Another queer, neurodivergent, anarchist trans femme on the world wide web
it/its
This link opens in a pop-up window
60% complete! luch has read 3 of 5 books.
(From the Preface): Running throughout this book, as a central theme, has been the superior …
Making a sincere effort to begin to understand market anarchism (crucially, /not/ american-style "libertarianism"). I'm told this is a good place to start.
[From the Back Cover:] Davide Turcato makes history's relevance dynamically clear. Through a biographical account …
The most notable example [of a strike following in the footsteps of a London dockworkers' strike] was the strike of the Rotterdam dockers, which on 27 September 1889 was met by harsh police repression, after it had extended to about 5,000 workers. The strike lasted until 10 October, when the workers' request of a salary increase was accepted. […] The Rotterdam dockers [in the midst of the strike], eager to banish any suspicion of socialism, got to the point of throwing out of a meeting a worker who had spoken in socialist terms, and of cheering the Orange reigning house.
— Making Sense of Anarchism by Davide Turcato (Page 44)
This is, to my mind, a fundamental challenge of organising via mass politics: "the masses" or "the people" or whatever one wishes to call the category of individually comparatively powerless folks, are /not/ a unified bloc. Some may be for revolution, others reform, others reaction, and any combination of these (coherent or not [see, e.g., fascism]) and other ideas.
If there's anything i think the Right has gotten right in recent decades, it's the understanding that a lot of political movement comes from cultural shifts. Certainly those of us on the so-called Left have made strides on certain fronts of the so-called Culture War; but so has the Right in its insistent messaging and political jockeying on its pet issues (such as its seemingly boundless fixation on deepening immiseration in an accelerationist race to a fascist bottom). Which is to say: i don't know that it's possible for organizers to …
This is, to my mind, a fundamental challenge of organising via mass politics: "the masses" or "the people" or whatever one wishes to call the category of individually comparatively powerless folks, are /not/ a unified bloc. Some may be for revolution, others reform, others reaction, and any combination of these (coherent or not [see, e.g., fascism]) and other ideas.
If there's anything i think the Right has gotten right in recent decades, it's the understanding that a lot of political movement comes from cultural shifts. Certainly those of us on the so-called Left have made strides on certain fronts of the so-called Culture War; but so has the Right in its insistent messaging and political jockeying on its pet issues (such as its seemingly boundless fixation on deepening immiseration in an accelerationist race to a fascist bottom). Which is to say: i don't know that it's possible for organizers to swoop into the midst of a strike to direct it toward their own desired revolutionary ends like a vanguard, as most participants will likely already have their own political ideas (even if not well-thought-out). It is hard to direct the flow of a burst dam, which i would tend to think is often what spontaneous strikes amount to. The groundwork of building socio-cultural imagination for what is possible and what ought to be is at least as important as intervention. "The masses" (read: we) /will/ direct themselves when these moments arrive (remember: /we are [among] the masses, not separate from or, so much worse, above them/)
[From the Back Cover:] Davide Turcato makes history's relevance dynamically clear. Through a biographical account …
Insofar as the interplay of wills was informed by contrast and competition, the individual was severely limited. However, insofar as competition was replaced by association, the individual will was empowered by its harmonization with the cooperating wills of other individuals.
— Making Sense of Anarchism by Davide Turcato (Page 28)
A reed against the tide doesn't stand especially firmly. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why i find the reification of "competition" under Capitalism so exhausting, alienating, Sad.
[From the Back Cover:] Davide Turcato makes history's relevance dynamically clear. Through a biographical account …
"[anarchists and marxists participating in the International] each ultimately did the same: they all tried to force events rather than relying upon the force of events … [f]or Malatesta what killed the International was not persecution, or personal controversies, or the way it was organized: it was that both marxists and anarchists tried to impose their program on the International, and in this struggle for hegemony they prevented the International from a slower maturation that would have more appropriately created the right conditions for change, by uplifting the minds and building up the necessary momentum."
— Making Sense of Anarchism by Davide Turcato (Page 20)
I remain somewhat skeptical of mass organizing (more on that in a future read), but i'm interested to see where this and similar analyses go; i always find Malatesta's words worth meditating on, given their lucidity.
