Theo Slade

what exactly is your goal here taking it over after they suspended my account? the only reason i ever made that subreddit was to keep others from making it.

stop working to seize control of anarchist projects to promote your liberal ideology

veuzi: Was about to ask why Ishkah was on the new modlist and I guess I now know why, they’re all Ishkah

vegan_breath_mint: the internet is such a weird place

scouserisibilities: Polarisation is interesting and amusing. I can disagree with you without needing to view you as not anarchist, I don’t know why you’re incapable of doing the same.

When the Ted K archive was created a dude cried ‘why are you besmirching a brave anarchist prisoner of war’ instead of ‘sad it promotes some critiques of anticiv also, but I get the whole Ted K sucks thing’. It’s clarifying amusing polarisation.

Raddle has a forum for updates on reddit shenanigans, you can survive a forum on reddit about raddle shenanigans.

ziq:

[–]be-jhijak 1 point 37 minutes ago*

Tbh it’s a groomer site run by creepy middle aged groomers. Recently read all about it on ANews.

https://anarchistnews.org/content/raddle-its-all-kicking-over-there

That’s a yes.

To start with, I’m deleting all your past accounts and any account going forward that even looks like you, unless you transfer ownership of that subreddit back to me (redmenaced) and demod your 3 accounts. You do not want me as an enemy. I’m not some mild-mannered librarian.

scouserisibilities: ‘Look, you want to shut down our joint construction projects, eat K-rations, fine. You want Phil to put one into one of my guys, well, that’s gonna take you a long way from the rich prick you always wanted to be.’

I just went back to archive everything and noticed years ago you used to think I was a tankie entryist lol:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/141607/a-left-anarchist-reading-list-critiquing-post-left-anarchy

Taking actions based on misinformed opinions or partial knowledge is amusing and what makes the world go round, the situations where ‘they don’t that we know, that they know, that we know, that they know’ are just deeply funny to me.

Here’s two posts I’ll be sad if they’re deleted for the poignent replies I got, but ce la vie:

https://web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Zines_and_Publications/201797/fighting-for-our-lives-by-crimethinc-2002

https://web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/176222/i-am-no-hero-and-neither-are-you-thoughts-on-how-our

scouserisibilities: Anyways I deleted the comment you quoted as soon as I saw it, an hour after it was posted. So, no not a yes. I’ll get more mods I can trust to improve the time delay between people posting potential slander and it being deleted.

ziq: 15 minutes.

ziq: you have one more hour before i wipe every trace of you from this website and proceed to the next step.

ziq: Announce your goal without bullshit, liberal. Raddle shenanigans? So generating harassment against raddle and its userbase?

scouserisibilities: yawn, no, this place is called reddit shenanigans and I’m sure some people use it to just discuss meaningless harmless stuff going on on reddit, people can do the same on reddit about raddle, it doesn’t need to be a negative space. Here’s the description in the sidebar:

The unofficial forum about a forum. Share your stories of the novel impact raddle has had in your life or a cool post you found recently.

ziq: You have no ownership stake over raddle. It is not yours to take. 10 minutes.

scouserisibilities: You have no ownership stake over a sub-reddit, get off your power trip.

Cursed situationist carnism...

Post Link:
<pbs.twimg.com/media/Gxj46kIWcAAbGZ_?format=png&name=900x900>

Submitted by taodoray 19 days ago in Vegan

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Vegan/209610/cursed-situationist-carnism>

The authors might be going for layers of exaggerated satire, but I still hate this. It’s part of a self-help/comedy book that gives people suggestions of things to do every day, so it’s likely they encouraged a fair few people to do this.

Source: This Book Will Change Your Life

Inside Front: International Journal of Hardcore Punk and Anarchist Action (1994–2003)

Submitted by taodoray 28 days ago in lobby (edited 1 hour later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/209351/inside-front-international-journal-of-hardcore-punk-and>

I created a rough ABBYY conversion of all the available old ‘Inside Front’ issues. So, they can be word searched and some of the essays republished.

Inside Front: International Journal of Hardcore Punk and Anarchist Action — Almost Complete Archives, 1994–2003

Let me know what essays you would like to see republished and feel free to help out with cleaning up errors and republishing them on T@L & The Library of Unconventional Lives.

Full Issue Photoscans

Introduction: <crimethinc.com>
Issue #1: <archive.org>
Issue #2: <archive.org>
Issue #3: [Missing]
Issue #4: <archive.org>
Issue #5: <archive.org>
Issue #6: <archive.org>
Issue #7: <archive.org>
Issue #8: <archive.org>
Issue #9: <archive.org>
Issue #10: <cdn.crimethinc.com>
Issue #11: <cdn.crimethinc.com>
Issue #12: <cdn.crimethinc.com>
Issue #13: <cdn.crimethinc.com>
Issue #14: <cdn.crimethinc.com> [page 64 is missing]

Digitized Essays

Issue #9 (1996)

How Ethical is the Work ‘Ethic’? — CrimethInc

Issue #10 (1997)

Issue #11 (1998)

Punk Rockers, One More Effort To Become Revolutionaries — CrimethInc. (newly archived)
Your Body Fucken Matters — Eric Boehme (newly archived)

Issue #12 (1999)

Introduction to the Situationists — CrimethInc

Issue #13 (2000)

Infinite Relationships — CrimethInc
Editor’s Introduction to the Final Issue of Inside Front (newly archived)

Issue #14 (2003) — Postscript Issue

All traveler kids purged from CrimethInc. membership — CrimethInc
Anarchy and Alcohol — Alcoholics Autonomous
White Shark Tales: Vanarchy in the U.S.A. — Secret Agent Captain Ahab (newly archived)
Why we should bring back Veganism — Bruce Burnside (newly archived)
The Denial of Death — Bruce Burnside & Greg Bennick (newly archived)

The Anarchist Library has an official wikipedia™ page now :)

Post Link:
<en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Library>

Submitted by taodoray 2 months ago in anticiv

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/208837/the-anarchist-library-has-an-official-wikipedia-page-now>

I’ve heard the librarians describe the project as founded by anticiv nihilists and the OG anticiv project. So, I’m curious what people here make of the new wiki page.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Anarchist_Library

For some people it already shows up as the top result when you search ‘about the anarchist library’.

I helped with dates, info & sources for use throughout the page.

I also opened up the talk page for people to discuss changes they’d like to see on there if they like:

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:The_Anarchist_Library

Was anyone not in the know fascinated to learn the history?

What did people think of the criticism section?

Also, here’s a collaborative wiki-style page that was created for people to share arguments about which texts people think should get a second chance at being published, or updated to include disclaimers at the top, etc.:

Some of The Anarchist Library’s Controversially Published & Deleted Texts

Someone updated this text recently to offer this argument for publishing ‘Are Prisons Obsolete?’ by Angela Davis:

“A lot of people find their way to anarchist ideology through prison abolitionist organizing, and this is a foundational anti-state text.”

ziq: snake in the grass

secco: Very disgusting behavior.

Bezotcovschina: I don’t get it. Why?

secco: The post celebrates a minor victory in Ishkah’s war on anti-civ anarchists. Here on f/anticiv. Context is the program, the investigations and the demands. And now we get a wiki article that serves to emphasize old drama and the library’s greatest flaw...

Critics argue that the editorial collective places disproportionate emphasis on anti-technology writings at the expense of other anarchist perspectives.[16][17][6][18][19] They contend that this focus, particularly in a project that identifies as an anarchist archive, risks legitimizing authoritarian ideologies and blurring the distinction between anarchists and their opponents.[16][17][6][18][19]

Complete with “Ted K and ecoterrorism” sources. Reads like it was written by someone who hates anarchists and librarians.

Bezotcovschina: thanks, I think I’ve got it now

taodoray: Aye, it was a cold Christmas night when Ishkah was able to score a minor victory in moving his troops across the Delaware undetected. However will the other side respond in the battle to come up with an informative wikipedia page that anyone can edit? Oh right, just declare that my edits make me anti-anarchists & anti-librarians for including what you think is meaningless drama too intimate for the normies to behold.

echonegate: Well, you keep resetting my edits, so...

taodoray: I haven’t ‘kept resetting your edits’, you didn’t make multiple edits, you just deleted half a paragraph I’d written that was well sourced, declaring it extrapolation, so I undid the deletion (singular). Feel free to talk it out with me. Why do you think what I wrote is extrapolation? Even if the text isn’t perfect, why do you not think rewording or replacing the text with something else wouldn’t be useful? Etc.

Someone else put a ‘[who] [citation needed]’ edit on something I wrote defending T@L’s editing process in the introduction, so I thanked them and deleted that part myself as what I was attempting to say was better dealt with at the end anyway.

taodoray: How would you like to see the page edited and why mon frere? Are there any references not included that you think it’d be good to cite?

totalism: Putting the ITS spat on there feels really selective lol

taodoray: You don’t think the reason some of the original founders of the project and substantial contributors were alienated deserves a mention?

Act for freedom now!, 325 Collective/Dark Nights Collective & Touchpaper Anarchist Library all promote anarchistlibraries.net, not T@L.

echonegate: Anarchistlibraries was a valiant effort that has been dead in the water for over a year. If those groups are promoting anarchistlibraries, it is to the disservice of everyone. Not least of which the handful of non-english libraries which have popped up in the past year and are therefore not listed nor are they likely ever to be, but also to the librarian running anarchistlibraries who is either not able to or not willing to maintain the project and the readers looking for signs of life from anarchists.

Alienation or not (I’d argue not, and that the use of this term is editorializing) it does seem a little intimate to be putting out as a public message to the normienet. One could reasonably view this as an invitation to attack the project, given it’s the most prominent in a very limited selected history.

My question to you is why it would be significant to point to the departure of a founder and establishment of a briefly active project as topic that warrants what amounts to a controversies section available for broad public consumption. Is Wikipedia the appropriate place to have this information, and if so, why? Was this information included with the blessing of the person it pertains to, who did list t@l on their own project after all was said and done? Or, if it was included due to the scandal of inclusion of “eco-extremist” writings being a truly significant step away from the scope of the project, why not have an “inclusion of non-anarchist texts” section and list the “eco-extremists” alongside other non-anarchists like the transhumanists or egoists?

If anyone would like to keep up with the multitude of anarchist library projects run by different people with independent control over their independent libraries, as was the mission statement of anarchistlibraries, you’ll find a well maintained list at... Theanarchistlibrary. Fancy that.

taodoray: There’s various events and issues mentioned in the history and criticism sections, why do you view this specific criticism as not significant enough to make the cut? They build on each other as you go down the page. An ‘inclusion of non-anarchist texts’ criticism paragraph or section discussing transhumanists and egoists texts not being included wouldn’t build on anything above and be a criticism that feels less significant to prevalently written about criticisms people have of the project. However, if you have any references you’d use if you were to rewrite the section it’d be interesting to read.

Why do you relate to anarchistlibraries as dead in the water? For some things anarchistlibraries are a better place to land, and some things the anarchist library. Ideally, there wouldn’t have been a split, but I know where I put the blame for that.

I like that on anarchistlibraries.net there’s a guide for what steps to take to build a new library with contact details on who can help for free, advertised prominently on the website. I like the great search engine that allows you to search for texts on T@L, Fifth Estate & others simultaneously. I like that in their linked IRC you can find where some other language librarians like to talk and the person that built the amusewiki software underlying the various projects, and the other web development/software people they’ve trained up. I like learning ahead of time about anarchist archive projects people there build. I like that they advertise anarchist archives that T@L don’t.

The reason they give for not listing even more libraries is they’re just showing libraries hosted on their servers, like the mirror backup of T@L is hosted on their server. An issue they have also is some are maintained very badly such that they don’t generate PDFs, either the librarians are too sloppy and/or don’t want to ask for help.

For a list of amusewiki libraries that attempts to cover both T@L & anarchistlibraries lists, people can go here:

The Various AmuseWiki Libraries

If you know any missed out from that list feel free to let me know.

zip: I think it could use a better NPOV and less embellishment, but it’s hard for me to point at any specifics (it’s just sort of the “vibe” I feel reading through the article)

(also, for future reference, raddle has an f/wikipedia that would probably be better suited for any future wikipedia-related posts)

Mapping the anarchist media landscape

Submitted by scouserisibilities 3 months ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/207637/mapping-the-anarchist-media-landscape>

I came up with these lists linked below to encourage myself to read more long-form non-fiction articles, to draw experience from, and then eventually to submit articles to the publications myself. Plus, I wanted to learn about the media landscape of mainstream & radical media projects.

If peeps find the lists useful and can think of any more names of publications to add to them, or suggestions for reorganizing them, just let me know or hit the little ‘writer’s pen’ symbol and submit an edit directly:

https://thelul.org/library/radical-nonfiction-writing-markets

https://thelul.org/library/zine-resources

https://thelul.org/library/list-of-publications-accepting-longform-narrative-non-fiction-submissions

https://thetedkarch’ve.com/library/where-to-read-and-submit-nonfiction-articles

Part of the work of researching for these lists was categorizing the original source of every text on The Ted K Archive:

https://thetedkarch’ve.com/library/the-ted-k-archive-sources

I’ve started the process of doing this for The Anarchist Library too, by doing ‘importxml’ on every library text link in a spreadsheet. If anyone knows a quicker way and wants to help that’d be great too.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1P0m-um_hkhzbCfqI2KTtblVSzYf27bNOa5w6xq6FM10

I think the ‘radical writing markets’ page could make for a good page to copy onto the bookshelf wiki and adapt. That way, when a self-published author asks why their text hasn’t shown up on the library, there’d be a good resource to link them.

Success Story by Billy Burg

Post Link:
<principiadiscordia.com/bip/33.php>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 4 months ago in Comics

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Comics/206860/success-story-by-billy-burg>

Source: Black Iron Prison — Page 33 & Days of War, Nights of Love

So, what do you do?

I’ve gone from doing tree sits, to zine archiving, to zine making, to Wordpress blogging, to youtubing, to book editing, to various niche texts archiving, to now article writing.

I’d be curious if anyone has experience writing stories for your local newspaper or trying to sell your writing to various outlets. What publications do you love and think are worth learning from, and why?

I created these lists linked below to encourage myself to read more articles, gain experience from them, and eventually submit articles to them.

If peeps find the lists useful and can think of any more names of outfits to add to them, or suggestions for reorganizing them, just let me know or hit the little ‘writer’s pen’ symbol and submit an edit directly:

Look forward to the discussion :)

Mom come pick me up, I’m in a K hole.

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=oVIkboeONQY>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 4 months ago in ACAB

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/ACAB/206686/mom-come-pick-me-up-i-m-in-a-k-hole>

List of Publications Accepting Longform Narrative Non-Fiction Submissions

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/list-of-publications-accepting-longform-narrative-non-fiction-submissions>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 4 months ago in Writing

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Writing/206590/list-of-publications-accepting-longform-narrative-non>

I came up with this list to encourage myself to read more longform literary articles to draw experience from. Then eventually to submit articles to myself.

If peeps find this list useful and can think of any more names of outfits to add to it, or suggestions for reorganizing it, just let me know or hit the little ‘writer’s pen’ symbol and submit an edit directly.

Zine Resources

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/zine-resources>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 4 months ago in Zines_and_Publications (edited 7 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Zines_and_Publications/206588/zine-resources>

This is a work-in-progress wiki page. Feel free to click here, or the ‘writer’s pen’ symbol to make edits.

Hope it helps :)

Broken Pencil Is Done

Post Link:
<thegrindmag.ca/broken-pencil-is-done/>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 4 months ago in Zines_and_Publications

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Zines_and_Publications/206531/broken-pencil-is-done>

The Hunt for America’s Smartest Serial Killer

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=wkVygetgeRY>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 4 months ago in videos (edited 9 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/videos/206059/the-hunt-for-america-s-smartest-serial-killer>

Here’s a darkly amusing sequence of events:

~2015: The Anarchist Library starts platforming eco-extremist texts.

2023: The Ted K Archive is created with the help of an ex-librarian from T@L.

The archive hosts rare writing by Ted K, like his journals, with the hope that once people read Ted’s motivations, they’ll be more likely to turn away from anti-tech ideology.

2025: AI like ChatGPT and Grok quotes from The Ted K Archive for people researching Ted.

A three-million-subscriber YouTube channel creates a video on Ted K encouraging people to read Ted’s journals and citing the archive in the sources linked in the description box.

In one of the URL links for the archive the end of the URL shows "?utm_source=chatgpt.com"

The youtube channel doesn’t offer any links to find out who the people are who contributed to the video...

Anyways, there looks to be a good book out that covers the story of one of the eco-extremist dudes who was convicted for planting b’mbs at public bus stations.

It’s called ‘Siete Kabezas’ by Iván Poduje, but it’s in Spanish & I think only available to buy in Chile:

https://uqbareditores.cl/7-kabezas

The Vicious Circle

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/ali-winston-the-vicious-circle>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 5 months ago in Fascism

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Fascism/204550/the-vicious-circle>

On Donald Trump’s Coattails, America’s Neo-Nazi Youth Is Flowering in Active Clubs and the Prison System

White supremacists and right-wing extremists are working out, doing time, and radicalizing ever more young men

Some rambling thoughts on weird situations

Submitted by scouserisibilities 5 months ago in lobby (edited 11 hours later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/204549/some-rambling-thoughts-on-weird-situations>

Content warning: Mentions of abusive relationships and pedos.

Half a year ago, I helped a woman see sense to break up with her pedo boyfriend and move out of the house, which I’m happy about.

The website and social media that this couple used for 2 years or so – to rally people to support the guy with help and donations in challenging the police allegations of CP possession – was taken down. I then archived a fair amount of it in a research text dump, so that people could look back and decide what lessons to learn.

In the long list of bizarreness they displayed to the world, there was; the cult of martyrdom, the machismo, the conspiracies, the demanding ‘thoughts and prayers solidarity’, insulting anyone who held back out of scepticism and the lack of thorough questioning when the guy brought up a story about being sent to prison for trying to smuggle a kid across the border in the back of a van for what he claimed were noble reasons.

However, the woman asked me to take it down as she didn’t want to see this pedo dudes writings out there, so I did.

***

Almost a year ago, I witnessed a bizarre set of interrogation videos where a dude filmed his girlfriend saying she wants to kill herself while he berates her from off camera.

7 popular reddit threads were created at that time on places such as r/vegan, r/cringe, r/women, r/VictoriaBC, r/abusiverelationships & r/EiselMazard. Plus, 1 kiwifarms thread was created.

Vegan Gains watched the videos on stream, then ScareTheater created a video essay.

I have the list of titles of 35 videos that this dude Eisel uploaded to his channel at that time, and 16 of them downloaded. However, I doubt I’ll ever see any good reason to watch them again or use them as inspiration for any creative projects. I just look back on it as a bizarre time when Eisel was outdoing himself in how much of a jerk he can be.

***

Around 10 years ago, I was sitting in a social centre in Cardiff successfully helping talk one guy out of his primitivist sympathies. Another guy called Jay that was there, unfortunately stuck to his misanthropic primitivist outlook on life. He died not long after and I learned later that he’d created a pamphlet promoting terrorists who perpetrate misanthropic attacks and whose aim it is to kill or maim random people.

Today, I’m trying to write an essay partly motivated by this memory. However, I can’t really say anything more until I know everyone I’ve interviewed is happy with the final product.

This memory also partly motivates me to archive texts related to the Unabomber in a roundabout way. I wish I lived in a world where a lot more people desired to live an ascetic low-impact lifestyle, like living part of the year in a cabin in the woods, but ideally for noble reasons, not the misanthropic reasons of the Unabomber or Jay. So, the fact that that desire is tied up with people like Ted in the public’s imagination means that it feels worthwhile to explore what all Ted’s motivations were so that I can separate my own desires from his and be able to get that across to people, even if that’s just ‘subtextually’.

Therefore, I use Ted as a way of really thinking through why various people are attracted to that life, so that I can sort out the interesting motivations from the more juvenile and cruel. That way I can then learn to spot the signs of that in others, and so hopefully form cool connections over my lifetime with that knowledge.

I want to see luddite groups flourishing that have to do with using tech sparingly, according to a metric like minimum viable usefulness. So, in forming the groups and connections I want to see in the world, I feel like it’s useful to work out how to best disambiguate those ideas from anti-tech people’s projects.

Finally, just because I can’t instantly know at a glance whether someone will be an interesting or reactionary person, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth it to me to explore various philosophies and psychologies deeply so that I can tell in conversations with people sooner rather than later if I hadn’t done that reading.

That’s all my rambling thoughts for now anyways.

A Women’s History of Sex (1987)

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/harriett-gilbert-christine-roche-a-women-s-history-of-sex>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 5 months ago in books

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/books/204485/a-women-s-history-of-sex-1987>

Sexual politics began long before the term was coined. In this amusing and authoritative history of western women’s sexuality, we see how sex, from courtship to consummation, has been pursued and perused in numerous ways, by a variety of means, in different places and times.

The chastity belt, the bidet, the pill each has profoundly altered our sexual behaviour, as have cultural, political and religious revolutions. From Sparta to the Swinging Sixties, from Christianity to the Women’s Movement, this book follows the beleaguered path of women’s experience of sex and finds some signs that we’re finally coming through.

Written by Harriett Gilbert, A Women’s History of Sex is beautifully-and hilariously illustrated throughout with original cartoons by Christine Roche.

If you had my background and interests, how would you pursue my goals differently?

Submitted by scouserisibilities 6 months ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/203728/if-you-had-my-background-and-interests-how-would-you-pursue>

Having been on this forum for years, I hope some people have a detailed enough grasp of my interests for this to spark an interesting discussion.

So, some of my interests include:

Writing books & articles
Helping set up two new online archives
Converting lots of books
Contributing to The Ted K Archive
Setting up lots of sub-reddits
Longboarding on walks with my dog, etc.

I’ll expand on my interests below and would love to hear suggestions on different ways to approach them moving forward. For example, do you think archivists should buy the ‘fucktedk.com’ domain to mirror the TKA site, providing a domain that some might find more ideologically comfortable for sharing links? I like using fuck in funny ways like ‘go fuck a suck’, but I don’t know if just ‘fuck person x’ is too macho SA coded, like ‘get fucked’, I don’t know, maybe I’m overthinking it.

Writing books & articles

I’m currently writing an article based on new research & interviews. I’d like to do more of this.

I got interested in this niche field of academia warning against anti-tech reactionaries which I’ve helped contribute to in a very small way, e.g. I helped an anarchist author with the research for his writing by scanning up old ‘Green Anarchist’ journal issues from my national library.

Hopefully, I’ll be finished writing about anti-tech reactionaries soon with one final essay that might drive a bit of popular interest. I’ve been able to do a lot of comparing and contrasting the various ways people understand our biological and cultural evolution and what lessons we can draw from it in our political struggles.

Finally, here is a list of my past books, articles and blog posts, to give a flavor of my interests:

Books

Captain Hotknives Greatest Hits, The Sleeve Notes
The Unfinished Autobiography of Aileen Wuornos
The Ultimate Ted Kaczynski Research Document

Personal Essays

Early beginnings…
An experience with solidarity activism
The Personal is Political – Reflections on Mike Mills film Beginners
Everyone has to deal with the absurd…
A Love Letter To Failing Upward
Life’s Lessons & Abolitionist Politics
My Last Will & Testament as a Vegan Atheist

Social Movement Theory

An Experimental List of Anarchist Principles
On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence
Why Ecocentrism Is Essential
Why I think anarchists should not abandon all left-wing mass movements
Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline
The bizarre case of vegan Neo-Nazis & deprogramming vegans who glorify violence
Vegan Grey Areas & Campaign Allies
Common Allies ‎
Contentious Allies
Freeganism
Companion Animal Care
Free Animal Postings
Racism in Veganism

Philosophy

My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics
How to simply explain what veganism is and argue for it
The Many Approaches to Advocating & Explaining Veganism
Flowchart of Animal Rights Caucuses
Re; ‘Freeganism Is Evil’ – A Pro-Freegan Story Analogy
How To Advocate To Pro-Vegan Leftists (Mock Vaush Debate)
The Vaush Debate That Never Was
The Vegan Inception of Vaush

Guides

Starting a YouTube Channel

Debate

Ethics of Direct Action Debate & Research
An Open Letter to John Zerzan (A Primitivist Philosopher of Technology)
A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More
Arguments For Re-Introducing Predators Into Damaged Eco-Systems
A Collaboratively Edited Discussion on Anti-Tech Politics
Debate On How Best To Explain What Veganism Is
Response Video to ‘Veganism vs. Animal Liberation’
Responding to claims I’ve been attempting anarchist and/or anticiv entryism
Is Freeganism a Positive Form of Advocacy for Legal Animal Rights?
The Fox Hunting Debate

Archiving

Comedy Archive
The Life and Times of Andy Kaufman
Andy Kaufman’s Full Discography
Anarchism Around The World
My recommendations for two anarchist libraries
Some of The Anarchist Library’s Controversially Published & Deleted Texts
A text dump on various library publishing ethoses
Dumpster Diving the Anarchist Library Text Bin – Part One
Anarchist/Socialist Periodicals
New Anarchist/Socialist Periodicals
History of Anarchism among newly emigrated communities to America
Revolutionary Subversive Faction-Commando Unabomber Communiques
Adam Lanza’s Call to Anarchy Radio
The Communications of Ted Kaczynski as part of his Terror Bombing Campaign
The Bombings & Communications of Ted Kaczynski as part of his Terror Campaign (1978–1995)
Updated Playlist: Deleted Vegan Video Archive
The Vegan Vanguard Podcast

History

The Life of Aileen Wuornos Podcast Episode Promo
Case Revisited – Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s Lingering Influence in 2021
The Unabomber & Quiet Neighbors
Primitivists Love-Hate Relationship With Anthropologists
Does the Unabomber have any relevance to anarchism?

Projects

A failed attempt to get Ted K to wax autobiographically
The Great British Reuse Map
Mutual advertising opportunities between Freegle & free item Facebook groups
UK Travel Master List of Resources; Free/cheap things to do and campaigns to help.
UK Cycle Touring in Solidarity; A How To – #0 Summary
UK Cycle Touring in Solidarity; A How To – #1 Travel Prepping
List of UK campaign groups & how to keep their information updated.
UK Campaign Groups
Food not Bombs – UK Chapters
UK campaign/communalist event calanders, event location maps & tables
Introducing a new variety of vegan sub-Reddits
Overview of Pirate Radio Stations & Shows
Top 25 Radical Radio Stations & Shows
An Overview of UK Talk Shows
List of Call in Talk Shows for Advocacy
New: Campaign Networking & Collaborating Space
New Beginnings: A Vegan Video Resource Library
Life & Projects Update
Activist Journeys Compilation Zine – A call out for radical submissions
Catalogue of Radical Zines – Call out for submissions

Helping set up two new online archives

I’m helping set up an online archive on ‘Communalism’ which will archive lots of texts on the ideology & practical realities of the federation in Northern Syria, though I do intend to petition for the inclusion of lots of essays critiquing them also, such as the application of ‘tekmil’ which has its roots in more authoritarian socialism.

Plus, I’m in talks with the Radical Anthropology Group about setting up an online archive of radical anthropology texts. I’m not 100% sure what I think about their politics yet, but I like that many of the members have desired to spend years of their lives living with hunter-gatherers writing ethnographies for their PhDs.

Converting lots of books

A librarian from T@L asked me to convert two books for the library & Contagion Press which I did.

The editors of the Contemporary Anarchist Studies series for Manchester University Press also sent out an email asking for book suggestions for publishing, such as a new compilation of old essays or out of copyright text. So, I had lots of texts I’d digitized to suggest them which they appreciated.

Plus, I put out a call out to find others interested in discovering rare and out of print books for republishing.

Contributing to The Ted K Archive

The Ted K Archive was chosen as a name partly to troll Ted K fans by claiming to have ‘the’ best collection of reading on Ted K, when the collection includes tons of critiques of the dude. The dig worked as it rustled lots of Ted K fans jimmies:

hey i think i’ll start an archive called thenoamchomskyarchive.com and fill it with ... writing that noam chomsky would obviously not want attached to his name ... ted k is an actual person (an anarchist POW, no less) who you’re shitting all over.

Similarly, as far as I’m aware, The Anarchist Library was chosen as a name partly to troll social-anarchists by claiming to have ‘the’ best collection of anarchist reading when the collection of texts they approve is biased in favor of individualist and anti-civ texts over social-anarchist texts.

The Ted K Archive isn’t just a dig at Ted K fans though. There’s plenty of reasons why pro-tech people would find it interesting to have all Ted’s texts neatly archived e.g. someone:

writing a biography on Ted
researching entryists into green anarchist communities
writing academic essays on the upsurge of anti-tech reactionaries and it’s parallels to mainstream politics
archivists interested in library archiving ethoses, so creating a seperate archive distinct from the anarchist library
true crime readers
terrorism studies researchers
etc. etc.

It is comical how calling the website ‘the’ Ted K archive and including social anarchist texts has made it possible for teddites to relate to how pissed off the social anarchists were when ITS texts got added to ‘the’ anarchist library.

It’s obviously a funny dig at Ted K fans to claim to have ‘the’ best collection of reading on Ted K, when the collection includes tons of critiques of the dude. I don’t think anarchy deserves that kind of dig, but I do think Ted K does.

So, for anyone who argues The Ted K Archive ought make a long statement on its front page about the librarians being critical of Ted’s anti-tech ideas, then I would love to read an argument for why The Anarchist library ought not also make a long statement on its front page about their library archiving ethos skewing more anti-civ.

Personally, I don’t believe The Ted K Archive is obligated to make a statement like that on its front page as:

Trolling Ted K fans is infinitely funnier and more deserved than what T@L has done in trolling social anarchists.
Like T@L’s relationship to social anarchism, the TKA isn’t 100% antagonistic to all Ted’s ideas. I recognize Ted has some good critiques of the average psychology of both left and right wing people. And so the usefulness in forming smaller groups with different objectives to the entire left-wing or the entire right-wing, optics be dammed.

I just see the value in small far-left groups helping draw people over to a radically different world over a long period of time by agitating from the radical fringe. So, making centre-left policies look more reasonable in comparison to centrist politics, then the tried and tested policies of the future, then far-left, then far-left and anarchist.

The Ted K Archive is a pretty neutral sounding name e.g. The Ted Kaczynski Papers is also pretty neutral sounding, which is the name of a university archive that wasn’t created for the purpose of supporting Ted’s ideology. The head archivist Julie Herrada is likely a left-anarchist who enjoyed painstakingly archiving and cataloguing a collection of texts related to Ted.
The Ted K Archive aims to serve a similar role to the existence of other archives dedicated to tragic events e.g. 9/11. Ideally, a 9/11 memorial archive would include documents on (a) the terrible harm to families and firefighters as the long-term victims of that attack, as well as (b) documents explaining the grievance narratives of the perpetrators, such as documents on imperialist wars, intelligence agency tricks, extractive corporations, etc. Plus, (c) documents on actions that could be pursued going forward, to try to reduce the likelihood of similar tragic events happening again.

So, with regards to Ted, archivists see part of the solution to reducing the emergence of similarly alienated people like Ted as; agitating for rewilding at least 50% of the world, boycotting animal agriculture and living a minimum viable use tech lifestyle to partly provide this incentive, plus forming housing and worker co-ops for kids general well being growing up.

One goal that motivates me to archive texts related to Ted is wishing I lived in a world where a lot more people desired to live an ascetic low-impact lifestyle, like living part of the year in a cabin in the woods, so the fact that that desire is tied up with Ted in the public’s imagination means that it feels worthwhile to explore what all Ted’s motivations were. So that I can separate my own desires from his and be able to explain that well to people.

Plus, more than just caring about explaining to people, I use Ted as a way of really thinking through why various people are attracted to that life and sorting out the interesting motivations, from the more juvenile and cruel, learning to spot the signs of that in others, and so hopefully forming cool connections over my lifetime with that knowledge.

I want to see luddite clubs flourishing that have to do with using tech sparingly, according to a metric like minimum viable usefulness. So, in forming the groups and connections I want to see in the world, I feel like it’s useful to work out how to best disambiguate those ideas from anti-tech people’s projects.

Finally, just because I can’t instantly know at a glance whether someone will be an interesting or reactionary person, doesn’t mean it isn’t worth exploring various philosophies and psychologies deeply so that I can tell in conversations with people sooner rather than later if I hadn’t done that reading.

Setting up lots of sub-reddits

I like spreadsheeting lists of shit to de-stress, so I spreadsheeted a tonne of anarchist and vegan sub-reddits in order to create master lists of suggested anarchist and vegan sub-reddits.

As I was doing that I thought it might be nice to try and fill in the gaps of anarchist themed sub-reddits that didn’t already exist, so I created a tonne of sub-reddits, such that today I’m the moderator of 187 subreddits, tho only ~10 of them are currently above 100 members. By first glance of the name of the sub-reddits this is how they’d break down:

Anarchy: 74
Other: 44
Vegan: 43
Anti-tech: 13
Socialist: 10
Pro-tech: 3

It’s been argued claiming branding real estate of ideologies I don’t like, making clear it’s a critique space and posting highly critical essays of said ideology is entryism. However, I disagree. Entryism is pretending to support an ideology and trying to redefine it to be something different whilst pretending to be a member.

Longboarding on walks with my dog, etc.

This is just a fun one to end on. I want to get better at breaking and doing pivots and shit, any suggestions?

Wendy Williams: I’m Living Like a Convicted Criminal ... Thanks to a Draconian Guardianship

Post Link:
<tmz.com/2025/02/12/saving-wendy-williams-lives-like-a-prisoner-in-guardianship/>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 6 months ago in News

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/News/203301/wendy-williams-i-m-living-like-a-convicted-criminal-thanks>

totalism: Almost no one is allowed to visit her. No one can call her. She can make calls out, but that’s it. She has no access to the internet

ah, state-sponsored torture. this is presumably how the 90 year olds are treated in that building too

kin: Death...to all of them

Ceol_Frith_faisisteach: Who ?

MountainEntity: Is it just me or do those images make it seem like this is going to be a comedy?

The Whales’ Song — Story by Dyan Sheldon & Illustrated by Gary Blythe

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/the-whales-song>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in art

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/art/202914/the-whales-song-story-by-dyan-sheldon-illustrated-by-gary>

Children’s story book.

‘One of the most beautiful, poetic, mysterious and overwhelming picture books you are ever likely to read ... a dazzling and haunting book.’

Illustrations by Gary Blythe for Le jardin de Mérédith

Post Link:
<archive.org/details/lejardindemeredi0000shel>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in art (edited 1 minute later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/art/202864/illustrations-by-gary-blythe-for-le-jardin-de-me-re-dith>

scouserisibilities reply to a deleted post:

I’m struggling with this feeling atm. Children’s books definitely sold me a raw deal lol. I grew up believing a world was more easily within reach where nature was treated as sacred, communities cared for each other, and wisdom came from those who had lived in harmony with the land for generations. Stories made it feel possible, like kindness, courage, and respect for the earth could shape a better future. But now, I’m stuck in the gap between those ideals and the world as it is. How do I find hope when some of the visions that shaped me now feel naive? How do I figure out what parts of those childhood dreams are worth fighting for and which were just comforting illusions? Just gotta put one foot in front of the other I guess.

Adaption on a ‘stonetoss is a nazi’ adaption [Labeled “Liberal Entryist”]

Linked Image:
<uploads-cdn.raddle.me/submission_images/e7a4101a5729118b4fda08eb7033846c8fb3333316693cbe6ffbe3bde9dae8f8.jpg>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in memer (edited 9 hours later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/memer/202831/adaption-on-a-stonetoss-is-a-nazi-adaption>

Just throwing a little shade at primitivists for sometimes being a gateway to more reactionairy politics.

The idpol t-shirt was in the original which could maybe do with changing.

NamiFromOnePiece: The guy next to the “an”com looks like a steampunk capitalist, which is extremely apt.

Also “the point of anarchism is that workers take over control of production”, lmao, that’s communism...

asterism: Yeah zoe baker strikes again.

Literally the worst

secco: Why stop there. I’ll throw a little shade at Kropotkin for sometimes being a gateway to anarchist communism, which was then a gateway to anarchist syndicalism, which was then a gateway to a Bookchinite anarchism influenced by left communism and workerism, which was then a gateway to Jacques Camatte, a gateway to anarchist primitivism, a gateway to the appropriation of Ted Kaczynski, a gateway to more reactionary politics.

It’s gateways and pipelines all the way down. That’s how ideas work. Why would Kropotkin do this to us?

scouserisibilities: Solid relativizing, I’m convinced. I’ll pass the word along to anti-civs that they don’t need to be concerned about anarcho-municipalism sometimes being a gateway to maoism. All meming and throwing a little shade should be done away with as pointless infighting. Those who found their way to anarchy because they saw it as a vibrant discourse are just debate bros anyway, fckn shitlibs.

fallenalice: we also could try not to feed alienation between two groups that already tend to hate eachother despite everything they have in common...

scouserisibilities: Adaption on a ‘stonetoss is a nazi’ adaption.

Just throwing a little shade at primitivists for sometimes being a gateway to more reactionairy politics.

The idpol t-shirt was in the original which could maybe do with changing.

ALT-text: An anarcho-communist gets into a tug-of-war with a capitalist over whether technological society can exist without stratified hierarchies. The anarcho-communist gets joined by a transhumanist anarchist, then sees a primitivist pulling in the opposite direction, so asks a surprised ‘huh?’

yava_bug: So anti-civ is bad because... they disagree with ancoms? The people whose whole position is “Oh we’re anarchists, that’s why we think everyone should continue producing and working and laboring for the ‘greater good’?”

I don’t see how this meme is anything except for shaming anti-civs into joining your civilized heirarchy...

SnowyKnave: you could make the same meme but with the tug of war over “factory bad” and transhumanists and communists joining the capitalists.

the meme says nothing and is Ishkah propagating more green scare propaganda.

scouserisibilities: You could draw a tug of war like you said except there would be no surprise element because primitivists already know most other anarchists aren’t against the production line in principle.

The reason I put the anarchopac tweet on the left is to get people thinking about the conflict between most anarchist and liberals being that most anarchists argue we can still make cool shit, just without the unjustified hierarchy. So, the debate is around whether anarchists can make cool shit. Then, when the transhumanist and primitivists enter the picture it’s a reminder that there’s a deeper level conversation about how important some people rate ‘making cool shit’ is in the first place.

I just think unlikely intellectual allies situations are interesting for contemplating how ideologies differ e.g. in some ways primitivists don’t even feel that radical, like in this case where they just bite the bullet on liberals’ critiques of anarchists. I find them doing that annoying cause I like tech, but I get it’s one part of a bigger picture.

An uncomfortable intellectual allies situation for most social anarchists is with anti-tech vanguardists like Ted, how we have a similar ‘hopefulness’ that situations can change dramatically.

Quoting Ted: “Never lose hope, be persistent and stubborn and never give up. There are many instances in history where apparent losers suddenly turn out to be winners unexpectedly, so you should never conclude all hope is lost.”

So, most social anarchists and anti-tech vanguardists believe violent revolution is justified, possible & desirable (obvs the type of revolution each of us desires is very different). Whereas liberals & most anti-tech anarchists simply don’t for very different reasons again.

ziq: Stop pretending to talk for anarchists shitlib

ziq: No, anti-civs are bad because we work with capitalists to shut down the nuclear waste dump? if that transhumanist’s nuclear sludge covered hat is any indication anyway.

wearelegion: for the greater good of the tau empire!

EmberGrove: I hate stonetoss so i down vote would be better on a sub for subverting stonetoss comics

Is what specific posts users are downvoting and upvoting available to mods? And if not, could the webdevs make it available for a while?

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in meta (edited 1 minute later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/meta/202717/is-what-specific-posts-users-are-downvoting-and-upvoting>

I know it’s metadata about peoples interests some people might prefer to keep private, but if feels like Ruminator has made some people paranoid, which has led to mods banning the wrong person for mistaken reasons in at least one case I know of. Tbf I don’t know how big an issue this is, or how much effort it would entail to make votes available to mods. Just a thought.

Source

ziq admin: No.

Dylan Moran — The Expedition | Dark-Comedy Radio Play (July, 2010)

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=VUFgQ-9YTEo>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in comedy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/comedy/202680/dylan-moran-the-expedition-dark-comedy-radio-play-july-2010>

Anarcho-Nihilism Review || The Ideology of Insurrection by Jreg

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=T5woPQU2uug>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in videos

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/videos/202654/anarcho-nihilism-review-the-ideology-of-insurrection-by-jreg>

Timestamps:

0:00 Intro
0:26 Part 1: Russian Nihilism
2:24 Part 2: Post-Leftism
3:43 Part 3: Post-Modernism and Negation
5:31 Part 4: Insurrection
7:12 Part 5: Climate DeNihilism || No Global Future
9:13 Part 6: Struggle As An End
9:49 Part 7: A Post-Modern Right
12:11 Part 8: Praxis
13:24 Conclusion
14:25 Song

footnotes

Eco-nihilism (according to eco-nihilists rofl) is not so much “do nothing” as it is “focus on local communities and maintaining autonomy in the face of inevitable climate catastrophe”

I got the meme at the end from here: / cfpzbs6ndho

totalism: (teamspeak voice) User in your channel has been banned from the server. Reason: “Posting Jreg”

EmberGrove: anarchy is about doing vast amounts of trolling against those who oppress us x3 uwu owo

What big desires do you hold that have always been a minority viewpoint among anarchists?

Linked Image:
<uploads-cdn.raddle.me/submission_images/8108007748a74d42647f0f9800ee0ab5506594aa8b827d36c12a46b0f817f99f.png>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in Anarchy (edited 1 hour later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/202653/what-big-desires-do-you-hold-that-have-always-been-a>

No answering; ‘I like marmite on toast, which most anarchists have always disliked’, you get the spirit of the question; ‘big desires’.

Also, do you hold any minority camp desires that non-anarchists try to tar all anarchists as believing in because they think it’s a silly or evil thing to desire? E.g. like in the meme below.

Mine would be if someone said, ‘You anarchists just want everyone to goof off more and live a low-impact lifestyle, swearing off lots of hedonistic pleasures that make life fun.’ I’d just be like, ‘Yes,’ and if they wanted to know why, I’d say, ‘Because tranquility is more important. Also, the hedonic treadmill is a thing, plus environmental destruction, etc., etc.’

I don’t know how minority that position is among anarchists, though. Maybe in the kind of extremes of asceticism that I think it’d be nice if a lot more anarchists desired e.g. having lots of hermit neighbors in the woods, where we’re all a fair distance away from each other but could meet up if we wanted to, hehe.

Lettuce_Vegan_: That’s pretty cool I think being a coomsumer is pretty bad. Like not enjoying a lot of the goods seems pretty valuable. I’m not super great as I enjoy social media and playing video games + occasionally magic the gathering with friends. But mostly of the consumer stuff is like why does it exist.

And to be fair if there were lots of cool vegans arround I prob wouldn’t use social media much and would try n get ppl to play outside games rather than Vidya.

For me it’s mostly like vegan stuff. It’s super important to me and pretty major conflict point regularly for me. To me none of the infrastructure n stuff is just. It’s more just interesting to be some criminal parasite trying to do what I think is good at the expense of society without some sort of positive program outside no cops and liberating animals.

irregular_expression: having lots of hermit neighbors in the woods, where we’re all a fair distance away from each other but could meet up if we wanted to

this sounds so nice

OdiousOutlaw: I don’t really care if anarchy makes the world “better” for most humans or not. It’s wholly irrelevant and a utilitarian distraction as to whether or not billions of lives are “improved” by anarchy (even though it would be better for life on earth in general, let’s be real). I like the idea more than this endless circle of compromise and willful submission, so it’s what I want.

Laws are a veiled threat and rights are a treat you get for compliance; I would absolutely commit more crimes for my own benefit if there weren’t cops around, though the idea that people would immediately descend into a Hobbesian free-for-all without rulers is absolute bullshit, I’m definitely deterred by legal constructs and sanctions. Leave that “Order through Anarchy” crap to the lefties and idealists; “human nature” doesn’t real one way or the other in this imaginary dichotomy of “selfishness vs selflessness”. Yes, I do want a world without law.

Eating animals bred in some industrial hellscape doesn’t make you like a hunter-gatherer or some survivor, it makes you dependent on a massive power structure and conveyor belt of unneeded suffering. No more of this “animals as a commodity” garbage. Death to economics and the nerds that gush incessantly about them.

Authority figures dying is incredibly cool, wholesome, and funny; regardless of their “revolutionary potential” or aspirations. More dead authoritarians, please.

Anarchy is ridiculous, unrealistic nonsense that will leave a messy power vacuum behind, but end goals and “visions” are for control freaks with a blueprint. As long as the anarchists doing the smashing had fun and leave a way for future anarchists to smash whatever’s built afterwards, who cares? So-called “failed projects” didn’t fail just because they’re impermanent. Embrace strife, harmony is a scam.

I’m never beating the “evil madman” allegations.

Crown_of_Frozen_Veggies: I want to form the dark paladins where our justice is perfect and supreme.

Jialunes: Tell me when you take members, I’ll gladly join!

Crown_of_Frozen_Veggies: Anyone can become one! As long as they have the heart. We are lone wolves. Friendly partners. Myriad connected souls. The dark paladins are always recruiting.

Jialunes: ⚔️🥷

Lettuce_Vegan_: What does justice mean to you? Not that I’m against justice or trying to argue mostly just curious

Crown_of_Frozen_Veggies: When you do something unforgivable you must be punished. There are cardinal offenses (these mostly entail intentionally and maliciously harming another animal) that cannot be ignored and the dark paladins will mete out relentless justice.

Lettuce_Vegan_: What are most of the cardinal offenses?

Also what do you think about the arguments for rehabilitation rather than punishment?

I don’t really have anything against punishment but I’m curious what ur argument is. It’s neat to see why ppl think things and hear them talk about how their values are formed and based.

Crown_of_Frozen_Veggies: Rape, pedophillia, child abuse.

I think victims should choose what happens to perpetrator. Rehabilitation is nice, but it is a mercy extended by the harmed.

Lettuce_Vegan_: Oh I c

Makes sense to me. Thx for sharing

What weapons do the paladins use?

Crown_of_Frozen_Veggies: Power fists! We punch holes right through evildoers!

Lettuce_Vegan_: BASED

naocat: i just want to raise aloft the ancient blade

Fool: Nothing is real!

It keeps touching me, inappropriately

scouserisibilities: No idea of the joke, can you give me a hint?

amenema: Anti-civ. The standard response usually being what about medicine??. Well what if civ causes the ails you need medicine for?? This is what anti-civ looks like.

totalism: The social production of disability and disease is obviously real. At the same time, it’s trivially true that not every single disability, injury, disease is caused by civilization. A related example is expecting that trans people should be okay with 110% leaning into the social model of gender instead of having say, HRT production. This is unreasonable. It’s very likely that it’s actually easier to have HRT production instead of convincing everyone not to be cissexist — in a world with no widespread communication medium no less

With that aside, the thing that repulses people the most from anti-civ positions is that it is peak compromise. We can’t have both interconnected society with technology capable of satiating infinite desires and relations free of domination at the same time, so choose one. It’s registers to me exactly like asceticism or quietism in that sense.

CaringIsCool: I don’t know if it’s always been a minority viewpoint among anarchists, but, for years, I’ve believed that the rich are the truly “crazy” ones, because their selfishness is self-destructive, while everyone else who’s been called “mentally-ill” or “crazy” do far less to hurt all life on earth.

Will someone please, gently, convince me I’m wrong to believe that rich people have a brain disease, a disease that makes them hurt all life on earth? (No one whose disagreed with me, so far, has convinced me there’s a flaw in my logic; I think a lot of them just wish they were rich, hurting other people like the vampires in the vampire stories.)

fallenalice: I guess that’s one way to put it... Sometimes i like to say that people are possessed by demons, not just rich people but almost everyone more or less, myself included. Maybe it sounds like Stirner’s ghosts but i don’t think it’s the same.

CaringIsCool: My big desire is an end to the vampire disease that the rich, clearly, have, and the beginning of an anarchist world. (I think we should search for a way to cure the brain disease rich people have; I’m not saying we should exterminate them.)

Exlurker: We can either try to build another Revolution which will get destroyed or we can be the Vanguard of Collapse which is the ‘main stage’ of Anarchy, not Humanity or even Animals.

One Earthquake does a hundred times more for Anarchy then any human.

burn the bread book’ twitter discourse...

Post Link:
<x.com/RegularSanStan/status/1876687999305687309>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in Twitter

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Twitter/202556/burn-the-bread-book-twitter-discourse>

ziq: they have to stop letting just anyone publish anything on this damn site. its not only embarrassing & unethical, its an insult to all anarchists because we’re directly associated with this. modern medicine. weelchairs. racist. sexist. pure individualism. the great Kropotkin rolls in his grave. tHiS iS EcO-fAsCisM!

Bezotcovschina: This shouldn’t be surprising in any way, but still sad shit

ziq: This is eco fascism

ziq: Also, hamas

destroy_yourcomputer: pretty confidently incorrect there

totalism: I think this is great actually. Bread Alienates Us From XYZ is actually a really good argument to persuade people to stop caring about being alienated from whatever.

Anyway, I don’t really disagree with the whole people feeding themselves bit but the way that it is phrased does make it sound like a parody of Milton Friedman because it implies that like, no one every collaborates on food production which I don’t think is what ziq is implying, actually.

If anything this is a thoroughly Marxist (neutral affect) text phrased like it was written by a libertarian (neutral affect) taken to primitivist conclusions (kind of not surprising affect). We can’t have complex food production without markets, which are alienating and exploitative and distance us from nature, ergo people feed themselves. Feel free to accuse me of reading into this too much.

Two anarchy-related archives have reached their two-year anniversary!

Post Link:
<thelul.org/special/index>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in lobby (edited 6 hours later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/202511/two-anarchy-related-archives-have-reached-their-two-year>

This announcement was just posted to The Library of Unconventional Lives:

2 Year Anniversary Announcement

As this project comes to its second anniversary, we have to acknowledge collaborators and views on this project haven’t been as forthcoming as we hoped.

This situation might change in the future, as archivists who have helped out on this project also helped secure funding towards developing a classic forum board called Radical Libraries. When the forum is up and running it could provide the boost this archive needs by being signposted on a single website discussion space for a few different radical libraries. However, finding dedicated web developers to work on this has also been slow going.

If anyone would like to help make this happen, please consider joining the group working on this here: <af2c.org>

Or, donate here: <fundrazr.com/anarchf2c>

Or, simply help introduce more people to this archive by sharing texts from this library or sharing posts from our social media: <twitter.com/thelibul> & <reddit.com/r/TheLUL>

If you like the optics of this website being able to be found at its own dedicated web domain (thelul.org) and you are optimistic the plucky site will be able to go on to big things by people only needing to remember how to type in the short URL, then perhaps with your donation you could leave a note saying this donation is a contribution towards domain costs.

If not enough interest is forthcoming this may be the last year we can be found at <thelul.org>. After a few months of being redirected to <thelul.radicallibraries.com> the latter sub-domain would then go on to be the only place people can find this archive.

A similar announcement was also posted to Steal This Wiki, where the only changes were that; the social media posts mentioned that can be shared are: <twitter.com/stealthisw> & <reddit.com/r/StealThisBook>

Plus where it’s mentioned the new domain may become <stealthiswiki.radicallibraries.com>.

The LUL archive is currently clogged up with a fair few communalist texts because the plan is to copy them over to a new Communalist Library currently in the works. Once the new library is set up most of those texts can then be deleted from TheLUL.

The Ted K Archive is also clogged up with a lot of anthropology texts because the plan is to copy them over to a new Radical Anthropology archive currently in the works. Once that online archive is set up, the anthropology texts may simply stay on The Ted K Archive however. This would be done in order to keep up the long running joke of trolling Ted K fans by building up an archive that has more suggested reading only very tangentially related to Ted K, than texts praising Ted K.

The Radical Anthropology Group hold the same philosophical foundation as Ted K, in that they believe reading about our genetic evolutionary drivers are key to understanding what kind of environment would provide us the most meaning in life. However, they differ strongly in whether our genetic nature is more rigidly noble, rigidly ambiguous, rigidly savage, or flexible between all three.

Israel-Hamas ceasefire in Gaza takes effect

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=vFvGKhNKyl8>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in News

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/News/202424/israel-hamas-ceasefire-in-gaza-takes-effect>

Here’s a niche debate on time abolition

Post Link:
<x.com/thelibul/status/1880916708497695211>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in debate

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/debate/202423/here-s-a-niche-debate-on-time-abolition>

EcoTechBro

Can someone tell me what time abolition looks like in an organized society?

And I swear to god, if it ends up just being “we do things when we want to instead of in accordance with the dictates of the ruling class” I am going to yell at you.

Rosa

If it’s anything other than that the discussion becomes an annoying and pointless. it’s a waste of time. Let’s talk about the theft of our time by compelled work and struggle to survive not the bollocks in these replies. Organised time doesn’t oppress anyone.

TheLUL

Counterpoint: Being a ‘time abolitionist’ can often just be an optically awful way of saying something meaningful e.g. that you’re very anti-accelerationist. Like you virtually never want to make ‘ends justify the means’ arguments because you’re sceptical we can know the ‘ends’.

Some accelerationists imagine we can reduce the amount of time everyone will have to live in capitalist societies by pushing down on the accelerator. Time abolitionists or anti-accelerationists want to question how liberatory holding this utilitarian mindset can truly be.

Rosa

We’ve shifted to time as in the time it takes to get to abolition of capitalism it seems. Which is an interesting and important conversation but quite separate from the question of if measuring time compels us to spend our time in any particular way which I don’t think it does.

I am concerned with the theft of time under the oppressive status quo as I know we all are. It is also the only part we can change after all. The amount of time we have doesn’t change however we describe it and how it’s described doesn’t compel us.

TheLUL

I really don’t like the optics of ‘time abolition’, however I also don’t think it’s reasonable to presume that most ‘time abolitionists’ want to do away with measurements. Not saying you’re saying that btw, just thinking outloud.

It would be like assuming most school abolitionists are simply anti-learning.

The philosophy of time is just really complicated, so it’s a discourse I’m interested in learning more about.

For example some indigenous people will have a perception of time that is based more on sun rise and sun set, so they experience time more flexibly, since time will feel like it’s going ‘slower’ or ‘faster’ depending on whether it’s winter or summer.

Plus, in relationship to oppressive work, it can have this extra dimension of oppression for how long parents are able to spare kids from this time perception of the rigid 24 hour clock. If before you were able to work in a field whenever you want and play, but now your mood of how happy you are is regulated by your ability to become aware of whether it’s getting to 5 or 6 o clock when your wage slave master can no longer keep you, then that adds an extra dimension of sadness to life.

One way of looking at it can also be like mental health advocates looking back at how tribes venerated mentally neurodivergent people vs. how we simply lock many up today that we don’t feel we have the time to deal with.

We should take the pros of the past of how tribes were able to value the difference they saw in people, plus the pros of the present in having a clear picture on how people become mentally neurodivergent today.

I’ll link below an essay I’m reading to understand a kind of philosophical critique of the idea that tribes managed to keep hold of a cohesive identity through shared time perception regardless of colonialism, it’s an example of a kind of time abolitionist over-optimism, but it’s still all interesting reading:

Time in a Complex Society

Source

totalism: Time abolition is like a leftcom/ultraleft argument that has seeped into postieism and from there into the general discourse. It’s, as far as I understand it, about the day/night cycle being cut up into individual time units so it can be sold as a commodity, think a 9–5 job, at the same time inciting productivism because this view incentivizes you to think of your free time as “empty hours” that you could be spending in a more “productive” way. Ergo abolish time.

Here’s a niche debate on ‘adopt don’t shop’ advocacy

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in debate (edited 7 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/debate/202320/here-s-a-niche-debate-on-adopt-don-t-shop-advocacy>

So the context to all this is that a vegan person called Melissa watched a video advocating ‘adopt don’t shop’ by a popular entertainment outlet, then comments under the video and share-posts it on twitter and Instagram with her critical comments.

So, she’s criticizing the people who made the video and anyone who resonates with the message.

Next, a past friend from college who has been following her on social media writes a response to her. Then, Melissa writes out this long blog post explaining her position in depth.

The Case Against Pet Ownership by Melissa

In this blog post, I share my reply to a former housemate from university who sent me Twitter comments and Instagram messages, namely:

“Melissa what the hell? This is the most extremist take I’ve ever heard and incredibly messed up. You were too smart to let some youtube psychobabble turn you into someone who makes these kind of comments...”

“Hmm so pigs can convey misery, suffering, and fear to humans but dogs “don’t care about the human ideas of family and love”? Your arguments make no sense”

Megan, I understand this may be this is the first time you’ve really thought through these concepts. You have said hurtful things in your Twitter and Instagram comments to me. I have every reason to simply delete your comments and ignore you, but I’m going to take the high road and offer an explanation.

What’s shown in nature documentaries is how I want animals to live. I think it is our responsibility as human beings to allocate as much of the planet’s surface as is possible to be like what is shown in documentaries so that animals can live their lives in a way that is meaningful for them.

Humans are animals, but we are endowed with cognitive abilities that are superior to any other animal on earth. We have complex language, we have culture, and we have built (and destroyed) civilizations. We have the ability to reason and use that reason for good rather than evil.

Unfortunately, much of what we do to animals is evil and has become so normalized that people don’t question it.

There are obviously basic similarities between the life cycles of humans and other animals: birth, childhood, adulthood, reproduction, death. Animals absolutely feel pain, fear, joy, and sorrow. However, animals have their own social lives and family structures (without interference from human interaction).

Wolves, for example, are predatory pack animals who love to hunt and fight with other wolves. Wolves compete to find mates and reproduce. Wolves raise their children, and the cycle begins again. Wolves are happy to live this way in the wild.

Think about what humans have done to wolves. The life of a dog is nothing like the life of a wolf in the wild. Humans have selectively bred wolves over generations to be tame enough, small enough, and cute enough to be playthings. We’ve even bred them so that their bodies are so far removed from nature that they experience serious health problems like breathing issues (Pugs), hip dysplasia and intervertebral disc disease (Beagle, Corgi, Shih Tzu, etc.), and sometimes they can’t even reproduce with one another (the French Bulldog, for example, is shaped in a way that it can’t even mount another Bulldog).

If a dog is able to reproduce, their mate is often chosen by another human being so that the babies are more valuable and can get sold off to humans. The dog doesn’t get to raise a family of pups—the pups get separated pretty soon after birth. Most of the time, not too long after they are puppies, humans remove their reproductive organs to make them more docile and to avoid them ever being able to reproduce. (Cats, too, as I’m sure you know. I think most people in America these days don’t even know what a cat in heat sounds like because they have their reproductive organs removed before they can even be “in heat.”)

Wolves in the wild roll around in the grass and dirt. They smell. They often have parasites and fleas. This just doesn’t fit with animals living in the homes of human beings where furniture has to be kept clean and free of fleas and dirt. We groom dogs and give them medicine to keep away parasites. They scratch at the floors and blankets on beds because that’s part of the behavior of wolves: they scratch and dig… but in a human home, they aren’t supposed to scratch, and they have nowhere to dig.

Wolves, like all wild animals, urinate and defecate wherever they please. This also is an issue for animals living in a human home, and they have to be trained NOT to pee or poo wherever and whenever they want to like they would in the wild. It’s a struggle and anyone who has owned animals know that it oftentimes doesn’t work and you end up cleaning pee and poo out of carpets. Anyone who has owned dogs or done any dog sitting knows the disgusting feeling of using a plastic baggy to pick up warm poo from the grass so that our parks and sidewalks don’t get covered in dog poo.

I’ve owned cats and I’m personally really disgusted that I had to spend so much time cleaning up cat poo from litter boxes, cleaning up kitty litter from crevices around the house, cleaning fur out of carpets, furniture, and clothes, etc. When my cats got older, especially, I had to clean up a lot of waste around the house. It’s just plain gross to have to clean up after animals, and we force them into this unnatural, uncomfortable lifestyle when all they really want to do is be outside, hunt, mate, and fight with one another.

Dogs are the obviously the most happy when they get to go to a dog park and sniff the butts of other dogs and mount other dogs. They’re pack animals and want to be around other animals of their own species, but most of the time they are sitting at home, alone, waiting for their owner to come home from work so that they can go outside and pee and maybe, if they’re lucky, see another dog.

This is not even mentioning the messed up reality that they don’t get to hunt for their food even though they’re naturally predatory animals. They’re fed mushed up remains from slaughterhouses (the body parts of pigs, cows, and chickens that humans don’t want to eat) on a schedule dictated by humans, their owners.

It’s all horrible, and I think people will all be better off when they can just GET REAL and admit that we naturally have an aversion to living amongst animals who, naturally, in the wild, are filthy and smelly. We should let animals live out their lives with other animals in their natural habitats: in the forests, in the deserts, and in the oceans.

And that’s just talking about household pets. Animal agriculture is a whole other level of human derangement, and you can watch a variety of documentaries about veganism: Cowspiracy, Earthlings, Vegucated, etc.

My response

First obvious question, on just a pragmatic level is it not irresponsible to just be brashly turning potential converts to veganism away in this manner? I.e. even if I agreed with her philosophy on not rescuing dogs from shelters to live in our personal homes, would the importance of raising this issue in order to disambiguate animal rights from pet ownership be worth it at this stage?

For example, Eisel’s talked about not helping shoppers when asked to reach for animal products from a high shelf, and just carrying on walking without even caring to explain why he won’t help. For me, that’s just the exact wrong image I want to impart of what veganism means, for me veganism is about building a better community social contract where no one you meet has ever taken the life of an animal arbitrarily or supported that action because it can help towards better human relationships.

So, whenever I’m critiquing someone, I always want to also be inviting a person over to my way of thinking. The circumstance in which I’d want to reserve the possibility of coming across as an asshole are wholly important conflict scenarios, like negotiating human rights with one another and where we’re on the brink of collectively game-changing achievements for animal rights and the battle lines are plain, like out fox sabbing against cruel sports.

Second question, is Melissa right on the issue of pet ownership? Criticizing people self-congratulating being able to rescue a dog from a shelter to live in a house that is still a cage in comparison to what a dog’s interests are in reality; to be able to roam all day, hunt, pick their own mate, like a wolf in the wild.

I think my answer to this is also no, I wouldn’t go as far as to use all the failings of man keeping dogs alive without being able to satisfy all their needs as a reason to deride anyone rescuing a dog from a shelter.

The part I liked about the original video being critiqued is, in the video, they basically say; ‘though it’ll be sad when your rescue animal dies, that you’ll have gotten to experience its whole life, and you’ll likely be open to wanting to experience that again’. So whether you rescue from a kill or no-kill shelter, you on average become this carrier capacity for rescues, which in the future could mean a dramatically reduced number of dogs left on the street or in shelters. Along with a change in the culture through people meeting the dog and you, those conversations happening that wouldn’t otherwise, where you’re able to advocate for ‘adopt don’t shop’, then we can potentially start to see a decline in the number of people breeding these animals.

Dogs also get people out in the countryside more, creating a demand for nature parks and in the future. A big paradigm shift might even be spurred on by an optimistic future vision of packs of sterilized feral dogs that we help be able to survive and roam on their own in managed wildlife habitats, with big fences so they can’t attack farmers sheep, regular feeding time, veterinary care, and shelter they can access from the rain, etc.

Finally, I think the article should have grappled with frequently asked questions with this issue, even if Melissa’s answer is simply that ‘we shouldn’t own dogs’, like what would her ideal solution be? Why is it better to discourage this practice of individuals rescuing dogs when it will just lead to more dogs getting killed?

An interesting comparison to bring up is video games as a way of getting across how shallow the relationship between man and dog often is. However, I still think it’s useful to paint a clear picture of the kind of life a dog could find meaning with a person in rare circumstances like living somewhere isolated and rural where farm dogs often take themselves on walks at night, or where the person works a job outdoors and is able to take the dog with them. Also, I know people who have simply got their dogs’ fallopian tubes tied so they can be at gatherings with other dogs, off the lead, getting into harmless scraps and fucking, without risking bringing more dogs into the world.

I do grant it’s a grey area for me. I struggle with basically ‘owning a slave’ in that my family has rescued a dog, and then I’ve become its main carer. But to whatever extent the dog is a slave, I’m still glad I’ve saved the ‘slave’ from possibly having been killed by a vet, or living a shittier life in the city with only a small park to go for walks in.

It crosses my mind all the time in the small experiences I have with my dog, about how I’m in control of this dog’s life and don’t wish to be. Like how the dog would ideally just spend virtually all it’s time outside running around a forest if I was capable of giving it that life. Or, just little things like, when I’m on a walk and trying to warn sheep of my approach so they don’t scatter at the last minute and lambs get separated from their mum, I make warning noises like ‘yeoooo yeooo’, which the dog then greatly enjoys joining in with, in barking a ton. Although obviously in her mind, she’s saying ‘let me at ‘em boss, let me at ‘em’ lol. I also sometimes longboard around the village with her at night and sometimes do this ‘yeoo’ call to encourage her to run faster on a section of road that we can go fast on, which I know makes her enjoy the run more for the excitement of running faster and evoking that idea of being in a chase. However, it crosses my mind every time ‘is the more authentic her just jogging along at her own pace?’ So, am I being a bad slave master? Anyways, just random thoughts.

Finally, I want to complete an off-road cycle tour of the UK with my rescue dog who doesn’t like people, which will likely be a bit challenging lol, but I’m going to plan out stops where I can take breaks and pay people to buy lentils for me and stuff. Hopefully, I enjoy the solitude, views, beaches, and forests, and the dog will become slightly better adjusted.

Nuremberg Diary by Gustave Mark Gilbert

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/gustave-mark-gilbert-nuremberg-diary>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in books

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/books/202221/nuremberg-diary-by-gustave-mark-gilbert>

I know I’m preaching to the choir here, but by the dead gods, conservatives & fascists are such pricks.

‘Goering was greatly bothered by the fact that his philosophy tied him to doing the bidding of a genocidal murderer. However, instead of acknowledging his philosophy was cruel, he doubled down in trying to figure out an angle for lessening his complicity in his own philosophy. He tried to reassure himself by laughing with a shit faced grin about how his politics was one of looking backwards (kings and renaissance), rather than trying to be an ethically upstanding person of the current or future.’

[Goering] was in a rather serious mood, seeking small consolation in his cynical fatalistic views. He called man the biggest Raubtier (beast-of-prey) of all, because he has the brains for large-scale destruction, while other beasts-of-prey merely kill to eat when they are hungry. He was sure that wars would become more and more destructive—it was all fate. There was an air of Gotterddmmerung in the ill-defined space of the darkened cell. (He had told the guard not to turn on the light.) One could almost fancy him saying his lines to the echoes of Wagner’s music. …

Goering’s Cell: Goering tried to be moderate in giving his reaction to Speer’s denunciations. “What a tragicomedy!— Don’t you think it’s funny?—I was hated and ordered shot by the Fuhrer at the end! If there is to be any denunciation of the Fuhrer, I was the one who had the first right to do so—not these others like Speer and von Schirach who were favored by the Fuhrer to the very end!—Where do they get off denouncing him like that? I didn’t do it, and I am the one who had the best right. But I didn’t do it because of the principle of the thing, that was all! ... Do you think I have any personal love for him?—Not in the least!—I assure you, it’s the principle of the thing!” (Psych, note: Substitute pose for principle.) “I swore my loyalty to him and I cannot go back on that. That has nothing to do with him as an individual. It is my principle that is in question. You must separate those two things. The same applies to von Schirach. He had no business calling Hitler a murderer.—All right, I know what you are going to say; it is true. But I mean he could have at least said it differently.

“But when I give my oath of loyalty, I cannot break it.— And I had a hell of a time keeping it too, I can tell you!— Just try being crown prince for 12 years some time—always loyal to the king, disapproving of many of his policies, and yet not being able to do anything about it, knowing at any moment that you might become king and have to make the best of the situation. But I couldn’t plot behind his back with poison gas or sticking briefcases with bombs under his arse and cowardly tricks like that.—The only thing I could have honorably done was to make an open break; to declare openly that I renounce my loyalty, and fight it out—.”

“You mean slap him in the face with your glove and challenge him to a duel?” I broke in.

“—Cast my gauntlet at his feet!” Goering corrected quickly, showing that I had read his chivalrous thoughts correctly, but had misplaced the century of his fantasies.

“Then it would have come to an open showdown.—But I couldn’t do that when we were in the middle of a four-front war—divide our forces by internal struggle. Suppose I’d tried after the Russian campaign went bad. Thousands would have joined me. But it would have meant chaos for Germany, and anyway he would have had Himmler and the SS behind him —it would have been no good. And of course, after the victorious French campaign, I would have been lucky to get a few hundred to join me, if I had been crazy enough to break with him then.—And as for trying it before the war—why, they simply would have thought I was sick in the head. They would have sent me to an asylum. No, I assure you, there was nothing I could do.”

“But don’t you know that history and your people would have thought better of you if you had said on the witness stand that you had kept your oath to Hitler, but Hitler betrayed you and the German people, just as von Schirach says?”

“Oh, no, there I understand German tradition better than you, believe me. It has not always been easy for German heroes, as I’ve told you, but they kept their loyalty just the same.”

“Don’t you think that all these medieval concepts of loyalty and nationalism are out-dated and that people will think differently in the future?”

“Well, then, let those who belong to the future think differently. I am what I have always been—‘the last Renaissance figure,’ if you please.” He smiled as he quoted his witness Koerner’s characterization of him, and I could have sworn that he had told Koerner to say that on the witness stand. “—You can’t expect me at the age of 52 to change my entire concept all of a sudden.”

It is evident that Goering is greatly bothered by the fact that as things stand now, he has confirmed his loyalty to a murderer, and is trying to figure out a new angle for his last stand.

Gay Skins — Class, Masculinity and Queer Appropriation

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/murray-healy-gay-skins>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 7 months ago in books

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/books/202164/gay-skins-class-masculinity-and-queer-appropriation>

Since their birth in the late 1960’s as a working class subcultural response to what was seen as a feminised, bourgeois-hippy parent culture, the skinhead has since held a semi-mythological status amongst the UK’s street tribes. But from the off, queer undercurrents inevitably ran through skinhead culture, as shaven heads, shiny DMs and tight Levis fed inevitably into fantasies and fetishes based around notions of ultra-masculinity. In this updated 1996 mini classic, Murray Healy looks into the myths and misapprehensions surrounding Gay Skins, exploring fascism, fetishism, class, sexuality and gender.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by totalism in A text dump on ‘The Intolerant Left’ by Theodopodopodus

BTW the research text dump was deleted at Rosa’s request and an update is provided here:

twitter.com/thelibul/status/1869096984461844759

Living with the Past, Living with Oneself; Mimesis, Sexuality and Death in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/andrew-lattas-living-with-the-past-living-with-oneself>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in books (edited 17 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/books/201846/living-with-the-past-living-with-oneself-mimesis-sexuality>

This is a super sad read:

When travelling in the bush, Melo would navigate around like a European, using binoculars she made from carved pieces of wood. She also built a camera and made people decorate themselves before lining up to be photographed. She claimed that when the photos were developed that people would see themselves with new white skins which they were to acquire. Monongyo described how:

She would make people stand up for a while and then tell them: “You can now be happy. Later I will wash [develop] this. When the film comes back, you can see these photos of ours and be happy. Now you must decorate yourselves good. You will see your skin and it will be as white as that of all white men. It will not come up black, like us natives. No way!” Their skin would come up white, like all you whites, and then they [Melo’s followers] could be happy.

I asked Monongyo if Melo said anything about how the photos would represent people’s hair or whether they had any thoughts about this. He replied: “The hair would not be like ours, it would look like that of yours. They [people in the photos] would come up like all whites and then all kinds of something [cargo] would come up.” Melo told people that if they did not get their photographs taken by her “then it would not be enough for their skin to change and for them to come up like all masta; they would stay as ol kanaka (natives).” Those whose skins remained dark would become the natives of the new race of white men; and their black skin and subordinate position would remain with them forever. Like other Kaliai cult leaders, Melo presented her work as people’s last chance to earn the right to enjoy a future European lifestyle. Her photos were not just representations of, but a means of producing a new white body for people. Monongyo explained it:

Yes, the photo would change their skin. For it is like this with this photo of theirs: she would wash this photo and after she washed it their skin would come up good. Now supposing some people were afraid and she was not able to photograph them, then their skin would remain black.

Here European chemical notions of development get married and transformed into notions of having one’s symbolic identity washed with all the notions of moral purity, baptism and rebirth that this contains. For the Kaliai, a photograph captures one tevil or ano which is how people refer to the soul and second skin a person will inhabit when they leave their first skin or body. Melo’s camera promised to reveal and capture this second skin which was the future identity that a person was to inhabit when the new law of existence was won. Using Melo’s camera, people stared at themselves through the lens of a European cultural artefact which promised to redeem their problematised identities. In a sense, Melo’s camera embodied and objectified the redemptive pedagogic projects of European hegemony which is people becoming white by seeing themselves through European eyes. The magical power of the camera fetishised and appropriated the transformative pedagogic project of European cultural hegemony. It condensed the process of becoming white into a material object that embodied the gaze and representational practices of European culture which could now be appropriated by Melanesians. A new way of developing the Melanesian subject was offered by the camera which allowed people to develop themselves differently by developing differently the white gaze that captured them.

Melo’s camera allowed the Kaliai to mime European forms of mimesis, they copied the processes of copying belonging to Europeans. Indeed, they searched in their miming of European mimesis for a way of transforming a representation into reality, or more accurately for a way of representing foreign representational practices so that they realised the foreign culture they embodied. European representational practices were displaced and reconstituted so that they became part of a magical cosmology which understands a representation to be the spiritual essence or soul of the objects it portrays. The alternative image of reality offered by European technology promised an alternative world which for the Kaliai was not simply the promise of an ideational world of representation but a real world to which the representation referred. It is a question of photographing oneself into existence, of taking the mimetic representational practices of European culture and casting them under the spell of an indigenous system of magic that is able to draw a soul and a reality out of a representation.[81]

Melo was experimenting with the boundaries of various identities and she tried to use the power of a technological European gaze to produce new corporeal schemes for her followers. This belief in the creative magical power of the camera did correspond to a certain truth and that concerns the way all identity is constituted through a process of seeing oneself through the eyes of others including all their techniques for capturing and accentuating the process of seeing. I believe that what makes the mechanical eye of Europeans so powerful is that these technologies of surveillance are simultaneously technologies of memory and are such fit into a traditional culture of mourning and memory of the dead. What also makes the mechanical eye of Europeans so powerful is that the transformative creative power of machines is married to the field of viewing bodies, such that the field of vision offered by the camera becomes experienced as transformative. Moreover, the camera, in the photos it produces, does offer people alternative ways of seeing their bodies, it does displace their identities into alternative spaces. It is this displacement which is experienced as magical for it corresponds to that displacement of self which a new existence will bring about.

Aside from her camera and its photographs, Melo was in her actions and gestures also experimenting with developing new hybrid forms of identity which blurred the divisions of race and sexuality. Earlier I pointed out that Melo’s refusal to subordinate herself to other men drew upon traditional Kaliai myths about how in the past women were the dominant sex. Melo’s autonomy from men went further than this. Though she had a husband, she also refused to have sex with him, claiming it would damage her law and she would not be able to deliver a new existence. When her husband tried to have sex with her forcibly, she told him: “If you do that then the law won’t come up.” Initially, Melo’s husband heeded her warnings, but later he raped her. She told him he had broken the law and that he could no longer live in the same village as her. Her husband did leave, but later he became sick and died. Many suspected he was sorcerised by Melo’s followers for what he had done. After her husband’s death, Melo started travelling around with women whom she called her wives; one of them was Aikele’s wife. Melo was beaten a number of times by men who accused her of using love magic, like a man, to attract female lovers.

