#movements against economical inequality

[arunpangar2]

सर्वंकष देशहितार्थ लढणे हीच खरी देशसेवा!

[thepeacepigeon]

The 4B Movement: How South Korean women are leaving the patriarchy behind 

(Getty Images)

In 2016, a 34-year-old man named Kim Sung-min waited inside a unisex restroom outside exit 10 of Gangnam Station, Seoul South Korea. Six different men came and exited through the restroom over the span of an hour, until a 23-year-old woman entered, and Kim proceeded to stab and kill her with a 12-inch-long sushi knife. In court, Kim stated, “I did it because women have always ignored me.” Kim’s actions and thoughts are not out of the ordinary amongst Korean men—violence against women is extremely common in South Korea. 

(BBC)

South Korea has a long record of female subjugation. Between 1953 and 2021, abortion was illegal in almost all circumstances, and current law allows a woman to get an abortion only if she has consent from a male relative or her boyfriend/husband/partner. A 2015 South Korean government survey revealed that almost 80% of women had been sexually harassed at work. A survey released by The Ministry of Gender Equality and Family found that 57.8 percent of women felt vulnerable to misogynistic violence. Digital crime and sexual harassment are extremely common— “molka”, up-skirt photos, and secret cameras hidden in restrooms are rampant, so much so that any cellphone purchased in South Korea has a mandatory chime when photos are taken. The World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Gender Gap Index ranks South Korea at number 99 out of 146 countries for gender equality. Legislation actively works against women trying to report sexual assault. Men accused of stalking or harassment can “ask” their victims to drop charges, and in 2022 a man murdered his former colleague after she refused to drop charges against him for stalking her since 2019. South Korea has the highest gender pay gap of all the OECD countries—the top wealthiest 37 countries, globally, with women earning on average a third less than men. These alarming statistics have come years after the “Gangnam Station” murder, and South Korean women continue to be targeted for their gender.

(Jung Yeon-Je/AFP via Getty Images)

Despite Kim’s own testimony, government authorities explicitly denied the misogynistic motive, and the prosecution announced that the case was not being investigated as a hate crime. Kim was eventually sentenced to 30 years in prison. In response to the murder, women took to the streets outside Gangnam station and the surrounding areas in protest. The women, many of whom had never considered themselves feminists or activists, but the nature of the crime and the misogynistic motivation, as well as the court's refusal to acknowledge it, outranged them. The murder incited intense debates about misogyny within the country, and the gender inequities women faced both socially and economically. Five months after the murder, Cho Nam-Joo’s novel Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982 was published. The book devastatingly details an everyday woman’s daily experiences of nonstop sexism, inequality, and misogyny in contemporary South Korea, and served as another enraging eye-opener that would develop into what would become known as the 4B Movement. 

The four B’s (or “Four No’s”) of the movement represent the four major components that women of the movement are rejecting; Bisekseu (sex), Bichulsan (child-bearing), Biyeonae, (dating) and Bihon (marriage). South Korean feminists define the 4B movement not as a fight against the patriarchy, but a complete step away from it— leaving it behind. In 2017, the Escape the Corset campaign swept across the country. The word “corset” is used by Korean feminists as a metaphor for the societal mechanisms that control and repress women, for example, the extreme and toxic beauty standards. Both 4B and Escape the Corset condemn and reject the influence that beauty holds within every aspect of South Korean life. Pioneers such as feminist author Cho Nam-Joo, and photographer Jeon Bo-ra, who photographed women who shaved their heads in rebellion. Social media has played a large role in the 4B movement, with bloggers and beauty influencers like Lina Bae speaking up against unattainable beauty standards and societal pressures, and Summer Lee who was inspired to cut her hair, throw away her hyperfeminine clothes, and post pictures of herself without makeup. 

(Jean Chung/Getty Images)

Despite increasing conversation on women’s rights, feminism is still considered a taboo, contentious, or even “dirty” word for many South Koreans. It is often associated with “man-hating” and perceived as overly aggressive. The country's current president Yoon Suk-yeol has promised to close down the South Korean Ministry of Gender Equility and Family, and any other organizations that fund or support women and victims of sexual violence, claiming they “treat men like potential sex criminals”. A January 2023 article in the South Korean newspaper The Sisa Times reported that 65% of women in the country do not want children, 42% do not want to get married, and over 80% of those cite domestic violence as their key reason. As a result, concerns regarding the rising average population age and declining birth rate in South Korea have increased greatly. The country's birth rate is less than one per woman as of 2021, and the country saw less than 200,000 marriages. In recent years, the South Korean government has commissioned a number of soap operas and reality TV shows to promote an idyllic view of romantic heterosexual love, and to encourage marriage and reproduction. 

(Yonhap)

The 4B movement and Escape the Corset campaign have had a tremendous impact on the way young South Korean women view the countries cultural grip on women’s appearances and lives. Between 2015-2016 and 2017-2018, Korean women spent over 5 billion Korean Won less on beauty products and cosmetic surgeries, instead investing their money in cars and choosing independence over objectification. The movement is calling for boycotts of any business that uses sexist advertising, and encouraging women to eat at women-owned restaurants, drink in women-owned bars, and shop at women-owned stores—women’s money goes into the pockets of other women. Women’s universities have also been on the rise in South Korea, with most cities housing one or several women-only institutions. Similarly, women’s only spaces have begun to expand, women’s parking spots closer to entrances and exits in parking garages, women’s only hotel floors and common rooms, and women’s only subway cars. These spaces allow feminism to spread and flourish, and give Korean women the ability to find community with other women without the interference of men. 

(Ian Baldessari/CityLab)

Since 2016, Exit 10 of Gangnam Station has become a symbolic site for South Korean feminism. The South Korean feminist movement developed out of particularly misogynist conditions within their country. The 4B movement represents a radical way that women have sought to create an online and offline world devoid of men—rather than engaging in arguments and altercations, they simply refuse to interact with men in every aspect of their lives. These actions have had a profound impact on the functionality of South Korean society and have opened an uncloseable door too the discussion of women’s rights. 

McCurry, Justin. “Calls for Stalking Law Overhaul in South Korea as Woman’s Murder Shocks Nation.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 23 Sept. 2022, www.theguardian.com/world/2022/sep/23/calls-for-stalking-law-overhaul-in-south-korea-as-womans-shocks-nation.

Teehan, Katie. “What Is the 4B Movement?” Service95, 16 Apr. 2024, www.service95.com/4b-movement-explainer/.

