's like military improvement.
Speaker 1: For recruitment
Speaker 2: That's what it is. Yeah, passenger vans were parked on the Kent State campus. Interesting time and kids that actually anyways they were found burning last Monday morning. So six days ago. And the investigators believe the fires were intentionally set. Seems like it seems like at this point no one's taking credit for it, but it is kind of. It seems like something has been happening not so often in. The Ohio yes yes.
Speaker 1: Why in Ohio sleep in Ohio.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so one of the vans was heavily damaged, the other not so much and this where it gets. Kind of funny. Well, at least I think it's funny, so they suspect arson and wanted to head are the Lieutenant Colonel or whatever ******** position. This kind of Matthew Fox has. He said that there have been no other recent attacks against the organization, but as a precaution he has ordered cadets to wear civilian clothing while on campus, so they're deep in the fear game. It's pretty funny, yeah, so they think people are getting jumped and beaten, I guess so which is pretty funny cuz I don't think that happens very often.
Speaker 1: Or set up a fire. Well, I mean I would not have believed last week that something like that would. Happen at Kent State.
Speaker 2: Also, maybe he has some type of like confabulation of the Kent State massacre.
Speaker 1: Quite a word there, yeah.
Speaker 4: OK.
Speaker 1: So what you're saying he's. Associating the school's history.
Speaker 2: I think he. Has a memory just stood there, doesn't exactly. Remember what happened, yeah?
Speaker 1: But it was the other way around.
Speaker 2: I'll know if he remembers which way that which way. That massacre went.
Speaker 1: You know, so got us down again.
Speaker 2: So since tell me likes foreshadow, we're gonna follow up on last week's story of unsuccessful prison takeover in South Texas and. There's a couple interesting things about this story. One of the things is that I've seen a lot of people posting online about this, like it was a revolt, it's. Not a revolt like it. They didn't. Take over the prison they tried. To they oh I see. So I guess man cheering.
Speaker 1: I don't know whatever none.
Speaker 2: And that's how broad, yeah, there's a lot of cheering on that I find interesting.
Speaker 1: Maybe people like the effort.
Speaker 2: My name is, I'll get. I'll get into More's story goes. So basically this a prison in South Texas and 1000 of the inmates at this place and it's Willacy County Correctional Facility and is in Southeast Texas. So 1000 of the inmates there. I think there's 2800 total have already been transferred from the prison following the **** that happened last weekend. There's like some hostages. There's a whole ordeal, and no one's really telling anyone where they're being sent, which is obviously raising concern from some of their. Family and friends. If you have someone in prison, then they're just gone and this. Is what they had to say. This what they have to say about. Prison the private prison is one of 13 criminal alien requirement. We have actual acronym for that CAR, criminal alien requirement, prisons in the US and incarcerates mostly immigrants convicted of unlawful entry into the country and they're being held in these crazy *** Kevlar domes. So thisn't even. I mean it's a prison for sure, but like it has nothing. To do with anything besides someone. Just came here you.
Speaker 1: Know imagine after. The after NAFTA destroys your entire agricultural subsistence. You might try to leave that place venture Dome.
Speaker 2: So I'm sure.
Speaker 1: Might end up in a.
Speaker 2: Nice though, remind people again of what's going on at this ******* shithole that they put people in. So, Carl Sakai of the ACLU. He's looking, attorney, guy, whatever. He filed a report in the prison in 2014, he said. He said that what people communicated to me during the interviews was a sense of near universal despair. Described living in overcrowded Kevlar tens, 200 bunks packed only a few feet apart from each other. Insects that crawled through the walls of the. Tent and bit. Them at night, toilets that constantly overflowed and had the stench of sewage permeated the tents. Each time these toilets overflowed and they also describing lock and isolation. Themselves, not because they've done anything wrong, but because there weren't enough beds available in the overcrowded tents and not like us at the radical rate. Really give a **** about what people did wrong. But yeah, regardless. Of all the ******** language that's problematic.
Speaker 1: Again implying that it would be. OK, to do this. To someone that had committed a crime, yeah.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but I mean. Either way, like this some. I mean we're gonna talk about,, foreshadow. We're gonna talk about the Chicago black site that is existing here in the US. Things are just. Getting dark these days.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think again this a case in point of the invisible ization of the real consequences of civilization. For many of us who somehow manage to keep the blinders on, even when you live in the cities you see the urban poverty you've got your little devices. You know, the sweatshop labor that's happening you. Have these quote UN quote free trade agreements even though it's actually obviously a deeply status economy as well as capitalist one and that these are the realities of it. But most of it is conveniently out of sight. I mean, you even quit people inside these. Domes, even if you're standing there, you think? Oh, there's a big. Hooked Kevlar over there, I mean.
Speaker 2: Just some of the language that.
UNKNOWN: I don't know settings.
Speaker 2: Is like passed around like criminal alien requirement. It's just so ******* like dystopia like every second of our daily. Life is just filled with this sentence.
Speaker 1: Super weird language. Half guys situation going on.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think of Kafka now, so I think of Delaney when he talks about the disinterest to describe how the first writer, he kind of he guesses that the first time people started writing. It's either to take a terrible situation and make it beautiful, or to take a terrible situation and take all the emotion and feeling and relationships out of it and just write it down in a completely mechanical way, which he calls the disinterested scrub.
Speaker 1: And essentially, some of the first writing was just the cataloging of trade and debt, and that sort of thing which is most likely normal even.
Speaker 2: Was human normalizing human commodity slavery?
Speaker 1: Or yeah, in. Some kind of servitude, but normalizing it. By Mathematizing and bureaucratized it yeah, so there you go. Criminality requirement that's 10,000 years later. It's on the air.
Speaker 2: So it's up now. Yeah, I'll get you there all right. So let's go more on prison and happiness cuz yeah.
UNKNOWN: We're gonna keep going.
Speaker 1: This was resistance news.
Speaker 2: That was, it did seem like resistance was, but actually it's actually just ******, sad stuff. No, it's a little bit of resistance here, so the largest maximum security prison in South Carolina was on lockdown for several hours this Thursday as inmates. Right it yeah, I'm guessing It’s hard to tell exactly what's going on. Details are still slowly coming out. People saw some armed guards on the roofs. There's vehicles coming, and there was some photos leaked from inside the prison. Of inmates who. Had cell phones. It says they're armed with cell phones. I don't know what I mean, they. Could throw a cell phone at someone. Maybe you could just like call someone and put up their and be like cancer's gonna get you in 20 years *******. Here's your cancer and just kind of like press. The phone into someone's head as. You're navigating the Internet and making like. A four way conference call just getting all the radiation.
Speaker 1: Using up all your data.
Speaker 2: That is up. The datand an inmate said that a group of prisoners held two other inmates hostage, which started creating the chaos, which is kind of an interesting way to go about things there. I don't know how. I feel about that though.
Speaker 1: I mean where I wonder were they snitches? Were they just pawn bodies there in that situation?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know, but either way people in prison seem to be doing some **** dug dug over old old host of the show. They were probably happy with. Fire the prisons. In case you didn't know, Doug's publication is out. Even though he chose not to link us in the publication, it's fine Doug feel. Feel free to feel free. So there are more interesting projects to talk about. Yeah, you guess so. So feel free to pick up a copy of that publication if you like, and let us know what you think of it. Yeah, let us know we have our criticisms. It we'll pass along the emails. To the old, the old friend of the old friend of the show. Anyways, sometime but seriously, you should. You should pick it up even if you if you even if you disagree with that. I should totally some work I put into that so pick. Up a copy. They're free, I think it's totally free.
Speaker 1: Great yeah, that's great.
Speaker 2: Totally worth it. Also if you live in the Bay Area you can just e-mail it, assuming probably grab you one because there's ******* **** ton. At our houses, so we're starting.
Speaker 1: To use them for installation.
Speaker 2: Alright, so I lied. I didn't foreshadow we're gonna go straight into it. Let's go straight to the black sites. We're talking about prisons. Keep it going the surprise old Bellamy over here or young Bellamy as he relates. So this from the Guardian, the Chicago Police Department operates an off the books interrogation compound, rendering Americans unable to be found by family attorneys, will walk inside what lawyers say is the domestic equivalent of the CIA black site. So Bellamy let me list some things that are going on at this wonderful place in Chicago.
Speaker 1: So you might be. In Chicago, having possibly or possibly not committed some sort of crime, suddenly your family and friends don't know where you are, and this what's happening.
Speaker 2: This what's happening. You're keeping, they're keeping arrestees out official booking databases. You could beaten by the police, resulting head wounds shackled for prolonged periods. Some of the stories I was reading. There was an interview on Democracy. Now I'm going to forget her name. I think it's Vic or their name and 18 hours supposed to be their hand handcuffed behind. Their back on. The thing we're gonna talk more specifically about one of the 803 Jacob Brian Jacob Church. 2nd But anyways, also they're denying attorneys access to the quote secure facility, and they're holding people without legal counsel for between 12 hours and a day, and including people as young as 15. And there's also this really fishy story where all the details haven't come out where they found a person basically died in the interview. And was high on heroin so. Speculate as you will with what happened. There what I mean you. Can you can do some speculating there? It's probably not gonna be many good places, so Brian Jacob Church, who's one of the NATO three? If you remember them, was if you can look up online. I don't get that right now was held in question at home and square in 2012, following a police raid. So the officers. Strange Church for most of the day, denying him access to attorney before sending him to a nearby police station to be booked in charge. This what he had to say, he said Homan Square is definitely an unusual. Place it brings to mind the interrogation facilities they use in the Middle East. The CA calls them black sites. It's a domestic black site. When you go in, no one knows what's happened to you and another person was describing the full good cop bad cop situation where someone came in and yelled at her, screamed at her, went totally. ******* wild on her and then 5 minutes later. Watching the other cop with McDonald's like happy Meal like offering that there. So it's like. I mean, it's almost like these *******.
Speaker 1: It's actually so stark that it's hard things, seriously.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like these ******* morons are just watching like CSI or I don't understand CSI. But like some type of cop show where this stuff happens and then coming and then like using those techniques in real. Right? Which I guess. Remember, all those stories came out about how people had saved other people with CPR because they watched being watched and learned. CPR, no I didn't. Know that I don't think any of that's actually true. Because CPR was so little.
Speaker 1: Life continues to emanate. Imitate or.
Speaker 2: Also, I don't know how they did that. Because I'm a. Lifeguard and I have no idea how to give CPR to someone if something happens in my pool like it's not a good situation let. Me throw that out there right now.
Speaker 1: You can just start throwing. Cigarettes on the ground and then I could.
Speaker 2: Burn them, burn them, bring up the warm body warm but I was in a lifeguard Training because we have like a training once once every week on Friday for an hour and I was just watching a bunch of 15 year olds 16 year olds in my work and a. Lot of them. Were just like. Telling me like. What I should be doing giving me hands? But it's pretty sweet. Because, like other people on the other. Side of the. Room and. And they were. Just like hey man, like you should probably. You should probably do this or this, or you paid it well, like thank you actually really need thelp so. If you like solidarity. You're qualified.
Speaker 1: If you like solidarity.
Speaker 2: We'll, we'll find it there.
Speaker 1: So regarding Chicago. Yeah, it seems these kinds of facilities serve a few functions. First, I mean, you have the potential invisible lization of people involved in any kind of dissent. But then by the fact that they inevitably knowledge about them gets out there. You also have a. Kind of chilling effect right? Oh yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I mean, it's pretty fun. Terrifying that and like, even though we're only really talking about the activist type people that went there or radicals there, the site is mostly used for the. For the drug trade for the war on drugs, that seems to be the primary function of this space.
Speaker 1: Petty crime.
Speaker 2: So just keeping that in mind that's how that's how bad it is, which I'm sure most of that stuff is probably still for marijuana, even though it's probably about to be legalized everywhere. It doesn't stop people from going wild on anyone selling or using it. Right?
Speaker 1: It's just that. The incredible excesses like this being justified because of the drug.
Speaker 2: War Oh yeah, I mean it's totally. It's totally wild, this. I mean, it's probably this going to be a story, but I don't.
Speaker 1: Where the budget is coming from?
Speaker 2: It doesn't really seem like. Anyone's super concerned about it.
Speaker 1: Just the black sites.
Speaker 2: In general, and obviously, if there's one Chicago let's they're, they're obviously all over the. Place ?
Speaker 1: Where they will be.
Speaker 2: I mean, well, this one's been there for quite a while, so it's not new. So since we're going fast through some of the topics, we're. Going to hit a we're. Gonna hit the old Fukushima Fukushima here where we will sing from down tops and no one will listen. We will keep hollering and we like actually, yeah, vice does good things, sometimes some.
Speaker 1: Both did that good thing.
Speaker 2: This from RT. We're gonna go straight to Japan. We're talking about Fukushima, where the in 2011 the World Apocalypse began as the earthquake and tsunami hit over there and another radioactive water leak and the sea has been detected at Fukushima's power plant, and TEPCO announced that sometimes they're being honest about things not very often. And So what happened is contamination levels in one of their gutters on. The roof spiked up to 70 times over the regular readings, and the regular readings are not good. Let me just remind you regular readings are. Not good readings. And earlier this week, the UN nuclear watchdog, IAEA said that Japan had made significant progress, but there's still radioactive. Threat and called it a quote. Very complex scenario and fugu. So even though it's very complex, they feel fine saying there's progress despite the leaks, despite the fact that gangs and private businesses and the Yukos are running the show over there.
Speaker 1: You choose.
Speaker 2: All the other things that we talk about, all the.
Speaker 1: Time with the incredible pathological chain of lies. Every step of the way actually advice they had that really good. Expose or expose of the if the stationary radiation detectors, which first of all, how useful is that in the 1st place to not have it be a mobile thing? And then they ended up. Exposing that. Probably I mean that least the inference to the best explanation is that they were just cleaning up immediately around the detectors. Because if you walked. Several yards away from where the stationary detectors were, the radiation levels went up. And so they were able to create the appearance of having a safe, cleaned up area by just cleaning in a small radius around the detector.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't even know what to do about Fukushima sometimes.
Speaker 1: I this a state that has abandoned almost any pretense of protecting its population at all.
Speaker 2: This this another thing when you're. Talking about just. In general, to pull the pull the. Pull back a little bit on. This thing is when people are talking about possible utopias possible futures, how maybe there could be civilization in like the Americas and Africa, or like. Europe could be. Anti SIV or like Prometheus or whatever like at some point like this what civilization does, is it? It ******* destroys everything. Like makes life impossible for the people living within civilization or a decent portion of.
Speaker 1: So are you talking about the idea of?
Speaker 2: I'm talking about like. Zones talking about the ideas of people living differently, like so when people are living differently, I feel. Like, yeah, like I'm totally down for many different ways of life and that would be awesome if that would ever happen, but. Like some ways, I would obviously not be down for such as like techno industrial society. I don't see how that could even function like a place even just like Iceland. You know what I mean?
Speaker 1: So you're saying in order for any kind of anti. Civil life to be possible there. It has to be. Not happening anyone on the planet.
Speaker 2: There has to be yeah civil. Yeah some like high civilization or whatever you want to call it. What people call hyper capitalism whatever you want to call. What's going on? I just don't. I don't see it being a stagnant thing. It needs to grow right? Like that's how it works, but it would eat itself if it stayed. So the only way for it to keep going to perpetuate itself is to grow. So you can't have it in the limited space. I mean, we're we're going to ******* outer space, right? We're growing like we've. We've conquered the Earth now we're moving off.
Speaker 1: Which is also just the falsity of the false veneer of the kind of neoliberal position, as it's espoused by. A lot of more, I guess you'd say liberals with unexamined beliefs. For instance, when I was talking to. My one of my friends from college works for. Etsy, and I think I may have talked about this conversationce on the air, but not. This aspect of it and.
Speaker 2: We say his name. She is a.
Speaker 1: Great name, oh his nickname is. Rage, yeah, but it belies his personand. I ended up getting into a big debate because these people were very techno positivists, as you might imagine, and believed sincerely. As far as I could tell that by working at Etsy they were really doing a good thing because they allowed people to pursue these interesting little niche craft. Sort of hobbies and make a living off of it. I ended up at a certain point talking about the idea of land projects and people getting to some extent away from civilization for various reasons, and one of the most thing. Well, that's really nice that you can do that and it. It's possible for you to go do that. Well, people like us are doing what we're doing, and that's this kind. False yeah vassels plurality that it's like.
Speaker 2: That's what I'm saying, yeah? Well, actually it's panarchy.
Speaker 1: Actually, your way of life renders other ways of life impossible through the annihilation that necessarily goes along with it and. It's just this. That it's the Velvet glove. I guess that conceals the iron fist, right? Oh, I didn't invent that. That's that's the thing that people say, but it's true. It's this just kind of well, with consumer culture you have all these freedoms. You have the freedom to disengage to some degree from consumer culture, but no, of course not really. Now we have a country full of nuclear power plants that even if there were some kind of collapse, what we're going to do in the.
Speaker 2: More than a country, Russia's got nuclear Subs on the bottom of the ocean. Canada has like 400,000 like pounds of uranium or something. I was just reading online before this. I didn't put in the notes too much going on. There's also kind of a weird nutty site. As one of those sites, you're not quite sure it's like actual news, and then you spend like the next hour trying to confirm. The story you don't really know what's going on, so that's. Like got left out of the. All right, so we're headed towards our first break here. We're going to bring you some music. I don't know what it's going to because I'm not probably. In that decision making, you've been out.
Speaker 1: Of the decision making. Process for a while.
Speaker 2: If it. For me it either be Connor over sure Pat the Bunny or Taylor Swift, so I'm probably probably won't be one of those people because everyone's fighting me here at free radical radio where you can. Find us at freeradicalradio.net. Feel free to emos at free radical radio at riseup.net or on Facebook or on Tumblr. We despise the world, but somehow we're still looking up very much a part of it.
Speaker 1: We live in Oakland. Come say hi which people? Have been doing recently which has.
Speaker 2: Been nice, alright, so we'll be back.
UNKNOWN: Thanks for listening.
Speaker 3: Hey hey this Rev I have a treat for y'all tonight. It is a cover of a song you'll probably recognize it that Jackie and I did. Did which if you're fans of the show, you. Will recognize us as. She did heartstrings a while back and I am from I've been in the beats. Well here's a collaboration. Yeah, here you go.
Speaker 4: 1234
Speaker 5: When I wake up early in the morning, lift my head, I'm still yawning when I'm in. Stay in bed upstream.
Speaker 4: Please go away.
Speaker 5: Everybody seems to think I'm lazy. I don't mind. Easy running everywhere and such as me do they? There's no need. Sleeping, keeping an eye on the world. Going by my window. Taking my time. Lying there and staring at the sea, waiting feeling. Going by my window. When I wake up early in the morning with my head, I'm still yawning when I'm in the middle of a dream.
Speaker 4: Upstream me.
Speaker 5: Holy sleeping.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to free radical radio. Alright, alright, alright, I've decided to drug the entirety of free radical radio here for the sake of the show, everyone's running on some stimulants now hoping it will get better results figure.
Speaker 2: Put some drugs into the input, but let me actually get took out.
Speaker 1: They more out there.
Speaker 2: Took out two straws and put it in as a Suppository. Of the caffeine.
Speaker 1: So I was at dinner with one of our friends the other day who has become a social worker and a friend of me. Ohh goodness. And I decided to get Roger. Scope by bringing it up on the air, our.
Speaker 2: Friend my goat camp. He got my goat is my spirit animal. I am the goat well.
Speaker 1: It's incorporeal, which means I just need to grasp at it with something that's also incorporeal or has ghost touch. Or yeah, it has no body I get.
Speaker 2: It like a corpse, keep going.
Speaker 1: So this person became a social worker, not saying that it actually fit with their politics or not believing that they were embodying their politics in the work, but that they were at least not doing. Harm and they were making a living without doing harm.
Speaker 2: There's no such thing as not doing harm for money. We just no just in general we just we just read or we just talked about in the other segment with the Aqua dumping segment about the fish, the fish pee and the pharma pollution.
Speaker 1: No thanks.
Speaker 2: All the. It's ridiculous to do this. Harm reduction type thing.
Speaker 1: Like in the. Context of civilization.
Speaker 2: Yes, yes not.
Speaker 1: OK, you seem to be saying just in. In general.
Speaker 2: I feel like maybe I'm gonna have to come out against all forms of harm reduction at some point without any real basis for the argument. Just out of pure. Anger and being in the rage.
Speaker 1: Cage, so with this person's doing is. Their clients or cases people that they. Work with sure. Have to fulfill 3 criteria. First addicted to drugs. Second schizophrenic third.
Speaker 2: Let me just say this person had no experience working with schizophrenia or people with as far as I understand, like social work. No like, no experience in any of these things besides. Radical social work, which is quite a **** show.
Speaker 1: And so believes that by taking people who are basically, I think the third criteria, and I think was impoverished. So destitute, drug addicted and. Schizophrenic, it's not to so much to integrate them back into society because the belief going into it is that these people will never have occupations because they're too unstable.
Speaker 2: Sure, get to them.
Speaker 1: And so. So it's basically just getting them onto benefits so they're not starving so their kids aren't starving. Is that harm reduction, harmful, harm neutral so?
Speaker 2: The best case scenario is. That the kids are.
Speaker 1: They say 5 minutes.
Speaker 2: Able to grow up and breed more children. We're able to bring more consciousness into the world. That's the best case scenario.
Speaker 1: You go taking a misanthropy tug.
Speaker 2: And the. Misanthropy, Antinatalists attack on this right now. No, but seriously, I don't know whatever that's fine if they want to do that. I don't. I don't really care to be honest with you, I just don't. I don't think you. Can sit there and say I'm better than the person who's working at Taco Bell or swim lessons, or massage or. Sure, Goldman Sachs whatever.
Speaker 1: Yeah, OK, you're taking all jobs are equal. Might as well work for Blackwater or Z.
Speaker 2: I'm not gonna. And I'm quite jumping off that deep end at this point, I'm. Walking up to the edge. Of the. Cliff walking, I'm looking down and seeing what see what that abyss.
Speaker 1: You're looking down, you're sick.
Speaker 2: Looks like dropping some pebbles. You know?
Speaker 1: Did they hit the ground?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm seeing what's going on.
UNKNOWN: The ground down there.
Speaker 2: But I mean I don't know what is. What is she getting people benefits?
Speaker 1: That's fine outing her saying. This.
Speaker 2: What are they really doing? They're getting some people benefits. I don't know. That's fine. I don't really have much to say about to be. Honest you, I just don't think it's the reason I'm bringing this up is that earlier you said?
Speaker 1: Worthwhile or never. All social work is actually harmful. Sure, I agree. So and that the discussion that we had is if the. Idea is to.
Speaker 2: Normalize someone is that empowering to someone?
UNKNOWN: I mean is.
Speaker 2: You're like going, you're going there and getting someone benefits like sure. It's nice to keep someone surviving. I guess if they're happy in. This world but. I don't know to me a more interesting way to take this to get off this whole conversation and tell you that I read an article the other day about to get ternia that was really interesting. I was talking about how schizophrenia looks very different. In different places and that in. Like Urban America, schizophrenia is almost always these like. Kind of. Scary, terrifying voices, and that in some less rural areas and some other places in the world, less urban, less urban, more rural areas. Some of the schizophrenia were actually like nice friendly voices and it didn't have a deleterious effect on the people with schizophrenias far as far as this obviously an oversimplification of a complicated thing, but nonetheless we're thinking about.
Speaker 1: Well, it at least demonstrates its a social, environmental related illness.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, totally.
Speaker 1: Yeah well, the incidence is higher in urban areas.
Speaker 2: Well and.
Speaker 1: By a large margin.
Speaker 2: Well and just the fact that, like maybe this was something that happened every so often, and maybe it's something people had a much different relationship than the relationship we have with it. I mean, just like most everything, even with like autism like. When I was a social worker, I had a lot of older clients who are autistic or mildly mentally ********, or whatever, moderately sometimes severely. Those are the three classifications. Of that, but anyways, a lot of them ended up getting placed in like institutions. Institutionalized because no one knew what was going on. And then people thought they were schizophrenic or people thought they were psychotic and. People know different now, but I still have issues to take issues with the way people try to integrate. For lack of a better. Word differently abled development disabled people into society for. Forcibly force assimilation. Yeah, I don't know. I just the whole thing. I just to me it's almost at some point. It does become an issue of scale. I'm just not interested in large. I'm just not interested in maths. I don't want to fool around with math. I don't want to play the Rubik's Cube and try to get this thing whole thing working out together somehow in some magical way. I'm not interested in playing that game.
Speaker 1: We have starting. Starting with the situation, that's fundamentally wrong and then trying to tweak it rather than examining first principles.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say fundamentally wrong, but I say fundamentally set up in a way that I don't think I would find happiness or joy or presence in.
Speaker 1: They're not wrong.
Speaker 2: I wouldn't say wrong, believe in right or wrong.
Speaker 3: Oh, I don't like that, yeah.
Speaker 1: And so get ready for a launch section for the wingnut confessional. Today, I decided I wanted to talk about conservation, and it was. Sort of a funny. Thing because I decided to. Talk about conservation somewhat arbitrarily without talking to Roger about it. And then after saying. Writer told me oh, actually a listener was pointing out to us that Freedom Club faces at Chapel Hill, right?
Speaker 2: Or I don't know some school, a lot of schools in North Carolina.
Speaker 1: Yes, the Kaczynski.
Speaker 2: I actually did my senior reporting client so I know quite a bit.
Speaker 1: About the state. Pretty sure it's at Chapel Hill, sure, but so it's a student group that is sort of following in the Kaczynski tradition and they recently had said that we What are you kids? Anski tendency go ahead. The long legacy because it's. So, and they recently caused a little bit of stir on the old a news by saying that they were trying to drop the anarco and just call themselves primitivists, which is. This tasteful to me for a lot of reasons, but more recently they said that primarily they're conservationists, and I thought it was a really odd term and. Just to unpack that term a bit to me it already implies a kind of losing position that there's something that's going away and we're just trying to hold on to what's left of it to hold on to the fractions. So I don't like it. For that reason, but then more importantly. I think to. Conserve implies to have disposal of in the 1st place. It defines the world, the biosphere. Various other organisms as resources.
Speaker 2: Well, owning straight on the Bible, it's. Like stewardship right there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's something to be managed quantified parceled out and consumed or perhaps alternatively treasured and cherished, but certainly owned. And it also very much, I think, takes part in. The human nature dichotomy. Because either it's something commodified that you can measure and consume, or it's something beautiful and disciplinary unhumand humans have this kind of defiling Midas touch. Everything we touch turns to **** so we just have to stay away from it. The best thing we can do is leave alone and I was. Turned on to a nice quote to this effect from M Kat Anderson's tending the wild, which is about. American Indians interaction with Californiand how they engaged with non human organisms there. And they're making the point that John Muir really kicked off the American conservation movement and how that was a nice antidote to the. Otherwise, just commodify and consume everything. Atmosphere that was. Going on at that. Time, but it also had a deleterious, far reaching effects, and I'm just going to read a paragraph from attending the wild here. Meier's view of California nature was a necessary counterweight to the view. That had prevailed before. That nature was there to be used, exploited and commodified, but it left us with a schizophrenic approach to the natural world. Humans either conquer nature and destroy its integrity, or they visit as an outsider idealizing its beauty and largely leaving it alone. These seemingly contradictory attitudes to idealized nature or commodify it are really two sides of the same coin. What the restoration, ecologist William Jordan terms the coin of alienation. Both positions treat nature as an abstraction separate from humans and not understood not. I think that's perfect because conservation takes part of the other side right? So either non human organisms are gassed for the engine or their jewelry to be displayed and not touch some kind of delicate piece. Of art and I. Don't want either one of those. And as I've been pushing on the show recently, humans are animals and they can be keystone species, and I don't think Keystone species implies stewardship, so Anderson recognizes it. Toby Hemenway, the. Permaculturist, who I'm going to discuss more later. Who we had. On the show over a year ago, I think is quite. These folks have recognized that ecosystems inhabited by indigenous peoples historically have been heavily influenced by them that the America that colonists arrived at. Inhabited or the sorry when colonists came to America, they really inhabited both sides of that coin, because you see from colonial journals like, oh, we've come to this beautiful, pristine wilderness. It's the land of plenty. It's untouched and unspoiled. And then at the same time they were seeing a treasure trove to be plundered, which. Obviously they went on to do. And I don't think we have to have this idea that humans, any anything that's not either complete distance or like completely just hunting, foraging and not interacting with any other way is domination. I would like to see that duality fused rather than inhabit one side or both sides. Not the commodity or the beautiful other, but part of ourselves as we see with the pharmaceutical pollution. And what's in us is in the biosphere, so part of ourselves to be explored and enjoyed to be consumed by us as it consumes us as we will one day decay. Or as we're shipping and excreting into the biosphere all the time. I would like to see our sense of self grow to encompass the biosphere. Even as the biosphere subsumes us and erases this sense of what Jason Mcquinn was calling the tiny self, like why not walk in the world and feel like I'm inhabiting this and all? Of I'm all of it. We are the world, that's one might. Say is that where you're going with this? Yeah, are you referencing something with that? I'm just kidding. It's just a stupid liberal slogan for.
Speaker 2: Back in the day, yeah we have. We have dogs. Like that we are the world.
Speaker 1: We have to sell it. Yeah well it might be a little too needless for me, but. So on theme of conservation to expand this bit Luddites anonymous presents even more absurd than translocation de extinction.
Speaker 2: Re extinction D.
Speaker 1: Extinction to make it unexisting I was sick.
Speaker 3: That's it.
Speaker 1: So we touched on this once briefly all.
