Category: editorial

(September 2nd, 2017)

It’s that time of year again when students, teachers, professors, and the related faculty of workers are returning to school again at the elementary, secondary, and collegiate levels. The day after this labor day holiday here in the States, many young and old wild glowing eyes will awaken with excitement, dread, uncertainty, and a thousand other emotions about what this coming year means to them. A few weeks back, CrimethInc. published a topical text about the anarchist relationship to school. It covered the efforts of a small group of anarchists to use collegiate level student funding to maintain an anarchist group at their university. These kind of creative projects that spring out of the depths of institutions and environments often at odds with the anarchist idea, inspire us to take a closer look at those involved. Those coming back from vacation, “the place where only dreams can be realized”, are witness to the energizing and turbulent situations of Charlottsville and Hurricane Harvey, to name just a few world-changers currently unfolding in the American landscape.

The University and school are often fleeting events in the lives of the student, whirlwinds of those working in such places, and a constant in the life of the townies just watching everything pass by. I fondly remember my first introduction to anarchism being around the age of 15 and finding an anarchist magazine and quickly trying to absorb and make sense of these particular ideas. Stumbling upon those anarchist ideas and friends at a young age completely changed my life and future relationships, and more than 15 years later here I am remembering some of the life inside the institutions of school as someone from Generation Y (or millennial from the early 1980s into the mid 90s and early 2000s).

I can fondly remember being a student in secondary school and absolutely despising almost everything about such a life, except for the friends and relationships made. Funny enough, here I am thinking about the younger generation. I heard a podcast the other day about the new so-called “I-Generation” (I-Gen) or roughly adolescents born between 1995 and 2012, or the first generation to spend their entire youth with a smartphone. Some of these same data has previously been covered here and related anarchist podcasts, but it’s worth noting. According to the data, some scholars have determined that the I-Gen is having less sexual activity, less binge drinking, and physical fights have decreased. So basically they’re having less fun? These same data sets also said that the I-Gen is more depressed, lonelier, less rebellious, and at greater risk for suicide and self-harm. Teens are spending less time with their friends in real life and tend to spend their leisure time in fundamentally different ways than before.

Accordingly, social media and cell phones seem to be one of the issues related, be it causally or correlated, and a reflection of a much deeper problem. The podcast goes on to say that many in I-Gen spend a great deal of the day enveloped on a screen with limited face-to-face interactions, while these face-to-face interactions that are missing are often linked to a better mental health; sound familiar? As Tim Cook, the CEO of Apple put it recently, “sometimes the very technology that is meant to connect us, divides us.”

On the other side of things, the I-Generation tends to be less religious, less spiritual, and less likely to believe in a god or gods. On the political spectrum and possibly most interesting for anarchists is that I-Gens tend to be more politically independent, have no party affiliation, an individualistic approach to culture with a focus on the self, and appear to be very liberal on social issues, yet more conservative in other areas like gun control. At base they are libertarians. However, according to the data with this political approach comes a stronger work ethic than previous generations (possibly out of fear and vulnerability) with a lack of taking action towards their beliefs, related perhaps to their low level of optimism. Damn… kids these days.

So basically smartphones have ruined a generation of youth, and it was not everything else, like student loan debt and the changing job market? Whatever it is, I-Gen has become known as a generation of thinking without consequences, people thinking more along computational lines, and the rise of artificial intelligence. We are looking at the effects of technology on a child’s brain development, the dopamine levels, the screens everywhere one looks, and often the resulting deprivation and lack of sleep. I-Generation is being characterized as more vulnerable, having a stronger desire for validation and need for instantaneous feedback via the ubiquitous social media and connected apparatuses.

While data is just data and the question of such overarching generalities (plz don’t generalize), it does hold up with some personal experience. The idea inside and outside of many education circles today is that technology can save us, these unknown places to go; and here we see data sets about what is going on with the youth today. Science and the race of the State to be all: certainly a dark, but intriguing thought experiment.