Izaakson , Jen, and Tae Kyung Kim. “The South Korean Women’s Movement: ‘We Are Not Flowers, We Are a Fire.’” Feminist Current, 16 June 2020, www.feministcurrent.com/2020/06/15/the-south-korean-womens-movement-we-are-not-flowers-we-are-a-fire/.

Lee, Min Joo. “Why so Many South Korean Women Are Refusing to Date, Marry or Have Kids.” Yahoo! News, Yahoo!, 15 May 2023, news.yahoo.com/why-many-south-korean-women-123250959.html?guccounter=1&guce_referrer=aHR0cHM6Ly93d3cuZ29vZ2xlLmNvbS8&guce_referrer_sig=AQAAAHmBVorK4v6bdzwcJMRyRdXkKtzUlpQYWn5Ot-BPzs-YRNNZFW5JBwC65OTaPrRImn3F3G56r0gfNydadUzlQtPS61hOi6uggk_OkwZqqvLvS-YN4HbPrpwKvK9_7g0e9yqu9fiRRvOVJkGRv__L7AZGoYtfHVxjKLLPDi9DI2fu.

Park, Seohoi Stephanie. “Murder at Gangnam Station: A Year Later.” KOREA EXPOSÉ, 2 Mar. 2023, koreaexpose.com/murder-gangnam-station-year-later/.

Dockeray, Hannah. “Why Some South Korean Women Are Rejecting Beauty.” Sky News, 14 July 2021, news.sky.com/story/plastic-surgery-south-korea-faces-beauty-backlash-11871654.

[readytoescalate]

"EMORY IS EVERYWHERE": AN OPEN INVITATION FROM PROTESTORS OCCUPYING EMORY UNIVERSITY

As the Palestine Solidarity movement rips across college campuses, college administrators and government bureaucrats are rushing to denounce anyone taking action as an “outside agitator”. Those who grease the gears of the war machine think that this rhetoric will erode public support for bold actions at Emory. They are wrong. 45 years after the Camp David Accords - an infamously botched, imperialist plan for peace between Israel and Egypt with no input from Palestinians - was orchestrated by an Emory faculty alum President Carter, we observe that there is nowhere on Earth “outside” of Emory University. We want to say as clearly as possible - we welcome “outside agitators” to our struggle against the ruthless genocide of Palestinians. Emory University has the highest tuition, the lowest acceptance rate, and by far the highest endowment of any institution in Georgia. Economic barriers, infamously racist standardized testing, and nepotism have barred many from studying at Emory. To students in Atlanta and beyond - we invite you to struggle with us. Local high school students dream of attending Emory, and many teachers encourage them to study hard and take up extracurriculars to increase their chance acceptance, knowing their chance of admission is slim. To local high school students and teachers, we invite you to struggle with us. Just down the street from Emory Hospital Midtown is the site of the former Peachtree-Pine homeless shelter. In a bid to gentrify the city and evict its houseless population, the City closed the shelter and did not replace it, displacing hundreds and cutting off a last line of support for thousands of poor people in the city. Emory University purchased this building, just one example of Emory’s contribution to gentrification in Atlanta. To those without homes, or those displaced by gentrification, we invite you to struggle with us. Emory’s $11 billion endowment, the 11th highest in the country, is an outsized influence in Atlanta’s economy. While economic inequality widens in the city, Emory remains a bastion of the rich. To the restaurant workers, house cleaners, gig workers, and all proletarians - we invite you to struggle with us. In 2020, Emory University laied off or furloughed over 1500 employees. To those who are no longer affiliated with the university - we invite you to struggle with us. 4 out of 5 students at Emory are not from Georgia. While the Freedom Riders were heading down to Georgia in the 1960’s to fight for Black people’s right to vote, segregationist governors cast them as “outside agitators”. To those from outside Atlanta and Georgia, we invite you to struggle with us. 1 in 5 students at Emory are from outside of the United States. The Palestinian students murdered by American weapons under Biden will never be one of those students. To those from outside of the country, we invite you to struggle with us. In April 2023, Emory admin called the police to break up a protest led by students against Cop City on the quad. None of the pigs were Emory students. To all of those who struggle against police brutality, we invite you to struggle with us. EMORY IS EVERYWHERE. THE PLACE FOR DIVISION IS NOWHERE. WE INVITE YOU TO STRUGGLE WITH US.

[racefortheironthrone]

Is there any way for governments to respond to a pandemic such as Covid 19 or something worse without provoking considerable public resentment? Take no measures to prevent the spread and you’ll be blamed for the resulting public health disaster. Try to prevent the spread, and you’ll be blamed for the inevitable inequities and negative effects taken to do so, and the (mitigated, but not entirely avoided) public health disaster.

I don't mean this to come off as pessimistic or overly negative, but I would say as a matter of historic record, public health campaigns (especially anti-pandemic campaigns) tend to be quite unpopular - and my suspicion is that the mid-20th century moment where public health experts like Jonas Salk and Albert Sabin became folk heroes with enormous amounts of popular support from the middle-class parents of the Baby Boom is probably the exception that proves the rule.

You can go all the way back to the very earliest days of public health measures - the Venetian invention of the quarantine during the Black Death - to find one of the first anti public-health backlashes. Conservative Venetians felt that the free food packages that were an essential part of the quarantine process (because you don't want potentially sick people wandering the city looking for food) would make people lazy and economically dependent on the government.

Likewise, when advances in medicine and state capacity in the early 19th century led to one of the first modern pandemic campaigns during the cholera outbreaks of the early 1830s, the public's response was not one of orderly compliance and gratefulness. Instead, you had what were called the "cholera riots" in both the U.K and Russia. Buoyed by conspiracy theories about shadowy cabals of doctors working hand in hand with an autocratic government to kill the destitute, mobs attacked symbols of public health (public hospitals, government doctors, public research clinics, anatomical colleges, health boards) and government authority (governors, police stations, quarantine cordons, court houses, etc.).

By contrast, all the anti-vaxx insanity of the past couple years seems a bit tame - at least in COVID-19, most violence has been rhetorical and abstract rather than involving the targeted murder of doctors and government officials.

Ultimately, we may just have to come to grips with the fact that public health/anti-pandemic policy is always going to be unpopular and that the correct approach is to use hard power rather than try to chivvy people into doing what's in their best interests. I certainly remember how California started to make strides against the anti-vaxx movement prior to COVID-19: it ultimately required legislation like SB 277 and SB 742 that made vaccinations more mandatory and made anti-vaxx harassment punishable with six months in jail.

[keshetchai]

The thing is, if the big criticisms of Zionism that offend people, are like mentions of racial and economic inequality, failed democracy, or generic comparisons to apartheid, we all know the solution would be to stop doing the things people are criticizing.