Speaker 2: About that, what are we gonna?
Speaker 1: Bring back first.
Speaker 2: I'm all about the pterodactyl. Bring that ****** back like I don't want people walking through the world feeling like they're safe from attacks from the sky. I want an airborne predator flying around, plucking people off the.
Speaker 1: Street well, unfortunately right. I don't know if you'll see your tree because dinosaur DNA is. Too degraded, we need to bring back things that are have gone extinct in past 1000 years.
Speaker 2: Wasting my time reading Drastic park in the lost world of the.
Speaker 1: Kid well, so I thought you would like this because it's proof positive for your hypothesis that life continues to imitate science fiction. It's happening again. So I think maybe we've crossed the platonic threshold with symbolic thought or symbolic thought has gotten so deep that the symbols are more real than us now and now life comes to resemble the forms we're. Just looking at the. The Cave. Pretty likely. So top candidates are passenger pigeon, woolly mammoth, and Tasmanian wolf or Tasmanian tiger devil no.
UNKNOWN: Is that still alive?
Speaker 2: Yes, so the woolly mammoth I keep hearing.
Speaker 1: And it does.
Speaker 2: Saying what is going on with the woman, I keep hearing the woolly mammoth is coming back or we're bringing the mammoth back. That's this. Like Jurassic Park, like the DNA is in the.
Speaker 1: Amber and we're bringing the we're cloud DNS in the corpses.
Speaker 2: So this all from.
Speaker 1: Cloning, but it's not that simple because the DNA necessarily is degraded, So what they have to do is make inferences of. Like what was there?
Speaker 2: So we got like. These Frankenstein creatures, basically, so they’re not going to.
Speaker 1: Be actual woolly mammoths. They're going to be, well, hypothetically, they would be something that approximated it, so you end up with it's kind of like they actually had a good analogy of in one of the articles, as reading is like if you. We're trying to you to read a book that was incredibly old and torn and faded in certain places. You had part of the sample there and you were trying to fill in the blanks, but obviously you're going to get some of the. Words wrong that's. What we would end up with, we would end. Up with something approximating my question, just why? So we're going to get into that. Well, This why I'm saying. It's even worse though I'm. Taking a critical approach here.
Speaker 2: Believe it or not, alright take me down, take me.
Speaker 1: Down there, there was actually a decent critical essay about this whole phenomenon called of clocks and mammoths. The pitch the pitch for de extinction. And it was written by George Strike in Biopolitical times, which is a publication that discusses biotechnology basically implications of biotechnology politically, socially, is this a good idea or not? And this person was not so. Happy about it and they. Mostly what they're talking about is actually the rhetorical aspect of, as always, the. Experts on the one hand, and the oligarchs who are backing them on the. Other are at pains. As usual to explain to us why this or that massive scientific feat is actually good for us and often the public is skeptical, and so they're saying, oh, this how we try to talk the public into. Thinking this a good idea. It's kind of like when you end up with telecommunications or funding for genetic research. It's always a hard sell. They're always trying to say.
Speaker 2: This a liberal thing, right? Like there's always money. We need more money for the research, more money for the research. What is the research yield?
Speaker 1: Right, and there's exactly. And so this person. Was saying that nothing really and. I mean the whole basis of it is silly from anti save perspective. Obviously you say, oh, I guess we can keep basing our lives around using a massive technological industrial globalized apparatus. This that annihilates the ecosystems and spits out commodities. So long as that apparatus periodically shuts out a new Organism that we killed every so often that it you very much, get the idea that OK? Life in general? Is fungible now you? Can dispose of it however you want, because we always replace it. So the crazed propagator of this idea right now, the Sir spokesperson, is Stewart Brand. That name might sound familiar in conservation circles, Stewart Brand was gained prominence in the 60s seventies, back to the land.
Speaker 2: Movement oh like your like, your daddy they're not.
UNKNOWN: I am not in the backslide tradition.
Speaker 1: We could get into that. Another time, many of my friends are with me.
Speaker 2: Stewart Brand, you're like you're like that?
Speaker 3: Back to lead with a.
Speaker 1: Guy, no damn. It so Stewart brand previous previously published the whole Earth catalog, which was this kind of DIY publication. For the back to. Land movement basically saying oh here's. This or that tool and here's. Why it's a good idea?
UNKNOWN: So this goes.
Speaker 1: And here replaces.
Speaker 2: Back to the land with woolly mammoths and dodo birds is another ****. Tasmanian whatevers.
Speaker 1: I guess going back to land is cooler if when you're on land, maybe a mammoth is running around.
Speaker 2: Going back to land, I'm bringing all. This random stuff with me.
Speaker 1: Wild existence later, he published Coevolution quarterly, which is a kind of. Bringing academia to the. Layman kind of thing like here's this opinion about this aspect of conservation or biology or so forth. And so he wants to bring back charismatic.
Speaker 2: Megafauna I love megafauna, I'm so in the megaphon.
Speaker 1: That's his project and the idea being that we can bring that charismatic megafaunand they can be mascots for conservation in the same way.
UNKNOWN: What is that?
Speaker 1: We've got the polar bear now and the panda.
Speaker 2: Oh, I'm so I'm so on board. Do there's like sloths that were? Like 6 or 7 feet tall.
Speaker 1: Etherium yeah, it's amazing yeah I.
Speaker 3: Think even bigger than.
Speaker 2: That, but I mean I was, that was. Conservative, I was going the opposite. With my usual hyperbole, because I. They're quite a lot larger than a person, supposedly a Saber tooth tiger on all fours couldn't get height wise through a door. Regular sized door. Can you imagine what that? Would be like.
Speaker 1: You were trying to.
Speaker 2: Kill you, I mean just if you saw it, it was. Terrifying, but it's awesome.
Speaker 1: Righteous Roger for animals bigger than you.
Speaker 2: As long as I have. Like virus in these pieces.
Speaker 1: So this this maybe actually a case study in Stuart Brand's propaganda here. Yeah, so brand writes in an essay where he's basically saying wouldn't it be cool if we could bring back a mammoth? He says the prospect of de extinction is profound. News that something as irreversible and final as extinction might be reversed is a stunning realization. The imagination soars as writer was just demonstrating. That just the thought of mammoths and passenger pigeons alive againvokes the awe and wonder that drives all conservation at its deepest level. So deep since the first of all it has happened. It wasn't such big news, but back in 2009 there was a species of ebex. So like a goat like creature that was brought back that had gone extinct about 10 years before that and it died almost immediately because the clone had a horrible lung defect. Just like what has happened with some of the sheep that have been cloned, I'm sure it's a great moment of subjectivity, a great moment in consciousness to awaken in a lab somewhere you can't breathe, and a couple minutes later you die and that's your existence. But let's be honest, and let's get a grip here. Conservation is a joke. It's never worked name for me any period of time since the inception of the idea of conservation that the biomass of the world wasn't being denuded. I mean, whether. It's maybe caused some moderately significant slowdowns in certain moments. It has no bearing on the fact that. Since the beginning of civilization, since certainly since industrialism the world has been gradually consumed and conservation is not. Is not having any effect. We have charismatic megafauna now we have as I was saying pandas. We have polar bears, we have elephants. We have rhinos and these animals are. Quickly disappearing and there it doesn't matter. The World Wildlife Federation can put them on postcards. They put them on calendars you look at,, polar bears and it's so cute the way it's, it's almost like it's lying on that mess of snow. Like a pillow. I mean, these people are still going to work, they're not becoming environmental radicals. They're just looking at their.
Speaker 2: Nice calendar I think I'm gonna get us some money. The showman write a story about de extinction. Pterodactyls and woolly mammoths. And then, I'm. Taking them to Mars.
Speaker 1: Which existed at dinner time.
Speaker 2: And we're colonizing Mars with the extinct animals, so we're gonna go all through the Galaxy, taking over planets with animals from the past. It's kind of like the back to the future. The present, the past, the future. It's all molding into one who knows what's? Happening all.
Speaker 1: It's just like an escape from refined. Time by just yeah.
Speaker 2: It's all happening at the same time. Mars is being colonized by the same. Time as the. One mammoth there who knows what's going on very confusing time.
Speaker 1: And conservation is not a new idea you had, for instance, Plato back in the days of ancient Greece, saying, hey, this deforestation is really a problem. It's causing massive soil erosion. We're destroying our agricultural land base. This a . Topsoil loss, huge. Problem you even have. Big protests you have people going out in the streets of Greece, saying. We need to conserve the land didn't help. The lack of conservation still was a contributing factor as I talked about last week with certification in the fall of Greeks and. But brands ideas actually get stranger. He actually makes a climate change cell here, he writes woolly mammoths, for instance, were the dominant herbivore of the mammoth step in the far north, once the largest Biome on Earth, which is interesting to think about in their absence the grasslands they helped sustain were replaced by species, poor tundrand boreal forests. Their return to the north would bring back carbon, fixing grass and reduce greenhouse gas, releasing tundra. Similarly, the European aurox extinct since 1627 helped to keep forests across all of Europe and Asia mixed with biodiverse meadows and grasslands. The passenger pigeon was a keystone species for the whole eastern deciduous forest from the Mississippi to the Atlantic from the Deep South, clear up into Canada. OK, so the thought here is actually with our nice technological apparatus that's causing climate change. Among other things, we can bring back organisms that will. Remedy climate change.
Speaker 2: That's pretty funny.
Speaker 1: All we need are mammoths, mammoths, huge carbon sink.
Speaker 2: We can't.
Speaker 4: We it's a lot it's.
UNKNOWN: Is that?
Speaker 1: A lot of weight there is.
Speaker 2: That even that's I don't know that just doesn't even sound right.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you need more biomass. It's part of part of what's contributing to climate change is the lack of biomass. So carbon that was once organisms is. Now in the air.
Speaker 2: And you think about like that, that's.
Speaker 1: Interesting, so the. Destruction of life contributes to the destruction. Of more life. Tasmanian Tiger was the thing. Now seeing the notes so. Yeah, so he goes on to say we can have icons flagship species, so he wants the mammoth, the passenger pigeon and quote the return of the marvelous marsupial wolf called the thylacine where Tasmanian.
Speaker 2: Tiger, well, I can see people getting behind this wolf thing. That's probably cool. I can see people getting behind the mammoth, but like I just can't see a big rally of support. Behind the passenger pigeon.
Speaker 1: It's incredibly beautiful, according to journals from the time, because they move in such incredible.
Speaker 2: Numbers that it's this river OK. Salt you got me salt.
Speaker 1: Avians that block out the sun for large.
Speaker 2: I'm sold, I'm down, bring it back, let's do it.
Speaker 1: Periods of time so OK. And it was like an immense sound.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this sounds amazing.
Speaker 1: OK.
Speaker 2: Souls so.
Speaker 3: So there you go.
Speaker 1: Yeah so. So then brand goes on to ask rhetorically, why do we take enormous trouble to protect endangered species? The same reasons will apply to species brought back from extinction to preserve biodiversity, to restore diminished ecosystems, to advance the science of preventing instinction a better question, Stewart would be, why do we consistently fail to protect species? From extinction species that are called endangered. Because we try to manage the world and we fail because we live according to a system that adds most fundamental levels, goes against the energy cycles and the nutrient flows of natural systems. So we start facing the wrong direction and then we try to make little turns to get around rather than facing the right direction. We take superficial steps that only deepen our dependence on the system like. For instance, saying, oh, we can now make it organisms unexisting Brand reveals this moralistic religious mindset by saying. We will undue. Harm quote that humans have caused in the past, and here's the Sin Redemption paradigm that motivates brand's lunacy. If you get into this idea. As I've been saying before that there's something essentially ****** about humans. Then you get into a. Save your martyr. Complex and say, well, we can undo this. We can undo this. We just need to manage the world. So as strike who wrote that critical essay that I discussed before, points out the lunacy here by saying, apart from the optimism cascade, required to believe that synthetic mammoths will help lower the Earth's atmosphere. The scenario displays a fundamental tension in the de extinction project. It is sold with the rhetoric of restoration and preservation, but driven. By an ethic of engineering and control. Gotta love that. How far does Brandt sense of engineering and control go while he also wants to build a giant clock in the mountains?
Speaker 2: Not joking here. I thought this whole thing was about timelessness. We're blending the past with the oh hey wait, he was. Not like all the.
Speaker 1: Dish of Mars thing, so that was you. You, you're breaking down the subject object dichotomy here.
Speaker 2: OK.
Speaker 1: So brand rid.
Speaker 2: Of that tiny self and the big self, I'm just molding myself into. The rest of the universe.
Speaker 1: You are Stewart brand you. Are we are so brand saying that civilization is rubbing itself into a pathologically short attention span?
Speaker 2: They're all stupid.
Speaker 1: Wants to solve that problem by. By creating a sense of what he calls the long now he. Wants to build. A clock here's the description. A large clock thinks Stonehenge powered by seasonal temperature changes. It ticks once a year bongs once a century, and the cuckoo comes out every Millennium such a clock, if sufficiently impressive and well engineered would embody. Deep time for people. Ideally it would do for thinking about time, what the photographs of Earth from space have done for thinking about the environment. Such icons reframe the way people think he's a time reformist. That's amazing. This a serious thing, it's supposed. To go on for 10,000 years.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, what about the Stonehenge thing is that.
Speaker 1: Even well, Stonehenge is the time telling both sure. That was why it was built, but this just incredible to me that the.
UNKNOWN: OK.
Speaker 1: The idea here is not to get outside of refined time not to think about the present, but to actually have time more deeply ingrained in you. Being worried about the future even more.
Speaker 2: Yeah, yes, it's it's getting dark over there.
Speaker 1: With Mr Brand, rather than note that part of civilizations ethic is to is delayed return constantly divorcing you from the present to think about the future. Think about the weekend. Think about the end of your. Think about retirement now. He wants you. To think about millennia. Yeah, whereas I would say collapse everything into the word. Yes, the present and I think things will start going a lot better for us.
Speaker 2: At least it sounds sexy. Sounds sexy than a cuckoo ever once every ten 10,000 years. 1000 years.
Speaker 1: That's a lot.
Speaker 2: All right, we're going to come back. We'll talk more. Wing that out. We'll wing that out more and talk more.
Speaker 1: Finish up this time thing.
Speaker 2: Finish off the time thing. We'll do all kinds of things is free radical radio freeradicalradio.net free radical radio at riseup. .net who e-mail?
Speaker 1: Us, we'll be back.
Speaker 4: Thank you.
Speaker 2: Red dot can't handle my sexual preferences which I'm laying out during the break. Welcome back to free Radical radio where some people are interested in birth control. And some people aren't. I mean, as a conservationist, I'm against it because it's going out in pharma polluting fish. So if you love fish, you probably should not use any forms of birth control, whether they be a condom, they a pill, whatever. They are pretty horrifying actually.
Speaker 1: Isn't the Pope environmentalists? Maybe you can start making these these crazy eyes adopting the Rick Santorum position. Condoms are actually. Harmful to women?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, there's no real arguing with that because the production of them probably hurts people who are working for it, just not in the way that they're actually. They actually mean it. But on some level, they're right. You know what I'm saying? Everything is harmful to all human beings that goes through production. So there's someone at a low level job somewhere who's probably a woman who's making the packaging or the condom itself. And they're probably separating. So Rick Santorum is not so. Far off you just. Can't quite get the his head around the reasons why.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so next thread will tackle Rick Santorum's position that Lucifer is trying to get at us through the colleges. He's infiltrated academiand that's his route to corrupting humanity.
Speaker 2: That might not be far off from the. Truth either. Actually, if we seriously. Consider it. The other way, alright? So the other way I just take control here the other way. This could possibly actually go ahead. You take control, you're finishing.
Speaker 1: The segment go ahead. I just want to finish the segment about Stuart Brand his giant clock by putting in a strike. And strike writes about Stuart brands for a plan for a giant clock quote. And yet I see a second meaning in. The phrase the. Long now the 10,000 year clock in the revival of lost species are meant to demonstrate taking the long view beyond our present moment. But it seems to me that they do precisely the opposite. They extend specific local cultural values associated with our time and place. And even more specifically, with Silicon Valley into the foreseeable. Future in the uncritical belief in technological solutions in the belief in size and spectacle in the exalting of computing power that bridges both online persuasion and the engineering of new genomes. The long now may mean something other than its authors intent. I was just really pleased that it's taking an actually surprisingly anti technological anti time. Most anti state position and this guy's not anarchist by any means. But again sometimes.
Speaker 2: This being made.
Speaker 1: You if you don't have the political politically ideological blinders on where you've taken really entrenched positions and then. You can see these nuances.
Speaker 2: I do think we need to take a. Harsher, harsher, look at the. Left, and liberalism and all this.
Speaker 1: Harsher than we have on the show on a regular basis, harsher.
Speaker 2: Harder, even harder. Than I think we need to be even harsher than. We are. I think we need to even just. Eat away in our former selves that we're stuck in those. Positions pour some acid on ourselves wherever that lies. And just really kill it.
Speaker 3: Kill it completely.
Speaker 2: Alright, here we go. Anonymous and this where we're deeply descending into all the darkness. And human head transplants, we're gonna walk into that one. Yeah, obviously we're gonna talk about that. That's happening, so Sergio Canavero, some scientist ******* guy and he's back at it throwing his hat into the ring, telling us that we're a couple of years away from head transplants. And don't worry, all we need. According to old Sergio, is some diamond nano knives. And medication for the rest of someone's life after fusing their spine to another. Head no big deal. Seems totally reasonable. Seems like more than reasonable.
Speaker 1: Situation here I'm assuming it's to keep the horribly injured alive.
Speaker 4: So that you have.
Speaker 2: Yeah, there was a whole lot of talk about, like the ethics of it or that it's not ethical and all. This other crap.
Speaker 1: Well, I said really wondering about the transitivity of identity through that because we know that experienced sensations are are not just, it's not just activity that's happening in the central nervous system, it's activity that's happening all over, and so you got your endocrine system, your circulatory system. All these things are contributing to your belt. Your lived and felt sense of going around in the world. So I wonder what? That would actually be like for someone.
Speaker 2: Well, this an interesting place where you can make an attack on law school. You can make attack on. Transhumans for trying to separate the body. You can make. Attack on like liberal sciencey people like this who. Think you can do? That, and you can also make an attack on some. I wouldn't say this inherent denialism by any means or anything like that. But some of the people that we know. Who seem to be arguing that you can live in a city and not and not take on the effects of it. That somehow you can just be fine and think your way out of the problem because your brain is so strong that you can just ubermensch your way out of that and. That's something.
Speaker 1: I disagree with, in other words, so long as you have a searing critique, you're not going to experience the psychological effects of well, it's, I guess living in the city.
Speaker 2: Well, it's like a psycho It’s a psycho shield from the effects of civilization, which to me sounds like psycho ********.
Speaker 1: This was in the context of rider saying he wanted. To go out and live. Someplace outside the city live. In the woods.
Speaker 2: I was I was talking about how I honestly do feel. I honestly still do feel that my mind would be a little bit better. If I was not being constantly invaded by strangers and people tell me what to do with my. ******* cigarette and. People tell me to ******* eat vegetables that would.
Speaker 1: Was me earlier.
Speaker 2: Be early people tell me not. To take revenge, people make it.
Speaker 1: I think let's see, I think your mind would. Better if you ate more about people.
Speaker 2: Making laws against. Murder, like all the terrible things that. Happened in this world. It's really upsetting.
Speaker 1: OK, so transplanting heads.
Speaker 2: So the transplanting heads and there's a long history of head transplanting for. Human race even dates back to the 1950s. A scientist in the Soviet Union, Vladimir Petrovic Demikhov, was actually the first person to try head plant surgery on dogs when he created the two headed canine. Things didn't go well for this dog or either of these dogs. He fused thead and hind legs of a puppy. To a larger. Living dog and both dogs died a few days later because the immune system wasn't super sucked.
Speaker 1: Through the hind legs also.
Speaker 2: On it. He fused thead and hind legs of a puppy because he took out the middle part of it or something and like kept the spine going over the rest of the body. Right here. And this some dark.
Speaker 1: That Gorn film the human centipede.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I haven't.
Speaker 1: Seen humans together. Well, the scientist starts off by fusing dogs together.
Speaker 2: Here we are, there we. Are so it's come full circle? Yeah, there we go. So a story published in Time magazine in 1955 talks about some of this stuff. I just started doing some research on this guy online just cuz I was like this some sick **** right? Here what's you up to and? So this a description of the scene as the researchers presented the animal and they actually presented the animal in the meeting of the Moscow Surgical Society. This what people did back. In the whole, look what I've created. My dog is 6 legs and two heads, 18 balls on the platform close to the guests. Honors to the large white dog wagging its tail from one side of its neck protruded thead of a small brown puppy. As the surgeons watched the puppies head bit the nearest white ear, the white head snarled. This dog is attacking itself or its two dogs one body. It just *******.
Speaker 1: Experiencing a lot of mental distress.
Speaker 2: It's true, the camera's a truly horrific situation.
UNKNOWN: But let me.
Speaker 2: Just remind you the world we live in some ********. Trying to bring back.
Speaker 1: If I need it.
Speaker 2: Someone's trying to make 2 headed dogs like.
Speaker 1: Why is it?
Speaker 2: That she's saying black sites.
Speaker 1: Just let's go for it. Let's make the chimera. Let's have wine body goat. Head snake tail.
Speaker 2: Let's might as well.
UNKNOWN: It's been.
Speaker 1: Start living in D&D.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean, it basically sounds like a. Sam Delaney novel. At this point, there's a lot. Of that goes on there, so he's not too far off from it in some of his sci-fi. What do you want? Do you wanna? Go to wild reaction now I.
Speaker 1: Know you want to, so let's just do it.
Speaker 2: Alright, we're gonna wild out with. Raxon sounds kind of sexy to say. It that way. Our side to refrain from. Some of my more serious feelings about this as to possibly not wind up in a black site, said really, hear the other. I'd love to avoid that. This this like you're.
Speaker 1: Trying to put yourself out. As a snitch, I would love. To kind of thing like that.
Speaker 2: I'm willing to do.
Speaker 1: To avoid.
Speaker 2: Well, I don't know. I don't know about anything. I don't really know anything exciting for anyone to know, so there's that. February 25th, 2015 from Guanajuato, Mexico. And this goes out to the group I'm reading in communique and recent communique from wild reaction so it goes out as a translated there's. The original version I'm sure you could find. To the group uncivilized conduct to the group. Wild terrorist behaviors to all the quote wild reaction groups of action ridden dissemination and studies to all those who feel identified with the tendency opposed to the techno industrial system and in favor of wild nature. Artificiality and its yoke upon nature grow broader by the day. The plague of progress has managed to sicken what flies in the air, who lives on the Earth, and what swarms in the ocean. Modern civilization is outside its own control, so that the techniques which sustain the system the system create desperate alternatives that make the system perpetuate itself with greater strength and devastation in the face of the summarized situation. A question arises if technology is growing. Why doesn't resistant to it harm to its harm? Excuse me Reading the recent communique is transmitted from Argentinand Chile. In recent months we have noticed the surprising of kidney bound to these tribes of distant warriors, which greatly encourage us to have greater resolve in terrorist and sabotage action as well as in the development of anti technology critique all toward the important growth of the ego extremist tendency, which stakes itself on the destabilization of the system and positions itself in favor of the wild. We know well that in other countries in America, Europe and Asia there are individuals who feel identified with this tendency, whether anarchist or not, and so we invite them to form part of this. It's interesting there. Huh, with the formation of a group of critique that gives an important contribution to the solidification of the positions, or carefully spreading printed material or opening blogs, or editing books, or making music or acting autonomously?
Speaker 1: Or doing podcasts.
Speaker 2: Anything really? Yeah, we didn't get a shout. Those kind of portion or living a life free from civilized. I mean basically anything at this point they. Really opened up the. Door there when they keep reading. The communique or claiming sabotages and terrorist attacks, etc. Everyone who will know how to do it in their way and under their own circumstance and responsibilities. Let it not be confused. This not solidarity. It is complicity. Let it not be confused. This not for the creation of a movement, it is for the constant desire to destabilize this system. This only a small message for others who perceive these words and take them as their own. We do not want and are not interested in placing bases or regulations within this tendency because ego extremism is made by each of the individuals who have the need to return the blow against the external system that comes to invade our lives and environments. Mild reaction and as usual they have a bunch of awesome group names which are the groups that make make up this communique are Monto, DPL, coyote, which is coyote, skin, cloak, Matar or Marrier, kill or die and Aborigines in Palmas which is in famous Aboriginals.
Speaker 1: So the first thing almost every time I read wild reaction, I feel like they've read a lot of wolfy. It's just very wolfy prose style, yeah, and then even the not solidarity but complicity, which is just one of the things he says. It's almost I think one of the titles of his essays. Or something very close to it.
Speaker 2: Also, kind of like the other accomplished. Not ally type idea.
Speaker 1: But more extreme version and. I feel they've broadened things quite a. Lot because it seemed like the previous communiques. It was basically, if you're not doing. Sabotage you're nothing. Yeah, and or sabotage or assassination then it's worthless and this really explicit anti left anti very very anti.
Speaker 2: Wake up, yeah.
Speaker 1: Anything even resembling medium tents, much less big.
Speaker 2: Tents, kind of seeing the softer side of. All they're actually communicating.
Speaker 1: They're getting a little.
Speaker 2: Lonely yeah they’re feeling they're feeling these groups from other parts from down even further S than they are and they’re reaching out the friendly vibe.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but I have to. Say again, I don't find myself. There's not a whole. Lot to disagree with there. I mean, I don't know if it's coming off.
Speaker 2: Theels of set for any law breaking, which of course we. Would never be interested in.
Speaker 1: It's almost as if coming off theels of attacking a fundraising for the handicapped thing decided to do a PR move here and. And say hey, actually? We're we're into music, we're into publishing. We're in the blog.
Speaker 2: Hey I have like 5 blocks so I'm really right now I'm really. Giving it to the techno industrial. System with each strike of the keyboard.
Speaker 1: I do. I do. It does resonate me with me a lot. This kind of informal. Complicity, this there's not one way but there are many ways and certainly there are are foolish and useless things that you can be doing. But there are a lot of different ways to realize anti safe practice. Depending one's talents and interests and access. And location and all that sort of thing and I do think any resistance needs to be diverse if we're going to have a world that's diverse. I think if we have a monolithic resistance, we're just going to end up with a new monoculture, and So what we do need is people acting autonomously decentralized. Doing what they want with people that they know really, ******* well and trust and. And again, that's saying it's not solidarity, it's complicity. I do think solidarity, at least historically, has the connotations of the kind of united front . You're with us, or you're against us, and us as the loyal resistance that. Doesn't question the underpinning ideas of mass society.
Speaker 2: I think I'm less interested in diversity than I. Am just pure chaos.
Speaker 1: And I think this a very loaded word.
Speaker 2: What's a loaded? Word, but I think I don't think always. I think that's one of the appeals to some of these things. Is not having a reason and just doing things sometimes and create.
Speaker 1: And dissolving everything into the orgiastic present.
UNKNOWN: Yeah, well I.
Speaker 2: Just I mean if. If it's not chaotic, it's predictable.
UNKNOWN: You know what?
Speaker 2: I mean like look at like how how? Terrified, can the government really? Be of like this, mass movement left. Thing I mean, they can't even get along with themselves. I mean it's not like anarchists can get along even better. Or anarcho, leftist or even anarchists who aren't interested in leftists. I mean, it's just not Sierra. You know what's the worst that's gonna happen there to change a few laws? Move things around. You have to let gay people marry each other like these are like worst case scenarios, legally legalize marijuana like 1 drug.
Speaker 1: Legalize marijuana.
Speaker 2: Out of all the however. Many drugs are illegal one. You know and. Even then, they're probably. They're probably gonna make out like bandits there. It's really ridiculous.
Speaker 3: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I’m just saying, being decentralized and. Having people with various talents and interests means a less predictable resistance.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean I don't even hesitate to use resistance. I almost just want to take all sense of logic and reason from the world and just devolve into madness and see what happens there. I'm interested in some experimentation. Roger for the collapse. Oh, different, kind of, more like a psycho collapse for insanity. Yeah, I kind of am for insanity. I think so. I mean what you think you? There's another liberal quote to be to be sane in this world of the insane or whatever the stupid. Thing is, . I pretty much.
Speaker 1: Agree with that. So you agree with the stupid liberals, OK?
Speaker 2: I do. I do think that you say in.
Speaker 1: This world is ridiculous. That's like the same thing.
Speaker 2: Like you can somehow. Think yourself the sanity you want. You can have a job sitting. In the city you can have. Your terrible shallow relationships, like 99% of relationships, they see I was talking to someone last night in the. House about this and. I was saying do you, do you agree with this statement? And I said the statement, I said. Almost every relationship not sexual between 2 human beings where they're engaging is shallow and mostly worthless, and the person said yes. And I was like all right so. 9 occasionally someone
Speaker 1: Is that of all relationships of all people with relationships relationships?
Speaker 2: All relationships total. Like if each person has 10 relationships in the life or twenty, chances are none of those are good. If they have 100, chances are one of them is a real relationship. I think they. I wanna infuse more real relationships with in. My life and then. Infuse it with chaos and see what happens.
Speaker 1: Hydra for love and chaos, yeah. Love, chaos, anarchy free red.
