(December 28th, 2018)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The new year is only a few days off and with it we are wishing our bests to the year of 2018 as we wave so-long in the review view mirror. I\u2019m not sure about you, but I for one welcome the new year, however picayune it may actually be. Party this January (pizza that is)!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The days off, reflecting on another year of life, of music, of texts, and projects seems like a nice way to round everything off. Create ideas and plans for the new year, for the coming years, although I\u2019m not really sure if I have a five year plan as mentioned by some on this podcast. At least not something deemed such, more like a life project, where the years aren\u2019t that important, but perhaps that because I\u2019ll be an over-the-hill anarchist by then. Always in it for the long run.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This has been a year of many things, but for this editorial lets take a look and see what we can learn from some events that have happened over this past year, all culminating together last weekend or so. We\u2019re talking about relationships, exclusion, the shutdown of discussions, platforming and deplatforming, a lack of critical thinking, the cult of personality, and a dogmatic groupthink. We\u2019re talking about the life and death of Doctor Bones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Bones was a relative new kid on the block these last few years, a proverbial \u201cman from Florida\u201d as the popular saying goes for the weird shit that often goes on there. They were a self-styled gonzo journalist in the likeliness of Hunter S. Thompson, who quickly launched themselves into the limelight of egoism and the left. They had all the best friends from the most popular antifa writers to handful of loyal Twitter followers willing to pay him money each month via Patreon to help his living expenses. Obviously I\u2019m doing something wrong.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Dr. Bones wrote desperate and offensive attacks against Wolfi, Little Black Cart, Anarchist News dot org, and friends that really made a name for them among people who are against those kind of things. Famously the \u201cBlocked by Bones Club\u201d on Twitter sprung up, of people who they would block who disagreed with them like the pinnacle of blissful ignorance or an ungrateful little prick who doesn\u2019t even have a 3rd grade reading level of critique.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
They co-hosted the now defunct (love and solidarity, rest in power comrade!) \u201cThe Guillotine\u201d podcast with a Maoist while trying to hype everything to the next level. Often careless of what they were actually saying or thinking, as in one breath they would praise antifa fighting against the alt-right and government and in the next breath all praise be to the State and government of Cuba. Laugh out fucking loud. What anarchist in their right mind could listen to this absurdity without calling out their support for El Commandante and Dr. Ch\u00e9? Apparently, not enough as they became the larger than life, figure of radical left Twitter or whatever that means.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In the end, Dr. Bones wasn\u2019t brought down by their ideas, writings, or political acts, but rather by the relationships they formed outside of their public appearance. The cult of personality all came crumbling down last weekend or so, as another Twitter user revealed their relationship to Dr. Bones for all the public to read and digest. Dr. Bones was found guilty of \u201cto have been grooming one of our comrades for sexual favours as well as objectifying trans sex workers, drink driving and other assorted shitty behaviours.\u201d – The Guillontine. Dr. Bones followed up by calling it quits, vowing to never write anything again, and basically deleted their website, Patreon, Twitter, and whatever else. The publisher of their book, Gods and Radicals, who they previously severed ties with over eco-extremism some months earlier also pulled all of their books from distribution(why not after the eco-extremism tirade?), along with various other anarchist-friendly bookstores around the USA. A quick search online today revealed that I couldn\u2019t find their book for sale anywhere. Hopefully, it doesn\u2019t become a giant commodity icon selling for hundreds and thousands of dollars down-the-road like the recent CrimethInc. children\u2019s book from years ago, turned out to be.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On anarchist justice: we don\u2019t wish to publicize crimes over the Internet and put people in danger, but how else could have this played out, could be a good starting point. Perhaps on a more local level, but the actors involved are States away from each other and quite frankly as much as I despised Dr. Bones before, I\u2019d like to see less anarchists (and their friends) put up against the Twitter firing squad, although we may find it funny, as one wrote on Twitter – \u201cif someone could collect Dr. Bones tears and put a hex on them for us.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On a different scale, but related this sense of public call-outs played out recently in the Northeast of the USA, when a well-known anarchist organizer (think Black Rose Anarchist Federation) resigned from their job over allegations of sexual misconduct and emotional abuse to their former partners. Who knows what happened internally, (and thank you), but they just quit their job over some relationship stuff from the early 2000s and 2010s and got banned from a local anarchist hangout. Originally, it was publicized over social media and eventually made it to the newsprint of the local paper, the same week Dr. Bones quit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On giving up so easily: Did it ever really matter to Dr. Bones? It doesn\u2019t seem so, although from who they appeared to be, it seems like they\u2019re simply acting out the social norms of their peers, and as unfortunate as it may be, this is what the majority of people do in these types of situations. Perhaps, this says more about the people who were Dr. Bones aficionados, rather than actual anarchists in it for the long run, but it is still intriguing, and hopefully a note taken. The way in which we build and destroy relationships, deal with drama and tragedy, is exactly who we are as anarchists. For some, it\u2019s all they\u2019ve ever known.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The new year is only a few days off and with it we are wishing our bests to the year of 2018 as we wave so-long in the review view mirror.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-574","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editorial"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=574"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":593,"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/574\/revisions\/593"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=574"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=574"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rocinante.anarchyplanet.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=574"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}