Anonymous asked: Is anarchism eurocentric because it came from Europe? Why do people dismiss it because of this and what is your response when people bring this up?

class-struggle-anarchism:

Well, anyone making this claim first has to deal with the historical fact that there have been a great many anarchist movements outside of Europe which were earlier, larger and more powerful than most of those inside. 

What influence has anarchism had in Britain, France or Germany when compared with Argentina, China, or Mexico? The success of the CNT in Spain was exceptional in European terms, but in relation to Latin America it was reasonably ordinary, in fact, at no point did it dominate the Spanish labour movement in the way anarcho-syndicalist (or in the case of Argentina, anarcho-communist) unions dominated in multiple Latin American countries around the turn of the century. The first revolution with anarchist influence was in Mexico. The first anarchist-feminist organisation, and newspaper, emerged in 19th century Buenos Aires, where workers could take their pick of two daily anarchist newspapers. 

People think that there was no anarchism outside Europe because they (usually Europeans themselves) haven’t heard much about it - ironically a pretty eurocentric way of understanding world history. Equally ironic, is that when I point out the fact that large, early and influential anarchist movements existed outside Europe, I am often met with the objection that this was the result of European migration, and the dissemination of ‘European’ ideas. Pretty amazing that people can deny the intelligence and agency of huge sections of the non-European working classes in the name of combating eurocentrism, but there you go. 

That argument is also shown to be unfounded if you actually read up on the history of non-European anarchist movements - in every case there are unique characteristics and trajectories which arise from the specific social, political and cultural contexts. It’s in the nature of anarchist organising to adapt and reconfigure rather than impose a predetermined model… for example these movements were usually particularly attractive to the peasant class as well as the emerging proletariat, a class which was dismissed as backward and non-revolutionary by the orthodox marxists of the day - but made up the vast majority of the exploited workers in the world. This meant that traditional forms of collective life, ownership, mutual aid and solidarity were preserved and synthesised with anarchist ideas from elsewhere - we can see this happening all over the place, from Mexico to Korea. 

It’s important to acknowledge that European anarchists themselves have often been guilty of holding a eurocentric view of anarchist history though, I think a full appreciation has only started to become common knowledge in the last couple of decades - the lack of translated texts and serious interest from academia has played a part in this, as has the omission from some very popular anarchist history books (George Woodcock’s, for example) and also obviously the ingrained cultural racism of Europe in general… but today there’s really no excuse for ignoring or glossing over the fact that anarchism has been a global phenomenon from the earliest days. 

1 month ago  Notes (125)

Anonymous asked: So theres’s video up of antifa at their rally’s chanting the new motto” Cops and Klan go hand n’hand”. My question is, if you have a line of cops who are hispanic and black how are they Klan? The KKK is against those two races. So the entire motto collapses on itself as an idiotic statement. If you can clear it up please do.

antifainternational:

Fair question, Anon.  Some points:

1) Ever since the invention of racism about 500 years ago there have been racialized people that collaborate and cooperate with white supremacists.  Africans facilitated the enslavement of other Africans during the slave trade.  The nazis actively recruited Jewish collaborators to assist in their pogrom of genocide against Jews.  It’s been found that racialized cops are more likely to kill other racialized people than white cops.  So it’s a historical fact that being a member of a racialized group does not automatically bar you from participating in discrimination against that same group. 

2) Let’s just ignore for a moment the cops that are active KKK members like Raymond Mott or the entire Fruitland Police Department.  Let’s not bring up the Greensboro Massacre, which occurred when the police department there actively collaborated with the KKK to allow the Klan to shoot and kill anti-racist protestors in the streets in broad daylight.  And let’s pretend that policing in the U.S. didn’t start off as patrols to capture runaway slaves.  The bottom line is this: when a racialized cop works with his fellow cops to side with white supremacists (and we listed ample recent examples of kkkops siding with white supremacists in this post!), they’re actually worse than other cops because they’re allowing their racialized status to be used as a shield to protect white supremacists and the actions of the police to defend, facilitate, and encourage white supremacists by allowing people to argue that those particular racialized cops couldn’t possibly be hand-in-hand with the Ku Klux Klan because they’re racialized themselves!  They sell out themselves, their families, and everyone that came before them who endured white supremacy by choosing their paycheck over what’s right.