"it's not apartheid! we just have a giant wall to prevent suicide bombers, and the numbers of suicide bombings went down as a result! We're also culturally sensitive, the bomb detecting dogs at the checkpoints are hidden from view!" [Please note I have met, in person, the architect of the wall along the west bank and I am essentially paraphrasing him here.]

okay so, hear me out!: what if you prevented suicide bombers by ensuring stable employment, healthcare access, good public education, allowed for freedom of movement, didn't build huge walls across farmlands, stopped evicting people from their homes, what if you didn't created tiered systems of civic access and policing, and also let their local governments manage/steward necessary public resources instead of like, cutting water or electricity or something? What if you met the needs they are agitating for, the needs which, when denied, make people easier to radicalize?

What if you made violence seem totally undesirable because their lives were good and prosperous and stable? Their children untraumatized?

...no? You can't systemically better the lives of the people on this land? "Well if we're nice, they take advantage and attack," ok so you will be stuck in a cycle of violence forever. Have you never had a sibling? It's no longer about who "started it," it's about who will end it. "They unfairly criticize when we protect ourselves!" If Israel only ever destroyed incoming missiles or rockets/protected themselves against aggressive attacks, I think the global stage would have a lot less to criticize, actually! But we all know that Israel does more than just defend itself and its people.

Escalations, retaliations, and vengeance never brings anyone back from the dead and never fixes the wounds caused. Too many people see someone else committing a moral wrong as an excuse for them to do the same because being a good person in response to atrocity/bad people feels unfair and difficult, and because it doesn't satisfy their anger and fear.

Unfortunately if a bad person hurts your community because of their feelings of disenfranchisement/anger/sense of justice, and in response you decide to be a bad person to their community out of a sense of justice for your people, now we just have two bad people doing bad things and a lot of dead civilians.

[birdmomblogs]

Content Warnings: This post discusses or mentions capital punishment, child abuse, execution, fascism, genocide, homicide, Nazis, politics, prison, and transphobia.

*****

"The Lemkin Institute [for Genocide Prevention] believes that the so-called “gender critical movement” that is behind [USA anti-trans legislation] is a fascist movement furthering a specifically genocidal ideology that seeks the complete eradication of trans identity from the world."

As I write this on April 22nd 2023, a total of 498 anti-trans bills have been introduced in the USA during 2023 alone. 19% of these bills have failed (96/498). 9% have passed (43/498). 72% of these bills are still being actively considered (359/498). This is already 286% more anti-trans bills introduced in 4 months than in the entirety of 2022 (176 bills were introduced in 2022). These bills affect;

ability to change sex marker on legal documents

preferred name usage

personal pronoun usage

access to gender-affirming care

student athletes

student bathroom usage

drag performers

and more!

This puts parents of trans children, educators, health care providers and more at risk for simply advocating for trans children. This puts trans adults and drag performers at risk. This puts trans children at risk.

Punishment for breaking anti-trans legislation is at risk of being as worse as imprisonment for life or the death penalty.

Example 1: Bill amendments HB - 4257, would define any person (including parents, doctors, coaches, teachers, etc.) involved in the gender transition of a minor as a child abuser, punishable by imprisonment for life. This bill amendment proposal has been continuously reintroduced with no sign of stopping until passed.

Example 2: "Drag ban" bills such as SB - 1438 and SB - 1698 broadly label drag as sexual conduct to "protect minors" from them. States then proceed to pass bills such as SB - 1342 that can allow sexual crimes against children to be punishable by death. Do you see the connection and how uncanny the timeline of the introduction or passing of these bills is? More than 4% of those executed are innocent but this percentage is likely higher in reality due to racial bias, economic inequality, etc. This number will only increase with prejudice against the LGBTQ+ community being legalized.

There are only 3 other accounts of trans genocide that have occurred globally:

During Nazi Germany (1920-1945), the Institute for Sexual Research was looted and destroyed. The Institute worked toward improving gender-affirming surgery and advocated for trans rights. Trans and gender non-conforming individuals faced forced detransitions and sentences to concentration camps. In 2022, Germany ruled that claiming trans people were not targeted by Nazis as denial of Nazi crimes, which is punishable by a prison sentence.

In Indonesia during the 1960s, a Bugis gender identity known as the bissu, faced violent persecution, torture and execution, with sacred ceremonies being banned. Bissu persecution in the Pancasila Republic of Indonesia continues to this day. In 2022, it was declared that these people are close to extinction.

Brazil has experienced the most annual transgender-targeted homicides since 2009. That's 14 years in a row. Many trans homicides go unreported, misreported or uninvestigated. The methods of murder are becoming increasingly more violent and organized. Transphobia continues to run rampant in Brazil due to the lack of legal protections and encouragement from politicians.

The one stage of genocide that the United States has not yet reached, like these other 3 countries, is execution. Do not let it get to that stage.

Anti-trans legislation is not about protecting women, children, etc. Its sole purpose is to silence and control, leading to the erasure of trans identities. The longer this continues the easier it is for transphobes to spread their harmful ideology and get away with it. I am privileged to have the opportunity to live in Canada, but in recent years even I have experienced and witnessed increasing numbers of transphobic incidents. Although not violent, the ideology is there. Hate spreads like a plague.

Be vigilant when following the news and make some noise about this with your own state officials. Even if you aren't American, label it like the genocide it is. Don't be silent about this. I've listed two resources below that I think will be helpful next steps once you finish reading this post. Feel free to also share your own resources in reblogs! Thank you!

***** About me: I am a trans and queer individual with a B.Sc. in Agriculture and International Development. Currently, I am working towards applying for graduate school. Research interests include food security, indigenous peoples, the LGBT community and historical aspects of human rights development.

[dailyanarchistposts]

F.1 Are “anarcho”-capitalists really anarchists?

In a word, no. While “anarcho”-capitalists obviously try to associate themselves with the anarchist tradition by using the word “anarcho” or by calling themselves “anarchists” their ideas are distinctly at odds with those associated with anarchism. As a result, any claims that their ideas are anarchist or that they are part of the anarchist tradition or movement are false.

“Anarcho”-capitalists claim to be anarchists because they say that they oppose government. As noted in the last section, they use a dictionary definition of anarchism. However, this fails to appreciate that anarchism is a political theory. As dictionaries are rarely politically sophisticated things, this means that they fail to recognise that anarchism is more than just opposition to government, it is also marked a opposition to capitalism (i.e. exploitation and private property). Thus, opposition to government is a necessary but not sufficient condition for being an anarchist — you also need to be opposed to exploitation and capitalist private property. As “anarcho”-capitalists do not consider interest, rent and profits (i.e. capitalism) to be exploitative nor oppose capitalist property rights, they are not anarchists.

