Category Archives: Activism

Unity 2020: Why the Lesser Evil? 2

by • Activism, American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Strategy

If I had to identify any way in which my views have shifted over the years, it would probably be that I have largely moved away from the idea of a far-left/far-right “third position” type of tactical framework toward more of a revolutionary centrist one. The far-right and far-left are not alternatives to the duopoly as much as mere caricatures or parodies of the duopoly. The far-right and far-left typically either have totalitarian ambitions of their own or merely get absorbed in lesser evilism. I also underestimated the entrenchment of culture war politics and overestimated the commitment of radicals to actually overthrowing the system. Though I think recent events have certainly confirmed my long-held view that the urban lumpenproletariat is the vanguard class of a modern revolution.

Unity2020 – Ballot access: Can you see it? Reply

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Electoralism/Democratism, Secession, Strategy

The main problem I see with Bret’s idea, aside from the technical issues and sectarian conflict, is that the elected officials are merely managers and the electoral system is merely a front for the oligarchy.  Unity 2020 is not entirely dissimilar to the “pan-secessionist meta-party” idea I’ve written about in the past but the PSMP would only be an afterthought once a dual power system has already been developed, which would require not only large scale organization but also much higher levels of political education than what currently exists by a huge margin. Nor would the PSMP be a means of taking state power but merely the political propaganda arm of a movement to abolish the state, which can only be achieved through dislodging the oligarchy.

Ungovernable: An Interview with Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Race and Ethnicity

Black Rose Anarchist Federation

Author and independent writer William C. Anderson interviews veteran organizer and former Black Panther and political prisoner Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin on the current political crisis, fascism and rising relevance of Black anarchism. We also urge you to generously contribute towards a fundraising campaign organized by William to support Lorenzo and his partner JoNina Ervin. Both are movement elders who’ve inspired generations of rebels and are in need of support with their living and medical expenses.

Introduction and Interview by William C. Anderson

The novel coronavirus, also known as COVID-19, has highlighted the daily disasters of capitalism. A lack of healthcare, a safe environment, housing, and food are an everyday question for a growing segment of vulnerable people. This has brought about a noticeable interest in anarchism for many. The failures of the state were made plain by ineffective solutions, willful neglect, and utter disregard for human life.

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The Struggle for Bottom Unity in an Age of Division Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Fourth Generation Warfare, History and Historiography, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Race and Ethnicity, Strategy • Tags: ,

By Nicky Reid aka Comrade Hermit

Exile in Happy Valley

“The most interesting political questions throughout history have been whether or not humans will be ruled or free, whether they will be responsible for their actions as individuals or left irresponsible as members of society, and whether they can live in peace by volitional agreements alone.”

-Karl Hess

“We’ve got to face the fact that some people say you fight fire best with fire, but we say you put fire out best with water. We say you don’t fight racism with racism. We’re gonna fight racism with solidarity.”

-Fred Hampton

Solidarity is a bitch when everyone who can afford a knife is slitting each other’s throat. That’s the nasty little limerick that keeps playing on repeat in my skull like a mantra as populist grassroots uprisings devolve into bitter proxy wars between roaming tribes of bitter proles, killing each other over which oligarch’s name they have scrawled across their battle flags. Everyone wants to pick sides. Everyone is trolling for convenient scapegoats. I just see poor people killing poor people while two sick rich candidates arrange their corpses into clever platforms to stand on and promote more war from. The splintering of the George Floyd Uprisings into partisan turf warfare doesn’t just rip up my already bleeding heart because I had so much hope for the revolutionary potential now being squandered. It kills me because I have people on both sides of these gorey shenanigans and they should both be on the same damn team. All poor people should be, regardless of race or even politics.

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100+ nights of Portland protests – Attack the System podcast 1

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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The Boogaloo Movement Is Not What You Think 2

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Fourth Generation Warfare, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

This is a comment from an Antifa-oriented social media page:

“I have a comrade who was monitoring the Boogaloo pages before they got taken down and said they were very pro-gay, pro-black, etc, just very accelerationist and anti cop. I cant wrap my head around it. They had a very incel vibe IMHO.”

This is exactly what we need. Hardline anti-System extremism that fully rejects any last vestiges of “law and order” conservative statism while completing shedding any affinity for culture war/race war/tribal war/civil war politics. We need a Boogaloo right of the kind described above and a Bolo’bolo left of the kind described in the adjacent post, and for these tendencies to eventually bend toward each other. Build the Boogaloo-Bolo’bolo Axis!

