Anarchism

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Discuss anarchist praxis and philosophy. Don't take yourselves too seriously.


Other anarchist comms


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cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/25806106

Summary

An investigation by the Texas Observer identified ICE Assistant Chief Counsel James Rodden as the operator of "GlomarResponder," a white supremacist X account.

The account, active since 2012, has posted racist, xenophobic, and pro-fascist content, including support for mass deportations and anti-immigrant violence.

Rodden's identity was confirmed through biographical details, court records, and social media activity. ICE has not confirmed his employment but is investigating.

Legal experts warn that his views compromise his ability to fairly represent the government in immigration proceedings. Rodden declined to comment.

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submitted 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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I've been trying to get some thoughts together that have been haunting me for a long time. I don't have a ton of time to write and edit, so I'm just kind of banging this out and trying to figure out how to get something usable and consumable in to the world. I'd love to get critical feedback ("ideas too dense", "information seems to be missing", "oh hey, this is almost just like ", " is distracting and can be dropped" etc.). Still trying to figure out where to even post it or what to do with it, and am open to any suggestions. Thanks to anyone who takes the time to trudge through all of it. :)

Edit: added a codeberg link for anyone wanting to propose edits under revision control. I'll be adding a bit more context there as well. Link in URL.


Towards a Fractal Anarchism: a Psychedelic Anarchist Manifesto

We have long since passed the crisis point, and we can all feel it if not see it. Liberalism has failed and fascism is feeding on its corpse. We can all feel the creeping doom. We see the water rising and know the ship is sinking. Some of us are frozen in fear. Some of us are pretending it's not happening. But we all know, at least at some level, that something is deeply wrong.

The world is on fire. Governments around the world are inadequate. They are at risk of being (or have already been) captured by forces of wealth extraction. They operate for the few at the expense of collective prosperity, social cohesion, and, ultimately, the survival of the species.

We can't keep going the way we're going, and alternatives are hard to imagine. But this is exactly where the key to our escape lies. But if we can revive our collective imagination, we can stop struggling against the suffocating mire of apocalypse and begin to build our utopia. Take a second to imagine how it would feel to no longer be afraid. Now imagine the void left by your fear being filled with hope and joy.

It is by no coincidence that authoritarian systems have the same properties as interpersonal abuse dynamics. It is not a coincidence that the trauma authoritarians inflict on us all decreases our compassion and creativity. Their violence makes it harder for everyone to figure out how to oppose them, and imagine a world without their domination. Their abuse conditions us to give up hope.

It is by no coincidence that the dictators who dominate authoritarian nations exhibit egotistical behavior. The fear and anxiety you are feeling mirrors the fear and anxiety within the authoritarians who dominate and threaten our world. Our interaction with them consumes us. We become an externalization of their own neuroses.

This is not imaginary. This is not an illusion. The mind of the society reflects the mind of the individual; consciousness is a fractal. Within your own mind there are competing interests, competing thoughts. Do you silence opposition to your paradigm, or do you accept inconsistency as an inescapable fact of all complex systems?

When we see the shape and structure of the world we participate within, we begin to understand how to manipulate it at all levels. As we free parts of our minds to question assumptions we had not realized we accept or explore ideas we had suppressed, as we accept our own flaws and inconsistencies, as we forgive parts of ourselves, we find that we as individuals are more free and able to more completely engage with the world. As we become more kind to ourselves, we find it easier to accept criticism and to address our own internalized oppression. The more we address these issues within ourselves, the more we are able to predict the actions that authoritarian systems will take against us.

A fractal approach to anarchism should feel natural to many anarchists. How can we expect to address oppression in our communities if we can't address it in our own lives? How can we hold others accountable if we can't hold parts of ourselves accountable? How can we dismantle hierarchy in the world if we can't even see it in our own organizations, or in ourselves?

If we already operate within this framework sometimes, what would it look like to embrace it fully? What could a fractal anarchism look like?

An anarchism that lacks compassion is an authoritarianism in disguise. Without compassion, what do we do with those who don't agree? Do we help those who don't understand, who are not ready to be anarchists? We must have some compassion in order to meet people where they're at, help them even if we don't completely align. If our compassion doesn't guide us, then we are not building the world we want to see we are only struggling to destroy the one we hate. If we center destruction, are we doing anything but justifying the police and helping them get overtime?