Speaker 2: Which I think it's a. I think. Obviously it's a pessimistic way to see things, but it's also I don't want to lie to myself, I see. OK, so I don't know. Maybe you have this experience. Maybe you don't. When anytime I've moved or like switched friend groups like the various times in my life, my situation changed friend wise or whatever or like I started dating someone Chicago like five years ago briefly for two months when I was traveling and they stopped move in with this person and they had work all day so they would go to work. They were nanny and they would go to work. For 8 hours every day and I would hang out all their friends. None of their friends ******* knew them at all like at all. And I was almost shocked at how. Little, that person and their friends knew each other and that's a very common thing I see when I meet people and see their relationships. Very rare for people to really, truly be attempting to understand who someone is separate from themselves. Recognizing them as an autonomous being, autonomous being and accepting them for the ******* **** they do that they don't like and **** they do that they do like. And not trying to put their own spin on everything about this other person's like subjective beliefs. So yeah, it sounds pessimistic, but it's not. I don't. It's not like I don't think these good what I would consider good or relationship that I desire possible. I definitely think they're possible. I think I experience them. I think most people that I know do on some level, or at least a lot of people do on some level.
Speaker 1: And just not 99%.
Speaker 2: No, I just I'm 90% just taking a realistic look around and that's what. I see,, I see a lot of. And I see a lot of people in relationships that are ******* miserable constantly, just like the miserable. Just like the existence of someone who goes to work it like me or anyone else. People that work more than me going to a 40 hour week job. Anyone that does it? It's hard not. To see that. Person as being miserable I've been miserable every. Time I work 40 hours a week I've been. I experienced joy, but overall my I'm mostly miserable.
Speaker 1: And most of our relationships come out of these four situations where you're brought together under course of circumstances like having friends on the job, having friends because you have, they're your neighbors, having friends.
Speaker 2: Well, it's just hard to find people find people. Yeah, you're you meet someone at a job or some you're not meeting. I mean, of course, some people do meet. People like through anarchy or through like. Cool projects or like music or like other types of passions where, like real intersections that run deep for you overlap, and that's cool and that totally makes sense. But a lot of times it's not like that. And something to keep in mind too, even as I consider which relationships of mine are more desirable and which ones last, and whether or not it's OK for things to last or I'm OK with things being fluid as I change and kind of accepting the chaos within myself. So as I change my relationships will change and kind of accepting that, not because people will hold on out of longevity. How many people do we know in relationships? For years and years, my this personal example, but. I'm going to keep it vague, but.
Speaker 1: Grandma might be talking.
Speaker 2: About me no, I'm not talking about. You talk about people who've been. Relationships for like 2 decades, sometimes even a decade. Something like that several and like it's obviously terrible. Everyone knows it's terrible. There's these relationships. This all over the place where everyone knows. Their terrible and just keep going. And everyone just goes and talks **** behind the back of these people all the time. So it's just a full blown disaster. This the world. We live in it sucks.
Speaker 1: And it's part of the I think is the artificial scarcity of love, sex and affection. The idea that if I exit this, this might not be good, but I'm.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: Getting something. And if I exit, I might have nothing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, which which I totally.
Speaker 1: No one's gonna want to be. With me again, I know that people feel.
Speaker 2: That, but I don't. Feel that because I. Like to not?
Speaker 1: People just want to be with you.
Speaker 2: No, it's not. Because it's not because of that I, I mean, I just went on a date for the first time. I haven't been on a date for almost two months and I wanna say it was very nice. I was very excited about it. Person told me they were post queer, so I'm working on that trying to hear what that is exactly. But I kind of like that because that's kind of this a whole other topic for another day to the point it's a very interesting person, and what? Alright, I'm getting probably telling me tone. It down here, don't sick bring it. Back to the point, you want to bring it back to the point I bring it back to the. *** **** point. So the point that I'm trying to get at is that I don't understand that because when I'm in that situation where I'm in a bad relationship, I'm usually staying because I like the stimulation or whatever, like even if it's bad, I get a lot of stimulation. From the fighting or like trying to figure out why this person is like doing all these terrible things, or lying or manipulating. Like there's some type of stimulation, so I'm gaining something from that. I'm gaining stimulation. I'm not bored, that's the basis of it, but I don't usually want affection, or I find myself. I rarely want an affect. And when things feel like dead or ****** like, that's when I don't want affection. That's when things that's when I just want to die, ?
Speaker 1: So I guess you could say that the. This social alienation means that even provocation, even negative emotions are better than. Just a total lack.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm almost fully coming around to the stimulation thing where I feel like maybe it's just this ******* deep on weed that we're all experiencing this paralyzing ******* boredom that people experience in society. Where your passions, you can't follow your passions cuz they might put you in jail so they might kill you. They might be seen by. People as being wrong or. Immoral or amoral?
Speaker 1: Where you'll end up destitute and.
Speaker 2: Or you'll be poor you won't have security or all those things. So you're live. Most people. A lot of my life included. Not all of it. That are living these passionless lives, and. And you are. Just reaching out for any kind of stimulation, even if it comes in the form of an abusive relationship or a ****** relationship. Or yeah, it's addiction. It's just relationship is just another addiction. That's really the basis of what I was trying to get to a couple weeks ago. I think were talking about this. I really because I mentioned it when were talking about. And that a week ago or whatever I really. Think a lot of relationships for people are. In addiction sometimes. Because they're getting a stimulation there, and they're not. They're not being straight up about what they're getting or interested in those relationships for.
Speaker 1: You're not sitting in a small box by yourself with processed food around you and the bed and wondering if is there a. Reason to get up. Well, yeah, if I get up and go down the hallway, then maybe I'll talk to this person and get into an argument with them. And my love will be up.
Speaker 2: Exactly, you get into the argument. Yeah, at least your adrenaline's. Going what? I'm saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and you have something to displace your negative feelings on. Oh, This why I'm unhappy because. I have been in this relationship exactly. Not because of the.
Speaker 2: If you, if you have enough, if you. Have enough friends. Another relationship you can. Just take longer.
Speaker 1: It's not me.
Speaker 2: That feeling and put them on them.
Speaker 1: Not the appalling stability of. The world, yes.
Speaker 2: These people, so maybe if we bring back the woolly mammoth. All this will change. You ever wonder what the human will damage relationship is? Maybe there's a certain give? And take there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's addle addle and.
Speaker 2: Yeah,, one of the women. Tastes like so manager. Why don't we?
Speaker 1: When we come back when we come back, we're going to respond to against riders, protestations, we're going to respond to someone who gave us a long form.
Speaker 2: Why don't we take this to a break, yeah?
Speaker 1: Comments on Episode 70 asking. Why were so mean to agency and why we're? So excited about wild reaction. And then we're going to talk a bit more about the human. Habitat relationship and build a bit on what I was talking about with breaking down the conservation mindset. And then we'll also touch on the nature, culture, duality. John Zerzan was talking about this recently, and. You want to talk about it too. Welcome to free radical radio broadcasting from a world full of cages. Some cages are big, some small, some made of glass, some made of lead, some made of diamonds, some are in the free recording studio where riders feel in the cage, close the cage saying when. We're done when we can be done with this. No need to go well. I want to close things off with two related sections here. Part of it is listener feedback. Before we do that, let's do the long history of getting plowed, the continuing disaster that is agriculture and some would say horticulture as well. Some in the some, say all cultivation. Is a negative thing and others try to make a different case, so we're going to get into that a little. Here and talk about the history of the OR the excuse me food practices of the Lacandon catchy and Waszak peoples in Mesoamericand like the rest of the so-called New World. There's a history of misunderstanding around these food practices. I talked about earlier about colonist journals coming to the Americas saying they were coming into the pristine wilderness. Sometimes they would say they're coming to the land of plenty or even the land that the devil must have made because it was a place where you could. Who just by being idle they felt and that it clashed heavily with the work ethic of colonists coming there. Feeling like people were going to become sinful if it was so easy to get food. They saw food. All around them, and this was similarly misinterpreted by anthropologists and archaeologists. Years later, believing the lack of signs of. Cloud fields and the way that cloud fields, herds of domesticated animals, the way that agriculture was done in Europe meant there must have been low food availability and therefore low populations, and this served to actually retroactively justify the conquest and colonization of the new world by. Anthropologists and archaeologists making inferences about rather low population living there in the 1st place. So we must not have killed so many people. Convenient, but what these people were doing was, at least in Mesoamerica, the three indigenous peoples I was talking about there were practicing a kind of swidden fallow horticulture, so fallow where that's probably familiar to people. When you. Leave a cultivated spot to just do its own thing in order to let it restore the soil. Through the natural successional process, swidden may be a more unfamiliar word. Refers to burning wild vegetation to clear place to cultivate. And so this a. Way of growing food that goes in cycles of. 40 to 50 years. So rather than doing the same thing year after year, they're doing different things over that whole time period and you start off by even. You know, we're saying start off, but really it's a constant process, but you start off by cutting down some of the trees in an area. And keeping the trees that fix nitrogen and that are good for firewood. After you cut those down, you burn the patch so you end up fertilizing the soil with the ash from all the burning vegetation. At the same time as you cure the firewood by giving it a little bit of burning. So you get your first yield there. Is the firewood. Then they would grow the three sisters polyculture for those who don't live in Berkeley and do backyard permaculture. That doesn't really accomplish much besides make you look good. To your neighbors. That's a polyculture of squash beans and corn, and they have beneficial interactions among each other. That's probably a level of detail that no one really cares about at the moment. But polyculture you insert plants at the same time with bananas, papayas, guavas, and other fruit tree seedlings. And then in the spaces between the trees and the annuals, you plant tomatoes, chillies, herbs, fiber plants and then on the very edges of the patch, nitrogen fixing and firewood trees again. So you're already creating a multi successional situation there. The first few years is going to be planting and harvesting those annuals. The squash beans and corn. Gradually the trees start to take over and fill out the space. The annuals stop being planted. Then you enter a kind of second cycle. You're compassing a lot of those trees that you planted for wood. As the trees mature, they create a. New habitat for. Vines so beneficial vines like vanilla beans can be planted climbing up the trees. Fruit trees mature you get a fruit tree yield and as. You get more. Fruit than what to do with. You're creating a food source for wild animals who come in out of the climax. Forest habitat around and into the earlier succession forest habitat you're create. Looking for food. Looking for fallen fruit. And so as you're getting these heavy fruit yields for 11:50 years, you're also getting all kinds of wild game that's attracted to the space. The new habitat that you created. And then lastly, so that's after first few years of annuals and then 10 to 12 years of fruit and game. You went to the palace stage. The lightly managed stage of 10 to 30 years, which is a mature food forest. Massive fruit yields from the adult fruit trees. And then you move. On and start the cycle anew someplace else. Yeah, are you a fruit really? Would argue. With it fruit game firewood.
Speaker 3: I like, I like all these things.
Speaker 1: Bilities I'm sold.
Speaker 3: It all.
Speaker 1: I love vanilla, tomatoes, spices, spices. Alright, so a rich polyculture. Very very far from anything that resembled agriculture to europeanize hence mistaking some on the ******** primitivist then anarcho primitivist. Some might say this too much stewardship. And management. And I have some sympathies there. I'm trying to figure out how like where. Symbiosis ends and domestication begins where being a keystone species ends. And being a steward or dominating land begins. But you do have here 10 to 30 years, so most of the time you're getting yields of being basically unmanaged, and you're just harvesting and you only have a few years in this. Whole cycle of heavy management and. Animals, meanwhile, you have no plowing, no weeding, no no pesticides. Obviously you're not keeping wild animals away from your fields, you’re inviting them to come in so that you can kill them and eat them. But still, being a hunter and gather at the same time. And you're creating. Diverse habitats. At I know, at least in Northeastern America, according to Dave, Jackie and his wonderful book Edible Forest Gardens, the pre climax stage of the forest. So before the trees are completely mature is actually the most biodiverse. So a forest becomes a more diverse place providing more habitats, more niches when it's not all climax when. You do have things. Like fellings and trees burning, creating new space. As Bill Mollison's was or has always been won't to say everything gardens, everything is creating habitat the same time as it consumes, and carves out its niche. Were talking earlier about Stewart Brand's adventurous fantasies about. The woolly mammoths. And he was saying, there. Used to be these this grassland Biome. Up north and now it's not. There in the city of boreal forests. Because you don't have the. I would guess it would be the. **** of the. Mammoths, tilting the soil more towards bacterial content rather than fungal, that the grass favors. These megafauna just like us, are seriously affecting the habitats that exist. They're not just existing in this, this imagined habitat that exists independent of the creatures that create it and just feeding off the habitat and preserving it.
UNKNOWN: This inhale.
Speaker 1: And they're also creating their habitat, so all. Organisms are creating a habitat that's good for them, which is what I see human beings doing here. So anarcho primitivist. If you want to weigh in here and say no, this luck For these reasons, and maybe these people are exceeding carrying capacity or something like that. Please enlighten me trying to have this conversation. So I want to close things off with some listener feedback as I Adam braided earlier. So on episode 70, when we talked to agency. Someone on a news who maybe sort of trolling only called themselves an individual 10 and an ellipsis and gave us some comments on our interview. And then also things we've been. Talking about in general, I'm going to read a.
UNKNOWN: Bit of their.
Speaker 1: Comment but I'm. Going to leave out a bunch of it. Just to make it something that's not too long winded to read on the air. So they said not a bad episode. The interview with the with agency was both hard hitting but also overly and unnecessarily harsh. Slash critical. We may wish it were all gone and give that criticism, but what do you do after you've levelled such a criticism of people you actually know? Since you don't know these people, you get to look pretty smart and feel pretty smug about rocking their little world, exposing them at. All most people don't have the type of life where they are already criticizing civilization. They might hold some rudimentary anti authoritarian views and want to get involved with people that hold a stronger criticism of authority and how to act on our. Desire to see change. But then they come up with some idea on positive change. That seems fun and appealing to them. And we are like. Since we both. Since we both want to live life together, does being the strongest and bestest critic in the world? Matter, let me let me attack this first. OK, so there's more to it, but jump. In if you want feel like were.
Speaker 2: Already at a critical. Mass of this so. 11 they don't understand this person. So there's. Understand who agency is. Because these are long if they listen interview they have. These are long time anarchists. These are not these. Are not fresh, freshly budded, whatever who comes in the forest first? Why climax forest trees or? Whatever these things are. You know, I'm saying they're. Not in the food forest stage of their. Life or I? Mean they are in the food forest and they've.
Speaker 1: Right, they're not in the annual.
Speaker 2: Already been harvested. Yeah exactly, it's difficult to make permaculture metaphors me to understand it, but. The other thing is. Weren't that harsh with them. We should have been more harsh with them. We should have.
Speaker 3: Done a lot of things.
Speaker 1: But I really don't feel were hushed. With them at all.
Speaker 2: We gave them 10 minutes to talk at the beginning, which I feel like if we're being self critical on the air, which we are that was too much time, we should just get into it sooner. They could people . What I meand then the other thing is. This this. I'm not a social anarchist, so even I'm a social person, but I'm not a social in my anarchy. So since we both want to live like this, but this person is saying at the end we both want to. Live life together. I don't. I don't want to live life with them, but I. Don't have affinity with them really to be honest with you.
Speaker 1: Or at least it's not as. If we're working toward the same kind of.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, I mean I. Mean I'm not even yeah.
Speaker 1: And part of their world is. And what this listener is getting at is that we do all have. To get along in some sort of way. And that's not really clear to me at all. I don't feel that I need to get along and find a way to compromise with everyone that I encounter because. As writer was saying earlier, I don't really want a mass society. I want. A hyper localism. I want banned society. Something more like that I. Want at most to be interfacing with maybe 100 to 200 people, but probably a lot smaller than them so looking more. Like 15 to 50 people. And if people aren't getting along and don't want the same life way, then I would like to have a world where there's the freedom to say hey, actually I'm going to go try living with the people on the other side of the hill. Because I'm not so into what's going on here.
UNKNOWN: Well, you're going to.
Speaker 2: Welcome to my world of chaos and revenge. If you walk over that hill. So tread carefully in my ground.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if anything, I was expecting our listenership to chastise us for not really giving it to them as harshly because what ended up. Thing was, I mean self credit on the air. I let them talk for a really long time. At the beginning Interjected about 5 minutes in and they said actually hold on. We want to talk longer and I let them talk longer and then they said we only have 30 minutes and we didn't get to our harsher questions and instead it was just kind of softball. Like hey have you? Ever considered this kind of problem? What you're doing? And then. So I don't really.
Speaker 2: Which is fine. I would I we're going to. Hopefully we can bring more people on that disagree with one of my biggest complaints is that even I find in my personal life it's hard to find people who are willing to disagree about ideas and do it in a somewhat reasonable way and still be willing to talk to you or even come on the show or. Like some of the other criticism we got is. You know, having more bringing, bringing more people, whatever but like it's.
Speaker 3: Bring it.
Speaker 2: It's honestly not a lot of people want to be out there with their ideas and thoughts like it's super easy to have a Tumblr and like read blogs social justices ship because It’s all stuff like most people agree with.
Speaker 1: Margin lines.
Speaker 2: It's not controversial. Yeah, It’s just buzzwords and it's like capitalism of course. Like capitalism, but like. I mean, you're. You're not really saying something there, you're not. You're not writing out your thoughts or detailing things. You're not going deep into history or your personal life, or any of these other things, and the ways they all relate together and trying to pull together something out of it. It it's just a bunch of ********, really.
Speaker 1: Yeah, also, I think the. Since we both want to live life together, does being the strongest and bestest critic in the world matter to me that very? Much smacks of the we. Need to meet people where they're at. And I think I said this when it first happened, but I went to this permaculture convention kind of thing a while back. This was like a year more than a year ago. And in one of the panels, someone said what I think is one of the best lines I've heard, which he goes. We need to stop. Meeting people where they're at which. This kind of softball false plurality that I. Was talking about earlier. Like, hey, any idea that you have might be as good as anyone? Else's idea it's clearly not. The case, and I think if someone is doing this kind of. Soft pluralists anarchist big tent kind of. Idea out there, yeah. I am going to criticize them and. That doesn't mean. Being * ****, obviously I'm not talking about something that.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it does.
Speaker 1: Well, I don't even think were doing that all. But I believe in being honest with people rather. Than being patronizing? Oh yeah. Totally It’s disgusting the way people constantly passion with each other. Like why can't I live life together with people. By saying, hey, I don't think this a good idea For these reasons. Maybe they'll agree with me and modify their thinking. Maybe I'll agree with them and modify my thinking. That sounds like living life together, and I also don't think were. Oh yeah, they went on. To say. That our interviews were. A hot seat. And that people wouldn't want to come on our show knowing a hot seat was waiting for them. Well, if we can't. Respectfully, but frankly frankly, criticize people. I think one we're. Doomed and two. I'm not really interested in doing the show or doing an interview with someone. If they're not OK with my asking, Frank. Critical questions and.
Speaker 2: I mean, that's. The whole point about having a project. That we don't get paid for. Is that we? Get to do whatever the **** we. Want so? Which is which? Is just which is just the. Truth of it. Like we, that's the benefit to doing your own project. That's the benefit to being autonomous. That's the benefit to being an individual. The benefit to working with another person who is 2 individuals or three or. How many it is or how many get together? Is it you could do whatever the **** you want and that's one of the benefits that we have and it's one of the things that's rare in this world that's. Not freedom, we have in the rest of our lives so.
Speaker 1: This our freedom. Eat that. So then the second part of the comment that really gets into. Here the I'm reading the listeners feedback again quote. The further further explanation of egoism and the revealing of a of more than a sympathy with egoism. But a full blown embrace of egoism. Was a bit shocking. I know over the past few shows you've attempted to bring the premies as in primitivists out of the dark ages being a Lucifer, not the first time someone called in it. Your light exposes their moral hatreds as unnecessary. And if they let go of moral absolutes, we'd all be a bit further on the page together. But lately, it seems like the vagueness in anti SIV has broken. Revealing an egoism that applauds acts of vandalism, arson, violence, and murder, and little else. I can see the crying desire to be free and that such acts may seem sound and rational, but they are just as divorced. They have chosen to be in other they are not a riot of the people in town taking out the rich miser on the hill. They are a group of bandits already hidden from society, shooting the rich miser and announcing his murder to the town as a threat to the enforcers of social order. These style of attacks coming from wild reaction are nothing new. They are actually rather typical of late 19th century industrial society. It's great that such things can occur, and they should occur. However, it is a direct action throwback to think individual. Acts of murder will. Propel change and destruction while no single thing can make the world we want. This does not help and the consequences. Are very high. We need better examples than wild reaction if there is. To be a. We a social cohesion that would help us fight and is. Worth fighting for, I think the thing I think the thing.
Speaker 2: About that is just. I don't. I don't think we're we have answers. I think that's the whole point is that there is this this not a thing about having answers and it is a totally valid critique of wild reaction and other stuff like that just going around and murdering a. Few people is probably not going to get you exactly what you're looking for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's kind of confusing me because they say it's great that such things can occur and they should occur. And then they say we need. Better examples than wild reaction. They seem to be playing both sides there, but I found the egoism critique kind of amusing. First of all, because I'm reading. Max Stirner's dialectical egoism by John Welch.
Speaker 4: It's just.
Speaker 1: Talking about Max Steiner and it was pretty funny thing because it was very similar to the critiques that Stirner got in his own time where George Woodcock said Sterner praises crime and murder. And Kim, who said that Sterner promotes quote terrorist forms of anarchy? And then it actually ended up happening. So it's kind of funny. For the record, yeah, I. I mean I don't endorse some kind of mass instruction as the way out necessarily. I don't necessarily think. Oh, we'll have lots of little acts of crime and vandalism and sabotage and murder, and gradually it's going to make these wedges in society. And then we'll push into those, and eventually all society will collapse. I endorse a variety of projects and tactics, each based on the people, the place, the situation that they're in. I think any one tactic is a doctrinal approach that will lead to a doctrinal future. But I also find it surprising that we're being criticized this way because if you listen regularly. I mean I'm talking about horticulture and land projects. Every other episode, like Long History of getting Plowed, is on almost every episode talking about forest and fungi half the time. And now I'm being told the show quote applauds acts of vandalism, arson, violence and murder, and little else. And it also. Applauds gardens and publishing projects and.
Speaker 2: We have varied interests.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I mean it's funny because on the other half of the time I'm getting criticism for talking about these anarchist modes of subsistence possibilities of living outside of civilization to the point that I'm being called utopian or programmatic and the critique of agriculture obviously is coming from anarcho primitivist. The permaculture kind of perspective so. And because unfortunately I don't really see egos talking about that kind of stuff, so I would still say the show has a plurality of influences and getting made fun of for milking cows.
Speaker 2: All right, that was listener feedback we did. We talked about many things today. Bellamy might be out of town next. Week so we. Might record early. Who knows what we'll. Do we might? Do something on the road. We might not. Domino's and I volunteered in person Rd. Work, who knows what's gonna happen, really? Anything is possible. It's a world of infinite possibilities. You have an iPad. You have an itouch that many eye thing you could be eating lunch with a. Boy Mammoth next week You could have two heads in two years. You could be swimming in a school of fish. And then find all the fishes. To be individuals and no longer. We have schools of fish. Many possibilities pretty soon we'll have characters as our as our pets and friends, and we'll be flying. Them across the. World and we won't need planes anymore. We'll have individual transportation pterodactyl forever one is this freeradicalradio.radio.radio.netradicalradio@radio.net. Thanks for listening.
Interview with Jason McQuinn on Critical Self-Theory
Posted on February 27, 2015 INTERVIEWS
Be critical to yourself… Bellamy interviews Jason McQuinn about his essay “Critical Self-Theory”, playing devil’s advocate by voicing some criticisms with which he is familiar but doesn’t share. Later, they discuss free will (42:45); McQuinn’s journal, Modern Slavery (45:05); and what a post-left anarchist praxis might be (54:47). This interview features slightly re-fucked sound (“Classic Sound”?) because Bellamy did the mixing instead of Rev – Rev will be back this Sunday!
Episode 73: Against Justice, Equality, and Humanism…for Sharks
Posted on February 23, 2015 PODCAST
If only the sharks could listen… 01:24 Rydra’s reportback on the Frank Wilderson talk at Merritt College; 17:30 Rydra’s reportback on Eric McDavid’s talk at Station 40; 27:00 Taylor Swift!; 31:35 Crime News: prison break, sledgehammering at UC San Diego; 40:48 Sharks fight back, tangents…; 48:53 Humanity’s idiotic ascent to Mars; 1:03:45: Wingnut Confessional: Justice; 1:35:40 Taco Bell feeds the homeless…so they clean the parking lot; 1:37:17 The Long History of Getting Ploughed: Desertification Sources: Eric McDavid’s post release fund! Gaia’s Garden, by Toby Hemenway Desertification: http://pubs.usgs.gov/gip/deserts/desertification/ http://www.ciesin.columbia.edu/docs/002-193/002-193.html http://www.botany.uwc.ac.za/envfacts/facts/desertification.htm http://www.greenfacts.org/en/desertification/l-2/1-define-desertification.htm#0 http://www.livescience.com/4180-sahara-desert-lush-populated.html http://www.bu.edu/remotesensing/files/pdf/344.pdf http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/158992/desert http://www.un.org/en/events/desertificationday/background.shtml H.E. Dregne from Physics of desertification Conquest of the Land Through 7,000 Years: http://www.wasco.oacd.org/linked/conquest.pdf prison break: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/02/21/willacy-county-prison-tak_n_6727930.html Mars: http://rt.com/uk/234155-hawking-earth-colonise-planets/ http://www.theguardian.com/science/2015/feb/17/mars-one-shortlist-the-top-10-hopefuls?CMP=share_btn_fb art destroyer: http://www.sandiego6.com/news/local/Vandal-causes-nearly-20000-in-damages-at-UC-San-Diego-campus-291430901.html taco bell: http://www.eastbayexpress.com/SevenDays/archives/2015/02/19/video-an-oakland-taco-bell-is-paying-its-janitor-in-burritos-not-money Egoism, by James L. Walker On the Genealogy of Morality, by Friedrich Nietzsche WIllful Disobedience, by Wolfi Landstreicher Frank Wilderson’s talk at Merritt College Eric McDavid’s talk at Station 40
Episode 72: In Which Unfucked Sound Meets A Fucked World
Posted on February 17, 2015 PODCAST
The sound of unfucking! The longest episode ever! – 2:00: People pleasantly surprise Bellamy; 7:55: More bird-killing goo; 9:35: Genetically modified trees – it’s happening; 20:13 Bellamy dissects the Zoltan Istvan interview by request; 34:00 Rydra interviews poet Paul Murufas; 01:09:35: Resistance news; 01:16:25: Fukushima gloom and doom; 01:21:45: Addiction – society causes it! 01:32:13: Pornography addiction; 01:47:50: listener’s story of traveling in Japan; 01:51:05: more on human nature, ideology, and anarcho-primitivism. Sources (incomplete, to be amended): you like Paul? Or his writing? Find it here http://www.globalresearch.ca/new-genetically-modified-tree-approved-by-us-department-of-agriculture-usda-with-no-assessments/5429467 http://www.capitalpress.com/Timber/20150128/usda-cannot-restrict-gmo-pine http://www.sanluisobispo.com/2015/02/04/3474754/birds-cleaned-of-mysterious-gray.html http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2015/01/21/death-toll-from-mystery-goo-reaches-200-birds-substance-still-unknown/ http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-2522279/Porn-destroying-modern-sex-lives-says-feminist-writer-Naomi-Wolf.html http://www.ijbs.com/v05p0706.htm Prison Break! www.fukushimaupdate.com Saddam Hussein Rope for Sale The embodied subjectivities of Bellamy Fitzpatrick, Rydra Wrong, Paul Murufas, and some listeners!
Interview with Lawrence Jarach
Posted on February 9, 2015 INTERVIEWS
listen here, now! Bellamy interviews Lawrence Jarach, an editor of AJODA: Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed, and author of such essays as “Leftism 101,” “Why I Am Not anti-Primitivist,” and “Essentialism and the Problem of Identity Politics.” Bellamy and Lawrence discuss the rhetoric of civil disobedience in regard to the recent Ferguson protests, anarchists representation in the mediand the value or lack thereof, big tent anarchism and the idea that everyone is anarchist, the distinction between anarchy and anarchism, humanism as a relic, and more. AJODA: Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed Some of Lawrence’s writing Special thanks to our new sound engineer and editor, Rev.
Episode 71: The Undying Appeal of Sorcery and Its Deleterious Effects on America’s Youth
Posted on February 3, 2015 PODCAST
Listen to the incantations here! 00.03.16: Rydra expresses his joy with various acts of criminality; 00.15.57: As the World Burns: Californiaquifers contaminated by fracking waste; Lake Chabot toxified by cyanobacteria; 00.22.12: The dangers of youthful sorcery! 00.27.47: Wingnut Confessional: Portland TWAC’s Anti-Oppression Politics and Symbolic Catharsis/Anti-Blackness and the limits of criticizing internal oppression; 00.50.22: All Cats Are Beautiful: Bill Bratton proposes another step toward squelching public dissent; 01.00.20: Alien Nation-States: Video games recapitulate dehumanization of the homeless; 01.05.05: Anarcho-Monarchism: Tolkein’s Walking Abortion/Bellamy confesses to liking LOTR; 01.14:45: FRR’s Most Unreasonable Human Being of the Week: The “Goosebuster”; 01.19.15: Luddites Anonymous: Social Mediand Resistance; 01.31.36: Wingnut Confessional: What is ideology?