The “Booglaoo” movement would at this point seem, at least in some ways, to be the most advanced of any “extremist” sector in US fringe politics in terms of their overall thinking. In order to build an authentically revolutionary movement in North America, two things have to happen. First, the revolutionaries must shed any last remaining attachments to the system. That rules out the archaic American patriotism of many on the far-right and the “anarcho-Democratic Partyism” of many on the far-left. Perhaps some of these folks will move toward an actual revolutionary perspective at some point in the future, but for now, they are still too much under the residual influence of “Systemism.” Second, the revolutionaries must shed any attachment to the idea of a racial, cultural, tribal, ideological civil war. There cannot be even a hint of this among the actual revolutionaries. Unfortunately, most supposed “extremists” have not abandoned this idea at all, and often enthusiastically endorse as much, thereby making themselves into nothing more than parodies and caricatures of the Red and Blue tribes.

More so than other far-right tendencies, and most far-left tendencies, the Boogaloos seem to understand this if their recent public pronouncements and actions are any indication.

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How Pan is your Pan-Secessionism? Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Secession, Strategy • Tags:

This post from Anarchist News (and the discussion thread that follows) from a few months back is worth checking out. It is illustrative of something that I have been thinking would eventually happen in the “left” anarchist milieu. While many left-anarchists are clearly oriented toward the Maoist-influenced Antifa, and others toward reformist tendencies like DSA, it appears that still others are gradually moving toward “pan-secession” or, roughly, the kinds of ideas discussed at ATS. The “Bolo’bolo” left-anarchist utopian book from the 1980s is very popular among left-anarchists, particularly Green types, and seems to have heavily influenced the thinking of some anarchists, a small number of whom have now embraced the “pan-secession” framework. Increasingly, I am coming across conflicts in the left-anarchist milieu between those who are primarily motivated by mere anti-rightism and those who are motivated by anti-systemism on a general level.

AnarchistNews.Org

A while ago I/we made a topic of the week discussing differences among anarchists. This topic is about how you engage with not-anarchist people and ideas, stemming from the recent debate about Bellamy’s new project Liberty and Logos in which he’s engaging with someone who’s a self-identified reactionary (and someone who apparently has some unpleasant yet unsurprising interests according to some recently deleted tweets).

The concept of anarchy that Bellamy is working with here is one where there’s no big happy ending where everyone agrees with us (never mind us agreeing with each other) – an idea that most readers on this site can probably get behind. Most people, even people we love and care for, don’t agree with us, and relationships with people who aren’t anarchists are inevitable in this world. The more complicated question is where do we go from there?

Agree with his approach or not, this is what Bellamy is attempting. My question for you is, what is your next step from that premise? What does it mean to look for allies in a world that’s generally hostile to us? How wide do you draw your circle, where and how do you draw the line, and what does that engagement mean?

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The Ten Core Demographics Revisited Ten Years Later Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Electoralism/Democratism, Environment, Fourth Generation Warfare, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Secession, Strategy

Ten years ago, I identified what I considered to be the “ten core demographics” that proponents of the ideas we discuss here at ATS will have to reach in order to eventually find the Holy Grail. The original piece is available here. It is interesting to evaluate the status of each of these ten demographics (which are really collections of sub-demographics) a decade later in light of the current uprising. Here is where things seem to stand. The parts in italics are from the original piece.

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Sovereign Counties: Free Association through Local Autonomy Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Secession, Strategy

Sovereign Counties is a new project that has given its endorsement to Attack the System. The Foundation for Intentional Community is an interesting group as well, and seems to be a domestic parallel to the Startup Societies Foundation. Also, see my essay “The Case for the City-State System.”

The ideas of sovereign counties, intentional communities, and startup societies is really the only set of ideas that we non-world dominationist anarchists need to be promoting among the left, right, center, all religions and ethnic groups, all philosophical and ethical systems, and all subcultures, countercultures, and youth cultures. These ideas provide the framework for Anthony Sutton’s “voluntary associations, voluntary communes, or local rule and decentralized societies” as an alternative to imperialism, and Gene Roddenberry’s ideal of “infinite diversity in infinite combinations.” I even know Trumpists or Democratic Party voters who like the ideas we discuss at ATS but still vote for one of the major parties out of “fear of the other.”

Sovereign Counties

Sovereign Counties is a movement to create intentional communities governed by the consensus of county residents. Conventionally, members of an intentional community found the community, so all members accept its principles from the outset. In the longer run, new members are born into the community and remain into adulthood by choice while members falling outside of an evolving consensus leave. Counties can become intentional communities in the latter sense. Discuss conventional communities here.

