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moonlune wrote

we were seeing the end of 2nd wave (post-left) anarchism

are we really? most anarchists I know irl are leftists and even bookchinists lol.

future anarchism might be more angry and nihilist than what we have today?

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kin wrote

I dunno where, but I heard the following,

1st wave = 1848 to 1930s/1940s - the "classical" anarchism, revolutionary syndicalism, organization against individualism, propaganda by the deed and early illegalists.

2nd wave = 1945 to 1990 - "Under the Shadow of the USSR" anarchism, anarchy loosing ground to Marxists and Communists, infusion of prositu and contraculture, queer and secondwave feminism, Platformism and Especifismo on the rise, but punk will carry your seeds to the next generation

3rd wave = 1990 until now, post-left, post-structuralism, post-anarchism; "be gay do crime", decolonization, Bookchin and Chomsky, Battle of Seattle, Nihilism & Insurrection.

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

Interesting A! Seemed to posit 2nd wave as "post-situationism" so starting around 1968, and seemed to believe it was atleast still slightly alive though on the way out in 2018.

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kin wrote

I can see waves, but this approach (waves) depends on the context, the country you are. I think maybe I took this from especifistas, they don't recognize any anarchism outside the social anarchism. For them individualism and egoism are petty-bourgeoisie endeavours.

I do think we are already living in a new wave, after the fall of the USSR, capitalism seemed hegemonic.. Neoliberalism ravaging poor countries and

BOOM

1st of January of 1994 - San Cristóbal de las Casas

Then we saw anti-globalization movement, black Bloc, conspiracy of cells of fire. Maybe we in the same momentum, continuing the stage post Communism Realism. Interesting to see Aragorn! speaking the post situationism, bc for me its the Anarchopunk what really kept anarchism alive

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Fool wrote

for me its the Anarchopunk what really kept anarchism alive

I'd definitely agree with this, before I finally looked into Anarchism I had been listening to Anarchist propoganda through industrial and punk music for decades.

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

That sounds quite depressing. I think it's less about popularity though (second wave anarchism was never popular) but more of what are the lessons of the historical period we find ourselves in (since second wave anarchism was very much influenced by post-situationalism).

I do agree that Nihlism is becoming more and more relevant to anarchism.

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_caspar_ wrote

I agree that the popularity or identification with the wave is separate from the conditions of the time that birthed and/or shaped it, which is why the wave model is deceptive in a way. if these folks (Institute for Precarious Consciousness) are right in pointing out that the dominant affect of capitalism reigns until it is no longer a public secret, a secret exposed by radical responses to it.

if the first wave of collectivist/workerist anarchism was a response to the affect of misery, and the (post-)situationist, punk, DIY, and drop-out cultures, were responses to boredom, then the third then a third wave will be one that addresses the current affect of anxiety in a society of extensive mass surveillance, quantitative assessment, and ecological crises.

but what does this overview mean for anarchists in places which capitalism has played out differently, where possibly all three of these (or others?) are happening at the same time or with widely varying impacts?

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

Thank you so much for this response, it really gives one a lot to think about. I think you are spot on with the analysis that anxiety is the common affect of this third wave. I would say especially authors such as Mark Fischer, who I find especially influential, definitely mark this trend.

The questions you pose are especially interesting. I wish I had more defined thoughts on then but I'll have to think on it more. I think perhaps this could relate to my other comment where i mention needing to build an analysis/reconciliation of what a "diversity of tactics" means. But perhaps your questions go beyond that in their implications.

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_caspar_ wrote (edited )

no problem, I like to think about these things.

I think of anxiety as not separate from but entangled with panic and depression, so that is also something to keep in mind if it truly is the dominant affect.

though overviews can be challenging puzzles, how they relate to my specific context matters most, and primarily with whom I am living in meaningful relation with (both human and non-human). the internet shapes that dramatically, and I can run into trouble by loosing sight of my context and getting lost in the web. these are going to be huge challenges for anarchists: maintaining distance from hyper-spectacularized life on the internet, re-engaging with a local context, and navigating the effects of continual and increasing crises (both in number and impact, mostly overlapping).

as if they werent difficult enough, I can only see cities becoming increasingly harder to live in, especially for anarchists. I think over the coming years there will be a much larger increase of back-to-the-land type movements of different sorts. most will be out of necessity, creating a neo-feudal type situation for those who do not already have or are unable to hold on to the land they live on.

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

I think of anxiety as not separate from but entangled with panic and depression, so that is also something to keep in mind if it truly is the dominant affect.

