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Table of Contents
- Introduction
- Disclaimers galore
- The issue
- A comparison
- An analogy by way of a diagram
- Various ideologies
- Insurrectionary Anarchism as Primary
- The narrowing of approaches
- The expanded limits of violence
- Various Critiques
- Post-Left Anarchism
- The narrowing of approaches
- The expanded limits of violence
- Various Critiques
- Anti-Civilization
- The narrowing of approaches
- Various Critiques
- Anarcho-Primitivism
- The narrowing of approaches
- The expanded limits of violence
- Various Critiques
- Anti-Tech Revolution
- The narrowing of approaches
- The expanded limits of violence
- Various Critiques
- Eco-Extremist Nature Worshipers
- The narrowing of approaches
- The expanded limits of violence
- Various Critiques
- Human Exterminationists
- The narrowing of approaches
- The expanded limits of violence
- Various Critiques
- Satanist Death Cultists
- The narrowing of approaches
- Various Critiques
- Minimalist Anarchism
- A broad approach with specialized interests
- Pragmatic Left-Anarchism
- A wide array of approaches
- The limits of violence
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Introduction
At the very least, one goal I hope to achieve in writing this essay and collecting these quotes together, is to provide a cautionary warning, mostly for young people, about the importance of approaching political philosophy with careful consideration.
In short, try to avoid becoming this guy:
I think polarization and passionate polemical arguments for the direction and focus of the anarchist movement should be encouraged as it can be a vibrant discourse that inspires someone to join.
However, the two foundational issues any group has to worry about are firstly becoming defined too broadly such that the philosophy just becomes a weak cultural disposition. So, for example, the way in which you have Christians on every side of every political issue today. And secondly, the group’s members defining the project in a rigidly narrow way, such that the group splits into factions, with each faction calling the other fakes, or abandoning the project entirely.
The obvious ideal is to maintain lots of specialized philosophical platforms within any movement, whilst maintaining coherence as a unified force. I’ve only written about this first issue in passing in On The Far-Left, Effective Activism & Violence, but I plan to write about it more in the future.
For now, I’d like to address this second issue of factionalism.
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Disclaimers galore
A while ago I was told by a Kaczynski fanboy that anyone who doesn’t want to destroy all electricity grids is a reformist. There’s a danger in traveling down the purist anarchist rabbit hole of more and more rigidly dogmatic political theory, where you begin to believe it’s only worth reading the way a few authors view the world.
One obvious critique of the way I’ve formatted this essay, is that I open up anarchism and its many specialized philosophies, to a charge of being solely irrational steps along the road that people adopt for reasons of personal purity. Also, that the same could be said of people adopting center-left liberalism as opposed to status quo centrism.
I believe, however, that the desire to take on political identities for personal purity or the need to view the world in rigidly fundamentalist ways is willfully self limiting. I’m not saying the only way a person could arrive at all the philosophies that I’m going to discuss is through a desire for personal purity. So, although I think this is an important critique that can be leveled at some niche ideologies participants, it certainly isn’t a perfect defeater to all the ideologies.
I really value debate between various specialized political philosophies and strategies, and I have nothing against for example, green anarchism as the promotion of a style of critique not often seen, like black-anarchism and anarcha-feminism. These can help identify you as someone who has had the time to research the ways in which expertise in building democratic institutions, green architecture and rewilding will help get us to a better world.
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The issue
I think it’s inarguable that some people will take a bunch of contradictory twists and turns down a list of more and more fringe ideologies, in pursuit of the most rigidly simplistic way of viewing the world, in searching for ‘answers’ to reduce anxiety in a seemingly chaotic world, to provide a navigable route in a world which can feel terrifyingly uncharted. In this way they come to believe they have the answers to almost all life’s questions. What is arguable is how common this phenomenon is depending on the ideology.
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A comparison
I’m going to make a comparison between elements of two situations now, but I want to be clear that I’m not equating the two, and the element I’m comparing is not how similar the ideologies are to each other. I’m comparing a dynamic of how participants may move through the ideology.
A person might move over to the far-right in stages which incrementally take them further away from their initial views. For example firstly believing that: Slavery is bad and also that the US civil war was more about the economic disparity between North and South. Then moving to a position, that slavery, understood in the context of the time, was a necessary evil. And from there to a position black Americans have benefitted from being brought to the US and are ungrateful for the opportunities afforded them.