If a compassion drives our external actions, do we apply that compassion to ourselves? Are your actions driven by love, by joy, by hope, or the guilt of knowing how much you didn't do before you knew how bad things really were? When, comrade, was the last time you let yourself stop and cry?

When we are compassionate to ourselves, we recognize that our work must be sustainable. We understand our limits, and we understand that we need help. We recognize when we are destroying ourselves, and we recognize the burden we on our comrades when we get arrested, injured, or killed. None of this stops us from taking appropriate risks, but rather it forces us to consider what is appropriate and sustainable.

When we are good to ourselves, we are also more welcoming. Our compassion makes it easier to accept new people, recognize their flaws, and help them build their own compassion towards others and themselves.

A fractal anarchism would tell us to heal ourselves and our communities, so that we can heal others. It tells us to heal and build.

A fractal anarchism notices what our internal anarchism looks like and offers it to the world. It sees a self-awareness and an introspection that is impossible for states to achieve. It recognizes that the world we are trying to build is a fractal reflection of ourselves, a conscious global organism. A fractal anarchism would have to see itself as a part of Gaia, a global being, becoming self-aware and self-compassionate. A fractal anarchism is necessarily one informed by ecofeminism as we must treat ourselves with respect at all levels: the self, the collective, the planetary being.

A fractal anarchism is a neurodiverse anarchism. We are ourselves the sum of the parts of our minds. Within ourselves we are better if we accept and adapt to how our minds work, if we accept each component and treat them all compassionately. In nature, a population of organisms may develop multiple strategies, each one that is more or less tuned to different situations.

A neurodiverse population values these attributes as important features of the collective, supporting those who need support for in situations for which they are less adapted and leveraging those adaptations when they are beneficial to the collective. An honest neurodiveristy is one that accepts that people both have the right to alter their consciousness, and the right not to. A fractal anarchism recognizes that the individual is best suited to make judgments about how their brain should operate, and that the collective should support that. None of this is to say that maladaptive behavior should be accepted. Everyone is accountable for their actions individually, and the collective is accountable for the actions of their members.

All this is not to say that a fractal anarchism would be entirely internally focused, a meditative anarchism, a psychedelic anarchism. No, it would also have a revolutionary praxis. However, it would not focus on overthrowing the global order.

The revolutionary praxis of a fractal anarchism would mean constructing the revolutionary society as a fractal, as a self-organizing creature, following, in some ways, our own evolution as conscious beings.

A fractal anarchism would structure society as recursive entities: the individual, the affinity group, federated affinity groups, federations of federations, etc. At any level, the entity would identify and take on tasks appropriate to the perpetuation of the entity. An individual may start, for example, with self-care, personal inventory management (food, supplies), and basic disaster preparedness. When the individual builds an affinity group, they may share some of these tasks, where appropriate, with the collective. Disaster preparedness scales. Community pantries can reduce the cost of food and other consumables. Community dinners can simplify meal planning and reduce preparation time, thereby freeing up time for personal or collective activities. Personal grooming doesn't scale well, so everyone continues to brush their own teeth. With each layer of reclusion, new capabilities become available to help members internally and to influence the world externally.

With a large enough federation, the entity begins to behave as a dual power structure. It competes with the state for legitimacy and, against a state that prioritizes violence, can necessarily offer more.

This model is necessarily prefigurative. The revolutionary praxis is literally just building the post-revolutionary society. The transitionary period, rather than being a signal catastrophic event, becomes a gradient. Each revolutionary experiences the revolution personally and collectively in every success and expansion of their capability. The risks of revolutionary change are minimized, allowing those who may be critical of the concept to experience the revolution within the comfort of the state before they allow it to collapse.

The fractal structure also addresses one of the long-standing problems of anarchist organizing: internal conflict. Conflict can be isolated to interaction points. Low conflict individuals can bridge networks with high conflict individuals, allowing cooperation while reducing or avoiding drama.

Most importantly, a fractal anarchism is both invisible to the state apparatus of violence and almost impenetrable to it. By organizing naturally through social networks, states cannot easily observe unusual behavior. Infiltrators cannot gain entry to trusted social networks without first building trust.

Extralegal actions, where necessary to avoid to circumvent or confront state repression, are executed primarily at the individual or affinity group level for security reasons. Though these actions may be supported via other means at higher levels, higher levels would necessarily lack visibility in to such actions because knowledge would compromise the security of higher level entities. So even if infiltrators did gain access to any level of federation, they would have to infiltrate each small groups in order to understand which ones pose a threat.

