#isaif

[cabinsoda]

[t4tozier]

guys i think in sickness & in flames might be my new fave tfb album over talon of the hawk 🫣 is this what growth looks like

[punxsutawneyfilth]

Here is my official unsolicited front bottoms opinions:

Brothers Can’t Be Friends: 7/10

I Hate My Friends: 9/10

My Grandma Vs Pneumonia: 8/10

The Front Bottoms: 10/10

Talon of the Hawk: 9/10

Back on Top: 6/10

Going Grey: 5/10

In Sickness and In Flames: 8/10

You Are Who You Hang Out With: 5/10

[doghartzy]

literally ginasfs if it was by the front bottoms. even the genius annotators think this song is gay

making myself sick thinking abt hockey n batman again.

[kazimirkharza]

What are your thoughts on how many anarcho-primitivist/luddite/anticiv spaces have been taken over by right-wing types? It seems less people are actually engaging in primitivist thought and more so thinking it's "based" and "trad."

I saw how you got downvoted for insulting whatalthist, and this is what led me to ask this question.

I'm assuming you're referring to online spaces. There's a strong effort by the right to co-opt primitivism. There are some forums that are frequented by right-wingers, though they're in the minority; most problematic spaces are the ones about Kaczynski and things directly related to him. There are also many social media accounts that express primitivistic ideas in combination with authoritarian and rightist politics (e.g. individuals who adore both Ted Kaczynski and Pentti Linkola). Most concerning to me are actually the offline examples that get press coverage.

I see this as being both due to deliberate efforts to co-opt primitivism, much in the manner Nazis co-opted socialism, and due to ignorance on the part of many right-wingers. It isn't too hard to misinterpret Kaczynski's remarks about leftism if you read him inattentively, and conclude that he must be some sort of right-winger. Ted's mistake was focusing on attacking the left too much and worrying too little about the right, but at the time he wrote his manifesto this choice made sense.

Ted was a fan of Earth First! and when he wrote Industrial Society and its Future the wounds of an ideological split within it were still fresh. EF! started out as a truly ecocentric movement with extremely narrow goals of protecting the wilderness from the ravages of industrialism and other harm caused by civilized humans. After gaining a lot of momentum, EF! attracted thousands of newcomers, many of whom leaned more to the side of leftist humanism than deep ecology, causing conflict — the newcomers were trying to transform the movement into one about ecology-related social justice issues, while the original Earth First!ers preferred to only focus on wilderness conservation. (For more on this check out Earth First!: Environmental Apocalypse by Martha F. Lee). The right-wing in America at the time was comprised mostly of people who were staunch prometheans, warmongers, etc., and Ted rightly assumed they weren't going to take over his movement. However as the political climate changed they became one.

The US and the rest of the "West" seems to be experiencing a rise in right-wing back-to-nature ideas, similar in many ways to the so-called "right-wing hippies" of the Weimar republic. I'm talking about doomsday preppers, christian nationalist communes, etc. Kaczynski did not anticipate this, and by the time news about who was adopting (some of) his ideas — not just anarchists and former Earth First!ers, but people including the Greek fascist Golden Dawn party, and Andreas Breivik — reached Kaczynski in his supermax prison it was a bit late. He penned a short note titled Ecofascism: An Aberrant Branch of Leftism in 2020, arguing against their ideas and saying he's their enemy. However, more people read and will read ISAIF in the future than this obscure note and the few other scattered critiques of the right that can be found throughout his work.

What we need to do is to aggressively shun these types until we successfully repel them. This applies to real life and online interactions. There will always be some who'll try to co-opt primitivism, but this big wave needs to be halted. There are also some who are genuinely willing to learn and adjust their beliefs, but they're few in between. It's necessary to distinguish between the two, keep the latter and reject the former.

[floridakilo]

been rereading and annotating ISAIF and theres so much stuff i missed out on during my first two reads

[christmasintheloonybin]

positive thing about ted dying is a revival of these memes and the vast quantity of them. and people in the comments saying "who is this and why is everyone talking about him?" if one out of every hundred of these people reads ISAIF because of a meme I think the world will be a better place.