Part of the problem is that Marxists, like many academics, also tend to assert that anarchists are simply against the state. It is significant that both Marxists and “anarcho”-capitalists tend to define anarchism as purely opposition to government. This is no co-incidence, as both seek to exclude anarchism from its place in the wider socialist movement. This makes perfect sense from the Marxist perspective as it allows them to present their ideology as the only serious anti-capitalist one around (not to mention associating anarchism with “anarcho”-capitalism is an excellent way of discrediting our ideas in the wider radical movement). It should go without saying that this is an obvious and serious misrepresentation of the anarchist position as even a superficial glance at anarchist theory and history shows that no anarchist limited their critique of society simply at the state. So while academics and Marxists seem aware of the anarchist opposition to the state, they usually fail to grasp the anarchist critique applies to all other authoritarian social institutions and how it fits into the overall anarchist analysis and struggle. They seem to think the anarchist condemnation of capitalist private property, patriarchy and so forth are somehow superfluous additions rather than a logical position which reflects the core of anarchism:

“Critics have sometimes contended that anarchist thought, and classical anarchist theory in particular, has emphasised opposition to the state to the point of neglecting the real hegemony of economic power. This interpretation arises, perhaps, from a simplistic and overdrawn distinction between the anarchist focus on political domination and the Marxist focus on economic exploitation … there is abundant evidence against such a thesis throughout the history of anarchist thought.” [John P. Clark and Camille Martin, Anarchy, Geography, Modernity, p. 95]

So Reclus simply stated the obvious when he wrote that “the anti-authoritarian critique to which the state is subjected applies equally to all social institutions.” [quoted by Clark and Martin, Op. Cit., p. 140] Proudhon, Bakunin, Kropotkin, Goldman and so on would all agree with that. While they all stressed that anarchism was against the state they quickly moved on to present a critique of private property and other forms of hierarchical authority. So while anarchism obviously opposes the state, “sophisticated and developed anarchist theory proceeds further. It does not stop with a criticism of political organisation, but goes on to investigate the authoritarian nature of economic inequality and private property, hierarchical economic structures, traditional education, the patriarchal family, class and racial discrimination, and rigid sex- and age-roles, to mention just a few of the more important topics.” For the “essence of anarchism is, after all, not the theoretical opposition to the state, but the practical and theoretical struggle against domination.” [John Clark, The Anarchist Moment, p. 128 and p. 70]

This is also the case with individualist anarchists whose defence of certain forms of property did stop them criticising key aspects of capitalist property rights. As Jeremy Jennings notes, the “point to stress is that all anarchists, and not only those wedded to the predominant twentieth-century strain of anarchist communism have been critical of private property to the extent that it was a source of hierarchy and privilege.” He goes on to state that anarchists like Tucker and Spooner “agreed with the proposition that property was legitimate only insofar as it embraced no more than the total product of individual labour.” [“Anarchism”, Contemporary Political Ideologies, Roger Eatwell and Anthony Wright (eds.), p. 132] This is acknowledged by the likes of Rothbard who had to explicitly point how that his position on such subjects was fundamentally different (i.e., at odds) with individualist anarchism.

As such, it would be fair to say that most “anarcho”-capitalists are capitalists first and foremost. If aspects of anarchism do not fit with some element of capitalism, they will reject that element of anarchism rather than question capitalism (Rothbard’s selective appropriation of the individualist anarchist tradition is the most obvious example of this). This means that right-“libertarians” attach the “anarcho” prefix to their ideology because they believe that being against government intervention is equivalent to being an anarchist (which flows into their use of the dictionary definition of anarchism). That they ignore the bulk of the anarchist tradition should prove that there is hardly anything anarchistic about them at all. They are not against authority, hierarchy or the state — they simply want to privatise them.

Ironically, this limited definition of “anarchism” ensures that “anarcho”-capitalism is inherently self-refuting. This can be seen from leading “anarcho”-capitalist Murray Rothbard. He thundered against the evil of the state, arguing that it “arrogates to itself a monopoly of force, of ultimate decision-making power, over a given territorial area.” In and of itself, this definition is unremarkable. That a few people (an elite of rulers) claim the right to rule others must be part of any sensible definition of the state or government. However, the problems begin for Rothbard when he notes that ”[o]bviously, in a free society, Smith has the ultimate decision-making power over his own just property, Jones over his, etc.” [The Ethics of Liberty, p. 170 and p. 173] The logical contradiction in this position should be obvious, but not to Rothbard. It shows the power of ideology, the ability of mere words (the expression “private property”) to turn the bad (“ultimate decision-making power over a given area”) into the good (“ultimate decision-making power over a given area”).

Now, this contradiction can be solved in only one way — the users of the “given area” are also its owners. In other words, a system of possession (or “occupancy and use”) as favoured by anarchists. However, Rothbard is a capitalist and supports private property, non-labour income, wage labour, capitalists and landlords. This means that he supports a divergence between ownership and use and this means that this “ultimate decision-making power” extends to those who use, but do not own, such property (i.e. tenants and workers). The statist nature of private property is clearly indicated by Rothbard’s words — the property owner in an “anarcho”-capitalist society possesses the “ultimate decision-making power” over a given area, which is also what the state has currently. Rothbard has, ironically, proved by his own definition that “anarcho”-capitalism is not anarchist.

Of course, it would be churlish to point out that the usual name for a political system in which the owner of a territory is also its ruler is, in fact, monarchy. Which suggests that while “anarcho”-capitalism may be called “anarcho-statism” a far better term could be “anarcho-monarchism.” In fact, some “anarcho”-capitalists have made explicit this obvious implication of Rothbard’s argument. Hans-Hermann Hoppe is one.

