Firstly, I’d like to give my thanks to Dennis Morgan at Counterpunch for stating succinctly the exact fundamental problem with the “Rage Against the War Machine” rally that took place on February 19th, 2023. In Dennis’ own words, “We have to demand that the supply of weapons shipped to Ukraine stop immediately and that all NATO troops stand down and withdraw, as a precondition for negotiation with the Russians.” (emphasis added)

On May 21st, 2021, the Center published a piece by Andrew Kemle titled “Libertarianism vs Psychopathic Dumbfuckery.” The article discusses Rand Paul’s active role in the ongoing disinformation campaign against vaccination and COVID response more generally, focusing specifically on his promotion of conspiracies blaming eminent immunologist Dr. Anthony Fauci and the U.S. government for “creating the COVID-19 pandemic.” The crux of Andrew’s argument is a challenge to Paul the Younger’s claim to the label of “libertarianism” on the grounds that considering the health of others, voluntary adherence to the suggestions of public health experts, and getting the fucking vaccine is a consistent and necessary libertarian position for anyone who takes freedom seriously.

“If voting changed anything, they’d make it illegal.” – Emma Goldman

In case it wasn’t already implied by the title, I’m arguably a follower of the “transgender ideology.” I prefer the term “non- binary” instead of “trans,” but I’m part of the community and I do adhere to the “ideology” of validating peoples’ gender identities by using their preferred pronouns. Much like a fair number of queer people I know, I don’t support government intervention — even if it’s “on my behalf.” I see the state as an oppressor, not an ally. Despite all of this, reactionaries will call people like me a “collectivist.”

Radical positions are always a hard sell. To some extent, this is an inherent aspect of advocating any alternative system of social organization, instead of just proposing reform and “bipartisan solutions.” Some, perhaps too many, have attempted to dull the edges of their political labels by wrapping their ideology in broader language, using “common sense” rhetoric, and reducing their viewpoints to simple but incomplete definitions. One of the most successful examples of this is Noam Chomsky’s definition of anarchism as “opposition to unjustified hierarchies.” This has persuaded many people who otherwise might never have investigated these ideas, myself included.

In a recent interview, economist Bryan Caplan gave his usual right-libertarian spiel about the wonders of the free labor market (something that definitely exists under capitalism), complete with a bizarre praise of entrepreneurial schemes like Uber mixed with his own particular enthusiasm for open borders. At one point he’s asked to comment on Hans-Hermann Hoppe and his opposing stance on immigration:

We prepared this short piece after several comrades were badjacketed in public and with pictures on social media at the 4th Precinct Shutdown. We believe those individual cases have been dealt with, and don’t wish to cause unnecessary division by complaining, or publicly calling any group or individual out. Instead, this is intended to provoke reflection, and conversation, amongst all of us, as to how to deal with the suspicions we may have of people we don’t know in our growing movements, without creating the sorts of divisions among ourselves that does the work of the State and the police for them. We intend to act in solidarity with those who know how to act in solidarity.

Political violence is a delicate topic—and not only because of how easy it is to find ourselves getting criminalized for conversations among comrades about violence.

Since the commencement of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, millions around the world have taken to the streets in support of Palestine against the genocidal Zionist entity. We are, globally, in an unprecedented moment of anti-imperialist mobilisation, which threatens not only the Zionist occupation but the colonial powers that uphold it.

Vor etwa drei Jahren begann die Coronavirus-Pandemie, die sich über den gesamten Globus ausbreitete. Unser Leben hat sich mit dem Fortschreiten der Pandemie nicht nur einmal, sondern viele Male verändert. Die Krise ist noch nicht vorbei, und dieser Text versucht, darüber nachzudenken, wie Anarchist:innen bisher mit der Pandemie umgegangen sind. Er beginnt mit einer (beklagenswert unvollständigen) Nacherzählung der Ereignisse, um sicherzustellen, dass wir ein gemeinsames Verständnis des Ablaufs der Ereignisse haben, das als Grundlage für unsere Analysen dient. Im Folgenden geht es nicht darum, einzelne Organisationen oder Aktionen und ihre Verdienste zu kritisieren, sondern um Überlegungen zu den allgemeinen Trends, die sich aus der anarchistischen und angrenzenden Bewegungen ergeben haben. Es handelt sich keineswegs um eine formale akademische Abhandlung, aber wo es angebracht oder nützlich ist, haben wir Links zu weiterführenden Quellen angegeben.

About three years ago, the coronavirus pandemic began and swept across the globe. Our lives have changed not just once but many times as the pandemic has progressed. The crisis is not over, and this text attempts to reflect on how anarchists have handled the pandemic thus far. It starts with a (woefully incomplete) recounting of events to ensure that we have some shared understanding of the progression of events to serve as a foundation on which to base our analyses. What follows is not nitpicking individual orgs or actions and the merits thereof but instead reflections on the broad trends that emerged from the anarchist and adjacent movements. This is by no means a formal academic paper, but where appropriate or useful, we have linked to resources for further reading.

