#Anti-CIv

[vampirechatroom]

posting the shit that would get the canadian federal police looking through my twitter profile again

[forbidden-sorcery]

[tastethebloodofmeatthawsmoth]

"I don’t think one can separate a critique of the state and capital from a critique of civilization. Civilization gave birth to the state and capital, which brought all kinds of oppressions and tools to manage that oppression such as surveillance, greed, domination, and all the other shitty things people find logic in doing to each other and the environment. Civilization is explained away by capital as being advancements in efficiency and quality of life, but remember the life expectancy of a Black male in the U.S. is about 25 years. He is expected to be dead or in prison by 25 years of age. Civilization has caused a disconnect between people and the earth. Civilization has given birth to all kinds of diseases; drugs that don’t cure anything but have you buying them to “manage” the disease, feed their greed; pollution; patriarchy; racism; prisons; etc. Civilization is the root cause of the misery which we term oppression and must be dismantled, ruthlessly and utterly destroyed." - anarchist prisoner Michael Kimble

[autogyne-redacted]

what’s wrong with building codes?

Ok fair, this isn't a line of critique ppl talk about much and probably isn't intuitive from lots of positions.

But they're a fundamental piece of how capitalism (tries to) force us to play its game and of how it destroys alternative lifeways!

Also worth noting that nearly all traditional indigenous dwellings are gonna be illegal by most building codes. That alone should make you real skeptical of them.

//

For most of human history, in most places, people could build dwellings at the individual or small group level out of readily available, natural materials. (Eg from what I've read 1-2 people can build a wigwam in 3 days that'll last well over a year).

This kind of set up gives individuals way more power over their housing and isn't conducive to landlording or housing debt. Readily available housing means way less pressure to stay with shitty family/housemates/partners/jobs. It removes one of the primary forms of leverage.

Building codes make it difficult or fully illegal to live in anything other than a modern, conventional home.*

///

Modern homes are convenient in tons of ways. But:

Older tech gets portrayed as way worse than it was, and:

A lot of that convenience primarily matters if you're spending most of your time/energy working because you're living thoroughly inside the market and if you're separated from the skills and knowledge to take care of your shit without modern conveniences.

Civ has a gravity to it. You (theoretically/legally) have to pay a certain amount in taxes, at the point at which you're working a little, probably you find at least some things you want to buy. As you work more you handle less shit yourself and pay more so other people handle it for you. As more people are doing this community becomes harder and harder to find if you're holding out. And the skills, knowledge and lifeways for living outside of civ are harder to access.

While mass violence is needed at times, that's not needed or sustainable long term.

With the commons enclosed, the genocide and forced relocation of indigenous people enacted, industrialization and urbanization complete, more mundane and bureaucratic forms of coercion tend to do the trick for the few hold outs and breakaways.

Shit like telling you you have to install a septic system you can't begin to afford, or condemning your house.

//

*while the details of what's allowed and what's prohibited vary massively from place to place, it is a practical tension I and friends come up against with the state, and even if it wasn't I think it makes sense to object on principle/with an eye towards the future.

Child custody standards (what's grounds for the state taking your kid/what's gonna count against you in a custody battle) often go above and beyond building codes in requiring normative dwellings.

I'm thinking of details like: septic/sewer standards, requiring electric/water hookups, requiring buildings made to last decades vs easy to build structures that are rebuilt every few years or require more active maintenance, making it difficult or impossible to use natural materials, etc.

//

Qualifier: I think building codes serve a purpose in landlord-tennant relationships but without them it'd be way easier to escape renting

[noneedtofearorhope]

Many [insurrectionary anarchists] refuse to offer a specific, singular model of the future at all, believing that people will choose a variety of social forms to organise themselves when given the chance. They are critical of groups or tendencies that believe they are ‘carriers of the truth’ and try to impose their ideological and formal solution to the problem of social organisation. Instead, many insurrectionary anarchists believe that it is through self-organisation in struggle that people will learn to live without institutions of domination.

“Insurrectionary Anarchism: Organize for Attack!” from Do or Die Issue 10

[cl0ck-killer]

Now, amid intensifying social and environmental breakdown, there is a growing realization that daily life overshadowed on every level by the internet complex has crossed a threshold of irreparability and toxicity. More and more people know or sense this, as they silently experience its damaging consequences. The digital tools and services used by people everywhere are subordinated to the power of transnational corporations, intelligence agencies, criminal cartels and a sociopathic billionaire elite. For the majority of the earth's population on whom it has been imposed, the internet complex is the implacable engine of addiction, loneliness, false hopes, cruelty, psychosis, indebtedness, squandered life, the corrosion of memory and social disintegration. All of its touted benefits are rendered irrelevant or secondary by its injurious and sociocidal impacts.

Jonathan Crary, Scorched Earth: Beyond the Digital Age to a Post-Capitalist World

[vraggoee]

ALF edit (posted on discord so I don't have a link to the original, but there is a watermark, so credit to tadashikeii)

[111seedhillroad]

Self-determination should be read as the desire for people who are self-organized (whether by tradition, individual choice, or inclination) to decide how they want to live with each other. This may seem like common sense, and it is, but it is also consistently violated by people who believe that their value system supersedes that of those around them. The question that anarchists of all stripes have to answer for themselves is whether they are capable of dealing with the consequences of other people living in ways they find reprehensible.

Aragorn! Locating an Indigenous Anarchism

[nikolasongsa]

“The more I see of what you call civilization, the more highly I think of what you call savagery!”