Even before she left her village, Melo had taken on the identity of a man to the point where she demanded a wife. She carved a penis out of a tree called Bola, tied it with a string to her body and used it in sexual relations with her wives. One woman who became Melo’s lover told her relatives how Melo had warned her: “supposing we two sleep together and I throw my penis and it comes to your vagina, you cannot be startled”. In the case of Melo, the process of internalising and assuming the body of a man was used to sustain the process of becoming white, and also vice-versa, the process of internalising the white man’s identity was used to sustain the mythic process of becoming sexually other — of recapturing the creative androgynous past. People’s experience of their bodies is central to their experience of themselves and the world. The body is the site of one’s identity, its minute gestures encode a whole social order which governs its etiquette and rules for interacting with others. Indeed, when people want to recreate themselves and their world, then they often do so by recreating their experiences of their bodies. The way people can most radically re-experience themselves and thus reexperience the world is by internalising the body of the other into their own interactions and practices....

[81] Censure also photographed his followers. He would line them up at his telephone-doors so that they could be photographed by the dead. He would say to his followers: “You all stand up good so the men at the door can photograph youse. You all must stand up straight you cannot lie about... if you want to work the law then do this well so they [the dead] can photograph you all.” Here the new law of existence is the process of seeing oneself through the gaze of the white man which comes to be indigenised and assimilated to the photographic gaze of the dead. It is the hegemonic gaze of the white man which is being appropriated in the eye of the camera and which is displaced into the more familiar gaze of one’s relatives.

Cult followers saw their underground namesakes as already living the white man’s lifestyle and many saw them as living inside a white skin. Individuals were told to expect their specific cargo to come from their wannem or poroman. At the same time as Censure would say this, he would also say that the arrival of cargo had been held up by grievances which the dead had against the living. Censure spent a great deal of time visiting different telephone-doors trying to discover what was preventing the dead from coming to the surface. In trying to solve their grievances, Censure often ended up exploring the different moral norms that separated the dark world of the past from the more morally enlightened state of existence which the Kaliai now claimed as the basis of their identity.

Though Censure’s cult saw itself as dependent upon the underground dead, the cult was also built around a moral critique of Kaliai ancestors. They were accused of embodying all those old bad habits and ways of thinking which were holding back Papua New Guinea from sharing in a new law. For this reason, Censure started schooling those in the underground in the Wind of God and later in a second set of rituals he called lo bilong tumbuna (law of the ancestors). Censure saw his telephone conversations and the discipline of his new rituals as a way of re-educating the dead, for they had not participated in the moral transformations which had occurred in the above-ground world which had discovered God, stopped fighting and had sought to civilise itself. I see Censure’s battle to eradicate the pig-headedness, anger, and immorality belonging to the dead as a way of speaking allegorically about the pig-headedness, anger, and immorality of the living. The dead, which were spoken to through the telephone, represent those voices of the past that reside in the memory and habits of the living. The dead represent an underground displaced fragment of oneself which the cult enters into a dialogue with so as to reform and reconstruct that part of the identity of the living which is seen to come from a flawed cultural heritage.

Censure told his followers that the wrongs and sins of the past were blocking the Law. Most of the ancestors were ready to come, but they had been stopped by a few underground individuals who had old grievances which they wanted straightened. As Posingen put it: “Tumbuna wanted to come, but if there was one man in a small place who was stuck then nothing would happen. Father would have to find him, work this man [compensate, appease him], work it, and work it, so that this wrong was finished.” At his telephone-doors, Censure was queried by the dead about some of the violent crimes which had been committed against them. The dead wanted to know why they had died so violently at the hands of the living. Those who had been murdered would hold those now residing above ground responsible for straightening the sins of their grandparents and they would not allow the cargo to come until their grievances had been addressed. Sometimes Censure would arrange for the living to “buy” these sins of their grandparents by bringing shell money and pigs to the sites inhabited by those angry individuals whom their grandparents had murdered. This compensation was said to clear the thoughts of these ancestors so that they would now want to join the other dead and come to the surface.

Through conversations using his telephones, Censure worked hard at trying to negotiate away the anger of the dead. He would talk in a conciliatory way with them until their thoughts started to become clear and there was now nothing to block the coming of the new law. The anger of a few vexed individuals was said to be responsible for them rejecting the new school through which Censure was trying to reform the dead. The violence of the past was blocking the transmission of that moral knowledge — the Wind of God and the Law of Tumbuna — which would clear away the ancestor’s angry thoughts. Posingen explained how his father would try to find the underground sites where someone was “stuck” and there he would try to help this person to come up with the others whom Censure had already straightened and clarified.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by totalism in A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history by scouserisibilities

Oh, yes, here you go:

raddle.me/f/reddit/201831/tales-from-the-reddit-keyboard-wars

Tales from the reddit keyboard wars

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in reddit (edited 57 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/reddit/201831/tales-from-the-reddit-keyboard-wars>

r/LeftAnarchism

From me to [REDACTED] via /r/LeftAnarchism

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/LeftAnarchism because your post violates this community’s rules. You won’t be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

from [REDACTED] to me

You... don’t like Rojava?

to [REDACTED] from me

Obviously, you know that’s not the reason you were banned.

I knew a person who was killed fighting out there and it certainly wasn’t for ‘neo-feudalism’.

from [REDACTED] to me

Is r/LateStageFeudalism literally pro-feudalist?

to [REDACTED] from me

I don’t know and don’t give a fuck. Bye bye now.

r/IntelexualMedia

from [REDACTED] to me via /r/IntelexualMedia

I don’t think that this page is useful

If she need to promote her content here she would have done so herself, I like her videos, her character, her beauty; I just don’t find this page interesting

to [REDACTED] from me

Good to know [REDACTED], unfortunately I feel the need to tell you I didn’t find this message interesting.

r/AskAnthropology

subreddit message to me via /r/AskAnthropology

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/AskAnthropology because you broke this community’s rules. You won’t be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

Note from the moderators:

One more post about the Unabomber, ever, and this becomes permanent.

to /r/AskAnthropology from me

Of course this was an anthropology question: ‘is this anthropology paper written by the Unabomber junk anthropology today or good anthropology’

It would give me insight into the field of anthropology, and may even help me decide whether it would interest me to take a class in Anthropology.

I get your moral aversion to the Unabomber, I help scan up documents and do research for academics warning against the upsurge in anti-tech radicalism.

The post was getting lots of upvotes likely by genuinely interested anthropologists, I think you made a mistake in removing it, but whatever. Have a nice life.

r/tedkaczynskii

subreddit message to me via r/tedkaczynskii

Hello, You have been permanently banned from participating in r/tedkaczynskii because you broke this community’s rules. You won’t be able to post or comment, but you can still view and subscribe to it.

from me to r/reddit.com

This sub-reddit was recently set up to ban evade and glorify violence:

https://new.reddit.com/r/tedkaczynskii/

The previous at least two sub-reddits were:

https://new.reddit.com/r/tedkaczysnki & https://new.reddit.com/r/tedkaczynski

r/Anarchism

to /r/Anarchism from me

Why does this type of anarchist history post keep getting deleted?

https://reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/1hs388e/new_anarchist_library_text_offers_important/

Is there any way you’d approve of me discussing it without the post getting removed?

humanfleshenjoyer: what is ██████ all i see is black boxes?

scouserisibilities: Redacted names. I’ve just changed it now to ‘[REDACTED]’ to avoid confusion.

humanfleshenjoyer: i feel like this would be better with context

scouserisibilities: meh fair enough, ask away if you have any questions on context, I just thought to do it quickly in response to someone asking about a DM I’d sent.

Ceol_Frith_faisisteach: OP just forget about Reddit. It’s too much of a time sink. To a lot of folk Reddit is like the Hotel California. Flawed as the platform is they don’t want to leave because they think their ideas get more of an audience there until they realise their “audience” is comprised largely of bots.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by totalism in A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history by scouserisibilities

No, do you recommend I make a meta post or something? I’m assuming the only way I don’t stay banned is if I just be myself, post about my interests and engage in convos long enough that some post warms me slightly to the mods.

Fighting For Our Lives by Crimethinc (2002)

Post Link:
<crimethinc.com/zines/fighting-for-our-lives>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in Zines_and_Publications (edited 2 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Zines_and_Publications/201797/fighting-for-our-lives-by-crimethinc-2002>

Oldy but a goody. I hope kids and normies are still discovering these older texts today and getting radicalized.

Here’s a text version also:

usa.anarchistlibraries.net/library/noam-deguerre-crimethinc-writers-bloc-fighting-for-our-lives

secco: As far as introductory material goes I think CrimethInc’s “To Change Everything” is much better and more likely to stand the test of time. I like “Fighting For our Lives” as a document, giving us a picture of anarchism in 2002. But I don’t think I have ever shared it anywhere.

The preface is more or less Zerzan light, offering a primitivist sort of perspective with the usual (still too Marxian) talking points about competition, commodities, Market economics, and whatever happens after the revolution.

Then, at the absolute height of post-left anarchy: “Anarchy, not Anarchism!” — in response to leftists proclaiming the exact opposite, leftists whose politics are still boring as fuck.

“Anarchists use democracy—but we don’t let democracy use us.” Ew! They could not have foreseen the governmentalism creeping in with a wave of Chomsky-approved anarcho-democracy. But, a decade and an Occupy movement later they end up producing some of the best, most thorough democracy critiques.

And then there’s CrimethInc’s version of an old rhetorical twist: Anarchism is aristocratic, everyone is elite, everyone is master, we want to seize power only to abolish it, we want to establish a nation of sovereigns, etc. Proudhon did some of that (which may be forgiven, guy lived in a monarchy), and with aristocracy I think George Woodcock is the most prominent example. I think that sort of approach, using the language of authority against itself, is quickly exhausted, outdated, and risky.

New Anarchist Library text offers important context to all the Ted K texts on the library: Ted never read up on anarchism & simply played down his vanguardism

Linked Image:
<uploads-cdn.raddle.me/submission_images/22bcfc1af949fdf073bb2c02b09a6e191997e4f48b58477fde2dbcca69c2447a.jpg>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in Anarchy (edited 4 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/201779/new-anarchist-library-text-offers-important-context-to-all>

Title: A Comment on Anarchists

Author: Ted Kaczynski

Topics: not-anarchist, Ted Kaczynski, vanguard

Date: 2000

Source: “Comment on anarchists 2000”, Folder 6, Box 68, Ted Kaczynski papers, University of Michigan Library (Special Collections Library). <findingaids.lib.umich.edu/catalog> & <archive.org/details/eg.-notes-by-ted>

Notes: In 2019 Ted made this private feeling public in a small footnote of an update to his manifesto in the book Technological Slavery: “In 1995 I described FC as ‘anarchist’ because I thought it would be advantageous to have some recognized political identity. At that time I knew very little about anarchism. Since then I’ve learned that anarchists, at least those of the U.S. and the U.K., are nothing but a lot of hopelessly ineffectual bunglers and dreamers, useless for any purpose. Needless to say, I now disavow any identification as an anarchist.”

A Comment on Anarchists

5–26

5/7/00. I think most U.S. anarchists bunch of neurotics, incompetents, leftists. U.S. means United States. Anarchists worthless as tits on a rainbarrel. I can’t tell you how much they disgust me. I maintain contact with them only because know no better U.S. antitech groups. Some Brit anarchists maybe better. This open question. I keep my contempt for anarchists private as matter of policy. An asshole is John Z. <- Zerzan

scouserisibilities: I understand why the librarians wanted to archive Ted’s manifesto since it likely had a sizable impact on the public’s understanding of anarchism in the 90s. However, the above note further reinforces for me that Ted’s texts should have been tagged ‘not-anarchist’ from the beginning.

Or, even more ideally, combined into a text dump with a critical introduction. The reason is that there are simply other websites people could go to to read his texts. So, having Ted’s texts published under the banner of ‘the anarchist library’ without a critical introduction I think amounts to an embarrassing & damaging platforming of ideas incompatible with anarchy.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by secco in A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history by scouserisibilities

Ted wrote an anthropology essay at Harvard that cited a nazi doctor. I wondered how scientifically accurate the essay was (on a scale of not at all to not very), so made a post on r/AskAnthropology. It got deleted, so I tried to reword it and post again. The post got 12 upvotes in the first few minutes before a mod removed it. It’s telling you’d side with the mods as opposed to the free discussion of history. But whatever floats your boat.

A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in Green

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Green/201777/a-short-timeline-of-tech-environmentalist-politics-related>

I wrote this to explain to someone why I’m confident my Ted Kaczynski focus won’t go on forever, but feel free to comment any thoughts it brings to mind.

I think I’ve taken myself on some interesting reading journeys by delving deep into Ted and someone I knew called Jay as case studies of a certain politics. However, I plan to focus more on anthropology reading in the new year.

Age 15: Watched Bruce Parry’s Tribe & Ray Mears. Read books about building birchbark canoes and log cabins. Read ‘new age indigenous wisdom’ books, such as ‘Primal Awareness’, ‘Mutant Message Down Under’ & ‘The Vision’.

Age 16: Went to the island of Borneo in Maritime Southeast Asia with an outdoor expedition company who came to our school. Fantasised about running away to live with the Penan when I was in Borneo if the home situation carried on majorly sucking. Visited an Orangutan rehabilitation centre, which I’m happy can be there to also cure diseases and fix injuries that occur randomly.

Age 17: Went to my first Earth First! Gathering, made friends with one kid who was a primitivist & one kid whose biological dad had been an undercover cop spying on the movement when he was conceived. Saw footage of tree-sits in Tasmania. Listened to Seize the Day sing the song ‘No one’s slave, No one’s master’, which had the lyrics; “Mother Earth I was nearly the end of you. Please accept my desire to be friends with you. Now I know just how much I depend on you for life.”

Age 18: Did well in my year 11 exams, but didn’t show up to my end of high school exams because I was in turmoil with my abusive biological father. Followed the Earth First! Newswire, thought about going to Coal Action Scotland’s open cast coal mining forest camps which some people used as a base to sabotage coal company machinery.

Age 19: Went to live at a forest camp in England trying to block the expansion of an open cast coal mine. Got a call by a person working on resisting the eviction of Irish Travellers. Went to live on the Irish Traveller site, then squats in London afterwards. Met some cool & some strange people in both places.

One anarchist at the Irish Traveller site put on the film ‘Natural Born Killers’ for us to watch. Other anarchists put on documentaries about the Irish Travellers longstanding separate DNA heritage as evidence that their culture has deep roots, so they shouldn’t just be dismissed as ‘a mafia of thieves who only took up root after the Potato famine.’

One anarchist related to me ‘you know people get the wrong idea about these Travellers, the sites look a bit shabby from the outside, but inside, the static caravans are like a pristine shrine.’ I related back that I quite liked the Travellers not worrying about keeping up perfectly manicured lawns, and how I liked the history of some Irish Travellers carrying poles on their horse drawn carriage to simply live in large benders.

Age 20: Got told about communiques where a car dealership and rows of new cars were burnt by anti-civ anarchists in solidarity with the Irish Travellers I’d lived with. Plus, a primitivist communique about small bank sabotage actions, which I read recently was done in solidarity with eco-anarchist prisoners & Ted K. Went to visit a small rural forest commune who made their money making and selling apple juice.

Age 21: Went to live in Ireland to take direct action against a potentially dangerous gas pipeline the community didn’t want building near their village when it could have been built in a more rural location, plus where neither themselves or the country was getting much in return for this climate change causing tech.

Age 22: Went to live on the border of the UK & France helping refugees live in squats & tents. Learnt about a cool diversity of cultures and peoples, some of whom came from ecologically devastated landscapes, some of whom came from lineages of ancestors who were relatively recently hunter-gatherers.

Age 23: Got arrested at a road protest tree-sit. My free activist lawyer beat the charge by arguing it couldn’t be proven I wasn’t already locked on up the tree before the date I was charged with aggressively trespassing, and so whether I simply needed rescuing on the day in question. Went for brief stays to live at an anarchist community centre in Cardiff, Wales. Got to know a primitivist dude called Jay more who had been at the coal action camps in Scotland & England, plus the road protest in Southern England.

Age 24: Went to live on a squatted community farm on the border of Wales & England. The land used to be held in a community trust of tenant farmers, but when the last farmer died, the solicitor sold it at auction without doing his due diligence to track down relatives of the community trust members. The land was bought by a dude who had helped activists occupy the farm potentially to be able to buy the land at a lower price, then turfed everyone off to put up a solar panel farm. The eviction team companies office was set fire to (not trying to claim illegalist clout by mentioning this, thankfully I have an honest alibi, I just enjoy that I’ve lived in places where interesting events happened).

Age 29: Started playing around with re-structuring books I found interesting. Like I turned a book of prison letters between two childhood friends, into a kind of unfinished autobiography of the person in prison, by reorganizing all the memories she would tell into the timeline of her life. This led me to next start working on digitizing Ted Kaczynski’s book ‘Truth versus Lies’ so that I could potentially reorganise the most interesting parts into a biography of his life.

Age 31: Started contributing to an archive of rare Ted K documents & suggested reading. Wrote a short research text dump on Jay who died in Spain when I was 26. Jay wrote a zine promoting groups who perpetrate misanthropic attacks and whose aim it was to kill or maim random people. So, I wonder what the radicalizing factors were in his journey and whether he was hoping to connect up with other Ted K fans by going to Spain.

Age 32 (now): Contributing to 5 online archives; The Ted K Archive, The Library of Unconventional Lives, Steal This Wiki, The Anarchist Library & Bibliothèque Anarchiste. Plus, working towards hopefully helping set up 2 more in the new year:

Finally, here’s a fairly embarrassing collage of news & activist press release clippings I was involved in:

https://toleratedindividuality.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/10/rap-sheet.pdf

P.S. This isn’t a timeline of my whole life, it’s specifically a timeline focused on events in my life that have significance related to my environmental interests. So, although I highlight some of the events for their personal environmental significance to me, some of the connections were fairly abstract. The primary significance of some of the events was enjoying helping out other people.

secco: lol @ you getting banned from r/AskAnthropology

Your fascination with the Unabomber is not our problem. He was not an anthropologist, and what he thought of anthropology is not an anthropological question.

As you were told before. When your ban elapses, do not repeat this.

Your obsession isn’t our problem.

I guess for the time being it’s Raddle’s problem again.

Lettuce_Vegan_: Holy shit this is so funny my god

scouserisibilities: Ted wrote an anthropology essay at Harvard that cited a nazi doctor. I wondered how scientifically accurate the essay was (on a scale of not at all to not very), so made a post on r/AskAnthropology. It got deleted, so I tried to reword it and post again. The post got 12 upvotes in the first few minutes before a mod removed it. It’s telling you’d side with the mods as opposed to the free discussion of history. But whatever floats your boat.

humanfleshenjoyer: fReE dIsCuSsIoN oF hIsToRy

totalism: Did you appeal the ban?

scouserisibilities: No, do you recommend I make a meta post or something? I’m assuming the only way I don’t stay banned is if I just be myself, post about my interests and engage in convos long enough that some post warms me slightly to the mods.

totalism: I mean like responding to the mod mail DM or whatever with the initial comment I responded to

scouserisibilities: Oh, yes, here you go:

raddle.me/f/reddit/201831/tales-from-the-reddit-keyboard-wars

scouserisibilities: Reply to What are Your Current Dreams and Ambitions? by Lettuce_Vegan_

Succeed in writing a poignant, well-researched essay based on a series of interviews.

Complete an off-road cycle tour of the UK with my rescue dog who doesn’t like people lol, will likely be a bit challenging, but I’m going to plan out stops where I can take breaks and pay people to buy lentils for me and stuff. Hopefully I enjoy the solitude and views, and beaches, and forests, and the dog becomes slightly better adjusted.

Help out with the setting up of two new amusewiki libraries.

Learn from some cool radical anthropology academics.

Manage to keep my head down at work. Have to remember to do symbolic shit like taking my lunch break at a table and chairs where I can read my book outside the big kitchen space, otherwise, the boss swinging by thinks I’m reading a book on the job.

What about yourself?

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by TheGingerNut in Do You Think All Humans Should be Vegan? by Lettuce_Vegan_

For clarity, I’ve dumpster dived a ton and given meat from the dumpster to my family dogs. The issue is with supermarkets putting good food in the dumpster in the first place.

I’ve read all the books on decolonizing nature, leaving indigenous people be, and letting towns and villages grow wild with trees and honey hives. I just think bins put out for recycling or composting or burying or whatever should go to that end. It’s a lower quality life for a fox dodging cars and getting trapped in bins than living in the wild, we shouldn’t incentivize urban life for animals by being irresponsible.

This is all a grey area for me anyways, if you’re out in the wilds on a picnic and want to leave your crusts behind because you have evidence to believe a fox will likely benefit from it go wild.

The core ethical issue in our relation to animals is just that I don’t think we should be killing them or supporting the killing of them for food under life/heath circumstances in which we could just eat free or cheap vegan food.

Again, when no one is living with the memory of arbitrarily having ended the life of another highly-sentient animal, or having supported that action, it can help towards better human relationships. Plus, we should be reducing our land use, to long-term maximize the quantity of highly sentient animals getting to flourish in wild habitat.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by TheGingerNut in Do You Think All Humans Should be Vegan? by Lettuce_Vegan_

Firstly, to clarify, veganism for me just means the act of doing an animal products boycott, so this wouldn’t include hunting. Holding an animal liberation philosophy for me does entail desiring that no one hunts animals for food in life/heath circumstances in which they could have just eaten free or cheap vegan food. Killing deer as part of a well-thought out depopulation plan, whilst waiting for wolf populations to increase is fine to me.

I think we should detach from being a predator long-term though because it makes for better relationships among people. When no one is living with the memory of arbitrarily having ended the life of another highly-sentient animal, or having supported that action, it can help towards better human relationships.

If someone wants to live a vegan hermit-like existence, thinking of themself as part of an eco-system by living in a log cabin and foraging almost all their food, that’s fine with me, as it would mean a higher quantity of animals with a high degree of sentience getting to experience happy flourishing than if that person were hunting.

I also think many humans’ chance at achieving happy flourishing involves living part of one’s life in hamlets, villages or towns, ideally with small land footprints by building upwards. Locking up dumpsters well and reducing food waste would also be a compassionate response to not wanting animals like foxes to experience a life of painful stultifying by letting too high a number of them live worse quality lives in urban environments getting run over by cars, letting their capabilities and cunning to hunt in the wild stultify, etc.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by TheGingerNut in Do You Think All Humans Should be Vegan? by Lettuce_Vegan_

I want to live in a world in which no one I meet has killed a bear for food when they could have just eaten free or cheap vegan food. Knowing someone I’m conversing with experienced killing a beautiful sentient bear would be incredibly sad, a bear who had interests to look after their bear cubs, or enjoy playing with another bear.

I’m the change I want to see in the world because slaughter-house workers and hunters often experience suffering waking up to the fact they cut short an animals interests for no good reason, which also has knock-on effects for others like slaughterhouse workers bringing their pain home and being domestic abusers at higher rates, etc.

Yes, maybe you could have shot a specific bear on a specific day who was going to fall off a cliff and die in torturous pain, so you prevented worse suffering, but the same could potentially be true of shooting a random human. If you don’t know for certain a really terrible outcome is going to befall an animal don’t involve yourself in killing them, just let them be.

If we leave eco-systems alone and undamaged, then those eco-systems can host more sentient life getting to express their capabilities, and achieving happy flourishing. The more we involve ourselves in taking sentient life, the more the quantity of animals getting to live long wild lives goes down. We just need to consume plants that require the least amount of land to support and leave dense wildlife eco-systems alone.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by TheGingerNut in Do You Think All Humans Should be Vegan? by Lettuce_Vegan_

Is there a specific vitamin or mineral the average person can’t get from a cheap vegan source?

B12 most vegans can get cheap from foods supplemented with B12 grown on yeast like how beer is brewed. Or if someone was a really puritan wholefoodist they could carefully plan out consumption of duckweed or something.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by totalism in A text dump on ‘The Intolerant Left’ by Theodopodopodus

BTW the research text dump was deleted at Rosa’s request and an update is provided here:

twitter.com/thelibul/status/1869096984461844759

Living with the Past, Living with Oneself; Mimesis, Sexuality and Death in Bush Kaliai Cargo Cults

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/andrew-lattas-living-with-the-past-living-with-oneself>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in books (edited 17 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/books/201846/living-with-the-past-living-with-oneself-mimesis-sexuality>

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by humanfleshenjoyer in Tales from the reddit keyboard wars by scouserisibilities

meh fair enough, ask away if you have any questions on context, I just thought to do it quickly in response to someone asking about a DM I’d sent.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by humanfleshenjoyer in Tales from the reddit keyboard wars by scouserisibilities

Redacted names. I’ve just changed it now to ‘[REDACTED]’ to avoid confusion.

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by totalism in A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history by scouserisibilities

Oh, yes, here you go:

raddle.me/f/reddit/201831/tales-from-the-reddit-keyboard-wars

Tales from the reddit keyboard wars

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in reddit (edited 57 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/reddit/201831/tales-from-the-reddit-keyboard-wars>

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by totalism in A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history by scouserisibilities

Fighting For Our Lives by Crimethinc (2002)

Post Link:
<crimethinc.com/zines/fighting-for-our-lives>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in Zines_and_Publications (edited 2 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Zines_and_Publications/201797/fighting-for-our-lives-by-crimethinc-2002>

Gorillaz — 19–2000

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=WXR-bCF5dbM>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in Music

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Music/201782/gorillaz-19-2000>

New Anarchist Library text offers important context to all the Ted K texts on the library: Ted never read up on anarchism & simply played down his vanguardism

Linked Image:
<uploads-cdn.raddle.me/submission_images/22bcfc1af949fdf073bb2c02b09a6e191997e4f48b58477fde2dbcca69c2447a.jpg>

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in Anarchy (edited 4 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/201779/new-anarchist-library-text-offers-important-context-to-all>

scouserisibilities: Reply to comment by secco in A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history by scouserisibilities

A short timeline of tech/environmentalist politics related events in my life history

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in Green

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Green/201777/a-short-timeline-of-tech-environmentalist-politics-related>

What are some time machine and teleporting adventures you’d go on if you could?

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/201468/what-are-some-time-machine-and-teleporting-adventures-you-d>

Warning the indigenous peoples of the Americas about the new arrivals.

Warning anarchists and others about key fascist figures and events, or as a last resort, warning anyone who would listen about the Arden breakthrough. Hope that more lives are saved and that the heroism of the anti-fascist resistance in the new timeline provides an even cooler lesson in not going down the fascist road to the extent they did in Germany.

Chilling out at the Stonehenge Free Festival.

Try to learn lots of languages to get to discuss philosophy & literature with Albert Camus, Simone de Beauvoir, Laozi & Siddhartha Gautama.

And as far as teleporting...

Helping out the federation in Northern Syria, or the rebels in Myanmar, by being a covert assasin.

Impressing the Mbuti, Penan and Kuari peoples with my fast honey-gathering capabilities. Helping a Kuari family build a new treehouse.

Chilling out at the top of some tall old growths in California & Tasmania.

So, mostly getting up and down trees easier haha.

zip: go back to see what Proto-Indo-European was actually like because those mfs were on something when they made that language

SnowyKnave: i imagine it was more than one language. more a family of languages that evolved together?

zip: I’m not a linguist but I know that the theory that the indo-european family descended multiple languages in close contact (i.e. a sprachbund) is not really accepted and that a single proto-language is preferred. if you look it up there’s good reasons why but I don’t feel like copypasting them here

SnowyKnave: Oo I didn’t know that. Should probably look into that more sometime later!

Jialunes: Oh, I’d love to observe the beginning of life and dinosaurs! So many mysteries to solve!

Squiddleton_John: I’d provide the Haudsnosaunee with Automatic rifles and nukes. You can’t escape the Great Peace.

Kavi: i would meet my buddy anomalocaris and omnidens

Hi, I’m new, did you know risibility is a word?

Submitted by scouserisibilities 8 months ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/201431/hi-i-m-new-did-you-know-risibility-is-a-word>

risibility

noun

ris·i·bil·i·ty ˌri-zə-ˈbi-lə-tē

plural: risibilities

1: laughter

2: the ability or inclination to laugh —often used in plural

our risibilities support us as we skim over the surface of a deep issue

Provoking as the scene was to midwestern risibilities, we could see that these men represented their countries in all earnestness

tuesday: to laugh is reír in spanish so that’s probably a latin root word. which means laugh likely is germanic in origin.

Squiddleton_John: Anything is a word if two or more people understand it. Watch this.

Spalloopous

Adjective

Spah-Loop-Puss

Something awe inspiring that goes hard as fuck.

I just had a Spalloopous day, I felt like I was a flaming skeleton riding a motorcycle while drinking cold beer and chuffin back a cig. A pretty Spalloopous mental image if you ask me.

There, Spalloopous is a word now because we both understand it.

scouserisibilities: Fair. I guess I just enjoyed discovering that people had been using this quaint way of talking about different local humors for a while. Like learning about schadenfreude.

ROBUXYYYYYYYYYY: Rizzability

Orchid_: erm, what the sigma?

Ishkah: Reply to The Ted K Archive by secco

Meh, a better clarifying timeline would have included events like the fact that I lived with an ex-anarchist who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young: a text dump on Jay

Baudrillard asserts that the explosion of the terrorist’s bomb causes an implosion of meaning, a gaping hole in the social fabric that power frantically seeks to cover in order to restore the tyranny of meaning.

I’ve written about trying to live in doubt and stay open to the value of any meaning people happen to take away from various events in life.

I never claimed that being able to identify trends in the way some people travel down political rabbit holes to find simple answers to life’s questions was a perfect defeater to those political philosophies. I just find those situations interesting because I wish I could have pulled friends out from that situation, and hope to be able to do it for others.

Steal This Book Today (3rd Edition)

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125181601/https:/stealthiswiki.com/library/steal-this-book-4th-edition>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 9 minutes ago in Anarchism

This is too long to be printed out in its current form, but every wiki page has a linked print-ready PDF. There's also a book builder feature for combining various wiki pages together into custom print-ready PDFs.

Includes lots of advice on living free and fighting back.

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125181601/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchism/182667/steal-this-book-today-3rd-edition>

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman (1st Edition - 1971)

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125181903/https:/stealthiswiki.com/library/steal-this-book-1st-edition>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 6 minutes ago in books

Obviously includes lots of outdated advice, but it's a cool window into past attempts at living simply and what image yippies had of useful direct action.

Debate in the Earth First! Journal about ‘The Parable of the Tribes’

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20240914045558/https:/new.reddit.com/r/EarthFirstNetwork/comments/1f256mm/debate_in_the_earth_first_journal_about_the/>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 16 days ago in debate

A friendly debate is started when Earth First! editor John Davis (writing under his favorite pseudonym) reviewed an important book which contradicts the anarchistic tendencies of both the libertarian “rednecks for wilderness” and the more communitarian green anarchists. This sets off the first (and last) extended debate on social philosophy in the pages of Earth First! Formanistas from Davis, Manes, Abbey, and others, defend anarchism, while Schmookler more than holds his own.

Sara Thornton; The Story of a Woman Who Killed

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20241126195239/https:/thelul.org/library/jennifer-nadel-helena-kennedy-sara-thornton>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 2 months ago in books

Quoting from the back cover:

The controversial story of the woman at the centre of one of Britain’s most famous legal cases.

In February 1990 Sara Thornton was jailed for life for killing her violent alcoholic husband. Eighteen months later — as a man walked free having killed his alcoholic wife (who, in the words of the judge, ‘would have tried the patience of a saint’) — Sara’s appeal was turned down. As she began a hunger strike and thousands started to campaign for her release, the case became a cause célèbre.

With Sara Thornton’s cooperation, Jennifer Nadel now tells of her life before and after imprisonment, and analyses public reaction to the woman and to the legal aspects of the case. She has had access to all the relevant papers and has interviewed many of Sara’s friends, family and others who know her. Sara Thornton is a complex story, and one which calls into question the rules and attitudes of the English legal system and the justice of Sara’s own conviction.

Plus here's the source photo scan I made of the book that I borrowed from my local library:

archive.org/details/sara-thornton-the-story-of-a-woman-who-killed

My recommendations for two anarchist libraries

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/theo-slade-my-recommendations-for-different-amusewiki-libraries>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 1 month ago in Anarchy (edited by a moderator 6 days later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20241027062318/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/197192/my-recommendations-for-two-anarchist-libraries>

This post is just an exercise in making clear my arguments for archiving various texts.

I do wish T@L would publish a wiki page that people could go to to see where librarians have given their arguments for platforming & deleting various texts.

It could then also be updated with arguments by readers and librarians alike.

[link removed -ziq]

humanispherian: F*cking with libraries: it's not just for reactionaries anymore...

Confusing the inclusion of various texts in an archive with whatever "platforming" means this week seems unlikely to bring good or useful results.

aaandagain: F*cking with libraries: it's not just for reactionaries anymore...

Ishkah is bringing book burning back to Europe, where it started!

Theodopolopolous: Why do you view it that way? Is it not possible that I'm just offering a simple critique, plus good faith recommendations?

I gave many arguments for the inclusion of texts that it would be nice to see T@L republish so that the texts can receive a wider audience.

aaandagain: I do wish T@L would publish a wiki page that people could go to to see where librarians have given their arguments for platforming & deleting various texts.

surely that conversation is between the librarians and the person who wrote/uploaded the text?

It could then also be updated with arguments by readers and librarians alike.

shh.anarchyplanet.org is the place for this, and the IRC, and the public mailing list. You could even take it to the anews forums if you wanted.

I see you added r/AnarchistLibrary to your long list of subreddits, ishkah. And r/AnarchistLibraries/ too.

fail: I see you added r/AnarchistLibrary to your long list of subreddits, ishkah. And r/AnarchistLibraries/ too.

oh it's them

Theodopolopolous: The problem with librarian's reasons being spread across so many different websites and posts, plus there being no known librarian reason for some texts, is that it makes it harder for the average person to get a detailed view of the archiving ethos. Also, I explain why I think that's a problem in the introduction:

The internet, bookshops, and libraries are all swamped with more information than anyone could read in a lifetime, but when searching for reading on a particular subject, having the choice of a 100 texts on that subject isn’t necessarily valuable if the task of choosing between them is made more difficult by a library crew’s choice to archive 50 texts that showcase embarrassingly anti-anarchist ideas, or where the one text that would interest you most has been deleted from the catalog due to the library crew having a personal issue with the author.

Therefore, when browsing texts from these institutions it would be valuable to get a sense of what type of texts are likely included at a higher or lower rate. So, what type of texts it is better to go elsewhere to look for. A simple brochure or web page people could read would suffice, to see a list of some of the texts that were controversially included or excluded, and ideally the reasons why.

Finally, I think there is value in discussing the embarrassment some people feel about controversially platforming some texts under the banner of ‘The Anarchist Library’. For example, if one of the reasons for hosting a text on the The Anarchist Library is that it can’t easily be found elsewhere, then having that be more well-known may encourage people to start a unique archival project specifically for exploring texts on that subject. Also, most every anarchist would agree that platforming the complete works of Mao under the banner of The Anarchist Library just because he was an ex-anarchist would be an unjustifiably embarrassing platforming of ideas. So, I just think it would be good for the library crew to post publicly the arguments and counter-arguments for why they think archiving various controversial authors and texts would or would not amount to this kind of embarrassing platforming.

I see you added r/AnarchistLibrary to your long list of subreddits, ishkah. And r/AnarchistLibraries/ too.

Aye, I invited T@L peeps to be mods. Creating spaces where nothing existed there before to encourage discussion on people's preferred platform of choice is good me thinks.

aaandagain: Creating spaces where nothing existed

I listed five such 'spaces', all of them hosted by anarchists, not by Reddit. This is just the latest in your long run of hoarding subreddits.

Also, why do you put that cringe banner on all of them? Did you run that by the librarians? Do you think they'd want to be associated with sci-fi techno-optimism? Or with you, for that matter?

plus there being no known librarian reason for some texts

And why does it have to be known outside of the librarians and the person who uploaded it? Is there no privacy in your anarchism? Are anarchist projects all some kind of 'public service' like PBS or the BBC?

a detailed view of the archiving ethos

I am not a librarian, but I have a good idea of their ethos from their 'about the project' page. If I had more questions I could email them.

when searching for reading on a particular subject, having the choice of a 100 texts on that subject isn’t necessarily valuable

Have you ever visited a library, Ishkah? I know that'd mean going outside, but still...

Finally, I think there is value in discussing the embarrassment some people feel about controversially platforming some texts under the banner of ‘The Anarchist Library’

Ah, here we go again. How many years have you been grinding this axe now? Surely there are better things you could be doing than trying to get the handful of EE texts deleted for the hundredth time?

For anyone who hasn't read what Ishkah has been crying about for the LAST THREE YEARS, here you go: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/los-hijos-del-mencho-against-the-world-builders-eco-extremists-respond-to-critics

Theodopolopolous: Have you ever visited a library, Ishkah? I know that'd mean going outside, but still...

This doesn't give me a lot of incentive to reply to all your points.

A sad feeling I have at the moment is not being able to tell many people about the exciting traveling I have been doing, including visiting libraries as research, as part of a writing project. Because if some weirdos with a grudge find out what the writing project is they might email people a bunch of weird stuff to try and scare them off from simply talking to me about their feelings on publicly known stuff.

This is a picture from one of the green anarchist journal issues that I scanned up at a national library at an anarchist academic's request:

That feeling when you so want the news of the Unabomber's arrest to be a mistake that you produce an hour long conspiracy documentary lol

Plus, here's just a book I found interesting that I borrowed from my local library to scan up:

differentanonhere: weirdos with a grudge

is it true that all this started when the anarchist library rejected one of your texts?

sameanonhere: including visiting libraries as research, as part of a writing project

will you be recording everything the librarians say without them knowing then posting it on your site for everyone to see? and if they ask for it to be taken down, well, it was said in public after all!

and if you happen to come across any internal notes in their filing cabinets will you be photographing them and posting the pictures on your website as 'nerdy research'? and again if they ask you to take it down, well, too bad!

Theodopolopolous: I'm visiting France next month

Will you be spitting in every French person's eye you see because you said spitting off of cliffs is ok?

Bazinga.

AntifaNI: Apparently I am now blocked by "Reddit network security",

I was a former reddit mod who "went on strike" but now it seems to have become a lockout ?

Adds: The article is here

fail: I do wish T@L would publish a wiki page that people could go to to see where librarians have given their arguments for platforming & deleting various texts.

you can always ask the librarians in the IRC/Matrix chat

It could then also be updated with arguments by readers and librarians alike.

why?

Theodopolopolous: Aye, I did suggest the idea to librarians in matrix and emailed earlier asking if they'd be interested in filling out the library reasons sections.

I think it would be good for the wiki page be a live wiki page where readers could update their ideas for changes to the library under specific sections. For example on this page there are specific sections in bold that can be updated by readers such as "A readers argument against deleting". That way as changes to the library happen, readers could update the wiki page with their thoughts.

aaandagain: Aye, I did suggest the idea to librarians in matrix and emailed earlier asking if they'd be interested in filling out the library reasons sections.

Let me guess their response...

Do you think you hacking their website and publishing their private conversations might have biased them against your suggestions?

Theodopolopolous: Is there some utility to using a different definition for this commonly understood word that I'm not aware of?:

hacking

the activity of getting into someone else's computer system without permission in order to find out information or do something illegal

--https://dictionary.cambridge.org/dictionary/english/hacking

I googled how to download a full list of web.archive.org url's for any website, then compared the list against the live site map, then looked at the deleted texts with '/edit' added to the end of the URLs to see many of the unpublished texts in their live unlisted state, there were examples of the '/edit' URL's in the web.archive list and it's a common-sense step to do for anyone who's ever clicked the edit button on a T@L text and seen the new URL.

If you don't believe it's possible to do what I did without installing a virus on their machine to give me access or whatever shit you have in mind then I'd be happy to create a screenshot step-by-step guide.

Also, part of what I was curious to see in comparing the web.archive list to the live site map is the history of texts that used to be live on the website, but that have been scrubbed from even the unpublished text bin, but I couldn't find many examples.

For example, here's one text linked below where you can see what it used to look like live on the website:

web.archive.org/.../theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexis-buss-promising-to-keep-women-down-the-real-agenda-of-the-promise-keepers

It's been scrubbed from the unpublished text bin because the '/edit' URL is dead, but it seems like it was deleted for a fairly innocuous reason, such as maybe because it was just a low-quality blog post.

An example of a text that's potentially been scrubbed is this one:

web.archive.org/.../theanarchistlibrary.org/library/friedrich-engels-on-authority

But, it may have just been an April Fools prank or a mistaken URL link in some text that web.archive.org captured as dead because there was never anything there.

SnowyKnave: users here say u published private conversations without consent and without peoples knowledge. idk.

https://raddle.me/f/Anarchy/189995/-/comment/388468

differentanonhere: without consent

they asked him to take it down and he wouldn't

asere_que_vola: Correct. Theodopolopolous went on a public IRC / Matrix and kept the library chat logs and then posted them to their website. They have been asked to take down the chat logs by the library, but have refused.

ziq: They've been banned, please message me directly if they harass your volunteers again.

Theodopolopolous: Yeah they're talking about me quoting the publicly linked matrix chat:

theanarchistlibrary.org/special/webchat

Plus quoting the '#DELETED' reasons I saw when I did the web.archive.org research I explained above.

differentanonhere: Is there some utility to using a different definition for this commonly understood word that I'm not aware of? hacking: the activity of getting into someone else's computer system without permission in order to find out information or do something illegal

how many definitions did you have to go through before you found the one that suited you? here's the first one i found

Hacking is the use of unconventional or illicit means to gain unauthorized access to a digital device

'unconventional', 'unauthorized'...

do the anarchistlibaries.net people know you've done the same to their site?

Theodopolopolous: 'unconventional', 'unauthorized'...

That's the same as 'without permission' in the definition I gave, the ethically thick concept in either definition is that a 'computer system' or 'digital device' is someone/s personal or collective property and that another person has essentially stolen time with it while the other person wasn't looking, nothing like that happened.

Viewing historically listed URLs that happen to be 'unlisted' today does not make it someone/s 'digital device', it's just 'the public internet'; it's just what various people who own web servers decided to make public and never made private. They showed a public way of accessing it, then sometimes website table of contents changes or whatever, but just because one page that linked to it no longer exists doesn't mean that what they were linking to isn't still the public internet.

If there's a story on someone's blog that they link to on another page on their blog, and that other blog page gets deleted, such that there's no internal blog link to it anymore, but it's still public; have I hacked them by going into web-archive.org to remember what the link is? Or is it only hacking if I didn't know about it until I was curious to browse the web.archive.org for their site one day? Or can you recognize this is all so far removed from what comes to mind for every person when they think about hacking that you're essentially talking shit?

do the anarchistlibaries.net people know you've done the same to their site?

I didn't think to do it for their sites because their English anarchist library is a historical frozen-in-time thing that isn't open to new submissions.

I gave them all the info on fixes T@L made that are relevant to texts on their website like a potential pedo apologea text T@L deleted. Plus I showed them all the texts that were still live on the USA mirror that were deleted on T@L which they were grateful for.

sameanonhere: You skipped the bit where the librarians said ''those notes were meant to be private, please don't publish them.''

If you and the anarchistlibraries.net people are such good buddies and you're being so so helpful why did they kick you off their hosting?

Theodopolopolous: You skipped the bit where the librarians said ''those notes were meant to be private, please don't publish them.''

Why ought I give a fuck that T@L regrets that they didn't private something if (1) I'm being careful about shit like not publicly revealing lists of texts that authors requested be taken down and (2) The quotes that I do release are useful for anyone wanting to understand what type of texts are likely included at a higher or lower rate. So, what type of texts it is better to go elsewhere to look for, and (3) T@L could just offer detailed updated reasons for archiving various texts, then the old reasons would be superfluous, they could be deleted and T@L would be doing a great service.

Come to think of it, T@L never getting around to making the unlisted texts private is a beautiful irony, as it was likely because they didn't have anyone with the tech know-how who would desire to write the script anytime soon. So, this likely mirrors the situation of the majority of readers who visit T@L in that if they were presented with a choice of what kind of texts they would like to see on the anarchist library it would look slightly different, they would likely desire someone with the tech know-how build this slightly different library, and they would likely just create share links to that newer library more often.

That isn't to say the majority opinion would definitely be better, it's just interesting how higher population levels of expertise with tech would likely enable someone to come along and fulfill a desire of many readers for a version of T@L that lived up to principles that T@L don't desire to. Plus, then T@L wouldn't have to experience as many people questioning their divinely ordained precedents.

If you and the anarchistlibraries.net people are such good buddies and you're being so so helpful why did they kick you off their hosting?

Because moving the files to a new server was partly simply because people were trying to scare them into believing there was illegal shit on there, due to the library making a good-faith effort to archive a broad range of pro-Ted K texts for people to research.

Plus, because my desire to be helpful isn't contingent on being best buddies with people, such as my making error corrections to T@L texts that I have no desire to copy over to any other library.

ziq: since you have both voiced and actioned blatant disregard for actual anarchists security culture and are a snitch for all intents and purposes, I'm banning you and will ban any account you make in the future. don't fucking come back. snake in the grass

totalism: as annoying as Ishkah is I think I'm taking their side on this one. If you're posting shit on the internet and you don't want people to see it then at least include some IP-exclusion mechanism for your little site. finding exploits like this is part of what makes security culture what it is. hopefully they're fixed! hopefully!

ziq: Yes compiling anarchists private messages and publishing them against their will as part of a years long harassment campaign is totally chill

notalibrarian: did you miss the bit where the librarians said 'please take our messages down from your site' and ishkah said no? that's not security culture.

totalism: lol yes it fucking is. we can say ishkah is an asshole for not disclosing this privately or w/e but as far as i'm concerned, it's fair game. if you opened up your computer to the internet and i could access all your files remotely, it would be fair game for me to publish them.

totalitarian: and with friends like these, who needs enemies?

raddlers, i hope there are no vulnerabilities in your setup, because if there are this person thinks you are '''fair game'''

totalism: yes, this is 100% true. I'm not going to go sifting through raddle source code though that sounds boring as fuck.

Nerdy research into The Anarchist Library crew's archiving ethos

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20240529231519/https:/thelul.org/library/a-text-dump-on-various-library-publishing-ethoses>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 9 days ago in Anarchy (edited 5 minutes later)

I was bored so I decided to create a research text dump of conversations that have been had about whether to archive various texts:

A text dump on various library publishing ethoses

I also spreadsheeted the web.archive.org list of URLs of The Anarchist Library and sorted them against the live sitemap. This meant that I could see the list of texts that were once public on the library, but that have now been deleted. I then archived a collection of these deleted texts for people who are curious to read some of the texts that were deleted for unclear reasons or because the librarians thought they weren’t anarchist enough:

Here’s some of what I found out:

Most of the texts are saved to unlisted URLs so that they can be remembered by librarians and searched through in an ‘unpublished console’. 2. Often the reason given for deleting a text was just because it was discovered that the text had lots of OCR errors, so fell below quality standards. I found a few texts that I thought were worth the time fixing, so I fixed them, re-submitted them and one has already been re-published. 3. I agreed that some of the texts weren’t suited for the anarchist library, but I was glad to find them as I thought some of them were worthwhile archiving on other libraries. 4. I disagreed with some of the reasons for deleting texts given by librarians, but I found the reasons interesting nonetheless for understanding the library crew’s archiving ethos.

None of the texts in the collection I created are ones that were deleted due to a request by the author, or DMCA, or bad formatting.

Finally, I won’t reveal the unlisted deleted anarchist library URL’s in case a spam bot brakes the texts or something. Also, if any authors of the texts in the collection stumble upon it and wish to see their text removed, they can of course feel free to edit the text themselves to delete their section, or leave a note in the proposed edits and I'm sure the section will be deleted.

yaspora: This is actually pretty great. I'm enjoying picking just one published author (say, Öcalan) & comparing/contrasting with all the rejected ones.

A list of DMCA'd works would be really cool, though.

Theodopolopolous: Here you go:

[Edit: Deleted.]

thistornflesh: Diane di Prima and Dispossessed being removed is a travesty

asere_que_vola: Hello, a few things.

The library would prefer to keep the DMCA takedown requests private, as to not encourage other publishers. 2. This is not an accurate list and I'm not sure where you came across this list. There are more. 3. All of the above takedowns were requested by their publishing house.

Theodopolopolous: Heya.

Okay doke, I'll edit my comment to delete them now. 2. I didn't mean to imply it was a full list, I found them through simple research using web.archive.org. 3. Interesting, cheers.

SnowyKnave: yeah normally I dont like Ishka’s stuff but this is kinda interesting

exlibrarian: kinda interesting

Is it? I don't really understand how he's done it, and I haven't been part of the library for many years now, but as far as I can see what Ishkah has done here is hack The Anarchist Library and post the librarians' internal notes onto his own website.

It also looks like he's been logging the library's IRC channel then copying and pasting comments made by the librarians onto his site.

Interesting is not the word I'd use.

SnowyKnave: as far as I was aware this was just content from archives put together. wasnt aware of any private conversations being hacked but if so then thats real creepy. maybe i should have looked into this more before making a judgement.

at the time thought it was interesting to see how a relatively well known radical library decided what to archive. reminded me of people deciding on zines or something but on a larger scale.

Ishkah: I quoted the publicly linked matrix chat:

theanarchistlibrary.org/special/webchat

Plus quoted the '#DELETED' reasons I saw when I did simple web.archive.org research.

exlibrarian: This is actually pretty great

Nothing great about publishing private conversations for all the world to see. Nothing great about publishing notes written between librarians that were never meant to be seen outside of the library collective.

Maybe Iskhak/TheTedKArchive thinks he's Speaking Truth to Power, or something, but what he's really doing, and what he's being doing for more than three years now, is trying to make life difficult for the handful of anarcho-nerds who run t@l (in their own time, at their own expense, for no reward), possibly because they rejected one of his texts one time.

Tsuji Jun: Japanese Dadaist, Anarchist, Philosopher, Monk

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20241126173611/https:/thelul.org/library/erana-jae-taylor-tsuji-jun>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 2 months ago in books

This is a collection of brief writings about Tsuji Jun, by Erana Jae Taylor. It includes a brief biography, background and context, and the relationship of his thinking to people like Nietzsche and Stirner.

This work was originally a master’s thesis submitted to the Department of East Asian Studies at the University of Arizona. You can view this earlier edition here:

<archive.org/details/tsuji-jun>

Plus, here is source PDF that was published by Little Black Cart/Enemy Combatants:

<archive.org/details/tsuji-jun-japanese-dadaist-anarchist-philosopher-monk_202308>

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Fool: Vagrants and labourers of the town gather about him. The defeated unemployed and the penniless find in him their own home and religion... his disciples are the hungry and the poor of the world. Surrounded by these disciples he passionately preaches the Good News of Nihilism. But he is not Christlike, and he preaches but drunken nonsense. Then the disciples call him merely “Tsuji” and sometimes hit him on the head. This is a strange religion...

Thank you for sharing.

Permalink

Theodopolopolous: No worries.

I'm sure that's true of a few or potentially most. I think with some though, like 'Unabomber cops a plea by Coatimundi' the text body was a perfect duplicate except that it missed out emphases and had a spelling error that the other text didn't have.

For anti-civs: do you ever worry that your advocacy and actions could close off opportunities to help humans and animals?

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20241127001503/https:/raddle.me/f/debate/193655/for-anti-civs-do-you-ever-worry-that-your-advocacy-and>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 5 months ago in debate (edited 27 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20241127001503/https:/raddle.me/f/debate/193655/for-anti-civs-do-you-ever-worry-that-your-advocacy-and>

I don't think all the world's high-tech societies are ever going to collapse, but for anticivs who do think it's possible:

Do you think through your advocacy and/or actions you're possibly helping make collapse more likely?
If so, do you worry that you could be doing a disservice to:

The billions of innocent human kids that would die in such a collapse.
The wild animals that get randomly injured by events such as falling branches, who we can sometimes rescue, heal with advanced healthcare, and release.
The wild animals that we can prevent from being killed by brush fires started by tribespeople from accidentally consuming vastly larger areas of wildlife habitat than intended.
The wild animals we could help in working towards a world in which humans are able to create huge marble bridges covered in soil and trees that form whole new levels of wildlife habitat that would mean wildlife could populate even more than the entire territory of the earth.
All life on earth that we could potentially prevent from being killed off by knocking a meteor slightly off course.
The great diversity of life on earth which we could potentially relocate in part to another planet before our sun swallows the earth.
The potential life on other planets we could create through terraforming.
The humans that could more easily fall prey to cults of irrationality in a primitive world, where people might cannibalize other people who they thought were inhabited by evil spirits, like has happened in living memory in Papua New Guinea.
Etc. etc.

Essentially collapse feels like one rigid solution that closes off the opportunity for better solutions to the harms tech society is currently causing.

... all the arguments in the world that technology or civilization may have certain downsides are entirely beside the point if those downsides are in different areas from one’s most core values.

My most core value is vigilance. I don’t see how one can speak of any sort of coherent ethics or care without it. In fact it was vigilance that attracted me to the arguments of primitivism two decades ago — concern with the lack of due diligence and consideration to the dynamics and externalities of our industrial society. But at the end of the day what primitivism ultimately represents is an abandoning of vigilance. The world of the permanent collapse is world in which our inquiry into the universe — the depth of our engagement with nature — can never progress past a certain level. A world in which the array of means (technologies) we might consider are permanently and starkly limited. In which we are cut off from the richness of most others’ thoughts and confined to tiny prisons of localism.

These deep tradeoffs to its prefigurative world are horrifying enough, but the primitivist ideology that has shaken out to defend that prescription bends inescapably towards a vicious anti-intellectualism.

Distilled, primitivism is the very opposite of radical thinking. In its reactionary embrace of an Orwellian negative freedom implicitly centered around a biological essentialism it has mutated into a mockery of anarchism. The portrait of “freedom” as some unperturbed static natural state of being to be defended bears only the loosest of linguistic ties with the positive freedom — the freedom to — of anarchy. What the popular notion of collapse represented in Jensen’s “Endgame” — where almost all technological options are irrevocably banished — really presents is the ultimate prison. One so absolute as to need no further guards.

In this we must recognize primitivism as functionally serving to carry the tradition of domestication and sedentary life to its apex: a final desperate attempt to exterminate the rich Cambrian explosion of lush cultural and intellectual complexity that accompanied increased social connectivity and options in affinity. An extinction event unparalleled in the history of consciousness. The permanent loss of incalculable cultural and intellectual ecosystems.

And for what? A sedate lifestyle of immediatism, of comfortably consistent conditions. Longer chains, bigger cages. Superficial ameliorations at the cost of all further advances in freedom in the longterm. There’s a word for people who trade away all hope of the infinite in return for immediate pleasures, the very people who popularized “in the long term we’re all dead”… they’re called liberals.

Yes, freedom implies risk and danger. But the perpetual security promised by primitivism is a nightmare irreconcilable with anything capable of calling itself anarchist without choking. Coffins are made “human sized,” our lives should be lived bigger than that.

--A Quick And Dirty Critique Of Primitivist & AntiCiv Thought

Theodopolopolous: Reply to comment by Bezotcovschina in For anti-civs: do you ever worry that your advocacy and actions could close off opportunities to help humans and animals? by Theodopolopolous

You're welcome to draw upon any metaphor you like, I'd just like to read a good argument along with it.

I think many anticivs have their ecocide porn that feuls their conspiracy mindset that collapse is inevitable, I just have my wildlife rescue and release porn that feuls my hope for a different world. Ever since visiting a wild orangutan rescue and release center at 16 I've simply wanted to fight for more, in both stopping the ecociders and building a better world:

Theodopolopolous: Reply to comment by __0 in For anti-civs: do you ever worry that your advocacy and actions could close off opportunities to help humans and animals? by Theodopolopolous

What are you saying is ridiculous sorry? Are you disagreeing that the example events described have ever happened or could ever happen?

Theodopolopolous: Reply to comment by NamiFromOnePiece in For anti-civs: do you ever worry that your advocacy and actions could close off opportunities to help humans and animals? by Theodopolopolous

Heya, I don't think that was my argument, but I'm open to learning why you think so. Maybe I could have given better hypothetical examples? Or, balanced the ones I gave with different types of examples? Or, clarified my arguments better?

Theodopolopolous: Reply to comment by Elster_Penrose in For anti-civs: do you ever worry that your advocacy and actions could close off opportunities to help humans and animals? by Theodopolopolous

Two of my points could be read as including the possibility of killing life on other planets, though I more had in mind introducing atmosphere and life to a lifeless planet through e.g. bombing the ice caps to kick up a cloud of CO2 and then airdropping in life such as algae into the warmed up oceans.

For deflecting an asteroid, potentially flying a rocket into one, really far away from earth, such that even if you only deflect it from it's course a tiny fraction, it ends up bypassing earth:

newsroom.ucla.edu/releases/planetary-defense-nasa-dart-mission-asteroid

I fully grant cannibalism isn't just a tribal thing, I think it's an occurrence the average person in high-tech society has to fear happening to them less than they did in Europe in medieval times or Papua New Guinea within living memory.

Theodopolopolous: Reply to comment by !deleted38738 in The deleting of “Child Molestation vs. Child Love (Critically Annotated)” by Theodopolopolous

The critique was not a rhetorical fudge. Quoting the authors of the text, Heresy Distro:

Buried deep inside a barely-legible scan of Rants: Essays and Polemics of Feral Faun, is the short essay Child Molestation vs. Child Love. It would seem that very little, if any, attention has been given to this small piece. This is a shame -- and not, of course, because we think it is, uh, important dialogue. Rather, it brings light to a very specific situation within the anarchist community, in which egoist rhetoric is appropriated by predatory individuals in order to justify and bury their sadistic need to victimize and subjugate individuals. We saw this with Dr. Bones, who seemed to enjoy manipulating and fetishizing trans* women on top of writing egoist critiques of society.

As anarchists we should be tending towards anarchy, not using anarchism as a vehicle to reproduce the same degrading authoritarian power structures we supposedly are fighting against. Further, if we claim to have "no gods or masters," then we should be able to hold figures in our circles accountable.

Thus, us here at Heresy Distro have decided to publish a (very) critical edition of Child Molestation vs. Child Love to, hopefully, stop any sort of "child love" quasi-egoism from coming to fruition. While incredibly short (short enough to fit on a single-sheet minizine,) producing this work took an incredible amount of emotional labor to be able to sift through the child molestation apologia. It is not for the faint of heart.

--Anarchist News post

Theodopolopolous: Reply to comment by !deleted51548 in The deleting of “Child Molestation vs. Child Love (Critically Annotated)” by Theodopolopolous

I think the ideas Wolfi was promoting can be found in friend groups who don't intervene in their pedo friends' abuse because they've adopted some form of this 'boundaries are oppressive' bullshit mentality, and similarly with friends of friends of these groups who've taken on board the ideas in subtler forms.

So, although it may not be necessary to reason a friend out of the idea 'abuse is not disgusting', I think it is useful to be equipped with the tools to be able to notice and critique both this kind of apologia for abuse and subtler forms if it’s ever taken up by other people in one’s own life.

Steal This Book by Abbie Hoffman (1st Edition - 1971)

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125181736/https:/stealthiswiki.com/library/steal-this-book-1st-edition>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 4 minutes ago in books

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125181736/https:/raddle.me/f/books/182668/steal-this-book-by-abbie-hoffman-1st-edition-1971>

Steal This Book Today (3rd Edition)

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125181736/https:/stealthiswiki.com/library/steal-this-book-4th-edition>

Submitted by Theodopolopolous 11 minutes ago in Anarchism

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125181736/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchism/182667/steal-this-book-today-3rd-edition>

What would your ideal library look like?

Submitted by TerminallyCurious 2 months ago in anarchistlibraries

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20240125182258/https://raddle.me/f/anarchistlibraries/181543/what-would-your-ideal-library-look-like>

If you could magic a library or online archive into existence, where all the work of tracking down texts from various different libraries and hard-to-find corners of the internet was done for you, what would it look like? And what would it be called?

Also, are there any cool existing libraries that come close to your dream library?

I'll quote a few that I know of below.

---

Joseph A. Labadie Collection

One of the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive collections of its kind, with materials on anarchism, anti-colonialist movements, antiwar and pacifist movements, atheism and free thought, civil liberties and civil rights, ecology, labor and workers’ rights, feminism, LGBTQ movements, prisons and prisoners, the New Left, the Spanish Civil War, and youth and student protest.

The collection includes books, pamphlets, periodicals, and more, and is noteworthy for its printed ephemera and holdings of posters, photographs, sheet music, pinback buttons, and scrapbooks. It also includes important archival and manuscript material, as well as recordings of speeches, debates, oral histories, and protest songs.

New material is added regularly through both purchase and donation, with the goal of filling gaps in the historical record, building on existing areas of strength, and meeting the current and emerging needs of researchers, instructors, activists, and others who use the Labadie Collection in the Special Collections Research Center.

History

The Labadie Collection is named for Detroit labor organizer and anarchist Jo Labadie, who donated his personal library of books, pamphlets, newspapers, magazines, and memorabilia to the university in 1911. In 2000, we received a large donation of research materials from the National Transgender Library and Archives, adding to our already strong holdings.

Materials in the collection

Labadie Collection in the catalog

Finding aids and indexes

Digital collections

Online exhibits

Birthing Reproductive Justice: 150 Years of Images and Ideas

---

MayDayRooms

Our archive focuses on social struggles, radical art, and acts of resistance from the 1960s to the present: it contains everything from recent feminist poetry to 1990s techno paraphernalia, from situationist magazines to histories of riots and industrial transformations, from 1970s educational experiments to prison writing.

We proceed from the understanding that social change can happen most effectively when marginalised and oppressed groups can get to know – and tell – their own histories “from below.” Our archival collections challenge the widespread assault on collective memory and the tradition of the oppressed. We aim to counter narratives of historical inevitability and political pessimism with living proof that that many struggles continue.

We run a public programme including archival projects, publications, film screenings, “scan-a-thons” for digitising archival material, workshops, talks and discussion, reading groups, and social nights, all of which encourage active and collective engagement with history of social movements.

---

Feminist Library

The Feminist Library is a large collection of feminist literature based in London. We are a library and community space and support research, activist and community projects.

In 2020 The Feminist Library celebrated 45 years of archiving and activism. Mainly volunteer run, we have created and looked after one of the most important collections of feminist material in the UK, and provided an inspiring learning and social space for thousands of people.

Events
Blog

---

Touchpaper Anarchist Library

Touchpaper is an anarchist library in South London.

Only the best in subversive publications from around the world, with distro publications for contribution, library books which can be borrowed with a small deposit, and an extensive archive of anarchist ideas put onto paper.

They also have texts available to buy and plans to host an archive online.

---

The Anarchist Library

E-mail: library@angrylists.com
Live chat: See /special/webchat
Wiki: bookshelf.theanarchistlibrary.org

theanarchistlibrary.org is (despite its name) an archive focusing on anarchism and anarchist texts.

Within the scope of our use of the term “anarchism” we have been quite broad, but broad does not mean infinite, and basically shrinks down to a set of ideas against the State and capital. This immediately rules out the so-called “anarcho-capitalism”, “anarcho-nationalism” and similar crap.

What is so special about this site?

The library provides a high quality online web browser version of the text along with various other formats, like PDFs, plain text, HTML, EPUB, and XeLaTeX. We actively encourage the DIY printing and the distribution of the texts, so there is no need to ask us for permission to use the texts.

The site provides a way for distributors and friends to change the layout of the PDFs and to create collections of an arbitrary number of texts (1 or more). See the bookbuilder page.

The site also provides an advanced search engine.

All these features come with some responsibility for the people who want to contribute to the library. We ask that uploaders contribute a logical representation of the text, with headings, emphasis, quotation blocks, etc. marked up appropriately. The site provides some tools (inside the web interface) to make this process easy, but some attention and some care is still required. Please be sure to read the manual if you plan to join the project for the mid- to long-term.

---

Anarhija

We live in the age of the inflation of the word. Its presence is so ubiquitous, its quantity is so overwhelming that its value tends to be zero, carrying no meaning. Technology has made publishing easy and inflated. The idea this library is built upon is not to collect everything coming out from the internet, but instead to save from this deluge meaningful, purposeful, useful texts, texts with live ideas, texts which could be printed and which wouldn’t feel off on the tables of an anarchist distribution. The outcome of this endeavour is still unclear.

This project was forked from theanarchistlibrary.org by some substantial contributors embarrassed by what is being published there. The archive has been cleaned up, new texts are being added, the mess of topics sorted out as much as possible.

That said, this library goes elsewhere. It is not going to be an echo chamber of news or “social” sites, nor a catch-all site. The selection strives to be strict. There is no place for blog posts, rants, academic exercises, internet fights. It is not meant to please everyone. Instead, be assured that it is the product of the passion and the efforts of few individuals.

The library is in English because English is the modern lingua franca. As a side effect, texts coming from the USA are over-represented while other very interesting regions are under-represented, if not missing at all. This is a major problem.

There is no automated submission process. If you think a text deserves to be published here, please contact a-library-en@inventati.org.

This library wants to be a tool, or a weapon if you prefer. Its purpose is to provide quality anarchist literature to individuals and to distributions, focusing on printing and diffusion of anarchist ideas, also serving as a long term hosting solution for valuable texts.

Please contact a-library-en@inventati.org if you think a text should not be here.

This project is part of the net of anarchist libraries.

---

Sprout Distro

Sprout Distro is an anarchist zine distro (distributor) and publisher based in the occupied territory currently known as the United States.

We distribute zines (see: "What is a Zine?" if you are new to zines) as a way of contributing to the increased proliferation of anarchist projects and resistance. We primarily distribute zines via this website and in person at zine fests, book fairs, and other such events. We make all the zines we carry available as PDFs for folks to download, print, and distribute themselves.

About Our Distro

Our distro mainly focuses on anarchist tactics and skill-building. This means that we have a lot of zines on direct action, organizing, starting projects (ex: collectives, study groups, prisoner support projects), decision-making, street tactics, security, affinity groups, how we relate to each other, etc.

Get In Touch

We welcome feedback from folks, suggestions of zines to carry, new ways to distribute zines, and other projects we should know about. Contact us here.

Archive.org Page

---

Steal This Wiki

A collaborative update and rewrite of Abbie Hoffman's seminal work, Steal This Book. Plus, a collection of related books and essays e.g. books analysing this project's yippie anarchist roots.

Table of Contents

Introductory Texts

About This Project
General Guidelines
How to Improve This Project
Rejected, Censored and Controversially Accepted Texts

Collaborative Texts

Website Visitors Guestbook
Reach Out

---

The Library of Unconventional Lives

An archive for collecting together stories of lives lived in unconventional ways. Which could mean something as simple as what it’s like to live on a narrow boat. Or it could mean someone hitchhiking round the world because it was the only way they knew how to process a tough childhood with their sanity intact.

Table of Contents

Introductory Texts

Collaborative Texts

Website Visitors Guestbook

---

The Ted K Archive

The biggest online archive of texts related to Ted Kaczynski.

The suggested reading heavily leans pro-tech and left-anarchist, though it's a fine open-ended question whether the website should have just been a weird collection that people privately shared.

You can find a full index of the archive here:

The Full Table of Contents

The archive is split into eight main categories:

Introductory Texts has tips on how to use and improve the website, plus more.
Original Texts are texts that were first published on this website. Feel free to contribute your own essays.
Primary Source Documents on Ted K can help researchers understand events as they happened, rather than relying on reflections from years later.
The Collected Works of Ted K includes the largest online collection of Ted K’s books, essays, stories, translations, and drawings, plus more.
Analyses of Ted’s Ideas & Actions includes political and literary analyses, podcast transcripts, plus more.
Suggested Reading contains some potentially valuable lessons that can be drawn from the story of Ted K’s life. Plus, the history of political violence related to Ted K and leftist political groups in contrast.
Broader Topics is a wide range of texts that simply shows what else the political violence researchers and true crime fans who frequent this website are reading and find interesting discussing.
The Criminal Justice System covers everything from; reading on the legislators who advance prison reforms, to the terrorists and freedom fighters who get prosecuted as criminals, to stories of poor people getting arrested for dumpster diving food to feed their family.

Introductory Texts

About This Project
The Ted K Archive's One-Year Anniversary
How to Find and Use the Archive
How to Improve This Project
Rejected and Controversially Accepted Texts

Collaborative Texts

Website Visitors Guestbook
Readers Favorite Texts
A Collaboratively Edited Discussion on Anti-Tech Politics
Frequently Asked Questions about Ted Kaczynski
Wishlist of Texts

---

Fool: You really have a style of writing that makes you easy to identify.

MountainMan: For starters I want to collect all the most highly-regarded books in each of the academic fields I'm interested in. Math, programming, history, etc. I want one good book for each subject.

For example, I like math. I want a full math curriculum in books, and I want all the books to be the ones people consider "the best of all time". Therefore I have:

Sullivan Pre-calc
Stewart Calc, early transcendentals
How To Prove It & How To Solve It
Rosen Discrete Math

Those are just examples. I want a full math curriculum in books.

In the programming realm, the best example is the wizard book (Structure and Interpretation of Computer Programs (SICP)) which is widely considered to be mind-opening to a ridiculous degree, even for senior programmers. And then there's On Lisp and The Art of the Metaobject Protocol.

Here's a bunch of subjects I want to do this for:

math (especially graph theory and cryptography)
physics
programming (especially Lisp, and systems programming)
anarchy stuff
history (especially in regards to liberation movements)
political literature (from all ideologies, yes even fascists)
Trade skills like woodworking, metalworking, engineering, etc.
Survival/emergency stuff like medical care, how to grow food, etc.
Military manuals

On the flip side, I like to collect books that aren't very well known. Most of these are random anarchist publications and stuff like that. I like to print things out myself if they aren't in books. Got a shitload of folders full of papers on my bookshelf. For example I have a ton of Ziq's writings printed out.

I also really like the idea of an "anti-library", a collection of books you never intend to read.

baikonur: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Library_of_Babel

Theodopolopolous: Here's a friends answer on discord:

I'd want something that collected left-wing stuff both fiction and non-fiction and catagorized it in multiple ways (like online search categories: anarchism, essay, sci-fi, ect.).

I'd want it to include as many different media formats as possible (comics, essays, even music if possible).

I'd also want it to let you know a little about the author (good and bad) as well if the author is voluntarily sharing their content on the sight.

And finally I'd call it the library of Alexa (as a joke on Alexandria and Alexa).

I think helping with novel library projects will be a hobby of mine for a while, so I'm enjoying everyone's answers.

Newish raddle forum for the exchange of information hiding away in libraries

Post Link:
<raddle.me/f/LibraryInfoExchange>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in lobby£££--------

And here are the first 3 posts:

New raddle forum for anyone curious about book publishing as a hobby

Post Link:
<raddle.me/f/HobbyPublishing>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/177066/new-raddle-forum-for-anyone-curious-about-book-publishing-as>

And here are the first three posts:

yaspora: I appreciate this & the other forum you started. How’d you get interested in these things?

Ishkah: Thanks :)

It started off with playing around with re-structuring books I enjoyed reading. Like I turned a book of prison letters between two childhood friends, into a kind of unfinished autobiography of the person in prison, by reorganizing all the memories she would tell into the timeline of her life.

Then, enjoying helping make old pdf scans into low ink printable books again, for sites like the anarchist library.

Then, going to big libraries for research for a biography I was writing and helping other authors with scans of rare material for research for their books.

ziq: Very cool.

yaspora: Cool. Do you mind if I send a DM?

Ishkah: No worries, yeah feel free.

Spreadsheeting rare and out of print books to send to publishers or publish myself

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/HobbyPublishing/177065/spreadsheeting-rare-and-out-of-print-books-to-send-to>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in HobbyPublishing (edited 1 minute later)

I’m working on two spreadsheets of texts which may be helpful to small radical publishers and hobby publishers alike finding out of print books to republish.

One is a comparison of the various AmuseWiki archives (The Anarchist Library, Elephant Editions, etc.):

AmuseWiki Archives Comparison

The other is a comparison of various archives of Leo Tolstoy’s texts:

Leo Tolstoy Archives Comparison

One benefit of seeing all the texts in a spreadsheet is that people can sort the spreadsheets by the date the texts were written. So, making research into finding public domain texts somewhat easier.

I’m going to try submitting some of the books to publishers as part of trying to flog my own writing anyway. Then on the public domain books with no takers, I’ll try formatting some myself for etsy and amazon:

Book Submission Drawing Board

If anyone would like to help work on one or both of the spreadsheets, just let me know a gmail to add, or hit the little request edit access in the top right corner.

Also, if anyone can remember the title of a really good book that when you went to look for it you were surprised was out of print feel free to let me know. As I might be able to help digitize it, re-print it for cheap, and so have it be read more widely and quoted more often. Bonus points if it’s an old book published before 1927, so is more likely to be public domain. Or I can always help with suggestions for publishing it yourself also.

A book builder feature that’s free to use

Post Link:
<thelul.org/bookbuilder>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in HobbyPublishing

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/HobbyPublishing/177064/a-book-builder-feature-that-s-free-to-use>

The AmuseWiki bookbuilder: a tutorial

Post Link:
<amusewiki.org/library/bookbuilder-tutorial>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in HobbyPublishing

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/HobbyPublishing/177063/the-amusewiki-bookbuilder-a-tutorial>

The Fox and the Hound

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/daniel-p-mannix-the-fox-and-the-hound-black-white>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in books

First edition synopsis

This remarkable animal story, 1967 winner of Dutton’s annual Animal Book Award, is the tale of a duel between two superbly skilled antagonists — each one born and bred to his dangerous calling.

One is a fox, the other a hound.

As he tells their story, Daniel P. Mannix brilliantly evokes the world of each animal: the dog, devoting his instinct and ingenuity wholeheartedly to the service of his master... and the fox, welcoming risks, roaming his own range, interrupting his wild freedom to help raise a family of pups as carefully and anxiously as any human parent.

Copper, the half-bred bloodhound, is a favorite in his master’s pack of hounds and fighting dogs. He lives for the hunt, picking up a scent and following it with painfully learned tactics, whether his quarry be bear, deer—or man. There is one animal he longs to bring to bay —the red fox whom his master pursues with single-mindedness.

The fox is Tod, named by a man who rescued him as an orphan pup and raised him among humans for his first year of life. Then Tod returned to the wild. You share the excitement of Tod’s strong young life, the thrills of his hunting and mating—discover how he acquires dozens of quick-witted strategies to outwit his constant pursuers. In chapters filled with action and little-known hunting and nature lore, you follow the life-and-death contest of the fox and the hound from their first breathtaking hunt through many memorable encounters to the last hunt of all, with its intensely dramatic ending.

Packed with incident, with suspense, and with superb nature writing. The Fox and the Hound is an extraordinary, authentic portrait of animal life that might well become a classic.

Daniel P. Mannix is one of America’s most knowledgeable and popular authors of animal and nature stories; his books include Last Eagle, and, most recently, A Sporting Chance. Mr. Mannix began collecting animals at the age of five, and he wrote his first book about them while in high school. He lives at Sunnyhill Farm, in Malvern, Pennsylvania, with his wife, two children, and a large collection of animals and birds. His intensive study of the habits and abilities of foxes includes keeping a pair who know him so well that he can turn them loose and watch them hunt, fight, mate and in general live as wild foxes do.

I am no hero, and neither are you; thoughts on how our histories of abuse inflect our anarchist practice

Post Link:
<theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-i-am-no-hero-and-neither-are-you>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in Anarchy

These contributions were made in response to the prompt “How have our histories of abuse inflected our anarchist practice?”

They may be triggering.

for starters

Most anarchists share an understanding of security culture practices that discourages spreading information about peoples’ private political involvement. It is also important to avoid handing over emotional information without consideration of the potentially damaging ramifications. We need to build a practice of emotional security culture: mindfully protecting the emotionally charged parts of our friends’ lives.

In our scene, snitches and cops have been given easy access to personal information through the seemingly benign stories told about people’s private lives. This information is often used to create divisions between their targets. It is almost always an element of snitching, and sometimes is the driving force. This is one reason we should be keeping our friends safe when sharing parts of their emotional lives in the same way we protect parts of their political activity: they are really not separate at all.

