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1000 results for “Thomas_Loock”

  1. Wojtek Pietrusiewicz @[email protected] ·

    562: Czarny Piątek i nowy hardware od Valve – Steam Machine i Steam Frame | Nadgryzieni

    W tym odcinku podcastu głównymi tematami są obszerne omówienie promocji na Czarny Piątek oraz analiza nowych urządzeń od Valve: Steam Machine, Steam Frame i Steam Controller. Prowadzący dyskutują również o szeregu nowości technologicznych, takich jak DJI ROMO, Switch-Bot Lock Ultra Vision Combo, nowym elektrycznym Porsche Cayenne oraz o opóźnieniu premiery GTA 6. Poruszono kwestie oficjalnego języka polskiego w Nintendo Switch 2, zmian w mObywatelu, problemów z AirPods Pro 3, a także iPhone Pocket i końcu obecnej formy Maca Pro. Nie zabrakło informacji o postępowaniu UOKiK wobec Apple oraz o Google Private AI Compute. W kąciku filmowym recenzowane są m.in. Slow Horses (Kulawe konie), Only Murders in the Building (Zbrodnie po sąsiedzku), Gen V (Pokolenie V), Goodfellas (Chłopcy z ferajny), Hancock, Tomb Raider, Back to the Future (Powrót do przyszłości), The Truman Show (Truman Show), The Mummy (Mumia) oraz The Family Plan 2 (Plan wycieczki 2), a także vlogi z Korei Północnej i musical Wicked.

    Prowadzący:

    Linki z odcinka:

    Legenda do kącika filmowego: A – Apple TV+; C – Canal+; CDA – CDA Premium; D – Disney+; H – HBO Max; i – iTunes/Movies; MGM – MGM; N – Netflix; PY – Player.pl; P – Prime Video; S – SkyShowtime; SPC – Sony Pictures Core.

    Spis treści:

    • 00:00:00: Intro
    • 00:00:20: Wstęp
    • 00:01:46: Newsy / plotki
    • 00:01:58: 20% rabatu z kodem “VOLAND” na gry na Questa
    • 00:03:01: DJI ROMO
    • 00:07:07: Switch-Bot Lock Ultra Vision Combo
    • 00:13:59: Nowe elektryczne Porsche Cayenne i Cayenne Turbo
    • 00:18:32: GTA 6 ponownie opóźnione
    • 00:19:24: Nintendo Switch 2 oficjalnie z językiem polskim
    • 00:20:44: Duże zmiany w mObywatelu i Profilu Zaufanym
    • 00:23:13: Użytkownicy AirPods Pro 3 skarżą się na szumy i trzaski
    • 00:24:11: Apple uruchamia nowy internetowy App Store
    • 00:25:05: iPhone Pocket
    • 00:28:23: Koniec Maca Pro, jakiego znamy
    • 00:40:33: UOKiK wszczyna postępowanie wobec Apple
    • 00:42:59: Google Private AI Compute
    • 00:45:36: Nadgryzieni Bingo
    • 00:46:34: Czarny piątek
    • 01:18:47: Valve – Steam Machine, Steam Frame i Steam Controller
    • 01:40:44: Kącik filmowy
    • 01:41:43: Slow Horses (A)
    • 01:43:04: Only Murders in the Building (D)
    • 01:43:57: Gen V (P)
    • 01:44:34: Vlogi z Korei Północnej
    • 01:53:42: Goodfellas (P)
    • 01:54:11: Hancock (H)
    • 01:54:54: Tomb Raider (H)
    • 01:55:58: Back to the Future (H)
    • 01:56:45: The Truman Show (i)
    • 01:57:51: The Mummy (P)
    • 01:58:41: The Wicked i The Wicked – For Good
    • 02:00:23: Champagne Problems (N)
    • 02:01:35: The Family Plan 2 (A)
    • 02:03:05: The Wicked w Teatrze Roma – RTFU
    • 02:03:44: Zakończenie

    Live stream:

    Słuchaj i/lub subskrybuj:

       

       

       

    Słuchaj na tej stronie:

    https://media.blubrry.com/nadgryzieni/imagazine.stronazen.pl/nadgryzieni/Nadgryzieni-Odcinek-562.mp3

    Nadgryzieni mogą korzystać z linków afiliacyjnych, które pomagają nam utrzymać ten projekt, więc jeśli coś kupicie z naszego linka, to dostaniemy z tego tytułu jakiegoś grosza lub trzy.

    #nadgryzieni #podcast

    #nadgryzieni #podcast
  2. (Roughly) Daily @[email protected] ·

    “Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come.”…

    Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting ran on PBS (and the CBC) from 1983 to 1994. Reruns continue around the world, including the non-commercial digital subchannel network Create and the streaming service Hulu. As part of its launch of Twitch Creative, Twitch streamed every episode over a nine-day period starting on October 29, 2015 – what would have been Ross’s 73rd birthday– and scored 5.6 million viewers. So they created a weekly rebroadcast of all 31 seasons of The Joy of Painting to air, with episodes in order, on Twitch each Monday from November 2015 onward, and a marathon of episodes each October 29. In the United Kingdom, the BBC re-ran episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic while most viewers were in lockdown at home.

    Ross is estimated to have pained 30,000 canvases during his lifetime. But as those paintings are scarce on the art market, sale prices of the paintings average in the thousands of dollars and frequently topping $10,000. Lately, they’ve done even better– and for an important cause.

    Starting last November, auction house Bonhams has been offering what will be a total of 30 Ross oils to benefit the public broadcasting system that made him famous…

    Bonhams has revealed the next works by the beloved US television painter Bob Ross it will offer for sale, with auction proceeds going toward public television following devastating funding cuts by president Donald Trump’s administration. More than $1bn in federal funding previously allocated to support public broadcasters was slashed by the Republican-controlled congress last year.

    Last year, Bonhams announced it would sell 30 Ross paintings donated by Bob Ross Inc to benefit public television. The first three paintings from the group went up for sale in November and fetched a combined total of $662,000 with fees. Ross’s painting Winter’s Peace (1993) sold for $318,000 with fees, setting an auction record for the artist. Just weeks later, that record was shattered again when his painting Cabin at Sunset (1987) sold for more than $1m in an online charity auction for the Public Media Bridge Fund initiative [see here], organised by the television host John Oliver. [One more reason to love John Oliver.]

    Three more Ross paintings will be part of the “Americana: Crafting a Nation: Art, History & Legacy” auction on 27 January at Bonhams in Massachusetts, and could fetch as much as $155,000 collectively, according to the auction house’s estimates.

    Valley View (1990) is estimated to sell for between $30,000 and $50,000, and was the first work completed for the 21st volume of Ross’s Joy of Painting instructional book. Change of Seasons (1990) comes with an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, and was completed live on air in 1990, on the 11th episode of the 20th season of his The Joy of Painting television series. In that episode, Ross describes the scene as “just a beautiful little painting”.

    Babbling Brook (1993), a unique oval-shaped painting, is estimated to fetch between $25,000 and $45,000. It was completed during filming for the first episode of the 30th season of The Joy of Painting. Ross often let the subject in his landscapes develop as he went along, encouraging viewers to add spontaneous details as they saw fit. While painting Babbling Brook, Ross said, “I see something!” and painted in a waterfall, adding: “Let your imagination take you to any world that you want to go to.”

    An additional 24 Ross works will be sold throughout this year across Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, the auction house says…

    Bob Ross’s Babbling Brook (1993)

    Giving back: “More Bob Ross paintings head to auction to benefit US public television” from @theartnewspaper.bsky.social.

    * Bob Ross

    ###

    As we “don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents,” we might note that Ross’ rough contemporary and fellow “popular” painter, Thomas Kinkade was born on this date in 1958. While Ross was concerned with communicating the joy of creating and was opposed to his paintings becoming “financial instruments,” Kinkade was focused on capitalizing on his creations.

    Kinkade, who described himself as a “master of light” (putting himself in the company of Rembrandt and Caravaggio), achieved success during his lifetime via the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products through the Thomas Kinkade Company (according to which, at one point one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings).

    Ross died in 1995 of complications from lymphoma (which he’d had for several years). KInkade died in 2012 of acute intoxication from alcohol and diazepam.

    Thomas Kinkade “Bambi’s First Year” (source)

    source

    “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that”

    Happy Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day

    #art #BobRoss #culture #history #kitch #MartinLutherKingJrDay #PBS #politics #pubicTelevision #publicMedia
    #art #bobross #culture #history #kitch #martinlutherkingjrday
  3. (Roughly) Daily @[email protected] ·

    “Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come.”…

    Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting ran on PBS (and the CBC) from 1983 to 1994. Reruns continue around the world, including the non-commercial digital subchannel network Create and the streaming service Hulu. As part of its launch of Twitch Creative, Twitch streamed every episode over a nine-day period starting on October 29, 2015 – what would have been Ross’s 73rd birthday– and scored 5.6 million viewers. So they created a weekly rebroadcast of all 31 seasons of The Joy of Painting to air, with episodes in order, on Twitch each Monday from November 2015 onward, and a marathon of episodes each October 29. In the United Kingdom, the BBC re-ran episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic while most viewers were in lockdown at home.

    Ross is estimated to have pained 30,000 canvases during his lifetime. But as those paintings are scarce on the art market, sale prices of the paintings average in the thousands of dollars and frequently topping $10,000. Lately, they’ve done even better– and for an important cause.

    Starting last November, auction house Bonhams has been offering what will be a total of 30 Ross oils to benefit the public broadcasting system that made him famous…

    Bonhams has revealed the next works by the beloved US television painter Bob Ross it will offer for sale, with auction proceeds going toward public television following devastating funding cuts by president Donald Trump’s administration. More than $1bn in federal funding previously allocated to support public broadcasters was slashed by the Republican-controlled congress last year.

    Last year, Bonhams announced it would sell 30 Ross paintings donated by Bob Ross Inc to benefit public television. The first three paintings from the group went up for sale in November and fetched a combined total of $662,000 with fees. Ross’s painting Winter’s Peace (1993) sold for $318,000 with fees, setting an auction record for the artist. Just weeks later, that record was shattered again when his painting Cabin at Sunset (1987) sold for more than $1m in an online charity auction for the Public Media Bridge Fund initiative [see here], organised by the television host John Oliver. [One more reason to love John Oliver.]

    Three more Ross paintings will be part of the “Americana: Crafting a Nation: Art, History & Legacy” auction on 27 January at Bonhams in Massachusetts, and could fetch as much as $155,000 collectively, according to the auction house’s estimates.

    Valley View (1990) is estimated to sell for between $30,000 and $50,000, and was the first work completed for the 21st volume of Ross’s Joy of Painting instructional book. Change of Seasons (1990) comes with an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, and was completed live on air in 1990, on the 11th episode of the 20th season of his The Joy of Painting television series. In that episode, Ross describes the scene as “just a beautiful little painting”.

    Babbling Brook (1993), a unique oval-shaped painting, is estimated to fetch between $25,000 and $45,000. It was completed during filming for the first episode of the 30th season of The Joy of Painting. Ross often let the subject in his landscapes develop as he went along, encouraging viewers to add spontaneous details as they saw fit. While painting Babbling Brook, Ross said, “I see something!” and painted in a waterfall, adding: “Let your imagination take you to any world that you want to go to.”

    An additional 24 Ross works will be sold throughout this year across Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, the auction house says…

    Bob Ross’s Babbling Brook (1993)

    Giving back: “More Bob Ross paintings head to auction to benefit US public television” from @theartnewspaper.bsky.social.

    * Bob Ross

    ###

    As we “don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents,” we might note that Ross’ rough contemporary and fellow “popular” painter, Thomas Kinkade was born on this date in 1958. While Ross was concerned with communicating the joy of creating and was opposed to his paintings becoming “financial instruments,” Kinkade was focused on capitalizing on his creations.

    Kinkade, who described himself as a “master of light” (putting himself in the company of Rembrandt and Caravaggio), achieved success during his lifetime via the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products through the Thomas Kinkade Company (according to which, at one point one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings).

    Ross died in 1995 of complications from lymphoma (which he’d had for several years). KInkade died in 2012 of acute intoxication from alcohol and diazepam.

    Thomas Kinkade “Bambi’s First Year” (source)

    source

    “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that”

    Happy Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day

    #art #BobRoss #culture #history #kitch #MartinLutherKingJrDay #PBS #politics #pubicTelevision #publicMedia
    #art #bobross #culture #history #kitch #martinlutherkingjrday
  4. (Roughly) Daily @[email protected] ·

    “Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come.”…

    Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting ran on PBS (and the CBC) from 1983 to 1994. Reruns continue around the world, including the non-commercial digital subchannel network Create and the streaming service Hulu. As part of its launch of Twitch Creative, Twitch streamed every episode over a nine-day period starting on October 29, 2015 – what would have been Ross’s 73rd birthday– and scored 5.6 million viewers. So they created a weekly rebroadcast of all 31 seasons of The Joy of Painting to air, with episodes in order, on Twitch each Monday from November 2015 onward, and a marathon of episodes each October 29. In the United Kingdom, the BBC re-ran episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic while most viewers were in lockdown at home.

    Ross is estimated to have pained 30,000 canvases during his lifetime. But as those paintings are scarce on the art market, sale prices of the paintings average in the thousands of dollars and frequently topping $10,000. Lately, they’ve done even better– and for an important cause.

    Starting last November, auction house Bonhams has been offering what will be a total of 30 Ross oils to benefit the public broadcasting system that made him famous…

    Bonhams has revealed the next works by the beloved US television painter Bob Ross it will offer for sale, with auction proceeds going toward public television following devastating funding cuts by president Donald Trump’s administration. More than $1bn in federal funding previously allocated to support public broadcasters was slashed by the Republican-controlled congress last year.

    Last year, Bonhams announced it would sell 30 Ross paintings donated by Bob Ross Inc to benefit public television. The first three paintings from the group went up for sale in November and fetched a combined total of $662,000 with fees. Ross’s painting Winter’s Peace (1993) sold for $318,000 with fees, setting an auction record for the artist. Just weeks later, that record was shattered again when his painting Cabin at Sunset (1987) sold for more than $1m in an online charity auction for the Public Media Bridge Fund initiative [see here], organised by the television host John Oliver. [One more reason to love John Oliver.]

    Three more Ross paintings will be part of the “Americana: Crafting a Nation: Art, History & Legacy” auction on 27 January at Bonhams in Massachusetts, and could fetch as much as $155,000 collectively, according to the auction house’s estimates.

    Valley View (1990) is estimated to sell for between $30,000 and $50,000, and was the first work completed for the 21st volume of Ross’s Joy of Painting instructional book. Change of Seasons (1990) comes with an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, and was completed live on air in 1990, on the 11th episode of the 20th season of his The Joy of Painting television series. In that episode, Ross describes the scene as “just a beautiful little painting”.

    Babbling Brook (1993), a unique oval-shaped painting, is estimated to fetch between $25,000 and $45,000. It was completed during filming for the first episode of the 30th season of The Joy of Painting. Ross often let the subject in his landscapes develop as he went along, encouraging viewers to add spontaneous details as they saw fit. While painting Babbling Brook, Ross said, “I see something!” and painted in a waterfall, adding: “Let your imagination take you to any world that you want to go to.”

    An additional 24 Ross works will be sold throughout this year across Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, the auction house says…

    Bob Ross’s Babbling Brook (1993)

    Giving back: “More Bob Ross paintings head to auction to benefit US public television” from @theartnewspaper.bsky.social.

    * Bob Ross

    ###

    As we “don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents,” we might note that Ross’ rough contemporary and fellow “popular” painter, Thomas Kinkade was born on this date in 1958. While Ross was concerned with communicating the joy of creating and was opposed to his paintings becoming “financial instruments,” Kinkade was focused on capitalizing on his creations.

    Kinkade, who described himself as a “master of light” (putting himself in the company of Rembrandt and Caravaggio), achieved success during his lifetime via the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products through the Thomas Kinkade Company (according to which, at one point one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings).

    Ross died in 1995 of complications from lymphoma (which he’d had for several years). KInkade died in 2012 of acute intoxication from alcohol and diazepam.

    Thomas Kinkade “Bambi’s First Year” (source)

    source

    “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that”

    Happy Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day

    #art #BobRoss #culture #history #kitch #MartinLutherKingJrDay #PBS #politics #pubicTelevision #publicMedia
    #publicmedia #pubictelevision #politics #pbs #martinlutherkingjrday #kitch
  5. (Roughly) Daily @[email protected] ·

    “Gotta have opposites, light and dark and dark and light, in painting. It’s like in life. Gotta have a little sadness once in awhile so you know when the good times come.”…

    Bob Ross’ The Joy of Painting ran on PBS (and the CBC) from 1983 to 1994. Reruns continue around the world, including the non-commercial digital subchannel network Create and the streaming service Hulu. As part of its launch of Twitch Creative, Twitch streamed every episode over a nine-day period starting on October 29, 2015 – what would have been Ross’s 73rd birthday– and scored 5.6 million viewers. So they created a weekly rebroadcast of all 31 seasons of The Joy of Painting to air, with episodes in order, on Twitch each Monday from November 2015 onward, and a marathon of episodes each October 29. In the United Kingdom, the BBC re-ran episodes during the COVID-19 pandemic while most viewers were in lockdown at home.

    Ross is estimated to have pained 30,000 canvases during his lifetime. But as those paintings are scarce on the art market, sale prices of the paintings average in the thousands of dollars and frequently topping $10,000. Lately, they’ve done even better– and for an important cause.

    Starting last November, auction house Bonhams has been offering what will be a total of 30 Ross oils to benefit the public broadcasting system that made him famous…

    Bonhams has revealed the next works by the beloved US television painter Bob Ross it will offer for sale, with auction proceeds going toward public television following devastating funding cuts by president Donald Trump’s administration. More than $1bn in federal funding previously allocated to support public broadcasters was slashed by the Republican-controlled congress last year.

    Last year, Bonhams announced it would sell 30 Ross paintings donated by Bob Ross Inc to benefit public television. The first three paintings from the group went up for sale in November and fetched a combined total of $662,000 with fees. Ross’s painting Winter’s Peace (1993) sold for $318,000 with fees, setting an auction record for the artist. Just weeks later, that record was shattered again when his painting Cabin at Sunset (1987) sold for more than $1m in an online charity auction for the Public Media Bridge Fund initiative [see here], organised by the television host John Oliver. [One more reason to love John Oliver.]

    Three more Ross paintings will be part of the “Americana: Crafting a Nation: Art, History & Legacy” auction on 27 January at Bonhams in Massachusetts, and could fetch as much as $155,000 collectively, according to the auction house’s estimates.

    Valley View (1990) is estimated to sell for between $30,000 and $50,000, and was the first work completed for the 21st volume of Ross’s Joy of Painting instructional book. Change of Seasons (1990) comes with an estimate of $40,000 to $60,000, and was completed live on air in 1990, on the 11th episode of the 20th season of his The Joy of Painting television series. In that episode, Ross describes the scene as “just a beautiful little painting”.

    Babbling Brook (1993), a unique oval-shaped painting, is estimated to fetch between $25,000 and $45,000. It was completed during filming for the first episode of the 30th season of The Joy of Painting. Ross often let the subject in his landscapes develop as he went along, encouraging viewers to add spontaneous details as they saw fit. While painting Babbling Brook, Ross said, “I see something!” and painted in a waterfall, adding: “Let your imagination take you to any world that you want to go to.”

    An additional 24 Ross works will be sold throughout this year across Bonhams salesrooms in New York, Boston and Los Angeles, the auction house says…

    Bob Ross’s Babbling Brook (1993)

    Giving back: “More Bob Ross paintings head to auction to benefit US public television” from @theartnewspaper.bsky.social.

    * Bob Ross

    ###

    As we “don’t make mistakes, just happy little accidents,” we might note that Ross’ rough contemporary and fellow “popular” painter, Thomas Kinkade was born on this date in 1958. While Ross was concerned with communicating the joy of creating and was opposed to his paintings becoming “financial instruments,” Kinkade was focused on capitalizing on his creations.

    Kinkade, who described himself as a “master of light” (putting himself in the company of Rembrandt and Caravaggio), achieved success during his lifetime via the mass marketing of his work as printed reproductions and other licensed products through the Thomas Kinkade Company (according to which, at one point one in every 20 American homes owned a copy of one of his paintings).

    Ross died in 1995 of complications from lymphoma (which he’d had for several years). KInkade died in 2012 of acute intoxication from alcohol and diazepam.

    Thomas Kinkade “Bambi’s First Year” (source)

    source

    “Darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that”

    Happy Martin Luther King Jr. (MLK) Day

    #art #BobRoss #culture #history #kitch #MartinLutherKingJrDay #PBS #politics #pubicTelevision #publicMedia #ThomasKinkade
    #art #bobross #culture #history #kitch #martinlutherkingjrday
  6. abolitionmedia @[email protected] ·

    I can imagine many people resenting the term Palestinian revolution when reading the title of this article. Some have already written that revolution is one thing and resistance is another, that war is one thing and liberation is another. I chose this title, being literal, precisely because it would be provocative. Let us be open to any dialogue, knowing that the first thing that is at issue is the definition of the subject. In times of war, any political discourse is a polemic act. War is not a choice, it is not a means among other means, as statist positivism and its projections on the anti-authoritarian pretexts for capitulation assert; it is the incessant class condition in which we find ourselves and through which we liberate ourselves. Every phrase that has been uttered in the last 20, 50, hundreds and thousands of years flutters on the broken Gaza wall or hangs in the rubble of the city, among the dismembered children. If the well-meaning movement researchers who have produced numerous analyses of the class and social background of the Greek revolution of 1821 find it difficult to recognize the Palestinian revolution as such, this says something about their euroelitism and nationalism. As for those who deny resistance to colonialism and imperialism, as well as its revolutionary potential, by juxtaposing the “essential” antithesis of capital-labor, the totality or molecularity, today we can say that their abstractions and confines are filled with the stench of the carnivorous capitalist North. The thoughtless adoption of the dogmatic social-democratic scholasticism suggests a blind consumption of intellectualism, self-indulging in ideological garbage. If I pay you a regular salary, the relationship is class-based. But if I take your land to build a work camp or a prison, then not only the relationship is not class-based, but it is subordinate to that, even if I put you in the camp on a salary or put you in prison! If I put you up against the prison wall and shoot you, the relationship is not class-based, it is “essentially” indifferent outside of its interpretation into a monetary relationship. If I lock you up in the prison that I built by stealing your land, if I control your survival resources and bomb you day and night, the relationship is not class-based and the relation of power cannot be changed until the labor relation is universally and completely dismantled. This kind of idiocy goes around as scholastic proletarian theory.

    We have entered the evolutionary phase of capitalist civilization where it is materialized as a total synchronic crisis and where every tick of the clock reveals the positioning of every political subject on the side of revolution or on the side of counter-revolution. All antitheses are condensed, they intersect and are confounded towards the maximum and the minimum and in the explosive way that they emerge they express their complexity. The anti-capitalist movement is shaped within this vortex, it does not stand still in some idealized apathetic position of an overseer. It is therefore traversed by the whole set of intersections, confusions and complexities. The war waged by the statist public health control revealed a deep rift in the anti-capitalist movement, the imperialist war in the Ukrainian territory revealed other rifts, which literally culminate into war. The revolutionary counterattack inside the territory of the zionist colonialist rule, illuminated the most fundamental rift within the movement. If we can schematically say that the first rupture concerned the fractional scope of imperialist colonialism over the social body and the second one concerned revolutionary autonomy in conditions where military rule, as fundamental to capitalism, is unveiled, then the Palestinian rupture concerns the very point of the history of capitalism and its destruction. The unfulfilled crusade of colonizing the Eurasian East (prior to the complete colonization of Africa and of the continent westward to Europe) reappears as a historically inescapable and globally universal definitive question. Incidentally, wage slavery, on which the capitalist mode of production is founded, emerged and prevailed in Europe through the colonialist war to the east (in particular, from the data so far it appears that the prime organism where the prevalence of the wage relation was incubated was crusading Venice).

    The historical moment of the dissemination of CoV-2 and the culmination of the anti-health imperialist counter-revolution, through its militaristic and bio-technocratic experiment of the universal vaccination, brought to the fore the class and political subjectivity of the human body, i.e. the most elementary organic unit of human existence and society, making it the target of a totalitarian colonial campaign. Imperialist terrorism attempted to establish itself in new depths of primitive accumulation and to restructure all existing power relations with the guiding principle of the liquidation, expulsion and purging of surplus labour. This coincided with the powerful manifestation of the Black Revolt in so-called America and of the women’s revolt globally, the living subject of the history of slavery and capitalist colonization of the Earth. The war of state sanitation introduced a historically innovative regime of perpetual state of emergency, which through bio-politics gave primacy to militaristic terms of domination and to the ideology and morality that derives from that. The counter-revolutionary offensive, in the form of the emergency regime, within the metropolises of Euro-Atlantic imperialism, continued in relation to the war in the Ukrainian-Russian space and now continues in relation to the war in Palestine (the Chinese counter- revolution continues on the first axis). It is no coincidence that the Israeli techno-stratocracy is a pioneer in the production and export of technology and methodology of control and repression, of fascist organization and politics, of biotechnology, digital integration and post-humanist fiction ideology. It should be noted that Israeli fascism imposed universal compulsory biotechnological vaccination of its citizens. Zionist colonialism fuses on the one hand traditional religious totalitarianism and racism, and on the other hand the fundamentalist governmentalist and mechanistic mentality of the bourgeoisie, the theocracy of capital and its technocratic mysticism. That is why Israeli colonialism today is demonstrating worldwide, on behalf of the Western Empire, the might of its terrorism with unprecedented intensity.

    In the ideological battle within the international movement, which of course expresses contradictory and now increasingly antagonistic tendencies on the line of conflict between revolution and counter- revolution, what emerges as a central rift is the koinonismos (1) of counter-revolution. In particular, the koinonismos of imperialism and more specifically the koinonismos of imperialist social democracy. In correlation to this, anti-imperialist social fascism reappears as a problem. In the Greek movement the concept of koinonismos has been defined as the internalization of the pervasive ideology of the regime by the social movement. I reinstate it here with a reverse definition, which, without negating what is historically recorded, it puts the title of social in the right causal relation: the social ground and the social relation are not constructed by power, but on the contrary, power pillages their material, their name and their value, in order to return them to the subjects, having reconstructed them with the necessary divisions. This rift concerns the underlying anti-proletarian, anti-social and counter-revolutionary roots of making a separation from the aggressive initiative of the Palestinians, from their Islamic vanguard, from the unholy revolutionary means, from the open class war, from anti-imperialist resistance, from the national identities of the global South, from the prevalence of faith over survival, from the devaluation of the ideological and normative claims and rhythms of the bourgeois positivism internalized in the movements of the North, etc.

    The koinonismos of counter-revolution is defined by the class and political frontier that the ruling class erects against the savage proletariat, which in the historical narrative is presented as uncivilized and in politics as terrorist. The koinonismos of imperialism has as its central axes the peace of Christian ecumenism and bourgeois liberalism with its modern ecumenism. The peace of God presupposes the sovereignty of the crusading sword. Imperialist socialism, by demanding the disarmament of the ‘uncivilized’ in order for a peace to be recognized, expresses its militaristic totalitarianism. Let’s not forget that even when Euro-Atlantic imperialism declared war on Russian nationalism, it called Russian nationalism uncivilized and collectively criminalized Russian culture (arts, sports, history…).

    The common joint of imperialist koinonismos is the Law of Empire, developed on a global model, in transnational conventions (treaties) and transnational institutions. The sword of peace of the god of the Judeo-Christian tradition is surrounded by legal trinkets and supposedly collective mediations. Around the slaughterhouse, the real class conditions of political warfare (military, biopolitical, moral-social) imperialist koinonismos bombards with a totalitarian morality, founded on the given biopolitical class divisions. Not only is not every death or freedom of every person measured equally, but more specifically, the more intense the class or political factors that determine a person’s life chances and local rights, the more necessary and just for the political economy of capital is the intensification of their oppression or even their killing.

    In examining the ideological conflict around the Palestinian revolution, I will use as a model of reference the first statement of Syriza after the revolutionary initiative of October 7, because it contains in three sentences all the basic ideological points of imperialist social democracy that have been internalized in the anti-capitalist movement.

    “SYRIZA unequivocally condemns today’s Hamas attack against Israel, calls for its immediate end and expresses its solidarity with the people of Israel. The ongoing violence by all sides in the region, is a threat to any prospect of resolving the differences and is brutally affecting the security and rights especially of civilians, Israelis and Palestinians. We stand firmly in favour of the immediate resumption of credible bilateral talks for a two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 borders, with the capital of the Palestinian state being the city of east Jerusalem.”

    Let us distinguish the ideological points that form the positions of imperialist social democracy:

    1. Condemnation of the attack against the occupier’s national body inside its fort. This condemnation is the most basic position statement within the war. Various people try to convince that the condemnation of violence or of state violence from either side places them in a third position, morally and politically superior. The global proletariat understands, today as a whole, that the condemnation of the real military victory of the Palestinians is an expression of solidarity with imperialist koinonismos and thus a statement of consent to the extension of genocide, stronger than any tearful protest against it by the very subjects who condemn the attack.

    In many statements, the condemnation, in its support, invokes the particular religious identity of the political organization that carried out the attack on the colonial fortress. This dogmatic demonization of Islam is identical with the fundamentalism of the crusades, which permeates conservative ideologies of capitalist times and culminates in imperialist/colonial elitism. Those who have been quick to denounce the religious character of Hamas identify with Netanyahu in his position that “we are the light, they are the darkness”. Koinonismos, the most subservient to imperialism, immediately assimilated the propaganda about rapes and massacres of civilians and children as if these practices, which characterize state warfare in general, are automatically derived from the Islamic identity of the resistance organization. The anti- theocratic guise of political condemnation is itself an attack on faith that transcends the carnal lust and fears of the bourgeois citizen, an attack on social morality that puts individualist autarchy under question, an attack on the collective and transcendentalist psyche that dismantles utilitarian positivism.

    The ideological lackeys who, disgusted from the resistance’s attack joined the chorus of the liberal crusade, forgot that Hamas is the elected government of the marginal colonial territories, which was arbitrarily denied its bourgeois-democratic authority. The genocidal blockade of Gaza began in 2007, when Hamas ousted Fatah coup plotters, at whose hands the struggling Palestinians had been infamously tortured. Liberal fundamentalism, which sets up a la carte democracies, with coups, terrorism and mass purges, calls the “uncivilized” people fascists, whenever its bribery doesn’t work. The goal is the condemnation of their extended political autonomy.

    Hamas was of no interest to the luminaries of imperialist social democracy during the years when the unrecognized Hamas government was tolerated by the colonialists, as it was managing the biopolitical and economic plight of the people of Gaza due to its total blockade. Once it breached the blockade, its militaristic armor and the security of its national reproduction, imperialist social democracy felt the need to join in denouncing the virtual hideous monster.

    2. Recognition of the settlers and their genocidal state as a people. Subsequently, expressing solidarity with the colonialist organization. Only statism ascribes the concept of people to a state that is ethnically homogeneous. From the socio-revolutionary point of view, the popular always defines itself in class terms. The militarist colonists never and nowhere constituted a people. All Israelis are settlers because, in contrast to their abstract historical locality, their actual settlement, residence and expansion in the biblical land is by direct and continuous ethnic cleansing of another locality. If we were talking about the United States, only white fascists consider white Americans a distinct people. There is an Israeli nation, but it is not a people. The people of the Israeli state are the Palestinians, the hunted natives. Israeli citizens become a people to the extent that they betray their nation and fight with the Palestinian people. We will see this in a moment in their own words.

    A side note, invoking the phantom Israeli people and expressing solidarity with this makes no class or political distinctions within the colonial nation. This phantom comes straight out of the most horrible statist nationalism, that is, colonialist nationalism. In any case, solidarity with the exploited classes of the colonial organism itself cannot possibly depend on submissiveness to its state of domination. On the contrary, class solidarity starts from the anti-colonial revolution, the social war for the destruction of the state-launching ground for imperialism.

    The declarations of solidarity with the “Israeli people” are an invitation to complete the genocide of the Palestinians.

    3. Condemnation of violence on both sides.

    4. Focus on civilians and subjecting them to the imperialist conditions of rights and security. The focus on civilians completes the project of moral-ideological disarmament, depoliticization and passivization of the resisting people. At the same time that imperialism is blowing up the revolted prison of Gaza, it is also assuming the paternalistic responsibility of managing the survivors of genocide. More generally, the humanitarian infiltration of the transnational and parastatal (NGO) institutions of capital in the global South is paving the way for the formation of protectorate state institutions in the service of imperialism, with the assignment of managerial positions to collaborationists. We should note that the regional hegemonic powers are also playing in this field, always against the political autonomy and internationalist solidarity of the resisting people.

    The external projection of the security claim as a primary need, annihilates the revolutionary needs of the people and extorts the recognition of the colonial interest, the security of its national fascist regime, as a universal need. The conclaves that hold the sword of imperialist peace can define the rights and the timeliness or untimeliness of their application. While international rights have been established in order to give the form of a contract to structural inequalities, the equation of the Palestinian people and of the zionist settlers under the category of ‘civilian’ legitimizes colonialism and currently justifies the attempt for a “final solution” for the sake of the security of the genocidal organization, i.e. total ethnic cleansing through genocide.

    5. Proposing the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories that remained unconquered until 1967. On this point, libertarian imperialist social democracy is differentiated from the statist leftist social-democracy in terms of theoretical formulations and working field. However, they meet on the basic point of the relationship with the colonial state. Left social democracy expresses the imminent imperialist project of annihilating the Palestinian resistance and imposing on the wreckage of Gaza a collaborationist regime based on the experience of the Abbas management, who is an agent of the years-long ethnic cleansing. Libertarian social democracy, with a kind of Jesuit elitism and hypocrisy, advocates the fraternity of the exploited Palestinians and Israeli “peoples” or “societies”, without the destruction of the colonial state. I note that the workerist position that attributes the capacity for overthrowing the Israeli capitalist state formation exclusively to the Israeli working class, validates colonial nationalism and even lends it with an ideological envelope of pure national socialism (Nazism). Nothing new, Mussolini started out as a leftist and zionist settlers too, with strong socialist, workerist and communitarian roots.

    All the ideological points of imperialist social democracy except the last one are replacing political polemics with a biopolitical ethics and managerial lingo. The biopolitical discourse objectifies existential experience in order to strip it of its class history and political subjectivity. Biopolitical ethics defines what violence is in order to exempt a set of capitalist-state practices from the category of violence and at the same time to criminalize resistance practices. Critical biopolitical ideology ratifies imperialism’s stripping of bodies of their collective identities and their resistance power. Vulnerability is transformed ideologically into an insurmountable anthropological condition, either as a class condition or as its weak consciousness. In this context, “civilians” become the central figures of the biopolitical narrative of war, with imperialist citizenship as their archetype of identification and measure of evaluation.

    From a revolutionary point of view, the examination of experiences and the subordination of means to abstract ends that come from outside the immediate field of struggle is an ideological ploy to eliminate and replace the practical ends of direct resistance with the koinonistic ethics of the means, i.e. the anti-proletarian and counter-revolutionary values of the bourgeoisie, which reflect established inequalities. To judge the Palestinian resistance by the yardstick of anarchist or Marxist utopia is a project of ideological colonialism, but also of existential annihilation by the intelligentsia of dominant european humanism. Values that do not allow for taking sides with the existing resistance are values that are comfortable with the existing class slaughterhouse. In the offices where the fundamentalist critique on unholy means takes place, sits the Inquisition, which is certainly concerned with popular resistance, but only as an enemy. A Palestinian people separated from its armed struggle and its resistance organizations is the imaginary flock of the crusader church.