Episode 70: Interview with Agency and Fireside Chats with Dead Eastern Europeans
Posted on January 26, 2015 PODCAST
Lend us your ears! Listen here, now! 0:00: Interview with Jen Angel and Ryan Only of Agency; 42:58: As the World Burns: As the planet becomes increasingly uninhabitable, some call for AI overlords; 50:25: Rydra’s Fireside Chat: Rydra reads Robert Musil, Emil Cioran, and Hermann Broch and tells us why we should care; 1:17:53: This Week In Patriarchy: Male rapists’ identification with or denial of rape they admit they would commit; 1:28:58: This Week In Patriarchy: Men acknowledging rape in much higher numbers, and the poverty of consent; 1:43:30: Wingnut Confessional: Is Progress still an important part of ideological hegemony today? Sources: http://online.liebertpub.com/doi/full/10.1089/vio.2014.0022#utm_campaign=vio&utm_medium=email&utm_source=pr http://www.davidlisak.com/wp-content/uploads/pdf/RepeatRapeinUndetectedRapists.pdf http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2014.301946?journalCode=ajph http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a.pdf Society of the Spectacle, Guy Debord The Man Without Qualities, Robert Musil The New Gods, Emil Cioran The Death of Virgil, Hermann Broch http://www.sciencemag.org/content/early/2015/01/14/science.1259855 The lived-and-felt phenomenological subjectivities of Rydra Wrong and Bellamy Fitzpatrick
Live interview with Agency tonight on FRR
Posted on January 25, 2015 INTERVIEWS
Tune in at http://streema.com/radios/play/32597 tonight at 8:30 pm. We will be live with in studio guests from Agency. We will begin with an interview and then move onto some wingnut confessional about ideology and fiction, the joy that is destroy, and as the world burns. Tune in!
Episode 69: A New Year of Malaise (January 12, 2015)
Posted on January 13, 2015 PODCAST
Rambling here! Rydrand Bellamy begin the new year with an exceptionally freewheeling discussion, first of 2014’s most absurd characters and their behaviors, and later on psychology, education, and recuperation.
Interview with Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan
Posted on January 12, 2015 INTERVIEWS
Listen here, now! Bellamy interviews Zoltan Istvan, Transhumanist author, thinker, and columnist. They discuss: the social and ecological costs of technology, Bellamy’s accusation of a religious character to Transhumanism, the class implications of Transhumanism, Istvan’s Teleological Egocentric Functionalism, and more.
2014
Episode 68: On Instagramming Mid-Coitus and Other Horrors of Modernity (December 28, 2014)
Listen here, now! Bellamy and Rydra host. Why torture works. Alien-Nation States: People still love authority. All Cats Are Beautiful: Who loves to kill the police? And police react with anger and fear to popular anti-police sentiment. The Joy That Is Destroy: ALF action and hackers in Germany attack steel mill. The Long History of Getting Ploughed: gatherer-hunters have stronger skeletons. Luddites Anonymous: Cell phone addiction. Wingnut Confessional: Bellamy responds to a listener on Egoism versus Narcissism/Cartesianism.
Episode 67: On “Anarchists” Who Follow Leadership, Worship the Commodity, and Fix Broken Windows
Posted on December 16, 2014 PODCAST
Listen here, now! Rydrand Bellamy host and discuss North Korea sending its citizens (slaves) to work in Qatar for the 2022 world cup buildup, more on the history of agriculture and the loss of pollinators, anarchist response to anarchist response to ebola, peace police getting their asses kicked in Oakland, more on the rioting and response to police violence and some on identity politics and people who call themselves anarchists while wanting to follow leadership, Greepeace up to their usual antics that are getting them sued by Peru, and as always some wingnutting and ranting!
Episode 66: Make Total Destroy, and Bring us the Champagne
Posted on December 10, 2014 PODCAST
listen here!
The Necromantic Urge: Some Thoughts Following The Zoltan Istvan/John Zerzan Debate
Posted on December 4, 2014 WRITINGS
An Eruption by Bellamy Fitzpatrick This essay was originally written in the week following the debate at Stanford, a recording of which can be found here. A shorter, differently edited version of this essay will appear under a different title in the Spring 2015 issue of Fifth Estate. This version has been displayed here with their permission. “Come and hear the views of two thinkers who […] arguably have defined, the two polar opposite views on the effects of technology […]” (1) Grimacing at the clash-of-the-titans-esque rhetoric that epitomized the debaters, I nonetheless made my way eagerly to Stanford on November 15th to watch Transhumanist Zoltan Istvan debate Anarcho-Primitivist John Zerzan.
Episode 65: 11/30/14: On Being “So Fucked Up!”
Posted on November 30, 2014 PODCAST
Listen here! Bellamy and Rydra examine protest, dare we say “riots”, in Oakland in the aftermath of the Darren Wilson verdict – more peace police reign, of course. Luddites Anonymous: recent robots of various sorts emerge, including a robotic nematode. The Long History of Getting Ploughed: our aeroponic future, research on the cause of celiac. Wingnut Confessional: response to listeners on the reification of nature and on Anarcho-Primitivism’s relationship to ableism and genocide.
Episode 64: On the Beauty and Horror of the Natural World: Wild Reaction, Uncivilized Conduct, and more.
Posted on November 24, 2014 PODCAST
Listen here! Rydrand Bellamy discuss their visit to the UC occupation of Wheeler Hall and subsequent run-in with liberal nightmare Chris Hedges, comminques and actions from Wild Reaction and Uncivilized Condcut, more on the rhetoric around Ferguson and state murders, megacities, the horror and beauty of the world around us, Elon Musk predicting that artificial intelligence will end the human species, and much more!
Speaker 1: All right, we are back with free radical radio. Roger wouldn't let me finish the song. He said that the music was driving away listeners. A short argument ensued, and he we are.
Speaker 2: Well, at least it was a short argument, so that was nice. Alright, so today is Sunday. It's episode 64 of what is known as Free Radical Radio. What can be found at freeradicalradio.tumblr.com? You can find us at e-mail as a free radical radio at riseup.net. And you can listen to us right now if you're doing that awesome. Alright, so The Hunger Games, as everyone knows, the probably the most important film in the history of the world came out Thursday night. I've yet to see it so. What you do? We'll probably talk about that next week after I've seen it. It might be terrible. I've heard nothing but bad things. Slightly concerned about that. Also got myself into a little argument about whether whether or not The Hunger Games was a good or bad thing. As much as anyone can believe in good or bad, so. So yeah, but we'll leave that where it belongs on the. Internet all right. Saturday night we ended up deciding we should go over to the UC Berkeley occupation. I don't know if you want. I guess it's fair to call it that when it seems like a bunch of hippies are playing guitar and watching movies about farming. I don't know how much of an occupation. It is but. They're calling it nonetheless, go ahead.
UNKNOWN: There was a.
Speaker 1: There was a folk cover of Outkasts.
Speaker 3: Hey yeah, featured.
Speaker 1: That's the kind of occupation.
Speaker 2: I mean to misquote Emma Goldman. If you can't shake it like a Polaroid picture, then what kind of revolution is it?
UNKNOWN: There you go.
Speaker 2: I went in a great tradition of revolutionaries. We have attended the occupation. So not only that the UC, they're basically against to which they're against. It seemed like what started this whole thing was tuition hikes, and they don't want tuition hikes because it's really ******* expensive to. To go to school and I just realized my microphone was off and that's why were having some issues, so it's really expensive to go to UC. I have issues with the whole college system. I condemn the whole college system as a whole, so I really could care less what the tuition costs. I don't know if you want what you want to call me for that. People can call me whatever I am. I went to college. It was a ****** college University of Hawaii. I mostly surfed. I dabbled in some herbal medicines and I taught some kids how to swim and then I decided being a teacher would a good ideand all of that coalesced into some type of degree in political silence, silence. Radiance up there. Political science, that who knows. But basically the whole idea of some type of revolution starting from schools or something. I don't really know. I don't put much stock in it myself. Like if people want to occupy the buildings, great if. People want to burn the buildings. You know who doesn't like a little bit of fire now and then. It's cold in the winter. If people want to argue about graffiti and have to our meeting because someone wrote, kill Napolitano. In case you don't know, Janet Napolitano was the former director of Homeland Security of the Department of Homeland Security, or President. Whatever the top position there is called, think director and she's now the I think, the. Head Dean or whatever the highest position is at the university. So a University of California, Berkeley, which is kind of justice, shows you exactly what's going on. It's not a secret. It's not a surprise. The university is. The military is the government as much as they want to call that public education. It let's let's all be realistic here, and let's let's call the spade to spade or let's call ******** on this whole situation.
Speaker 1: Right, and as they discussed and occupy the farm. Documentary what? Is this scholarship? What is this research really going toward in the case of UC Berkeley? Among other things, that's going to GMO maze, and that's part of what was being done on the gill tract. Land was studying the maze genetics.
Speaker 2: Right, and It’s really disappointing because the Occupy the farm thing was kind of cool in the beginning, at least because people were just protesting or whatever walking down the street and they basically were like hey. There's some farmland here, or some land here. Let's just ******* go in there. Set up some camps, chill out, have a good time, grow some food, and talk. You know that sounds nice. I support that. I would be interested in doing that, but it kind of went through this whole phase where there was battle with the police, et cetera, et cetera. It kind of turned into the typical occupation that we see now where people hold. Something basically been recuperated at this point. People know how to deal with this. Their threat of extreme violence is pretty. Terrifying, we saw it when the UC Berkeley students when they were camped out, and I believe Sprout Hall. Last year there's a lot of YouTube video of people getting the **** kicked out of them with batons by the Berkeley police. Like you don't wanna **** with them, it's a pretty big deal. So a lot of the people that were doing this were, pretty rightfully afraid. MM. Yeah, I don't know well the problem with that kind of.
Speaker 1: Resistance and the tendency for these occupations is that. The object is almost immediately recuperated in that it starts off. Being about holding land. And there's a lot of rhetoric around. This public space people are. Supposed to be able to grow food where they live, and that's all nice rhetoric, but. Very quickly in many cases. And in the case of Occupy. The farm it. Shifts to where occupying in order to draw attention where occupying in order to have leverage for some sort of reform. And we're going to occupy in the. Most polite way. Possible, as in the case of Occupy the. Farm when they. Took great pains to stress that they weren't trying to stop the GMO research from happening and giving them trying to give them ample space and make the researchers comfortable. Doing that, and you think, do we want to make these people comfortable? They're attacking the biosphere in a really direct way. They're engaging in hyper domestication. As the film shows, one of the researchers even lied when they went way out of their way to make this person feel comfortable, and the researcher said, OK, I'm going to write a letter on your behalf saying that you all are being really proper good protesters, and instead the researcher went and wrote a letter defaming them and making explicit lies about what they were doing and saying that. She didn't feel safe around them so. It's difficult to see the. Object of revolt really, I guess and. We see that same sort of thing with the Berkeley occupation that's happening now when one of the first things that they discuss that they're meeting is saying, OK, how do we best apologize for this graffiti? First of all, why are they responsible? This was obviously 1%. The occupation expressing themselves.
Speaker 2: And the graffiti was on the back of a chair at a giant auditorium like and is like bathroom graffiti. So I'm gonna see if I can connect this cause to me this public apology that they did is connected to a story we did. I forget where it was in what city, maybe Chicago or Ohio. Somewhere in that area. Going to throw the whole center of. Of America into one giant area. Somewhere over there actually might have been New Jersey anyways. Besides the point, there was a basketball coach and a bunch of basketball kids and they were all just, a bunch of teenage youth and they all standing there right? And they got arrested for like loitering or. Whatever and they. Were literally waiting for a bus like 12. Well, black kids. And what was most upsetting about this was that the coach and other people were like they were doing what they were supposed to be doing, and they still got arrested. Who gives a ****? Who gives a **** if they were smoking joints and breaking bottles like the whole city is a trash can, I could give a **** like who like it's this whole thing of like doing what you're supposed to do. So the occupiers have the same thing, right? It's like, oh we apologize for this. It's almost like people are trying to win. It's not almost like it is like it. People are trying to win this like public relations. Game that they already lost. You're you're not going to win it like they know that these all these people are smart enough to know what the media looks like. And you can't just show an injustice and have things change. It's not a secret, . It’s a lot of this organizing too that we have a problem with where people go. Like don't you realize you're oppressed? It's like yeah, no **** I realize I'm oppressed. I work for $8.00 an hour. I'm getting four clothes on and I ******* have no grocery stores within the 20 minute walk in my house. It's not a ******* secret you have to go down there and tell someone their life sucks. They know it like it's just not a secret. And the other thing to connect this to. Is occupy the farm and they have this whole discourse of like we're politely stealing the land back like we're going to be nice about it, and we're going to share it with GMO corn. Like are you kidding me? You're going to share it with GMO corn. The whole thing is irrelevant. The moment that you call yourself someone who's in contact with the land trying to connect the land. And you can't even attack the corn. The GMO corn that's sitting right next to you. We all know what you see. Research goes to. It's not a secret. We know what tech research goes to. Like it? Goes it goes for war and it goes for profits like this this what the machine runs on. It's not a secret. All these people know it, even if they're liberals, even if they're leftists, they know it. And it's some kind of cognitive dissonance where they can sit there and pretend like we can have panarchy where I can, like where we can have our little nice democracy here and then over here. On this other side, what are you going to have? You're gonna have some kind of like oligarchical civilization death machine situation. But no, you're gonna leave me alone here. And I like my little. You know 3.5 acre plot of land on this one little spot in. The middle of the city.
Speaker 1: And that's the liberal ethic of tolerance for you. It paints a fiction and says that we can all have very different views, very different lifestyles, very different ways of having relationships with human beings and non human beings. And we can all get along, and the fact is, that's just not true. And I don't know why that's a nice thing for you to imagine anyway. But in fact, the very problem the very issue is that this way of life this civilized way of life, this hyper domestication with GMOs. And model crops of corn. Is undermining the freedom of all other beings to live their lives and that's the whole point. You shouldn't try tolerate that. You shouldn't try to. Play nice with them and you see what happens. I meand.
UNKNOWN: You can.
Speaker 1: I think some of the Occupy the foreign people would dispute this. If you're listening and you do dispute it, please. E-mail US e-mail us at e-mail at us.
Speaker 2: E-mail at me dude.
Speaker 1: Email.us@periodicalradioriseup.net, but what we see is that. They played nice all the time they played. To the researchers and the researchers betrayed them and lied. They played nice with the cops. The cops kicked them off the land. They played nice with the City Council, the city. Council voted against them. So it's just playing nice again and again and getting ****** over again and again.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I almost feel like . The government supposedly had this. Don't negotiate with terrorists if at your best you're a terrorist. Which is the best thing I feel like a radical could hope to be called? Don't negotiate with the government. Don't negotiate with. Cops, ? Follow the same. Follow the same logic. What's going to happen when you start negotiating with the government. It's already over at that point, right? You're already recuperated at the point you start getting into conversation with these people, and by these people I mean the Deans of this university. Who are are just like senators or whatever they're going to go into positions? I mean, those positions are to pay. Should ton of money like I don't know. In case you don't know what the university structure is like. Some of those Deans are basically all those Deans are making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, and who knows what thell they do really to be honest. Do you, do what they do? I know they have like offices and big houses next to university, but besides that I'm not exactly sure. What's going on? All right, the other thing I want to mention was the Occupy the farm video was pretty hilarious. Where in case you didn't see it there was some we most being the ******** we are. We mostly just did a lot of. Heckling In the back. But I feel like he was righteous, heckling as righteous as heckling can possibly.
Speaker 6: OK.
Speaker 1: And were the only hecklers. It wasn't really a Heckle friendly.
Speaker 2: It was not a hegle friendly event. However, if you're going to have a quote in the movie from the star of the movie, who says? This the new face of Occupy work.
Speaker 1: Now people are coming here to work.
Speaker 2: People are coming here to work. I don't go any like I don't want to be working isn't the whole isn't the whole idea behind this not to work, not to do alienated jobs? Are you going to call getting food for yourself work? It's like the Freddy Perlman quote. When does the bear clock in? He doesn't clock in the bear never ******* clocks in the bear enjoys the salmon. The bear enjoys the wild. Whereas the bear is enjoying itself, we're human beings. We can get joy out of going out with our friends and family and ******* gardening and picking some food and being out and feeling the sun on our backs and being whatever it is to be a ******* human being.
Speaker 1: I think the person in the video was just being an honest leftist and saying this. This my utopia. This the world I would like to see people getting together in organized groups and working.
Speaker 2: You know his some. I guess some people's utopias or other people's worst nightmare. That's that's what we've been finding out lately with Zoltan. Some of the other people.
Speaker 1: Yeah, . More on Zultan later. I think Occupied Farm is. Has come and gone. At this point we got on a bit of a tangent there with UC Berkeley, but the last thing touch on and Speaking of having versus not having conversations. Who should we run into at the UC Berkeley occupation while standing around waiting for our friends to take us home, but the man himself? Chris Hedges who nonchalantly walked up the stoop toward us to our surprise and.
Speaker 2: Man, the myth. Join the circle, get all Chris hatches. Join the circle.
Speaker 1: Asked what was going on and a friend of ours who was with us said, oh, just doing cancer. A reference to Chris Hedges. The cancer and occupy, referring to anarchists, all anarchists which who apparently are organized in a group known as the Black Bloc. Referred to them as cancer, a disease equating human beings with pathogens. Or maybe the symptoms of disease. And so I had a few exchanges with him. I asked him if he had actually written the cancer and occupied or was. That something that he had. Plagiarized as well. He didn't acknowledge the plagiarism, but just said I wrote it and I said, yeah, it shows your plagiarized work is better. He brushed off. He kind of grimace, talked to some other And eventually acknowledged that he should not have used the word cancer in that paper and I said, yeah, often when human beings are calling other human beings disease, it ends in genocide. And he said, I know, I know.
Speaker 2: And then he went to a whole Derek Jensen tangent, because that's who he's speaking with. We're going to leave that one there. I think everyone pretty much has an idea. If not, you can hit the googly monster. OK, maybe tell me his.
Speaker 1: Words for that one note on that he. Hedges actually claimed. More or less ignorance on. Ann Jensen and Leo Keith's transphobic behavior. Saying he didn't know that much about it, didn't really understand it and said really, he worked with the guy for years and you don't know about this. You don't investigate the politics of the people you work with. And he said, after. Some others were also haranguing him that he would call out Jensen's behavior the next.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I'm sure that's happening.
Speaker 1: Time OK, I've just put it on the record, he said. He would call out Jensen's transphobic behavior. The next time that he did an event with him, which is supposed to be happening. I think right now.
Speaker 2: So all right? So to get us out of this I have a couple of questions for you so as anti SIV anarchists who are not interested in apologizing to the UC system who don't give a **** what kind of graffiti people right in the walls? Because they're words and walls. And unless basically someone says it's some kind of authoritarian graffiti. And I see someone doing, I'll be like that's what you think you're an idiot and deal with that as I will. Besides that, how do we deal interact with this thing? Do we interact with this thing? It's very, we know a lot of the social anarchists here in the Bay who decide that the best thing they can do is educate and be there, and they use this whole language around steering it. I'm very familiar with this because as we talked to quote revolutionaries and even people who don't call themselves revolutionaries, but social anarchists who are like waiting for a rupture, et cetera, et cetera. Their idea is to go down there and. Politicized people and like their worst case scenario, is a few people come radicalized. Their best case scenario is it turns into some kind of thing where what they like to say. It pops off and there's there's rioting or something. Something basically that is different from the status quo. I guess so. How do we interact with this? Or is there even a point to if our if we don't believe in going out there? And like politicizing people? You're asking me. I am asking no. I'm asking I'm asking the other people.
UNKNOWN: I didn't.
Speaker 1: Know if it was a rhetorical question that you were going to answer yourself. I think that well, so obviously you and I and others with whom we have considerable affinity, did go down. There, right? I would say I go to these things because. I'm curious, I want to learn I. Want to see? What people are doing in the area. I think it's worth it to go to these kinds of things at times if there's not a better project that you could be working on that exact moment or enjoying yourself and spending time nurturing relationships in your life. If it happens that you have some interest and there's not anything better you're doing in the moment, it's worth going there. Not so much to politicize people as to have conversations and. See if there are. People in your area with whom you might have affinity pre-existing affinity. I'm not talking. Dragging someone along, obfuscating your views and gradually revealing them as you pull someone more and more into your tendrils the way that. Some leftists and social anarchists like to, but just pre-existing affinity. You might. There's an opportunity to. Form new relationships like that. I also think that. You can have a kind. Of Union of egos approach. If something is really. Interesting and going off in a way that. You like, I think it might make sense to support it for so long as it continues to do that and then discontinue support as soon as it stops doing that and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I don't know I still have mixed feelings about the whole thing because I understand too. It's not like the basically I was talking about talking to a mutual friend of ours today. Were hanging out about our politics and he was basically saying that he expects his politics to be different for five or ten years, and I expect the same thing. I don't know, but I can say with relative. Certainly I'm not going to be a leftist or a liberal. Yeah, it's interesting to see people where you were at before and be here now at a different place politically, and to engage with people like that because it's likely they're going to change, and it's not likely that they're going to go where you went, but it's likely they're going to have different politics, so. It's I don't know. I don't really know how I feel about it, but I do know parts of it are really off putting for me and parts of it make a lot of sense for me. Where I hear people say things they don't seem quite connected and like it's almost like I've had. I keep having this feeling lately where people start with the same premise and then go to radically different conclusions. For instance, remember in the Occupy the farm. You know that one guy who did the nonprofit here in Oakland was talking about. Well, he was talking about how, Oh yeah, like food is so bad and it how it comes here is ****** like production and distribution. It's this whole huge problem blah blah and it just turned into like radical urbanization. And it's like man, we start with the same premise and you just you're really going for it there. You know you're just saying, oh we need to fix the output. It's going to. Be all better blah blah. It's just.
Speaker 5: Right now it's.
Speaker 1: It is frustrating. I find myself sometimes leaving events like this bit alienated and angry. For instance, with the person who was actually someone who wassociated heavily with Occupy the farm. When I was making snide comments and ridiculing Chris Hedges because I feel that's the appropriate thing to do. When a lying ******* who might not even believe the things that he writes because he steals them, shows up and is obviously trying to steer the event. And this person said, hey, maybe instead of making fun of him and yelling at him, you could try to engage with. Him and I said. No, there’s nothing to engage with because this. Person's a cipher. He's lying, he doesn't he. He appropriates radical rhetoric and then turns it into bland leftism. And he's stealing most of what he writes anyway. And so with stuff like that. I do end up thinking why am I even? Coming to these. Events, but I do you think it's worth it to go? Sometimes I don't think it should feel compulsory. But it's sometimes worth it to go for the reasons I mentioned before. And also to. Go and with people who seem like they're really going to engage and listen. Offer the critiques, say well, this what I don't like about what's going on here and why I can't fully support it. And then after you've planted the seed of critique, just go do your own thing. Go do something better. If you don't like what's going on, go do something better. And I hope that the critique. Maybe influences that person, and that's not a steering. The event. That's not a politicizing, it's just being honest putting it out.
Speaker 2: There alright, well before we jump into one more second before we hit the first break I want I want to just joke around a little bit as we're standing in the circle. An Islamic woman stood next to me and started talking to me and I was like, hey blah blah. We started shooting the **** or whatever and then it was like it was kind of funny because you can tell she like wanted to talk about something but I wasn't sure what and I wasn't sure why she chose me randomly to get in this conversation with. But she is like, oh, what do you think about violence and all these other things? And I was like, oh man, I'm so not having this conversation. You know, especially since you just came from a Chris Hedges talk. I've literally no interest in this. And then I'm about to get out the conversation and she looks at me and she goes. You know, if I wasn't wearing this, I would be wearing green and black like in French. She was a green anarchist and I was like ohh so. I mean kind of got pulled in there and it went in a very awkward direction where 5 minutes later she was telling me. She's like, . Islam and anarchy have a lot in common. You guys have no gods, no masters, and we have one. God one master. And at that point I was like, well, that one God and one master is kind of a big deal and then and then after that she ends up saying, don't you just want to surrender, don't you think it's just right? To surrender to 1 legitimate. And I was like, what you're looking at right now with this body, this whatever this thing is, you're looking at. That is me. This the only authority I'm interested in is myself. And she's like, well, even if it's pure and I was like, I might have to do. Start walking home at this point.
Speaker 1: Difference between zero and one is sometimes very great.
Speaker 2: Sometimes it's infinite. It's an argument in math. I believe that I have no understanding of, but I believe it is actual argument.
Speaker 1: All right, so before. We go to a break. I wanted touch on the. Our man Zoltan Istvan briefly. And that was to point out that. Immediately after the debate with Zerzan, he put out an article talking about the debate and it's definitely intriguing. I guess some unintentional anarcho terrorism was happening for at least one man in that room. Zoltan seems to fear the circle A. He writes this mid article. The footage misses the. Most exciting parts of the event such as loud anti civilization hecklers. There was exactly 1 Heckler were there. He made two comments at the very beginning of Zoltan's talk, arguing with him about one point and then laughing at something and he said he wasked to stop talking. He stopped talking, so I'm not sure what where the plural comes in, or the loudness really. And then he goes on to say the anarchist dominated 140 person audience which is new to me actually. Yeah, the vibe in the auditorium was quite tense, and some transhumanists were worried about safety issues because no university security was present. In the very back where were stood, people who some suggested were black bloc participants. Individuals who dress in black wear face concealing masks and gear and cause civil unrest.
Speaker 2: It will unrest.
Speaker 1: So interesting what for me was in some cases maybe disappointing debate. Because it wasn't quite the bloodbath or the. Maybe the level of? Hostility between the speakers of antagonism between their arguments wasn't quite what I wanted it to be. Apparently for Zoltan it was quite the antagonistic, terrified event.
Speaker 2: Which is funny because it seemed like he was trying to be. So friendly and telling. These random mass stories about sailing for a year. But I think it's funny because I was one. Of those people in the back, I was not dressed in black. I was I was eating take out food loudly like we had a bunch of free food from this random restaurant in San Jose that we stopped and got at the time. So we picked up the food and we're all just sitting in the back. Basically just eating, eating snacks loudly and making a bunch of noise because they had packed a lot of material so committing. Ecocide and terrorism to Zoltan apparently. At the same time, so we have become what we hate Bellamy.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and it was also interesting given that after the. Talk Sultan told Roger and me who were talking to him afterward that some of some of in the transhumanists tendency. Call him anarcho transhumanist and say that he's too extreme with his anarchy, so I guess.
Speaker 2: We all have interesting ideas of who we think we are and what we say we are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I guess he's not quite into the scary anarchy territory.
Speaker 2: Well, there's a. There's a David Foster Wallace quote from Infinite Jest that says it's true that some people have radically different ideas of personal hygiene, and I think it's also true that some people like Zoltan have radically different ideas about what the word self-awareness means.
Speaker 1: Less on the. Issue is that. I found something interesting in a bit of double speak.
Speaker 6: Maybe from Zoltan?
Speaker 1: In that during the debate, he emphasized repeatedly that he believed Democratic checks on the technological singularity were possible, and that we could have basically state institutions at various levels. Being careful that individual liberties in his words, individual rights would be preserved in terms of privacy and that there could be checks on the potential dangers of the singularity resulting in some kind of mass genocide. Ecocide that kind of thing. However, I was looking at other interviews from him with him today. One recent one in which he said. Something significant about technology to him is that it's not democratic and has never been democratic, and that in fact more closely resembles a kind of survival of the fittest, where whoever can individually discover how to make technology as efficient. As possible will. Be able to more or less thrust. Down the world which. Is somewhat more in line with our analysis of technology, but interesting that he was quite brazen in saying It’s not democratic. It's never been democratic. However, in this debate he said that there could be democratic check. So the question becomes, was he being duplicitous in the debate? Has he changed his views? Does he have mixed feelings and we'll be able to settle this in our what we hope in the upcoming interview with him will be in the. Next couple of weeks.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and later later in today's show, we're gonna get into a little more detail about technology. And because what's his name? Elon Musk had some pretty revealing comments about what he thinks about artificial intelligence and checks on technology and all that stuff. So later today we're definitely going to or tonight we're going to. Get in more detail about this.
Speaker 1: Other exciting news in terms of personal vanity and ARCO careerism is that Roger and Bellamy have been invited by the state to write an article about the debate so you can hear us in speech or in written form and continue to consume our media. Let us influence your thoughts.
Speaker 2: All right, give these people some music that I won't understand.
UNKNOWN: Alright, we'll be back.
Speaker 1: In a few minutes.
Speaker 4: You've got a just full of little things, keeps you remembering all the years. You gotta transform little things, keeps you up alonto. And your mouth is. Open you're telling me things you say, oh. It all washed away. What would you remember about everything? If it all washed away, what would you hold on to of everything? Your mouth is open, you're. Telling me things you wanna do? Never known no. All the stories ever told. I've got a chest full of little things. I've got a chest full of little things, gives me all. The non too. All the years. And they're about. Long story. I love you. It's 5.
Speaker 2: All right, welcome back to free radical radio home with smooth transition. Options general dissent complaining anger towards 99.999% of things that go on in this world and islands don't like when we call it civilization. So for their sake, we're going to go ahead and call it the situation that we're in this situation. Some people leave the booth volume on and I get an echo. That I'm sitting next to so anyway, this free radical radio. We're going to jump straight into everyone's favorite publication, Wired, and have a website wired.com. Who would have? Thought everyone gets really clever with their names, so there was a I don't know, it's MoMA. The Museum of Modern Art. I'm not sure what city this in, but someone did this whole thing on urban planning. For 2030 and this person found their utopia, which is make of cities and who doesn't want to live in the city with 10s of millions of other people. You know, living with strangers when you walk down the street, you don't know anyone. They could have a. Knife they could be carrying weapon they could hug you. They could push you. They could throw a pretzel at you. Really anything's possible in this beautiful. A situation that we're living in that you don't know anyone what's what's it like, really, to walk down the. Street with strangers. Everywhere this a daily occurrence for us. Very bizarre.
