More Scary Movies for Anarchists to Watch in the Dark Reply

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

It has been one supremely horrific year since I wrote the virgin instillation of this list last October, what with apocalyptic plagues, dystopian police death squads, and collapsing empires. In many ways life has come to resemble many of the movies on it. Some might argue that horror movies are gratuitous at this point, I mean, haven’t we had enough? No, dearest motherfuckers, not by a longshot. The fact that everyday life has come to resemble a George Romero flick is just proof of his unsung brilliance. No genre in cinema gets dumped on like horror movies. Yet no genre of cinema is more stunningly prophetic. That’s because horror movies, good horror movies anyway, are perfect vehicles for social commentary. They seek to illuminate that which makes us uncomfortable and force us to actually fucking deal with it. And that is what 2020 needs now more than ever. We realize that we’re living in a goddamn zombie apocalypse, but how do we deal with it? That is the ultimate question that anarchists wrestle with. How do we create a new society amidst the collapse of the old? And that’s also what great horror movies strive to figure out.

So I made another goddamn list. A dozen more scary movies for anarchists to watch in the dark, and it’s as eccentric and idiosyncratic as the last. I have a love for both foreign arthouse shockers and overlooked grindhouse pulp. They both take the necessary measures to punish the audience into thinking about shit that scares them. Like last time, many movies on the list are not horror movies in the traditional sense, but they are all movies that seek to terrify their audience into challenging authoritarian institutions. Spoiler alerts abound. Read at your own risk.

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America Does Not Tolerate Losers Reply

This is one of the best critiques of American culture I’ve seen to date. The problem with ruling classes that adopt a “Let them eat cake” attitude is that they tend to not come to a happy ending. Ask the Bourbons and the Romanovs.

By Alex Bash

(academiccomposition@gmail.com), www.academiccomposition.com

America Does not Tolerate Losers!

As General George Patton prepared the Third Army for the invasion of Sicily, he famously observed “Americans love a winner and will not tolerate a loser!”. While Patton’s speech was well-regarded by the troops, some of his colleagues judged him to be vulgar and unprofessional.

Love him or hate him, you cannot deny that Patton was a uniquely American character. America was founded by people who were courageous enough to leave the comfort of their old life in Europe. To do this, they had to abandon the aristocracy, tradition, and order of their European country of origin. Upon arriving in the colonies, Americans not only claimed their independence but also pursued a relentless Westward expansion, which forms a key component of America’s core identity: manifest destiny. Galvanized by this belief, Americans aggressively pursued an expansionary foreign policy, as they continue to do so today. Questions about whether this is right or wrong aside, an aggressive foreign policy is a core component of the American identity: that cannot be changed, nor should it be.

The liberals may deride Jackson’s “trail of tears” and “manifest destiny”, but what they fail to understand is that the nation’s core identity cannot be changed. In the “Significance of the Frontier in American History”, Fredrick Jackson Turner showed how the frontier mentality fostered the character of American rugged individualism

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An Assessment of It’s Going Down’s Assessment 9

It’s Going Down throws in their two cents worth. Listen to their original podcast here. My assessment follows.

By Keith Preston

As for my assessment of the IGD podcast, I agree that if the election is close, what mainstream political scientists call a “constitutional crisis” is likely to result. I suspect there will be violence associated with the election regardless of who wins. The losing side will likely claim the winner cheated their way to victory. Because of the pandemic circumstances, it is more likely that instead of having an “election day” there will be an “election month” where the drama involving vote counting, premature claims of victory, and legal maneuvering are involved. It will probably be similar to the Bush/Gore election only more intense because the circumstances are more complicated and because the level of political polarization is now higher.
A limitation of the IDG analysis is they’re looking at things from a very narrow ideological lens and are just concerned about the interests of their own side. Fair enough. But they also miss certain things as a result. First, like liberal and left opinion generally, they exaggerate Trump’s uniqueness as a supposed authoritarian in a way that is contextually shallow. I discussed that in this assessment of Trump. I see the same thing coming from conservative/right opinion all the time where folks are claiming Bernie and AOC are puppet mastering the entire Democratic Party, or that the Bidenists are crypto-Bolsheviks.

