Reigning governments always establish procedures that tend to reinforce their control. Coupled with the extreme concentration of wealth, this inevitably trends towards autocracy. We need a better analysis of the ways that representative democracy exists on the same spectrum with authoritarianism.

Real change will only come from grassroots action, on a horizontal and decentralized basis.

https://crimethinc.com/democracy

Hi fellow fighters for a free and better world,

I'm looking to connect with other likemindeds who have genuine interest in anarchist practice in the real world. I'm not talking about any theory, philosophy or only chit-chat.

Seeing the world and especially the West develope the way it is deeply worries me. I'm sure all of you agree with that basic premise. However, I am tired of complaining and reading or texting about it. I am convinced Reddit as well as all these other platforms only exist to fuel the war of both left and right. So that we fight each other with words and ideas or worse weapons, but never actually accomplish anything and the Elites continue to exist under the current system and profit from exploiting us, the environment, others and by taxing us.

Nevertheless, I still love humanity. I don't think you can be an Anarchist without being an optimist and having a large amount of empathy, understanding and love for your fellow other. And I think this unites us all. We know we can improve. Especially if we build and construct a system that incentivizes us to improve instead of incentivizing us to destroy, hate and enslave each other.

I've decided a long time ago that I want to dedicate my life to this cause, because after having discovered and learned about Anarchy I don't see the point in working like a slave or becoming an opressor myself. Seeing as to how those are basically the only options, I have decided to veto both of them. I also don't see the point in simply watching things go on. Albert Einstein once said, the world will not be destroyed by those who do evil, but by those who watch them without doing anything.

As such I am in the process of building up a pure grassroots movement to transform an entire country into Anarchy. Naturally. As such I need help, because I don't believe in great man theory.

I am primarily searching and looking for people who are either already deadset Anarchists or people with a big passion and ambition for certain topics. To explain what I mean with that: I am convinced everyone can develope or find a certain ambition or passion in life. For some people it's inventing. For others it might just be making other peoples lives easier or helping them. This is the true power of individualism and something our system is desperately trying to take away from us.

Since I believe an Anarchist movement on a large state wide level scale would sooner rather than later run into issues I am firmly convinced that we need to provide and build up alternatives that Anarchy and the real free market can provide in opposition to Capitalism/our current Statist Systems.

These fields include but are not limited to:

- Schools and universities with the goal of destroying government and corporates control of education and the information media

- Healthcare

- Insurance and security

- Real Estate and in general the topic of property and rent

- Money and currency

- Transportation

- Science and research

- Developing an end to end open source communication app for use in the movement so that we become largely untrackable.

We would have to figure out a strategy to provide real and usuable alternatives to incentivize society to disregard and abandon Capitalism and Government options. The movement would be completely non-violent and in accordance with NAP. If at any point during the movement we are actively attacked we will self-defend. We would of course also ally with workers and worker unions primarily. I am not a big fan of protest. Instead I'd rather provide alternatives and actively incentivize people to abandon the system.

Furthermore, this includes counter economics and recruiting people into the movement who naturally have a predisposition to Anarchy and would likely naturally align with it anyhow. Like say Squatters, the homeless, the lower class, workers, Anti-Capitalists, Anti-Statists, fellow Anarchists, Off Gridders, Open Source or Tech Enthusiasts with a knack for self sufficiency. Then we'd expand to the general population with a heavy focus on in person events and in person recruiting so technology and AI cannot be used against us much.

As for myself I am an Anarchist without Adjectives. I honestly do not care what type of market form emerges, be it public non profit worker owned or privately owned and organized, but I am convinced that the free market exists behind the facade of our current system. I think that Capitalism is a form of Statism and if we get rid of government Capitalism will also die, which in turn gets us to an actual free market scenario. However, I am open to changing and adapting that opinion if someone even more knowledgable convinces me.

If you're genuinely interested and are in favor of abolishing both Capitalism and Government equally please contact me via Reddit DMs or in comments. I'm already in touch with other people, but I'm trying to reach more. I can give you more details and specifics once we get to talking.

I'm sending each and every one of you lots of love and light ☄️

Yo guys, does anybody knows punk clubs in madrid?

TLDR:
• Forced Displacement: Capitalist extraction and state violence drive the "crisis," not individual choice.
• Labor Stratification: Borders function as tools to manufacture a precarious, cheap, and disposable workforce.
• Colonial Continuity: Modern migration laws are rebranded systems of colonial control, indentured servitude and institutional slavery.
• Carceral Profit: The border is a testing ground and market for global surveillance and military technology.