Hoppe prefers monarchy to democracy, considering it the superior system. He argues that the monarch is the private owner of the government — all the land and other resources are owned by him. Basing himself on Austrian economics (what else?) and its notion of time preference, he concludes that the monarch will, therefore, work to maximise both current income and the total capital value of his estate. Assuming self-interest, his planning horizon will be farsighted and exploitation be far more limited. Democracy, in contrast, is a publicly-owned government and the elected rulers have use of resources for a short period only and not their capital value. In other words, they do not own the country and so will seek to maximise their short-term interests (and the interests of those they think will elect them into office). In contrast, Bakunin stressed that if anarchism rejects democracy it was “hardly in order to reverse it but rather to advance it,” in particular to extend it via “the great economic revolution without which every right is but an empty phrase and a trick.” He rejected wholeheartedly “the camp of aristocratic … reaction.” [The Basic Bakunin, p. 87]

However, Hoppe is not a traditional monarchist. His ideal system is one of competing monarchies, a society which is led by a “voluntarily acknowledged ‘natural’ elite — a nobilitas naturalis” comprised of “families with long-established records of superior achievement, farsightedness, and exemplary personal conduct.” This is because “a few individuals quickly acquire the status of an elite” and their inherent qualities will “more likely than not [be] passed on within a few — noble — families.” The sole “problem” with traditional monarchies was “with monopoly, not with elites or nobility,” in other words the King monopolised the role of judge and their subjects could not turn to other members of the noble class for services. [“The Political Economy of Monarchy and Democracy and the Idea of a Natural Order,” pp. 94–121, Journal of Libertarian Studies, vol. 11, no. 2, p. 118 and p. 119]

Which simply confirms the anarchist critique of “anarcho”-capitalism, namely that it is not anarchist. This becomes even more obvious when Hoppe helpfully expands on the reality of “anarcho”-capitalism:

“In a covenant concluded among proprietor and community tenants for the purpose of protecting their private property, no such thing as a right to free (unlimited) speech exists, not even to unlimited speech on one’s own tenant-property. One may say innumerable things and promote almost any idea under the sun, but naturally no one is permitted to advocate ideas contrary to the very purpose of the covenant of preserving private property, such as democracy and communism. There can be no tolerance towards democrats and communists in a libertarian social order. They will have to be physically separated and expelled from society. Likewise in a covenant founded for the purpose of protecting family and kin, there can be no tolerance toward those habitually promoting lifestyles incompatible with this goal. They — the advocates of alternative, non-family and kin-centred lifestyles such as, for instance, individual hedonism, parasitism, nature-environment worship, homosexuality, or communism — will have to be physically removed from society, too, if one is to maintain a libertarian order.” [Democracy: the God that Failed, p. 218]

Thus the proprietor has power/authority over his tenants and can decree what they can and cannot do, excluding anyone whom they consider as being subversive (in the tenants’ own interests, of course). In other words, the autocratic powers of the boss are extended into all aspects of society — all under the mask of advocating liberty. Sadly, the preservation of property rights destroys liberty for the many (Hoppe states clearly that for the “anarcho”-capitalist the “natural outcome of the voluntary transactions between various private property owners is decidedly non-egalitarian, hierarchical and elitist.” [“The Political Economy of Monarchy and Democracy and the Idea of a Natural Order,” Op. Cit., p. 118]). Unsurprisingly, Chomsky argued that right-wing “libertarianism” has “no objection to tyranny as long as it is private tyranny.” In fact it (like other contemporary ideologies) “reduce[s] to advocacy of one or another form of illegitimate authority, quite often real tyranny.” [Chomsky on Anarchism, p. 235 and p. 181] As such, it is hard not to conclude that “anarcho”-capitalism is little more than a play with words. It is not anarchism but a cleverly designed and worded surrogate for elitist, autocratic conservatism. Nor is too difficult to conclude that genuine anarchists and libertarians (of all types) would not be tolerated in this so-called “libertarian social order.”

Some “anarcho”-capitalists do seem dimly aware of this glaringly obvious contradiction. Rothbard, for example, does present an argument which could be used to solve it, but he utterly fails. He simply ignores the crux of the matter, that capitalism is based on hierarchy and, therefore, cannot be anarchist. He does this by arguing that the hierarchy associated with capitalism is fine as long as the private property that produced it was acquired in a “just” manner. Yet in so doing he yet again draws attention to the identical authority structures and social relationships of the state and property. As he puts it:

”If the State may be said to properly own its territory, then it is proper for it to make rules for everyone who presumes to live in that area. It can legitimately seize or control private property because there is no private property in its area, because it really owns the entire land surface. So long as the State permits its subjects to leave its territory, then, it can be said to act as does any other owner who sets down rules for people living on his property.” [Op. Cit., p. 170]

Obviously Rothbard argues that the state does not “justly” own its territory. He asserts that “our homesteading theory” of the creation of private property “suffices to demolish any such pretensions by the State apparatus” and so the problem with the state is that it “claims and exercises a compulsory monopoly of defence and ultimate decision-making over an area larger than an individual’s justly-acquired property.” [Op. Cit., p. 171 and p. 173] There are four fundamental problems with his argument.

First, it assumes his “homesteading theory” is a robust and libertarian theory, but neither is the case (see section F.4.1). Second, it ignores the history of capitalism. Given that the current distribution of property is just as much the result of violence and coercion as the state, his argument is seriously flawed. It amounts to little more than an “immaculate conception of property” unrelated to reality. Third, even if we ignore these issues and assume that private property could be and was legitimately produced by the means Rothbard assumes, it does not justify the hierarchy associated with it as current and future generations of humanity have, effectively, been excommunicated from liberty by previous ones. If, as Rothbard argues, property is a natural right and the basis of liberty then why should the many be excluded from their birthright by a minority? In other words, Rothbard denies that liberty should be universal. He chooses property over liberty while anarchists choose liberty over property. Fourthly, it implies that the fundamental problem with the state is not, as anarchists have continually stressed, its hierarchical and authoritarian nature but rather the fact that it does not justly own the territory it claims to rule.

Even worse, the possibility that private property can result in more violations of individual freedom (at least for non-proprietors ) than the state of its citizens was implicitly acknowledged by Rothbard. He uses as a hypothetical example a country whose King is threatened by a rising “libertarian” movement. The King responses by “employ[ing] a cunning stratagem,” namely he “proclaims his government to be dissolved, but just before doing so he arbitrarily parcels out the entire land area of his kingdom to the ‘ownership’ of himself and his relatives.” Rather than taxes, his subjects now pay rent and he can “regulate the lives of all the people who presume to live on” his property as he sees fit. Rothbard then asks:

“Now what should be the reply of the libertarian rebels to this pert challenge? If they are consistent utilitarians, they must bow to this subterfuge, and resign themselves to living under a regime no less despotic than the one they had been battling for so long. Perhaps, indeed, more despotic, for now the king and his relatives can claim for themselves the libertarians’ very principle of the absolute right of private property, an absoluteness which they might not have dared to claim before.” [Op. Cit., p. 54]

It should go without saying that Rothbard argues that we should reject this “cunning stratagem” as a con as the new distribution of property would not be the result of “just” means. However, he failed to note how his argument undermines his own claims that capitalism can be libertarian. As he himself argues, not only does the property owner have the same monopoly of power over a given area as the state, it is more despotic as it is based on the “absolute right of private property”! And remember, Rothbard is arguing in favour of “anarcho”-capitalism (“if you have unbridled capitalism, you will have all kinds of authority: you will have extreme authority.” [Chomsky, Understanding Power, p. 200]). The fundamental problem is that Rothbard’s ideology blinds him to the obvious, namely that the state and private property produce identical social relationships (ironically, he opines the theory that the state owns its territory “makes the State, as well as the King in the Middle Ages, a feudal overlord, who at least theoretically owned all the land in his domain” without noticing that this makes the capitalist or landlord a King and a feudal overlord within “anarcho”-capitalism. [Op. Cit., p. 171]).

