[Plus audio version]

Because the term “anarchy” is so often used pejoratively to mean chaos, and because some contemporary anarchists are far from freedom-loving, [1] people often look for a less off-putting term to describe the future society they would like to see.

I personally took to using “real anarchism” [2] to mark my own position, while others call themselves “voluntaryists” and here in France “libertaires”.

One term that is sometimes used to replace “anarchy” is “acracy”, although I suspect the label “acracist” is a non-starter for obvious reasons!

“Anarchy” means the absence of any “archy”, any form of government or rule, such as monarchy or oligarchy, [3] while “acracy” means the absence of any “cracy”, which is to say any coercive authority, such as plutocracy or so-called democracy. [4]

The term acracia first appeared in the Iberian world and is believed to have been invented by the Catalan syndicalist Rafael Farga i Pellicer (1844-1890), who founded a journal with that name. [5]

It was used by the likes of Peter Kropotkin (1842-1921) [6] and Martin Buber (1878-1965) [7] as a synonym for anarchy, but is seen by some as conveying the idea of a society that is ordered, albeit in a voluntary and consensual manner, and/or as one without any kind of exploitation rather than without any kind of authority, as is the case with anarchy. [8]

In a 2018 interview, French economist and thinker Frédéric Lordon argued that, etymologically, anarchy means the absence of an absolute foundation (ᾰ̓ρχή, ărkhḗ) on which power’s commandments can be based.

He said that because its political meaning is, in fact, a society in which there is neither power nor domination, the word should really be replaced by acracy, which is precisely that absence of power and domination (κρατία, kratía). [9]

With due respect to Lordon, the question does not seem to be as clear as he suggests. While the root word krátos can indeed mean “power, might”, [10] it can also mean an “act of strength, act of valour”, with the postulated Proto-Indo-European stem kret also indicating “intelligence”. [11]

So acracy could alternatively be interpreted as a society without strength, valour and intelligence.

I think we may already be there!

Meanwhile, the ărkhḗ opposed by anarchy can be traced back to the verb ắrkhō which means, in the transitive sense, “to lead; to rule; to govern; to command” and, in the intransitive sense, “to be ruler; to hold an archonship”. [12]

My ears pricked up at that last word!

Historically, an archon was a chief magistrate of ancient Athens and more generally “a person who claims the right to rule, or to exercise power or sovereign authority over other human beings” or simply “a ruler, head of state or other leader”. [13]

But in the gnostic tradition it identifies “a supernatural ruler of the cosmos”. William Thompson has described “the cry of the archon Ialdabaoth that he was the Lord of the Universe and that there was nothing beyond him”. [14]

Per Shapiro writes about the archons in his book The War on Life: How We Are Manipulated by Archontic Intelligence, which I reviewed in May this year. [15]

He explains that the archontic influence in our world is a psychopathic one which refuses to respect natural boundaries and human taboos: “In this range, we find everything from incest, rape and perversions to various manifestations of hubris, such as genetically manipulated crops, laboratory-made life and the fission of the atomic nucleus”. [16]

He sees this phenomenon as taking its most extreme form with Yahweh, the god of the Old Testament, who for the gnostics was a pretender god, “an insane demon who has the delusion of having created the universe. A deranged being who is jealous of the living planet and wants to destroy it”. [17]

There is definitely an anarchic flavour to the message from Sophia (Mother Earth) to archon leader Ialdabaoth: “The authority you claim rests on deception, and when the deception fails, you perish”. [18]

Per quotes author John Lamb Lash as saying the game is now nearly up for the archons thanks to “a growing counter-movement that wants to expose and overthrow these insane and inhuman authorities”. [19]

If the deep meaning of anarchy is, in fact, our human struggle against vitaphobic, authoritarian and psychopathic forces known as archons, I for one will ignore the lure of acracy and proudly remain an anarchist!