All extralegal actions would necessarily need to follow standard security protocols, which are beyond the scope of this document. Anyone unfamiliar with said protocols, deeply familiar with security culture and practices, has no business taking such actions unless they are already themselves designated as illegal (for one reason or another).

By containing risk, it's possible to minimize badjacketing as either a paranoia response or a viable tactic for disruption. State agent, informant, right wing infiltrator, none of these matter, only the individual's behavior matters. Is the individual contributing or not? Is the individual causing harm, or not? Is the individual willing to be held accountable for harm they do cause, or not? Entities that are incapable of dealing with problematic individuals can be externalized until they can be dealt with, minimizing risk to the larger organization.

What does the external praxis look like, concretely, in practice?

People organize affinity groups to address collective needs based on priority. Buy food in bulk, learn to forage, dumpster dive, etc, to establish food security. Plan for disasters, including catastrophic state collapse, by stockpiling medication where possible and identifying alternatives where viable. Assign tasks to individuals or small groups initially, and create committees as groups grow.

Start with affinity groups, targeting a size of 5. Grow the group through social networks. Fragment groups, dividing like cells, in to smaller groups as they grow. Federate via appointed points of contact. Determine which tasks should be taken at the federation level and which should remain at the individual. Coordinate task management within federations via appointed representatives at regular meetings (spokes councils, for those already familiar).

Create things like local food pantries, durable good libraries (such as for books), shared digital infrastructure, and mutual aid services. Grow the scope of each of these, and add new targets as the federation expands.

At each level, each entity needs to figure out their own strategy, their own targets, their own structure, their own protocols for interacting and decision making. The more we work on this, the more we can share what works and what doesn't, the more we can publish externally, and the lower the barrier to entry for others who come after.

Social insertion provides a way for fractal anarchists to leverage existing organizations, and a way to spread their ideas or identify other fractal entities with which to collaborate. Anarchist general assemblies also provide ways to meet other fractal entities.

Regardless of the next steps, the very first step is your realization, as a reader of this text, that the neural clusters processing these words, putting together the pieces, making meaning, and relating it to your life, are as much unique parts who's emergent complexity manifest your individual consciousness as that you are part of a larger emergent consciousness. By reading this, by integrating this information, and awakening to this fact about your potential, you progress the awakening of a greater consciousness to itself and it's potential.

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Cross-posted from ""Dragon Tiger Gate" by Stephane Wootha Richard (who released 90gb of his work into public domain)" by @[email protected] in [email protected]


WikiMedia

He dropped 90gb of his artwork into public domain a couple years back, more information here. Everything's available on the Internet Archive.

For years you may have known me through a fictional entity called "Wootha". Today I have decided to destroy this entity. In this text, I will explain to you what motivated this decision. ..

I have decided to be radical in the face of what I believe is the most perilous situation humanity has ever known in at least twelve millennia and the Younger Dryas end. It seems to me that the ecosystem crisis we are experiencing, this terrible tierracide (a word invented by Glenn Albrecht to name the conscious murder of the Earth), can only be stopped by a profound change in our current civilizational paradigm.

I believe this change can only come about through creative destruction.

We spend our lives accumulating goods, experiences, memories, and recognition and convincing ourselves that we possess them, to nourish our sense of identity. We identify ourselves with all these possessions and believe that we are a sum that must constantly grow in order not to fall apart. ..

Our collective creative power can do more than the destructive creativity that resides within the α angle. We can bring to humanity imaginaries of a vast multitude of possible, desirable, and magnificent futures if we come out collectively.

To apply this philosophy to myself, I will once again indulge in the magic of creative destruction. "Wootha" is dead, but I'm still alive and well. I do not know how this creative force that inhabits me, just like each of us, will manifest. I believe it will take a very different form, rooted in local communities, the present actions, and a lot of friendship and solidarity.

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David Rolfe Graeber (/ˈɡreɪbər/; February 12, 1961 – September 2, 2020) was an American anthropologist and anarchist activist. His influential work in economic anthropology, particularly his books Debt: The First 5,000 Years (2011), Bullshit Jobs (2018), and The Dawn of Everything (2021), and his leading role in the Occupy movement, earned him recognition as one of the foremost anthropologists and left-wing thinkers of his time.

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a long but i think great overview on antifa action. something I think we could refresh on.

