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ziq wrote

anarchist - eco-anarchist - postciv anarchist - anarchist without adjectives - anticiv anarchist - nihilist anarchist

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

Grew up in tension in centre-right places, was centre-liberal for a long time.

Had an odd patch where I thought that aristocracy was best, in the sense of "ruled by the best people for the job" and not the common sense of rule by the privileged.

Then post-left anarchy. Then anti-civ anarchy together with (queer) nihilist anarchy. Had a couple amazing intersectional feminist queers that introduced me to the cutting edges of that and helped keep me from being a garbage anarchist. Took on a huge focus on decolonial stuff after realising how bad so many greens and nihilists are on race and decol questions. A little bit of pure black (minus the individualism), which I sometimes wonder with hubris whether it was in part a result of a conversation I had with Aragorn! some years ago. Oh and there's a lot of Deleuze underpinning everything now.

Presently and for the last few years I'm just trying to create a new anarchy emergent from the specific localised context in which I live. It's only after having been to the US and other places that I realise how deeply contextualised so much of their theory is. Reading it from a distance, it makes sense, but you don't see the finer details. There's nothing like that where I am; deeply situated theory.

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[deleted] wrote

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

I'd be interested to hear about your favourites in this kick.

Separately, in case it's ambiguous to people, I don't think red anarchists have good race / decol politics generally either; they were just irrelevant to what I said.

And last, if people don't know, I've put together a collection of good readings in w/decolonial. I'd also be happy to try to suggest specific stuff if people are looking.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I'm not sure I understand the difference between pure black and just plain, original flavor anarchy aka individualist anarchy aka post-left anarchy.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote (edited )

Well, when I think of post-left anarchy I really do think a lot of CrimethInc. - and though I don't know if I can articulate it right now, there's a substantial difference in approach between CrimethInc and pure black.

I also think that pure black is more illegalist than the average individualist or post-lefty. Thinking here about Simons' Illegalist Praxis when I try to gauge what I think he means when he's talking illegalism.
And when I think of pure black (so I guess, in my version of pure black) it is not individualist or egoist at all, so there's that.

Also think the nihilism of pure black implies some anti-civ critique at least, but not necessarily individualism or post-leftism.

Finally, I associate pure black (probably also my version, haha) with a position where people are going hard, getting shit done, so it's more relentless and less half-assed than a lot of what I see in many post-lefties (and anarchists generally, I suppose.)

There's a lot to be said about it. One of the other things I've been chewing on lately is reconciling my thoughts on the desirability of attack and Bellamy's comments in An Invitation to Desertion around how that's not particularly good or useful. This quote is adequate:

To anticipate the anarchist critic: desertion does not necessarily imply that all forms of attentat are to be rejected outright; but it does mean a profound reevaluation of what some anarchists have vaguely taken to calling “attack,” which I feel has been greatly exaggerated in importance, often very misguidedly conducted, commonly easily recuperated by the parasitic social classes, and woefully overshadowing what ought to be the primary goals of desertion, autarky, and reinhabitation. It is only an empty bluff, or a suicidal and mass homicidal impulse, to prioritize attacking civilization when oneself and one’s kin totally depend on its infrastructure and social relations for their survival.
It may very well be necessary and appropriate to resist more confrontationally at certain junctures, but much of anarchist activity these days is a repetitive exercise in self-righteous victimhood, a perpetual motion machine animated by a ressentiment-fueled martyr complex: rioting, aggressively confronting police, destroying public and private property — all of which accomplish next to nothing when civic and economic activity returns to normalcy one or several days later, but which often result in arrests, fines, incarceration, and injury for the activists involved. One attempts to assault directly an enemy who is best equipped and enormously accustomed to absorb and/or crush direct assaults, knowing that they will likely only inflict superficial scratches on their enemy while risking the total destruction of their lives — only a virulently self-sacrificial morality that places catharsis over wisdom could motivate such behavior. One loses, but feels vindicated, justified, and redeemed in their loss, and the oppression they receive only proves their dedication to righteousness and the turpitude of their enemies — and so the cycle continues.

Your thoughts more than welcome. It's also interesting for me some of the disconnnects between my theory and my action because of how the context is limiting.

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ziq wrote

When you exclude individualism do you mean mutualism?

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I don't really even consider mutualism.

Not sure if this elaboration is what you were looking for, but I don't really understand the individualism-collectivism dichotomy. I think both aren't good. I think it's far more interesting to think about understanding and reframing subjectivity and personhood in terms of multiplicities that bleed into all the various elements of the world beyond it, collective and nonhuman.

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ziq wrote (edited )

To me, individualism (what I prefer simply to call 'anarchy' since I also think the social/individual dichotomy is bogus and invented by strict collectivists that don't really understand anarchy) just means you don't prioritize the idea of fighting for a rigid pre-defined global communist revolution and instead produce living anarchy everywhere you can in different ways.

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

I've experienced too many individualists and especially egoists to have really simplistic ideas of the individual and/or self-interest, that make me associate those views with them.

So in my experience the collectivist side is authoritarian and the individualist side doesn't seem to have a good sense of what an individual is and has a corresponding selfishness that I don't like and think often has affinity with capitalist individualism.

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ziq wrote (edited )

I also avoid egoism (and the term 'post-left') because of those types. But most egoists don't use the word 'individualist', just the other 2.

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GrnBlck wrote

Raised National Conservative (was basically a fascist) -> Right-libertarian -> Drifted towards center axis -> Realised I actually kinda liked the sound of socialism -> Libertarian Social Democrat -> Anarchist (Somewhere between Mutualist and Ancom)

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LostYonder wrote

liberal -- leftist/Maoist -- progressive -- unidentified radical -- anarchist

Always had a difficult time placing my politics in relation to others. the labels reflect general orientations, until my very recent "discovery" of my anarchist tendencies. Still remain mostly an "armchair"/academic anarchist (perhaps the worst kind) but slowly growing into the realm of possibilities of breaking my umbilical chord tie to my laptop and getting out and discovering life on the streets as actually lived rather than as hypothesized in my mind.

While it was reading that shaped my thoughts and orientations (including an early high school/college flirtation with Maoism) it was ultimately the Arab Spring that drew me into realizing the true possibilities of anarchism...

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mouse wrote (edited )

centrist -> liberal -> social democrat -> right libertarian -> left libertarian -> mutualist -> anarcho-syndicalist -> veganarcho-pacifist

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RosaReborn wrote

Lesser-of-two-evils but still upholding the social order social democrat, always anti-capitalist. This led to a bit of statist communism, believing that the mechanisms of the state could be used to crush capital and allow for representative communalism (always aware of the failures of past states but thinking we could learn from it, turns out what we learn from it is that the state is incentivized to never let go of power and that oppressive systems extend far beyond just defeating capital but also altering our fundamental interactions with each other and the environment).

I guess this led to a kind of eco-anarchosyndicalism, with an emphasis on communal cooperation. Looking further into colonialism and individualism I now consider myself an anarchist without other labels because my focus is on a total shift in nearly all aspects of life, which is what anarchy means to me.

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leftous wrote

Centrist liberal -> "Progressive" liberal -> Soc Dem -> Brocialist -> Chomskyist -> Ancom -> Mutualist

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An_Old_Big_Tree wrote

No shit! You're a mutualist right now? I hope you'll post some interesting texts on the topic.

Also I'd love to understand the move from ancom to mutualist.

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