The author of the fine book The Ego and its Own was a man whose forehead sprouted a name: Stimer refers to his great brow. There is something charming about the fact that this book was signed with a pseudonym – this book that insists to the death on irreducible, irreparable uniqueness.
Continue reading How the Stirner Eats Gods
Identity Politicians (IPs) are a particular kind of leftist who use the spectre[1] of an identity-category (gender, race, sexuality, etc) as a lever to obtain power. In the sense discussed here, they should not be considered coterminous either with groups of people oppressed by identity categories, or even that subset who prioritise identity as a key site of struggle. Not all women, Black people, People of Colour (POC)[2], or members of other specifiable groups are IPs; not all feminists, anti-racists, or even separatists are IPs. Racism, sexism and other oppressions along identity axes are sociologically real, and not every person involved in the struggle against such oppressions is an IP.
For a moment there during the L.A. Riots there was jubilation as people showed they could take the streets back from the police, if only for a night or two. Poor people were able to attain things they could otherwise never afford. Capitalism’s excess products that forever waste away in the stores to be bought or always to be replaced by another on the shelf were liberated for use or for poor people to sell at swap meets for much more reasonable prices. Reporters on the scene were alarmed to see looters smiling and laughing. What isn’t fun about liberating free stuff from overpriced stores? People felt free. The crowd turning over and setting on fire the police car downtown was laughing, cheering and howling because they were having a blast and it was a crowd of mothers and their children, every race and age and every kind of folk you’d meet in this diverse city.
By (d)anger, AJODA #35, 1993
There are moments when life seems entirely impossible. All the crazy dreams of rebellion disappear. The desire to revolt against the society of the civilized is lost to futility, the open but empty hand. All of the late-night laughter filled conversations, the meanderings and wanderings of those intoxicated with thoughts of adventure, begin to seem naive and empty. One comes to the conclusion that one is accomplishing nothing: destruction and creation seem equally without attraction. One abandons one’s own imagination and returns to the old trap of fear. The existential idiot occupies one’s head.
By Rob los Ricos
In his book Temporary Autonomous Zone, Hakim Bey suggests that we not worry about changing the world, but instead take charge of our own lives whenever possible. He reminds us that, even though such insurrections as the ones in Paris 1871 and during the Spanish Civil War were ultimately crushed militarily, they at least achieved a period of autonomy for a portion of their lives, which is more than many of us can say.
Continue reading Traveling Autonomous Zone (2009)
It is idiotic that those who have figured things out are forced to wait for the mass of cretins who are blocking the way to evolve. The herd will always be the herd. So let’s leave it to stagnate and work on our own emancipation (… ) Put your old refrains aside. We have had enough of always sacrificing ourselves for something. The Fatherland, Society and Morality have fallen (…) That’s fine, but don’t contribute to reviving new entities for us: the Idea, the Revolution, Propaganda, Solidarity; we don’t give a damn. What we want is to live, to have the comforts and well-being we have a right to. What we want to accomplish is the development of our individuality in the full sense of the word, in its entirety The individual has a right to all possible well-being, and must try to attain it all the time, by any means…” (Hégot, an illegalist, writing to the anarchist journal Les Temps Nouveaux in 1903, on behalf of a “small circle” who shared his opinions.)
Continue reading THE “ILLEGALISTS” by Doug Imrie
A police force, where there are no crimes to discover and delinquents to arrest, will provoke or invent crimes…
— Malatesta
People involved in law enforcement are agents of the powerful against the weak, who readily mobilize and deploy arbitrary and unpredictable violence and destruction. The hateful and demented pro-police comments made in mass and social media in the wake of the cops’ fully exposed immunity from Ferguson to Staten Island (well, everywhere) show that better than any political treatise. The pro-police camp persists in perpetuating some of the most banal lies of authoritarian morality: The state exists to protect the weak from the whims of tyrants. The system of law and justice is impartial. Cops only arrest the guilty. The guilty deserve whatever the police do to them. Prisons are only for bad people…
Continue reading For the Abolition of Police
Play is desire realized, it is the negation of domination. Play is unmediated activity that does not attempt to produce a specific emotion, indeed, any emotion at all. The result of play may be alternatively orgasm, terror, delight, even death. Play is ambivalent; any one of these conclusions or any multitude of others are possible (there may even be no conclusive result). Yet, each eventuality in its own context is correct because none are specifically elicited except in the content of the play-activity that produces it.
Airs on WSFM-LP 103.3 in Asheville / streaming at AshevilleFM from 3am EST on October 12th, 2015 through October 18th, then podcasting at radio4all.net. Also airing this week on KOWA-LPFM in Olympia, WA, KWTF in Bodega Bay, CA, KXCF in Marshall, CA, and WCRS-LP Columbus Community Radio 98.3 and 102.1 FM. The show will later be archived at TheFinalStrawRadio.NoBlogs.Org. You can email us at thefinalstrawradio@riseup.net and you can send us mail at:
Continue reading Lawrence Jarach on Anarchy (A Journal of Desire Armed) & critiques of tactics of debate
There are many prejudiced caricatures and objections concerning primitivism; for example that its proponents want to go “back to the Stone Age,” or that any move away from industrial capitalism would result in an immediate mass die-off of thousands — if not millions — of humans. These dismissals showcase a lack of seriousness on the part of anti-primitivists, and their refusal to engage in any kind of substantial dialog around the issues of the origins of capitalism and the various mechanisms of social control and domination. While understandable coming from non-anarchists (who are engaged in promoting one or another form of domination and exploitation), such a knee-jerk reaction from anarchists and antiauthoritarians is cause for concern. Can it really be the case that the issues of industrialization, urbanism, centralized technologies, and the furthering of hierarchical power relations that arise from these phenomena are off-limits to anarchist discourse?