That’s the big scary example. What happens more often is the casual spreading of other people’s emotional lives amongst friends, sometimes in the form of divisive gossip. Although the definition of gossip is debatable, what is clear is the harm that can come from people sharing emotionally sensitive information about other people’s lives without knowing if it is OK to do so. This isn’t to say we should never talk about other people’s stories; rather, we should do so with discretion, and get permission when possible. These boundaries are consistent with the principles of security culture in general.

On the other hand, we don’t feel an obligation to protect those who’ve harmed us. We must feel free to share our own stories of emotional vulnerabilities, and to pass on those of others when they consent. Doing so safely may take some extra consideration, but this additional effort is totally worth it.

When dealing with emotionally sensitive information, be sensitive with it.

the hand you hold is the hand that holds you down

Everyone I know is so fucked. We are all damaged broken ugly things, with huge, gaping faults that make us always near the brink of condemnation. At times, I think our greatest redeeming quality is that we know this, and hate ourselves more than anyone, and want to kill the parts of ourselves that have come to resemble those who made us this way. In this situation, among the ones who cannot leave anarchy because we have no other options, despair has come to constitute the real basis of our affinity. False positivities feel insulting, hope seems treacherous—but, also, sometimes necessary. How to fight them without being just like them, how to survive them without being just like them, how to love each other with all our oozing infected wounds?

When elephants are born into captivity, they sometimes are chained to a stake when still small. The young elephant learns its limits, the circle within it may act; it can see the rest of the world, perhaps imagine its ability to act outside the circle, but it is not permitted to. Perhaps it rages against this constraint, but the fact remains that, when it is old enough, the stake and chain can be removed. The elephant will continue to walk its small circle, having been taught that no greater freedom exists. This is called domestication.

But, sometimes, the elephant revolts and kills its trainer. Sometimes herds of wild elephants rampage through a town, destroying infrastructure and people alike. Let’s not kid ourselves—these elephants pay for their rebellion, are put down or further confined. But in that moment of freedom that comes from biting the hand that feeds, there is an opening, a hope, an anarchy.

There are many qualities of anarchist spirit I have come to appreciate: bravery, humility, the tendency to listen to others and take them seriously, a deep hatred of the world and disdain for its offerings, an empathy with the struggles of others that translates directly into material solidarity, and a complicated relationship with death—a desire for it that overtakes us completely sometimes, a guiding vision of its necessity for those who control us, but a total regret and sadness for its power over us at present. (Sometimes, the knowledge feels liberating: in the Algerian insurrection of spring 2001, “the young rioters fought police and gendarmerie forces during several weeks shouting: “You cannot kill us, we are already dead!””[1])

One way to sum these qualities up is as a great generosity of spirit. We are not afraid to give of ourselves. We recognize, in fact, that there is little difference between ourselves and our comrades, with whom we have a fluid bond; we cannot help but share everything. We can extend further, to find some solidarity with those forms of life estranged from ours… although the relationship is attenuated and made difficult for our differences at times. And, truly, we all inhabit different forms of life at once— the queer anarchist is unhappy amidst their straight comrades, but even more so among queer radicals.

All of this generosity, though, and its attempts at generalizing itself, are constrained by the circle we have been taught to walk.We may be taking the Ring to Mordor to destroy it, but, at times, we are not Frodo, or even Sam. Sometimes we are Gollum, desiring and hating what destroys us, bent and broken by it already, not always able to resist its temptation. The poor abused Smeagol in us is not always on top.

Other ways of saying this: we are Frankenstein’s monster, misshapen by our experiences and trauma, but still with a human heart that can feel and bleed. Nietzsche would say that we have a slave morality, that we try to bring down those around us, that we hate our oppressors so much that we try to become their opposites—the perfect victims. We are full of ressen- timent, our natural anger against our conditions turned inwards for our own destruction. We are Reich’s little man, reactionaries fighting against our own liberation, covered in character armor. Our defense mechanisms have outlived our need for them, and come to define and control us.

We are taught our own constraints by subtle means, often “positive”—to buy from the co-op if we can afford it, and to feel guilty if we cannot; to patiently stand in line at that co-op; to not leave the line in disgust and walk out with our arms full of stolen groceries. We are also taught, if this omnipresent manipulation is not enough to confine us, by more blunt, sovereign power—the violent arrest, prison and the abuse we might experience there. But, as for the elephant, the most effective teachings we endure happen early—the advice of our parents, the tone of our interactions, whether or not they hit us, and so on. These things are not small—studies show that the single most important fact defining whether or not someone will do well in life is whether or not your mother loves you. Even if for only a year, when you are too young to remember her—it matters.

The killer in me is the killer in you

This whole time I have said we, because I suspect I am not alone in this, but now I will say I, and speak from my own experience. My mother did not love me. She hated me, in fact, and spent my childhood reenacting a less horrifying version of the abuse she experienced in her own childhood, although she would not describe it so; she often told me that I had it easy, and described things terrible enough to make me agree. My dad loved me, though, and I chalk it up to his care that I am sometimes able today to love and care, to feel a tension towards freedom within myself. Now that I am grown, and have a child of my own, I am determined to not become my mother, to never hurt her. I want to believe that experience is not destiny, that the story does not have to repeat just so.

As anarchists, we seek to defy the limitations of society in blatant, powerful ways—attacking abusers, institutions, physical manifestations of what we hate. We affirm our own sovereignity, or try to destroy what destroys us; so many slogans. This is good, and more of it is needed, but... as I get older, and as I come up against my internal limitations more and more consistently, I am reluctantly coming to believe that we must also resist and undo the subtle inflections of our terrible experiences. I am afraid that, otherwise, my practice will be forever constrained and uncreative, that I am doomed to reproduce the state in every relationship. For years I have mouthed “it’s not what, but how” without fully believing it—if there were a thousand more attacks a year, it might not be enough, but it would certainly be encouraging! But I look to history, and see how it has been bad before, and feel unwillingly convinced of the need for personal and social destruction on an intangible level.

If you hit me and I hit you, we still ain’t even

The most common definition of the cycle of violence is something like: you hit me, I hit you, you hit me back, and it never ends. This is a disempowering and flattening definition: one thinks of the liberal narrative of Israel and Palestine. The definition used by the antidomestic violence “community”, however, is a bit more useful.

It describes a process that happens largely within the abuser: a honeymoon period in which everything is good, better, more intense than other relationships; then a building tension; next a violent outburst; then apologies, promises of never again and a return to the honeymoon period. It is not just a circle, but a spiral turning clockwise, tending to tighten each time. The survivor becomes invested in the cycle too, certainly, but that is a result of the abuser’s manipulation:

you can’t leave me, I need you; you can’t leave me, I love you more intensely than you’ve ever experienced; you can’t leave me, or I will make you hurt.

Within this context, if a survivor reacts violently against their abuser, it is not so much an act of participation within the cycle of violence, but a blow of self-defense, a push towards freedom. (Of course, it is often not this linear.)

But there is yet another cycle of violence, and it is generalized. Statistics, for what they’re worth, say that 30% of those who are abused as children go on to abuse their own children. Fredy Perlman’s Against History, Against Leviathan is this narrative on a global scale. Perlman tells the story of many different sets of people resisting their conditions, fighting their oppressors—then forming their own new Leviathans, corrupted by the harm they experienced, sick with the virus of civilization (some would say.) These situations are horrible and complicated and not this simple—there are so many structural oppressions and points of history at play—but, still, this pattern seems too true to look away from.

You could believe from all this that we are poisoned at the core by all the damage we’ve experienced, too likely to repeat the past—but that eliminates the possibility of choosing otherwise, means that resistance is never real or possible for long, that all lines of flight hit brick walls. I don’t think so. I think it is true that we are nearly doomed, and that it is delusional and dangerously short-sighted to believe otherwise—but I don’t want us to use that as an excuse to give up. We must think and talk together and try again; only in that effort can we learn.

So in my own life: the shit I experienced so long ago became a self-destructive tendency. Then it started to harm my practice. Now those tendencies have begun to negatively affect others.

*All of the times I’ve had sex I didn’t want to have, not because the other person forced me into it but because it was a narrative I had become used to playing out—*I thought that I was only hurting myself, but now I see that I was hurting others too, that the wrong lies not only in forcefulness but, sometimes, in withholding an answer. The bad habits it has taught me take me to the edge of an unthinkable precipice.

After I escaped my mother, I felt invulnerable to further abuse.* But, when shades of it come to me after all, it feels more like real love than anything positive I have freely engaged in. It is so hard to decline.

I consider the bitterness and resentment I feel when others are doing projects I feel incapable of because of my circumstances or insecurities, and I see an enemy.

I try to create the magic moments of revolt I have sometimes stumbled into with others, and they fall apart, crumble in my hands.* I become afraid to even try.

There are other ways to look at it, of course. Surely our desire to fight against what has been done to us (and who does it and how it is done to everyone) is based in our own experience, the most legitimate basis for attack. One could argue that one of the reasons why so surprisingly many privileged people are anarchists— or, conversely, why it seems that a disproportionate number of anarchists have experienced abuse—is because surviving abuse can give you a basic ability to empathize with others, to feel an impulse towards solidarity, that privileged people would otherwise lack.

What happened to us is terrible, but it fuels our desire for something else, our hatred of the world and need to resist it. This is not to psychoanalyze our resistance away, but rather to recognize our emotional resources so that we may more explicitly draw on them. Knowing what we do about how abuse has shaped us, we can also look at our practices critically, search for the poison in us, and build a tension towards dissolution rather than replication.

And it’s not all holding us back: we have learned practical skills in our personal attempts to survive, not only outdated defenses. We know how to smile when we want to cry; we know how to keep secrets. We know how to be beaten without making a sound. We know how to strike back in small but meaningful ways, and how to keep a little piece of ourselves out of their grasp, hidden and free. We have learned, in a very direct sense, that there really is an outside; that it may take years of failed attempts, but that one can escape not only in death.

Freedom lies in revolt;we are good in a crisis, and the crisis is always on.

fever dream

the lines blur.

all we are now is voice.

scream at me.

break the wall.

you give me the violence of your vocabulary.

animal. monster. faggot. scum.

your words do not name me,

do not bring me back into the

labyrinth of identity (ripping skin,

endlessly stepping on needles).

animal. monster. faggot. scum.

you do not inscribe me

with Nature and Law and Light and Beauty.

no,

your words do not entrap

the fetid mire that is my body.

they open up

possibilities:

how many scars can my skin accumulate?

how many teeth can i fracture?

how much shit can i swallow?

how much nature can i profane?

your words loose in me

the monster hiding:

stabbing her father,

castrating her self.

do your violence to me.

set fire to our childhood homes.

let old selves die.

until we are born,

the horror we want to be.

every time i attend a consent workshop, sexual assault accountability discussion, or even read a survivor support zine, i fight back tears. every fucking time it’s a trigger for me to hear that the most important thing you can provide as support is to listen, to believe. when i went to my family about being sexually abused they continued the abuse by screaming at me for hours, insisting that i was lying. i was moved into my grandma’s house where my life was threatened if i ever ‘said anything about the men in her home.’ my mom tried another go with housing me a year later. another three years of abuse. i ran away when i was 15.

my family didn’t want to believe me when i told them i was being assaulted because my abuser was, to them, virtuous beyond reproach. this belief was fostered by the parallel created between my mother’s first husband (my dad) and her second (my abuser.) my dad was an alcoholic and outwardly abusive, so i was actually happy when mother divorced him. my happiness was shortlived; soon after the divorce she brought home something even worse. with this one the abuse happened when no one was looking and didn’t leave visible marks. to everyone except me it seemed like my mother had improved her situation.

nobody wanted to believe that this man who held a steady job, went to church, and gave expensive gifts could ever be the monster i was calling him out for being. i was told that i was ungrateful and awful to make up such stories about someone who did so much for my mother and i.

many things have become a part of my core beliefs and personality based on my formative experiences. some i try to resist, and others i try to see as the positive takeaway from an overall negative time in my life. having my mother, a figure imbued with assumptions of unconditional support, turn against me and not believe and defend me, has made it so that i struggle with speaking up and asking for help. i feel like she defended her partner over her child because she felt like she had to maintain a relationship with a man in order to survive. this understanding has been the basis for my cynicism of the power dynamics between men and women. the societal pressure for two by two pairings and the inherent co-dependence that ensues is what i primarily blame for the destruction of my relationship with my mother. as a result of not having familial involvement i also have a heightened understanding of the importance of the bonds established within my community of chosen family.

my abuse also made me question everything that my abuser believed in. his value as a person for making money and spending it on gifts (bribes), has definitely formed my anti-work/capitalism ethic. his faith in god as our holy father and his conviction to submit oneself to the authority of god has made me retch at any patriarchal pyramid scheme bullshit ever since i was made to submit to his authority. and i guess that plays into my overall distrust of any person in a position of authority.

i sometimes wonder what my life would be like if my mom never met him. would i be less cynical? would i be able to communicate easier? would i have a relationship with my bio family? i don’t really know and i try to not fixate on the things that might have been different and focus on the things that i can have an impact on. helping other folks in their struggles helps me deal with my own. i know that i would have figured that out, even if i never had to struggle in the ways i have.

“All that is ruined in you, I’ll cherish. All that you have endured, every pain you have known brings me closer to you; I would not take you into my heart but for each crack in yours. Every bruise your mind cannot get rid of, every little detail that is hideous I find beautiful beyond words. It is only with the exposure of our horrifying scars that I can learn to love, and be loved.”

– Delete me, I’m so Ugly

on vigilance: toward another impossibility

1: a consideration

what does it mean to be an anarchist survivor of abuse what does it mean to have been abused by an anarchist what does it mean when men who want to fuck you because you have “good politics” keep fucking you when you don’t want to what does it mean when your lifelong comrades lie to you for years about what they did what does it mean when you don’t trust anyone what does it mean to be real, really real, about how capital has poisoned your idea of intimacy over and over again what if the first person who ever abused or manipulated you was an anarchist, a popular one, one whose press people still recommend you read zines from, what does it mean when the friendships that were the only thing you could still believe in are sick with the rot of cruelty, manipulation, emotional expropriation, how do you cut out the rot, can you cut out the rot, why can’t you find exactly where the rot is, if you could find it you’d kill it, if you could find it you’d kill it, you call them scene enmities as to discount them when you’re looking for someone else to trust but you know it’s something else, know your reputation is monstrous if you talk shit, what does it mean to have survived anarchist abuse, what does it mean in our tiny scene, its impotent gestures utterly destined for failure (we know this) except god damn can its practitioners destroy you easy, what does it mean to be an anarchist survivor of abuse, if anarchy as a politic has taught me to take solace in nothing then what’s the next step, more zines about accountability processes, more baseball bats, except nothing leaves you unabused if anything anarchy means failure to me and even if the failure isn’t mine i know that there is no other side, there is no abuse>>[slide missing]>>communique>>then healing complete, abuse terminated, history wiped clean, trust restored, community standard upheld, perpetrator cast out, redemption achieved, ready to block capital flows in accordance with my ability forever and evermore, amen

anarchy’s not like a video game and neither are our lives. you can’t win on the other side of abuse even if you kill the motherfucker. you can’t and won’t win. all the actions that want you to win feel like shit because they are shit. you don’t have to disappoint anarchist narratives of healing and accountability, too. you’ve got enough disappointment in the depths of yourself. you don’t have to pretend you don’t feel like shit.

i see one attainable goal for abusers, which is a lifelong commitment to not abusing anyone else, ever. accountability per se should be understood as a failing gesture at an impossible project, that of unabusing the survivor, of building a world where people aren’t systemically encouraged to abuse one another. survivor solidarity means understanding that i’m not going to feel better, and that you don’t get a pass from feeling bad. solidarity is agreeing to feel bad with me for a while. maybe really bad, maybe a long while.

2: an expansion

lest we fucking forget that many kinds of abuse can be understood, for the guileless marxists among us, as a special kind of forced value extraction: a coerced accumulation of care from the abused to the abuser. the flows of affect and care that reproduce culture and therefore subjectivity are unequally maintained by women; emotional abuse forcibly directs those affective gestures away from the surviving subject and onto the abusing subject; the abuser’s selfhood is affirmed endlessly through the survivor’s maintenance of it, and at the expense of the survivor’s selfhood. one leaves the abusive situation shattered, unsure of which affective bonds can be trusted, starved for care or attention whose implicit purpose is not control, confused as to where oneself ends and the other—much less a network individuals connected by affinity—begins.

on a better day i’d argue against conceiving of all social life as the circulation and maintenance of affects and subjects mirroring the circulation and maintenance of capital and the commodity, since that framework is limiting and terrifying. but in terms of abuse, it can perhaps be useful to lay out an analysis that treats sociality as perhaps not work, but as circuits that produce value, keeping in mind particularly the material consequences of surviving abuse.

(reached the character limit for raddle)

Jialunes: The author added quotes from Delete me, I’m so Ugly, it can be read freely here : https://archive.org/details/ief_2011_delete/ief_2011_delete/mode/2up

Thank you for sharing this text, it was really interesting. Our traumas shaped us in different ways : it made the author take action, but also impulsive. They are in movement.

Freedom lies in revolt;we are good in a crisis, and the crisis is always on.

I think we may be stuck in repeating the acts that accomplished our revolt against our abusers.

It made me hide, I cut the strings that controlled my body. I became useless, and thus unused. I am stuck in time, in the place I used to hide. The abusers are not here anymore, they’ve lost all power, but I’m still hidden, in case anything new would try to hurt me.

It used to feel like freedom, because I’m free from them, because I can do anything and do nothing if I want, they cannot hurt me.

So I do nothing. I’m still hidden away, carefully unproductive.

Is it even my choice anymore? I don’t know any other way of being but being threatened to work, having to do everything I’m ordered to that would satisfy my abusers enough to not be abused. I was abused anyway, but less when I complied. I had more and more exigences to respond to though. It’s not that complaint was forbidden, it was not smiling and not showing gratefulness for the abuse that was punished. Complaint was unfathomable, when looking unhappy is perceived as dissent.

And now I’m deadweight, and oh I like it, even if society try to shame “freeloaders”, I’m still acknowledged as disabled. I still wonder if it is them, or if it was me, that disabled me.

Can I re-able myself? Psychiatry promised me medication would help, but, that I would have to, step by step, “integrate myself into society”. I’m the one who has to do the work again.

I don’t know if I’m unable to, or if I don’t want to. Being useless still feels like a victory, as I spite on everything they only valued about me : my capacity for work. It still feels safe, as the only way of being productive I’ve ever know was letting my survival instinct and fear drives me.

But I don’t want to live like that anymore, and I don’t know any other way of living.

I’m stuck in time, like a game in pause, not understanding that I’m the only one in pause, not the world. Years feel like yesterdays. There’s no tomorrow I can see that is not a repeat of my past abuse, so I stopped time, I’m always now, in the present. It kinda fucked-up my ability to plan, and to create a future for myself. Deadlines feel like terminals.

The Frustratingly Predictable ‘Quiet Neighbour’ News Stories

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/theo-slade-the-frustratingly-predictable-quite-neighbour-news-stories>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/172757/the-frustratingly-predictable-quiet-neighbour-news-stories>

Anarchy Radio 08 08 2023

Post Link:
<archive.org/details/anarchy-radio-08-08-2023>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in Podcasts (edited 2 minutes later)

Episode synopsis:

The HEAT. Bronze Age Pervert’s recent call. Diseases tick up. The Great Dechurching.Conspiracy theory 2.0. “Moxie”- a talking robot (chatbot) to teach kids “social skills.” World- view projects 8 billion facial recognition links to cryptocurrency. New podcasts, action news e.g. Russian recruitment center arsons. One call.

Any debate perverts know which episode the fascist Bronze Age Pervert dude called up, with a thick Romanian accent?:

Zerzan: Remember Bronze Age Pervert? He called like, what? A month ago? ... Well, it turns out there’s an article in the ... September issue of the Atlantic entitled How Bronze Age pervert charmed the far right and Internet personality you espouses fascism, racism and body building as one influential converts.... he seemed pretty slimy kind of figure.

Carl: It was a weird call, you couldn’t tell what exactly about it, but it.

Zerzan: Kinda smelled a rat.

Carl: Was a little weird.

Zerzan: He wouldn’t spit it out. You know what? What are you all about here anyway? So the guys now somewhat.

Carl: Confirmed creep.

Zerzan: Right. The well known creed. Yeah, news to us. But we have gotten some strange calls over the years.

Finally, here’s the article mentioned:

How Bronze Age Pervert Charmed the Far Right

Suspect escapes courthouse during sentencing; officer injured

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=6G8ka7xuy3E>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in ACAB

kris: a classic.

UberGeek: Praxis.

Radriendil: “Officer injured” does not do justice to the manner in which that guy wrecked himself.

Nature and Psyche; Radical Environmentalism and the Politics of Subjectivity

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/david-w-kidner-nature-and-psyche>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in books

Underscores the limitations of traditional psychology to envision a more healthy ecological and psychological future.

Description

Nature and Psyche argues that psychological and environmental writing and action are all too often colonized by the same assumptions that inhibit ecological and cultural diversity. Industrialized monocultures conceal the character of our alienation from nature and, thus, prevent the emergence of effective solutions. Drawing on a diversity of disciplines, David Kidner illustrates that traditional psychological understanding is often inherently hostile to the natural order, and that the dominant form of selfhood that has emerged in the industrialized world promotes the domestication of nature. In fact, even some of the most radical environmentalists, who simplistically oppose technology, are also trapped within this paradigm. The author demonstrates that a more critical historical and cultural awareness, rooted in nature, can enable a re-integration of nature and psyche.

David W. Kidner is Senior Lecturer in Psychology in the Humanities and Communication Studies Programmes at Nottingham Trent University.

Reviews

“David Kidner’s book … does for environmental theory what Edward Said’s book, Orientalism, did for postcolonial cultural criticism: it lays open the belly of the industrialist beast and shows how pervasive the assumptions of industrialism are in contemporary psychological theory and practice, as well as in academic discourse and environmental practice. “ — Environmental Practice

“…erudite discussion that analyzes the fragmented industrialist ideology he believes is contributing to the gradual extinction of natural structures. “ — CHOICE

“The Titanic is sinking and Kidner rightly shows that it is no longer enough simply to slow the rate of sinking. We need a new boat, and his book provides the first in-depth plans for its construction, a vessel—human consciousness—which does not start in hubris and the boast of being un-sinkable because we have so distanced ourselves from the natural world. Kidner’s book rightly invites participation founded on our resonance with nature. At bottom psyche does sink its roots deep within the earth. This book is destined to become a landmark. “ — Robert Romanyshyn, author of Technology as Symptom and Dream and The Soul in Grief: Love, Death and Transformation

“Nature and Psyche has a tremendous amount of theoretical drive and integrity. Kidner is not afraid to make large claims, and writes with the sure confidence of a calling, yet never loses a critical edge. What is powerful about his work is the way he gets the reader to really appreciate what is meant by opening the psyche to nature, and, by contrast, the closed and fragmented world of ordinary consciousness. “ — Joel Kovel, author of History and Spirit: An Inquiry into the Philosophy of Liberation

Women Who Run with the Wolves; Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype

Post Link:
<thelul.org/library/clarisa-pincola-estes-women-who-run-with-the-wolves>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in books

Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype is a 1992 book by American psychoanalyst Clarissa Pinkola Estés, published by Ballantine Books. It spent 145 weeks on The New York Times Best Seller list over a three-year span, a record at the time.[1] Estés won a Las Primeras Award from the Mexican American Women’s Foundation for being the first Latina on the New York Times Best Seller list.[2] The book also appeared on other best seller lists, including USA Today, Publishers Weekly, and Library Journal.[3]

Estés had been producing popular audiotapes of her stories and research and was approached by publishers to turn them into a book.[1]

The stories printed in the book were given to her from her family, people she met on her travels, or her patients, as part of her work. The author sees the stories as a way to hand over knowledge about the cycles of life and forms of healing, and also as forms of art which can be used for healing and helping people along the way.[4]

Introduction

Deep instinctual nature became endangered through society as it is not regarded as important. Rationality and decision making through the head has become the primal and socially accepted way of things. The wild woman archetype is instinctual knowledge which everyone has deep inside. It is knowing when to stay and when to leave, when to let live, and when to let die. It is knowledge about the natural cycles of life in balance. There are high expectations on women nowadays: they should be everything for everyone. They were treated as property, objects, and lesser beings.[4]

Fairy tales picture ways for growth and give instruction on how to find one’s own right way. We may have lost the connection to our deep instinctual guide, but she is still there and can help us. The Wild Woman lives everywhere we are and can be found everywhere: In beauty, in daily affairs, in an honest smile. Many women long for the deep instinctual in a world where rationality thrives.[4]

Through cultures the Wild Woman has many names in many different countries, e.g.: La Mujer Grande, the great woman (Spain), Dakini, the dancing force which produces clear seeing in women (Tibet), Psych-ology, knowing of the soul; Losing contact to the inner guide takes away joy and inspiration and makes women merely ‘function’ in everyday life. It makes women shaky, depressed, feeling powerless, shame-bearing, chronically doubtful and more. When women’s lives are in stasis, or filled with ennui, it is always time for the wildish woman to emerge. Within every woman there is a place where joy and freedom live, a secret place for lush growing.[4]

The Wild Woman can act as an ally, leader, model, teacher to women. She carries everything a woman needs to know and medicine for all things. To be with the instinctual nature means to act wholeheartedly and groundedly. Old scars and passion are doors through which a woman may find her way back to instinctual nature.[4]

Chapter 1: The Howl: Resurrection of the Wild Woman

The first story is about La Loba, a wolf woman who lives in the desert and collects bones. Once she has found a whole skeleton, she sings it alive again. This teaches us that the dead ideas and powers can be resurrected by using the soul voice. To do so, a woman needs to enter into a state of deep love and speak from that source. To gather the bones is to do creative work, e.g.: analysing dreams, dancing, making art;[5]

Chapter 2: Stalking the Intruder: The Beginning Initiation

The third story of Bluebeard is about a man who marries a woman and then leaves his keys to her in his absence. She goes exploring and uses the forbidden key. Behind the door she finds the bodies of his previous wives. The key is stained red and so she hides it, but Bluebeard finds out about her betrayal and wants to kill her for it. Scared she calls for her sisters and they manage to kill her husband.[6]

This story teaches us that there is a natural predator within the psyche of each woman. This man wants a woman to be only what he wants her to be: perfectly innocent and naive. But a woman cannot live a full life in being unaware of the danger and not caring to know more. We need to be curious and need to explore the dark corners of our mind in order to grow.[6]

Every woman has that unnatural force which will seek to inhibit the natural instinct. The predator cuts women off from their ideas, feelings, and actions, although he longs for the light, he kills it. Therefore, we need to recognize such forces and protect oneself against its deadliness. But often, when we are young (mental and or physical) we do not see the danger, out of youthful enjoyment, physical attraction or pleasure. Thus, we are easily captured by the looks, charm, and wealth of someone.[6]

Naive women as prey: Young women let themselves be captured, because they didn’t learn to trust their instincts. They are told to be nice and behaved and taught not to see the predator as what he is. The predator cuts women off from their ideas, feelings, and actions; although he longs for the light, he kills it.[6]

Critique

American folklorist Barre Toelken criticized Estés’ analysis of the Bluebeard tale as conflating versions from separate cultures. Toelken held this as an example of a tendency of Jung-influenced psychologists, who may overlook the complexities of folklore studies, to build complex theories around a single version of a tale that supports their own theory or a proposal.[7]

[1] Sylvia Mendoza, The Book of Latina Women: 150 Vidas of Passion, Strength, and Success, Adams Media, 2004, p. 221.

[2] “A Legacy of Latina Leadership: Las Primeras Awardees, 1990–2014” (PDF). MANA, A National Latina Organization.

[3] “Nonfiction Book Review: Women Who Run with the Wolves: Myths and Stories of the Wild Woman Archetype by Clarissa Pinkola Estes, Author Ballantine $27.95 (560p) ISBN 978-0-345-37744-9”. PublishersWeekly.com.

[4] Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. (1992). Women who run with the wolves : myths and stories of the wild woman archetype (1^st ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 1–11, 21. ISBN 0-345-37744-3. OCLC 25747660.

[5] Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. (1992). Women who run with the wolves : myths and stories of the wild woman archetype (1^st ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 23–26, 35. ISBN 0-345-37744-3. OCLC 25747660.

[6] Estés, Clarissa Pinkola. (1992). Women who run with the wolves : myths and stories of the wild woman archetype (1^st ed.). New York: Ballantine Books. pp. 39–43, 46, 470. ISBN 0-345-37744-3. OCLC 25747660.

[7] Toelken, Barre (1996). The Dynamics of Folklore. O’Reilly. pp. 412–413. ISBN 9781457180712.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by Fool in Would you still use domesticated animals in a peaceful world? by Ishkah

What is special about those groups that warrants bringing them up

Because the person I was discussing veganism with was again and again asking in different ways ‘why don’t we see apes choosing to eat vegan’ and I was simply trying to get across that I like how the concept of an animal products boycott came about at a particular time and place in human history and the utility it has today, that it has a particular meaning to me that when hypothesised in the context of primates would be as silly as asking ‘why don’t we see apes choosing to do complex arithmetic?’

So I came up with my own hypotheticals to help elucidate that concept, e.g. a fictional psychopath without the ability to authentically desire to empathise with other animals may have no reason to adopt this lifestyle in the way that it’s meaningful to me either.

Again it was not about distancing myself from the similarities I have with these groups, only clarifying for Alex why I both like the history and utility of veganism, but don’t believe many of the ideas he was in my opinion mistakenly assuming most vegans believe.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by Fool in Would you still use domesticated animals in a peaceful world? by Ishkah

Factually by the way I define those terms, none of them would ever be capable of conceptualizing and authentically adopting that ethical reasoning. Psychopath may be a fictional concept, I don’t know how useful it is, but again, even defined as a fictional character the above still applies.

And none of that was a judgement on the above fictional and non-fictional people, it was just a way of clarifying the type of reasoning I was talking about factually isn’t in the realm of concepts these other groups would be engaging with.

Would you still use domesticated animals in a peaceful world?

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Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in debate (edited 7 hours later)

Here are two conversations I had on this subject with two primitivists who advocate collapsing technological society and returning to live as hunter-gatherers.

Obviously this is a very niche position, but it’s perhaps interesting to compare elements of their philosophy with others who sometimes fall into the same natural fallacy trap i.e. holding to an evaluative asymmetry whereby anything that happens in wild habitat is automatically less bad than anything that happens in an industrialised society.

Feel free to answer the question in your own way and/or comment on these exchanges.

Theo: There are obviously people who are pro & anti animal domestication on either side of the technology question, so I’m curious to get a range of opinions for how anti-tech philosophy interacts with animal rights issues.

Most vegans are against breeding domesticated animals like cows, pigs, sheep and chickens because we think we should be freeing up space for those wild animals with a close common ancestor such as bison, wild boar, mouflon and jungle fowl, which are better able to express their capabilities in the wild. That way those domesticated animals with numerous health problems like chickens who get egg bound or break their legs from carrying so much meat can be allowed to simply not be bred into existence anymore.

Many anti-civ people extend this critique of domestication to the way they say humans have allowed ourselves to become unthinkingly subordinate to the way of life in cities. And some even go as far as to say this process started when we began using fire.

Finally, there are many anti-tech people who see it as necessary to practice animal farming and hunting for surviving the collapse, which I don’t see as likely, but I do think that that would be justified if true.

A hypothetical question I’m curious about though, to test people’s principles is... if you lived in a world where everyone was vegan and there was no war, where everyone grew food forests, so even if you desired to move, you could always help someone else with their food forest, and you knew you could meet all your nutritional needs living this life, and you knew there wasn’t going to be warfare, and you knew you could maintain the skills of hunting if you needed to go back to that, would you hypothetically choose not to hunt animals? Just living a life where you’re communicating with them through seeing otters in the wild, but just choosing not to hunt, do you think that would be an ethical responsibility? What do you think if you knew that you could survive perfectly fine with low labor hours?

Zerzan: That sounds rather nice, yeah I wouldn’t argue against it, I mean if it’s conceivable and I think you know hunter-gatherer life was more gathering than hunting, but still, maybe that would be more ideal. If you’re trying to learn anything from the record, it’s a bit hard to imagine that in terms of our evolution, but it sounds nice, yeah.

Theo: Yeah it’s a nice dream. I just often come up against people who are really invested in like eating meat because it’s their culture and eating these horrible factory farmed animals, so I think it’s interesting, like I use the argument of we have all these glass greenhouses now, we have thousands of vegetables we can grow all year round to eat a varied diet, but even if we went back to primitivist life and we could still meet all our nutritional needs, I think there would be some ethical responsibility there too, just to embody this more compassionate lifestyle.

Zerzan: Right, I salute your values, I think that’s very worthwhile to think about.

Alex: Veganism is unnatural and detrimental to human health. Of course a civilized child may have emotions when simply facing death, but living creatures die, and they must die for others to be fed. The vegan dogma is one of the worst aspects to develop from of civilized life, and I hope every vegan gets free of it before it does them serious bodily damage.

Our species of human is 200K years old, and you can be sure people were eating anything they could tolerate. Suddenly refusing to process foods which forever enabled human survival is not going to be without negative consequences. Humans are genetically most alike chimps and bonobos, and neither are vegetarian. What do you imagine would be the consequences to the health of these apes if they were to be limited to a vegan diet? (This dietary restriction would have to be imposed on them because they would never fall victim to the ideology that it is wrong to kill/eat grubs, fish, insects, and small mammals.)

Theo:

Veganism is unnatural … The vegan dogma is one of the worst aspects to develop from of civilized life

Our nature is simply that of being highly intelligent animals who can choose to struggle against our natural drives if we decide intellectually that we desire to. E.g. Biologically really liking sugar because it’s not common in the wild, but deciding not to binge on it anyway, even when we have easy access to it in cities.

Humans are genetically most alike chimps and bonobos … This dietary restriction would have to be imposed on them because they would never fall victim to the ideology that it is wrong to kill/eat grubs, fish, insects, and small mammals.

The reason I think hunting and paying for the killing of animals is a character vice for myself and many others is because I’m intelligent enough to empathize with other animals and know I can be happy and healthy eating a vegan diet. So, I don’t hold the position you’re tarring all vegans with, but we likely agree my position is not one other animals could ever come to, along with severely mentally disabled people and psychopaths.

detrimental to human health. … Our species of human is 200K years old, and you can be sure people were eating anything they could tolerate. Suddenly refusing to process foods which forever enabled human survival is not going to be without negative consequences.

If the only way we’d been able to achieve optimal health for 200K years was eating large quantities of soil I would still happily abandon it if I knew the trade-off was just knowing how to grow enough duck-weed year round, or brewing yeast in glass jars, just like we do beer or penicillin.

Of course a civilized child may have emotions when simply facing death,

I agree it’s likely a problem for kids to fear seeing death, I’d probably take my kids out on a deer hunt if they were overpopulated and politicians in my area were continuing to drag their feet on re-introducing predators.

but living creatures die, and they must die for others to be fed

I’m with you, along with the Tibetans and Zoroastrians, I would like a sky burial were it legal, as a charitable offering to larger animals that could benefit from the meat most. However, most animals people eat today are bred to live much shorter and more dreadful lives than they would have in the wild, getting to express their wild capabilities. So, I advocate more people go vegan, so they are never bred to live these shitty lives. Also, because it takes more land to grow plants to feed to animals, to eat the animals, than just eating plants, so I’d like to free up more land for wild habitat, to increase the net amount of wild animals on earth getting to express their capabilities. So regardless of whether your ideal is primitive food forests or solar-punk, I think advocating veganism is character virtuous.

Alex: This reformism and vegan advocacy is seriously bogus. Removing violence from our lives is good for stabilizing and perpetuating techno-industrial civilization, but since violence is an innate part of ape life, the lack of any arena for its expression does not foster human psychological health. Instead of killing to eat, we civilized people in technological society are largely repressed from any violent action — how good can this be for us, physically and psychologically? (Again, if chimps were made to be nonviolent, what consequences would result? What would human observers think if some minority of chimps suddenly began persuading others to not eat nothing but plants and fruits, for some reason — and how would that differ from a psychosis in the animal?) Have we civilized a healthy relationship with death? I think not, and the charade of veganism’s promise to eliminate any contribution to animal deaths is noy going to foster a good understanding of death & life. But vegan advocates are in luck: the TIS seems ready to impose veganism or other engineered techno-sciencey manufactured diet (perhaps crickets) upon humanity, for as long as humans are allowed and tolerated.

You think and hope you will be healthy eating a vegan diet, but you may simply be beginning a slow-burn disaster which doesn’t crescendo for 15 years. On the other hand, we know that people eating animals and their eggs and marrow, and drinking their milk or blood, have been well nurtured and made healthy for eons.

r/ exvegans has plenty of testimonials and anecdotes of health problems befalling ardent vegans, driving them to question and leave the ideology; I wish you no harm and hope you will move to a more natural diet before health maladies arrive — and I’m sure they will, eventually. And our nature to desire sugar (or salts) should be exercised and fulfilled, when sugar is rare, regional and seasonal. When we create foods and modify the world to suit ourselves — taking control from the gods, as Daniel Quinn put it — we have to attend to ripple effects we cannot foresee or fully manage (hypertension, diabetes, obesity, population growth come to mind).

Theo: I set up r/ AntiVegans a while ago as I think it’d be funny to gather anecdotes of people who used to be ideologically motivated to warn against veganism for the comedic mirror it would create. Either way, I don’t actually see the evidentiary use value in a bunch of anecdotes when we have so many either way, and so much better evidence in research papers, but if you’re curious about my personal cultural experience with vegans and the arguments, I was brought up vegetarian, went vegan at 15, and enjoy a fit life at 31 in a tiny village.

I don’t think we’re lacking for opportunities to habituate people to violence and conflict in TIS, we have much more meaningful opportunities in fact in the painful realizations about friends, frenemies and enemies we are in intellectual and physical competition with.

You keep asserting veganism is x, like veganism wants apes to be non-violent, veganism wants people to eat crickets, which just sounds like conspiracy thinking, linking news stories that aren’t connected. The way I’ve seen the crickets thing pop up is just liberal journalists covering the rise of veganism and offering an unsatisfactory middle ground as part of what they think their job is to do in covering both sides impartially and suggesting middle ground steps. But obviously vegans are against farming and killing insects, as they’re sentient animals who can have a subjective experience of capabilities they’re enjoying expressing. So to vegans it’s a character vice to breed them into the world knowing you plan to go against their interests by killing them.

Alex: You misunderstand my remarks. The technological system pursues its needs, which may be a lower human toll upon Nature, possibly accomplished by a cricket-heavy sustenance, or petri dish lab meats, or a vegan nutritional syrup — or the eradication of (most of) humanity. Even if unintentional and unwitting, the vegan movement (along with the animal rights folks pushing cellular ‘meat’ and such) aids the technological system’s management of humanity, separated from Nature and dependent upon the social managers of the system. Crickets are championed by the non-vegan advocates of “sustainability” who want feed everyone everywhere and ‘lessen our impact’. If humans are apes, and vegans want animals not to be killed by humans, then at least some elimination of apes’ violence is being sought by vegans, right? I don’t follow your remarks about friends and enemies, but I doubt that that violence compares to raids or hunts by uncivilized tribal groups or survival by killing as required in Nature. Why do you think it is that people who do live in Nature have not adopted a vegan diet?

Theo:

vegans want animals not to be killed by humans

No, vegans simply want to do an animal products boycott, they can still be in favor of killing animals for a multitude of reasons, e.g. for pest control within settlements and farms, reducing overpopulation, eliminating invasive species, mercy killing injured animals, etc. There’s many legal animal rights advocates who for example are against hunting on principle, but that was never the original goal people had in mind who came up with the term vegan and so even that is not a required principle to hold in order to adopt veganism. Here’s 5 example ethical reasons someone might be vegan (and what branch of philosophy it may be related to):

Hedonistic Utilitarianism: The commitment to not use sentient life where you know you will cause more suffering on a global calculus than happiness. Examples: human caused climate change, stress and pain in a slaughterhouse than a longer happy life in the wild with low rates of predation, stress to slaughterhouse workers who are more likely to abuse their family, etc.

Preference Consequentialism: The commitment to not use sentient life in various ways because you know they will have interests to go on living longer than would be profitable. Examples: They have habits for activities they’d like to do each day and they show you by their desire not to be loaded onto scary trucks and to a slaughterhouse where they hear the screams of other animals and the smell of death.

Virtue Ethics: The pursuit of positive character virtues through not breeding a sentient life into captivity when you know you could leave room for other animals to enjoy happy flourishing by being able to express all their capabilities in wild habitat. So not wanting to parasitically take away life with meaning for low-order pleasure in our hierarchy of needs which we can find elsewhere.

Deontology: The principle of everyone should only act in such a way that it would still be acceptable to them if it were to become universal law. So not breeding sentient life into existence, only to keep them confined, tear families apart and kill them later, as you wouldn’t want it to happen to you.

Existentialist Ethics: The desire to be wary of acting in-authentically, so in a way you don’t believe due to outside social pressures, like that acting un-caringly is necessary to what it means to be a man. So testing out values you were brought up with against new ones as you go and coming to the conclusion that you’d prefer to live in a society where most people have the value of seeing animals flourishing in nature and not in captivity/pain.

I doubt that that violence compares to raids or hunts by uncivilized tribal groups or survival by killing as required in Nature.

It doesn’t compare in terms of the quantity of opportunities to chaotically follow ones baser instincts on a whim, but it is far and away superior on the calculus of more meaningful and emotionally draining conflict that people have access to in TIS. E.g. millions of people have the ability to go volunteer to fight against Russia’s attack on the Ukrainian people now, and for 5 years millions had the opportunity to fight ISIS’s attack on the Yazidi people. Going to fight ISIS may have involved tying oneself emotionally to forever wanting to know on a deeply personal level that the sex slaves you freed are still doing well and potentially carrying the burden of a mistake that could have been avoided costing a friend’s life, you get to experience the attempts at saving and recapturing a complex culture and people tied to a land that can trace their philosophical development back to being primitive tribes.

Why do you think it is that people who do live in Nature have not adopted a vegan diet?

Again, because like I said at the beginning, “the reason I think hunting and paying for the killing of animals is a character vice for myself and many others is because I’m intelligent enough to empathize with other animals and know I can be happy and healthy eating a vegan diet. So, I don’t hold the position you’re tarring all vegans with, but we likely agree my position is not one other animals could ever come to, along with severely mentally disabled people and psychopaths.” There’s no injustice happening to the animals that get hunted by for example uncontacted tribes people who use blow darts to pick off the slowest squirrels or whatever, helping their evolution. And there’s no bad intent or character vice on the part of the tribes person who hasn’t ever contemplated leaving the forest to eat farmed foods and allow the forest to go in a different evolutionary direction such that they could be living a more meaningful life, and the forest would be able to contain a higher quantity of animals.

Source

Fool: my position is not one other animals could ever come to, along with severely mentally disabled people and psychopaths.

Your superiority complex is showing.

Ishkah: Factually by the way I define those terms, none of them would ever be capable of conceptualizing and authentically adopting that ethical reasoning. Psychopath may be a fictional concept, I don’t know how useful it is, but again, even defined as a fictional character the above still applies.

Fool: So you’re saying that they can’t reason that way because they’re specifically not you?

Then why bring up those groups?

What is special about those groups that warrants bringing them up, if the measurement you’re using is basically applicable for everything in existence?

Why do you want to distance yourself from being included in those classifications?

Ishkah: What is special about those groups that warrants bringing them up

Fool: I do agree that Alex seemed to be deify the apes as though it was some sort of reason in itself, but I don’t see why bringing up disabilities had any place in the conversation, or would have been persuasive.

I infer from the text that they showed a level of defensive certainty, that hinted reveling in violence and their “natural” physical dominance over their prey.

Theodopolopolous: Just re-visiting this because of the ablist slur convo.

I didn’t feel that I had arrived at the point where I could begin fully arguing why veganism is cool or whatever, I was just trying to establish a foundation of clarity around how I defined veganism and how veganism as a movement of people had developed in history up to the present day.

I think bringing up disability is fine when trying to clarify the concept you’re talking about is a political philosophy position, about understanding supply and demand and having an ethical stance on this present societal reality, so not simply an emotional disposition or whatever. So, there’s a spectrum of mental capabilities a person can have where sure it might be blurry in the middle of the spectrum, but where the capabilities needed to understand this concept and apply it in one’s own life definitively falls on one side of the spectrum.

Fool: Overall, I still think this had no reason to be brought up in the conversation.

But, I get it was a debate. You needed to display your mental dominance. To verify your authority, as a person of sufficient mental capacity, and display that you’ve considered those other people that should be excluded, in a debate of enlightened gentle-folk.

🐿️

Theodopolopolous: Ok, thanks for another sad jab I guess.

Fool: Sorry, I was really hating on the concept of debating more than you specifically.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by crapshoot in Vegan purists are harming our ability to convince people to go vegan. So, we need a simple vegan definition. (Encase anyone thought my blowhard crusade against the spooky purist problem was reserved to just critiquing purist anarchists XD) by Ishkah

The argument for not basing your decision to eat animal products on the belief that the common animals people farm can have an opinion on ways they’d like their body to be treated after they’re dead is that factually we know they can’t.

The argument about there being ways of acting towards animal material with more or less dignity is simply cultural and about setting an example for other people of the positive intention for the way I would like to see us interacting with other animals and even the memories of animals. Like a way to treat the memory of fish in a stream from your childhood with dignity could be to not kill fish unnecessarily today.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by zoomzoom in by Ishkah

Did the EF! Journal ever publish anything of Ted’s beyond a tiny novel note once he was a celebrity (where Ted argued EF! should splinter into two)?

They rejected his essay “Progress versus Wilderness”. Then they rejected a note suggesting EF! should dox evil people for EF!ers to protest, likely in reality so he could bomb them, which would have helped turn away more newbies from EF!. Then there was a “Suggestions for EF!” essay that I don’t know whether he sent, but if he did they didn’t publish it. They did publish that note from after his arrest that I mentioned. Then they rejected his interview with Theresa.

But, yeah let me know if there’s one I missed.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by black_badger in by Ishkah

This is a natural language argument, not an assertion:

2006 — Ted publicly breaks with anarchism

A vegan primitivist from Turkey wrote to Ted with a long list of questions. Ted responded with a detailed critique of how many primitivists idealize primitive life, arguing that the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good.

This is the same two paragraphs with the premises and conclusions moved around into a formal logical argument format:

A vegan primitivist from Turkey wrote to Ted with a long list of questions.

P1) IF Ted responded with a detailed critique of how many primitivists idealize primitive life, arguing that the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good THEN Ted publicly broke with anarchism

P2) Ted responded with a detailed critique of how many primitivists idealize primitive life, arguing that the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good

C) Ted publicly broke with anarchism

Now your natural language argument:

your [argument] that the footnote you quote represents a break with anarchism is untenable since he doesn’t mention it at all, unlike the second citation where it’s explicit.

And in formal logic terms:

P1) IF he didn’t mention it [breaking with anarchism] at all THEN [he didn’t break with anarchism]

P2) [H]e didn’t mention it [breaking with anarchism]

C) He didn’t break with anarchism

My response is simply that, if Ted went from publicly saying ‘I love Stalin’ to ‘I love Hitler’ then I think it would be reasonable to argue that this would be a case of Ted publicly breaking with Stalinsim, even if he didn’t explicitly say ‘I renounce stalinism’. And that similarly, I think the quantity of statements Ted made in that essay distancing his philosophy and proposed political strategy from anarchism amounted to a public breaking with anarchism, regardless of how implicit.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by black_badger in by Ishkah

I haven’t read an argument for why I should yet, just your assertion that my argument was an assertion and a stretch. The 2019 example is added now.

That is a truly silly argument of Ted’s. Would love to see the quote or the full thing if you fancy typing it up, putting the image on imgur or sending it into the website admins at thetedkarchive@proton.me for them to put up. You could obviously cross out your name and any identifying info. It’d be better than a copy being stuck unlabelled and so virtually impossible to search for in a university archive I think.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by black_badger in by Ishkah

The fact that Ted argued the hierarchical relationships found between many tribal members is natural and therefore neutral or good is the premise of my argument for why I think he’s not an anarchist and was publicly breaking with anarchism.

Before that point it was possible to read into his writing potential anarchist ideals, such as: “after the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it.”

Anyways I learned this after I wrote this essay and totally forgot to add it recently, so thanks for reminding me; this is a footnote Ted added to his manifesto in 2016, that was published in the 2019 update of his book Technological Slavery:

In 1995 I described FC as “anarchist” because I thought it would be advantageous to have some recognized political identity. At that time I knew very little about anarchism. Since then I’ve learned that anarchists, at least those of the U.S. and the U.K., are nothing but a lot of hopelessly ineffectual bunglers and dreamers, useless for any purpose. Needless to say, I now disavow any identifcation as an anarchist.

--Ted Kaczynski’s Updated Notes on His Manifesto

A Dialogue Between an Absurdist and a Cynic

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=o4r-NvFI4s8>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in videos

A philosophical dialogue inspired by a great scene from Season 4, Episode 9 of House.

The Original Scene

[Quidd’s room. Day. House runs the ultrasound test on Quidd. Quidd removes his oxygen mask to talk to House.]

JIMMY QUIDD: So what’s wrong with me?

GREG HOUSE: You mean besides your music?

JIMMY QUIDD: [rolls his eyes] Oh, well, sure, ‘cause I don’t play your kind of music, it’s not music, right?

GREG HOUSE: Yeah. I resent you because you’re not Perry Como.

JIMMY QUIDD: [chuckles] Look, I don’t… I don’t play for an audience, okay?

GREG HOUSE: Well, then, that stage you stand on is an odd choice.

JIMMY QUIDD: I just… I do it for me, okay? I don’t do it for you.

GREG HOUSE: You have three choices in this life. Be good, get good or give up. You’ve gone for column “D”. Why?

JIMMY QUIDD: Look, you know, some people… They like my music. Most people can’t stand it. But they just sort of just shrug and ignore me. But a few, they feel like they have to tell me… what I’m screwing up. You know, what I’m wasting. Why do they care?

The Inspired Dialogue

ABSURDIST: Have you figured out why you think I’m choosing to behave wrongly yet?

CYNIC: How about that you openly exhibit all the vices of what usually correspond with being wrong?

ABSURDIST: I’m comfortable with not being easily comprehensible to most people.

CYNIC: To what end though? What to you is the point in communicating at all then?

ABSURDIST: Because I’ve found that I enjoy precisely seeing people work through that incomprehension.

CYNIC: There are obviously virtuous people to look up to though, why not simply follow their example and try to be as good as them?

ABSURDIST: What if most people’s metric for who to look up to is screwed up though? What if what’s actually virtuous looks dull and boring?

What if you need a clown to show you that being good doesn’t have to mean being dull and boring.

Maybe the clown looks to be failing or being inconsistent at first, but only because you’re stuck viewing their actions through a broken lense.

Love will follow you

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=4oKJVeMAcIA>

Submitted by Ishkah 2 years ago in Music

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Music/153808/love-will-follow-you>

Ishkah: Reply to Anarchy is deeply ideological, and that’s okay by ajesiroo

Love it. I already am eating from the trashcan, and so on, and so on.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in What’s an unpopular opinion that you hold when it comes to anarchism or general leftist thought? by byro1234512345

So the mere sadness I feel about crop deaths that happen in the production of bread should prevent me from dumpster diving bread otherwise I’m not truly relating to wildlife with dignity?

Me dumpster diving lots of edible material is fast and means money saved on buying food, which means I don’t have to work to earn as much money, which means I have more time I can put into projects I care about like environmental ones. If I was growing a food forest and dumpster diving it would mean I could give away more food I’ve grown or leave more to wildlife. So, for me, all of that is relating to the wildlife that died in crop deaths with more dignity than I would be if I was leaving perfectly edible material in triple wrapped plastic in the trash.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in What’s an unpopular opinion that you hold when it comes to anarchism or general leftist thought? by byro1234512345

I’m 6ft 3 and cycle everywhere, a sandwich with wholemeal bread as a snack is a cheap tasty way of getting my carbs in. It might be that I should stop buying it for ecological reasons and crop deaths, but that’s not an argument against dumpster diving it.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in What’s an unpopular opinion that you hold when it comes to anarchism or general leftist thought? by byro1234512345

For me putting the time into dumpster diving bread with whey in it is absolutely me better achieving a goal I decided I wanted to take on with veganism, that of wanting to relate to the world with more compassion.

Seeing animal material from farms always brings the sadness closer to mind of the cruel lives animals live on farms. But, I just would feel that I’d be treating the animal with less dignity letting any of their final remains rot in dumpsters when the material has been used in items like bread similar to the vegan bread that I would otherwise go out and buy.

Eating that animal material for me is about treating the animals’ final remains more similar to the way the animals’ wild ancestors would have been treated after death. So, with more dignity than the way we bred infantile traits into them and with more dignity than the toxic relationship we would be perpetuating by anthropomorphically infantilising them as infant humans who could have grown up to be people who could suffer a worse quality of life worrying about how other people might intend to treat their body after their death.

Earth First Summer Gathering!

Post Link:
<earthfirst.uk/ef-summer-gathering-2022/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in UnitedKingdom

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/UnitedKingdom/146081/earth-first-summer-gathering>

In a month from now I’m heading to the Earth First Summer Gathering in the South-West from Wednesday on the 31^st of August, til Monday on the 5^th of September.

There’ll be tons of people offering their first hand knowledge on current campaigns. Plus lots of skills to learn and friendly debates to be had.

I’d like to increase my foraging skills, learn about updates on the situation in Northern Syria, friendly debate the application of ‘tekmil’ and discuss with people my work in progress biography on Ted Kaczynski to learn about more ways to help prevent people from falling into apathy, misanthropy, fatalism, etc.

They let you know on the day a suggested donation between £0–50 for between a 1–5 days stay, in order break even on bringing in all the infrastructure and doing all the organizing before hand, then it’s £0–10 for healthy breakfast lunch and dinner tickets every day, but you can always bring your own food.

Finally, there’s always a wide range of people who show up, so please consider coming and it’ll be nice to see people :)

https://earthfirst.uk/ef-summer-gathering-2022/

Here’s a short list of some of the workshops they have scheduled so far:

⦿ Intros

• Intro to Earth First

• Campaigns Round Up

⦿ Everyday Skills

• Plant Walk

• Trust Your Instincts Self-Defence, and Attacking the Threat

• Wildlife First Aid

⦿ Ecology

• Land Justice Network

• Revolutionary Ecology

• Total Liberation

⦿ International Solidarity

• Learning from the Kurdish Freedom Movement: Challenges of Individualism, Care and Autonomy

• Jin Jîyan Azadî – woman, life, freedom: Jineolojî and the Women’s Revolution

• Ecological Struggles in Kurdistan: Make Rojava Green Again and the Mesopotamian Ecology Movement

• 25 Years after the Zapatista Uprising

⦿ Coal

• Coal Mining in Germany

• Colonial Coal

• The Struggle Against Coal in the North East

⦿ Animal Liberation

• Learning from the past: some reflections on the animal liberation movement

• An introduction to hunt sabotage and the badger cull

• Animal Liberation Strategy

• Vegan Outreach to Animal Liberation

• Fascism and Anti-Fascism in Animal Liberation Movements

• Working Class Vegans

⦿ Civil Disobedience

• Aerial Blockading

• Lock on workshop

• Martial Arts for Peaceful Protestors: Self Defence

• Mass Action Vs Affinity Action

• Keeping Each Other Safe: A Talk About Security Culture and Affinity Group Tactics

• Direct Action Skills

• Fences: Over, Under, Through

• Lock Picking

• Night Navigation Game

Source

[10 min Audio] Fritz Teufel is Dead | The Baader-Meinhof Podcast (2010)

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=5jxrEEPRqxQ>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/145582/10-min-audio-fritz-teufel-is-dead-the-baader-meinhof-podcast>

“Fritz Teuful, co-founder of Kommune 1, clown prince of the Berlin student movement, and inspiration of the Baader-Meinhof Gang, died this week at 67.”

Here’s the podcast episode source: https://baader-meinhof.com/podcast-21-fritz-teufel-is-dead/

As well as the referenced article: https://irishtimes.com/life-and-style/people/pudding-bomber-whose-clowning-turned-violent-1.620284

English Long Weekend Trip — Chester to Cambridge and back via London

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in lobby (edited 29 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/145465/english-long-weekend-trip-chester-to-cambridge-and-back-via>

If anyone would like to meet up to look for skips or foraging sites, or whatever else, in various places around the UK, this long weekend, just let me know :)

I’m going to be in Chester in the day on Friday and Monday.

Then the North of London for a few hours on Friday night and Monday morning.

Then in Cambridge for the weekend.

---

Resources I use for frugal travel

I could have hitched but hitching in England and anywhere near London sucks, so I searched for public transit using omio.co.uk, I found a £25 ticket with FlixBus, and found out it could have been £15 from one side of the country to the other if I could have left on a Wednesday and returned on a Wednesday.

For not getting lost I’ve been using google maps to find the fastest road routes, then tweaking them with explore.osmaps.com to create the fastest partially off-road routes, then using the free version of the phone app to know that I’m still on the path and heading in the right direction.

As well, I use google maps to find wild camping spots because it has pictures random people took integrated into the map. This is something I intend to do on anonymous accounts myself in future with: maps.google.com/localguides

Finally, feel free to join my UK Freegans discord server, where we try to keep information updated on various free item locations: discord.gg/v5HAZSTsMg

Ishkah: Reply to comment by pishandvinegar in The challenges of non-fiction book writing by Ishkah

You people who caricature reasonable anarchist arguments against religion make me ashamed to call myself an anarchist.

Here is an actually coherent egoist anarchist acknowledging the usefulness of applied virtue ethics language:

However, if postanarchism questions this sort of moral foundationalism, can it still maintain a commitment to ethical action? Not according to Benjamin Franks, who argues that postanarchism leads to a radical subjectivism – a moral relativism where the individual, in a solipsistic fashion, determines his or her own moral coordinates – thus, making it unsuitable for developing ethical and political relations with others. This subjectivist position is attributed to Stirner, who, Franks argues, rejects the universal moral and rational discourses embodied in Enlightenment humanism and proposes in their place the supreme individualism and amoralism of the selfcreating egoist:

“However, the alternative [to consequentialist and deontological anarchisms] adopted by some egoist individualists and postanarchists, i.e. radical subjectivism, is inadequate on similar grounds. If subjectivism is right, then it restricts the possibility of meaningful ethical dialogue, recreates hierarchies between the liberated ego and the rest, and cannot adequately account for the creative ego, without recourse to the other social forms it rejects.” ...

As an alternative to both Stirnerite ‘subjectivism’ and moral universalism, Franks proposes a situated ethics: an understanding of ethics as situated within, and contingent upon, specific social practices, communities and organisations. Different situations demand different ethical relations and rules, rules which can nevertheless change over time, and are open to dialogue and critical negotiation. I fully agree with this application of ethics, and I see it as a useful way of thinking about ethics in terms of autonomy and pluralism.

— The Politics of Post-Anarchism by Saul Newman

Ishkah: Reply to comment by pishandvinegar in The challenges of non-fiction book writing by Ishkah

Obviously you can relate to someone as having character vices and virtues without it having any religious component. I’m an existential nihilist, but I wish I had the language of applied ethics to describe subjective ways people desire to act and relate to others earlier on in my life: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

Ishkah: Reply to by !deleted34351

I guess I can’t entirely blame her, as she was probably traumatized living in a horror movie reality where heads can turn 360 degrees on a swivel.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted34351 in The challenges of non-fiction book writing by Ishkah

I’m not adding a tonne of commentary, that’s the concern, that the copyright holder will say readers can pick up my book and have read their book without the content having been substantially transformed, so simply costing them the profit on their book.

I’m just presenting it in a slightly different way, with paragraphs moved around into the timeline of his life, with light commentary, some boring paragraphs missing and some other sources added.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted34351 in The challenges of non-fiction book writing by Ishkah

Alright fuck it, I’m editing it now to include a bijillion references which will likely take a month to finish working on part-time. If I get fined you have to tell me a place where we can meet so that I can travel to meet you and slap you with a dead fish that I’ll find in a dumpster.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted34351 in The challenges of non-fiction book writing by Ishkah

I wrote that they sent me a “cease and desist email”.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted34351 in The challenges of non-fiction book writing by Ishkah

I wrote cease and desist email, first you give me unasked for BS advice, and then you call me a liar, another amazing convo on raddle.me. If I tried to publish someone else’s book with just paragraphs moves around, and adding my own commentary, without permission, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got fined in court for it not being deemed fair use, I just don’t much like risking that possibility is all.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted34351 in The challenges of non-fiction book writing by Ishkah

The Truth versus Lies book that I would be quoting from extensively was copyrighted by Kaczynski, even though it was never printed on mass. I would have liked to put up a perfectly re-typed up version on the anarchist library for free, but Kaczynski never responded to my letter, and his publishers sent me a cease and desist email. The rights to use the Aileen Wuornos prison letters were also the property of the friend she gave them to, and copyrighted in a book that she signed a deal on.

And no, my interest in true crime simply has to do with my interest in psychology and political activism to try and bring about a better society where less unjustified violence occurs.

I’m fascinated by outcasts like Aileen Wuornos and Ted Kaczynski because of their desire to find healing in unorthodox lifestyles, before everything goes wrong for them and others.

The surface level fascination is I’m convinced that profound changes in lifestyle are needed, for instance I live a low-impact vegan lifestyle myself, so unpicking the knot of what went so wrong for them is important for me, in order to understand the way it may have negatively impacted their lives, so as to better advise people to avoid those pitfalls.

The deeper level of fascination is to understand what meaning they were deriving from their life and unpicking that knot of how can any person get so lost. Finally, we all walk around with naive assumptions that people we know well could never act in evil ways, if we’re ever forced to come face to face with the fact that they are, we have this realization of the ways we were blind to being able to help those people.

For Ted he romanticized nature as a boy in the library, reading books about neanderthals, and wishing he could escape into that life.

For Aileen she had set off hitchhiking and began living on communes from the age of 15 with the hope of doing some psychological healing away from the circle she was stuck in in Troy, Michigan, where she grew up.

This was also a very romanticized road to take at the time, although I don’t think Aileen bought into all of that, as she was simply homeless from the age of 13, and traveling further afield was a nice break from relying on friends in Troy. But, she loved the hippie music of the era and cherished every commune she stayed at for the people who attempted a new more compassionate way of relating to one another.

So for me, that was activist circles, the way people romanized the activist life on the road, and my participation in it was partly to heal wounds from childhood. So, it left me with the understanding that you don’t get a choice in the strange situational reasons that different people will be alienated from society enough to join this or that campaign, but you can make the best of the journey all the same.

The idea of people being commended for being part of nomadic culture today is; if you’re able to plug the gaps in various local campaigns, like helping out with cooking for activist soup kitchens and giving workshops, etc.

I set off at 16 for Malaysia on a month long outdoor expeditions trip and got to live with poor rice farmers, and at 17 for earth first gatherings and climate camps, and then was on the road from 19 for many years, going from protest camp to protest camp.

I was looking at environmental groups from tree sitters in California, to food not bombs groups in Indonesia. And seeing this movement learning from each other internationally, that had different social and moral norms, that I was really wanting to explore and see if I could make that my adoptive community.

The same way some people have the willpower to put up with horrible bosses in order to pursue a passion at work, I was OK with putting up with physical hardships in order to get to explore this more co-operative culture in its grassroots form, still developing, trying to become the mainstream culture and politics.

The challenges of non-fiction book writing

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Writing

Source

Hey all,

I’ve written some short travel stories and philosophical essays before, but I’m more of a researcher and librarian who enjoys creating whole archives of files with indexes related to a person’s life. Then what I do is extract quotes from those documents and organize them into the timeline of the person’s life which gives you a detailed view of the time they lived through.

The first biography I edited together was done like this also, it was all the persons own writing through her letters to her childhood friend, with a short introduction, and I simply called it ‘The Unfinished Autobiography of Aileen Wuornos’. And obviously I made sure to get the letter owner’s permission.

Then the next project for me has been cataloguing documents on Ted Kaczynski, with the aim of simply getting a clear timeline in my head of all the key moments that lead up to him going off the rails and committing violence.

I’ve created two timelines, in the way that I described above, of both Ted and his brother David Kaczynskis’ lives, but I’m less optimistic about getting their or their copyright heirs permission to publish. So, I’m contemplating how to write a book that is partly a biography and partly how this person’s life relates to my own philosophy and experiences. As there have been lots of biographies sticking closely to his life, I think I’m less interested in trying to give a detailed explanation of the timeline of their lives.

One subject I’d like to touch on in my book is that sadly I met a primitivist who had bought into the same violent ideology as Kaczynski, who after many years of feeling lost and hopeless died of a drug overdose.

I grew up in a hippie corner of North Wales and took myself off on my own to an Earth First Gathering when I was 17, then went on to joining activists who were trying to block open cast coal mine planning applications. It was here that I met the primitivist friend who would go on to overdose. I have also helped open squatted social centers, and volunteered in kitchens to feed the 5000 in Calais. I’ve been fairly reclusive the last few years, just living very rurally and devoting lots of time to learning website building and going from one online hobby project to another.

But yeah, knowing that I had been friendly with someone who went from open cast coal protest sites to being an eco-extremist in ideas at least, and then basically committed suicide through a life of drugs is a disturbing reality. Obviously I wish I could have saved him.

So, I like to try and study all the rabbit holes that lead people down paths like this and therefore the best arguments for pulling them out. I’ve had a good podcast with one of the most renowned anti-tech philosophers on the subject of violence, and I’ve written an article on the journey some people take to anti-tech philosophy.

I’ll stop here, as I’m sure I’ve gone on long enough, but my main problem at the moment is what subjects in the Kaczynski book to focus on, so how to lay out a clear structure to the book.

These are the main subject headings that are motivating my writing at the moment, but I’m aware they’re not all going to have mainstream interest, so would need reframing to appeal to a larger readership:

The weakness of religious arguments
The burden on the family and friends of both good and evil revolutionaries
The call to revolution – Healthy vs. unhealthy outlets
Unhealthy outlets — Ted Kaczynski’s Unhealthy Outlet — Healthy Outlets
Everyone has to deal with the absurd — How getting hurt as a child lead me to have a strong skepticism of unjustified authority — Activism
Pragmatist vs. Idealist Strategy
Calling for anarchists on the radical fringe to not abandon all left-wing mass movements
Introduction — The term anarchist often evokes ridicule today — Why can we not just only be friendly with vaguely anti-authoritarian people who are easier to win over to anarchism? — Wouldn’t that mean sometimes walking shoulder to shoulder with left-authoritarians? — The importance of voting — Having solely anarchist organizations that use solely anarchist tactics is important too

And if you’d like to read or skim read the full document of main concept ideas I’ve written about so far, you can click here.

All the best :)

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: The Truth versus Lies book that I would be quoting from extensively was copyrighted by Kaczynski, even though it was never printed on mass. I would have liked to put up a perfectly re-typed up version on the anarchist library for free, but Kaczynski never responded to my letter, and his publishers sent me a cease and desist email. The rights to use the Aileen Wuornos prison letters were also the property of the friend she gave them to, and copyrighted in a book that she signed a deal on.

And no, my interest in true crime simply has to do with my interest in psychology and political activism to try and bring about a better society where less unjustified violence occurs.

I’m fascinated by outcasts like Aileen Wuornos and Ted Kaczynski because of their desire to find healing in unorthodox lifestyles, before everything goes wrong for them and others.

For Ted he romanticized nature as a boy in the library, reading books about neanderthals, and wishing he could escape into that life.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: I wrote cease and desist email, first you give me unasked for BS advice, and then you call me a liar, another amazing convo on raddle.me. If I tried to publish someone else’s book with just paragraphs moves around, and adding my own commentary, without permission, I wouldn’t be surprised if I got fined in court for it not being deemed fair use, I just don’t much like risking that possibility is all.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: I wrote that they sent me a “cease and desist email”.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: Alright fuck it, I’m editing it now to include a bijillion references which will likely take a month to finish working on part-time. If I get fined you have to tell me a place where we can meet so that I can travel to meet you and slap you with a dead fish that I’ll find in a dumpster.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: I’m not adding a tonne of commentary, that’s the concern, that the copyright holder will say readers can pick up my book and have read their book without the content having been substantially transformed, so simply costing them the profit on their book.

I’m just presenting it in a slightly different way, with paragraphs moved around into the timeline of his life, with light commentary, some boring paragraphs missing and some other sources added.

pishandvinegar: The weakness of religious arguments

The burden on the family and friends of both good and evil revolutionaries

Ishkah: Obviously you can relate to someone as having character vices and virtues without it having any religious component. I’m an existential nihilist, but I wish I had the language of applied ethics to describe subjective ways people desire to act and relate to others earlier on in my life: My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics

pishandvinegar: The weakness of religious arguments

Obviously you can relate to someone as having character vices and virtues

Ishkah: You people who caricature reasonable anarchist arguments against religion make me ashamed to call myself an anarchist.

Here is an actually coherent egoist anarchist acknowledging the usefulness of applied virtue ethics language:

— The Politics of Post-Anarchism by Saul Newman

pishinginthewind: That doesn’t say what you said it says.

You people who caricature reasonable anarchist arguments against religion make me ashamed to call myself an anarchist.

You people who make anarchism into Christianity make me ashamed to call myself an anarchist.

Letting domesticated animals go extinct through putting birth control pills in their food (not killing them) is a valuable option

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/vaahrc/domesticated_animal_extinction_through_birth/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in debate

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/debate/144695/letting-domesticated-animals-go-extinct-through-putting>

TL;DR: Letting domesticated animals go extinct through birth control pills in their food would be preferable to keeping them around on farms or in safaris, as it would free up human energy and land for restoring wildlife habitat, where wild animals can better express their physical capabilities that are matched to their wild habitat.

I just spent a while writing these long responses in a comment thread on r/Vegans, so I thought I’d turn it into a debate topic post.

Disclaimers Galore

I’m not arguing for killing animals, I’m arguing for giving them birth control pills in their food and only euthanizing them if they were in extreme suffering like we do for humans in death with dignity states/countries.

Everyone is responsible for their own decisions, mine are to boycott animal products because I don’t like the idea of funding the breeding of animals with stunted physical capabilities, keeping them captive and killing them to turn a profit. And I prefer to eat a diet that requires less land use so that we can restore more farmland to wildlife habitat, to maximize the number of wild animals that get to express their physical capabilities & find more value from life in fully wild habitat.

There are vegans who want to charitably keep domesticated animals around as tourist attractions, and if we ever saw a vegan world, and vegans with that philosophy were in the majority, then we would see millions of domesticated animals in safari like semi-wild habitat looked after and protected from predators. Again, I just make the argument that wild animals could be gaining a lot more value from that land as fully wild habitat.

‘What will happen to domesticated animals as the world goes vegan?’

In the event that a country or the world becomes vegan, what do you think will happen to cows, chickens, sheep, horses, some ducks, goats etc. As well, what do you think should happen?

Short Term

Farmers will breed less animals as it becomes less profitable, less animals will exist.

Long Term

Towards the very end there will be a burden put on animal sanctuaries to take in lots of animals and for governments to write laws to say the farmer has to turn their farm into a sanctuary to save the few remaining animals, like how there is a burden put on rescuers today with some battery farmed chickens allowed to be rescued after their egg laying numbers drop, while others get killed for pet food, to save the farmer the bother of transporting them to slaughter and sometimes not cutting even.

Forever Outcome

What will likely happen: Some conservationist society will fund keeping enough domesticated animals to fill a few semi-wild safaris in every country and enough to allow for a healthy breeding stock like zoos and safaris today. And there won’t be enough political will to outlaw this.

What should happen ideally: They should be allowed to go extinct to make room for their closest common ancestors to be able to express their non-deformed physical capabilities and choose their own social relationships.

Is extinction the most caring and respectful future for them?

What do you think their opinion would be if they could understand what you say, and talk?

I mentioned many useful proposals moving forward, but as far as an ideal proposal, yes, it would be more respectful to not kill them when they’re young for food, and that instead they would get to live a long life in semi-wild habitat, where they can roam far, choose their own relationships, but are protected from predators, and receive birth control pills in their food, until they either die in their sleep or start to show signs of being in unmanageable suffering and are euthanized.

If they were clever enough to understand all the concepts I wrote and discuss them with me, then I hope they would see the rational of choosing not to breed, to not inflict the stunted capabilities we bred into them on a further generation.

If you disagree, where would the line in the sand be for you with how many breeds of domesticated animals you would let go extinct?

Because most cows we breed today already experience life threatening conditions due to the way we’ve bred them, for example many cows experience metabolic pressure from high milk yield which is found to be a causative factor in Mastitis, Lameness, Metritis and other reproductive disorders. One recommended solution is to select and feed for lower yield — Human Relationships with Domestic and Other Animals: One Health, One Welfare, One Biology

Or even more obviously for the cows welfare, not risk breeding cows with life threatening conditions with other cows at all.

Similarly with domesticated chickens that get egg-bound more often, or can’t stand up for having too much meat on their bones.

‘Domesticated Animals Are Natural’

You are seriously proposing the euthanization, the forced extinction of entire species. And in the name of their well being. And hoping the animals would agree with you. Blows my mind.

My line in the sand is this: they have the right to live fulfilling lives, according to their nature, and reproduce, according to their nature. And to die with the least suffering.

Their nature has been artificially selected by us such that they have desires to express their physical capabilities in ways that are less effective as a result of our breeding choices.

I asked for your line in the sand of what level of artificial selection you’d be ok with letting go extinct, would you not even be willing to say this fucked up muscle mutant should not be allowed to pass on its genes to another generation that would risk seeing the same double muscle gene turned on in further offspring:

https://assets3.thrillist.com/v1/image/2554341/792x468/flatten;scale;webp=auto;jpeg_quality=60.jpg

And if not there, how about hypothetically if we artificially selected a cow that couldn’t stand up for it’s udders being so big? Convenient that you didn’t reply to the actual harm domesticated cows suffer today also.

There are humans with severe brittle bone disease who make the right choice not to breed to pass on their condition to the next generation.

All domesticated animals have wild animals with a close common ancestor that they could breed with and produce fertile offspring, the wild animals would just be less likely to pick them as a mate as they are easier prey for predators.

I want humans to do something more interesting with their life than herding sheep around, and I want to make room for wild animals that can actually use their more efficient physical capabilities that are designed for their wild habitat.

The argument that humans need to continue protecting domesticated animals from predators forever to preserve small aesthetic differences in breeds of animals is ridiculous, and it lends credence to fascists like Richard Spencer saying they just want to preserve the white race as a gateway to getting people into the far-right.

‘Sounds like a concentration camp’

I’m sorry, but some people deciding, based on an ideology, who has the right to live, and proposing that the undeserving ones be euthanized or castrated in concentration camps, will never sound right. Specially if you truly believe animals have the same rights than us.

Maybe you should spend more time asking questions as to what the person you’re talking to thinks rather than just assuming and turning their arguments into a strawman.

Myself and most vegans have never claimed that animals should have the same rights as us, neither in an ethical or legal sense.

I value the happy flourishing of as many animals as possible, which is connected to having the physical capabilities to pursue that happy flourishing, like a wolf trying to become leader of a wolf pack. Many domesticated animals have desires to roam far, but would get tired and suffer more than their closest wild relative species, as well as be easier prey for predators, for something we did to them.

Once an animal is born into the world, it has desires and habits that it would be a character vice to end for our own lower-order pleasure or nutrient needs which we can find elsewhere in different food items.

We were the cause of them being easier prey for predators, the fact they would be less capable of surviving on their own in wild habitat or that they would be invasive species disrupting the local eco-system. Therefore, I think it’s a character virtue to give them a good life on a semi-wild sanctuary and only euthanize them if at some point they would benefit from it, like almost any doctor would do for some people in a country with death with dignity laws.

Interesting you would use the term concentration camp to apply to my ideas, when it’s often meat eaters complaining that vegans are bordering on anti-Semitism for recklessly throwing around terms like that which may lead people to downplay the Jewish holocaust.

