by Nowick Gray Elect to govern yourself. “Democracy” is a sacred cow in political discourse, unquestioned as a form of government that promises fairness, equality, […]
The money behind the smears
by Paul Cudenec Back in 2020 I was on the receiving end of a lot of vitriol from so-called “anarchists” who objected to the fact that I refused […]
My Two-Year Stackiversary: Lattice of Coincidence + The Courage to Face the Truth
For my two-year Substack anniversary, I am publishing an essay I started last summer to accompany a guest article by Paul Cudenec. It seemed a fitting anniversary piece because it covers connections, collaborations, community, and courage—four C’s that have defined my transformative experience at Substack.
Why do I do this to myself?
Why has the frustration and pain of being an activist got worse? I’ll try to explain. I used to be very tribal. Once I’d found a political home, I’d defend it and my comrades vigorously. Any nagging doubts I had were packed away in a box and hidden in a dark cupboard. That was until the point when it started to become clear that what I thought was a ‘for ever’ political home was changing and going off in a direction I couldn’t travel in.
Beyond the label…
I’ve written this piece because there are a few things about who supposedly ‘owns’ the movement and what anarchism actually is that I want to try and clarify. In part, it was written in response to some of the ongoing sniping that’s going on between various factions in the movement. If this sniping is all people see of anarchism, then it may well not have much of a future.
The abuse of a term
As the word ‘fascism’ been used in such a scattergun way, when actual fascism really emerges, too many people won’t recognise what’s actually going on until it’s too late.
Honesty vs tribalism
Looking back over the last six years, the issues I’ve had with now former comrades stem from me wanting to find out the truth of a situation as best I can and to then formulate what I felt was an honest opinion. What I found was that some of the opinions I formed were at variance with what could best be described as the prevailing orthodoxy. I don’t use the term orthodoxy lightly but, on a range of issues where I has differences with comrades, it transpired that there was very little room for an open and honest debate.
It’s been an interesting year…
As for how events and trends will pan out next year, we’ve given up making predictions. That’s simply because making predictions as we enter a massive and complex clusterf**k is a mug’s game.
Attachment, connection and a search for meaning
Among the various currents of protest against the way the Covid situation was leveraged to accelerate the 4IR, there are those of us doing what we can to join the dots and understand what’s being done to us and why. In the process of doing that, a fair few of us have moved beyond the political labels we once had and we once, sometimes proudly, wore.
Trying to understand the situation we’re in…
It’s only when you start to pull all of the disparate threads of the ongoing clusterf**k together that it becomes frighteningly obvious we’re heading towards some kind of system failure, possibly even a collapse. What this piece is attempting to do (quite possibly in vain) is to try and analyse why we are where we are and then establish what, if anything, we can do to save ourselves.
Where the f**k do we go from here?
That’s it, we’re done with what passes for an anarchist ‘movement’ in this country. While we still adhere to what we regard as anarchist principles, it needs to be known that we want nothing to do with this ‘movement’.
Double standards?
When we see double standards and blatant hypocrisy in play in what passes for an anarchist movement here in the UK, we really have no option but to call it out.
Anarchism = Natural Law
It is precisely because we already know true justice – in our blood, in our bones, in our guts, in our dreams – that anarchists are so revolted by the sick parody that is served up to us by the bigwigs of the state.
Breaking and re-making us
One part of the strategy and tactics being deployed against us is persuading a significant chunk of the populace to do the dirty work of divide and rule for you. Having an atomised, frightened populace makes the project of breaking and re-making us that much easier. Atomisation is a key part of the process.
2021 – spiralling down | 2022 – ‘interesting’
Do you remember March of 2020 when it was ‘just three weeks to flatten the curve’? We do although given how far back that is now, the memory is not exactly an immediate one. It’s not even two years ago but it feels like a lot longer than that as we unwillingly become acclimatised to a new (ab)normal.
The rebels will return
I have always been proud to be an anarchist. That is why it pains me to have had to say that there are today some fundamental problems at the very heart of the anarchist movement, problems which reach deep into the very way it thinks and feels.
What is real anarchism?
Posted on December 12, 2017 by winter oak Anarchism is a philosophy which, over the years, has often been seriously misunderstood, thanks largely to the […]
Anarchism not State Socialism
by MARION (anarchist since 1982) Posted on February 27, 2021 by winter oak In this article I am going to give some definitions of anarchism, […]