Rober E. Howard, Conan the Barbarian

[anoriginalderivative]

everyone is really quick to accuse green anarchists and anti-civ folks of being “eco-fascists” but then when you look at where the materials for a climate revolution actually come from, and who suffers and dies when those materials are extracted, and who does and doesn’t benefit from that extraction, it’s literally always poor people, brown people, people in the global south.

the only people who think they get to choose who lives and dies are the ones who think it is acceptable to sacrifice the people living near lithium and coltan mines (largely people in south america and central africa, respectively) for the benefit of their own communities. and the communities ive seen expressing those wishes are located in the us and europe.

[vampirechatroom]

born to target critical infrastructure, forced to edit terroristic threats toward oil execs out of social media posts

[forbidden-sorcery]

[lakecitylifeline]

Misconceptions About FTHPNW

Since posting our Grievance Zine on Twitter, people have said some completely incorrect things about Lindsay's behavior being due to the communist nature/structure of the organization. It's clear that people have zero idea how From the Heart actually operated.

To clarify: From the Heart PNW proper was never a communist organization, and Lindsay is not and has never been a communist. When the walkout finally happened, a majority of the people who participated were communists, and many communist spearheaded the attempt to democratize the organization and make it more internally and externally accountable.

I'm sure this confuses people, based on their impressions from social media, but words are cheap. From the Heart was never Red's org. It was always Lindsay's org, and Red just supported the effort. Red saw the political potential of the effort, and cared about it succeeding, but he knew better than to try and run it. The CDC was his project, and when he got sick that effectively disappeared. For the years he was too weak to do political work on the ground, he just posted and fundraised and recruited. Any impression people got from Red's twitter was purely his own politics, and had nothing to do with the org--he wasn't even there on the ground to see things himself most of the time.

Lindsay's politics are based primarily on whatever passes her personal vibe check. There was no formal structure in the org, only the informal ones of seniority and personal dominance, and the capitalist ones of private control of funds and media. When we tried to democratize the organization based on our expectations as communists, that new structure was a potential threat to her control and income, and so she quickly acted to crush it.

Lindsay butted heads with anarchists and constantly talked shit about them, but if you were around long enough you learned she had smoke for everyone. She would often say that "communism never works," and other vague anti-communist statements. When we talked about carrying political literature, or when we put up political graffiti, she would explode at us. She would get annoyed when we talked about communism, even with each other. If you went along with her, she liked you, and if you disagreed with her or pushed back, she would frequently use your political ideology--anarchist, communist, or liberal--to explain why you were so annoying.

Because of Red's social media presence, online recruits were mostly communists. With anarchists distancing themselves from Lindsay or leaving when they got fed up, it eventually left the organization majority communist. This created a weird situation where both the media presence and the volunteer base of From the Heart were mostly communist, but the actual operation, organization, and politics of the org on the ground were not.

She believes large, collectively-driven political change is impossible in the US, so any thoughts we had about trying to make the program more political were squashed. She thinks our only hope is to build and support a socialist micro-society among the unhoused, and then wait out the climate apocalypse--or that we'll all die in nuclear Armageddon, so we should just help a few people and dick around while we have the chance. She talked about how we were building a "new culture," and that she was opposed to a socialist revolution if we hadn't established the new culture yet (according to her own standards). If we didn't do things exactly how she wanted, that was a personal failure to build the new culture™️.

Lots of prefiguration, lots of apocalypticism, lots of inherent sin and personal martyrdom, constant demands for a protestant work ethic (i.e. if there's a problem achieving a goal, it's because people aren't working hard enough), and not much systematic material analysis--basically Christianity, but without the parts about being nice.

All that mattered was maintaining the flow of goods and services to the unhoused of Lake City, and maintaining her income. Anything else she viewed as a waste of time. Red's misdeed was creating a false face for this, and enabling and covering for Lindsay's behavior. Once he was gone, the parasocial fog lifted. The non-socialist nature of the org became a problem once we were asked to step up and replace Red's labor.

Don't think that your politics can't be used to justify abuse--as though there are no toxic anarchist spaces. Lindsay used anarchist prefiguration, communist revolutionary discipline, and liberal identity essentialism as rhetorical devices to control us, while holding onto the economic and social capital needed to run the org. There's a lesson in that.

[iisthepopeoffools]

I am against nostalgic Luddism and against techno-optimism. I am against reaction, against conservatism, and against progress. I am against vitalism and against alienation. I am against civilization and against primitivism. I am against moralism and against nihilism. I am against asceticism and against hedonism. I am against reformism, against escapism, and against annihilationism. I am against slave morality and against master morality. I am against egalitarianism and against stratification. I am against universalism and against atomization. I am against humanism and against humanity as something to be overcome. All of these may hopefully find their syntheses in salvagepunk philosophy.

[noneedtofearorhope]

‘socialism or barbarism’ is a phrase that i think we ought to phase out, at least in that specific form.

like, i get the meaning, that the logical conclusion of our current society is outright fascism, and the only alternative is revolt and the creation of socialism. i get that. but when you look at the history of the word ‘barbarism’, it’s a word calling for purity of culture, a word which delineates between the cultured, civilized, and therefore superior in group, and a primitive, uncivilized, and therefore inferior other. it’s far more a word to be used by fascists than it is to describe them.

as i see it, socialism is about solidarity with the underclasses, and often there is no greater underclass than those seen as being completely outside of society, those cast as ‘barbarians’, those who are targeted by fascists for elimination. if anything it should be ‘socialism and barbarism’, ‘socialism as barbarism’. we should seek to sack rome, to see the fall of empire.

[cl0ck-killer]