[From the Back Cover]
As the election of Donald Trump shows, fascism in all its …
This text leaves me with the distinct impression that it was written rapidly in the wake of the election of Trump—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it /is/ a /lot/ of information to take in: names, organizations, ideas, movements. If you're not familiar with many of these things in advance, it can be difficult to distinguish between the "blink and you'll miss them" fascist actors and movements, and the ones that have had a deep and lasting impact. Sincerely, it's something of a 300-page infodump.
That said, i still think it's very much a text worth reading. I didn't try especially hard to remember every last detail that i was reading; it was more an impressionistic read-through, but even this was really valuable to me. It makes a few things clear: fascists are /everywhere/, trying at all times to find entry points into other movements in order to …
This text leaves me with the distinct impression that it was written rapidly in the wake of the election of Trump—and that's not necessarily a bad thing. But it /is/ a /lot/ of information to take in: names, organizations, ideas, movements. If you're not familiar with many of these things in advance, it can be difficult to distinguish between the "blink and you'll miss them" fascist actors and movements, and the ones that have had a deep and lasting impact. Sincerely, it's something of a 300-page infodump.
That said, i still think it's very much a text worth reading. I didn't try especially hard to remember every last detail that i was reading; it was more an impressionistic read-through, but even this was really valuable to me. It makes a few things clear: fascists are /everywhere/, trying at all times to find entry points into other movements in order to recruit and swell their own ranks; fascism is not a single, monolithic entity: there are many distinct currents and flavours of fascism, all of which are in at best uneasy alliances with one another, but just as often at war; fascism tries very hard to be "neither left nor right", as is to be expected from a movement whose chief aim is to gain and wield power over all other considerations (including consistency or cohesion); and, perhaps most important for those of us on what could broadly be called "the left": we are not immune. There is no ideology that is safe from fascist entryism. Given a chance, given space to act, fascists will pull from our ranks, will find ways of seducing us. Fascists and fascism must be actively considered and resisted.
Given its title, i thought this text was going to contain more analysis, more discussion of tactics and strategy, and i'm a little disappointed that it didn't. But its length, even as a fairly shallow dive into the complete history of a movement with so much breadth, variation, and nuance, makes clear that this could not really have been possible; it must be left to others.
[From the Back Cover:] Davide Turcato makes history's relevance dynamically clear. Through a biographical account of Errico Malatesta's revolutionary exploits …
[From the Back Cover]
As the election of Donald Trump shows, fascism in all its white nationalist and "alt-right" permutations …
[From the Back Cover]
As the election of Donald Trump shows, fascism in all its …
When it came to such fascist action [fascist actors doing awful things under the banner of some of the left's ideals], the left's crisis was how to clearly define left-wing ideology, strategy, and tactics in contradistinction to not just fascism but to the qualities that have always linked fascism to some strains of the left: namely, elitism, illiberalism (that is, rejection of certain ideals /as/ liberal, rather than on their own merits, or lack thereof as the case may be), and authoritarianism. Without addressing and critiquing these fundamental qualities, including their implications on strategic aggression and a readiness to sacrifice civilians, the left was all the more prone to creeping fascism slipping in and out of its manifolds.
— Against the Fascist Creep by Alexander Reid Ross (Page 94 - 95)
This is the way the world ends... for the last time.
A season of endings …
"Tell them they can be great someday, like us. Tell them they belong among us, no matter how we treat them. Tell them they must earn the respect which everyone else receives by default. Tell them there is a standard for acceptance; that standard is simply perfection. Kill those who scoff at these contradictions, and tell the rest that the dead deserved annihilation for their weakness and doubt. Then they'll break themselves trying for what they'll never achieve."
---Erlsset, twenty-third emperor of the Sanzed Equatorial Affiliation, in the thirteenth year of the Season of Teeth. Comment recorded at a party, shortly before the founding of the Fulcrum.
— The Fifth Season by N. K. Jemisin (Page 76)
Yep. That about sums up the maintenance of hegemony.
This is the way the world ends... for the last time.
A season of endings has begun.
It starts with …
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren …
Samantha Heather Mackey couldn't be more of an outsider in her small, highly selective MFA program at New England's Warren …
[From the Back Cover]
Winning the lottery has ruined Opal Devlin's life. After quitting her dead-end job where she'd earned …
[From the Back Cover]
As the election of Donald Trump shows, fascism in all its white nationalist and "alt-right" permutations …