    The Palestinian revolution awakens a multitude of questions of the international anti-capitalist movement, which are inevitably answered immediately by each one’s stance. I will only mention a few of these in which the class-political borders have already been drawn within the actual conflict, and then I will focus on the revolutionary lines given to us by the revolutionary anarchists from the ground of the conflict.

    a. The identification of class relations in the actual composition of capitalist domination on a global scale. Who is an enemy and who is a friend at any particular point for the revolutionary anarchist movement? How is the distinction between direct and indirect political tasks concretized at each point, given anarchism’s characteristic historical stance of directly responding to the needs of our community as oppressed people, with the general perspective of freedom and equality? The most concrete answers, the only ones capable of bringing about alliance, immediacy and radical perspective, stem from the direct struggle of the subjects involved. This observation confirms the anarchist claim to the political autonomy of all resistance.

    b. The correlation of ends and means. A question that many anarchists falsely and arrogantly declare that anarchism has solved, unlike the statist political currents. Whenever the class conflict brings this question to the fore, as did the revolutionary initiative on October 7, all those who claim to have answered this question without having a revolutionary organization on the ground, can and do validate their ideological position in only one way: by separating themselves from revolutionary action.

    c. The strategic treatment of the relations between imperialism, the state and the social revolution.

    d. The political mediation of the resistance. Here I am not referring to the mediation of the Palestinian movement by the Palestinian political organizations, the surrounding state or, more generally, political-military forces and the international imperialist institutions. The Palestinian people have felt on their own flesh the exploitative and usually treacherous attitude of the Arab and Islamic states. One sees no friends in the UN and in the various imperialist political interventions. Here I am referring to the ideological and political mediation of antagonistic positions of the international movement on behalf of the Palestinian movement. In particular, it is important within the internationalist movement, to deal with the internalized imperialist koinonismos and also with anti-imperialist social fascism, from the point of view of their colonialist political authoritarianism against the autonomy of the Palestinian revolution. In the sphere of political mediation which cancels the field of struggle itself, belongs also the usual koinonistic address to an imaginary apathetic mass as if it constituted the political public of resistance. The political public of resistance is of course the movements themselves, from their organic processes (and their collaborations) to the militant frontier of their development.

    The confusion has spread to the internationalist movement. A simple example is the confrontation
    within the anti-fascist football club St.Pauli. The critical response (2) of the local clubs to the club’s pro-Israeli statement sharply reproduced the positions of imperialist social democracy. An exception was the message of the Turkish club, a few days later, which highlighted the historical unity of the anti-colonial and anti- racist struggle. The radical position came from the key borderland between the global North and the global South. I will focus below on the first statement (3) of the Anarchist Federation of Afghanistan-Iran, because of the intensity of its reactionary positions, its locality in a place of struggle (Middle East, Kurdistan), and in connection to this because of its internal contradictions. In contrast, I will examine the social-fascist positions that present themselves as anti-imperialist. The last critical reference will focus on conspiratorial (4) positions.

    The entirety of the ideological positions of imperialist social democracy have been eloquently and succinctly answered by the Palestinian refugee Nidal Khalaf in his intervention, “On ‘pro-Palestinian’ hypocrisy.” (5) I will only summarize at this point, but anyone who continues reading this text should read the aforementioned article as if it were interjected here. I adopt every word of it, considering it sufficient to deconstruct the scarecrows of imperialist koinonismos. N. Khalaf, after stating from the outset that “Israel” is a colonial entity created and existing as an advance military base for Western imperialism, makes it clear that a war is being waged with colonialism and that it is not a border or religious dispute. He then goes on to denounce pro-colonial pacifism and collaborationist case of the two-state solution, the condemnation of violence and international law. He explains that the western value systems underlying the allegedly friendly critique of the Palestinian resistance, exist due to and for the sake of imperialist genocide. According to the Palestinian refugee’s testimony, the real hypocrisy is not the imperialists’ policies and their propaganda, but the projection of a pro-Palestinian identity by subjects who conform to the western scheme of liberal values. The worst form of western hegemonism is the attempts at moral subjugation, which are condensed in the refusal to support the Palestinian resistance organizations. The article closes by returning back to the exponents of cultural imperialism the image of the dead civilian. The whole text decimates the ideological colonialism of imperialist koinonismos that is so internalized in the international movement.

    I proceed to a political summary of the views expressed in two interviews by two anarchists from the field, one who spoke (6) on behalf of the Palestinian anarchist organization FAUDA and one with Israeli citizenship. (7) Political positions from reality, against the political mediation of imperialist koinonismos. As another testimony (8) from the refugee Palestinian diaspora notes: “There is plenty of temptation to wag fingers in the aftermath of the operation [of October 7], but surely that task is not the domain of academics and activists in the metropole. Nor should it be the priority of diaspora Palestinians (among whom I include myself). In our environs, filled with their own kind of hostility, the priority should be to defend Palestinians against the torment to which they have been subjected by the entire industrialized world. Among politicians, artists, celebrities, and intellectuals, Palestinians have no shortage of critics happy to cosign Zionist genocide. Those critiques don’t need or desire our validation, anyway. Abandoning our brethren in order to appease the Zionist establishment will deliver no accolades. In the end, the aspirant to respectability is left only with the shame of conciliation.

    Palestinians are perfectly capable of formulating strategy and thinking through complex problems without the guidance of outsiders; they certainly don’t need half-baked moralism from dorks and social climbers in the West.”

    The actual relationship between ends and means as testimonies from ground reveal, clarifies the issue of concretizing class-political relations and identifying enemies and friends. I begin with two quotes from the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. (9) “The Gaza Palestinians have decided they’re willing to pay any price for a moment of freedom.” Who would deny this cause and its consequences? “On Saturday, Israel saw pictures it has never seen before. Palestinian vehicles patrolling its cities, bike riders entering through the Gaza gates. These pictures tear away at that arrogance.” No consequence is capable of undoing the achieved unity of this cause and this means. The October 7 initiative drew a line of war, of revolution and counter-revolution in Gaza that defines the world in an inescapable way: you either tread on one hemisphere of the Earth or the other, either with the Palestinian revolution or with imperialist genocide. The word arrogance, couched as the self-consciousness of the colonial nation (self-consciousness can only ever be negative) dissolves the counter-revolutionary propaganda about innocent victims.

    The comrade from FAUDA informs us that the common front of the Palestinian resistance under the same banner and with the common goal of liberation from zionism is a fundamental need and that their organization is fighting for the unity of the movement. It also points out the necessity of mobilizing the youth for this purpose. (10)

    The comrade with Israeli nationality informs us that what characterizes the Palestinian resistance these days, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, is the common and broad fronts. Islamists, secularists, Marxists and even national-liberals, like some parts of Fatah, are fighting side by side. The immediate class and political frontier has been defined, the immediate revolutionary purpose has been defined, the practical consequences are inescapable.

    The comrade, with their testimony, completes the revolutionary line by taking a radical stand at the rear of the colonial frontier. His words illuminate precisely what internationalist defeatism means. Already as he introduces himself he declares his place of birth, Haifa, as occupied Palestine and thus calls the occupation by its name, for all Palestinian land. Recognizing the anti-colonial resistance as the only revolutionary movement in the occupied territories and as the vanguard of any radical change, he declares his obligation to deny his Israeli identity, to become an enemy, a traitor to the colonial nation, to his “society” and to ally with the dispossessed. Here is a perception of class specific condition, of the specific consequences of ends and means. The comrade declares his duty to side with the oppressed, on their own terms and under their own leadership. And he notes on this that anarchism (11) gives him both the language and the tools to envision this politics. “For me, there is no ‘anarchist society’ to march towards, since we don’t have an end goal. I see anarchism as a resistance movement, an arsenal of tools for the oppressed all over the Earth to fight the present dystopia, and that is what attracts me to it.”

    The comrade participated in the organization “Anarchists against the Wall” (now dissolved). Since the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day, the walls between North and South have multiplied: Palestine, Mexico, Mediterranean, Evros (greek-turkish border), Kurdistan. The revolutionary initiative of October 7 was a powerful blow to the historical development of the global imperialist prison. The comrade from the settler hinterland explains that the idea of coexistence is a superficial show and that only by fighting against the wall did the two sides come together, not as enemies, but as fighters for the same purpose, comrades, co-conspirators and allies, on equal terms. “What Hamas did on Saturday, October 7, was to break the ghetto, both physically and symbolically. They broke the gates surrounding Gaza and reclaimed land inside Israel, positioning themselves as a force beyond their assigned role as the Gaza government. They put themselves at the forefront of the Palestinian liberation movement, directly decolonizing territory.” Class conditions, revolutionary consistency, ends, means, all crystal clear from the anarchist perspective that unites the oppressed in the war.

    Let us return briefly to the question of defining the grid of class relations overall. Why is the anti-colonial struggle the key meeting point on both sides of the border? Why not the workers’ struggle, the anti-patriarchal struggle, etc.? Aside from the fact that the regime of national subordination and general exile in Palestine has implanted a condition of domination that superimposes the entirety of class relations there, the comrade points out an additional condition: the settler democracy allows everything, all kinds of radicalism, as long as it is committed to the zionist military rule.

    I would like to make two comments on the information given to us by our comrades from Palestine. Both the relativist theory of the intersectional approach and the relativist theory of the abstract wage-relationship as a universal class identity, are incapable of dealing with the specific class needs and social currents that unite people in revolutionary struggle. This does not imply that the correct theory is the post- Leninist one that projects imperialism as the main antithesis in relation to which all other antitheses are indifferent. We will see this below. Direct action anarchism, even when aware of the various abstract theories of Marxist or sociological origin, goes beyond them, having at its disposal the wealth of knowledge offered by direct struggle. There are no issues that fall within a molecular sphere independent of class relations on a global scale, nor issues that fall within a mega-scale where relations are inevitably mediated by states. The scales are interrelated and the criticality of each antithesis is defined by the subjects of the resistance. There are contradictions that affect internationalist solidarity (e.g. Hamas’s links to the Turkish state and the ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories of Rojava) and direct contradictions that exclude any non polemic encounter (e.g. the participation of the working class and the queer community of the colonial Israeli nation in its war machine).

    Many libertarians internationally are still investing in the working class of the colonialist establishment. Typical is the intervention of the Anarchist Communist Group of Melbourne (12) (11/10) which, while acknowledging the complicity of the majority of the Israeli working class and not expecting Jewish workers’ solidarity to be a major force in the near future, characterizes the targeting of Israeli workers as damaging. Although this intervention describes the Israeli state in real terms, pointing out that Israeli fascism is moving towards the “final solution”, it does not neglect the obligation to imperialist social democracy to condemn Hamas with a cultural shadow (abstractly “reactionary”) and to distance itself from the targeting of Israeli civilians. But why is equality in horror damaging, especially in a permanent condition where no other practice has been able to even remotely crack the arrogance of genocidal peace, as the Israeli writer D. Levi attests?

    Both comrades from Palestine answered categorically to the questions put to them about workers’ solidarity: mass proletarian solidarity from within the colonialist entity towards the Palestinian people is an ideological ghost. The suggestion that the liberation of Palestine, and more broadly of the global South, from imperialist domination is dependent on the workers’ movement of the North, is a characteristic expression of imperialist social democracy, of the colonial capitalist conception of progress and its projection against the revolutionary class struggle. Without the direct struggle of the oppressed people, nothing else happens except the expansive reformism of genocide.

    Immediately after the revolutionary initiative of October 7, the state of settler bosses detained the thousands of Palestinian workers who crossed from Gaza every day as if moving through a labour camp, tortured them and marked them with numbers. Some workers died from the torture. In what way did the settler workers express their solidarity? By continuing to enlist and work to murder 160 children of the uncivilized proletariat every day.

    The popular movement of the citizens of the occupied colonial hinterland has a direct enemy and if it does not confront this enemy in a way proportional to the intensity and depth of the current nationalist offensive, it will leave the nationwide responsibility of Israelis for the culmination of the genocide intact. War with zionist fascism which suppresses even the slightest questioning of the “final solution” and which devalues even the Israeli hostages and their protesting relatives, must be internalized in the Israeli nation. During the Nazi occupation of Europe, Italian and German antifascists found a way to stand in solidarity with the peoples in the conquered lands and to put antifascist resistance into practice: they defected to the partisans. This was the clearest manifestation of proletarian internationalism.

    Of course, the preconditions for solidarity to the Palestinian resistance are not put forth by the anti-nationalist anti-colonial movement of the colonial entity, which has expressed understanding for the loss of its own people in the revolutionary attack of October 7, but by the imperialist social democracy. The same fascism, especially its antiproletarian-counterrevolutionary expressions, must be confronted in the imperialist hinterland, such as the capitalists’ terrorism against the workers of Starbucks (13) or against Harvard students in the USA and the military rule in the streets of Europe.

    As various people attempt to contrast the Kurdish Freedom Movement with the Palestinian movement, doing in this way great disservice to internationalist solidarity, let me remind that the internationalist connection of the PKK with the revolutionary proletarian movement in the turkish territory is the HBDH ( Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement) the front of the Turkish armed revolutionary organizations with the PKK.

    Those who say that “resistance, uprisings and revolutions will either be social/class or nothing”, denying the class and social nature of the Palestinian resistance and the class and social elements of the political self-determination of the resistance organizations, are aiding the imperialist genocide. Their “nothing” is a gleeful applause for the cultural and physical ethnic cleansing of the oppressed who stray from the fundamentalist lines of colonial socialism. After all, the ideological totalitarianism of “All or Nothing” always comes to nothing anyway. (14)

    Speaking of workers’ struggle, when the FAUDA comrade was asked about the possibility of a new general strike of Palestinians like in 2021, he replied that although it is not a trivial and useless practice, the struggle today has gone beyond this level. The situation and experience prove the necessity of armed struggle. The interdependence of means and ends is not deduced from some abstract interpretation of the conflict (e.g. workerism), nor from a mechanistic projection of abstractions onto practice. Even the purely economic struggle, as we move away from the reformism of the workers’ aristocracy, requires armed ways of protecting itself against military and penal repression, strike-breaking and anti-union terrorism (e.g. in the greek territory today). The political strike sharply raises the level of conflict. And finally, the whole historical experience of the workers’ movement showcases that the labor camp is a base for self-organization and for venturing into the struggle, but not a place of militant power, when the bourgeoisie is ready to extend its military means beyond limits.

    The class conflict in Palestine reveals the hypocrisy of the ideological distinction, founded on an anti-armed struggle stance, between organized vanguardism and spontaneous insurrection, a construct propagated in the libertarian movement by the situationist lackeys of counter-revolution. Many political texts claiming the title of solidarity with Palestine, call for or wish for the emergence of an uprising in the image of the 1st Intifada, as opposed to the current military conflict. These vulgar euro-elitists, who pretend to be the generals of the correct ways of rebellion, underestimate the Palestinian people, as if they were not already rebellious, as if they were not involved in the resistance in a thousand ways, as if they cannot judge for themselves what the right ways are, and with no sense of responsibility, push a line of disarmament and non-organization within the slaughterhouse, only to promote the doctrine of their political subservience to the military rule’s monopoly, as the genuine liberal colonialists that they are.

    On the actual ground, Gaza, the quality and size of the war production of the Palestinian resistance shows, in real terms, what the historical evolution of social horizontality means. Both the arsenal and infrastructure of resistance, with their particular characteristics within specific cultural and political conditions, express the breadth and depth of creative participation and social cohesion in relation to the conflict with colonialism. The main weapons of resistance are improvised. To manufacture the available quantity of rockets and various explosive devices required a huge amount of work. In addition, it required working space and an equally vast transport network. Even more work was needed to build the underground forts, which serve almost all the activities of the combative forces, and not only their cover at the time of close combat. In other words, this is an infrastructure project that serves far more needs than the classic concrete forts, such as those of the Maginot and Metaxa lines, with all the work being done underground and in incomparable territorial density. Additional work was required to ensure that all work was done invisibly and that no information would leak, within a geographically tiny space, overrun by people and which comprises the world model for technocratic surveillance and espionage.

    None of these tasks, in the given guerrilla warfare conditions, could have be done for 30 pieces of silver or under gunpoint. Only volunteers with credibility for their dedication to the cause could accomplish this feat. A pan-popular army of unparalleled cohesion density, with no historical precedent, prepared the counterattack against the zionist class enemy and the long war of attrition. The conditions demanded an unprecedented density in the unity of social and armed resistance, and the revolted Palestinian people brought the evolution of humanity towards social self-direction one step further. A step further within the tightest universal prison, a step over an abyss that had to be bridged for us all to move forward, lest we be swallowed up by the history of capitalist and state rule.

    In order to carry out the multidimensional program of the aforementioned work, improvisation was needed at all scales, in all phases. It is impossible for a structure of tight vertical direction to carry out all the interdependent productive objectives in the given conditions. It may be difficult for the individualist mentality that permeates part of the anti-capitalist movement to grasp the concept of coordinated self organization, its radicalism and its evolutionary force, but the revolutionary people are putting it into practice. I will not tire of saying it, the historical evolution of guerrilla struggle is the main natural field of development of the fractionally synthetic autonomy of the human animal, because it aims at its liberation from its cultural cannibalism and has developed explosively in the capitalist era, which has unified humanity in a negative way.

    At this point we must note something that the guerrilla organization of the Kurdish Freedom Movement constantly emphasizes: capitalist technology is not capable of defeating determined resistance. The self-sacrifice, cooperativeness and resourcefulness of social resistance are capable of annihilating all the mechanical means of the enemy, its one-dimensional way of organizing and its inherent predisposition to take precautions by increasing distances and obstacles. Victory over modern industrial warfare depends on appropriate tactics, strategy and logistics, but it derives, like guerrilla tactics, strategy and logistics, from the moral forces and collective intelligence of the revolutionary people. Hamas has developed homemade rockets into precision guided systems and has expanded its arsenal with effective portable anti-tank and anti-helicopter missile systems, also of its own design. The ideological dogma that considers the proletariat capable only of tearing up bricks of the pavements, is a vile insult to the working class. If euro-elitism cannot understand that beneath the soil of Gaza a temple of popular culture has been built, catacombs that cut the legs off the modern empire, and if it cannot comprehend insurrection beyond setting up barricades with rubbish bins, it is because of insufficient imagination, but more fundamentally, because of insufficient determination.

    Horizontalism is not a question of preference of certain closed communities, but a question of breaking down class relations, political heteronomy, all inequalities and especially the conditions of polemic power on which they are based. By what yardstick would horizontality be measured if, while the community of the oppressed filled the coffins, the masters stood unmoved like the columns of the Parthenon?

    The authoritarian critique to the means of insurrection, a critique that is certainly directed against the insurrection itself, attempts to define what is ‘of the peoples’, in the way that bio-political critique validates totalitarian rule and its genocides by abolishing political self-determination. The juxtaposition of the 1st Intifada against the armed Palestinian resistance, by recognizing an uprising as popular only when unorganized and unarmed masses are involved, denies the people their status when they organize, arm themselves and try to fight back on as equal terms as possible. This reverse insurrectionalism is no different, neither in political position nor in morality, from the imperialists’ sarcastic statements, “We are against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people”, at the same time that they have unleashed their gendarme to slaughter the rebellious people. In the real conditions of Palestine (and beyond), denying the popular essence of armed resistance means not only to agree with the liquidation of armed resistance, but also, to give masked consent to genocide, since the separation of Hamas from the Palestinian people is precisely the pretext for the dehumanization of the entire Palestinian people, who have been branded as the “shield of terrorists”. He who holds the weapons defines the scope of the hostility. The movements that denounce the armed popular resistance of Palestine have nothing to offer up against the imperialist total massacre, that is being advertised live as the upcoming political management of the entire global South. To settle for throwing a rock or two, not to strike at those who ensure their well-being through displacement and genocide, but instead to implore them for humanity. The means do not tell us what the end is, but they do tell us what it is not. The separation of armed struggle from insurrection is certainly not a friend of Palestine, it is not a friend of political autonomy, nor of social liberation; it cannot go beyond the vortex of serfdom to military rule.

    Unfortunately, calls for non-organization and disarmament are also heard from collectives active around the Kurdish revolutionary movement. How do they forget from one announcement to the next, the armed struggle in Rojava? Have they not understood the decisive contribution of the PKK’s party-popular guerrilla movement in the development of the entire movement over half a century? Have they never heard of the declared People’s Revolutionary War and the unity of its four fields: guerrilla, youth and women’s uprising, direct social self-defense and socialist workers’ movement? Have they overlooked the account of the battle of Heftanin (2020) and the evolution of its lessons in the three-year all-out war that followed in the Medya Defense Zones? Today’s Kurdish guerrilla resistance promotes itself as a model for the whole world.

    Let’s see what the comrade from the colonial hinterland has to say about the issue of diffuse struggle: “Dana El-Kurd, a Palestinian academic, in her book ‘Polarized and Demobilized- Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine’ makes the argument that the Palestinian struggle is not only anti-colonial, but also anti-authoritarian in its roots. During the days of the first Intifada, Palestinians had a vibrant civil society, spontaneously organizing local committees to coordinate struggle, and address the needs of local communities. This uprising was democratic in its nature, and was fought against the will of the PLO. Even within the PLO, as Edward Said argues in his book ‘The Question of Palestine’, the structure was organized in a very democratic way, with internal discussions and open criticism, in complete contrast to politics in the Arab world, an area filled with reactionary regimes and self-appointed dictators and out of touch monarchs. The Palestine liberation movement was always the most democratic and progressive movement in the region, and inspired many other anti-authoritarian movements and uprisings, some of them we saw during the Arab Spring, and many are still ongoing. Many argue that the defeat of the Palestinian left in Lebanon, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo accords and the rise of political Islam have changed the picture, but I think many of the original characteristics are still in place.

    Having said all that, I can’t really say that Palestinians ever had an anarchist movement per se. Palestinian anarchists do exist, but like among Israelis, it isn’t really organized as a movement, nor can I say it’s a popular idea. I do believe though that even if the name anarchism isn’t being used, Palestinians do tend to organize in an anarchist way, without calling it like that. New guerrilla groups in the West Bank in recent years like the Lion’s Den in Nablus, Jenin Brigade in Jenin and Balata Battalion in Balata refugee camp organize in a non-hierarchical way and are non-sectarian in principle, open to all the different factions to join. These youth groups are completely outside the control of the Palestinian Authority and the old politics of factions and parties, and their unpredictable, spontaneous nature is challenging to the Israeli authorities.”

    It is logically consistent to note that the reproduction of imperialist koinonismos in the libertarian movement and the aberration of “insurrection, not armed conflict”, are expressed by a plethora of ideological schools that either openly oppose the platformist tradition or tend to smother the organizational approach within the boundaries of the national field and of legitimacy. The current class struggle demands that anarchist revolutionary organization be in its constitution borderless and guerrilla. The world that rises will be shaped by those revolutionary organizations that fight and take roots simultaneously in all corners of the Earth. If we anarchists miss this calling, the responsibility will not belong to history. From a historical evolutionary point of view, I reckon that these days are the last chance for anarchism, until the imminent collapse of capitalism, to become a real force for change. The fighting comrades in Kurdistan, Armenia, in the land of the Mapuche, in Palestine and perhaps in other parts of the South that do not come up in the northerners’ maps are paving the way.

    The question of bankrupt anarchism and bankrupt leftism

    The statement of the Federation of the Anarchist Era, Afghanistan-Iran (9/10/23) (15) exalts the polemics of imperialist social democracy. The condemnation of the October 7 revolutionary initiative is not limited to the act itself. The act is placed entirely in the sphere of the war between powers. The condemnation of Hamas adopts the rhetoric constructed by the genocidal and counter-revolutionary imperialist propaganda. Violence is denounced not as a method but as a tautology of statism. The distinction between civilians and resistance goes to an extent that is constitutive for political meanings: on one side are “peoples” as passive subjects without class determinants and on the other side are governments, which are equated as an ideological category. Referring to the specific field, however, the announcement focuses its aggressive assertion on one pole of power, the Islamist one. And peace is not put forward as a pragmatic perspective, always under the yoke of colonialism, but as an ultimate goal and at the same time an accepted social status which was destroyed by the resistance’s initiative. Peace and security.

    Since when did security, the main pretext for state and imperialist terrorism, become a revolutionary project capable of inescapably canceling the struggle for freedom and equality? The conflict has begun anew, here is the evil, according to the statement. As if the years-long siege of Gaza by a nation of settlers were not one-sided war. And as if the preceding, “peaceful” status were not based on the threat of the new status, that is, the “final solution”. Did this particular anarchist collective ascertain from the prisoners of the Gaza strip that the state of their genocidal peonage is acceptable? This statement is an exaltation of voluntary servitude, transposed on the peoples by an ideological elite. Are the Iranian insurgents to be deemed deluded, as they fight for their freedom by risking their lives and continuing while the regime’s murderous terror intensifies? Let them be left to the peace and security offered by submission to power… Why is it that in one place freedom is life and in another place, where there is no guarantee of survival and tranquility, freedom is superfluous and the needs of the settlers (peace and security) are prioritized? Simply because the Federation of the Anarchist Era chooses enemies and friends based on localist criteria. Since the Palestinian resistance is led by forces linked to the regime we are directly confronting (Iranian), we are siding with the polemic of the colonizer. This reflects zero political autonomy and a scant utilitarian internationalism. This is of course campism with a sectarian motive. Idealistic neutrality, speaking in the language of counter revolution, is the most insidious form of campism. In the interpretation and utopia of the Federation, anti statism is the completion of liberalism, with class relations remaining intact, with the crimes of imperialism and zionist ethnic cleansing and counter-revolution going unpunished, with memory trashed.

    By disregarding the fighting Palestinians and by nullifying their discourse, which declares that this is a war with colonialism, the statement reduces the war to a question of ideologies. The meaning that the Western ideological trend wants to imperiously impose is to strip the real class-political subjects of their class-political determinations. From the point of view of fundamentalist liberal consciousness, ideology is an illusion, without which citizens can peacefully regulate their relations. In the train of thought of liberal metaphysics, Thomas Hobbes’ classic scheme, which describes the state as a necessary evil for the safeguarding of the “social contract”, makes more sense than the version of the Federation, which regresses as to the determination of the cause: if ideology is the cause of the state and of war, then what is the cause of ideology? The answer, if we adhere to this theory, is illusory consciousness. Everything comes down to a question of enlightenment. And as usual, enlightenment is not aimed at promoting direct revolutionary action, but at preventing it and promoting class pacification. What does this metaphysics have to do with the revolutionary anarchist tradition? Nothing, not with any revolutionary tradition. Anarchist ethics and vision is the spawn and development of direct struggle, not an offshoot of bourgeois koinonismos and pacifism.

    The reduction of this conflict to ideology agrees with the imperialist ideology about the “war of civilizations”. The aforementioned statement takes this provocative polemic beyond its general formulation; it targets the side of the resistance, describing its ideology as reactionary and inhuman, with the only evidence being its resistance activity. In this way, the counter-revolutionary terrorism of the colonialist regime is transformed into the logical and inevitable consequence of the unacceptable provocation of the resistance. Having assimilated itself to the counter-revolutionary line of imperialist ideology, due to its sectarian perspective, the Federation culminates its attack on the Palestinian resistance by reproducing the pretext of the colonial militarists for the massacre of the Palestinian people: “using innocents as human shields”. How obvious, the army of colonialists is bombing the Palestinian people, slaughtering their children, pushing them towards the Sinai desert, and attacking them on the route, in order to free them from the terrible power of Hamas! Journalists, nurses and international volunteers, who are unaware that they are being used as human shields by the barbarians, are bombarded by the progressive forces in order to free themselves from this delusion! There are several ways to endorse genocide. Erdogan has literally put his signature on drones that are hitting Rojava and Basur. The Federation of the Anarchist Era and others have put their signature on the bombs that flatten hospitals, schools, temples and refugee camps in Gaza and have put the blame up front on the resistance, with their polemic pen. A sign of the bankruptcy of anarchism in the era of liberal illusions.

    The so-called libertarians who blame Hamas equally or primarily for the suffering of the people of Gaza are, like the imperialists, silencing the fact that the people of Gaza have been condemned to an exhausting blockade because they elected a government that disobeyed the colonialists. All those who criticize Hamas at the moment it attacked the wall and the settler prison guards are, like the imperialists, demanding that the Palestinians abandon anti-colonial resistance. They demand it by means of genocide. Their anti-statist or democratic sentiment is encapsulated in the disparagement and abandonment of the Palestinian people to genocide because they chose the “wrong” leadership.

    According to the logic of liberal fundamentalism, the PKK is responsible for the razing of the Kurdish towns of Bakur in 2015, during the war of Democratic Self-Government, and the Kurdish youth should not get organized with the YDGH and YPS, but against them. In this way one sides with the special warfare of the Grey Wolves and of Mossad.

    The Palestinians’ self-organization which the authoritarian liberals, so called libertarians, advocate, will never happen, because it is a historically arbitrary metonymy for submission to zionist colonialism and imperialism. The Palestinian people do not lie in wait for the luminaries of imperialist koinonismos, they are self-organizing in their daily uprising, in their armed struggle, in their survival, in their mutual aid and in the care of the wounds of genocide. The most radical form of self-organization is the collective memory of the martyrs, which turns into revolutionary organization and an endless river of revenge. Only this self-organization that rejects voluntary servitude and the inequality in life and death can be internationalist. Yes,there is a problem. If a statist religious party is leading the resistance and anarchism seems to be on the opposite side, there is a historical problem for anarchism.

    Koinonistic neutrality has a common intersection with the leftist defense of counter-revolutionary regimes which are antagonistic to NATO imperialism, around which they complement each other. They both derive from the denial of proletarian and social political autonomy within the unremitting war of capitalism. Pacifist idealism, by denying war, makes the people a passive subject, compromised in the world class hierarchy, while statist anti-imperialism also makes the people a passive subject of the world class hierarchy, unable to change the general relations without the mediation of bourgeois power and unable to change the class and political relations at the grassroots level. This opportunism is a by-product of the historical bankruptcy of marxism. By investing in Islamism in order to have an effective anti-imperialism, leftism comes to terms with its historical end and changes sides, since political Islam was the investment of the imperialist counter-revolution in the South. It is common, and historically explicable, for would-be leaders of the left to shift from one pole of power to another on occasion, in order to hold the position of would-be leadership. It has happened even in the most radical revolutionary organizations. The adherents of the anti-NATO front of Iran, Russia, China or even Turkey, support the counter-revolution in order to continue having a say about the anti-imperialist struggle, because it is necessary for them to gloss over the defeated anti-imperialist strategy of Leninism. Since the leadership has been historically defeated, it demands that the people become servile too. This pretentiously anti-imperialist opportunism, being unable to lead the living subjects of resistance in the global South, refers to Khomeini and Saddam Hussein (16), the butchers of the proletarian movement, of the revolutions and of the marxist left in Iran and Iraq.

    The arab and islamic states have sold Palestine out, many decades now. No state will take on a clash with NATO, unless its own existence is threatened. No bourgeoisie can lead the resistance to the end, because it will not risk its own existence, as Bakunin pointed out. The history of the PLO is yet another example. We saw how the Iranian counter-revolution sucked up the execution of Soleimani. No state will seriously go to war over Palestine. No state will throw more resources into the battle for Palestine than are necessary to spend in order to strengthen its own position in the inter-state power relations, by undermining its antagonizers. The pro-Palestinian war crowns are a preventive protection of the counter-revolution in the Middle East and are specifically aimed at maintaining discipline in the armies and paramilitary militias of the arab and islamic states. The above positions and predictions were written before Nasrallah’s backpedaling statement, which confirmed them. Also, before the Houthis take up action, but with knowledge of their expressed threats. The Houthis are a community that recently faced a genocidal war and remains under siege by local exploiters, NATO powers, the saudi monarchy and the Emirates, with the active participation of the greek army.

    The revolutionary resurgence of Palestine, the worldwide popular mobilization, especially of the muslim world, and the surge of imperialist terrorism with unprecedented brutality, put the anti-imperialist struggle at the forefront of the internationalist social movement. In the Middle East, the urgency of the popular anti-imperialist resistance strengthens the need to overthrow the state-capitalist regimes, whether religious or purely bourgeois, dictatorial or parliamentary. The opportunists who support the counter-revolution in the name of anti-imperialism also undermine the anti-imperialist resistance, because they have betrayed its popular basis. On the other hand, liberals who separate the social revolution from the anti- imperialist resistance are dividing the popular uprising, giving away living radical forces to nationalist and religious fascism and thus undermining the social revolution.

    Turkish fascism in particular, which incorporated Palestine in its neo-Ottoman conquest plans, is doing service to NATO imperialism, in parallel with zionist fascism. Turkish fascism is spreading war, fascism and genocide in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus and Europe. However, it doesn’t make a move, unless it serves the interests of American or Russian imperialism or both. Neo-Turkism was a child of imperialism. Turkish islamic-fascism is the product of the imperialists’ desperate plan to dismantle the revolutionary movement in Kurdistan and the turkish territory. The same plan that led to the transnational conspiracy to capture Abdullah Ocalan. Erdogan’s anti-imperialist speeches are also part of the special counter-revolutionary war that the Turkish state is waging in cooperation with all imperialist and regional reactionary forces. If the AKP-MHP regime offered any support to Hamas, it did so only to undermine revolutionary internationalism, to strengthen the repression and genocide in Kurdistan, to promote its colonialist plans, which also involve Palestine, and to enhance its negotiating position among the hegemonic powers of the World War III imperialist war. Behind the facade, the flow of oil and steel from Turkey to Israel has not been interrupted, according to a recent article (17), and there is direct military involvement of Turkey in the genocide of Palestinians, as the zionists use the Kürecik Radar Station in Malatya province.

    Turkish fascism likens israeli fascism to the Islamic State, just as israeli fascism also identifies the Palestinian resistance with the Islamic State, the demon that NATO and the colonialists bred together. All the massacres carried out by the I.S. inside turkish territory were the plans of the MIT, and of the current Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan personally, as were also the anti-Kurdish assassinations in Europe. On the same day that the Palestinian revolutionary attack took place, the Turkish air force bombed a mosque in the Makhmur refugee camp in Basur, as part of the ongoing war against the social forces of democratic con- federalism. (18) An Israeli army spokesman sarcastically mocked the Turkish regime’s genocide accusations directed at Israeli fascism, pointing out that they are doing the same in northern Syria. Zionism, no longer having anything to gain by adorning imperialist humanism, speaks candidly: only we, the blessed ones, are human – the rest are just flesh, useful for our progress. Neo-Ottomanism is compelled to usurp the revolutionary movement. At the same time that the mercenaries of turkish colonialism in Rojava rape and murder women because the women’s revolution is gaining ground and femicide is multiplying in the turkish territory, Erdogan’s wife and daughter are crowning themselves as leaders of the regime’s “pro-palestine” movement. The political alignment with the staged manipulation of revolutionary internationalism cannot be justified, it has no innocence.

    Imperialism must be defeated militarily wherever it lands or places its war proxies. Only the popular movements can achieve this. The zionist military rule must be defeated. In order to socially deconstruct the zionist organization, it is necessary to defeat it in war. Only popular resistance can achieve this. Turkish colonialism must be defeated. The Revolutionary People’s War of the Kurdish Freedom Movement and internationalist confederalism is achieving this. Fascism must be defeated everywhere, the insurrections must win by means of the political autonomy and military might of the proletarian social forces.

    Anti-imperialism or social revolution, fascism or imperialist democracy, multiple poles or a single pole in the global capitalist order, european enlightenment or jihadism, anti-occupation or workers’ struggle, war or self-organization, insurrection or armed resistance, Palestine or Kurdistan? Artificial dilemmas. It is the job of the bosses to make such enforced divisions on the internationalist social revolution. The most important consequence of revolutionary anarchism is the immediacy of its commitment to the entirety of all particular points of struggle. This alone builds the cohesion of the revolutionary social front.

    In these days of the crucial frontal confrontation with NATO terrorism in the Middle East and in the metropolises of the North, revolutionary internationalism has the responsibility to promote solidarity with the Kurdish and Palestinian resistance on a undivided basis. (19) It is crucial for the revolutionary social and anti-imperialist/anti-colonial character of any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people to not neglect the task of highlighting the conflict in Kurdistan and informing about the current intensity of colonialist attacks in northern Syria and Armenia. At the same time, contrasting the social gains of the Kurdish movement against the Palestinian resistance is unacceptable. As organizations of the turkish- kurdish political front point out, “we support the struggle of the people of Kurdistan and Palestine without any ifs and buts.” (20) Sectarian attitudes are expressions of the conditions of repression of revolutionary internationalism. In practice, the state-capitalist leaderships that organize the military and bio-political rule of the Middle East and of the whole Earth are the same for both Kurdistan and Palestine. The same imperialist directorates, the same war industries, the same energy trusts, the same logistics chains.

    As a revolutionary internationalist movement we have a duty to promote the arab-kurdish alliance, which has spread the social revolution in NE Syria and is defending the battle front against the turkish occupation. To promote it wherever we struggle.

    From the message of an HPG guerrilla of Arab origin fighting in Medina of Basur (Siyar Ereb, 14/10) (21): “As a member of the brother Arab nations, I now take my place in the Free Movement. I joined the guerrillas to respond to enemy attacks. I am very happy and proud of this. […] Genocidal wars are being waged everywhere. […] We will resist until we fulfill our defensive duty and defeat the invading forces. Arab peoples must support this honorable struggle. Our young people need to join this struggle and fight against fascism.”

