Excellent. Now, if only something comparable could happen on the progressive side. Fragment, fragment, fragment…
Author: Keith Preston
“Situating Hardt and Negri'” Reply
By David Bates
To what extent is it possible to situate Hardt and Negri’s thought? Are they best regarded as ‘anarchists’, ‘socialists’, ‘communists’, ‘marxists’, ‘leninists’, ‘postmarxists’ or ‘postanarchists’? Answering this question is no mere intellectual exercise. As Wittgenstein once remarked, ‘words are deeds’. On the radical left, much blood has been spilt through those deeds, careers ended and reputations shattered. Of course, today a great deal is made of the claim that we live in ‘postideological’ times, ‘new times’ where ‘class struggle’ does not have the importance it once had; postmodern times, where meanings and identities are constantly subject to the contestation of ‘discourse’. Now, while the costs of labelling are not what they once were, there are still costs. Labelling instigates a kind of ‘symbolic violence’ over discursive space. Rival ideologies are constructed as ‘straw men’, as ‘crude’, ‘naïve’, as ‘elitist’ or ‘authoritarian’ etc. This process neglects any philosophical sophistication, common ground, or indeed the interpenetration of ‘rival ideologies.’ One danger of labelling is that we move beyond healthy criticism to a desire to relegate our theoretical interlocutors to the status of the ‘other’. Accordingly, they become an opponent we seek to dismiss, in order to give positive identity to ourselves, rather than a potential ally in the struggle against the exploitative mechanisms of global capitalism.
Before Jihadists There Were Anarchists: A Failed Case of Transnational Violence Reply
By Ersel Aydinli
With the wave of violent jihadist activities in recent years, the world’s attention hasshifted away from a traditional prioritizing of state forms of formal violence toward one focusing on an apparently “new” phenomenon of transnational violence. Yet transnational violence itself is not a new phenomenon; it in fact precedes international,state-centric violence. For reasons related to gaps or defects within the state systemor to surges in the capacities of individuals and societies, transnational violence has periodically made attempts to regain its primary position. Prior to the violent jihadists,the last of these efforts was that of the late-nineteenth-century Anarchists. This articlelooks at the dynamics of the Anarchists’s failure as part of a transnational violencecontinuum, using a framework based on their autonomy, representation, and influence.The results provide an historical example against which future studies about the current episode of transnational violence may be compared.
Anarchism and business ethics: the social responsibility of the anarchist is to destroy business Reply
Only on ATS will you find a “let’s destroy business” article right next to a “let’s bring back the gold standard” article.
By Benjamin Franks
‘Anarcho’-capitalism has for decades occupied a small but significant position within ‘business ethics’, while the anarchism associated with the larger traditions of workers and social movements has only had a spectral presence. Social anarchisms’ forms of opposition and proposed alternatives to standard liberal business practices, identities and presuppositions have appeared only fleetingly in mainstream business ethics. In the light of these anarchist hauntings, this paper identifies and explores social anarchism’s critique of dominant forms of business ethics, and business practice. It applies anarchism’s critical insights to market-based ethics, of which Milton Friedman’s influential essay, ‘The Social Responsibility of the Businessman is to Increase Profits,’ is used as an exemplar. This paper differentiates the anarchist critique from the criticisms of corporocentric, economic-liberalism emanating from social democrats and advocates of corporate social responsibility. It demonstrates the pertinence of social anarchist approaches to re-thinking the co-ordination of the production and distribution of goods, highlighting inadequacies in state-centred managerial responses to the harms and deficiencies of Friedman’s free-market.
Media Celebrates after Trump’s Pro-Gold Fed Nominee Gets Blocked Reply
By Stefan Gleason, Money Metals Exchange
It was only after he entered politics that President Donald Trump began to fully grasp the bias, dishonesty, and fakeness that runs throughout the so-called mainstream media.
But gold bugs and sound money advocates have long known to distrust the reporting of establishment news sources.
Journalists’ anti-gold and anti-Trump biases converged this week as the Senate took up President Trump’s nomination of Judy Shelton to the Federal Reserve Board.
Shelton, a fierce Fed critic and past supporter of a gold standard, drew intense opposition from Senate Democrats. She also faced opposition from Republicans Lamar Alexander, Susan Collins, and Mitt Romney.
A path to her confirmation appeared to exist earlier this week, but that path was blocked, at least temporarily, on Tuesday.
Two Republican Senators had gone into quarantine and Democrat Kamala Harris shuttled in from her Vice President in-waiting training to cast a “no” vote.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell took procedural steps which enable him to bring Shelton back up for another vote when the two quarantined Republicans return. But that didn’t stop the press from pronouncing her nomination dead.