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Man charged with health insurance CEO murder to accept $300,000 in donations

Lawyer says 26-year-old accused ‘very much appreciates the outpouring of support’ on fundraising platform

Mangione “very much appreciates the outpouring of support”, said a statement on GiveSendGo that was attributed to his attorney, Karen Friedman Agnifilo.

There's only one occurrence of Luigi. The slogan was "free Luigi", not "free Mangione".

obligatory: I do not condone violence.

I just think that his was a political act like other historical regicides. Ravaillac is a historical name, like Luigi has now become. Why avoid it?

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Long-form analysis on the #50501movement. I found this thread on mastodon interesting, so I thought I'd crosspost here as well

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My local community has taken this style of mutual aid and ran with it! I wanted to share and see if others are doing this. Possibly share tips and tricks and get to know others in mutual aid communities!

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some highlights

"It’s not that I think people are fundamentally power seeking. I don’t. It’s something with cultural variance, but at least in my experiences (especially in workplaces & activism) most people actively avoid power. They accept it only reluctantly, when circumstance forces it on them or the rewards are too great to ignore."

"More abstractly, I want to think of success in terms of increasing freedom. It’s not a zero sum - my freedom does not end where someone else’s nose begins. Sometimes it does, & sometimes somebody needs to get punched. Sometimes that someone is me. Sometimes freedom is realizing that my needs can take a backseat to a collective good. Other times it’s insisting that the severity of my need outweighs the collective’s. It’s building social trust to where we can discuss situations while assuming good faith, where the give & take happens without fear of advantage taking or domination."

"I went on a date with someone who had been a bank teller during a robbery. She was robbed by an older black woman, armed with a piece of paper (“but she could have had a gun!”). She later learned the woman was trying to pay her sister’s medical bills. My date told me how she rode along with a police detective (“ACAB but I felt a camaraderie with her when she told me she was a lesbian”) to identify the suspect who then spent 5 years in prison. My date felt deeply traumatized by the whole experience. I ended the date, telling her as gently as I could that I was entirely on the side of the bank robber & privately thinking that I had just met a monster. The truly terrifying kind that sleeps soundly at night in a comfortable bed with loved ones nearby."

I'd recommend reading the whole thing. it's not long. I'd be keen to see more personal reflections of how others organise. it's more valuable than what some may think.

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After having to revisit the Kronstadt revolt with a campist I realized realized I don't have a hangout where I can shoot the shit with other of a similar mindframe. So I just opened a room on matrix based on this comm. The assumption is that if you're joining it, you're an anarchist or at least knowledgeable about it.

Not planning this to be a debate channel. More like a cozy space.

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I'm a young anarchist thinking about moving to a different country (in my case UK or Ireland). I'm wondering what the best way to begin would be.

I imagine that having some contacts in the country would be a good place to start, but how to get them? Maybe you could share some tips?

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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

They are not specifically anarchist, probably democratic socialist, though I’ve been pushing them more and more to the left (they started off as neolib), and I think Trump getting elected really disillusioned them with the prospect of reformism actually making meaningful change.

They basically asked me, “It’s fucking crazy over here. People are dying and Trump is fucking up everything. I feel so helpless and hopeless. Do you have any resources on things to do?”

Do you guys have links I could send. Cheers.

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submitted 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
 
 

Hello, I'm thinking of creating a matrix account after a long time and I thought about creating one on an anarchist server (like something with similar ideas in this lemmy server). Do you have any suggestions? I was looking at this database, but it says it has gone down and they provide a json list.

I found https://4d2.org/ , but I saw that they removed the mention of anarchy from their description. (Compare this snapsot from 2025/01/05 with today's snapsot.)

Hopefully this is the correct place to ask, if not, pls direct me to a more appropriate community:)

Edit: The admin of the server told me that 4d2 became a non-profit company (https://www.acabinc.org/) and they don't want to look that political to avoid any legal issues (I think they have to be non-politicaland such, so they removed the mention of anarchy from their website description.😄 (I eventually made an account there.)

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cross-posted from: https://slrpnk.net/post/17611547

The fantasy-story of right-wing anarchy is creating misinformation, someone thinks that something like "anarcho-capitalism" is real philosophy, instead of the linguistic distortion of fascist-capitalism that it is.

Should people even specify that they are left-wing anarchists now? Do we really want to put a stop to this propagandistic joke? Anarchy will always be the extreme left into the political pendulum.