[weepingwitch]

sometimes i remember that my d&d character's name is isaif vhndhkmp after [redacted] and bree from desperate housewives

[draugenrarities]

Every time an advertisement pauses my music I re-read a passage of ISAIF

[ozomatli]

tee bee aych i am so tired and i want to sleepies in my bed with my kitty cat and my pillows and blankets

would you guys believe me if isaif this was my first time just getting drunk and not crossfaded ? usually i start with the marrige iguanas and then add some alky-hol to the mix

i feel really bad i ripped the fishnet thigh highs my bf got me bc i tried to race a guy and ate shit within the first second. they forgot i was srunk and to be honest so did eye

[teamisc]

no because i really feel like in sickness and in flames is theyre like culmination album a lot of brians songs really capture this like need 2 be loved for any amount of time even if its like so ill fated and ultimately hurting him and whoever hes with it resulting in these songs that are so bittersweet peach specifally comes 2 mind

because it really is this like admittance that youre not right for someone its like even though youre the only thing keeping me going i know in my heart that im not right for you im holding you back and there are so many somgs featuriong the inverse like fucking ok cough it out was the first song i head by them and i was like going through a huge falling out w my like bestfriend/like first real crush at the time so its like yeah this song was going to resonate w me but this fuckinbg like the ENDING

like im like ok im getting off rtopic actuallyu back to ISAIF i just feel like its a huge turning point album like i feel the the songs have almost completely abandoned that gnawing feeling of not being good enough, of being too damaged to stick around and like looking at love at first sight right like lookingf at that song it s like

no longer can i accept that im goin g to hurt you, that im going to US including himself in that pain is sooo crazy the amount of songs where the pain of losing someone is put on someone else, like he cant accept it

(back 2 peach) like the way he cant admit that he will miss her drives me fucking crazy and even when he can admit it like in twin sized mattress

like this desprerate plea 2 stay and how he'll find a way to keep the subject of the song like happy and like its not enough and ISAIF just like ditches a lot of that like vfucking bus beat its like hoensly one of my favoirtite songs and i lost the fucking plot ims os sorry u guys give me a minute

[cowardlycowboys]

as much as I want new tfb music I know it'll probably be like isaif and well I'm not happy enough for that brian

[mirakano]

Thanks for the anti tech reading list. Just starting to learn. Hope you are well

Of course!!! Hope you enjoy. Please feel free to reach out if you have any questions or anything. (Btw I just wanted to mention that if you're put off by the strong critique of leftists in ISAIF then I would strongly encourage you to read The System's Neatest Trick, that essay in particular was what made me fully grasp how leftism serves the techno-industrial system).

Also this may be of interest to you: the Anti-Tech Collective is having an upcoming open discussion on Zoom that is meant to serve as an intro lesson/discussion for individuals that are new to anti-tech theory (though all are welcome, even those that are already familiar). You can visit their website for more details and/or sign up here. It's at 12PM EST on 2/19.

[all-things-are-nothing-to-me]

Ecofascism: An Aberrant Branch of Leftism

The “ecofascists,” as I understand that term, share, at a minimum, two traits: I. They do not advocate total rejection of modern technology; instead, they want to create a society in which technology will be “limited and “wisely” used in such a way as to ensure the ecological health of our planet.

II. They support, if not white supremacism, then at least white separatism.

First let’s take trait I. In essence, the ecofascists want a planned society, which means quite simply that they are socialists, for the fundamental idea of socialism is that of the planned society. The illusion of the planned society originated in the Enlightenment, when certain philosophers, misled by the successful application of scientific rationality to the physical world, imagined that scientific rationality could be applied with equal success to the development of human societies. This illusion should long since have been dispelled by what we have learned since the 18th century; but the leftists of today, including the ecofascists, persist in clinging to it.

Back in the late 1990s and the early 2000s, many people on the left referred to my writings as if I were an ideological comrade of theirs. They were able to do this only as a result of selective reading: They failed to perceive or failed to remember the parts of my work that were radically inconsistent with their ideology. These ecofascists who cite my work today, or claim me as an inspiration, are similarly engaged in selective reading: They completely overlook crucial parts of my work; for example, Chapter One of Anti-Tech Revolution, wherein it is demonstrated that the development of a society can never be subject to rational human guidance. On this basis alone, one can predict with perfect certainty that any attempt on the part of ecofascists — or anyone else — to establish and maintain a stable, worldwide balance between technology and ecological health will fail.