    And the account of an internationalist fighter a few years before: “An experience full of hope? There are many in this case too. I can juxtapose another man whom I met, who is a boy from Raqqa, an Arab. He willingly chose to leave Raqqa. He was a worker in a garage, he was 15 years old, and, while at work, a civil guard approached him, one of those who in many Syrian cities goes around like they are a king and does whatever they want, who said to him: “Show me how you pray”. And after he prayed, the guard told him: “You are phony, you don’t believe, you don’t pray right”. Well, the boy said: “I am here in my city, I am working, and here comes someone who is not even from Raqqa to bother me and tell me I don’t know how to pray”. And so he decided to leave and to migrate to the North. In the end he joined the YPG because he saw the Kurdish people like people who behave in the opposite way to what he had experienced.

    He was one of the first Arabs to join a force that was initially 100% Kurdish. I met him one year after this happened, and we were in the same Unit. He is an impressive person. Aside from the fact that he explained his plan to me, which was that he would participate in the liberation of Rojava which has then to become the liberation of all Syria. And he wanted to go fight in Turkey, in Iran and in Iraq. “Finally afterwards we will be able to liberate Palestine and in this way also Lebanon”, he would say. And if there was a need also in Italy, he would come here to fight too. He is a person, almost illiterate, who had never seen anything outside of Raqqa, of Kobane and maybe a bit further, but he has a genuine will and perspective, a real one. I am speaking in the present tense, even though I unfortunately cannot be sure if he is still alive, since I left him in September, and in Syria life expectancy is rather short. I fought by his side, and as a fighter he is just impressive, indescribable. There were scenes that, to a westerner like myself, seem like they come out of a movie, how a person can fight like this. As a proletarian and a man with no education, illiterate, condemned by his life to a limited reality, he is a revolutionary of the highest levels in history imaginable. This is how I know that in the north of Syria there are thousands like him, and this is inestimable.

    I can say his nom de guerre, Zagros Raqqa, because no one in Rojava uses their real name…

    The biggest lessons are two. The first is that there is an inequality, a divide, and I already knew this, between the West and the Middle East, or maybe between the West and the rest of the world. It is so great that you cannot imagine it, it cannot be described, and unfortunately, it is not even enough for one to go there and fight in order to bridge the gap, in the sense that it is a divide between those who have everything and those who have nothing, between one who is well and one who is suffering. This is a realization of the seriousness of this situation, made mainly by the one who goes to fight in such war situations.

    The other lesson is that the revolution is just and necessary, however, when we say ‘revolution’ we must be conscientious about the gravity of this word in the sense of the pain, the tragedy and the pain it brings about, because a revolution is still a turning point for society, it is an upheaval of society that doesn’t happen peacefully, even though it is necessary, and so we should not use this term lightly. We don’t need to imagine simply that it is a ‘beautiful thing’. Those who think like this should better give up on politics and do something else, while it would be useful to have people who understand how terrible it is to have to have a revolution, but who continue to think it is necessary.” (Davide Grasso, former YPG fighter, Italy, September 2017)

    Stories of spies and saints

    “Palestinians have determined to proceed without their Western custodians. Decolonization is a grueling project, generally beyond the acumen of those weaned in comfort. The professional classes are stuck in bourgeois abstractions (from which they derive so many rewards) or profess a material politics they don’t in reality support. They demand a bloodless liberation, but only without the colonizer’s blood, even as the native bleeds out in full view of the world. They demand a revolt without consequence, a caucus of pristine victims politely asking to stay alive. They have taught Fanon but ignored his observation that decolonization ‘cannot be accomplished by the wave of a magic wand, a natural cataclysm, or a gentleman’s agreement.’

    These erstwhile liberals don’t need to consult Palestinians to see how wrong they are. Zionists have been explaining for decades that Israel must be defeated by force.” (A Voice from Palestine) (22)

    It is undeniable that Hamas is working with states. It does not hide it, since it is not ashamed of its statism. It is also plausible that the revolutionary initiative of 7 October was aimed, among other things, at significantly changing the inter-state power relations in the Middle East and at overturning the political relations as regards the imperialist hegemony. As Hamas confirmed after a month of fighting (in an interview with the New York Times), the initiative was founded on a decision to break free from the long and exhausting siege of Gaza, at any cost.

    None of the above facts implies that the stated purposes are contrary to the will of the Palestinian people. This implication presupposes as an arbitrary rule that the people always choose peace, even when that means their long-term extermination, over desperate resistance. The lackeys of genocidal colonial peace silence the fact that the news of the invasion against the colonial fortress was greeted with mass celebrations in the besieged Palestinian territories. (23)

    No one on the planet could have interpreted Hamas’ move as the product of anti-state struggle, nor of course as independent of any state assistance. However, the statist mediation of popular interests does not make these interests entirely artificial and alien; it does not cancel the existence of needs determined by the class-oppressed communities and exploited classes themselves, which are assigned to the political mediation of an agent of power. From the anarchist point of view, political mediation is a historical problem, precisely because there are always proletarian and social needs, which are confused with antagonistic needs wherever authoritarian mediation takes place. The idea that any mediated will expresses false needs and only hostile interests, expresses a vulgar aristocratic anti-popular elitism. As if the people are a thoughtless passive entity that will be redeemed only when it is enlightened by some blessed ones, or by chance.

    Why should the upsurge of the Middle East or even of the whole Earth be a hostile prospect for those who permanently live and die inside the furnace of colonialist rule? How else will Palestine be liberated, if the colonial fortress is not blown up like a powder keg and thus, if the whole world does not flare up first? The scaremongering about ‘escalation’ is a central propaganda line of the imperialists. If there is a specific problem with state mediators here, it is their inherent incompetence and their insufficient motivation to engage in the anti-imperialist struggle to the degree that is necessary for the liberation of Palestine. The ideological elites of any social democracy have even less of a motivation and zero capacity.

    In Greece, a group that brandishes an understanding of politics as an interplay between agents, surpassing even the greek Communist Party, added to the above that “the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its inhabitants was and is among the plans of Hamas’ agents, was intended and indeed is a precondition for its continuation.” (24) This conclusion negates the fundamental axiom of the state that state expediency takes precedence over all other expediency and therefore of the interests of its citizens, because it completely equates the interests of Hamas with the interests of the supporting states and their interests with the interests of the enemy states (NATO, Israel, etc.). This is the typical Hitlerian reduction (propaganda manual in “My Struggle”), historically anti-Semitic, of all antitheses to the dark designs of a principal enemy. This mystical reduction is the pretext for stripping the meaning from the antitheses and subordinating them to a simplistic monolithic ideology. In this case, the contradictory factors in the imperialistic management of the Palestinian genocide are blatant. It has been shown by official documents that the colonialists are seeking the complete displacement of the disobedient people. But the vassal Arab states do not want the surplus Palestinian precariat and the displaced Palestinian resistance in their territories. Neither do the European imperialists. That’s why the Egyptian junta keeps them corralled in the slaughterhouse. Which state and why would it want the Palestinian resistance to diffuse, except the settlers, who have their own special interest as a priority? The NATOists have pulled out of the drawer the case of a collaborationist palestinian state, the ideal plan for them, however, as much as an open war was necessary in order to attempt the definitive annihilation of resistance throughout occupied Palestine, so too a war makes the prospect of annihilation unrealistically idealistic. The national disregard for the Palestinian Authority, its total weakness on an international level, the resistance’s ultimatums to Abbas (5-6/11/23, Organization ‘Children of Abu Jadal’, from inside the police forces of the Palestinian Authority), and the attack on him (7/11/23, questioned by the Palestinian Authority and the imperialists) confirm these lines, which were written prior to this. The interpretation that open war was a priori necessary and legitimate for the colonialists and imperialists, and by implication, the October 7 attack was a pretext, turns the causes and practical consequences upside down, with a preconceived position that resistance is irrational. Why would the imperialists seek to feed and diffuse anti-colonial anti-imperialist resistance, why would they want to compromise the relations of the Arab states with Israeli colonialism, why would they want to increase Iranian-Shiite influence and to hand over to the mediating Turkish hegemony more bargaining cards, while the Hamas state was quietly managing the Gaza camp? Why would the Iranian regime want the Palestinians scattered around rather than at the feet of the Israeli hinterland? There is only one answer: because this is how it suits the ideology that says that the powerful are always powerful and that they inevitably pull the strings of history.

    All the current complications have one driving premise, which alone gives them coherent meaning: the settlers’ and NATO’s expectation to eliminate Palestinian resistance, because on October 7 it manifested itself powerfully. With the unhindered prolonged mass massacre of the people of Gaza, with the repeated bombings of refugee convoys, hospitals, schools and churches turned into refugee shelters, with the killing of 101 volunteers of the UN humanitarian mission (until 12 November), the targeted killing of dozens of Red Crescent nurses and doctors (an article published on 19/10 reports 192 deaths since 7/1025 and of 40 journalists (by the first week of November), the imperialists are sending the message to the people of the whole world, that those who do not get used to poverty, exclusion, displacement, incarceration and slow death, will be brutally exterminated. Resistance is not the pretext for this coordinated operation of global terror, it is its cause, its enemy. The ‘agents’ game’ theorists are capable of making up any nonsense in order to interpret the facts to suit their simplistic ideology, always against the resistance.

    The more specific interpretations of the hypothesis that the attack on the colonial fortress was carried out to provoke the war and impose a new occupation of Gaza or an imperialist protectorate regime, refer to marine hydrocarbon deposits and pipelines. Some also link Turkish involvement with competition for energy routes. These interpretations have the advantage of reducing political conspiracies to specific economic interests and thus pretend to flirt with an anti-capitalist or even anti-imperialist perspective. On the specific field of conflict, it is a stupid ideology to suggest that while there was a semblance of capitulation there were more obstacles to the exploitation of the undersea resources west of Gaza than have now arisen due to open warfare. The only ideal footing of this view is the total disparagement of the Palestinian resistance or popular resistance in general. On 7 October a dynamic of total collapse of the colonialist organization was triggered, but the pseudo-intellectuals of the North could see nothing but the endless development of imperialist domination.

    It is not only that they cannot see in any other way than through the language of subjugation. They can neither think in any other way than in the mentality of capital. The usual talk about oil is not class analysis, it is vulgar political economy. Besides, something that is a key issue in capitalist competition everywhere, energy resources, is not enough to describe and explain anything relevant to the specific forms that the class-political struggle takes. Then, politics is reduced entirely to the sphere of political economy and, as a corollary, war falls into the category of political guise. This scheme, of course, comes from the most extreme liberal school.

    The conspiratorial pseudo-understanding of the October 7 revolutionary initiative offers the greatest ideological service to genocide, having eliminated the existence of resistance by statute. We can passively watch the massacre without guilt, since everything is pre-designed and inevitable and there is no popular resistance on the ground. The aforementioned group spews out its fatalism on the Palestinians: “The residents of [Gaza] are complying [!] with a directive from the Israeli state and are moving from the north to the south despite UN complaints that Israel is imposing a collective punishment, calling the ultimatum ‘horrible’.” Too much compliance by the elite of koinonismos.

    Simplistic reductions in order to get rid of the real contradictions are also expressed in more subtle tones. E.g. (from another group’s text): “Hamas is an Islamist organization. Huge differences of all kinds separate us from it, including – but not limited to – the tactic of targeting civilians. Keeping in our hearts the days of the Palestinian intifada, we stand always and wholeheartedly with the Palestinian people and their resistance, but we see ourselves as far removed from any Islamist formation. We cannot ignore the fact that Hamas’s growth is largely due to its strengthening by Israel itself during the period when it was trying to weaken the secular and progressive forces of the Palestinian resistance. In a similar way, the US was funding and arming Islamist forces as a counterweight to the socialist and communist movements in the Arab and Islamic world. The truth is that Israel chose the enemy it considered most easily manageable. What it was trying to achieve (and it succeeded) was to reverse the internationalization of the Palestinian question (which was the greatest conquest of the resistance until the 1990s) and turn it into an issue of the Islamic world alone. This role was played by Hamas. A role destructive to the movement’s prospects. However, we cannot ignore the fact that at the moment Hamas is also the result of decades of oppression and humiliation of a people. That the young people, born and raised in a prison, seeing their families slaughtered again and again, are siding with those who oppose the inhuman conqueror with arms: and that, unfortunately, is Hamas, even though it is part of the problem and at the same time has the role of oppressor for the Palestinian people themselves.” I skip the points where all the positions of imperialist social democracy of counter-revolutionary pseudo-insurrectionalism, which I analyzed at the beginning, are reproduced. We go forward from the fact that, in the last century, political Islam was promoted by the imperialists to inhibit and reverse the revolution in Asia. The aphoristic ideological lumping together all Islamic movements, belongs precisely to the methods of this imperialist strategy, it reproduces the projection of religion as a dominant field, it vindicates Christian racism, since it recognizes the internationalization of a problem of the South only insofar as it speaks in the language of the North and, above all it veils, behind the conspiratorial mysticism, the class and political dynamics that lead an Islamic organization to the leadership of a resistance movement, the left to decline and anarchism to irrelevance, wherever this has happened. Authoritarian Euro-socialism gets away with an “unfortunately”. Without exaggeration I can say that this attitude does more damage to internationalist solidarity than the practice of provocation through funding (such as the scenarios about the funding of Hamas).

    The revolutionary answer to political Islam is not atheistic fundamentalism, which can only dictatorially and colonially become a political identity. The answer has been given practically and effectively on the ground by the Kurdish Freedom Movement: democratization of Islam, in the way of social resistance, not in the way of imperialist assimilation and subjugation. Idealist abstractions and totalitarian aphorisms offer precisely the easy escape from the task of the struggle to transform contradictions. In this particular conflict, the clearest answer to the ideological construction of the ‘religious war’ comes from the joined mass demonstrations of rabbis, priests and mullahs against the zionist military rule.

    The fundamentalist koinonismos of the above-mentioned group (that uses agents’ game rhetoric) had led it to nationalism a few years ago (the Macedonian issue). Now it mocks “the general prompt for victory to the weapons of Palestine”. It indirectly advocates refusing to support the resistance and accepting colonial peace, so that a new state is not imposed on the Palestinians and does not annihilate dissidents and insurgents, as if they were secure until then. As those who joined arms with Ukrainian fascism say, Zelensky’s racist regime offered more freedom for anarchists and they expect the same from an ideal post- war renewed bourgeois democracy. Revolutionary anarchism is not positioned laterally, and so from my own position I answer that it is the axioms of koinonismos, not the prompts of revolutionary solidarity, that are general and abstract. Victory to the arms of the specific organizations that are fighting the colonialists, victory to their struggle against the colonialists. No political conflict justifies undermining the anti-colonial struggle. To leave no room for intentional confusion, I note that resistance to Palestine’s long-term ethnic cleansing is not an isomorphic phenomenon with Ukrainian-NATO nationalism, nor with the Iranian counter-revolution, despite its nationalist anti-NATO interests. The differences between these struggles are predominantly class-based on a global and local scale, and moreover political.

    Biopolitical ethics, based on its self-valorization, extends its polemic claims to a general and absolute distinction between the supposed revolutionary discipline towards it and the subjects who oppose it and are thus placed in the category of the authoritarians. The elitist project of denouncing real resistance begins with the rape of history and the proclamation of the sovereignty of colonialism over memory. In the words of the aforementioned groups: “No purge can ever and nowhere be a project of revolutionary movements”. Incidentally, the severity of the October 7 attack, across the colonialist entity, was not an attempt at purging, nor did it mean that the liberation of Palestine requires the extermination of all settlers. From the text of the aforementioned group: “The October 7 methodical massacre of hundreds of civilians, youth, children, women and elderly, carried out by the butchers sent by Hamas to carry out this religious ‘duty’ on the road to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the hostage-taking of old people, young children and women, the display of savagery even on the bodies of the murdered, is now added to the pantheon of similar acts of savagery that adorn the history of every form of power. But they will never be written in the pages that adorn the history of the struggles for social liberation and dignity, in the pages that adorn the world history of uprisings and revolutions of oppressed and exploited people.” Gentrification against “savagery”.

    Should we erase from revolutionary proletarian history the Makhnovists who set up machine guns and shot at the bourgeoisie and the feudal lords at their feasts? Butchers, when they threw into the furnace of a locomotive a priest-snitch of the German colonialists? (26) The CNT fighters, who during the revolution of ’36 stormed the monasteries and spared no one? The barefoot Somalis who two and a half decades ago paraded as trophies on spikes the flesh of the American soldiers of a downed helicopter, under whose history should we register them? Popular hatred is the heart of liberational evolution, as Walter Benjamin had noted. It is the task of imperialist social democracy to extinguish proletarian hatred, replacing it with appeals for mercy to the theocracy of capitalist war. Thus koinonismos concludes its positions with abstract pacifism. E.g., “Stop the Israeli attack on Gaza now. Stop now the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza.” Which forces will stop them and how? Not to ask how the return of the Palestinians to the main occupied territories will take place.

    The moderate view of the aforementioned comrade with colonial citizenship, restores historical and contemporaneous truth, opening up as topic of discussion the humanitarian law of war. “The images coming from southern Israel the day of the attack 7th of October were of course very hard to process emotionally.Nothing to celebrate about the massacre of many civilians, and by all definitions and standards this is a war crime. Things should be seen in of context though. Also, there are zero examples in history of a pure, ‘clean’ resistance movement and liberation that didn’t kill innocent people. Be it resistance to apartheid in South Africa, the British colonization of India, the fight against slavery in America and resistance to nazi occupation throughout Europe- in all of those cases innocent people died. This is not to justify, but the demand of purism from the Palestinian liberation movement alone is unrealistic. The bigger responsibility is on the occupier.”

    The Geneva Convention binds the parties to abide by it regardless of its violation by enemy forces. In any case, no state abides by it. Besides, the inter-state law of war does not apply to internal war, since the internal enemy is not presented as militarily distinct and with represented responsibilities. Indeed, only revolutionary armed forces are self-disciplined in the law of war. The Kurdish Freedom Movement is an example of such an attitude.

    Does the imperialist humanitarian law of war consist a revolutionary self-worth? For biopolitical ethics, yes. But biopolitical ethics is grounded on the regime of class power inequality, biopolitical terrorism and biopolitical racism, and it is articulated so as to perpetuate these. The biopolitical ethics of war revolves around the ‘civilian’, but he is defined by the archetype of imperialist citizenship. The guerrilla and his community first and foremost, the unruly government and its supporters, the pariah state and its citizens, are excluded from bourgeois law. In this case this applies to all the people of Palestine before and after October 7. The citizen who joins arms with, who votes for and finances the class war of the tyrant is the definition of ‘civilian’, with the archetype of the innocence of the capitalist, the politician, the technocrat, the media baron, the soldier and the cop, who become targets of the revolutionary struggle. The identification of the ‘civilian’ with the ‘unarmed’, masks with the feudal aristocratic code of values, the protection of the capitalist-state division of responsibilities, from its war machine. Imperialist humanist law transforms the genocidal settlers into ‘the people’ and the people into an exemption from bourgeois civilization. That is why the UN officials do not say, “what Israel is doing is genocide,” but they say, “what is being done may amount to genocide.” The boundary between the recognizably real and the typical speculation is deeply classist and savagely lethal.

    Thus, subservient koinonismos and pacifism put forward the historical legitimacy of the unstoppable century long genocide as “living in harmony and respecting diversity”. Diversity indeed, where one slaughters and steals the land of the other and the other is slaughtered and persecuted in exile. Some good comrades proposed the mutual rapprochement of the arab and jewish populations on an internationalist and proletarian basis, through the realization that they have nothing to divide and that they can coexist without religious differences, as they did for centuries in the region before the creation of the state of Israel. Both the myth and the utopia are equally true and necessary, but are interspersed with the real history of class struggle. The state of Israel also comes in the way. A history and a present that fatally divides Palestinians and settlers. The former have nothing but chains and death. The others have everything, have seized it with savagery and maintain this relationship with even greater savagery. “Israelis have the right to call the area home”, say some anarchists. “Because whatever happened in the past, all these people live there now.” Except it didn’t happen 3,000 years ago. The present class-political regime of the Palestinian land is the capitalization of the ethnic cleansing (not a vague ‘whatever’) that began in the recent past, a few generations ago, and continues unabated. The koinonists suck up to the colonialists, but the colonialists are not impressed by pacifist cajoling.

    On the contrary, a single experience proved capable of instilling humanistic feelings, moderation, a sense of equality in a small part of the colonial nation: the hostage-taking of loved ones. The murderousness of the October 7 attack produced a consciousness of the insurmountable vulnerability of the dominant clan, and mass hostage-taking produced the prospect of a peace with a little more freedom for the class oppressed, which would not have been conceivable without the universal equation to death. “All hostages, for all of their prisoners”, chant the protesting settlers who are turning against their war-mongering government. The fact that these deeply and broadly nationalistic subjects still form the only opposition within the militaristic nation today, demonstrates something important. Dialectically, the barbarians’ method creates social progress, because it brings to light the means and subsequently the motives of capitalist civilization.

    The vile tyranny says, “what’s done is done”. Restorative justice for the massacred and displaced Palestinian people requires the uprooting of the settlers. Projecting the ideal consent of the settlers to a peaceful settlement as a precondition, reflects the hypocrisy of imperialist social democracy and glosses over class ethnic cleansing. Revolutionary law directly restores cosmic harmony by the edge of the knife.
                                       “Whatever is necessary for the return”(27)

    These days my soul dwells in the basements and rubble with the dying fighters who wait and stoically greet the settler army. Revenge! Revenge for all the history of tyranny. Revenge for the bloody hypocrisy of the imperialists and colonialists. Revenge for the children of Palestine.
                               Unconditionally with Spartacus, for the fall of the Empire.

    “So it is fortunate that insurrection and revolution still remain absurd, because this is precisely what still remains their only potential to win”(28)
    Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis
    November-December 2023
    Domokos Prison

     

    (1) In 1990, the term “κοινωνισμός” [koinonismos] was introduced in the critical thinking of greek speaking anarchists, which is literally translated into english as “socialism”. The word socialism has been conveyed into the greek language without etymological transformations (in greek: “σοσιαλισμός”). The term koinonismos means something different from socialism, so if we were to translate it as socialism based on the language roots, it would result in serious confusion. Writer and translator of this text jointly decided to use the direct transliteration from the greek to english, the word koinonismos, adding this linguistic and conceptual note. In short, the meaning of the term koinonismos, as was first expressed, was the political invocation of an ideologically artificial social whole, which, in communication practice, entails the reproduction of those ideological forms that are produced and infused by the state and capital.

    (2) International statement of the clubs (10/10/23) – https://fcstpauliathensclub.wordpress.com/2023/1/10/%cf%83%cf%87%ce %b5%cf%84%ce%b9%ce%ba%ce%ac-%ce%bc%ce%b5-%cf%84%ce%b7%c%bd-%ce%b4%ce%ae%ce%bb%cf%89%cf %83%ce%b7-%cf%84%ce%bf%cf%85-%cf%83%cf%85%ce%bb%ce%bb%cf%8c%ce%b3%ce%bf%cf%85-%cf%84%ce%b7%cf%82-s/, Statement of the Turkish club (28/10/23) – https://twitter.com/StPauli_TR

    (3) The issue of Palestine is the issue of statism’s bankruptcy! – https://asranarshism.com/1402/07/18/palestine-issue-statism-failure-en/

    (4) tn: The term conspiratorial is the nearest translation of the term that the writer in this text uses to refer not to conspiracy theories, but to an understanding of politics as an interplay between agents or proxies.

    (5) On “Pro-Palestine” hypocricy – https://thepublicsource.org/palestine-solidarity

    (6) Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists –

    Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists

    (7) We Can’t Afford to Remain Silent – Interview with an Israeli Anarchist – https://itsgoingdown.org/two-new-zines-interviews-with-israeli-and-palestinian-anarchists/

    (8) A Practical Appraisal of Palestinian Violence – https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/10/21/a-practical-appraisal-of-palestinian-violence/

    (9) Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price – https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israelis-made-to-suffer-the-cruel-price-for-oppression-of-palestinians-in-gaza

    (10) A recent interview with three FAUDA members confirms the commitment to the unity of the resistance and adds the information that FAUDA is involved in the guerrilla struggle. One comrade states that their anarchist movement has opened up a path of popular self-sacrifice. Regarding Hamas, it deconstructs NATO propaganda and describes the political dialogue and cooperation of anarchists with other organizations in the resistance. Importantly, they points out that all resistance organizations have an inclusive political position for all religious communities. The case for Islamic dictatorship is imperialist black propaganda. Just as the addition of a new, Palestinian state is a case of imperialist designs. Anti-authoritarian criticism of the claim of a two-state status and the separation of religious communities throws the discussion off course. Maoists (PFLP), confederationists (DFLP) and pacifist democrats (such as Mussa’ab Bashir, used as a reference by certain ideological opponents of the Palestinian resistance), Islamists (Hamas and Jihad) and anarchists (FAUDA) agree as a program on a single inclusive polity. Such were the declarations of the Israeli constitution as well. Only the imperialists and the would-be exploiters of the Palestinian resistance want two states. But the crucial question is whether we are defending the colonial state as the agent of potential coexistence, against historical and current revolutionary realities, or are we defending the right of the oppressed to reorganize social culture on their own terms, correcting the accumulated injustices? For anarchism the answer is self-evident. Whether the Palestinian revolutionary polity will claim recognition from the inter-state matrix and take the title of state is nobody’s business outside the Palestinian resistance, just as it is nobody’s business outside the Kurdish resistance, the claim of official recognition for the confederation of N-E Syria as a constituent state entity of the unified Syrian territory. (The interview: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/abolishtheusa-fauda-in-depth-interviews-with-3-members-of-fauda )

    (11) The revolutionary South responds to the a-historical critique that describes anarchism as a eurocentric project. Only the anchorage to the post-Bakunin deconstructivism, that eroded the anarchist movement after the dissolution of the First International, can see in anti-imperialism conceptual and practical boundaries to anarchism. For example, “Anarchists in the Sahel” (18/9/23), (https://www.alerta.gr/archives/33233 ). Marxism had to go beyond the imperialist philosophy of its writings, with Lenin. Revolutionary anarchism never had that problem. From its birth it ventured all over the Earth.

    (12) https://www.alerta.gr/archives/33399

    (13) https://www.efsyn.gr/kosmos/boreia-ameriki/408433_i-starbucks-poinikopoiei-tin-allileggyi-stin-palaistini

    (14) One group writes, “Clearly, we do not intend to dictate to the oppressed and exploited how they should fight […]”. Just before they wrote, “The only self-defense that we recognize -ethically and politically- is the collective social self-defense and social counter violence that the exploited and the oppressed co-opt to emancipate themselves and to shake off the bonds of authority over them”. What does this group mean behind the unclear invocation of collectivity and cooption? And who cares whether these here pharisees of anarchism recognize the Palestinian resistance as self-defense or not? To put the question in a different context: a person who has suffered patriarchal violence, do they need the opinion of these conclaves so as to decide whether to resort to the police, to the state, or if they will cut off the balls of the rapist or whatever else? This same group, ten years ago, in order not to spoil the self interest of some of its members, had covered up an attack against a squat, legitimized by the fact that they refused to recognize the squat as a community, refused to recognize the community’s egalitarian institutions and practices, the political dynamic proletarian social development taking place there, its autonomy in social self- direction and its self-defense. This is what “we do not recognize” means in the world of violence and terrorism: let Netanyahu do his dirty work. However, the Palestinian resistance is winning and the aforementioned squat, which offers refuge to the persecuted and has not put any terms on the Palestinian resistance, is still standing.

    (15) https://asranarshism.com/1402/07/18/palestine-issue-statism-failure-en/

    (16) Artistic intervention for Palestine, ΚΕΔ – https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1627014/ & https://avantgarde2009.wordpress.com/2023/10/12/palaistinh-dikh-mas-ypothesh/ Two months after writing this text I received a text from Solidarity with migrants entitled “The avant-garde of retrogression: notes on the pro-russian and pro-china political tendencies in the greek society” (https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1628404/). The political line of anti-american campism and its political conclusions that this text describes, make up a stance of active counter-revolution on the field. Political directions and practices that are anti-labour, anti-feminist, pro-imperialist and pro- fascist, anti-internationalist and totalitarian. The text correctly argues that the two tendencies inside the pro-Palestine movement are clashing and they will continue to do so. I will further note that this clash is not related only to the movement for Palestine. The fields of struggle are intersecting as is shown in the text. Social-fascism is lurking everywhere and is manifesting itself respectively to political priorities. The contradictions of the social-fascist lines are interesting. Eg, political subjects who converge in their defense of the Assad regime and in their anti kurdish stance, and who have allied in the past as a friendly opposition to SYRIZA in the re-negotiation of the greek state’s position in the imperialist pyramid, have taken antagonistic positions in the conflict over (or against) the capitalist-statist public health control. The former, who openly defend the anti-NATO imperialist front, openly supported the resistance to the unhealthy health-control repression and the dictatorial bio-technocratic subjugation. The latter, who are intensively trying to take the lead of the movement with reformist positions, joined arms with the vanguard of capitalist and statist progress. Despite this, the leftist group that the aforementioned text is denouncing has not “infiltrated” the movement; it comprises one of its constitutive subjects. Particularly in reference to the Palestinian struggle, where the subjects of the struggle are collaborating with state agents in their periphery, it is illogical to demand that the struggle be cleansed of statist ideological tendencies within the solidarity movement. In general, I have put down at length my arguments against the automated logic of exclusions.

    (17) Middle East: Economy and Geo-strategy, https://trohia.espivblogs.net/2024/01/03/mesanatoliko-oikonomia-kai-geostratigiki/

    (18) https://anfenglishmobile.com/features/kck-calls-on-muslim-peoples-to-take-a-stance-against-turkish-bombing-of-mosque-in-maxmur-69767

    (19) A simple practical example: Larissa, solidarity gathering for the Palestinian and the Kurdish peoples, from Dugru Squat- https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1627002/

    (20) https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/kahilogullari-peace-in-the-middle-east-will-only-be-possible-if-people-struggle-together-69791

    (21) https://anfenglishmobile.com/kurdistan/hpg-guerrilla-ereb-calls-on-arab-young-people-to-support-the-struggle-69811

    (22) https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/10/21/a-practical-appraisal-of-palestinian-violence/

    (23) as above

    (24) The massacres of Hamas, the brutality of the Israeli state and the imminent global conflict, Syspeirosi Anarxikon-
    https://anarchypress.wordpress.com/2023/10/14/%ce%bf%ce%b9-%cf%83%cf%86%ce%b1%ce%b3%ce%b5%cf%83-%cf%84%ce%b7%cf%83-%cf%87%ce%b1%ce%bc%ce%b1%cf%83-%ce%bf%c%b9-%ce%b8%ce%b7%cf%81%ce%b9%cf%89%ce%b4%ce%b9%ce%b5%cf%83-%cf%84%ce%bf%cf%85-%ce%b9%cf%83/

    (25) Gaza 2023 — High-Tech War Revisited – https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/19/gaza-2023-high-tech-war-revisited/

    (26) The roads of Nestor Makhno, B. Bielas & A. Bielas, Babylonia Press, October 2007 –

    Οι Δρόμοι του Νέστορ Μαχνό | 1ος Τόμος (pdf-κατέβασμα)

    (27) https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/10/21/a-practical-appraisal-of-palestinian-violence/

    (28) Nikos Nikanoras, The right to self-defense – https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1627291/

    https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/07/13/the-palestinian-revolution-and-the-rift-in-the-international-movement/

    #anarchism #counterRevolution #DimitrisChatzivasiliadis #greece #palestine #platformism

    #anarchism #counterrevolution #dimitrischatzivasiliadis #greece #palestine #platformism
  7. abolitionmedia @[email protected] ·

    I can imagine many people resenting the term Palestinian revolution when reading the title of this article. Some have already written that revolution is one thing and resistance is another, that war is one thing and liberation is another. I chose this title, being literal, precisely because it would be provocative. Let us be open to any dialogue, knowing that the first thing that is at issue is the definition of the subject. In times of war, any political discourse is a polemic act. War is not a choice, it is not a means among other means, as statist positivism and its projections on the anti-authoritarian pretexts for capitulation assert; it is the incessant class condition in which we find ourselves and through which we liberate ourselves. Every phrase that has been uttered in the last 20, 50, hundreds and thousands of years flutters on the broken Gaza wall or hangs in the rubble of the city, among the dismembered children. If the well-meaning movement researchers who have produced numerous analyses of the class and social background of the Greek revolution of 1821 find it difficult to recognize the Palestinian revolution as such, this says something about their euroelitism and nationalism. As for those who deny resistance to colonialism and imperialism, as well as its revolutionary potential, by juxtaposing the “essential” antithesis of capital-labor, the totality or molecularity, today we can say that their abstractions and confines are filled with the stench of the carnivorous capitalist North. The thoughtless adoption of the dogmatic social-democratic scholasticism suggests a blind consumption of intellectualism, self-indulging in ideological garbage. If I pay you a regular salary, the relationship is class-based. But if I take your land to build a work camp or a prison, then not only the relationship is not class-based, but it is subordinate to that, even if I put you in the camp on a salary or put you in prison! If I put you up against the prison wall and shoot you, the relationship is not class-based, it is “essentially” indifferent outside of its interpretation into a monetary relationship. If I lock you up in the prison that I built by stealing your land, if I control your survival resources and bomb you day and night, the relationship is not class-based and the relation of power cannot be changed until the labor relation is universally and completely dismantled. This kind of idiocy goes around as scholastic proletarian theory.

    We have entered the evolutionary phase of capitalist civilization where it is materialized as a total synchronic crisis and where every tick of the clock reveals the positioning of every political subject on the side of revolution or on the side of counter-revolution. All antitheses are condensed, they intersect and are confounded towards the maximum and the minimum and in the explosive way that they emerge they express their complexity. The anti-capitalist movement is shaped within this vortex, it does not stand still in some idealized apathetic position of an overseer. It is therefore traversed by the whole set of intersections, confusions and complexities. The war waged by the statist public health control revealed a deep rift in the anti-capitalist movement, the imperialist war in the Ukrainian territory revealed other rifts, which literally culminate into war. The revolutionary counterattack inside the territory of the zionist colonialist rule, illuminated the most fundamental rift within the movement. If we can schematically say that the first rupture concerned the fractional scope of imperialist colonialism over the social body and the second one concerned revolutionary autonomy in conditions where military rule, as fundamental to capitalism, is unveiled, then the Palestinian rupture concerns the very point of the history of capitalism and its destruction. The unfulfilled crusade of colonizing the Eurasian East (prior to the complete colonization of Africa and of the continent westward to Europe) reappears as a historically inescapable and globally universal definitive question. Incidentally, wage slavery, on which the capitalist mode of production is founded, emerged and prevailed in Europe through the colonialist war to the east (in particular, from the data so far it appears that the prime organism where the prevalence of the wage relation was incubated was crusading Venice).

    The historical moment of the dissemination of CoV-2 and the culmination of the anti-health imperialist counter-revolution, through its militaristic and bio-technocratic experiment of the universal vaccination, brought to the fore the class and political subjectivity of the human body, i.e. the most elementary organic unit of human existence and society, making it the target of a totalitarian colonial campaign. Imperialist terrorism attempted to establish itself in new depths of primitive accumulation and to restructure all existing power relations with the guiding principle of the liquidation, expulsion and purging of surplus labour. This coincided with the powerful manifestation of the Black Revolt in so-called America and of the women’s revolt globally, the living subject of the history of slavery and capitalist colonization of the Earth. The war of state sanitation introduced a historically innovative regime of perpetual state of emergency, which through bio-politics gave primacy to militaristic terms of domination and to the ideology and morality that derives from that. The counter-revolutionary offensive, in the form of the emergency regime, within the metropolises of Euro-Atlantic imperialism, continued in relation to the war in the Ukrainian-Russian space and now continues in relation to the war in Palestine (the Chinese counter- revolution continues on the first axis). It is no coincidence that the Israeli techno-stratocracy is a pioneer in the production and export of technology and methodology of control and repression, of fascist organization and politics, of biotechnology, digital integration and post-humanist fiction ideology. It should be noted that Israeli fascism imposed universal compulsory biotechnological vaccination of its citizens. Zionist colonialism fuses on the one hand traditional religious totalitarianism and racism, and on the other hand the fundamentalist governmentalist and mechanistic mentality of the bourgeoisie, the theocracy of capital and its technocratic mysticism. That is why Israeli colonialism today is demonstrating worldwide, on behalf of the Western Empire, the might of its terrorism with unprecedented intensity.