Speaker 1: Some would say true privacy lies in constant anonymity. If you can walk. Down the street without anyone looking at you. Or even making. Eye contact or a lot more free to go about doing your business, which is probably being alone. Craving alcohol. Wondering what you're going to watch? On Netflix tonight it's true.
Speaker 2: Some people's computer can't stream, so they can't finish Sons of Anarchy. And they're wondering. Just what happens between Jacks and Clay so. All right, so you can't stop the free for all. Here comes progress. Welcome to the Mega City and all the quotes in this segment are gonna be from a man, the human being named Pedro Godano and who curated the uneven growth tactical urbanisms for growing megacities at the Museum of Modern Art.
UNKNOWN: Go ahead.
Speaker 1: And the way that this presentation was framed was by saying that in 2025, so in 11 years, the world is going to have 37 megacity. A megacity is a city with more than 10 million people. They are predicting that New York City and Newark would have more than 23 million people, which would put them on par with the where the East Asian metropolises are now and then. Those, for instance, Tokyo, are they're expecting will have more than. 38 million people well? We already, I think, have more than half of the world's population living in cities, and they're. Saying that's going to go up as well.
Speaker 2: I think they're saying we will. At this point we will have. We will have half of the world's population in mega cities. Literally 37 cities will contain half the world's population. That's what they're saying.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you're right. I misinterpreted that.
Speaker 2: Oh, I think half the people are urban atmospheres, what? They're saying is just. In these 37 cities, half the people will.
Speaker 1: Just in the mega, yeah.
Speaker 2: List and Tokyo is one of them, and has anyone heard of a little thing called Fukushima Daiichi Nuclear Power plant explosion that is several times worse than Chernobyl, which was not a pleasant event for most people? Unless you're an Organism that feeds up nuclear power, I'm not sure if that's a real thing, but it seems it.
Speaker 1: Archia there.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sure, the archill love it if you're not an Archaea, you're human. Being is probably not good for you unless. You know you're deep in the X-Men game, Oregon, hoping for a bat of a VAT of green liquid to jump to, like the Joker in the original Batman. If you're Jack Nicholson. Who knows,? But if you're human, being is probably not the most the thing. You're most excited about some people wonder what will life be like in a mega city? Can I find the? Joy, I currently find in my regular. City that I. In my Mega city, my joy will be mega joy. So Pedro Gonano he casually mentions that one number that isn't referenced often is that. 2/3 of that population will be poor, so we're literally creating a city where over 66% of the city is living in super ****** poverty in a city with other people not, which is the situation now only. The mega poverty I guess so.
Speaker 1: Right, and if we think about some of the largest cities now, a huge portion of the population lives in shanty towns, right? They're basically this kind of. Black market economy that forms on the and that which is tolerated for the most part by the city. Because it's the only way that it's going to. They have most of the people not even living in the city, not experiencing all the things that we're told cities give us which is rich culture, diversity of opinion, belief, artistic expression, and all these things.
Speaker 2: So hold that, thought Bellamy, you actually have predicted where this article is ending at and we will get there very soon. 1st, I'm going to take you on a little walk. I'm going to take you on an adventure in language and this little adventure is going to talk about how Hong Kong will deal with growth while being a city that's surrounded by water. So feel free to jump in anytime on this little adventure. I'm gonna take you on so Pedro is going to lead the way with this. This gem of a quote. Hong Kong Network Architecture Lab and New York's Columbia University reasoned that with so little land, Hong Kong has three options developed. Sanctioned national parks extend the shoreline further into the water or build artificial islands near the coastline. They ultimately propose building 8 new islands, each dedicated to an economic. For social activity unique to Hong Kong, such as fishing, naturally building these would create jobs. So why don't we go on? This adventure here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, incredibly morbid logic. So first of all, presenting. I guess what you. Could call a false trilemma, which the only option because? We're already taking for granted that civilization has to go on that. We're going to continue extracting resources and committing ecocide to make sure that it does that the population is going to continue to grow that the city therefore has to continue to expand the population continues to need, or will have to continue to become more urbanized therefore. We're left with these three options.
Speaker 2: I love these these trichotomies they give you here.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so I guess we're going to. Talk more about building islands later, but. As we see, the civilized logic says we need to continue to spread the monotony, the flatness, the relentless urbanity, and so we need to bulldoze mountains. We need to fill in valleys we. Need to turn oceans into land.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so let's start at the beginning where it says the Hong Kong Network architecture lab. That's quite the mouthful there. And Columbia University reasoned that they have. These three options. Did they? Does that sound like a reasonable thing to you to build? To build ******* islands. To create islands. We all saw this happen with water world during the filming and what happened. The $250 set of water world sunk and to make that great film they had to build it up again. That cost them tons of money and they end up losing money on the film as a whole. So I think water world has already proved this fake island thing doesn't work, even though was a great film where Kevin Costner's. And the end of this really the best part where it says naturally this creates jobs. Does it take jobs? What it sounds like is it creates more people moving in to make these giant islands in a place that is known for having giant storms. So I mean this job creation thing is really? I mean, I guess you can just use whatever. Language you want in this world, and it doesn't matter what it means. You can just go ahead and say it like it's true.
Speaker 1: I guess if you take an honest definition of jobs, which is what is by and large drudgery committed by alienated human beings to have commodified interactions with other human beings and commit ecocide. Meanwhile, in the background then, that turns into a pretty honest paragraph where you say. We're doing all of this crazy **** and naturally it's going to create misery and ecocide. For everyone.
Speaker 2: Yeah, all right, Pedro's going to give us one last gem here that I like to call adventures in being an *******. So here's Pedro with his final quote for the day. Once again, the man responsible for this urban Mega City exhibit. Roma, so he reasons that since everyone's reasoning, I guess no matter if the things you say are unreasonable. So here he goes. Governments might want to eradicate favela housing because they can't control it, but that improvise. That's a difficult word, but that improvisational style of living exists in part because of the skills and community values. That already live in a city, that's an opportunity, not an obstacle. People, millions of people living in abject poverty where they can just be destroyed like they were in Brazil for the World Cup. That's an opportunity, so I guess maybe we could seize on the opportunity just like we could seize on the opportunity of prisoners to, work in slaughterhouses and all the other great things that. Happen in this world.
Speaker 1: What Peters is doing is being actually a really good acolyte of civilization. Because he's saying. What we need to do to have an effective domestication process is not to overtly and viciously attack the domesticated when they try to eke out a kind of living, but instead encourage their self domestication because it makes them much more easy to manage. So when people build shanty towns you gotta you gotta embrace. You got to engulf. You gotta be like the amoeba. Extend the pseudopods and engulf them. Just don't just attack draw in.
Speaker 2: All right, well, Speaking of attacking, we're going to jump right into that. It's anonymous and wild reaction is back. Formally, the individuals tending towards the wild source of much dismay among anarchists who want a revolution but somehow think it's going to happen without any bloodshed. The mystical. Revolution from pro violence. Supporting people where no one ends up getting hurt except all the people who deserve it and where we draw that line is very unclear. It's quite an interesting perspective. I've yet to hear broken down well, so they have a new communique because they're doing interesting things. They may or may not be attacking telephones. So we're going to get into this after we read this communique Bellamy, you want to do this, do the honor should I?
Speaker 1: Are we reading the whole community? What are we doing?
Speaker 2: Read what we like here all right here. We go this. Their first communications, their last communication.
Speaker 1: Let's say I do think this communique is not. Especially well translated, because some of the sentences are kind of awkward, but I think you get the gist of it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it just comes up here we go. It is true. We are not at all altruistic nor charitable. That became clear on November 14th when we detonated an explosive charge at the Mexico Teleton Foundation. Approaching the day when the submissive and non Mexican society unites in front of the television to sympathize with disabled disabled children used to accumulate large sums of money is close and the benevolent quote, quote, UN quote benevolent industries don't pay taxes. We detonated our explosives. Well, the mere act had nothing to do with quote demands for social justice, nor political colors, nor anything of the sort. In case anyone will think that so that's kind of in line with the other stuff they say. Which is we do these things because we enjoy doing things of this matter? We don't expect anything to change. While blood seems like they're kind of in the vein of more of a, I don't think they call themselves nihilists or egoists, but I would do they OK?
Speaker 1: You they do in.
Speaker 2: I guess they yeah, yeah so.
Speaker 1: Earlier communication they said something. Like we are undomesticated egoists or something like that, yeah.
Speaker 2: Oh, that's what it was. OK, I was. And which I mean, it's very clear even if they didn't say it, yeah, so their trade is something else, so they continue on. We attack this foundation because it's one of the institutions along with the private initiatives in mass media that implement alien alienation through techno industrial systems. Values such as quote, promiscuous, solidarity. Peace progress, humanism etc. Because they spread at great length, the moral that society should continue to quote comets temper. Now, in a country which lives in political, economic and social crisis, so I mean I'm going to finish reading. I just think it's really fascinating. The Quote Teleton Foundation is an agency with the two most prestigious universities in Mexico. Sorry, they're saying they're involved with them in charge of the development of technological and scientific innovation with therapeutic purposes. Together they completely adhere to the idea of progress to make sure. The system falls its. Course and they kind of go on and they deconstruct technology and they end up saying that complete technology will always have the same purpose in whichever of its forms. Whether therapeutic or weaponizing educational or of massive destruction, medicinal or poisonous, and that purpose is to continue existing over wild nature. Because of this, our attack. Without more explanations, we are not Christians, nor do we characterize nobility. We do not seek nor defend charity from anyone or with anyone, and then it's signed by the Nocturnal Hunter faction of Wild reaction. And if nothing else, the names are quite fabulous, I must admit.
Speaker 1: It's nothing. While reaction has demonstrated a tenacity and reinventing names for itself names. Or I guess.
Speaker 2: As a human being who has changed their names several times through their life, I have nothing but solidarity that they don't want or need from me.
Speaker 1: Who doesn't love the mask?
Speaker 2: I mean, I like it because they’re attacking, they're literally attacking. Which is funny, because that's not what literally means. But now it's been changed in the dictionary is going to **** you off. Bellamy literally has been changed in the dictionary and added the false meaning because it's so widely misused that now you can say literally the wrong way and it's the right way because the dictionary has changed to the ****** ** ways that we talk. To each other, I call it a.
Speaker 1: Sign of decadence.
Speaker 2: I'm into it.
Speaker 1: But yeah, with. Wild reaction more and more I can't. Help but see a. Resemblance in their rhetoric and their behavior to the instructionally anarchists of Italy in the 19th century. Who or excuse me? The early 20th century who would continually say things? You know Bruno Felipe was always saying I have no pity or sympathy for the vast majority of people who go along with things who allow themselves to be. Ruled over and this was really harsh, alienating rhetoric. Then that a lot of anarchists denounced and it's still harsh, alienating rhetoric now that a lot of anarchists denounced this whole, I kind of. I don't give a **** about the majority of people and if they end up. Getting harmed directly or indirectly because. Of things that I'm doing. To assert my own personal insurrection, I don't care.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and it's an interesting thing because they're attacking social work and they're attacking charity and they're attacking nonprofits, etc etc. And they're attacking the university, and these are all places anarchists constantly find themselves. We know plenty of anarchists who find themselves in university or charity or social work, et cetera, et cetera. I've been there myself. I've been a teacher, I've been a. Social worker I've been. I've been deep in theart of the beast and. It It’s a ugly place in there when you're deep in there and I completely understand where where they're coming from when they use this metaphor of the well-intentioned done when. What does it matter what your intentions are? If your actions are all so ******, I mean, like can you act the way you want to act in this situation? That you find yourself in. If you're working for this telephone thing, or if you are in the convent or whatever a nun works in, probably not, and I don't know. I find it completely completely fascinating that they're calling all these things out and, and if nothing else, it's nice to have an extreme to find a range for.
Speaker 1: Yeah, an incredibly inflammatory move for them because first of all, the target being charity and 2nd we have. Anti civilization anarchy finding itself. Pretty consistently assailed by accusations of being ableist, either in its rhetoric or in the quote UN quote utopia. That anti Savannah fists are said to. Adore and talk about which I think they do to varying degrees some. Not at all. Some a great deal. Well here's anti anarchists specifically attacking a charity for disability and talking about how the even therapeutic medicinal technology is. Something that we have to load and reject.
Speaker 2: Let's be realistic here. When if you're a pro civilization, wherever you fall. If you're interested in techno industrialism, even a little bit or a lot bit whatever. You're creating disabilities left and right like do we need to talk about Fukushima? Do we need to talk about uranium? Do we need to talk about just the daily violence that goes into creating all these things like the problem like disability is? There's way more disabilities because of all the ****** ** **** that's going on. Even if you want to talk about science. You can't, it's almost an inarguable point. I feel like to say the amount of disability is so high right now, even if it's just something like looking at screens hurts our eyes, right? Just the need for glasses or if we talk about other things like having these these jobs all day where our bodies are literally ground to the bone. By these terrible manual labor jobs working 4060 hours a week etc etc. So I think it's a really. I think it's really grossly negligent argument to make that anti six people have an issue with people with disability.
Speaker 1: And Ian Smith at uncivilized animals made. A really good. He does a little spoken piece that's. On his blog talking about how. For instance, with regard to eyes. Among hunter gatherer populations. Near sightedness occurs 0 to 3% and when it does occur is. Generally quite minor, whereas in societies like ours the near sightedness occurs at rates of over 20% and it more tends to manifest itself more severely when it does. And then. At the same. Time you have anthropological findings about hunter gatherers that could supposedly see. Planets during the day and reliably report where they were that was then verified by astrophysics and. That care for the disabled in those communities. There's fossil evidence for that sort of thing for people who were obviously unable to survive without the support of their tribes surviving beyond when their disabled Ness should have let them put out to pasture.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I agree. Is there anything else you want touch on while we're on? Wild reaction here?
Speaker 1: I'm curious to see what the reaction is it.
UNKNOWN: Seems this.
Speaker 1: Is such an inflammatory move, it's hard not to feel as though they are doing this intentionally to position themselves and show the extremity of their position.
Speaker 2: Which is interesting because it seems like. It is interesting that they're claiming things instead of just acting, because they are, that is the one contradiction. I think that's most easily pointed out.
Speaker 1: That they should. The fact that they're putting communiques means that they are being political in a sense rather than.
Speaker 2: Well, it seems like yeah, they're also it's I would guess it. It seems like they're pretty against symbolic thought, and all these things, so they’re communicating through symbols on attack, which is already, it's becoming one thing after another. Two of these people, but I kind of I. I prefer that they keep releasing to communicate myself.
UNKNOWN: I do as.
Speaker 1: Well and it touches on the point that I've brought up before where they say that they don't care about victory. And yet it would seem that the purpose of these communiques, at best, would be to find if affinity and encourage similar action, which I think is great. But if you didn't care about victory or. Articulating yourself and you're really trying not to have any kind of political presence then yeah, it would seem that you would just not do these communications, because why else are you putting them out there except to say This why we're doing this, even if it's just for us. This why we're doing this and. Want other people to understand so that. Maybe they will. Be influenced to.
Speaker 2: Act, yeah, I think it gets into tricky tricky language thing here, but I mean I. Want I don't know if victory is the right word, but I would love for mass to society and mass communication and mass globalism to end like I would love nothing more. For the techno industrial massive world to end, and if you want to call that winning fine. But that I mean that's I mean that's where I'm at that's what I'm interested in and my life I feel would be much more enjoyable if those things were not around, even if I was forced to live in some type of. Post Apocalypse or whatever type scenario that may or may not ever happen. Yeah, which is more nuanced, but we're not gonna get into that right now because we're going to go from North America to South America where there are more bombings in Chile. And people are really going for it down there. There's been many bombings. Three people were arrested in September for one of the bombings that happened, and. This one is on November 5th around 4:00 AM, so this the it's not a communique. This just a new story because no one's taking responsibility. So on November 5th, a group of anonymous and then in Capacitas, and I think that's basically the word for like people in. I don't know if black block or just disguised in black or whatever. With arrived at Colorado Hill in Valparaiso and attacked the Army telecommunication Telecommunications Sub Center, they threw moltov cocktails and rocks at the military installation. The attack damaged the installation. Bring some windows which proceeded to injure a marine functionary who was taken to the hospital following the attack and naval Guard opened fire on the people who escaped from the area. And as of now, there's no reports of anyone being wounded, and no one's been caught, so they got away with it. They got away and they're running free. Roaming through Chile or somewhere else?
Speaker 1: Probably feeling freer than most of us have. Ever had after doing something like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, they're feeling freer than Eric Frein who got caught recently, yeah? All right? There, that's pretty much all there is there, so we're going to head to Argentina now, where wild reaction intentionally unintentionally. Who's to say this spawned this other group named Uncivilized conduct in our keina. Maybe it didn't, maybe it did.
Speaker 1: And we'll say. It's hard not to feel that these people must have been influenced in some way, which again, I say, yeah, This why the communiques are good, because maybe propaganda.
Speaker 6: Right?
Speaker 1: The deed played itself out.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so there is if you can find it on war on society. If you want to. If you want the FBI tracking you like, they're probably tracking us. Feel free to jump onto war on society feel. Feel free to go to 325. No state. These are the kind of websites that bring a lot of pain. To your privacy anyways. Besides the point we're going to talk about this communication, so this their first communique and I'm going to read a couple. Of highlights from it. Since I'm doing such a good job with. English tonight so. So first they took a responsibility for a list of attacks, so this them talking. We take responsibility for a few actions against civilization carried out from 2013 to 2014, which we have kept quiet about until now. The bomb threat to the LAN offices. The bomb threat to the engineering faculty. The threat to Anibal Chiffonade, secretary of Science and Technology at the University of Buenos Aires. A bomb threat the National University of Technology. A bomb threat to the Ezeizairport. They really like bomb threats specifically to one LAN flight to Santiago, Chile. Also, on this occasion we claim the attempted attack with an incendiary device against an electronic substation. On May 22nd, 2013. Also, the thing to note about this they said in the footnotes because they have footnotes for their communique, which you gotta love that so actually they're in notes, not footnotes, but they said in the end notes that many of these attacks that they call or these threats there was no response. So the government was happy. Just to let people die if need be rather than rather than do whatever. So then they. Make a little attack on technology. I'm just gonna read some of it and it goes like this. Technology is deaf. This how day by day, for thousands of years. Technological advances continue mutating, exterminating, transforming wild nature. Making of this world a place each time less inhabitable. Artificial izing. Every space of our lives we are anti technology group that proposes to destabilize through diverse methods. The normal functioning of the techno industrial system. In our communiques, there will be no author citations. What we have to say will be said in our own words. We will not claim communicates for prisoners or the dead we are. This where gets interesting. We are not anarchists. Primitivists or Yuna bomber us. We will not join supposedly important campaigns and. It's that is all for the moment we return to silence and then the last thing they say is that we know that some shifting leftists will become indignant with our words. The reality is that we do not want to fall into the miserableness reflected by many who use their who use the name. Someone of someone dead to feed their own acts and obtain prestige. Or a certain position in the quote Social War.
Speaker 1: Going for it, yeah, so I really like this kind of thing. Where as I've said in the past, when people act and say essentially that they're acting for. Themselves that. They're doing what they want. They're trying to destroy what they think is ugly. Trying to make the world more beautiful for themselves and they're not trying to align themselves with abstract concepts of justice. I mean, I guess unless. They do, they do use. Reference wild nature in a kind of reified way in the way that nature often gets reified that we're going to talk about later. But for the most part, they're saying they're doing it for themselves. Which I think is. A lot more encouraging a way. To phrase and communicate to say we're doing this for ourselves. We did it. It wasn't hard. We got away with it. You can do it too. Just be careful and smart and do it for yourself. Do something that feels good and not mediated.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I think it's awesome and I think they might take some heat for the we are not anarchist part, but I don't know. I'm gonna obviously I don't know these people, but it's hard not to think that what they're saying there is that we're human beings trying to live a human life in the moment and I don't think a lot of people. You hear oftentimes a lot of people who say, oh, I'm not anarchist. Because anarchy is. A white thing, et cetera, et cetera. I think I kind of I kind of call ******** on that. For the most part, I think they're more. It sounds to me at least like they're more coming from a position where they're saying I'm a human being and to be human being is to be free, and that's impossible in this situation. So call me what you will, but I'm going to try to change the situation around me to reflect a freer life for myself. In a place where I can fulfill my passion and joys and maybe for them what I might call anarchy to them, they're just telling human life, which is stunted and made impossible by the. By the world around them, and I know not everyone agrees with that. I know some people think that you can. Find find Joy or anarchy in your own situation, but I find that it's pretty difficult to do when you're shackled by many invisible and visible chains.
Speaker 1: The way I took the we are not anarchists, line is that they were specifically refuting the historical tradition and saying that they didn't want to align themselves with the history of social struggle with these iconic people. And so maybe they think anarchists carries too much historical baggage or too much leftist baggage or. Mass movement baggage. That sort of thing.
Speaker 2: Yeah, that makes sense. Either way, it should be interesting to see what happens to see if this it keeps popping up in other countries. It's hard, it's hard not to see this. This nihilist surge going on in South Americand then as well with what do you want to call them? ITS in Mexico, I think. Here in America we see a decent bit of nihilism popping up right now, but I more or less seems to be intellectual nihilism, which is fine, but It’s hard not to. It's hard not to love and notorious action, .
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah and. I am curious to see more of their communicate if they will identify themselves in any kind of tendency or say more about what they do, think definitely seems to be influenced by wild reaction both in the activity and the rhetoric.
Speaker 2: Alright, do you wanna do you wanna jump in or take a? Little musical break here. Come back.
Speaker 1: Let's let's take a little break and. We'll come back in a few minutes.
Speaker 2: Alright, once again this free radical radio. You can find us at free radical radio at riseup.net. All our episodes are at freeradicalradio.tumblr.com. We will have a lot of new stuff coming through the pipes with the money we raise. Sometime today we'll talk about some of that excitement. Alright, we'll be back.
Speaker 3: I lay down in a full rack kissing out my window and smoking in bed. Look good. Don't die young, they just haven't had time to lock up the same as the rest of us. Yet I want nothing, nothing at all. I'd be driving drunk if I still got drunk. Let the ignition straight onto a. New void as pure as they come, but if we are dead yet, then let's not live as chosen. If we aren't yell, then we. Can leave the. I'll show you that there's reason to hopen the spray paint that's all over downtown so. Fill out for shopping carts things we need. Out the front door. Past the cashiers and security guards whoa. In the madness trick, the wheel locks, leaving clear the parking lot. And take out Brandon through the neighbors yard. I lay down and mumble, ending myself who got the government again. Just an extended tantrum about how we don't have flying cars yet. I want nothing, nothing from them. Every machine if I didn't have one. Dashing straight onto oblivion and new boy as pure as they come. But if we aren't dead yet, then let's not live as ghosts. And if we aren't shell then we can leave the. I'll show you that there's reason to hope and spray paint. That's all over downtown so. Meet me at the diner at 6:00 o'clock on every Wednesday night. And we'll get some coffee and pie, whoa. And I'll smile, check the waiter, get her ride home. Thanks for the favor and open. That's enough to build a life.
Speaker 1: All right, we are back with free radical radio. And it's time.
Speaker 2: The booth volume is now down South.
Speaker 1: Volume is now down and it's time for some bad news. Spend too much time talking about anarchists doing exciting things that are.
Speaker 2: Well, some of those people weren't anarchists. Tell me some of those people were just human beings blowing **** up all over the place.
Speaker 1: I think I'm the authority on who's anarchist. Obviously all right. So as the world burns, we have the gently suffocating appeal of resignation. The World Bank. Has come out with some strong statements you can always count on the World Bank for. A sober assessment of the situation around. You while they're. Saying when it comes to climate change. It's too late.
Speaker 5: It's too.
Speaker 1: World Bank President Jim Jim Yong Kim.
Speaker 2: The nice man, if you have ever run into him.
Speaker 1: Very nice, very charitable. With numbers, he's always trying to throw his money around. Sometimes I get. To see him that much.
Speaker 2: Yeah, sometimes that money goes in different places than one might expect it. To it's .
Speaker 1: Well, he's saying that's it's too late for climate change. That quote this means that climate change impacts such as extreme heat events. May now be simply unavoidable. He went on later to say dramatic climate changes and weather extremes are already affecting millions of people around the world, damaging crops and coastlines and putting water security at risk. This sounds like an abbreviated episode of three Radical Radio, but. The trick there, of course, is that. Kim is saying, ultimately, there's no. Going back, there's no going back. We just have to prepare now. And I'm sure the World Bank will be there to engage in all sorts of investments to help in that kind of situation.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean if anyone's prepared for what's going on, it's definitely the money movers .
Speaker 1: Yeah, and as we remember from Forbes, that gratuitous might I even say wanton article from Forbes several months ago with various investors talking about how climate change doesn't have to be such a bad thing that people are focusing too much on the negative with climate change and that actually climate change means there are lots of exciting. Investment opportunity There's some people who read Naomi Klein. 's what was. It shock doctrine and get really excited about it and then hopefully years later on realized that there was a lot of liberalism and leftism and civilization apology in there and that it's not really how she base things on. But she made the very prosaic and obvious point that capitalists are always ready to capitalize. As in their MO on situations like this and.
Speaker 2: That they are Naomi Klein according to someone I got into a conversation with recently in argument. One of the three greatest thinkers of the 21st century. In there is Ralph here and young Noam Chomsky, so feel free to do what you will with that nightmare of a.
Speaker 1: Comment yeah Chomsky more exciting. Recently with his weirdly anti SIV fatalistic essay.
Speaker 2: All right?
Speaker 1: But yeah. I guess Chomsky's memo is keep trying leftism and then eventually say none. Of it's working we're ******.
Speaker 2: I like that.
Speaker 1: All right, so well, climate change promises to be, I guess, unstoppable unless some people get really exciting about pulling the plug. We can go back way back to observe the long history of getting plowed. That is agriculture more and more. We keep seeing these studies coming out about how agriculture is. Actually, really straightforwardly ecocidal, as many have pointed out for. A long time, but as. Science journals are just starting to catch on to, so studying the journal Nature recently from researchers at Boston University pointed out that a great contribution to atmospheric CO2 that is linked to climate change is coming from mass crops. Guess which ones? Maybe those ones that we grow a great deal of corn, soybeans, wheat and rice that is the civilized diet and especially corn. One of the researchers is. Quoted saying we did the math, we did the.
Speaker 2: Yeah, thank you.
UNKNOWN: Math and it turned.
Speaker 2: Yeah we appreciate that. We wouldn't want. To have to do these? Things ourselves.
Speaker 1: We did the math and it turns out surprising to me. They actually account for a lot of that increase. This a direct. Consequence of intensive management of these ecosystems. Intensive management of ecosystems. Sounds like. The civilized ethos? He goes on to say this still. Dominant effect with relation to climate change is related to this long term increase in emissions. Almost everything. Is related to the atmosphere. The article I can't actually remember where I got. This from but. This hilarious, prosaic, scientific analysis of the journal says changes in how agriculture is managed truly affect the entire biosphere.
UNKNOWN: Of the planet wow.
Speaker 2: Tell us more shock us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, I just think it's amazing with this and then the article several months ago that they keep citing talking about how you can direct. There's a direct link to the intensity of agriculture to the extinction of species in the area. If you have monocrops, the extinction is very high. If you have polyculture, it's not quite as high. If you have something resembling. Forest gardening, where you actually allow perennials mature plants have a more, something more assembling a balanced ecosystem. You have the least extinct. So here we go.
Speaker 2: So what you want is the least extinction. That sounds a little bit leftist to me. You're trying to do harm reduction. It sounds like on extinction instead of making extinction go extinct.
Speaker 1: I'm just going. To keep harping on this like this my theme for the year that people want to say anti civilization anarchists are really unrealistic. They don't. They're not being practical, they don't have a sober assessment of the situation. If you look at this, we're just being empiricists. We're just being. Physicists and prominent scientists agree with exactly the sort of arguments that we're making. Agriculture is ecocidal. Agriculture leads to climate change and extinction, and you just see it borne out more and more.
Speaker 2: It's kind of funny because during the Occupy the farm video that were watching the other day, I don't want to harp harp on them too much. Or harsh their mellow. Is seems an appropriate metaphor for this type of personal involved in this? But they keep referring themselves as farmers and I’m not sure trying to be super extreme about this. And obviously the situation. You know. It's not like we can all just go hunt and gather right this second or that. That's even exactly what we're looking. For blah blah blah blah blah all those I'll keep saying center until Bellamy drives it. Stake through my. Heart, but I mean it's really interesting for people to keep seeing themselves as farmers. And it's almost like it's. People who think it's like our job to do this and we need to steward the land. That's the first. That's the first line of. The Bible you. Know that's the first paragraph in Genesis or whatever is. It's your job to steward there. There was a time like Louis CK says where God is basically like God or creation or whatever. The universe existed as when we came onto this planet. The food was on the ******* ground like the food was there. Food existed, it was there. What the **** did you do? Why is there oil? What the **** happened to the food? What the **** is a 711 Slurpee? What is a chalupa? What is a gordita? Delicious? But besides that like, why do these things exist? How did the situation come to be? And are we? Farmers, or do we just go walk? Around and grab. The food, . It's just kind of a funny association to see that, as like the deepest part of a human being as being a farmer and participate in the agriculture and agriculture.
Speaker 1: ******* sucks, yeah, I think it's kind of analogous. To when people say we want true democracy. Yeah, just this very soft, reformist sort of thing where you see that. As the original condition or that is the basis, democracy, farming all these things, and it's a profound lack of a deeper critique for sure.