Now let’s look at trait II. The true anti-tech movement rejects every form of racism or ethnocentrism. This has nothing to do with “tolerance,” “diversity,” “pluralism,” “multiculturalism,” “equality,” or “social justice.” The rejection of racism and ethnocentrism is — purely and simply — a cardinal point of strategy.

Any movement that aims to limit technology has to be worldwide because if technological progress is cut back in one part of the world while another part of the world continues to follow the path of unrestrained technological development, then the fully technological pact of the world will have a vast preponderance of power over the less technological part. Sooner or later (probably sooner) the fully technological part of the world will take control of the other part in order to exploit its resources. To mention only the most obvious example, if technological progress is restrained in the United States while China continues down its present technological path, then China will dominate the world and will take whatever it wants of America’s natural resources — regardless of the wishes of Americans.

For obvious reasons, a white-supremacist movement cannot be worldwide. Even if a movement does not claim superiority for any one race or culture, but merely insists on keeping the world’s various races or cultures separate and distinct, it will not be able to bring technology under control, because its separatist attitude will inevitably promote rivalry and/or suspicion among the various races or ethnic groups. Each race or ethnic group, for the sake of its own security, will try to make sure that it has more power — and therefore more technology — than other races or ethnic groups. It follows that any movement that seeks to limit technology must make every effort to minimize divisions or differences among races or ethnic groups. Purely as a matter of strategy, racial and cultural blending must be promoted.

The ecofascists need to read ISAIF, Technological Slavery, and Anti-Tech Revolution CAREFULLY. Doing so will not change their beliefs — which are based solely on emotion, not on reason — but at least it may prevent them from calling me an “inspiration” and citing my works in support of their ideology. It should show them that I am their adversary.

The ecofascists’ fixation on race puts them in the same family with the leftists, who likewise are fixated on race. The difference between the two is only that to the ecofascists the “white” race is the hero of the story, whereas the ordinary left makes the same race into the villain. The ecofascists and the ordinary leftists are only two sides of the same (counterfeit) coin.

- Ted Kaczynski

September 29, 2020

[seneca-careto]

"No, what worries me is that I might in a sense adapt to this environment and come to be comfortable here and not resent it anymore. And I am afraid that as the years go by that I may forget, I may begin to lose my memories of the mountains and the woods and that's what really worries me, that I might lose those memories, and lose that sense of contact with wild nature in general. But I am not afraid they are going to break my spirit."

— Ted Kaczynski, when asked if he was afraid of losing his mind in prison.

[onetouchteststrip]

"A technological advance that appears not to threaten freedom often turns out to threaten it very seriously later on. For example, consider motorized transport. A walking man formerly could go anywhere he pleased, go at his own pace without observing any traffic regulations, and was independent of technological support-systems. When motor vehicles were introduced they appeared to increase man's freedom. They took no freedom away from the walking man, no one had to have an automobile if he didn't want one, and anyone who did choose to buy an automobile could travel much farther than a walking man. But the introduction of motorized transport soon changed society in such a way as to restrict greatly man's freedom of locomotion. When automobiles became numerous, it became necessary to regulate their use extensively. In a car, especially around densely populated areas, one cannot just go where one likes at one's own pace, one's movement is governed by the flow of traffic and various traffic laws. One is tied down by various obligations: license requirements, drivers test, renewing registration, insurance, maintenance required for safety, monthly payments on purchase price. Moreover, the use of motorized transport is no longer optional. Since the introduction of motorized transport, the arrangement of our cities has changed in such a way that the majority of people no longer live within walking distance of their place of employment, shopping areas and recreational opportunities, so they they HAVE TO depend on the automobile for transportation. Or else they must use public transportation, in which case they have even less control over their own movement than when driving a car. Every walker's freedom is now greatly restricted. In the city he continually has to stop to sit for traffic lights that are designed mainly to serve auto traffic. In the country, motor traffic makes it dangerous and unpleasant to walk along the highway. (Note this important point that we have just illustrated withy hr case of motorized transport: When a system of technology is introduced as an option that an individual can accept or not as he chooses, it does not necessarily REMAIN optional. In many cases the new technology changes society in such a way that people eventually find themselves FORCED to use it.)