    In the ideological battle within the international movement, which of course expresses contradictory and now increasingly antagonistic tendencies on the line of conflict between revolution and counter- revolution, what emerges as a central rift is the koinonismos (1) of counter-revolution. In particular, the koinonismos of imperialism and more specifically the koinonismos of imperialist social democracy. In correlation to this, anti-imperialist social fascism reappears as a problem. In the Greek movement the concept of koinonismos has been defined as the internalization of the pervasive ideology of the regime by the social movement. I reinstate it here with a reverse definition, which, without negating what is historically recorded, it puts the title of social in the right causal relation: the social ground and the social relation are not constructed by power, but on the contrary, power pillages their material, their name and their value, in order to return them to the subjects, having reconstructed them with the necessary divisions. This rift concerns the underlying anti-proletarian, anti-social and counter-revolutionary roots of making a separation from the aggressive initiative of the Palestinians, from their Islamic vanguard, from the unholy revolutionary means, from the open class war, from anti-imperialist resistance, from the national identities of the global South, from the prevalence of faith over survival, from the devaluation of the ideological and normative claims and rhythms of the bourgeois positivism internalized in the movements of the North, etc.

    The koinonismos of counter-revolution is defined by the class and political frontier that the ruling class erects against the savage proletariat, which in the historical narrative is presented as uncivilized and in politics as terrorist. The koinonismos of imperialism has as its central axes the peace of Christian ecumenism and bourgeois liberalism with its modern ecumenism. The peace of God presupposes the sovereignty of the crusading sword. Imperialist socialism, by demanding the disarmament of the ‘uncivilized’ in order for a peace to be recognized, expresses its militaristic totalitarianism. Let’s not forget that even when Euro-Atlantic imperialism declared war on Russian nationalism, it called Russian nationalism uncivilized and collectively criminalized Russian culture (arts, sports, history…).

    The common joint of imperialist koinonismos is the Law of Empire, developed on a global model, in transnational conventions (treaties) and transnational institutions. The sword of peace of the god of the Judeo-Christian tradition is surrounded by legal trinkets and supposedly collective mediations. Around the slaughterhouse, the real class conditions of political warfare (military, biopolitical, moral-social) imperialist koinonismos bombards with a totalitarian morality, founded on the given biopolitical class divisions. Not only is not every death or freedom of every person measured equally, but more specifically, the more intense the class or political factors that determine a person’s life chances and local rights, the more necessary and just for the political economy of capital is the intensification of their oppression or even their killing.

    In examining the ideological conflict around the Palestinian revolution, I will use as a model of reference the first statement of Syriza after the revolutionary initiative of October 7, because it contains in three sentences all the basic ideological points of imperialist social democracy that have been internalized in the anti-capitalist movement.

    “SYRIZA unequivocally condemns today’s Hamas attack against Israel, calls for its immediate end and expresses its solidarity with the people of Israel. The ongoing violence by all sides in the region, is a threat to any prospect of resolving the differences and is brutally affecting the security and rights especially of civilians, Israelis and Palestinians. We stand firmly in favour of the immediate resumption of credible bilateral talks for a two-state solution on the basis of the 1967 borders, with the capital of the Palestinian state being the city of east Jerusalem.”

    Let us distinguish the ideological points that form the positions of imperialist social democracy:

    1. Condemnation of the attack against the occupier’s national body inside its fort. This condemnation is the most basic position statement within the war. Various people try to convince that the condemnation of violence or of state violence from either side places them in a third position, morally and politically superior. The global proletariat understands, today as a whole, that the condemnation of the real military victory of the Palestinians is an expression of solidarity with imperialist koinonismos and thus a statement of consent to the extension of genocide, stronger than any tearful protest against it by the very subjects who condemn the attack.

    In many statements, the condemnation, in its support, invokes the particular religious identity of the political organization that carried out the attack on the colonial fortress. This dogmatic demonization of Islam is identical with the fundamentalism of the crusades, which permeates conservative ideologies of capitalist times and culminates in imperialist/colonial elitism. Those who have been quick to denounce the religious character of Hamas identify with Netanyahu in his position that “we are the light, they are the darkness”. Koinonismos, the most subservient to imperialism, immediately assimilated the propaganda about rapes and massacres of civilians and children as if these practices, which characterize state warfare in general, are automatically derived from the Islamic identity of the resistance organization. The anti- theocratic guise of political condemnation is itself an attack on faith that transcends the carnal lust and fears of the bourgeois citizen, an attack on social morality that puts individualist autarchy under question, an attack on the collective and transcendentalist psyche that dismantles utilitarian positivism.

    The ideological lackeys who, disgusted from the resistance’s attack joined the chorus of the liberal crusade, forgot that Hamas is the elected government of the marginal colonial territories, which was arbitrarily denied its bourgeois-democratic authority. The genocidal blockade of Gaza began in 2007, when Hamas ousted Fatah coup plotters, at whose hands the struggling Palestinians had been infamously tortured. Liberal fundamentalism, which sets up a la carte democracies, with coups, terrorism and mass purges, calls the “uncivilized” people fascists, whenever its bribery doesn’t work. The goal is the condemnation of their extended political autonomy.

    Hamas was of no interest to the luminaries of imperialist social democracy during the years when the unrecognized Hamas government was tolerated by the colonialists, as it was managing the biopolitical and economic plight of the people of Gaza due to its total blockade. Once it breached the blockade, its militaristic armor and the security of its national reproduction, imperialist social democracy felt the need to join in denouncing the virtual hideous monster.

    2. Recognition of the settlers and their genocidal state as a people. Subsequently, expressing solidarity with the colonialist organization. Only statism ascribes the concept of people to a state that is ethnically homogeneous. From the socio-revolutionary point of view, the popular always defines itself in class terms. The militarist colonists never and nowhere constituted a people. All Israelis are settlers because, in contrast to their abstract historical locality, their actual settlement, residence and expansion in the biblical land is by direct and continuous ethnic cleansing of another locality. If we were talking about the United States, only white fascists consider white Americans a distinct people. There is an Israeli nation, but it is not a people. The people of the Israeli state are the Palestinians, the hunted natives. Israeli citizens become a people to the extent that they betray their nation and fight with the Palestinian people. We will see this in a moment in their own words.

    A side note, invoking the phantom Israeli people and expressing solidarity with this makes no class or political distinctions within the colonial nation. This phantom comes straight out of the most horrible statist nationalism, that is, colonialist nationalism. In any case, solidarity with the exploited classes of the colonial organism itself cannot possibly depend on submissiveness to its state of domination. On the contrary, class solidarity starts from the anti-colonial revolution, the social war for the destruction of the state-launching ground for imperialism.

    The declarations of solidarity with the “Israeli people” are an invitation to complete the genocide of the Palestinians.

    3. Condemnation of violence on both sides.

    4. Focus on civilians and subjecting them to the imperialist conditions of rights and security. The focus on civilians completes the project of moral-ideological disarmament, depoliticization and passivization of the resisting people. At the same time that imperialism is blowing up the revolted prison of Gaza, it is also assuming the paternalistic responsibility of managing the survivors of genocide. More generally, the humanitarian infiltration of the transnational and parastatal (NGO) institutions of capital in the global South is paving the way for the formation of protectorate state institutions in the service of imperialism, with the assignment of managerial positions to collaborationists. We should note that the regional hegemonic powers are also playing in this field, always against the political autonomy and internationalist solidarity of the resisting people.

    The external projection of the security claim as a primary need, annihilates the revolutionary needs of the people and extorts the recognition of the colonial interest, the security of its national fascist regime, as a universal need. The conclaves that hold the sword of imperialist peace can define the rights and the timeliness or untimeliness of their application. While international rights have been established in order to give the form of a contract to structural inequalities, the equation of the Palestinian people and of the zionist settlers under the category of ‘civilian’ legitimizes colonialism and currently justifies the attempt for a “final solution” for the sake of the security of the genocidal organization, i.e. total ethnic cleansing through genocide.

    5. Proposing the creation of a Palestinian state in the territories that remained unconquered until 1967. On this point, libertarian imperialist social democracy is differentiated from the statist leftist social-democracy in terms of theoretical formulations and working field. However, they meet on the basic point of the relationship with the colonial state. Left social democracy expresses the imminent imperialist project of annihilating the Palestinian resistance and imposing on the wreckage of Gaza a collaborationist regime based on the experience of the Abbas management, who is an agent of the years-long ethnic cleansing. Libertarian social democracy, with a kind of Jesuit elitism and hypocrisy, advocates the fraternity of the exploited Palestinians and Israeli “peoples” or “societies”, without the destruction of the colonial state. I note that the workerist position that attributes the capacity for overthrowing the Israeli capitalist state formation exclusively to the Israeli working class, validates colonial nationalism and even lends it with an ideological envelope of pure national socialism (Nazism). Nothing new, Mussolini started out as a leftist and zionist settlers too, with strong socialist, workerist and communitarian roots.

    All the ideological points of imperialist social democracy except the last one are replacing political polemics with a biopolitical ethics and managerial lingo. The biopolitical discourse objectifies existential experience in order to strip it of its class history and political subjectivity. Biopolitical ethics defines what violence is in order to exempt a set of capitalist-state practices from the category of violence and at the same time to criminalize resistance practices. Critical biopolitical ideology ratifies imperialism’s stripping of bodies of their collective identities and their resistance power. Vulnerability is transformed ideologically into an insurmountable anthropological condition, either as a class condition or as its weak consciousness. In this context, “civilians” become the central figures of the biopolitical narrative of war, with imperialist citizenship as their archetype of identification and measure of evaluation.

    From a revolutionary point of view, the examination of experiences and the subordination of means to abstract ends that come from outside the immediate field of struggle is an ideological ploy to eliminate and replace the practical ends of direct resistance with the koinonistic ethics of the means, i.e. the anti-proletarian and counter-revolutionary values of the bourgeoisie, which reflect established inequalities. To judge the Palestinian resistance by the yardstick of anarchist or Marxist utopia is a project of ideological colonialism, but also of existential annihilation by the intelligentsia of dominant european humanism. Values that do not allow for taking sides with the existing resistance are values that are comfortable with the existing class slaughterhouse. In the offices where the fundamentalist critique on unholy means takes place, sits the Inquisition, which is certainly concerned with popular resistance, but only as an enemy. A Palestinian people separated from its armed struggle and its resistance organizations is the imaginary flock of the crusader church.

    The Palestinian revolution awakens a multitude of questions of the international anti-capitalist movement, which are inevitably answered immediately by each one’s stance. I will only mention a few of these in which the class-political borders have already been drawn within the actual conflict, and then I will focus on the revolutionary lines given to us by the revolutionary anarchists from the ground of the conflict.

    a. The identification of class relations in the actual composition of capitalist domination on a global scale. Who is an enemy and who is a friend at any particular point for the revolutionary anarchist movement? How is the distinction between direct and indirect political tasks concretized at each point, given anarchism’s characteristic historical stance of directly responding to the needs of our community as oppressed people, with the general perspective of freedom and equality? The most concrete answers, the only ones capable of bringing about alliance, immediacy and radical perspective, stem from the direct struggle of the subjects involved. This observation confirms the anarchist claim to the political autonomy of all resistance.

    b. The correlation of ends and means. A question that many anarchists falsely and arrogantly declare that anarchism has solved, unlike the statist political currents. Whenever the class conflict brings this question to the fore, as did the revolutionary initiative on October 7, all those who claim to have answered this question without having a revolutionary organization on the ground, can and do validate their ideological position in only one way: by separating themselves from revolutionary action.

    c. The strategic treatment of the relations between imperialism, the state and the social revolution.

    d. The political mediation of the resistance. Here I am not referring to the mediation of the Palestinian movement by the Palestinian political organizations, the surrounding state or, more generally, political-military forces and the international imperialist institutions. The Palestinian people have felt on their own flesh the exploitative and usually treacherous attitude of the Arab and Islamic states. One sees no friends in the UN and in the various imperialist political interventions. Here I am referring to the ideological and political mediation of antagonistic positions of the international movement on behalf of the Palestinian movement. In particular, it is important within the internationalist movement, to deal with the internalized imperialist koinonismos and also with anti-imperialist social fascism, from the point of view of their colonialist political authoritarianism against the autonomy of the Palestinian revolution. In the sphere of political mediation which cancels the field of struggle itself, belongs also the usual koinonistic address to an imaginary apathetic mass as if it constituted the political public of resistance. The political public of resistance is of course the movements themselves, from their organic processes (and their collaborations) to the militant frontier of their development.

    The confusion has spread to the internationalist movement. A simple example is the confrontation
    within the anti-fascist football club St.Pauli. The critical response (2) of the local clubs to the club’s pro-Israeli statement sharply reproduced the positions of imperialist social democracy. An exception was the message of the Turkish club, a few days later, which highlighted the historical unity of the anti-colonial and anti- racist struggle. The radical position came from the key borderland between the global North and the global South. I will focus below on the first statement (3) of the Anarchist Federation of Afghanistan-Iran, because of the intensity of its reactionary positions, its locality in a place of struggle (Middle East, Kurdistan), and in connection to this because of its internal contradictions. In contrast, I will examine the social-fascist positions that present themselves as anti-imperialist. The last critical reference will focus on conspiratorial (4) positions.

    The entirety of the ideological positions of imperialist social democracy have been eloquently and succinctly answered by the Palestinian refugee Nidal Khalaf in his intervention, “On ‘pro-Palestinian’ hypocrisy.” (5) I will only summarize at this point, but anyone who continues reading this text should read the aforementioned article as if it were interjected here. I adopt every word of it, considering it sufficient to deconstruct the scarecrows of imperialist koinonismos. N. Khalaf, after stating from the outset that “Israel” is a colonial entity created and existing as an advance military base for Western imperialism, makes it clear that a war is being waged with colonialism and that it is not a border or religious dispute. He then goes on to denounce pro-colonial pacifism and collaborationist case of the two-state solution, the condemnation of violence and international law. He explains that the western value systems underlying the allegedly friendly critique of the Palestinian resistance, exist due to and for the sake of imperialist genocide. According to the Palestinian refugee’s testimony, the real hypocrisy is not the imperialists’ policies and their propaganda, but the projection of a pro-Palestinian identity by subjects who conform to the western scheme of liberal values. The worst form of western hegemonism is the attempts at moral subjugation, which are condensed in the refusal to support the Palestinian resistance organizations. The article closes by returning back to the exponents of cultural imperialism the image of the dead civilian. The whole text decimates the ideological colonialism of imperialist koinonismos that is so internalized in the international movement.

    I proceed to a political summary of the views expressed in two interviews by two anarchists from the field, one who spoke (6) on behalf of the Palestinian anarchist organization FAUDA and one with Israeli citizenship. (7) Political positions from reality, against the political mediation of imperialist koinonismos. As another testimony (8) from the refugee Palestinian diaspora notes: “There is plenty of temptation to wag fingers in the aftermath of the operation [of October 7], but surely that task is not the domain of academics and activists in the metropole. Nor should it be the priority of diaspora Palestinians (among whom I include myself). In our environs, filled with their own kind of hostility, the priority should be to defend Palestinians against the torment to which they have been subjected by the entire industrialized world. Among politicians, artists, celebrities, and intellectuals, Palestinians have no shortage of critics happy to cosign Zionist genocide. Those critiques don’t need or desire our validation, anyway. Abandoning our brethren in order to appease the Zionist establishment will deliver no accolades. In the end, the aspirant to respectability is left only with the shame of conciliation.

    Palestinians are perfectly capable of formulating strategy and thinking through complex problems without the guidance of outsiders; they certainly don’t need half-baked moralism from dorks and social climbers in the West.”

    The actual relationship between ends and means as testimonies from ground reveal, clarifies the issue of concretizing class-political relations and identifying enemies and friends. I begin with two quotes from the Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. (9) “The Gaza Palestinians have decided they’re willing to pay any price for a moment of freedom.” Who would deny this cause and its consequences? “On Saturday, Israel saw pictures it has never seen before. Palestinian vehicles patrolling its cities, bike riders entering through the Gaza gates. These pictures tear away at that arrogance.” No consequence is capable of undoing the achieved unity of this cause and this means. The October 7 initiative drew a line of war, of revolution and counter-revolution in Gaza that defines the world in an inescapable way: you either tread on one hemisphere of the Earth or the other, either with the Palestinian revolution or with imperialist genocide. The word arrogance, couched as the self-consciousness of the colonial nation (self-consciousness can only ever be negative) dissolves the counter-revolutionary propaganda about innocent victims.

    The comrade from FAUDA informs us that the common front of the Palestinian resistance under the same banner and with the common goal of liberation from zionism is a fundamental need and that their organization is fighting for the unity of the movement. It also points out the necessity of mobilizing the youth for this purpose. (10)

    The comrade with Israeli nationality informs us that what characterizes the Palestinian resistance these days, both in the West Bank and in Gaza, is the common and broad fronts. Islamists, secularists, Marxists and even national-liberals, like some parts of Fatah, are fighting side by side. The immediate class and political frontier has been defined, the immediate revolutionary purpose has been defined, the practical consequences are inescapable.

    The comrade, with their testimony, completes the revolutionary line by taking a radical stand at the rear of the colonial frontier. His words illuminate precisely what internationalist defeatism means. Already as he introduces himself he declares his place of birth, Haifa, as occupied Palestine and thus calls the occupation by its name, for all Palestinian land. Recognizing the anti-colonial resistance as the only revolutionary movement in the occupied territories and as the vanguard of any radical change, he declares his obligation to deny his Israeli identity, to become an enemy, a traitor to the colonial nation, to his “society” and to ally with the dispossessed. Here is a perception of class specific condition, of the specific consequences of ends and means. The comrade declares his duty to side with the oppressed, on their own terms and under their own leadership. And he notes on this that anarchism (11) gives him both the language and the tools to envision this politics. “For me, there is no ‘anarchist society’ to march towards, since we don’t have an end goal. I see anarchism as a resistance movement, an arsenal of tools for the oppressed all over the Earth to fight the present dystopia, and that is what attracts me to it.”

    The comrade participated in the organization “Anarchists against the Wall” (now dissolved). Since the fall of the Berlin Wall to the present day, the walls between North and South have multiplied: Palestine, Mexico, Mediterranean, Evros (greek-turkish border), Kurdistan. The revolutionary initiative of October 7 was a powerful blow to the historical development of the global imperialist prison. The comrade from the settler hinterland explains that the idea of coexistence is a superficial show and that only by fighting against the wall did the two sides come together, not as enemies, but as fighters for the same purpose, comrades, co-conspirators and allies, on equal terms. “What Hamas did on Saturday, October 7, was to break the ghetto, both physically and symbolically. They broke the gates surrounding Gaza and reclaimed land inside Israel, positioning themselves as a force beyond their assigned role as the Gaza government. They put themselves at the forefront of the Palestinian liberation movement, directly decolonizing territory.” Class conditions, revolutionary consistency, ends, means, all crystal clear from the anarchist perspective that unites the oppressed in the war.

    Let us return briefly to the question of defining the grid of class relations overall. Why is the anti-colonial struggle the key meeting point on both sides of the border? Why not the workers’ struggle, the anti-patriarchal struggle, etc.? Aside from the fact that the regime of national subordination and general exile in Palestine has implanted a condition of domination that superimposes the entirety of class relations there, the comrade points out an additional condition: the settler democracy allows everything, all kinds of radicalism, as long as it is committed to the zionist military rule.

    I would like to make two comments on the information given to us by our comrades from Palestine. Both the relativist theory of the intersectional approach and the relativist theory of the abstract wage-relationship as a universal class identity, are incapable of dealing with the specific class needs and social currents that unite people in revolutionary struggle. This does not imply that the correct theory is the post- Leninist one that projects imperialism as the main antithesis in relation to which all other antitheses are indifferent. We will see this below. Direct action anarchism, even when aware of the various abstract theories of Marxist or sociological origin, goes beyond them, having at its disposal the wealth of knowledge offered by direct struggle. There are no issues that fall within a molecular sphere independent of class relations on a global scale, nor issues that fall within a mega-scale where relations are inevitably mediated by states. The scales are interrelated and the criticality of each antithesis is defined by the subjects of the resistance. There are contradictions that affect internationalist solidarity (e.g. Hamas’s links to the Turkish state and the ethnic cleansing in the occupied territories of Rojava) and direct contradictions that exclude any non polemic encounter (e.g. the participation of the working class and the queer community of the colonial Israeli nation in its war machine).

    Many libertarians internationally are still investing in the working class of the colonialist establishment. Typical is the intervention of the Anarchist Communist Group of Melbourne (12) (11/10) which, while acknowledging the complicity of the majority of the Israeli working class and not expecting Jewish workers’ solidarity to be a major force in the near future, characterizes the targeting of Israeli workers as damaging. Although this intervention describes the Israeli state in real terms, pointing out that Israeli fascism is moving towards the “final solution”, it does not neglect the obligation to imperialist social democracy to condemn Hamas with a cultural shadow (abstractly “reactionary”) and to distance itself from the targeting of Israeli civilians. But why is equality in horror damaging, especially in a permanent condition where no other practice has been able to even remotely crack the arrogance of genocidal peace, as the Israeli writer D. Levi attests?

    Both comrades from Palestine answered categorically to the questions put to them about workers’ solidarity: mass proletarian solidarity from within the colonialist entity towards the Palestinian people is an ideological ghost. The suggestion that the liberation of Palestine, and more broadly of the global South, from imperialist domination is dependent on the workers’ movement of the North, is a characteristic expression of imperialist social democracy, of the colonial capitalist conception of progress and its projection against the revolutionary class struggle. Without the direct struggle of the oppressed people, nothing else happens except the expansive reformism of genocide.

    Immediately after the revolutionary initiative of October 7, the state of settler bosses detained the thousands of Palestinian workers who crossed from Gaza every day as if moving through a labour camp, tortured them and marked them with numbers. Some workers died from the torture. In what way did the settler workers express their solidarity? By continuing to enlist and work to murder 160 children of the uncivilized proletariat every day.

    The popular movement of the citizens of the occupied colonial hinterland has a direct enemy and if it does not confront this enemy in a way proportional to the intensity and depth of the current nationalist offensive, it will leave the nationwide responsibility of Israelis for the culmination of the genocide intact. War with zionist fascism which suppresses even the slightest questioning of the “final solution” and which devalues even the Israeli hostages and their protesting relatives, must be internalized in the Israeli nation. During the Nazi occupation of Europe, Italian and German antifascists found a way to stand in solidarity with the peoples in the conquered lands and to put antifascist resistance into practice: they defected to the partisans. This was the clearest manifestation of proletarian internationalism.

    Of course, the preconditions for solidarity to the Palestinian resistance are not put forth by the anti-nationalist anti-colonial movement of the colonial entity, which has expressed understanding for the loss of its own people in the revolutionary attack of October 7, but by the imperialist social democracy. The same fascism, especially its antiproletarian-counterrevolutionary expressions, must be confronted in the imperialist hinterland, such as the capitalists’ terrorism against the workers of Starbucks (13) or against Harvard students in the USA and the military rule in the streets of Europe.

    As various people attempt to contrast the Kurdish Freedom Movement with the Palestinian movement, doing in this way great disservice to internationalist solidarity, let me remind that the internationalist connection of the PKK with the revolutionary proletarian movement in the turkish territory is the HBDH ( Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement) the front of the Turkish armed revolutionary organizations with the PKK.

    Those who say that “resistance, uprisings and revolutions will either be social/class or nothing”, denying the class and social nature of the Palestinian resistance and the class and social elements of the political self-determination of the resistance organizations, are aiding the imperialist genocide. Their “nothing” is a gleeful applause for the cultural and physical ethnic cleansing of the oppressed who stray from the fundamentalist lines of colonial socialism. After all, the ideological totalitarianism of “All or Nothing” always comes to nothing anyway. (14)

    Speaking of workers’ struggle, when the FAUDA comrade was asked about the possibility of a new general strike of Palestinians like in 2021, he replied that although it is not a trivial and useless practice, the struggle today has gone beyond this level. The situation and experience prove the necessity of armed struggle. The interdependence of means and ends is not deduced from some abstract interpretation of the conflict (e.g. workerism), nor from a mechanistic projection of abstractions onto practice. Even the purely economic struggle, as we move away from the reformism of the workers’ aristocracy, requires armed ways of protecting itself against military and penal repression, strike-breaking and anti-union terrorism (e.g. in the greek territory today). The political strike sharply raises the level of conflict. And finally, the whole historical experience of the workers’ movement showcases that the labor camp is a base for self-organization and for venturing into the struggle, but not a place of militant power, when the bourgeoisie is ready to extend its military means beyond limits.

    The class conflict in Palestine reveals the hypocrisy of the ideological distinction, founded on an anti-armed struggle stance, between organized vanguardism and spontaneous insurrection, a construct propagated in the libertarian movement by the situationist lackeys of counter-revolution. Many political texts claiming the title of solidarity with Palestine, call for or wish for the emergence of an uprising in the image of the 1st Intifada, as opposed to the current military conflict. These vulgar euro-elitists, who pretend to be the generals of the correct ways of rebellion, underestimate the Palestinian people, as if they were not already rebellious, as if they were not involved in the resistance in a thousand ways, as if they cannot judge for themselves what the right ways are, and with no sense of responsibility, push a line of disarmament and non-organization within the slaughterhouse, only to promote the doctrine of their political subservience to the military rule’s monopoly, as the genuine liberal colonialists that they are.

    On the actual ground, Gaza, the quality and size of the war production of the Palestinian resistance shows, in real terms, what the historical evolution of social horizontality means. Both the arsenal and infrastructure of resistance, with their particular characteristics within specific cultural and political conditions, express the breadth and depth of creative participation and social cohesion in relation to the conflict with colonialism. The main weapons of resistance are improvised. To manufacture the available quantity of rockets and various explosive devices required a huge amount of work. In addition, it required working space and an equally vast transport network. Even more work was needed to build the underground forts, which serve almost all the activities of the combative forces, and not only their cover at the time of close combat. In other words, this is an infrastructure project that serves far more needs than the classic concrete forts, such as those of the Maginot and Metaxa lines, with all the work being done underground and in incomparable territorial density. Additional work was required to ensure that all work was done invisibly and that no information would leak, within a geographically tiny space, overrun by people and which comprises the world model for technocratic surveillance and espionage.

    None of these tasks, in the given guerrilla warfare conditions, could have be done for 30 pieces of silver or under gunpoint. Only volunteers with credibility for their dedication to the cause could accomplish this feat. A pan-popular army of unparalleled cohesion density, with no historical precedent, prepared the counterattack against the zionist class enemy and the long war of attrition. The conditions demanded an unprecedented density in the unity of social and armed resistance, and the revolted Palestinian people brought the evolution of humanity towards social self-direction one step further. A step further within the tightest universal prison, a step over an abyss that had to be bridged for us all to move forward, lest we be swallowed up by the history of capitalist and state rule.

    In order to carry out the multidimensional program of the aforementioned work, improvisation was needed at all scales, in all phases. It is impossible for a structure of tight vertical direction to carry out all the interdependent productive objectives in the given conditions. It may be difficult for the individualist mentality that permeates part of the anti-capitalist movement to grasp the concept of coordinated self organization, its radicalism and its evolutionary force, but the revolutionary people are putting it into practice. I will not tire of saying it, the historical evolution of guerrilla struggle is the main natural field of development of the fractionally synthetic autonomy of the human animal, because it aims at its liberation from its cultural cannibalism and has developed explosively in the capitalist era, which has unified humanity in a negative way.

    At this point we must note something that the guerrilla organization of the Kurdish Freedom Movement constantly emphasizes: capitalist technology is not capable of defeating determined resistance. The self-sacrifice, cooperativeness and resourcefulness of social resistance are capable of annihilating all the mechanical means of the enemy, its one-dimensional way of organizing and its inherent predisposition to take precautions by increasing distances and obstacles. Victory over modern industrial warfare depends on appropriate tactics, strategy and logistics, but it derives, like guerrilla tactics, strategy and logistics, from the moral forces and collective intelligence of the revolutionary people. Hamas has developed homemade rockets into precision guided systems and has expanded its arsenal with effective portable anti-tank and anti-helicopter missile systems, also of its own design. The ideological dogma that considers the proletariat capable only of tearing up bricks of the pavements, is a vile insult to the working class. If euro-elitism cannot understand that beneath the soil of Gaza a temple of popular culture has been built, catacombs that cut the legs off the modern empire, and if it cannot comprehend insurrection beyond setting up barricades with rubbish bins, it is because of insufficient imagination, but more fundamentally, because of insufficient determination.

    Horizontalism is not a question of preference of certain closed communities, but a question of breaking down class relations, political heteronomy, all inequalities and especially the conditions of polemic power on which they are based. By what yardstick would horizontality be measured if, while the community of the oppressed filled the coffins, the masters stood unmoved like the columns of the Parthenon?

    The authoritarian critique to the means of insurrection, a critique that is certainly directed against the insurrection itself, attempts to define what is ‘of the peoples’, in the way that bio-political critique validates totalitarian rule and its genocides by abolishing political self-determination. The juxtaposition of the 1st Intifada against the armed Palestinian resistance, by recognizing an uprising as popular only when unorganized and unarmed masses are involved, denies the people their status when they organize, arm themselves and try to fight back on as equal terms as possible. This reverse insurrectionalism is no different, neither in political position nor in morality, from the imperialists’ sarcastic statements, “We are against Hamas, not against the Palestinian people”, at the same time that they have unleashed their gendarme to slaughter the rebellious people. In the real conditions of Palestine (and beyond), denying the popular essence of armed resistance means not only to agree with the liquidation of armed resistance, but also, to give masked consent to genocide, since the separation of Hamas from the Palestinian people is precisely the pretext for the dehumanization of the entire Palestinian people, who have been branded as the “shield of terrorists”. He who holds the weapons defines the scope of the hostility. The movements that denounce the armed popular resistance of Palestine have nothing to offer up against the imperialist total massacre, that is being advertised live as the upcoming political management of the entire global South. To settle for throwing a rock or two, not to strike at those who ensure their well-being through displacement and genocide, but instead to implore them for humanity. The means do not tell us what the end is, but they do tell us what it is not. The separation of armed struggle from insurrection is certainly not a friend of Palestine, it is not a friend of political autonomy, nor of social liberation; it cannot go beyond the vortex of serfdom to military rule.

    Unfortunately, calls for non-organization and disarmament are also heard from collectives active around the Kurdish revolutionary movement. How do they forget from one announcement to the next, the armed struggle in Rojava? Have they not understood the decisive contribution of the PKK’s party-popular guerrilla movement in the development of the entire movement over half a century? Have they never heard of the declared People’s Revolutionary War and the unity of its four fields: guerrilla, youth and women’s uprising, direct social self-defense and socialist workers’ movement? Have they overlooked the account of the battle of Heftanin (2020) and the evolution of its lessons in the three-year all-out war that followed in the Medya Defense Zones? Today’s Kurdish guerrilla resistance promotes itself as a model for the whole world.

    Let’s see what the comrade from the colonial hinterland has to say about the issue of diffuse struggle: “Dana El-Kurd, a Palestinian academic, in her book ‘Polarized and Demobilized- Legacies of Authoritarianism in Palestine’ makes the argument that the Palestinian struggle is not only anti-colonial, but also anti-authoritarian in its roots. During the days of the first Intifada, Palestinians had a vibrant civil society, spontaneously organizing local committees to coordinate struggle, and address the needs of local communities. This uprising was democratic in its nature, and was fought against the will of the PLO. Even within the PLO, as Edward Said argues in his book ‘The Question of Palestine’, the structure was organized in a very democratic way, with internal discussions and open criticism, in complete contrast to politics in the Arab world, an area filled with reactionary regimes and self-appointed dictators and out of touch monarchs. The Palestine liberation movement was always the most democratic and progressive movement in the region, and inspired many other anti-authoritarian movements and uprisings, some of them we saw during the Arab Spring, and many are still ongoing. Many argue that the defeat of the Palestinian left in Lebanon, the establishment of the Palestinian Authority after the Oslo accords and the rise of political Islam have changed the picture, but I think many of the original characteristics are still in place.

    Having said all that, I can’t really say that Palestinians ever had an anarchist movement per se. Palestinian anarchists do exist, but like among Israelis, it isn’t really organized as a movement, nor can I say it’s a popular idea. I do believe though that even if the name anarchism isn’t being used, Palestinians do tend to organize in an anarchist way, without calling it like that. New guerrilla groups in the West Bank in recent years like the Lion’s Den in Nablus, Jenin Brigade in Jenin and Balata Battalion in Balata refugee camp organize in a non-hierarchical way and are non-sectarian in principle, open to all the different factions to join. These youth groups are completely outside the control of the Palestinian Authority and the old politics of factions and parties, and their unpredictable, spontaneous nature is challenging to the Israeli authorities.”

    It is logically consistent to note that the reproduction of imperialist koinonismos in the libertarian movement and the aberration of “insurrection, not armed conflict”, are expressed by a plethora of ideological schools that either openly oppose the platformist tradition or tend to smother the organizational approach within the boundaries of the national field and of legitimacy. The current class struggle demands that anarchist revolutionary organization be in its constitution borderless and guerrilla. The world that rises will be shaped by those revolutionary organizations that fight and take roots simultaneously in all corners of the Earth. If we anarchists miss this calling, the responsibility will not belong to history. From a historical evolutionary point of view, I reckon that these days are the last chance for anarchism, until the imminent collapse of capitalism, to become a real force for change. The fighting comrades in Kurdistan, Armenia, in the land of the Mapuche, in Palestine and perhaps in other parts of the South that do not come up in the northerners’ maps are paving the way.

    The question of bankrupt anarchism and bankrupt leftism

    The statement of the Federation of the Anarchist Era, Afghanistan-Iran (9/10/23) (15) exalts the polemics of imperialist social democracy. The condemnation of the October 7 revolutionary initiative is not limited to the act itself. The act is placed entirely in the sphere of the war between powers. The condemnation of Hamas adopts the rhetoric constructed by the genocidal and counter-revolutionary imperialist propaganda. Violence is denounced not as a method but as a tautology of statism. The distinction between civilians and resistance goes to an extent that is constitutive for political meanings: on one side are “peoples” as passive subjects without class determinants and on the other side are governments, which are equated as an ideological category. Referring to the specific field, however, the announcement focuses its aggressive assertion on one pole of power, the Islamist one. And peace is not put forward as a pragmatic perspective, always under the yoke of colonialism, but as an ultimate goal and at the same time an accepted social status which was destroyed by the resistance’s initiative. Peace and security.

    Since when did security, the main pretext for state and imperialist terrorism, become a revolutionary project capable of inescapably canceling the struggle for freedom and equality? The conflict has begun anew, here is the evil, according to the statement. As if the years-long siege of Gaza by a nation of settlers were not one-sided war. And as if the preceding, “peaceful” status were not based on the threat of the new status, that is, the “final solution”. Did this particular anarchist collective ascertain from the prisoners of the Gaza strip that the state of their genocidal peonage is acceptable? This statement is an exaltation of voluntary servitude, transposed on the peoples by an ideological elite. Are the Iranian insurgents to be deemed deluded, as they fight for their freedom by risking their lives and continuing while the regime’s murderous terror intensifies? Let them be left to the peace and security offered by submission to power… Why is it that in one place freedom is life and in another place, where there is no guarantee of survival and tranquility, freedom is superfluous and the needs of the settlers (peace and security) are prioritized? Simply because the Federation of the Anarchist Era chooses enemies and friends based on localist criteria. Since the Palestinian resistance is led by forces linked to the regime we are directly confronting (Iranian), we are siding with the polemic of the colonizer. This reflects zero political autonomy and a scant utilitarian internationalism. This is of course campism with a sectarian motive. Idealistic neutrality, speaking in the language of counter revolution, is the most insidious form of campism. In the interpretation and utopia of the Federation, anti statism is the completion of liberalism, with class relations remaining intact, with the crimes of imperialism and zionist ethnic cleansing and counter-revolution going unpunished, with memory trashed.