I’m talking about a semi-wild animal sanctuary that would be better than 99.9999% of farms in existence today, where the animals simply get birth control pills in their food rather than a bolt gun to the head.

With the goal that the land can be restored to fully wild habitat within 30 years, and can be repopulated by close wild relative species like bison which can have families and offspring that can gain much more from life for likely 10s of 1000s of years, basically however long they remain an important part of the eco-system or evolve into something else. All the while freeing us up to pursue art, architecture, science and all things more rewarding than herding domestic animals around.

It’s the easiest possible trolley problem to remediate an artificially selected animal environment passed down to us by tribespeople wanting a better chance at survival, which is as irrelevant to us today as feudal princes killing off their brothers to stand a better chance at inheriting the throne.

Source

Fool: I suggest this can be solved via the trolley problem, give each animal a trolley and release them into crowded cities.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah:

What the fuck have I just read — AGAIN??

Lol, these reactions are what makes it so funny posting here.

If you don’t want domestic animals to reproduce you don’t have to drug them. Just keep males and females separated.

I think it’s more likely that far in the future there’ll be harmless infertility drugs we can give in food that will last years, making it the more compassionate option than separating a herd of animals that care about each other by sex and making it so they each can’t roam as far as the areas that the other herd roam in.

Furthermore, in what type of an anarchist society will the government write laws to regulate farmers??

My arguments weren’t presupposing an anarchist society, as they were written for a general audience, so I was answering what would be some good remedies even if we hadn’t yet made it to an anarchist world.

And finally, can we stop with these sweeping plans as if there is a single solution that the entire human race, all 7 billion people on this planet, can just take and apply to their specific circumstances?

Sounds like this is the opening gambit of a boring semantics discussion, all I said was one valuable option for what to do about domesticated animals dependence on us is giving them a good life and letting them go extinct through birth control.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: Like I said in another thread if you shot a bison with a magic domesticating and infantilising dart out in the wild, and made it easier prey for predators, I think the character virtuous decision would be to protect them from predators and attend to their healthcare needs. It wouldn’t be to just release them into an area with less predators and hope everything works out, it would be to release them into an area where no predators could predate on them because we were the cause of their stunted physical capabilities.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: billions and billions of animals

You’ve failed at comprehending the potential short, long and forever outcomes I posited in the post.

I’m going to get back to my work that fulfills me now, because I like mostly using the primary definitions of words and not getting into boring semantics discussions, have a great day.

whitedreadss: Counter-proposition: human extinction.

__0: Other then all the ethical problems with this, and like the ethics of any sort of society where taking these kind of actions are possible, I would like to point out that there is often not as clear of a divide between “wild” and “domesticated” so much medication mostly passes through your system and into nature, if every “domesticated” animal was sterilized in this way, and I assume a lot of people (who I hope was voluntarily) even if that medicine was 90% bioavailable that would mean 10% of the drug would pass into the environment at the very least, in areas with very high amounts of animals that were directly dosed, the environment would be incredibly polluted with a drug that has very significant effects on animals reproduction. There are lots of species and ecosystems where certain small environmental contaminants accumulate very quickly, and many animals are particularly affected by some chemicals. Also I want to point out how much total biomass is domesticated animals, people, and also how plants, animals, microbes, fungi etc... can react to contaminants in their environment very differently

__0: 1. Effects of environmental accumulation of ddt in birds

https://eap.mcgill.ca/MagRack/JPR/JPR_14.htm#:~:text=DDT%20and%20its%20metabolites%20cause,other%20predatory%20birds%20were%20recorded.

Biomagnification

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Biomagnification

Most biomass is domesticated animals now... medicating a majority of Earth’s mammals is an absurd take, and would fuck up the rest of life on earth.

https://ecowatch.com/biomass-humans-animals-2571413930.html#:~:text=In%20particular%2C%20the%20domestication%20of,mammals%20for%20only%204%20percent.

Ishkah: Jebus, why do people bother commenting assuming my positions without reading or comprehending what I wrote. I’m not hypothesising what we ought ideally do now if everyone went vegan tomorrow, it’s about one possible avenue that might be open to us like 500 years in the future, if most people are eating near to zero animals every year, so there only being around a billion domesticated land animals spread out over the whole planet. And obviously that the drug wouldn’t have these effects, like that it had a high absorption rate and that there were so few animals left that it had a negligible impact on the environment.

__0: Oh so you’re talking about if medication was magical, in some hypocritical fantasy world 500 years from now. Why didn’t you say so in your original post? There is no use world building a future that doesn’t exist.

Any society that isn’t an authoritarian hellscape wouldn’t be capable of sterilizing 90% of all animals on earth, and I can’t think of any farmer on an industrial or otherwise level that would participate in a system like this voluntarily either, any drug that targets such a wide range of animals, and stays persistent in their bodies for years is basically guaranteed to fuck things up, what happens when an animal dies? No one could eat it. If left to rot it would become a persistent environmental contaminant.

This isn’t a real debate if you move the goalposts to some hypothetical utopia 500 years from now...

Ishkah: The goalposts were always at around 500 years if people read my post carefully, as I was talking about a point in time in which the whole world was virtually already vegan and debating safaris or extinction.

Most anarchists in the real world aren’t vegan and aren’t cool with domesticated animal extinction, so it was just positing a hypothetical drug to make the scenario more concrete, to have a possible future to debate. But either raddle is mostly pro-extinction vegan anarchists, or the meat eaters and anti-extinction ones aren’t coming out to debate, so you guys just took it as an opportunity to read in bad faith and commit a circular firing squad. Congrats lol.

vegansaint: Given that modern humans are by far the most domesticated animals ever to exist, perhaps we’re the ones who should have birth control pills snuck into our water supply by Ishkah and his buddies? I, for one, am all for it. We can call ourselves Ishkah’s Infertile Individualities Tending Towards The Wild.

Ishkah: Improving on the humble jungle shack by building villages and cities does not a domestication process make.

veganpope: Wait so you think modern humans are NOT domesticated? What the hell are you talking about this time, Ishkah?

P.S. Ignoring the obvious nonsense about cities being an ‘improvement’ on anything because, honestly, how do you even...

Ishkah: Yeah arguing with newly created alt accounts who use their other alts to upvote their own comments is not how I want to spend my day, but have a great life.

veganpope: I haven’t up (or down) voted anything. When I click “New Identity” in Tor the old account is lost and I have to make a new one. I do this every time I sit down at my computer.

I’m not the only person who posts anonymously on here. Not everyone is trying to build a name for themselves.

No doubt you have some really important things to do with your day (like draw up plans for the next 500 years of existence) but I am very curious to hear why it is you think cows are domesticated but humans aren’t. This is a completely new take on domestication to me.

Why I think anarchists should not abandon all left-wing mass movements

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/LeftAnarchism/comments/v4f6xh/why_i_think_anarchists_should_not_abandon_all/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in debate

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/debate/144492/why-i-think-anarchists-should-not-abandon-all-left-wing-mass>

Introduction

There exists a way of defining left vs. right as a spectrum of political philosophies in which anarchism happens to be on the far-left.

I think it would be good to use and promote this definition because... if having one more opportunity to advertise our elemental philosophical similarities with political philosophies on the left would help clarify a clear road map for encouraging people to the far-left, as well as towards anti-authoritarianism, then doing so will likely help bring about an anarchist world faster.

I don’t find any solace or warm fuzzy feelings about identifying with the left, I just value a cold hard calculation of the benefits of being open about existing under a big tent of philosophies that if at strategically important times all pull together stand a better chance of achieving an incrementally less bad status quo, in the same way I would hold my nose and vote or pull the lever in the trolley problem.

The term anarchist often evokes ridicule today

Most people hold a ton of misconceptions about what being an anarchist entails, whether it be that we’re naive about human nature, or that we all just want chaos and disorder.

If we came up with an entirely new word to call ourselves tomorrow, like ‘benows’, the media would simply again make the word synonymous with chaos, such that more people would be using ‘benows’ in conversation to refer to a state of chaos than the amount of people who even knew about anarchism.

So, either we acknowledge that fact and make a point of explicitly relating elements of our philosophy to leftist remedies which are less extreme, or we define ourselves as being outside the left vs. right paradigm and stand a far greater chance of people never shaking off the idea that we hold to some ridiculously irrational ideas.

In order to have any hope of upping our success rate at persuading more people over to our philosophy, we have to make the pragmatic optics decision in explicitly making clear that we’re both leftists and anarchists, that way for now, anchoring the term anarchist explicitly to a mainstream struggle of left vs. right economic & egalitarian politics.

The same way many socialists make the optics decision to tag on democratic to the word socialist.

That’s not to say we have to support or even be happy about every leftist tactic. Nor does it mean we can’t still be loud about our unique position on the radical fringe.

It’s simply about establishing one reference point for people to latch onto about our comparative elemental similarities, before we can then go on to distance ourselves in other elemental ways.

The most important thing about the Overton window, however, is that it can be shifted to the left or the right, with the once merely “acceptable” becoming “popular” or even imminent policy, and formerly “unthinkable” positions becoming the open position of a partisan base. The challenge for activists and advocates is to move the window in the direction of their preferred outcomes, so their desired outcome moves closer and closer to “common sense.”

There are two ways to do this: the long, hard way and the short, easy way. The long, hard way is to continue making your actual case persistently and persuasively until your position becomes more politically mainstream, whether it be due to the strength of your rhetoric or a long-term shift in societal values. By contrast, the short, easy way is to amplify and echo the voices of those who take a position a few notches more radical than what you really want.

For example, if what you actually want is a public health care option in the United States, coordinate with and promote those pushing for single-payer, universal health care. If the single-payer approach constitutes the “acceptable left” flank of the discourse, then the public option looks, by comparison, like the conservative option it was once considered back when it was first proposed by Orrin Hatch in 1994.

This is Negotiating 101.

Why can we not just only be friendly with vaguely anti-authoritarian people who are easier to win over to anarchism?

I think we should be open to comparing elemental similarities with any person we hope to advocate over to our philosophy and strategies. So with centrists we should be open to arguing that we hold some positions they can relate to that are near to them on the left, and to liberals that we hold some positions which are near to them on the far-left, and to the far-left that we hold some positions that are near to them on the anti-authoritarian far-left to leave every avenue open.

In terms of appealing to socially conservative people who are skeptical of authority, the fact that we’re anti-authoritarian is clear in identifying with anarchism. I’m just not willing to give up the best optics chance we have of achieving our goals incrementally by being in common cause with big-tent leftism, because being colloquially left or right entails an important defining difference over ones economic and egalitarian values.

Also, to the extent we’re working on campaigns that have less ambitious goals than transitioning a piece of land or workplace to an entirely anarchist run project, I think it’s important for that campaign to have at least some big-tent leftist goals. Even if what the campaign is fighting for is the government to be less involved in some aspect of social life, because what we should want is to hold onto as much funding for social institutions like hospitals as we can until we can take over management.

Therefore I think big-tent leftist goals mostly overlap with seeking the kind of incremental positive liberties that would make for an easier shift towards anarchism.

Wouldn’t that mean sometimes walking shoulder to shoulder with left-authoritarians?

Sometimes yes, like for instance if we wanted to be most effective at preventing a group of fascists from marching through an immigrant neighborhood and potentially hurting innocent people. I think we should accept our tactical allies in that circumstance.

Philosophy and history places us on a philosophical spectrum close to ML’s in some ways, like our similar desires to maximally meet everyone’s basic needs. In the same way that anyone right of us have elements of their philosophy which is more similar to fascism and weird anarcho-feudalists/capitalists.

But obviously the nearer we get to a far-left world, the more the differences between anarchists and tankies will be highlighted. So, I think that, in trying to reject that categorization by taking a hostile approach to leftists, when they’re trying to achieve incremental improvements, you actually doom us to being associated for longer.

Being overly concerned with this association, like the egoists who call social-anarchists ‘Lenin-light’ reminds me of anti-civs who accept the liberal critique of anarchism in believing that industrial society would be too difficult to maintain co-operatively, so requires force and coercion to be upheld.

Maybe you think you’re preserving a purer anarchism with a clearer focus, but you do so at the expense of tactical unity with people whose incremental remedies would help you, thereby weakening your resistance to the status quo.

So, yes if we were to naively imagine we could be allies to the very end and walk off into the sunset together we would likely be walking blindly into a backstabbing again. But I doubt history would call 1 anarchist and 1 ML working together against an entirely fascist world a death sentence. To the extent we ever look to have moved the Overton window even close to the far-left, we can begin to diverge on insisting our mass movement organizations focus on libsoc issues, then purely anarchist issues.

The importance of voting

It’s often obvious which party is the lesser evil long-term and I think it’s virtuous to vote that way as more people will have a qualitatively less bad experience than the few who do. So it’s the trolley problem. We wouldn’t desire to put in the electoral system ourselves, but some of us engage with it for a few hours every 4 years and use the discourse surrounding it to rally people to the far-left.

I think we need to get well educated on how even the baby step policies toward the left would be an improvement on where we are now, we need to learn the internal politicking of government and get good at having friendly and persuasive arguments to appeal to friends and acquaintances basic intuitions.

The goal being that we can talk the latest news and (1) Win over conservatives to obvious empirically better policies on the left, and (2) Win over liberals when center-left parties are in power to feel dismayed at the slow pace of change, and so acknowledge how much better it would be if there was a market socialist in the position willing to rally people to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

This still must entail a cynical clarity about how many swing voters you meet will be responding to the see saw effect in politics of blaming the last person in power for everything wrong, so knowing how much time to invest and picking your battles.

Having solely anarchist organizations that use solely anarchist tactics is important too

Here is some advice that entails a mix of both pursuing big tent leftist goals and solely anarchist goals:

Mutual aid – We should put the time into helping our neighbors and volunteering, for example on a food not bombs stall, to both manifest and get enjoy the positive benefits of a communalist caring society.

Direct action – We should try to mostly choose targets which the largest amount of people can sympathize with most, for instance the sabotaging of a fox hunt in order to highlight the direction we’d like to move in with legal animal rights, going from mostly ending blood sports, to mostly ending animal captivity, to mostly ending hunting for taste pleasure.

Education – We should be educating ourselves and helping others know what work and rent union to join, what to keep a record of at work, how to defend yourself from rapists and fascists, how to crack a squat and how to write a press release, etc. Anarchist bookfairs and social centres can be great places to dip your toe in.

Campaigning – We should look for the easiest squeeze points to rack up small wins, like the picketing of a cafe to reclaim lost wages, so that word spreads and it creates a domino effect. Organisations like the International of Anarchist Federations can be useful for finding collaborators, but obviously don’t feel bad about forming your own allied organising group if the larger groups stop feeling useful to you.

Further Reading

veuzi: You want to dedicate your life to endless politicking, moving the overton window (as if you have any impact on that shit), voting for the “least bad” liberal, buddying up with bootlickers and authoritarians because they call themselves leftists?

Be my guest. But I’m completely uninterested in going back to the snoozefest you call activism.

ziq: You know what’s interesting about you?

Nothing.

Fool: I will start by saying that I didn’t actually read what you wrote.

But I just want to point out that you’re basically writing theory about how we should ignore theory.

Ishkah: No, I always make an effort to reference or link some of the material I’m critiquing for people to do their own reading. And my advice is reflected in lots of other political theorists advice which I also often link and suggest people read.

Archaplain: too long; didnt read.

Fool: Yeah, I was a bit harsh.

Actually, I think actually the problem may lie in the medium, as a forum post it seems long, but if it was an article on a blog site or something I’d probably be more likely to read it.

CircleA: upping our success rate at persuading more people over to our philosophy, we have to make the pragmatic optics decision

I don’t think “our” philosophies are the same. You seem to be invested in recruiting sacrificial bodies for some odd cult you’re in.

Ishkah: You’re welcome to give an argument for why you think so.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: I know, I was asking for an argument for the latter point, given that non-post-left-anarchists (so left-anarchists) are in the majority. When I said ‘our’ I was simply offering advice to this majority with similar philosophies to my own.

My Last Will & Testament as a Vegan Atheist

Post Link:
<youtu.be/uq8FdfKIA1o>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Vegan (edited 13 hours later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Vegan/144171/my-last-will-testament-as-a-vegan-atheist>

**
Timecodes**

0:30 My Last Will & Testament
1:55 Big Tent Veganism
2:45 The Freegan Debate
3:20 The Free Rider Objection
4:10 The Speciesism Accusation
5:03 The Pet Rights Objection
6:00 The Separate Eco-Systems Objection

Disclaimer: I know this is heavy subject for many people, so I don’t want anyone to get the wrong idea and think that I’m making it because I’m depressed or anything like that, I do plan to try and live a long life, I just thought it would be a useful exercise to talk in detail about exactly what I’d like to have happen after I die, as I think it can help put into focus how I want to live my life, what kind of world I want to build and finally encourage others to think in this way also.

My Last Will & Testament

So I’ll start off by explaining my 4 main desires, then I’ll explain what got me thinking about this and there’ll be time codes in the description if you want to jump around.

Firstly if possible I want to be an organ donor and I want to offer my body for medical students to poke around in and get skilled up till their hearts content.

Secondly I want to share out some amount of money to any family and friends who are poverty stricken. And for what’s left to be donated to whatever political campaign organisation or charity that the person I’ve chosen and trusted to be the executive of my will knows that I value most, so today it would be the charity ‘Rewilding Britain’.

Thirdly, at my funeral I don’t want there to be any religious people there in an official capacity.

Finally, I would like to be buried at a green burial site on land acquired specifically for restoring dense wildlife habitat. To emphasise the importance of this desire, under an ideal legal situation I would desire that my body be carried to a beautiful location where large predators like wolves exist and that my body be left as a donation of energy to larger animals that could benefit from it most, as smaller animals like flies can get by on almost anything like rotting veg just fine.

Big Tent Veganism

So, what got me thinking about this is I know that in holding rare desires like this I dumbfound even some vegans, and that some vegans might desire that I keep quiet about stuff like this to not muddy the name of veganism with eccentric desires. But I do think we should make room for lots of different people with niche interests to be loud and attract attention to vegan politics in their own unique way. So long as the person isn’t saying you must hold this niche interest in order to call yourself vegan.

It’s simply the difference between an actually effective big tent vegan political alliance and a fractured group of purist vegans all defining veganism in their own way.

The Freegan Debate

Now my ideal desire to have my body be used as a resource for wild animals in this way extends to seeing it as an entirely positive practice for humans to use dead animals they find in the wild, and even dead animals that were unjustifiably killed by other people, so long as you don’t help perpetuate the cycle of killing.

Issues like this one and countless others like whether vegans should date non-vegans gets to the heart of a debate over what vegans’ philosophical foundation and central focus should be.

The Free Rider Objection

For instance, one objection some vegans raise is that people who use second hand leather are free riding on the bad actions of others, but this often stems from a misunderstanding about what philosophical foundation the other person is using. For instance I would never claim that the reason it’s a character vice for people to buy animal products is because all use of animals bodies is wrong, so I’m not free riding on a less bad use of an animal after someone has already made the greater sin of paying to keep the cycle going of animals being killed to be sold. I simply think sometimes using animal bodies after they’re dead can be an entirely positive character virtue, like finding a deer killed along the road and learning to turn its hide into clothing.

The Speciesism Accusation

Another objection is that we wouldn’t use a human body for leather after they’re dead, so we’re unreasonably devaluing non-human animal life by viewing them with less dignity. But non-human animals don’t experience a worse quality of life worrying about what’s going to happen to them after they’re dead, humans do as a species norm.

So even for babies and the mentally disabled it’s reasonable to project onto them this cultural norm of desiring to relate to them as people who if they had grown up or not had a mental disability, that they would likely have desires for what happened to them after they’re dead.

But with other animals I think we would likely be perpetuating an entirely toxic relationship to project onto them this cultural norm.

The Pet Rights Objection

Firstly because the most common way I see this intuition play out is among vegans who had a pet as a child and would like to consider every domesticated animal a kind of citizen of their own community who they would like to extend funerary rights to.

But, I think this intuition precisely comes from liking the way we’ve bred infantile traits into some dogs to relate to them more as infant humans. So, it’s buying into the delusion you desired be created. You imagine that they could have grown up to be people who could suffer a worse quality of life worrying about how other people might intend to treat their body after their death.

So I think it’s more respectful to think of domesticated animals like their wild ancestors, where it would be normal for other animals to eat them after they’re dead.

The Separate Eco-Systems Objection

The second way I see this intuition playing out is where the person would have liked to think of animals as existing in ecosystems that are almost entirely cut off from us, where they live, die and get broken down without interference from us. Whilst we pursue challenges entirely separate from them.

But, as well as joining campaign groups working towards restoring dense wildlife habitat, I simply think it’s a positive to maximize the use value of natural resources in ways that don’t have a long-term negative impact on the eco-system. Whether that be finding thatching for roofs, or skinning a dead deer on a hike and leaving the flesh for scavengers.

These are skills that positively teach us how to achieve a task like how to make a set of shoes using the minimum viable technology necessary to do it, so gaining a whole host of skillsets that can be rewarding for a child to grow up learning to do.

So again abstaining from pursuing tasks like this would in my view be relating to the animal with much less dignity than you could show by putting that animals body to use in the value of the happy flourishing you could achieve in your community.

So that’s everything, feel free to leave your thoughts in a comment down below, and like and subscribe, cheers.

Further reading

Source

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: Most European countries, including the UK, have an opt-out system, meaning unless you opt out, your organs will be harvested for donation after you die.

Aye, it came in 2 years ago in the UK. When I said if possible I want to, I was simply referring to the fact that “only around one in 100 people who die in the UK are usually able to be donors. Donors are typically those who have died in a hospital intensive care unit or emergency department.”

You’ll have to make arrangements to have your body donated to science, but I wonder how much scientific use there is for an organ-free body (I might be wrong, but I think you have to choose either the organ donation or science).

My grandad was on both registers, I should get round to it soon: “Most people don’t know this, but—yes! You can be an organ donor and donate your body to medical science. Though many people are unaware of having both options, there are a number of organizations that support organ, eye and tissue donation and then facilitate full-body donation to help advance medical research—providing a much-needed contribution to medical students and scientists for years to come.” — https://mainlinehealth.org/blog/whole-body-donation

Whether you choose the donation or science, both of these options will take away your fourth wish — being fed to wild animals, which I don’t think is particularly viable anyway, even if you set the logistics of it aside.

Encase it wasn’t clear I said “Finally, I would like to be buried at a green burial site on land acquired specifically for restoring dense wildlife habitat. To emphasise the importance of this desire, under an ideal legal situation...” I’m aware it’s not feasible today as it would be illegal, so not something I’d want to put normie family and friends through.

They do ship back bodies on ice for burial that were donated to medical science for a short time though, usually just with a few incisions.

In the future it would be nice if there was a steady flow of family and friends stretchering bodies into the wilderness to say their goodbyes and leaving dead bodies as a resource to help a carnivore stand a better chance of lasting the winter.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by anarchyintheyouuuk in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

I’m happy to stay up late to record something your morning time or whatever. Or we can just leave it as a text discussion.

If you don’t mind using google just hit request editor role on this document or we can use Etherpad or some other document collaboration platform. I can’t get disroot pad to run without it glitching though.

Also just a factual correction, I wrote that I had an intuitive feeling of disappointment that they didn’t have enough evidence to conclusively connect anyone they arrested to a terror attack. I didn’t say I was disappointed that they didn’t have enough evidence to put them in prison for running a website, like I didn’t mean I was disappointed they didn’t have enough evidence to fraudulently connect anyone they arrested to a terror attack.

I felt that intuitive disappointment because I would like info on bus stop bombers to become publicly available so that they can be challenged by anarchists, just like I’m happy any time a fascist gets doxxed.

I understand the opposition to the consequentialist hypothetical I wrote after that though and I am sympathetic to it.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by anarchyintheyouuuk in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

Of the hour and a half, you discussed his philosophy for maybe five minutes.

Because that wasn’t the purpose of the discussion. I tried organizing a recording delving into his ideas like that, but the guy stopped responding. If you’d like to record a voice discussion or work on a text discussion, I’d be delighted.

While you’re here, why have you registered the subreddits https://old.reddit.com/r/AntiCivilization/ and https://old.reddit.com/r/AntiCiv/ and posted techbro William Gillis’s anti-primitivist screed there? In fact, why have you done this with nearly a hundred different subreddits?

Because I like the critique, I like spreadsheeting lists to de-stress and I thought it might be nice to try and foster lots of small communities based on specialized political interests, so I created at least 30 pro specialized anarchist philosophy spaces, 8 anti-civ critique spaces, and 10 anti-civ ideological name variations to host redirect links:

Ishkah: Reply to comment by anarchyintheyouuuk in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

I haven’t been able to record a discussion with a supporter of his, but here are the planning notes for a discussion.

I’ve had a pleasant conversation with Zerzan that delved into his arguments for primitivism.

I’ve had a mock debate with someone playing devil’s advocate for primitivist positions here.

I engaged with post-left ideas here.

Other ideas I’ve addressed in depth are for example anti-freeganism and I’ve debated a liberal on my defence for anarchist direct action.

Instead you copy and paste long lists of texts that you clearly haven’t read and dismiss them with the word ‘purist’

I cataloged lots of highlights from essays arguing for ideologues at various levels of nicheness and highlights from their critiques. The highlighted critiques and the advertisement to do your own further reading into them were the main arguments for whether you should dismiss the arguments for the ideology or not. I acknowledged the purist pipeline was a distinct phenomenon and not a perfect defeater to all the ideologies listed.

and by telling an anecdote about the time Ted was dropped on his head as a baby or something.

Never done anything like that, you must be confusing this for me simply researching the way in which he related to his attacks on technology at the time as primarily a personal passion project.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by anarchyintheyouuuk in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

You registered an hour ago to comment on my post? I’m honored lol.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by stacat in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

Just helping out or starting a food not bombs chapter would be nice, with conversations and leaflets, encouraging people to boycott animal agriculture and Israeli occupation.

As well, I’d like to help build the political squatting movement, that houses people and shifts the Overton window at the very least towards the council selling empty homes to charities to house and train up homeless people like Take Back the Land and Latch (Leeds Action to Create Homes).

Ishkah: Reply to comment by stacat in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

For anyone first starting out, and open to reading about psychology, I’d recommend:

Ishkah: Reply to comment by stacat in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

All of them bar 1 or 2. I just set out with a simple goal and built them up till I was happy with them. 1 of them the computer programmer pulled out, but I’m still happy with what we’ve produced, that we can easily restart it up and expect to be able to finish it one day. Many of them are obviously active projects, with mechanisms for people to add data, so they’re constantly being updated.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by stacat in I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA by Ishkah

Yeah it’s the motivation for researching his life. Some formerly anarchist people buy into his ideas out of a desire to view the world in a more rigidly simplistic way and leave broader campaigns behind which is often both a detriment to their own quality of life and others. As well I think there are comparative elements to the way some people go from valuing many anarchist campaigns to mostly just illegalism, propaganda of the deed and communiques.

As a professor at Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam war protests Kaczynski would have been very aware of militant campaigns. He romanticized the anti-hero in Joseph Conrad’s novel The Secret Agent. And he was angry at being a product of kind of conservative by todays standards emotionally repressed parents. And so he chose a kind of militant purism.

I’m also interested in the phenomenon of how and why the children of defeated fascist countries grew up to have the most active rebel urban guerrilla movements. The obvious simple answer is anger at their parents generation, but how that played out in each of their lived experiences is interesting to study.

Finally, we all walk around with naive assumptions that people we know well could never be acting in evil ways, if we’re ever forced to come face to face with the fact that they are, we have this realisation of the ways we were blind to being able to help people, and so the way the average person is causing harm that we never even thought about.

I’ve started 100s of online hobby projects over the last few years... AMA

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/143868/i-ve-started-100s-of-online-hobby-projects-over-the-last-few>

...and I’ve no idea what the likelihood is that it’s benefited me or not.

From age 19 to 25 I travelled, worked on farm-stays, took odd unskilled jobs and joined lots of anarchist projects and campaigns. Most of my time was spent outdoors in rural areas, sometimes literally up a tree building a treehouse.

But the last 5 years I’ve been completely stationary, still living rurally in a village, working unskilled jobs and going out hiking with the dog, but devoting lots of time to being online, going from one hobby project to another:

My Video Essays, Editing & Mirrors – Philosophy, politics, veganism, comedy, film & music
My Writing – Personal growth, politics & philosophy
My Editing
Captain Hotknives Sleeve Notes Zine – Working class comedy — The Unfinished Autobiography of Aileen Wuornos – Hippie sub-culture, sex work & abuse — Ted Kaczynski Book Projects – Terrorism, political philosophy & recent history
My Cataloguing
The Radical Zine Library — Leftist / Vegan Community Directories — Anarchist Media Archive — Vegan Video Resource Library — Community Discord Directory — Comedy Archive — Leftist Debates & Discussions — Master lists of anarchist & vegan sub-reddits — Sortable table of languages by number of speakers — Sortable table of music genres
My Other Projects
UK Travel Master List of Resources; Free/cheap things to do and campaigns to help – Human geography research & map building — List of UK campaign groups & how to keep their information updated – Political movement research — Freegle – Map building & rule drafting — Leftist / Vegan YouTube Analytics – Research & website building — Library Information Exchange — Philosophical Vegan Wiki — Musical tribute call out

I’m not sure what the future holds, I know I want to cycle tour soon around a good length of the UK.

I would probably most enjoy doing a philosophy degree, but I also know that I can enjoy learning philosophy at my own leisure over a lifetime, so I probably want to do something like a psychology degree to then specialize in publishing papers debating ideas like in what way we learn to use folk psychological concepts.

Although I also don’t know if I could really enjoy that life, I just know that I’m terrible at narrowing down my interests which is probably fairly obvious.

Finally here’s my best attempt at a short list of what skilled careers I could maybe see myself doing:

Publishing Papers, Writing Articles & Books, Making Video Essays, Documentaries &/or Indy Films
Campaign Organising
Counselling
Journalism
Freelance Academic Researcher
Library or Museum Work

So yeah feel free to AMA.

Source

stacat: How do your Kaczynski Book Projects relate to your writing against purist/insurrectionary anarchism?

anarchyintheyouuuk: It’s the same deal: Ishkah pretends to be presenting a big brain neutral take on the subject but is really just pushing his usual agenda against anarchists of action. As well as the moral crusading, I suspect there’s a financial motivation. Fortunately, it seems unlikely Ishkah’s hit pieces will ever get off the ground. Publishing a book about a living person is not as easy as just copying and pasting stuff from the internet, splicing your own crappy ‘commentary’ in the middle, and listing the result on Amazon.

Ishkah: You registered an hour ago to comment on my post? I’m honored lol.

anarchyintheyouuuk: I post anonymously.

Some formerly anarchist people buy into his ideas out of a desire to view the world in a more rigidly simplistic way and leave broader campaigns behind which is often both a detriment to their own quality of life and others.

Why is it that anything not in line with your workerist dogma is a ‘rigidly simplistic way to view the world’? Do you really think that your 19^th century workplace democracy BS (sprinkled with Food Not Bombs NGO charity work) is some deep, rich tradition?

It always comes back to the pop-psychology with you. Not once have I ever heard you engage with Ted’s ideas. Or primitivist ideas. Or post-left ideas. Or any ideas, come to think of it. Instead you copy and paste long lists of texts that you clearly haven’t read and dismiss them with the word ‘purist’ and by telling an anecdote about the time Ted was dropped on his head as a baby or something.

It’s really tiresome. Maybe you could find yourself a new hobby? Studying psychology and becoming a social worker would suit you, I think.

Ishkah: I haven’t been able to record a discussion with a supporter of his, but here are the planning notes for a discussion.

I’ve had a pleasant conversation with Zerzan that delved into his arguments for primitivism.

I’ve had a mock debate with someone playing devil’s advocate for primitivist positions here.

I engaged with post-left ideas here.

Other ideas I’ve addressed in depth are for example anti-freeganism and I’ve debated a liberal on my defence for anarchist direct action.

Instead you copy and paste long lists of texts that you clearly haven’t read and dismiss them with the word ‘purist’

and by telling an anecdote about the time Ted was dropped on his head as a baby or something.

Never done anything like that, you must be confusing this for me simply researching the way in which he related to his attacks on technology at the time as primarily a personal passion project.

anarchyintheyouuuk: Never done anything like that, you must be confusing this for me simply researching in what way he related to his attacks on technology as primarily a personal passion project.

You recorded an hour and a half long show where you and another person go back and forth over and over again about the time 1) Ted was briefly separated from his family as a child (routine practice to this day) 2) MK Ultra (discredited conspiracy theory invented by his defence to save him from the death penalty) and 3) his lack of success with women (as if Ted is the only person ever who struggled to form relationships in this hellscape we live in).

Of the hour and a half, you discussed his philosophy for maybe five minutes. As an aside, I remember this was the show where you said schooling for children should be standardised and compulsory.

Ishkah: Of the hour and a half, you discussed his philosophy for maybe five minutes.

anarchyintheyouuuk: If you’d like to record a voice discussion or work on a text discussion, I’d be delighted.

I live in New Zealand so the time difference would make this difficult if not impossible. Also I’d be very wary of discussing my ideas with you over voice given that only last week you said on here that you hoped the admins of a website you didn’t like got arrested and locked up. I suspect the person you were talking to previously about recording something dropped out for the same reason.

Ishkah: I’m happy to stay up late to record something your morning time or whatever. Or we can just leave it as a text discussion.

I understand the opposition to the consequentialist hypothetical I wrote after that though and I am sympathetic to it.

Ishkah: Yeah it’s the motivation for researching his life. Some formerly anarchist people buy into his ideas out of a desire to view the world in a more rigidly simplistic way and leave broader campaigns behind which is often both a detriment to their own quality of life and others. As well I think there are comparative elements to the way some people go from valuing many anarchist campaigns to mostly just illegalism, propaganda of the deed and communiques.

stacat: Psychology is not that interesting a thing to study in practice, so far as I know, mostly just a boring fledgling science.

Ishkah: For anyone first starting out, and open to reading about psychology, I’d recommend:

stacat: How many of your projects have you finished and how do you feel about that?

Ishkah: All of them bar 1 or 2. I just set out with a simple goal and built them up till I was happy with them. 1 of them the computer programmer pulled out, but I’m still happy with what we’ve produced, that we can easily restart it up and expect to be able to finish it one day. Many of them are obviously active projects, with mechanisms for people to add data, so they’re constantly being updated.

stacat: What kind of campaign would you be interested in organising?

Ishkah: Just helping out or starting a food not bombs chapter would be nice, with conversations and leaflets, encouraging people to boycott animal agriculture and Israeli occupation.

A Love Letter To Failing Upward

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2020/10/31/a-love-letter-to-failing-upward>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Philosophy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Philosophy/143867/a-love-letter-to-failing-upward>

Failing upward is simply the concept of failing by mainstream standards and yet achieving more fulfilling outcomes in the long run. Often this is connected to a feeling of unlocking opportunities you didn’t even know existed.

Power – Failing to take every opportunity to lead from the front

Due to the unfair distribution of power in society in the hands of very few, the good any one person can strive to achieve is immense, because one can imagine wielding the kind of power those at the top currently have to do good. But this power is unnatainable to many.

So, like how a figure like Bernie Sanders could have harnessed the position of presidency to do lots of good, how he did educate the masses on the positives of socialised government institutions and, if he’d gotten into power, mobilise a grassroots movement to demonstrate and strike to push through bills.

But, most importantly power can be a mirage. It’s the carrot dangled in front just beyond our reach. We need to create opportunities for ourselves, to achieve great acts of good on our own, like the personal heroism of people flying to Syria to fight Islamic Fascism or organising edible gardens in low-income neighbourhoods.

As well, even though we may cherish those opportunites to do great deeds today, counter-intuitively, the goal should be to move to a world where grand feats of good deeds aren’t necessary or possible. So that more people get a chance to strive to do good.

So a move to devolve government power to a multi-party system through preferential voting, to… Some local government positions being elected by sortition, to… The majority of society being so content with worker-co-ops and syndicalist unions that we transition from representative democracy to direct democracy. So, a chamber of ministers to federated spokes councils.

We all know the experience of living under a conservative culture that accepts bigoted assumptions. And we all know of certain unproductive actions which some counter-cultures have dogmatically valorized as the best form of resistance. Both cultures incuclate their members with a ‘willing epistemology of ignorance.’ That is, a conspiracy to fail to view the world as it is, in exchange for the benefits being a member of that cultural group.

In response, we can simply work hard to fail to be swayed by the fear of what embracing radical compassion will turn you into. Therefore, we must avoid the pitfalls of an illusory politics of resistance which wears its activists out faster than it inspires lasting change.

Time – Failing to rush to achieve a bunch of outcomes without fully considering the value.

With the ever expanding knowledge each new generation is able to harness, the hard material outcomes of our goals in life will always be out performed better or faster than before.

So, while some people fret about failing against others, which makes them feel their life is not worth living, you, by failing to set strict goals for yourself and instead giving a leg up to those around you, can just observe everyone acting around you, contemplate your time and place in history and experience a peace of mind knowing you’re part of the fabric of everything.

We were nothing before we were born and we’ll be nothing again after we’re dead. The zoomed out size of the universe and length of time we aren’t around for overwhelms the blip of time we are here. This not-self follows us like a shadow throughout our life, like a chalk outline on the pavement, with every less able iteration of ourselves in between, refracted along a scale and merging back into the universe with other people’s similar layers.

A philosophical denial is just a view, a theory… it does not get one actually to examine all/ the things that one really does identify with… as ‘self’ or ‘I’, / This examination, in a calm meditative context, is what the not-self teaching aims at. It is not so much a thing to be thought about as to be done.

Finally allow ideas to percolate to the surface, don’t rush to nail down what an experience meant to you for time in perpetuity.

Authenticity – Failing to modify your behaviour to be more comprehensible

It can be annoying or hurtful for others to presume they know everything about you, but rather than assert their wrongness and make them defensive, you can acknowledge it as a common human failing and find nice creative ways to hold a mirror up to what life experiences they’ve had that lead them to jump to that conclusion.

One way is a kind of playful authenticity, telling a lie about a lie, to get back closer to the truth. So don’t outright challenge the idea, but don’t live up to it either, in fact live down to it. Playfully undermine the idea by failing to live up to the glamour of what it would mean to be that person, then find a way of revealing that it was a misunderstanding all along, so they needn’t worry about it applying to you.

The Middle Way – Failing to achieve short term gratification

Take satisfaction in starting a project with the tools at your disposal in which you have no idea whether it’ll ever be valuable to others, just that you learnt something new and that you really enjoyed the process.

There’s a quote I really like from the Tao Te Ching which explains how we can harness our higher inner character through acting with a conscious awareness about the way the universe works:

The way of heaven is like the bending of a bow.
The high is lowered, and the low is raised.
If the string is too long, it is shortened;
If there is not enough, it is made longer.
The way of heaven is to take from those who have too much
and give to those who do not have enough.
Man’s way is different.
He takes from those who do not have enough
to give to those who already have too much.

Knowledge – Failing to keep track of every piece of information

It’s great to live with people who are observant of clues as to your mindset and can offer suggestions to help you or give you the room to learn from your own mistakes where the consequences aren’t dramatic.

It’s less useful to try and acquire every piece of gossip about a person and come into interactions with funny presumptions about who they are and why they act the way they do.

Meaning – Failing to live up to expectations

Through having an accurate accounting of some of the worst possible outcomes at any moment and having a healthy way of coming to terms with that, we can truly decide if the road we want to be on us is as much ‘our choice’ as anything can be.

Compassionate comedy for the wholesomeness of peoples mistakes is one really great way of feeling comfortable in your own skin. In being able to laugh at ourselves, we can feel freer to experiment and enjoy a culture with more complex forms of expression being understood.

Vulnerability – Failing to avoid pain

Love is the feeling that you almost had no other choice than pursuing the road you’re on. It’s both a scary feeling for opening yourself up to pain and a wonderful feeling for realising a passionate interest you may not have even been aware you had. Embrace it.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by lettuceLeafer in Vegan purists are harming our ability to convince people to go vegan. So, we need a simple vegan definition. (Encase anyone thought my blowhard crusade against the spooky purist problem was reserved to just critiquing purist anarchists XD) by Ishkah

What would you like sources on? The metabolic pressure from high yield source was from here: Human Relationships with Domestic and Other Animals: One Health, One Welfare, One Biology

They don’t need to be milked bc one the milk comes out even if u don’t milk the and the fucking caves drink it dipshit.

Metabolic pressure from high milk yield is found to be a causative factor in Mastitis, Lameness, Metritis and other reproductive disorders. One recommended solution is to select and feed for lower yield.

Cows haven’t gotten any bigger and yet we’ve selected for massive udders and massive milk yields. I couldn’t parse if you thought cow milk would just spring forth from the udder even if there was no-one there to pull on the teat, cow or human, but if so, no that doesn’t happen. And even if you thought calves could happily drink all this extra high yield milk despite not being bred to need it, what if all the calves died or not enough calves survived to feed from multiple cows, what then? I think humans can play a positive healthcare role in the same way First Nations people used to go out and mercy kill injured bears despite risk to themselves, we can rehabilitate and release wild animals, and we can look after domesticated animals health care needs because we were the ones that gave them these deformities.

Fucking snowflakes who can’t accept reality I swear.

If you shot a bison with a magic domesticating and infantilising dart out in the wild, and made it easier prey for predators, I think the character virtuous decision would be to protect them from predators and attend to their healthcare needs.

Vegan purists are harming our ability to convince people to go vegan. So, we need a simple vegan definition. (Encase anyone thought my blowhard crusade against the spooky purist problem was reserved to just critiquing purist anarchists XD)

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/DebateAVegan/comments/uobato/vegan_purists_are_harming_our_ability_to_convince/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Vegan

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Vegan/143661/vegan-purists-are-harming-our-ability-to-convince-people-to>

Vegan Purists

There are 1000s of vegan purists all defining veganism in their own way so as to exclude people who diverge from their niche ideological interests.

Fill in the blank; “if you ever use _____ you’re not vegan!”:

Anti-Capitalist Purists (Sources)

A Fast Food Drive-In — Even if it’s for vegan food.
Items with Non-Vegan Parent Companies — Even if the research would be never ending.
Palm Oil — Even if it’s what a friend asked for.
Quinoa — Even if the tabloid news story was dumb.
Chocolate — Even if it’s what a friend asked for.
Non-Fair Trade Items — Even if you buy mostly locally.

Anti-Freegan Purists (Sources)

Second-Hand Wool — Even from a charity shop skip.
Roadkill Deer — Even if you would be fine with animals eating you after you’re dead.
Dumpster Dived Bread with Whey in it — Even if you use it for animal rights advocacy.

Anti-Natalist Purists (Sources)

A Fertility Clinic — Even if an anti-natalist world will never happen.

Organisations Worshipers (Sources)

Anti-PETA Talking Points — Even if you just wish they were better animal rights activists.

Militant Purists

Solely Legal Activism — Even if you support the ALF.

Anti Companion Animal Purists

A rescue dog to get you out on hikes more — Even if you wish no one ever bred them.
A Horse — Even if it’s a rescue pulling you both to a new field.
A Guide Dog — Even a rescued one who likes it.

Pro-Life Purists

An Abortion Service Provider — Even if you were raped.

Sparse Healthy Food Deserts Denier

Food desert talking points — Even if it’s to promote vegan remedies.

Indigenous Rights Denier

Indigenous talking points — Even if it’s to promote vegan remedies.

Deontological Purists

Reducitarian Diet Tips — As a fall back advocacy option.
Avocados — Even if it’s what a friend asked for.
Almonds — Even ones pollinated by DIY built wild bee nests.
A non-vegan friend for sex and falling in love despite them never going vegan.

Pseudoscience Cult Purists

Cooked Foods — Even if it can help make nutrients more bio-available.
Processed Foods — Even if it can help make nutrients more bio-available.
GMO Foods — Even responsibly made & grown.

Pragmatic Veganism

We need vegans to recognize that they can have a philosophical perspective similar to any of the above perspectives and still see themselves as part of a big-tent vegan alliance which allows for a diverse array of philosophical caucuses within it.

But if we want to maintain our coherency and power as a unified force, then we need to be hostile to gatekeepers, ideological purity testers and entryists trying to turn veganism into a niche belief system with a primary goal that is different to trying to end the animal agriculture industry through boycotting it’s products.

So for example, we can have caucuses such as all the below and more:

Anti-Capitalist Caucus (Sources)
Freegan Caucus (Sources)
Rewilding Caucus (Sources)
Naturist Caucus (Sources)
Environmentalist Caucus
Health Caucus
Direct Action Caucus
Anti-Racist Caucus
Feminist Caucus
LGBT Caucus
Mental Health Caucus
Pro-Natalist Caucus
Anti-Natalist Caucus
Liberal Caucus
Conservative Caucus
Pro-Choice Caucus
Personally Pro-Life Caucus

One important way of achieving this big-tent vegan alliance is through using and promoting a simple, practical and historically accurate definition of veganism, in that veganism means ‘an animal products boycott’ which is primarily a campaign waged against animal agriculture.

The argument I’m going to be making is that if boycotts can be an important element to political movement building and I think boycotts are in the case of animal rights, then the vegan society were irresponsible for trying to come up with various sectarian definitions for a way of life which people already have a colloquial definition for, in that these are people who boycott all animal products, and some of them go further in being animal rights advocates.

Like the word libertarian, the positive original vision has been obscured or run away with entirely. As libertarian used to stand for the democratization of the means of production, so enlightenment liberalism or left-anarchism.

Veganism As A Boycott Campaign

“An animal products boycott”

Ethical Foundation: First & foremost a behavior, like how ‘heroism’ means to ‘act bravely’, so the principle reason why someone is colloquially a vegan would be contained within a separate identity like what it necessarily means to be a legal animal rights advocate.

Pros: Clear & simple implications and historically accurate to why the vegan society came about. Has broader appeal for other liberation causes like anti-racism and anti-sexism to see it as a strategy of action which is useful for their struggles also. Makes explicit it’s a campaign tactic and leaves room for combination behaviours like freeganism.

As for my preferred definition of legal animal rights advocate, it’s...

A person who seeks to gain collective legal rights for non-human animals to have a refuge in dense wildlife habitat where they aren’t subject to human cruelty. With the few exceptions where the law is overridden by right to self-defence or special dispensation from the government for example to practice some scientific testing, as well as breed and keep guide dogs for the blind.

How to explain what veganism is

I define veganism as simply “an animal products boycott.”

I make the point of saying it’s one campaign tactic among many, aimed primarily at achieving the end of animal agriculture.

And that personally I see the principle behind the action as being grounded in the animal rights movement, seeking collective legal rights for animals to have a refuge in dense wildlife habitat where they aren’t subject to human cruelty. In a similar way to how the act of boycotting South African products or the act of boycotting the Montgomery bus company was grounded in a larger civil rights movement.

Other boycotts didn’t have a specific name for the identity one took on when boycotting, the principle for why they boycotted was contained in what it meant to be part of a larger movement e.g. being a civil rights advocate. So I would just encourage people to think of themselves as animal rights advocates first, fighting for the legal protection of animals. Though you could also call yourself an animal liberation advocate fighting to free non-human animals to be able to express their capabilities in managed wildlife habitat or a sanctuary.

As for why someone would arrive at the ethical conclusion to boycott, it could be a million ways. The person advocating just needs to tailor their arguments to the person they’re standing in front of. So, two examples for the principle that got you into veganism could be:

Preference Consequentialism: The principle of not breeding sentient life into the world to kill when you know they will have interests to go on living longer than would be profitable.

Nihilist Meta-Ethics: The principle that you should be wary of in-authentically acting in a way you don’t believe due to outside social pressures, like that acting uncaringly is necessary to what it means to be a man.

Why not use other definitions?

The reason I would encourage people to use the definition “an animal products boycott” and not other definitions is it gets at the root motivation people have for being vegan without being divisive about which ethical system is best.

In 1944 those members of the vegetarian society who were avoiding all use of animal products, created their own vegan society and came up with the word vegan. They did this after a series of debates in which they voiced their concern that we should also be advocating the boycott of the dairy and egg industries.

Now I acknowledge that one problem with defining veganism as an “animal products boycott” is people saying “well would you be okay with hunting wild animals yourself then?” But to that I would answer “implicit in the word boycott is an ethical judgement on the activity that creates the product.”

So, for 99% of people protesting animal farming, it’s going to be hypocritical to go hunting, because you’re desiring to prevent the incentives for the killing from ever happening so you couldn’t then go out and do it yourself. It’s a positive that we get to really easy conceptually tie this to other boycotts where someone boycotting South African products during apartheid wouldn’t feel comfortable with flying over their and joining the police force themselves, more so than in other definitions where you’re just saying you’re abstaining from using the end animal products.

But I am actually fine with my definition being softer on for example subsistence hunters, which my opponents definition doesn’t do. I’ve got a video on my channel of Penan tribes people in Indonesia explaining how it would be repulsive to them to keep animals in captivity to farm, and I think this is great animal rights advocacy, so again a positive distinction.

So the idea that some tiny 0.001% of people might boycott animal products, may also feel fine with going out hunting themselves would just be one of a number of fringe groups you already have under many definitions, like neo-nazis desiring to boycott animal products and wanting to commit harms against humans. Which we simply have to denounce or distance ourselves from in our animal rights advocacy anyway.

Another concern people may have is that boycotting sounds like you’re primarily negatively opposed to a thing and trying to reduce your reliance on that thing. But I would argue you have that with every definition and that by creating a distance between the behaviour (veganism) and the principle (animal rights) you allow people to see the action as part of a big tent animal rights movement, where you’re hoping through boycotting, lobbying, starting vegan cafes, food not bombs stalls and foraging groups to create the breathing room necessary for legislation and rewilding where you can get to enjoy a more compassionate local community and see more animals flourishing in wildlife habitat.

To draw attention away from veganism as a political act is to make veganism look simply like an identity one takes on to look cool or be part of a subculture. Whereas people can relate boycott’s to other real world events as great positive coming together moments under a liberation politics. For example car-sharing during the Montgomery bus boycott, students leading the call to stop subsidising Israel and before that South Africa, the widespread boycotting of a reactionary tabloid newspaper in the UK that ran stories saying mass suffocation at a football stadium due to overcrowding and fences were the fans fault. So boycotting to show your real felt ties to the land you stand on. The first boycott was people simply withdrawing their labour from an imperialist landlord in Ireland in a desire to build something greater once he’d left, so I think it is very flexible to positive intention [1]

Now, does this definition leave room for any exceptions to the rule? Well yes in a way, but I would say a positive one, in that it allows for waste animal products to be used if no profit finds its way back to the person who caused the harm. If you can get a supermarket to redirect its 1000 loaves of bread containing whey from going in the dumpster to a food bank, that can only be a benefit to the world.

Also, it doesn’t attempt to include animal entertainment boycotts in what it means to be vegan, and simply leaves that to be included in what it means to be an animal rights advocate. Although it’s so similar one could raise an eyebrow about why someone would boycott animal agriculture and not animal cruelty as entertainment. People already view veganism as simply abstaining from the use of animal products, so we just do have to contend with why awful people like some eco-fascists desire to be vegans and denounce them. To try and pretend that someone boycotting animal products can’t also be an awful person in other ways is wilfully ignorant. In the same way, claiming that ex-vegans could never have been vegan for not having understood the ethical arguments is fallacious and off-putting.

History of the Term

In 1944 those members of the vegetarian society who were avoiding all use of animal products created their own society and came up with the word vegan. They did this after a series of debates in which they voiced their concern that we should also be advocating the boycott of the dairy and egg industries. The word they almost came up with was ‘dairyban’. And the colloquial understanding of vegan is the closest to this today.

The various definitions some vegans have attempted to come up with later was never historically accurate to why the vegan society came about as it didn’t represent all the members’ reasons for creating the society, and neither did it represent the 100 year old anarchist history that founded the very vegetarian society in London which the vegan society grew out of, and finally neither did it represent the diversity of philosophies over the 1000 or more year old history going all the way back to ancient India for why people desired to live that way of life.

Trying to make the definition of vegan as “the doctrine that man should live without exploiting animals” was equivalent to defining vegans as people who wear pink hats, it was never going to come into popular usage and would have been detrimental if it had.

So right there you have two diametrically opposed belief-isms consequentialism and deontology at the outset of the society which couldn’t survive together as one coherent idea without the behaviour-ism. Take the belief-isms away and you still have a behavioural preference for one group of products over another.

And the principle behind the boycott only splinters further as time goes on, today you have anti-natalists, vegans who are anti-pragmatically rescuing animals, anti-capitalists, pro-capitalists who think paying taxes isn’t vegan, the only thing uniting all of them being the behaviour of doing an animal products boycott.

But, vegans shouldn’t revolve their whole identity around a behavior either, we should ideally see ourselves as part of a larger animal rights movement, otherwise you get purism like that seen in 1975 of vegan shops who refused to stock the first mock-meat veggie burger because they were so attached to the behaviour that they worried if they sold mock-meats they would lose the coherency of veganism as a distinct behaviour.

Utilitarians definitely lead up to and were part of the creation of the vegan movement

The American Vegetarian Society poured its energies into utilitarian, anti-slavery vegetarian settlements in the Wild West. And its founder, Englishman Henry Clubb, ultimately took a bullet for the union in the Civil War.

Dr. Anna Bonus Kingsford, a member of the Vegetarian Society in 1944 argued for a total boycott of animal products, saying “[the dairy industry] must involve some slaughter I think and some suffering to the cows and calves.”

As were far-leftists

Végétarien in France, Insurrectionary anarchists robbing banks to build up their working class communities.

There was a Tolstoyan (christian anarchist) congregation in Croydon in South London that set up a vegetarian society, and that vegetarian society was still around in 44 and one of the pivotal events that played a pivotal role in the launch of a proper vegan movement.

Walter Fliess (1901–1985) was the owner of ‘Vega’ restaurant with his wife Jenny. Born in Germany. In 1920, Walter Fliess joined the IJB (Internationaler Jugenbund or International Youth Group), a small educational group led by the philosopher Leonard Nelson, which evolved into the ISK (Internationaler Sozialistischer Kampfbund or Militant Socialist International) in 1926. Walter Fleiss was head of the Cologne branch and, following persecution by the Nazis, moved to England in 1934 (preceded by his wife, Jenny, in 1933.) In London, the couple opened a vegetarian restaurant, Vega, based on previous restaurants they had run in Germany which gave financial support to the ISK.

“The vegetarian society has reason to be grateful to Walter and his late wife, Jenny, for services rendered in the early days of veganism. Thank you for leading so many to a healthier and more humane way of life.” — Serene Coles. President of the Vegan Society

Etymology

How did the term come about? Why is the syllable ‘veg’ like vegetable being attached to an ‘-ism’ to mean an ideology, wouldn’t it make more sense for the ethical principle to be contained in what it means to be a ‘legal animal rights advocate’?

I understand a secondary definition has come into popular usage about it being a belief-ism also, but considering we already have the words animal rights, I’m arguing we should use the primary definition of veganism as an animal products boycott for more coherence.

Like I accept literally has come to take on a secondary definition of figuratively because it rolls off the tongue so nicely, but in veganism’s case, I don’t think we have any benefits at this point in time to using a secondary definition of veganism, and so should stick to using the primary definition in all circumstances, and just acknowledge that of course there are people who go a lot further than an animal products boycott and so hold a commitment to animal rights that means a lot more to them than just veganism.

Various clarifications to my argument

‘An animal products boycott’ or ‘a person who boycotts industries which produce animal products’?

Boycotting can sometimes be confused for only temporarily removing yourself as a customer until some minor business practice has been changed, but the history of boycotting is far more radical. The term has it’s origin in rent and labor strikes against a colonial landlord in Ireland aimed at forcing him to leave. And the dictionary definition of a boycott is “withdraw from commercial or social relations with (a country, organization, or person) as a punishment or protest.”

The South African apartheid boycott for example was promoted as ‘boycotting the products of apartheid’, so protesting apartheid until it was gotten rid of as a style of government. Similarly, the reason for the creation of the vegan society was over debates that we should be promoting the boycott of the animal agriculture industry, so protesting animals kept in captivity unjustifiably, which is a call to eliminate the industry.

Veganism is ‘an animal products boycott’ in the same way the boycott against South Africa was ‘a South African products boycott’. It’s a boycott primarily against animal farming. The same way people didn’t do a ‘South African products boycott’ because they were inherently against tropical fruits, they did it because of the method used to obtain the fruits through predominantly black labourers living under apartheid.

My definition of veganism is “an animal products boycott”, for the word to work as a noun, it has to have have descriptive utility about a person, that person has to be said to be desiring to do it themselves, so ‘a vegan’, is “a person who desires to do an animal products boycott.” What does it mean to do a specific products boycott? To protest something specific to the manufacture &/or distribution of that group of products.

So you wouldn’t introduce your anti-capitalist friend to a room of people as someone who’s primarily protesting against the manufacture &/or distribution of specifically animal products, if they’re primarily protesting against all products.

Their desire is more broad than animal products, it’s just a technicality that the former is included, not a desire that has any utility on it’s own as a descriptive tool for the person.

Grey areas

With every definition there are a 1000 grey areas like oysters or backyard eggs. I would just direct the conversation back to the core of getting consensus first on the ethical issue of where the majority of people get their meat from. What’s important is this definition focus’s the conversation and is easily accessible.

Easily comprehensible and accessible

A really important positive attribute to acknowledge about this lifestyle is it’s a broad food category that in its wholefood form is easy to distinguish on the shelf. Therefore experimenting with the diet doesn’t need to feel like a burden to take on board in the same way researching and seeking out conflict-free minerals in everything you buy can be for example.

All that appeal is lost if you try to include researching to boycott non-vegan parent companies in the same animal products boycott.

As well as it having a cast iron meaning in not using any products which have an origin in the body of an animal.

It focuses the conversation on it being a political tactic, not all or nothing

It’s not the case that we need to win over everyone to veganism in order to make massive change, if a large enough minority can create breathing room for legislation and food co-ops on the way to a vegan world, it will make the transition easier saving humans and wildlife. As well as driving less, buying second hand, etc.

Source

secco: Fill in the blank; “if you ever use _____ you’re not vegan!”:

animals as food

zephyr: good choice. covers my purism tendencies.

Ishkah: Close, but I’d say if you ever use ‘animals as commercial products’ you’re not vegan, to include activists doing great work such as Food not Bombs Houston:

We, participants in Food Not Bombs Houston (FNBH), agree;

to use sharing of free food, exchange of information, and dialogue as a means of promoting social justice, cultural exchange, horizontal organizing, and mutual aid ...

not to sell food or otherwise profit from any kind of donations given to FNBH

secco: shit, I was going for purism

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: Fair enough. And coolio will have to look around more, I liked the top comment on that linked thread.

catachresis: I’d rather view veganism as the things that people do, rather than the things people don’t do and that leads to a pretty standard definition: a person who avoids supporting animal exploitation and cruelty. A boycott doesn’t cover enough ground to satisfy me.

In your comment it seems like you’re alluding that FnB Houston fits your definition of vegan, and I would disagree. FnB does amazing work, but ovo-lacto freegan is not vegan. There is an important psychological shift in denouncing animal products and becoming vegan that freeganism doesn’t usually give way for.

I also want to concur with moonlune’s post and I agree with their hot take, I want to try and cool it down by saying that activism can look different to different people. Have a pragmatic definition to activism. Vegan activism doesn’t have to end at ALF or anonymous for the voiceless. A boycott can be considered activism, too. I remember how excited and outspoken I was the first year I went vegan and being nearly the only vegan I knew in my conservative-ass town felt pretty radical and I would consider it activism for others acting alone in challenging carnism as a social norm.

Ishkah: In your comment it seems like you’re alluding that FnB Houston fits your definition of vegan, and I would disagree.

There is an important psychological shift in denouncing animal products and becoming vegan that freeganism doesn’t usually give way for.

Here’s a bunch of topics that come up on on a lot of food not bombs stalls which make it a positive form of animal rights advocacy:

We cooked vegan soup, so no profits needed to go to an industry which breeds and kills animals.
Here’s some freegan bread with milk powder in it which was rescued, so no harm to animals and it’s carbon negative.
Isn’t it amazing they kept those cows captive and milked them only for it to go in the trash. So that’s one sign farming animals isn’t necessary to feed the population, if so very much meat, milk and eggs end up rotting in supermarket skips instead.
Isn’t it sad that politicians subsidize such an energy intensive product like meat to just become food waste, while people are starving around the world.

It would be much less dignity than you could show the animal by putting that energy to use in the value of the happy flourishing you could achieve yourself and in how you would be setting an example for others. And…
It would be treating the animals’ final remains more similar to the way the animals’ wild ancestors would have been treated after death. So, with more dignity than the way we bred infantile traits into them and with more dignity than the toxic relationship we would be perpetuating by anthropomorphically infantilising them as infant humans who could have grown up to be people who could suffer a worse quality of life worrying about how other people might intend to treat their body after their death.

crapshoot: Freegan here, but it seems inconsistent to say not to base arguments around ‘whether farmed animals can have an opinion on ways they’d like their body to be treated after they’re dead’, but then talking about the most ‘dignified’ way to treat animals’ bodies after they die.

Good point on the abundance mentality though. I suspect the other person is also right wrt the psychological shift wrt denouncing animal products altogether; I feel like a part of me would feel disappointed when people stop producing animal products and throwing them in dumpsters for me to take, even if I rationally recognise it as a good thing. But I’d rather that shift happen naturally; I don’t think cold-turkeying it is going to work for me :‘D

Ishkah: The argument for not basing your decision to eat animal products on the belief that the common animals people farm can have an opinion on ways they’d like their body to be treated after they’re dead is that factually we know they can’t.

elell: a long-term vision of letting them go extinct in habitat where they can best express their capabilities, choose their social relationships and are protected from predators

fucking hell. my father grew up on a farm with half a dozen cows. the cows were named after the children. they were all milked by hand, the milk shared with the calves. my father would sing to them while he milked them. when the cows were aging (my father said you could spot it because ‘their hind legs started to go’) they’d be killed for meat, leather etc. the day a cow was killed was a day of mourning on the farm.

jaw-dropping to me that you think extinction is preferable to the above.

zoom_zip: my father grew up on a farm with half a dozen cows. the cows were named after the children. they were all milked by hand, the milk shared with the calves. my father would sing to them while he milked them. when the cows were aging (my father said you could spot it because ‘their hind legs started to go’) they’d be killed for meat, leather etc. the day a cow was killed was a day of mourning on the farm.

you are literally the “i only buy my meat from my uncle’s local humane farm where he sings to the animals and gives them sweet kisses while he tucks them into bed” meme.

meanwhile more than 70% of all meat worldwide is from factory farms

elell: i’ve been vegan all of my adult life thx

zoom_zip: so what?

elell: how can i be a ‘i only buy my meat from blah blah’ meme if i don’t buy meat

zoom_zip: did you read your own post?

elell: i reread it and you’re absolutely right, extinction is absolutely preferable to the scenario i described

Gardon160: not racist. I’ve got black friends. Same shit

elell: lol okay whitey

Gardon160: Cope. It the same shit regardless of if you like it or not

lettuceLeafer: Oh fuck off. Fucking cowardly snowflakes who have to construct baby cage fiction to make them accept and be happy with life. So pathetic

elell: WAAAAAAAAAAH

Ishkah: The above is how I’d like to see them go out because of the way we bred cows to have painfully large udders they’re more likely to get mastitis infection and die, so sometimes milking will be necessary.

Short Term

Farmers will breed less animals as it becomes less profitable, less animals will exist.

Long Term

Forever Outcome

lettuceLeafer: The above is how I’d like to see them go out because of the way we bred cows to have painfully large udders they’re more likely to get mastitis infection and die, so sometimes milking will be necessary.

U can’t b vegan and want to milk cows. This is just wanting to own cows and ur slaves but in an uwu nice way. They don’t need to be milked bc one the milk comes out even if u don’t milk the and the fucking caves drink it dipshit.

So we can’t even let them roam far in fully wild habitat with wolves around without having to train dogs to save most of them with big spikes round their neck, so some calves, wolves and dogs would still be getting killed for dumb reasons.

Oh fuck off. The criticism I gave above is even more true and this is an even more bullshit argument. Fucking uwu I’m so nice snowflakes who pretend to be anti oppression but in reality just Wana be oppressors in a uwu nice may. Own the fuck up shit u wanna do or don’t advocate slavery. At least u won’t be a fucking coward who can’t even admit to themself their I tentions. Fucking snowflakes who can’t accept reality I swear.

Animals sanctuaries fucking make me sick. U don’t like the consequences of animals not being humans property but u also don’t want the consequences of them being free so u gotta create an elaborate plot to keep them ur slaves and deprive them of their freedom to follow their dreams. Fucking nasty liberals I swear

Ishkah: They don’t need to be milked bc one the milk comes out even if u don’t milk the and the fucking caves drink it dipshit.

Fucking snowflakes who can’t accept reality I swear.

The timeline of various anarchist critiques of ITS (Individualists Tending Towards the Wild)

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/the-early-history-of-its-and-the-various-anarchist-critiques>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy (edited 5 days later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/143394/the-timeline-of-various-anarchist-critiques-of-its>

On eco-extremism and anarchy (Jun 6^th, 2016)
There’s Nothing Anarchist about Eco-Fascism; A Condemnation of ITS (May 12^th, 2017)
“Eco-extremism and the indiscriminate attack – The Church of ITS Mexico” by L (UK)(Jul 21^st, 2017)
Not Our Comrades: ITS Attacks on Anarchists (Aug 30^th, 2017)
On ITS and virtual threats (Sep 8^th, 2017)
“Eco-Fascist” Groups Applaud ISIS, Murder of Heather Heyer, and Publishers (Sep 13^th, 2017)
On No Platform and ITS(Oct 24^th, 2017)
‘Removing the Trash’ by L (UK) (Oct 29^th, 2017)
Jake Hanrahan’s Twitter Thread (Jan 30^th, 2018)
Anarchist Libraries .Net (Jun 22^nd, 2018)
Against Eco-Extremism: Mirror image of Civilisation & Religion & PDF (Jul 18^th, 2018)
Egoism Vs. The Nazi Aztecs of Eco-Extremism (USA) (Aug 20^th, 2018)
Who is Arturo Vasquez, a Paralegal or an Eco-Extremist Mafia? (Sep 15^th, 2018)
Anitra Guillory, wife of “Eco-Extremist Mafia” is a vivisectionist (USA) (Sep 16^th, 2018)
More non-news about the “Eco-Extremist Mafia” (Oct 23^nd, 2018)
Regarding the Death of Kevin Garrido – Clarifications and Positioning (Nov 7^th, 2018)
“Eco-Extremist Mafia” Arturo Vasquez submits legal & FBI threat to anarchist counter-info site 325 (Nov 17^th, 2018)
Anarchy: Deep in the Woods (Dec, 2018)
End humanity to end domination? – On the misanthropic current in anarchic environments (Mar 17^th, 2019)
Against Green Reactionaries: Writings on eco-fascists and exterminationists (Spring 2020)
CARR Research Insight Series: Confronting the Rise of Eco-Fascism Means Grappling with Complex Systems – Centre for Analysis of the Radical Right (Jul 7^th, 2020)
Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline (May 2^nd, 2022)
Source

secco: I should read some ITS so that I can give a shit

kinshavo: Their blog https://maldicionecoextremista.altervista.org/ was deleted after some arrests

kinshavo: In May 2018, detectives of researchers from the General Directorate of Investigations and Special Operations Police Headquarters Milan began an investigation that yielded important data administrators of a website (Maldición Eco) which are the claims of terrorist training with international ramifications

The agents were able to identify the computers on the network from which the administrators logged into the website, including a device that entered from Argentina. It was geolocated in Buenos Aires. The warrant arrived via Turin at the Servini court, at the end of last year.

That’s why we don’t want no Darknet fuckery on Raddle

Ishkah: Interesting, it’s a shame that they didn’t have enough evidence to conclusively connect anyone they arrested to an actual terror attack.

daggers: it’s a shame that they didn’t have enough evidence to conclusively connect anyone they arrested to an actual terror attack

fucking hell get out of here

Ishkah: Just as if it’s a bad thing to desire to exist in a world in which there’s one less person likely to plant a pipe bomb at a bus stop.

ziq admin: No prison apologia.

daggers: Maldición Eco-extremista was a news website, Sherlock. Again, very weak understanding of what you’re trying to write about.

Ishkah: Sure thing, and no members of a terror network’s primary press office have ever been found out to be taking part in terror activities themselves before... oh wait...

asere_que_vola: Hi Ishkah.

One source you can add to your list is right after 325 published all these denouncements and called out some anarchists, they went on to publish an action in Chile of a bomb going off on a public transportation bus. Just like your comment said. 325 literally posts the same stuff they condemn in one breath and in the other breath when no one is looking support it.

Incredible praxis... BARF.

kinshavo: No need to shit on the 325 but I guess Abe Cabrera is a better person than Toby Shone lol

If u are disgusted by hypocrisy I can’t blame you but mirrors are usually ugly to us

Ishkah: Sad times if this is true, and without critique. I did find articles about the bus bombing. I’ve also added a critique by Dr.Bones to the list:

Egoism Vs. The Nazi Aztecs of Eco-Extremism (USA)

elell: Dr. Bones lol

ziq: The fuck

veuzi: I remember finding that blog in 2017 and thinking “now this looks like some real edgelord shit”. The rhetoric in their communiqués came across to my baby-anarchist eyes as more of a meme and a LARP than the actual public communications of an eco-terrorist group. Comparatively, I did not see that with communiqués from Greek insurrectionary anarchists which I saw as more blunt, straight to the facts and reasonings for their attacks with little in the way of rhetorical flourish.

daggers: Maldicion was a news website reporting on the eco-extremism tendency, same as 325 does (did) for the insurrectionary tendency etc. It wasn’t ITS’s blog anymore than 325 was CCF’s blog.

kinshavo: I know, but look what happened to the site owners(?) And Toby Shone.

The ITS use their secure means of communication, but the people on the front is paying for publishing the news. And to make clear since the Mexican ITS (and maybe the Chilean) associated with the O9A I lost any interest

daggers: Their early communiques — before their ‘delirious decline’ — were really quite good.

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/individualists-tending-toward-the-wild-communiques

I especially like their critique of ‘promiscuous solidarity’:

Leftists, taking their altruism incarnated by the values of the Techno-industrial System only make visible their alienation and the perversion of their natural instincts through it.

One of those mutated instincts is promiscuous solidarity. Which is very far from reality, since we can observe that when a small group of people live together daily or have a truly close bonds, solidarity is present, as is defense (of itself), appreciation and support, since the members of said group know each other well and share a vision that is related (in whatever aspect), it is there where true instinctive and natural solidarity develops, far away from the compromise with the force, sentimentalism and hypocrisy of leftist society.

This is real solidarity—what individuals share within a natural and immediate group of intimates, and which is not modified with victimist ideologies and practices with unknown persons due to psycho-cultural philosophies...

Identification and compassion with unknown persons has its closest historical roots in philanthropy, the love of the neighbor that the first Christian sects reinforced and leftism perpetuates now in the era of technological modernity. With this it’s shown that promiscuous solidarity is completely contrary to the natural development of the human being and that to defend and to be within our natural circle of loved ones is the only thing that should matter to us, but due to the variations that human behavior has had within Civilization, that has deeply changed in many people’s minds.

Before anyone flips their lid, this was ITS at the time when 325, Return Fire etc were still enthusiastically writing about them, when they were targeting professors etc.

Esperaux: That doesn’t seem to line up. We’ve consistently sought to form bonds and connections throughout our existence beyond just immediate family and persons. It’s no wonder they’d devolve further into attacking other anarchists and random people instead of doing anything actually substantial against capitalism and the state.

daggers: We’ve consistently sought to form bonds and connections throughout our existence beyond just immediate family and persons

I don’t think their critique of ‘promiscuous solidarity’ contradicts that. What they’re critiquing is, for example, ‘solidarity with the workers of the world!’, which is really no different to ‘solidarity with all God’s children!’

Seeking out bonds and connections beyond immediate family and forming solidarity with those individuals is one thing, claiming solidarity with someone you’ve never met nor will ever meet is another.

No doubt the name ITS did devolve/decline into something stupid, but given that anyone can claim an attack in the name of ITS (same as ELF, ALF etc) it seems unlikely to me that the people who wrote these early communiques are the same people who wrote the later ‘FUCK YOU WE HATE OLD PEOPLE HAHAHA’ ones.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by r4ddl3me in Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline by Ishkah

Literally the CCF example I just gave.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by r4ddl3me in Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline by Ishkah

You’re asserting that simply by using the word pipeline that I’m making an absolutist factual claim, that if a person reads x thing they are on their way to becoming y thing, always and definitively, when nowhere in the text did I write that.

I’m using the term pipeline in the sense that there is a clearly observable psychological crossover among some people from these niche ideologies who move down them in a pursuit of viewing the world in more fundamentalist terms, attempt to move others along in the same direction as them, and that it’s more common the further down you go.

Obviously someone can travel all the way down to the level of a satanist death cultist and only have been able to encourage one of their former friends to move down one level, thus spitting them out at only one level lower, but it’s still a concerning phenomenon, both for the few who end up at the really low levels, as the many who just take on a more purist gatekeeping form of anarchism.

But, yeah Individualists Tending to the Wild Mexico are an example of a group of people who started out at one end of the pipeline and moved all the way to the other end, whose members were originally part of the green & insurrectionary anarchist milieus who likely grew up on earth first monkey-wrenching manuals from the 80s.

Upon reading the Unabomber’s manifesto they started on a long road from committing arsons aimed at sabotaging evil companies and instead started to desire to have the wider effect of terrorizing people through fear of injury or death out of a simple hatred for people:

… in 2011 the (newly formed) ITS was testing various modus operandi (from known and attempted arson attacks on cars and construction machinery, companies and institutions in Coahuila, Guanajuato, and Veracruz State of Mexico, until we decided to focus on terrorism and not sabotage)

— Communiques of ITS

Here are old members of the FAI / CCF in Mexico acknowledging former collaboration and ideological crossover:

Exactly 5 years and seven months ago we signed a “joint statement” at the request of a comrade for whom we feel great affection and respect. That text was entitled “2^nd Joint Statement of the Anarchist Insurrectional and Eco-Anarchist Groups”. …

Back then, we let it be known publicly and energetically that:

“With these ITS partners, we can have theoretical differences and discuss them (always arguing fraternally in a constant attempt to update ideas and by building a unitary criticism attuned to the reality of the anarchist struggle), but we have never disagreed with the methods used, understanding anti-authoritarian violence and propaganda for the facts as they are : valid practices consistent with our ethical principles.”

Although ITS were one of the few clusters with which we did not directly coordinate when undertaking joint actions, we were in solidarity with them, in the same way that some of the comrades that made up our affinity groups obtained monetary resources for them to solve specific difficulties when requested. That has been (and is) the basis of practical co-ordination between the new anarchic insurrectionalism and eco-anarchism.

— ITS, or the rhetoric of decay

Here’s them expressing solidarity with anarchist prisoners:

Total support with the Anti-civilization prisoners in Mexico, with the Chilean comrades and with the furious Italians and Swiss....

One more time: Direct and total support with the anti-civilization prisoners of Mexico, with those eco-anarchists of Switzerland, to the affinities in Argentina, Spain, Italy, Chile and Russia.

— Communiques of ITS

And here is an answer members of ITS gave in an text interview in 2014 showing they were leftists and not simply post-left-&-right:

Individualists tending towards the wild formed at the beginning of 2011, and was motivated by the reasoning acquired during a slow process of getting to know, questioning, and the rejection of all that encompasses leftism and the civilized, and accordingly, employing all the above, we deemed it necessary to carry out the direct attack against the Technoindustrial System. We think that the struggle against this is not only a stance of wanting to abandon Civilization, regressing to Nature, or in refuting the system’s values, without also attacking it.