So say it loud, Anon: COPS AND THE KLAN GO HAND-IN-HAND!


   

2 months ago  Notes (494)

niggazinmoscow:

Trans women are women. It’s not subject to anyone else’s approval.

(via celestethebest)

2 months ago  Notes (5105)

Trans resources (( please signal boost ))

cannibalcoalition:

yjdon:

alkanive:

General resources:

Trans related terminology:

Understanding your gender identity:

Pronouns:

Intersex:

Nonbinary resources:

Two Spirit:

Other Cultural Based Genders:

Transfeminine resources:

Transmasculine resources:

Coming out:

Trans mental health:

Trans advice/resource/discussion blogs and sites:

Well… thats about it! Of course there’s a whole bunch of useful resources which I just couldn’t include in this post because it was getting too long. 

Even if you yourself aren’t trans and wouldn’t find this content useful, please reblog because it may be of great help to some of your followers.

And if you ever have any trans-related questions or need some advice or support, feel free to message me at my main blog here or at my personal/transition blog here.

Just because it’s worth reposting again.

Hey, times are bad. 

Here’s a list of resources for trans, nonbinary, and intersex persons. 

(via commune-or-nothing)

2 months ago  Notes (224592)

aries-brat:

supraliminally:

xekstrin:

mezamir:

assgod:

signepierce:

AMERICAN REFLEXXX

holy shit

American Reflexxx is a short film documenting a social experiment that took place in Myrtle Beach, South Carolina. Alli Coates filmed performance artist Signe Pierce as she strutted down a busy oceanside street in stripper garb and a reflective mask. The pair agreed not to communicate until the experiment was completed, but never anticipated the horror that would unfold in under an hour

The result is a heart wrenching technicolor spectacle that raises questions about gender stereotypes, mob mentality, and violence in America.

You see how quickly it escalates– and how quick people are to harass when they feel there is no reprecussion. But as soon as they are confronted, they ran away.

Notice that it’s a cis woman who shoves her down and that there are cis women hurling slurs at her right along the men. You can’t just chalk this up to male violence and act like it’s not your business. Cis women who consider themselves allies need to take a stand against violent transmisogynist cis women just like men need to take a stand against violent rapist men and white people need to take a stand against white violence.

This was really good

(via terf-cringe)

2 months ago  Notes (186770)

The Christian right’s new strategy: Divide and conquer the LGBT community

neoqueenmomo:

merak-zoran:

lesbianabstraction:

autisticpadfoot:

tygressofaera:

This is why TERFs are right wing.

Effing literally “Drop the T” is a radfem/TERF popular tag.

TERFs are right in lockstep with the right wing as long as trans lives suffer.

A direct quote from the article:

“Attendees were also told to wrap their transphobic rhetoric in the language of feminism, claiming gender identity is a concept offensive to women.”

what this also means: if someone is putting transphobia in feminist language while also not having a basic understanding of other feminist principles, if the extent of their feminist organizing is that, they may well be a christian right plant.

conference speeches aren’t where new tactics are invented. if they’re recommending it at a conference, it’s because they’ve been doing it, and it’s been effective.

Also folks, if you look at your history books, you’ll see that dividing and conquering is a tactic used, SUCCESSFULLY for hundreds of years. And every time, it sets back progress. Don’t fall for this. Break the cycle.

If you truly are a part of the community you would never be trans exclusionary. Dont let them brainwash you. We are only safe united.

(via terf-cringe)

2 months ago  Notes (63890)

anarcblr:

“We can, we must, in certain circumstances, avoid mentioning socialism and anarchy, but only as long as our practice is socialism and anarchy. We may well not speak out against the government, but only as long as we are actually attacking the government; we can steer clear of talk directed against property, but only as long as our practice is expropriation.”

-Errico Malatesta. “Another Strike”. (1889).

