As the uselessness and harmfulness of patriotism have become manifest, so also has increased the power of the government and ruling class to excite patriotism among the people.
-- Leo Tolstoy
#anarchism — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #anarchism, aggregated by home.social.
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If all our comrades of Europe, America and other countries, who do not understand what we are doing to Spanish anarchism, would come to Spain, we could then see how they would react.
-- Frederica Montseny -
@poisonpunk
..#GifsArtidote: voting doesn't change that. collective direct action, sabotage, solidarity & community building does. #anarchism 🏴✊🏻🖤🌍 -
Then hang us! Here we will tread upon a spark, but there, and there, and behind you and in front of you, and everywhere, flames will blaze up.
-- August Spies -
RE: https://todon.nl/@anarchismhub/117548727338906439
Solidarity from the so called Netherlands with London’s Freedom Bookshop! :anarcho_solidarity: :solidarity:
#London #anarchism #antifascism #bookstore #FreedomBookshop #WhiteVanguard #nazis
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Gaza has become one of the harshest forms of human suffering, a tragedy that has shaken the conscience of the world. A woman faces hardship alone, enduring oppression and pain while everyone else carries on with their lives as if nothing were happening. https://chuffed.org/project/190160-please-help-dalia-her-children-escape-this-genocide
#mutualaid #mutualaidspace #MutualAidRequest #DisabilityCrowdfund #EmergencyCrowdfund #transmutualaid #queermutualaid #disabilitymutualaid #GazaMutualAid #disability #anarchism #politics #neurodivergence #healthcare
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"Anarchism poses the question: ‘What is it that has excluded me?’, ‘What is it that has isolated me?’ In each place the response is different. Anarchism simply states the simple question and stipulates that the response is plural, that the response is inclusive.” "
A Living Spirit of Revolt: The Infrapolitics of Anarchism by Ziga Vodovnik
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Anarchy: further thoughts
‘The ancient Greek origin of the word ‘anarchy’ is a matter of common knowledge’ comments the Israeli activist, academic, editor, anarchist and author, Uri Gordon, ‘and it has become a predictable convention to mention it at the outset of almost any discussion of anarchism…(A)narchist and non-anarchist commentators alike have inevitably satisfied themselves with second-hand exercises in Greek etymology’ (Gordon, 2006, p81).
In a time of crisis, particularly in a time of crisis, vested interests ensure that the words around us swirl and merge and change meaning. Defence is attack; free speech is silence; homelessness is a lifestyle choice, to take three recent, well-publicised political examples. Predictable and conventional though it may be, understanding the word ‘anarchy’ through a second-hand exercise in Greek etymology still seems useful ground to stand on.
Etymologically, then, ‘anarchy’ certainly means ‘without’ something; few scholars bother to give the ‘an’ prefix a second thought. But without what? There are multiple translations for the ancient Greek ‘archos’, the root of the word: sovereignty (Jewett, 1886); a military king (Raaflaub, 2004); authority (Encyclopaedia Britannica, 2023); government (Woodcock, 1989); and simply, ruler (Wikipedia 2023).
Analyses of how ‘anarkhia’ was actually used in ancient Greece are inconclusive. Gordon finds, in Aeschylus’ ‘Seven Against Thebes’ (467 BC), not only a feminist inspiration in its protagonist Antigone, but a proto-anarchist, who uses the term for the first time on record. She will act, she says, in defiant opposition (apiston tênd’anarkhian) to the rulers of the city (Gordon, 2006). But Sophocles, Herodotus, even Euripides, use it in a pro-oligarchian sense: the idea of a ruler-free populace invoking scorn, terror or both (Radding, 2019). The cycle of merciless slaughter, at the behest of rulers bad, mad or bored, depicted by historians from Herodotus to Thucydides, hangs in the background, as the Parthenon burns.
The archons of ancient Athens, to whom the word ’anarchy’ is connected, were not merely leaders, but rulers. One can, justifiably then, perhaps, take the most literal meaning of ‘anarchy’ as being ‘without a ruler’. Today it is, as in ancient Greece, the disseminated understanding that being ‘without a ruler’ instead means being ruled: by violence, war, disintegration, barbarism and terror. Anarchy is seen as chaos (MacLaughlin, 2016). One can quite understand why rulers of any era would prefer to frame it that way.
Looking at it from the general population’s point of view, one can deduce, from the multifarious translations of ‘archos’, that the word ‘anarchy’ refers to a human fear, and envisages a world without it. The precise translation of the fear varies, since it is time and culture specific, but it is invariably potent. At any point on the human timeline, one of those versions would invoke alarm, whether for someone at the mercy of the Chinese government during the Cultural Revolution’s massacres, or facing the gang leaders in modern day Colombia. Contemplate disobeying your sovereign in 16th century England, or, if in 19th century Madagascar, the military queen, Ranavalona; or religious rulers in multitudinous iterations. Today, if you can entertain the word ‘authority’ with nothing but a brief shiver, and the word ‘government’ produces a mirthless laugh, you are lucky, and know it.