    By disregarding the fighting Palestinians and by nullifying their discourse, which declares that this is a war with colonialism, the statement reduces the war to a question of ideologies. The meaning that the Western ideological trend wants to imperiously impose is to strip the real class-political subjects of their class-political determinations. From the point of view of fundamentalist liberal consciousness, ideology is an illusion, without which citizens can peacefully regulate their relations. In the train of thought of liberal metaphysics, Thomas Hobbes’ classic scheme, which describes the state as a necessary evil for the safeguarding of the “social contract”, makes more sense than the version of the Federation, which regresses as to the determination of the cause: if ideology is the cause of the state and of war, then what is the cause of ideology? The answer, if we adhere to this theory, is illusory consciousness. Everything comes down to a question of enlightenment. And as usual, enlightenment is not aimed at promoting direct revolutionary action, but at preventing it and promoting class pacification. What does this metaphysics have to do with the revolutionary anarchist tradition? Nothing, not with any revolutionary tradition. Anarchist ethics and vision is the spawn and development of direct struggle, not an offshoot of bourgeois koinonismos and pacifism.

    The reduction of this conflict to ideology agrees with the imperialist ideology about the “war of civilizations”. The aforementioned statement takes this provocative polemic beyond its general formulation; it targets the side of the resistance, describing its ideology as reactionary and inhuman, with the only evidence being its resistance activity. In this way, the counter-revolutionary terrorism of the colonialist regime is transformed into the logical and inevitable consequence of the unacceptable provocation of the resistance. Having assimilated itself to the counter-revolutionary line of imperialist ideology, due to its sectarian perspective, the Federation culminates its attack on the Palestinian resistance by reproducing the pretext of the colonial militarists for the massacre of the Palestinian people: “using innocents as human shields”. How obvious, the army of colonialists is bombing the Palestinian people, slaughtering their children, pushing them towards the Sinai desert, and attacking them on the route, in order to free them from the terrible power of Hamas! Journalists, nurses and international volunteers, who are unaware that they are being used as human shields by the barbarians, are bombarded by the progressive forces in order to free themselves from this delusion! There are several ways to endorse genocide. Erdogan has literally put his signature on drones that are hitting Rojava and Basur. The Federation of the Anarchist Era and others have put their signature on the bombs that flatten hospitals, schools, temples and refugee camps in Gaza and have put the blame up front on the resistance, with their polemic pen. A sign of the bankruptcy of anarchism in the era of liberal illusions.

    The so-called libertarians who blame Hamas equally or primarily for the suffering of the people of Gaza are, like the imperialists, silencing the fact that the people of Gaza have been condemned to an exhausting blockade because they elected a government that disobeyed the colonialists. All those who criticize Hamas at the moment it attacked the wall and the settler prison guards are, like the imperialists, demanding that the Palestinians abandon anti-colonial resistance. They demand it by means of genocide. Their anti-statist or democratic sentiment is encapsulated in the disparagement and abandonment of the Palestinian people to genocide because they chose the “wrong” leadership.

    According to the logic of liberal fundamentalism, the PKK is responsible for the razing of the Kurdish towns of Bakur in 2015, during the war of Democratic Self-Government, and the Kurdish youth should not get organized with the YDGH and YPS, but against them. In this way one sides with the special warfare of the Grey Wolves and of Mossad.

    The Palestinians’ self-organization which the authoritarian liberals, so called libertarians, advocate, will never happen, because it is a historically arbitrary metonymy for submission to zionist colonialism and imperialism. The Palestinian people do not lie in wait for the luminaries of imperialist koinonismos, they are self-organizing in their daily uprising, in their armed struggle, in their survival, in their mutual aid and in the care of the wounds of genocide. The most radical form of self-organization is the collective memory of the martyrs, which turns into revolutionary organization and an endless river of revenge. Only this self-organization that rejects voluntary servitude and the inequality in life and death can be internationalist. Yes,there is a problem. If a statist religious party is leading the resistance and anarchism seems to be on the opposite side, there is a historical problem for anarchism.

    Koinonistic neutrality has a common intersection with the leftist defense of counter-revolutionary regimes which are antagonistic to NATO imperialism, around which they complement each other. They both derive from the denial of proletarian and social political autonomy within the unremitting war of capitalism. Pacifist idealism, by denying war, makes the people a passive subject, compromised in the world class hierarchy, while statist anti-imperialism also makes the people a passive subject of the world class hierarchy, unable to change the general relations without the mediation of bourgeois power and unable to change the class and political relations at the grassroots level. This opportunism is a by-product of the historical bankruptcy of marxism. By investing in Islamism in order to have an effective anti-imperialism, leftism comes to terms with its historical end and changes sides, since political Islam was the investment of the imperialist counter-revolution in the South. It is common, and historically explicable, for would-be leaders of the left to shift from one pole of power to another on occasion, in order to hold the position of would-be leadership. It has happened even in the most radical revolutionary organizations. The adherents of the anti-NATO front of Iran, Russia, China or even Turkey, support the counter-revolution in order to continue having a say about the anti-imperialist struggle, because it is necessary for them to gloss over the defeated anti-imperialist strategy of Leninism. Since the leadership has been historically defeated, it demands that the people become servile too. This pretentiously anti-imperialist opportunism, being unable to lead the living subjects of resistance in the global South, refers to Khomeini and Saddam Hussein (16), the butchers of the proletarian movement, of the revolutions and of the marxist left in Iran and Iraq.

    The arab and islamic states have sold Palestine out, many decades now. No state will take on a clash with NATO, unless its own existence is threatened. No bourgeoisie can lead the resistance to the end, because it will not risk its own existence, as Bakunin pointed out. The history of the PLO is yet another example. We saw how the Iranian counter-revolution sucked up the execution of Soleimani. No state will seriously go to war over Palestine. No state will throw more resources into the battle for Palestine than are necessary to spend in order to strengthen its own position in the inter-state power relations, by undermining its antagonizers. The pro-Palestinian war crowns are a preventive protection of the counter-revolution in the Middle East and are specifically aimed at maintaining discipline in the armies and paramilitary militias of the arab and islamic states. The above positions and predictions were written before Nasrallah’s backpedaling statement, which confirmed them. Also, before the Houthis take up action, but with knowledge of their expressed threats. The Houthis are a community that recently faced a genocidal war and remains under siege by local exploiters, NATO powers, the saudi monarchy and the Emirates, with the active participation of the greek army.

    The revolutionary resurgence of Palestine, the worldwide popular mobilization, especially of the muslim world, and the surge of imperialist terrorism with unprecedented brutality, put the anti-imperialist struggle at the forefront of the internationalist social movement. In the Middle East, the urgency of the popular anti-imperialist resistance strengthens the need to overthrow the state-capitalist regimes, whether religious or purely bourgeois, dictatorial or parliamentary. The opportunists who support the counter-revolution in the name of anti-imperialism also undermine the anti-imperialist resistance, because they have betrayed its popular basis. On the other hand, liberals who separate the social revolution from the anti- imperialist resistance are dividing the popular uprising, giving away living radical forces to nationalist and religious fascism and thus undermining the social revolution.

    Turkish fascism in particular, which incorporated Palestine in its neo-Ottoman conquest plans, is doing service to NATO imperialism, in parallel with zionist fascism. Turkish fascism is spreading war, fascism and genocide in the Middle East, the Mediterranean, the Caucasus and Europe. However, it doesn’t make a move, unless it serves the interests of American or Russian imperialism or both. Neo-Turkism was a child of imperialism. Turkish islamic-fascism is the product of the imperialists’ desperate plan to dismantle the revolutionary movement in Kurdistan and the turkish territory. The same plan that led to the transnational conspiracy to capture Abdullah Ocalan. Erdogan’s anti-imperialist speeches are also part of the special counter-revolutionary war that the Turkish state is waging in cooperation with all imperialist and regional reactionary forces. If the AKP-MHP regime offered any support to Hamas, it did so only to undermine revolutionary internationalism, to strengthen the repression and genocide in Kurdistan, to promote its colonialist plans, which also involve Palestine, and to enhance its negotiating position among the hegemonic powers of the World War III imperialist war. Behind the facade, the flow of oil and steel from Turkey to Israel has not been interrupted, according to a recent article (17), and there is direct military involvement of Turkey in the genocide of Palestinians, as the zionists use the Kürecik Radar Station in Malatya province.

    Turkish fascism likens israeli fascism to the Islamic State, just as israeli fascism also identifies the Palestinian resistance with the Islamic State, the demon that NATO and the colonialists bred together. All the massacres carried out by the I.S. inside turkish territory were the plans of the MIT, and of the current Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan personally, as were also the anti-Kurdish assassinations in Europe. On the same day that the Palestinian revolutionary attack took place, the Turkish air force bombed a mosque in the Makhmur refugee camp in Basur, as part of the ongoing war against the social forces of democratic con- federalism. (18) An Israeli army spokesman sarcastically mocked the Turkish regime’s genocide accusations directed at Israeli fascism, pointing out that they are doing the same in northern Syria. Zionism, no longer having anything to gain by adorning imperialist humanism, speaks candidly: only we, the blessed ones, are human – the rest are just flesh, useful for our progress. Neo-Ottomanism is compelled to usurp the revolutionary movement. At the same time that the mercenaries of turkish colonialism in Rojava rape and murder women because the women’s revolution is gaining ground and femicide is multiplying in the turkish territory, Erdogan’s wife and daughter are crowning themselves as leaders of the regime’s “pro-palestine” movement. The political alignment with the staged manipulation of revolutionary internationalism cannot be justified, it has no innocence.

    Imperialism must be defeated militarily wherever it lands or places its war proxies. Only the popular movements can achieve this. The zionist military rule must be defeated. In order to socially deconstruct the zionist organization, it is necessary to defeat it in war. Only popular resistance can achieve this. Turkish colonialism must be defeated. The Revolutionary People’s War of the Kurdish Freedom Movement and internationalist confederalism is achieving this. Fascism must be defeated everywhere, the insurrections must win by means of the political autonomy and military might of the proletarian social forces.

    Anti-imperialism or social revolution, fascism or imperialist democracy, multiple poles or a single pole in the global capitalist order, european enlightenment or jihadism, anti-occupation or workers’ struggle, war or self-organization, insurrection or armed resistance, Palestine or Kurdistan? Artificial dilemmas. It is the job of the bosses to make such enforced divisions on the internationalist social revolution. The most important consequence of revolutionary anarchism is the immediacy of its commitment to the entirety of all particular points of struggle. This alone builds the cohesion of the revolutionary social front.

    In these days of the crucial frontal confrontation with NATO terrorism in the Middle East and in the metropolises of the North, revolutionary internationalism has the responsibility to promote solidarity with the Kurdish and Palestinian resistance on a undivided basis. (19) It is crucial for the revolutionary social and anti-imperialist/anti-colonial character of any expression of solidarity with the Palestinian people to not neglect the task of highlighting the conflict in Kurdistan and informing about the current intensity of colonialist attacks in northern Syria and Armenia. At the same time, contrasting the social gains of the Kurdish movement against the Palestinian resistance is unacceptable. As organizations of the turkish- kurdish political front point out, “we support the struggle of the people of Kurdistan and Palestine without any ifs and buts.” (20) Sectarian attitudes are expressions of the conditions of repression of revolutionary internationalism. In practice, the state-capitalist leaderships that organize the military and bio-political rule of the Middle East and of the whole Earth are the same for both Kurdistan and Palestine. The same imperialist directorates, the same war industries, the same energy trusts, the same logistics chains.

    As a revolutionary internationalist movement we have a duty to promote the arab-kurdish alliance, which has spread the social revolution in NE Syria and is defending the battle front against the turkish occupation. To promote it wherever we struggle.

    From the message of an HPG guerrilla of Arab origin fighting in Medina of Basur (Siyar Ereb, 14/10) (21): “As a member of the brother Arab nations, I now take my place in the Free Movement. I joined the guerrillas to respond to enemy attacks. I am very happy and proud of this. […] Genocidal wars are being waged everywhere. […] We will resist until we fulfill our defensive duty and defeat the invading forces. Arab peoples must support this honorable struggle. Our young people need to join this struggle and fight against fascism.”

    And the account of an internationalist fighter a few years before: “An experience full of hope? There are many in this case too. I can juxtapose another man whom I met, who is a boy from Raqqa, an Arab. He willingly chose to leave Raqqa. He was a worker in a garage, he was 15 years old, and, while at work, a civil guard approached him, one of those who in many Syrian cities goes around like they are a king and does whatever they want, who said to him: “Show me how you pray”. And after he prayed, the guard told him: “You are phony, you don’t believe, you don’t pray right”. Well, the boy said: “I am here in my city, I am working, and here comes someone who is not even from Raqqa to bother me and tell me I don’t know how to pray”. And so he decided to leave and to migrate to the North. In the end he joined the YPG because he saw the Kurdish people like people who behave in the opposite way to what he had experienced.

    He was one of the first Arabs to join a force that was initially 100% Kurdish. I met him one year after this happened, and we were in the same Unit. He is an impressive person. Aside from the fact that he explained his plan to me, which was that he would participate in the liberation of Rojava which has then to become the liberation of all Syria. And he wanted to go fight in Turkey, in Iran and in Iraq. “Finally afterwards we will be able to liberate Palestine and in this way also Lebanon”, he would say. And if there was a need also in Italy, he would come here to fight too. He is a person, almost illiterate, who had never seen anything outside of Raqqa, of Kobane and maybe a bit further, but he has a genuine will and perspective, a real one. I am speaking in the present tense, even though I unfortunately cannot be sure if he is still alive, since I left him in September, and in Syria life expectancy is rather short. I fought by his side, and as a fighter he is just impressive, indescribable. There were scenes that, to a westerner like myself, seem like they come out of a movie, how a person can fight like this. As a proletarian and a man with no education, illiterate, condemned by his life to a limited reality, he is a revolutionary of the highest levels in history imaginable. This is how I know that in the north of Syria there are thousands like him, and this is inestimable.

    I can say his nom de guerre, Zagros Raqqa, because no one in Rojava uses their real name…

    The biggest lessons are two. The first is that there is an inequality, a divide, and I already knew this, between the West and the Middle East, or maybe between the West and the rest of the world. It is so great that you cannot imagine it, it cannot be described, and unfortunately, it is not even enough for one to go there and fight in order to bridge the gap, in the sense that it is a divide between those who have everything and those who have nothing, between one who is well and one who is suffering. This is a realization of the seriousness of this situation, made mainly by the one who goes to fight in such war situations.

    The other lesson is that the revolution is just and necessary, however, when we say ‘revolution’ we must be conscientious about the gravity of this word in the sense of the pain, the tragedy and the pain it brings about, because a revolution is still a turning point for society, it is an upheaval of society that doesn’t happen peacefully, even though it is necessary, and so we should not use this term lightly. We don’t need to imagine simply that it is a ‘beautiful thing’. Those who think like this should better give up on politics and do something else, while it would be useful to have people who understand how terrible it is to have to have a revolution, but who continue to think it is necessary.” (Davide Grasso, former YPG fighter, Italy, September 2017)

    Stories of spies and saints

    “Palestinians have determined to proceed without their Western custodians. Decolonization is a grueling project, generally beyond the acumen of those weaned in comfort. The professional classes are stuck in bourgeois abstractions (from which they derive so many rewards) or profess a material politics they don’t in reality support. They demand a bloodless liberation, but only without the colonizer’s blood, even as the native bleeds out in full view of the world. They demand a revolt without consequence, a caucus of pristine victims politely asking to stay alive. They have taught Fanon but ignored his observation that decolonization ‘cannot be accomplished by the wave of a magic wand, a natural cataclysm, or a gentleman’s agreement.’

    These erstwhile liberals don’t need to consult Palestinians to see how wrong they are. Zionists have been explaining for decades that Israel must be defeated by force.” (A Voice from Palestine) (22)

    It is undeniable that Hamas is working with states. It does not hide it, since it is not ashamed of its statism. It is also plausible that the revolutionary initiative of 7 October was aimed, among other things, at significantly changing the inter-state power relations in the Middle East and at overturning the political relations as regards the imperialist hegemony. As Hamas confirmed after a month of fighting (in an interview with the New York Times), the initiative was founded on a decision to break free from the long and exhausting siege of Gaza, at any cost.

    None of the above facts implies that the stated purposes are contrary to the will of the Palestinian people. This implication presupposes as an arbitrary rule that the people always choose peace, even when that means their long-term extermination, over desperate resistance. The lackeys of genocidal colonial peace silence the fact that the news of the invasion against the colonial fortress was greeted with mass celebrations in the besieged Palestinian territories. (23)

    No one on the planet could have interpreted Hamas’ move as the product of anti-state struggle, nor of course as independent of any state assistance. However, the statist mediation of popular interests does not make these interests entirely artificial and alien; it does not cancel the existence of needs determined by the class-oppressed communities and exploited classes themselves, which are assigned to the political mediation of an agent of power. From the anarchist point of view, political mediation is a historical problem, precisely because there are always proletarian and social needs, which are confused with antagonistic needs wherever authoritarian mediation takes place. The idea that any mediated will expresses false needs and only hostile interests, expresses a vulgar aristocratic anti-popular elitism. As if the people are a thoughtless passive entity that will be redeemed only when it is enlightened by some blessed ones, or by chance.

    Why should the upsurge of the Middle East or even of the whole Earth be a hostile prospect for those who permanently live and die inside the furnace of colonialist rule? How else will Palestine be liberated, if the colonial fortress is not blown up like a powder keg and thus, if the whole world does not flare up first? The scaremongering about ‘escalation’ is a central propaganda line of the imperialists. If there is a specific problem with state mediators here, it is their inherent incompetence and their insufficient motivation to engage in the anti-imperialist struggle to the degree that is necessary for the liberation of Palestine. The ideological elites of any social democracy have even less of a motivation and zero capacity.

    In Greece, a group that brandishes an understanding of politics as an interplay between agents, surpassing even the greek Communist Party, added to the above that “the destruction of Gaza and the displacement of its inhabitants was and is among the plans of Hamas’ agents, was intended and indeed is a precondition for its continuation.” (24) This conclusion negates the fundamental axiom of the state that state expediency takes precedence over all other expediency and therefore of the interests of its citizens, because it completely equates the interests of Hamas with the interests of the supporting states and their interests with the interests of the enemy states (NATO, Israel, etc.). This is the typical Hitlerian reduction (propaganda manual in “My Struggle”), historically anti-Semitic, of all antitheses to the dark designs of a principal enemy. This mystical reduction is the pretext for stripping the meaning from the antitheses and subordinating them to a simplistic monolithic ideology. In this case, the contradictory factors in the imperialistic management of the Palestinian genocide are blatant. It has been shown by official documents that the colonialists are seeking the complete displacement of the disobedient people. But the vassal Arab states do not want the surplus Palestinian precariat and the displaced Palestinian resistance in their territories. Neither do the European imperialists. That’s why the Egyptian junta keeps them corralled in the slaughterhouse. Which state and why would it want the Palestinian resistance to diffuse, except the settlers, who have their own special interest as a priority? The NATOists have pulled out of the drawer the case of a collaborationist palestinian state, the ideal plan for them, however, as much as an open war was necessary in order to attempt the definitive annihilation of resistance throughout occupied Palestine, so too a war makes the prospect of annihilation unrealistically idealistic. The national disregard for the Palestinian Authority, its total weakness on an international level, the resistance’s ultimatums to Abbas (5-6/11/23, Organization ‘Children of Abu Jadal’, from inside the police forces of the Palestinian Authority), and the attack on him (7/11/23, questioned by the Palestinian Authority and the imperialists) confirm these lines, which were written prior to this. The interpretation that open war was a priori necessary and legitimate for the colonialists and imperialists, and by implication, the October 7 attack was a pretext, turns the causes and practical consequences upside down, with a preconceived position that resistance is irrational. Why would the imperialists seek to feed and diffuse anti-colonial anti-imperialist resistance, why would they want to compromise the relations of the Arab states with Israeli colonialism, why would they want to increase Iranian-Shiite influence and to hand over to the mediating Turkish hegemony more bargaining cards, while the Hamas state was quietly managing the Gaza camp? Why would the Iranian regime want the Palestinians scattered around rather than at the feet of the Israeli hinterland? There is only one answer: because this is how it suits the ideology that says that the powerful are always powerful and that they inevitably pull the strings of history.

    All the current complications have one driving premise, which alone gives them coherent meaning: the settlers’ and NATO’s expectation to eliminate Palestinian resistance, because on October 7 it manifested itself powerfully. With the unhindered prolonged mass massacre of the people of Gaza, with the repeated bombings of refugee convoys, hospitals, schools and churches turned into refugee shelters, with the killing of 101 volunteers of the UN humanitarian mission (until 12 November), the targeted killing of dozens of Red Crescent nurses and doctors (an article published on 19/10 reports 192 deaths since 7/1025 and of 40 journalists (by the first week of November), the imperialists are sending the message to the people of the whole world, that those who do not get used to poverty, exclusion, displacement, incarceration and slow death, will be brutally exterminated. Resistance is not the pretext for this coordinated operation of global terror, it is its cause, its enemy. The ‘agents’ game’ theorists are capable of making up any nonsense in order to interpret the facts to suit their simplistic ideology, always against the resistance.

    The more specific interpretations of the hypothesis that the attack on the colonial fortress was carried out to provoke the war and impose a new occupation of Gaza or an imperialist protectorate regime, refer to marine hydrocarbon deposits and pipelines. Some also link Turkish involvement with competition for energy routes. These interpretations have the advantage of reducing political conspiracies to specific economic interests and thus pretend to flirt with an anti-capitalist or even anti-imperialist perspective. On the specific field of conflict, it is a stupid ideology to suggest that while there was a semblance of capitulation there were more obstacles to the exploitation of the undersea resources west of Gaza than have now arisen due to open warfare. The only ideal footing of this view is the total disparagement of the Palestinian resistance or popular resistance in general. On 7 October a dynamic of total collapse of the colonialist organization was triggered, but the pseudo-intellectuals of the North could see nothing but the endless development of imperialist domination.

    It is not only that they cannot see in any other way than through the language of subjugation. They can neither think in any other way than in the mentality of capital. The usual talk about oil is not class analysis, it is vulgar political economy. Besides, something that is a key issue in capitalist competition everywhere, energy resources, is not enough to describe and explain anything relevant to the specific forms that the class-political struggle takes. Then, politics is reduced entirely to the sphere of political economy and, as a corollary, war falls into the category of political guise. This scheme, of course, comes from the most extreme liberal school.

    The conspiratorial pseudo-understanding of the October 7 revolutionary initiative offers the greatest ideological service to genocide, having eliminated the existence of resistance by statute. We can passively watch the massacre without guilt, since everything is pre-designed and inevitable and there is no popular resistance on the ground. The aforementioned group spews out its fatalism on the Palestinians: “The residents of [Gaza] are complying [!] with a directive from the Israeli state and are moving from the north to the south despite UN complaints that Israel is imposing a collective punishment, calling the ultimatum ‘horrible’.” Too much compliance by the elite of koinonismos.

    Simplistic reductions in order to get rid of the real contradictions are also expressed in more subtle tones. E.g. (from another group’s text): “Hamas is an Islamist organization. Huge differences of all kinds separate us from it, including – but not limited to – the tactic of targeting civilians. Keeping in our hearts the days of the Palestinian intifada, we stand always and wholeheartedly with the Palestinian people and their resistance, but we see ourselves as far removed from any Islamist formation. We cannot ignore the fact that Hamas’s growth is largely due to its strengthening by Israel itself during the period when it was trying to weaken the secular and progressive forces of the Palestinian resistance. In a similar way, the US was funding and arming Islamist forces as a counterweight to the socialist and communist movements in the Arab and Islamic world. The truth is that Israel chose the enemy it considered most easily manageable. What it was trying to achieve (and it succeeded) was to reverse the internationalization of the Palestinian question (which was the greatest conquest of the resistance until the 1990s) and turn it into an issue of the Islamic world alone. This role was played by Hamas. A role destructive to the movement’s prospects. However, we cannot ignore the fact that at the moment Hamas is also the result of decades of oppression and humiliation of a people. That the young people, born and raised in a prison, seeing their families slaughtered again and again, are siding with those who oppose the inhuman conqueror with arms: and that, unfortunately, is Hamas, even though it is part of the problem and at the same time has the role of oppressor for the Palestinian people themselves.” I skip the points where all the positions of imperialist social democracy of counter-revolutionary pseudo-insurrectionalism, which I analyzed at the beginning, are reproduced. We go forward from the fact that, in the last century, political Islam was promoted by the imperialists to inhibit and reverse the revolution in Asia. The aphoristic ideological lumping together all Islamic movements, belongs precisely to the methods of this imperialist strategy, it reproduces the projection of religion as a dominant field, it vindicates Christian racism, since it recognizes the internationalization of a problem of the South only insofar as it speaks in the language of the North and, above all it veils, behind the conspiratorial mysticism, the class and political dynamics that lead an Islamic organization to the leadership of a resistance movement, the left to decline and anarchism to irrelevance, wherever this has happened. Authoritarian Euro-socialism gets away with an “unfortunately”. Without exaggeration I can say that this attitude does more damage to internationalist solidarity than the practice of provocation through funding (such as the scenarios about the funding of Hamas).

    The revolutionary answer to political Islam is not atheistic fundamentalism, which can only dictatorially and colonially become a political identity. The answer has been given practically and effectively on the ground by the Kurdish Freedom Movement: democratization of Islam, in the way of social resistance, not in the way of imperialist assimilation and subjugation. Idealist abstractions and totalitarian aphorisms offer precisely the easy escape from the task of the struggle to transform contradictions. In this particular conflict, the clearest answer to the ideological construction of the ‘religious war’ comes from the joined mass demonstrations of rabbis, priests and mullahs against the zionist military rule.

    The fundamentalist koinonismos of the above-mentioned group (that uses agents’ game rhetoric) had led it to nationalism a few years ago (the Macedonian issue). Now it mocks “the general prompt for victory to the weapons of Palestine”. It indirectly advocates refusing to support the resistance and accepting colonial peace, so that a new state is not imposed on the Palestinians and does not annihilate dissidents and insurgents, as if they were secure until then. As those who joined arms with Ukrainian fascism say, Zelensky’s racist regime offered more freedom for anarchists and they expect the same from an ideal post- war renewed bourgeois democracy. Revolutionary anarchism is not positioned laterally, and so from my own position I answer that it is the axioms of koinonismos, not the prompts of revolutionary solidarity, that are general and abstract. Victory to the arms of the specific organizations that are fighting the colonialists, victory to their struggle against the colonialists. No political conflict justifies undermining the anti-colonial struggle. To leave no room for intentional confusion, I note that resistance to Palestine’s long-term ethnic cleansing is not an isomorphic phenomenon with Ukrainian-NATO nationalism, nor with the Iranian counter-revolution, despite its nationalist anti-NATO interests. The differences between these struggles are predominantly class-based on a global and local scale, and moreover political.

    Biopolitical ethics, based on its self-valorization, extends its polemic claims to a general and absolute distinction between the supposed revolutionary discipline towards it and the subjects who oppose it and are thus placed in the category of the authoritarians. The elitist project of denouncing real resistance begins with the rape of history and the proclamation of the sovereignty of colonialism over memory. In the words of the aforementioned groups: “No purge can ever and nowhere be a project of revolutionary movements”. Incidentally, the severity of the October 7 attack, across the colonialist entity, was not an attempt at purging, nor did it mean that the liberation of Palestine requires the extermination of all settlers. From the text of the aforementioned group: “The October 7 methodical massacre of hundreds of civilians, youth, children, women and elderly, carried out by the butchers sent by Hamas to carry out this religious ‘duty’ on the road to the establishment of a Palestinian state, the hostage-taking of old people, young children and women, the display of savagery even on the bodies of the murdered, is now added to the pantheon of similar acts of savagery that adorn the history of every form of power. But they will never be written in the pages that adorn the history of the struggles for social liberation and dignity, in the pages that adorn the world history of uprisings and revolutions of oppressed and exploited people.” Gentrification against “savagery”.

    Should we erase from revolutionary proletarian history the Makhnovists who set up machine guns and shot at the bourgeoisie and the feudal lords at their feasts? Butchers, when they threw into the furnace of a locomotive a priest-snitch of the German colonialists? (26) The CNT fighters, who during the revolution of ’36 stormed the monasteries and spared no one? The barefoot Somalis who two and a half decades ago paraded as trophies on spikes the flesh of the American soldiers of a downed helicopter, under whose history should we register them? Popular hatred is the heart of liberational evolution, as Walter Benjamin had noted. It is the task of imperialist social democracy to extinguish proletarian hatred, replacing it with appeals for mercy to the theocracy of capitalist war. Thus koinonismos concludes its positions with abstract pacifism. E.g., “Stop the Israeli attack on Gaza now. Stop now the occupation of the West Bank and the siege of Gaza.” Which forces will stop them and how? Not to ask how the return of the Palestinians to the main occupied territories will take place.

    The moderate view of the aforementioned comrade with colonial citizenship, restores historical and contemporaneous truth, opening up as topic of discussion the humanitarian law of war. “The images coming from southern Israel the day of the attack 7th of October were of course very hard to process emotionally.Nothing to celebrate about the massacre of many civilians, and by all definitions and standards this is a war crime. Things should be seen in of context though. Also, there are zero examples in history of a pure, ‘clean’ resistance movement and liberation that didn’t kill innocent people. Be it resistance to apartheid in South Africa, the British colonization of India, the fight against slavery in America and resistance to nazi occupation throughout Europe- in all of those cases innocent people died. This is not to justify, but the demand of purism from the Palestinian liberation movement alone is unrealistic. The bigger responsibility is on the occupier.”

    The Geneva Convention binds the parties to abide by it regardless of its violation by enemy forces. In any case, no state abides by it. Besides, the inter-state law of war does not apply to internal war, since the internal enemy is not presented as militarily distinct and with represented responsibilities. Indeed, only revolutionary armed forces are self-disciplined in the law of war. The Kurdish Freedom Movement is an example of such an attitude.

    Does the imperialist humanitarian law of war consist a revolutionary self-worth? For biopolitical ethics, yes. But biopolitical ethics is grounded on the regime of class power inequality, biopolitical terrorism and biopolitical racism, and it is articulated so as to perpetuate these. The biopolitical ethics of war revolves around the ‘civilian’, but he is defined by the archetype of imperialist citizenship. The guerrilla and his community first and foremost, the unruly government and its supporters, the pariah state and its citizens, are excluded from bourgeois law. In this case this applies to all the people of Palestine before and after October 7. The citizen who joins arms with, who votes for and finances the class war of the tyrant is the definition of ‘civilian’, with the archetype of the innocence of the capitalist, the politician, the technocrat, the media baron, the soldier and the cop, who become targets of the revolutionary struggle. The identification of the ‘civilian’ with the ‘unarmed’, masks with the feudal aristocratic code of values, the protection of the capitalist-state division of responsibilities, from its war machine. Imperialist humanist law transforms the genocidal settlers into ‘the people’ and the people into an exemption from bourgeois civilization. That is why the UN officials do not say, “what Israel is doing is genocide,” but they say, “what is being done may amount to genocide.” The boundary between the recognizably real and the typical speculation is deeply classist and savagely lethal.

    Thus, subservient koinonismos and pacifism put forward the historical legitimacy of the unstoppable century long genocide as “living in harmony and respecting diversity”. Diversity indeed, where one slaughters and steals the land of the other and the other is slaughtered and persecuted in exile. Some good comrades proposed the mutual rapprochement of the arab and jewish populations on an internationalist and proletarian basis, through the realization that they have nothing to divide and that they can coexist without religious differences, as they did for centuries in the region before the creation of the state of Israel. Both the myth and the utopia are equally true and necessary, but are interspersed with the real history of class struggle. The state of Israel also comes in the way. A history and a present that fatally divides Palestinians and settlers. The former have nothing but chains and death. The others have everything, have seized it with savagery and maintain this relationship with even greater savagery. “Israelis have the right to call the area home”, say some anarchists. “Because whatever happened in the past, all these people live there now.” Except it didn’t happen 3,000 years ago. The present class-political regime of the Palestinian land is the capitalization of the ethnic cleansing (not a vague ‘whatever’) that began in the recent past, a few generations ago, and continues unabated. The koinonists suck up to the colonialists, but the colonialists are not impressed by pacifist cajoling.

    On the contrary, a single experience proved capable of instilling humanistic feelings, moderation, a sense of equality in a small part of the colonial nation: the hostage-taking of loved ones. The murderousness of the October 7 attack produced a consciousness of the insurmountable vulnerability of the dominant clan, and mass hostage-taking produced the prospect of a peace with a little more freedom for the class oppressed, which would not have been conceivable without the universal equation to death. “All hostages, for all of their prisoners”, chant the protesting settlers who are turning against their war-mongering government. The fact that these deeply and broadly nationalistic subjects still form the only opposition within the militaristic nation today, demonstrates something important. Dialectically, the barbarians’ method creates social progress, because it brings to light the means and subsequently the motives of capitalist civilization.

    The vile tyranny says, “what’s done is done”. Restorative justice for the massacred and displaced Palestinian people requires the uprooting of the settlers. Projecting the ideal consent of the settlers to a peaceful settlement as a precondition, reflects the hypocrisy of imperialist social democracy and glosses over class ethnic cleansing. Revolutionary law directly restores cosmic harmony by the edge of the knife.
                                       “Whatever is necessary for the return”(27)

    These days my soul dwells in the basements and rubble with the dying fighters who wait and stoically greet the settler army. Revenge! Revenge for all the history of tyranny. Revenge for the bloody hypocrisy of the imperialists and colonialists. Revenge for the children of Palestine.
                               Unconditionally with Spartacus, for the fall of the Empire.

    “So it is fortunate that insurrection and revolution still remain absurd, because this is precisely what still remains their only potential to win”(28)
    Dimitris Chatzivasileiadis
    November-December 2023
    Domokos Prison

     

    (1) In 1990, the term “κοινωνισμός” [koinonismos] was introduced in the critical thinking of greek speaking anarchists, which is literally translated into english as “socialism”. The word socialism has been conveyed into the greek language without etymological transformations (in greek: “σοσιαλισμός”). The term koinonismos means something different from socialism, so if we were to translate it as socialism based on the language roots, it would result in serious confusion. Writer and translator of this text jointly decided to use the direct transliteration from the greek to english, the word koinonismos, adding this linguistic and conceptual note. In short, the meaning of the term koinonismos, as was first expressed, was the political invocation of an ideologically artificial social whole, which, in communication practice, entails the reproduction of those ideological forms that are produced and infused by the state and capital.

    (2) International statement of the clubs (10/10/23) – https://fcstpauliathensclub.wordpress.com/2023/1/10/%cf%83%cf%87%ce %b5%cf%84%ce%b9%ce%ba%ce%ac-%ce%bc%ce%b5-%cf%84%ce%b7%c%bd-%ce%b4%ce%ae%ce%bb%cf%89%cf %83%ce%b7-%cf%84%ce%bf%cf%85-%cf%83%cf%85%ce%bb%ce%bb%cf%8c%ce%b3%ce%bf%cf%85-%cf%84%ce%b7%cf%82-s/, Statement of the Turkish club (28/10/23) – https://twitter.com/StPauli_TR

    (3) The issue of Palestine is the issue of statism’s bankruptcy! – https://asranarshism.com/1402/07/18/palestine-issue-statism-failure-en/

    (4) tn: The term conspiratorial is the nearest translation of the term that the writer in this text uses to refer not to conspiracy theories, but to an understanding of politics as an interplay between agents or proxies.