And I will tell you more: anarchism is by its nature also pacifism, as it aims to prevent any form of uncontrolled power on others. This is to silence even centrists: another fake group, people who think that it's not "extremist" in its own abstinence, in delegating violence.

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White folks are used to being polite and accommodating to cops. Do not fall into your old ways. For once, your silence will not be violence. STFU if the cops come looking for your neighbours. No matter how friendly.

Fascism only works if we go along with it. Fascism only works if we surrender to it. Resist. Do not say a word about your neighbours. As far as the cops are concerned you’re a recluse who doesn’t talk to anybody where you live."


ID for all 3 images: White text on a black background:

"Fascist raids by law enforcement should be met with:

I don’t know.

I can’t help.

I do not know anybody’s legal status.

I have no idea who is an immigrant.

White folks are used to being polite and accommodating to cops.

Do not fall into your old ways.

For once, your silence will not be violence. STFU if the cops come looking for your neighbours. No matter how friendly.

Fascism only works if we go along with it. Fascism only works if we surrender to it.

Resist.

Do not say a word about your neighbours. As far as the cops are concerned you’re a recluse who doesn’t talk to anybody where you live."

Credit: @Raeeka Yassaie

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More about FreeQuency and their fantastic work:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mwende_Katwiwa

https://www.freequencyspeaks.com/media

Video transcript:

This is for the 45 lies campaign.

The title of this piece is 1 through 45 have lied, 46 through 100 will be no different. And it is in conversation with the piece "I want a dyke for president" by Zoe Leonard.

Oh silly humans, how quickly we forget.

We who were once ruled by thrones and those who told us they were born to sit upon them.

We the descendants of those who overthrew dynasties and decapitated dictators.

Who are we, in this moment, to not remember how much we've already overcome.

How dare we dream so small.

No, I don't want another four years of Trump.

I don't want any republican for president.

But I don't want a democrat either.

No democrats, no dykes, no people who've been unemployed.

I don't want a black woman in office.

Not Oprah, Ava or even Michelle.

No immigrants in the oval.

I don't care how many or which drugs they've done, I don't want a president at all.

After all, what is a president but a small king?

An emperor whose new clothes I cannot see.

An agreement we made collectively that we can unmake just as easily.

I pledge no allegiance to America because white men defiled it with borders and called the result a country.

I do not confuse dying to vote with dying for freedom even though they meant the same thing at one time in history.

I will not beg for a seat at a table whose legs are bent backs and we dine only on scarcity.

I want us to dare to dream beyond the dictates of this dystopia.

To say that the ending that so many feared was coming came long ago and we have simply been living in it's shadow.

I want us to admit more than this being a failure from the start.

To say America never was great and never can be.

That sometimes, sometimes the rot is so deep in the root that a pruning does not breed possibility.

That the only hope for a harvest lies in the fields being re-sown entirely.

And I wanna know why this isn't possible.

I wanna know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always needed, that a country is always needed, that the police are always needed, that any of this has ever been and will always be needed.

And I wanna know how after slavery, genocide, colonialism and all of the ways that they've renamed the taking, how in the world that they convinced us that they knew how to run one better than we did, or do.

And I know it's sometimes hard to imagine that all of us can truly get free, but I need you to believe that we already are.

I need you to believe that we always have been, no matter the master or the monarch, but only if we dare to dream beyond what we can see, only if we understood that re-skinning or re-gendering the beast would never change a rumbling in it's belly.

See sometimes, sometimes I daydream I will live to see a day that a child is born so free that they will hear this poem and wonder what the hell a president even is.

And I believe that we can do it.

And I accept that we will be ourselves in the doing.

I accept that there will be disagreement, that we will conflict as we unravel our imposed inhumanity, as we realize that we have less to learn than to unlearn as we remember our collective body.

And I wanna know why this isn't possible.

I wanna know why we started learning somewhere down the line that a president is always needed, that a country is always needed, that the police are always needed, that any of this has ever been and will always be needed.

And I wanna know how we were asked to write to one lie, from one president in one poem, as if the sum of this country's presidencies have been anything but an untruth.

45 lies, yes, but so did 44 and so will 46, and so will our writing if we do not speak to the entirety of this.

Oh silly writers, how quickly we forget.

We who were once ruled by thrones and those that told us they were born to sit upon them.

We the descendants of those who overthrew dynasties and decapitated dictators.

Who are we, in this moment, to not remember how much we've already overcome.

How dare we write so small.

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