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flingwingin wrote

hey it seems like your and others' beef with ziq and crew is based in a diff understanding of who a person is. just pointing this out cause i didnt see it come to a head directly in the comment chain

both are right... its a stupid dialectic which should be tried to be broken out of. On the one hand, a person is all that they have been constituted as by society, so it's both fair to say that a person isnt at fault for thinking (wrongly?) that they would rather have cops, etc., but also that is who they are, there's no other "them" to speak of who actually wants to be free, or its in their "best interests" or anything. People are given a "choice" (which is always obfuscated and out of their knowledge generally) whether or not to merge their interests with the interests of society. You're raised into the "yes" condition - so it's not fair and people need to be informed and i agree with this side totally. But at the same time, when people have accepted to throw their lot in with the leviathan, they are the enemy and its interests are the interests they express the vast majority of the time.

Anyways arguing which of these is right wont get anywhere because obviously people are both deceived, and their deception is constitutive of their character and makes them our enemy as anarchists. IDK the way out, but just that this is basically a total impasse because neither are really wrong here

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ziq OP wrote

the way out is to stop feeling like people need to join you in your beliefs in order for your beliefs to be valid

the only anarchy i care about is my anarchy

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flingwingin wrote

idk, there's still the problem that we live in a world which is controlled by the state/other people, and we can't accomplish any real degree of liberation alone.... i think it's noble as fuck to just be a free anarch in your actions or whatever, but the game for me now is how to actually strike a blow, you know?

btw, i was reading Return Fire the other day and their thing about insurgency vs activism and militancy and its good as fuck. They make a point of saying, e.g. cops aren't the enemy themselves - theyre just a blockage in getting what we want sometimes. But we should let go of this moralizing that forces opinions about other people and their position - like obviously a cop is the enemy of an anarchist, but they only need to be my enemy when theyre a direct threat. The point isnt to get rid of cops, but undercut their whole systems of controlling our lives. This can be applied to everyone. It doesnt matter if theyre hostile, will narc on you, and if it's only cause they have been traumatized and kept in the dark that they dont value their own freedom or power, and if you think they should be helped too - theyll be helped from their small world by the world around them changing/coming alive with insurgency, and they dont need to be targeted as an enemy since most of the time they arent really doing anything to get in your way.

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[deleted] wrote (edited )

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flingwingin wrote

/f/Anarchism/137809/-/comment/232056

i was gonna comment basically this to you but commented to ziq instead but basically this...

I really agree that the main thing is they dont need to be annihilated or subjugated or "re-educated" or anything. As far as the latter, if they have been stuck into falsehoods, lies, and static ways of thinking, this can be dislodged by the world around them forcing their perceptions to open up. And for their status as enemies, they might be enemies at heart and in their daily lives, but theyre pretty harmless except when there's some conflict with them - the idea of enemy doesnt need to be an essential characteristic, since we base the idea on actions that someone takes (e.g. call cops, pay taxes, work job, maintain smooth functioning of society), the label should be more transitory too, to only cover when there's an actual direct conflict. live and let live

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