[1] See Paul Cudenec, ‘Anarchists against freedom’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2020/04/26/anarchists-against-freedom/
[2] ‘What is real anarchism?’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2017/12/12/what-is-real-anarchism/
[3] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/anarchy
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Glossary_of_anarchism
[5] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acratie
[6] https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/peter-kropotkin/
[7] https://orgrad.wordpress.com/a-z-of-thinkers/martin-buber/
[8] https://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acratie
[9] https://www.lesinrocks.com/livres/entretien-fleuve-avec-frederic-lordon-le-philosophe-publie-la-condition-anarchique-178570-06-10-2018/
[10] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%B1%CF%84%CE%AD%CF%89#Ancient_Greek
[11] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%CE%BA%CF%81%CE%AC%CF%84%CE%BF%CF%82#Ancient_Greek
[12] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/%E1%BC%84%CF%81%CF%87%CF%89#Ancient_Greek
[13] https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/archon#English
[14] William Irwin Thompson, The Time Falling Bodies Take to Light: Mythology, Sexuality and the Origins of Culture (London: Rider/Hutchinson & Co, 1981), p. 83, https://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/archon#English
[15] Paul Cudenec, ‘Choosing sides in the war for life’, https://winteroak.org.uk/2026/05/29/choosing-sides-in-the-war-for-life/
[16] Per Shapiro, The War on Life: How We Are Manipulated by Archontic Intelligence (Folkets Radio, 2025), p. 96.
[17] Shapiro, p. 105.
[18] Shapiro, p. 219.
[19] Shapiro, p. 176.

Real Left’s Conference: ‘Critical Fronts of the Class War in 2026’

Real Left is hosting its 6^th annual conference in Islington, London UK, on Saturday 3 October on the theme of ‘Critical Fronts of the Class War in 2026’. You can buy tickets, starting from £15 here, or email realleftevents@yahoo.com to reserve your place and pay in cash on the day.

In latter years the ascendance of Reform/Restore, and eruptions of ‘street fascist’ activity – seen at Tommy Robinson’s rallies, the 2024 summer of riots, and more recently the invasion of ‘Stop the Boat’ masked men at the Port of Dover – has provoked a response from the left that offers little beyond reactive counter protests and condemnatory messaging, falling well short of a confidently articulated emancipatory and egalitarian alternative vision for society, that might deliver a more constructive political direction to those duped by the scapegoating tactics of the ruling class.

The first speaker of the day, Emily Garcia of Real Left, will examine the forces and funding streams sweeping the sex-realist-feminist movement, like that of the broader political landscape, to the right (and far right) through a critical exploration of the billionaire class’s war on reproductive sex, the grassroots fightback and its ensuing co-option.

To make sense of the era of synthetic sex identities we now live in and adequately answer the question ‘What is the gender lobby?’ she will argue that we must make the connections to the ruling class’s overarching bio-digital convergence project, for which societal acceptance of virtual identities; of the technological reconstruction of human bodies; and of techno-capitalist markets of artificial procreation, must be leveraged.

Relatedly, the presentation by philosopher, feminist, and author Dr Heather Brunskell-Evans will focus on the emerging ‘New Normal’, which desensitises us to the moral wrong of neoliberal power and treats the body as an object: erasing, degrading and disconnecting the body from what it is to be human. Drawing particularly on the cases of transgenderism and transhumanism, and the Israeli genocide of Palestinians, Brunskell-Evans will interrogate the modus operandi of the New Normal enforcers – who span the Left- Right political spectrum – in their silencing of critical speech and, in turn, critical thought about the ideologies of dehumanisation which they uphold and reproduce.

The volume of war drums heralding World War Three as an imminent possibility has lately increased, with mainstream media news pieces on work being undertaken by the Burnham administration to prepare for a war-time national emergency, and the brandishing of threats to imprison ‘pro-Russia’ critics in such an event.

Dr Jakob Nordangard, in a rare speaking appearance on UK soil, will cover how top advisors of the UN Trusteeship Council have indicated that the systemic shift toward a global technocracy might require a third world war in his talk on the rise of the Agentic State.

The presentation will elucidate on the ultimate goal for the global business and banking elites who devised the 2024 UN Pact for the Future: to manage people and resources through an AI-driven administration within what could be described as a digital “world brain”. You can buy copies of Jakob’s latest book, The Digital World Brain: Our Common Agenda and the Pact for the Future, along with Off-Guardian contributor, journalist and author Iain Davis’s acclaimed The Technocratic Dark State at our cash-only bookstore on the day.

Featured speaker Davis (pictured) will go beyond illuminating the problem of the Technocratic Dark State – or rule by functional oligarchy – to offering strategic solutions for collective resistance, starting with a ‘revolution of the mind’, which will entail acceptance of responsibility for ourselves, our communities, and the world we live in as equal sovereign human beings.

The programme will also include a contribution from Debbie Hicks of the ‘Keep It Cash’ campaign on practical resistance to the ‘war agenda’, as well as video presentations from New York based academic, journalist and author Dr Christian Parenti, and independent scholar, filmmaker and journalist Dr Julian Vigo.