Back to school, work, play, whatever it is you’re doing. One can find inspiration in encountering anarchist ideas and practice in the unknown places of everyday life outside of the weeknight / weekend / vacation. Outside of that and everything else, to a time of everything – “maybe what’s happening is that we’re all becoming children again. Our rigid roles and characters are dropping off like dried skin. We’re fascinating to each other because each one of our acts might be a total surprise, at any instant our personalities might change completely. Like children, we’re not exhausted by what we’ve been and are; life is ahead of us; we’re no longer dead.”

(July 29th, 2017)

Heroes and heroines. The important people and loved ones in your life, inside and outside of the anarchist space. This has been a monumental week of solidarity for the anarchist heroes and heroines we have come to love. July 20th thru 27th was a week of solidarity to support defendants arrested while protesting the inauguration of Donald Trump, six months prior on January 20th (#disruptJ20). July 25th also marks the International Day of Solidarity with Antifascist Prisoners that originated in 2014 in support of an Australian friend. Our lived philosophies and endeavors, whether successful to some degree or not, will often steer us toward trouble and into the roughest spots of the sea. After the storm has passed, we’re often faced with the brutal results, friends and loved ones hurt in need of long-term care and others facing long stays behind bars.

As anarchists, I think one of the things that we have learned to do well is support our friends in trouble or at least aim for such heights. In many ways, the sole praxis of being an anarchist means perpetually being in sights of those who wish to see us fail. It’s terrible enough that often it seems, the feelings we express towards other anarchists and their projects, people on the same team, is the harsh sectarian reality of real life, like a mirror reflecting the worst of society back onto us. Over the years, the regional and international solidarity efforts have made a large impact. In the United States over the last years, some IWW branches have went from organizing in the factories to organizing incarcerated workers (Incarcerated Workers Organizing Committee), to the delight of many red anarchists. Prison solidarity work is often one of those thankless projects for those involved. It’s tough to keep up the steam at times, especially when directly dealing with your enemies, the jailers, the police, the courts. It’s nice to see the growth of new projects, groups, and events year round to support not only anarchists in trouble, but for the total abolition of all prisons and prisoners.

Going back to title of this editorial, perhaps we should use a different word for heroes and heroines. Yes, utmost respect to those facing time and total solidarity, but the word just seems like too much of an idolization of each other. No, I’m not talking about “kill your idols” kind of view either, but that the language of society and heroes is often associated with those of superpowers, fighting against something. Of course, a heroes welcome home is called for, but the hero worship and idolization of each other seems off for anarchists. A quote from the retired NBA player Charles Barkley comes to mind where he says, “I’m not a role model” in an old Nike commercial of all things marketed to the culture of cool.

On such a note, this past week a recent text on It’s Going Down regarding prison solidarity work called-out readers for doing-nothing, nothing-doing. “Dear reader, I do not mean to insult you but chances are the most active you’ve been in the last year-and-a-half is critiquing our president at your favorite bar.” Ouch! This random shelling of dear readers must totally be spurred to action now, leaping from their bar stools to help the revolution throw newspaper boxes in the streetz. As every wise anarchist critic knows, as the old saying goes, if you don’t riot you can’t complain. End text.

(July 1, 2017)

This past week Doctor Bones wrote a text entitled “Anarchists Failed Philando Castile and They Have Failed Black Americans” that covers the expanses that anarchists in the USA are failing at. The text takes some strong words towards “woke anarchists” saying that:

if your politics can only function in “radical spaces” they are worthless. If they can’t keep people alive they are garbage.

It goes on to state that in America the police can execute a black man in front of their child and reasonably expect a jury to let them off the hook, while radicals are more concerned with the identity politics behind the cultural appropriation of food from Mexico, arguing over whose administrating Facebook groups, and so on. Meanwhile anarchists are marching in Pride while the cops are showered with roses two blocks ahead.