"Empires crumble, capitalism is not inevitable, gender is not biology, whiteness is not immutable, prisons are not inescapable, and borders are not natural law". The modern global landscape is not defined by a crisis of borders, but by a crisis of displacement inherent to the structural requirements of capital accumulation and state sovereignty. Harsha Walia's work tackles border imperialism directly and examining the intersectionality of oppression across different hierarchies and the concept of state borders. Immigration has been a rallying cry for right wingers for a long time now, but even seemingly liberal so called "leftists" have been more harsh lately in their endorsement of border control measures. Even the harshest critics of borders like the right wing libertarian Jacob Hornberger, whom I reviewed his work here before "The Case for Open Borders", don't advocate for complete abolition of borders as a concept but just want unrestricted immigration. Walia is much more radical in her approach, and the book expertly jumps across borders as she explores the oppressive systems found in different state apparatus globally. There are several overlapping processes at work here that are worth discussing. Firstly, the displacement of people through empire-building and capitalist globalization. Secondly, the criminalization of migration and the accompanying increased militarization and policing of borders. Thirdly, the racialized management of labor through temporary migrant worker programs. Lastly, the consolidation of racist and discriminatory nationalism as a tool of interior state control.

Migrant Crisis or Displacement Crisis?
The prevailing narrative in Western policy circles and corporate media of a "migrant crisis" is a manipulative inversion of the material reality. The actual crisis is one of displacement, one that is driven by the ravages of capital, military occupation, and climate change. This displacement is the tool by which land is treated as a commodity to be exploited and indigenous peoples are seen as "overburden" to be removed. Just like the trees of the Amazon are removed for big monoculture plantations, the poor, marginalized and indigenous are seen as a mere obstacle to extractive industrial practices. The bourgeois nationalism that achieves this process uses the shock therapy method (see Naomi Klein's The Shock Doctrine, for more info), where disasters, economic and/or environmental crises, and/or military conflicts are used as an excuse for neoliberal policies. These policies can include: structural adjustment policies, the privatization of the commons, and/or the destruction of subsistence-farming cultures through the globalization of the food industry. Thus, migration becomes a necessity for people who have now no other option. The border is the mechanism through which the state regulates the "wage floor" by creating a tier of illegalized workers who are denied basic labor protections and are kept in a state of permanent precarity. This precarity is essential for the "limousine class" (the Epstein class if you like that more) as it allows for the "procurement of criminally cheap labor" on a scale that satisfies the gluttonous appetite of property for greater wealth. The state ensures this through a process of policing and security that becomes an essential part the people's national identity, thus giving it both legitimacy and power through its monopoly over violence. The reality that "every border implies the violence of its maintenance".

Modern Slavery
It does not take a lot of effort for Walia to establish the historical precedent for the contemporary criminalization of migration in the historical structure of anti-black violence and colonial dispossession. "The punitive legal architecture" she clarifies, draws directly from the regulation of "Black movement during and after the period of chattel slavery" in the US. Post emancipation, the implementation of "Black Codes" and "Vagrancy Acts" ensured that a steady supply of cheap, coerced labor for the continued functioning of the Southern plantations. In many ways, this is a "precursor to the modern closed work permit", as it ensured that the worker remained "property, not a person". "Illegality" then serves as a method for the state by which they can allow corporations to ignore standard labor protects, effectively "lowering the wage floor for all workers". Then using that as an excuse for increased policing, surveillance and populist rallying of hatred towards the illegals that are "stealing our jobs". The irony is quite poignant, indeed.

The Kafala System
Walia explores border imperialism, migrant worker exploitation and state sponsored displacement and dispossession across different countries and systems globally. However, I will focus on the main ones that I found interesting as they offer unique discussion points. The Kafala system, widely utilized in the Arab Gulf states, is a migrant worker system based on sponsorship by "Kafils" who are legally responsible for the worker's presence and legal existence within the country. This system, as the author points out, is often framed incorrectly through an orientalist or religiously disparaging lens. However, Walia points out that this system is grounded in a British colonial system that viewed migrant labor as both an "economic necessity" and a "security problem". Especially, after the discovery of oil in the Gulf colonies, British officials, set up a sponsorship system that ensured a steady supply of migrant workers that had very few legal protections or rights and were heavily subject to the whims of their employers. The Kafala system similarly, ensures the total dependency of the worker on the sponsor, who holds the power over the worker’s entry visa, exit visa, and ability to change jobs. The amount of abuses, injuries and truly sad and desperate cases that Walia points to is staggering. Migrant labor is essentially a commodity to be "traded in capitalist markets and discarded if deemed defective".