If you would really like to join the event in person, but will struggle to afford even the concession price, email us.

To receive further info, including the release of the full schedule, and to access the uploaded talks post-event, please subscribe to Real Left’s substack. We hope to meet some of you soon for a thought-provoking and stimulating day of information-sharing and discussion with other like-minded pro-egalitarian dissenters to digital enclosure!

Standing up to zionism

Have we now reached the point where not only is anti-zionism not universally condemned and Israel universally praised – as zionists insist should be the case – but where support for zionism and Israel is even generally regarded as morally repugnant?

Some commentators certainly think so, particularly on the back of the Ed Sheeran story, in which the English singer agreed to remove American rapper Macklemore from his tour line-up for an innocuous short speech including the words “free Palestine”.

This cowardice came under pressure from billionaire Robert Kraft – who appears in the Epstein files, donates heavily to the IDF and even has a surveillance system inside his Gillette stadium that monitors the internet for criticism of Israel – and the rest of the zionist mafia.

Said rapper Lowkey: “Ed Sheeran says he doesn’t take sides. That can’t be the truth – he chose the side of the Epstein class over humanity”.

The response was swift and dramatic, with artists withdrawing from Sheeran’s show – including his own band – others refusing to step into the breach and fans deserting and condemning him.

Journalist Wajahat Ali told the Piers Morgan show: “This is a generational fumble by Israel and Robert Kraft (pictured) and anyone who is pro-Israel. What you are witnessing in real time here, and this is fascinating, what you and I are witnessing is what happened in the 80s with the global turn against South African apartheid.

“Israel has lost the plot. They’ve lost the youth. They’ve lost the culture. It’s done. No matter how many pro-Israel apologists come on this show, I want you all to know – it’s over”.

Kerry Burgess commented on X: “Ed Sheeran has inadvertently opened the gates of hell for Israel. He’s made it okay for artists to speak out against the Israeli genocide of Palestinians. It’s got that 1985 Artists United Against Apartheid, Sun City vibe…”

In a sharp and hard-hitting article entitled ‘Why do we let Zionists decide what we can and can’t say?’, Council Estate Media wrote: “Someone says something Zionists don’t like and they’re immediately cancelled. Even worse, it’s the type of cancel culture you’re not allowed to rage against, because the moment you do, you’re cancelled too.

“Thankfully, people are waking up. The Ed Sheeran / Macklemore saga is a clear example of this. But it’s not enough to say you stand in solidarity with Macklemore. It’s not even enough to drop out of a tour in support of him and Gaza. You have to call out the Zionist control of our institutions, otherwise this problem just isn’t going away.

“We need to collectively say ‘enough’. When they cancel us we must cancel them harder. We must boycott everything they’re associated with. Support for Zionism must be an immediate career ender, rather than opposition to Zionism”.

Acorninfo

“The world war stage of Agenda 2030 will fail”, insists architect and dissident Robin Monotti. “The Great Reset has failed its Covid route, its ‘Climate Emergency’ route, and will also fail its war route. There is no willingness in the masses to fight Russia, but there is a mass willingness to debunk the next false flag of the Epstein Class… It’s over, and whatever they throw at us we will send back to them”.

* * *

“Rising from the ruins of the world currently being destroyed by those behind the curtain is a monstrous technocratic tyranny – one being established equally in Russia and Ukraine, in the collective West and in the BRICS nations alike. The ongoing world war is a new ‘historical accelerator’, much like Covid, only far more violent and bloody”. Iurie Rosca spells out the ugly truth behind the manufactured “conflict” with Russia.

* * *

We recommend a very interesting 2011 interview with German dissident journalist Wolfgang Eggert in which, as a parting shot, he reveals how the long-term collaboration of “the left” across Germany with the communist East German regime was used to silence their opposition to the first US/zionist attack on Iraq just after the fall of the Soviet bloc in 1990. This was yet again the global mafia’s “binary bounce” in action.

* * *

It turns out that the clearest connection between the Rothschilds and 9/11 is a shipping company called ZIM, which broke its lease, paid a penalty and moved out of the North Tower of the World Trade Center in New York just in time. It seems that this ZIM has two owners – the Israeli state (which was essentially created by the Rothschilds) and “Baron Edmond de Rothschild through the Israel Corporation, which he owns”. Adds podcaster Richard Grove: “So when people ask ‘how would ZIM know?’, well if it’s a state-sponsored terrorist attack to get us into a never-ending war in the Middle East for somebody else’s agendas…” For some of us, of course, ZIM stands for zio-imperialist mafia.