One group of Chinese anarchists pointed out the obvious in 1914. As anarchism “takes opposition to authority as its essential principle,” anarchists aim to “sweep away all the evil systems of present society which have an authoritarian nature” and so “our ideal society” would be “without landlords, capitalists, leaders, officials, representatives or heads of families.” [quoted by Arif Dirlik, Anarchism in the Chinese Revolution, p. 131] Only this, the elimination of all forms of hierarchy (political, economic and social) would achieve genuine anarchism, a society without authority (an-archy). In practice, private property is a major source of oppression and authoritarianism within society — there is little or no freedom subject to a landlord or within capitalist production (as Bakunin noted, “the worker sells his person and his liberty for a given time”). In stark contrast to anarchists, “anarcho”-capitalists have no problem with landlords and factory fascism (i.e. wage labour), a position which seems highly illogical for a theory calling itself libertarian. If it were truly libertarian, it would oppose all forms of domination, not just statism (“Those who reject authoritarianism will require nobody’ permission to breathe. The libertarian … is not grateful to get permission to reside anywhere on his own planet and denies the right of any one to screen off bits of it for their own use or rule.” [Stuart Christie and Albert Meltzer, Floodgates of Anarchy, p. 31]). This illogical and self-contradictory position flows from the “anarcho”-capitalist definition of freedom as the absence of coercion and will be discussed in section F.2 in more detail. The ironic thing is that “anarcho”-capitalists implicitly prove the anarchist critique of their own ideology.

Of course, the “anarcho”-capitalist has another means to avoid the obvious, namely the assertion that the market will limit the abuses of the property owners. If workers do not like their ruler then they can seek another. Thus capitalist hierarchy is fine as workers and tenants “consent” to it. While the logic is obviously the same, it is doubtful that an “anarcho”-capitalist would support the state just because its subjects can leave and join another one. As such, this does not address the core issue — the authoritarian nature of capitalist property (see section A.2.14). Moreover, this argument completely ignores the reality of economic and social power. Thus the “consent” argument fails because it ignores the social circumstances of capitalism which limit the choice of the many.

Anarchists have long argued that, as a class, workers have little choice but to “consent” to capitalist hierarchy. The alternative is either dire poverty or starvation. “Anarcho”-capitalists dismiss such claims by denying that there is such a thing as economic power. Rather, it is simply freedom of contract. Anarchists consider such claims as a joke. To show why, we need only quote (yet again) Rothbard on the abolition of slavery and serfdom in the 19th century. He argued, correctly, that the ”bodies of the oppressed were freed, but the property which they had worked and eminently deserved to own, remained in the hands of their former oppressors. With economic power thus remaining in their hands, the former lords soon found themselves virtual masters once more of what were now free tenants or farm labourers. The serfs and slaves had tasted freedom, but had been cruelly derived of its fruits.” [Op. Cit., p. 74]

To say the least, anarchists fail to see the logic in this position. Contrast this with the standard “anarcho”-capitalist claim that if market forces (“voluntary exchanges”) result in the creation of “tenants or farm labourers” then they are free. Yet labourers dispossessed by market forces are in exactly the same social and economic situation as the ex-serfs and ex-slaves. If the latter do not have the fruits of freedom, neither do the former. Rothbard sees the obvious “economic power” in the latter case, but denies it in the former (ironically, Rothbard dismissed economic power under capitalism in the same work. [Op. Cit., pp. 221–2]). It is only Rothbard’s ideology that stops him from drawing the obvious conclusion — identical economic conditions produce identical social relationships and so capitalism is marked by “economic power” and “virtual masters.” The only solution is for “anarcho”-capitalist to simply say that the ex-serfs and ex-slaves were actually free to choose and, consequently, Rothbard was wrong. It might be inhuman, but at least it would be consistent!

Rothbard’s perspective is alien to anarchism. For example, as individualist anarchist William Bailie noted, under capitalism there is a class system marked by “a dependent industrial class of wage-workers” and “a privileged class of wealth-monopolisers, each becoming more and more distinct from the other as capitalism advances.” This has turned property into “a social power, an economic force destructive of rights, a fertile source of injustice, a means of enslaving the dispossessed.” He concluded: “Under this system equal liberty cannot obtain.” Bailie notes that the modern “industrial world under capitalistic conditions” have “arisen under the regime of status” (and so “law-made privileges”) however, it seems unlikely that he would have concluded that such a class system would be fine if it had developed naturally or the current state was abolished while leaving that class structure intact. [The Individualist Anarchists, p. 121] As we discuss in section G.4, Individualist Anarchists like Tucker and Yarrows ended up recognising that even the freest competition had become powerless against the enormous concentrations of wealth associated with corporate capitalism.

Therefore anarchists recognise that “free exchange” or “consent” in unequal circumstances will reduce freedom as well as increasing inequality between individuals and classes. As we discuss in section F.3, inequality will produce social relationships which are based on hierarchy and domination, not freedom. As Noam Chomsky put it:

“Anarcho-capitalism, in my opinion, is a doctrinal system which, if ever implemented, would lead to forms of tyranny and oppression that have few counterparts in human history. There isn’t the slightest possibility that its (in my view, horrendous) ideas would be implemented, because they would quickly destroy any society that made this colossal error. The idea of ‘free contract’ between the potentate and his starving subject is a sick joke, perhaps worth some moments in an academic seminar exploring the consequences of (in my view, absurd) ideas, but nowhere else.” [Noam Chomsky on Anarchism, interview with Tom Lane, December 23, 1996]

Clearly, then, by its own arguments “anarcho”-capitalism is not anarchist. This should come as no surprise to anarchists. Anarchism, as a political theory, was born when Proudhon wrote What is Property? specifically to refute the notion that workers are free when capitalist property forces them to seek employment by landlords and capitalists. He was well aware that in such circumstances property “violates equality by the rights of exclusion and increase, and freedom by despotism … [and has] perfect identity with robbery.” He, unsurprisingly, talks of the “proprietor, to whom [the worker] has sold and surrendered his liberty.” For Proudhon, anarchy was “the absence of a master, of a sovereign” while “proprietor” was “synonymous” with “sovereign” for he “imposes his will as law, and suffers neither contradiction nor control.” This meant that “property engenders despotism,” as “each proprietor is sovereign lord within the sphere of his property.” [What is Property, p. 251, p. 130, p. 264 and pp. 266–7] It must also be stressed that Proudhon’s classic work is a lengthy critique of the kind of apologetics for private property Rothbard espouses to salvage his ideology from its obvious contradictions.