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My Assessment of Trump: Law and Order Liberalism Reply

He’s Tricky Dicky, redux. Only less Tricky.
By Keith Preston
I don’t spend a lot of time on Trump-bashing because TrumpHate, Inc. is a Fortune 500 corporation at this point. But my assessment of Trump is and always has been that Trump is a neo-Nixonian, a liberal Republican with a right-wing populist flavor. Only today, the culture has shifted far enough leftward that yesterday’s “silent majority” is now the “deplorable” culturally conservative minority. These Proud Boy-types are the present-day version of groups like the Hardhats from the Nixon era. As was the case with Nixon, Trump’s ego is his own worst enemy.
Trump is, at worst, Nixon redux. Though he’s not nearly as tied into the “deep state” as Tricky Dicky. Nixon had been Ike’s VP and associated with the Dulles brothers. Trump is more like Ross Perot is the sense of being a somewhat wacky loose cannon within the upper class.
In fact, Trump and Perot had similar politics. Semi-isolationist, protectionist, law and order, pro-military, patriotic, quasi-populist, etc. but comparatively socially liberal when compared to the “normal” Republicans in the sense of not being as fixated on religion, abortion, homosexuals, 2nd amendment absolutism, etc. The main difference is that Perot was a staunch fiscal conservative and Trump appears to be at least a closet believer in Modern Monetary Theory.

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100+ nights of Portland protests – Attack the System podcast 3

Keith interviews Attack The System co-editor Vince about Portland Oregon’s 100 plus nights of protest. Vince lives in Portland and provides first hand accounts and context for the uprising

Discussion includes:

  • 100 nights of protests in Portland
  • Scope of the protests and effect on the city
  • Targets of the protest
  • Trump’s switch to a “Law & Order” re-election campaign
  • Trump’s fixation on Portland and the presence of Federal Police
  • Shooting of Portlanders with “less than lethal” munitions and use of Geneva Convention banned weapons
  • Participation of the Lumpenproletariat in the uprising
  • Effect of the pandemic on the uprising
  • “Disappearing” protesters by the police
  • Conflict between right-wing groups and anti-fascists
  • Shooting of Aaron Danielson by self proclaimed anti-fascist Michael Reinoehl, who was killed by police
  • Failure of Democrats and progressives to address police brutality in liberal cities
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Ian M. Returns, Minneapolis Experience, & Voluntaryist Silver Linings 5

Listen here.

Episode 368 welcomes back Ian Mayes to have a chat with Skyler on the following topics: working in the neighborhood where George Floyd was killed; his experience with the Minneapolis protests and riots; Kyle Rittenhouse; lockdown created tinderbox across the country and world; Minneapolis “defund the police” campaign; lack of real anti-authoritarian sentiment; political coalition building and guilt by association; civil wars and anarchists; Portland neighborhood “wake up” protests (Reason interview); voluntaryist welfare actions, ie. silver linings; restorative justice systems (Kibbe interview); and more.

Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.

Yes, Imperialism Can Be Defeated Reply

by • Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy

The Soviet Empire once ruled a third of the world’s nations and half the world’s peoples. But where are they now? During the Cold War, the world was divided into the Greater Western Empire and the Lesser Eastern Empire. The Lesser Eastern Empire was defeated at the cost of expanding the Greater  Western Empire into a truly global empire. The next step is a global anti-imperialist revolution.

Countries which once had overtly Marxist–Leninist governments in bright red and countries the USSR considered at one point to be “moving toward socialism” in dark red.
Between 1922 AD and 2020 AD.

Not Even Crumbs Reply

by • Electoralism/Democratism

From a post on social media.

“Joe Biden is signaling that he’s going to pack his cabinet with Wall St. vulture capitalists, corporate Republicans, and neocon-lite hawks, and essentially no solid economic or foreign policy progressives. Gotta laugh, Bernie sabotaged his own campaign and threw all in with Biden and he isn’t even going to get crumbs. But go ahead Chomskyites, keep pretending you’re going to have any ability to influence policy in a Biden administration.”

The Great Reset for Dummies Reply

by • Economics/Class Relations, Science and Technology

By Tessa

The peasants are getting fat, and they are breeding!
Oh no.

What is “the Great Reset”?

The Great Reset is a massively funded, desperately ambitious, internationally coordinated project led by some of the biggest multinational corporations and financial players on the planet and carried out by cooperating state bodies and NGOs. Its soul is a combination of early 20th century science fiction, idyllic Soviet posters, the obsessiveness of a deranged accountant with a gambling addiction—and an upgraded, digital version of “Manifest Destiny.”

The mathematical reason for the Great Reset is that thanks to technology, the planet has gotten small, and the infinite expansion economic model is bust—but obviously, the super wealthy want to continue staying super wealthy, and so they need a miracle, another bubble, plus a surgically precise system for managing what they perceive as “their limited resources.” Thus, they desperately want a bubble providing new growth out of thin air—literally—while simultaneously they seek to tighten the peasants’ belts, an effort that starts with “behavioral modification,” a.k.a. resetting the western peasants’ sense of entitlement to high life standards and liberties (see awful “privilege”).