Completely, perhaps it is accurate even to turn to some less contemporary but still imo relevant others such as Foucault, Frued and Deleuze who were discussing maddness/neurosis/psychosis. Personally I habe found both my own experiences with madness generally and psychosis more specifically, as well as that of others, to be quite influential on my thoughts.

maintaining distance from hyper-spectacularized life on the internet, re-engaging with a local context, and navigating the effects of continual and increasing crises (both in number and impact, mostly overlapping).

I don't really have a "local context" as in "of one place" as a transient person but I think the shift of focus to one of personal/in person context is very important. I do still think there is some ammount of "use" one can find in the internet, but I think that use is primarily in what ways it can be used to get outside of it. (For example I have met the previous people I've traveled with irl through it and have read critiques such as "Caught in The Web" on it.) But it is definitely a challenge to keep that balance as once ine is in these irl spaces the internet then poses a challenge that one must get away from to be fully in those spaces/relationships.

as if they werent difficult enough, I can only see cities becoming increasingly harder to live in, especially for anarchists. I think over the coming years there will be a much larger increase of back-to-the-land type movements of different sorts.

From my experiences of "urban anarchism", though really I think a more fitting term is sedentary anarchism since it also affects landprojects, the urban/sedentary environment is definitely one of stagnation and isolation. I'm not sure if one would consider my ideas a "back to the land" though I do draw at least some inspiration from Aragorn's idea of an indigenous anarchism of the land, in the practice of being transient. Or at the very least I see this practice as a means to get closer to that idea. And I think this practice of transients also has implications that can affect other drawbacks of the sedentary life and politics but that is more a hypothesis then what has played out so far.

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_caspar_ wrote

"I don't really have a "local context" as in "of one place" as a transient person"

makes sense. my use of local there was open-ended in the sense that a local-focused orientation would be a deeper engagement with your specific context, something other than a global-focused observer from afar whose mindspace is occupied and decisions based mainly on contexts they have never experienced, and with people they will never meet.

to put it another way, the nomad is not outside of place. the place you inhabit (or locale) is just a different terrain than the sedentary: a shifting set of routes that, though in motion, you can engage deeply with because it is what is engaging with you directly in turn.

the distinction I make are those overlooking or mistaking their context for something it isnt. for example, Id use politics: lots of time/effort/engagement spent rigorously debating and crafting policy scenarios only to miss the point. like a politician speaking in the best interest of their community. almost a cant see the trees for the forest scenario, but forest in the abstract, the ideal forest, the platonic form of forest.

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

I really like that idea of locality applied to the routes of nomads. But in that way yes I completely agree, especially this idea of ideals which often remove us from reality.

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existential1 wrote

I'm ready for, and possibly a part of, the wave of anarchists that identify with nothing, including anarchism...and can't be bothered to argue in favor of their flavor because to do so would require engaging with that which you detest unnecessarily.

Whatever wave that is, I'm there...maybe.

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Exlurker wrote

I agree too, I don't get why people are so reluctant to lose the 'anarchy' label which I feel trying to keep is doing more harm then good. I feel that people are often more attached with words then what they represent. People are less brainwashed against ideas without labels.

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lettuceLeafer wrote (edited )

I agree with this. I basically only go by the anarchist label on raddle for clarity sake and anarchy is a good label to find writing I'm interested in. But for most cases being an anarchist isn't helpful. Maybe having a label where most people become more fonfis d about your positions and values when you use it isnt worth using most of the time.

I think TW said this a while back and I agree. Just describing yourself as anti authoritarian is so much better. Well they didn't say that but they did give me the good idea to use the term anti authoritarian rather than anarchist with most people irl. It works so much better.

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

Interesting, I definitely resonate with the move away from identifying with anarchism. I would even say things like nihlism are difficult for me to say I really identify with in any concrete way, though I would definitely say I'm influenced by it. I'm definitely looking forward to what this sort of shift away from anarchy will look like in terms of what people write, if anything.

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gracklegrackle wrote

Probably will get absorbed into boring, dogmatic neoliberalism to be completely honest, but will have a trendy aesthetic of something "cutting edge". Here's to hoping I'm completely wrong though!

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kin wrote

I got an interesting hunch: maybe we will have the same two large groups, one will be a reconciliation of Green AntiCiv Insurection and Biohacking TransQueer Nihilists; and the other camp will be those DualPower Platformists-With-Guns that somehow will be Anarcho Communists but the dangerous type.