— Interview with Individualists Tending toward the Wild

Finally, here’s a purist anarchist explaining the feeling of moving down the levels:

Just finished reading Atassa. Has anyone else had a chance to read it? I thought it was extremely fascinating, especially the essay “Apostles and Heretics”. Even though there are obvious similarities between ITS and EE and other nihlists like Conspiracies of Cells of Fire, something about EE and Atassa just feels like such a drastic shift in the discourse and reminds me of the importance with which individuals read and shared Desert.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by r4ddl3me in Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline by Ishkah

Not the claim I was making:

The issue

I think it’s inarguable that some people will take a bunch of contradictory twists and turns down a list of more and more fringe ideologies, in pursuit of the most rigidly simplistic way of viewing the world, in searching for ‘answers’ to reduce anxiety in a seemingly chaotic world, to provide a navigable route in a world which can feel terrifyingly uncharted. In this way they come to believe they have the answers to almost all life’s questions. What is arguable is how common this phenomenon is depending on the ideology.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by stacat in Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline by Ishkah

The primary meaning of vulgar is a kind of less complicated copy of an original idea/object where some of the original important nuance is lost. So with anarchists who treat insurrectionairy anarchism as the strategy which is of primary importance, I think some nuance is lost. Like what Cells of Fire said about people fetishizing illegalism and voluntarily going underground. Maybe they respected people who talked about having to go on the run to live by their principles after the cops got wind of who they were, but then the people who thought they were copying them mistakenly imagined they were following in their footsteps by going underground even when they didn’t need to.

“You see, Ricks — they get lazy. There’s always a shitty decoy towards the end. But those decoys made decoys too, and got lazy themselves. And far enough down the line… There be monsters.”

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted34351 in Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline by Ishkah

Yeah I’d have preferred it if any time someone use her writing they also mention or link to a critique. Here’s her talking about anarchism and a critique anyways:

Germaine Greer on Anarchist Feminism + A Critique of Greer’s Bad Takes

Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/disrupting-the-purist-anarchist-pipeline>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/143308/disrupting-the-purist-anarchist-pipeline>

**
Table of Contents**

Introduction
Disclaimers galore
The issue
A comparison — An analogy by way of a diagram — Various ideologies
Insurrectionary Anarchism as Primary
The narrowing of approaches — The expanded limits of violence — Various Critiques
Post-Left Anarchism
The narrowing of approaches — The expanded limits of violence — Various Critiques
Anti-Civilization
The narrowing of approaches — Various Critiques
Anarcho-Primitivism
The narrowing of approaches — The expanded limits of violence — Various Critiques
Anti-Tech Revolution
The narrowing of approaches — The expanded limits of violence — Various Critiques
Eco-Extremist Nature Worshipers
The narrowing of approaches — The expanded limits of violence — Various Critiques
Human Exterminationists
The narrowing of approaches — The expanded limits of violence — Various Critiques
Satanist Death Cultists
The narrowing of approaches — Various Critiques
Minimalist Anarchism
A broad approach with specialized interests
Pragmatic Left-Anarchism
A wide array of approaches — The limits of violence

Introduction

At the very least, one goal I hope to achieve in writing this essay and collecting these quotes together, is to provide a cautionary warning, mostly for young people, about the importance of approaching political philosophy with careful consideration.

In short, try to avoid becoming this guy:

Image #1

I think polarization and passionate polemical arguments for the direction and focus of the anarchist movement should be encouraged as it can be a vibrant discourse that inspires someone to join.

However, the two foundational issues any group has to worry about are firstly becoming defined too broadly such that the philosophy just becomes a weak cultural disposition. So, for example, the way in which you have Christians on every side of every political issue today. And secondly, the group’s members defining the project in a rigidly narrow way, such that the group splits into factions, with each faction calling the other fakes, or abandoning the project entirely.

The obvious ideal is to maintain lots of specialized philosophical platforms within any movement, whilst maintaining coherence as a unified force. I’ve only written about this first issue in passing in On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence, but I plan to write about it more in the future.

For now, I’d like to address this second issue of factionalism.

Disclaimers galore

A while ago I was told by a Kaczynski fanboy that anyone who doesn’t want to destroy all electricity grids is a reformist. There’s a danger in traveling down the purist anarchist rabbit hole of more and more rigidly dogmatic political theory, where you begin to believe it’s only worth reading the way a few authors view the world.

One obvious critique of the way I’ve formatted this essay, is that I open up anarchism and its many specialized philosophies, to a charge of being solely irrational steps along the road that people adopt for reasons of personal purity. Also, that the same could be said of people adopting center-left liberalism as opposed to status quo centrism.

I believe, however, that the desire to take on political identities for personal purity or the need to view the world in rigidly fundamentalist ways is willfully self limiting. I’m not saying the only way a person could arrive at all the philosophies that I’m going to discuss is through a desire for personal purity. So, although I think this is an important critique that can be leveled at some niche ideologies participants, it certainly isn’t a perfect defeater to all the ideologies.

I really value debate between various specialized political philosophies and strategies, and I have nothing against for example, green anarchism as the promotion of a style of critique not often seen, like black-anarchism and anarcha-feminism. These can help identify you as someone who has had the time to research the ways in which expertise in building democratic institutions, green architecture and rewilding will help get us to a better world.

The issue

A comparison

I’m going to make a comparison between elements of two situations now, but I want to be clear that I’m not equating the two, and the element I’m comparing is not how similar the ideologies are to each other. I’m comparing a dynamic of how participants may move through the ideology.

A person might move over to the far-right in stages which incrementally take them further away from their initial views. For example firstly believing that: Slavery is bad and also that the US civil war was more about the economic disparity between North and South. Then moving to a position, that slavery, understood in the context of the time, was a necessary evil. And from there to a position black Americans have benefitted from being brought to the US and are ungrateful for the opportunities afforded them.

A similar dynamic can happen for people moving away from identifying with green anarchism. A person could first be convinced that they should stop supporting a variety of direct action campaigns, in order to focus solely on being against technology, and in this way to reach the maximum people with a clear message. However, in consequence, significantly reducing the amount of people they’re trying to coalition build with. Then secondly that, in the absence of fellow activists to spread the message to a wider population, that killing and terrorizing people is a necessary evil to draw maximum attention the direction society needs to be heading in. Reducing further the number of people they’re trying to recruit. Then thirdly, thinking that hope for changing people’s minds is pointless, and that we should just take pleasure in embracing our violent hatred for all things ‘unnatural’. And that recruiting is meaningless.

An analogy by way of a diagram

I’d also like to offer an analogy that someone could go from desiring a ‘libertarian socialist revolution’ to a ‘vulgar anarchist insurrection’ because people can buy into anarchist ideology for all the wrong reasons the same way a person with an eating disorder could just be using veganism as a way to restrict their diet on the way to raw veganism, etc. So, just keep in mind that the diagram text is not meant to be a perfectly summarized version of each ideology.

Finally, I neither claim all the ideologies listed are anarchist, nor that I would personally desire to see a libertarian socialist revolution end at worker control, but I do see anarchists as part of a big-tent leftist movement, where securing workplace democracy would be a massive improvement in society.

Image #2

Various ideologies

I’m going to quote a ton of essays from a bunch of ideologies in the order I’ve seen people travel down them, along with quotes from a ton of critiques, then end on two possible ideologies that could work as a useful force in disrupting a person’s journey down the pipeline.

I’ve unashamedly chosen various critiques with prescriptions which at times contradict each other, as the aim is to find some critiques close to each specific ideology in order to have the greatest chance of relating to the person’s way of thinking intuitively.

Insurrectionary Anarchism as Primary

The narrowing of approaches

A few words of freedom by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire

The vital force of FAI-FRI is its constant renewal, its stimulating evolution. Today the need to overcome old concepts such as “organization”, “liberated society”, “revolution” is more urgent than ever before.

Other concepts such as “federalism”, “informality”, “mutual support”, ” horizontal-anonymous debate between groups/individuals through praxis”, ” rejection of plenary assemblies” retain their full strength as the main pillars of our planning.

Lone wolves are not alone… by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire

The ambassadors of the modern way of life speak of the savior of economy through corrective changes and development programs, while the ideologists of the left beg for the cleansing of institutions. Unfortunately, in Greece the tension of bureaucratic social anarchy also joins the dance of the absurd and fantasies the revival of dead ideologies speaking of self-management of the production means and workers collectives.

Thus the socialist anarchists, while refusing the system, instead of destroying class identities and economy, speak their language. They speak of the overthrowing of the existent, without however uprooting from inside them the economic-centric logic. For us, as anarcho-individualists and nihilists, economy is not the key for liberation.

Economy is a part of the problem and the problem itself. The only way to strike the heart of the problem is to destroy the economy and its distinctions and speak of human relations. The world will not become prettier or more-free if we collectivize work but only if we blow up the relation of work and destroy its mentality, its ethics and culture. The same will happen with friendship, love, pleasure, the meaning of life itself.

On the road for continuous anarchist insurrection we do not keep anything which holds us down on the past. We tear down the myths of the revolutionary subject, of the proletariat, of the eternal wait for the right objective conditions, the social likeness towards the population, this slow moving mass which with its inactivity stops us from breathing…

Therefore, looking back in time, we recognize as our own prints, the traces left behind by some lone wolves, who walked then against their time. It is all those conspiratorial anarchists illegalists who made the anarchist insurrection their only home land. It is those who chose to stay away from the glory of the dead ideologies and bureaucracy of the social anarchism which awaits the masses in order to begin its insurrection. Lone and unique they armed their desires, out aside the pathetic rot of the mob and went on to the storming of heaven.

Armed Joy by Alfredo M. Bonanno

People are tired of meetings, the classics, pointless marches, theoretical discussions that split hairs in four, endless distinctions, the monotony and poverty of certain political analyses. They prefer to make love, smoke, listen to music, go for walks, sleep, laugh, play, kill policemen, lame journalists, kill judges, blow up barracks. Anathema! The struggle is only legitimate when it is comprehensible to the leaders of the revolution. Otherwise, there being a risk that the situation might go beyond their control, there must have been a provocation.

Hurry comrade, shoot the policeman, the judge, the boss. Now, before a new police prevent you.

The expanded limits of violence

Italy: Open Letter To The Anarchist & Anti-Authoritarian Movement (2003)

When a group or individual starts a revolutionary campaign through the deeds and related communiques, other groups and individuals in the Anarchist Informal Organisation will follow according to their methods and time. Each group or individual can launch a struggle campaign on specific targets through one or more actions signed by the single group or individual and by the claim of the Federation. If a campaign is not agreed by the other groups, the critic will show itself through actions and communiques that will contribute to correcting or discussing it.

The organisation, therefore, does not affect the entire life and projects of the comrades so that all kind of armed-struggle sectarianism are avoided. Once we are well rooted, power will find it very difficult to destroy us.

‘Do not say that we are few’ – Statement from the Italian FAI

The only limits we put to our action are of ethical nature. We have made a choice with our action in this world of included and excluded. We are not interested in a society divided in classes, we don’t want any dictatorship of a class over another, we want anarchy! Millions of microcosms where each individual can experiment themselves freely. Something very similar to what we experiment through action every day by elaborating the best way of organizing ourselves without renouncing our individual freedom. It is exciting to grow in this organisational experience along with sisters and brothers we’ve never seen and probably will never see. It is exciting that individuals who don’t know one another come to the same conclusions in a given moment in history. …

The first: destructive direct action as an indispensable and essential element. Such action can take the form of throwing a molotov as well as committing murder, without any hierarchy of importance, each group or individual will decide as they best like, in the respect for their own revolutionary ethics, which will certainly always exclude hitting at random. In our view, this point will have to give rise to a new nihilist and anarchist guerrilla, thousands and thousands of fires against capital everywhere.

Escalation; Some Texts Concerning the Informal Anarchist Federation (FAI) and the Insurrectionist Project

My idea was to make some points known, points that normally we have never clarified and that make us angry sometimes… yes, when we hear or read comments about us… in other words we need to show to this fucking movement that we are not ghosts coming from nothing (laughers…’hey. did you see you?’). We need to show to them that we think it very carefully before carrying out an action and that we leave very little to chance. Our actions are not indiscriminate, on the contrary they are so controlled that we haven’t managed to do what we really want yet…(laughers). Then there’s nothing obscure or clandestine in our way of life. Most of us come from the movement. Live inside it and know that reality. Some even come from shit situations.

The sun still rises by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire

We are exiting the scene of urban guerrilla warfare’s past ethical fixations, which rarely took a public position on the issue of revolutionary bank robbery. We feel that there is now plenty of new urban guerrilla discourse and practice that opposes — in a clearly attacking way — the bosses’ work ethic as well as the predatory banking machinery, proposing armed expropriation as a liberatory act, and obviously not as a way to get rich.

Nevertheless, we don’t consider the expropriation of banks to be a prerequisite for someone’s participation in the new guerrilla war. There is one revolution, but there are thousands of ways in which one can take revolutionary action. Other comrades might choose to carry out collective expropriations from the temples of consumerism (supermarkets, shopping malls) in order to individually recover what’s been “stolen” and use those things to meet each person’s material needs, thereby avoiding having to say “good morning” to a boss or take orders from some superior. Still others might participate in grassroots unions, keeping their conscience honed — like a sharp knife — for the war that finally abolishes every form of work that enriches the bosses while impoverishing our dignity.

We feel the same way about voluntarily “disappearing” to go underground. The fetishization of illegalism doesn’t inspire us. We want everyone to act in accordance with their needs and desires. Each choice naturally has its own qualities and virtues as well as its disadvantages. It’s true that when a group voluntarily chooses to go underground (“disappearance” from the environment of family and friends, false papers, etc.), that certainly shields them from the eyes of the enemy. But at the same time, their social connection to the wider radical milieu is cut, and to a certain point they lose a sense of interaction. Of course, the same doesn’t apply when there are objective reasons for going underground (arrest warrants, a price on one’s head), in which case clandestinity is the attacking refuge of those caught in the crosshairs of the law. This creates a parallel need for the existence of support infrastructure, both among guerrilla groups themselves as well as within the wider antiauthoritarian milieu, that will “cover” the tracks of wanted comrades. Prerequisites would be a certain complicity and discretion, which concepts are frequently seen as “outdated” but in our opinion should once again be launched piercingly into battle. If comrades from a guerrilla group engage in regular above-ground interaction — participating in movement meetings and processes, taking part in debates, and creating projects with others that address shared concerns — then the hermetic nature of the guerrilla group should clearly be protected from open ears and big mouths. Therefore, it’s general attitude also must be one of discretion in order to circumvent the deafening exaggerations that can turn it into a “magnet” for bastards from antiterrorist squads and the police. Taking a page from our own self-critique, we must mention the fact that many of us behaved completely opposite to the above, which — along with the viciousness of certain conduct originating within the anarchist milieu — “guided” a number of police operations right to us. In any case, self-critique lays down solid ground from which to develop oneself and offer explanations, but the current text isn’t appropriate for that. We’ll return to it in the future.

Various Critiques

Say You Want an Insurrection

If we have never called ourselves insurrectionists, it is not because we do not wish for insurrection, but because our own temperament predisposes us to an anarchism without adjectives. The important thing is to fight for freedom and against hierarchy; we imagine that this will demand different approaches in different situations, and that these approaches may need one another to succeed. We are anarcho-syndicalists on the shop floor, green anarchists in the woods, social anarchists in our communities, individualists when you catch us alone, anarcho-communists when there’s something to share, insurrectionists when we strike a blow.

Anarchism without adjectives not only refuses to prioritize one approach over the others, but emphasizes the importance of each aspect of anarchism to its supposed opposites. The riot needs the bake sale to be repeatable; the arson needs the public campaign to be intelligible; the supermarket heist needs the neighborhood grocery distribution to pass on the goods.

All dichotomies are false dichotomies to some extent, masking not only the common threads between the terms but also the other dichotomies one might experiment with instead. On close inspection, successful insurrectionism seems to depend so much on “community building” and even “lifestyle anarchism” as to be virtually indistinguishable in practice. If we retired this particular distinction, what other distinctions might arise in its place? What other questions might we ask?

All this is not to say that individual anarchists can’t focus on their particular skills and preferred strategies—simply that it is an error to frame anyone’s personal preferences as universals. In the end, as always, it comes down to a question of which problems you want to wrestle with, which shortcomings you feel most equipped to overcome. Do you prefer to struggle against invisible hierarchies in informal networks, or brave the stultifying inertia of formal organizations? Would you rather risk acting rashly, or not acting at all? Which is more important to you, security or visibility—and which do you think will keep you safer in the long run?

We can’t tell anyone which problems to choose. We can only do our best to outline them. Best of luck in your insurrections—may they intersect with ours.

Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist Non-dialogue

The insurrectionist milieu has situated itself as an iconoclastic force within anarchist thought. Its critique often seeks to analyze and subvert the subtle leftism of much allegedly radical thought. This is important. This is valuable.

However, I find it disturbing that, in the midst of this, there lies gross generalizations, ignorance toward the material being criticized, and outright refusal to acknowledge the multifaceted nature of many frames of critique. With this piece, I will focus on the critique of feminism in the works of Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher, as I find it to be generalizing, misinformed, and thus far without consolidated response from anarchists or feminists.

One of the key texts produced by insurrectionary anarchists to counteract feminist critique is Feral Faun’s “The Ideology of Victimization” found in the collection Feral Revolution. Within this, Feral Faun posits that feminism and victimization are inseparable and, because of this, feminism turns toward domination structures such as the state for support. There is much to be said for this argument; it undeniably does describe certain strains of feminist thought. Unfortunately, Faun transforms feminism into a monolithic ideology, stripping it of all subtleties and nuances....

Does he once reference a piece of feminist literature to support his argument? No. Does he ever acknowledge that this analysis does not apply to all feminist critique? No. Instead, he makes empty claims with no reference to the field of theory he is critiquing.

Feminism “promotes fear, individual weakness (and subsequently depends on ideologically based support groups and paternalistic protection from authorities)” (37). What Faun fails to realize is that these exact issues have been addressed within feminist discourse.... In addition, Valarie Solanas, in SCUM Manifesto advocates sabotage, informal revolt, direct action, avoidance of civil disobedience tactics, and the destruction of capitalism and the state. Radical feminists established further critiques of the state in their works as well (see: Emma Goldman, No More Fun and Games journal, etc). The fact is, there is a wide critique of hierarchical power structures within feminism and even a cursory exploration of feminist theory would indicate that. Greer’s statement is in direct contradiction to Faun’s attempt to dismiss feminism. She opposes the state, morality, and marriage, all subjects Faun/Landstreicher has tackled in his works. Are we to assume that Faun is not familiar with the work of Greer, an avowed anarchist and important figure in the theory that Faun critiques; or Valarie Solanas, one of the most infamous feminist icons? Or is it simpler to ignore such writings, as they do not conform to the distortions of feminism Faun seeks to make?

To continue reading click here --> Disrupting The Purist Anarchist Pipeline

Source

secco: Disrupting the purist anarchist pipeline

here’s mine

kinshavo: Maybe you are on something interesting, but your tales are just weak. Or you really don’t understand the subject of your critique or you just don’t care

lettuceLeafer: Sadly u r not one of the two anarchist writers I agree with (myself and I) who are real anarchists so I didn’t read lol

ChaosAnarchy: too long didn’t read.

Basic values like no hierarchy and mutual aid is not something you can trade away with

stacat: Thanks for posting. I only read the part that made it onto Raddle because I don’t have more time and energy, but I found it interesting as someone who enjoys learning about how others create their pictures of how anarchisms relate to one another.

I suspect none of the anarchisms as you lay them out speak to the issues of my context very well.

Anyway, I would have been interested to read far enough in to see whether you make distinctions between a vulgar and non-vulgar insurrectionism. What was the use of adding ‘vulgar’ if there are non-vulgar versions, and what makes it vulgar.

I’m curious as a purist who would describe myself as an insurrectionary type in some occasions. Also as someone who is immune to the political compass journey you show in image 1, and who only finds ever-enriching complexity in my politics rather than pursuing “the most rigidly simplistic way of viewing the world, in searching for ‘answers’ to reduce anxiety in a seemingly chaotic world, to provide a navigable route in a world which can feel terrifyingly uncharted.”

Ishkah: The primary meaning of vulgar is a kind of less complicated copy of an original idea/object where some of the original important nuance is lost. So with anarchists who treat insurrectionairy anarchism as the strategy which is of primary importance, I think some nuance is lost. Like what Cells of Fire said about people fetishizing illegalism and voluntarily going underground. Maybe they respected people who talked about having to go on the run to live by their principles after the cops got wind of who they were, but then the people who thought they were copying them mistakenly imagined they were following in their footsteps by going underground even when they didn’t need to.

“You see, Ricks — they get lazy. There’s always a shitty decoy towards the end. But those decoys made decoys too, and got lazy themselves. And far enough down the line… There be monsters.”

r4ddl3me: Do you have any examples of ‘vulgar insurrectionary anarchism’

Ishkah: Literally the CCF example I just gave.

r4ddl3me: I read the whole thing. The pipeline ends with eco-extremism.

Do you really think that if people read CCF or Bonanno they’re on their way to becoming eco-extremists? You’re not going to get on well here with that kind of reductionist, ‘gateway drug’, church-lady thinking.

Ironically, it’s you, Ishkah, who is the purist in all this. You think that ‘workplace democracy’ or some workerist shit is the ‘pure’ way of thinking, and anyone who deviates from it is, well, a deviant, and they’re in need of having their thinking ‘disrupted’ by the pure thinkers like you and the others in your church.

Ishkah: Not the claim I was making:

The issue

r4ddl3me: You framed your article as a pipeline. Surely that means that what goes in one end comes out the other? What else could it mean?

At the beginning of your article, which is mostly just a long list of people you don’t like, you have CCF and Bonanno. At the other end, you have ITS and O9A. O9A have nothing to do with anarchism but I guess were added for sensationalist effect. How else are we meant to read it other than: this is one end of the pipeline, this is the other?

As for a ‘rigidly simplistic way of viewing the world’, again, take a look in the mirror. You seem to think that worker owned co-ops and direct democracy plus a sprinkle of advanced technology is the answer to all of life’s questions.

Ishkah: You’re asserting that simply by using the word pipeline that I’m making an absolutist factual claim, that if a person reads x thing they are on their way to becoming y thing, always and definitively, when nowhere in the text did I write that.

— Communiques of ITS

Here are old members of the FAI / CCF in Mexico acknowledging former collaboration and ideological crossover:

Back then, we let it be known publicly and energetically that:

— ITS, or the rhetoric of decay

Here’s them expressing solidarity with anarchist prisoners:

Total support with the Anti-civilization prisoners in Mexico, with the Chilean comrades and with the furious Italians and Swiss....

One more time: Direct and total support with the anti-civilization prisoners of Mexico, with those eco-anarchists of Switzerland, to the affinities in Argentina, Spain, Italy, Chile and Russia.

— Communiques of ITS

And here is an answer members of ITS gave in an text interview in 2014 showing they were leftists and not simply post-left-&-right:

— Interview with Individualists Tending toward the Wild

Finally, here’s a purist anarchist explaining the feeling of moving down the levels:

kinshavo: here is an answer members of ITS gave in an text interview in 2014 showing they were leftists and not simply post-left-&-right

Either poor interpretation skills or intellectual dishonesty. What part of “slow process of getting to know, questioning, and the rejection of all that encompasses leftism and the civilized”

And more, I challenge you to find a quote were they claim to be Anarchists (you find the opposite, quotes were they say they are not).

daggers: Finally, here’s a purist anarchist explaining the feeling of moving down the levels:

lol wat? How is this individual ‘moving down the levels’? Do you mean to say that because their reaction to reading Atassa wasn’t ‘OMG THIS IS EVIL’ (I notice you use the word very evil often in your writing, Ishkah) they’ve somehow become an eco-extremist?

You’d have made a good Stasi agent, comrade. If someone isn’t crying enough/cheering enough then they must be one of THEM.

Anyway, keep fighting the good fight, soldier, and happy purging!

Ishkah: Them buying into another ideology with almost opposite prescriptions to the first big exciting break in Desert just because it feels like a new exciting direction showed it was likely never about the actual ideology. And then it was confirmed later by them saying that they mostly agree with who they have chosen as targets, and shaping all their future writing by the eco-extremist ideological structure and worldview.

daggers: Them buying into another ideology with almost opposite prescriptions to the first big exciting break in Desert...

Desert is the most famous nihilist text to come out of the anarchist milieu in living memory. Have you actually read any of these texts that you keep namedropping?

Again, how does the above quote from Reddit or wherever in the fuck show someone ‘buying into another ideology’? The person says they found the booklet Atassa ‘fascinating’. That’s it. I find your one man moral crusade against eco-extremism (five years too late) and Ted K (twenty years too late) fascinating. Doesn’t mean I’m about to join your workers co-op or subscribe to your Patreon.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: Yeah I’d have preferred it if any time someone use her writing they also mention or link to a critique. Here’s her talking about anarchism and a critique anyways:

Germaine Greer on Anarchist Feminism + A Critique of Greer’s Bad Takes

An Experimental List of Anarchist Principles

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2022/05/01/an-experimental-list-of-anarchist-principles>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Philosophy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Philosophy/143296/an-experimental-list-of-anarchist-principles>

Some groups and projects try to put together an aims and principles list to explain what campaign news and philosophy they’ll focus on and I think this can positively influence what actions people take and think are justified. Some examples I know of include:

You also have people using slogans like ‘by any means necessary’ going all the way back to Malcolm X & Franz Fanon in the 60s, which I guess is an attempt to say we’ll go as far as we’re pushed, so be careful what state terror tactics you use on us.

My aims are reflected in the CrimethInc exercise in what an anarchist program might look like. And I’ve already written about my ethics broadly, but I’ll try to be more specific here, in experimenting with drawing up a list of principles that I think would be useful to the calculation of what tactics I think are useful and justifiable in the UK today which is in my view a non-revolutionary period, which to me just means a time when social tensions are not at their height:

1.) Never act with reckless indifference to human and non-human animal life.

2.) Never physically hurt people for the purpose of achieving political goals as it runs counter to our philosophy on the left that material conditions create the person and so we should make every peaceful effort to rehabilitate people.

Some tricky to explain examples that are justified, but only just outside this principle are:

(A) Community self-defense and self-defense by proxy, where you might desire to fight fascists in the street in order to block them from marching through immigrant communities or where you might desire to push your way through huntsmen in order to save a fox from getting mauled to death by dogs.

(B) Survivor-led vigilantism, where to the extent that some current institutions fail to rehabilitate people and the process of seeking justice through the institutions available can sometimes cause more trauma than its worth, then personal violence in order to resolve feelings of helplessness in the face of evil acts can sometimes be reasonably viewed as justified to regain feelings of agency.

3.) Never take actions on the basis of anti-science beliefs or with the intent to propagate anti-science beliefs e.g. disproven conspiracy theories.

4.) Take care to respect the difference between property which is personally and privately owned.

So, it could be seen as ethical to choose material targets of evil actors in order to cause economic damage and make a statement, so long as in the case of personal property, the item has no intrinsic sentimental value and can be replaced because the person is wealthy and that the item was paid for through the exploitation of others labor. Or is private property, meaning the means of production which should be owned collectively anyway.

The action would be an outlet for legitimate anger against that which causes us suffering and a means of developing people’s thinking and creating a wider base of people joined in sympathy for those ideals.

For example, if taking the risk to slash slaughterhouse trucks’ tyres in the dead of night both draws attention to animal suffering and also helps you to develop stronger bonds with a group of people and learn from other liberation struggles, then the action is both productive and leads to personal growth.

5.) Never take actions in the hopes of helping in part instigate a revolutionary war sooner than it’s reasonable to believe you would have the capability to win. Similarly don’t use rhetoric about how tensions in society have escalated to the state of civil war or a third world war. For example, even if the revolutionary left got really good at assassinating captains of industry and getting away with it, there would be reasonable fears around the psychology of people who would take such an act against people who they could have grown up and been socially conditioned to be themselves, which would inexorably lead to a more authoritarian society and worse foundations on which to work towards a better society.

I do think we can hypothesize the unrealistic case of 99% of society desiring a referendum on a shift from parliamentary representative system to a federated spokes council system and the MP’s dragging their feet, the same way both parties gerrymander the boundaries to make it easier to win despite it being the one issue most everyone agrees is bad, and people needing to storm the halls of power to force a vote to happen.

More likely though, an opportunity for revolution might arise from such a confluence of events as climate refugees and worker gains forcing the state and corporations into trying to crack down on freedoms in order to preserve their power and enough people resisting that move, who are then able take power and usher in radical policy change, with either the army deciding to stand down or splitting into factions.

Most can sympathize with quick revolutions against dictatorships where the result is a freer society, like the Kurdish uprising in Northern Syria which took power from a regime who had rolled tanks on demonstrators and outlawed teaching of their native language.

But, even there, there are key foundations you need to work from, like the probability you won’t just give an excuse for the oppressor committing even worse horrors as was the case with the Rohingya militants who ambushed a police checkpoint, resulting in army & citizen campaign to burn down many villages, plus murder and rape those that couldn’t get away.

As well as a responsibility to put down arms after winning political freedoms and a majority are in favor of diplomacy through electoral politics, like in Northern Ireland today.

Under representative democracies, the sentiment of most is that, even if it could be argued that a war of terror (not a revolutionary war) against the ruling class was the easiest route to produce a better society, that it would still be ethically wrong to be the person who takes another’s life just because it’s the easiest way. Since regardless of manufactured consent or anything else you still could have worked to build a coalition to overcome those obstacles.

And I agree, it would be an act of self-harm to treat life with such disregard when we could have been that same deluded person shrouded in the justificatory trappings of society which normalizes that behavior. I don’t think the way we win today is by treating a cold bureaucratic system with equally cold disregard, by justifying our resort to threat and violence because we have fewer resources, and a belief in the importance of our message. Time on earth is a foundational value worth fighting for, and everybody deserves some amount of breathing room to make mistakes and learn from them.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by NoPotatoes in If you could get a random person from anywhere in the world to perform a simple task for you that would also involve getting a digital file for you, what would it be? by Ishkah

I showed my housemate your comment and it gave us both a good chuckle, thanks lol.

If you could get a random person from anywhere in the world to perform a simple task for you that would also involve getting a digital file for you, what would it be?

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/DigitalFreegle/comments/tsx0g8/if_you_could_get_a_random_person_from_anywhere_in/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/142225/if-you-could-get-a-random-person-from-anywhere-in-the-world>

I recently created two sub-reddits for exchanging digital items on the longshot hope that they could become as active as any other freecycle group, just rather than swapping physical items locally, we’ll be swapping unique digital items internationally.

So, the question arises, if you could get a random person from anywhere in the world to perform a simple task that involves getting a digital file of something, what would it be?

Writing, photography & video of every inch of the world is so ubiquitous it’s almost hard to think of anything, but I’d like to challenge people to come up with the best never thought of before serious and funny requests.

So, here are some examples to get the brain juices flowing.

Personal Connections

Say your best friend who you grew up with in the UK moved to the other side of the world, and after 5 years of skype conversations, the one shared holiday and many gift parcels sent to his door later, you get the idea that it would be nice to see one of these parcels being delivered to see the look of happy surprise on your old friends face.

So you come onto a forum like r/Digital Freegle ask if anyone who lives nearby would be willing to film themselves knocking on your best friends door and giving him some flowers with the message; “hey I was sent to give you these flowers from your old friend in the UK.” And so you get to experience seeing making your old friend happy as if you were there.

Knowledge Advancement

Obviously highly educated scientists make fantastically clever requests of each other internationally all the time and come up with great break throughs.

But, what if an amazing history professor and author needed an item from a special collections archive of a university, but the library staff didn’t fulfill complicated requests and the professor couldn’t justify the jet fuel just to fly all the way out there to get one document?

What if instead of hiring a random person who for instance turned out to be an economics student who didn’t care at all about the research... What if the professor could come online to a forum like this and find a person with a similar interest in the subject to collaborate with and have them be able to learn from the professor? I think that would be pretty wholesome story myself.

And also one reason why I set up r/ The Library Information Exchange :)

Comedy Sketches

Finally, a more random funny request could just be something like asking a North Korean soldier to secretly film themselves going up to their friend with their military hat on backwards and pretending to them that that’s how they’ve always worn it.

Your Turn

So what would your request be?

Source

NoPotatoes: Wait, you created two new subreddits? I don’t get it. Does somebody have a gun to your head?

Blink once if you are in danger.

Ishkah: I showed my housemate your comment and it gave us both a good chuckle, thanks lol.

The Library Information Exchange! — New group that aims to be the Freecycle of swapping information stored away in libraries!

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/LibraryInfoExchange/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy (edited 2 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/142094/the-library-information-exchange-new-group-that-aims-to-be>

It’s a longshot idea to get off the ground, but I’m hoping this group may become as active as any other freecycle group, just rather than swapping physical items locally, we’ll be swapping digital items internationally.

You simply offer your services to find some rare piece of information stored away in some library local to your area. And then you can request information stored away in libraries internationally and hope someone is willing and able to go for you.

For instance, lots of university special collections archives have non-copyrighted information where they just haven’t got round to digitalizing every item or haven’t got round to building public website posts to show off every item.

As well, it can sometimes be impossible to make sense of the difference between various obscurely listed items in an archive, and library staff may only have time to send files rather than answering long questions, so you might need a person to go down there with instructions to see it in person for you.

Finally, in situations where you’re only allowed to request scans of a couple of folders per month online, you might intrigue someone into requesting a scan of an archived folder on a subject you’re both interested in, and then be able to pool your resources to see what both your scans add up to.

On Facebook, Reddit & Discord:

https://facebook.com/groups/522160072632411

https://reddit.com/r/LibraryInfoExchange/

https://discord.gg/Fcs35D9rVx

The Ted Kaczynski Book Projects Update!

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2021/12/23/ted-kaczynski-book-projects>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in anticiv (edited 1 year later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/142052/the-ted-kaczynski-book-projects-update>

I made a call out in November of 2021, for volunteers to help get Kaczynskis’ unpublished and badly scanned up book ‘Truth versus Lies’ retyped up without all the annotations, so that people can easily read it online, quote it and print nicely formatted versions.

The edits are mostly finished now, so we have an almost identical retyped up 1^st draft of Kaczynskis’ 1^st draft. I’d just like to solve the issue of what changes he potentially wanted to have happen for the 2^nd draft of the book and solving the issue of what the missing text is that is obscured by the scanning blotches. Then we can move on to trying to get both the original copy published and creating a version with some cosmetic edits like changing the awkwardly abbreviated names into fake names, whilst preserving which fake names refer to which abbreviated names in a table at the back.

The project has also since expanded into an archive collection, a work in progress biography, and a useful tool for writing other books and essays.

All the documents linked here are restricted, but if you’d like to get involved, my email is theosladehome at gmail.com, you can email me to let me know how you’d like to help, if you’d like to join the email group, to just discuss ideas, to send me text relating to any of below. Or finally if you’re logged into your gmail now, you can go to the page you want to work on and click the ‘request edit access’ button in the top right corner, and simply explain how you’d like to help. I can also send you the documents via email or disroot.

The Email Group

11 people who responded to the call out joined the email group. We mainly used it to coordinate making edits to the Truth versus Lies document, like who was working on what chapter offline and things like what formatting rules to follow.

Some people talked about hoping to work together on a translated version.

And generally, I hope if there’s any way I can be of help with someone gaining some use from this project for their own pursuits, like transcribing a specific section for an essay they want to write or whatever, that they can email me or use the group email to update us on what they’re up to.

As well, I’ve started a reddit group chat and discord channel on my server for anyone who would prefer to discuss using instant messaging as well:

The Various Projects

0. The Ted Kaczynski Archives

We’re doing tasks like transcribing prison letters and getting tons of writing by and about Kaczynski into an easily browsable catalog. At some point ideally we could build a website to create an easily searchable archive. And I’ll reach out to some university libraries encase they want to add material from it to their collections or create a new one.

1. The Ted Kaczynski Archives — Part 1
1. The Ted Kaczynski Archives — Part 2
Kaczynski Archives Comparison

Here’s the google drive folder for all the main project documents:

Ted Kaczynski Book Projects Google Drive Folder

1. Truth versus Lies

Ted Kaczynski finished writing a book in 1999 critiquing all the media representations of his life called ‘Truth versus Lies’:

“During the media frenzy that came to be known as ‘Club Ted,’ a report surfaced that the accused Unabomber was writing a second manifesto. He was in fact at work on this compelling book that deftly treads the line between eloquent memoir and uncompromising defense. This intriguing artifact is Ted Kaczynski’s attempt to tell the other side of the tale spun by his family, who told the world he was insane to save him from the death penalty. It is also an outspoken rebuttal of the lies told by the many-media-charmed acquaintances and opportunistic strangers who surfaced to offer their stories in exchange for fifteen minutes of fame.”

Many publishers turned him down, Context Books almost printed a slightly edited version, but Ted rejected this proposal. I think the publisher was worried about copyright e.g. quoting some sources in their entirety and libel e.g. Ted calling his brother, David, “a Judas Iscariot (who) ... doesn’t even have enough courage to go hang himself.”

In 2002 he donated a draft copy of the book which Context Books made to the University of Michigan along with a tonne of journals, letters and other material which the book references.

So, I copied the text into a google document and started working on cleaning up the scanning errors with 3 other people:

1. Truth Versus Lies - #1A: Photocopy of book with scanning errors

We’ve almost finished this now, so soon we can put it up on the anarchist library and places:

1. Truth Versus Lies — 1B: Photocopy of book with fixed scanning errors

Next, we want to decide together on a few changes we’d like to suggest to Kaczynski, which will give the book a higher chance of getting a book publisher to mass print it, without risking libel and copyright. Ideally we could just black out the parts we can’t print, and then write an article on the missing parts and where to find the unedited version:

Truth versus Lies – 1C. Book publisher version

We’ll create a document which is an automatic text comparison between documents 1A and 1B for transparency:

Truth versus Lies – 1D. Photocopy of book; text comparison

And a document discussing the pros and cons of the few changes we might want to make between Docs 1B and 1C:

1. Truth versus Lies — 1E. Book publisher version corrections

We sent a letter off to Kaczynski about getting permission to publish, but haven’t heard back:

Letter to Kaczynski

Here’s a how to on requesting items from the University of Michigan Library to work out what the missing text is that is obscured by scanning blotches:

Requesting Items From The University of Michigan Library

Finally, here’s a short summary of all the different documents related to the Truth versus Lies book that are out there for clarity:

Summary of the various Truth Versus Lies related documents

2. Unfinished Autobiography

As well, I’m condensing the book down to where Ted is just talking about his memories and how he felt about them and using the text along with other material for two books:

A biography called ‘The Unfinished Autobiography of Ted Kaczynski’.

And a fictional novel called something like ‘The Imagined Autobiography of Ted Kaczynski …’

I’m mainly writing the second one to just get a clear timeline in my head of what moments Kaczynski finds most significant about his life. So, I’m writing them in two columns alongside each other at first:

2. Unfinished Autobiography – 2A. Biography & Fictional Autobiography
2. Unfinished Autobiography — 2B. Biography
2. Unfinished Autobiography – 2C. Fictional Autobiography

3. Reading material for Kaczynski

I’ve finished transcribing a bunch of video media on Kaczynski which I’ve now sent him as encouragement to write his own autobiography or make any further changes to his book ‘Truth versus Lies’, to get a further clarifying window into his mind as an intriguing case study in political violence:

3. Reading for Kaczynski — 3A. Kaczynski Video Media Representations
The Unabomber in Motion Pictures.docx
The Unabomber in Motion Pictures.pdf

4. David Kaczynskis’ Autobiography

I’m also going to try reaching out to David Kaczynski about either getting permission to use long quotes of his writing in a biography of the both of them, and/or if I can get paid as a researcher on a 2^nd edition of his book which contained a fair few inaccuracies about the timeline of events:

Every Last Tie — 2^nd Edition Research Document
Potential Inaccuracies

5. Related project ideas

Some people talked about hoping to work together on a translated version of Truth versus Lies.

How you can help

Here are some tasks that I think would be really useful:

You can request scans from the University of Michigan Library, or visit the reading room in Michigan in person to take photographs of any missing text — Requesting Items From The University of Michigan Library
You can help transcribe prison letters and/or copy any interesting writing by or about Kaczynski which you think might be useful for the autobiography, as well as for a future archive — 0. The Ted Kaczynski Archives — Part 1
You can help proofread 1. Truth Versus Lies — 1B. Photocopy of book with fixed scanning errors and make sure we haven’t missed any scanning or grammar errors.
You can help with discussing potential corrections we might need to make to get a book publisher to mass print the book, but that aren’t too big such that they would distort the original text to a degree that Kaczynski wouldn’t consent to changing when asked — 1. Truth versus Lies — 1E. Book publisher version corrections
Finally, you can give your advice and suggestions, which would be greatly appreciated :)

Payment

This just started as a hobby project, so I’m not in a position to be able to pay upfront for every hour worked, but I’m happy to talk about percentage revenue sharing or back-paying based on hours contributed if the book sales reach some threshold. Everything will be discussed transparently and if we can’t agree as a group on an end product, then members can always take the writing and develop it however they like in a separate document.

I’ve no idea if the person who was going to print it ever held or still holds sole right to publish Truth versus Lies, or if either Kaczynski will say yes to any corrections needed to avoid libel. I’ve emailed the book publisher person once, but will try again.

I’d also like to pay royalties to the survivors of Kaczynski’s bombings, I know they’re supposed to receive any money Kaczynski makes as part of a $15 million restitution order, but I’m not sure if he co-writes a book what that means in terms of a percentage. I’ll email the two organizations who have published his work when we’ve finished.

Critical Platforming

My contributions are made mainly for myself and researchers similarly fascinated by his life with the goal of wanting to make the writing easier to sort and skim through.

I’d like to include a thorough critique of Kaczynski’s philosophy in any publicity we do for the books and in the forward for the biography I’m writing. I’m pro-technological advancement, and against ever physically hurting people unless in a bunch of rare circumstances like if it was; medically in their own interest, in self-defence, in the case of a justified revolutionary war or a survivor-led vigilante action.

Here are some of my past critiques of anti-technology, anti-industrialist, primitivist, anti-civilisation and misanthropic ideologies:

Podcast planning notes: The Ideas of Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber) & Preventing The Fascist Creep
A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More
An Open Letter to John Zerzan — A Primitivist Philosopher of Technology
Case Revisited – Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s Lingering Influence in 2021
The bizarre case of vegan Neo-Nazis & deprogramming vegans who glorify violence

Updates

The discussion spaces are now on this Discord & Matrix

The Ted Kaczynski Archives is now this website

The various versions of Ted’s book Truth versus Lies are now here: Truth versus Lies

A preview of the biography is here: The Ultimate Ted Kaczynski Research Document

Video & audio transcripts I sent Ted are now here: Video & Audio Media

Collecting together a timeline of writing on his brother David was a nice break from writing about Ted, and helped with the biography on Ted, but would still need a lot of work to publish as a biography.

Source

barbaramorrigan: To write a good paper on psychology https://andreeablazar.com/how-to-formulate-an-excellent-psychology-paper/ , you need to focus on clarity and simplicity. You also need to avoid using jargon and technical terms that will confuse readers, even if they are intelligent novices in the field.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) by Ishkah

I understood your point that all philosophies are going to have their bad actors and that we shouldn’t equate the bad actors with the philosophy. I explained I fully agreed, and that that wasn’t the point of the post, and that I value including disclaimers about social anarchists also.

I just valued preserving the integrity of a post-left anarchy reading list as a little time capsule for it’s time, along with IMO vitally important disclaimers like Hakim Bey being a pedophile advocate, so for instance if anyone were to meet him they’d know not to let kids anywhere near him.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) by Ishkah

Do you have an essay I can link specifically critiquing Berkman’s pedophilia, I can’t find one. Thanks in advance.

BTW I didn’t list an essay by Marx, but I’ve added the other two disclaimers.

Edit: Oh yeah, I didn’t cite an essay by Berkman. Feel free to link anyways tho.

Edit 2: Nor did I cite Bakunin lol, but I’ve just added him now as I don’t think his critique of capitalism and the state was fundamentally racist.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) by Ishkah

Right, but I would say you’re using a secondary, less common definition of the left-right spectrum. It’s fine to say anarchists aren’t on the left-right spectrum by this classical definition, the way the word came about, or this secondary definition I’ve explained to you. But I still think it’s valuable to attach anarchism to big tent leftist philosophies today because I think it simply is one by the primary definition of left-right spectrum and it’s good to be explicit about it because it helps clarify where we stand and have a better chance of opening people up to anarchist philosophies.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) by Ishkah

Yeah I just disagree that when most people talk about people being somewhere on the left-right spectrum of politics today that they’re specifically talking about party politics, I think most people mean philosophical attitudes.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) by Ishkah

You do you I guess. Wasn’t equating by any stretch of the imagination, I just took a popular reading list on the post-left and added some disclaimers that I thought were important.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in An Open Letter to John Zerzan (A Primitivist Philosopher of Technology) — Part 1 by Ishkah

I had a really pleasant conversation with him, and an anti-civ dude even reached out to me asking to make the transcript into a zine. I honestly just like having broad ranging discussions, it was not an inquisition at all.

And now I’m writing a biography on Ted Kaczynski with minimal framing because I’m interested in his story for the way it intertwines with tons of other events, like being a professor at Berkeley during the height of the Vietnam war protests.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) by Ishkah

I agree classical anarchism was not overall pro engaging with in tactical left unity with some mass movements. as well as doing our own thing. I think most anarchists today are and simply accept we’re on the left as well in virtue of holding far-left positions on a spectrum of egalitarian and economic philosophies.

Thanks for the disclaimers about those authors anyways, I did know them I just forgot to add them as what was on my mind when making the list of disclaimers was people uncritically promoting these modern authors and then people meeting them today not knowing this stuff. I’ll add them now.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by Fool in A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) by Ishkah

The post-left reading list was taken from a poster which is very popular in post-left spaces: click here

And I simply said “I feel the need to make special mention of the issues with 4 types of listed items”, I wasn’t suggesting people dismiss all the texts mentioned outright, just that I thought it important to make mention of the most serious issues so people don’t go onto uncritically promote the authors without knowing this information. If you can think of a better way I could have phrased the disclaimer be my guest.

A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 2)

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/LeftAnarchism/comments/tevqrj/a_leftanarchist_reading_list_critiquing_postleft/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy (edited 21 hours later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/141608/a-left-anarchist-reading-list-critiquing-post-left-anarchy>

This is Part 2 of 2 due to reddit’s character limit. For Part 1: click here

A Left-Anarchist Reading List — Critiquing Post-Left Anarchy (Part 1) [Labeled “Tankie Entryism”]

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/LeftAnarchism/comments/tevqik/a_leftanarchist_reading_list_critiquing_postleft/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy (edited 1 day later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/141607/a-left-anarchist-reading-list-critiquing-post-left-anarchy>

This is Part 1 of 2 due to reddit’s character limit. For Part 2: click here

Firstly here’s a more general anarchist reading list: click here

This is just an exercise in creating a counter reading list of essays and books critiquing post-left anarchy from the perspective of desiring that those individualist anarchists who consider themselves post-left might come back to acknowledging the benefits of working on big tent leftist campaigns, as well as solely anarchist campaigns and direct actions.

If you’re unaware of what post-left anarchy is, the main thing you need to know is that it’s primarily a skepticism of the utility of mass-movements. Here’s a post comparing & contrasting the different values in summary: click here

The post-left reading list is taken from this poster: click here

The essays in each section of each column offer a contrast to each other already, but I feel the need to make special mention of the issues with 4 types of listed items:

Eco-extremists defend misanthropic and fascistic mass murder: click here
Hakim Bay is an advocate of paedophilic rape: click here
Dr. Bones was credibly accused of abusing a fan of his: click here
One of the authors of Black Flame called Schmidt has since been outed as a racist. Although the main author of the book was Van der Walt, not Schmidt.

LEFT-ANARCHIST READING LIST		POST-LEFT ANARCHY READING LIST
.
The Regrettable Argument that Created the Post-Left		The Argument that Created the Post-Left
(overly critical) ------->		Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm by Murray Bookchin (1996) (critical)	Read here
(overly defensive) ------->		Anarchy After Leftism by Bob Black	Read here
(overly defensive) ------->		Withered Anarchism by Bob Black	Read here
(overly critical) ------->		Whither Anarchism? A Reply to Recent Anarchist Critics by Murray Bookchin (critical)	Read here
.
Left-Anarchist General		Post-Left General
Anarchists in Wonderland; Against post-left anarchism and for an anarchism that does not shed the left	Read here	Post-Left Anarchy: Leaving the Left Behind by Jason McQuinn	Read here
The Left-Overs: How Fascists Court the Post-Left	Read here	The Incredible Lameness of Left-Anarchism by Jason McQuinn	Read here
Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! by David Graeber	Read here	On the Radical Virtues of Being Left Alone; Deconstructing Staudenmaier by Lawrence Jarach	Read here
Exercise: What Would an Anarchist Program Look Like? by Crimethinc	Read here	Anarchists, Don’t Let the Left(overs) Ruin Your Appetite by Lawrence Jarach	Read here
An Anarchist Programme by Errico Malatesta	Read here	Whatever You Do, Get Away With It by Jason McQuinn	Read here
Anarchy! by Errico Malatesta	Read here	Critical Analysis of the Left: Let’s Clean House by Joaquin Cienfuegos
At the Cafe by Errico Malatesta	Read here	From Politics to Life: Ridding Anarchy of the Leftist Millstone by Wolfi Landstreicher	Read here
Anarchism and Its Aspirations by Cindy Milstein	Read here	Notes on “Post-Left Anarchism” by Bob Black	Read here
No Gods, No Masters: An Anthology of Anarchism by Daniel Guerin	Read here	Bolo’bolo	Read here
Volumes 1–3 of Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas by Robert Graham	Read here	Abolish Work by Bob Black	Read here
Debating Anarchism: A History of Action, Ideas and Movements by Mike Finn	Read here	Instead of Work by Bob Black
Anarcho-Syndicalism in the 20^th Century by Vadim Damier	Read here	Defacing the Currency by Bob Black	Read here
Black Flame: The Revolutionary Class Politics of Anarchism and Syndicalism by Schmidt, Michael & Lucien Van der Walt Hirsch	Read here	Modern Slavery (journal)
Anarchism and Syndicalism in the Colonial and Postcolonial World 1870–1940 by Steven and Lucian van der Walt	Read here	Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed (journal)
The Tyranny of Structurelessness	Read here	The Tyranny of Tyranny	Read here
		A Review of The “Tyranny of Structurelessness”: An organizationalist repudiation of anarchism	Read here
.
Saul Newman (Because it’s more valuable to spread modern theorists referencing present political realities)		Max Stirner
Saul Newman On Anarchism Today	Read here	The Unique and It’s Property by Max Stirner	Read here
Stirner and the Politics of the Ego (Saul Newman)	Read here	Stirner’s Critics by Max Stirner	Read here
The Politics of Post-Anarchism by Saul Newman	Read here	The False Principles of Our Education by Max Stirner
.
Social Anarchism (Not because individualism is bad, but because both are useful)		Anarcho-Individualism
Anarchism and Anarcho-Syndicalism	Read here	The Anarchists by John Henry Mackay	Read here
Social Anarchism and Organization by Anarchist Federation of Rio de Janerio	Read here	Enemies of Society by various
The Formation of Local Councils by Omar Aziz	Read here	Disruptive Elements: The Extremes of French Anarchism by Vincent Stone
Role of the Revolutionary Organisation by Black Rose Anarchist Federation	Read here	Novatore by Renzo Novatore
Post Scarcity Anarchism by Murray Bookchin	Read here	The Rebel’s Dark Laughter: The Writings of Bruno Filippi	Read here
Fighting for Ourselves: Anarcho-Syndicalism and the Class Struggle by Solidarity Federation	Read here	Individualist Anarchism and Revolutionary Sexualism by Emile Armand
Fragments of an Anarchist Anthropology by David Graeber	Read here	Anarchism & Violence: Severino Di Giovanni In Argentina, by Osvaldo Bayer
A Talk About Anarchist Communism Between Two Workers by Errico Malatesta	Read here	Alexandre Jacob: Sailor, Thief, Anarchist, Convict by Bernard Thomas
The Conquest of Bread by Pëtr Kropotkin	Read here	The Bonnot Gang: The Story of the French Illegalists by Richard Parry
.
Critical Thinking (Because why be pretentious about it)		Self-Theory
\------->		The Minimum Definition of Intelligence: Theses on the Construction of One’s Own Self-Theory by For Ourselfs
\------->		Critical Thinking as an Anarchist Weapon by Wolfi Landstreicher	Read here
\------->		Critical Self-Theory: Towards an Anarchist Critical Theory of the Self and Society by Jason McQuinn	Read here
\------->		Critical Self-Theory and the Non-Ideological Critique of Ideology by Jason McQuinn	Read here
.
Pragmatic Left-Anarchism (Not because insurrectionary anarchism is bad, but because a diversity of tactics are needed)		Insurrectionary Anarchism
On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence	Read here	Armed Joy (1977) by Alfredo M. Bonanno	Read here
The Anarchist Federation statement on the kneecapping of a nuclear executive perpetrated by the Informal Anarchist Federation	Read here	The Insurrectional Project (1998) by Alfredo Bonanno	Read here
The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence	Read here	Let’s Destroy Work, Let’s Destroy the Economy by Alfredo M. Bonanno	Read here
Say You Want an Insurrection by Crimethinc	Read here	A Critique of Syndicalist Methods by Alfredo M. Bonanno	Read here
Direct Action: An Ethnography by David Graeber	Read here	Worker’s Autonomy by Alfredo M. Bonanno	Read here
The Democracy Project: A History, a Crisis, a Movement by David Graeber	Read here	Some Notes on Insurrectionary Anarchism by Sasha K	Read here
Means and Ends: The Anarchist Critique of Seizing State Power by Zoe Baker	Read here	Feral Revolution by Feral Faun	Read here
Towards an Anarchism in the Philippine Archipelago by Simoun Magsalin	Read here	Willful Disobedience by Wolfi Landstreicher	Read here
Who’s Afraid of the Black Blocs? Anarchy in Action Around the World by Francis Dupuis-Deri	Read here	A Crime Called Freedom by Os Cangaceiros	Read here
		Killing King Abacus Anthology by various
		‘Anarchy – Civil or Subversive?’ A Collection of Texts Against Civil Anarchism by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
		‘The Sun Still Rises’ by The Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell	Read here
		Beyond Right and Wrong by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
		LET’S BECOME DANGEROUS for the Diffusion of the Black International by Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell	Read here
		Individuality and the Anarchist Group by Conspiracy Cells of Fire
		A Conversation Between Anarchists by Conspiracy Cells of Fire: Imprisoned Members Cell and Mexican Anarchists
		Never Again Unarmed by Harris Hatzimichelakis	Read here
		Lone Wolves are Not Alone by Conspiracy Cells of Fire	Read here
		Articles from “Canenero” by various	Read here
		It’s Time for Anarchists to Pick Up A Gun by Dr. Bones	Read here
		Stop Protesting and Become a Revolutionary: How to Join the FAI by Dr. Bones
.
Eco-Centrism (Because we can still carry out direct actions, just without the misanthropy and celebrating of fascist mass-murder)		Eco-Extremism
Why Ecocentrism Is Essential	Read here	Technological Slavery: The Collected Writings of Theodore j. Kaczynski a.k.a The Unabomber
A Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought	Read here	The Flower Growing Out of The Underworld: An introduction to Eco-Extremism
A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More	Read here	Regresion Magazine (journal)
The Unabomber’s Ethics	Read here	ECO-EXTREMIST RELECTIONS
There’s Nothing Anarchist about Eco-Fascism: A Condemnation of ITS	Read here	Atassa 1 and 2 by various
Not Our Comrades: ITS Attacks on Anarchists	Read here	Toward Savagery
Eco-extremism and the indiscriminate attack – The Church of ITS Mexico” by L (UK)	Read here	INCORRECT: An Interview with Wild Reaction
Attacks and Wild Reactions: An Anti-Civ Anarchist Engages with ITS and Atassa, their Defenders and Their false Critics	Read here	The Calusa: A Savage Kingdom?
Eco-Extremism or Extinctionism by John Jacobi	Read here	ATLTLACHINOLLI: ECO-EXTREMIST DIALOGUES
The Philosophy of the Unabomber	Read here	Ash and Ruin (Subversive Nihilist Periodical) (journal)
A brother lost, a brotherhood found	Read here	MICTLANXOCHITL: THE FLOWER FROM THE UNDERWORLD THAT GREW IN OUR TIME
From the Unabomber to the Incels: Angry Young Men on Campus — Eileen Pollack Considers Their Rage and Our Responsibility	Read here	Collateral Damage: An Eco-Extremist Defense of Indiscriminate Violence
Children of Ted and a Response	Read here	The Anarchist Myth
The New Wave of Eco-Terrorism and Nihilist Militancy by Popular Front	Read here	“Confronting your Domestication” and “Rewilding”
		Wild Reaction: Some Answers About the Present and NOT About the Future
		Mexico: Indirect Response from the Individualists Tending toward the Wild
		Against the World-Builders: Eco-Extremists Respond to Critics
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Gender Existentialism		Gender Nihilism
The Master’s Tools Will Never Dismantle the Master’s House by Audre Lord	Read here	Toward the Queerest Insurrection by Unknown	Read here
The Revolution is Female by Abdullah Öcalan	Read here	Gender Nihilism: An Anti-Manifesto by Alyson Escalante	Read here
		What is Gender Nihilism? A Reader by various
		Baedan (journal)	Read here
		Queer UltraViolence Bash Back! Anthology by Fray Baroque
		Communization and the Abolition of Gender by Unknown	Read here
		The Coloniality of Gender by Maria Lugones
		The Gender Rift in Communisation by P. Valentine	Read here
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Afro-Pragmatism / Black-Existentialism		Afro-Pessimism / Black-Nihilism
Anarchism and the Black Revolution by Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin	Read here	Afro-Pessimism: An Introduction (Raked and Dispatched)
What is Pan-Africanism? by Saint Andrew	Read here	No Solves to Abolish: Afro-Pessimism, Anti-Politics and the End of the World by K. Aarons
Black Anarchism: A Reader by Black Rose Anarchist Federation	Read here	Black Skin, White Masks by Frantz Fanon
		Being or Nothingness: Indigeneity, Anti-Blackness, and the Settler Colonial Critique by Iyko Day
		Black Nihilism and the Politics of Hope by Calvin Warren
		Onticide: Afro-Pessimism, Queer Theory, and Ethics by Calvin Warren
		“We’re Trying to Destroy the World” Anti-Blackness & Police Violence After Ferguson by Unknown
		BLACKNESS BY HOSTIS
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Feminism		Feminism
\------->		LIES: A Journal of Materialist Feminism (journal)
Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist Non-dialogue	Read here	BLOODLUST: A Feminist Journal Against Civilization (journal)
\------->		Xenofeminism: A Politics for Alienation by Laboria Cuboniks	Read here
\------->		The Intersection Between Feminism and Stirner Egoism by Abissonichilista	Read here
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Anti-Cancel Culture		Anti-Identity Politics
\------->		The Point is Not to Interpret Whiteness but to Abolish it by Noel Ignatiev
\------->		Accomplices Not Allies: Abolishing the Ally Industrial Complex: An Indigenous Perspective and Provocation by Unknown
\------->		Really Though, Not All “Black” People Give a Fuck About “White” Dreads: A Diary on Mayhem and Race Nihilism by Flower Bomb
		Against Identity Politics by Lupus Dragonowl	Read here
		Nameless: An Egoist Critique of Identity by Wolfi Landstricher	Read here
		White Purity and ‘Woke’ Nationalism by Rhyd Wildermuth
		The Intersection Between Feminism and Stiner Egoism by Abissonichilista
		I Apologize in Advance by Dr. Bones
.
Situationist		Situationalist
\------->		An Introduction to the Situationists by Jan D. Matthews	Read here
\------->		Treatise on Etiquette for the Younger Generations / On the Poverty of Student Life by SI
\------->		Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord
\------->		Comments of the Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord	Read here
\------->		The Revolution of Everyday Life by Raoul Vaneigem	Read here
\------->		The Situationist International Anthology by various
.
Post-Situationist		Post-Situationalist
\------->		Debord, Ressentiment and Revolutionary Anarchism by various
\------->		An Inquiry into the Causes and Nature of the Misery of People by Jean-Pierre Voyer
\------->		It’s Crazy How Many Things Don’t Exist by Jean-Pierre Voyer
\------->		Public Secrets: Collected Skirmishes of Ken Knabb: 1970–1997 by Ken Knabb
\------->		The Joy of Revolution by Ken Knabb	Read here
.
Ultra-Left		Ultra-Left
\------->		Jacques Camatte and the New Politics of Liberation by Dave Antagonism	Read here
\------->		The Wandering of Humanity by Jacques Camatte	Read here
\------->		Manual for Revolutionary Leaders by Fredy Perlman	Read here
\------->		The Continuing Appeal of Nationalism by Fredy Perlman	Read here
\------->		Nihilist Communism by Monsieur Dupont	Read here
\------->		Species Being and Other Stories by Frere Dupond	Read here
\------->		Anarchists Must Say What Only Anarchists Can Say by Monsieur Dupont	Read here
\------->		Autonomia: Post-Political Politics by various
\------->		Communization and its discontents: Contestation, Critique, and Contemporary Struggles by Benjamin Noys
\------->		The Economy of Abolition / Abolition of the Economy Marina Vishmidt	Read here
.
Communization		Communization
\------->		The Coming Insurrection by The Invisible Committee	Read here
\------->		To Our Friends by The Invisible Committee	Read here
\------->		Now by the Invisible Committee	Read here
\------->		Endnotes 1 (journal)
.
Anarcho-Transhumanism		Anti-Civilization
What is Anarcho-Transhumanism? by William Gillis	Read here	The Critique of Civilization by Ran Prieur	Read here
Science and Liberation by Justin Podur	Read here	Against His-story, Against Leviathan by Redy Perlam	Read here
		This World We Must Leave and Other Essays from Camatte by Jacques Camatte
This Machine Kills Ableism by Lexi Linnell	Read here	Against Domestication by Jacques Camatte	Read here
The Floating Metal Sphere Trump Card by William Gillis	Read here	Destroying Civilization, Destroying Nature by Anonymous	Read here
The Importance of Quentin Meillassoux for Radicals by Eric Fleischmann	Read here	What is Green Anarchy? by Anonymous	Read here
15 Post-Primitivist Theses by William Gillis	Read here	Anything Can Happen by Fredy Perlman	Read here
		Myth of the Machine (both volumes) by Lewis Mumford
A Hacker’s Manifesto by McKenzie Wark	Read here	There is No Civilization, there is No Wild. There is Only You and Me by Dr. Bones	Read here
Anarchy and complexity by Carlos Maldonado and Nathalie Mezza-Garcia	Read here
Curiosity is the Harbinger of Revolution by Why	Read here	Post-Civilization
Models of Neurodivergence by Ozy Frantz	Read here	Post-Civ! A Brief Philosophical and Political Introduction to the Concept of Post-Civilization by Strangers in a Tangled Wilderness	Read here
Scarcity and Abundance Under Anarchism by Rai Ling	Read here	Post-Civ! A Deeper Exploration by Usul of the Blackfoot	Read here
Squatting in Space by Mixael S Laufer	Read here	Take What You Need and Compost the Rest: An Introduction to Post-Civilized Theory by Margaret Killjoy	Read here
Towards a Liberatory Technology by Lewis Herber	Read here	Beyond Civilization and Primitive by Ran Prieur
.
Green-Pragmatism		Green-Pessimism
Revolutionary Ecology by Judi Bari	Read here	Desert by Anonymous	Read here
Green Syndicalism by Jeff Shantz	Read here	Black Seed (journal)	Read here
Defending the Earth: A Debate by Murray Bookchin & Dave Forman	Read here	Green Nihilism or Cosmic Pessimism by Alejandro de Acosta	Read here
.
Green Anarchism		Green Anarchism
\------->		Society Against the State by Pierre Clastres	Read here
\------->		Beyond Geography by Frederick Turner
\------->		Woman and Nature by Susan Griffin
\------->		Earth First! Environmental Apocalypse by Martha F. Lee
The Ecoanarchist Manifesto by Green Anarchist International Association	Read here	Reconsidering Primitivism, Technology, and the Wild by various
.
Low-Impact Lifestylism		Anarcho-Primitivism
Minimum Viable Technology	Read here	Origins by John Zerzan
The Technological Society by Jacques Ellul	Read here	A People’s History of Civilization by John Zerzan
Veganarchism by Joseph Parampathu	Read here	For Wildness and Anarchy by Kevin Tucker
		Uncivilized: The Best of Green Anarchy by Various	Read here
		Against the Megamachine by David Watson
		A Dialog on Primitivism by various	Read here
		In Search of the Primitive by Stanley Diamond
		Nature and Madness, Tender Carnivore and the Others by Paul Shepard
		My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization by Chellis Glendinning
		Black and Green Review (journal)
.
Post-Anarchism		Post-Anarchism
Resisting Development: The politics of the ZAD and No-TAV	Read here	Post-Anarchism Anarchy by Hakim Bey	Read here
\------->		Anarchy, Power, and Post-Structuralists by Allan Antliff
\------->		The Political Philosophy of Post-Structuralist Anarchism by Todd May
\------->		From Bakunin to Lacan: Anti-Authoritarianism and the Dislocation of Power by Saul Newman
\------->		The Politics of Postanarchism by Saul Newman	Read here
\------->		Postanarchism by Saul Newman
\------->		Empiricism, Pluralism and Politics in Deleuze and Stirner by Saul Newman	Read here
\------->		Specters of Stirner: A Contemporary Critique of Ideology by Saul Newman
\------->		Stirner and Foucault: Toward a Post-Kantian Freedom by Saul Newman	Read here
\------->		War on the State: Stirner and Deleuze’s Anarchism by Saul Newman	Read here
\------->		Post-Anarchism: A Reader by various
\------->		After Post-Anarchism by Duane Rousselle
\------->		Its Core is the Negation by Alejandro De Acosta	Read here
\------->		The Agony of Power by Jean Baudrillard
.
Existential Anarchism		Spiritual Anarchism
My Virtue-Existentialist Ethics	Read here	T.A.Z. The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism by Hakim Bey	Read here
A Love Letter to Failing Upward	Read here	An American Retrograde by Dr. Bones
		Folk Magick as Insurrection by Dr. Bones
Existentialism, Marxism and Anarchism by Herbert Read	Read here	Against Tradition: Anarchism in a Magical Context by Dr. Bones
I and Thou — Martin Buber	Read here	The Magic of Crime: Illegalism, “The Sporting Life”, and Living Beyond the Law Dr. Bones
		Dark Virtue: Daoism and the Rejection of Civilization by Ramonelani	Read here
		The World Without Forms by Rhyd Wildermuth
		Neither Lord Nor Subject by Bao Jingyan	Read here
		Zen Anarchy by John Clark	Read here
		Gods and Radicals (journal)
.
Solarpunk Anarchism		Egoist Communist
Why this Anarchist has Stopped Using the Word Communism (an overlong explanation)	Read here	A Brief Description of Egoist Communism by D.Z. Rowan	Read here
What is Solarpunk? By Saint Andrew	Read here	The Right to Be Greedy: Theses on the Practical Necessity of Demanding Everything by For Ourselves	Read here
		Egoist-Communism: What it is and What it isn’t by Dr. Bones	Read here

Fool: I feel like a parts of the list is in bad faith —

“Eco-Extremism” then lists texts including non-anarchists.

Lists personal flaws about authors as though they should be considered reasons to dismiss the texts.

Ishkah: The post-left reading list was taken from a poster which is very popular in post-left spaces: click here

ziq: In 8 months you’ve yet to overcome your leftist inclination for struggle sessions.

I’m tempted to start equating you with pedos, misogynists and racists (your dead heroes) since you insist on equating anarchists who reject the left (so, anarchists) with perverts and bigots. Since you readily ID as a leftist, I should just condemn you for everything Joe Biden, Vaush and Chomsky have ever said.

Ishkah: You do you I guess. Wasn’t equating by any stretch of the imagination, I just took a popular reading list on the post-left and added some disclaimers that I thought were important.

ziq: ITS aren’t even anarchists. They hate anarchy. You found some years old reddit image and decided it was the embodiment of black flag anarchy?

kinshavo: The Mexican ITS is even part of the O9A network (notorious neoNazi) together with Tempel Ov Blood (the famous Florida Atomwaffen cell)

ziq: So somehow linking to neonazi lit is a ‘critique” of anarchy according to OP

ziq: Marx was a white supremacist. Kropotkin was an imperialist. Bakunin hated jews. Berkman was a pedo.

None of them were leftists. Anarchists aren’t leftists. Neither are Marxists in theory (tho in practice, there’s no way for a political party to not be either left or right wing since they position themselves at the state’s table — most often on the right i.e. MLs).

ziq: Go ahead, actually read your heroes’ theory. Or just do a ctrl+f for ‘left’ if you’re too busy: https://usa.anarchistlibraries.net/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread

https://marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/alexander-berkman-what-is-communist-anarchism

Not a single instance of them identifying as leftists.

Berkman even repeatedly makes a clear distinction between the left (state socialists) and anarchists in Russia e.g.

This attitude also caused a split in the party, the conservative element becoming known as the Right Socialists Revolutionists, while the more revolutionary faction called itself Left Socialists Revolutionists. The latter, led by Maria Spiridonova, who had suffered many years of Siberian imprisonment under the Tsar, advocated the termination of the war and secured a very considerable following, particularly among the poorer agricultural classes.

The most radical element in Russia were the Anarchists, who demanded immediate peace, free land for the peasant, and the socialization of the means of production and distribution. They wanted the abolition of capitalism and wage slavery, equal rights for all and special privileges to none. The land, the factories and mills, the machinery of production and the means of distribution were to become the possession of the whole people. Each able person was to work according to his ability and receive according to his needs. There was to be full liberty for every one and joint use on the basis of mutual interests. The Anarchists warned the proletariat against delegating power to any government or placing a political party in authority. Government of any kind, they said, would stifle the Revolution and rob the workers of the results already achieved.

Anarchists are not the left wing of any state.

Ishkah: I agree classical anarchism was not overall pro engaging with in tactical left unity with some mass movements. as well as doing our own thing. I think most anarchists today are and simply accept we’re on the left as well in virtue of holding far-left positions on a spectrum of egalitarian and economic philosophies.

ziq: The left/right spectrum has nothing to do with anarchy. Anarchists aren’t a part of government so there’s literally no way for an anarchist to be on the left or right wing of government. If they are, then they’re a governmentalist, and so by definition, not an anarchist. Anarchists reject all government. Anarcho-communism is not “on the left”, it’s a rejection of government. The left wing of government does not reject government. All anarchists reject government, all wings of government.

Ishkah: Yeah I just disagree that when most people talk about people being somewhere on the left-right spectrum of politics today that they’re specifically talking about party politics, I think most people mean philosophical attitudes.

ziq: w/leftism

Adopting the language of authority only diminishes your presumed message.

Ishkah: Do you have an essay I can link specifically critiquing Berkman’s pedophilia, I can’t find one. Thanks in advance.

BTW I didn’t list an essay by Marx, but I’ve added the other two disclaimers.

Edit: Oh yeah, I didn’t cite an essay by Berkman. Feel free to link anyways tho.

Edit 2: Nor did I cite Bakunin lol, but I’ve just added him now as I don’t think his critique of capitalism and the state was fundamentally racist.

ziq: I’m not going to help you smear anarchy. You’re missing the point

Ishkah: I understood your point that all philosophies are going to have their bad actors and that we shouldn’t equate the bad actors with the philosophy. I explained I fully agreed, and that that wasn’t the point of the post, and that I value including disclaimers about social anarchists also.

Ishkah: Right, but I would say you’re using a secondary, less common definition of the left-right spectrum. It’s fine to say anarchists aren’t on the left-right spectrum by this classical definition, the way the word came about, or this secondary definition I’ve explained to you. But I still think it’s valuable to attach anarchism to big tent leftist philosophies today because I think it simply is one by the primary definition of left-right spectrum and it’s good to be explicit about it because it helps clarify where we stand and have a better chance of opening people up to anarchist philosophies.

ziq: I don’t stand with the “big tent left”. There is no value in their philosophy (increase government power, use power to pass more laws to increase government power).

I’m not using a secondary definition. The philosophy of the left is governmentalism. It’s putting faith in government to safeguard “rights”.

Edit: what do you think the philosophy of the left is?

the left wing of political ideology represents a belief in a strong central government, which uses its power to help create economic and social equality. People on the left-wing generally believe in taking income from the wealthiest and redistributing it among the poorer part of the population. They also generally believe in enforcing social equality through governmental regulation. Socialism and modern liberalism are both examples of left-wing politics.

In left-wing politics, there is usually a belief that the collective group is more important than the individual, while the right wing believes in a much more individualistic ideology. This results in a wide difference in policy. For example, the right wing often sees taxation as an undue burden on the individual, while the left wing usually sees taxation as a good thing for the collective group.

See? Primary definition. The only in any way accurate definition. Just because some anarchists in the USA from the 1980s onwards have been confused social democrats who have strived to tether anarchy to the left, doesn’t mean anarchy is leftist.

Anarchists don’t believe in enforcing social equality through government, we don’t believe the collective is more important than the individual, we don’t believe in creating hierarchies to amass and then redistribute wealth, we don’t believe in a strong central anything. The philosophy of the left is the direct opposite of anarchy.

lettuceLeafer: Anarchists don’t believe in enforcing social equality through government, we don’t believe the collective is more important than the individual, we don’t believe in creating hierarchies to amass and then redistribute wealth, we don’t believe in a strong central anything. The philosophy of the left is the direct opposite of anarchy.

While I agree with basically your whole point and think that OP is really annoying and bad at making points I think there is something worth noting. Sure anarchists don’t believe in those things but it’s not like almost every anarchist tacity supports government in some ways.

For example I don’t think I’ve seen a anarchist ever complain about or promote the removal of welfare, civil rights legislation or laws against child rape. Basically every anarchist has laws they are in theory against but in all practical sense for the law.

I have never read a anarchist text or heard an anarchist actually actively want all laws to be gone. Sure in theory sometimes anarchist say they don’t want laws but in all their actions tacitly support some laws. Or at very least do not care at all if the laws continue.

I mean take for instance civil rights laws. Go and try to find an anarchist that says they will be happy if civil rights laws where repealed or ask if there are any anarchists would be happy about the legalization of rape.

Anarchist theory says that it’s against all laws in some fantasy dreamland time when it will be good to get rid of laws though from now and until basically eternity anarchists only want the laws they don’t like rid of a no new ones.

I know this bc if anarchists really would be happy for all laws to be gone they would be elated at the idea of an capistan. What do anarchists say about Ancap theory oh yeah that having no laws would lead to a fuedal society which is literally worse than current society.

I actually think the people saying that no laws would make life worse or is just as bad as laws don’t actually want all laws gone right now. So I feel like this argument u made is bad bc I don’t think there is anyone on this site who acts like they want all laws gone right now. (Okay in fairness I actually would like that but there is no way in hell I would say it on this site bc everyone likes some law here.) But even then I have some laws I would be upset to loose.

Case in point the Kyle Rittenhouse trial. If I remember correctly I was the onlyone who bothered to say that I thought a guilty verdict was bad bc anarchism is inherently against slavery. On this site I was the only one who had a tract record of condemning all slavery. While everyone else either had advocated for slavery or was to cowardly to condemn anarchists preaching about how great slaves are. So if anarchist actions are okay with laws sometimes it’s bad to pretend the philosophy is against all laws if even saying slavery bad is a contentious issue.

