Tag Archives: Anarchy Magazine

What Do Streams Want?

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Aragorn!

endgame, Volumes I & II

by Derrick Jensen

Seven Stories Press

New York, NY

929 pages. Paper. $18.95
Prior to the release of endgame there was quite a bit of buzz about the book in anti-civilization circles. The expectation was that this book was going to make explicit Jensen’s previous flirtations with anarcho-primitivism (for instance his widely republished interview with John Zerzan from The Sun). Volume one was going to make the strong indictment of Civilization, volume two would discuss how, exactly, to bring civilization down. endgame was expected be an anarcho-primitivist manifesto by someone who is a skilled writer rather than a philosopher, student, mail-bomber, or propagandist.
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You Can’t Blow up a Social Relationship… But you can have fun trying!

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Bob Black

In 1979, four Australian anarchist and “libertarian socialist” organizations published a tract called You Can’t Blow Up a Social Relationship, presumptuously subtitled “The Anarchist Case Against Terrorism” — as if theirs was the only case against it and there was no case for it. The pamphlet has been reprinted and distributed by North American anarchist groups, usually workerists, and by default appears to enjoy some currency as a credible critique of terrorism canonical for anarchists.
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Why I am not an Anti-Primitivist

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Lawrence Jarach

Introduction

There has never been a civilization that has lasted more than several centuries. It is reasonable to assume that the one we are forced to inhabit (Western, Euro-American, Capitalist, Post-Industrial, whatever you want to call it…) will also someday fall apart. Identified and critiqued by anarchists for over 150 years, the disparities between rich and poor and between order-givers and order-takers are increasingly obvious and obnoxious; mainstream public discourse is often gleefully polarized, permeated with facile dehumanization of chosen enemies; so-called culture wars continue apace; the devastating burdens imposed on the natural world and indigenous people (including the semi-permanently displaced) by the extraction of resources[1] and the expansion and development of productive forces continues unabated. The end of this civilization may have the characteristics of some apocalyptic and bellicose horror show, similar to what some call The Collapse, fodder for much American popular culture over the past decade. Alternatively, it could look like a slow erosion of technological dependence with an accompanying reversion to a simpler, decentralized, and rural-centric culture, with people using up industrial gadgets and tinkering with them for as long as there’s material to tinker with. It might even be the result of a self-managed restructuring of urbanism, in line with the histrionics concerning Revolutionary Barcelona (July 1936- April 1937). All anarchists agree, however, that the current organization of this civilization is untenable.
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Articles from Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed

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Liana Doctrine

Anarchy and Anxiety

Before we go anywhere in this exploration, what do I mean by anxiety?

Anxiety is a fear and the resulting set of protective behaviors which form in response to a real or fabricated threat, and continue though that threat has passed. Anxiety is a fear out of its original context. It can look like avoiding conflict, bonding, criticisms, direct answers, certain places, situations, tasks, or technologies. It can manifest as over or under functioning, cliquishness, feigned helplessness, dogmatic philosophies that favor certain personalities, angry outbursts, and the desire to control situations, people, or conversations. It can lead to not having an opinion or having an opinion about everything. It can cause us to cloud agreements or expectations, create pretenses, or outright excuses. It can look like not completing tasks on time, avoiding fascinating projects, events, and discussions. So why do we have it if it’s so destructive to our desired lives? Where did it come from?

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Against Organizationalism: Anarchism as both Theory and Critique of Organization

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Jason McQuinn

One of the most annoying and oft repeated clichés of leftist political rhetoric concerns the unquestioned imperative for nonspecific, generic “organization.” Whatever else might define the left, it has always and consistently called for the creation and development of formal organizations that are supposed to represent and lead the masses or the working class (or these days often the appropriate identity-group or “minority”). Of course, when leftists leave the realm of rhetoric and enter the realm of practice, it becomes quite evident why the details of organization are usually left unspecified.
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The anarchist subculture:

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a critique“…the absence of imagination needs models; it swears by them and lives only through them.”

It is easy to claim that there is no anarchist movement in North America. This claim frees one from having to examine the nature of that movement and what one’s role is in it. But a network of publications, bookstores, anarchist households, squats and correspondence connecting those with anti-statist perspectives most certainly does exist. It has crystallized into a subculture with its mores, rituals and symbols of “rebellion”. But can a subculture create free individuals capable of making the lives they desire? The anarchist subculture certainly hasn’t. I hope to explore why in this article.
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FBI vs. the Branch Davidians: Assembling an alternative understanding

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Dina Fisher

On April 19, 1993, live broadcasts of armored tanks and burning buildings flooded my TV screen. Flipping from station to station, I gathered that somewhere between 70 and 100 people were burning to death inside the buildings.

The news reports cut back and forth between live footage of the fire and replays from earlier that day of a U.S. government tank repeatedly smashing into the buildings. I could see dark spots where huge holes had been ripped into the exterior walls. Over these blurred, grainy images, newscasters explained that up until several minutes before the fire started, the FBI had used a specially-equipped armored tank to inject massive amounts of tear gas into the buildings during the proceeding six hours.

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