Death Of An Anarchist — GODS & RADICALS PRESSComments
celebratedrecluse wrote (edited )
This behavior is something i would like to understand better. Cis white men with a lot of organizing cred in antifascist organizing have told others that projects I and others in my trans community were doing were transphobic...because of an LBC bookmark they saw lying around the space. Not a zine, or a book, or any text...a fucking bookmark.
I was galled at the cynical use of my own identity as a political cudgel, and shocked at how effective it was at mobilizing cis people against even trans people who just like to read and who aren't aware of whatever controversy.
I was at that point pretty well biased against any of these people, who seemed led by exactly the sort of disgusting sycophants who make my average day as a radical queer just that much more absurd and infuriating. who systematically undermine others, reatomizing marginalized people in order to preserve their centrality to us as "important organizers".
I'm sure there are powerful motivators which drive people to such righteous rage in this controversy. But to ignore the bad faith actors is to erase my personal experience.
ziq OP wrote
I'm also fascinated by it. It really all stems from a collective moral outrage that's used as a blunt instrument by petty ideologues to beat down ideas that threaten their world-view.
They associate loosely affiliated groups (e.g. LBC writers) with wrongness and exert massive amounts of energy attacking and purging people for merely speaking of a group or an idea that they've declared to be morally wrong.
It's almost always guilt by association: "This idea is associated with this group who are associated with this person who is associated with this idea which is linked to this group who have this idea that I deem morally unacceptable. Purge the lot of them!"
That's basically the exact train of thought that allows these collectivists to shun people as pariahs for reading the wrong book or mentioning the wrong anarchist. It's deeply authoritarian and is the same mindset that created Christian inquisitions against heresy and Maoist struggle sessions against "counter-revolutionary elements". If these faux-radicals ever had the power, I'm sure their purges would be every bit as bloody. They get so much pleasure brandishing the power of the collective to cast dissenters out into the cold.
Because it's always about power, they can never really be satisfied and have to keep adding more and more ideas, groups and people to their list of undesirables to keep the purges going, until even their closest allies are in the cross hairs.
At some point they run out of allies entirely, and with no more collective to wield as a weapon to cancel people, they just decide everyone in the entire movement except them is morally impure, and is oppressing them, and they bail: cancelling the entire movement in their head to protect their ego.
Bezotcovschina wrote
I think you have a lot of good points here, but I think I need something to be cleared out for me, if you don't mind:
As I see it (I might be all wrong, my understanding of the whole situation is very surfac-y), outrage to LBC is caused not because of some loosely affiliation, but because they literally published some very questionable materials. Isn't it an old good "not giving a platform to fascists"? Only question is "was it really fascism?" Again, an old good centrist argument "Where you'll draw the line?" But I understand that a lot of people equates ITS with fascists. So, isn't this outrage understandable? I'm not sure I understand attacks on other LBC authors, though.
Feel free to correct me if I'm wrong somewhere.
ziq OP wrote (edited )
because they literally published some very questionable materials
They published material by a Mexican post-anarchist group (ITS) that has voiced support for terrorism. Apparently Aragorn! thought some of the group's material was interesting enough to collect. I have no association with LBC beyond them publishing my essays, so I'm not going to speak for them or defend them. Here's their explanation, plus a disclaimer attached to the book that created all the furore:
A small snippet:
This should be obvious to anyone paying attention but the role of a book publisher is to produce written material, perhaps from a position, perhaps for an audience, but always in relationship to authors, readers, and the world at large.
Eco-extremism, an idea borne of the body and practice and text that Ted Kaszcinski, put into practice by a variety of people we do not know, is compelling because it makes some fascinating arguments and has some complex, and some painfully simple, thinking within it. We are, ultimately, not persuaded by their conclusion but we think it's worth fully airing out.
The ideas we wish to publish are visionary, world-wrecking, ideas about a passionate, critical, fiery anarchy unleashed upon the world. Perhaps we are anachronisms but we believe what we are putting out into the world can inform future authors as it informs me.
Snippet:
This journal gives a platform to non-anarchist, ex-anarchist, and a-anarchist, eco-extremist thought, not limited to, but including, some people who defend killing people. While neither of the two issues of this journal include communiques from the folks who claim to have done such killings, there is some sympathy with, and also some not-necessarily-sympathetic analysis of, the phenomenon, which apparently is extremely dangerous. So, we have all been warned.