Edit: for clairty on my tone not mad or really think this is an important issue. I just snort out of my nose when I hear people say anarchists are against all laws when it seems to me reality is very different.

ziq: anarchists want to abolish government. laws are upheld by government so they no longer exist without government to enforce them across society. instead of government/law, anarchists want to manage themselves.

as part of that self management, anarchists have certain principles they hold, which includes no tolerance of rape.

there won’t be a government or laws to enforce these principles, only anarchy. which is to say we won’t need to appeal to or answer to an authority when someone rapes and an individual or a group of individuals take action in response to that abuse

government has never prevented rape, in fact it’s more often than not created an environment where rapists face little or no consequences.

in a lot of cases, government even actively creates rape (politicians, soldiers, judges, prison guards, cops and other powerful men are far more likely to be rapists and to get away with it). institutional rape of minorities is even coded into countless governments throughout history

the solution to a society that is brimming with rapists is to remove the hierarchy that creates the power imbalances that normalize rape i.e. to destroy government and create anarchy

there will still be rape, but much less of it, and the rapists will face consequences for their actions far more often

the whole point of abolishing hierarchy and replacing it with mutual aid is to put every one on even footing.

if someone has no authority behind them, they are far more likely to act in the interest of public good in order to survive and in order to prosper

decency and respect for others becomes necessary to your well-being, while harmful anti-social behavior like rape, wealth hoarding, slumlording, slavery become obsolete because such actions would greatly hinder your survival — people would seek out and kill you, or at least exclude you socially, which in anarchy where everyone depends on mutual aid, may as well be fatal. and there would be no authority in place to shield you from the natural consequences of your actions

the anarchist opposition to rape thus needn’t be enshrined in law because it’s simple common sense and survival instinct. humans, when left to their own devices, without government in place to coerce them into accepting domination, quickly figure out how to coexist with each other peacefully

lettuceLeafer: I mean I agree. This is prob similar to what I would say if someone asks me why I think all rapists should be free from prison.

I think this is the theory of anarchism but in reality of how every anarchist I have seen acts they are fine with some laws or have conditions for when laws are okay until X end state.

Just like how leninists in theory want no laws too but will support some laws until the day the die. Likewise in anarchist theory and talking points is anarchists are against all laws but the vast majority of anarchists will defend or support some laws almost certainly till the day they die bc for most anarchists the end state of when they would be okay with no law is so far away it will never happen

To try and explain differently yes anarchist theory exains why all laws are bad and I agree and think less laws the better. But the reality is almost all anarchists would not be happy if some of the laws they like where removed tommorow.

ziq: leninists are staunchly pro-authority so when they say that they want a stateless society as their ‘endgame’, they’re not talking about anarchy. they want the peoples laws, the people’s courts, the people’s police and the people’s prisons

they’ve spent exactly 0 time thinking about power relations and all their time thinking about how to rule people more efficiently. they don’t want anarchy, in theory or otherwise

ziq: what they really mean by ‘stateless communism’ is one world government

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

lettuceLeafer: I think this illustrates my point better than what I said. Ziq says there is no connection between anarchy and Marxist Leninism but these two things are the same philosophy. Laws are less than ideal but they can’t be removed untill a certain condition can be made.

This is a philosophy straight out of Marxs mouth. Corporations have to b abolished so (the workers control the means of production) and only until then can all laws be removed (state wither away). We can’t get rid of laws until there are no more companies is very similar to the state can’t b removed until socialism is reached.

So ziq says “Tankies and anarchists aren’t the same bc anarchists don’t want laws while Tankies only want laws to be removed at a certain end state”

Me: I think these two concepts are similar bc anarchists want of laws to be removed is circumstantial

Ziq: no u don’t understand anarchists don’t want laws at all

You: let me explain why it’s good to have laws until a end state is reached

I’m not critiquing anything here I’m stating what I see to be obvious how leftism is a pretty accurate label and anarchists are fine with many laws.

I think this concept is incorrect tho it’s something I only find minority objectionable at best bc anarchists mentally being okay with a law doesn’t effect me in any meaningful way I can think of.

Tho I do think it’s funny how I instantly thought “when is annikas going to say “and only the can the state wither away””

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

ziq: they don’t even define ‘state’ the way we do or the way anyone does (because they’re a cult with their own secret language) so their ‘stateless endgoal’ is absolutely meaningless

ziq: leftism is a pretty accurate label and anarchists are fine with many laws.

it’s not a secret that i think the majority of people calling themselves anarchists aren’t anarchists

Edit: quoted the part i was replying to

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

ziq: Huh?

Edit: oh i wasnt responding to that part of their comment.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

ziq: I have the bad habit of reading half a comment, replying because something triggers a thought in my head, and then reading the rest of the commemt later (or never)

lettuceLeafer: If this is true then I have absolutely no idea what ur position is.

What u r saying would indicate that u don’t view anikasheory as an anarchist. Or u do view annikas theory as a anarchist but don’t believe your point early that anarchists are against laws

ziq: I don’t think leftists are anarchists. I don’t know how to be more clear.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

lettuceLeafer: No I’m not talking about deregulation. I’m talking about how one feels about laws existing. Not advocating for policy. For instance I can not like the police to exist but that is very different from me protesting to get the police to exist.

Being against laws is being against the police existing in this analogy and deregulation is protesting the government to defend the police. Relate dbut very different contexts. I’m not talking about deregulation at all.

I want to destroy them.

I’ll critique this at a later time but I’m mantioning it bc this is the exact same problem again. Destroying all the means of production would entail destroying the entire earth bc dirt an rocks are means of production in the most common definitions of the world. And I highly doubt that is practically what u want. Just like laws you theoretically are allways against all means of production but it’s actually extremely conditional on what means of production u want to destroy, and how and when.

Also when the US government blows up a empty school or hospital are you for that since u want all means of production to be destroyed or are you against it bc your wanting the means of productions destroyed is conditional.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

lettuceLeafer: lol I’m Anarcho-Palpatine.

tbh wanting to destroy the whole earth might be based bc in the strats guide I’ve been writing I wrote about how the main reason for my politics is liking conflict and having a goal that I will be in constant conflict until the day I die and I don’t care if the conflict makes peoples lives worse as long as its more less hierarchical so I might be getting called anarcho palpatine soon. lol

lettuceLeafer: My point is anarchism is fine with laws depending on circumstance. For instance if the United States idk decided to redistribute land to native American according to treaties or whatever and then let native Americans need from the US government if the want my position on this issue would be that I’m indifferent about it.

Ziq says that anarchists inherently is against law while I said that I’ve never ever seen an anarchist who is always against laws no matter the circumstance.

And what u say inherently goes against this stance as u have specific circumstances when u want there no be no law.

For instance if the US removed the laws against child molestation I do think there would b 0 comments talking about how great it is. (Outside of me maybe) but if laws for police to exist where removed I bet the comments would be estatic. Bc every anarchist I’ve ever interacted with or anarchist text I have read indicates that all anarchists arnt allways against the law.

Also I didn’t mean to say u think the state will wither away. I was joking about how I was worried u might. I don’t think u believe the state will wither away.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

lettuceLeafer: I mean I was more arguing that anarchism is a philosophy that is conditional on when its against laws. Reminding me of marx or being leftist isn’t bad and being conditional against laws existing isn’t horrible or really something I deem bad enough to care. Just I was arguing that it exists. Which should be obvious bc I’ve been banned from this anarchist site for being against the idea of laws that give land to indigenous people which should make it obvious that anarchist aren’t always against all laws.

on recollection it feels like you interpreted my comments as criticizing your opinions as being bad when it was more me saying “look you are an example of what I”m saying exists existing”. Also I view living as the law doesn’t exist isn’t the same as being against the law. Tho mostly my whole point was more to declare that anarchists do like laws sometimes and there can be good reasons for it.

also just to make sure, because online communication is hard. I have no ill will and I ain’t worked up or angry. We good as far as I am concerned even if I think your definitions are odd.

yeah thats cool. It would have sucked it one of the top 5 cooler people on this site joined the ranks of those who don’t like me. You didn’t bug me at all tho it was annoying bc I feel like I”m always really bad at this more rhetorical discussion as it always is me and other people talking past each other. But other than that it didn’t bug me. If I don’t like stuff I just don’t respond these days.

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

lettuceLeafer: Ah ok

Comparing and contrasting; left-anarchism & post-left anarchy for funzies

Post Link:
<reddit.com/r/LeftAnarchism/comments/t808zh/leftanarchism_postleft_anarchy_a_compare_contrast/>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/141209/comparing-and-contrasting-left-anarchism-post-left-anarchy>

What Left-Anarchism Is

People who identify as left-anarchists differ from most other anarchists in a purely surface level way, in that when asked how we identify politically, we desire to make a pragmatic optics decision, in explicitly making clear that we’re both leftists and anarchists.

That way for now, anchoring the term anarchist explicitly to a mainstream struggle of left vs. right economic & egalitarian politics.

The same way democratic socialists make the optics decision to tag on democratic to the word socialist.

We feel this is an important strategy for being able to get our foot in the door with most people by overcoming a caricature and definition, that of being people who just want chaos and disorder, which we’ve been tarred with since almost all the way back to the beginning.

So, depending on who you’re talking to or what platform you want to stay unbanned from, I think we should accept that we may need to hide our power level and sometimes even go undercover in those spaces.

This does however put us at odds with one small group of anarchists who identify with post-left anarchy, in that we desire to engage in tactical left-unity on the big-tent campaigns of the present, even though we do still value forming solely anarchist campaigns and planning uniquely anarchist strategies as well. So, the term can also help identify us as being in the majority camp of anarchists who simply are not post-left anarchists, and don’t hold to purely post-left values.

Finally, here’s one definition of anarchism which we think works well for left-anarchists to promote also:

Anarchism is a political theory that is skeptical of the justification of authority and power. Anarchism is usually grounded in moral claims about the importance of individual liberty, often conceived as freedom from domination. Anarchists also offer a positive theory of human flourishing, based upon an ideal of equality, community, and non-coercive consensus building.

— https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/anarchism/

kinshavo: Your account is fair.

Just want to point 2 things. Anticiv is not given for post Left anarchist thought. And the post left anarchism is a position born on the Left (any “right” anarchism is an oxymoron conceptually) as critique as you put and to overcome the perceived flaws and limitations of Leftism ™

Maybe what post Left brings to me is to recover pure Anarchism (not forgetting the context)

secco: Boring apologia for the left, for no good reason. Same shit about “optics” and “being pragmatic”, with some shitty euphemisms for what is really inconsistent and incoherent in leftism. You more or less express critical support for critiques of organizationalism and politics, but still want to organize, identify politically, advocate left unity. Don’t get stuck with your foot in the door.

Life’s Lessons & Abolitionist Politics

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2022/03/02/lifes-lessons-abolitionist-politics>

Submitted by Ishkah 3 years ago in Anarchy (edited 44 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/141085/life-s-lessons-abolitionist-politics>

How getting hurt as a child lead me to have a strong scepticism of unjustified authority

Pretty obvious outcome I guess, but it’s not how it always goes.

Here’s another outcome that can happen:

Something bad happens, and the person thinks; ‘this sucks, my pain was totally undeserved, if I could just set an example for how to behave better and encourage everyone to emulate the aesthetics of doing better, then everything would be alright with the world.’

Here’s the only way I knew how to accept what happened to me:

Something bad happened, my pain was the almost random result of people existing and then developing essences according to social conditioning, but I can find solace in collaborating with people grappling with similar environmental conditioning and where possible challenge any power that works through these social contracts.

Now, I’m not saying that because of the way the first person dealt with their pain they can’t also become strongly sceptical of unjustified authority, I’ve just noticed a trend whereby it seems many of these people gravitate towards policing other people’s behaviour according to simple and rigid rules, whereif you act in a way that looks outside the mould enough times you’re treated as not being trustworthy.

The way I prefer to go through life is finding unique people precisely in order to scrape the bottom of the barrel of socially uncool mannerisms, to work out whether or not that socially uncool behaviour is something the status quo society was right to have deemed as something you should be ashamed of or not. So as to reason backwards whether the social norms we’re enforcing are even good ones to begin with.

How you get convinced as a child that fucked up shit is actually ok is being taught that it’s just part of the status quo social norm. And I understand people jumping to the simplest solution, and hedging all their bets on the probability that if someone had only enforced a better social norm and taught their abuser not to be abusive that it wouldn’t have happened to them, and I can agree that it wouldn’t have in that way, and those remedies are needed, but I can’t stop there and open myself up to pain by imaging that we have all the answers for how to put checks and balances in place to make sure everyone is on a good path in life.

Anyway, as well as needing to live in doubt, and do this observation work to question every social norm, even the status quo good ones, I felt the call to adventure to simply rack up as many wild and complicated experiences as I could immediately, saying fuck it to the risks I chose, because at least I was out of the stifling social norms I’d been brought up to believe were healthy and had only hurt me. The steps that lead to someone becoming an abuser are so disgustingly simple and boring that they adequately suit the phrase ‘the banality of evil’, so at least by adventuring I was racking up complicated experiences which were the opposite of that.

Suffice to say as part of this bare bones existence I got to witness lots of people trying to play by the established rules, and falling behind or never even getting off the ground due to circumstances outside their control, which lead me to desire radical solutions.

Activism

My desire to live this bare bones existence left me with one intuitional bias about what type of activism I think is likely more productive, which people may or may not already find obvious and useful.

It has to do with a kind of harm reduction, welfare based politics where a group desires to be assimilated into the whole under certain conditions vs. an oppression abolition based politics where a group desires simple autonomy and positive liberties.

I have this scepticism of whether some of the protests done to achieve media attention for the civil rights struggle were well thought out or not, which is a semi-heretical claim to make today. But, I basically align with Malcolm X on this issue, who was the biggest voice given a microphone at the time questioning this.

The logic of the protests were simple, black civil rights activists would attempt to carry out every day civilized activities that white people got up to in their white only spaces where you know you’re going to receive abuse and show up to the media the uncivilized nature of the attacker. Thus making a solid case against restrictions on integration, because the black community have upright social norms and are capable of shouldering their share of the burden of responsibilities in society.

Most famously you have the Montgomery bus boycott after the planned disobedience of Rosa Parks, a middle class, respectably dressed woman. Now an extra piece of trivia to this story that most, but not everyone who knows about the disobedience knows, is that inspiration for the planned disobedience was drawn from the arrest of a Claudette Colvin who wasn’t well suited for the media attention as “she did not have ‘good hair’, she was not fair-skinned, she was a teenager, she got pregnant.”

Anyway, this whole back story is to say; I respect more the spontaneous fight that teenager faced than the planned disobedience of Rosa Parks precisely because it was based on a spontaneous desire to confront injustice and do so regardless of any planned strategy. And although I think the way they went about the planned disobedience and boycott was likely a clever strategy, there were also many protests that were ill thought out and failed to get the required media attention. This meant people subjecting themselves to abuse for worse reasons than their own spontaneous choosing. So, I just don’t think we should lose sight of the authentic bedrock inspiration for these struggles.

MLK said himself he was disappointed that engagement with the civil rights struggle dropped after the passage of the civil rights amendment, so I can’t help wondering if the civil rights movement of the time took a calculated risk not to put so much of their time and money behind the harm reduction politics of asking to be assimilated into respectable society, and instead into the basic means of survival in black communities, like labour and housing unions, then America might be a more equitable society today.

Finally, this calculus has implications for other struggles, like with the legal animal rights movement, whether we need to be cheerleaders for every KFC that offers a vegan option, or whether we should feel more energized about building up our own vegan cafes and forming contentious alliances of our own choosing, not only when it suits a multi-million dollar companies profit incentive.

So, my advice; live in doubt, try to stay open to holistic problem solving methods for remedying the foundational issues in society. Observe people’s lack of autonomy living under various unjustified hierarchical relationships. Try to live a more frugal existence so as not to get lost in the rat race of consumer capitalism and find happiness in the small things like the fun you can have joking around with friends to get them to accept you for who you are or not to accept you at all, so as to create deeper connections which builds stronger communities:

“It can be annoying or hurtful when others presume they know everything about you. But rather than assert their wrongness and make them defensive, you can acknowledge it as a common human failing and find creative ways to hold a mirror up to what life experiences they’ve had that lead them to jump to those conclusions.

“I am, somehow, less interested in the weight and convolutions of Einstein’s brain than in the near certainty that people of equal talent have lived and died in cotton fields and sweatshops.” [2]

Apparently Ted Kaczynski managed to get skin cancer in prison...

Post Link:
<twitter.com/theo_slade/status/1491478195576705033>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anticiv

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/140231/apparently-ted-kaczynski-managed-to-get-skin-cancer-in>

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

Nothing I wrote relies on that interpretation of anticiv anarchy, I just noticed a trend among some people moving through green anarchist ideology down a rabbit hole of attempting to find a more and more rigid purist worldview. I acknowledged the route people take was often contradictory, like going from violent, to pacifist, to violent again.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted31647 in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

Sure, but none of my arguments rely on green anarchists being red anarchists.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by lemon_grass in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

Getting told by Kaczynski fanboys that anyone who doesn’t want to destroy all electricity grids is a reformist.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

I only ever identified as an anarchist, so I thought metocin thought most anarchists don’t call for a revolution and that I was trying to pass off LibSoc ideas for anarchist ideas, which isn’t true.

But yeah that’s likely true of most anticivs and green anarchists, but again I never claimed I was a green anarchist or an anticiv, or that the ideas I presented were that. I just gave some advice from an anarchist about slippery slope purism, not trying to change the ideology to mean something different.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

Didn’t say anticiv or green anarchists is or are any of those things, hence ‘convinced into believing idea a, b then c’.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by metocin in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

Just as if anarchists haven’t called for revolution throughout history.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted31647 in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

I wasn’t saying they do, just making a comparison for how people can move through ideologies, not about the content of what they believe.

As for the rest, with what you wrote I imagine this discussion would just descend into semantics, but no I do think there are markers I could point to to say I would prefer it society was organized closer to this or that way. The obvious ones being people stopping viewing others as their objects to squeeze a profit out of at work, or justifying rape through a sexist culture.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by ziq in A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole! by Ishkah

It’s not meant to be a perfectly summarized version of each ideology. It’s an analogy for how some people will take a bunch of contradictory twists and turns down a list of more and more fringe ideologies, in pursuit of the most rigidly simplistic way of viewing the world so they can say they have the answers to almost all life’s questions.

I made clear that I’m an anarchist, but I used the analogy that someone could go from desiring a ‘libertarian socialist revolution’ to a ‘vulgar anarchist insurrection’ because people can buy into anarchist ideology for all the wrong reasons the same way an anorexic person can just be using veganism as a way to restrict their diet on the way to raw veganism, etc.

People move over to the far-right for contradictory reasons, like first being convinced that the civil war was just about less taxes on cotton, to second that black Americans are lucky to be in the US, then third that the civil war was about white people keeping slaves to pick cotton and they had a right to protect their interests.

With green anarchists, it could be first being convinced that giving up various direct action campaigns for thinking solely being against technology is necessary for the most amount of people to get a clear message, reducing the amount of people they’re trying to coalition build with. Then secondly that killing and terrorizing people is a necessary evil to showing the direction society needs to be heading in. To thirdly hope for changing people’s minds is pointless, we need to just take pleasure in embracing our violent hatred for all things ‘unnatural’.

Ishkah: Reply to John Zerzan on primitivism by Potkea

Oh hey, that’s my channel haha, glad you like the upload. I’ll have more anarchist interviews up soon.

A friendly reminder not to get lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole!

Linked Image:
<uploads-cdn.raddle.me/submission_images/ddad08880788b2423948987b1bd68ab7dd03285c9cee59e5450b38ee648decaa.jpg>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anticiv (edited 7 hours later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/138355/a-friendly-reminder-not-to-get-lost-down-the-eco-purist>

I have nothing against green anarchism as the promotion of a style of critique not often seen, like black anarchism and anarchafeminism, as it can simply help identify you as someone who has been able to have the time to research the ways expertise in building democratic institutions, green architecture and rewilding will help get us to a better world.

This is just a friendly warning against travelling down the eco-purist rabbit hole of more and more rigidly dogmatic political theory, where you begin to believe it’s only worth reading the way a few authors view the world.

And obviously I don’t think the revolution would end at worker control, but I do see anarchists as part of a big tent libertarian socialist movement, where securing workplace democracy would be a massive improvement in society.

Ted Kaczynski, aged 79, has been transferred to the prison hospital, but they’re not saying what he’s ill with

Post Link:
<theday.com/article/20211222/NWS13/211229793>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anticiv

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/137936/ted-kaczynski-aged-79-has-been-transferred-to-the-prison>

Ted Kaczynski Book Projects

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2021/12/23/ted-kaczynski-book-projects>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anticiv

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/137934/ted-kaczynski-book-projects>

I’m going to try and get two books by Kaczynski published, one solely written by him and another co-written by him. So, I’m looking for volunteers to help, if you like the idea and have time to help, please let me know :)

1. Truth versus Lies

Ted Kaczynski finished writing a book in 1999 critiquing all the media representations of his life called ‘Truth versus Lies’:

In 2002 he donated a draft copy of the book which Context Books made to the University of Michigan along with a tonne of journals, letters and other material which the book references.

So, I copied the text into a google document and started working on cleaning up the scanning errors with 3 other people:

1. Truth Versus Lies — 1A. Photocopy of book with scanning errors

We’ve almost finished this now, so soon we can put it up on the anarchist library and places.

1. Truth Versus Lies — 1B. Photocopy of book with fixed scanning errors

1. Truth versus Lies – 1C. Book publisher version

Finally, we’ll create a document which is an automatic text comparison between documents 1A and 1B for transparency:

1. Truth versus Lies – 1D. Photocopy of book; text comparison

And a document discussing the pros and cons of the few changes we might want to make between Docs 1B and 1C:

1. Truth versus Lies — 1E. Book publisher version corrections

2. Unfinished Autobiography

As well, I’m condensing the book down to where Ted is just talking about his memories and how he felt about them and using the text along with other material for two books:

A biography called ‘The Unfinished Autobiography of Ted Kaczynski a.k.a. The Unabomber’.

And a fictional novel called something like ‘The Imagined Autobiography of Ted Kaczynski …’

2. Unfinished Autobiography – 2A. Biography & Fictional Autobiography
2. Unfinished Autobiography — 2B. Biography
2. Unfinished Autobiography – 2C. Fictional Autobiography

And with biography sources, I’m doing tasks like transcribing prison letters and getting tons of writing by and about Kaczynski into an easily browsable catalogue. At some point we can release this separately as something like ‘The Ted Kaczynski Archives’:

2. Unfinished Autobiography – 2D. Biography Sources

3. Reading material for Kaczynski

Finally, I’ve finished transcribing a bunch of video media on Kaczynski which I’d like to send him as encouragement to write his own autobiography or make any further changes to his book ‘Truth versus Lies’, to get a further clarifying window into his mind as an intriguing case study in political violence:

3. Reading for Kaczynski - #3A. Kaczynski Video Media Representations

How you can help

Here are some tasks that I think would be really useful:

You can proofread 1. Truth Versus Lies - #1B: Photocopy of book with fixed scanning errors and make sure we haven’t missed any scanning or grammar errors.
You can help with discussing potential corrections we might need to make to get a book publisher to mass print the book, but that aren’t too big such that they would distort the original text to a degree that Kaczynski wouldn’t consent to changing when asked — 1. Truth versus Lies — 1E. Book publisher version corrections
You can help transcribe prison letters and/or copy any interesting writing by or about Kaczynski which you think might be useful for the autobiography, as well as for a future archive — 2. Unfinished Autobiography – 2D. Biography Sources
You can go in person to the University of Michigan Library to see their archive on Kaczynski, to scan or take photographs of new letters and any missing text. The scanned version of Truth versus Lies has a few words where the text is unreadable on pages 34, 35, 37, 39, 61, 144, 145, 173, 204, 216, 218, 220, 231, 232, 233, 239, 242, 244, 544.
Finally, you can give your advice and suggestions, which would be greatly appreciated :)

My email is theosladehome@gmail.com, you can email me to discuss ideas, to send me text relating to any of the above and/or you can send the name of your gmail email address and I’ll add you as an editor to any of the documents you like, so that you can help work directly on the google documents. Or if you’re logged into your gmail now, you can go to the page you want to work on and click the ‘request edit access’ button in the top right corner.

Payment

This just started as a hobby project, so I’m not in a position to be able to pay upfront for every hour worked, but I’m happy to talk about percentage revenue sharing or backpaying based on hours contributed if the book sales reach some threshold. Everything will be discussed transparently and if we can’t agree as a group on an end product, then members can always take the writing and develop it however they like in a separate document.

I’ve no idea if the person who was going to print it ever held or still holds sole right to publish Truth versus Lies, or if Kaczynsk will say yes to any corrections needed to avoid libel. I’ve emailed the book publisher person once, but will try again.

I’d also like to pay royalties to the survivors of Kaczynski’s bombings, I know they’re supposed to receive any money Kaczynski makes as part of a $15 million restitution order, but I’m not sure if he co-writes a book what that means in terms of a percentage. I’ll email the two organisations who have published his work when we’ve finished.

Critical Platforming

My contributions are made mainly for myself and researchers similarly fascinated by his life with the goal of wanting to make the writing easier to sort and skim through.

Here are some of my past critiques of anti-technology, anti-industrialist, primitivist, anti-civilisation and misanthropic ideologies:

Call out for volunteers to help finish editing Truth Versus Lies by Ted Kaczynski

Post Link:
<docs.google.com/document/d/1O9IFyBh3SzpcWOG4vs-b3VlLDnd-CAt0nIGzgQFCQcc>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anticiv (edited 15 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/136523/call-out-for-volunteers-to-help-finish-editing-truth-versus>

Truth versus Lies is a book that Ted Kaczynski finished writing soon after his sentencing. The book never went into print, but we have photocopies of the draft in 2 parts: Part 1 & Part 2.

Ted goes over tons of court documents and magazine articles to attempt to correct the record on the story of his life.

If someone has a perfect word document, is an email or letter away and is up for releasing it soon after we finish I’d be so annoyed haha. But, I think it’s worth the risk as they likely would have put it online already if they really wanted to.

If you’d like to help make error corrections, click the request access button in the top right corner or send your gmail address to theosladehome@gmail.com. It just requires having the pdf open on one side of the screen whilst error correcting this document on the other side. And if we got any trolls it’s easy enough to see what edits were made, boot them and restore previous versions. Finally, press Ctrl+F and type # to see where I’m up to so far.

Once finished we can do a bunch of things like:

Make a bunch of free formats available like epub, pdf & word.
Put it on amazon so hard copies can be printed and delivered for cheap.
I’d like to include a thorough critique of Kaczynski’s philosophy in a second forward for the version I put out there.
At the same time as editing this I’d like to be copying over memories for a shorter biography drawing from this book, diary entries and other writing. I may even send the 2 books to Kaczynski to encourage him to finish filling in key moments to turn it into an autobiography.

But, I’d like to know I have at least 2 people working on it with me, so I’m not editing 350 pages on my own.

Germaine Greer on Anarchist Feminism + A Critique of Greer’s Bad Takes

Post Link:
<youtu.be/O4fFJ5DYuTE>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/136414/germaine-greer-on-anarchist-feminism-a-critique-of-greer-s>

An interview with lifelong anarchist Audrey Goodfriend

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2021/10/29/audrey-goodfriend-on-anarchism-in-america>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/136093/an-interview-with-lifelong-anarchist-audrey-goodfriend>

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted32344 in Palestinian Resistance veteran Mark Barnsley on why he joined | Testament by Duncan Pickstock (2009) by Ishkah

Coolio!

Anarchism Around The World

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2021/10/22/anarchism-around-the-world>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/135827/anarchism-around-the-world>

Palestinian Resistance veteran Mark Barnsley on why he joined | Testament by Duncan Pickstock (2009)

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=z-u70FuuS80>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/135732/palestinian-resistance-veteran-mark-barnsley-on-why-he>

Stuart Christie on why he tried to help assasinate Franco | Testament by Duncan Pickstock (2009)

Post Link:
<youtube.com/watch?v=-Va9rgXeT5Q>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/135731/stuart-christie-on-why-he-tried-to-help-assasinate-franco>

Case Revisited – Unabomber Ted Kaczynski’s Lingering Influence in 2021

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2021/09/01/case-revisited-unabomber-ted-kaczynskis-lingering-influence-in-2021>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/134204/case-revisited-unabomber-ted-kaczynski-s-lingering-influence>

Ishkah: Reply to comment by secco in A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More (Newly Transcribed & Updated) by Ishkah

Aye, thank you. Long story why I made that error, but someone pointed it out on anarchistnews and I asked for it to be updated on anarchist library an hour ago.

A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More (Newly Transcribed & Updated)

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2021/08/09/a-conversation-with-john-zerzan-on-direct-action-school-shootings-authenticity-veganism-more>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in Anarchy (edited 3 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/133477/a-conversation-with-john-zerzan-on-direct-action-school>

A Conversation with John Zerzan on Direct Action, School Shootings, Authenticity, Veganism & More

Post Link:
<youtu.be/MUuzgHkn0Sc>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anarcho_primitivism (edited 1 minute later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anarcho_primitivism/133368/a-conversation-with-john-zerzan-on-direct-action-school>

secco: Zerzan: That sounds rather nice, yeah I wouldn’t argue against it, I mean if it’s conceivable and I think you know hunter-gatherer life was more hunting than gathering,[...]

In the video, Zerzan says the exact opposite — “you know hunter-gatherer life was more gathering than hunting”. Mind if I fix that in your anarchist library upload?

Ishkah: Aye, thank you. Long story why I made that error, but someone pointed it out on anarchistnews and I asked for it to be updated on anarchist library an hour ago.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted30 in An Open Letter to John Zerzan (A Primitivist Philosopher of Technology) — Part 1 by Ishkah

Gotcha, makes sense :P

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted30 in An Open Letter to John Zerzan (A Primitivist Philosopher of Technology) — Part 1 by Ishkah

He is very good about not directly advocating for illegal activities in a public space/manner.

Sorry but firstly that’s not the case, quoting Zerzan:

I’m not averse to saying I think direct action is a good thing. Damage to property, not violence against people. Things in the streets, like in Seattle in 1999, really got people’s attention. The Earth Liberation Front, when they commit arson, it draws people’s attention to just how bad it’s getting and to take up arms – and I don’t mean against people. They’ve never injured anyone – and go after these targets. We literally mean direct action, and we’ve got friends in prison because of it.

Secondly why would that be good? I get exemplifying security culture, but some public advocates willing to justify illegal direct action is important I think to contextualize actions for different audiances.

The Ted talk was great and I’ll have a think about how to re-word, so I really appreciate the suggestion. I think it’s good for open-letters/public-debates to be a bit performative to garner audiance interest, but it’s a good idea to try to incorporate some of the tools for how to have a good discussion in general.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted23972 in The Life of Ted Kaczynski — Podcast Episode Topics by Ishkah

Fab.

An Open Letter to John Zerzan (A Primitivist Philosopher of Technology) — Part 1

Post Link:
<activistjourneys.wordpress.com/2021/07/25/an-open-letter-to-john-zerzan-a-primitivist-philosopher-of-technology>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anticiv (edited 13 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/132826/an-open-letter-to-john-zerzan-a-primitivist-philosopher-of>

TL;DR John Zerzan is one of the most well known and philosophically adept writers within the the primitivist political tendency. I hope to ask questions of him to clarify his theory, plus critique him and his ideology in the process.

Any last minute edit suggestions or questions you’d want to add before I send it off or discussion on the points, just let me know.

Hello John,

A primitivist blogger passed on your email on the off chance you may be interested in answering a few questions that would help towards a podcast episode I’m preparing for.

The podcast is a discussion between me, I am pro technological advancement, and a primitivist who has spent a great deal of time studying and writing essays on Kaczynski’s work.

So, below I have 4 questions for you which I’d be very interested in reading your views on, plus explanations of my thoughts on each. I’ll also link my podcast notes encase they’re of any interest to you.

With your consent I’d like to post this question and answer discussion around a few places, to help clarify your theory for others and promote my critique of primitivism.

Thanks for your time.

Theo

How do you determine what direct action targets are justifiable today?

Obviously ideally we would be able to win by simply choosing targets which have caused people the most amount of misery, so actions for which people can sympathise most, like sabotaging a draft office to attempt to materially challenge the US’s war in Vietnam.

But to the extent some targets are not as optically advantageous, but still useful to sabotage, I’d say that it would be valid as long as you can still envision a probable future in which the action is vindicated in hindsight through its usefulness for the movement, for example John Brown’s attempt to incite a slave rebellion.

Some guiding principles that I find useful to this calculation are:

.1) Never act with reckless indifference to human and non-human animal life.

.2) Never with premeditation physically hurt people for the primary purpose of making a political statement or to earn money, as it runs counter to our philosophy on the left that material conditions create the person and so we should make every peaceful effort to rehabilitate people.

Some tricky to explain, justified, but only just outside the principle just laid out are:

(A) Survivor-led vigilantism, where to the extent that some current institutions fail to rehabilitate people and the process of seeking justice through these institutions can cause more trauma, then personal violence to get to resolve feelings of helplessness in the face of evil acts can be an ethical act.

(B) Personally desiring to fight fascists in the street to block them from marching through immigrant communities or pushing your way through huntsmen to save a fox from getting mauled to death by dogs.

.3) Never take actions on the basis of anti-science beliefs or with the intent to propogate anti-science beliefs e.g. disproven conspiracy theories.

.4) Take care to respect the difference between property which is personal, luxury, private, government owned and cooperatively worker owned.

So, it could be seen as ethical to choose material targets of evil actors in order to cause economic damage and make a statement, so long as in the case of personal property, the item has no intrinsic sentimental value i.e. can be replaced because the person is wealthy. Or is a luxury item that was paid for through the exploitation of others labor. Or is private property, meaning the means of production which should be owned collectively anyway.

.5) Never take actions in the hopes of helping in part instigate a revolutionary war sooner than it’s reasonable to believe you would have the capability to win. Similarly don’t use rhetoric about how tensions in society have escalated to the state of civil war or a third world war. For example, even if the revolutionary left got really good at assassinating captains of industry and getting away with it, there would be reasonable fears around the psychology of people who would take such an act against people who they could have grown up and been socially conditioned to be themselves, which would inexorably lead to a more authoritarian society and worse foundations on which to work towards a better society.

As a socialist, I do think we can hypothesize the unrealistic case of 99% of society desiring a referendum on a shift from parliamentary representative system to a federated spokes council system and the MP’s dragging their feet, the same way both parties gerrymander the boundaries to make it easier to win despite it being the one issue most everyone agrees is bad, and people needing to storm the halls of power to force a vote to happen.

As well as a responsibility to put down arms after winning political freedoms and a majority are in favor of diplomacy through electoral politics, like in Northern Ireland today.

Under representative parliamentary systems, the sentiment of most is that even if it could be argued that a war of terror against the ruling class was the easiest route to produce a better society, that it would still be ethically wrong to be the person who takes another’s life just because it’s the easiest way. Since regardless of manufactured consent or anything else you still could have worked to build a coalition to overcome those obstacles and change the system slowly from within.

And I agree, it would be an act of self-harm to treat life with such disregard when you could have been that same deluded person shrouded in the justificatory trappings of society treating your behavior normally. I don’t think the way we win today is treating a cold bureaucratic system with equally cold disregard in whose life we had the resources to be able to intimidate this week. Time on earth is the greatest gift people have, to make mistakes and learn from them.

Firstly with your statement on what kind of technology is likely good and which is bad:

If you have a tool that anybody can make, that’s great. You’re in contact with it in a very sensual way. But tools that require a hierarchy of coordination and specialization create a kind of distancing. That’s the kind of technology to avoid.

Are you not concerned you could be promoting direct action which falls well outside ethical principles like the ones above, such that you run the risk of motivating someone to take direct action which makes your rebellion look insane and preserve the status quo or facilitate a move to a more authoritarian society?

Secondly is physically hurting people for the primary purpose of making a political statement or to earn money bad?

For example you stated “Bonanno, it should be added, has been prosecuted repeatedly and imprisoned in Italy for his courageous resistance over the years.” Is it your view then that armed robbery or similar violence is justified? And are you aware that Bonanno promotes the strategy of kneecapping journalists?

Similarly do you regret at all the manner or substance of previous defences you’ve given of Kaczynskis actions? For example you wrote:

The concept of justice should not be overlooked in considering the Unabomber phenomenon. In fact, except for his targets, when have the many little Eichmanns who are preparing the Brave New World ever been called to account?... Is it unethical to try to stop those whose contributions are bringing an unprecedented assault on life?

Would industrial society not simply re-emerge?

I’m sceptical of Kaczynskis’ confidence that a new industrial revolution wouldn’t simply re-emerge, especially with people passing down memories and books of all the benefits to modern life.

My concerns are that firstly, the harm to the environment would be much worse than us simply transitioning to renewable energy and rewilding areas as we depopulate as is the trend in advanced countries. Secondly, I would argue the probability that we will achieve a long-lasting, mostly peaceful, technologically advanced, left-anarchist society is far more valuable to me than returning to an either never ending series of warring feudal societies or feudal societies that repeats the industrial revolution and has another series of world wars for resources.

Primitive life is more appealing to me personally than feudalism in that I could be born into a fairly egalitarian tribe like the Penan or that I wasn’t but I wouldn’t know any different life or if I had some of the egalitarian ideals I had now, the possibility would be there to strike out on my own and form an egalitarian tribe. But bar convincing everyone to be hunter gatherers, or technological incentives to have fair and democratic communication among societies who trade with each other, you just are going to recreate feudal era societies, where you’d have to be very lucky to escape from conscription and tyrants and environmental destruction could be far worse.

Do you worry that you affirmed the irrationally violent desires of the school shooter who called your radio show through your shared desire for de-industrialisation, which I suspect the caller would view as leading to worse violence and think is good?

I applaud you for trying not to answer fluff questions for the CNN piece on the school shooter who called into your radio show, so leveraging audience interest in your relationship to the story for trying to get important issues on the air. It’s advice I hope more activists will be trained with in the future.

The doctor of criminology they had on at the end of the CNN piece did interest me though when she said “the subtext of what he’s [the school shooter is] saying is violence is innate and instinctual to humans, and really should not be punished because it’s their natural basis, that’s the message I think he’s trying to get across, and the parallel to himself is obvious, he feels possessed by this need, this compulsion to commit violence.”

So my question is, do you agree that he was in part using the story of the domesticated ape to justify his own violent desires? And if you had suspected that was part of his motivation at the time, how do you think you would have responded to his story differently? Finally has the experience led you to be more cautious of what motivations callers are bringing with them to have affirmed when they call in?

Finally is primitivism motivated primarily by a desire to return to a more innocent time in one’s childhood?

There’s a quote I like by Saul Newman from the book the ‘Politics of Postanarchism’ on page 156, about how the desire for a primitive way of life is often a desire for a more innocent time in one’s childhood which I would love to read your response to if you have the time. I’ll attach a file of the full ebook also if you’d like to see it in context:

Where Zerzan’s argument becomes problematic is in the essentialist notion that there is a rationally intelligible presence, a social objectivity that is beyond language and discourse. To speak in Lacanian terms, the prelinguistic state of jouissance is precisely unattainable: it is always mediated by language that at the same time alienates and distorts it. It is an imaginary jouissance, an illusion created by the symbolic order itself, as the secret behind its veil. We live in a symbolic and linguistic universe, and to speculate about an original condition of authenticity and immediacy, or to imagine that an authentic presence is attainable behind the veils of the symbolic order or beyond the grasp of language, is futile. There is no getting outside language and the symbolic; nor can there be any return to the pre Oedipal real. To speak in terms of alienation, as Zerzan does, is to image a pure presence or fullness beyond alienation, which is an impossibility. While Zerzan’s attack on technology and domestication is no doubt important and valid, it is based on a highly problematic essentialism implicit in his notion of alienation.

To question this discourse of alienation is not a conservative gesture. It does not rob us of normative reasons for resisting domination, as Zerzan claims. It is to suggest that projects of resistance and emancipation do not need to be grounded in an immediate presence or positive fullness that exists beyond power and discourse. Rather, radical politics can be seen as being based on a moment of negativity: an emptiness or lack that is productive of new modes of political subjectivity and action. Instead of hearkening back to a primordial authenticity that has been alienated and yet which can be recaptured – a state of harmony which would be the very eclipse of politics – I believe it is more fruitful to think in terms of a constitutive rift that is at the base of any identity, a rift that produces radical openings for political articulation and action.

Source

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: He is very good about not directly advocating for illegal activities in a public space/manner.

Sorry but firstly that’s not the case, quoting Zerzan:

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted comment]

Ishkah: Gotcha, makes sense :P

ziq: Why would he even read this shit? You’re like a christian on an inquisition. Creepy af.

Ishkah: I had a really pleasant conversation with him, and an anti-civ dude even reached out to me asking to make the transcript into a zine. I honestly just like having broad ranging discussions, it was not an inquisition at all.

Ishkah: Reply to comment by !deleted23972 in The Life of Ted Kaczynski — Podcast Episode Topics by Ishkah

Thanks, that’d be much appreciated!

Ishkah: Reply to comment by NOISEBOB in The Life of Ted Kaczynski — Podcast Episode Topics by Ishkah

I’m in the UK, he was a homegrown terrorist because he attacked targets in the country he grew up, as opposed to a foreign terrorist.

Ishkah: Reply to The Life of Ted Kaczynski — Podcast Episode Topics by Ishkah

Hey all, I’m working on topic ideas for a podcast episode on the life of Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), so if you have any ideas or would like to talk about it in text or over voice, just let me know. You can also comment directly on the google doc.

The Life of Ted Kaczynski — Podcast Episode Topics

Post Link:
<docs.google.com/document/d/1HgZpVe0XrMOv_ofwSRS3T-qVQ8NgVjZ-CW2Q1UuCnxs>

Submitted by Ishkah 4 years ago in anticiv

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/131962/the-life-of-ted-kaczynski-podcast-episode-topics>

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted]

Ishkah: Thanks, that’d be much appreciated!

[Deleted or banned user]: [Deleted]

Ishkah: Fab.

Ishkah: Hey all, I’m working on topic ideas for a podcast episode on the life of Ted Kaczynski (the Unabomber), so if you have any ideas or would like to talk about it in text or over voice, just let me know. You can also comment directly on the google doc.

NOISEBOB: a homegrown terrorist

Your americentrism is showing...

Ishkah: I’m in the UK, he was a homegrown terrorist because he attacked targets in the country he grew up, as opposed to a foreign terrorist.

NOISEBOB: Oh. I see .. i will go downvote myself now

What’s an unpopular opinion that you hold when it comes to anarchism or general leftist thought?

Submitted by byro1234512345 7 months ago in Anarchism

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20230811164245/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchism/150795/what-s-an-unpopular-opinion-that-you-hold-when-it-comes-to>

veuzi: That anarchism maybe doesn’t belong on the left.

That anarchistic action maybe don’t even belong in the world of politics.

That providing an alternative to the thing you are criticizing is not important, the criticism can be valid regardless of hypothetical alternatives. I.e. anarchists do not need to provide an alternate way of restructuring society while criticizing hierarchy.

Work should not be reformed, organized or otherwise reimagined to an “after the revolution” context. Work should be abolished. It may even be preferable to significantly cut down on industrial production and the economies of scale it requires if it means no more work as in coerced labor.

Anarchy is chaos, but chaos isn’t the same thing as a war of all against all. There is no innate human nature or any need for a social contract. Unpredictability and spontaneity are worthy of embrace.

These are all opinions which should not be unpopular on this particular site. But if I say any of these on anarchist reddit, I have to expect being dragged into a thread defending my opinions from confused leftists and anarcho-democrats, and repeatedly assert that I am not an ancap nor an anprim.

fortmis: That providing an alternative to the thing you are criticizing is not important, the criticism can be valid regardless of hypothetical alternatives. I.e. anarchists do not need to provide an alternate way of restructuring society while criticizing hierarchy.

Ahhhh I’m torn. I mean I agree that not having a ready alternative doesn’t mean you can’t and shouldn’t criticize hierarchy etc but I disagree that having an alternative isn’t important.
We were just having a whole convo about this. I’ll edit the comment with a link in a moment.
Link: https://raddle.me/f/discussion/150678/continuing-the-convo-is-absence-of-a-negative-thing-enough
There are definitely situations where the criticism can end with “no ____” for example, a critique of domestic violence doesn’t require providing an alternative .. it can just be “no hitting your wife.”
But when I’m in a conversation where I’m saying yo we don’t need the government, I find it really important to explain how I think it could work.
I think the problem with anarchists being called to explain how they would x y z, is that the questions are all wrong. The defund the police movement faced a lot of this. We don’t need to answer the question “but what would you do if someone was gunna stab you.” But I think it’s helpful to answer questions like “how would we deal with violence.”

ukuleleclass: i think you made a really good point. at least how i understood your sentiment is that it’s all a matter of scale— we’re under no obligation to try and administer some national strategy for anarchy (in fact that would be fascist) but it can often be liberating to try new ways of accomplishing things in our hyper local ecologies.

subrosa: Anarchy is chaos, but chaos isn’t the same thing as a war of all against all.

I probably don’t agree with anarchy is chaos any more than I agree with anarchy is order. Either position can be argued elegantly, in consistently anarchistic ways.

One commonality between radicals I enjoy reading the most, is the presence of a ‘language of war’.

So, like, how about...

Anarchy does not preclude order, but every call for order is a declaration of war.

ukuleleclass: on the topic of chaos i guess it just depends on how you view chaos. to me it’s the nature of constant change and transformations that are beyond our human understanding but can be felt and embodied. i view it almost in an ontological way in which even the patterns that arise throughout evolution are partially attributes of a larger condition of spontaneity. embracing this change as a function of material reality is often grounding for myself, especially in the face of extreme dissociation and alienation that capitalism and civilization requires.

subrosa: allow me to riff on this

beyond our human understanding

Some external and beyond comprehension, approximately eternal, bigger-than-all-of-us nature that pumps out spontaneity, patterns, causes for larger conditions of whatever. Chaos as a post-left leftover god, barely capable of antagonizing the gods of natural order... I’m not sure what to do with it.

Hakim Bey was probably the first and last anarchist to do something interesting with “chaos”, and even then it was really just the era of 80s hippies incorporating then-new and exciting pop-science and science fiction themes in their writings. Capturing a certain anxiety about the “end of history”, about entering a new millennium without the old basis of left vs. right politics on the world scene. Also capturing a certain optimism about possible futures imagined then, of the sort that fed transhumanism into existence. Chaos-talk lent itself to conflicts between lifestylists and anarcho-leninists, and between other caricatures of anarchists.

When I read about “chaos” in anarchist forums, that’s what I’m thinking of. A term charged with meaning in now fading contexts; no more immune to nostalgia, conservatism, impotence and relative fixity as “progress” and “change” turned out not to be a century earlier. When it comes to ontological speculation, I’ll say Proudhon’s “certainty and its criterion “ dance was the more elegant one so far.

ukuleleclass: very interesting ! i’ve heard of Hakim Bey but haven’t read any of their stuff. it sounds like there’s maybe specific contexts for how chaos has been used that i’m not really aware of to be honest. i’m mostly coming from a performative new materialist, transcorporeal and maaaaybr Deleuzian sense but i’m rusty on all of my ontology readings.

is the certainty and it’s criterion an essay by proudhon or a part of a larger project ?

byro1234512345: 1. So kinda a “fifth position”?

2 i mean quite a few anarchists argue that anarchism is anathema to politics it self so yeah

3 I do think we should come up with alternatives but our main priority (at least in the short term) is criticising systems

4 Hmm have some big reservations about that but I have no problem as long as you don’t pull the “Christianity wants to keep us in poverty” thing in response to Christian socialism/anarchism

5 fair

6 yep I have noticed this website is into more esoteric and exotic forms of anarchism that’s for sure

veuzi: Hmm have some big reservations about that but I have no problem as long as you don’t pull the “Christianity wants to keep us in poverty” thing in response to Christian socialism/anarchism

Not sure how that relates to what I said. But as you mentioned you being a christian anarchist in another comment, may as well give you my 2 cents on that.

For the most part, I have no particular beef with christianity, or at least not to any more degree than any other religion or even ideology. I do frequently criticize religious thinking in other ideologies and other anarchisms, specifically spooks/phantasms or fixed ideas such as “greater good”, “lesser evil”, Community with a capital C and so on. Often just to make the case, like Stirner did, that Enlightenment values, humanism and liberalism by extension can be considered as religious in their thinking as any “proper” religion despite presenting itself as secular and nonreligious. If you replace God with Man then have you really replaced God?

I of course criticize religious authority like any other anarchist, I would expect a christian anarchist to agree to that point too. As for christian anarchism specifically, I think it is a weird curiosity but not something I would treat with outright hostility despite my nihilism and rejection of heightened, fixed ideas. It’s still anarchism all the same. Not a fan of the pacifism that usually comes with it, though.

I have a T-shirt depicting a burning church (it’s a band shirt and no it’s not a black metal band) that I sometimes like to wear in public, and it gets some worried looks but also plenty of laughs.

byro1234512345: You know what those are pretty good points but the reason I brought it up is that your initial point was suggesting we should live more frugally, which is what Christianity also encourages, but many socialists and anarchists accuse Christianity of wanting to keep people in poverty so yeah...

dropdead161: Overpopulation is not a myth.

ziq: Anarchists should be for anarchy.

byro1234512345: i mean I’m pretty sure that’s in the name so...

fortmis: You’d think that would be enough.... But alas

byro1234512345: Fair

Bezotcovschina: this whole site is pretty much a harbor for unpopular to general anarchists and especially leftists opinions

byro1234512345: true although i have notice when even compared to anarchists elsewhere this site can lean on the extreme side.

fortmis: I would argue instead that a lot of anarchists elsewhere (need I say Reddit) spend a lot of their time trying to find ways to drag anarchy closer to “safer,” more mainstream left ideas, trying to bring it into accordance with systems of oppression. I think they do this because they want less work to do. they want to be able to call themselves an anarchist but they want to hold on to their old ideas.

byro1234512345: Also fair although I would put myself in the “mainstream libsoc” camp and don’t find anything wrong with that but still I can understand why some would think we’re too “soft” even if I do disagree with it at the end of the day

Bezotcovschina: “Soft” is a wrong term, I think. It implies that those who think that consider themselves “hard”, which isn’t usually a case.

byro1234512345: By “soft”I just mean not being as radical

fortmis: So what’s your answer to this question?

byro1234512345: As in an unpopular opinion? Well i have a few but I think this is definitely the most unpopular one, especially here...

I don’t like anti theism, granted that’s probably because I’m christian which now that I think about is also kinda unpopular here but still, I think they are ironically pretty dogmatic and zealous and I think even when it comes to anarchists it can quickly lead to tyranny and violence (on reddit there was a “anarchist” who deadass said there should be a “don’t say god” bill), now don’t get wrong I do agree with some of their points and I also understand that many become anti theists (especially if they’re lgbt etc) because they have been wronged by Christianity and or other religions but still, bigotry should not be answered by bigotry and hatred should not be the answer for hatred

moonlune: You’re right, that is unpopular haha

byro1234512345: yeah, i thought so although this sub reacted better then i thought it would. btw what are your thoughts on Christian anarchism??

moonlune: an anarchis approach to life make sense theologically : it’s pretty close to Jesus’ preaching. But I don’t think being christian brings anything different in a good way over regular anarchism, while locking away some of the fun.

Maybe we should call christian anarchism, anarchist christianism, to show better where their priorities lie.

byro1234512345: Tbf we see the Christian part as more of a motivation then a goal and even the more conservative members tend to take a “live and let live” approach when it comes ‘fun stuff’ and we frown on stuff like coerced or manipulated conversions

Also I think anarcho-Christianity is a better name

moonlune: Oh no by fun stuff I meant embracing eternal damnation because fuck god even if he exists, instead of accepting the one hierarchy of the divine over the mortal.

byro1234512345: Me a gnostic universalist: I Am Four Parallel Universes Ahead Of You

ziq: yea it’s almost like we’re barely social democrats at all

moonlune: U can’t be a serious anarchist or leftist (even the authoritarian ones) in 2023 and not be vegan (or at least freegan)

& it’s ok for stuff to be ephemeral

fortmis: Oooooooofff. * hides behind a curtain*

veuzi: Is there any more room behind that curtain?

fortmis: Yes, just move that pile of cheese off the chair there and take a seat!

moonlune: I hope it’s stolen cheese at least!

Bezotcovschina: dumpster dived, I think

fortmis: There’s no other way!!! Haha

Bezotcovschina: not be vegan (or at least freegan)

At least? I always perceived freegans as higher beings myself.

ziq: I think that’s just a cop out. An animal’s body isn’t being wasted because you’re not consuming it. Living beings aren’t for your consumption. Just treating captivity, death and suffering as a product, whether you pay for it or not, is gross

Ishkah: For me putting the time into dumpster diving bread with whey in it is absolutely me better achieving a goal I decided I wanted to take on with veganism, that of wanting to relate to the world with more compassion.

PSA: Don’t be taken by a colonialist, homophobic, state-capitalist, ethnic-cleansing, conservative central government that masquerades as ‘libertarian socialist’

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchism/144621/psa-don-t-be-taken-by-a-colonialist-homophobic-state>

Submitted by 107a 2 months ago in Anarchism (edited 6 days later)

[Crossposted from https://old.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/va3he8/psa_dont_be_taken_by_a_colonialist_homophobic/]

[And https://old.reddit.com/r/AnarchismZ/comments/vauxla/psa_dont_be_taken_by_a_colonialist_homophobic/]

Updated by crypto_zoomer£££--------

There’s a mountain of documentation showing Rojava is not in any way aligned with anarchist values. Their government is almost exclusively made up of foreigners (e.g., Kurds from Turkey (who have a very different culture and dialect than the Kurds from Syria & Germans). There is zero attempt to include minorities or the local population in government. They have prisons where they send citizens who break a long list of laws — including for smoking cannabis and being critical of the government. They have a police force that enforces these laws.

They engage in ethnic cleansing to change the population of villages from Arab to Kurd (this includes demolishing of Arab houses). source1 source2 source3 source 4

“Shocking video footage has emerged showing militants from the Kurdish Peoples’ Protection Units (YPG) beating, torturing and urinating on an Arab family in the city of Manbij which it occupies in northern Syria.”

They use child soldiers which means kidnapping children as young as 10 to serve the government and military.

The recruitment and use of boys (263) and girls (152) by Kurdish armed groups were also prevalent during the reporting period (12 per cent of the verified cases) and sharply increased in 2017 and the first quarter of 2018. Children as young as 10 years of age were associated with the People’s Protection Units (249), the Women’s Protection Units (137) and the Asayish male (14) and female (15) wings. Contrary to the stated policy of the People’s Protection Units and Women’s Protection Units, as further detailed below, 224 of the verified cases (54 per cent) involved children of 15 years of age or less and, overall, 398 of the verified cases (96 per cent) involved children in combat roles, armed and in uniform, including 133 girls. In July 2016, for example, two girls of between 16 and 17 years of age were posted, armed and in uniform, at a checkpoint in Kafr Jannah in the Afrin district of Aleppo. Identified as a new trend in 2017, 49 cases (12 per cent) referred to the recruitment of Arab children by Kurdish armed groups, in the context of the expansion of Syrian Democratic Forces towards territories in Aleppo, Raqqah and Dayr al-Zawr Governorates. Overall, in at least 51 of the cases (12 per cent), the recruitment of children involved an element of coercion. In June 2017, in Aleppo Governorate, for example, at least three Arab boys of between 15 and 16 years of age were taken from Ayn Daqnah checkpoint in I‘zaz district to be recruited by the People’s Protection Units and taken to a military training centre in Afrin district.

YPG brags abt killing innocent non-combatants on twitter

https://web.archive.org/web/20200710073348/https://thenation.com/article/archive/americas-favorite-syrian-militia-rules-with-an-iron-fist/

In the first year of force recruitment, local journalists produced many stories, in part because anxious parents approached them and urged them to report the news. But public protests were quickly suppressed, and independent journalism has been crushed.

In 2013 Sadun Sino began working for Orient TV, an opposition news outlet in Rojava. After reporting on a series of assassinations of Kurdish opposition figures—all of which he believed were carried out by PYD operatives—Sino began regular coverage of protests, which usually erupted when the YPG seized an underage boy or girl. Sino said he produced at least 15 reports from his hometown of Derbasi, and other reporters in Amudah and Kobani produced even more. The YPG “staged so many roundups in Derbasi that I lost count,” Sino said. “People came to me asking me to report on it,” he pointed out.

He reported on the conscription of girls, at least two of whom were under-age, and on PKK arrests of young men and women at checkpoints. “On one day in 2014, they took 40 men and boys at one checkpoint,” Sino said. “It was happening every day.” On another day, the YPG issued an order to round up 150 conscripts.

Finally, the authorities cracked down on the news coverage. “They told me that either I give up journalism and leave or they will kill me,” Sino told The Nation. After being jailed four times, he fled Rojava in January 2015.

They have government-managed capitalism which includes robber-barons and landlords who are propped up by the central government with a central economy.

They use forced labor all across society with government ministers announcing ‘all workers must work in the communal projects’ and ‘private property is sacred, the market is a main part of social economy.’ (state capitalism)

Article 41 of Rojava’s constitution enshrines private ownership: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Constitution_of_the_Rojava_Cantons

There’s a top-down dedication to patriotism and the “Kurdish land”.

There’s a clear one-party dictatorship with an undisputed leader for life who is again a foreigner (and critics of this arrangement are sent to prison or even executed). Öcalan himself once boasted: “I am the strongest man in Kurdistan, and the people regard me as a prophet.”

There’s a martyr mentality where citizens are expected to sacrifice their lives to the government, which culminated in citizens being used as cannon fodder for the American military.

Women especially are forced to be celibate and devote themselves to the glory of the government like nuns in a convent. They are taught by the government to reject feminism and adopt conservative values (Jineology). It has been alleged that Öcalan himself has raped women.

There’s institutional homophobia with punitive punishment for LGBTQ+ people:

The queer brigade had great troubles convincing the YPG officers to allow them to plant the LGBT flag in Raqqa. They finally were allowed to, but immediately after the battle everyone involved was stripped of their positions in the press/PR department, and some were sent to self-criticize in a reeducation camp. Also there was a large-scale investigation of all openly LGBT people in YPG, to gauge their “sense of discipline”.

Sources for all of the above:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-notes-on-a-public-discussion-with-a-greek-anarchist-who-volunteered-in-rojava

Backed up by this: https://libcom.org/news/report-meeting-organized-internationalist-comrades-kurdistan-01122016

The State in Rojava and the armed forces are organized so vertically, as in Stalin’s Russia, but with a libertarian mask, that they are the exact copy of the ideology developed by the PKK in Turkey.
Imitating all the bourgeois “revolutions”, they proclaim religious freedom but in fact the apparatuses of social control are accomplices of all the religions and ethnic religious separations and play a nefarious role in causing dissension, oppressing, moralizing, repressing.
In fact, Stalinist and feminist [c_z’s note: yeah, this line is weird] military and political structures simultaneously promote Kurdish nationalism, while using hymns and flags in cities, neighborhoods, schools… appearing in the eyes of the majority of the population as a minority and oppressive dominant ethnic group, what results being terribly destructive of the unity of interests of the proletariat.

PKK (a Turkish party) ‘orchestrates 90% of what is happening in Syrian Kurdistan.’ The Rojava regime, apparently, has even tried to ban the display of pictures of politicians other than those from the PKK such as Abdullah Ocalan.† They have also banned overly critical journalists.†

https://archive.ph/JcvLk

A lot of the kadro who run things politically are Kurds from bakur (North Kurdistan in turkey) they run around talking Turkish everywhere so the perception of them is often as a foreign occupying force.

https://journals.openedition.org/ejts/4925

I had joined to help people. But it wasn’t the case once you got there, you’re not allowed to question Öcalan’s orders. You’re not free... If there were a Kurdish State it would be like the PKK..

https://libcom.org/article/stalinist-caterpillar-libertarian-butterfly-evolving-ideology-pkk-alex-de-jong

Öcalan was not willing to share his authority. He demanded absolute submission to his person from the people in his surrounding and unrelentingly pushed this through. Opposition to Öcalan and his decisions was impossible and the PKK would pay a heavy price for this...

The PKK’s idea of creating a ’New Man’ was a powerful means of control as the ideal incorporated unquestioning obedience — and criticism of the ’leadership’ was seen as proof of failing to achieve this goal. Öcalan was more than a distinguished or even indispensable leader, he himself, his person, was built up to be indispensable to the liberation of the Kurdish people. As a critical observer noted his role ; ’he alone “is” the key to liberation – as opposed to just possessing it’. [29] This also explains why even after his capture Öcalan remained the leader of the movement.

https://web.archive.org/web/20200710073348/https://thenation.com/article/archive/americas-favorite-syrian-militia-rules-with-an-iron-fist/

Mohar, a Turkish-born PKK defector, said he himself mastered the operation of tanks, sniper rifles, and mortars, but his training was on the job. The PKK approach, he said, is “if you have the ideology of Ocalan, you can fight, so it’s more important to understand the ideology than the military part.”

Another PKK defector said his training had lasted three months, of which one month was devoted to military training and the rest to ideology. “Technically, the military training was very weak. But ideologically, we had very good training,” said Shiyar, a 20-year veteran now in his 40s. “They tried to work with our minds and make us ready to fight.”

https://old.reddit.com/r/Anarchism/comments/tu2ydv/der_internationalist_baran_n%C3%BBjian_ein_k%C3%A4mpfer_der/i31mjqq/

While I definitely support the Kurdish struggle can we please stop being flooded by party propaganda. They’re not anarchists nor do they pretend to be. The new paradigm isn’t even universally supported in the party. Kadro are installed at every level of civil life such as the communes and even as far as the hospitals. Their function is as the responsible who guides the locals towards the party line. Failure to adhere to the stringent ideological line is viewed as a problem with individuals them selves and their solution is further indoctrination.

There are absolutely prisons and laws in rojava. I had a friend who was incarcerated for just smoking weed. Even un sanctioned political graffiti is punishable. There’s a long texts of laws and justice that’s freely accessible at the intl commune.

There’s absolutely no attempt at any sort of social economy there and the party often collaborated with local thug like landlords. Even the so called peoples co-ops are just a fancy word for small businesses.

There a many good things but the completely inaccurate messaging coming from the party propaganda machine is just sickening. I’d highly encourage anyone to go and discover this for themselves.

I spent over a year fighting alongside other internationalist and ypg haramî taburs. These things are well known.

https://web.archive.org/web/20060508083133/https://chris-kutschera.com/A/pkk_dissidents.htm

‘One man decides everything, nobody else can say what they think. … To become a member of the PKK is like joining a religion.’

https://libcom.org/library/grim-reality-rojava-revolution-anarchist-eyewitness

This refusal of workers to cooperate with the regime may also explain why one of Rojava’s finance ministers has recently declared that ‘all workers must work in the communal projects’. As well as this apparent advocacy of forced labour, the minister also said that private property is ‘sacred’ and that ‘the market is a main part of social economy.’

As Ocalan said, female fighters should maintain ‘the refusal of any other love than that of the homeland.’

This claim that the Rojava regime has a ‘strong anti-state philosophy’ is rather contradicted by numerous statements by Ocalan himself. For example, he says: ‘It is not true, in my opinion, that the state needs to be broken up and replaced by something else.... [It is] illusionary to reach for democracy by crushing the state.’

The picture at the top of the page of Rojavan police in front of a ubiquitous portrait of Abdullah Ocalan indicates that the state in Rojava is far from crushed.

Öcalan has openly rejected anarchism.

Öcalan’s The Sociology of Freedom has been accused of being laced with anti-Semitism.

Syria: US ally’s razing of villages amounts to war crimes

In villages south of the town of Suluk, some residents said YPG fighters had accused them of supporting IS and threatened to shoot them if they did not leave. While in some cases residents acknowledged that there had been a handful of IS supporters in their villages the majority were not supporters of the group.

In other cases, villagers said YPG fighters had ordered them to leave threatening them with US coalition airstrikes if they failed to comply.

“They told us we had to leave or they would tell the US coalition that we were terrorists and their planes would hit us and our families,” said one resident, Safwan.

The YPG has justified the forced displacement of civilians by saying it was necessary for the civilians’ own protection or militarily necessary.

“It is critical that the US-led coalition fighting IS in Syria and all other states supporting the Autonomous Administration, or co-ordinating with it militarily, do not turn a blind eye to such abuses. They must take a public stand condemning forced displacement and unlawful demolitions and ensure their military assistance is not contributing to violations of international humanitarian law,” said Lama Fakih.

Video by a Syrian: Why Rojava ACTUALLY Depends on Bashar Al-Assad + Sources

The YPG has been flying Assad’s flags.

استبدلت قوات سوريا الديمقراطية “قسد”، اليوم الجمعة 10 حزيران/يونيو، أعلامها على أسطح مقراتها ونقاطها العسكرية بأعلام نظام الأسد والروس في ريفي الرقة والحسكة.‎

Today, Friday, June 10 [2022], the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) replaced their flags on the roofs of their headquarters and military points [outposts?] with the flags of the Assad regime and the Russians in the countryside of Raqqa and Hasaka.

https://baladi-news.com/ar/articles/84429

I’d like to encourage everyone to read up on the Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz (2) (3) a Syrian anarchist whose revolutionary ideas have been thriving elsewhere in Syria without maintaining a cult of personality.

Source

deeppurplehazedream: The first clue for me was “government”.

anarchyfrog: Now that the SDF is flying the regime’s flag, there’s no way any anarchist can still support them.

https://www-baladi--news-com.translate.goog/ar/articles/84429?_x_tr_sl=auto&_x_tr_tl=en&_x_tr_hl=en-US&_x_tr_pto=wapp

They’ve become just another gear in Assad’s machine, but I guess that was always the goal:

https://youtube.com/watch?v=6bVt6Ctf0lk

Potkea: Someone made a version of this with more links: https://old.reddit.com/r/AnarchismZ/comments/vauxla/psa_dont_be_taken_by_a_colonialist_homophobic/

Ishkah: I knew a lot of this already, but I’m always glad to read evidence of wrongdoing to get a fuller picture on the region. I’m particularly interested in the exporting of the process of ‘Tekmil’ back into anarchist spaces in the UK:

Tekmil is an instrument of collective reflection. The historical root of what we know as tekmil can be traced to authoritarian communist traditions, such as Stalinism. Although, Mao was the first one among these traditions to put so much emphasis and importance to the methods of criticisms and self-criticism.

— Tekmil: A Tool For Collective Reflection

I would love to do a long-term psychological study on people who went through this, what their thoughts were on their experiences 1 year later, 5 years later and 10 years later. It doesn’t half sound culty, but I’m open to the possibility it incidentally had a positive impact on most peoples lives due to there having not been any real culture of criticism in their lives at all before hand, healthy or not.

I wanted to go out there when the Syrian Civil War first started, I know people have gone over to work as doctors, farmers, architects and soldiers. I still think it would be immensely valuable for people with a strong headspace to go, come back and spread their first hand experience of the war Turkey is waging now, and any potential progress towards an anarchist society.

Here’s one piece of counter evidence about the potential increase in women’s autonomy anyways:

How our feminist ideals incorporated into their praxis because I know there’s a strong focus on feminism when anyone talks about Rojava or the Kurds?

Yes so there’s obviously the Yekîneyên Parastina Jin which is the YPJ, the women’s protection units, so that’s a big part of it, they set up a lot of women’s houses which are, it’s hard to describe, I’ve been to a couple for a short amount of time, but they’re essentially some sort of mix between family planning advice Center, domestic violence shelter and a barracks, in some cases.

Because it’s a very violently patriarchal society in many ways and so you kind of have this sort of thing where a woman will escape a forced marriage or a violent home and come to the woman’s house and the father, the brothers, the husband and his father and brothers and everything will come along to try and get them back and when a woman with a machine gun pops up on the roof, they generally reconsider.

In that sense they’re taking a very direct woman controlled approach to facing these things head-on, it’s one thing that they don’t compromise with, on economics that’s one thing, but they do not compromise on the women’s rights, and that sometimes bring them into opposition with the more you know conservative and patriarchal elements of society, but the kind of benefits are there that generally all you gas out of it is just you know the old husband’s complaining that they can’t tell their wives or daughters anything anymore.

Yeah so there’s that and in the actual councils there’s a 40% gender quota so essentially if there’s you know 60% women on a council on the larger councils there aren’t allowed to be any more there’s forty percent men as the rest the council and likewise if there’s sixty percent men then there has to be 40% women and this they will do things like you know they will delay the council meeting until all these men who have come and said oh well my wife couldn’t come because she’s busy they tell the man to go home do whatever work the woman was supposed to be doing and sent the woman to the council otherwise they won’t help them sort of thing so yeah it’s very important part of the practice and is the thing that they’re most successful at. …

There’s also things like one of my best came out in fact most of my best commanders well those out there were women very varying different levels so this is another thing at all levels of the hierarchy sort of thing there are a man and a woman with a kind of equal position but the the woman can give orders to men so you know low like my equivalent of a captain I suppose could order around the you know platoons of male soldiers in the YPG but a man cannot do the same to the woman they can suggest to the ypj that they should do something and you know often there in the interests of fighting the same war or whatever so they’ll do it but they can’t command them they can’t order them if if a if a male YPG member commits a offense against a ypj it’s the ypj and their command structure that deal with it and there’s nothing we can do about it so say this is very unlike to happen but you know men being men say a man was sexually assault a member of the ypj then the ypj could come along with their rifles and everything drag him off and punish him in whatever the way they saw fit and we won’t be allowed to raise a finger or protest you know it’s deal with not for us. …

People often joke that if you assault a ypj they could just drag you off and shoot you, and that’s not quite true but they’re a lot more likely to say platform a man where essentially they have to stand in front of like all the ypj in the region while each one lays out exactly why what they did was wrong at great length and like kind of shame of them in front of everyone that’s quite a common punishment for sort of intermediate kind of crimes or offenses or whatever crimes isn’t quite the right word for some things that you would get that kind of treatment for, but yeah.

— On the Rojavan Revolution with Josh Walker, YPG Veteran

commanderbookchin: Why do white boys get so excited at the thought of a brown girl having a seat on a council or training to use a gun or some other bullshit? Holy shit.

As for Commander Josh Walker, YPG Veteran and White Savior of Brown Women the World Over — these boys spend a lot of money going to Rojava. They need a story to tell when they come home, and ‘err, I mostly just sat in an apartment in the city sending tweets’ isn’t gonna win them any clout at their local social center.

Abdullah Öcalan played y’all.

Ishkah: I don’t really care to get into a debate with a pseudo-post-identity-politics-anarchist who is so deeply immersed in idpol that you see spooky performative idpol arguments everywhere, even when all I was doing is just positing evidence of a position along a reformist spectrum.

anarchyfrog: Here are further sources.

https://alestiklal.net/en/view/8987/the-sdf-changed-the-demography-of-the-eastern-euphrates-region-in-syria-with-american-support

(forced demographic change)

https://aljazeera.com/news/2018/3/7/un-us-backed-sdf-recruits-children

(child conscription)

https://amnesty.org/en/latest/news/2015/10/syria-us-allys-razing-of-villages-amounts-to-war-crimes/

(war crimes)

https://middleeastmonitor.com/20190729-us-backed-forces-torture-urinate-on-arab-family-in-syria/

https://middleeastmonitor.com/20190827-leaked-video-shows-kurdish-forces-torturing-young-men-in-syria/

(torture, hate crimes)

scarredd: Something else to consider:

When the well-meaning euros/yankees come home after a ‘tour’ or whatever, notice that the cops in their home states never bother them. Surely if they were all battle hardened anti-authoritarians the security forces would be all over them? The CIA etc know exactly what’s going on over there, and they know it’s no threat to them. A young Muslim man coming home from Iran, on the other hand...

RanDomino: (forced demographic change)

The fact that you’re still peddling this bullshit (your link doesn’t even explain what the specific accusation is) is enough to dismiss everything you’re saying.

TheNerdyAnarchist: Hey, comrade — I noticed you got really quiet on Reddit after your “they didn’t raise Assad’s flags” lie was shown to be...well, a lie.

What happened there?

RanDomino: I responded to that several times. For example: https://reddit.com/r/metanarchism/comments/v58yo8/ban_marxist_propaganda_accounts/ic4yj3x/

TheNerdyAnarchist: I responded to that several times.

The “nuh-uh!” argument is...less than convincing.

RanDomino: You said I “got really quiet” after that “lie”. But actually I pointed out that it was the other person who was lying. They said it was a picture of a SDF soldier replacing a YPG flag with a regime flag. I pointed out that it was an SAA soldier putting a regime flag next to a YPG flag. I directly refuted what they said.

Warhammer88: I eat anarchists for breakfast and shit commies by lunch... Gaggle of misguided wannabe hooligans who still live at home when your 35...Have no skills and are fucking Cowards...

ziq: They’re anarchists going in but your rectum turns them red? Makes sense.

what’s the deal with vegans?

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Vegan/143729/what-s-the-deal-with-vegans>

Submitted by zoom_zip 3 years ago in Vegan

someone who has slaves is a slaver

someone who rapes is a rapist

someone who tortures others is a torturer

someone who kills is a killer

there’s no word for “not a slaver”

there’s no word for “not a rapist”

there’s no word for “not a torturer”

there’s no word for “not a killer”

so why is there a word for “not any of those things”?

Ishkah: Reply to what’s the deal with vegans? by zoom_zip

I’d argue the word for “not a sexist” is a feminist, and “not a speciesist” is a vegan.

I get the point of the post is we want to work towards a world where people no longer need to identify as vegan because the whole world is vegan.

I just wanted to add that qualifier, as there are vegans genuinely arguing to give up the word or make it’s meaning more restricted than necessary. Whereas I think it has practical utility for instance to mark food in a cafe as not containing animal products, and to highlight events where you can find people to collaborate on animal liberation projects with.

The Ted K Archive

Imagining The Anarchist Library’s Visitor Guestbook

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/178777/imagining-the-anarchist-library-s-visitor-guestbook>

Submitted by ImaginationLand 2 years ago in Anarchy

If the anarchist library had bookshop cafes all around the world where you could see archivists typing away digitizing old badly scanned books, printing them out, and filling the shelves with newly restored books, what do you think the visitor’s guestbook would look like? And what note would you leave? E.g. After a day of reading and sipping sugarcane juice on a balcony looking over the Mekong river.

Origami_psych

The anarchist library is pretty well done. Clean, good enough search function, nice palette. Though the tag system could be a little better.

tigredepapel420

The anarchist library makes me so so happy, few movements are this willing and open to spread knowledge. Recently one of my friends started getting into radfem (I know) and she got on a discussion group at her school, she mentioned they had a very big and complete online library on feminism in general and when I asked her for a link to check it out, she mentioned that they do not share that kind of information to anybody, especially men, and I was astonished with that and made me appreciate anarchy even more.

Faux_Real_Guise

The Anarchist Library is hard to navigate and has even more ideological diversity— tread carefully and read about the authors in conjunction with their works or you might find yourself nodding along with Uncle Ted 😬. I think the easiest thing to do here is search or browse for topics you’re interested in.

QueenofMars321

I personally got into my theory through a Marxist pal of mine. Ended up reading quite a bit of Marx and enjoying him a bunch before getting into anarchism and falling in love with Malatestas work. I mainly read stuff from Marxists.org and the Anarchist Library. Both are fantastic resources. I would suggest Malatesta. His work Anarchy is quite good and I really like At the Cafe as well. Rudolf Rocker with Anarcho-Syndicalism: Theory and Practice is fantastic as well. For Marx I would suggest starting with the manifesto and than taking a detour into Engels with Socialism: Utopian and Scientific before going into Critique of the Gotha Program. Good luck with your journey and hopefully this helped!

AgainstSomeLogic

I have been reading some anarcho-communist writings and stuff from the anarchist library and the more I read the [censored word] it gets. Saying all crime is a result of heirarchies and capitalism so crime will not exist under anarchy and repeating for every ill of society is not terribly convincing.

R2unit69

Libcom and the anarchist library are wonderful websites that archive an enormous amount of anarchic political thought and discussion. The Anarchist Library is really robust, has a lot of documents, speeches, pamphlets, plays, transcripts, manifestos, essays.

rechelon

I have my issues with The Anarchist Library (they continue to maintain ITS communiques despite it driving off the original developer and editor) but you can download their whole 1.6 GB archive as a torrent ...

If you go to an anarchist infoshop you expect to find either exclusively anarchists or a spread of ideas that reflects who’s inside and outside the circle of discourse anarchists take as legitimate.

If there’s a wall of Maoist texts that’s just a Maoist bookstore doing entryism.