Now you all can make fun of me

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

now you all can make fun of me

That would be all too easy.

Jokes aside though I have been fascinated by the ideas of "non sectarian" anarchism. I've been working on an analysis of how calital/civilization is disrupted and reinforced by actions, whether it be Indiscriminate attack or liberal marches, and I'm curious if some sort of reconciliation of the idea "diversity of tactics" is possible. But I'm not yet sure exactly what direction things ideas will take me.

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kin wrote

If I stand for something tactically is exactly the diversity of actions. But like u said, and it's one of my main issues, how we can be certain that one is not detrimental to the other? How we can measure the impact of a insurrection campaign to the conditions of worker, for example. But in the bottom of this articulation I go for the nihilistic conclusion, capital/civ needs to end. We just to be careful to not became what we hate

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

Yes I think that is where you reconciliation must happen. At least from what I see it seems most of the popular actions anarchists are participating in such as Insurrection, movement building, and even Indiscriminate attack, while disrupting capital in some ways, actually reproduce its flows in other ways.

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kin wrote

And I think the antogonism of "schools" will always exists, like right now we can see how solar punk bookchinites are trying to counter Desert. Like we always have, anprim vs transhumanist, red against green, individualist X communist. If will be an emerging new wave the antagonist anarchist side will emerge too

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

Interesting, do you think a third wave would be a sort of "third position" outside of these dichotomies? Or would it just be another binary thrown in the mix?

Personally I see it as an attempt to break from these binaries but it's truly hard to say if one successfully breaks out from binary thinking or not.

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kin wrote

If I am not mistaken, the Cells of Fire pose themselves as the third position between Individualism and Social anarchism.

About escaping the dichotomy, I think that is hard to avoid bc one of the tradition, namely Platformist (and the social anarchists that rally under the Organization banner), will always to say that Anarchy is order and needs profunda and profuse organization. Everything else for them is not anarchism.

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Fool wrote

Maybe it is cynical of me, but all I see is history repeating until collapse.

No ideas are new, we just retread the same ground with new language.

I believe that there is a gradual progress being made, which is being accelerated by technology. However, technology is also accelerating collapse, and soon none of the pontificating will matter...

Or maybe it will matter more than ever, when the "Anarcho-Communist" Warlords of the new world order decide they cannot tolerate those that will not join them in "people's democracy", and remove the radical outsiders, and the voice can be heard... "See, I told you this would happen."

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

all I see is history repeating

I think Perlman demonstrates how there is both a cyclical, uncivilized, time, and a linear, civilized, time we experience simultaneously.

No ideas are new, we just retread the same ground with new language.

Because of these two forms of time it is true that no ideas are truly new, and that every context we find ourselves in is just a variation on some old phenomenon that too was just a variation. However just as their are variations on these contexts there are variations on the ideas, and it is up to us to uncover these ideas and their variations since, to a large extent, they are not being passed down. This is not to insinuate these ideas will save us, but they are lessons.

until collapse

Turning to Perlman again, I do not think there will be A collapse. The collapse of Rome was not thr collapse of civilization. Similarly while there is a decompositional affect of climate change on civilization, I think it is optimistic to assume this will culminate in a collapse. Even in Desert, Collapse is not the disappearance of civilization but is instead the tightening of its grip where it can. Beyond the visions of desert though I think we should also prepare for a future where civilization shifts these decompositional forces. Civilization is not capable of being sustainable but throughout history civilization has averted disasters from one source by switching to another.

In this way I think the idea of leftists reforms don't pose concessions that marginalized people can win, but is instead the fuel of progress that allows civilization to shift decompositional forces.

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Fool wrote

I think it is optimistic to assume this will culminate in a collapse.

It was literally how I thought it in my mind... I thought of how it'll be and chose the less depressing version.

Perlman

A few occurances have pointed me to Perlman today. I think that's where I should look next for insights.

😺

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

I highly recommend Perlmans work. Against His-Story Against Leviathan has been a very influential work for me but the continuing appeal of nationalism I thinknis also a great piece

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AnarchoDoom wrote

It HAS to be anti-tech or even anti-civ, or else it'll just end up being more of the same old deal. Corporate social media has drawn a pretty decisive line in the sand, I think.

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Passive_Nihlist OP wrote

I'm unsure I'd it would be anti-civ exactly. I would say that anti-civ thought very much so finds itself situated within this second wave of anarchism. While I think the third wave will be influenced by this school of thought, I definitely find myself influenced, to say it is anti-civ I think would be reductive.

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