While I don’t disagree with El Doctor and find common ground in their solutions of going more hard, as hopefully all anarchists can agree (at times, at least), the over arching point is the lack of a large anarchist movement in the USA. If anything it seems to me here that the post-Trump era anarchists are winning, whatever that means. It’s like the old adage, that sometimes our greatest successes come from our failures, or something like that. Because in reality, what winning looks like in the anarchist space is not a large scale social-political revolution, but the smaller scale of an ant preparing for the coming winter months, while the grasshopper aimlessly plays.

The times have changed – this isn’t 1910 Mexico, 1917 Russia, and the 1930s in Spain anymore. It’s not 1969 in France and a long way off from the 1980s and 90s of the USA. One can understand the many reasons for a lack of hope and wild eyed gleams in radical society today, when you and your compas can have a laser guided missile come through your bedroom window one night while you browse ANEWS. I wish all we could do was win, but we’ve been losing so much, that perhaps our idea of what winning looks like needs to change.

Just this past week, I listened to the “Intelligence Unclassified” podcast from New Jersey Homeland Security about anarchist extremists. Accordingly, from their intelligence reports the anarchist space across the USA lacks a central leadership (duh!), is largely disorganized, split into regions, and when we do attack they are low level unsophisticated attacks. These critiques from our enemies in blue is certainly not new, but quite interesting to actually hear, as one an imagine very similar good faith arguments coming from other anarchists like El Doctor about the current predicament. They went on to break down anarchist extremists into two distinct groups, the heroes of the day, the antifa and the traditional anticapitalists. Not surprisingly, the east coast was portrayed as “peaceful” while the west coast not so much. With the exception of Montreal and the fact that it’s a city in Canada and not the USA, the east coast does seem like the sleep of old father time has dazed them off into a long slumber. Writing this editorial from the East Coast of things, I can agree that naps and nothing doing, seem like the status update of the day for our unwoke anarchist friends. Yes, we’ve all failed and will continue to fail. This isn’t grade school anymore though and the grit and grime of failure can hopefully (long pause) only help us pass onto something that looks like winning. And that as anarchists, we can get back to the most beautiful idea of all, anarchy.

(May 5th, 2017)

The world of politics has certainly been a wild ride for the books this year. This week alone, with elections coming up in France and the ever ongoing process of governments across the world making drastic headlines with the love-hate relationship of mainstream media, we look towards how this pertains to the world of anarchism.

It could be said that many anarchists pay extremely close attention to this world of politics, even while having a strong distaste of such a close reading. In turn, with some basing their anarchistic actions and responses to such governments call-to-action. Writing letters the old fashioned way to the news and elected officials, calling up and leaving a message to their government “representative”, and as can be seen over the past week, making signs and marching down a street somewhere near you.

While on the other side of things, even those who begrudgingly follow along with the latest of world politics, take a strong anti-political approach to such events, as the follow up. On the more rebellious side of things, putting your body and mind on the line for the idea. Between these two camps plays out the other love-hate of international anarchism. Perhaps common everywhere is a sense of disempowerment, despair, and hopelessness when we see our actions, whatever they may be in the name of anarchy, after we wake up tomorrow and the beautiful idea we have based our lives off of is no closer to realization than lasts nights wonderful dream. Or is it?

Some may argue that perhaps these global catastrophic events carried out in the name of world politics, in the short run are discouraging but over time strengthen whatever it is that the international anarchist space may be / become. You have to crack a few eggs, if you’re to make that omelet for your friends and loved ones.

Here at anarchistnews dot org, we often take the brunt of critiques from all sides in response to the coverage and commentary shared on the site, metaphorically cracking a few eggs. It is plainly obvious that even as these world wide political events unfold, there are those who no matter the camp, enjoy attacking other anarchists more than whatever their instruction manual proclaims as public enemy number one. “Why is this political thing covered and that other one not? Why are such comments allowed? And what is up with thecollective?”

Then as the next day unfolds, we return to our daily lives, our work and the wash, rinse cycle of world politics repeats itself with slightly different beginnings, middles, and ends. The stories, the comments, and the reactions keep coming, as our levels of loss and victory wax and wane throughout this first week after May Day, 2017.