So, ironically, Rothbard repeats the same analysis as Proudhon but draws the opposite conclusions and expects to be considered an anarchist! Moreover, it seems equally ironic that “anarcho”-capitalism calls itself “anarchist” while basing itself on the arguments that anarchism was created in opposition to. As shown, “anarcho”-capitalism makes as much sense as “anarcho-statism” — an oxymoron, a contradiction in terms. The idea that “anarcho”-capitalism warrants the name “anarchist” is simply false. Only someone ignorant of anarchism could maintain such a thing. While you expect anarchist theory to show this to be the case, the wonderful thing is that “anarcho”-capitalism itself does the same.

Little wonder Bob Black argues that ”[t]o demonise state authoritarianism while ignoring identical albeit contract-consecrated subservient arrangements in the large-scale corporations which control the world economy is fetishism at its worst.” [“The Libertarian As Conservative”, The Abolition of Work and Other Essays, pp. 142] Left-liberal Stephen L. Newman makes the same point:

“The emphasis [right-wing] libertarians place on the opposition of liberty and political power tends to obscure the role of authority in their worldview … the authority exercised in private relationships, however — in the relationship between employer and employee, for instance — meets with no objection… . [This] reveals a curious insensitivity to the use of private authority as a means of social control. Comparing public and private authority, we might well ask of the [right-wing] libertarians: When the price of exercising one’s freedom is terribly high, what practical difference is there between the commands of the state and those issued by one’s employer? … Though admittedly the circumstances are not identical, telling disgruntled empowers that they are always free to leave their jobs seems no different in principle from telling political dissidents that they are free to emigrate.” [Liberalism at Wit’s End, pp. 45–46]

As Bob Black pointed out, right libertarians argue that ”‘one can at least change jobs.’ But you can’t avoid having a job — just as under statism one can at least change nationalities but you can’t avoid subjection to one nation-state or another. But freedom means more than the right to change masters.” [Op. Cit., p. 147] The similarities between capitalism and statism are clear — and so why “anarcho”-capitalism cannot be anarchist. To reject the authority (the “ultimate decision-making power”) of the state and embrace that of the property owner indicates not only a highly illogical stance but one at odds with the basic principles of anarchism. This whole-hearted support for wage labour and capitalist property rights indicates that “anarcho”-capitalists are not anarchists because they do not reject all forms of archy. They obviously support the hierarchy between boss and worker (wage labour) and landlord and tenant. Anarchism, by definition, is against all forms of archy, including the hierarchy generated by capitalist property. To ignore the obvious archy associated with capitalist property is highly illogical and trying to dismiss one form of domination as flowing from “just” property while attacking the other because it flows from “unjust” property is not seeing the wood for the trees.

In addition, we must note that such inequalities in power and wealth will need “defending” from those subject to them (“anarcho”-capitalists recognise the need for private police and courts to defend property from theft — and, anarchists add, to defend the theft and despotism associated with property!). Due to its support of private property (and thus authority), “anarcho”-capitalism ends up retaining a state in its “anarchy”: namely a private state whose existence its proponents attempt to deny simply by refusing to call it a state, like an ostrich hiding its head in the sand. As one anarchist so rightly put it, “anarcho”-capitalists “simply replaced the state with private security firms, and can hardly be described as anarchists as the term is normally understood.” [Brian Morris, “Global Anti-Capitalism”, pp. 170–6, Anarchist Studies, vol. 14, no. 2, p. 175] As we discuss more fully in section F.6 this is why “anarcho”-capitalism is better described as “private state” capitalism as there would be a functional equivalent of the state and it would be just as skewed in favour of the propertied elite as the existing one (if not more so). As Albert Meltzer put it:

“Commonsense shows that any capitalist society might dispense with a ‘State’ … but it could not dispense with organised government, or a privatised form of it, if there were people amassing money and others working to amass it for them. The philosophy of ‘anarcho-capitalism’ dreamed up by the ‘libertarian’ New Right, has nothing to do with Anarchism as known by the Anarchist movement proper. It is a lie … Patently unbridled capitalism … needs some force at its disposal to maintain class privileges, either from the State itself or from private armies. What they believe in is in fact a limited State — that is, one in which the State has one function, to protect the ruling class, does not interfere with exploitation, and comes as cheap as possible for the ruling class. The idea also serves another purpose … a moral justification for bourgeois consciences in avoiding taxes without feeling guilty about it.” [Anarchism: Arguments For and Against, p. 50]

For anarchists, this need of capitalism for some kind of state is unsurprising. For “Anarchy without socialism seems equally as impossible to us [as socialism without anarchy], for in such a case it could not be other than the domination of the strongest, and would therefore set in motion right away the organisation and consolidation of this domination; that is to the constitution of government.” [Errico Malatesta, Errico Malatesta: His Life and Ideas, p. 148] Because of this, the “anarcho”-capitalist rejection of the anarchist critique of capitalism and our arguments on the need for equality, they cannot be considered anarchists or part of the anarchist tradition. To anarchists it seems bizarre that “anarcho”-capitalists want to get rid of the state but maintain the system it helped create and its function as a defender of the capitalist class’s property and property rights. In other words, to reduce the state purely to its function as (to use Malatesta’s apt word) the gendarme of the capitalist class is not an anarchist goal.

Thus anarchism is far more than the common dictionary definition of “no government” — it also entails being against all forms of archy, including those generated by capitalist property. This is clear from the roots of the word “anarchy.” As we noted in section A.1, the word anarchy means “no rulers” or “contrary to authority.” As Rothbard himself acknowledges, the property owner is the ruler of their property and, therefore, those who use it. For this reason “anarcho”-capitalism cannot be considered as a form of anarchism — a real anarchist must logically oppose the authority of the property owner along with that of the state. As “anarcho”-capitalism does not explicitly (or implicitly, for that matter) call for economic arrangements that will end wage labour and usury it cannot be considered anarchist or part of the anarchist tradition. While anarchists have always opposed capitalism, “anarcho”-capitalists have embraced it and due to this embrace their “anarchy” will be marked by relationships based upon subordination and hierarchy (such as wage labour), not freedom (little wonder that Proudhon argued that “property is despotism” — it creates authoritarian and hierarchical relationships between people in a similar way to statism). Their support for “free market” capitalism ignores the impact of wealth and power on the nature and outcome of individual decisions within the market (see sections F.2 and F.3 for further discussion). Furthermore, any such system of (economic and social) power will require extensive force to maintain it and the “anarcho”-capitalist system of competing “defence firms” will simply be a new state, enforcing capitalist power, property rights and law.

