From What’s Left? via Substack
WATCH VIDEO HERE: https://open.substack.com/pub/amyhoggart/p/the-radical-politics-of-raec…
Welcome to What’s Left? I’m Amy Hoggart, a writer and comedian with the ideals of a socialist but the risk-aversion of a centrist. Each week, I interview someone interesting on the Left about their personal politics and the state of the Left today.
Raechel Anne Jolie is a writer and educator whose writing has appeared in ‘The Baffler’, ‘Bitch’, ‘Teen Vogue’ and ‘In These Times’, among other publications. Her memoir ‘Rust Belt Femme’ (Belt, 2020) received recognition in NPR’s Favorite Books of 2020, was a finalist in the Heartland Bookseller’s Award, and was the winner of the Independent Publisher Book Award in LGBTQ Nonfiction. Raechel is also the editor and co-creator of ‘The Prison Arcana’ tarot zine, made in collaboration with incarcerated artists. Her newsletter, ‘radical love letters’, can be found here.
We spoke “live” on substack, so I’ve made the whole conversation free and open to everyone this week xx
Welcome, Raechel! So the first question I always ask everyone is this: if there was a version of the political spectrum where zero puts you as a total centrist, -100 a fascist, and + 100 as radically left as you can go, where would you put yourself?
I knew this was coming because I did my homework and I enjoy your stuff. So to do right by anarchy, I need to point out that there are many anarchists who wouldn’t even identify with being left. Largely, it’s all about our relationship to the state and on the left, there are negotiations and compromises within the state, so anarchists often are outside that.
That said, I am an anarchist who often votes; I’m not a purist. I have held my nose and voted for most Democratic presidents. Many anarchists do not do that, but that feels like an easy compromise to make.
So, to answer your question, I probably wouldn’t be 100 because I’m not a purist. But I do want and believe in the abolition of the state, of capitalism, of hierarchy and any system of domination,
So how did you find anarchism?
When I was growing up, I was basically a liberal. Then I was radicalised and politicised after 9/11. I went to my first Food Not Bombs and then at college, I was in an anti-war group that was a beautiful mix of anarchist, communist and Green Party people. I became a pretty diehard Marxist communist, for sure.
Oh wow, you’ve tried it all! I didn’t expect you to say you’d been a Marxist.
Marx says that once the proletariat takes over the bourgeois in a temporary workers’ state, then the state will wither away. So far, that hasn’t happened. And also, that process requires a lot of authoritarianism, a lot of murdering of queer people and people who whoever is in power doesn’t like…
Are you saying that although Marx proposes the dissolution of the state—which is a kind of anarchist end-goal—in the interim, there’d be a revolution including authoritarianism and the murdering of marginalised people?
Exactly, yes. That is generally the notion of Marxist revolution: the dictatorship of the proletariat. So even in that title, we hear a little bit of authoritarianism. The dictatorship of the proletariat will take over the bourgeois in this sort of one big revolution. And then we just have to trust everybody in power: all those hierarchical leaders, whether that’s Lenin, Stalin, Mao, Castro. So far, historically, they’ve all made a lot of horrific and bad choices. And supposedly those great men in power will just give up their power. So far, that hasn’t happened.
That’s the bit that always makes me really nervous about the idea of revolution…
What I think we’re seeing more of—and what we have to confront in this moment of severe, devastating ecological crisis—is that there isn’t going to be one big revolution.
Anarchy is about taking care of each other here and now, without waiting for the revolution, for the one great leader or next administration to fix things. Because feeding people who need to get fed is way more helpful than voting for somebody who would take forever to instil different things.
It’s not like genocide stopped when we had a Democrat in office. It’s not like abortion rights were protected when we had a Democrat in office. There are so many things that people in power simply will never change as long as there’s this state structure of hierarchy that they need to protect.
Oof, that’s so bleak, but pretty persuasive.
Another reason that this feels both easy and difficult for me is that I grew up with a single mom, often in poverty, and we experienced immense housing instability. I was very lucky to have pretty stable relatives, so I had it a lot better than a lot of people in those kinds of situations. But I still experienced the reality that—even in the flourishing ’80s and ’90s, when things were supposedly so much better economically—poor people were still fucked, completely.
So it was always easy for me to understand that as long as capitalism existed, poor people were going to be screwed. These systems didn’t protect us or keep us safe, the supposed welfare systems still sucked and the bureaucracy was still awful. We were still surveilled and stigmatised. My mom is still in a pretty precarious economic situation, and the free health care in the States is mostly atrocious.
What was hard for me after growing up that way was the idea that there wouldn’t be a better version. That Daddy Marx or Daddy Lenin or Daddy Stalin couldn’t just create a better version of that.
I’m so struck by hearing you talk about paternalistic leaders; the idea that we’re all just looking for a father figure.
Yeah, totally. We are so trained to look to authority for answers, from presidents to our nuclear family structure to the teacher standing in the front of the classroom to the priest in the church. And it is just so evident that that hasn’t worked.
Something else that’s really struck me is the contrast in our upbringings. I had a much more financially comfortable background, and for a long time, I naively wished that things would just go back to the way they were in the ‘90s. I’ve had to more recently learn that they were never really working, while you figured that a lot younger.
Absolutely. I think it did set me on a speedier path to a more radical political viewpoint. So many radical positions—about capitalism and the state—made so much sense because I lived that.
But on the other hand, I was so tired from growing up in so much precarity that I was also like, But maybe if there’s just like a good one? I was excited about Bernie Sanders. I wanted my mom and I to have better health care.
Do you not think Bernie would have improved healthcare if he’d been president?
Things would have gotten nominally better for some poor people, but not a lot of poor people, and not poor people who don’t have access to the horrific bureaucracy.