    (5) On “Pro-Palestine” hypocricy – https://thepublicsource.org/palestine-solidarity

    (6) Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists –

    Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists

    (7) We Can’t Afford to Remain Silent – Interview with an Israeli Anarchist – https://itsgoingdown.org/two-new-zines-interviews-with-israeli-and-palestinian-anarchists/

    (8) A Practical Appraisal of Palestinian Violence – https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/10/21/a-practical-appraisal-of-palestinian-violence/

    (9) Israel Can’t Imprison Two Million Gazans Without Paying a Cruel Price – https://www.commondreams.org/opinion/israelis-made-to-suffer-the-cruel-price-for-oppression-of-palestinians-in-gaza

    (10) A recent interview with three FAUDA members confirms the commitment to the unity of the resistance and adds the information that FAUDA is involved in the guerrilla struggle. One comrade states that their anarchist movement has opened up a path of popular self-sacrifice. Regarding Hamas, it deconstructs NATO propaganda and describes the political dialogue and cooperation of anarchists with other organizations in the resistance. Importantly, they points out that all resistance organizations have an inclusive political position for all religious communities. The case for Islamic dictatorship is imperialist black propaganda. Just as the addition of a new, Palestinian state is a case of imperialist designs. Anti-authoritarian criticism of the claim of a two-state status and the separation of religious communities throws the discussion off course. Maoists (PFLP), confederationists (DFLP) and pacifist democrats (such as Mussa’ab Bashir, used as a reference by certain ideological opponents of the Palestinian resistance), Islamists (Hamas and Jihad) and anarchists (FAUDA) agree as a program on a single inclusive polity. Such were the declarations of the Israeli constitution as well. Only the imperialists and the would-be exploiters of the Palestinian resistance want two states. But the crucial question is whether we are defending the colonial state as the agent of potential coexistence, against historical and current revolutionary realities, or are we defending the right of the oppressed to reorganize social culture on their own terms, correcting the accumulated injustices? For anarchism the answer is self-evident. Whether the Palestinian revolutionary polity will claim recognition from the inter-state matrix and take the title of state is nobody’s business outside the Palestinian resistance, just as it is nobody’s business outside the Kurdish resistance, the claim of official recognition for the confederation of N-E Syria as a constituent state entity of the unified Syrian territory. (The interview: https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/abolishtheusa-fauda-in-depth-interviews-with-3-members-of-fauda )

    (11) The revolutionary South responds to the a-historical critique that describes anarchism as a eurocentric project. Only the anchorage to the post-Bakunin deconstructivism, that eroded the anarchist movement after the dissolution of the First International, can see in anti-imperialism conceptual and practical boundaries to anarchism. For example, “Anarchists in the Sahel” (18/9/23), (https://www.alerta.gr/archives/33233 ). Marxism had to go beyond the imperialist philosophy of its writings, with Lenin. Revolutionary anarchism never had that problem. From its birth it ventured all over the Earth.

    (12) https://www.alerta.gr/archives/33399

    (13) https://www.efsyn.gr/kosmos/boreia-ameriki/408433_i-starbucks-poinikopoiei-tin-allileggyi-stin-palaistini

    (14) One group writes, “Clearly, we do not intend to dictate to the oppressed and exploited how they should fight […]”. Just before they wrote, “The only self-defense that we recognize -ethically and politically- is the collective social self-defense and social counter violence that the exploited and the oppressed co-opt to emancipate themselves and to shake off the bonds of authority over them”. What does this group mean behind the unclear invocation of collectivity and cooption? And who cares whether these here pharisees of anarchism recognize the Palestinian resistance as self-defense or not? To put the question in a different context: a person who has suffered patriarchal violence, do they need the opinion of these conclaves so as to decide whether to resort to the police, to the state, or if they will cut off the balls of the rapist or whatever else? This same group, ten years ago, in order not to spoil the self interest of some of its members, had covered up an attack against a squat, legitimized by the fact that they refused to recognize the squat as a community, refused to recognize the community’s egalitarian institutions and practices, the political dynamic proletarian social development taking place there, its autonomy in social self- direction and its self-defense. This is what “we do not recognize” means in the world of violence and terrorism: let Netanyahu do his dirty work. However, the Palestinian resistance is winning and the aforementioned squat, which offers refuge to the persecuted and has not put any terms on the Palestinian resistance, is still standing.

    (15) https://asranarshism.com/1402/07/18/palestine-issue-statism-failure-en/

    (16) Artistic intervention for Palestine, ΚΕΔ – https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1627014/ & https://avantgarde2009.wordpress.com/2023/10/12/palaistinh-dikh-mas-ypothesh/ Two months after writing this text I received a text from Solidarity with migrants entitled “The avant-garde of retrogression: notes on the pro-russian and pro-china political tendencies in the greek society” (https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1628404/). The political line of anti-american campism and its political conclusions that this text describes, make up a stance of active counter-revolution on the field. Political directions and practices that are anti-labour, anti-feminist, pro-imperialist and pro- fascist, anti-internationalist and totalitarian. The text correctly argues that the two tendencies inside the pro-Palestine movement are clashing and they will continue to do so. I will further note that this clash is not related only to the movement for Palestine. The fields of struggle are intersecting as is shown in the text. Social-fascism is lurking everywhere and is manifesting itself respectively to political priorities. The contradictions of the social-fascist lines are interesting. Eg, political subjects who converge in their defense of the Assad regime and in their anti kurdish stance, and who have allied in the past as a friendly opposition to SYRIZA in the re-negotiation of the greek state’s position in the imperialist pyramid, have taken antagonistic positions in the conflict over (or against) the capitalist-statist public health control. The former, who openly defend the anti-NATO imperialist front, openly supported the resistance to the unhealthy health-control repression and the dictatorial bio-technocratic subjugation. The latter, who are intensively trying to take the lead of the movement with reformist positions, joined arms with the vanguard of capitalist and statist progress. Despite this, the leftist group that the aforementioned text is denouncing has not “infiltrated” the movement; it comprises one of its constitutive subjects. Particularly in reference to the Palestinian struggle, where the subjects of the struggle are collaborating with state agents in their periphery, it is illogical to demand that the struggle be cleansed of statist ideological tendencies within the solidarity movement. In general, I have put down at length my arguments against the automated logic of exclusions.

    (17) Middle East: Economy and Geo-strategy, https://trohia.espivblogs.net/2024/01/03/mesanatoliko-oikonomia-kai-geostratigiki/

    (18) https://anfenglishmobile.com/features/kck-calls-on-muslim-peoples-to-take-a-stance-against-turkish-bombing-of-mosque-in-maxmur-69767

    (19) A simple practical example: Larissa, solidarity gathering for the Palestinian and the Kurdish peoples, from Dugru Squat- https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1627002/

    (20) https://anfenglishmobile.com/news/kahilogullari-peace-in-the-middle-east-will-only-be-possible-if-people-struggle-together-69791

    (21) https://anfenglishmobile.com/kurdistan/hpg-guerrilla-ereb-calls-on-arab-young-people-to-support-the-struggle-69811

    (22) https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/10/21/a-practical-appraisal-of-palestinian-violence/

    (23) as above

    (24) The massacres of Hamas, the brutality of the Israeli state and the imminent global conflict, Syspeirosi Anarxikon-
    https://anarchypress.wordpress.com/2023/10/14/%ce%bf%ce%b9-%cf%83%cf%86%ce%b1%ce%b3%ce%b5%cf%83-%cf%84%ce%b7%cf%83-%cf%87%ce%b1%ce%bc%ce%b1%cf%83-%ce%bf%c%b9-%ce%b8%ce%b7%cf%81%ce%b9%cf%89%ce%b4%ce%b9%ce%b5%cf%83-%cf%84%ce%bf%cf%85-%ce%b9%cf%83/

    (25) Gaza 2023 — High-Tech War Revisited – https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/11/19/gaza-2023-high-tech-war-revisited/

    (26) The roads of Nestor Makhno, B. Bielas & A. Bielas, Babylonia Press, October 2007 –

    Οι Δρόμοι του Νέστορ Μαχνό | 1ος Τόμος (pdf-κατέβασμα)

    (27) https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2023/10/21/a-practical-appraisal-of-palestinian-violence/

    (28) Nikos Nikanoras, The right to self-defense – https://athens.indymedia.org/post/1627291/

    https://abolitionmedia.noblogs.org/post/2024/07/13/the-palestinian-revolution-and-the-rift-in-the-international-movement/

    #anarchism #counterRevolution #DimitrisChatzivasiliadis #greece #palestine #platformism

    #anarchism #counterrevolution #dimitrischatzivasiliadis #greece #palestine #platformism
  8. Sentence first @[email protected] ·

    Would of, could of, might of, must of

    When we say would have, could have, should have, must have, might have, may have and ought to have, we often put some stress on the modal auxiliary and none on the have. We may show this in writing by abbreviating to could’ve, must’ve, etc. (Would can contract further by merging with the subject: We would have → We’d’ve.)

    Unstressed ’ve is phonetically identical (/əv/) to unstressed of: hence the widespread misspellings would of, could of, should of, must of, might of, may of, and ought to of. Negative forms also appear: shouldn’t of, mightn’t of, etc. This explanation – that misanalysis of the notorious schwa lies behind the error – has general support among linguists.

    The mistake dates to at least 1837, according to the OED, so it has probably been infuriating pedants for almost 200 years. Common words spelt incorrectly provoke particular ire, sometimes accompanied by aspersions cast on the writer’s intelligence, fitness for society, degree of evolution, and so on. But there’s no need for any of that.

    Usage authorities unanimously call it a mistake, though some allow for its deliberate use (more on that below). Many associate it specifically with children and other less educated writers. For example, Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage finds it a practice of ‘semiliterate writers’, and accepts no excuses: ‘the word is have, or a contraction ending in ’ve, and it should be written so.’

    Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Guide to English Usage says ‘children and those who have not completed grammar school may have an excuse for making this mistake, but most others do not.’ What’s meant by that most is what we’ll now consider: that the misspellings don’t always indicate carelessness or relative illiteracy.

    The Columbia Guide to Standard American English finds room for the anomalous forms as a stylistic device:

    substituting of for ’ve in writing can be an example of eye dialect, which deliberately misspells words to suggest Nonstandard or dialectal speech. . . . The important thing is to correct it when it isn’t intentional.

    The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage elaborates on this, saying writers use the spelling ‘to create an unlettered persona’. It cites several examples, including a ‘he’d of got me’ from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who ‘used the spelling to represent the speech of a woman who was not overeducated’, as MWDEU politely puts it.

    Here is must of in an intertitle in the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928):

    And in Josef von Sternberg’s 1928 The Docks of New York:

    Over the last number of years, I’ve seen the non-standard of-form in many books by authors who presumably knew what they were doing:

    ‘I could of sworn I’d run into you some place before.’ (Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding)

    ‘Oh Miz, oh Miz,’ he moaned, rubbing his leg. ‘You shouldn’t of done that, you shouldn’t, you reely shouldn’t.’ (Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar)

    ‘All bloody and mucked up, with figuring away aboard the Vénus, when two minutes would of changed it.’ (Patrick O’Brian, The Mauritius Command)

    ‘I’d of liked to be stabbed – and have lashings of red paint.’ (Agatha Christie, Dead Man’s Folly)

    ‘Never should of married‘ (Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood)

    ‘See, they must of had them already saddled.’ (Elmore Leonard, The Law at Randado)

    ‘If I hadn’t of got my tubes tied, it could of been me, say I was ten years younger.’ (Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale)

    ‘You could of just told him.’ (Raymond Chandler, The Long Good-bye)

    ‘You could of said no and I could of not believed you.’ (Raymond Chandler, The Long Good-bye)

    ‘She must of grabbed some pills.’ (Raymond Chandler, The Long Good-bye)

    ‘You ought to of asked for me in the first place.’ (Raymond Chandler, ‘Trouble Is My Business’, in Trouble Is My Business)

    ‘Maybe I had ought to of gone to the servant’s entrance.’ (Raymond Chandler, ‘Trouble Is My Business’, in Trouble Is My Business)

    ‘Youve never seen anything so mad, the lassie couldnt of known what kind of nut house she was in.’ (Alan Warner, Morvern Callar)

    ‘I don’t suppose he would remember you,’ the woman said thoughtfully. ‘Seems like he would of mentioned you sometimes if he did.’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Lie’, in Let Me Tell You)

    ‘He shouldn’t of done it, that’s all’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘Root of Evil’, in Let Me Tell You)

    ‘My wife,’ he said, putting his elbows on the counter and still watching Judith, ‘my wife, you ought to of heard her when she thought I was going.’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘Homecoming’, in Let Me Tell You)

    ‘If he’d of been a friend of mine you would have said plenty, believe me,” Mrs. Royster said darkly. (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Daemon Lover’)

    ‘She sure must of been glad to see him, the way he looked,’ the old man said. (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Daemon Lover’)

    ‘I never saw him,’ the clerk in the drugstore said. ‘I know because I would of noticed the flowers.’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Daemon Lover’)

    ‘If you had of been dead, you’d of had a funeral. I only just thought a that now. I’d of went along.’ (Claire Kilroy, The Devil I Know)

    Mabey I shoudnt of let them oparate on my branes like she said if its agenst god. (Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon)

    Now that makes me feel bad because I would never of hurt the baby. (Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon)

    ‘I should of had my head examined.’ (Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon)

    ‘She should of got it lit before we arrived.’ (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)

    ‘Maybe you should of shot us when we was far away.’ (Chris Cleave, The Other Hand)

    ‘If he’d been an animal, he’d of been the runt of the litter and we’d of put him down.’ (Gillian Flynn, Dark Places)

    ‘I could of used the money,’ Donna said. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’ […] ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I could of used the money.’ (Raymond Carver, ‘Vitamins’, in Cathedral)

    ‘And here I’d of sworn…’ He took another try at the coffee cup, registered surprise to find it empty. (James Sallis, Drive)

    ‘Figured they must of took you when they took Ellis.’ (James Sallis, Bluebottle)

    Must of been May 14 as May 12 is my birthday and it was by way of a late present. (Minette Walters, The Ice House)

    ‘You could of got it from the paper.’ (Minette Walters, The Sculptress)

    ‘You should of shown me this last time.’ (Minette Walters, The Sculptress)

    ‘She went guilty so she must of done it.’ (Minette Walters, The Sculptress)

    Yorkin cringed. ‘Me. Pierce told me to clip him. I shouldn’t of done it by the drop.’ (James Ellroy, L. A. Confidential)

    ‘That sure could of been true,’ says the clerk at the Salon City store (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild)

    ‘I must of fell asleep, eh?’
    ‘I guess you must have,’ said Isserley. (Michel Faber, Under the Skin)

    Then one day, it must of rained, and man discovered a new place: indoors. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything)

    And where that monkey might of come from. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything)

    I would of put loads more dinosaurs in. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything)

    ‘Donnie, we’d of finished this Betamax deal in ten days. And we’d have had winter money, all three of us.’ (Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia)

    ‘And who else could of built it?’ Mr Madden shouted. (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    Sheila, the woodshed, should of paddled you sooner. (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    ‘You went had in there. Stark mad. You’d have raped her if . . .’
    ‘I’d of what?‘ (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    ‘I never should of come here.’ (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    ‘Whether Miriam would of been any different, I don’t know, but I’d say she’d of been worse.’ (Patrician Highsmith, Strangers on a Train)

    ‘I’d of thought Mrs Herman was the last person in the world to—’ (Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse)

    …the marshal hadn’t taken any of the Collinsons’ property though of course he might of. (Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse)

    ‘I wouldn’t of flagged that taxi if the For Hire flag hadn’t been up.’ (Dashiell Hammet, ‘Fly Paper’, in The Big Knockover and other stories)

    ”F he’d of been a man I’d of seen him in hell ‘fore I’d of gave it to him.’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘Corkscrew’, in The Big Knockover and other stories)

    ‘They may of gone,’ he said slowly. (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Golden Horseshoe’, in The Continental Op)

    ‘But he must of gone through the house and out front . . .’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Girls with the Silver Eyes’, in The ContinentalOp)

    ‘Anybody could of got in them with a ladder.’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Farewell Murder’, in The Continental Op)

    ‘Well, we would of if she hadn’t put the two X’s to me the same as she done to you’ . . . ‘but if my rod hadn’t of got snagged in my flogger you wouldn’t have seen nothing else.’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Whosis Kid’, in The Continental Op)

    ‘If I’d known you five years ago I’d of given it to you.’ (Sara Paretsky, ‘The Maltese Cat’, in Windy City Blues)

    ‘Mate, I’ve probably said enough already. More than I should of (taps nose) . . . Professional conduct an’ all that.’ (Nicola Barker, Darkmans)

    ‘Yes, and if the bastard hadn’t of moved I’d have got him, too.’ (Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards)

    ‘I’m Billy Baker. Your Daddy might of talked about me, called me Space?’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher) (pictured and quoted below: Preacher no. 2: Proud Americans)

    ”Cause I hope I ain’t outta line here, but I think he’d of been cool about you hearin’ it…’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher)

    ‘He was stupid an’ clumsy an’ kind of a weakling, an’ he wouldn’t of lasted a fuckin’ day over there if it hadn’t been for one thing’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher)

    ‘See, we’d of done Murphy there an’ then, we’d of had to do Van Patten as well — an’ I knew your Daddy didn’t really wanna do that.’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher)

    The Dunns must of felt this when Tracy vanished. (Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower)

    ‘She must of really gotten knocked out.’ (Jonathan Lethem, Girl in Landscape)

    ‘He’s not around now, or you’d of met him.’ (Jonathan Lethem, Girl in Landscape)

    ‘They could of just been losing us,’ said Coney. (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘Your parents must of been hippies,’ he’d tell me. (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘He might of been a little impatient for his date with Frank.’ (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘If it weren’t for Gilbert I would of told him to stick it—’ (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘Oh, I’d of straightened it out,’ Tony said. (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘Each one of them, he says it might of been you, it might of been two other guys.’ (Robert Anton Wilson, The Universe Next Door)

    ‘You must of been back on the reservation eating peyote again.’ (Robert Anton Wilson, The Universe Next Door)

    ‘And it wouldn’t of mattered to me whether you did or did not like women.’ (George Pelecanos, Drama City)

    ‘I wouldn’t of thought of such a thing in a million years.’ (George Pelecanos, The Big Blowdown)

    ‘If you hadn’t of stepped in the middle of everything—’ (George Pelecanos, The Big Blowdown)

    It would of done no good gettin’ somebody else te scratch it for me because that was a sin as well. (Frances Molloy, No Mate for the Magpie)

    ‘Been calling all night. Four, five calls, must of been.’ (Lawrence Block, A Ticket to the Boneyard)

    ‘Six-thirty or so, you must of just got on your way to Maspeth, guy goes out back with a load of kitchen garbage.’ (Lawrence Block, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse)

    ‘Another minute and I would of made it, you rats.’ (Lawrence Block, No Score)

    ‘Now if you would of done this we wouldn’t have any trouble.’ (Lawrence Block, No Score)

    ‘Need a social security card,’ he said. ‘You must of had one, I guess.’ (Lawrence Block, Chip Harrison Scores Again)

    ‘Guess they must of been chafing you some on that bus ride.’ (Lawrence Block, Chip Harrison Scores Again)

    ‘You might not of noticed yesterday but he’s only got one hand.’ (Ron Rash, The Cove)

    ‘Would he of died?’ (Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic)

    ‘Pete should of told me,’ he said. (Donald Westlake, Good Behavior)

    ‘Okay,’ Dortmunder said. ‘Could be worse. She could of been wearing her habit, right?’ (Donald Westlake, Good Behavior)

    ‘Wound up, it took him forty-eight years to serve a ten-year sentence that he should of got out in three.’ (Donald Westlake, Good Behavior)

    ‘She has on a pair of bikinis I couldn’t of got into when I was ten years old.’ (Elmore Leonard, Mr. Paradise)

    ‘We could’ve settled, the city pays out a few bucks, it wouldn’t of cost you a dime.’ (Elmore Leonard, Mr. Paradise)

    ‘You know what I sor?’ said the child patiently. ‘Well, the train must of stopped, see, and some little men with bundles on their backs got on.’ (Mavis Gallant, ‘Up North’, in The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories, edited by Robert Phillips)

    ‘You two might of settled down and had a nice baby or something.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘Maybe you should of looked around some more.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘He must of gone to the show.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘I shouldn’t of toog you id,’ Angelo breathed. ‘I got nerbous.’
    ‘It was all my fault,’ Mrs Reilly said, ‘for trying to protect that Ignatius. I should of let you lock him away, Angelo.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘I don’t think I’d of wanted to go down there even for the Grape-Nuts. But maybe if we’d’ve gone real fast . . .’ (Harlan Ellison, ‘Sensible City’, in The Dead that Walk, edited by Stephen Jones)

    ‘You could of killed someone!’ (Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living)

    ‘There’s a lot of places round here you could of bin.’ (Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living)

    ‘If she’d stuck around, I could of asked her advice. I bet she could of come up with somewhere to put you that no one would think of lookin’, not if you paid them ready money.’ (Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living)

    ‘If you’d gotten into a fight with that swordarm of yours, there’d of been bodies all over’ (Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, Lone Wolf and Cub, vol. 2: The Gateless Barrier, translated by Dana Lewis)

    ‘It ain’t right I wasn’t there because if I had of been there I would of known.’ (Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find)’The other vics probably would have lived if Lewin hadn’t of made that play.’ (George Pelecanos, Shame the Devil)

    ‘I should of thought of that my own self.’ (George Pelecanos, Shame the Devil)

    ‘If you’d gone in right away, you would of got him, none of this would of happened. . . . I’d of got off! You think I’d of stood around that roadblock for seven hours?’ (Richard Stark, Slayground)

    ‘That guy talks pretty big, Cory. We should of called his bluff right there.’ (Richard Stark, Ask the Parrot)

    ‘Everything screws up, it just gets worse and worse, we should never of got into this, we’re fuckups, that’s all, we’re just fuckups.’ (Richard Stark, Comeback)

    ‘Might of slipped in and out, nobody the wiser, except we were already on the scene, account of Parmitt being gone.’ (Richard Stark, Flashfire)

    ‘Couldn’t you of – oh, he was ignorant in his speech – couldn’t you of prevented it?’ (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    ‘I should of thought to bring a sun lounger, from the garden centre,’ Mart said. (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    ‘He could of been,’ her mother said vaguely. (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    When she provoked him and he was in a temper with her, he would say, count your blessings, girl, you fink I’m bad but you could of had MacArthur. You could have had Bob Fox, or Aitkenside, or Pikey Pete. You could have had my mate Keef Capstick. You could of had Nick, and then where’d you be? (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    He shouldn’t of been near enough . . . (Donal Ryan, ‘Aisling’, in A Slanting of the Sun)

    Stupid idea anyway I dont think he ever wud of really done it. (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting – this example is from a teenager’s text message)

    But if she hadn’t of drank she would never have seen him at all and better that she was there she thought where she could at least try to keep some grip on him before he lost the run of himself completely (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    Lar thought about it They must of gone out on a job he said (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    I wonder what kind of life you might have had, if you hadn’t of been dragged back here. (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    I paid a man to write it he says He must of never sent it at all (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    I wish someone had of told me you croak into his shoulder (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    Lars frowns Choosing his words He didn’t think you should of married Dickie he says (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    U SHUD OF TOLD ME I CUD OF SHOWD U AROUD!!!! (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting, text message)

    ‘Hell, if I knew I was sitting on a gold mine, I’d of sold ’em a long time ago.’ (Jim Dodge, Not Fade Away)

    ‘And he couldn’t of loved me because he took away my kid, he’s off someplace where I can’t never see him.’ (James Baldwin, Another Country)

    ‘But I would of died for my kid, I wouldn’t never of let anything happen to him.’ (James Baldwin, Another Country)

    ‘I couldn’t of done nothing else,’ he cried, ‘what else could I of done? Where could I of gone with Esther, and me a preacher, too? And what could I of done with you?’ (James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain)

    ‘Must of had a heart attack or something!?’ (Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin, Tank Girl One):

    A curious example in Jim Nesbit’s novel Lethal Injection, which suggests an attempted copy-editing or proofreading fix that stopped halfway: changing “would of” to “would’ve” but not deleting the “of”. Or maybe it’s else entirely:

    The example below, from alt-manga historian Ryan Holmberg’s The Translator Without Talent, is from The Marvel Times, a pretend-newspaper about comics that he created on his twelfth birthday. So its must of is probably not deliberate and also completely forgivable:

    Such phrases appear often in Cormac McCarthy’s novels. Here are some from Cities of the Plain, all used in dialogue:

    You’d never of knowed it though.

    I wouldn’t of wrote home for nothin.

    Looks like they’d of learned to stay out of it.

    Johnny if he hadnt of found that girl would of found somethin else.

    And there was nothin any mortal man could of done to of stopped it.

    And from Blood Meridian:

    No, No, he said. I mean ye was lost to of come here.

    It might of been a mule.

    Somebody ought to of pickled it a long time ago.

    Must of been a thousand indians in there all settin around.

    He appears to of spoke for hisself.

    I couldnt of learned it off ten dutchmen.

    Him and the governor they sat up till breakfast and it was Paris this and London that in five languages, you’d of give something to of heard them.

    Don’t you know he’d of took you with him? He’d of took you, boy.

    Glanton spat. Ort to of shot that one too, he said.

    Well, he said. I’d of thought any damn fool could saw the barrels off a shotgun.

    That old boy you bought them off of might of said they was injins but that dont make it so.
    The man didnt answer.
    Them ears could of come off of cannibals . . .

    You wouldnt of lived anyway, the man said.

    And from All the Pretty Horses:

    They might as well of, he said.

    Otherwise I’d of been born in Alabama.

    …it was a mistake not to of told you.

    But if it hadnt of been for her I wouldnt of made it.

    He might well could of

    Might well could of is also a nice example of a double modal. The [modal]-of construction is used frequently throughout Chris Cleave’s remarkable novel Incendiary:

    She was like that was Mena. Philosophical. I’d definitely of killed myself if it hadn’t of been for her.

    If you could of looked in my eyes you’d of seen the same thing I shouldn’t wonder.

    I wouldn’t of come near you I’d never of let you touch me you should be ashamed.

    Most notably in this exchange between two people only one of whom uses it dialectally:

    – He would of said something.
    – Maybe he wouldn’t have.
    – Wouldn’t you of?

    A remarkable example in A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore uses it without a preceding modal, in the speech of a young child:

    ‘You got brown eyes,’ she said. ‘I of brown eyes.’

    Searching the Corpus of Contemporary American English for the string would of [v*], where [v*] is a verb, produces the graph below. It shows that the of-form’s predominant setting is fiction, usually ‘would of been’, and it also shows up in transcription of actual speech, as in the academic and newspaper instances. You can click through the image to view examples, sources, and further information at COCA.

    The magazine data are false positives (‘we’d have a better chance of achieving a breakthrough in quantum gravity than we would of figuring out how to reliably connect with teenagers’), but you get an idea of the construction’s low frequency and particular genre distribution.

    Plotting could of [v*] usages over time, using the related Corpus of Historical American English, suggests the construction may have peaked. Or is that just wishful thinking? Again, you can click on this graph for details, or open it in another tab.

    Of 1000 occurrences of could/would of in the Oxford English Corpus, about 850 are from ‘representations of direct speech (mostly from the Fiction domain, but also from interviews and courtroom transcripts)’. That leaves 150 genuine written instances of could/would of, compared with 4 million examples of standard could/would have. I can’t help picturing a global battalion of editors keeping it firmly at bay.

    The of-form is not frequent in edited prose, but it appears quite often in casual writing and it has been around a while. Does that count for much? MWDEU says its prolonged use has ‘not made it respectable’, and recommends avoiding it – including in transcriptions of real speech, since ’ve serves the purpose equally well. I agree, and I think if someone explicitly says of, and stresses it, that might warrant a ‘[sic]’.

    Regular readers know I like to make room for literary effect and poetic licence, but I have never warmed to this mistake. Every time I see it – be its use naive or intentional – I want to fix it. Authenticity of dialect and character are all well and good, but I think the main effect of the deliberate usage in edited prose is further uncertainty and error (not to mention irritation, in some quarters). What do you think?

    Updates:

    Years after writing this, I’ve softened considerably on the modal-of construction. This is partly because of exposure to its use by so many great writers, and also because it’s a good example of language change – a natural, essential characteristic of a living language. See my post on reconciling descriptivism with editing for more discussion.

    I’ve come across many more examples in books, and have added them to the sets above and below. @desktopenglish on Twitter drew my attention to this BBC article that quotes a footballer saying he ‘Shouldn’t of reacted the way I did’.

    What sounds to me like a good audio example comes from author Zadie Smith on the Adam Buxton Podcast. This link should cue the player automatically at 15:50, but if it doesn’t, that’s the time stamp. The relevant exchange is as follows, discussing Smith’s father:

    Smith: He was very uptight about time, yeah.

    Buxton: It rubbed off on you.

    Smith: It must of, yeah.

    Medievalist Lucy Allen found the line ‘For methowte I wold not for my life a sen it fallen’ in a 14thC religious text, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich. Translating it as ‘I thought I would not for my life of seen it fall’ [underlines mine], she writes: ‘it’s always fun when you notice something in a medieval text that is a dead ringer for one of the “modern” mistakes that horrify the pearl-clutchers’.

    David Crystal adds further historical commentary in his book Making Sense: The Glamorous Story of English Grammar:

    On 5 September 1819 the poet John Keats sends an apologetic letter to his publisher John Taylor, in which he writes:

    Had I known of your illness I should not of written in such fierry phrase in my first Letter.

    ‘Should not of written’? From such a great poet? It must have been just a slip, because later on in the same letter he writes ‘You should not have delayed.’ What interests me is to find this confusion 200 years ago. It isn’t just a modern thing, as some critics say. That identity in pronunciation between the preposition of and the unstressed form of the auxiliary verb have has been around a long time.

    Morph, a linguistics blog by the Surrey Morphology Group at the University of Surrey, has a great post on different aspects of the modal-of usage: ‘What’s the good of “would of”?’

    Lots of examples in Anne Tyler’s If Morning Ever Comes, spoken by several different characters (of different ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities):

    ‘You mustn’t of been but twelve or so but I remembered.’

    ‘You shouldn’t of mentioned breakfast, boy,’ he said.

    ‘Course I think he could of made a better choice in wives, but then Sally’s right pretty and I reckon I can see his point in picking her.’

    ‘You know, when I was a boy we’d of been plumb through town by now.’

    ‘If we’d of known,’ she said, ‘I’d of cleaned up house a little.’

    ‘Folks tell me I take too good care of him, so it can’t of been that he got too cold. Though he is right much of a puddle-wader, that could’ve done it.’ [Note nearby use of could’ve.]

    ‘I don’t guess my letter would of made any change in him one way or the other.’

    ‘If I’d of married Jamie,” she said, “I would of had a different family.’

    ‘Well, if it hadn’t of been her, it’d been someone else.’

    ‘She mustn’t of seen us.’

    Ross Macdonald also makes regular use of the construction:

    ‘If they knew they had a buyer, they might of stayed in business to accommodate you.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Blue Hammer)

    ‘I wish I could of died instead of him.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Blue Hammer)

    ‘The other man took them, he must of.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘He must of got away.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘He must of fell down on the knife and stabbed himself.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘He would of killed him too.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘When Culligan came marching out, armed up to the teeth, you could of knocked me over with a ‘dozer.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘Lucky for him I was out, or I’d of shown him what’s what.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘You were just a tiny baby, but that wouldn’t of stopped him.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    As does Elmore Leonard; these are from The Hot Kid:

    Emmett Long kept looking at him. ‘You had a gun you’d of shot me, huh?’

    ‘I’d of shoved the ice cream cone up his goddamn nose.’

    What Oris did, he got mad, changed the name of the company from Busy Bee Oil & Gas – a cartoon bumblebee in the trademark they’d of had one day – to NMD Oil & Gas, standing for No More Dusters, and worked a year as a driller to restore his capital.

    ‘The only one I told was Emmett,’ Carl said. ‘It had to of been Crystal told the papers.’

    She had to wonder if she had been here would he of recognized her, and bet he would’ve.

    ‘I’d of arrested him he’s walking in the door,’ Lester said.

    Franklin was shaking his head. ‘I’d of seen ’em.’

    ‘I told him he shouldn’t of left the key in it.’

    ‘She looked at him again with a faint smile. ‘I would never of suspected.’

    ‘The first remark out of his mouth, I’d of pulled and killed him where he stood.’

    ‘She’d of given me the choice of taking a chance with Teddy or being locked up.’

    ‘She wouldn’t of started breakfast if they weren’t all downstairs near ready to eat.’

    ‘Jack’s a talker,’ Carl said. ‘He’d of thought of a reason to go alone, pick up a bottle? And Tony’s polite, he would’ve said don’t steal the car, okay?’

    ‘No, he couldn’t of known that.’

    ‘Jack Belmont wouldn’t of left with bullets in his gun.’

    The minute Jack wasn’t looking, like taking a leak or something, she’d of run out of the house to find a cop.

    But Nancy knew who he was, so so the kidnapping wouldn’t of worked.

    ‘If I hadn’t decided to step back inside to answer the phone, I’d of missed one of the great opportunities of my career as a journalist . . .’

    Richard Stark, already quoted above, has half a dozen examples in his first novel, The Hunter:

    ‘If Art wanted to see you, he’d of told you where to find him.’

    Stegman blinked. ‘He must of believed me.’

    ‘His wife must of known it, but she never told me.’

    ‘Five minutes later,’ the owner told him, ‘you’d of been out of luck.’

    ‘…it must of meant something, that’s all.’

    ‘I wouldn’t of believed it.’

    The spelling occurs often in Kent Haruf’s novel Plainsong:

    He should of taken it last year.

    She might of come down and gone back, Ike said. She might not of too.

    She must not of stuck.

    She must of went home, Mr. Guthrie.

    You shouldn’t even of touched that.

    Well, he might of went to Denver, Raymond said. Then he might of went back to the Rosebud in South Dakota.

    I should of called during these months, I know.

    You could of done something yourself too, you know, he said.

    Something must of happened to her, Harold said. She must of got taken off or something.

    I can’t think of anything we might of did.

    You don’t even know where he might of took her for sure.
    He might of landed her in Pueblo or Walsenburg.

    We didn’t know what we might of done to cause you to want to leave here like that.

    He better not of hurt her permanent, Raymond said.

    And in Pete Dexter’s novel Train:

    “They must of left the sprinklers on all night,” the fat man said after he got back in control of his deportment again.

    “He must of got home somehow,” Train said.

    “She all convulsed the whole time they going through the house; she keeps saying, ‘Oh, no, he couldn’t of did that….'”

    Train began thinking more and more that the world might of decided to let him alone.

    Now he thought about he, she might not of even noticed the table leg if he hadn’t dropped it and woke up the dog…

    Train thought it must of reminded him of that feeling when he was hit by that car and rolled across the road.

    Then, if it was the right officer, they might of just carted Mayflower out of there, just because she was pretty, and then took his ass out into the desert and left it.

    “One of them must of got up here and took it,” he said.

    It seemed like Mr. Cooper must of told him where he come from, or how else would he know?

    Must of bought his clothes in the boy’s department.

    Melrose might of been trying to say something too, and Train distinctly saw his jaw slide out from under his face.

    It came to Train the Plural must of heard her before she even come out of the double-wide, that he must of known from how she was walking that she was mad.

    “A blind man,” he said, “We should of sold tickets.”

    Walter Tevis’s The Hustler, from multiple characters:

    ‘You should never of quit going to Sunday school.’

    ‘I already watched you lose – watched you lose to a man you should of beat.’

    ‘And if I hadn’t already paid for it I could of with the money I won in side bets.’

    ‘They couldn’t of helped but hear of me.’

    ‘I should of let that guy quit, Charlie, like you told me.’

    #books #corpusLinguistics #couldOf #dialects #dialogue #etymology #eyeDialect #fiction #grammar #language #linguistics #literacy #modalVerbs #modals #phrases #reading #schwa #speech #speechErrors #spelling #transcription #typos #usage #verbs #writing

    #writing #verbs #usage #typos #transcription #spelling
  9. Sentence first @[email protected] ·

    Would of, could of, might of, must of

    When we say would have, could have, should have, must have, might have, may have and ought to have, we often put some stress on the modal auxiliary and none on the have. We may show this in writing by abbreviating to could’ve, must’ve, etc. (Would can contract further by merging with the subject: We would have → We’d’ve.)

    Unstressed ’ve is phonetically identical (/əv/) to unstressed of: hence the widespread misspellings would of, could of, should of, must of, might of, may of, and ought to of. Negative forms also appear: shouldn’t of, mightn’t of, etc. This explanation – that misanalysis of the notorious schwa lies behind the error – has general support among linguists.

    The mistake dates to at least 1837, according to the OED, so it has probably been infuriating pedants for almost 200 years. Common words spelt incorrectly provoke particular ire, sometimes accompanied by aspersions cast on the writer’s intelligence, fitness for society, degree of evolution, and so on. But there’s no need for any of that.

    Usage authorities unanimously call it a mistake, though some allow for its deliberate use (more on that below). Many associate it specifically with children and other less educated writers. For example, Garner’s Dictionary of Modern American Usage finds it a practice of ‘semiliterate writers’, and accepts no excuses: ‘the word is have, or a contraction ending in ’ve, and it should be written so.’

    Merriam-Webster’s Pocket Guide to English Usage says ‘children and those who have not completed grammar school may have an excuse for making this mistake, but most others do not.’ What’s meant by that most is what we’ll now consider: that the misspellings don’t always indicate carelessness or relative illiteracy.