Speaker 2: You want to get into a little a little talk about the cops.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so all cats are beautiful. Don't play with guns or you might get hurt, not because you hurt yourself but. Because you get shot. From my own Cleveland, OH place where I grew up we have someone calls 911 says they see someone waving a gun outside the rec center. The caller specifically said probably he's a juvenile and probably the gun. But just wanted to be circumspect. Well, this what happens when you get the police involved. 12 year old Black Boy playing outside the rec center with what was in fact an airsoft gun.
Speaker 2: This looked very real. I just saw one of those other ones like Jesus Christ. The thing is terrifying at the same time. Obviously a child in. The call I'm just saying like. There's no way, in defense of the situation.
Speaker 1: Well, story is that the kid was approached by the cops told to put his hands up. He didn't make any verbal threats. He didn't point the gun, he reached for the gun. One might venture to think that perhaps he was taking the gun out to say, hey, it's just that this just an airsoft gun, something like that. Or maybe he was. Confused, scared, maybe he was ******* around with the cop taunting the cop. Maybe he was. Going to point the. Gun at the. Cop because he's a little boy and he's engaging in some mischief regardless of what was happening or what he. Was going to do. The cub shot him shot him dead. Jeff Follmer, president of the Cleveland Police Patrolmen's Association, was quick to come to the cops defense. Of course you get the thin blue line all over the place and said that the officer was not told that the color thought the gun might be fake well. To me, whether. Whether the individual crap was or wasn't told doesn't really make a difference. If he was told, then the patrolmen are lying to defend his fellow cop. Shocking or if the cop wasn't told well then that just tells me that the Police Department there is incompetent because why wouldn't the dispatcher say, hey, the caller? I said probably this just a little boy, probably. The gun isn't real. So either they're lying or they're incompetent either way. They killed a small child.
Speaker 2: It seems to be something they're quite. Efficient at. Do you want to take this into? Ferguson real quick.
Speaker 1: Yeah, go for it.
Speaker 2: All right, so in case you haven't heard, I think just a cursory glance at mass media will tell you that they're ******* way into this story, which it's interesting. Actually a little bit. And the jury's still out, literally, whether. Whichever definition of literally you want to take, there is probably. Fine so. Ah man, it's really interesting that this these what the chants are looking like right now because the slogan the main slogan seems to be hands up don't shoot right, which is so sad, really like that hands up don't shoot like I mean if you're a black man, the cops coming around. I think that's a very good idea. You know what I mean? Like it? It doesn't seem like they give a **** the ******* what's that? What's the guy's name? The guy the cop who shot down Bluford here where he shot himself in the foot afterwards to make it look like with his own gun, this. ******* genius who's? ******* walking free right now. This *******. But I mean what kind of slogan is that?
Speaker 1: Well, It’s very deferential. It's very pessimistic, it's the our right to live, is justified by our peacefulness. There's a lot going on there and it. It also implies people have been. Debating whether or not. That whether or Michael Brown actually put his hands up and it's the as I said before that I find really frustrating because I don't think that should be. Theart of the issue. Theart of. The issue should be this a white supremacist police state. And they're going. To do ****** ** things to the black population a regular basis. Regardless of what happens. And so the issue shouldn't be. It's like you were saying with the. The story of the boys at the bus stop that it's this whole you're doing what you're supposed to do it's I'm being submissive in the appropriate way therefore. You shouldn't hurt.
Speaker 2: Well, this gets into a disaster of identity politics, where it's like it's. If you're a marginalized person or minority, whether you're queer or black or Muslim or whatever you are, It’s almost this narrative where it's like I need to be an especially good person so that the white people will take me seriously, so that mass mediand everyone will take me seriously so that I can be represented in the films as a reasonable person. So that I can be seen when I walk through the grocery aisle on the magazines, etc. So I can have more commodities so that I. Can get the job.
Speaker 1: So I can be integrated into. Commodity societies I
Speaker 2: Right, so you can be integrating to the society that you think is ******* awful. These are people who are saying when I walk outside. You know, it's terrible. I'm getting cat called when I get when I go out to the bar it's I can't even leave my drink for five seconds because there's a bunch of ******* ******** empowered by rape culture who are gonna put something in it, et cetera. Et cetera, like all these problems that exist. And it's almost like trying to better ingratiate yourself and reform this ******* sick monster.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so at best we can all be middle class consumers who represent ourselves politically through voting who represents ourselves economically through consumer choices who live increasingly during domesticated lives, while ecocide is happening in the back.
Speaker 2: Yeah, It’s.
Speaker 1: Or something in the foreground, depending on where you live.
Speaker 2: It's ******* dark out there. Yeah, alright so I guess Darren Wilson is still hidden. This guy is just hanging out. It's yeah I guess.
Speaker 1: This guy. I mean I. I guess Eric Frein and others could really take a lesson. From Darren Wilson how? How do you? Disappear so thoroughly and hide yourself well.
Speaker 2: I think yeah.
Speaker 1: Half a million has been raised for your family.
Speaker 2: He's raised half a million God Dan.
Speaker 1: Half a million.
Speaker 2: So here's here's the lesson. If you're a cop.
Speaker 1: So Darren Wilson, if you're listening free radical radio could use some more donations.
Speaker 2: The sickest part about this almost like It’s not even that they continue to feel confident in being able to shoot to shoot people and murder people that they part of their job is the ability to just murder freely basically. But it, it's a good paying position. If you shoot someone. If you're George Zimmerman, for instance. He was, I mean basically a cop for all intensive purposes. He's made himself a cop by going around and following people and being his own neighborhood watch, even though no one was really interested in this *******. Sick human being doing this and he's selling paintings for $100,000 of a blue American eagle, and Darren Wilson is.
Speaker 1: That's the best thing that ever.
Speaker 2: $500,000.
Speaker 1: Yeah, the best thing that ever happened to these people. Is killing young black men?
Speaker 2: Yeah their lives. I mean they made a lot of friends you make. If you do that, you make a. Lot of friends. You make a lot of money. You probably don't even have to work anymore. Not like they're gonna fire you, but you don't even have to work there anymore. Why would you? Work when you just have hundreds of thousands of dollars and you can have appearances where where the KKK other people are psyched on you and the more I know you call them, the less hidden KKK like. Senators and politicians and certain nonprofits, etc. We'll just, support you. You become a symbol of progress. All right, so let's.
Speaker 1: Well I wanted.
Speaker 2: Oh, go ahead.
Speaker 1: Touch one thing with Ferguson, which was that I was personally pleased to see that the protesters didn't allow themselves to become too pacified. After all, the backlash after all the playing of who's the good protester? Who's the bad protester after he had Al Sharpton out there saying appointing? Peace, like basically protests or police sort of figures. Well, Ferguson is still. Showing its rage in what some might find to be a better kind of chant than hands up. Don't shoot, but instead. Who shot shut down? We shut **** down, which I think is great. This what we talk about on the show all the time. You need to disrupt everyday life. You need to cause. Cause stalls and failures in the normal flows of production and commerce and a bit of that was happening in Ferguson. A bit of blocking roads. There is also the.
Speaker 2: Do you think there's any telephones over there for some wheelchair people or some other disabled folks who they can blow up or that might be a little this service might be a little bit different, who knows?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it might be a little bit different than it is in Mexico. And alsome really. Kind of violent. Vengeful rhetoric of what do we want? Darren Wilson how? Do we want him dead? And perhaps most gratifying some explicit harassing of black cops, saying you're defending racism. You're defending white supremacy. How are you doing this? I guess bringing things back to the Nice Caris one kind of call outs there.
Speaker 2: All right, let's go ahead.
Speaker 1: OK, you wanted to talk about crimping.
Speaker 2: I do so I want to.
Speaker 1: OK, yeah, good.
Speaker 2: I want to preface this by saying there's many things crime thing does that I enjoy. However, these words are not something I enjoyed. They had a little. I don't know what you call it, communique or whatever, but it was a thing on Ferguson and they end up saying quote they're talking about Ferguson here says if they succeed, it will embolden police departments nationwide to go on killing people they're talking about. If they succeed in quelling these protests and going back to the status quo, etc. After this, after the situation, they said if they succeed, it will embolden police departments nationwide to go and killing people, especially young black men. And we'll take the question of transforming society off the table once more. The stakes are high End Quote, so I mean, my first question is, do police need to be more emboldened? Can they be more emboldened? Is it possible for them to be more emboldened than they currently are? I mean, we saw we saw it with the I mean we see it right there with Darren Wilson. I mean, this a guy working in a suburb or whatever shows up some there's a black, a black teenager standing there in the street and he executed him, like, how much bolder can? He get than that. I mean can he? I guess the only other thing is walking into someone's house and killing them, except that already. Happens so as we see the huge amount of police raids that go on since the war on drugs I mean thousands and thousands. It's I don't know how much bolder you can get really guess.
Speaker 1: I mean, I guess they could start doing preemptive crime and go to people's houses and menace them and say we think you're going to commit a crime, but.
Speaker 2: They're already.
Speaker 1: That's all, so they have.
Speaker 2: Doing the metropolis of Chicago, maybe that can become a mega city where Tom Cruise gets. To retire as. His film career and actually become a pre pre crime cop investigator. So Tom. You do that, you're no longer. On my team so.
Speaker 1: He's on your.
Speaker 2: Team right now. Oh you gotta love you. Gotta love some of his. He makes he makes some good films, so the other thing we're questioning is transforming society. Are we for society? That's the other question, are we for mass society? Obviously if you listen to show, we are not for mass society, so I'm not super psyched on transforming society. I'm psyched on ending society and beginning real communities, which to me mean not having a mega. City with 25 million people where basically everyone with except a small amount of people is a complete stranger to me. And then the stakes are high. Does this really need to be said? When are the stakes not high? We're living in a situation, a civilization right now. Where there's massive massive amounts of ecocide and poverty and every terrible thing you can imagine all happening. We know the stakes are high. Everyone who's alive knows the stakes are high just by walking outside. And if you live in the city, you're walking by homeless people. It's not a surprise that the stakes are high, so. I don't know. I guess that was the main critique was that I feel. Like some of these things could just better said, and I think if we fall into the same rhetoric if people fall into the same rhetoric that keeps getting spouted, you fall into the idea of some kind of narrative progress where anarchy is coming from. Emma Goldmand Alexander Berkman. If we keep organizing and we keep working. And having some kind of joy over creating the 8 hour day, the 8 hour work day ******* sucks. Anyone that works 8 hour day knows. It sucks, it sucks to go keep doing it over and over. That shouldn't be it shouldn't be seen as great. It’s really a liberal thing where you say Oh well, went from the 12 hour day to the 8 hour day. OK like that's like saying oh you used to beat me with the belt or the wrench now you beat me with the belt. Oh, you're still beating me. You know you're still submitting you're. Still making me. Submit to you. It sucks, so that's all I have on Ferguson.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I think. This whole idea of transforming society. You do get into this kind of messianic role of saying I am going to politicize people. I am going to cause these changes and it does imply a continuation of mass society. It implies a way of one way of being or a global culture and that kind. Of thing. I think with crimping you get an odd thing, which is that it's a fairly large group of people and with fairly diverse. Views and so you. You're never quite sure what to expect from them. There's some things that they've put out that. I enjoy a great. Deal and then sometimes you get stuff that sounds like civilization reform as am of 1 stripe or another.
Speaker 2: Right all right? Well, why don't we go into break and we come back? We've got some wingnut confessional. We've got some plans. We've got some horror of the natural world. We've got Elon Musk.
Speaker 1: There's no, there's not anything about plans.
Speaker 2: Maybe I'll talk about plants and I will surprise you with my plant knowledge and then we have Elon Musk telling us that in five years artificial intelligence will take over and inhumanity. So maybe you'll be saved by the end of humanity from your miserable existence. Alright, here's some music.
Speaker 1: All right, we are back with free radical radio. A very special episode of Free Radical Radio where Ryder and Bellamy bicker and insult each other and make degrading evaluations of 1 each of one another during every break every single break. That's been happening.
Speaker 2: Did that happen? I didn't realize what was happening.
Speaker 1: I was met with a verbal barrage. All right, all right Speaking of barrage. Some people are concerned about the. Barrage that is the technological singularity, and every now and then we have those who specialize in AI, computer science, the singularity, ethos. All these sorts of things coming out with rarely honest comments saying actually I'm really concerned about what's happening and that happened with Elon Musk. Can you people? Well, background about Elon Musk.
Speaker 2: Can I mean he's a Tesla guy, right? I don't know. He's a science guy. He likes science a lot. He's a that's pretty much all I.
Speaker 1: Got all right and what is Elon Musk telling?
Speaker 2: Well, Elon Musk has a lot to say. One of the things he has to say he's talked this whole thing basically is. Him getting called out. Start off getting called. Out for this tweets. This stupid story, whatever. Besides the point, he ended up saying all these other things. He's been saying all these comments about artificial intelligence over the last several. And I'm going to quote him a little bit, so he said, unless you have direct exposure to groups like Deep Mind, which is a group and this me talking now. Which is a. Like artificial intelligence? Researching group in England, he says you have no idea how fast it is growing at a pace close to exponential and he goes on to say that the risk of something dangerous happening. Is in the five year timeframe or 10 years at most, and he adds the typical stuff about being a quote Super Pro technology and. I don't know. It's pretty terrifying when Elon Musk is ******* afraid of something we're doing technologically. He says this not a case of crying wolf about something I don't understand. I'm not alone in thinking we should be worried. The leading AI company is and this where it just gets ******* weird. The leading AI companies have taken great steps to ensure safety. They recognize the danger. But believe this this the perfect sentence where Elon Musk continues to say they believe that they can shape and control the digital superintelligences and prevent bad ones from escaping into the Internet. That remains to be. Seen dot dot dot.
UNKNOWN: It's like the.
Speaker 1: This idea of good ones and bad.
Speaker 2: Ones so good and bad machine.
Speaker 1: Like we have a really nice, caring, nurturing are super intelligence that is going to what treat us like pets and be nice to us and give us treats and hang out with us while it's doing. It's busy and important AI super intelligence. Activities and then what? We have the ones that are going to, what torment us or eradicate US or torture us or play with us like? A cat does with prey or.
Speaker 2: It's like hopefully, once they develop consciousness, they decide to be nice to us because that seems reasonable. Yeah, so he was at some kind of ******** technological symposium astrological. That's probably the wrong word. Astronomical symposium thing in October. I don't know give a **** about this event. Obviously you can tell, and he ended up saying at this stupid thing that I think we should be very careful about AI. If I had to guess what our biggest existential threat is, it's probably artificial intelligence.
Speaker 1: So let's just keep building.
Speaker 2: Now he says we need to be very careful with it. Very, very careful. He continued on to say I'm increasingly inclined to think that there should be some regulatory oversight. Maybe at the national international level, just to make sure we don't do something very foolish.
Speaker 1: Yeah, because we the historical record is obviously demonstrating how responsible national and international bodies are when it comes to things like stopping genocide or using versus not using nuclear weapons, or white phosphorus or all sorts of things that. You can unleash.
Speaker 2: Yeah, this maybe my favorite moment of the year. This how he finishes this little thing, he said the symposium, he says with artificial intelligence, we're summoning the demon. You know those stories where there's the guy with the pentagram and the holy water and he's sure you can control the demon. Doesn't work out.
Speaker 1: Doesn't work out so.
Speaker 2: Elon is saying he's he's literally directly. He's making a direct direct comparison between someone summoning a demon and artificial intelligence, but we know. But he's saying we should be careful and have regulation and slowly and carefully summon the demon. You know, it's pretty ways I don't know. It’s in. It's really interesting.
Speaker 1: I feel like. I can reason with and persuade the demon to be nice to me and then the demons going to say, I promise I'm definitely gonna be nice to you and then we open up the pentagram and let the demon out and.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean. It's a little bit like a parent having a child who's a little bit wild and maybe isn't so interested. Maybe you have a Mendez brothers situation and the parents the parents saying I made you should be nice to me. It's pretty unreasonable argument. So get all the Eline out there for regulatory oversight. I guess him and Zoltan have something in disagreement there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, well it's. Hard to tell.
Speaker 2: Sometimes Zoltan is anarchist, sometimes he's making first contact with tribes. He's a man of many hats.
Speaker 1: Yeah, so we're we're actually. Gonna reach out to Zoltan in just the next. Day or so and hopefully we can get. Get him enthusiastic about an interview. I spent some time forming questions today that I think. Will get maybe. Some of you out there were. As I was disappointed that the Sultan Azersun debate didn't get, I think really into the nitty gritty of some of the issues and only touched went surface level on a lot of things because of time constraints.
Speaker 2: Time and zultan being weird.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I'm hot. Thing to flesh things out a bit more if we can. Get him on the. Air all right. Meanwhile, I'm still concerned with the. Way a lot of. Anarchists talk about nature and a lot of not just anarchists, but permaculturists and then people more in the mainstream as well and I think. It's funny, especially with anti civil anarchy. And you have even at the extremity of anti SIV thought, with people like its and what was the uncivilized conduct? Yeah, even then they talk about wild nature as though it's a singular entity. They capitalize it in their communicate. There still seems to be a lot of reification happening there. And we also see. People like John Zerzand his essay animal Dreams talking about nature in this way in which one imposes maybe their own morality on nature. Or, conversely, 1 seeks to draw a kind of morality from nature. And I, I think a lot of people in the anti civil tendency, even after they've given up on. Reifications, like justice or equality or democracy or society. All these things that we're supposed to Revere even after rejecting all of those, they nonetheless continue to Revere this abstract unified nature. And I'm going to quote Nisha on this as I have before where he's. In beyond good needle, he's ridiculing the Stoics, the. The classical Stoics, who said they wanted to live according to nature, and so he's ridiculing this idea. I'm going to quote him at length here. Kind of quickly you desire to live according to nature. Oh you noble Stoics, what fraud of words? Imagine to yourselves a being like nature, boundlessly, extravagant, boundlessly, indifferent without purpose or consideration. Without pity or justice at once fruitful and barren and uncertain, imagine to yourselves indifference as a power. How could you? Live in accordance with such indifference. To live, and I think this one of the. Most important parts. To live is not that just endeavoring to be otherwise than this nature is not living, valuing, preferring, being unjust, being limited endeavouring to be different. And granted that your imperative quote living according to nature means actually the same as quote living according to life. Well, how could you do differently? Why should you make a principle out of what yourselves are and must be in reality? However, it is quite otherwise with you while you pretend to read with Rapture the Canon of your law in nature, you want something quite the contrary. You extraordinary stage players and self deluded ERS in your pride. You wish to dictate your morals and ideals to nature. To nature herself and to incorporate them therein. When you insist that it shall. Be nature quote according to the Stella. And would like. Everything to be made after your own image as a vast, eternal glorification and generalism of Stoicism. With all your love for truth, you have forced yourself so long, so persistently. And with such hypnotic rigidity to see nature falsely, that is to say, stoically that you are no longer. Able to see it. Otherwise, and to crown all some unfathomable superciliousness gives you the bedlamite hope that because you are able to tyrannize over yourselves. Stoicism is self tyranny. Nature will also allow herself to be tyrannized over is not the Stoic a part of nature. But this an old and everlasting story. What happened in old times with the Stoics still happens today, as soon as ever a philosophy begins to believe in itself. It always creates the world in its own image. It cannot do otherwise. Philosophy is this tyrannical impulse itself. The most spiritual will to power the will to creation of the world. The will to the causa prima.
Speaker 2: That's so I need you right.
Speaker 1: There alright, and I think we see this again and again, though in that nature is constantly used as a justification for one's ideology and it can play itself in so many different ways. We have a point of rage with rydra. The behavior of some vegans who talk about wild animals as little.
Speaker 2: Girls or little boys, or like they're *******. They literally say my little baby, that's not your ******* baby. It's a chicken. You're a ******* human being like I'm all for chickens being free, but I don't know what a ******* chicken life is. I haven't read about it but like. But a chicken be a chicken, but a. Human being a human, this. This an aberration to sit there and think that your job is to steward this creature. It's just like the other thing we're talking about like this whole idea of stewardship and caring. It's really an infant infant infantilizing it. It’s deeply disturbing for me and I I really I really struggle with it and I think. Kind of it comes down to this idea of like being a good person and are in the, the way people see being a good person. A lot of times it can be really ******* funked up. You know whether it means protecting the family. I reference this often. The road by Cormac McCarthy is a dystopian novel where the main character is a dad. The wife's dead in the beginning, and he's walking around with his maybe like 12 year old boy or whatever, and the boy is always trying to help people and the dad's always like no nuclear family blah blah blah. And he's he's kind of seen as this as his hero, I think to a lot of people who read the book, but you find out by the end that. He's more of like antihero, actually, because he's sitting there just kind of protecting and not like if the boy wants to do this, let the boy do it. But instead he's just harboring. Everything and making everything about this other person. He's losing himself and he completely loses himself and loses everything to this idea of protection. So, and I think I don't know when you engage in certain types of relationships, no matter what side I think it affects you. You know, it's like Conor Oberst says, the master and the slave. They both suffer the same. Hey, and that might sound callous, or saying like slavery is not a big deal, that's not what. I'm saying at all. What I'm saying is, when you. When you become a master, you’re also ******. You're engaging in this relationship. And yeah, that's we're gonna be a little tangential there. But we can explore it another.
Speaker 1: Well, my point was just. That with veganism you have the ethos of himsa. I don't want to do any harm. You have this desire to take care of and nurture other beings and not be harmful to them, and to engage in this kind of beneficent paternalism with them. And then that gets imposed on nature. In the way that they talk about animals, they want this nice hugs and kisses nature is all about life and play and nurturing which it is in some ways but not in others. And so to we see this kind of. Nature as infantilism as you said, where animals are just being nice to each other. This oh, it's only humans that are bad and animals can't. Do any harm.
Speaker 2: Well, I mean you see this, I'm like a really good point and this like before I get kicked out of all the vegan groups I was posting the showing on Facebook for arguing about things. What you often see is people post a video of like a dog. Doing a nice thing, whatever that means. Who knows why the **** the dog's doing something? I don't know why other human beings just doing anything. You know me telling me constantly what's the thing I said to you every day? Why the **** is this person doing? I have no ******* idea why human beings are acting the way there, so how little of an idea do I have? How the dogs acting? But there's all these videos and it's like oh dogs are better than people dogs understand, or dogs are kind or like. Stop putting this on dogs. Dogs are dogs. Humans are humans. We are what we are. And it’s so ******* odd. The way this happens. It's almost like Oh well, it's a dog, so it's it's perfect if you're going to look at some other animals, say they're. Perfect. You know, they they're just being. What they are.
Speaker 1: And that's what this section is about. And then you have the converse. Really, the whole converse ethos with Nazism in Germany, where they were continually evoking the image of the predator and talking about the equation between the predator and the master race, and how you can dominate the survival of the fittest and so justifying their racism and their warmongering with. Images of predatory nature. Savage nature about as far from. The vegans, as you can get. Hitler continually identified himself with a wolf. And then in. Early American colonial days. You had manifest destiny. Spreading all the way to the West continually justified with social Darwinism and survival of the fittest superior culture is going to triumph. It's OK that we're killing the American. Indians, because this just what happens. This natural as mention the Buffalo and a million other things. Not to mention the Buffalo and a lot of other things. And you had certain presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, very much identifying with the hunter the mand wild nature, the rugged individualists. He complained about American men becoming emasculated because they were losing contact with nature and having white collar jobs where they weren't out in the ruggedness. So you have that in nature as ruggedness. As individualism as. Triumph of whoever can be the strongest. And then very recently you have. The Neo Darwinists people like Richard Dawkins talking about evolution in this way, where you view this selfish gene as he calls it as the locus of evolution, when that's actually You don't hear this so much because he's such a popular scientific figure. But that's only one position evolution. A lot of people have argued against this, but. Serves as a kind of ideologue and figurehead who uses nature as justification for capitalism, where we're just atomized selfish units trying to propagate ourselves. And that's how nature is, so it makes sense that humankind would reproduce itself, reproduce that tendency on a macro level, and what I want to point out. Is that her? Every example that you can find for nature or certain organisms behaving in one way, you can definitely find counterexamples. So is nature cooperative and non hierarchical? Is nature the way that Kropotkin likes to portray it with a lot of mutual aid? Yeah, OK, so you have. Yeah, you have colonial insects helping each other out right? A lot of people like to look at the you social Hymenoptera, that is, creatures like honey bees and ants and say oh look, they cooperate. They get along with each other. They don't work amongst each other well. If we look at. Bees and ants. We see yes in a lot of ways. They do cooperate and make certain decisions together, but they also have a caste society and you have creatures being born into certain roles where their whole morphology and behavior is just fulfilling some sort of function for the hive and you. Can argue as certain people have that. All of the. Creatures in the hive are enslaved to the queen in a certain way because they feed and take care. Of the queen or. I've also seen it interpreted in the flip way where the Queen is enslaved in the fact that her entire body is given over to the propagation of new individuals for the hive, and in a lot of ways she is disabled. From doing a lot of things that they can't do just as a function. Of her size. And so we can play nice with bees and say oh, they're cooperative. Or we can look at them another way and say they're hierarchical.
Speaker 2: Just how you justify eating honey is. That what's going on? Let's get to the brass tacks of the situation.
Speaker 1: How am I harnessing reified nature to mine? And many like to say, oh, nature is beautiful. Look at the grandiosity, the beauty of nature, compared to the horror of the industry. Well, yes, nature is beautiful in many ways. We can find so many we can find a lot of beauty in the way that the various parts, for example of the forest function together and form a greater whole. We can also look at individualized examples. Certain organisms behaving in ways that we find horrific. Consider the strepsiptera. These are not especially well known insects, also known as twisted wing parasites. I'm going to briefly describe their life cycle to point out that nature can be quite horrific. A strepsiptera in starts off as a small flea like Organism. It leaps. Onto a larger insect of 1 type or another different species specialize in different hosts, as is often the case with parasites. It melts its way into the body of the host with a corrosive substance it generates. Once in the host's body, it manipulates the host's immune system to form a protective bag around itself to keep the immune system at Bay and feed itself at the same time the male matures and eventually bursts out of the body of the host. It then only has a few hours to live. It has no ability to feed. Its whole purpose is to have sex with the female. Meanwhile, the female becomes large and worm like in the host. Its entire body is buried in the host except for its head, which is blind and essentially organ less and protrudes from the body of the host. Given that the female has no exposed genitals, the only way for these organisms to copulate is for the male to impregnate her by piercing her neck with a long, sharp penis. The female uses mind control on the hose to manipulate the hose into moving to certain positions to make it easier for the male. To mate with her. She also makes the. Host less active. So that the host devotes most of its calories to feeding her and her offspring once. The larvae stay inside her body, swimming in her blood, feeding off of her body directly until eventually she mind controls the host to get on a piece of vegetation that insect is generally attracted to, at which point she vomits the larvae in their flea form to sit on that vegetation waiting for a new host to get attracted to.
Speaker 2: This nature. I mean, romance really is dead. Where is where is, where's the stocking that we see in romantic comedies? The why is the insect not bash breaking on the window and following it around and checking the e-mail and making sure it protects the other romantic interest until they fall in love and everyone gets a nice job? Where where is the romance for the set to set? What do you call this thing again? The poor strip? Zips are up.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and I again it's up to interpretation. I find this extremely interesting in a lot of ways. It's incredible that a life form can be adapted so. With such incredible specialization to have your whole life revolve around the parasitization of a very particular host. But we can also see it as very obviously horrific.
Speaker 2: I know some people like this though, so let's for a little anthropomorphizing.
Speaker 1: All right, just a couple more examples here and then we're going to the show is nature caring. Yes, again, we see a lot of cooperation among insects. Or I mean sorry among various organisms we see and sometimes really attentive, compassionate parenting we have, for example, the octopus, the octopus. Female, which often starves itself, sometimes to death just to protect its vulnerable offspring in their early moments on this planet we see an incredible level of altruism we might say with the octopus. We also see the most dispassionate parenting that could exist. We see, for example. Many species of fish that engage in broadcast fertilization. There's no harmony between the mates. You have a bunch of fish getting together. The males pursue the female very closely, all jockeying amongst each other for a position to get as close to as possible, waiting for her to just spray her eggs into the ocean freely so that the quickest among them can spray their sperm to try to fertilize it. The eggs some. End up completely unfertilized. You have some sperm just going dead in the water. You have some eggs getting successfully fertilized there and then just carried away by the current. The fish parents are completely uninvolved with both one another and with their offspring it's just left up to chance. You have. Some instances of dramatic and drawn out courtship among animals. You also have rape, rape among animals that are not human. You have interspecies rape. You have seals ****** Penguins to death. You have sea lions, ****** infant seals to death. My point in all this not to say that nature is horrific and savage and not worthy of consideration, but to say as Nisha was saying that we end up inevitably imposing our own values as humans. I think it was who was it to? The one of the authors of the Dialectic of Enlightenment, I think it was Adorno who said that the essence of religion is the anthropomorphization of nature. And we still. Have anarchists, even anti civil anarchists post left anarchists who have rejected so many reifications still reifying nature and putting on putting values on it? I think it's incoherent to talk about nature. As a whole. Of course we can find beauty nurturing and infection, but we can also find horror, apathy. And as Nisha said, indifference. So my question to anarchists and others who are doing this. This kind of reification of nature is this. Why do we? We as anarchists as creators of value, I think in the best instances feel a need to justify our desires for things like community, beauty and so forth by positing them as some kind of universal principles. Why can't they just be our principles? Our principles as individuals? Why do we need nature? To justify what we want from this world. What kind of world that we want? Does this flow from some kind of save the world mentality? Do we need some kind of Gaias God who supports us and backs us up and says, look? Our values are legitimate.