A similar dynamic can happen for people moving away from identifying with green anarchism. A person could first be convinced that they should stop supporting a variety of direct action campaigns, in order to focus solely on being against technology, and in this way to reach the maximum people with a clear message. However, in consequence, significantly reducing the amount of people they’re trying to coalition build with. Then secondly that, in the absence of fellow activists to spread the message to a wider population, that killing and terrorizing people is a necessary evil to draw maximum attention the direction society needs to be heading in. Reducing further the number of people they’re trying to recruit. Then thirdly, thinking that hope for changing people’s minds is pointless, and that we should just take pleasure in embracing our violent hatred for all things ‘unnatural’. And that recruiting is meaningless.
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An analogy by way of a diagram
I’d also like to offer an analogy that someone could go from desiring a ‘libertarian socialist revolution’ to a ‘vulgar anarchist insurrection’ because people can buy into anarchist ideology for all the wrong reasons the same way a person with an eating disorder could just be using veganism as a way to restrict their diet on the way to raw veganism, etc. So, just keep in mind that the diagram text is not meant to be a perfectly summarized version of each ideology.
Finally, I neither claim all the ideologies listed are anarchist, nor that I would personally desire to see a libertarian socialist revolution end at worker control, but I do see anarchists as part of a big-tent leftist movement, where securing workplace democracy would be a massive improvement in society.
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Various ideologies
I’m going to quote a ton of essays from a bunch of ideologies in the order I’ve seen people travel down them, along with quotes from a ton of critiques, then end on two possible ideologies that could work as a useful force in disrupting a person’s journey down the pipeline.
I’ve unashamedly chosen various critiques with prescriptions which at times contradict each other, as the aim is to find some critiques close to each specific ideology in order to have the greatest chance of relating to the person’s way of thinking intuitively.
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Insurrectionary Anarchism as Primary
The narrowing of approaches
A few words of freedom by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
The vital force of FAI-FRI is its constant renewal, its stimulating evolution. Today the need to overcome old concepts such as “organization”, “liberated society”, “revolution” is more urgent than ever before.
Other concepts such as “federalism”, “informality”, “mutual support”, ” horizontal-anonymous debate between groups/individuals through praxis”, ” rejection of plenary assemblies” retain their full strength as the main pillars of our planning.
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Lone wolves are not alone… by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
The ambassadors of the modern way of life speak of the savior of economy through corrective changes and development programs, while the ideologists of the left beg for the cleansing of institutions. Unfortunately, in Greece the tension of bureaucratic social anarchy also joins the dance of the absurd and fantasies the revival of dead ideologies speaking of self-management of the production means and workers collectives.
Thus the socialist anarchists, while refusing the system, instead of destroying class identities and economy, speak their language. They speak of the overthrowing of the existent, without however uprooting from inside them the economic-centric logic. For us, as anarcho-individualists and nihilists, economy is not the key for liberation.
Economy is a part of the problem and the problem itself. The only way to strike the heart of the problem is to destroy the economy and its distinctions and speak of human relations. The world will not become prettier or more-free if we collectivize work but only if we blow up the relation of work and destroy its mentality, its ethics and culture. The same will happen with friendship, love, pleasure, the meaning of life itself.
On the road for continuous anarchist insurrection we do not keep anything which holds us down on the past. We tear down the myths of the revolutionary subject, of the proletariat, of the eternal wait for the right objective conditions, the social likeness towards the population, this slow moving mass which with its inactivity stops us from breathing…
Therefore, looking back in time, we recognize as our own prints, the traces left behind by some lone wolves, who walked then against their time. It is all those conspiratorial anarchists illegalists who made the anarchist insurrection their only home land. It is those who chose to stay away from the glory of the dead ideologies and bureaucracy of the social anarchism which awaits the masses in order to begin its insurrection. Lone and unique they armed their desires, out aside the pathetic rot of the mob and went on to the storming of heaven.
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Armed Joy by Alfredo M. Bonanno
People are tired of meetings, the classics, pointless marches, theoretical discussions that split hairs in four, endless distinctions, the monotony and poverty of certain political analyses. They prefer to make love, smoke, listen to music, go for walks, sleep, laugh, play, kill policemen, lame journalists, kill judges, blow up barracks. Anathema! The struggle is only legitimate when it is comprehensible to the leaders of the revolution. Otherwise, there being a risk that the situation might go beyond their control, there must have been a provocation.
Hurry comrade, shoot the policeman, the judge, the boss. Now, before a new police prevent you.