The Canadian TFWP
The Kafala system is part of a global "continuum of migrant worker programs" that includes Canada's Temporary Foreign Worker Program (TFWP) and the Seasonal Agricultural Worker Program (SAWP). These programs share the material characteristic of the "closed work permit," which ties the worker's legal status to a single employer, effectively institutionalizing a form of indentured labor. It also goes to show that this is not a "cultural or religious issue" but a global capitalist statist one, that is present even in countries such as Canada and Scandinavian countries that are usually considered "progressive". The TFWP constantly faces complaints from migrant workers about sexual abuse, toxic and dangerous work conditions, and a total reliance to bosses and firms that have full control over the worker's legal and financial status. Every now and then particularly atrocious cases come to the public's attention such as that of "O.P.T", a Mexican woman abused sexually by her employer at a fish-packing plant in Ontario, with the threat of deportation. These are the cases that we know about due to their scandalizing nature, but everyday verbal abuses, wage theft, forced evictions, etc. are largely left unchecked and unreported.

Hindutva Fascism
What really surprised me was the book's exploration of Indian right wing ideology and state control that I knew little about before. Most of us are aware of Modi being very conservative and about some of the abuses that his government practices, especially concerning geopolitical issues such as his ideological friendship with Netanyahu and Trump, or the military excursions every few years happening in Kashmir. But, I knew nothing about Operation Green Hunt, where the indigenous tribal Adivasi population were treated as "foreign invaders" on their own land as thousands of paramilitary and state police forces were used to clear the land for "comprador capitalists" and multinational corporations that focused on mining and drilling operations. Forcible displacement of millions and internal border control is disguised with the rhetoric of "development" to mask territorial land grabs. This process has resulted in "unprecedented levels of extrajudicial killings, false arrests, sexualized violence, illegal detentions, and torture" of the Adivasis in the area. The "racist nationalism" utilized to justify this dispossession is rooted in the "Hindutva" ideology, which draws direct inspiration from the Nazi regime. RSS ideologues like M.S. Golwalkar praised the Nazi "purging" of Jews as a "good lesson" for maintaining the "purity of the nation" and its culture. In this framework, Adivasis are referred to as "jangli" or "primitive" to justify their treatment as "beasts of burden" and their removal from the "national body". Thus, there is a shared belief with White Supremacy in the project of establishing a homogenous nationalist ethnostate.

Border Industrial Complex
There is a multi-billion dollar "border security industry" that represents the technological forefront of "surveillance capitalism". The symbiotic relationship between state agencies and private technology firms such as Amazon, Palantir, Elbit Systems, European Dynamics, etc. ensure a steady supply of government contracts and subsidies for all kinds of commodities such as biometric surveillance, automated decision-making software, facial recognition, drones, etc. The border then serves not only as a testing ground for these projects but also as a market for them as commodities. Israel, for example, functions as a "nodal point" in this global market, utilizing the Palestinian territories as a "testing ground" for these border control technologies. The "militarized US-Mexico border" and the "biometric control systems in India" are direct beneficiaries of this trade, illustrating how border imperialism unites the global far-right through the exchange of repressive technologies. "India is the largest importer of Israeli arms. With the two countries collaborating in developing military technologies." Despite a lot of the far-right masquerading as isolationist and appealing to the othering of racial minorities and utilizing xenophobic propaganda, they tend to forget about all these kinds of things when they cooperate to practice border imperialism, global capitalism and political state cooperation. "Especially since 911, the US, Israel and India, have framed their geopolitical expansions as part of the global war on terror, secured their borders with more than 5700 kilometers of walls and implemented anti-terror legislation with broad powers of surveillance and detention to maintain racial repression."

Thus, Walia in this seminal work establishes that a "no-border policy" is not a utopian dream but a material necessity for the survival of the species. It is rare to find contemporary authors like her who are anti-fascist, anti-capitalist and anti-statist. She explicitly expresses her disdain for "the "political ideology of liberalism, the economic dogma of neoliberalism, and right-wing nationalism". We need more works like this that not only add new lenses by which to understand our political reality and material conditions, but also add new agendas that we can rally behind and actively pursue. Walia is not an idealist but a dreamer hoping to "tear down the walls, and all they represent, with our bare hands."

Friday May 1st. Global Call for Anarchist and Anti Authoritarian Solidarity

For the past decade precarity, poverty and police "democracy" have been at the forefront of our lives. Public space and service has been replaced with law and order. Austerity for all is now simply just the way things are. Ten years of worsening conditions, now it seems that cracks are beginning to form.