Then again, there was a really big struggle over reproductive justice and abortion in Ohio, and I was happy to go to the polls and click my little button to protect reproductive justice.
There’s a lot of debate in radical communities about using this notion of harm reduction for electoral politics. It’s like, Well, harm reduction for who? People in Palestine will experience harm regardless of who is in power. But I do think it was worth it to me to go to a voting booth and protect reproductive justice in our current system.
So what does your anarchist community look like? What do you love about it?
That’s a lovely question. I just want to note that there are so many people—many indigenous communities and stateless societies— who do anarchy without calling it ‘anarchy’.
Oh really?
Yeah, my mom and I have been doing mutual aid since I was little, because poor people take care of each other, that’s what we do. You can’t afford a babysitter, so you take care of your friend’s kid, and then you trade. And you go to the car mechanic who will fix your tyre because he knows you don’t have any money. So many poor people do that, and that’s a very anarchist principle.
But I have no need for people to call it ‘anarchism’. The only reason that I would say, ‘Hey, that’s also anarchy’ is just to destigmatise what we’re all about.
That makes sense.
I’m part of a radical social centre, a collective. We work really hard and sometimes fail. Anarchism is very much about experimenting because there’s no blueprint solution.
It’s like… Here’s a group of people. Figure out what you need and how to take care of each other and try to do it without control and hierarchy. So we make a lot of mistakes, but we try to make decisions horizontally instead of hierarchically. We try to name and acknowledge when patterns of patriarchy, sexism, classism and racism.
I try not to talk about myself much when I’m interviewing people, but I keep having these really intense feelings when I’m listening to you. My New year’s resolution was to become more interdependent in my community, and I still really struggle with that in London, even though I’m certain that my friends and neighbours also really want that. I’m pretty sure we all want to take care of each other and feel taken care of. Am I describing not just an anarchist principle, but a very human drive? Do most of us relate to anarchism more than we realise?
I think so, yes.
And also, I want to say that within the interview, there’s hierarchy there too.
Oh yes, whoops!
Of course you should be able to talk about yourself. I’m glad you talked about yourself. Thank you for talking about yourself.
And yes, human interdependence… I’m a feminist professor who tries to deconstruct the notion of natural anything, but I think that some things are probably pretty natural. And I think that wanting to take care of each other is.
So do you think we’re living in a system that’s already collapsing and you’re trying to create community to cope with that? Or, do you think that society might collapse, and that living in community is a good way to live whatever happens?
I think some things have already collapsed, for sure.
Could you give me an example?
People’s ability to buy eggs. There were people who just couldn’t afford to suddenly, because the food system and capitalism are so deeply ingrained that certain things just became inaccessible.
Access to health care used to be a lot easier. These days, we all read the stories of people who lost health care and then died because they didn’t have their insulin shots or whatever. This is happening all the time. It’s always happened, but it is now getting worse because of climate change, ecocide and wealth disparities. So things are already in collapse and some things have already collapsed. I don’t know that we will see full collapse, no.
To answer whether I’m just trying to have a better life: yes, but my cognitive dissonance can be really rough sometimes.
I am trying to live a life where I am aligned with my values, co-creating in community to make things less miserable for myself and other people. But I am also a person who grew up poor, who is mostly around people who have a lot more money than I do. I recently moved into a nicer home than I’ve lived in my entire adult life.
Oh congrats!
So another thing that’s very important to my politics is I’m a former sex worker. Sex workers are people who mostly grew up poor and don’t have generational wealth, who often make this choice because we don’t have a lot of other choices for making good money.
There is a part of me that’s encouraged by femme communities that say, ‘Try to live a nice life. Try to have some pleasures.’ That’s tough because there are also times I feel I should give all my money away and try to take care of people and have fewer material pleasures. That’s the cognitive dissonance. And it’s hard.
Hearing you say that makes me feel quite sad because I want you to have material pleasures. Surely that’s not totally incompatible with your views?
Yes, I do want everybody to have comfort above a bare minimum for surviving. But what do we consider pleasure in an alienated capitalist society? A lot of times, my pleasures are not community, they’re just things I can buy.
I can relate to that! Ok, I’m trying to get the left to take the piss of itself more. Could you make up a marginalised community that you belong to?
Anarchists who watch Sex and the City and don’t feel bad about it.
No way! Do you really watch Sex and the City?
Oh, my god, yes.
The original series, surely?
The original all the way through so many times. I’ve watched it with almost every partner I’ve had. If they haven’t watched it, then I make them watch it. I have no apologies for anything that I watch. It’s not radical television, but it’s so good. It’s so fun.
Anarchists who watch Sex and the City is 100% the best answer I’ve had to that question, thank you. Do you have any reading recommendations?
Books by Dean Spade, adrienne maree brown and Peter Gelderlos.
And any recommendations for action for someone?
Join a group. If it is a radical group, even better. But join any group. It could be a birding group. I’m a big birder; so watch birds with people.
And get to know your neighbours or just your friend circle. Figure out what skills and resources you have that you can share with somebody. Find out what you don’t have that you need and find people who might be able to offer that to you. Figure out ways to better take care of people.
Also, we’re all facing impending weather disasters. So have either a go bag or a little box of food.
Thank you so much, Raechel. It’s been such a fascinating conversation!
Guys, we talked for a full 90 minutes and I had to trim so much of the transcipt. Watch the video for more in-depth details about her daily life as an anarchist, more thorough reading recommendations (her partner is also an anarchist writer!) and our conversation about prisons. If I have an abolitionist on the line, I will be asking about prisons…
And subscribe to Raechel’s beautiful substack. Her most recent post reflects thoughtfully on Charlie Kirk AND offers a delicious recipe for corn soup…