(via class-struggle-anarchism)

4 months ago  Notes (175)
radicalgraff: “ colerenoire: “Antiproduct, Nantes. ” ‘Capitalism dehumanises us. Revolt makes us alive’ ”

radicalgraff:

colerenoire:

Antiproduct, Nantes.

‘Capitalism dehumanises us. Revolt makes us alive’

(via fuckyeahanarchistposters)

1 year ago  Notes (303)

"The police are the front line of capitalism and racism in every fight. You might never see the CEO who profits on fracking your water supply, but you’ll see the police who break up your protest against him. You might not meet the bank director or landlord who forces you out, but you will see the sheriff who comes to repossess your home or evict you. As a black person, you might never enter the gated communities of the ones who benefit most from white privilege, but you will encounter the overtly racist officers who profile, bully, and arrest you."

The Thin Blue Line is a Burning Fuse: Why Every Struggle is Now a Struggle Against the Police (via unbossed)

(via left-reminders)

1 year ago  Notes (2351)

luciferpussy:

Not to sound like a millennial freak or anything but working everyday and slaving away for an organization or company or person who doesn’t care about you no matter how “good” the pay or benefits or atmosphere is is not the way human beings were meant to live. Destroying ourselves from the outside in and otherwise is neither living nor surviving and it’s so disgusting we’ve been pushed into believe that it’s just the way life is. None of us ever have truly experienced what life is lol

(via commune-or-nothing)

1 year ago  Notes (84335)

"Does it follow that I reject all authority? Far from me such a thought. In the matter of boots, I refer to the authority of the bootmaker; concerning houses, canals, or railroads, I consult that of the architect or the engineer. For such or such special knowledge I apply to such or such a savant. But I allow neither the bootmaker nor the architect nor the savant to impose his authority upon me. I listen to them freely and with all the respect merited by their intelligence, their character, their knowledge, reserving always my incontestable right of criticism and censure. I do not content myself with consulting a single authority in any special branch; I consult several; I compare their opinions, and choose that which seems to me the soundest. But I recognise no infallible authority, even in special questions; consequently, whatever respect I may have for the honesty and the sincerity of such or such an individual, I have no absolute faith in any person. Such a faith would be fatal to my reason, to my liberty, and even to the success of my undertakings; it would immediately transform me into a stupid slave, an instrument of the will and interests of others."

Mikhail Bakunin, 1871

1 year ago  Notes (1)

"At the end of the day, capitalists care only about the surplus value which will be realised as monetary profit. They are indifferent as to the particular commodities they produce. If there is a market for poison gas then they will produce it."

David Harvey, Marx, Capital, and the Madness of Economic Reason (2017)

(Source: edwad, via left-reminders)

1 year ago  Notes (3157)

Slave Patrols and Civil Servants

“The first signature of the police is slave patrols: the requirement of black social death for white civil society, and the indiscriminate racist police violence that continues today. The second signature is the management of civil society. Starting from two different contexts—the antebellum American South and industrializing Britain—these signatures carry through to the present until they combine in the dual function of the modern police: management and exclusion; contingent violence against transgressors, and absolute violence against racialized bodies. “

1 year ago  Notes (1)

"Unlike Britain, with its uprooted proletariat, stripped of their means of subsistence through enclosure and sent wandering into the cities looking for work, and unlike the American North, with its interminable supply of immigrants sent over from Europe as a result of starvation, criminalization, or persecution, the South was particularly devoid of free, landless laborers. As a consequence, slave owners begin renting their slaves out to industrial capitalists. (This practice, incidentally, never ended, but today takes the form of prison labor being rented out to various factories, corporations, and agricultural operations.) The increasing mobility of slaves, traveling on their own to factories, with passes from their plantations, led to an increased need to police public urban spaces. Increasing mobility also required newer, more complex technologies for tracking and identifying bodies. At first there was the handwritten pass, and then, in various states and at various times, there were printed forms, metal badges, and other early forms of identification; the precursors to passports and state IDs that we all carry today."

Slave Patrols and Civil Servants: A History of Policing in Two Modes

1 year ago  Notes (0)

(Source: welcometogreybritain-blog, via fuckyeahanarchistposters)

1 year ago  Notes (3139)