* * *

“The government is not in the hands of the American people. The government belongs to the zionist billionaires”. So says Douglas Macgregor, retired colonel and former advisor to the US Secretary of Defense, in an interview with Glenn Diesen. He says public sympathy with Israel and zionism founded on Holocaust guilt is a thing of the past. “That’s exhausted now, that goodwill is no longer what it was, due largely to the incredible unanticipated murder and brutality that they’ve seen in places like Gaza and now, increasingly, in southern Lebanon”.

* * *

In this appearance on the Judging Freedom podcast, Max Blumenthal explains how the zionists occupying both the UK and the USA are systematically labelling their opponents “terrorists” so as to better persecute them.

* * *

“I’ve made this compilation for everyone who keeps hearing about the ‘Epstein Files’ but doesn’t know where to look. The files are scattered and massive, so I’ve organized the most horrific, verified and disturbing findings into one place”. Maddie of Books Behind Borders presents a gruesome collection of instances of the zionist paedocriminal sadism we are supposed to pretend does not exist.

* * *

“First of all, what stands out is the stealing of human creativity and knowledge, repackaging it and selling it back to society, and depicting the very same humans whose knowledge was stolen as ‘dumber’ than the machines”. Bhaskar Kamble warns of the AI racket and the threat that it poses to us all.

* * *

“Most grassroots opposition to data centers has understandably focused on the immediate harm to the community and environment, but the data center blitzkrieg is best understood as the foundation of the AI surveillance state. It enables the subversion of every freedom America claims to stand for by a parasitic fifth column, long embedded in the public and private sectors, that has been unable to mount a proper coup without AI”. Helen of DesTroy describes the “Invasion of the Country-Snatchers”.

* * *

“The AI panic is not going away, in fact it’s gathering the kind of fevered hysterical momentum we have not seen since the birth of Covid”, writes Kit Knightly of OffGuardian. He adds: “Nothing about it is organic, it is all 100% cultivated and steered in a direction. The final aim of this manufactured, fear-based social programming is new regulation. That has become undeniably obvious”.

* * *

“Well-meaning environmentalists who have uncritically accepted the official carbon-laced narrative are unwittingly providing cover for global capitalism to wreak havoc in so many ways, and to make huge profits off carbon trading derivative scams”. Rusere Shoniwa kicks off a series of essays on ‘The Collapsing Minds of the “Collapsing Climate” Cult’.

* * *

“We’re moving towards a world of unprecedented centralization and unprecedented power in the hands of the centralizers”. Keith Preston of Attack the System discusses multipolar neo-globalism and neo-globalist finance capital with Hrvoje Morić of Geopolitics and Empire.

* * *

“Nazi Germany can be seen as a kind of culmination of a very long-term trend”, writes Tobin Owl on his To The Root blog. “What I’m talking about is a culmination of centralism, of authoritarianism, and finally of industrial, technocratic society, though in none of these aspects was Nazi Germany unique for its time. The Soviet Union combined and epitomized all these elements as well”.

* * *

“What struck me was that most people are pretty apolitical. They just want the council to do their job in delivering the basics. That’s collecting the bins on time, keeping the streets clean, maintaining the local parks and many other issues which some activists would consider pretty mundane but I saw as essential in creating a neighbourhood people could take pride in. What also struck me was that I was meeting people who would hold opinions on issues that would span the political spectrum”. Dave Amis describes some of what he has learnt from his “somewhat chequered” personal political journey which included a spell with the Independent Working Class Association.

* * *

Acorn editor Paul Cudenec has enjoyed a couple of video conversations since our last issue came out – one with Nick Heys, which particularly focuses on the book Welcome to the New Resistance, and the other with Tessa Lena (aka Tessa Fights Robots) entitled ‘Dystopia and Hope’.

* * *

Acorn quote:

“Modern industry can be said to represent from all points of view the triumph of quantity, because its operations do not demand any knowledge other than quantitative, and because the instruments of which it makes use, that is to say machines properly so called, are developed in such a way that qualitative considerations come in to the least possible extent, while the men who work them are themselves limited to activity of an entirely mechanical kind”.

René Guénon

(For many more like this, see the Winter Oak quotes for the day blog)