    The Columbia Guide to Standard American English finds room for the anomalous forms as a stylistic device:

    substituting of for ’ve in writing can be an example of eye dialect, which deliberately misspells words to suggest Nonstandard or dialectal speech. . . . The important thing is to correct it when it isn’t intentional.

    The Merriam-Webster Dictionary of English Usage elaborates on this, saying writers use the spelling ‘to create an unlettered persona’. It cites several examples, including a ‘he’d of got me’ from F. Scott Fitzgerald, who ‘used the spelling to represent the speech of a woman who was not overeducated’, as MWDEU politely puts it.

    Here is must of in an intertitle in the Buster Keaton film Steamboat Bill, Jr. (1928):

    And in Josef von Sternberg’s 1928 The Docks of New York:

    Over the last number of years, I’ve seen the non-standard of-form in many books by authors who presumably knew what they were doing:

    ‘I could of sworn I’d run into you some place before.’ (Carson McCullers, The Member of the Wedding)

    ‘Oh Miz, oh Miz,’ he moaned, rubbing his leg. ‘You shouldn’t of done that, you shouldn’t, you reely shouldn’t.’ (Sylvia Plath, The Bell Jar)

    ‘All bloody and mucked up, with figuring away aboard the Vénus, when two minutes would of changed it.’ (Patrick O’Brian, The Mauritius Command)

    ‘I’d of liked to be stabbed – and have lashings of red paint.’ (Agatha Christie, Dead Man’s Folly)

    ‘Never should of married‘ (Dylan Thomas, Under Milk Wood)

    ‘See, they must of had them already saddled.’ (Elmore Leonard, The Law at Randado)

    ‘If I hadn’t of got my tubes tied, it could of been me, say I was ten years younger.’ (Margaret Atwood, The Handmaid’s Tale)

    ‘You could of just told him.’ (Raymond Chandler, The Long Good-bye)

    ‘You could of said no and I could of not believed you.’ (Raymond Chandler, The Long Good-bye)

    ‘She must of grabbed some pills.’ (Raymond Chandler, The Long Good-bye)

    ‘You ought to of asked for me in the first place.’ (Raymond Chandler, ‘Trouble Is My Business’, in Trouble Is My Business)

    ‘Maybe I had ought to of gone to the servant’s entrance.’ (Raymond Chandler, ‘Trouble Is My Business’, in Trouble Is My Business)

    ‘Youve never seen anything so mad, the lassie couldnt of known what kind of nut house she was in.’ (Alan Warner, Morvern Callar)

    ‘I don’t suppose he would remember you,’ the woman said thoughtfully. ‘Seems like he would of mentioned you sometimes if he did.’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Lie’, in Let Me Tell You)

    ‘He shouldn’t of done it, that’s all’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘Root of Evil’, in Let Me Tell You)

    ‘My wife,’ he said, putting his elbows on the counter and still watching Judith, ‘my wife, you ought to of heard her when she thought I was going.’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘Homecoming’, in Let Me Tell You)

    ‘If he’d of been a friend of mine you would have said plenty, believe me,” Mrs. Royster said darkly. (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Daemon Lover’)

    ‘She sure must of been glad to see him, the way he looked,’ the old man said. (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Daemon Lover’)

    ‘I never saw him,’ the clerk in the drugstore said. ‘I know because I would of noticed the flowers.’ (Shirley Jackson, ‘The Daemon Lover’)

    ‘If you had of been dead, you’d of had a funeral. I only just thought a that now. I’d of went along.’ (Claire Kilroy, The Devil I Know)

    Mabey I shoudnt of let them oparate on my branes like she said if its agenst god. (Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon)

    Now that makes me feel bad because I would never of hurt the baby. (Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon)

    ‘I should of had my head examined.’ (Daniel Keyes, Flowers for Algernon)

    ‘She should of got it lit before we arrived.’ (Terry Pratchett, Wyrd Sisters)

    ‘Maybe you should of shot us when we was far away.’ (Chris Cleave, The Other Hand)

    ‘If he’d been an animal, he’d of been the runt of the litter and we’d of put him down.’ (Gillian Flynn, Dark Places)

    ‘I could of used the money,’ Donna said. ‘That’s what I was thinking.’ […] ‘It’s true,’ she said. ‘I could of used the money.’ (Raymond Carver, ‘Vitamins’, in Cathedral)

    ‘And here I’d of sworn…’ He took another try at the coffee cup, registered surprise to find it empty. (James Sallis, Drive)

    ‘Figured they must of took you when they took Ellis.’ (James Sallis, Bluebottle)

    Must of been May 14 as May 12 is my birthday and it was by way of a late present. (Minette Walters, The Ice House)

    ‘You could of got it from the paper.’ (Minette Walters, The Sculptress)

    ‘You should of shown me this last time.’ (Minette Walters, The Sculptress)

    ‘She went guilty so she must of done it.’ (Minette Walters, The Sculptress)

    Yorkin cringed. ‘Me. Pierce told me to clip him. I shouldn’t of done it by the drop.’ (James Ellroy, L. A. Confidential)

    ‘That sure could of been true,’ says the clerk at the Salon City store (Jon Krakauer, Into the Wild)

    ‘I must of fell asleep, eh?’
    ‘I guess you must have,’ said Isserley. (Michel Faber, Under the Skin)

    Then one day, it must of rained, and man discovered a new place: indoors. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything)

    And where that monkey might of come from. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything)

    I would of put loads more dinosaurs in. (Philomena Cunk, Cunk on Everything)

    ‘Donnie, we’d of finished this Betamax deal in ten days. And we’d have had winter money, all three of us.’ (Joseph D. Pistone with Richard Woodley, Donnie Brasco: My Undercover Life in the Mafia)

    ‘And who else could of built it?’ Mr Madden shouted. (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    Sheila, the woodshed, should of paddled you sooner. (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    ‘You went had in there. Stark mad. You’d have raped her if . . .’
    ‘I’d of what?‘ (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    ‘I never should of come here.’ (Brian Moore, The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne)

    ‘Whether Miriam would of been any different, I don’t know, but I’d say she’d of been worse.’ (Patricia Highsmith, Strangers on a Train)

    ‘I’d of thought Mrs Herman was the last person in the world to—’ (Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse)

    …the marshal hadn’t taken any of the Collinsons’ property though of course he might of. (Dashiell Hammett, The Dain Curse)

    ‘I wouldn’t of flagged that taxi if the For Hire flag hadn’t been up.’ (Dashiell Hammet, ‘Fly Paper’, in The Big Knockover and other stories)

    ”F he’d of been a man I’d of seen him in hell ‘fore I’d of gave it to him.’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘Corkscrew’, in The Big Knockover and other stories)

    ‘They may of gone,’ he said slowly. (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Golden Horseshoe’, in The Continental Op)

    ‘But he must of gone through the house and out front . . .’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Girls with the Silver Eyes’, in The ContinentalOp)

    ‘Anybody could of got in them with a ladder.’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Farewell Murder’, in The Continental Op)

    ‘Well, we would of if she hadn’t put the two X’s to me the same as she done to you’ . . . ‘but if my rod hadn’t of got snagged in my flogger you wouldn’t have seen nothing else.’ (Dashiell Hammett, ‘The Whosis Kid’, in The Continental Op)

    ‘If I’d known you five years ago I’d of given it to you.’ (Sara Paretsky, ‘The Maltese Cat’, in Windy City Blues)

    ‘Mate, I’ve probably said enough already. More than I should of (taps nose) . . . Professional conduct an’ all that.’ (Nicola Barker, Darkmans)

    ‘Yes, and if the bastard hadn’t of moved I’d have got him, too.’ (Alexander Masters, Stuart: A Life Backwards)

    ‘I’m Billy Baker. Your Daddy might of talked about me, called me Space?’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher) (pictured and quoted below: Preacher no. 2: Proud Americans)

    ”Cause I hope I ain’t outta line here, but I think he’d of been cool about you hearin’ it…’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher)

    ‘He was stupid an’ clumsy an’ kind of a weakling, an’ he wouldn’t of lasted a fuckin’ day over there if it hadn’t been for one thing’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher)

    ‘See, we’d of done Murphy there an’ then, we’d of had to do Van Patten as well — an’ I knew your Daddy didn’t really wanna do that.’ (Garth Ennis and Steve Dillon, Preacher)

    The Dunns must of felt this when Tracy vanished. (Octavia E. Butler, Parable of the Sower)

    ‘She must of really gotten knocked out.’ (Jonathan Lethem, Girl in Landscape)

    ‘He’s not around now, or you’d of met him.’ (Jonathan Lethem, Girl in Landscape)

    ‘They could of just been losing us,’ said Coney. (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘Your parents must of been hippies,’ he’d tell me. (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘He might of been a little impatient for his date with Frank.’ (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘If it weren’t for Gilbert I would of told him to stick it—’ (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘Oh, I’d of straightened it out,’ Tony said. (Jonathan Lethem, Motherless Brooklyn)

    ‘Each one of them, he says it might of been you, it might of been two other guys.’ (Robert Anton Wilson, The Universe Next Door)

    ‘You must of been back on the reservation eating peyote again.’ (Robert Anton Wilson, The Universe Next Door)

    ‘And it wouldn’t of mattered to me whether you did or did not like women.’ (George Pelecanos, Drama City)

    ‘I wouldn’t of thought of such a thing in a million years.’ (George Pelecanos, The Big Blowdown)

    ‘If you hadn’t of stepped in the middle of everything—’ (George Pelecanos, The Big Blowdown)

    It would of done no good gettin’ somebody else te scratch it for me because that was a sin as well. (Frances Molloy, No Mate for the Magpie)

    ‘Been calling all night. Four, five calls, must of been.’ (Lawrence Block, A Ticket to the Boneyard)

    ‘Six-thirty or so, you must of just got on your way to Maspeth, guy goes out back with a load of kitchen garbage.’ (Lawrence Block, A Dance at the Slaughterhouse)

    ‘Another minute and I would of made it, you rats.’ (Lawrence Block, No Score)

    ‘Now if you would of done this we wouldn’t have any trouble.’ (Lawrence Block, No Score)

    ‘Need a social security card,’ he said. ‘You must of had one, I guess.’ (Lawrence Block, Chip Harrison Scores Again)

    ‘Guess they must of been chafing you some on that bus ride.’ (Lawrence Block, Chip Harrison Scores Again)

    ‘You might not of noticed yesterday but he’s only got one hand.’ (Ron Rash, The Cove)

    ‘Would he of died?’ (Alison Bechdel, Fun Home: A Family Tragicomic)

    ‘Pete should of told me,’ he said. (Donald Westlake, Good Behavior)

    ‘Okay,’ Dortmunder said. ‘Could be worse. She could of been wearing her habit, right?’ (Donald Westlake, Good Behavior)

    ‘Wound up, it took him forty-eight years to serve a ten-year sentence that he should of got out in three.’ (Donald Westlake, Good Behavior)

    ‘She has on a pair of bikinis I couldn’t of got into when I was ten years old.’ (Elmore Leonard, Mr. Paradise)

    ‘We could’ve settled, the city pays out a few bucks, it wouldn’t of cost you a dime.’ (Elmore Leonard, Mr. Paradise)

    ‘You know what I sor?’ said the child patiently. ‘Well, the train must of stopped, see, and some little men with bundles on their backs got on.’ (Mavis Gallant, ‘Up North’, in The Omnibus of 20th Century Ghost Stories, edited by Robert Phillips)

    ‘You two might of settled down and had a nice baby or something.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘Maybe you should of looked around some more.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘He must of gone to the show.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘I shouldn’t of toog you id,’ Angelo breathed. ‘I got nerbous.’
    ‘It was all my fault,’ Mrs Reilly said, ‘for trying to protect that Ignatius. I should of let you lock him away, Angelo.’ (John Kennedy Toole, A Confederacy of Dunces)

    ‘I don’t think I’d of wanted to go down there even for the Grape-Nuts. But maybe if we’d’ve gone real fast . . .’ (Harlan Ellison, ‘Sensible City’, in The Dead that Walk, edited by Stephen Jones)

    ‘You could of killed someone!’ (Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living)

    ‘There’s a lot of places round here you could of bin.’ (Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living)

    ‘If she’d stuck around, I could of asked her advice. I bet she could of come up with somewhere to put you that no one would think of lookin’, not if you paid them ready money.’ (Neil Gaiman, Death: The High Cost of Living)

    ‘If you’d gotten into a fight with that swordarm of yours, there’d of been bodies all over’ (Kazuo Koike and Goseki Kojima, Lone Wolf and Cub, vol. 2: The Gateless Barrier, translated by Dana Lewis)

    ‘It ain’t right I wasn’t there because if I had of been there I would of known.’ (Flannery O’Connor, A Good Man is Hard to Find)’The other vics probably would have lived if Lewin hadn’t of made that play.’ (George Pelecanos, Shame the Devil)

    ‘I should of thought of that my own self.’ (George Pelecanos, Shame the Devil)

    ‘If you’d gone in right away, you would of got him, none of this would of happened. . . . I’d of got off! You think I’d of stood around that roadblock for seven hours?’ (Richard Stark, Slayground)

    ‘That guy talks pretty big, Cory. We should of called his bluff right there.’ (Richard Stark, Ask the Parrot)

    ‘Everything screws up, it just gets worse and worse, we should never of got into this, we’re fuckups, that’s all, we’re just fuckups.’ (Richard Stark, Comeback)

    ‘Might of slipped in and out, nobody the wiser, except we were already on the scene, account of Parmitt being gone.’ (Richard Stark, Flashfire)

    ‘Couldn’t you of – oh, he was ignorant in his speech – couldn’t you of prevented it?’ (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    ‘I should of thought to bring a sun lounger, from the garden centre,’ Mart said. (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    ‘He could of been,’ her mother said vaguely. (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    When she provoked him and he was in a temper with her, he would say, count your blessings, girl, you fink I’m bad but you could of had MacArthur. You could have had Bob Fox, or Aitkenside, or Pikey Pete. You could have had my mate Keef Capstick. You could of had Nick, and then where’d you be? (Hilary Mantel, Beyond Black)

    He shouldn’t of been near enough . . . (Donal Ryan, ‘Aisling’, in A Slanting of the Sun)

    Stupid idea anyway I dont think he ever wud of really done it. (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting – this example is from a teenager’s text message)

    But if she hadn’t of drank she would never have seen him at all and better that she was there she thought where she could at least try to keep some grip on him before he lost the run of himself completely (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    Lar thought about it They must of gone out on a job he said (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    I wonder what kind of life you might have had, if you hadn’t of been dragged back here. (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    I paid a man to write it he says He must of never sent it at all (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    I wish someone had of told me you croak into his shoulder (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    Lars frowns Choosing his words He didn’t think you should of married Dickie he says (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting)

    U SHUD OF TOLD ME I CUD OF SHOWD U AROUD!!!! (Paul Murray, The Bee Sting, text message)

    ‘Hell, if I knew I was sitting on a gold mine, I’d of sold ’em a long time ago.’ (Jim Dodge, Not Fade Away)

    ‘And he couldn’t of loved me because he took away my kid, he’s off someplace where I can’t never see him.’ (James Baldwin, Another Country)

    ‘But I would of died for my kid, I wouldn’t never of let anything happen to him.’ (James Baldwin, Another Country)

    ‘I couldn’t of done nothing else,’ he cried, ‘what else could I of done? Where could I of gone with Esther, and me a preacher, too? And what could I of done with you?’ (James Baldwin, Go Tell It on the Mountain)

    ‘Must of had a heart attack or something!?’ (Jamie Hewlett and Alan Martin, Tank Girl One):

    A curious example in Jim Nesbit’s novel Lethal Injection, where a character says “would’ve of”. My first thought was that it was a copy-editing or proofreading fix that stopped halfway: changing “would of” to “would’ve” and neglecting to delete the “of”. But a search online shows occasional analogous examples in unedited writing, and adjacent discussion on Language Log, so it may well be authentically dialectal:

    The example below, from alt-manga historian Ryan Holmberg’s The Translator Without Talent, is from The Marvel Times, a pretend-newspaper about comics that he created on his twelfth birthday. So its must of is probably not deliberate and also completely forgivable:

    Such phrases appear often in Cormac McCarthy’s novels. Here are some from Cities of the Plain, all used in dialogue:

    You’d never of knowed it though.

    I wouldn’t of wrote home for nothin.

    Looks like they’d of learned to stay out of it.

    Johnny if he hadnt of found that girl would of found somethin else.

    And there was nothin any mortal man could of done to of stopped it.

    And from Blood Meridian:

    No, No, he said. I mean ye was lost to of come here.

    It might of been a mule.

    Somebody ought to of pickled it a long time ago.

    Must of been a thousand indians in there all settin around.

    He appears to of spoke for hisself.

    I couldnt of learned it off ten dutchmen.

    Him and the governor they sat up till breakfast and it was Paris this and London that in five languages, you’d of give something to of heard them.

    Don’t you know he’d of took you with him? He’d of took you, boy.

    Glanton spat. Ort to of shot that one too, he said.

    Well, he said. I’d of thought any damn fool could saw the barrels off a shotgun.

    That old boy you bought them off of might of said they was injins but that dont make it so.
    The man didnt answer.
    Them ears could of come off of cannibals . . .

    You wouldnt of lived anyway, the man said.

    And from All the Pretty Horses:

    They might as well of, he said.

    Otherwise I’d of been born in Alabama.

    …it was a mistake not to of told you.

    But if it hadnt of been for her I wouldnt of made it.

    He might well could of

    Might well could of is also a nice example of a double modal. The [modal]-of construction is used frequently throughout Chris Cleave’s remarkable novel Incendiary:

    She was like that was Mena. Philosophical. I’d definitely of killed myself if it hadn’t of been for her.

    If you could of looked in my eyes you’d of seen the same thing I shouldn’t wonder.

    I wouldn’t of come near you I’d never of let you touch me you should be ashamed.

    Most notably in this exchange between two people only one of whom uses it dialectally:

    – He would of said something.
    – Maybe he wouldn’t have.
    – Wouldn’t you of?

    A remarkable example in A Gate at the Stairs by Lorrie Moore uses it without a preceding modal, in the speech of a young child:

    ‘You got brown eyes,’ she said. ‘I of brown eyes.’

    Searching the Corpus of Contemporary American English for the string would of [v*], where [v*] is a verb, produces the graph below. It shows that the of-form’s predominant setting is fiction, usually ‘would of been’, and it also shows up in transcription of actual speech, as in the academic and newspaper instances. You can click through the image to view examples, sources, and further information at COCA.

    The magazine data are false positives (‘we’d have a better chance of achieving a breakthrough in quantum gravity than we would of figuring out how to reliably connect with teenagers’), but you get an idea of the construction’s low frequency and particular genre distribution.

    Plotting could of [v*] usages over time, using the related Corpus of Historical American English, suggests the construction may have peaked. Or is that just wishful thinking? Again, you can click on this graph for details, or open it in another tab.

    Of 1000 occurrences of could/would of in the Oxford English Corpus, about 850 are from ‘representations of direct speech (mostly from the Fiction domain, but also from interviews and courtroom transcripts)’. That leaves 150 genuine written instances of could/would of, compared with 4 million examples of standard could/would have. I can’t help picturing a global battalion of editors keeping it firmly at bay.

    The of-form is not frequent in edited prose, but it appears quite often in casual writing and it has been around a while. Does that count for much? MWDEU says its prolonged use has ‘not made it respectable’, and recommends avoiding it – including in transcriptions of real speech, since ’ve serves the purpose equally well. I agree, and I think if someone explicitly says of, and stresses it, that might warrant a ‘[sic]’.

    Regular readers know I like to make room for literary effect and poetic licence, but I have never warmed to this mistake. Every time I see it – be its use naive or intentional – I want to fix it. Authenticity of dialect and character are all well and good, but I think the main effect of the deliberate usage in edited prose is further uncertainty and error (not to mention irritation, in some quarters). What do you think?

    Updates:

    Years after writing this, I’ve softened considerably on the modal-of construction. This is partly because of exposure to its use by so many great writers, and also because it’s a good example of language change – a natural, essential characteristic of a living language. See my post on reconciling descriptivism with editing for more discussion.

    I’ve come across many more examples in books, and have added them to the sets above and below. @desktopenglish on Twitter drew my attention to this BBC article that quotes a footballer saying he ‘Shouldn’t of reacted the way I did’.

    What sounds to me like a good audio example comes from author Zadie Smith on the Adam Buxton Podcast. This link should cue the player automatically at 15:50, but if it doesn’t, that’s the time stamp. The relevant exchange is as follows, discussing Smith’s father:

    Smith: He was very uptight about time, yeah.

    Buxton: It rubbed off on you.

    Smith: It must of, yeah.

    Medievalist Lucy Allen found the line ‘For methowte I wold not for my life a sen it fallen’ in a 14thC religious text, The Shewings of Julian of Norwich. Translating it as ‘I thought I would not for my life of seen it fall’ [underlines mine], she writes: ‘it’s always fun when you notice something in a medieval text that is a dead ringer for one of the “modern” mistakes that horrify the pearl-clutchers’.

    David Crystal adds further historical commentary in his book Making Sense: The Glamorous Story of English Grammar:

    On 5 September 1819 the poet John Keats sends an apologetic letter to his publisher John Taylor, in which he writes:

    Had I known of your illness I should not of written in such fierry phrase in my first Letter.

    ‘Should not of written’? From such a great poet? It must have been just a slip, because later on in the same letter he writes ‘You should not have delayed.’ What interests me is to find this confusion 200 years ago. It isn’t just a modern thing, as some critics say. That identity in pronunciation between the preposition of and the unstressed form of the auxiliary verb have has been around a long time.

    Morph, a linguistics blog by the Surrey Morphology Group at the University of Surrey, has a great post on different aspects of the modal-of usage: ‘What’s the good of “would of”?’

    Lots of examples in Anne Tyler’s If Morning Ever Comes, spoken by several different characters (of different ages, backgrounds, and ethnicities):

    ‘You mustn’t of been but twelve or so but I remembered.’

    ‘You shouldn’t of mentioned breakfast, boy,’ he said.

    ‘Course I think he could of made a better choice in wives, but then Sally’s right pretty and I reckon I can see his point in picking her.’

    ‘You know, when I was a boy we’d of been plumb through town by now.’

    ‘If we’d of known,’ she said, ‘I’d of cleaned up house a little.’

    ‘Folks tell me I take too good care of him, so it can’t of been that he got too cold. Though he is right much of a puddle-wader, that could’ve done it.’ [Note nearby use of could’ve.]

    ‘I don’t guess my letter would of made any change in him one way or the other.’

    ‘If I’d of married Jamie,” she said, “I would of had a different family.’

    ‘Well, if it hadn’t of been her, it’d been someone else.’

    ‘She mustn’t of seen us.’

    Ross Macdonald also makes regular use of the construction:

    ‘If they knew they had a buyer, they might of stayed in business to accommodate you.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Blue Hammer)

    ‘I wish I could of died instead of him.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Blue Hammer)

    ‘The other man took them, he must of.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘He must of got away.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘He must of fell down on the knife and stabbed himself.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘He would of killed him too.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘When Culligan came marching out, armed up to the teeth, you could of knocked me over with a ‘dozer.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘Lucky for him I was out, or I’d of shown him what’s what.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    ‘You were just a tiny baby, but that wouldn’t of stopped him.’ (Ross Macdonald, The Galton Case)

    As does Elmore Leonard; these are from The Hot Kid:

    Emmett Long kept looking at him. ‘You had a gun you’d of shot me, huh?’

    ‘I’d of shoved the ice cream cone up his goddamn nose.’

    What Oris did, he got mad, changed the name of the company from Busy Bee Oil & Gas – a cartoon bumblebee in the trademark they’d of had one day – to NMD Oil & Gas, standing for No More Dusters, and worked a year as a driller to restore his capital.

    ‘The only one I told was Emmett,’ Carl said. ‘It had to of been Crystal told the papers.’

    She had to wonder if she had been here would he of recognized her, and bet he would’ve.

    ‘I’d of arrested him he’s walking in the door,’ Lester said.

    Franklin was shaking his head. ‘I’d of seen ’em.’

    ‘I told him he shouldn’t of left the key in it.’

    ‘She looked at him again with a faint smile. ‘I would never of suspected.’

    ‘The first remark out of his mouth, I’d of pulled and killed him where he stood.’

    ‘She’d of given me the choice of taking a chance with Teddy or being locked up.’

    ‘She wouldn’t of started breakfast if they weren’t all downstairs near ready to eat.’

    ‘Jack’s a talker,’ Carl said. ‘He’d of thought of a reason to go alone, pick up a bottle? And Tony’s polite, he would’ve said don’t steal the car, okay?’

    ‘No, he couldn’t of known that.’

    ‘Jack Belmont wouldn’t of left with bullets in his gun.’

    The minute Jack wasn’t looking, like taking a leak or something, she’d of run out of the house to find a cop.

    But Nancy knew who he was, so so the kidnapping wouldn’t of worked.

    ‘If I hadn’t decided to step back inside to answer the phone, I’d of missed one of the great opportunities of my career as a journalist . . .’

    Richard Stark, already quoted above, has half a dozen examples in his first novel, The Hunter:

    ‘If Art wanted to see you, he’d of told you where to find him.’

    Stegman blinked. ‘He must of believed me.’

    ‘His wife must of known it, but she never told me.’

    ‘Five minutes later,’ the owner told him, ‘you’d of been out of luck.’

    ‘…it must of meant something, that’s all.’

    ‘I wouldn’t of believed it.’

    The spelling occurs often in Kent Haruf’s novel Plainsong:

    He should of taken it last year.

    She might of come down and gone back, Ike said. She might not of too.

    She must not of stuck.

    She must of went home, Mr. Guthrie.

    You shouldn’t even of touched that.

    Well, he might of went to Denver, Raymond said. Then he might of went back to the Rosebud in South Dakota.

    I should of called during these months, I know.

    You could of done something yourself too, you know, he said.

    Something must of happened to her, Harold said. She must of got taken off or something.

    I can’t think of anything we might of did.

    You don’t even know where he might of took her for sure.
    He might of landed her in Pueblo or Walsenburg.

    We didn’t know what we might of done to cause you to want to leave here like that.

    He better not of hurt her permanent, Raymond said.

    And in Pete Dexter’s novel Train:

    “They must of left the sprinklers on all night,” the fat man said after he got back in control of his deportment again.

    “He must of got home somehow,” Train said.

    “She all convulsed the whole time they going through the house; she keeps saying, ‘Oh, no, he couldn’t of did that….'”

    Train began thinking more and more that the world might of decided to let him alone.

    Now he thought about he, she might not of even noticed the table leg if he hadn’t dropped it and woke up the dog…

    Train thought it must of reminded him of that feeling when he was hit by that car and rolled across the road.

    Then, if it was the right officer, they might of just carted Mayflower out of there, just because she was pretty, and then took his ass out into the desert and left it.

    “One of them must of got up here and took it,” he said.

    It seemed like Mr. Cooper must of told him where he come from, or how else would he know?

    Must of bought his clothes in the boy’s department.

    Melrose might of been trying to say something too, and Train distinctly saw his jaw slide out from under his face.

    It came to Train the Plural must of heard her before she even come out of the double-wide, that he must of known from how she was walking that she was mad.

    “A blind man,” he said, “We should of sold tickets.”

    Walter Tevis’s The Hustler, from multiple characters:

    ‘You should never of quit going to Sunday school.’

    ‘I already watched you lose – watched you lose to a man you should of beat.’

    ‘And if I hadn’t already paid for it I could of with the money I won in side bets.’

    ‘They couldn’t of helped but hear of me.’

    ‘I should of let that guy quit, Charlie, like you told me.’

    #books #corpusLinguistics #couldOf #dialects #dialogue #etymology #eyeDialect #fiction #grammar #language #linguistics #literacy #modalVerbs #modals #phrases #reading #schwa #speech #speechErrors #spelling #transcription #typos #usage #verbs #writing

    #books #corpuslinguistics #couldof #dialects #dialogue #etymology
  10. Andy Arthur - Threadinburgh @[email protected] ·

    Problèmes à Gogo: the thread about the Bonnington Bridge Bar

    If you take yourself along the Water of Leith Walkway then, where you meet Newhaven Road, you will come to the burnt out shell of a building. It’s been this way for the best part of a decade: doors and windows boarded up, now covered in graffiti; a roof open to the elements, now sprouting saplings. Look below the parapet of the adjacent bridge and you might notice a mysterious plaque for Uranus Art Garden. Perhaps this is a gentle joke at the expense of Jupiter Art Land? Who knows, but if you look down through the overgrowth you will see a tiered patio down to the river. Is, or was, this that art garden? If so, how did it come to be here? And just what is the story with this ruinous structure?

    The burnt-out shell of 74-76 Newhaven Road. Photo © SelfPlaque for “Uranus Art Garden”. Photo © SelfThe tiered riverside patio terrace. Photo © Self

    What you have been pondering was once the public house known as The Bonnington Bridge; a small, neat building – barely a single room – at 74-76 Newhaven Road. It was built around 1868 when an application for a licence to sell excisable liquors was made to the Burgh of Leith by the appropriately named Theresa Beveridge. The premises at this time were also known as The Bonnington Bridge. This appellation obviously refers to the adjacent bridge of that name, allegedly first built in 1812 but clearly marked in 1804 maps and referred to in newspapers of that time. They stand on a plot of land that had hitherto been the garden of a house called Bridge Place and were let from Mr Miller of Bonnington Old House.

    Bonnington Bridge in the snow, 1895, looking north with the bar of the same name beyond it to the right. Between the bar and the tenement is Bridge Place. Photograph by John McKean, in the Edinburgh & Scottish Collection, Edinburgh City Libraries

    Bonnington had long been a centre of milling and was progressively industrialised throughout the 18th and 19th centuries. Its population was swelled by workers who provided a ready clientèle for an enterprising publican. In 1880 the licence transferred to Thomas Henderson then in 1890 to William Blyth. In the latter case it was granted on the proviso he “undertook to keep eatables such as sandwiches and bread and cheese and such like for the supply of customers“. In 1894 the vast Chancelot Mill opened nearby and the pub became a favoured haunt for its thirsty workers. Come the new century there license changed hands again; in 1902 to H. S. McKay and in 1904 to J. M. Clark.

    OS 1876 town plan of Edinburgh highlighting P.H. (Public House). Note Bonnington Brae house and lodge on the left and Bonnington Old House to the right (east). Tenement housing has started to be built in this area, creeping north of the Water of Leith into an area that had been largely the preserve of villas until this time. Note also the station of the North British Railway to the north where the tracks pass beneath Newhaven Road. Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Scotland

    Between 1902 and 1903 the adjacent bridge was rebuilt and widened at the joint expense of the Corporations of Edinburgh and Leith. The boundary between these municipalities ran down its centre (see the dotted line in the above map) and therefore each was liable for a half share of the costs.

    Plaque installed on Bonnington Bridge in 1902-03 when it was rebuilt and widened. Photo © Self

    The pub’s licence was taken over in 1909 by David Bennet, who would keep it for fifteen years. By this time it had become a tied house of George Mackay & Co., who brewed on the Southside at St Leonard’s Street. Post Office Directories list it at this time as trading under the name of the Bonnington Bridge Tavern. Bennet suffered an elaborate burglary in June 1913 when slates were removed from the pub’s roof and a hole 15 inches square was cut in the sarking boards below to allow entry into the bar. The thieves failed to gain entry to the safe but made off with 18 Shillings from the till.

    The next licensee was Mrs Jane Macintyre Whyte who was granted it in October 1925. It then transferred in 1938 to William R. W. Whitson, who would extend the premises to the rear. By the time Durward Moncur took over in 1963 the brewery was New Mackay Taverns. This latter change was the result of Mackay’s being taken over by the English brewer Watney Mann two years previously. The new owners put their Scottish tied houses into this subsidiary and used them to introduce the novelty of keg beer into the country; Watney’s Red Barrel.

    Pint of Red Barrel please, Sid. Watney Red Barrel much in evidence in the 1972 film Carry on Abroad.

    In March 1965 a loyal customer of fifty plus years, seventy three year old John Black, sued bar manager John Ward for £500 for loss of earnings. Black claimed he had been ejected from the premises – after cracking a joke about being overcharged – with such force that he required hospitalisation and seven weeks off work. The newspapers did not report if his claim was successful. Ownership changed again in 1969 when it was moved to Waverley Taverns (Scotland) Ltd, another Wattney Mann holding company. This was the result of a further takeover, merging the former Mackay’s premises with those of Drybrough’s of Craigmillar.

    The decline of heavy industry in the district in the 1960s and 70s saw the pub’s demographic drift away from being a humble howff for the working man. By the early 1980s it had forged itself a new reputation as offering the latest opening times in Leith – 2AM every weekday – and always being good for a “lock in“. To keep the punters entertained there was live Jazz on Thursdays, country night on Fridays and a Golden Oldies disco on Saturday. And Go-Go dancers. Go-Go dancers every lunch time, late on weeknights and all day Friday and Saturday. Sunday was the Lord’s Day and therefore there would be no dancers and no drinking: the doors remained firmly closed.

    Scotsman, 26th November 1982. The opening hours were varied to 1AM every day Monday to Saturday in 1993.

    When the author of 1987’s Leith Pub Guide‘s – the appropriately named Derry Beer – visited he recorded it being known locally as either The Bonny or The Bridge. In his opinion the place “really comes to life at night” and was a favourite spot for stag nights and rowdy bowling club celebrations. The landlord at this time was John Murray, who also ran a print shop over the road.

    The Bonnington Bridge in 1987, picture from the Leith Pub Guide by Derry Beer.

    The 1990s saw a series of landlords come and go. In 1992 it passed to John Moriarty, who also ran the Alhambra Bar on Leith Walk (one wonders if he was a relation of the famous Mary Moriarty who ran the Port O’ Leith). In 1995 it was taken over by Michele Marr and in 1998 transferred to Gary Reid and James Gourlay. These latter owners changed the name to the Newhaven Inn, a somewhat odd choice given the fact it lies a kilometre south of that particular village. The name stuck despite the geographic anomaly and was retained when it was taken over in 2003 by Ian and Moira Brown. By this time the trading hours had moved with the times, the doors opening on Sundays but with the late nights pared back; midnight on Thursdays and 1AM on Friday and Saturdays.

    In 2006 a further change came to the little pub when it found itself in the vast portfolio of national operator Punch Taverns. This was the result of an extended and convoluted series of takeovers in the pub trade. Wattney Mann was taken over by Grand Metropolitan in 1972, who sold their tied houses to Courage in 1991. The latter was bought by Scottish & Newcastle in 1995 who sold their tied houses to Punch in 2003. The new owners were granted planning permission to build a small extension for a new kitchen and add a raised outdoor seating deck overlooking the river. This was possibly a response to the ban of smoking in enclosed public spaces in Scotland year (has it really been 20 years?) At this time the name was also sensibly changed back to its original Bonnington Bridge.

    The “Bonny” in 2008 when the Google Streetview car passed. This shows the work done as granted by the 2006 planning permission, adding the small kitchen extension and outside seating deck.

    The Bonny hit the news in May 2009 for the wrong reasons when a cannabis farm was discovered in its basement. Police officers searching for stolen property there found more than 350 plants, valued between £50-150,000, behind a series of locked doors in the cellar. They were being tended by an undocumented immigrant, 40 year old Ming Lee, who told them he had been paid £100 a week to tend them. Lee claimed to have been locked downstairs for two weeks and had only been allowed out once to buy food. At this time the owner was still Punch, who denied any and all knowledge of what had been going on.

    Punch shuttered the pub and would never re-open it. Obviously deciding it was time to call last orders they put it up for sale later in the year. Planning permission was granted at that time to turn it into a fireplace showroom and that might have been that for our story had it not been for a company called Nocturnal Aviators Limited. Formed as Malsen Limited in 2001, the company was dormant until it bought the pub for £120,000 in April 2010. It planned to return it to its original use, having been granted planning permission to thoroughly expand and modernise it. Its goal was to take advantage of the position overlooking the Water if Leith and pivot the business from traditional boozer to a family-friendly, food-centric bistro. The man behind this was the company’s sole shareholder and director; former Scotland Rugby international turned publican and businessman, Norrie Rowan. After making a name for himself on the Murrayfield turf in the 1980s, he remade it in the 1990s by excavating The Vaults and The Caves out of the cellars and arches beneath South Bridge. In doing so he forged a reputation for doing things his way, digging first and asking questions later, repeatedly coming into conflict with city planners and engineers along the way.