Foundation for Intentional Community

The Foundation for Intentional Community (FIC) defines an intentional community as a group of people who have chosen to live together or share resources on the basis of common values. You may have heard of a commune, ecovillage, cohousing, coliving or student coop. These are all types of intentional communities – models for more cooperative, sustainable and just ways of life. FIC curates a directory of over 1,000 communities worldwide, as well as supplies resources, runs educational events and promotes community classifieds. Support our work by making a donation today!

Startup Societies Foundation

A startup society is typically a small territorial experiment in government. For centuries, innovators have created enclaves to escape institutional barriers. America itself was created to escape religious persecution in Europe. The startup societies of today are making the world into a more diverse and competitive place.

A Strategy for Forcing the State Back Reply

by • Activism, Anarchism/Anti-State, Secession, Strategy

By Per Bylund

LewRockwell. Com

As libertarians, we like to discuss two things: what could be and what is wrong with society today. Some of us are intrigued by the promises of a free society, no matter if we advocate the total abolishment of the State or wish to radically cut back on its powers. It kind of sets your mind free to dream of all the things that could be weren’t it for the welfare-warfare State.

Some libertarians feel the adrenaline flowing when talking about the injustice caused people by the State: about immigrants being forced back to torture because they are not the “legal” kind; about poor people kept out of the labor market by minimum wage laws; about small business owners forced into bankruptcy because of totally unnecessary regulations and restrictions; about average Joes being forced off their property for the “common good”; about people literally being taxed to death.

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Protesters hit with gas as locals demand feds leave Portland Reply

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Fourth Generation Warfare, Police State/Civil Liberties

BY ANDREW SELSKY and GILLIAN FLACCUS

Yahoo News

PORTLAND, Ore. (AP) — Militarized federal agents deployed by the president to Portland, Oregon, fired tear gas against protesters again overnight as the city’s mayor demanded that the agents be removed and as the state’s attorney general vowed to seek a restraining order against them.

Federal agents, some wearing camouflage and some wearing dark Homeland Security uniforms, used tear gas at least twice to break up crowds late Friday night, The Oregonian/OregonLive reported.

Protests against systemic racism and police brutality have been a nightly feature in deeply liberal Portland since Minneapolis police killed George Floyd on May 25. President Donald Trump has decried the disorder and Homeland Security Secretary Chad Wolf blasted the protesters as “lawless anarchists” in a visit to the city, helping make the clashes between police and demonstrators a national focus.

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The Anti-Racism Protests Haven’t Stopped Reply

by • Activism, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Race and Ethnicity
Huffington Post

It’s been 50 days since people took to the streets after the police killing of George Floyd — and the nationwide protests haven’t let up since.

After demonstrators in Minneapolis called out the unjust killing of Floyd, a Black man, at the hands of a white police officer, protests quickly spread to cities and towns across the country and even the world. And now, over seven weeks later, while the unrest has quieted in some places, people continue to show up day after day in the name of anti-racism and ending police brutality.

In Louisville, Kentucky, for instance, residents have marched daily for weeks to demand justice for Breonna Taylor, a Black woman shot dead by police in her home in March. While one of the officers involved was fired — over three months after her killing and after weeks of protest — none of the three have been charged.

In Portland, Oregon, people have been protesting nonstop for nearly two months, with police — including federal law enforcement sent in two weeks ago by President Donald Trump — at times cracking down violently on demonstrators.

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6 Native leaders on what it would look like if the US kept its promises Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Race and Ethnicity, Strategy, Therapeutic State

By Rory Taylor

Vox

The US has signed hundreds of treaties with Indigenous peoples. Here’s what would happen if the government actually honored them.

“‘We the people’ has never meant ‘all the people.’”

These were words of independent presidential candidate and Navajo Nation member Mark Charles as he spoke, to great excitement, at the first presidential forum dedicated to Native American issues in over a decade.

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American breakup: Secession is much closer than we think Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

By F.H. Buckley

Spectator

The United States is ripe for secession. Across the world, established states have divided in two or are staring down secession movements. Great Britain became a wee bit less great with Irish independence, and now the Scots seem to be rethinking the Act of Union (1707). Czechoslovakia is no more and the former Soviet Union is just that: former. Go down the list and there are secession groups in nearly every country. And are we to think that, almost alone in the world, we’re immune from this?

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If the USA were to balkanize, what independent countries do you think would emerge, what would they look like, and which would be most successful? Reply

by • Activism, American Decline, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Secession, Strategy

Reddit

There are large economic, political, and cultural divides in the US (at least more so than other countries). Some states actually have economies that are competitive at a global scale (i.e. California, Texas).

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