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subrosa wrote

Reply to comment by Tequila_Wolf in by !deleted39333

idk, in what sense?

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Tequila_Wolf wrote

Well, I'm trying to make sense of what you're saying.

Your first comment indicates you have a preference for capitalists over democrats, and when I engaged about that preference with my own you seemed to ignore that and change from a notion of preference to something else which was unclear.

That being the baseline of my confusion, I wanted to understand what the grounds for 'taking' a person would be, now separate from the idea of preferring one over another. Taking them into an affinity group? Taking them on a project? Siding with them in some other way?

This is where the question of war comes in. For those of us under attack, who we 'take' is often more a matter of who will kill us and who will defend with us. If our concrete experience is of war, then much of the time I would be happy to side with someone who would be interested basically to defend any basic minimal anti-authoritarianism at my side. If our concrete experience is something else, say, just being alive and surviving somewhere and making various projects, without extreme violence at an arm's-length away, then it seems one could say they don't take others.

I recognise that internet/reddit democrats are possibly among the worst, which is why I mentioned graeber, who despite his heavy academicism and awkward choice of language around the word 'democracy' would definitely be someone I would welcome.

I'm curious if this make sense to you.

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kin wrote

I will enter this convo if it's ok, I want to engage with your comment about the sentiment of being in the middle of war.

First I want to remember, I said many times before that I carry many contradictions and a certain hypocrisy that I am ironically proud of. I like ambiguity and poetry, so I cultivate doubt and uncertainty.

Now with that said I agree with picking allies from liberals, leftwing or any potential closer ally than capitalists can be helpful for survival and I personally work irl with many people who are tankies, generic leftists, liberal feminists, even workers that hold tangential fascist values. If I am honest this don't accomplish the anarchy I imagine or even a middle path to a generic consensual "anarchism", but accomplish specific goals, for example assembling a FoodNotBombs chapter or holding a squatted social centre.

And I agree with subrosa, I think other users here too share this very same feeling, noted that Raddle is very vitriolic with baby anarchists or leftism. I see this as necessary in an ideological sense, exactly to prevent a possible appropriation.

Other point is that is that the users here come in every walks of life, and the only fact to have a stable connection to internet put all of us in a kind of a elite comparated to the mass of people. And sure many of us never get the taste of the war, some just smelled the powder smoke from the distance, other just read the news from far, etc. And we are fighting different wars or none at the same time. I can say that I am very privileged to never tasted hunger, violence from the state or any existential threat so despite the empathy I may show I will never now some levels of oppression. Sorry if this last paragraph come out as corny, can't think in a better way to put it

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Tequila_Wolf wrote

If I am honest this don't accomplish the anarchy I imagine or even a middle path to a generic consensual "anarchism", but accomplish specific goals, for example assembling a FoodNotBombs chapter or holding a squatted social centre.

So here are some thoughts I am curious about how you relate to:
Anarchy is the thing we live every day by making decisions with what we have. What you described as the anarchy you imagine is something if I understand you is practically never going to happen for any of us. Around here many of us are nihilistic enough to hold no hope for that. But whenever people argue or posture for purity the main line of reasoning they have is that if you don't the revolution will be coopted. But if the transcendent revolution is not going to happen and so if purity is not going to bring us closer to the utopia, then does it change how we can relate to the non-anarchists? I think that is possible.

Separately, I'm not saying anyone necessarily is or is not in war - I'm interested in how people perceive themselves to be participating in making anarchy, because it is useful to understand people's decisions based on that. And for me, one of the big questions underlying questions of who to collaborate with is, are we treating this as war?

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kin wrote

I agree that the anarchy is what we are making everyday and it was my personal thought, that's why I bother with prefiguration, everyday revolution. But even then I am honest to say that I can't live anarchy the way I think anarchy should be (for myself), the police still harass us, I still have to sell my labor to buy house food and water.. the thing is, the way I see it, it's not some kind of Nietzschean endeavour to be your own delusional king (I was using schizophrenic, but I don't find how to use it in a non ableist way, I waned to say when you are trapped by intrusive thoughts that in this case is self inflicted by ones staunchly ideology). I may have lots in common with nihilism, but I personally never abandoned the futile struggle, and it's a personal instance. I justify this to myself adhering to insurrectionist thought that isn't overtly nihilist, not sure if it was the conspiracy of fire cells or others but they treated the continuous insurrection as a praxis not a end in itself.