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The expanded limits of violence
Italy: Open Letter To The Anarchist & Anti-Authoritarian Movement (2003)
When a group or individual starts a revolutionary campaign through the deeds and related communiques, other groups and individuals in the Anarchist Informal Organisation will follow according to their methods and time. Each group or individual can launch a struggle campaign on specific targets through one or more actions signed by the single group or individual and by the claim of the Federation. If a campaign is not agreed by the other groups, the critic will show itself through actions and communiques that will contribute to correcting or discussing it.
The organisation, therefore, does not affect the entire life and projects of the comrades so that all kind of armed-struggle sectarianism are avoided. Once we are well rooted, power will find it very difficult to destroy us.
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‘Do not say that we are few’ – Statement from the Italian FAI
The only limits we put to our action are of ethical nature. We have made a choice with our action in this world of included and excluded. We are not interested in a society divided in classes, we don’t want any dictatorship of a class over another, we want anarchy! Millions of microcosms where each individual can experiment themselves freely. Something very similar to what we experiment through action every day by elaborating the best way of organizing ourselves without renouncing our individual freedom. It is exciting to grow in this organisational experience along with sisters and brothers we’ve never seen and probably will never see. It is exciting that individuals who don’t know one another come to the same conclusions in a given moment in history. …
The first: destructive direct action as an indispensable and essential element. Such action can take the form of throwing a molotov as well as committing murder, without any hierarchy of importance, each group or individual will decide as they best like, in the respect for their own revolutionary ethics, which will certainly always exclude hitting at random. In our view, this point will have to give rise to a new nihilist and anarchist guerrilla, thousands and thousands of fires against capital everywhere.
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My idea was to make some points known, points that normally we have never clarified and that make us angry sometimes… yes, when we hear or read comments about us… in other words we need to show to this fucking movement that we are not ghosts coming from nothing (laughers…’hey. did you see you?’). We need to show to them that we think it very carefully before carrying out an action and that we leave very little to chance. Our actions are not indiscriminate, on the contrary they are so controlled that we haven’t managed to do what we really want yet…(laughers). Then there’s nothing obscure or clandestine in our way of life. Most of us come from the movement. Live inside it and know that reality. Some even come from shit situations.
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The sun still rises by Conspiracy of Cells of Fire
We are exiting the scene of urban guerrilla warfare’s past ethical fixations, which rarely took a public position on the issue of revolutionary bank robbery. We feel that there is now plenty of new urban guerrilla discourse and practice that opposes — in a clearly attacking way — the bosses’ work ethic as well as the predatory banking machinery, proposing armed expropriation as a liberatory act, and obviously not as a way to get rich.
Nevertheless, we don’t consider the expropriation of banks to be a prerequisite for someone’s participation in the new guerrilla war. There is one revolution, but there are thousands of ways in which one can take revolutionary action. Other comrades might choose to carry out collective expropriations from the temples of consumerism (supermarkets, shopping malls) in order to individually recover what’s been “stolen” and use those things to meet each person’s material needs, thereby avoiding having to say “good morning” to a boss or take orders from some superior. Still others might participate in grassroots unions, keeping their conscience honed — like a sharp knife — for the war that finally abolishes every form of work that enriches the bosses while impoverishing our dignity.
We feel the same way about voluntarily “disappearing” to go underground. The fetishization of illegalism doesn’t inspire us. We want everyone to act in accordance with their needs and desires. Each choice naturally has its own qualities and virtues as well as its disadvantages. It’s true that when a group voluntarily chooses to go underground (“disappearance” from the environment of family and friends, false papers, etc.), that certainly shields them from the eyes of the enemy. But at the same time, their social connection to the wider radical milieu is cut, and to a certain point they lose a sense of interaction. Of course, the same doesn’t apply when there are objective reasons for going underground (arrest warrants, a price on one’s head), in which case clandestinity is the attacking refuge of those caught in the crosshairs of the law. This creates a parallel need for the existence of support infrastructure, both among guerrilla groups themselves as well as within the wider antiauthoritarian milieu, that will “cover” the tracks of wanted comrades. Prerequisites would be a certain complicity and discretion, which concepts are frequently seen as “outdated” but in our opinion should once again be launched piercingly into battle. If comrades from a guerrilla group engage in regular above-ground interaction — participating in movement meetings and processes, taking part in debates, and creating projects with others that address shared concerns — then the hermetic nature of the guerrilla group should clearly be protected from open ears and big mouths. Therefore, it’s general attitude also must be one of discretion in order to circumvent the deafening exaggerations that can turn it into a “magnet” for bastards from antiterrorist squads and the police. Taking a page from our own self-critique, we must mention the fact that many of us behaved completely opposite to the above, which — along with the viciousness of certain conduct originating within the anarchist milieu — “guided” a number of police operations right to us. In any case, self-critique lays down solid ground from which to develop oneself and offer explanations, but the current text isn’t appropriate for that. We’ll return to it in the future.