What Are So-Called “Second Amendment Sanctuaries?” Reply
Based on everything that has happened in 2020, I’d say the ATS position has largely been vindicated. On an international level, unipolarity seems to be moving toward retreat. Domestically, the lumpenproletariat has clearly demonstrated itself to be the vanguard class of the anarchist revolution. Pan-secessionism seems to be developing and coming from all points on the political spectrum as evidenced by sanctuary cities (from the left), 2nd amendment sanctuaries (from the right), and drug war resistance initiatives (from libertarians). The only major point I seem to have gotten wrong was overestimating the commitment of conventional radicals to overthrowing the system and underestimating the intensity of culture war psychology. That precludes the development of a left/right alliance against the state, but something just a valuable is happening in the form of the fractiousness that is taking place. The center is being delegitimized and the Left and Right have come to view each other as existential enemies with different factions, ranging from anti-lockdown protestors and to anti-police protestors, simply disregarding the state as they see fit.
Brady United
In a backlash to newly passed gun safety laws, gun rights extremists in some localities across the country are declaring that state gun safety laws don’t apply in their communities. Calling themselves “Second Amendment sanctuaries,” some localities are going so far as to pass resolutions declaring that they will refuse to enforce and dedicate tax-funded resources to the implementation of state gun safety measures.
Sanctuary Cities, Counties, and States 3
Center for Immigration Studies
The sanctuary jurisdictions are listed below. These cities, counties, and states have laws, ordinances, regulations, resolutions, policies, or other practices that obstruct immigration enforcement and shield criminals from ICE — either by refusing to or prohibiting agencies from complying with ICE detainers, imposing unreasonable conditions on detainer acceptance, denying ICE access to interview incarcerated aliens, or otherwise impeding communication or information exchanges between their personnel and federal immigration officers.
A detainer is the primary tool used by ICE to gain custody of criminal aliens for deportation. It is a notice to another law enforcement agency that ICE intends to assume custody of an alien and includes information on the alien’s previous criminal history, immigration violations, and potential threat to public safety or security.
Sanctuary Cities
Second Amendment Counties
Armed Struggle Reply
Anarchist News/Anathema
Comparisons to the worldwide uprisings of 1968 have been drawn over the last several years as we’ve seen a resurgence of revolt the world over. Finally, this year, the United States began catching up after the murder of George Floyd, followed by many more murders of black people by police – subsequently reinvigorating a mournful rage, time and again. What followed the previous revolutionary period of the ‘60s was a substantial leftist armed struggle, presenting questions in an already uncertain present of what the future will hold – especially when armed conflict is already taking place in our streets.
The initial riots in Minneapolis this year drew immediate comparisons to those following the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. in 1968, and then seemed to outpace them in some ways once a police precinct was burned to the ground – precipitating the only relatively sincere discussion of police abolition by any city government thus far.
The Next Step Reply
The insurrection of 2020 indicated that the lumpenproletariat is capable of directly and successfully targeting state/ruling class outposts. What will be the next step in the escalation of the armed struggle? Potentially, an escalation of the conflict from a focus on the lowest level and most immediately visible state forces like municipal police, and a wider focus on police state institutions generally such as the prison-industrial complex.
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The Assault of Ayacucho prison was an incident in the Peruvian city of Ayacucho, also known as Huamanga, on March 2, 1982. A group of 150 armed terrorists, members of the Sendero Luminoso, or Shining Path, staged simultaneous assaults on two local police stations before staging an assault on the prison, resulting in the release of 255 inmates. After a 5-hour battle, 16 people, including two prison guards, were dead and 12 people were wounded.
Kiddie Concentration Camps Reply
By Haley
“In June of 2016, at 4 am, two days before the end of my freshman year in high school, two large men burst into my room and asked if I wanted to do this, “the easy way or the hard way.”
My mom was crying hysterically in the hallway and told me I was going somewhere where I would be safe. She wanted me to be safe from public ridicule over an explicit video taken of me without my knowledge and sent to over 500 people. All my mom wanted to do was hide me.
I followed the men into a child-locked car, where they drove me hours away from my home to KW Legacy Ranch. As soon as I arrived, they drove me far into the desert and had me walk for five hours, in 110°F heat, with almost no sleep. They then drove me to a place called “the Canyon,” where the new kids and punished students were sent. We had to sit on a wooden stump for the entire 15-hour day, sleep in a tent on the hard ground with only one blanket, and were given a can of raw spam for food. I was vegetarian and told them I would not eat it, so they kept me there longer and screamed at me for hours a day every day until I ate it. I was there for four days.
After that, I was taken to the “girls’ house,” where I was woken up every morning at 6 am to start strenuous physical labor. Our labor consisted of cleaning dirty cow stalls, carrying large concrete slabs, throwing heavy hay bales onto a truck, milking cows, pulling weeds, and so much more. The heavy lifting and massive amounts of disgusting, unhealthy food, made me gain over 60 pounds, in only four months. We were forced to eat the butchered animals that we cared for, along with a combination of expired canned foods.
Workshop: Constructing Anarchisms Reply
This looks interesting. Shawn Wilbur is very knowledgeable of classical anarchism.