    Still from a promotional video issued by Norrie Rowan on YouTube for his 2022 council election campaign


    Like his previous schemes, Rowan once again intended to expand downwards. In the basement he would create a restaurant and second bar, from where a new patio terrace on the river bank would be accessed through folding glass doors. Work began, but repeatedly appears to have stalled and never reached a conclusion. Once again one of Norrie Rowan’s schemes brought him into conflict with the Council and there are a series of enforcement actions and appeals detailed in official records (summarised in the table at the foot of this post). And yet again he also managed to upset the city’s Roads Engineers, who charged he had been digging into cellars beneath the bridge without permission. Rowan contended these were within the curtilage of his property and that they had not proved otherwise.

    If one looks back using Google Streetview then – from the outside at least – it work appears to have been nearing completion in 2012. At that time however a full new planning application was taken that further altered and extended the place. The defining feature of this updated scheme was a large steel-framed, south-facing, glass dormer that sought to bring more daylight down into the building. It was somewhat at odds with the traditional masonry façade and wood-clad alterations at the side and was was initially rejected at planning. Rowan decided to build it anyway and managed to have it approved retrospectively on appeal.

    Google Streetview, April 2016, showing the state of works at The Bonnington Bridge. From the outside at least things appear to be finally getting close to finishing.

    Further complaints against him during this time were that we was flytipping on the riverbank – he claimed instead he was cleaning up the mess of others – and that his property was unkempt. Another claim was made that walls were being built on the riverbank without permission and there were two that he was undertaking unauthorised works beneath the bridge structure. No action was ever taken against any of these complaints. It should be noted however that the various walls that were built on the riverbank bare no relation to anything shown on any planning drawings. They do however denote this area as containing raised beds for “planting and sculpture“. Is this the Uranus Art Garden? One wonders if this was something of a wry joke on Rowan’s part after having so many unfounded complaints raised against his scheme.

    Drawing from 2012 planning application showing the new basement restuarant area, access through to a lower terrace and the tiered walls and staircase down to a riverside “pathway”, which is actually just a further tier of patio area and not related to the Water of Leith Walkway which runs on a steel structure overhead. City of Edinburgh Council, Ref. No: 12/02512/FUL

    By 2016 the pub had been closed for seven years and finally appeared – from the outside at least – to be approaching a state of completion (again). Disaster struck however on August 15th when the building was gutted by a fire, which was sufficiently intense to have been photographed by visitors to Edinburgh Castle. The Broughton Spurtle – self-described stirrer of local news – reported “when we spoke to Police Scotland on 18 August, the cause of the fire had not been established, and enquiries were ‘ongoing.’” They ended with “Let’s hope the owner was insured.” Planning documents submitted to the Council on his behalf in 2019 noted “a lengthy insurance case was being contested“.

    Photograph submitted with planning application for a temporary extension to the pub (18/09350/FUL)

    It’s not clear if a cause for the fire was ever established. Rowan wrote a letter of reply to the Spurtle in which he detailed his version of the difficulties encountered by the project. He concluded “these delays have led to the situation we now find ourselves in. What could have been an attractive and vibrant access point to the walkway looks likely to remain an eyesore for several more years“.

    Google Streetview image in November 2019, a few months after the catastrophic fire.

    A less determined individual might have just given up after so much time and the disastrous fire, but in 2018 another of Rowan’s company – Termshield Ltd – sought a 5-year consent with a view to rising from the ashes. This rising was quite literal and involved extending upwards by two-storeys using six shipping containers, welded together. This proposal was refused and an appeal was rejected in 2019. The premises’ licence expired that year and given the site appear to all intents and purposes to have been abandoned since then, they have never been renewed. At this time Norrie Rowan decided to turn his hand to local politics, with limited success.

    Architect’s drawing of the proposed shipping container extension, from planning appeal to 18/09350/FUL

    Seven years on from this last activity, if you manage to look through a gap in the rotting boards across the doors or windows you will see a sad site within; bare walls, burnt roof timbers and a filling of flytipped tyres and building waste being slowly overtaken by the Buddleia. Accounts for Nocturnal Aviators Ltd filed with Companies House indicate this ruin remains the company’s sole tangible asset. In its filings for 2025 they are recorded as a “potential development site owned by the company“. One imagines that after a catastrophic fire and a decade open to the elements, demolition and redevelopment might one day at last make a return on this troublesome investment.

    The burnt out interior of the Bonnington Bridge Bar in May 2026, open to the elements and being encroached upon by nature, vandalism and flytipping. Photo taken through a hole in the boarded up door. Photo © SelfReference & DateDescriptionOutcome09/03274/FUL – January 2010…form new sliding folding doors to ground and lower floors, form new patio to lower floor, extension to lower floor to form beer cellarGranted10/00327/EAMEN – June 2010Enforcement. Alleged untidy landNo further action09/03274/VARY – March 2011Non material variation…Alterations to external windows and doors and external stairsConsent varied11/00365/ELBB – June 2011Enforcement. Unauthorised works to listed bridge.No further action.
    11/00509/ELBB – August 2011Enforcement. Construction of stone walls on riverbank.No further action.12/02512/FUL – July 2012External alterations and formation of stair and dormer window.Mixed, granted on appeal12/00497/ELBB – August 2012Enforcement. Unauthorised works to listed bridge.No further action.12/00104/REVREF – September 2012Appeal for 12/02512/FULGranted13/00195/EOPDEV – April 2013Enforcement. Erection of side dormer without planning permission.No further action. Permission had been granted on appeal.15/00609/EAMEN – November 2015Enforcement. Alleged untidy landNo further action.16/00010/EAMEN – January 2016Enforcement. Alleged untidy landTreated as duplicate of 15/00609/EAMAN. No further action18/09350/FUL – October 2018Alter fire damaged public house by removal of existing attic floor and form two temporary extensions using shipping containers.Refused, refused on appeal19/00043/REVREF – April 2019Appeal for 18/09350/FULRefusedDate of validation used for Planning, date received for EnforcementSummary of planning applications and enforcement actions relating to 74 Newhaven Road, 2009 – 2019

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    #Lochend #Logan #Restalrig #StMargaret
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  11. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Monolord – Neverending Review By Creeping Ivy

    I always thought Monolord could level up by favoring hooky bangers. So too did Roquentin, who, in evaluating Vænir back in 2015, saw in these long-form Sabbathians the potential for memorable songs. In picking up Monolord reviewing duties, Huck N Roll began charting a consistently Good stoner/doom career that flirted with evolution but consistently maintained a tried-and-true formula. I would have added the adjectival modifier to Your Time to Shine (2021)—its five distinctive tracks strike a Very Good balance of droniness and catchiness across a sensible 39 minutes.1 My revisionism notwithstanding, Monolord has come to embody the AMG Good, with four branches now on the beloved 3.0tree. As the third Monolord reviewer, the odds suggest I will slap another 3.0 on Neverending and call it a day, especially if album six continues to innovate only around the edges.

    Fortunately, Monolord agrees that hooky bangers would reinvigorate Monolord. To help sculpt what they describe as ‘more succinct and immediate songs’ and a ‘sharper album,’ the band enlisted the legendary Sylvia Massy to record, produce, and mix Neverending.2 Monolord credit Massy for significantly influencing their editing, but this isn’t to say she radically altered the band’s stoner/doom sound. Sonically, Massy beefs up the already thick n’ fuzzy tones of this Swedish power trio. Indeed, the guitar of Thomas Jäger and bass of Mika Häkki continue to combine for some of the fattest, tastiest riffage in the game, with a signature chromaticism hard to achieve in the genre.3 As on prior records, Jäger’s vocals sit back in the mix, making his mid-to-upper range croon ethereally prominent. The metronomic drums of Esben Willems also sit back, making every crash, fill, and cowbell monumental. Like previous outings, Neverending sounds invitingly warm, with some welcome heft this time around.

    Under Massy’s guidance, Neverending shakes up the Monolord formula for the first time. Whereas previous records are 5–6 tracks with an average song-length of 8 minutes, 5 of 8 tracks here sit between 3–5 minutes. Exemplifying this new approach is the opening one-two punch of “Iodine,”—which feels like a miniature YOB meets the noise-groove of Killdozer—and “You Bastard,”—the album’s strongest Minilord song. The latter propels an infectious verse-chorus cycle, supplemented by shimmying shakers, with a Riff o’ the Year candidate. Later, “The Masque” and “Invisible” hit the spot; the former has a fun blues stomp and delightfully dark verses, but the song would’ve benefitted from three iterations of its (terrific) chorus. Minilord falters, however, on “Crystal Bridge,” which actually feels too short. Excellent CoC-style sludgery gives way to Jäger alone, laying plaintive vocals atop clean chords. It seems to set up something expansive, but once the sludge riffing returns as a capper, “Crystal Bridge” ends up sounding like a song without a chorus.

    Despite their emphasis on succinctness, Monolord lace ‘classic’ longer jams throughout Neverending. ”Oozing Wound” is the darling in this regard, typifying the winning chemistry Jäger, Häkki, and Willems possess when they lock in on a simple riff and give it enough space, turns, and melodic character to make it interesting yet still hypnotic. On “It’s Neverending,” Jäger vocally collaborates with Jörgen Sandström, the former bassist of Entombed, which gives Monolord its first flavoring of death-doom via Sandström’s growls. Though I’m less enthusiastic about the Sandström-led portions, the song’s gentle, melancholic dénouement makes it an exceptional eponymous closer. Speaking of closers, “Inside a Collider” weirdly feels like one at track three. It drones on a hooky riff/vocal combo for a while, but it also contains a killer doom descent I wish happened more than once.

    After careful analysis, I have arrived at the same score Monolord has been achieving at AMG for over a decade. In 2019, Huck described No Comfort as the band’s transition album, which was true at the time. But as it currently stands, Neverending is Monolord’s transition album, and it’s a transition not without its growing pains. Though the songwriting falters more than it should on a ‘sharp’ album, holistically, Neverending is an enjoyable 43 minutes, making it a more-than-worthy branch on the 3.0tree.4 In the promo materials, Häkki shares that the collaboration with Massy ‘makes [him] curious about what the next chapter will be’ for Monolord. I count myself among the curious—Neverending isn’t the fully-realized version of Minilord I was hoping for, but it plants the seed.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR    : N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
    Label: Relapse Records
    Websites: Official | Instagram | Facebook
    Releases Worldwide: May 29th, 2026

    #2026 #30 #BlackSabbath #CorrosionOfConformity #DoomMetal #Entombed #JohnnyCash #Killdozer #May26 #Monolord #Neverending #RelapseRecords #Review #Reviews #StonerMetal #SwedishMetal #SystemOfADown #Tool #YOB
    #blacksabbath #corrosionofconformity #doommetal #entombed #johnnycash #killdozer
  12. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Monolord – Neverending Review By Creeping Ivy

    I always thought Monolord could level up by favoring hooky bangers. So too did Roquentin, who, in evaluating Vænir back in 2015, saw in these long-form Sabbathians the potential for memorable songs. In picking up Monolord reviewing duties, Huck N Roll began charting a consistently Good stoner/doom career that flirted with evolution but consistently maintained a tried-and-true formula. I would have added the adjectival modifier to Your Time to Shine (2021)—its five distinctive tracks strike a Very Good balance of droniness and catchiness across a sensible 39 minutes.1 My revisionism notwithstanding, Monolord has come to embody the AMG Good, with four branches now on the beloved 3.0tree. As the third Monolord reviewer, the odds suggest I will slap another 3.0 on Neverending and call it a day, especially if album six continues to innovate only around the edges.

    Fortunately, Monolord agrees that hooky bangers would reinvigorate Monolord. To help sculpt what they describe as ‘more succinct and immediate songs’ and a ‘sharper album,’ the band enlisted the legendary Sylvia Massy to record, produce, and mix Neverending.2 Monolord credit Massy for significantly influencing their editing, but this isn’t to say she radically altered the band’s stoner/doom sound. Sonically, Massy beefs up the already thick n’ fuzzy tones of this Swedish power trio. Indeed, the guitar of Thomas Jäger and bass of Mika Häkki continue to combine for some of the fattest, tastiest riffage in the game, with a signature chromaticism hard to achieve in the genre.3 As on prior records, Jäger’s vocals sit back in the mix, making his mid-to-upper range croon ethereally prominent. The metronomic drums of Esben Willems also sit back, making every crash, fill, and cowbell monumental. Like previous outings, Neverending sounds invitingly warm, with some welcome heft this time around.

    Under Massy’s guidance, Neverending shakes up the Monolord formula for the first time. Whereas previous records are 5–6 tracks with an average song-length of 8 minutes, 5 of 8 tracks here sit between 3–5 minutes. Exemplifying this new approach is the opening one-two punch of “Iodine,”—which feels like a miniature YOB meets the noise-groove of Killdozer—and “You Bastard,”—the album’s strongest Minilord song. The latter propels an infectious verse-chorus cycle, supplemented by shimmying shakers, with a Riff o’ the Year candidate. Later, “The Masque” and “Invisible” hit the spot; the former has a fun blues stomp and delightfully dark verses, but the song would’ve benefitted from three iterations of its (terrific) chorus. Minilord falters, however, on “Crystal Bridge,” which actually feels too short. Excellent CoC-style sludgery gives way to Jäger alone, laying plaintive vocals atop clean chords. It seems to set up something expansive, but once the sludge riffing returns as a capper, “Crystal Bridge” ends up sounding like a song without a chorus.

    Despite their emphasis on succinctness, Monolord lace ‘classic’ longer jams throughout Neverending. ”Oozing Wound” is the darling in this regard, typifying the winning chemistry Jäger, Häkki, and Willems possess when they lock in on a simple riff and give it enough space, turns, and melodic character to make it interesting yet still hypnotic. On “It’s Neverending,” Jäger vocally collaborates with Jörgen Sandström, the former bassist of Entombed, which gives Monolord its first flavoring of death-doom via Sandström’s growls. Though I’m less enthusiastic about the Sandström-led portions, the song’s gentle, melancholic dénouement makes it an exceptional eponymous closer. Speaking of closers, “Inside a Collider” weirdly feels like one at track three. It drones on a hooky riff/vocal combo for a while, but it also contains a killer doom descent I wish happened more than once.

    After careful analysis, I have arrived at the same score Monolord has been achieving at AMG for over a decade. In 2019, Huck described No Comfort as the band’s transition album, which was true at the time. But as it currently stands, Neverending is Monolord’s transition album, and it’s a transition not without its growing pains. Though the songwriting falters more than it should on a ‘sharp’ album, holistically, Neverending is an enjoyable 43 minutes, making it a more-than-worthy branch on the 3.0tree.4 In the promo materials, Häkki shares that the collaboration with Massy ‘makes [him] curious about what the next chapter will be’ for Monolord. I count myself among the curious—Neverending isn’t the fully-realized version of Minilord I was hoping for, but it plants the seed.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR    : N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
    Label: Relapse Records
    Websites: Official | Instagram | Facebook
    Releases Worldwide: May 29th, 2026

    #2026 #30 #BlackSabbath #CorrosionOfConformity #DoomMetal #Entombed #JohnnyCash #Killdozer #May26 #Monolord #Neverending #RelapseRecords #Review #Reviews #StonerMetal #SwedishMetal #SystemOfADown #Tool #YOB
    #blacksabbath #corrosionofconformity #doommetal #entombed #johnnycash #killdozer
  13. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Monolord – Neverending Review By Creeping Ivy

    I always thought Monolord could level up by favoring hooky bangers. So too did Roquentin, who, in evaluating Vænir back in 2015, saw in these long-form Sabbathians the potential for memorable songs. In picking up Monolord reviewing duties, Huck N Roll began charting a consistently Good stoner/doom career that flirted with evolution but consistently maintained a tried-and-true formula. I would have added the adjectival modifier to Your Time to Shine (2021)—its five distinctive tracks strike a Very Good balance of droniness and catchiness across a sensible 39 minutes.1 My revisionism notwithstanding, Monolord has come to embody the AMG Good, with four branches now on the beloved 3.0tree. As the third Monolord reviewer, the odds suggest I will slap another 3.0 on Neverending and call it a day, especially if album six continues to innovate only around the edges.

    Fortunately, Monolord agrees that hooky bangers would reinvigorate Monolord. To help sculpt what they describe as ‘more succinct and immediate songs’ and a ‘sharper album,’ the band enlisted the legendary Sylvia Massy to record, produce, and mix Neverending.2 Monolord credit Massy for significantly influencing their editing, but this isn’t to say she radically altered the band’s stoner/doom sound. Sonically, Massy beefs up the already thick n’ fuzzy tones of this Swedish power trio. Indeed, the guitar of Thomas Jäger and bass of Mika Häkki continue to combine for some of the fattest, tastiest riffage in the game, with a signature chromaticism hard to achieve in the genre.3 As on prior records, Jäger’s vocals sit back in the mix, making his mid-to-upper range croon ethereally prominent. The metronomic drums of Esben Willems also sit back, making every crash, fill, and cowbell monumental. Like previous outings, Neverending sounds invitingly warm, with some welcome heft this time around.

    Under Massy’s guidance, Neverending shakes up the Monolord formula for the first time. Whereas previous records are 5–6 tracks with an average song-length of 8 minutes, 5 of 8 tracks here sit between 3–5 minutes. Exemplifying this new approach is the opening one-two punch of “Iodine,”—which feels like a miniature YOB meets the noise-groove of Killdozer—and “You Bastard,”—the album’s strongest Minilord song. The latter propels an infectious verse-chorus cycle, supplemented by shimmying shakers, with a Riff o’ the Year candidate. Later, “The Masque” and “Invisible” hit the spot; the former has a fun blues stomp and delightfully dark verses, but the song would’ve benefitted from three iterations of its (terrific) chorus. Minilord falters, however, on “Crystal Bridge,” which actually feels too short. Excellent CoC-style sludgery gives way to Jäger alone, laying plaintive vocals atop clean chords. It seems to set up something expansive, but once the sludge riffing returns as a capper, “Crystal Bridge” ends up sounding like a song without a chorus.

    Despite their emphasis on succinctness, Monolord lace ‘classic’ longer jams throughout Neverending. ”Oozing Wound” is the darling in this regard, typifying the winning chemistry Jäger, Häkki, and Willems possess when they lock in on a simple riff and give it enough space, turns, and melodic character to make it interesting yet still hypnotic. On “It’s Neverending,” Jäger vocally collaborates with Jörgen Sandström, the former bassist of Entombed, which gives Monolord its first flavoring of death-doom via Sandström’s growls. Though I’m less enthusiastic about the Sandström-led portions, the song’s gentle, melancholic dénouement makes it an exceptional eponymous closer. Speaking of closers, “Inside a Collider” weirdly feels like one at track three. It drones on a hooky riff/vocal combo for a while, but it also contains a killer doom descent I wish happened more than once.

    After careful analysis, I have arrived at the same score Monolord has been achieving at AMG for over a decade. In 2019, Huck described No Comfort as the band’s transition album, which was true at the time. But as it currently stands, Neverending is Monolord’s transition album, and it’s a transition not without its growing pains. Though the songwriting falters more than it should on a ‘sharp’ album, holistically, Neverending is an enjoyable 43 minutes, making it a more-than-worthy branch on the 3.0tree.4 In the promo materials, Häkki shares that the collaboration with Massy ‘makes [him] curious about what the next chapter will be’ for Monolord. I count myself among the curious—Neverending isn’t the fully-realized version of Minilord I was hoping for, but it plants the seed.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR    : N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
    Label: Relapse Records
    Websites: Official | Instagram | Facebook
    Releases Worldwide: May 29th, 2026

    #2026 #30 #BlackSabbath #CorrosionOfConformity #DoomMetal #Entombed #JohnnyCash #Killdozer #May26 #Monolord #Neverending #RelapseRecords #Review #Reviews #StonerMetal #SwedishMetal #SystemOfADown #Tool #YOB
    #blacksabbath #corrosionofconformity #doommetal #entombed #johnnycash #killdozer
  14. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Monolord – Neverending Review By Creeping Ivy

    I always thought Monolord could level up by favoring hooky bangers. So too did Roquentin, who, in evaluating Vænir back in 2015, saw in these long-form Sabbathians the potential for memorable songs. In picking up Monolord reviewing duties, Huck N Roll began charting a consistently Good stoner/doom career that flirted with evolution but consistently maintained a tried-and-true formula. I would have added the adjectival modifier to Your Time to Shine (2021)—its five distinctive tracks strike a Very Good balance of droniness and catchiness across a sensible 39 minutes.1 My revisionism notwithstanding, Monolord has come to embody the AMG Good, with four branches now on the beloved 3.0tree. As the third Monolord reviewer, the odds suggest I will slap another 3.0 on Neverending and call it a day, especially if album six continues to innovate only around the edges.

    Fortunately, Monolord agrees that hooky bangers would reinvigorate Monolord. To help sculpt what they describe as ‘more succinct and immediate songs’ and a ‘sharper album,’ the band enlisted the legendary Sylvia Massy to record, produce, and mix Neverending.2 Monolord credit Massy for significantly influencing their editing, but this isn’t to say she radically altered the band’s stoner/doom sound. Sonically, Massy beefs up the already thick n’ fuzzy tones of this Swedish power trio. Indeed, the guitar of Thomas Jäger and bass of Mika Häkki continue to combine for some of the fattest, tastiest riffage in the game, with a signature chromaticism hard to achieve in the genre.3 As on prior records, Jäger’s vocals sit back in the mix, making his mid-to-upper range croon ethereally prominent. The metronomic drums of Esben Willems also sit back, making every crash, fill, and cowbell monumental. Like previous outings, Neverending sounds invitingly warm, with some welcome heft this time around.

    Under Massy’s guidance, Neverending shakes up the Monolord formula for the first time. Whereas previous records are 5–6 tracks with an average song-length of 8 minutes, 5 of 8 tracks here sit between 3–5 minutes. Exemplifying this new approach is the opening one-two punch of “Iodine,”—which feels like a miniature YOB meets the noise-groove of Killdozer—and “You Bastard,”—the album’s strongest Minilord song. The latter propels an infectious verse-chorus cycle, supplemented by shimmying shakers, with a Riff o’ the Year candidate. Later, “The Masque” and “Invisible” hit the spot; the former has a fun blues stomp and delightfully dark verses, but the song would’ve benefitted from three iterations of its (terrific) chorus. Minilord falters, however, on “Crystal Bridge,” which actually feels too short. Excellent CoC-style sludgery gives way to Jäger alone, laying plaintive vocals atop clean chords. It seems to set up something expansive, but once the sludge riffing returns as a capper, “Crystal Bridge” ends up sounding like a song without a chorus.

    Despite their emphasis on succinctness, Monolord lace ‘classic’ longer jams throughout Neverending. ”Oozing Wound” is the darling in this regard, typifying the winning chemistry Jäger, Häkki, and Willems possess when they lock in on a simple riff and give it enough space, turns, and melodic character to make it interesting yet still hypnotic. On “It’s Neverending,” Jäger vocally collaborates with Jörgen Sandström, the former bassist of Entombed, which gives Monolord its first flavoring of death-doom via Sandström’s growls. Though I’m less enthusiastic about the Sandström-led portions, the song’s gentle, melancholic dénouement makes it an exceptional eponymous closer. Speaking of closers, “Inside a Collider” weirdly feels like one at track three. It drones on a hooky riff/vocal combo for a while, but it also contains a killer doom descent I wish happened more than once.

    After careful analysis, I have arrived at the same score Monolord has been achieving at AMG for over a decade. In 2019, Huck described No Comfort as the band’s transition album, which was true at the time. But as it currently stands, Neverending is Monolord’s transition album, and it’s a transition not without its growing pains. Though the songwriting falters more than it should on a ‘sharp’ album, holistically, Neverending is an enjoyable 43 minutes, making it a more-than-worthy branch on the 3.0tree.4 In the promo materials, Häkki shares that the collaboration with Massy ‘makes [him] curious about what the next chapter will be’ for Monolord. I count myself among the curious—Neverending isn’t the fully-realized version of Minilord I was hoping for, but it plants the seed.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR    : N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
    Label: Relapse Records
    Websites: Official | Instagram | Facebook
    Releases Worldwide: May 29th, 2026

    #2026 #30 #BlackSabbath #CorrosionOfConformity #DoomMetal #Entombed #JohnnyCash #Killdozer #May26 #Monolord #Neverending #RelapseRecords #Review #Reviews #StonerMetal #SwedishMetal #SystemOfADown #Tool #YOB
    #yob #tool #systemofadown #swedishmetal #stonermetal #reviews
  15. Angry Metal Guy @[email protected] ·
    Monolord – Neverending Review By Creeping Ivy

    I always thought Monolord could level up by favoring hooky bangers. So too did Roquentin, who, in evaluating Vænir back in 2015, saw in these long-form Sabbathians the potential for memorable songs. In picking up Monolord reviewing duties, Huck N Roll began charting a consistently Good stoner/doom career that flirted with evolution but consistently maintained a tried-and-true formula. I would have added the adjectival modifier to Your Time to Shine (2021)—its five distinctive tracks strike a Very Good balance of droniness and catchiness across a sensible 39 minutes.1 My revisionism notwithstanding, Monolord has come to embody the AMG Good, with four branches now on the beloved 3.0tree. As the third Monolord reviewer, the odds suggest I will slap another 3.0 on Neverending and call it a day, especially if album six continues to innovate only around the edges.

    Fortunately, Monolord agrees that hooky bangers would reinvigorate Monolord. To help sculpt what they describe as ‘more succinct and immediate songs’ and a ‘sharper album,’ the band enlisted the legendary Sylvia Massy to record, produce, and mix Neverending.2 Monolord credit Massy for significantly influencing their editing, but this isn’t to say she radically altered the band’s stoner/doom sound. Sonically, Massy beefs up the already thick n’ fuzzy tones of this Swedish power trio. Indeed, the guitar of Thomas Jäger and bass of Mika Häkki continue to combine for some of the fattest, tastiest riffage in the game, with a signature chromaticism hard to achieve in the genre.3 As on prior records, Jäger’s vocals sit back in the mix, making his mid-to-upper range croon ethereally prominent. The metronomic drums of Esben Willems also sit back, making every crash, fill, and cowbell monumental. Like previous outings, Neverending sounds invitingly warm, with some welcome heft this time around.

    Under Massy’s guidance, Neverending shakes up the Monolord formula for the first time. Whereas previous records are 5–6 tracks with an average song-length of 8 minutes, 5 of 8 tracks here sit between 3–5 minutes. Exemplifying this new approach is the opening one-two punch of “Iodine,”—which feels like a miniature YOB meets the noise-groove of Killdozer—and “You Bastard,”—the album’s strongest Minilord song. The latter propels an infectious verse-chorus cycle, supplemented by shimmying shakers, with a Riff o’ the Year candidate. Later, “The Masque” and “Invisible” hit the spot; the former has a fun blues stomp and delightfully dark verses, but the song would’ve benefitted from three iterations of its (terrific) chorus. Minilord falters, however, on “Crystal Bridge,” which actually feels too short. Excellent CoC-style sludgery gives way to Jäger alone, laying plaintive vocals atop clean chords. It seems to set up something expansive, but once the sludge riffing returns as a capper, “Crystal Bridge” ends up sounding like a song without a chorus.

    Despite their emphasis on succinctness, Monolord lace ‘classic’ longer jams throughout Neverending. ”Oozing Wound” is the darling in this regard, typifying the winning chemistry Jäger, Häkki, and Willems possess when they lock in on a simple riff and give it enough space, turns, and melodic character to make it interesting yet still hypnotic. On “It’s Neverending,” Jäger vocally collaborates with Jörgen Sandström, the former bassist of Entombed, which gives Monolord its first flavoring of death-doom via Sandström’s growls. Though I’m less enthusiastic about the Sandström-led portions, the song’s gentle, melancholic dénouement makes it an exceptional eponymous closer. Speaking of closers, “Inside a Collider” weirdly feels like one at track three. It drones on a hooky riff/vocal combo for a while, but it also contains a killer doom descent I wish happened more than once.

    After careful analysis, I have arrived at the same score Monolord has been achieving at AMG for over a decade. In 2019, Huck described No Comfort as the band’s transition album, which was true at the time. But as it currently stands, Neverending is Monolord’s transition album, and it’s a transition not without its growing pains. Though the songwriting falters more than it should on a ‘sharp’ album, holistically, Neverending is an enjoyable 43 minutes, making it a more-than-worthy branch on the 3.0tree.4 In the promo materials, Häkki shares that the collaboration with Massy ‘makes [him] curious about what the next chapter will be’ for Monolord. I count myself among the curious—Neverending isn’t the fully-realized version of Minilord I was hoping for, but it plants the seed.

    Rating: 3.0/5.0
    DR    : N/A | Format Reviewed: Stream
    Label: Relapse Records
    Websites: Official | Instagram | Facebook
    Releases Worldwide: May 29th, 2026

    #2026 #30 #BlackSabbath #CorrosionOfConformity #DoomMetal #Entombed #JohnnyCash #Killdozer #May26 #Monolord #Neverending #RelapseRecords #Review #Reviews #StonerMetal #SwedishMetal #SystemOfADown #Tool #YOB
    #blacksabbath #corrosionofconformity #doommetal #entombed #johnnycash #killdozer
  16. Thomas @[email protected] ·

    New on my #blog: aspi.blog/2026/04/10/surrey-go
    A look at goings on at The Oval where Tony Lock's first county are playing host to the other county he played for and a large photo gallery...
    #cricket #TheCountyChampionship #CountyCricket #SurreyvLeicestershire #SURvLEI #TheTonyLockClash #photography #birds #insects #bees #Butterflies #HollyBlue #WoodlandBrown

    #woodlandbrown #hollyblue #butterflies #bees #insects #birds
  17. Ashley Thomas @[email protected] ·

    On this week's #MissionLogGeneology, @theLogBook and I lock in on why Paladin's been locked up in our penultimate #HaveGunWillTravel discussion, "Cage at McNabb." Bonus: our guest star this week is #LonChaneyJr.! #GeneRoddenberry #StarTrek #nerdlyfe missionlogpodcast.com/cage-at-

    #missionloggeneology #havegunwilltravel #lonchaneyjr #generoddenberry #startrek #nerdlyfe
  18. Tom :damnified: @[email protected] ·

    I've already assumed that my touch pad was broken (or the driver was buggy) because after a tap-and-drag action, the mouse button was not released when releasing the finger from the touch pad.

    It was "sticky", e.g. after marking multiple lines of text.

    Just found out that this was introduced a while ago in Sway (to follow libinput recommendations):

    github.com/swaywm/sway/commit/

    Setting "drag_lock disabled" in the touch pad's config fixes this. 😌

    #sway #libinput #linux #touchpad #laptop

    #laptop #touchpad #linux #libinput #sway
  19. Marc Thomas @[email protected] ·

    Just spent the last several hours working on my Home Assistant install learning about HACS and getting my Schlage Encode Plus door lock working.

    Only to find out that the integration has been officially integrated into Home Assistant Core and will be part of the 2023.09 update which comes out in a matter of days.

    Hours of my life that could have been saved if I had just started reading the support thread at the end instead of the beginning.

    On the bright side, got most of my Nanoleaf essentials stuff added and did my first set of automations with them. So that’s good.

    #homeassistant #Schlage #nanoleaf

    #homeassistant #schlage #nanoleaf
  20. Marc Thomas @[email protected] ·

    Just spent the last several hours working on my Home Assistant install learning about HACS and getting my Schlage Encode Plus door lock working.

    Only to find out that the integration has been officially integrated into Home Assistant Core and will be part of the 2023.09 update which comes out in a matter of days.

    Hours of my life that could have been saved if I had just started reading the support thread at the end instead of the beginning.

    On the bright side, got most of my Nanoleaf essentials stuff added and did my first set of automations with them. So that’s good.

    #homeassistant #Schlage #nanoleaf

    #homeassistant #schlage #nanoleaf
  21. Marc Thomas @[email protected] ·

    Just spent the last several hours working on my Home Assistant install learning about HACS and getting my Schlage Encode Plus door lock working.

    Only to find out that the integration has been officially integrated into Home Assistant Core and will be part of the 2023.09 update which comes out in a matter of days.

    Hours of my life that could have been saved if I had just started reading the support thread at the end instead of the beginning.

    On the bright side, got most of my Nanoleaf essentials stuff added and did my first set of automations with them. So that’s good.

    #homeassistant #Schlage #nanoleaf

    #homeassistant #schlage #nanoleaf
  22. Marc Thomas @[email protected] ·

    Just spent the last several hours working on my Home Assistant install learning about HACS and getting my Schlage Encode Plus door lock working.

    Only to find out that the integration has been officially integrated into Home Assistant Core and will be part of the 2023.09 update which comes out in a matter of days.

    Hours of my life that could have been saved if I had just started reading the support thread at the end instead of the beginning.

    On the bright side, got most of my Nanoleaf essentials stuff added and did my first set of automations with them. So that’s good.

    #homeassistant #Schlage #nanoleaf

    #nanoleaf #schlage #homeassistant
  23. Thomas Beagle @[email protected] ·

    I had this brilliant idea to use some boxed trellis for the wood shed gate to preserve airflow, but the amount of additional work I'm going to have to do to build it up enough to add the lock I want to use is making me question myself.

    #DIWhy

    #diwhy
  24. Thomas Byern @[email protected] ·

    Security keeps getting framed as "add more MFA." That is necessary, but incomplete.

    What actually breaks people is recovery. Device verification. Authenticator lock-in. The moment your phone is missing and you discover that your "secure" setup assumed permanent smartphone availability.

    A secure system that you cannot operate under stress is not secure
    It is fragile, and fragility creates shortcuts.

    #Security #MFA #Identity #Resilience #TechReality #SystemsThinking #ByernNotes

    #security #mfa #identity #resilience #techreality #systemsthinking
  25. Thomas Byern @[email protected] ·

    Security keeps getting framed as "add more MFA." That is necessary, but incomplete.

    What actually breaks people is recovery. Device verification. Authenticator lock-in. The moment your phone is missing and you discover that your "secure" setup assumed permanent smartphone availability.

    A secure system that you cannot operate under stress is not secure
    It is fragile, and fragility creates shortcuts.

    #Security #MFA #Identity #Resilience #TechReality #SystemsThinking #ByernNotes

    #security #mfa #identity #resilience #techreality #systemsthinking
  26. Thomas Byern @[email protected] ·

    Security keeps getting framed as "add more MFA." That is necessary, but incomplete.

    What actually breaks people is recovery. Device verification. Authenticator lock-in. The moment your phone is missing and you discover that your "secure" setup assumed permanent smartphone availability.

    A secure system that you cannot operate under stress is not secure
    It is fragile, and fragility creates shortcuts.

    #Security #MFA #Identity #Resilience #TechReality #SystemsThinking #ByernNotes

    #security #mfa #identity #resilience #techreality #systemsthinking
  27. Thomas Frans 🇺🇦 @thomy2000 ·

    What I want from our ISP:
    - Reliable internet connection
    - Good customer service
    - Local network setup

    What I get and don't want:
    - Smart home Wi-Fi
    - The 10000th app to see my home network
    - Upselling gigabit connection
    - Internet network setup that doesn't work when not connected to the internet (I can't change a stupid port forwarding rule because their site is broken)!!
    - E-mail account to lock me into their system!!

    #telenet
  28. Thomas Holtz @[email protected] ·

    #NewPaper #Mammalogy #FunctionalMorphology

    Annika Avedik, Maria J. Duque-Correa & Marcus Clauss (2023)

    Avoiding the lockdown: Morphological facilitation of transversal chewing movements in mammals

    Journal of Morphology 284(2): e21554

    doi: doi.org/10.1002/jmor.21554

    onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10

    Free pdf:

    onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/ep

    #newpaper #mammalogy #functionalmorphology
  29. Daniel Thomas @[email protected] ·

    Fun new bug today, my work laptop didn't reboot successfully post grub, failed with error: shim_lock protocol not found
    error: you need to load the kernel first.
    Press any key to continue..._
    Current hypothesis is that the key used to sign grub has expired and a firmware update is required. Workaround was disabling grub (I don't have root on that laptop so can't do my own debugging). #UEFISecureBoot

    #uefisecureboot
  30. Thomas Steiner :chrome: @[email protected] ·

    🎉 Mozilla will turn on the Screen Wake Lock API by default in Firefox 124: groups.google.com/a/mozilla.or.

    Learn more about this #ProjectFugu 🐡 API: developer.chrome.com/docs/capa.

    It's a small addition to the Web platform, but with a positive impact: web.dev/case-studies/betty-cro 🧑‍🍳.

    #projectfugu
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