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Various Critiques
If we have never called ourselves insurrectionists, it is not because we do not wish for insurrection, but because our own temperament predisposes us to an anarchism without adjectives. The important thing is to fight for freedom and against hierarchy; we imagine that this will demand different approaches in different situations, and that these approaches may need one another to succeed. We are anarcho-syndicalists on the shop floor, green anarchists in the woods, social anarchists in our communities, individualists when you catch us alone, anarcho-communists when there’s something to share, insurrectionists when we strike a blow.
Anarchism without adjectives not only refuses to prioritize one approach over the others, but emphasizes the importance of each aspect of anarchism to its supposed opposites. The riot needs the bake sale to be repeatable; the arson needs the public campaign to be intelligible; the supermarket heist needs the neighborhood grocery distribution to pass on the goods.
All dichotomies are false dichotomies to some extent, masking not only the common threads between the terms but also the other dichotomies one might experiment with instead. On close inspection, successful insurrectionism seems to depend so much on “community building” and even “lifestyle anarchism” as to be virtually indistinguishable in practice. If we retired this particular distinction, what other distinctions might arise in its place? What other questions might we ask?
All this is not to say that individual anarchists can’t focus on their particular skills and preferred strategies—simply that it is an error to frame anyone’s personal preferences as universals. In the end, as always, it comes down to a question of which problems you want to wrestle with, which shortcomings you feel most equipped to overcome. Do you prefer to struggle against invisible hierarchies in informal networks, or brave the stultifying inertia of formal organizations? Would you rather risk acting rashly, or not acting at all? Which is more important to you, security or visibility—and which do you think will keep you safer in the long run?
We can’t tell anyone which problems to choose. We can only do our best to outline them. Best of luck in your insurrections—may they intersect with ours.
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Gender Disobedience: Antifeminism and Insurrectionist Non-dialogue
The insurrectionist milieu has situated itself as an iconoclastic force within anarchist thought. Its critique often seeks to analyze and subvert the subtle leftism of much allegedly radical thought. This is important. This is valuable.
However, I find it disturbing that, in the midst of this, there lies gross generalizations, ignorance toward the material being criticized, and outright refusal to acknowledge the multifaceted nature of many frames of critique. With this piece, I will focus on the critique of feminism in the works of Feral Faun/Wolfi Landstreicher, as I find it to be generalizing, misinformed, and thus far without consolidated response from anarchists or feminists.
One of the key texts produced by insurrectionary anarchists to counteract feminist critique is Feral Faun’s “The Ideology of Victimization” found in the collection Feral Revolution. Within this, Feral Faun posits that feminism and victimization are inseparable and, because of this, feminism turns toward domination structures such as the state for support. There is much to be said for this argument; it undeniably does describe certain strains of feminist thought. Unfortunately, Faun transforms feminism into a monolithic ideology, stripping it of all subtleties and nuances. ...
Does he once reference a piece of feminist literature to support his argument? No. Does he ever acknowledge that this analysis does not apply to all feminist critique? No. Instead, he makes empty claims with no reference to the field of theory he is critiquing.
Feminism “promotes fear, individual weakness (and subsequently depends on ideologically based support groups and paternalistic protection from authorities)” (37). What Faun fails to realize is that these exact issues have been addressed within feminist discourse. ... In addition, Valarie Solanas, in SCUM Manifesto advocates sabotage, informal revolt, direct action, avoidance of civil disobedience tactics, and the destruction of capitalism and the state. Radical feminists established further critiques of the state in their works as well (see: Emma Goldman, No More Fun and Games journal, etc). The fact is, there is a wide critique of hierarchical power structures within feminism and even a cursory exploration of feminist theory would indicate that. Greer’s statement is in direct contradiction to Faun’s attempt to dismiss feminism. She opposes the state, morality, and marriage, all subjects Faun/Landstreicher has tackled in his works. Are we to assume that Faun is not familiar with the work of Greer, an avowed anarchist and important figure in the theory that Faun critiques; or Valarie Solanas, one of the most infamous feminist icons? Or is it simpler to ignore such writings, as they do not conform to the distortions of feminism Faun seeks to make?
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