The psychological reason for the Great Reset is the fear of losing control of property, the planet. I suppose, if you own billions and move trillions, your perception of reality gets funky, and everything down below looks like an ant hill that exists for you. Just ants and numbers, your assets.

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My Resignation From The Intercept Reply

by • Uncategorized • Tags:

Glenn Greenwald on why he resigned from The Intercept. The media has become the new clergy.

But the pathologies, illiberalism, and repressive mentality that led to the bizarre spectacle of my being censored by my own media outlet are ones that are by no means unique to The Intercept. These are the viruses that have contaminated virtually every mainstream center-left political organization, academic institution, and newsroom.

By Glenn Greenwald

Today I sent my intention to resign from The Intercept, the news outlet I co-founded in 2013 with Jeremy Scahill and Laura Poitras, as well as from its parent company First Look Media.

The final, precipitating cause is that The Intercept’s editors, in violation of my contractual right of editorial freedom, censored an article I wrote this week, refusing to publish it unless I remove all sections critical of Democratic presidential candidate Joe Biden, the candidate vehemently supported by all New-York-based Intercept editors involved in this effort at suppression.

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Mutual Aid Is Essential to Our Survival Regardless of Who Is in the White House Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Economics/Class Relations

By Dean Spade, Truthout/Verso Books

When the COVID-19 pandemic emerged as a crisis in the U.S. in early 2020, people all over the country started coordinating to deliver groceries and prescriptions to vulnerable people, making and distributing masks and hand sanitizer, and raising money for people who were losing jobs and ineligible for unemployment benefits. By the time the uprising against anti-Black racism and police violence brought people into the streets in early summer, the concept of “mutual aid” had gained significant traction in the media, and it was visible on the streets as people operated street medic teams at protests, offered each other free food and water, and defended each other from cops and white supremacists. COVID-19 mutual aid projects are ongoing, and as social movement groups prepare for the possibility of a contested election next week along with increasing strikes, street protests and occupations of public space, activists are gearing up to support each other.

“Mutual aid” is one term used to describe collective coordination to meet each other’s needs, usually stemming from an awareness that the systems we have in place are not going to meet them. Those systems, in fact, have often created the crisis, or are making things worse. We see examples of mutual aid in every single social movement, whether it’s people raising money for workers on strike, setting up a car pooling system during the Montgomery Bus Boycott, putting drinking water in the desert for migrants crossing the border, training each other in emergency medicine because ambulance response time in poor neighborhoods is too slow, raising money to pay for abortions for those who can’t afford them, or coordinating letter-writing to prisoners. These are mutual aid projects. They directly meet people’s survival needs, and are based on a shared understanding that the conditions in which we are made to live are unjust.

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Trump Campaign Website Is Defaced by Hackers Reply

by • Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Science and Technology

By Nicole Perlroth, New York Times

President Trump’s campaign website was briefly taken over by hackers who defaced the site on Tuesday.

The defacement lasted less than 30 minutes, but the incident came as Mr. Trump’s campaign and that of his opponent, Joseph R. Biden Jr., as well as law enforcement and intelligence agencies, have been on high alert for digital interference ahead of next week’s election.

In a statement, Tim Murtaugh, a spokesman for the Trump campaign, confirmed the website’s defacement and said it was “working with law enforcement authorities to investigate the source of the attack.” He added, “There was no exposure to sensitive data because none of it is actually stored on the site. The website has been restored.”

The F.B.I. did not immediately comment on the incident. The defacement was first noted on Twitter by Gabriel Lorenzo Greschler, a journalist at the Jewish News of Northern California, while he was researching an article on climate change.

It was not clear whether the defacement was the work of foreign hackers or cybercriminals. But in a screed posted to Mr. Trump’s website — donaldjtrump.com — the hackers claimed to have compromised “multiple devices” that gave them access to the “most internal and secret conversations” of the president and his relatives, including classified information.

The hackers also accused the Trump administration, without proof, of having a hand in the origins of the coronavirus and cooperating with “foreign actors manipulating the 2020 elections.”

The hackers appeared to be looking to generate cryptocurrency. They invited visitors to donate cryptocurrency to one of two funds — one labeled “Yes, share the data,” the other labeled “No, Do not share the data.” They solicited payments in Monero, a hard-to-trace cryptocurrency.

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