Dieses Zine basiert auf einer Reihe von Vorträgen mit dem gleichen Titel, die auf anarchistischen Treffen im Sommer ’23 in Stockholm, Ljubljana und St. Imier gehalten wurden. Nach jedem Vortrag wurden der Inhalt des Zines und künftige Vorträge durch die Diskussionen mit anderen in den Räumen und später in den Ecken und Winkeln der Orte verbessert. Die Worte auf diesen Seiten sind nicht nur meine eigenen, denn Wissen entsteht nicht aus dem Nichts, sondern wird aus unseren vergangenen Erfahrungen und Interaktionen mit anderen zusammengesetzt. Wir lernen gemeinsam, nicht allein.

This is based on a series of talks with the same title given at anarchist convergences in the summer of ’23 in Stockholm, Ljubljana, and St. Imier. Following each talk, the content of the zine and future talks were improved by the discussions with others in the rooms and later in the nooks and crannies of the venues. The words on these pages are not solely my own because knowledge isn’t incepted out of nothing but rather synthesized from our past experiences and interactions with others. We learn together, not alone.

Cette brochure est basée sur une série de conférences du même titre tenues aux convergences anarchistes de l’été 2023 à Stockholm, Ljubljana, et St. Imier. Après chaque conférence, le contenu de la brochure et de futures présentations furent améliorés par des discussions avec d’autres personnes dans la pièce. Les mots sur ces pages ne sont pas que de moi parce la connaissance n’est pas produite à partir de rien mais est plutôt synthétisée à part de nos expériences et interactions passées avec les autres. Nous apprenons ensemble, pas seules.

Diese Zine enthält die Texte der Reden, die auf dem Anarchistischen CSD am 17. Juli 2022 gehalten wurden. Einige der Texte wurden von Mitgliedern des ACSD Kollektivs selbst geschrieben, andere stammen von Freund:innen und anderen Genoss:innen.

We recently received this anonymous contribution, and we publish it as a part of ongoing discussion on the Russian invasion against Ukraine. Text does not necessarily reflect collective views of Autonomous Action.

This zine contains the texts of the speeches that were presented at the Anarchist CSDon July 17^th, 2022. Some of the texts were written by members of the ACSD Collective itself, and other came from friends and other comrades.

An anarchist walks out of a punk show to smoke. On her vest are anarchist patches with various standard slogans, “No Gods No Masters,” “Death To Transphobes,” “Kill Your Local Rapist,” “All Cops Are Bastards,” “Punch Nazis,” “From The River To The Sea Palestine Will Be Free,” “Make Total Destroy,” “The Only Good Cop Is A Dead Cop,” “Eat The Rich,” “Death Before Detransition” and… “Fire To The Prisons.”

None of us wanted to wake up on January 18th to the news that a forest defender in Atlanta’s Weelaunee Forest named Tortuguita, known to the Law and its death system as Manuel Teran, had been murdered by police during a morning raid. It was the last thing that we wanted to hear. Tears came to my eyes while reading the news of their killing before their name and picture had been released, and later after seeing an image of them glowing, smiling, luminously full of life I thought of how much more devastated I would feel if I had known Tortuguita, if I had heard their voice, felt the warmth of their presence, knew them as a friend, as a fellow anarchist and a comrade, how utterly broken my heart would be if they were my child, if I had raised them lovingly and spoke to them almost every day on the phone, as their mother Belkis had.

We define the metropolis as the compact group of territories and heterogeneous devices crossed in every point by a disjunctive synthesis; there is not any point of the metropolis, in fact, where command and resistance, dominion and sabotage are not present at the same time. An antagonistic process between two parts, whose relation consists in enmity, totally innervates the metropolis. On one side, it consists, true to it’s etymology, in the exercising of a command that is irradiated on all the other territories – so everywhere is of the metropolis. It is the space in which and from which the intensity and the concentration of devices of oppression, exploitation and dominion express themselves in their maximum degree and extension. In the metropolis, the city and the country, modernity and second natures collapse and end. In the metropolis where industry, communication and spectacle make a productive whole, the government’s required job consists in connecting and controlling the social cooperation which is at the base to then be able to extract surplus value using biopolitical instruments. On the other side, it is a whole of the territories in which a heterogeneous mix of subversive forces – singular, Common, collective – are able to express the tendentiously more organized and horizontal level of antagonism against command. There are not places and non- places in the metropolis: there are territories occupied militarily by the imperial forces, territories controlled by biopower and territories that enter into resistance. Sometimes, very often, these three types of territories cross one another, other times the latter separates itself from the other two and, in yet other occasions, the last enters into war against the first two. The Banlieue is emblematic of this “third” territory: but if everywhere is of the metropolis, then its also true that everywhere is of the Banlieue. In the metropolitan extension of Common life, the intensity of the revolutionary imagination of communism-to-come lives.

On October 7, Hamas, the ruling party in the Gaza Strip, breached the siege wall surrounding them to carry out a series of attacks. The Israeli government has responded with a full military operation. While both sides have targeted civilians as well as soldiers, these events can only be understood in the context of decades of repression and ethnic cleansing.

The following is a brief but thorough statement on prisons and those who would contest them. It offers a broad critique of many commonly-held assumptions and positions that could characterize leftist and anarchist political practice with regard to prison and prisoners. In particular we chose to reprint the article here (it originally appeared in the magazine Fire to the Prisons #10) because of its poignant criticism of the prison “abolitionist” movement which has grown in the last few years.