If, for instance, you’re a certain anarchist bookstore in the 80s and you stock NAMBLA periodicals, that’s not mere decontextualized “provision of information,” that’s a social statement around affinities and norms that is read loud and clear by new anarchists that wander in.

It says “we might disagree with NAMBLA but they are an established part of our discursive circle and subcultural space.” Endorsement, normalization, and legitimization is inherent. Texts are not read in isolation, they are presented in contexts that declare and enforce norms.

I’ve shared a literal stage with people whose politics I’ve vehemently opposed, but who were validly within the movement.

I’ve also repeatedly refused to debate tankies on a stage or at an event. And I’ve repeatedly made fun of Bookchin for having debated nazis on a stage.

When organizers scheduled me to debate a fascist at a transhumanist conference in 2015 I raised hell, got the panel canceled and organized attendees to leave early.

I also checked in with a couple venerable antifascist groups and asked for insight and feedback on strategy.

No Platform absolutely does not mean Don’t Read Fascists. Antifascists endlessly beg you to actually read fascists. It’s actually really annoying that anti-antifa folks don’t know much about what fascists believe and argue!

But there are ethics around how to go about that.

For instance, everyone should know about and read Bronze Age Mindset (by Bronze Age Pervert / Costin Alamariu), as it’s one of the most influential and widely read fascist texts today, shared virally among young republicans.

But you shouldn’t fucking BUY it and give him money!

Ted K has strong overlap with fascist movements and has been explicitly opposed to anarchism for decades. Yet you should know what he argues and there’s a website with a complete archive of his works, but the entire site’s framing is clearly hostile to and critical of him.

Framing matters. When you put Ted K in an “anarchist library” you’re declaring “Ted K is inside anarchism”. If you put a unnoticeable “non-anarchist” tag on it you’re declaring “still within the circle of texts we think are anarchist-adjacent, in-group and respectable enough”

There are, after all, infinite “anarchist-adjacent” things. Mao came from anarchism, but if your “anarchist” library contains every maoist text you’re normalizing maoism.

There are tons of marxists, libertarians and liberals that anarchists engage with or are influenced by...

If an “anarchist” bookstore puts The Many Headed Hydra or Mumford in the window no one’s gonna blink but if they put Mao, that’s a fucking maoist bookstore. And if they put Hayek, that’s an ancap bookstore. If you put Ted K in the window you’re gonna get a lot of fascist vistors.

Antifascists have spent decades working out the ethics and the norms around No Platforming through consideration and worldwide trial and error.

Unfortunately there were some “radicals” who studiously ignored them and then got surprised to encounter those norms in 2016.

SnowyKnave

The Anarchist Library is a really good resource for learning about anarchy but it has archived lots of weird and terrible books/publications in the past. Sometimes this is corrected, sometimes not. Like there are other pretty terrible publications on there from Leninists, the PKK and fuck knows what else.

Tequila_Wolf

In the library chat and between librarians there’s regular conversation about what should or shouldn’t be on the library. It’s mostly an open conversation with precedents based on librarians having curated the space for years. You can join the IRC and follow some of the chats.

It’s common for people to submit work and for it to be rejected, for example, because there’s a requirement that it’s published somewhere else and not just something somebody thought up and posted like the library is their personal blog. But I also know people who have gotten their work on there and who arranged to remove their work from there, for multiple reasons.

Just imagine a small collective of librarians with various anarchist politics doing what they can to maintain and curate the biggest anarchist library in history, usually as just one part of multiple anarchist projects they participate in.

ziq

The bitter book burners trying to turn librarians into censors need to stfu. The only criteria should be if the piece is anti-authority or related to anarchist culture / history. So obviously, pieces talking about diddling kids don’t belong on there because that’s pro-authority af. But if the diddler also wrote other pieces that are actually anti-authority, those pieces don’t need to be retroactively removed or have disclaimers placed on them.

The recent case of a diddler who stole some random woman’s face, used it to promote kiddy diddling and then faked that woman’s death is another story because that harms the real unknowing person who was used in his creepy game. And he also fucked over the librarians by trying to manipulate them into posting a fake obituary and kiddy diddling apologia, so they should absolutely retaliate by wiping his whole archive. That’s completely justified when someone uses you as a pawn to promote authoritarian shit like diddling and the demonization of an innocent woman whose image and identity was stolen to sell books. Letting the guy roll over them and muddy their credibility as an anarchist library would be counter to any anarchy I’m familiar with.

sisterofaugustine

There’s a reason one of the greatest anarchist sites online is called The Anarchist Library. Libraries are tools of the people. Librarians are keepers of knowledge, and so often, guardians of the weak, innocent, forgotten, and downtrodden.

TeddyArgentum

The Anarchist Library is a great and free archive of tons of socialist texts on all kinds of subjects. My personal recommendations would be An Anarchist Program by Errico Malatesta, Mutual Aid by Pyotr Kropotkin and My Disillusionment In Russia by Emma Goldman.

Source

secco: It’s you again Ishkah, isn’t it.

ImaginationLand: I’m ImaginationLand :) Fun discussion topic for some no? E.g. People can tell stories of the novel impact the online archive has had in their life.

secco: Fair enough I guess, I’ll take that approach over any of the “disrupting pipelines” shit. But I find it hard to imagine you’re not trying to prove some point in response to the recent discussion about your guestbook while once more focusing in on Ted K.

Look at it this way. I’m entirely sick of seeing Ted K mentioned on raddle.me — mission accomplished. Pipeline disrupted. Take that victory, quit your 4-d chess moves, start participating in these forums not as a deprogrammer but as an anarchist.

blackestblack: He’s a “‘disruptor”’ offering you “mental health support”, not a “deprogrammer’.”

ImaginationLand: Obvs I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. But, I hear you.

secco: This is getting ridiculous.

stacat: Help me understand what you are talking about? I’ve not kept track well enough, it seems.

SnowyKnave: tldr Ishkah and The Ted K Archive got banned for attempting to “deprogram” individualist/anticiv anarchists, “claiming brand real estate of ideologies they dont like” i.e. individualist anarchist stuffs and generally being dishonest about it all. Ishkah made lots of alts to debate people about what happened here on raddle and also they talk/complained about it on various other websites.

These are the Ishkah accounts, which you could use to read through conversations. Theres almost certainly more.

Thread on anarchist news involving Ishkah https://anarchistnews.org/content/ted-k-archives-one-year-anniversary-roundup-all-archiving-work-thats-been-done

secco: It’s the end of a two-week saga starting with my The Ted K Archive post and involving quite a number of accounts created by OP. I’m hoping maybe someone else can fill you in on some details, it’s been a real long day for me. I’ll try to add to this comment tomorrow, if needed.

ziq: You’re way too boring to be doing this still.

blackestblack: You’re never gonna take control of your workplace spending your days like this, Ishkah.

blackestblack: While you’re here, a suggestion for your Ted K Archive:

Make the top line of the front page: WE ARE PRO-TECH, ANTI-KACZYNSKI ANARCHISTS

If your project isn’t entryism, and if you are no longer trying to “hide your power level”, you’ll have no problem being honest with people as soon as they visit your site.

blackestblack: PS Hiding it in your Twitter bio (which no one reads) or your About section (which no one reads) — basically putting it in the small print — doesn’t count. If you are not trying to deceive people, you’ll have no problem making sure everyone sees that line.

ImaginationLand: While you’re here, do you feel like clarifying the reason you’re so heavily invested in this topic? Are you perhaps someone who has been banned from raddle in the past yourself? But, for something like promoting eco-extremism whilst strawmanning people, like herewegoagain?.

I think the archive would be read as solely a political advocacy project if the front page contained a by-line like that. I prefer the current by-line: “The Ted K Archive; A critique of his ideas & actions.” So, an archive of texts critiquing his ideas & actions.

Then it’s made clear that there’s a section of all his collected works which people can just read on their own if they want to.

But, that there’s also a section called Suggested Reading containing some potentially valuable lessons that can be drawn from the story of Ted K’s life. Plus, the history of political violence related to Ted K and leftist political groups in contrast.

Then a tiny bit further down: “For more information about this project click here.” which links to the about page.

Then ending in a clear statement about part of the project’s goal:

Although the views of the people Ted bombed are undoubtedly mixed on many subjects, it was reassuring reading this request by William Dennison, the last person Ted addressed a mail bomb to:

I respectfully urge the court, Your Honor, to open all the Kaczynski materials, including the decoded journals, to public scrutiny in the expectation that valuable public safety information may be obtained and used to save many lives. Academician analysts will certainly be able to draw a more accurate picture of the mind of a killer and the connections to eco-terrorism if the original materials are in their hands.

But, again, the main task we’re happy about having achieved is simply creating parallel pages for every page on the Calif. Uni. website archive of UNABOM documents. So that it’s easier to search through the various documents.

blackestblack: While you’re here, do you feel like clarifying the reason you’re so heavily invested in this topic?

I’ve posted maybe a dozen comments on this topic, so that’s half an hour of my time, top. How many hours have you sank into trying to “deprogram” random strangers on the internet? A thousand? More? Why are you so heavily invested in that?

Are you perhaps someone who has been banned from raddle in the past yourself? But, for something like promoting eco-extremism whilst strawmanning people, like herewegoagain?.

I’ve been using Raddle for less than a year. I have little to no interest in the EE tendency, nor have I ever. Believe it or not, more than one person in the world who doesn’t like what you’re doing, and they’re not all Kazsinskyites and eco-extremists.

I prefer the current by-line

So that’s a no, then. You’re not going to be honest with people. You’re going to “hide your power level” and keep trying to “disrupt” those unlucky enough to stumble across your site. I guess the one saving grace is there are very, very few of them: https://thet*dkarchive.com/stats/popular

ImaginationLand: So you mean more popular than Elephant Editions, Lib.Anarhija.net, Edizioni Anarchismo, etc. BTW for anyone curious, those aren’t page views, it’s the number of clicks on the PDF file attached in the last 30 days. You can test it out and see the number only go up when you click on the PDF.

There were people sure that Ted’s copyright lawyers would have the website taken down over half a year ago, I don’t think it’s likely we’re going anywhere anytime soon.

blackestblack: You really think your terminally-online project is more popular than Elephant Editions? Delusions of grandeur. https://activedistributionshop.org/?s=elephant+editions

But yes, you did get slightly more hits this month than anarhija.net (which hasn’t been updated in three years), and edizioni anarchismo (which is only in Italian) — neither of whom spam their sites across social media, btw — so well done you, I guess.

those aren’t page views, it’s the number of clicks on the PDF file attached in the last 30 days. You can test it out and see the number only go up when you click on the PDF.

It’s page views. Visit the page from a different IP and you’ll see the number go up, same as if you view the text in a different format from the same IP (ie. PDF).

Ecodefense still going strong on t@l, I see: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/stats/popular

ImaginationLand: I don’t know anything about Elephant Editions, I was just comparing popular stats pages because that was the tool you thought was useful enough for coming to a judgement on the popularity of TKA. TKA isn’t geared towards creating print out pamphlets as much as other amusewiki archives either.

Ted K’s life and ideas is the curiosity of a massive amount of normie liberals, that’s the majority of people I hope we can have the greatest effect of encouraging into becoming more far-left, anti-authoritarian & pro-tech: click here for a diagram.

It’s page views

Quoting magsalin, a librarian in T@L matrix chat: “Its most downloaded texts in the past thirty days”

I tried new IP page visit’s with tor, mobile, etc. doesn’t change the counter.

blackestblack: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-ecodefense-a-field-guide-to-monkeywrenching just takes longer to be counted than https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/various-authors-ecodefense-a-field-guide-to-monkeywrenching.pdf

Sorry to burst your bubble, but the number you see in stats/popular/ is the number of people who’ve followed the link to the page. There’s a thread on this on raddle somewhere where someone linked to the Amusewiki documentation.

Liberals, like their communist and fascist cousins, are pro-tech by definition. Read Ellul, instead of just throwing his name around.

ImaginationLand: Liberals, like their communist and fascist cousins, are pro-tech by definition. Read Ellul, instead of just throwing his name around.

Even if that were true, there still could be a difference between someone being slightly pro-tech vs. very pro-tech, hence could be moved over to being more pro-tech. Like the difference between being nominally pro-tech and having strong foundational arguments for being pro-tech. Maybe try actually steel-manning your opponents arguments for once in your life.

mima: there still could be a difference between someone being slightly pro-tech vs. very pro-tech, hence could be moved over to being more pro-tech

“I don’t like people turning extremist into that side so let’s make them extremist to our side instead”

Fucking creep. You cultists disgust me.

blackestblack: Every one of Ishkah’s projects amounts to him trying to answer the question: “how do I make people think exactly like me?”

The main claim of the post is that I’ve been attempting anarchist and/or anticiv entryism, but it’s just not true. I am an anarchist who has been going to Earth First! gatherings since I was 17. I also accept anticiv anarchists and anprims as anarchist. I’ve just talked about desiring to have the effect of deprogramming some Ted K fans from their dogmatic beliefs like for example when some of them glorify the Cambodian genocide.

Disrupting the pipeline

A better clarifying timeline would have included events like the fact that I lived with an ex-anarchist who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young: a text dump on Jay.

I’ve written about trying to live in doubt and stay open to the value of any meaning people happen to take away from various events in life.

They create pipeline quizzes to better learn how to draw people into luddite philosophy, we promote reading and debate them to disrupt the pipeline.

Transparency

It’s clearly stated on the front page of the website that the project is in part simply attempting to fulfill a request made by one of the people Ted sent a mail bomb to, to just help bring more clarity to the foundations of many eco-terrorists political philosophy and the psychology of people who buy into it.

There’s also a long about this project page being incredibly transparent that’s linked at the top and the first item of the Introductory Texts page linked on the front page. Explanations of the admins pro-tech beliefs are pinned to the top of the twitter account for the website and pro-tech labels are tagged to the accounts of admins on discord.

I think part of the problem is some people were in a bubble because they just weren’t on any of the platforms where the website was getting positive feedback.

Creating lots of sub-reddits

I like spreadsheeting lists of shit to de-stress, so I spreadsheeted a tonne of anarchist and vegan sub-reddits in order to create master lists of suggested anarchist and vegan sub-reddits.

As I was doing that I thought it might be nice to try and fill in the gaps of anarchist themed sub-reddits that didn’t already exist, so I created and am currently a moderator of this many subreddits (tho only 7 of them are currently above 100 members):[1]

Anarchist related: 61.
Vegan related: 41.
AntiCiv related: 14.
Misc.: 33.

Entryism is pretending to support an ideology and trying to redefine it to be something different whilst hiding within it.

Claiming branding real estate of ideologies I don’t like, making clear it’s a critique space and posting highly critical essays of said ideology is simply not entryism.

The Zerzan transcript confusion

I sent the cleaned up transcript to Zerzan to get his approval, he read at least a long way down it as he corrected the name Adam Lanza. I just made a mistake trying to clean up a confusing sentence, full of ‘urm’s’. Which subrosa acknowledged at the time was a confusingly worded sentence:

yeah… I wouldn’t... uh... argue against it, I mean if thats… uh… It’s conceivable, and uh… I think that, you know, hunter-gatherer life was more gathering than hunting, but still… uh... maybe that would be more ideal, uh [...]

I think Zerzan was struggling to form a full sentence here, emphasizing that is “more ideal” and “it’s conceivable” (given that hunter-gatherer life was more gathering than hunting), while also suggesting that it’s a bit hard to imagine (if you’re “trying to learn anything from the record” / “in terms of our evolution”. Whatever that means.)

The archive is open to suggestions

Quoting a Ted K archive librarian:

If anyone’s interested in offering clear steps for ways they think the archive could be improved, feel free to let us know. Like how we decided to take the step of splitting off a bunch of texts to create The Library of Unconventional Lives. Or how we’ve tried to keep a record of controversial texts that were rejected, censored, accepted or deleted.

Obviously the archive is a niche project. The main task we’re happy about having achieved is simply creating parallel pages for every page on the Calif. Uni. website archive of UNABOM documents. So that it’s easier to search through the various documents:

The UNABOM Taskforce Documents & Their Typed Up Copies

And a thread was opened up on r/DebateAnarchism half a year ago to hear grievances and suggestions also:

The Ethics of Online Archive Curation

[1] Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/100WNnA0jDcanb4zHdJc84p0g0y5NS_pawthGhidAAu4

What percentage of people on raddle do you think were previously banned and just came back with a new account?

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/178186/what-percentage-of-people-on-raddle-do-you-think-were>

Submitted by dynafywyd 2 years ago in lobby

And how do you feel about that?

Source

Crown_of_Frozen_Veggies: A meaty 35% and I don’t really care unless they were egregiously bigoted and didn’t show any sign of learning. Is that you, 25chars? I hope it is!

Edit: And I think more people delete their accounts due to security concerns or taking a break and come back so it looks like they have new accounts, but not really.

Circe: Percentage wise very very few. It mostly seems to be this one person, actually… /s

And do I care? I’m not an admin, I don’t have to deal with it… but in general I’m against ban evasion because the admins do have to deal with it and it’s really not fair to them. Technically if you can keep your head down, follow the ToS and not make it obvious it’s probably not a big deal… but if that’s the case the initial banning probably wouldn’t have happened anyway. And if you end up banned again do everyone a favor and stop trying.

Radriendil: Yeah, the success cases are basically invisible. If nobody can connect you to your banned account, that means you stopped doing whatever it was that got you banned. The point of banning isn’t to banish people, it’s to banish behavior. People are allowed to reform.

rot moderator: 100%

Reflections on our technological evolution

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/debate/178103/reflections-on-our-technological-evolution>

Submitted by dynafywyd 2 years ago in debate

What new level of technological development would you have strongly opposed or critiqued others engagement with had you been born into the same time period to have witnessed its emergence? And why?

For example many people would have a critique of their friend needlessly building a big fire right next to them on a hot day, making them too hot. But, more specifically, what level of technological development would you have seen as inherently worthy of strong critique and opposition because its use is always or almost always to the disadvantage of a meaningful life?

Some possible answers

3.5 million years ago: No tools
3.3 million years ago: The first tools e.g. sharp flakes of stone used as knives and larger unshaped stones used as hammers and anvils.
2 million years ago: Huts
1.6 million years ago: Hand axe
1 million years ago: Fire
900,000 years ago: Boats
500,000 years ago: Cooking
400,000 years ago: Javelins
200,000 years ago: Glue
170,000 years ago: Clothing
90,000 years ago: Harpoons
70,000–60,000 years ago: Bow and arrows
60,000 — 50,000 BC: Sewing needles
43,000 years ago: Flutes & Fishing nets
40,000 years ago: Ropes
25,000 BC: Ceramics
23,000 years ago: Fishing hooks
15,000 BC: Domestication of animals
9000 BC: Sling (weapon)
8000 BC: Agriculture and Plough
6000 BCE: Irrigation & Bricks used for construction
4000 BC: Wheel, Sailing & Sundial Clock
3500 BC: Writing systems
3200 BC: Copper
2500 BC: Bronze smelting & Salt gathering
2000 BC: Chariot
1500 BC: Iron Smelting (enabling more common use of ploughs and scythes)
500 BC: Glass
400 BC: Catapult & Cast iron
300 BC: Horseshoe
100 AD: Stirrup
850: Gunpowder
950: Windmill
1044: Compass
1250–1300: Mechanical clock
1455: Printing Press
1765: Steam engine
1804: Railways
1807: Steamboat
1826: Photography
1831: Mechanical grain harvester pulled by horses
1844: Telegraph
1876: Telephone
1876: Internal-combustion engine (soon after used in trains & cars)
1879: Electric light
1901: Radio
1903: Airplane
1926: Rocketry
1927: Television
1937: Computer
1942: Nuclear power
1947: Transistor (an electronic component that meant we could build smaller devices such as digital cameras and pacemakers).
1957: Spaceflight.
1974: The Internet.
2012: Gene editing e.g. treating muscular dystrophe with a leg injection of healthy gene cells.
2017: Artificial intelligence e.g. quickly digitalizing out of print books.
The Present
At some point soon
At some point in the future
Never stopping babyyy
Source

stacat: Anything that doesn’t imply an enriching (rather than extractive) relation to everything else.

Any weapons that allow you to have emotional distance from your target.

Any technologies where humans have to adapt to the technology rather than the technology being adapted to the humans. This is a sure-fire way to build total dependence on technology where that dependence requires colonialism and ecocide.

Probably anything that standardises in the name of efficiency. This supplements what I said in the previous point.

I’d maybe go as far as to say, pretty much anything that couldn’t be built by people if they got shipwrecked on an uninhabited island with little but a book about the plants on that island (and so didn’t already have a huge overdetermining base of technology to work from.)

roanoke10: Lungs were an egregious wrong turn. Never shoulda left the abyss.

blackestblack: 2017: Artificial intelligence e.g. quickly digitalizing out of print books.

Yeah, like THAT’S what Artificial Intelligence is being developed for.

GTFO of here with your Silicon Valley techbro optimism.

Reddit responds to “The Ted K Archive”

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchy/178573/reddit-responds-to-the-ted-k-archive>

Submitted by blackestblack 2 years ago in Anarchy (edited 4 hours later)

Just to show that it wasn’t only us uncivilized raddlers who have a problem with that project:

“I’m not really a Ted K person and don’t condone the Cambodian genocide (which I’m not familiar with), but attempting to “deprogram” people is about as creepy as attempting to “indoctrinate” people.”

“Deprogramming might be seen as gas lighting.”

“They claim to be transparent about the fact that they’re pro-tech but they’ve approached many anti-tech people without disclosing this and attempted to get them to act against their interests.”

“They just want you doing nothing, while believing what they want you to believe.”

“The people behind that site seem to think they’re taking down the big “eco-extremist” bad guys, it’s childish.”

“The people behind that site are very underhanded and utterly bizarre. You’d think they’d spend their time on trying to actually establish their little socialist technotopia rather than besmirching a relatively niche ideologue.”

Source

StealThisW: “The people behind that site seem to think they’re taking down the big “eco-extremist” bad guys, it’s childish.”

Dept of funny ironies: The person who left this comment has been involved in actual liberal entryism, by heavily moderating the conversations on r/juststopoil in favor of their comments promoting Ted K’s vanguardism. They’ve now restricted the subreddit and stopped anyone posting to it for over 3 months.

You appear to have had no compunction about collecting quotes from places like r/tedkaczysnki to compile this small list of reddit quotes you approve of. If you could have found them, would you also have had no compunction about collecting a bunch of quotes from r/ecofascism to display triumphantly?

At least when I collect quotes from places like r/tedkaczysnki it’s to show both the people praising and critiquing the archive. And I’m not always over the moon about the people praising the website either. Like there’s an Italian book publisher using the archive to translate all Ted’s works, but, such is life.

That’s the absurdity of these ‘exposes’ — trying to twist things I’ve openly said about just desiring that my projects influence some people to see the appeal of my political philosophy — I’m not at all 100% confident that the project will have a net good impact on the world. I mainly just wanted to pursue a niche interest that captured my curiosity:

>>How/when did you decide to bomb?

>... I will give you a partial answer by quoting what I wrote for my journal on August 14, 1983 ...

However, Ted had already sent 7 bombs by this point, and as discussed earlier, had set off in his car with the plan to murder a scientist before he ever even moved to Montana. So, I think statements like this have contributed to a mythology around Ted that he was an ‘academic savant who rejected society to live in the wild, and only struck back at technology because of its continued encroachment on his wilderness life’. But obviously, the timeframe for Ted feeling lost and first planning to kill started long before that.

Interestingly, I think this archetypal mythologising is a mirror image of Euro-American narratives of the ‘last wild Indian and the noble savage’. The ‘noble savage’ is admired for starting out a Wildman fighting a justified war against his oppressors and who then becomes someone who could teach the white man his wisdom; whereas Ted is perceived by some as having gone in the opposite direction, of being someone who had all the capabilities and drive to become well accomplished academically early on in life in advanced society, but who chose to reject society to go into the wilds and fight a ‘justified war’.

Regardless of the truth or usefulness of these noble savage stories, when we see people who even vaguely resemble them, they are often very emotionally impactful because it’s a striking reminder on such an intuitive level that this fight to preserve wildlife habitat and low-impact ways of living are being lost. How we have failed to organize well-thought-out and sufficient resistance to the powers that bring about this environmental destruction.

blackestblack: They’re from /Anarchism, /Green_Anarchism, /anarchoprimitivism, /anarcho_primitivism, /anprimcontent, and /tedkaczysnki.

The one from /tedkaczynski is: “They claim to be transparent about the fact that they’re pro-tech but they’ve approached many anti-tech people without disclosing this and attempted to get them to act against their interests.”

I will do one for anews and t@l soon. Needless to say, your project wasn’t met with the glowing praise you expected there either.

yawn: BTW, the person I quoted was the person from /tedkaczynski, you just quoted them twice. Usually when I want to show two quotes from the same comment I just put a ‘...’ in between them, so people don’t confuse them for two different people’s opinions.

Anyway, the point was there’d be a different take away for many anarchists if it was for example eco-fash complaining about being unfairly critiqued than an anarchist complaining about the same thing.

But, either way I commented to try to get them to evidence or expand on their claim that I ‘attempted to get many anti-tech people to act against their interests’, but they didn’t reply.

It was probably something as innoccous as the project sending a website update to a bunch of people including anti-tech people on the long shot idea that there could potentially be collaboration on small stuff like working together on a complete list of titles of essays that Ted had written. Like that we could name rare essays sent to newspapers that not many people know about and other people might simply know the titles of some we don’t know about.

yawn: your project wasn’t met with the glowing praise you expected there either.

Nice attempt at mindreading, but my entire life’s modus operandi has been been not being afraid to exist in ways that happen to court controversy and simply noticing whether people will treat my actions with an open mind or not regardless. So, seeing whether people act neutrally/virtuously in situations where there’s no incentive to be charitable, not only in the few circumstances in life where being virtuous is explicitly incentivised:

blackestblack: So what’s with thetedkarchive’s guestbook where you copy and paste out of context quotes about how great your project is, and a handful of the most mild critiques you could find?

Will you be including the above quotes in the guestbook?

yawn: I created it because I was amused with people saying they thought the project had likely not received any public praise and so I thought it’d be funny to pop that echo chamber bubble for people.

And for sure I’ll keep adding to it.

blackestblack: Yah it really burst my bubble to hear that techbro e-grifter William Gillis doesn’t like critiques of technology.

BTW, most of the comments in your “‘visitor’s guestbook” are just random quotes about Ted K that you found on social media and are nothing at all to do with your project.

yawn: Do you feel like backing up that claim with one example?

Every comment on there in the praise/critique sections are talking about their experience with visiting the archive.

Then there’s a section of other notes of take aways people have had from visiting and reading various pages on the site, or stories people have only told because it’s a discussion thread under a link to something engaging on the archive or stories people have told because they’ve found a text they could only find on the archive and want to link it and talk about it.

blackestblack: stories people have told because they’ve found a text they could only find on the archive

Your archive is 90% copied and pasted from The Anarchist Library (without ever crediting them)

yawn: lol so that’s a no you can’t back up your claim.

And nope again, there’s a 23% cross-over on last count. And about 50 of those texts were first archived on TKA and then were added to T@L by me or someone else. And I plan to mass add at least a 100 more as I did a spreadsheet comparison, and showed them a table of texts that are currently on TKA which they might like to have and they’ve so far said yes to 68 of them.

Source for all the numbers above: AmuseWiki Archives Comparison Spreadsheet

T@L has published lots of texts we submitted that were first archived on TKA, such as books by Ellul, James C. Scott, Novatore, Tolstoy, various green anarchist texts, etc. And there’s lots more we just haven’t got around to submitting. We’ve also been on hand to help with fixing the formatting of texts other people submitted.

We also link to T@L in the ‘Related projects’ tab at the top.

We’ve created some guides for how to speedily archive documents with word365, ABBYY fine reader and google sheets. And we plan on making more.

The website definitely forks off a chunk of T@L texts with the aim of publishing many of the texts in a more responsible way and then archiving tangentially related side reading to show the context various books and essays are written in.

For example, there used to be an essay on T@L called ‘The Anarchist Response to Crime’, but then when Bob Black wrote a response to it, it was taken down. My guess is because then it could also be found as an appendix to Bob’s essay and that maybe some librarians preferred solely that item on the shelf as a way of finding the original essay.

And then in other situations, it feels like it’s worth it to some librarians to see non-anarchist texts on the library like ‘Against the Worldbuilders’ archived twice, as part of a compilation of essays and also as a stand alone essay.

But, it’s all good, that’s why it’s nice to have a diversity of collections like lib.anarhija.net and others.

blackestblack: The whole last section of the guestbook (half the page) is just random stuff you found after searching “Ted K”. Eg. “Jakegender: Remember when Ted Kaczynski said “I’m sorry women” for real?”

How is that a guestbook? A guestbook is somewhere people leaves messages for you. Again, you want your project to appear much bigger and important than it really is, and that YOU, of course, are a VIP doing Very Important Work. It’s typical manipulative behavior.

yawn: Swing and a miss, the comment shows up when you search thetedkarch__ive.com as the person hyperlinked the archive. (you just need to delete ___, just added it to avoid raddle’s censor.)

Amusewiki doesn’t appear on the surface very user friendly for things like this, but I enjoyed creating a collection of notes people made about their experience visiting the archive anyway, hence visitors guestbook.

Don’t let the facts keep you from finding other ways to build up a big spook in your mind though. The big scary archive that you thought was 90% copy pastes, even though it’s only 20% forked off from T@L.

blackestblack: Sign my guestbook? No? That’s okay, I’ll just sign it myself! Under your name, of course.

blackestblack: like lib.anarhija.net and others

You keep namedropping the anarchistlibraries and theanarchistlibrary projects as if yours has anything to do with them. Those projects are ran by anarchists, for anarchists. Your project is the equivalent of one of those libraries being ran by Stalinists and being made up of mostly texts about how terrible anarchists are.

Personally, I think anarchistlibraries.net showed very poor judgement in hosting your site, although no doubt you were deceptive in how you presented your project to them last year before it got off the ground. Surely it’s only a matter of time before they pull the plug.

The Anarchist Dimension of Liberation Theology

Post Link:
<theanarchistlibrary.org/library/linda-h-damico-the-anarchist-dimension-of-liberation-theology>

Submitted by ImaginationLand 2 years ago in books (edited 4 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20220817172515/https:/raddle.me/f/books/178783/the-anarchist-dimension-of-liberation-theology>

This is a newly restored out-of-print book that was also the author’s thesis. And here’s the synopsis:

While studies have shown the close connection between liberation theology and Marxism, no one has probed the relationship between liberation theology and anarchism. This study will show that in many of its most prominent themes liberation theology has an anarchist dimension. Its particular ethical concern with freedom, justice, equality, and love, its denunciation of political and economic structures of domination, its emphasis on action, its championing of all oppressed people, its realistic consideration of the issue of violence, and its vision of a future free from all servitudes reveal an indebtedness to anarchism.

This study will also examine some of the sources that have helped lead liberation theology in an anarchist direction. The anarchist elements in the Bible, the example of primitive Christianity, the example of popular religious movements, the progressive elements within the Church, the anarchist components of Marxism, and the influence of certain Latin American political activists and theoreticians have all contributed to the anarchist dimension of liberation theology.

Source

existential1: Haven’t read it, but I do have experience w/folks who sub to libtheo. Honestly, it’s one of those things where folks mostly agree with principles of anarchism but cannot concede their faith in God and the community they’ve come to know/have experience with.

In utopia(tm), sure, xtians are problematic for a lot of reasons and you’d prefer to associate only with folks who’ve left that attatchment behind, but in the world we all inhabit as it is, you’ll find common ground with these folks on a lot of stuff. And some things you’ll never find agreement with...ie...the “No God” part of “No Gods no Masters”.

The Ted K Archive

Source: <web.archive.org/web/20231126152145/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/177748/the-ted-k-archive>

Submitted by subrosa on Nov 15 2023 in lobby (edited 15 minutes later)

About two years ago Ishkah got very worried about people getting lost down the eco-purist rabbit hole!.

Prepared with a graph, Ishkah came to explain how eco-extremism amounts to taking pleasure in terrorizing people, and how the path away from all this horrifying nihilism is to dig your way back to reality. Meaning away from anti-tech revolutionaries as they would still take pleasure in terrorizing symbols of technological progress. Then, away from primitivists and anti-civ preppers as those groups are waiting for a Mad Max scenario to unfold. Away from the vulgar insurrectionists who want to seize control and find each other by shooting cops. And away from all the other nutty fringe ideologies until you finally arrive back at the surface again. The surface being libertarian socialism of course. And sometimes, social anarchism.

The larger text here is Disrupting the purist anarchist pipeline (itself apparently a chapter of the “Ultimate Ted Kaczynski Research Document”) which critiques many dangerous tendencies — and suggests possible ideologies for the task of “disrupting a person’s journey down the pipeline.”

Ishkah then created about 100 subreddits to cover every possible anarchism, every related practice and interest that came to mind. To make sure ex-primitivists can share their stories on r/exprim (for something like r/exjw I imagine), and to make sure that r/AntiCiv will be a debate subreddit open to all perspectives and points of view, with pro-tech Ishkah as moderator.

Around that same time, Ishkah reached out to John Zerzan to ask for an interview to be published on their youtube channel. When the transcript got posted to anarchistnews.org, a user noted that

[Zerzan’s] lack on knowledge was disappointing. That Zerzan would so confidently state that “hunter-gatherer life was more hunting than gathering” is laughably incorrect and perhaps shows the sources he studied are literally decades old.

Once pointed out the Zerzan actually said the exact opposite, Ishkah insisted

I didn’t mess up, I’m 90% confident he meant to say hunting not gathering and just didn’t realise he said it wrong.

Despite it not making any sense in the context of the conversation. [Since then conceded, Ishkah corrected the transcript.]

Ishkah is behind The Ted K Archive, which very recently celebrated its one year anniversary. According to the announcement, among its other successes the library celebrates having archived...

Documents analyzing the effect [Ted Kaczynski] had on the public’s understanding of radical environmentalists, anarchists, terrorists, criminals, the mentally ill & simple mental neurodivergence.

And the pro-tech people of this library are hoping that...

the website will continue to draw people in with similar politics to him and similar mental health issues frankly. Then for the cold hard reality of the primary source reading material, the epic-ness of the suggested reading material and the inviting discussion spaces connected to the website, to all have a deprogramming effect and be a mental health support.

Further down in the anniversary announcement The Ted K Archive recommends a number of “guides to Ted K and his philosophy”. The first link leads to a transcript of a youtube video from the true crime / mystery channel Unpredictable. While the fifth link leads to A Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought, just in case we imagined we’re talking about Ted Kaczynksi specifically. To be sure, the deprogramming and mental health support is to be provided to anyone not already on board with pro-tech social anarchism.

For this and for other reasons that I probably shouldn’t share, I need to say I have very little respect and even less patience for the Ted Kaczynski spamming on raddle.me.

ChaosAnarchy: great research @subrosa

blackestblack: tbf ppl on anews called out Ishkah’s creepy project on day one.

Subrosa has taken it to the next level though. I had no idea about all those subreddits. Jeesh.

ziq: I should really pay more attention to what gets posted here.

Lettuce: That’s why the Ted K archive exists! Wow I had no idea. I just assumed they really really liked Ted K. Tha is for pointing out the connection this is very hilarious

blackestblack: I just assumed they really really liked Ted K

That would make sense, wouldn’t it? Like it would make sense for the moderator of https://reddit.com/r/AntiCiv to really really like anti-civ, right? But no, it’s just Judge Ishkah again, making sure the anarkiddies don’t think any bad thoughts.

SnowyKnave: The essay on “Disrupting the purist anarchist pipeline” is terribly flawed and I detail some of the issues below. Sorry for the ultra long post. Im not even an anprim or a postleftist this just really annoyed me.

The whole section on “Far right courting post leftist” with the only citation being fucking Alexander Reiss Ross is already a very shit start. Im not going to dismiss the arguments just on the basis of who they were written by. Im going to dismiss them because they are shit. But assuming good faith is ridiculous even at this early stage.

accompanied by a synthesis of individualism and collectivism that rejected left, right, and center in favor of a deep connection with the earth and more organic, tribal communities as opposed to humanism, the Enlightenment tradition, and democracy. That post-left texts included copious references to Stirner, Nietzsche, Jünger, Heidegger, Artaud, and Bataille suggests that they form a syncretic intellectual tendency that unites left and right, individualism and “conservative revolution.” As we will see, this situation has provided ample space for the fascist creep.

Anarchism rejecting collectivism because it is authority has been consistent for a very long time. Anarchists rejecting democracy is nothing new (because its authoritarian). Even Proudhon was anti democracy on this basis from some of the earliest anarchist texts. Postleftists do talk about Stirner, Nietzche and Bataille a lot I guess and individualist philosophers are well talked about among the post left. But individualism is not right wing — regardless of how hard libertarians try to take the label. “Conservative revolution” is as far as I can tell a strawman concept. Ive never heard of any postleft anarchist arguing for this, let alone be a mainstream concept within the movement. Postleft isnt a synthesis of left and right wing, its a rejection of them both. Misanthropic stuffs is again not fascists. Fascists are generally pretty pro human and progress, at least from their books Ive read and my conversations with them.

quick and dirty critique of anprim

I want to write a critique of the original text in another commnent. This is just me critiquing how the text was used in disrupting the purist pipeline.

The critique of the inevitability of collapse in the “disrupting the purist pipeline” text is wild because it assumes that collapse is purely speculation. Every society, every empire, every civilisation collapses. This is as inevitable as death. On the inevitability of collapse caused by anthropogenic ecocide, we are already living through a very very large mass extinction. This isnt some hypothetical far off dystopia, this is an ongoing collapse that has been going on and accelerating for a very very long time. Even the end of the quick and dirty critique acknowledges this to some extent.

Many commentators have noted the turn of our milieu towards treating depression, anxiety and other mental health issues as the essential experience of our radicalism

Calling people who see the exploitation/authoritarianism in industrial society, or misanthropic people, mentally ill/depressed and dismissing them based on this is so ableist.

With the broader insight and perspective provided by science and global communication we finally have an opportunity to repair the mistakes of past generations as we move asymptotically towards greater understanding of our world and thus greater agency within it.

Science and global communication are tools. They dont necessarily even provide greater understanding or agency. Certainly, science can be applied in liberatory ways. But also academia is an institution which maintains the status quo, and the science done within its walls are also largely done in that light.

People who identify as left anarchists differ from most other anarchists in a purely surface level way, in that when asked how we identify politically, we desire to make a pragmatic optics decision, in explicitly making clear that we’re both leftists and anarchists. That way for now, anchoring the term anarchist explicitly to a mainstream struggle of left vs. right economic & egalitarian politics.

Proceeds to pragmatically vote starmer or something lmao. Im not even really a postleftist but thats very cringe.

This does however put us at odds with one small group of anarchists who identify with the term post-left anarchy, in that we desire to engage in tactical left-unity on the big-tent campaigns of the present, even though we do still value forming solely anarchist campaigns and planning uniquely anarchist strategies as well. So, the term can also help identify us as being in the majority camp of anarchists who simply are not post-left anarchists, and don’t hold to purely post-left values.

Left Unity (where I define multiple different political groups under the umbrella of the ‘left’ form an organisation) has nearly never ended well for anarchists — see the Russian Revolution, Spanish Civil War or even just go to a left-unity social media space. The anarchist voices will be marginalised and overriden for a variety of reasons, namely that the most radical positions will have the least institutional support. Ive never met anyone who holds “purely postleftist” values.

Entryism! Called it! Please consider not doing that.

Despite holding some anti-pragmatic positions like ‘conscientiously abstaining’ from voting

Called it again. Its not that I dont vote because Im some purist — sometimes I have to engage in authoritarian behaviour I dont like such as engaging in capitalism. I dont vote because I view all candidates and parties as imperialist genocidal warmongering ecocidal people that I think its unethical to support even symbolically. I dont vote because the impact of my vote for any of the candidates is indistinguishable to not voting — especially considering how chaotic society is. I dont vote because I would rather spend the time in bed. I dont vote because electoralism is one of the biggest inhibitors of social change. I dont vote because fuck democracy.

Honestly though, there may one day be a time where I vote. Like idk in a referendum on something I find really important. But I also acknowledge the vast majority of people are misogynistic racist imperialist queerphobic nationalist shitheads and that whatever I support is unlikely to ever be popular regardless of how hard I vote.

violence

Ive left out discussing violence till now which is a central theme of the text a. for legal reasons. b. because attitudes to violence vary wildly between authors. There is largely no trend or theme beyond a general distaste for it among anarchists — even nihilists.

SnowyKnave: ——— A quick and dirty critique of Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought.

The reality is that the collapse of civilization in a permanent Endgame sense is not guaranteed in the slightest. In fact while there is much that is brittle about our current infrastructure, it is the supposed guarantee of civilization’s collapse that has grown increasingly brittle. Collapsists love to rattle off the array of peaks or potential catastrophes as though multiple arguments that are interrelated are stronger than one. It would only take the maturation of a single technology to derail the whole thing. Get cheap energy from fusion or solar panels and you can spend that energy to process and recycle metals, averting peak metal in the process. Get cheap metals and harvesting wind, solar, etc suddenly becomes trivial.

Lets define civilisation. I quite like this definition: “ A civilization is any complex society characterized by the development of the state, social stratification, urbanization, and symbolic systems of communication beyond natural spoken words”. Idk why any anarchist would want a developed state, social stratification and classes but whatever, the focusses here are on the “complex society” parts.

If we had supercool hightech future technology maybe humanities relationship with the environment would be different. But we dont. On recycling metals to make more sustainable infrastructure: Its a more sustainable use of technology sure, but it does little to actually stop ecocide. In spite of global efforts to reduce climate change, the advent and adaption of green technology, CO2 in the atmosphere keeps going up. Rather, I think a view of green technology as largely green-washed movement is more accurate (but still ofc somewhat better than say a brown coal power plant).

Furthermore, the argument that we need better technology to stop the ecological crisis is very flawed because we dont need new technology to solve these issues at all. With existing technology, we can already recycle solar panels and build a much more sustainable powergrid that doesnt depend on fossil fuels, mining or whatever. The solutions are already there, people just wont do them. People will continue being consumers in a plastic throwaway economy that dominates their environment because its where their class interests lie, in the same way billionaires will keep on maintaining the domination of lower classes because thats where their class interest lie.

Multiple arguments are stronger than one in terms of collapse of complex industrial society because the issues compound. Warming the world 2–4 degrees would not nearly be as disastrous if mass extinctions, habitat loss, urbanization, domestication, poisoning of the oceans and the land ect were not all simultaneously occurring.

Meanwhile experts agree that we already have sufficient technology to mine asteroids and — aware of this as well as many asteroids with such abundances of rare metals as to crash global markets or create near post-scarcity — billionaires have been investing in asteroid mining companies. Imagine every mine on the planet shuttering, every mountain top removal project packing up. But again, like every other major technological development going back to satellites, the only response primitivists can muster is to say “science fiction” as sneeringly as possible.

To mine asteroids at scale sustainably and economically seems impossible for now and the foreseeable future. The amount of fuel alone required to take a whole mining operation into space is so astronomical (lol) that its unviable. Why would any corporation send an ultra expensive mission to the asteroid belt and back to mine for resources, when they can just take the resources from the earth at a fraction of the cost with less risk (beyond as a novelty). Not to mention how dreadfully bad for the environment, and authoritarian, the whole space industry is. Pretending this is an immediate solution to environmental collapse, or a viable solution at all, is really shitty. Billionaires investing in something is not a good way to tell whether a whole civilization could function off its use. Sorry i meant to say “science-fiction”, regardless of what some experts say.

Brazil for instance is almost entirely run on hydroelectric power.

Please dont greenwash hydroelectric power.

An Endgame collapse is certainly a possibility worth considering seriously, but it is not an inevitability. It is also a possibility we must fight to our dying breaths.

Rather than putting faith into hypothetical future technologies and civilization metanarrratives, who are made at the terms of governments, billionaires, corporations and industrial society as a whole, we can do so on our own terms as real people. Anarchists are fighting the ongoing collapse in spite of what we see as inevitable collapse, with rewilding, community gardens, *******ing, foraging and so much more.

In public primitivists are always quick to retreat to the claim that they don’t want to kill seven billion people, there’s just literally nothing we can do to stop........ very quickly a lot of them will revert to angry declarations that they’d blow up any possible fixes to the collapse.

I feel the principle issue is that these fixes arent fixes at all and rather greenwashed protech authoritarianism, rather than underlying inclinations of misanthropic mass murder.

Our only hope is carbon negative technologies — technologies that as a byproduct take carbon out of the atmosphere and into a more permanent form. Thankfully there’s a vast diversity of avenues by which we can do this, many of which are in production and use already. Some rather advanced, some stunningly simple. Algae are what originally pulled the CO2 out of the air over millions of years and made our atmosphere breathable. If the feedback process of global warming continues unabated algae blooms in the ocean risk destroying ocean life and creating toxic consequences. Some of my favorite carbon negative technologies generate algae in controlled systems — before algae blooms in the wild destroy even more — in ways that generates energy. The byproduct being both energy for our technologies and trapped carbon. The calculus is changing as the happenstance technologies that were normalized the last couple centuries change. With carbon negative technologies the more energy we consume, the less CO2 in the atmosphere.

Dont reduce the ongoing environmental collapse to just CO2 in the atmosphere or global warming. Saying that, algae systems could be worthwhile to consider in some environmental efforts.

In order for a series of chemical reactions to release energy overall, more energy should be in the products bonds than the reactants (as breaking bonds costs energy). Within CO2, the carbon oxygen double bond has 799 kj/mol bond which totals to 1598 kj/mol for the entire molecule. This is a very high amount of energy per bond, especially compared to other bonds using carbon and such a small molecule, and thus pretty much any reaction using CO2 is going to be endothermic — i.e. the reaction will cost energy. This is also obvious because CO2 is a product of high energy yield combustion reactions. (This is not to say co2 cannot be reacted with, just that it costs energy to do so. Trees get energy from sun ect. For context this paragraph was saying we need new technology and more civilization, not rewilding and reductions in consumption)

“With carbon negative technologies the more energy we consume, the less CO2 in the atmosphere.” + “Our only hope is carbon negative technologies” = “There is no hope”

This response should be highly illustrative of just how paper thin and superficial the fig leaf covering their genocidal misanthropic aspirations are. Primitivism is just another Marxism where you let “inevitable” material conditions do your slaughtering and gulaging for you.

Next to noone wants or is working towards billions dead. But ignoring material reality, class interests of civilizations ect when it comes to the environment is well... idealist and purist.

blackestblack: Brazil for instance is almost entirely run on hydroelectric power.

Anyone else not buying William Gillis’s “I used to be a primitivist, but then I saw the light and now I love tech” shtick? If he’d read anything from primitivists ever he’d know how destructive megaprojects like dams are. If he didn’t want to take Earth First! etc’s word for it, he could speak to the Brazilians who actually live near the dams.

“I used to be THAT, but now I’m THIS, so if you don’t like THAT, you must like me!” is a grift as old as time.

wind, solar, etc

Shilling for fossil fuel+! Shameless

There really isn’t. This kind of techno(techbro)-optimism is a religion at this point.

ziq: Yeah it’s just a milder form of entryism. That guy lies through his teeth to push his ideology all the time, and has been caught out countless times (like when he accused A! of being a rapist), so I have no doubt he was never really any kind of anticiv anarchist.

blackestblack: Alexander Reiss Ross

THAT’S SPECIAL AGENT ROSS TO YOU, CIVILIAN!

SnowyKnave: Is this a ziq alt

blackestblack: nope

SnowyKnave: sorry for the accusation. you just had pretty similar writing styles/themes and i jumped to conclusions

blackestblack: Calling people who see the exploitation/authoritarianism in industrial society, or misanthropic people, mentally ill/depressed and dismissing them based on this is so ableist.

sounds like you need “”””“deprogramming”””””! six months in the psych-ward for you!

blackestblack: With the broader insight and perspective provided by science and global communication we finally have an opportunity to repair the mistakes of past generations as we move asymptotically towards greater understanding of our world and thus greater agency within it

You know who had a great understanding of their world and great agency within it? Aboriginal Australians.

/u/Ishkah are you going to reply to this good faith response to your essay? Or are you going to just keep telling us over and over how thetedk*rchive.com was a great idea actually. It’s been 3 days.

OnlyCirceOus: I don’t think they can anymore. Just as well IMO since they weren’t actually responding to such anyway. 🤷‍♀️

SnowyKnave: I never really expected a response tbh. Was more me publicly being annoyed at them.

blackestblack: deprogramming and mental health support is to be provided to anyone not already on board with pro-tech social anarchism

WOOP WOOP it’s the sound of ishkah’s psych-police!

SnowyKnave: Wow. So this is basically anticiv entryism?!

Ive got a lot of thoughts about this that i wanna discuss but its taking me some time to formulate them and im getting pretty tired

But your response to Ishkah 2 years ago was very cool.

blackestblack: i wanna discuss

be wary of discussing this with ishkah himself as he will quote you out of context on his website for all to see, even if it was a private conversation: https://shh.anarchyplanet.org/node/70

SnowyKnave: Nah Im not gonna criticise anyone privately. I dont really see the value in doing that.

Also also quoting me (a weird internet loser) would be funny af

blackestblack: Ishkah then created about 100 subreddits to cover every possible anarchism, every related practice and interest that came to mind. To make sure ex-primitivists can share their stories on r/exprim (for something like r/exjw I imagine), and to make sure that r/AntiCiv will be a debate subreddit open to all perspectives and points of view, with pro-tech Ishkah as moderator

thetedkarchive (an archive of texts that mostly have nothing to do with ted k) is basically Ishkah one upping himself on this reddit bizareness

ziq: Wow, that’s wild. They always rubbed me the wrong way but also bored me to tears so I never bothered to actually read their shit. Should I ban them and add their creepy site to the censor?

subrosa: I had them banned from f/lobby but lifted it a day later (because the posts did get some upvotes, hardly any pushback), which then prompted me to write this ‘justification’ for the ban. Given Ishkah’s persistence in ignoring all criticism (or taking it as invitation to double down and link some more), I’ll just say I wouldn’t miss any of it.

ziq: Banned for entryism and added both thetedkarchive and their wordpress to the censor.

blackestblack: While I’m usually against banning and the like, I do appreciate that you can’t have a forum at all if people are consistently posting in bad faith. Online conversation depends on people saying what they mean, not ‘hiding their power level’

ziq: I probably wouldn’t have banned if they had stuck to some out of the way forum like f/fuckted, but they got greedy and were always spamming f/lobby for maximum visibility. Always annoyed me seeing that crap here, and finding out it was a troll campaign to deradicalize anarchists cemented the ban.

Ishkah: Meh, a better clarifying timeline would have included events like the fact that I lived with an ex-anarchist who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young: a text dump on Jay

I’ve written about trying to live in doubt and stay open to the value of any meaning people happen to take away from various events in life.

SnowyKnave: trends in the way some people travel down political rabbit holes to find simple answers to life’s questions.

I really don’t think the more individualistic/anti industrial anarchist critiques give simple answers to lifes questions. If anything imo it gives more and more philosophical questions revolving around your own life.

blackestblack: Meh, a better clarifying timeline would have included events like the fact that I lived with an ex-anarchist who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young

i knew this one guy who read a Dangerous Book by some really Bad People and then he LITERALLY DIED! I’m trying to save you! Like and subscribe!

TheTedKArchive: If anyone’s interested in offering clear steps for ways they think the archive could be improved, feel free to let us know. Like how we decided to take the step of splitting off a bunch of texts to create The Library of Unconventional Lives. Or how we’ve tried to keep a record of controversial texts that were rejected, censored, accepted or deleted.

The UNABOM Taskforce Documents & Their Typed Up Copies

blackestblack: Imagine The Anarchist Library was ran by anti-Anarchists who offered “mental health support” to everyone who visited The Anarchist Library expecting to find Anarchist texts.

sadie_killer: anarchist crisis centres

TheTedKArchive: Could you not even try coming up with new and better arguments? Already answered this a year ago.

Obviously that wouldn’t be ideal, as anarchy isn’t as cringe as Ted K is. But, if the first person to have the energy to create an archive of anarchist texts happened to desire to load the site with long table of contents sections of suggested reading anarchists wouldn’t like, I would still appreciate the work that went into archiving a lot of anarchist writing. Since if it was anything comparable to The Ted K Archive, the texts written by anarchists would be clearly findable in their own table of contents section linked on the main page.

Rather than moaning about why The Ted K Archive hasn’t been deplatformed, you could easily simply create rival projects for what you would like to see in the world. You could even buy thetedkarchive.org domain and mirror every anti-civ text on this website and delete the rest. All the software is open source and pages open to mirroring and downloading, so you could do it within a few hours work if you have anyone who ever sat through computer programming lesson in school. None of us had to suffer through that thank Zeus, but we’re grateful to the people who did, who decided to host thetedkarchive, and who don’t feel they need to agree 1000% on every editorial decision.

Again, it’s comical how calling the website ‘the’ ted k archive and including social anarchist texts has made it possible for teddites to relate to how pissed off the social anarchists were when ITS texts got added to ‘the’ anarchist library.

It’s obviously a funny dig at Ted K fans to claim to have ‘the’ best collection of reading on Ted K, when the collection includes tons of critiques of the dude. Anarchy doesn’t deserve that kind of dig, Ted K does.

SnowyKnave: If anyone’s interested in offering clear steps for ways they think the archive could be improved, feel free to let us know

Sure Ted sucks more than most anarchists do. But then calling people who critique you after you explicitly asked for critique “moaning” and saying if you dont like it just buy it/do it yourselfis very cringe. Most people here dont really care about Ted K very much and it would be weird of us to care imo, and hosting an explicitly pro Ted website sounds like a quick way to get shutdown and go to prison.

If you dont want to be criticised then dont ask to be — or better yet just be more honest to your potential users about the intentions of the website. I also think calling your critics Teddites is pretty harmful to everyone involved — like why would you want to create that binary in the first place even from a pro-tech perspective?

TheTedKArchive:

calling people who critique you after you explicitly asked for critique “moaning”

I didn’t say people who critiqued me were moaning, I said the person who has been moaning on multiple platforms about how indigent they are that we haven’t been de-platformed was moaning: “Rather than moaning about why The Ted K Archive hasn’t been deplatformed”.

just be more honest to your potential users about the intentions of the website

In what way aren’t we? The front page of the website states clearly that we consider that the project is in part attempting to fulfill a request made by one of the people Ted sent a mail bomb to:

Although the views of the people Ted bombed are undoubtedly mixed on many subjects, it was reassuring reading this request by William Dennison, the last person Ted addressed a mail bomb to:

I respectfully urge the court, Your Honor, to open all the Kaczynski materials, including the decoded journals, to public scrutiny in the expectation that valuable public safety information may be obtained and used to save many lives. Academician analysts will certainly be able to draw a more accurate picture of the mind of a killer and the connections to eco-terrorism if the original materials are in their hands.

There’s a long about page being incredibly transparent that’s linked at the top and the first item of the ‘Introductory Texts’ page linked on the front page. Explanations of the admins pro-tech beliefs are pinned to the top of the twitter account for the website, pro-tech labels are tagged to the accounts of admins on discord and never downplayed.

I also think calling your critics Teddites is pretty harmful

I don’t call all our critics Teddites, I was responding to a specific comment about website naming, drawing attention to a real funny reality of Teddites getting annoyed at us calling the archive ‘the’ ted k archive and yet previously not being able to empathise with social anarchists not liking ITS texts being promoted on ‘the’ anarchist library. Many are part of a weird group worthy of derision, like still believing Ted K was an anarchist in 2022. They create pipeline quizzes to better learn how to draw people into luddite philosophy, we promote reading and debate them to disrupt the pipeline.

SnowyKnave: In what way aren’t we?

Just from the reactions of users on this post its quite clear that your site is designed to be mental health support for potential ecoextremists is news to them — in fairness because they probably havent visited the site much. In the disrupting the pipeline text you quite clearly state

That doesnt sound particularly honest. Of course sometimes people may need to go undercover in far right online spaces or whatever to gather information, but it seems your whole project is themed around trying to hook potential “Ted K fans” and more generally environmentalists by presenting your archive as if its for them and going undercover to accomplish this. I havent seen your twitter or discord but thats much better and more honest I guess.

social anarchists not liking ITS texts being promoted on ‘the’ anarchist library.

I don’t call all our critics Teddites, I was responding to a specific comment about website naming

Thats good to hear. Im still concerned about your grouping together of anticiv people with Ted — its literally the name of the archive and a significant chunk is about talking about a pretty different, but still related, group of philosophies/critiques.

debate them to disrupt the pipeline

Im not sure debates good for that purpose. Certainly challenging harmful and shit ideas is useful, but I think its unlikely, regardless of how good your arguments are, that debating people will convince them.

pipeline quizzes

That actually made me laugh (in a good way tho because of the absurdity of it, the puns and that they just have a discord server). I had no idea that existed. What were the results of the quizz?

I said the person who has been moaning on multiple platforms about how indigent they are that

I wasnt aware of the context of that issue. Mb

blackestblack: Many are part of a weird group worthy of derision

Everyone who disagrees with me is in cahoots!

blackestblack: I said the person who has been moaning on multiple platforms about how indigent they are that we haven’t been de-platformed

When? What other platforms? You’re very quick to lie when it suits you, Ishkah.

blackestblack: Already answered this a year ago.

I hadn’t even heard of raddle a year ago. Maybe I’m not the only anarchist who doesn’t like coercive projects like yours, or domineering individuals like yourself?

ziq: Yeah, delete it and stop with the entryism. You obviously can’t “hide your power level” now, so just give up.

dynafywyd: The main claim of the post is that I’ve been attempting anarchist and/or anticiv entryism, but it’s just not true. I am an anarchist who has been going to Earth First! gatherings since I was 17. I also accept anticiv anarchists and anprims as anarchist. I’ve just talked about desiring to have the effect of deprogramming some Ted K fans from their dogmatic beliefs like for example when some of them glorify the Cambodian genocide.

Disrupting the pipeline

A better clarifying timeline would have included events like the fact that I lived with an ex-anarchist who promoted misanthropic terror attacks and who died really young: a text dump on Jay.

I’ve written about trying to live in doubt and stay open to the value of any meaning people happen to take away from various events in life.

They create pipeline quizzes to better learn how to draw people into luddite philosophy, we promote reading and debate them to disrupt the pipeline.

Transparency

I think part of the problem is some people were in a bubble because they just weren’t on any of the platforms where the website was getting positive feedback.

Creating lots of sub-reddits

I like spreadsheeting lists of shit to de-stress, so I spreadsheeted a tonne of anarchist and vegan sub-reddits in order to create master lists of suggested anarchist and vegan sub-reddits.

Anarchist related: 61.
Vegan related: 41.
AntiCiv related: 14.
Misc.: 33.

Entryism is pretending to support an ideology and trying to redefine it to be something different whilst hiding within it.

Claiming branding real estate of ideologies I don’t like, making clear it’s a critique space and posting highly critical essays of said ideology is simply not entryism.

The Zerzan transcript confusion

The archive is open to suggestions

Quoting a Ted K archive librarian:

The UNABOM Taskforce Documents & Their Typed Up Copies

And a thread was opened up on r/DebateAnarchism half a year ago to hear grievances and suggestions also:

The Ethics of Online Archive Curation

[1] Source: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/100WNnA0jDcanb4zHdJc84p0g0y5NS_pawthGhidAAu4

ziq: Quoting a Ted K archive librarian:

so, you?

blackestblack: “I think we should accept that we may need to hide our power level and sometimes even go undercover in those spaces.”

Guess who? And no, you weren’t talking about fascist spaces, you were talking about ‘post-left anarchist’ spaces.

You’ve been caught, Ishkah. Give it up.

subrosa: I didn’t wanna respond to Ishkah’s comment because it’s really just a ‘best of’ copy-pasted attempts at damage control. Could’ve been an opportunity to reposition their project or whatever, but instead they hold on to it being a deprogramming scheme for us uncivilized non-leftists. Kind of insulting then to have a zero-responses reddit thread and “I have written about trying to live in doubt” thrown at me to prove that The Ted K Archive takes critique seriously.

What are your top picks for Ted Kaczynski related texts that really hooked your interest?

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Submitted by TheTedKArchive on Oct 11 2023 in lobby

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I know this is really niche, but I liked the anarchist library reader lists, so I thought I’d try it out with Ted K related reading.

It feels like Ted’s life story and ideas have been used as a touchstone for discussing so many varied issues. So, it would be cool to see what different people’s lists of top texts looks like, and reasons why. Also, it doesn’t matter if your list is die-hard anti-tech or pro-tech.

You can include anything from books and essays to transcripts and drawings. Also, it can be anything from Ted’s own writings to ecology books that don’t even mention Ted.

Simply click here to edit the page or comment below and I’ll happily add it myself. It’ll likely stay linked at the top of latest posts on the main page for a long while because the main archiving work is wrapped up now. And I’ll create a year-in-review post soon.

jefycu

1. James C. Scott, Against the Grain

2. John Gray, Straw Dogs

catathymia

1. Jacques Ellul, The Technological Society

2. Jacques Ellul, Propaganda

Theo

1. Bron Taylor, Religion, Violence and Radical Environmentalism

Since the 1980 formation of Earth First!, radical environmental movements have proliferated widely. Their adversaries, law enforcement authorities and some scholars accuse them of violence and terrorism. Here, I scrutinize such charges by examining 18 years of radical environmentalism for evidence of violence and for indications of violent tendencies. I argue that despite the frequent use of revolutionary and martial rhetoric by participants in these movements, they have not, as yet, intended to inflict great bodily harm or death. Moreover, there are many worldview elements internal to these movements, as well as social dynamics external to them, that reduce the likelihood that movement activists will attempt to kill or maim as a political strategy. Labels such as ‘violent’ or ‘terrorist’ are not currently apt blanket descriptors for these movements. Thus, greater interpretive caution is needed when discussing the strategies, tactics, and impacts of radical environmentalism.

2. Michael Sperber, Dostoyevsky’s Stalker and Other Essays on Psychopathology and the Arts

In Dostoyevsky’s Stalker, we discover how the arts may illuminate psychiatry and psychoanalysis. … It makes sense to consider Asperger as a spectrum disorder. Its incidence in the population at large is far greater than is thought. The major problem is a difficulty ‘reading people,’ and those with the disorder are frequently hurt by those who misread them. As a consequence, they may become social isolates like the Underground Man and Kaczynski. Just as it is possible to teach people how to have a dialogue with themselves (by writing a poem, painting a picture, or playing a musical instrument) it is possible to teach a person who has no concept of another’s mind how to be in better touch with people.

3. Donald Wayne Foster, Author Unknown; On the Trail of Anonymous

Certain literary texts had an arguably pernicious effect on the Unabomber’s imagination during his seventeen-year campaign of terror. An avid reader, Kaczynski’s study included a wide variety of English, American, and Spanish fiction—and he often commented afterward on those stories and novels that especially moved or amused him. One such is Horacio Quiroga’s “Juan Darien,” a story that Ted subsequently translated into English. Juan Darien is a studious boy, cruelly ridiculed at school for his rough hair and shyness—but he is actually a tiger bearing a human shape. Taunted once too often, the tiger-boy renounces his sympathy for humanity. Taking his revenge on a cat-tamer, Juan catches the man in his teeth, carries him to a cane-brake, and sets him on fire. The cat-tamer begs pardon for his offenses, but it is too late. As the canes burn, the tiger that was Juan Darien stands by with other tigers, gazing at the colorful flames until the man is reduced to a blackened corpse.

4. Mark Dery, Pyrotechnic Insanitarium; American Culture on the Brink

Dery views contemporary America as “less a coherent society than a fault zone, a network of interconnected societal fractures. … I’m interested in the unlit, unfrequented corners of society, … the gothic, the grotesque, the carnivalesque—in short, extremes and excess of every sort. I want to induce, in my reader, the vertigo that comes from leaning too far over the edge of the cultural abyss.”

5. Michael Loadenthal, The Politics of Attack: Communiqués and Insurrectionary Violence

Since the early 2000s, global, underground networks of insurrectionary anarchists have carried out thousands of acts of political violence. This book is an exploration of the ideas, strategies, and history of these political actors that engage in a confrontation with the oppressive powers of the state and capital.

6. William Gillis, A Quick and Dirty Critique of Primitivist & Anti-Civ Thought

Today the landscape is even more ideologically fractured and many have retreated to a nebulous “anti-civ” position that inherits most of the primitivist framework while remaining loose enough to duck most criticism. But while those identify as anti-civ may individually break with some aspects of primitivism, without any of the frameworks or narratives of primitivism, there wouldn’t be an anti-civ position to speak.
Core to the term “anti-civ” itself is a sweeping impression of “civilization” that is intensely problematic and lends itself to overly simplistic narratives. Primitivism is rife with this kind of irreductionist handwaving that dreams up big monsters from loose associations and gives them agency as magical forces acting on the macroscale, shaping every particular. Following an approach that Ellul openly termed “monism”, primitivism refuses to pick these spooks apart, to recognize any conflict between or latitude in the configuration of their constituent dynamics.

7. Sean Fleming, The Unabomber and the origins of anti-tech radicalism

This article uncovers the origins of Kaczynski’s ideas and examines his influence on contemporary anti-tech radicalism.

Sean Fleming is a Nottingham Research Fellow in the School of Politics and International Relations. His current project, ‘Revenge of the Luddites’, is about anti-technology radicalism. The aim of his research is to understand the ideas and ideologies that motivate terrorist attacks on scientists (such as the Unabomber’s) and sabotage attacks on infrastructure (such as pipeline bombings). His previous project, ‘Leviathan on a Leash’, was about collective responsibility and Thomas Hobbes’s political thought.

8. Ole Martin Moen, The Unabomber’s Ethics

This text neatly reveals and refutes the hidden premise within many primtivists foundational arguments. That faulty premise being; the evaluative asymmetry whereby anything that happens in wild habitat is automatically less bad than anything that happens in an industrialized society.

9. Ted Kaczynski, Truth versus Lies (Volunteers Update)

A fascinatingly peculiar book for the context it was written in, it’s focus, and Ted hitting ‘stop the press’ mid-printing, preventing the publishing of what likely would have been a fairly well-read book:

[Ted] had been interested in writing letters to counter the image being presented by his family of him in the media. He discussed this with his attorneys and although he felt some pressure to conform, he had agreed with them not to write letters to the media and draw additional public attention to him at this point in the trial process. Nonetheless he spent approximately four months preparing a rebuttal to all he perceived as inaccurate in the public portrayal of him, and focused extensively on portraying his brother David in a negative light in these writings.

Quoting Ted:

My book … deals mainly with the lies that my mother and especially my brother have been telling about me through the media [crossed out: and with their motives for telling these lies]. In order to show why my brother and mother have been lying about me, I examine my family relationships in [crossed out: considerable] depth.
On the positive side, the book contains material of considerable human interest. I demonstrate that my brother’s case is one that surely would have fascinated Freud, Jung, and Adler.

10. Ted Kaczynski, Ted Kaczynski’s 1979 Autobiography

Ted wrote three autobiographies in his lifetime. All are painfully honest about his social inadequacies, his inability with women and his painful relationship with his family, particularly his parents:

He wrote his second autobiography … at age 37 he was back home with his parents in Chicago. After nearly a decade living in his cabin in the woods and it’s almost uncomfortably intimate. It feels more intimate than Ted’s journals themselves. He describes a teenage sexual encounter with another boy, talks about girls he lusts after and professors he hates. His own lifelong feelings of social inadequacy are everywhere, and this document Ted says there’s a particular reason he’s writing it, he’s going to start killing people, and if he’s captured or killed by the police, he wants people to find the document. Read his life story as he sees it.

11. Theo Slade, Normandie, etc. A Collaboratively Edited Discussion on Anti-Tech Politics

The open ended conversation that provoked me to start researching anti-tech philosophy.

12. Unpredictable, Why do People Love this Serial Killer?

The best short biographical account of Ted’s life story. Uses tons of info and images from this archive.

13. Sisyphus 55, The Philosophy of the Unabomber

The best short analysis of Ted’s philosophy.

14. Eileen Pollack, From the Unabomber to the Incels: Angry Young Men on Campus

Alone in his room, he was driven crazy by the sounds of the couple next door making love. Finally—and this is what broke my heart—Kaczynski decided to convince a psychiatrist to allow him to undergo the surgery and chemical treatments he thought would transform him into a woman, not because he was transgender, but because, as a woman, he might wrap his arms around himself and be held by someone female.
Kaczynski kept his appointment with the psychiatrist, only to realize he was going mad. Furious at a society that had pushed him to excel in academics at the cost of his ability to find love and connection to other human beings, he vowed to stop being such a good boy and learn to kill. Only later did he come up with an ideology that justified his murderous rage, lashing out at science and industrialization for destroying our environment, pressuring us to conform, depriving us of our privacy, and robbing us of our humanity.

15. Scott Corey, Lessons for an Anti-Terror Community

At one point, the Kaczynski family tried to persuade Ted to seek therapy, but they were rebuffed. Later, David found in the records at trial that Ted had already sought clinical help. He imagined doing it by correspondence. He was told that he would have to find a way to travel a considerable distance to the office, and that he would have to find some way to pay for his sessions. Both of these were more than he could manage.
We can do better than that, and we have been trying to do better than that. To cite one specific example, under the Affordable Care Act, mental health services finally received a decent inclusion in medical insurance. If this provision is now to be discarded, we are entitled to object on grounds of public safety and national security. There are no perfect defenses against terror and derangement, but if we know what fight we are in, we can see where to stand in it. Surely, for this struggle, we cannot justify disarming our community’s mental health capacity any more than we could justify disbanding the police or the intelligence services.

Source

shhheo: here ya go:

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-collateral-damage-an-eco-extremist-defense-of-indiscriminate-violence

The second quote from Stalin is: “One death is a tragedy, a million deaths is a statistic.” And is this not the logic of civilization, of the leftist and anarchist? They can shrug off a whole world being butchered by civilization, they can wave off the deaths of savage peoples who did nothing but defend their land, and they can play video games in their heads of strangling capitalists in their beds, but when they see a bus on fire, or a lab blown up, they scream, “Won’t somebody think of the children!?”

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chahta-ima-bowlegs-notebook-1

But what if this urge to save the world, this urge to “overthrow tyranny” no matter what the cost, this itch to “fight for a better world” is just another hamster wheel, another yoke to be put on us, to solve problems that we didn’t create, and to sacrifice ourselves for a better world which we will never see (funny how that works)? What if the genius of domesticated civilization has been to harness our hostility into making it better, commodifying our radicalism, and perpetuating civilized values in self-proclaimed enemies like a virus in an unsuspecting host? Why not just keep our principles, like the defeated Apache did, and let the chips fall where they may? What if we just realize that, as animals, we don’t know what the future will bring, the only resistance that we have is resistance in the now, and the cares of tomorrow will take care of themselves? Indeed, we simply have no power over tomorrow, just as we have no power to resurrect the past. If we did, we wouldn’t be animals, and the revolutionist / leftist / technocrat would be right.

TheTedKArchive: I see your anti-anarchist texts as stand-alone web pages and raise you the same texts as part of a compilation that shows the real-world consequences for some of the people who were suckered into such a ridiculous ideology:

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/a-text-dump-on-eco-extremism

Camilo Gajardo Escalona was sentenced to 45 years and one day in jail , who perpetrated several explosive attacks in the Metropolitan region and who were claimed by the group “Individualists Tending to the Wild” (ITS)....

3.- The explosion of a device at a Transantiago bus stop in Vicuña Mackenna with Bilbao, on January 4, 2019.

Speaking for the prosecution, Angela Gray, the advocate depute, said Karvounakis claimed to be a “lover of nihilist anti-political violence” and to support an anarchist terror group Individualidades Tendiendo a lo Salvaje....

John Scullion QC, Karvounakis’s defence counsel, said he had been struggling with anxiety and low self-esteem, and had spent increasing amounts of time online. There he had drifted into conversations with extremists, whose beliefs he now repudiated.

comeonfeelthenoise: Ishkah loves it when people go to prison. It’s one of his favorite things.

He also thinks really highly of the words of defence counsels, social workers and other parapolice. It’s telling that his “”“ted k archive””” has more texts from state-appointed experts than it does from anarchists.

Here’s another one for ya

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chahta-ima-ishi-and-the-war-against-civilization-1

It’s better, as some Chilean anarchists did recently, to explode noise bombs at four in the morning when no one is around in order to express “solidarity” with whoever international anarchism has been asked to pray for… I mean, express solidarity with this week. But if you have to do something, the least that you can do is minimize harm and express regret if something goes amiss (but mostly you should do nothing…)

Of course eco-extremism rejects these objections as childish and hypocritical. Are these people expressing their moral superiority while playing with fire crackers in the middle of the night and then dedicating it to someone halfway around the world for no apparent reason? Do they want a cookie or a sticker for being such well-behaved children? Eco-extremism will readily admit that devout anarchism is more pious and holier than it is. It doesn’t want its help anyway. If left-leaning anarchists want to win the popularity contest in the insane asylum of civilization, by all means eco-extremism forfeits. Congratulations in advance.

TheTedKArchive: Talked about that text on raddle recently here. I’d respond to your insults, but it doesn’t seem like your kind care much about having logical arguments, so it’s just boring. Let me know if a new EE text ever comes out that even gains the modicum of interest the ideas had when some people briefly confused the ideas as anarchist.

comeonfeelthenoise: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/anonymous-collateral-damage-an-eco-extremist-defense-of-indiscriminate-violence

the opposition of leftists, anarchists, anarcho-primitivists, and any number of people who react negatively to eco-extremist violence is one of great hypocrisy: hypocrisy of the level that Nietzsche and any good manipulator of words could easily dissect. For civilization, and any ideology really, is based on indiscriminate violence, on hiding dirty laundry and sweeping dirt under the rhetorical rug so no one can see it.

The Sex Offenses and their Treatments’

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Submitted by TheTedKArchive 7 months ago in Christianity

Source:
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I know I really outdid myself archiving such an awful book as this, but it is just such a weird book that I had to share it. If someone was up for making an f/ShittyBooksClub I’d be grateful for the memes.

Basically, this book is an attempt at marshaling psychology studies in the defense of Christian Fundamentalist beliefs. More specifically, the belief that evil is literally rooted in specific areas of the body, which can be cut off to become pure again.

Here are two quotes:

I do not wish to mitigate all that is good about sex, for “God created humankind in his image, in the image of God he created them; male and female he created them. God blessed them, and God said to them, ‘Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it …’” (Genesis 1:27–28), and this has been good for the past 50,000 years or so. But, in recent years, we have become more aware that there are many hazards connected with our sexuality, and I believe that we must somehow come to grips with this reality. Some of us have developed excessive levels of testosterone (T), which has resulted in many serious problems. T gives us sexual desire, excitement, pleasure, physical strength, and violence at even minor provocations. T also causes us to abuse women, children, and those weaker than we are. In ancient times, it caused the Nephilim to mate with the daughters of men and their descendants to become wicked, so that the earth became corrupt in God’s sight, and He destroyed it with the flood (Genesis 6).

The New Testament provides an answer to sexual sinning in the words of Christ Himself in Matthew: “… if your right hand causes you to sin, cut it off and throw it away; it is better to lose one of your members than for your whole body to go into hell” (Matthew 5:27–30, the New Revised Standard Version), and “… there are eunuchs who have made themselves eunuchs for the sake of the Kingdom of Heaven” (Matthew 19:12). The Talmud provides us with additional details so we can recognize eunuchs and their pictures down through the ages: “He has no beard, his hair is soft, his skin is smooth, his urine is not excreted in an arch … and the semen is thin like water. If a man has no beard or pubic hair by twenty years of age, one must assume that he is a congenital eunuch” (Tosefta Yebamoth, 10:6). Eunuch attendants are frequently pictured with the high and mighty on ancient wall carvings because they were the most trustworthy servants in most old cultures.

