Beautiful Monsters

Apr 16, 2023

A few months back while scrolling through my timeline on Twitter I stumbled on a new (to me) subculture that I had not been aware of before: the Anarcho-Nihilists. Now, Anarcho-Nihilism is nothing new. Sergey Nechayev, Renzo Novatore, even Mikhail Bakunin have all been described as such. But this new variant was new to me, and I was previously unaware of a lot of the writing they were referencing. Names such as Aragorn, Flower Bomb and Serafinski kept coming up, so I decided to check some of their writings out as my curiosity had been piqued. I do afterall have a background in Post-Left Anarchism, and the AnNihl perspective is pretty close to my own views in my late teens/early 20s.This article will focus on Serafinski and his critique against “Futurity” in his book Blessed is the Flame.

For a brief intro to what Blessed is the Flame is all about, it explores Jewish Resistance in Nazi Concentration Camps, and argues that these acts of revolt weren’t carried out because the Jews had hope for survival or a better tomorrow, they knew that all hope was lost and accepted their fate. They revolted out of sheer spite, against an oppressive and cruel system. Serafinski argues that these actions could be described as essentially Anarcho-Nihilist. I should briefly summarize what Anarcho-Nihilism is, which Serafinski does pretty efficiently here:

READ MORE