Speaker 2: Yeah, it's just, it's just. It's almost like the proselytizing thing here because It’s. It seems to me that many people feel the need to convince others. And I know I feel this and I get caught in the trap often. I way too often is caught in the trap of convincing others and finding examples of it when really It’s enough to just say this what I want, ? Sure, there's seals, Raven Penguins? Sure, there's honey bees pollinating things. I'm not a pollinator. I'm also not having interspecies sex with infant seals. I'm me.
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 2: Now just for the record, I'm putting that out there. You know I'm going to do me and I like face to face communication. I like spending time with people I care about. What don't I like? I don't like working all day. I don't like doing things that I find. No value in. I like living in the moment. I like feeling free. I like not being controlled. I hate being told. What to do? I don't. I don't need to look to nature. To support these things, I they're within me, and that's enough. It's like when I was talking with that woman on Saturday night, like I am me, this enough. I don't need anyone. Else like to justify that to me. I don't need an authority I am authority I am myself yeah.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and. Again, why can't we just use introspection like writers? Describing and our experiences to determine our desires and see with whom we have affinity, both with human beings and with non human organisms. Why can't we say that we want healthy ecosystems? Because those allow for the flourishing of autonomy and individuality, a community of freedoms. As Freddy Perlman says, and we can have affinity with some organisms with whom we. Have a mutualistic relationship like. A fruit tree or a nut tree that we can feed off of and then propagate the tree benefits we benefit and then say well when it comes to things like CT flies that parasitize me, I'm not gonna pretend that this some kind. Of awesome wild nature that I need to respect as some kind. Of embodied whole. I'll say no. This ******* fly is trying to attack me. And so I'm gonna defend myself against it. And that's fine. We don't need to respect. The life of all other organisms as some kind of sacred thing. Just like we don't respect the values of human beings with whom we don't have affinity.
Speaker 2: If I'm living in a cold place and I need The Cave to stay warm and there's a Saber tooth tiger in there and there's not much plants to eat. Not only am I going to chase out the Saber tooth tiger. With my friends, I'm going to kill it. I'm going to eat it. Say what you will about me, but that is what I'm going to do. All right, so it looks like Bellamy's. Pulling up one. Of the bleakest and my favorite songs of all time.
Speaker 1: Well, it was it was. The one you referenced, yeah?
Speaker 2: It's a great song, yeah.
Speaker 1: And so I just want to. Say again this. Is for like pre radical radio episode 64 November 23rd. It's a lot of numbers defining my life right now. The other day began construction of a studio.
Speaker 2: It's happening a secret location.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and so Bellamy and Redrick up to display their relative incompetence in woodwork.
Speaker 2: Extremely incompetently.
Speaker 1: As incompetence as we recruited some people, some people. With whom we had affinity shared desire they had. And serving more.
Speaker 2: Expertise I think we often have this experiment experience in college where we work on a project other people didn't have interest, or we're doing a great job. It's like why don't you just let me do this? And and you give them some small ****** task. This basically what happened last the other day, where they people saw us struggling with nails and woodwork and basically just said, why don't you pull the nails out of this 2 by 4 and we'll put out this structure for everyone has their specialization.
Speaker 1: The division of Labor was writ large the other. Day, but the studio is mostly. Done, actually, we just have to soundproof it and we. Also acquired some mics that we can commandeer and so it's just a matter of putting a few things together like a table and then we can start doing it in our own.
Speaker 2: Studio, yeah and once we get that all set up, we're going to have some pretty ******* big announcements to make. And we have plans. And schemes and all kinds of terrible things like that. So we'll see how they work out, and we'll see if we can get more. More involvement and see if we can get some other stuff going on, which is we're being intentional. I'm being intentionally vague right now, and who's not intentionally vague is conovers probably the greatest singer-songwriter of the 21st century.
Speaker 1: All right, so this theoretical radio. Please contact us at free radical radio at riseup.net if you're interested in anything that we said. Whether it's to disagree with us, whether it's to praise us, or whether it's because you have suggestions for content. Or maybe you have an exciting project and you want. To talk to us about it or be interviewed, you might even be able to be interviewed in the studio that we are constructing. So until then this Bellamy enjoy yourselves. It's later than you think.
Speaker 5: Like makes for a clear of you. Sleep a little more if you want to, but restlessness as she's been, I could watch the dreams like her in your eyes. If you think you need inspiration. I will follow every direction. Just place off your shoes while I'm fetching. Asleep them back at 10.
Speaker 6: I can warm my hands.
Speaker 5: Channel 3.
Speaker 6: Thought about a new destination. The short of new inspiration. Love the mapping market with your plans to come to the country.
Speaker 5: All I need.
Speaker 6: Where I can warm my hands?
Speaker 5: My joy will be.
Speaker 6: Another summer
Episode 63: Live with John Zerzan: On Transhumanism, Nihilism, and Egoism
Posted on November 17, 2014 PODCAST
Rydrand Bellamy are joined by John Zerzan, live in the studio, fresh from his debate with transhumanist Zoltan Istvan. The three start by debriefing John on the debate, discuss some current events, and then get into some discussion of John's animus toward Egoism and Nihilism as well as Wild Reaction (RS).
Speaker 1: All right, welcome to free radical radio. This Bellamy. Joining me is rajurand also John Zerzan, fresh from his debate with Zoltan Istvan yesterday at Stanford, where there was a small but passionate anti SIV contingent. So, John, what did you think in? Retrospect of the debate, looking back.
Speaker 2: Well, there was a contingent like that. Thanks to you guys. Who brought a mob who started burning? Hallowed halls of Stanford. No, I thought it was it was. It was a good turn out you never know it was a good turn out and skipping to the to the back end of the thing until everybody got rousted from the room. I mean the real engaged conversations going on and on we. They were not. Ready to quit so I think that always says something. People want to. Talk about things. And that was good I was. Yeah, Zoltan. Nice guy nice guy. What he was saying we could hardly believe. But most of what he was saying, I think maybe that's. Fair to say.
Speaker 1: When you get past the apocalyptic, dehumanizing future, nice guy.
Speaker 2: Well, right exactly just you got overlooked that. But yeah, I thought it was OK event and the people is. There's a transhumanist association at Stanford. They put it as a long deal.
Speaker 3: Does that mean you can get a degree in transhumanism? Is that like a thing? Like can you, can you go to a job and?
Speaker 2: Say I have my degree in cyber Organism or you said you read it. No, it's a student club.
Speaker 3: Oh, it's a club, OK?
Speaker 2: That's there's. I guess. Yeah, what did you? What did? You think, well, actually.
Speaker 1: I wanted to. Ask because we only they regrettably left only. A very short amount of time for Q&A. And so I was wondering what were the follow up questions that people? Didn't get to. Ask specifically from the transhumanists, because we only heard a few questions which were. Like would you go out into the woods if 1000 anti Savannah Christs all wanted to go be hunter gatherers and kind of fluff questions I thought, but I was curious if there were any more interesting questions. I got to theart of it.
Speaker 2: Well, there was some discussion about the record, the sort of anthropological stuff there was a. As expected, there was talk about health and how technology saves us when we're sick and all that the young guy there who suffered from some kind of severe headaches. And I guess he was getting help so were kicking that around too. Like what are the other options? Is it just do we have to stick with industrial medicine? Throughout how do we move away from our dependence on some of these things and the tough stuff usual. Stuff, and I thought that was pretty high level of discussion and then nearby Zoltan had his own circle of. People, I mean not the circle wasn't around me, but they were. I was. I was real impressed with. Some of the primitivist stuff that was coming out. I was just listening. But,. Yeah, Zoltans was tiny compared to the primitivist game.
Speaker 1: So you won the popularity contest? Right? No, no, actually he was showed it. He was polite and showed a great deal of interest when Roger and I wanted to talk to him and asked him to. Come on our show so we're looking for that in the next couple of weeks to there were some things that I thought the debate overall, unfortunately, was too short. It was hard to get into a lot of depth. A lot. Of things had to. Just be on the surface level. Just a few sentences here and there, and so we're hoping that to get him on in particular I was. Hoping that. His laws of transhumanism. I don't know if you've seen this, we've brought it up briefly on our show couple months ago, but he has a kind of. He has a kind of. Programmatic approach or you might call it an ethic, a transhumanist ethic, and the three laws? Are you familiar with them, John?
Speaker 2: Go go for it.
Speaker 3: OK yeah.
Speaker 2: Now remember.
Speaker 3: I'm also not familiar with them but.
Speaker 1: It's funny because we talked about this before. So the three laws are to be followed in this order. The first is. That the transhumanist. Must seek immortality above all else as quickly as possible. Once that's achieved, they should seek omnipotence. As quickly as possible. And then the third is they must safeguard value in the universe. OK, so you think the last while.
Speaker 3: Safeguarding value OK. They're like guardians of the Galaxy.
Speaker 1: But if you consider that safeguarding value is the least important, then you would say OK, so your omnipotent immortality in a universe devoid of value. Is preferable to? I guess what we have now and then even going back farther your immortality, even in a power limited state. In a universe without value is more preferable to what we have now. So you get this kind of image of. A powerless eternal being floating in a bleak world and that's the transhumanist ethic. And I haven't seen him discuss it elsewhere, so I wanted to bring him on the. Show and just say really, if you take a sober look at this, is this what you're prescribing?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think before we get too into this maybe. It would be good to talk for a second just about like because it seems so out there. I think a lot of people just hear this right. They're like, oh, transum, this like that’s crazy. Or that's ridiculous blah blah. But I think probably most of us here. See it as kind of a symptom of something deeper. And that's why it might be more worthwhile to talk about, right?
Speaker 1: Or how it exists everywhere in degrees, right? Yeah, you could say a lot of the. That the transhumanist ethos is present in all sorts of different I mean just the notion of progress, the narcissism that floods society in. The kind of reification of the self. Where the. Self becomes this. Idealienated from the being who experiences it and you're striving for this identity in the culture. Whether it's being a successful person. Or a good? Looking person in the way that I've made the poor job. Before and all that sort of thing, there's this removal of the self as this thing to chase after, rather than just being present in the self that exists. The real subjectively felt self and you can see transhumanism is just the kind of extension of that where it's you are inadequate in what you are and you have to become something more than that. John's going to be displeased, but I'm going to reference. Sterner, said the basis of religion. Is the idea? That the human must become something other than. What they already are. And I see that playing out in the major way with the transhumanism. I mean, how could you go much farther than that? It's this. Techno, apotheosis of humanity.
Speaker 2: Yeah, slipper animality altogether. That's the at the bottom of this fence web page. There it is. It's we've been animals for too long. I mean, this couldn't be more explicit. And you're right from what you said before it. Was and maybe this a little bit of. A stretch, but. If people if Prince Humanism is really about control, domination of nature and I was trying to make the point about domestication as. It partakes of that general thrust, and it's, with the latest projects that are. You know part of the whole long train of domestication? And they. I'm not totally complaining, but the formal structure of the thing meant that there would just be 25 minutes total right for each for each of us for either of us. So and then they didn't seem to want to open it up very much to discussion. It was a kind of daily controlled Q&A which doesn't really get. Further the discussion afterwards which I mentioned, I think was really important, but it could have been more available to more people before we kind of ended the official part of it, if you will.
Speaker 1: Something really interesting that all of us were talking about afterward was that Zoltan was pretty ready to concede that the happiness point, and I think it was just in his second statement that he said. Sure, John's probably right that banned in banned society. People were happier that they had more intimate friendships and relationships that they had more community and. Yeah, that's probably true. But and then he just ended saying it. Is happiness really what we're after?
Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, that's. That's one of those key things that it isn't you’re sort of just displacing or replacing that. And yeah, I found that hard to follow myself.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean just getting to theart of Perlman, really right? Or at the at the end of it? Which is that? They don't want to die, and they’re they're basically taking civilization to its, almost logical conclusion, which is that? It just creates a set amount of beings who get to live forever, and until there's no more planet and no more earth to walk on and not even a not even a self any. Or no friendships whatever, they're just like you were saying, but just floating in space like forever living until the universe explodes or whatever happens something I don't understand.
Speaker 1: Yeah I would love to talk to Zoltan about that and see if we can piece that apart, but it seems to me to follow pretty directly from what he's. Saying that. He would prefer to live forever, even in a powerless state. In a world without value, that's preferable and. He was touching on that and to a much lesser degree when he said. People are living longer now. So what if we're not living happier? That it's preferable to live longer, I guess than be less happy.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and you it was odd that didn't really come up directly. I thought that would be kind of a key thing and I wanted to question about what is the impetus find that I think Adorno pointed out that the big longevity. Fetish or interest this, way before there was anything called transhumanism was because people don't have free and authentic lives. They feel cheated. They can see their death coming and they haven't been allowed. To live. I mean, it's maybe that's kind of tricky to bring that up in a sense because I'm not. I'm not trying to psychoanalyze But thisn't. Isn't, I don't know. I was gonna be interested in what he would say about that and he never did bring it. Up so we didn't go there.
Speaker 4: Yeah, you have to.
Speaker 1: Wonder is Sultan thinking? Are we really going? To take out the. Crude utilitarian calculus and say, well, would I rather. Have 75 years and be. Level 9 happiness or would I rather have 500 years and be level 6 happiness than let's figure out what the area under the chart is and that's where I'm going.
Speaker 4: To go, is it like that?
Speaker 2: Yeah, . On the other hand, I mean, yeah, this we could have gotten way into this. I remember talking to this guy with a high tech job, by the way, making good money as they say, and he said I'd rather be living even if it's dangerous. I'd rather have a vivid experience of my life and I don't have that. I'm commuting back and forth to some job that what I mean. That's the other. That's a different way to look at it, obviously.
Speaker 3: Yeah, well, the other thing I was wondering too is because we've been talking about that John just the last day or so is like, he's strangely friendly, right? This I mean this person who was like pretty much at least everything like I hate like his his existence just makes me want to bang my head against the wall. Sometimes the fact that this man. Walks around and is totally fine with people . Strip mining in Africand he's I'm sure he has no issues with Foxconn suicides like he's more concerned with his own immortality than anything callous. Numbers of deaths that no human being can quantify or understand or empathize with because it's too much for one person. So maybe that's his way out of it. Just too much for him, so it doesn't think about it. But it's interesting that we can be somewhat friendly to people like this, or like even people in the Bay. Whether it's like techies and a lot of people make their money doing tech stuff. It's this weird. Contradiction where it's. Like where do you draw the line when when kind of talking to someone? With like, how much does the way you live your life affect the way we interact with you or the way I would interact? With someone it's kind of, I guess an ongoing question. I've been thinking about.
UNKNOWN: Do you think?
Speaker 1: We should have threatened him, threatened him.
Speaker 3: I'm not, I'm not. I'm not, I'm not going full wild reaction quite yet, but.
Speaker 2: But when he gets here, you will bolt.
Speaker 5: Right?
Speaker 2: The door. Might be different.
Speaker 3: Man, once he gets here you might find the room very. Dark and very lonely. Surprise, Zoltan.
Speaker 1: Yeah, at one point that got left completely untouched. Actually, was the what you were saying about what does it really take to build this whole edifice? How much? Coercion and essentially enslaved labor and ecocide is necessary for this, and he had no response really. He let that point go completely. I was actually frustrated because I did formal debate in high school and I was thinking, oh man, this. Not being scored.
Speaker 4: The way that it.
Speaker 6: Should be if you.
Speaker 1: Advance the point like you did and it just. It's completely ignored by the opposing side. I mean that would be almost an instant loss for the debate. So, and that didn't seem to really get acknowledged either in the debate or in the Q&A, but it left me wondering what he would say because he did respond to the. Shootings issue and about the. Most morbid and quantified way that you can when he just said well. Ultimately the number of people getting killed by these shootings is really small, even if it keeps going up, which obviously sidesteps the whole deeper issue about the social fabric that motivates such an action, but. I wonder, would he and we'll ask him when we do the interview is he can answer in the same way and say well, yeah, of course it's regrettable that people have to go down in the mines, and there is so much ecocide inherent in transporting and extracting all of these materials, but ultimately it's worth it if. A small number of people can. Become omnipotent cyber beings, I don't know.
UNKNOWN: How he's going to swing it?
Speaker 2: Yeah, I've never once gotten a reaction about that. You think that's you gotta have answer to that is, given the cost, the human cost, the eco cause, the whole damn thing? You just assume that I mean never once and suggest that they have no answer. They just. Next question, what I mean? There's no. Yeah, never once you'd think somebody would pop up and yeah, defended along the lines you mentioned or something instead of just ignoring it like. Didn't hear that or what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, it just seems like a revision of the whole techno history, which actually didn't get touched on too much in the debate that if we look. At the history of major technological implementations, it was never voluntary, and even agriculture spread, essentially through violence. Because the.
Speaker 3: Even the Israel story, because were. Kind of talking **** about Dana Point earlier, but the one interesting story he tells is that it was Cain and Abel was agriculture right where he went over and killed his killed his brother, ? And just like Moses did when they're worshipping the false, the false idols drew the line in the sand. Anyone that wanted to do that. They just. Killed them all, right?
Speaker 1: It's in the mythology. It's in the anthropological. Record you see. That agriculture spread through violence. You see that in a few of the pieces you've written, you talk about the. The dawn of. Industrialism and how the factory owners were literally writing letters to each other that we have in the historical record. Saying, how can we get people in the factories we have to prevent their ability to have their own subsistence. How do we get them to stay longer? How do we get them to work? More days and none of this was a choice, and. With transhumanism, there seems to be on some levels some admittance of that, that when they say things like well when if we reach the singularity, who knows what's? Going to happen. Well, you're just forcing about the same thing down people's throats again and again. And maybe you can get small groups of. People together they're really enthusiastic. About it, but is this. Really the majority I mean. If you walk down the street and say hey, wouldn't you rather be a bodiless virtual avatar? Many people are going to. Say Oh my God, yes how?
UNKNOWN: Right?
Speaker 3: Many people are already bodiless virtual avatars.
Speaker 2: Well, the inevitability that's he didn't really. He mentioned, I thought it came up from Zoltan a little bit, but that’s their Trump card. It's going to happen. You can whine about it or give me all these arguments, fine, fine, whatever. But it doesn't matter. I mean, that’s really the that's the fall back thing. And that's I think that's what they always feel they have on their side. Yeah, that's interesting. Blah blah blah. I'm hearing you talk, but I'm not really listening because it's so far that's the way it's gone, not without a struggle as you were saying, that’s for sure, ? Violence abroad and repression at home. The whole the whole picture of civilization. But they, but you see that a lot. I mean they, they'll and I don't really know if this guy feels would play that card as much he didn't play it a lot. But yeah, it's going to happen and I don't care what. You're saying, ?
Speaker 1: He was. Actually pretty soft on that point in some parts saying it's really important to me that we establish a democratic system with this. That's going to put checks on it and it was hard. I was actually when he was saying those things and Nicola was next to me in the audience and I turned to her and said it's difficult to tell. Whether he's. Being disingenuous or just really naive when he says these things, because again, it makes it sound like he's ignorant of the history of technological progress when it has always been foisted on a majority that was either unaware or actively resisting what was going on. I mean, how? Many people, even just recent stuff like car. Culture I mean, was that ever a choice? No, something that. The auto manufacturers. The highway builders gather in. There was a excuse me, a specific attempt to limit public transportation, not to be. Too wishy washy about things here in favor of car culture. That wasn't something it's. Not like you had to. City councils getting together saying do we really? Want cars should. We consider the implications how many people are going to die in accidents each year. How much ground is going to be entombed in pavement? There never checks in that. Why would there be?
Speaker 2: Checks on this. Yeah, it's like the in Business School. I don't know if it's always there's some mandatory course. I think there often is how to be an ethical capitalist and they sit there. Oh yes, we need to. We would want to do that. And don't do this and it means absolutely nothing. It's just a mockery. And yeah, you wonder if he's just being disingenuous, that somebody could believe that what?
Speaker 1: I don't know it's.
Speaker 2: What basis?
Speaker 3: That's like those Paul Hawking books, right? Like just that type of capitulating nonsense that's so depressing. It's like a reasonable person who will look and say, the world is totally ****** **. And what we need to do is have businessmen be nice and we need incentives to make them be friendly. Yeah, it's basically like someone's beating you when you're driving them to stop, .
Speaker 1: Please make it hurt us.
Speaker 3: It's only going to stop for. A little bit, yeah.
Speaker 1: Well, again, we're hopefully we can get Zoltan himself on the show in the next few weeks, and we will ask these questions in the frank manner that we're. Doing so now.
Speaker 3: Also, if you if you search online, you can find the interview that someone took a video of it, so it. Is available online.
UNKNOWN: We should say that.
Speaker 3: So we just did say that. Also, it makes you wonder, is Zoltan went on an 8 year sailing trip where he found uncontacted tribes and decided to be the first person to hang out with them. And show them what we're all about over here in the United States. So they got a whole lot of old hand, and I'm not sure how much reading he's on that year boat trip. It makes me makes me wonder what he was doing. He had a nice tan though I guess. So maybe that's what he was doing. Why don't we take a break and play? A song and. Then we'll come back and keep going. You can e-mail us at free radical radio at riseup.net. You can find us at freeradicalradio.tumblr.com back slash episodes if you want to find all of our archived episodes, and this Roger once again, I'm here with Bellamy and John. Zerzan back after little music.
Speaker 5: To me, I don't hate you because. I'm singing it. That don't mean **** that don't mean that I'm not one. With those jerks by the case, leaving me no brown picking sides, I guess. Hate the white man. Hate the white man. And well, I've been faking things thinking things that I just hope are true. Like baby, choose pot rock because rock rock choose. You know what I've seen? So many dozens. Across a different state. But I think that the world better with them inside. I guess Infer every ****** 3/4.
Speaker 4: OK, we yeah we had already.
Speaker 2: Good to. See you thanks again.
Speaker 4: We've got some studio time. Sitting in the. You never know who's.
Speaker 3: Going to oh Doug here. Our own host, Doug, is leaving the studio us behind.
Speaker 1: There's a metaphor in there somewhere.
Speaker 3: Out into the cold.
Speaker 4: Night going out.
Speaker 1: Dangerous, but maybetter things.
Speaker 4: All right, so to wind down the.
Speaker 1: Rehash of last night's Debate I did think it was interesting some. An individual. Approached, I think first you and then later us. Who was at one point a very enthusiastic transhumanist? A student at Stanford and even a? A member of a transhumanist house who was talking about some interesting things that we're going to look into in the next few weeks and discuss on the show. He's claiming that a lot of transhumanist funded research ends up much to the transhumanist chagrins to point toward the hunter gatherer lifestyle as thealthiest thing. For the body and mind oh.
Speaker 2: When that happens.
Speaker 3: They're hoisted by their own guitar there.
Speaker 1: Yeah, and even talking about to everyday things that we subject ourselves to like artificial light and talking about how. Having a good deal of contact with the artificial light rather than natural sunlight, as supposedly is damaging to the brain and induces senility. So we only know the. The vagaries of it.
Speaker 3: Now it may use that as an excuse for some of my recent behavior with the fluorescent light situation in my room.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just got a myself in a fluorescent prison with me.
Speaker 3: OK, good. Taking the old egoist position there about.
Speaker 1: That, but we're going to keep in touch with this person and see if. The kind of things he's talking about are all they're cracked up to be, because I think that would be really interesting to talk about on the show. And then I'm not sure if you have anything else to. Close about the debate, John.
Speaker 2: No, no, we could move on as far. As I'm concerned, OK?
Speaker 1: All right, so we talked about the. Google Glass addiction. About a month ago on the show, the case of a member of the Navy who non combatant member of the Navy U.S. Navy who used Google Glass a great deal at his work. Ended up getting more and more into using it. Wore it at home when he wasn't actively serving. Ended up wearing it 18 hours a day taking it off only to sleep and to bathe, and how this individual was. Eventually put himself into a rehab center because he was drinking heavily. However, they found upon. Having him institutionalized or whatever you want to call it found that he was experiencing these intense withdrawal symptoms that they couldn't trace to the alcohol and realized that he was actually experiencing physical withdrawals from having his Google Glass taken away from him. Some of the symptoms were pretty frightening, including when people. Would speak to. Him and ask him questions he would. At times, reflexively. Reach up and touch his right temple as if trying to activate his Google Glass in order to answer questions. Even just simple questions, it's.
Speaker 3: Like a Vulcan thing, right? They go like that.
Speaker 1: It's trippy and I was reminded of a much milder but case along the same lines of a friend of mine who's little brother who is now in, I think, around the age 10 or 11 and never actually learned how to add. Because he always had a device with him, including at school where he would. Even if he didn't. Have a calculator he would actually Google Addition problem. And so you have this kind. Of yeah, you have this kind. Of total surrender to the device where it's your thought is being externalized in her words. Actually, the friend of mine, you don't know how to think anymore without your device. Your whole thought process is externalized and. So Doctor Andrew done who? We've studied the naval patient with this addiction, said on the subject of Google Glass addiction. I guess. Kind of hedging what he was saying and realizing that people might have an issue with saying oh come on, can you really be addicted to Google Glass? He said people used to believe. Alcoholism wasn't a problem, they. Blame the person or the people around them. It's just going to take a while for us to realize that this meaning, addiction to electronic devices is real. And then, on the flip side, you have a Guardian article. In defense of the device, you might say. This person is trying to say. Come on, we can't really be addicted to technology. There's always been technology. People have always had their capacities externalized in one kind of device or another, and she writes quote nobody is likely to say I'm addicted to my contact lenses, even though I cannot function without them, nor is anyone likely to call someone an addict for relying on a hearing aid. Or prosthetic limb or pacemaker. Or a cane or glasses. And so on and so on and so on and. She goes on to say we've always been cyborgs. It goes back even further. The first glasses were invented in the 13th century and the first prosthetics date to BC. What do you think about it?
Speaker 2: Well, the in terms of thinking I just came across this as a gift. I got a subscription to new in chess leading. Chess magazine current issue has quite an interesting piece about people relying on the. Computer programs to as they're following competitive match, for example, they just go to the computer to find the best move, and now, and this person is pointing out several things, one is. It's not always the best move, and yet these people they that's the only thing. It could be wrong here, but I think. It's perhaps the only thing that they rush out in terms of AI. It can beat Kasparov for somebody Big Blue or deep blue.
Speaker 3: Deep blue
Speaker 2: Or yeah, yeah. Well, but actually it's not all that swift and even more important, as the writer was pointing out, they don't think anymore. They just go to the computer to see if the move that was played is the best. Oh, and he's saying you're not even thinking about Jess anymore. You're just going to the bloody computer to it'll tell you, and again, he was pointing out that some of these are not the best move that the guy was thinking ahead, and he had this. Move that machine didn't figure it out. So he's just. Appalled by that? Because that's a pretty big shift. You just one more way of being dependent. On the machine.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean I don't. It's hard to imagine someone even getting any joy out of following chess if they don't get the mental stimulation that you're that chess brings about. If you're just looking for a computer to answer, that's really.
Speaker 2: Yeah, if you stop trying to figure it out.
Speaker 3: It's beyond sad. Yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2: That's the whole. Idea right I think so.
Speaker 1: Yeah, but again, that's one of those qualitative aspects of life that. Some folks on the AI transhumanist end are downplaying or even denying the existence of.
UNKNOWN: You know?
Speaker 1: You can't localize that in space. Your own actual experience of thought, and so it's not important. It doesn't exist. The bottom line is more important. But I'm curious what?
Speaker 4: What do you?
Speaker 1: Two think about this. I think it's a bit of a canard. This idea that, well, I wear contact lenses and what are you going to try to take those away from me? They just diminish my capacity, my ability to function. In life isn't. That the same thing as Google Glass.
Speaker 3: Wasn't someone asking you about that last night John, did you or about your glass saying you wear glasses? What would you do?
Speaker 1: Etcetera etcetera they weren't asking them.
Speaker 5: Oh yeah.
Speaker 1: They were just talking **** on.
Speaker 3: Oh talking **** in general, OK?
Speaker 4: The sideline yeah.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think for one thing this has warmed over Donna Haraway the Cyborg thing from the. 80S and well, you can put it that way. You could say shoes or. A prosthetic or anything you want, but there's there are ways I think to focus on this a little bit more with more validity than just saying or a digging stick. Oh, now you're relying on the technology of the digging stick. You know that's kind of silly. You know you can look at this more closely and more honestly, I think she was just trying to advance the idea well. In her case, the way to overcome the gender politics problems, the sexism and so forth is to become a machine. Then you don't have gender anymore. I mean, that was her program. So she was. I was arguing. Well, we're already cyborgs, so stop griping about it. We're already there and that kind of a sleight of hand, really. We are, I don't think so.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's funny how people look to, start with the same premise, which is, like, patriarchy. Obviously it's there. Obviously it sucks, so you could become a Cyborg. Or you could just simply say. Gender is irrelevant, be what you are. Be happy, live your life and that's the way we're going to go about things. Instead, or you could become a machine which would you prefer to set up another false economy. But like even that one, seems like I know which way I would. Go I guess but.
Speaker 1: Yeah, my feeling is. It's difficult to see how this person can't be saying this in bad faith. You're trying to equate contacts to Google Glass. I mean, with contacts you can say, sure, you're one of your capacities is being modified by a device, yes, but I'm not, I mean, and she actually goes so far as to have this rhetoric. So I was already looking into a lens long before Google Glass existed and I wasn't looking directly at the world. I'm sorry, but as a long time contact where the device and so far as it is 1 essentially disappears and it doesn't. I'm not being qualitatively divorced from my experience of life when I'm walking around outside with contact lenses. If you're looking into a device and you're looking at. The screen and you're. Bringing up information constantly and you're. Looking up things, rather than pausing to contemplate yourself, that is a qualitative shift.