The rare Unabomber documents being kept hidden by a few zealots and rich people

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/apollo-the-unabomber-documents-hidden-away-by-a-few-zealots-and-wealthy-people>

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20230710011416/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/163836/the-rare-unabomber-documents-being-kept-hidden-by-a-few>

Michigan: How do people still defend this guy?

Ted Kaczynski ‘Unabomber’ Who Attacked Modern Life, Dies at 81

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Submitted by TheTedKArchive 9 months ago in News

Source:
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Alone in a shack in the Montana wilderness, he fashioned homemade bombs and launched a violent one-man campaign to destroy industrial society.

Alex Traub

Theodore J. Kaczynski, the so-called Unabomber, who attacked academics, businessmen and random civilians with homemade bombs from 1978 to 1995, killing three people and injuring 23 with the stated goal of fomenting the collapse of the modern social order — a violent spree that ended after what was often described as the longest and most costly manhunt in American history — died on Saturday in a federal prison medical center in Butner, N.C. He was 81.

A spokesman for the Federal Bureau of Prisons said Mr. Kaczynski was found unresponsive in his cell early in the morning. The bureau did not specify a cause, but three people familiar with the situation said he died by suicide.

Mr. Kaczynski traced a singular path in American life: lonely boy genius to Harvard-trained star of pure mathematics, to rural recluse, to notorious murderr, to imprisoned extremist.

In the public eye, he fused two styles of violence: the periodic targeting of the demented serial killer, and the ideological fanaticism of the terrorist.

After he was captured by about 40 F.B.I. agents in April 1996, Mr. Kaczynski’s particular ideology was less the subject of debate than the question of whether his crimes should be dignified with a rational motive to begin with.

Victims railed against commentators who took seriously a 35,000-word manifesto that he had written to justify his actions and evangelize the ideas that he claimed inspired them.

Psychologists involved in the trial saw his writing as evidence of schizophrenia. His lawyers tried to mount an insanity defense — and when Mr. Kaczynski rebelled and sought to represent himself in court, risking execution to do so, his lawyers said that that was yet further evidence of insanity.

For years before the manifesto was published, Mr. Kaczynski (pronounced kah-ZIN-skee) had no reputation beyond that of a twisted reveler in violence, picking victims seemingly at random, known only by a mysterious-sounding nickname with roots in the F.B.I.’s investigation into him: “the Unabomber.” It became widely publicized that some of his victims lost their fingers while opening a package bomb. Simply going through the mail prompted flickers of nervousness in many Americans.

After his arrest, Mr. Kaczynski’s extraordinary biography emerged. He had scored 167 on an I.Q. test as a boy and entered Harvard at 16. In graduate school, at the University of Michigan, he worked in a field of mathematics so esoteric that a member of his dissertation committee estimated that only 10 or 12 people in the country understood it. By 25, he was an assistant professor at the University of California, Berkeley.

Then he dropped out — not just from Berkeley, but from civilization. Starting in 1971 and continuing until his arrest, he lived in a shack he built himself in rural Montana. He forsook running water, read by the light of homemade candles, stopped filing federal tax returns and subsisted on rabbits.

From 1971 until his arrest, Mr. Kaczynski lived in a shack he built himself in rural Montana. He forsook running water, read by the light of homemade candles, stopped filing federal tax returns and subsisted on rabbits.Credit...Elaine Thompson/Associated Press

Mr. Kaczynski’s manifesto — published jointly by The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1995 under the threat of continued violence — argued that damage to the environment and the alienating effects of technology were so heinous that the social and industrial underpinnings of modern life should be destroyed.

A vast majority of Americans determined that the Unabomber must be a psychopath the moment they heard of him, and while he was front-page news, his text did not generally find receptive readers outside a tiny fringe of the environmental movement. The term “Unabomber” entered popular discourse as shorthand for the type of brainy misfit who might harbor terrifying impulses.

Yet political change and the passage of time caused some to see Mr. Kaczynski in a new light. His manifesto accorded centrality to a healthy environment without mentioning global warming; it warned about the dangers of people becoming “dependent” on technology while making scant reference to the internet. To young people afflicted by social media anomie and fearful of climate doom, Mr. Kaczynski seemed to wield a predictive power that outstripped the evidence available to him.

In 2017 and 2020, Netflix released documentaries about him. He maintained postal correspondence with thousands of people — journalists, students and die-hard supporters. In 2018, Wired magazine announced “the Unabomber’s odd and furious online revival,” and New York magazine called him “an unlikely prophet to a new generation of acolytes.”

Becoming ‘the Unabomber’

Mr. Kaczynski’s infamous label came from “UNABOM,” the F.B.I.’s code for university and airline bombing. That designation was inspired by his first targets, from 1978 to 1980: academics at Northwestern University, the president of United Airlines and the passengers of a flight from Chicago to Washington. The victims suffered cuts, burns and smoke inhalation. The authorities were aided in connecting several early attacks by the fact that the mysterious initials “FC” had been engraved on the bombs or spray-painted near the explosions.

The Unabomber struck one to four times a year for most years until 1987, when he left a bomb at a computer store in Salt Lake City. A woman remembered making eye contact with the man who had dropped off the package that later exploded, and soon a sketch was publicized of a mustachioed suspect wearing sunglasses and a hoodie.

Six years passed without an attack. Then, in June 1993, the Unabomber struck twice in the same week.

Packages containing bombs arrived at the home of Charles Epstein, a geneticist at the University of California San Francisco, and at the office of David Gelernter, a computer scientist at Yale University. Each man lost multiple fingers. Mr. Epstein sustained permanent hearing loss; Mr. Gelernter, whose office burst into flames, bled nearly to the point of death and lost much of the vision in his right eye.

The Unabomber was growing in infamy and deadliness even as his motives became harder to parse. His first fatality, in 1985, was Hugh Scrutton, an owner of a Sacramento computer store who was engaged to be married. Between December 1994 and April 1995, he killed two more men, seemingly with no relation to Mr. Scrutton or to each other: a New Jersey advertising executive and a lobbyist for the California forestry industry. The adman, Thomas Mosser, was married with three children. The lobbyist, Gilbert Murray, was married with two children. He was so mutilated in the blast that his family was permitted to see him only from the knees down as a farewell.

It was that April, the same month as Mr. Murray’s killing, when this nameless terrorist unveiled an identity. Writing on behalf of “the terrorist group FC” — which, he explained, stood for “Freedom Club” — the Unabomber sent The New York Times a letter offering a “bargain.” He promised to stop hurting people — though not to stop attacking property — in exchange for getting a long article about his ideas published in a major periodical.

In June, The Times and The Washington Post received a 35,000-word manuscript. Citing a recommendation from the F.B.I. and the Department of Justice, the papers took the Unabomber’s offer. They split the cost of printing the essay, titled “Industrial Society and Its Future.” The Post distributed it online and as an eight-page supplement with the Sept. 19 print paper.

The manifesto claimed that the current organization of society gives “politicians, corporation executives and remote, anonymous technicians and bureaucrats” control over “the life-and-death issues of one’s existence.” That makes modern people depressed, unlike “primitive man,” who gained satisfaction from determining his own “life-and-death issues” and found “a sense of security” in what the Unabomber called “WILD nature.”

The Unabomber justified his murderous campaign on the grounds that it got “our message before the public with some chance of making a lasting impression.”

The unique circumstances of the manifesto’s distribution — William Finnegan, writing in The New Yorker, called it “the most extraordinary manuscript submission in the history of publishing” — prompted a debate about the ethics of disseminating a terrorist’s views. The publicity seemed vindicated, however, after news of the Unabomber reached Linda Patrik, an associate philosophy professor vacationing in Paris. At first jokingly, then insistently, she told her husband that the manifesto reminded her of what he had said about his eccentric loner brother.

Ms. Patrik’s husband was David Kaczynski. When he read the manifesto online, his “jaw dropped,” he later told The Times. The language was reminiscent of letters Ted had written to David. He soon reached out to the authorities.

Since 1979, an F.B.I. team that grew to more than 150 full-time investigators, analysts and others had gone through tens of thousands of leads without getting close to a real suspect. After hearing from David Kaczynski, the authorities zeroed in on a 10-by-12-foot wooden shack in rural Montana. The area was so remote that during an 18-day stakeout, one agent saw a cougar kill a deer.

The home had two windows set on high; they caught light but kept the home hidden. Agents could not see inside. On April 3, 1996, one of them shouted that a forest ranger needed help. A thin, shaggy man emerged from the cabin. He was grabbed from both sides.

Mr. Kaczynski justified his murderous campaign on the grounds that it got “our message before the public.”Credit...Associated Press

A ‘Walking Brain’

Theodore John Kaczynski was born in Chicago on May 22, 1942. His father, Theodore Richard Kaczynski, worked at his family’s business, Kaczynski’s Sausages, a factory on the city’s South Side. His mother, Wanda (Dombek) Kaczynski, was a homemaker. They both descended from Polish immigrants in the Chicago area, dropped out of high school to work and obtained diplomas at night school. By all accounts they were gregarious, kind, diligent and thoughtful. Each sent letters to newspapers in support of progressive causes.

From boyhood, Teddy, as he was known, felt his brilliance to be alienating. When an aunt of his visited, his father asked, “Why don’t you have some conversation with your aunt?” Teddy replied, “Why should I? She wouldn’t understand me anyway.”

In school, he skipped two grades. He later blamed his parents for seeming to prize and cultivate his intellect over his emotions.

“He was never really seen as a person, as an individual personality,” a high school classmate, Loren De Young, told The Times. “He was always regarded as a walking brain.”

At Harvard, Teddy lived in Eliot House, home to the clubbiest and brawniest of the school’s white Anglo-Saxon Protestants, including the varsity crew team. Clad in a tacky plaid sports jacket, Teddy would enter his suite and stride past his roommates wordlessly, then open the door to his room — wafting the odor of rotting food — and slam it shut.

He went straight from college to graduate school in Michigan. His department would learn about new work of his by discovering, without any advance notice, his papers published in respected journals. “It was as if he could write poetry while the rest of us were trying to learn grammar,” Joel Shapiro, a fellow student, later told The Times.

Mr. Kaczynski arrived at Berkeley in 1967. He taught by lecturing from the textbook and did not answer questions. Yet he continued to publish distinguished work and received a promotion in the math department. Two years later, he resigned, without explaining the decision to his colleagues.

The Kaczynski brothers split the cost of the property in Montana, then had a falling-out when David got engaged in 1989. After Ted’s arrest, New York Times reporters searched for friends of his in the seven states he was known to have lived in or visited. They found nobody. Some fellow students of his in graduate school said they were amazed to find that they did not remember him at all. He was widely reported never to have had a romantic relationship.

During his Montana years, Mr. Kaczynski had the librarian in Lincoln, the town closest to his shack, obtain for him obscure volumes of science and literature, sometimes in the original German or Spanish. In an interview after his arrest with the British publication Green Anarchist, he described inventing gods for himself, including a “Grandfather Rabbit,” who was responsible for the existence of the snowshoe rabbits that were his main source of meat in the winter.

In the same interview, Mr. Kaczynski described how he had felt goaded to violence. His favorite part of the wilderness had been a two-day hike from his shack — a plateau with steep ravines and a waterfall. In 1983, he found a road paved through it.

“You just can’t imagine how upset I was,” he said. “It was from that point on I decided that, rather than trying to acquire further wilderness skills, I would work on getting back at the system. Revenge.”

That was his own narrative. Some details of his life indicated a predisposition to violence and an estrangement from the surrounding world that might also have accounted for his behavior. According to The Atlantic, Mr. Kaczynski had begun to imagine committing murder by the age of 27. In his diary, he described his bombs as giving him catharsis. Though he broke ties with his brother, Ted said he would open David’s letters if the stamp was underlined as a sign of emergency. David wrote to say that their father was dying and underlined the stamp.

“Ted wrote back, and the response was fairly peculiar,” David told The Times — “basically, that I had done well, that this was something worth communicating.”

His brother is his only immediate survivor.

At a super-maximum-security prison in Colorado, Mr. Kaczynski struck up friendships with inmates in neighboring cells: Ramzi Ahmed Yousef, who bombed the World Trade Center in 1993, and Timothy J. McVeigh, the Oklahoma City bomber. Mr. Kaczynski shared books and talked politics with them, and he got to know their birthdays, Yahoo News reported in 2016.

His terrorist strategy, and the ideas that he said undergirded it, enjoyed an afterlife few would have predicted in the 1990s.

The Norwegian news media reported that Anders Breivik, who killed dozens of people at government buildings and at a youth summer camp in 2011, lifted passages from Mr. Kaczynski’s manifesto in a manifesto of his own. More curious was the way a variety of law-abiding Americans developed an interest in the same line of thought.

In 2017, the deputy editor of the conservative publication First Things, Elliot Milco, credited Mr. Kaczynski with “astute (even prophetic) insights.” In 2021, during an interview with the businessman and politician Andrew Yang, Tucker Carlson cited Mr. Kaczynski’s thinking in detail without any prompting.

Online, young people with a variety of partisan allegiances, or none at all, have developed an intricate vocabulary of half-ironic Unabomber support. They proclaim themselves “anti-civ” or #tedpilled; they refer to “Uncle Ted.” Videos on TikTok of Unabomber-related songs, voice-overs and dances have acquired millions of views, according to a 2021 article in The Baffler.

Mr. Kaczynski was no longer the mysterious killer who had belatedly projected an outlandish justification for violence; now he was the originator of one of many styles of transgression and all-knowing condemnation to adopt online. His crimes lay in a past young people had never known, and he was imprisoned, no longer an active threat to society.

His online support did not indicate how many eco-terrorists had been newly minted, but it did measure a prevalence of cynicism, boredom, dissatisfaction with modern life and gloom about its prospects for change.

During his imprisonment, Mr. Kaczynski copied his correspondence by hand and forwarded it to the University of Michigan’s Joseph A. Labadie Collection, an archive devoted to radical protest, which has amassed dozens of boxes of Kaczynskiana.

According to New York magazine, Mr. Kaczynski’s papers became one of the collection’s most popular offerings. In an interview with the magazine, Julie Herrada, the collection’s curator, declined to describe the people so intrigued by Mr. Kaczynski that they visit the library to look through his archive. She said just one thing: “Nobody seems crazy.”

Glenn Thrush and Remy Tumin contributed reporting.

A correction was made on

June 10, 2023:

Because of an editing error, an earlier version of this obituary misstated the surname of a Norwegian mass murderer who lifted passages from Mr. Kaczynski’s manifesto in a manifesto of his own. He is Anders Breivik, not Beivik.

How we handle corrections

Alex Traub works on the Obituaries desk and occasionally reports on New York City for other sections of the paper. @alexetraub

A version of this article appears in print on , Section A, Page 1 of the New York edition with the headline: Theodore J. Kaczynski, Boy Genius Turned ‘Unabomber,’ Dies at 81. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

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TheTedKArchive: Ted always said he’d prefer suicide or the death penalty to life imprisonment.

He likely felt this was the best time to go after finishing final editions of his books and over a year of suffering with cancer, so dealing with chemo and the brain fog that comes with it.

ArsCortica: First the supposed UFO disclosures, and now this. I don’t have enough tinfoil for this crap.

Jokes aside — while I do believe it was Ted himself who took the bus (unlike, say, a certain Mr. Epstein), I’m kind of worried the current political climate will spawn a number of copycats. And that it might not ‘just’ be electrical substations, this time.

seasalt: I read a bit how he was pretty much tortured in his youth. I imagine that affected him in someway even though he denies it. That said this man was fkin insane and I blame the CIA or whoever it was that created this monster.

TheTedKArchive: Reply to comment by TwentyFiveCharsOrLess in Ishi in Two Worlds; A Biography of the last Wild Indian in North America by TheTedKArchive

“. Just* so must we be ...”

That was funny. I used the best pdf scan converter out there, but there will still be some errors obvs, so I’ve tagged it as half-finished error-correcting for now.

It’s good in this form anyways for quoting, helping the book show up in searches, linking to chapters, skim reading, and easy collaboration if anyone wanted to help error correct. Then when it’s fully error corrected it will make a nice printable book again.

Ishi in Two Worlds; A Biography of the last Wild Indian in North America

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/ishi-in-two-worlds>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 1 month ago in indigenous

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20230710002355/https:/raddle.me/f/indigenous/155219/ishi-in-two-worlds-a-biography-of-the-last-wild-indian-in>

I archived a few books on this sad history recently:

Ishi in Two Worlds A Biography of the last Wild Indian in North America
Ishi the Last Yahi A Documentary History
Hunting with the Bow & Arrow
The Population of the California Indians 1769–1970
Source

TwentyFiveCharsOrLess: The history of Ishi and his people is, inexorably, part of our own history. We have absorbed their lands into our holdings, fust so must we be the responsible custodians of their tragedy, absorbing it into our tradition and morality.

TheTedKArchive: “. Just* so must we be ...”

That was funny. I used the best pdf scan converter out there, but there will still be some errors obvs, so I’ve tagged it as half-finished error-correcting for now.

colonizzze: Why is Ishi’s story hosted on a website called ‘The Ted K Archive’? Are you, Ishkah, suggesting that Ishi, the last man standing in the war against colonization, has something to do with the Unabomber?

TheTedKArchive: Obvs not a strong connection, if any. I just read a dumb eco-extremist text on Ishi, then went and did my own reading and archived it on the site. It’ll get sorted under Broader Topics when I do a table of contents update:

The project is divided into six main categories:

Primary Source Documents on Ted K can help researchers understand events as they happened, rather than relying on reflections from years later.

The Collected Works of Ted K includes the largest online collection of Ted K’s books, essays, stories, translations, drawings, musical compositions and mathematical work.

Analysis of Ted’s Ideas & Actions includes political and literary analysis, podcast transcripts and more.

Suggested Reading contains some potentially valuable lessons that can be drawn from the story of Ted K’s life. Plus, the history of political violence related to Ted K and leftist political groups in comparison.

Broader Topics is a wide range of texts that simply shows what else the political violence researchers and true crime fans who frequent this website are reading and find interesting discussing.

The Criminal Justice System covers everything from; reading on the legislators who advance prison reforms, to the terrorists and freedom fighters who get prosecuted as criminals, to stories of poor people getting arrested for dumpster diving food to feed their family.

colonizzze: Do you mean this? https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/chahta-ima-ishi-and-the-war-against-civilization-1

What is “dumb” about that text? That is one of the more significant pieces to come out of the eco-extremist tendency, which, whether you like it or not, did include some strong writing. That one was republished by Enemy Combatant then reprinted by LBC.

I doubt that you’ve read it, like you’ve never read Atassa or any of the other texts you’re Very Concerned about.

If you’re looking for “dumb” texts, maybe look at some of the shit you’ve been uploading to the “Ted K” archive. Like, say, “Community Psychology In Pursuit of Liberation and Well-being.” Wow.

TheTedKArchive: One reason eco-extremists admire Ishi is because they perceive him as having had the ‘dignity’ to prefer spending time around his captors rather than other indigenous people, because EEs think Ishi was ashamed of other indigenous tribes for not having fought indiscriminately to the last man like his tribe did.

But, I just find that such a tragically sad, self-desctructive, macho, rigid and reductive philosophy.

‘Many Americans are racist and would like to wipe us out, I’ll show them by not caring that it’ll happen faster when I kill the white man’s babies.’

This is one of the few points I agree with Ted on; EEs feel disgust for modern society, so try to react against it by becoming it’s mirror opposite, but if being in opposite relationship to a thing becomes the most defining feature of your character, then you’ve just reduced your entire being to a similarly despicable loser in a game the oppressor enjoys winning.

Give me DIY mechanical eco-revolutions like what the Coconut Revolution achieved any day, rather than blips in time where tribes decided to kill babies and then got genocide’d quicker, or school shooters who decided to identify with monkeys and so wanted to ‘save’ kids from having to grow up in diverse cultures.

The most important error that ITS commits is that they express, and therefore promote, an attitude of hopelessness about the possibility of eliminating the technological system. I do not have time to comment on historical examples in which tiny and seemingly insignificant groups, considered by most people as crazies, fools, or “romantics,” finally managed, despite everything, to carry out successful revolutions.

-- Ted Kaczynski on Individualists Tending to the Wild (ITS)

If your enemy is much stronger than you, then it makes sense to prod him with a stick to wear him out, but if you prod too hard too quickly then the enemy will stamp you out completely.

-- A text dump on wildism

This has to be my favorite part of the essay:

Eco-extremism will grow because people know that this is the endgame. Indeed, from Muslims to Christians to all sorts of other ideologies, apocalypse is in the air, and nothing can stop it.

Yeah sure, ‘a significant essay’ with an amazingly accurate analysis of the past, present and future. Obviously ignorant of the amount of apocalyptic cults that flourished in the 60s which have been on the decline since. And failed to predict the withing away of the number of eco-extremist propagandists and attention.

Cry harder that cults like EE are dead and dying.

cryhard: But, I just find that such a tragically sad, self-desctructive, macho, rigid and reductive philosophy.

Imagine thinking indigenous people care what a Euro thinks about their fight.

TheTedKArchive: No response other than idpol, thanks for admitting you couldn’t think of a good counter-argument.

whitedreadlocks: Dismissing indigenous perspectives as ‘idpol.’ Peak settler.

TheTedKArchive: An elementary comparative analogy:

Squidward: What’s dumb about this text that argues indigenous people should become the new Nazi party ready to take over the world?

Spongebob: I dno, I guess I just have some notes, sounds kinda sad, if you go down this road you’re likely showing yourself to only care about shallow meaningless shit.

Squidward: Imagine thinking indigenous people care what a Euro thinks about their fight.

Yeah I will call that thought terminating idpol.

In expectation of the next insipid response, I’ll just remind you that comparing elements of someone’s logic to a hypothetical scenario doesn’t equal equating it to that thing.

whitedreadlocks: this text that argues indigenous people should become the new Nazi party ready to take over the world

I suspected you didn’t read the text. Now I know you didn’t.

TheTedKArchive: “In expectation of the next insipid response, I’ll just remind you that comparing elements of someone’s logic to a hypothetical scenario doesn’t equal equating it to that thing.”

The Ted K Archive Update & Discussions

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/clay-correspondences-with-a-contributor-to-the-ted-k-archive>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 2 months ago in lobby

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20230710002355/https:/raddle.me/f/lobby/154101/the-ted-k-archive-update-discussions>

Fixed Ideas and Letter Bombs by Wolfi Landstreicher

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/uploads/tedkarchive/w-l-wolfi-landstreicher-fixed-ideas-and-letter-bom-4.pdf>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 4 months ago in anticiv (edited 8 minutes later)

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20230710002355/https:/raddle.me/f/anticiv/152615/fixed-ideas-and-letter-bombs-by-wolfi-landstreicher>

TheTedKArchive: Also of potential interest:

Green Anarchist Journal
A text dump on Green Anarchist (archiving the irrationalists debate and the editors support for Ted K)

Fool: You website doesn’t believe I’m human when I tell it to go fuck itself.

So AI is telling me I’m inhuman, so I’ll just sit an stare at my screen.

TheTedKArchive:** Reply to comment by roanoke9 in What name would you give to a library that gathered together stories of unconventional ways of life? by TheTedKArchive

Yeah I forgot to get round to including a bunch of stuff, here’s one essay to start with: Ex-MOVE members say they were raised in a ‘cult’ where abuse and homophobia ran rampant

What name would you give to a library that gathered together stories of unconventional ways of life?

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/various-a-reading-list-of-unconventional-lives>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 7 months ago in lobby (edited 3 minutes later)£££--------

I’d like to set up a new library to host the list of texts on this page linked below and build on it, but I’m still undecided on a name:

A Reading List of Unconventional Lives

Here are some possible options, so please let me know which one you like best or offer your own suggestion:

The Library of Unconventional Lives
A Library of Unconventional Lives
The Unconventional Human Library
The Library of Autonomous Lives
The Autonomous Human Library
The Library of Adventurous Lives
The Alternative Lifestyle Library
The Library of Human Agency
The Free Range Human Library
The Wild Human Library
The Free Human Library

Every name has it’s pros and cons. Alternative lifestyle doesn’t really encapsulate what stories I’d like to gather together because I’d like to for example include texts on unconventional work people do. Also, I think some of the most interesting stories are for example people who find themselves living a certain way simply because it was the only way they knew how to survive a tough childhood with their sanity intact. But, then again ‘the alternative lifestyle library’ might be the most popular name for drawing in interest and collaborators.

Finally, if you could magic an online library into existence, where all the work of tracking down texts from libraries and various corners of the internet, formatting and collating was already done for you, what would it look like? And what would it be called?

Source

Fool: Superb Library of Terrific Housing (SLOTH)

Directory Enclosing Studies of Independent Residential Encampments (DESIRE)

Library of Humans Undertaking Modes of Unconventional Residence (Library of HUMOUR)

Free Outsider Occupancy Library (FOOL)

stagn: Wtf, MOVE movement is with the bad near the nazis and ITS?

houdini: Ishkah counts any anarchists of action as BAD, whereas any anarchist who ‘unites the left’ or votes for the ‘least bad’ political candidate is GOOD.

roanoke9: The good bad gray designation doesn’t sit well with me, but I’m going to make my own distinctions. Most of the good list is gray in my book (and self reflecting, I am gray by my own metrics). Anything over like five people I know personally I would be averse to involvement anyway. The existence and accessibility of the list, I like, for my own use.

Nazis aren’t even unconventional in my book, they’re just peak western civ to me : the distilled ethos of witch hunter culture. They give this away all the time projecting their paranoia about any opposition as witchhunting THEM.

I don’t know much about MOVE other than what I just read, but from that text I don’t see why they were grouped that way.

stagn: Overall I agree with you, how MOVE was categorized was just the thing that seemed most absurd to me on that list but certainly not the only thing I disagreed with

roanoke9: I agree with you too- just for consistency, if the linked article is representative of them, MOVE should be in the good list.

TheTedKArchive: Yeah I forgot to get round to including a bunch of stuff, here’s one essay to start with: Ex-MOVE members say they were raised in a ‘cult’ where abuse and homophobia ran rampant

roanoke9: Yeah that puts it in a different light.

My own position is anti-cult, which sounds like it is pretty uncontroversial, until I explain that I think most people were raised in a big psuedo-diverse socially accepted cult, popularly called civilization.

And my answer to this dilemma is not: just make your own cult. My answer is closer to: innoculate yourself to the extent that you can against cult tactics, maybe each person have an anti-cult with only themselves as a member. Don’t lead, don’t follow. The whole patriarchal nuclear family sort of makes every father a small-cult leader. And I oppose that.

MHC: “Unconventional lifestyles library”.

TheTedKArchive:** Reply to comment by armyourdesires in Does the Unabomber have any relevance to anarchism? by TheTedKArchive

To be fair to Wayne, the quote was taken from an essay he wrote in mid 1995 before the manifesto was even published. So he’s just responding to Ted’s actions & letters written to newspapers at the time. Then making guesses as to what kind of person tries to for example bomb a public airliner.

And Ted at the time he did that didn’t think a revolution was possible, so he was acting in pretty despicable ways, even torturing animals who came into his cabin looking for crumbs of food: Ted Kaczynski’s Various Ethical & Political Flirtations.

Does the Unabomber have any relevance to anarchism?

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/does-the-unabomber-have-any-relevance-to-anarchism>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 6 months ago in Anarchism

To begin with, I think Ted K sincerely identified as an anarchist in the 1990s at least. His first letter to the media, in June 1993, began with the words: “We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC.” A later communiqué from April 1995 repeated: “We call ourselves anarchists.” The Manifesto discusses “our particular brand of anarchism”.

Also, for many years after his arrest his message remained fairly consistent: “the social ideal I would put forward is that of the nomadic hunting-and-gathering society.” Plus, that: “after the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it.”

But, in terms of answering the deeper question of ‘does the Unabomber have any relevance to anarchism?’ I think Wayne Price said it best when he answered in the following way:

First, I answer “No.” His views have nothing in common with my views on anarchism. And even the most misguided anarchist bomb-throwers and assassins of the past would not have killed professors and students.

But I also say “Maybe.” His views are similar to those of many anarchists: the lack of interest in developing a strategy for popular revolution; the belief that the enemy is industrial technology; not building an organization; not participating in popular struggles, but acting as an elite above the people; the worship of violence, abstracted from popular struggle; a willingness to impose their views on the people, even while denouncing as vanguardist those who try to persuade people. Perhaps I could add: an ambiguity about democracy, seeing anarchism as for freedom versus democracy, rather than as the most extreme form of democracy. All these concepts are reflected in the Unabomber’s letters and actions and are also held by various trends within the anti-authoritarian movements. No doubt the Unabomber will be used as an excuse for denouncing anarchism. The movement would be wise to prepare by having open discussion about him and his methods.

As much as some Kaczynski fans would like to claim that the number of people who are curious about Kaczynski is a sign of a burgeoning movement, I think for the most part interest in the Unabomer case is comparable to other true crime curiosities such as the case of Aileen Wuornos.

I’m fascinated by the Aileen Wuornos case, who was this hitch-hiking sex worker in the 70s, who ended up killing and robbing some of her clients, and it was this weird juxtaposition for the time because women were getting killed all the time by men and so it flipped the script a little bit that there was actually truck drivers who had assaulted or raped women on the road before, who began to be too afraid to pick up women because they were worried about getting killed.

On hearing news on the radio of a woman sex worker killing men, one woman compared the unbelievable experience to the first time Orson Welles’ radio-play ‘The War of The Worlds’ was received by a bemused audience.

Also:

Of course, the idea that technology is having an ever more destructive effect on our species isn’t very surprising. I hear people saying stuff like this all the time. Technology is destroying us. Our modern lives are fundamentally sick. YouTube and Facebook, and subreddits and Fox News have destroyed any shared sense of truth.

And we are all with our consumption, our waste, our relentless burning of fossil fuels pushing the planet to the point of no return. …

Last fall I went to visit one of my best friends … as I was leaving he handed me a book to read. It was short, slender, a book of letters from the mid 1920s written by an Italian born German theologian named Romano Guardini, I started flipping the pages when I got home and I kept finding passages like this:

“Thus, a technique of controlling living people is developing. It is constructed rationally and embodied in a monstrous system. For most of us, the possibility of a free development and central shaping of the person has disappeared.”

It could have been lifted straight from the manifesto, except it was written 70 years earlier. It may be tempting to look at every screwed up development in our times and think the Unabomber was right, that Ted was prophetic, that his dystopian predictions for our world have come true. But that’s giving him too much credit. Ted’s ideas aren’t original, they’re old. The manifesto is filled with the same kinds of things people have been saying about technology for as long as machines have been around.

Source

kinshavo: I think we need to separate the Unabomber and Ted K. in order to say if there’s any value to his contribution to anarchism.

The relevance is indisputable, what we can discuss is qualify in terms of good/bad through one own experience and view on anarchism. No need to say that that Wayne Price is not very popular here, but for many anarchists his arguments are valid to some extent, but like the low blow of comparing Aileen and Ted the influence of the Unabomber is the same of the myth, propaganda by the deed, etc. Ted K will be persona after the arrest I guess.

Sorry if this reply is not saying much but besides the manifesto and a couple of writings I never wanted to read more

GoddamnedVoodooMagic: I have my own criticisms of Ted. His humanism, his problem of looking at industrialism as a math problem to be solved and trying to remove the emotion out of it, his vanguardism, his prejudices, and his pro natalism are among the ones that come to mind. So, he isn’t infallible in my eyes.

However, he was immensely important to my worldview, and responsible for me embracing anticiv. For me to deny this, I’d be lying. I’m greatly indebted to Ted’s thought. Have been since I was a teen getting deep into anarchy alongside hardcore and punk music, Thoreau, Emerson, Nietzsche, Wilde, and Milton. The manifesto was an eye-opener, no doubt about that.

To call him ecofascist or whatever, would be a gross misnomer, and I don’t see how that could occur, even if one reads Ted in a negative light. It’s obvious he isn’t, and he’s made that evidently clear. Does he have some moments where I can’t stand by them? Absolutely. But as far as “is he relevant to anarchism?”, yes. 100%.

My take on the matter.

armyourdesires: the lack of interest in developing a strategy for popular revolution

ted literally has a book called ‘anti-tech revolution: how and why’

wayne price is clueless about anything that’s happened since the spanish civil war.

ted, on the other hand, knew what was coming. in the words of another anarchist, ‘he tried to warn us.’

TheTedKArchive: To be fair to Wayne, the quote was taken from an essay he wrote in mid 1995 before the manifesto was even published. So he’s just responding to Ted’s actions & letters written to newspapers at the time. Then making guesses as to what kind of person tries to for example bomb a public airliner.

anarresinfoshop: even the most misguided anarchist bomb-throwers and assassins of the past would not have killed professors and students.

For sake of argument: what about the Chicago School economics professors, with their academic links to the Nazi Party, who directly collaborated with Pinochet and enabled his rise to power via the coup d’etat in Chile?

In the course of their academic work, they actively did things which were hostile to anarchy, and which anarchists are in turn hostile towards. Would some of these academics, professors, and their students, not in turn be politically opposed by anarchists? Not as a mere coincidence, but as a direct consequence of their academic work, which was their primary contribution to these crimes against humanity and the empowerment of the perpetrators thereof?

Might there be other types of academic endeavors, which are hostile to anarchy, and which in turn, anarchists might not be so “misguided” in being hostile towards?

If anarchists are serious about dismantling hierarchies, it makes very little sense to simultaneously privilege academic hierarchies.

roanoke9: New hot take on this. If we must compare the two (and we probably shouldn’t) Eileen was more anarchist than Ted. And either of them are more relevant to anarchism than Wayne.

TheTedKArchive:** Reply to comment by yourhonor in An Anarchist Archive Analysing the Life & Impact of Ted Kaczynski by TheTedKArchive

I don’t have time to go back and find the stuff to prove it to you, but here’s just the articles and podcasts from the time anyways as a starting point for people:

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/l-more-non-news-about-the-eco-extremist-mafia

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/john-h-richardson-conor-arpwel-children-of-ted-and-a-response

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/patrick-farnsworth-john-h-richardson-kaczynski-moments

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/aragorn-bellamy-fitzpatrick-etc-the-brilliant-podcast

TheTedKArchive:** Reply to comment by theishkaharchive in An Anarchist Archive Analysing the Life & Impact of Ted Kaczynski by TheTedKArchive

Yeah bullshit about that not being Abe, there were enough sources, confirmations and witness descriptions.

And of course I don’t read every single word of every text I upload, some are literally text dumps of 8 year long podcast transcripts for word searching, and a lot is just utter trash ideology, but it’s there to be a primary source for people to be able to reference in relation to other texts.

If you want to say any doxxes you think exist and should be taken down you’re more than welcome, I already censored the doxxes on Abe and his wife last night:

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/l-who-is-censored-a-paralegal-or-an-eco-extremist-mafia

TheTedKArchive:** Reply to comment by wuwuw in An Anarchist Archive Analysing the Life & Impact of Ted Kaczynski by TheTedKArchive

Suggested Reading critiquing Ted

Arguments for deleting: Ted is an anarchist POW, so he deserves not to be shit all over.

Counter argument: Even if I were to grant he’s an anarchist POW, it wouldn’t make the ‘war’ he fought any more justifiable, it would just mean some anarchist POWs deserve to be shit all over. Ted is an asshole who planted a bomb on a public airliner, took a knife to meet a romantic interest who turned him down, with the plan to disfigure her face for it, and slowly tortured animals to death for eating food in his cabin.

Texts by Daniel McGowen

Argument for deleting: Daniel is an ex anarchist POW, so he might deserve special treatment in being asked whether he wants his texts published.

Counter argument: There are countless witness testimonies of the time and place Daniel was radicalized also being a hotbed of interest in the Unabomber manifesto. So when using the website to learn about these events, it’s useful to have writing by the ELF members themselves to look through in the same topic. He acknowledges himself he made some dumb decisions like burning down a tree farm due to thinking they were genetically modified trees when they weren’t, and so hopes others can learn not to make the kind of mistakes he made, this website can attempt to in part serve that purpose.

Doxes of the eco-extremist writer/translator/publisher Abe Cabrera and his vivisectionist wife

Argument for deleting: No good is being achieved. And even if the husband did commit an unethical act, the wife can’t be guilty of the crimes her husband committed.

Counter argument: When I feel like it I’ll take screenshots of the sources, black out the names in the images, post them and replace the names in the text on the website with ‘[censored]’. The net good is being able to understand the history of a group who started out slavishly walking in Ted’s ideological footsteps and how they became way, way more misanthropic and hopeless than him, plus their supporters and promoters.

TheTedKArchive:** Reply to comment by wuwuw in An Anarchist Archive Analysing the Life & Impact of Ted Kaczynski by TheTedKArchive

It is comical how calling the website ‘the’ ted k archive and including social anarchist texts has made it possible for teddites to relate to how pissed off the social anarchists were when ITS texts got added to ‘the’ anarchist library.

But, yeah go off, I would prefer to read Chomsky over Chomsky haters, but if the first person to have the energy to create an archive of Chomsky’s writing happened to desire to load the site with Chomsky critiques and suggested reading Chomsky wouldn’t like, I would still appreciate the work that went into archiving his writing.

An Anarchist Archive Analysing the Life & Impact of Ted Kaczynski

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/special/about-this-project>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 7 months ago in Anarchism

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20230710002355/https:/raddle.me/f/Anarchism/149938/an-anarchist-archive-analysing-the-life-impact-of-ted>

This is a newly released huge archive on Ted Kaczynski.

The website works just like wikipedia, where anyone can submit new texts to the website and new edits of texts currently on the website.

We, everyone who has contributed, have archived:

A ton of primary source documents on Ted’s life and ideas.
Documents analyzing the effect he had on the public’s understanding of radical environmentalists, anarchists, terrorists, criminals, the mentally ill & simple mental neurodivergence.
Lots of great suggested reading on anarchism & other issues.

We, the librarians who bought the website domain, are pro-tech anarchists, but we just find his life story and impact really interesting.

So, we’re hoping the website can work to draw people in with similar politics to him and similar mental health issues frankly. Then for the cold hard reality of the primary source reading material, the epic-ness of the suggested reading material and the inviting discussion spaces connected to the website, to all have a deprogramming effect and be a mental health support.

For example, a popular text on the website for a while was simply a book on how to Unfuck Your Friendships and the discord has already played host to a discussion between people encouraging each other to think rationally about their depression diagnosis.

Which texts go up on the website is decided by a small collective of librarians, but all decisions will be put to a debate that anyone can join, in the live chat discussion spaces linked below.

Discussion Spaces

On the discord and matrix live chat spaces you’ll get:

Updates on when new texts go live.
Help with how to request rare documents from university archives.
The chance to co-ordinate with others on copy typing up handwritten documents onto the website.
The option to debate what new texts go up on the website.

Ethical steps taken by this project

We have a list of essays critiquing Ted’s politics & philosophy on the front page of the website.

There are long critiques and disclaimers added to some texts and we aim to add more.

When collecting together research on misanthropic groups and projects, we simply title the text ‘a text dump on ______’. That way for example we don’t dignify fictional stories terror groups weave when they write their own press releases and title them as communiqués.

Anyone can join the debate over which texts should go up on the website, obviously if you join just to troll or spam though, you will be removed.

A record will be kept of all texts that were rejected, whether for minor formatting reasons or deeply held political reasons.

A record will also be kept of controversial texts that were approved, where for example there was a sizable disagreement.

Ideally, in the future we will have popular sorting mechanisms directly under the main search box, such as a check box for ‘only anarchist texts’ that would exclude texts labelled ‘not anarchist’.

Frequently asked questions

Why idolize Ted by naming the website after him?

People who are curious about his life and impact are just the main audience we hope to draw in with this website.

Since we think he’s going to be remembered as a true crime curiosity anyways, we might as well capitalize on that and use it as a space to promote critiques of people with similar politics to him and help with similar mental health issues to him.

Was Ted K ever an anarchist?

He definitely identified as an anarchist in the 1990s at least. His first letter to the media, in June 1993, began with the words: “We are an anarchist group calling ourselves FC.” A later communiqué from April 1995 repeated: “We call ourselves anarchists.” The Manifesto discusses “our particular brand of anarchism”.

How easy was the website to set up?

We just bought the domain then asked the good folks at Anarchist Libraries.net to set up the Amuse Wiki software. They did it all for us for free, had it running virtually right away and have helped answer any questions.

If you’re curious to live chat to them, there’s a channel on the Hexchat program under Libera.Chat channels #amusewiki and #anarchistlibrary.

If you’d like to set up your own anarchist library you can attempt to follow the steps described here and/or email anarchistlibraries-request@inventati.org.

Source

__0: Didn’t ted more use the anarchist angle as a way to fuck with the feds? Like they would put effort into looking into a loosely connected group of radicals instead of some guy building bombs in a cabin? …

Ishkah: I think similar statements he made after he was arrested make it more likely he honestly thought of himself as an anarchist.

That’s not to say I necessarily think he was an anarchist or that the way he thought of anarchism is anything like the way I do. For further reading on this issue see: Is the Unabomber an Anarchist?

Before his arrest:

We call ourselves anarchists because we would like, ideally, to break down all society into very small, completely autonomous units. Regrettably, we don’t see any clear road to this goal, so we leave it to the indefinite future. Our more immediate goal, which we think may be attainable at some time during the next several decades, is the destruction of the worldwide industrial system. Through our bombings we hope to promote social instability in industrial society, propagate anti-industrial ideas and give encouragement to those who hate the industrial system.

...

Man is a social animal, meant to live in groups. But only in SMALL groups, say up to 100 people, in which all members know one another intimately. Man is not meant to live as an insignificant atom in a vast organization, which is the only way he can live in any form of industrialized society.

...

Leftism is unlikely ever to give up technology, because technology is too valuable a source of collective power.

215. The anarchist[34] too seeks power, but he seeks it on an individual or small-group basis; he wants individuals and small groups to be able to control the circumstances of their own lives. He opposes technology because it makes small groups dependent on large organizations.

...

34. This statement refers to our particular brand of anarchism. A wide variety of social attitudes have been called “anarchist,” and it may be that many who consider themselves anarchists would not accept our statement of paragraph 215. It should be noted, by the way, that there is a nonviolent anarchist movement whose members probably would not accept FC as anarchist and certainly would not approve of FC’s violent methods.

After his arrest:

I would like to comment on some statements that were made in reference to the Unabomber’s manifesto in GA 40–41. In an article on pages 21–22, Anti-Authoritarians Anonymous wrote:

“[A] return to undomesticated autonomous ways of living would not be achieved by the removal of industrialism alone. Such removal would still leave domination of nature, subjugation of women, war, religion, the state, and division of labour, to cite some basic social pathologies. It is civilization itself that must be undone to go where Unabomber wants to go.”

I agree with much of this....

But the removal of civilization itself is a far more difficult proposition, because civilization in its pre-industrial forms does not require an elaborate and highly-organized technological structure. A pre-industrial civilization requires only a relatively simple technology, the most important element of which is agriculture.

How does one prevent people from practicing agriculture? And given that people practice agriculture, how does one prevent them from living in densely-populated communities and forming social hierarchies? It is a very difficult matter and I don’t see any way of accomplishing it.

I am not suggesting that the elimination of civilization should be abandoned as an ideal or as an eventual goal. I merely point out that no one knows of any plausible means of reaching that goal in the foreseeable future. In contrast, the elimination of the industrial system is a plausible goal for the next several decades, and, in a general way, we can see how to go about attaining it. Therefore, the goal on which we should set our sights for the present is the destruction of the industrial system. After that has been accomplished we can think about eliminating civilization.

...

After the techno-industrial system has been eliminated, people can and should fight injustice wherever they find it....

__0: Ok damn i love that second quote … i think what confused me was it was based just an interpretation i had like 5–6 years ago, where i kinda simplified teds takes on things, i think also kind of seeing some of the more problematic stuff in the manifesto, and his pretty anti left take on things, but also as someone who identifies as anarchist leaning, and also not as stongly leaning towards traditional leftism … i kind of understand a bit more that traditional leftism isn’t the only route to social justice etc…

Ishkah: There’s certainly a lot to dislike about his political theory too, for example it’s an open question whether in Ted’s view some forms of racial and religious conflicts should be encouraged in the short-term, so long as they are stresses useful in breaking down the industrial system:

It seems to me, that there are discontented groups that could be very useful if we could, so to speak, recruit them.

Then when the right moment comes, they will be in a position to strike. The thing is that people will tend to be attracted to a movement not only on the basis of agreeing with its ideas, but if they see it as effective, having a clear-cut agenda, cohesive, purposeful and active.

In certain quarters, there is a rejection of modernity, among muslim militants, and I’m wondering what extent it might be useful to our movement to carry on discussions with the Muslim militants and see whether there is sufficient common ground there for any sort of alliance.

If he were simply that, I might be inclined to support him, but my guess is that his motive is less an opposition to modernity than a desire to create an Islamic ‘great power’ that would be able to compete on equal terms with other great powers of the world. If that is true, then he is just another ruthless and power-hungry politician, and I have no use for him …

Concerning the recent terrorist action in Britain: Quite apart from any humanitarian considerations, the radical Islamics’ approach seems senseless. They take a hostile stance toward whole nations, such as the US. or Britain, and they indiscriminately kill ordinary citizens of those countries. In doing so they only strengthen the countries in question, because they provide the politicians with what they most need: a feared external enemy to unite the people behind their leaders. The Islamics seem to have forgotten the principle of “divide and conquer”: Their best policy would have been to profess friendship for the American, British, etc. people and limit their expressed hostility to the elite groups of those countries, while portraying the ordinary people as victims or dupes of their leaders. (Notice that this is the position that the US. usually adopts toward hostile countries.)

So the terrorists’ acts of mass slaughter seem stupid. But there may be an explanation other than stupidity for their actions: The radical Islamic leaders may be less interested in the effect that the bombings have on the US. or the UK. than in their effect within the Islamic world. The leaders’ main goal may be to build a strong and fanatical Islamic movement, and for this purpose they may feel that spectacular acts of mass destruction arc more effective than assassinations of single individuals, however important the latter may be. I’ve found some support for this hypothesis:

“[A] radical remake of the faith is indeed the underlying intention of bin Laden and his followers. Attacking America and its allies is merely a tactic, intended to provoke a backlash strong enough to alert Muslims to the supposed truth of their predicament, and so rally them to purge their faith of all that is alien to its essence. Promoting a clash of civilizations is merely stage one. The more difficult part, as the radicals see it, is convincing fellow Muslims to reject the modern world absolutely (including such aberrations as democracy), topple their own insidiously secularizing quisling governments, and return to the pure path.”

...

“134. For all of the foregoing reasons, technology is a more powerful social force than the aspiration for freedom. But this statement requires an important qualification. It appears that during the next several decades the industrial-technological system will be undergoing severe stresses due to economic and environmental problems, and especially due to problems of human behavior (alienation, rebellion, hostility, a variety of social and psychological difficulties). We hope that the stresses through which the system is likely to pass will cause it to break down, or at least weaken it sufficiently so that a revolution occurs and is successful, then at that particular moment the aspiration for freedom will have proved more powerful than technology.” [Emphasis added.]

...

“150. As we mentioned in paragraph 134, industrial society seems likely to be entering a period of severe stress, due in part to problems of human behavior and in part to economic and environmental problems. And a considerable proportion of the system’s economic and environmental problems result from the way human beings behave. Alienation, low self-esteem, depression, hostility, rebellion; children who won’t study, youth gangs, illegal drug use, rape, child abuse , other crimes, unsafe sex, teen pregnancy, population growth, political corruption, race hatred, ethnic rivalry, bitter ideological conflict (i.e., pro-choice vs. pro-life), political extremism, terrorism, sabotage, anti-government groups, hate groups. All these threaten the very survival of the system. The system will be FORCED to use every practical means of controlling human behavior.”

As well he is now a kind of Machiavellian vanguardist:

(ii) If a member of the anti-tech organization can find a place on the editorial board of a radical environmentalist periodical (for instance, the Earth First! journal ), he will be able to influence the content of the periodical. If a majority of anti-tech people can be placed on the editorial board, they will be able in effect to take the periodical over, minimize its leftist content, and use it systematically for the propagation of anti-tech ideas....

How can anti-tech revolutionaries get themselves into positions of power and influence in radical environmentalist groups? The most important way will be through the moral authority of hard work. In every organization which they seek to capture, the communists are the readiest volunteers, the most devoted committee workers, the most alert and active participants. In many groups, this is in itself sufficient to gain the leadership; it is almost always enough to justify candidacy [for leadership].

The [Communists] in penetrating an organization... become the ‘best workers’ for whatever goals the organization seeks to attain.

...

The current political turmoil provides an environment in which a revolutionary movement should be able to gain a foothold. … Present situation looks a lot like situation (19^th century) leading up to Russian Revolution, or (pre-1911) to Chinese Revolution. You have all these different factions, mostly goofy and unrealistic, and in disagreement if not in conflict with one another, but all agreeing that the situation is intolerable and that change of the most radical kind is necessary and inevitable. To this mix add one leader of genius.

...

Prior to that final struggle, the revolutionaries should not expect to have a majority of people on their side. History is made by active, determined minorities, not by the majority, which seldom has a clear and consistent idea of what it really wants.

...

When the system becomes sufficiently stressed and unstable, a revolution against technology may be possible. The pattern would be similar to that of the French and Russian Revolutions. French society and Russian society, for several decades prior to their respective revolutions, showed increasing signs of stress and weakness. Meanwhile, ideologies were being developed that offered a new world-view that was quite different from the old one. In the Russian case revolutionaries were actively working to undermine the old order. Then, when the old system was put under sufficient additional stress (by financial crisis in France, by military defeat in Russia) it was swept away by revolution. What we propose is something along the same lines.

wuwuw: hey i think i’ll start an archive called thenoamchomskyarchive.com and fill it with a load of my own shitty writing and a ton of other writing that noam chomsky would obviously not want attached to his name

TheTedKArchive: It is comical how calling the website ‘the’ ted k archive and including social anarchist texts has made it possible for teddites to relate to how pissed off the social anarchists were when ITS texts got added to ‘the’ anarchist library.

wuwuw: except... ted k is an actual person (an anarchist POW, no less) who you’re shitting all over.

i wonder if you ever considered that someone like daniel mcgowan (an ex anarchist POW) would not want their writing on a website like yours? where are those ‘ethics’ that you’re always going on about, ishkah?

your website includes doxes of people who you don’t like, which i guess you think is fine because you’re ‘doing good’ or something, but how can you also dox their spouse? is a woman guilty of the crimes her husband committed in your eyes?

probably you have no idea what i’m talking about because you haven’t read any of the texts you’ve uploaded.

TheTedKArchive: Suggested Reading critiquing Ted

Arguments for deleting: Ted is an anarchist POW, so he deserves not to be shit all over.

Texts by Daniel McGowen

Argument for deleting: Daniel is an ex anarchist POW, so he might deserve special treatment in being asked whether he wants his texts published.

Doxes of the eco-extremist writer/translator/publisher Abe Cabrera and his vivisectionist wife

Argument for deleting: No good is being achieved. And even if the husband did commit an unethical act, the wife can’t be guilty of the crimes her husband committed.

theishkaharchive: Doxes of the eco-extremist writer/translator/publisher Abe Cabrera and his vivisectionist wife

Your website includes doxes of more people than just those two (who might just be two random latinx people for all you know).

You’d know which doxes I was talking about if you’d actually read any of the texts you’ve been uploading.

TheTedKArchive: Yeah bullshit about that not being Abe, there were enough sources, confirmations and witness descriptions.

If you want to say any doxxes you think exist and should be taken down you’re more than welcome, I already censored the doxxes on Abe and his wife last night:

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/l-who-is-censored-a-paralegal-or-an-eco-extremist-mafia

yourhonor: different anon here, coming to this conversation late.

there were enough sources, confirmations and witness descriptions.

what are you talking about? “witness descriptions”? there was literally one source. one site — only one — said it was him. he, via his legal representative, said it was mistaken identity.

no other anarchist site touched the subject because they didn’t want to risk ruining a guy and his wife’s lives over a fucking rumor on the internet.

you don’t seem to have any such qualms.

TheTedKArchive: I don’t have time to go back and find the stuff to prove it to you, but here’s just the articles and podcasts from the time anyways as a starting point for people:

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/l-more-non-news-about-the-eco-extremist-mafia

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/john-h-richardson-conor-arpwel-children-of-ted-and-a-response

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/patrick-farnsworth-john-h-richardson-kaczynski-moments

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/aragorn-bellamy-fitzpatrick-etc-the-brilliant-podcast

yrhonor: ‘I don’t have time to go back and find the stuff to prove it to you’ is internet speak for ‘i can not answer your question so i’ll just pretend to be busy and hide.’

Yes, I’ve read the 325 piece. We’ve all read it. It’s four years old now. You’re very late to the party, Brit dude.

There is nothing to confirm anything L at 325 wrote in any of the other pieces you’ve linked. Obviously John H Richardson of the New York Magazine didn’t doxx anyone. He knows the serious legal consequences of doxing people when you’re a public figure. Likewise, Aragorn! and Bellamy didn’t dox anyone either. Ever. That’s not their style, as anyone who’d ever listened to their podcast would know.

So you’ve literally got one source, not ‘enough sources, confirmations and witness descriptions.’

Gardon00765: Why should people care if others don’t want stuff they said to be known? Seems somebody just should watch what they say if they dont want people to know of it

asterism: Unironically a great idea.

Anything to smear the name of Chompsky!

A misanthropic bus stop bomber has been found by police and imprisoned...

Post Link:
<thetedkarchive.com/library/they-declare-guilty-the-individualist-tending-to-the-wild-for-explosive-attacks-in-the-rm>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 8 months ago in Politics

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20230710002355/https:/raddle.me/f/Politics/149298/a-misanthropic-bus-stop-bomber-has-been-found-by-police-and>

TheTedKArchive: Reply to comment by wednesday in Newly released website, hosting a treasure trove of rare documents on Ted Kaczynski, for political violence researchers & true crime enthusiasts alike. by TheTedKArchive

Yep:

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-truth-versus-lies-original-draft https://thetedkarchive.com/library/beau-context-books-correspondence https://thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-kaczynski-journal-1-of-4-from-series-vii-1984-1986 https://thetedkarchive.com/library/ted-s-notes-on-his-journals-feb-1996

TheTedKArchive: Reply to comment by Fool in Newly released website, hosting a treasure trove of rare documents on Ted Kaczynski, for political violence researchers & true crime enthusiasts alike. by TheTedKArchive

Again, I have no idea what you’re saying. Can you write in longer form?

‘New website... with anarchistlibrary back end?’

Not sure what you mean. I bought the domain name and did ask anarchistlibraries.net to help me set up their amusewiki software.

Here’s the site map: https://thetedkarchive.com/sitemap.txt

I’ve newly archived over 300 books, academic papers & essays that aren’t on anarchistlibrary. I have also copied over 200 or so anarchistlibraries.net texts onto the website because I do think they’re valuable.

This is just me announcing it’s all public.

Here’s the table of contents: https://thetedkarchive.com/library/the-ted-k-archive

TheTedKArchive: Reply to comment by ChaosAnarchy in Newly released website, hosting a treasure trove of rare documents on Ted Kaczynski, for political violence researchers & true crime enthusiasts alike. by TheTedKArchive

Because the archive was built in order to host an anarchist critique of him. It’s a picture that’s on all the PDFs where you can see it says, ‘A critique of his ideas and actions’. And in the top left corner of the website. You just can’t make it out in this raddle thumbnail.

Newly released website, hosting a treasure trove of rare documents on Ted Kaczynski, for political violence researchers & true crime enthusiasts alike.

Post Link:
<web.archive.org/web/20221211132950/https:/thetedkarchive.com/>

Submitted by TheTedKArchive 1 month ago in Politics

Source:
<web.archive.org/web/20221211132950/https:/raddle.me/f/Politics/149235/newly-released-website-hosting-a-treasure-trove-of-rare>

Fool: Ted K was writing for much longer and under more names than I realised.

https://thetedkarchive.com/library/petr-kropotkin-the-conquest-of-bread

Fool: Anarcho-Communism was the true Eco-Fascists all along.

🐿️

TheTedKArchive: ‘New website... with anarchistlibrary back end?’

Not sure what you mean. I bought the domain name and did ask anarchistlibraries.net to help me set up their amusewiki software.

Here’s the site map: https://thetedkarchive.com/sitemap.txt

This is just me announcing it’s all public.

Here’s the table of contents: https://thetedkarchive.com/library/the-ted-k-archive

Fool: You... chose... them...

TheTedKArchive: Again, I have no idea what you’re saying. Can you write in longer form?

Fool moderator: Y

ChaosAnarchy: dunno why it has the anarchy symbol when Ted K isn’t an anarchist??

TheTedKArchive: Because the archive was built in order to host an anarchist critique of him. It’s a picture that’s on all the PDFs where you can see it says, ‘A critique of his ideas and actions’. And in the top left corner of the website. You just can’t make it out in this raddle thumbnail.

wednesday: is there anything on here from the UMich archives? it’s a shame that content isn’t generally available online.

TheTedKArchive: Yep:

kinshavo: True crime fanbase is really troublesome overlapping with people with fascist tendencies so sorry if it rub me wrong your pitch to sell the site

The LUL

The Library of Unconventional Lives was born today! What stories of people living anarchy (or archy) would you like to see added?

Post Link:
<thelul.org/>

Submitted by TheLUL 3 years ago in Anarchy

Here’s the main page:

---

Welcome to The LUL!

You can find a full index of the archive here:

The Full Table of Contents

You can also:

Sort texts on the archive by author here.
Download any document on the archive, by clicking on one of the many download options, once on the document.
Edit any text on the archive by clicking the ‘writers pen’ symbol, once on the document.
Add texts to the library by clicking the ‘+’ button in the top right corner.
And much more, simply have a look around.

For more information about this project click here.

For suggestions on how you can help improve this website click here.

Join the live chat spaces for the website: Discord & Matrix

& Follow this website on twitter for updates: @TheLibUL

Education

The Man Who Snuck Into the Ivy League Without Paying a Thing

Work

Leisure

The Criminal Justice System

Fool: The Good, the Bad.

Why must you create these categories?

You want to craft a narrative, and push a view point. I think this is the general problem I have with your work, is that you tell the reader how they should think. You don’t present the information and allow the reader to make their own conclusions.

Judgement has been cast! These are sinners, that must be burnt. Burn the heretics!

fortmis: Ya the good bad grey thing is weird and not the good kind of weird

yeeshk: Finish the Ted K Archive first. Most of the texts you’ve uploaded there are totally broken.

TheTedKArchive: Nah, obviously not most. And I wouldn’t call the footnotes not working as meaning the text is ‘totally broken’, they’re simply first go’s at making the texts more freely available and link-able too by chapter.

But I will get round to throwing all the ones with formatting errors in a spreadsheet and fixing them. I just prioritized wanting to cultivate some different reading discussions.

yeeshk: P.S. Again, why have you included direct action attacks (smashing bank windows etc) in the BAD section, alongside Hitler etc?

NOISEBOB: yeah and what’s wrong with CLODO?

TheLUL: Working towards the goal of destroying all computers is cruel in my view, considering for example the number of medical advances that have come about with the use of such technology and the number of potential advances in the future.

NOISEBOB: Blah blah blah. CLODO clearly understood the total domination that came with computers.., as for medical advances, pffft.

theLOL: cOmPuteRs arE goOd fOr yoUr heaLTh!!111 https://i.pinimg.com/originals/25/a9/56/25a9565fcd403be4bdce507d9568fe7d.jpg

TheLUL: If we’re talking about the same communique, they actually didn’t claim to have smashed any windows, which is somewhat surprising, since they even went to the effort of bringing chains to lock doors with, but maybe they were worried about alarms going off.

The main reason that I view them as holding character vices is just that they promoted Ted K as a ‘freedom lover’, when Ted has argued for example that ‘rebels should have as many children as they can’ and that he hopes “the population explosion gets completely out of hand, because that will increase the likelihood that the system will collapse. Once the technological system is gone, population will decrease very rapidly, because without modern technology it will be impossible to produce and distribute enough food to supply such an enormous number of people.”

On a side note, there’s also texts in the roughly good category of groups, which discuss arsons of logging company offices and horse slaughterhouses.

Fool: All you’re displaying is that prescribing morality categorisation to filing of texts is a ill conceived method for sorting.

TheLUL: Potentially so, I just figured if I was looking at a list of revolutionary groups espousing various political philosophies, and I didn’t know who any of them were, my main motive for deciding which to pick first would be whether I was in a mood to read about groups who had a roughly positive effect on the world or a roughly negative one.

Do you have a themed sub-categorisation you’d suggest? Or would you sub-categorise them by date? Or leave them as one big list sorted alphabetically?

Fool: Maybe just Suggested vs Not Endorsed or Controversial. It’s essentially the same but softer, and less prescriptive.

It’s definitely tricky to categorise without passing judgement.

onlineterminally: groups who had a roughly positive effect on the world or a roughly negative one

it’s telling that you think YOU, and YOU alone, are the judge of what is GOOD and what is BAD, what is POSITIVE and what is NEGATIVE, for the whole wide world.

get yourself to church and leave us alone.

TheLUL: So, you get annoyed seeing discussion around and rational for projects you don’t like, in a space you otherwise like spending time in. But, rather than channelling that annoyance into giving your best long arguments against the rational for the projects existence (which could sharpen your philosophy and critiquing abilities), instead you’d rather just give short insulting straw-mans.

All of that to me just reads as a petulant person trying to preserve the dogmatic aspects to a space they enjoy.

theLOL: if you have anything good to say about ted k (an anarchist prisoner), you are literally hitler.

kinshavo: I see what you doing..

The people want to burn the library so you are building a dozen other libraries

TheTedKArchive: Can you expand on what you mean? I think library projects like this one and the ted k archive will simply be seen as doubly unsatisfactory by the two main camps.

I make more non-anarchist texts accessible than the anarchist library does, which anarchistlibraries.net people would especially not like doing themselves. But, I also add some long disclaimers to the beginnings of texts which the anarchist library people don’t like doing.

And just in general, anyone who has feelings of wanting to burn libraries to the ground because of disagreements wouldn’t agree with the aims and principles of these new library projects.

kinshavo:

anarchistlibraries.net

Ha! Nice touch

I was just joking about the callings for author/text removal after the A.Loyd debacle.

Steal This Wiki

Steal This Wiki is Reborn!

Post Link:
<https://stealthiswiki.com/>

Submitted by StealThisWiki 3 years ago in Anarchy (edited 6 minutes later)

Source:
<raddle.me/f/Anarchy/150902/steal-this-wiki-is-reborn>

This is a newly restored back up of an old wiki project.

WELCOME!

Thanks for visiting Steal This Wiki, a collaborative update and rewrite of Abbie Hoffman’s seminal work, Steal This Book. And a special welcome to readers of Little Brother, Cory Doctorow’s book, which we are excited to see reference our project.

The Table of Contents

The project is divided into four major categories.

Survive is a primer on basic level survival in tough times. Here, you will find information on everything from how to eat on the cheap, getting through high school, living on the street, knowing about drugs, and much more!
Fight is an advanced skills section for use after you have gotten your survival needs taken care of. Topics range from use of firearms, leadership skills, good use of the internet, getting the hell out of dodge, and even petty theft if you are desperate or crazy!
Liberate is a section on individual cities written from a free spirit’s viewpoint. If you are stuck in a small town going nowhere and want to leave for adventure, Free Cities may have some good information for you!
Lastly, Steal This Library is a collection of related books and essays e.g. books analysing this projects yippie anarchist roots.

Read it!

You can browse the always-improving wiki online or download it in book format to your computer and print and bind a hard copy. Our already very useful beta release of Steal This Book Today includes both a Complete Edition (1191 pages) and a condensed Survival Edition (670 pages). If you’re feeling nostalgic, you can also read the original.

Featured Great Articles

Parkour The urban sport that not only keeps you in good shape but turns you into a acrobatic, cop and bad guy evading ninja.
Camping When the homeless shelters are being oppressive assholes and there is no money to pay some asshole landlord, grab a cheap tent and live in the wooded patches!
Free Land Updated a while back with even more information about free land.

Write it!

We look forward to seeing what you can contribute to the project. Just take a quick look at our guidelines and then jump in editing and expanding.

Throughout the wiki, you may find some typos or sentences that are out of place. Some of our contributors may be using shoddy smart phones or ancient laptops with no spell check. Or they may have more enthusiasm than writing skill. If you see something like this, correct away!

Help us!

You can help by getting the word out. You can tell others about the site, email out copies of the book, make it available for download in new places, give print copies to friends or others, leave them in libraries, or quote material in new work.

Contact

Questions about the project can be addressed by joining our discussion spaces on Discord or Matrix, tweeting at us, emailing StealThisWiki@proton.me or DMing us.

On the discord & matrix you’ll also get:

Updates on when new texts go live.
Help with how to request rare documents from university archives.
The chance to co-ordinate with others on updating wiki pages.
The option to debate what new pages go up on the website.
Source

0fux: looks very nice but needs an onion site

onlineterminally: Ishkah’s third library/archive in as many months! What’s next, dude? Still waiting for thenoamchomskyarchive.com, where you can find the stand up routines of Andy Kaufman, Mein Kampf, Seige, How To Unfuck Your Friendships With BigBrain Science, and a few copy and pasted texts by Noam Chomsky.

Bezotcovschina moderator: Please, remove gendered word from your comment and avoid gendering users here in the future

Newly Digitilized Bibliography of Abbie Hoffman

Post Link:
<https://stealthiswiki.com/library/steal-this-wiki-abbie-hoffman-s-bibliography>

Submitted by StealThisWiki 2 years ago in Anarchy

Source:
<raddle.me/f/Anarchy/152361/newly-digitilized-bibliography-of-abbie-hoffman>

Index

Digitalized

In Full

Digitalized

Zines

Fuck the System – 1967

Books

Revolution for the hell of it – 1968
Woodstock Nation – 1969
Steal This Book (1^st Edition) – 1971
To America with Love – 1976
Soon to be a Major Motion Picture – 1980
Square Dancing in the Ice Age – 1982
Steal This Urine Test – 1987
The Best of Abbie Hoffman – 1989

Essays

Speeches

Music

Wake Up, America! — 1969

In Full

Books (in chronological order)

Hoffman, Abbie. Revolution for the Hell of It. New York: Dial, 1968. Reprint, New York: Pocket Books, 1970. ’ *

-------- . Woodstock Nation: A Talk-Rock Album. New York: Vintage, 1969.

-------- . Steal This Book. New York. Pirate Editions, 1971.

Hoffman, Abbie, Jerry Rubin, and Ed Sanders. Vote! New York: Warner Paperback Library, 1972.

Hoffman, Abbie, and Anita Hoffman. To America with Love: Letters from the Underground. New York: Stonehill, 1976.

Hoffman, Abbie. Soon to Be a Major Motion Picture. Introduction by Norman Mailer. New York: Putnam, 1980.

----- . Square Dancing in the Lee Age: Underground Writings. New York: Putnam, 1982.

Hoffman, Abbie, and Jonathan Silvers. Steal This Urine Test: Fighting Drug Hysteria in America. New York: Penguin, 1987.

Hoffman, Abbie. The Best of Abbie Hoffman. Edited by Daniel Simon and Abbie Hoffman. New York: Four Walls Eight Windows, 1989.

Articles, Poems, Talks, and Letters (in chronological order)

Hoffman, Abbott. The Drum. Newsletter written and edited by Abbott Hoffman, Worcester, Mass., 1964.

-------- . Letter. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, 4 May 1965.

-------- . Letter. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, 12 Aug. 1965.

-------- . Letter. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, 4 Oct. 1965.

-------- . Letter. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, 7 Dec. 1965.

-------- . Letter. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, 20 Jan. 1966.

-------- . Letter. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, 6 Aug. 1966.

-------- . “The Crafts of Freedom.” Catholic Worker, Oct.—Nov. 1966: i + .

Hoffman, Abbie. Noww. Newsletter written and edited by Abbie Hoffman, Worcester, MA, 1966.

----- . “SNCC: The Desecration of a Delayed Dream.” Village Voice, 15 Dec. 1966: 6.

-------- . “Another Look at the Movement.” Village Voice, 22 Dec. 1966: 5 + .

Hoffman, Abbott. “View from Canal nth.” Poem. Punch, Apr. 1967: 8.

-------- . “Venceremos!” Poem. Punch, Apr. 1967: 8.

Hoffman, Abbie. “Liberty House/Poor Peoples Corporation.” Liberation, Apr. 1967: 20–21.

-------- . “Love and Hate on 5^th Avenue.” WIN, 16 June 1967: 8.

Metesky, George [pseud, for AH], “Diggery is Niggery.” WIN, 15 Sept. 1967: 8–10.

Hoffman, Abbie. “The 1968 Election?” (Hoffman s comments on a panel that included Staughton Lynd, Dr. Spock, and Jack Newfield.) WIN, 15 Mar. 1968: 4–5.

----- . “Creating a Perfect Mess.” Other Scenes, Oct. 1968: unpaged. (Reprinted as “Creating the Perfect Mess” in Revolution for the Hell of It)

-------- . “My Life to Live.” New York Free Press, 3—9 Oct. 1968: 4—5.

-------- . Letter. Punch, 4 Nov. 1968: 5.

----- . “The Doctors Revolt.” WIN, 15 Feb. 1969. (Reprinted in The Movement toward a New America, ed. Mitchell Goodman.)

Hoffman, Abbott. “Fupk the Vanguard, Power to the People.” East Village Other, 30 Apr. 1969: 3 + ..

Hoffman, Abbie. Review of Die Nigger Die! by H. Rap Brown. East Village Other, 15 May 1969: 19.

-------- . Letter. East Village Other, 18 June 1969: 2.

----- . “Media Freaking.” Talk given in Lincoln Park, Chicago, 27 Aug. 1968. Tulane Drama Review, Summer 1969: 46—51.

-------- . “Commuter Protest.” New York Rat, 3–16 Dec. 1969: 7 + .

-------- . “Sami and the Golden Yo-Yo.” Short story. Eye, Jan. 1969: 67.

-------- . Letter. Dated 22 Feb. 1970. Punch, 12–24 Mar. 1970: 9.

----- . “Chicago: Two Years After.” Introduction to reprint of Revolution for the Hell of It. New York: Pocket Books: 1970.

-------- . “America on $0 a Day.” Ramparts, Feb. 1971: 48—55.

----- . Transcript. Untitled audio tape from “Tribunal for Steal This Book,” 1971.

-------- . “I Quit.” WIN, Sept. 1971:18–19.

-------- . “Yo-Yo Power!” Esquire, Oct. 1971:106+.

----- . “Fire in the Lake: The Image of Revolution.” Letter. East Village Other, 23 Dec. 1971: 8 + .

-------- . “The Eyes of Cronkite.” Esquire, Apr. 1973: 85.

----- -. “Book-of-the-Month-Club Selection.” University Review, June 1974: 12–14.

-------- . “Renewing a Revolution.” Berkeley Barb, 12–18 Dec. 1975: 7.

----- . “Breaking Control and Getting in Tune.” Berkeley Barb, 19—25 Dec. 1975: 5

-------- . “My Life on the Lam.” Oui, June 1977: 79 + —

----- . “Inside the FBI (Or, How One of the Most Wanted Fugitives Goosed the Ghost of J. Edgar Hoover).” Penthouse, Oct. 1977:142+.

----- . “Abbie: In His Own Defense.” Transcript of taped speech from underground to audience at Madison Square Garden Felt Forum. Yipster Times, 10 Mar. 1978: 3.

Freed, Barry [pseud, for AH]. “Statement to Jefferson County Board of Supervisors.” Thousand Islands (New York), 3 Oct. 1978.

----- . “The Facts about Save the River Committee and Winter Navigation.” Pamphlet, n.d.

----- . “Statement of Barry Freed, Save the River.” United States Senate Subcommittee on Water Resources of the Committee on Environment and Public Works. Field Hearing, Alexandria Bay, New York, 27 Aug. 1979.

Hoffman, Abbie. “My Life as a Fugitive.” Parade, 14 Dec. 1980: 8–10.

-------- . Letter. Harper’s, Dec. 1980: 4.

----- . “The Great St. Lawrence River War.” Village Voice, 1—7 Apr. 1981: 16–17.

-------- . Letter. Veritas letterhead. 25 June 1981. Photocopied.

-------- . Talk given at Clark University, Worcester, Mass., 28 Mar. 1982.

----- . “Fifties, Sixties, Seventies, Eighties.” Talk given at University of Colorado at Boulder, 26 July 1982.

----- . “Nuclear Waste Upstate.” Op-ed piece. New York Times, 27 Sept. 1982.

-------- . “Steal This Meal.” High Times, Jan. 1983: 41 + .

----- . “No Lack of Civil Liberties in Nicaragua.” Post-Standard (Syracuse, New York), 29 July 1985: A13.

-------- . “Woodstock: Love It or Leave It.” L. A. Weekly, 16—22 Aug. 1985: 39.

----- . “Steal This Campus: A Report on the Mood of the Colleges from a Veteran Rabble-Rouser.” L. A. Weekly, 16–22 May 1986: 18.

----- . “Students Deserve Truth about the CIA.’ Guest editorial. Worcester Telegram and Gazette, to Dec. 1986.

-------- . Talk given at “The Sixties” conference, San Francisco, Feb. 1987.

----- . “Democracy Summer.” Public statement on plan to combat the Philadelphia Electric Company, Bucks County, Penn., 7 July 1987.

----- . Talk given at Cody’s Bookstore, Berkeley, California, to promote Steal This Urine Test, 17 Oct. 1987.

-------- . “Reefer Madness.” Nation, 21 Nov. 1987: 580–81.

----- . “AIDS and Responsible Drug Education.” City Lights Review 2 (1988): 14–16.

----- . “Running on Empty.’ Review of Naomi Foner’s film Running on Empty. Premiere, Sept. 1988: 90.

----- . “Deers and Cars.” Letter to the editor. New Hope Gazette, 29 Dec. 1988:to.

-------- . “The Young Have to Be There.” Progressive, June 1989: 15.

----- . “The Value of Conflict.” Talk given at Naropa Institute peace conference, 19 June 1986. Vajradhatu Sun, Oct.-Nov. 1989: i + .

----- “Reflections on the Dialogue with [Jesse] Jackson.” Tikkun, Nov. I Dec. 1987. Reprinted in Tikkun ... To Heal, Repair and Transform the World: An Anthology, ed. Michael Lerner, 81–83. Oakland: Tikkun Books, 1992.

----- “Bye-Bye Sixties, Hollywood-Style.” Reprinted in Abbie Hoffman, Square Dancing in the Ice Age. New York: Putnam, 1982.

Hoffman, Abbie, and Jonathan Silvers. “An Election Held Hostage.” Playboy, Oct. 1988: 73 + .

Unpublished Manuscripts (in approximate chronological order)

Hoffman, Abbott. “A Theory of Motivation by Erich Fromm.” Unpublished paper for Psychology 107, Brandeis University, n.d.

----- . “ ‘Help’ and ‘Hinder’ in a GESP-PK test: A Pilot Study.” Unpublished abstract of experiment in parapsychology, University of California, Berkeley, 1960.

Phillips, Jean [pseud, for AH]. “La Chef Extraordinaire.” Twelve-page article on Dominique Nahmias and her restaurant, Olympe.

Hoffman, Abbie. Letter on electronic voting, n.d.

----- . “Kiss and Tell: A True Story of Love and Sex in the New Age.” Fortypage first draft of autobiography, n.d.

-------- . “Abbie’s Quickest Spanish Lesson in History.” N.d.

Hoffman, Abbott Howard. “Last Will and Testament.” 4 July 1983.

Hoffman, Abbie. “Memorandum on U.S. Public Relations.” Plan for a public relations tour of the U.S. by Nicaraguan president Daniel Ortega, 29 July 1985.

Joshuafall: Nice. But considering Abbie has been dead about 34 years, who gave permission to release his work?

secco: especially considering it’s been 34 years, why ask for permission?

Joshuafall: Copyright would still be in effect.

Copyright: What am I supposed to do about it?

<web.archive.org/.../raddle.me>

I’m not claiming all the raddle users covered here were different people, this is just the history of some accounts where all their posts and comments were deleted and the accounts banned.