The war metaphor is useful and for many a real one. But again it boils to personal sensibilities, if we don't have hopes for a mass uprising or that even we (the anarchist we™) make a consensual position in society, the question loses importance if each individual ia acting accordingly with their personal beliefs or pontual objectives. Maybe don't matter to have this dogma itched in anarchist collective consciousness. I say collaborate who best align with your goals and make things work but be aware that you can be drawn to other people agendas too.

Sorry if I tergiversate in my comment. I feel dissociated to theory and discourse more and more so this is becoming more philosophical than practical for me at the moment, if I only have the courage/energy I would probably would assemble my own insurrection

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subrosa wrote

I don't have a preference for capitalists over democrats.

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Tequila_Wolf wrote (edited )

Alright. You don't seem to be super interested to engage me so I'll leave things here. Good luck with your night.

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subrosa wrote

Seems to me you're more interested in stating your own preferences, about who you would welcome into your affinity group or whatever, and in interrogating my hardly existent sympathies for capitalists. You're not giving me much to engage with.

Maybe this will clarify my point, where I'm coming from:

  • OP's meme boils down to a simple, slogan-like position, a daily mantra of sorts. Capitalists are not anarchists — who knew — might as well say "statism is bad" and pat each other on the shoulder for that. I wanted to add something with a bit more flavor, an issue a bit more contemporary.

  • My own 'radicalization' and trajectory towards anarchy got started with a serious problem I had with democracy and my search for the most coherent version of it. Despite my early communism I was long hesitant to call myself anarchist or dig deeper precisely because Occupy era anarchists kept insisting on direct democracy.

  • After the Russian Revolution English-speaking anarchists started using "libertarian" much more prominently than before while being rather silent on the whole "socialism" thing. Which I'm not sure will ever recover. Anarchism as a barely existent libertarian anti-statism, as an alternative to the Marxists' "socialism = totalitarian government + planned economy" shit — it's almost funny how perfect of a set-up that was. If we want to move past anarcho-capitalism for good, it's not in choosing sides in Cold War binaries (true communism pls!, true capitalism pls!), but in rediscovering the more thorough critique of archy, which I'll insist is most easily found in the early anarchist's anti-governmentalism and anti-absolutism, in the neglected anti-political current that became a whole lot more available to us in the past decades. Graeber didn't bother with any of that, while he had plenty of time to promote Universal Basic Income. Because, basically, it's a policy that would reduce the size of government. Now where have I heard that before...

  • I'm currently reading two old books with "war and peace" in the title, forgive me if I'm hesitant to have any strong positions on war or what it is.

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Tequila_Wolf wrote

Seems to me you're more interested in stating your own preferences, about who you would welcome into your affinity group or whatever, and in interrogating my hardly existent sympathies for capitalists. You're not giving me much to engage with.

Really? Surprised to hear that.

I agree with you about the meme. I'd prefer if we never saw ancap memes on this site. I see where you were going with adding flavour, and was trying to do the same kind of thing with my own engagement with you. I wonder if I take people too literally, or with two specific a meaning, sometimes.

I'm pretty sure we're mostly in agreement on the relation to archy stuff.

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subrosa wrote

Probably. Whether we agree or not, I almost always appreciate your presence and comments on here. But the way you inquired in this thread felt a bit presumptive, almost as though you were baiting me into a gotcha moment.

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Tequila_Wolf wrote (edited )

I see. I'm rarely doing that. If I bother to engage people it's usually because I'm interested in the possibility of changing my mind, together with an opportunity to articulate myself in engagement with people who can meaningfully engaged. I also appreciate your comments and participation here.

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