The NYTimes has published countless editorials by state-terrorist genociders like Henry Kissinger, but you don't see anarchists demanding anyone who reads that newspaper be cancelled. The outrage is only directed at comparatively powerless radical publishers and their readers.
I'm not sure I understand attacks on other LBC authors, though.
For instance, I've been published by LBC and I've been called a transphobe and a rapist because of that association. LBC has published all kinds of books by all kinds of people from all over the world, but the collectivist mentality groups all of us together as an enemy to be ostracised and purged, simply because the collectivist is unable to accept people for the individuals we are.
In their minds, everyone has to be designated as a member of a clearly-defined group that their group can then do war with. It's a mindset that comes from the colonizing cultures they come from, where all out-groups must be purged to maintain settler supremacy.
Aragorn! was an indigenous north American, and if we're being honest, the people that rage against him, even after his death, are overwhelmingly white settlers deeply disturbed by any ideas that would make them question their existence on stolen colonized industrialized land. Just the idea that someone would dare to question the sacred 'progress' of their great civilization is deeply repugnant to them.
As far as I can tell Aragorn! never said anything transphobic in his life, but is branded a transphobe by certain people because of association. Collectivists would be perfectly comfortable branding you a transphobe for talking to me, someone who has been branded a transphobe for talking to Aragorn! (who has been branded a transphobe for talking to Bellamy, etc.).
The Guardian newspaper has transphobes writing for it in an editorial capacity. Does that mean anyone that reads theguardian articles is a transphobe? Of course not, but somehow everyone that reads LBC books is seen as a repugnant villain because of guilt by association. A guilt that only seems to be applied to tiny radical volunteer-driven publications that are desperate for funding, while the horrible crimes of big corporate entities are ignored.
Do you think any of the white knights who demand that anyone associated with LBC be exiled are going to part with their iphones because Apple drives workers to suicide? Fuck no. But they'll spend inordinate amounts of time demanding the cancelling of Aragorn! and everyone associated with him.
Bezotcovschina wrote
Thanks for really informative answer, as always. I think, I got it now.
ziq OP wrote
I also should mention that Derrick Jensen, a proud transphobe and reactionary, has been published in the past by AK Press, but the outrage gang never have anything negative to say about that (red) publication, while smearing LBC (a green publication) as transphobic and 'rape-apologist' without a shred of evidence, just because they so disdain anticiv ideas.
[deleted] wrote (edited )
anarch0 wrote
the leftist antifa craze currently dominating our spaces will pass soon enough, but LBC's books are forever.
lingeringroaming wrote
Totally agree with you. Antifa really are the real fa.
anook1 wrote
no one said that. stop being so childish ffs. anarchy has always been about so much more than punching nazis/opposing the republican party
[deleted] wrote (edited )
celebratedrecluse wrote
Yeah but none of us ever once questioned the desirability or usefulness of antifascist action. We just were observed with a contraband bookmark lol
[deleted] wrote
celebratedrecluse wrote
Lol.
it's ironic that this incident resulted in me developing a critique of the antifascist organizers around here, and subsequently working on cultivating my own rapid response networks which actually help to defend our own community. For the best, I guess, but it'd be nice if I could rely on those dudes who loudly proclaim their benevolence to "oppressed people" to not sabotage, threaten, or simply ignore us.
cronal wrote (edited )
It's those socialists in anarchist disguise. Supposedly in their perfect stagnant anarchist ideal State, everyone's gotta think and behave the same, talk the same way, read the same bread book, watch the same breadtube... Nothing to do with tankies!
[deleted] wrote
ziq OP wrote
Always great when collectivists roleplay like this.
[deleted] wrote
ziq OP wrote
keep burning those apocryphal books
wouldn't want to risk corrupting impressionable young ideologues with dangerous ideas
Waken wrote
Not accepting the banning of anticiv books is toeing a party line? What kind of joker are you?
ziq OP wrote
It's amazing that the kind of people that would tear up LBC books and try to ban them from bookfairs somehow consider themselves anarchists.