And yet, even in countries with the comfort blanket of a democracy, one is, sometimes uneasily, sometimes desperately, aware that this so-called comfort may be illusory; that just down the road, or over the continent, ‘angry old f*cks’, as thejuicemedia snappily puts it, (Honest Government Ad, 2023) ‘are massacring civilians and children as the world looks on’. Or rather, ordering their massacre. And yet the lack of these rulers, and their enforcers, would be anarchy. Could that be worse? Would it be possible?
Etymology aside, there must be at least two ways of attempting to explain an understanding of anarchy. The first might be simply to cut and paste Pyotr Kropotkin’s essay from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (1911), or perhaps to abridge it. Anarchism means being free from state and corporate and mind control; to cite Kropotkin: ‘man would not be limited in the free exercise of his powers in productive work by a capitalist monopoly, maintained by the state; nor would he be limited in the exercise of his will by a fear of punishment, or by obedience towards individuals or metaphysical entities, which both lead to depression of initiative and servility of mind’.
Since then, thoughts on, and writing on, anarchy have apparently continued to evolve. As Chomsky puts it: ‘There have been many styles of thought and action that have been referred to as “anarchist”. It would be hopeless to try to encompass all of these conflicting tendencies in some general theory or ideology’ (1970, p4).
Fortunately or not, my own understanding of anarchy is not based on theory or ideology. It is, instead, centred around a childhood logic which was most definitely anti-rule, and the perspective which occurs if, as an adult, you contemplate a life without rulers. What would it be to be free of them, in their myriad internal and external manifestations: the rule of the fear of death (Freire, 1970); the rule of the inner tyrant (Boal, 1979), or the outer tyrant (just about all good children’s literature), or the rule of physical violence, manifesting itself acutely in the throes of increasingly desperate totalitarian governments (Arendt, 1951)? What would it be?
#anarchic #anarchism #anarchy #bible #god #history #philosophy #religion -
Revolution can never stop.
-- John Cage -
The struggles of doctrinal exclusivism languish at present. My desire is to have contributed to making them disappear entirely.
-- Ricardo Mella -
As the public debate over the #protests in #Europe focuses itself exclusively on the damage to property, in turn described as "violence" by most of the politicians and the news media, one should reflect on the fact that the concept of #violence is always applied in contexts where non-sentient, material goods, are suffering damage. Never applied to describe the actual grievances, difficult experiences and harsh conditions that living #people must go through... specially during the most difficult times, which are, in fact, the point where the general insensibility of the whole #system seems to grow the most.
Tangible goods and services for the public #consumption are able to pass through the entirety of the product life cycle. Once they enter the market, they're assigned a #price based on their perceived #value for the owner. People, on the other hand, aren't assigned any price. The value of people is never measured or determined, as they aren't property to own or purchase by a #market. From the perpective of #capitalism, by logical inference, people can't be worth anything at all since no money is exchanged for it. No respectable man or woman from the high society should spare a thought about common people, because they are simply worthless by the measure of #money... thus "violence", in the context of the protests in Europe, can only mean damage to #property, not the suffering of people in general.
It's tough to realize that under the brutal system of #slavery, people actually had "more worth", in tangible terms, than in modern society... since people were an actual investment being paid by the owner class, and their loss suddenly impacted in their own pockets. But in modern capitalism, under the so called #freedom, people are worth anything only for as long as their political rights are recognized and their #socialcontract is respected; a social contract which the politicians are always rather eager to breach.
Maybe the damage to public spaces, that one can connect to the practices of #anarchism, is quite blind, and stupid, and hard to justify as a political action. But the fact remains, that the people are being slowly pushed over the limit of their psychological resistance... and yet, the only thing that matters to the european #politicalsystem, is the discussion of how to better jail them, for decades if possible.
And even if taking for valid the idea that the status quo is very compassionate... how difficult would it be for a political party X, based on the assumption that people possess no claim over #humanrights, to get into power and step over the #constitution and the rule of #law? Not very difficult, as a matter of fact. We should always remember that some of the most brutal "dictatorships", like #Hitler's, were in fact democratic regimes. Elected by the popular vote to do what they did, with full consent and support from the general populace.
Maybe the problem was, in fact, the #economicsystem all along. Maybe the democratic achievements over the political system, during the so called #enlightenment, were never as important as they'd like to make us believe.
