I agree with Brian. These folks aren’t alt-right. I can’t pin down the politics precisely but Brian gets the Invisible Committee thing right. They’re probably somewhere around leftcom/anarcho-communist/communization. I’m pretty sure they’re somehow connected to the Woodbine collective in Ridgewood, Queens. I picked up a copy of the pamphlet when I was at a workshop there.
On Sat, Nov 10, 2018 at 7:26 PM Brian Holmes <bhcontinentaldr...@gmail.com> wrote: > This pamphlet reads like an American redux of The Invisible Committee. Its > concepts and general outlook go back to a text like "Civil War" in Tiqqun > #2. Its production values are within reach of anyone who can afford a > laptop, an Amazon bucket and a domain name. Its imagery is of a piece with > the rest; and by looking around on the web you can see that it was > originally published as an orange-tinted book, so maybe the pseudo-print > aesthetic has a simple explanation. > > The idea that it's a psychologist's honey-pot crafted to catch the naive > is far-fetched. This is anarchy. The positions codified by Tiqqun and > popularized by the Invisible Committee have become widespread through the > experiences of Exarchia, the ZAD, Standing Rock and many others, with the > Palestinian resistance and the Kurdish war of independence blazing in the > background. The elemental question to be asked is, do I make common cause > with these authors? A corollary line of questioning would be: Is civil war > inevitable in the capitalist democracies? Could it have positive effects? > > I say no on all three counts. The serious threat of civil war comes from > the extreme right, they have both the numbers and the guns. Throw gasoline > on that fire and it will explode in your face. Punching a Nazi has become > legitimate, yes, and it's a good thing. The legitimacy, I mean. That makes > it possible to gather large numbers for anti-fascist demos and to seek > criminal prosecution against the extremists, while city governments topple > the statues of racists and carry out investigations of police abuse, etc. > The rule of law is definitely not all it's cracked up to be, but its > absence would be worse. The potential of life degrades exactly to the > extent that societies are not able to keep violence of all kinds in check. > In militarized countries like the US it has degraded a lot, and the point > is to reverse the process, not accelerate it. > > The really weird thing here is the typeface, for sure. I think that in the > age of atrophied thought and controlled imaginations there is an > unconscious sexualized attraction to the passions of war, symbolized by the > aesthetics of the 1930s. In this sense I agree with the gist of Ted's > analysis: the intention is that of normalizing a largely fantasmatic > violence, without realizing how enabling the practice of that fantasy can > be for the hard right. > > Where I agree with Ian is that we do have to discuss these things. Energy > companies ARE expanding their operations. Cities ARE being smashed by > hurricanes. US troops ARE camped at the border with Mexico (and possibly > militias too). How do you respond to a dystopian reality? What is the best > strategy? With whom can you carry it out? How can you bring it up to scale? > These are the questions we should be answering. > > best, Brian > # distributed via <nettime>: no commercial use without permission > # <nettime> is a moderated mailing list for net criticism, > # collaborative text filtering and cultural politics of the nets > # more info: http://mx.kein.org/mailman/listinfo/nettime-l > # archive: http://www.nettime.org contact: nett...@kein.org > # @nettime_bot tweets mail w/ sender unless #ANON is in Subject: -- Justin Charles 862.216.2467
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