Comments

You must log in or register to comment.

stolen_reddit_comment wrote

When I met Aragon! we got to the discussion of Bob Black and I think I must have said something critical and he responded along the lines of "the man has treated me incredibly poorly but he is still far smarter than both of us".

Oddly enough he was tabling with Little Black Cart at some weird Right-Libertarian event near my hometown. I think he was mainly trying to expose right libertarians and ancaps to Little Black Cart's style of anarchism (which is something I am not philosophically opposed to).

I was friends with him on Facebook at the time and he mentioned he was there and I told him I wanted to come to meet him. The event required buying tickets (and they were fairly pricey from my recollection) but Aragon! told me it would not be hard to sneak in and it really wasn't.

So I met up with him at his table where he was with some unspecified female friend (possibly partner?) and we talked for a while. In all honesty Aragorn! was a pompous dude and at times a little frustrating to talk to. We talked about various organizations (I can't speak much because it reveals more than I'd like) and disagreements amongst anarchists as well as the other anarchists we personally knew. He also ate some food in front of me and spilled some of it on a few zines at one point haha.

He was a very matter-of-fact guy. He asked me about my beliefs a bit and was mostly critical from what I remember. I think I mentioned something about revolution at one point (I'm probably a little too red for Aragorn!'s tastes) and he was very critical of the idea considering his known critiques of the revolutionary left. He also stated that even if a revolution could happen he would not be in favor of it because of how much it would disrupt his life and decrease his overall happiness (which is understandable to an extent but it was weird hearing that from an anarchist).

At one point I mentioned that I wanted to be a teacher, which I thought would illicit more criticisms from him, but he was surprisingly supportive and basically said that we need to get by and that he works as a software engineer but at the end of the day none of our hands are clean. He kind of implied that he was making pretty decent money and that some people had criticized him for being "bourgeois" or something like that. Interestingly, the female friend of his also happened to be a teacher and I talked with her a while about that.

Before leaving I planned on being some books and zines. I think I started looking up which ones were not online for free already (I am a notorious cheapskate) and he noticed what I was doing and just went "look, I get it, these are the books that aren't on the anarchist library". I bought a few books from him and I can't remember if I asked for the zines he spilled stuff onto or if he offered to give me them to me but either way I ended up getting those for free.

I don't specifically remember all the books/zines I got but I can check around my place later. I do recall getting Armed Joy (it might be the one that got stained with the sauce he was eating), some fringe Stirnerite approach to economics, and some weird zine about being anti-social and hating society. I think Lil Ugly Mane might have posted the same anti-social zine on his Instagram a while back but I honestly can't remember.

4

stolen_reddit_comment wrote

Sorry if that was a bit long and rambly but I wanted to recall every detail, especially now that he's dead.

I forgot to mention some other things too. He did talk about the trans woman who punched Bob Black and made some comments that sounded a bit odd ("Bob was attacked by someone with a male body").

Also right before I left he offered me an internship where I could work for some low number of hours each week (I want to say 20 hours) at Little Black Cart (LBC) helping them print books and I would be given free rent in the Bay Area to live with a bunch of anarchists (but they wouldn't be paying me any money). I asked about food and other necessities and he said it is best to bring some saved money but that I could eat a lot of free meals from the local Food Not Bombs lmao. Aragorn! mentioned some accounts about how it was really fun getting to spend time with a ton of wild anarchists in the Bay Area and I was pretty honored by his offer and was seriously considering it. I even formulated a plan to write a joke text about my experiences having Aragorn! as a sort of boss that I planned on titling "Against LBC, Against Argorn!" since it vaguely rhymes with Perlman's "Against History, Against Leviathan".

Ultimately I never ended up going and much later I heard people mention that it was a bit of a scam and apparently Aragorn! offered this internship to a LOT of people.

5