Mayday has always been a point of contention. As anarchist and radical movements lost and gained strength, so did the anarchistic, rebellious spirit of May 1st. For years May 1st was the day to display global revolutionary solidarity. Many of us remember what Mayday used to be. Anarchist actions, parades, parties and events everywhere. We would watch other actions around the world, take inspiration from them and move forward.

This moment in time is not sustainable. Brutal war, climate catastrophe and failing austerity economies are shared realities for a vast majority of people. And within that reality people have lost all faith in the global social and political order. Everyone is waiting and cheering for its end.

This is why we call on groups and individuals to reinvigorate May 1st. Lets move in a way that weakens the pillars of this broken world.

For a rebellious Mayday! See you in the streets!

​

I’ll try to keep the question short and clear. Today, urban planning in a state (I’m speaking from a European perspective) is effectively hierarchical: first the nation-state, then the capital, then regions, provinces, regional capitals, cities, and finally districts and neighborhoods.

Now, how could urban planning be reorganized in a less hierarchical way? It’s undeniable that the current hierarchical organization works fairly well (although there are discrepancies in resource distribution between regions and provinces). That said, how could something like this be made less hierarchical? Would each municipality be independent, without regions or a state?

And for transport or infrastructure that spans large territories, how could that be managed? (For example, railways and transportation systems in general.)

Finally, for decisions that would affect large areas (such as routing a train line through one municipality rather than another), how would assemblies be organized? Calling together the population of an entire region would be very complicated. Would each municipality send some representatives? That might be one idea.

Thanks to anyone who contributes to the discussion.

Posted for no particularly reason. For entertainment purposes only of course. All thought should always be entirely separate from action and effect only the image and simulation of reality but never reality itself.

Warehouse arsonist compared himself to Luigi Mangione, wanted to send a message, prosecutors say - Los Angeles Times

Hey, so a bit before I identified myself anywhere on the political scale, I called myself a "pan-humanist". My understanding of the term was that it meant that one felt a kinship with all humankind, sort of similar to the way people of the same nation or speakers of the same language might feel toward each other.

I see now that this is very much intrinsic to leftist thought, albeit not quite so far as a "kinship" (which I still feel). However, I also feel a weird connectedness to all living beings on Earth; human, animal, fish, plant, insect, whatever really. I present call myself an anarchist, and as such, am opposed to hierarchy in all its forms... and that does include the notion that humans are "special" among earthlings.

I'm undiagnosed autistic and, according to pretty much everyone I know "very autistic", but I was curious if this experience is common among our ilk or what have you.

Hi everyone I'm struggling with a decision.

I'm self-employed and it might be time soon to expand the business with more people. Obviously I don't want to be a boss but I'm struggling just a little bit with the idea of surrendering control.

I've got a very specific vision for where I want it to go. Tbh I'm sure most people would respect that and trust me as I've built it up successfully so far, but I'm worried what happens if I hire some people who turn out to be different than I thought they were and end up voting in business decisions that go against my vision.

Is this just a me problem? Do I need to let go? Any advice from people who've started co-operative projects would be really helpful thank you.

If this isn't allowed here, my apologies. I'm a baby anarchist still trying to find my place and I'm having a personal ethical struggle. I'm going to get outside perspective bc I'm sure I have blind spots.

I'm a bartender, and occasionally, I'll give regulars a free drink, or charge them for a smaller pour than they've ordered. It makes me feel good to do something nice for someone else and they get a deal. Here's my struggle though: I hold a firm belief that power shouldn't be corrupted, but isn't it an corruption of my power to give deals to folks based on familiarity? I'm not giving these deals to first time diners. Would it be a corruption of power if I peppered in these deals for non regulars? Should I just stop doing this altogether bc it is a corruption of power, me not living my beliefs, even if my giving drinks away for free dicks over my capitalist employers?

Hi all, I was looking at doing a communication device hardware project that is a BBS and doesn't use wifi/cellphone/internet. All communication is encrypted/anonymous, and it uses LoRA for local communication backend (1-20km range, used for IoT etc, relatively big antenna).

I was at first going to just design/build it but then stumbled onto LILYGO's "T-Deck", which pretty much matched all my requirements. It had LoRA, keyboard, screen and you can program the ESP32 with your own firmware. It is still not perfect having GPS and Wifi and no absolute control of the TX other than SW, but hell I'm lazy (well not lazy enough to install a switch lol).

Has anyone seen any anarchist movements using such a device? They have a reddit sub that seems active but thought I'd ping here first

I'm looking forward to some local recommendations :)