By Shawn Wilbur, Libertarian Labyrinth
’ve been contemplating hosting some sort of introductory course on anarchist history and theory for a long time now—and have put it off for a variety of reasons, not least of which is my own feelings of unpreparedness. It is no small thing to try to talk about the basics among anarchists, who often have very strong feelings about what they are not, even if they are not all that clear about what they are—or have strong feelings that perhaps that’s just not the sort of thing that real anarchists talk about.
I posted “An Anarchist Survey” in 2018, in part as a way of focusing on potential audiences for a basic introduction, I was struck by how much opposition there was to the very idea, despite the historical precedents I was working from. The most substantive general response seemed to treat the whole affair as a symptom of some large problem in the milieu.
So I let things sit for a while longer.
But the last couple of years have delivered a combination of greater confidence in the state of my own thinking and greater distance from most the anarchist milieu, as well as a general impatience. I’m not getting any younger and the opportunities to pass on what I’ve learned to those who are indeed interested aren’t getting any more promising or plentiful.
Marianne Williamson: New Age Spiritual Types Getting Sucked In To QAnon Reply
Marianne Williamson reminds me of Carol Burnett’s “Nora Desmond” character.
Jon Voight: Leftists Are Satan & Biden Stole The Election Reply
Jon Voight is apparently drifting off into Jim Jones-level insanity.
The State’s Crisis of Legitimacy Intensifies Reply
By Bill Lind, Traditional Right
As of this writing, the outcome of the Presidential election is uncertain although it appears Biden will “win”, thanks to questionable vote totals from urban areas. The Senate looks as if it will remain Republican, and the Democrats have held onto the House although with a reduced majority. The most important result of the election is, however, clear: the legitimacy of the state has taken another hit.
Stop Advocating For Lockdowns. Our Ancestors Risked Their Lives For Economic Opportunity Reply
I always thought Kim is too intelligent and independently minded to be a party-line leftist.
Zuckerberg CONFRONTED Over Secret Facebook Surveillance, Censorship Tools Reply
The Zuck sucks.
Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti discuss the tech hearings taking place on Capitol Hill.
Pandemic Winter Will Cause ‘MASS SOCIAL DISLOCATION’ 2
Hopefully, a grim winter will lead to some nice springtime insurrections.
Professor of Economics, Richard Wolff, discusses how the lack of a stimulus will impact the American people.
How Both Parties FAILED Us On Stimulus Guaranteeing Mass Unemployment, Business Death Reply
Some good economic commentary in this. The bad news is that the Third Worldization of the US class system will be complete once this pandemic thing passes. The good news is that more lumpenproletarian insurrections are on the way.
Saagar Enjeti explains how the government’s response to Covid-19 is one of the biggest failures since Herbert Hoover’s response to the Great Depression.
Watch Dem Senator’s DUMBEST Defense Yet Of Forever War In Afghanistan Reply
The full range of opinion among the ruling class and its functionaries is that the empire must never cede an inch. And 99% of Americans either agree or are indifferent as evidenced by the total rejection of Tulsi Gabbard by the Democrapic Party. Unipolarity will have to be defeated on the battlefield, which seems to be happening.
Krystal Ball and Saagar Enjeti react to Sen. Tammy Duckworth’s stance on President Trump’s plan to withdraw more troops from Afghanistan and Iraq.
Email Question: Kim, Are You A Dave Rubin Style Grifter? Reply
Dave Rubin’s program has interesting interviews at times, but he’s just become a neocon puppet at this point. He’s being used by the neocons to create the “next conservatism.” Kim’s critique of the Left is spot on although, fortunately, we don’t need the Left. We just need the lumpenproletariat. Bakunin was right.
Did Trump Really Look To Strike Iran? Reply
Trump’s worst flaw is his total subservience to Israel and Saudi Arabia and his wink and a nod to Turkey have been his worst flaws.
Trump’s Iran policy seems to be mostly about pandering to the hawks while stopping short of actual war.
They Thought They Were Free: The Germans, 1933-45 Reply
When Obama was the prez, I knew FOX News cultists who would recommend this book saying, “It’s happening here,” apparently on the grounds that both Obama and Austrian Charlie Chaplin favored public healthcare or something or other. Nowadays, I’m seeing left-cultists circulate this book, apparently on the grounds that Orange Man and Mustache Man both favored restricted immigration or something or other. I can violate Godwin’s Law with the best of them but for crying out loud, folks…
This is a very interesting book, btw.
First published in 1955, They Thought They Were Free is an eloquent and provocative examination of the development of fascism in Germany. Mayer’s book is a study of ten Germans and their lives from 1933-45, based on interviews he conducted after the war when he lived in Germany. Mayer had a position as a research professor at the University of Frankfurt and lived in a nearby small Hessian town which he disguised with the name “Kronenberg.” “These ten men were not men of distinction,” Mayer noted, but they had been members of the Nazi Party; Mayer wanted to discover what had made them Nazis. Available here.