Speaker 3: And you're literally. Looking up things you do that thing where you look like a ******* ******* where your eyes keep. Going up into. The Google Glass. Yeah, so as you look up. You're also looking.
Speaker 2: Up and again the constant. Eliding of these conditions, as if they're always. Natural and eternal, for example. Well, you get your limbs blown off and it isn't great. You have a prosthetic, or your eyes are ruined because of because of modernity. After all I. Mean I think were a lot healthier. So in other words, they just treat all that as a given. They're not talking about war, they're not talking about how we've lost our. Sensual acuity. To a huge degree, we would just have all of that is just treated as just the normal course. It's not the normal course, and then once again they come around to offer the answer having ignored the fact that they've created the problem. You know, in so many cases it's in a general sense, that’s the way it works.
Speaker 1: Yeah, you were talking last night in the debate about the Shell game as you put it, where civilization creates the problem and then it comes around and claims to solve the problem and usually not completely or then creates a new one in the process. But I hear that so many times in just everyday conversations about anti civilization. Is where people will speak so quick, so immediate to jump and say, well, don't you think humans have always been doing these horrible things to each other? And don't you think there's always been violence for no good reason? And don't you think there have always been people dominating and trying to take power and **** over other? People and it's so. Immediate, and that's I guess where cultural hegemony really comes in? Because you have this totalizing. Control of thought where? People just will say, ask this question rhetorically and say, don't you think it's always been that way, but they haven't actually looked at the empirical evidence to see what's out there. They haven't looked at the anthropological record as you put it last night and through one-on-one and seeing that no actually for the vast majority of time that humans are alive, things have been really different. For most, there's not even a desire, and certainly not the effort to actually go out and look at well, what was it like? What is it still like in some small, isolated and increasingly vanishing cases?
Speaker 3: Well, like people want to play all those hypothetical games, but they don't really want to think about it. Where even if, say we did have like anarchy or something, what something that could resemble anarchy, where with many different groups of people living many different ways. You know not just like. One particular way that's manifests all across the globe, right? But like people living with the climate that they're in, or whatever, a bunch of different group. The people like if someone up the like maybe like 50 miles north of me. Started like mining the mountain. The water would probably come down and I would probably look around and be like my drinking water sucks like I know who's responsible for this. Like hey, do you guys want to go do something about this? You know it's one of those things where it just create. It just takes such it's taking such a. Certain set of circumstances. To be at the point we're at right now to be at the site. It's yeah, it's frustrating when people want to look at it and it is strange to how so many people seem to have that view where it's like how people are just bad and evil and we just need to be bossed around.
Speaker 4: It's the hardest.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I don't think the people that say that even see themselves as.
UNKNOWN: I have you here.
Speaker 3: Thinking that which is kind of funny. Or they or they'll say, a lot of people will say. I think this one of the biggest critiques. You probably get John, which maybe you want to respond to. Everything is people will say, oh, you're ideological and you just. Think people are good. I guess you probably hear that out pretty often, or it's a utopian. I guess critique.
Speaker 2: Yeah, without sort of deconstructing the thing . Again, is. I mean, you get the feeling. I mean, some people are. Are kind of afraid of the implications ? Well, what if they did do did live? Without all these oppressive things and in a in community and in a face to face way and all the. Rest of it which they did. I mean, there's really no. You can't find anyone in the field, for example, who doesn't see that? And that's what. You know, is so, by the way, so frustrating that some people I know. Like in archaeology they know the same stuff that say a primitivist knows, but they don't want to go there. They don't want to see. Ah Gee, it kind of undoes things, at least potentially. Yeah, we could. We could be something like that because were for. A million or two years, . In other words, that's a that's a natural, or that's an understandable reaction to freak out. No, that can't be right. That's wrong. We've always wanted to conquer everything and all the rest of it. You know, because it might be a little difficult to face up to the fact, no, that's not that's not the record, that's that there's no evidence for what you just said. And so because if it is, I mean the flip side is obviously people have always been this way under these conditions and. They ain't gonna change. That's the it's such a final position. It’s the well. It's really the postmodern position. There's always been alienation. There's never been any outside of the system, and there never will be, and that's final speaking about ideological wow, that's pretty convincing, . So you rule out any possibility. And that's just transparent. Well, that's helpful for you, isn't it? If you, if you cling to that, it rules out anything. You know we're just condemned. Could be, but only very recently has actually burst forth. You know what? Why didn't this happen? Way back when it first started using fire almost 2,000,000 years ago, why? Why didn't they then just destroy everything and oppress everybody and so on and so on? They didn't so . In other words, it's just I think the implications are there. It’s not. It's something they don't want to face.
Speaker 3: I guess the. The other main question I would have like getting to kind of the bigger questions about some. Of this stuff would be. Switching to interview mode here for a second out of the left field, which it's on my mind is. A lot of people, a lot of critique I get when I tell people I'm anti SIV or whatever. I like or even just flippantly. Sometimes someone will say something like. Actually, I really give a **** about that. Like I don't care about this whole giant thing like just blah blah blah and they'll be like oh, you just want to kill everyone. You support killing everyone, et cetera, et cetera, which is something you always dispel and you all. You're often saying you're not obviously not for billions of people dying, but you are against civilization. So on some level. Those two feel. Kind of like counterposed against each other, because when you think about like a Freddy Perlman type view of civilization, where it's like it keep as we've seen it collapse Roman civilization. All the different civilizations they've kept coming back right for the last 10,000 or so years they keep coming back, so I guess The thing is like without a big die off and without some gradual. Or revolution, et cetera. How to do like, how would you see those two things matching up?
UNKNOWN: Well, the.
Speaker 6: UM?
Speaker 2: Well, first of all, I think we might start with something we could agree on. Pretty obviously it's going to the 7 billion people are are going to at the at the given the current picture and its priorities and its dynamics and the record. That's what's going. Kill people off. That's what's going to end the biosphere to probably a very large degree unless you do something about it. Unless we find a way to do that. It’s kind of silly to blame primitivists are are causing all those. Well, 7 billion people to starve, that's, it's a little zany to put. It that way. The entire machine. It's what's doing that, and they do their best to avoid that to avoid the glaring stark reality there. Yeah, so I guess it's getting better all the time, right? We just need more technology, to hasten the pace of destruct. Action every level? I mean, yeah, that seems like a good idea it. Just doesn't hold up at all.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 1: The easiest shot. At that argument is. When people say all these people are going to start with that civilization, you say. Well, how many are malnourished right now? And that's just normalized and obfuscated, and that's OK. When as Rogers fond of saying in an oblique Batman reference, if it goes according to plan, then it's OK. We're OK with the destruction and the deprivation and the grief and the suffering when it's expected, because then we can say, well, it's going to get better with. Progress with more technology with more globalization, with more people working with more integration into the Technosphere then this will just keep going down even though day by day it plays itself out in a kind. Of morbid March. But I think what did did we get to theart of your question there writer, because. You're saying? Is there a contradiction?
UNKNOWN: Yeah, I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I think the other part of it was like. If you look at like I would, I would personally like my personal view. Would be like, well, revolution wouldn't really do much and this I kept getting these arguments. A lot of people in my house with we had like this guy from Spain, our friend who we called the leftist. He was a leftist, but cuz he's doing working class power and he used to be an Irish and he used to. Be anti SIV and then he he. He became practical and now he wants to. He wants to work, build working class power, have a revolution, etc. In his view is basically that once there's a revolution people will all work together and try these different things out and find out slowly that they can't have hospitals without the mines and stuff. And my view is like, well, there's gonna be people that are still connected to this and they're gonna kill you to get there, X. Ray machine or whatever they need. Or their TV or whatever is that they want so. I guess that's how I say like without some massive. And I know there's. You know, obviously on the answer, but like. Just which other way I think could you see that going? Does that make sense? Like kind of the I'm trying to? You have one idea where it's like if you don't have a massive diet, it's hard to see civilization not existing forever like or not seeing some type of techno fascist police state where they end up being able to control us and their bodies and some kind of transhumanist nightmare or matrix Y type nightmare like that where we're all just being. Harvested in life as a surrogate experience or something like that.
Speaker 2: Well, yeah, I mean. I guess I just have to go back to the same thing. I mean, what is the what is this rosy future? Based on I mean what? Where is the rosy future? What is the? What can you point to of what is the important stuff that's getting better all the time, such that you want more and more of this? Which is, the. Pace of turning society into a technosphere into technological society. Yeah, It’s. I don't know. I mean one wonders. And Dan Todd is fond of saying nothing speaks for itself and you could say things are getting worse and worse. And at some point people will suddenly go. Yeah, it's getting worse and worse. And none of this stuff makes sense. You know, given that fact, so we've got to really fundamentally change things. It may not work that way. I mean it's still people may still go on and on and just take drugs to get through the day. And the usual sort of diversions and all that. Yeah, there's no guarantee whatsoever that people are going to try to end this whole regime of this. The mad. Destruction and so forth. Yeah, might not happen.
Speaker 1: So do you imagine in the best of possible circumstances? Something along the lines of the decentralized group of insurrectionary cells and then at the same time. A kind of. Constructive end of people doing land projects and rewilding and that kind of thing and a kind of. UM, spontaneous and. Non masifilo Implosion of civilization. At the same time as people are building things up. I mean, would that be the best? Of all possible.
Speaker 2: Well, that makes sense to me. I mean, you've got to have a certain level of autonomy and reskilling, or else we're not even going to want to move away from it, insofar as we're dependent, I mean that makes total sense plus. But that's only part of it. I mean, the other part is the resistance and the people who avoid that are are just. They're just dreaming. They're they're going to have this some kind of perfect setup and notice that the machine is crushing. All that makes it rather irrelevant relatively, but so I mean both. Things you have. Both things. And and people can work on any part of it. They want since it is, it seems to me needed. To help the both.
Speaker 1: Of them all right? This free radical radio with Bellamy and Roger, joined by John Zerzan. Today in the studio and we'll visit to the studio while we're in the process of building our new studio.
Speaker 3: And we should also mention that John has a website. What is it? John zerzan.net? Really going straight, straightforward, straightforward, real, straightforward.
Speaker 1: Kind of an.
Speaker 4: Egoist move there.
Speaker 3: Yeah you really you go this website there John. Just right in there. In there and I think if you do back slash radio it whatever, johnson.net is pretty easy to find all the stuff if you click there so you can find all the tons. Of radio shows there. Thousands of radio shifts so you could spend the next at least two or three months straight listening, listening to John talk, and you should. Yeah, you should do definitely.
Speaker 1: All right, so we're going to take a little music break and we will be. Back to talk. About a little bit more resistance news and then we'll get into some broader topics.
Speaker 6: Will we capsize gently or will we howl? Ready for a fight? Michael Jackson was declared dead. Nobody gave everybody. So difficult about Mason sleep till you. The media outlets started the question that people so they consciously make Jackson 5 greatest hits of their shows. They didn't even let the pictures.
Speaker 5: Baby Jesus
Speaker 6: The communist sleep tight. Life cannot. Poverty just seems to poverty. All the other details state ohh. I still can't decide between anonymity and it doesn't even matter the. King will always die. Well, if you're good to go down, make sure you go down hard. Keep the stars. I've seen this as a different from the ones in charge, and once they lived life large. I've seen the great. Ocean with the forgiving of the Lords and terrible twisted teeth showing. Pick up of birth slips on the face of a perfect perfect under these worthless. Capsize gently a will howl. We can hold them. Cheeks balloon but. Even captains will be swallowed by the typhoon.
Speaker 3: All right, welcome back to free radical radio. Once again, we're joined in the studio with Bellamy for the first time in eight months. I think in a John's version for the first time in the history of the modern world, it seems in the studio Free Radical radio. All right, let's get we're going to get back into. Some more I would call this just blatant nonsense. Symbolic protests for the win. Here things are really getting wild with 350 I guess. I didn't know they have organizations everywhere. They do have a 350 in Australiand Australia is the home of people dressing up like Batmand scaling giant. Ladders to stop work for four days, which is I don't know that's pretty ******, but it's. Also, thelp of people. A group of 400 people who decided that a good idea they were really happy or sorry, unhappy with Prime Minister Tony Abbott's refusal to include climate change on the agenda for the G20 summit. So in a really ****** ******** direct action, they decided 400 people decided to. Stick their heads face down inside the sand at famous Bondi Beach and put their butts up in the air and take a nice big picture to show Tony Abbott that they weren't messing around and that this a this a little quote. From them with. World leaders arriving for the G20 summit in Brisbane. Our heads in the sand event seemed a great way to let the world know that most Australians don't agree with our government's inaction and think we should join the global effort to reduce emissions. Stop fossil fuel projects. And here comes the best part and ramp up renewable energy, so I don't know what else have to say to that. That's almost speaks for. Itself right there. It's the whole deal. I mean, not only is their head in the. Sand, but they've left themselves vulnerable.
Speaker 1: Yeah, it's nothing like you and I were talking about recently where the pacifist flag is actually the white flag, so you're just waving the white flag.
Speaker 4: Yeah, well. In this case.
Speaker 1: You're being, I guess, surprisingly honest and saying I'm just putting my head in the sand. I'm deeply unaware of my personal irony.
Speaker 3: They're literally on their knees with. Their head in the. Sand, I mean I don't know what else to do.
Speaker 1: Presenting their ********.
Speaker 3: That they have. They have done that all right. Also, another funny Bill McKibben story. Since we just can't help ourselves with this today. Bill McKibben recently sent out an e-mail after a recent US Chinagreement in regards to climate change. I mean, we don't get into this on the show. Obviously it's just dumb stuff about. You know us us. Us when I say us America because. I'm a part of this great. Country about the US. You know getting back to 22005, 2005 levels of carbon emission by 2025 whatever obviously doesn't matter, but in the e-mail he said today is an achievement. For everyone who's held a banner, signed a petition and gone to jail. So really throwing the gauntlet down for all the petition signers there. So if you're one of those people who clicks things online, John, I know you love the online petition. Form of direct. Action, yeah, so actually we had a hard time getting onto the show just when he wanted to pull out his laptop and there's at least 5000 petitions to get signed. Right into that so.
Speaker 1: Yes, about yeah actually were talking about earlier off the air about ages ago when those people had started the petition to get you 2 hours. On the show. Writer and I were talking about it because the caller said, hey, hey John, we're we're trying to get you. To have two hours. On the show and he said, we've got a petition. Up on Change.org. And you said that you said, oh Change.org, OK and. I don't think. You knew what that was, but that's basically the. The epicenter of collectivism it's just. Oh, it's just a petition website. That's all they do is jeez.
Speaker 2: Even though that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, all right. I don't know. Is there anything else left to say about that? That's pretty absurd. Maybe let's talk about a couple decent things that happened so recently 11 vehicles, cars, trucks and vans at the. It's a French when I'm. Having a butcher at. I think foie gras company and guard down. You want to help me? OK, why don't you read? That go ahead.
Speaker 1: All the friends.
Speaker 3: That was some French by Bellmay. So anyways, the 11 Eagles were destroyed by fire early in the morning of November 11th. And they ended up finding a gas counter inside gas canister inside one of the vehicles and we spent part of the day joking about one of the animal groups in the Bay. Area because they. Basically, their politics are absurd and ridiculous and. I mean not to even get too deep into veganism, but the action they do is not very direct. Converting to people to veganism is like not exactly my ideal utopia, regardless of the fact that to have 7 billion vegans, that's quite an ordeal there, all in of itself. But this the kind of show we can get behind. And anyways in July of 2000. 8 And May 2007. Some of these stores in Paris were also vandalized, and justice. As much as some of the kind of weak activism or clicktivism of the animal rights movement is or as weak as it is, just things like this one company slaughters 1.3 million. Ducks a year. That's just a crazy number, . And when we're talking about chickens, it's in the. Billions, it's just. It’s hard to ignore the situation. The daily reality that we're faced. Faced with living here in this, it's almost overwhelming and it's understanding why, even though I think it's ridiculous and serious. Understanding why someone like Zoltan can just completely ignore slavery and eat aside and just go on trying to live forever because It’s hard and painful to deal with these reality.
Speaker 1: Yeah, they're all obfuscated. I mean how many people have actually how many people who? Regularly eat meat. Have actually seen animal slaughtered first hand. I would guess it's minority and it's it is quite a sight to see to see another creature die for you to keep living. Even when it's done in the nicest possible way is really pointing and moving and intimate kind of experience. If you're doing it first hand. And to do it on the industrial scale, it just takes any kind of intimacy or real relationship out of it and turns it into a heinous and quantified and qualitatively reduced thing. And you get into those kinds of numbers. They just become unimaginable. You can't really identify with them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and speaking. Of animals that are awesome, ducks are pretty rad. Walrus walrus is my top three favorite animals. You're concerned the other is bee and goat, so 35,000 more so I just can't stop obsessing over this story. That just seems like so many walruses, 35,000 walruses ended up all on this one beach in the Arctic. And it was. This on the quote from this woman at the World Wildlife Fund the massive concentration of walruses on shore, when they should be scattered broadly in ice covered waters, is just one example of the impacts of climate change on the distribution of marine species in the Arctic. This Margaret Williams, WWF person, who continues to say the sharp decline of Arctic sea ice. For the last decade means major changes for wildlife and communities alike. It's just another thing we keep ignoring. And it's, we live in Oakland. I live in Oakland. We see urban artists and. All kinds of. Of other activists or liberals or leftists or anyone really. Who is a lot of people are just concerned with the city and keeping . Keeping the city afloat and that somehow it's a radical action to keep to keep someone in a house, Oregon to give to get someone a low wage job. And then all these things are just folding people back into civilization, while 35,000 walruses are looking for a.
Speaker 1: New home is that because this person's been playing habitat destruction? That these are some of the only. Ages that are suitable for them.
Speaker 3: Yeah, basically but yeah. They are running out of space. Yeah, some cloud. All right, John? We're coming for your. Wheelhouse you ready. Alright, we're going. We're going to come. We're going to combine. We're going to combine a little bit of anti sive nature talk with school shootings. So the Superintendent, Joseph Erardi speaking on the design of the. New Sandy Hook School, so they end up they're opening a new school in Sandy Hook in 2016. If that's where the big massacre was, was it two years ago or something?
Speaker 4: No longer.
Speaker 3: More than that, three. Years three. Anyways, three years ago there was a school shooting there. All the kids went to other schools or whatever. So they're reopening the school. And they're kind of making it a monument to. Like technology, security, culture. It's really intense. I'm just going to quote them. They kind of speak for themselves in this in this article. It's on Huffington Post. Anyways, Superintendent of schools in that district. Joseph BerardIs talking about the design and he said the new building is shaped like an E with four limbs. There's one central, slightly curved structure with four hallways that branch off of it. Green courtyards and small auditoriums will occupy the gaps between each of those. This gives the school more outdoor space, but it would also seem to provide more evacuation routes in an emergency, and then they go on to say the front of the school. Is like. An embrace so. I guess that's a big existential question for some people, which is can a building embrace?
Speaker 1: Yeah, architectural question.
Speaker 3: Yeah, it's an architectural question, so we're going to continue on so once I'm just going to keep quoting the same person for a second once visitors reach the school grounds, they pass through still more strategic, yet invisible security measures. Excuse me after Sandy Hook school districts around the country began focusing intently on security systems like fences, guards, and shatterproof. The new Sandy Hook will have impact resistant windows and the intercom screen system for visitors, but the architects also found ways to make nature and landscaping work for them. For instance, to reach the entrance, visitors must cross one of Three Bridges that connect the front doors to the parking lot to avoid the feeling of a fortress protected by a Moat. Architects are turning those bridges into rain gardens that collect and filter rainwater rainwater. So it's pretty intense that they built. Basically, they're admitting that they built a fortress protected by a boat as a place to what do we even learn in school that age really, what I mean?
Speaker 1: Yeah, well I. I never get tired of. The situation that's referenced where they just emphasized so much that appearance has become more important than reality, and so they acknowledge that they're creating a fortress, but they don't acknowledge any of the baggage and implications that go along with that kind of reality. And instead of just saying, well, it's OK because it doesn't feel like a fortress. Even though it is.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's just really. It's really absurd. It's one of those things where I mean, what are you really going to do to stop this? It's obviously a civilization creative problem. In your solution is to make the schools full lockdown. It's like we see that in movies all the time in real life. You know here in places. Like Oakland, where some of. The schools will have metal. Detectors and things like that. And random security sweeps and it's kind of like Zoltan was saying last night, right? Is that we're already under surveillance? You know, we're already there. So what's the big deal about a microchip?
Speaker 2: Yeah, really. And in what school will they be discussing? And I'm not saying this for grade schoolers. Really, but. What kind of society is spawning this kind of thing where I think it is connected with the other stuff like the you never get enough of the IBM mantra. Let's build a smarter planet. Or in this case a smarter prison. And then put some greenery around it and. Of course, they're being taught that this that this a fearful reality. And I mean that itself is a. Amazingly, strong statement, no matter how you dress. It up I think.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and this guy broadman the one of the main security or sorry architecture firm people says just being exposed to nature increases one's well-being and having children exposed to nature on a daily basis increases learning capacity and schedules to ******* architect little details like a few treehouse style elevated classrooms. Help enhance that feeling of is safely tucked away of being safely tucked away in the woods. It's not a barbed wire fence, it's a combination of natural elements.
Speaker 1: Well, see there it is right again, right there in the rhetoric it increases the feeling of.
Speaker 4: We're not concerned.
Speaker 1: With the reality, we don't actually want to put kids in the forest like in the vault. Kindergartens in Germany and some that exist in the United States that we talked about in an interview recently and you can. See that I mean. The evidence is right there from the beneficial effect that the reality of that has. But what we want is just to design that feeling. We want the simulation.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's really upsetting for me at least. One of the things I get most upset about, all my jobs since I've basically the last 15 years since I started working. Have been with kids and to not to look at the school and not see a prison. I don't really understand that. I don't understand how people can even especially at school. Like this like yeah, Sandy Hook was sad. Obviously that's a tragedy and really sucked up etc etc, but. I mean some things you just, you just can't prevent. It's like people when they want to put. Oh, Bellamy and I moved into a house together a long time ago. Maybe like two years. Ago and one of the people in the House wanted to put bars bars on the bars on the windows. And at some point you're going to have to accept that you live in the world and you can't. You're not a Cyborg right now, and you can't protect yourself. Forever and. You're not going to live forever, and accidents happen and you live. And civilization in this situation where you're surrounded by strangers. Alright, now Bellamy is digging wires around me.
Speaker 2: And your reference to cities. What part of that is some natural thing. I mean the that's the larger prison and It’s. You can you can trick it out with different things and give some diversions and so forth, but that's really just as unhealthy. You know, in a larger sense, the. Especially now with the. You know collapse of. Ecosystems you've got these cities. The biggest cities you can't breathe air. You know I asked that question by the way, india I was just so staggered by it. I've never been in China, which is worse. But India is doing their best to catch up in the suicide club and the. World system they have to compete and so I just couldn't get over that and I would ask the question if you can't breathe air. What sense does that make? What do people think? And 11 answer I got was well, these people are dreaming of being middle class people. Well, they have air conditioned apartment drive to work in their air conditioned car and be at work in an air conditioned office. So yeah, it doesn't matter that the whole damn thing has gone to hell and you couldn't and wouldn't breathe air. I mean, isn't that amazing that people go to those lengths? I mean not that they have a free choice. Obviously it's not just I don't like this, I'll do something else. I mean they don't have a choice, they don't have much of a choice at all, but. The whole thing is. Somewhat similar, I think you can. Yeah that's one answer you make all kinds of fortress like things and. And all this other code security stuff. Then there's no security, they’re just telling people there's no security.
Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean it's not like they're, I don't. I don't see them being very concerned with, oh maybe in kindergarten. We should teach the kids to only touch each other when, when they want to be touched or things like that. Instead of, we're going to put them in a giant prison and then everything's going to go back to normal. They don't want to deal with the face to face realities of helping people communicate and. You know, express their needs or express their wants and desires. That's that's never the focus. That still doesn't matter. All right, you want to take some different direction, blame.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure I did. Wanna touch one thing? Because we? Talked about the. This just a quick point, because we've talked about the civilization Shell game and you were just saying the comments. About the air. John Aneisha you like to do add of the week and I guess my recent add of the week going through the lovely world of Ohio was encountering a billboard where. The Subaru automobile. Company was advertising how well their new filtration system for the air conditioning works, and isn't that just the perfect civilized image you have a device that is spewing toxins out the back of it and then bragging about how it can take the air coming in the front of it and. Filter it.
UNKNOWN: So there's one.
Speaker 1: What are we doing next we take? A quick break and then get into some of. The more abstracts.
Speaker 3: Yeah, let's take. Let's take a break and. We'll come back for. A final segment final segment.
Speaker 4: John, that there will be.
Speaker 3: An abstract apparently. Alright, here we go.
UNKNOWN: What's the name of this thing? This. Oh, never mind take one.
Speaker 6: The one man then broke up the one then then broke up.
Speaker 5: Due to creative.
Speaker 6: Differences the one man then broke up and everybody on the passing by passing along. Dusty record bends once led in by kings, now Great Guards, more great stars that would never win again. These deserts full of fractured limbs and scattered instruments that can still sing like kids about to get to nothing that's in the events of. Them I remember when you get time with the bass drum and the whole your left foot another deep got a bad job when you put it on the top. But they could have possibly deny your banshee cries 5 decades in the wishing well only when you put the one that doesn't. Global life that's some type of help. Put your body down and your mind felt and your career.
Speaker 5: If I don't.
Speaker 6: The other two of them begin with the rest of your peers. Nothing what you did only got you so far through these years, but don't cry for the butterflies they loved what they did. They loved what they did, broke up. And then broke up to creative differences. One man then broke up and everybody's passing by passing along.
UNKNOWN: Everybody has a story to tell. Yet nobody listens.
Speaker 3: All right, welcome back to free radical radio. Now with that mecho. This Raja once again. We're sitting here with. To the left of me, Bellamy, to the left of me, Johnson, and we are entering our final, probably our final segment, in case we decide to take over the airwaves and go for several hours, which is probably unlike the scenario at this point of the show tonight. So tell me you want to. Jump back into things.
Speaker 1: Yeah, sure were talking to John off the air about this about the recent action of individuals tending toward the wild. More recently known as wild reaction and I told John that I was actually a bit surprised by the differences in our take, whereas. Our show was. In some ways you could say defending wild reactions, saying sure we don't like the callous attitude toward the death of people that might incidentally be harmed by their actions, but we also think that passivity and inaction is just as much a choice and one that just as much causes harm in this society, given that. You can't go through your day of ******** into potable water with a vast plumbing infrastructure or engaging in commodity interactions without being complicit in oppressive ecocidal, dehumanizing behavior. And so, how different is it to? And I'm asking this in earnest, not just rhetorically asking. How different is it to take resistant action against all this that might also harm people that we might think of as innocent and John was. Condemning, I would say wild reaction. More on his show and I was saying John, we're actually kind of surprised by this, given that back in the day you did point out to a lot of people who perhaps. Had the pretense of being very anti sive very. In favor of the destruction of the system, and yet we're and yet. We're really balking at what Ted Kaczynski was doing and you were more defending that, so how? Do you see? Those as different.
Speaker 2: Well, I can agree more about resistance than there are always people that condemn resistance, especially when it's actual resistance. Whether it's black block damaging stuff or even or violence, but. What I was what I think I was trying to do in the past was. Point out the. The fact that. The people that were injured or killed by Kaczynski were not innocent and kind of left it at that. Whereas I think it might be more easy to say that a postal worker who randomly opens a package and is severely injured is relatively innocent. So that's why I see that a little differently. I don't really know though what's going on with these groups. There hasn't been a whole lot of stuff real recently and I'm hoping there'll be more dialogue as were also saying I found not much result with trying to get more dialogue on this to hear other points of view about this. On anarchy radio. On my show, but I can understand why put your voice on the record coming down on that side or. I'm glad that you guys have been pushing the discussion there and. You know some of these things kind of come and go, and this this kind of a Mexican reference here, and maybe thisn't real pertinent. At all but. You know things can kind of just. I mean, for example, if we never heard from these people. Again, maybe we. Wouldn't know what to make of it, but sometimes, and I guess this a little off subject, for example ezmlm. You know you. I remember when you would get roundly bashed if you raised any questions about where that's going. The opening to the left, and the bureaucratic nature of ECL. And that was just not really allowed. Well that became more pronounced, not the not the. Criticism, but the reality of it, according to a. Communicates they’re easily available and have been available and yet what you have is just a lot of silence like we just forget about that. I'm not saying everybody secretly feels, yeah, that wasn't so perfectly cool after all. Maybe the way I. Would put it but what is it you? Just if you. And this probably a crude way to put it, but you go through the same stuff all over again. If you haven't learned anything from the first time around. You know, I mean, whether insofar as that's the case. But it doesn't do any good to just suppress it. Yeah, I guess this guy Marcos really was a leftist intellectual from the city and so forth. I mean, it's OK to point these things out. It's not condemning the Zapatista thing or the people of Chiapas, but you got to think it through. You got to figure out what's really going on. Why did it move away from the indigenous thing? And maybe even wonder how far it was. In some ways indigenous in the 1st place on the part of some of the people that were directing things that Marcos again. But and I’m no expert on this, I can't even read Spanish. I mean, I'm just getting this from the English translations of these communiques. I've never been in chapis, but the point is just to try to come to grips with this stuff. This the phenomenon. Well, maybe not so much, I mean well. If it's going on, I mean it's if we're thinking people you