Thus the “anarcho”-capitalist and the anarchist have different starting positions and opposite ends in mind. Their claims to being anarchists are bogus simply because they reject so much of the anarchist tradition as to make what little they do pay lip-service to non-anarchist in theory and practice. Little wonder Peter Marshall said that “few anarchists would accept the ‘anarcho-capitalists’ into the anarchist camp since they do not share a concern for economic equality and social justice.” As such, “anarcho”-capitalists, “even if they do reject the State, might therefore best be called right-wing libertarians rather than anarchists.” [Demanding the Impossible, p. 565]

[probablyasocialecologist]

Why is “apartheid” the right word to describe Israel’s policies now and before Oct. 7? There are plenty of legal experts that have put effort into analyzing whether Israel’s legal strictures and formations are in line with the definition of the crime of apartheid as recognized by international law. Major human rights organizations have published reports before the current crisis. Palestinians used the language years ago. The late Bishop Desmond Tutu compared the situation in Palestine to the situation of South African apartheid. There was a flurry of reports published by Amnesty International; Human Rights Watch; by B’Tselem and Yesh Din, two Israeli human rights organization; and by Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights organization. And it’s not really about comparison to South Africa; it’s about understanding that the inequities and disparities between the two peoples, [Israelis and Palestinians], are part of the legal system. Anyone living in Israel knows that. It is true inside what is called “[1948] Israel” and it is even more true, and very visible, in the West Bank. You have hundreds of thousands of Israeli Jews living as settlers in the West Bank, you have millions of Palestinians who live on the West Bank, and [the two groups] are subject to two different sets of laws. Beyond that, there is systematic inequality that is enforced by semi-legal structures. [This includes] discrimination in access to housing or certain services inside Israel, allowing unofficial discrimination by institutions that will police the movement or the access of Palestinians to areas or to bank loans, etc. I know that in the U.S., talking about “Jewish supremacy” sounds suspect because Jews make a small minority in this country and there is a lot of Christian hegemony. But in the Israeli setting, Jews definitely enjoy a dominant position. There is Jewish supremacy that is [Israel’s] version of white supremacy.

[dorka]

Most mar a garbage day is megirta (egybol ossze is omlott a site)

Over the weekend, the always-excellent John Burn-Murdoch, over at The Financial Times, posted an alarming bit of demographic analysis that has now gone very viral. It’s from a column Burn-Murdoch wrote titled, “A New Global Gender Divide Is Emerging,” which shows a tremendous political gap forming between young men and women around the world.

Burn-Murdoch followed up the column with a lengthy thread on X hypothesizing as to what may be causing this gap and thousands of other users have offered up their own diagnoses, as well: Smartphones, video games, economic inequality, lack of education, an over-correction post-#MeToo.

Interestingly enough, though, the bulk of Burn-Murdoch’s reporting focuses on South Korea, the US, Germany, the UK, Spain, Poland, China, and Tunisia. Which, aside from China and Tunisia, were all countries I worked in, covering elections and far-right radicalization, in and around the time period those countries’ respective political gender gaps began widening. I’m not saying I have a tremendously in-depth understanding of, say, Polish toxic masculinity, but I did spend several days there following around white nationalist rappers and Catholic fundamentalist football fans. And, in South Korea, I worked on a project about radical feminists and their activism against the country’s equivalent of 4chan, Ilbe Storehouse.

In fact, between 2015-2019, I visited over 20 countries, essentially asking the same question: Where do bad men here hangout online? Which has given me a near-encyclopedic directory in my head, unfortunately, of international 4chan knock-offs. In Spain, it’s a car forum that doxxes rape victims called ForoCoches. In France, it’s a gaming forum that organized rallies for Marine Le Pen called Jeux Video. In Japan, it’s 2channel. In Brazil, it’s Dogolachan. And most, if not all, of these spaces pre-date any sort of modern social movement like #MeToo — or even the invention of the smartphone.

But the mainstream acceptance of the culture from these sites is new. Though I don’t actually think the mystery of “why now?” is that much of a mystery. While working in Europe, I came to understand that these sites and their culture war campaigns like Gamergate were a sort of emerging form of digital hooliganism. Nothing they were doing was new, but their understanding how to network online was novel. And in places like the UK, it actually became more and more common in the late-2010s to see Pepe the Frog cosplayers marching alongside far-right football clubs. In the US, we don’t have the same sports culture, but the end result has been the same. The nerds and the jocks eventually aligned in the streets. The anime nazis were simply early adopters and the tough guys with guns and zip ties just needed time to adapt to new technology. And, unlike the pre-internet age, unmoderated large social platforms give them an infinitely-scalable recruitment radius. They don’t have to hide in backrooms anymore.

Much of the digital playbook fueling this recruitment for our new(ish) international masculinist movement was created by ISIS, the true early adopters for this sort of thing. Though it took about a decade for the West to really embrace it. But nowadays, it is not uncommon to see trad accounts sharing memes about “motherhood,” that are pretty much identical to the Disney Princess photoshops ISIS brides would post on Tumblr to advertise their new life in Syria. And, even more darkly, just this week, a Trump supporter in Pennsylvania beheaded his father and uploaded it to YouTube, in a video where he ranted about the woke left and President Biden. Online extremism is a flat circle.

The biggest similarity, though, is in what I can cultural encoding. For ISIS, this was about constantly labeling everything that threatened their influence as a symptom of the decadent, secular West.

(X.com/jeremykauffman)

Taylor Swift, an extremely affluent blonde, blue-eyed white woman who writes country-inflected pop music and is dating a football player headed for the Super Bowl. She should be a resounding victory for these guys. Doesn’t get more American than that. But due to an actually very funny glitch in how they see the world, she’s actually a huge threat.

Pop culture, according to the right wing, should be frivolous. Because before the internet, it was something sold to girls by corporations run by powerful men. Famous pop stars through the ages, like Frank Sinatra, America’s first Justin Bieber, or The Beatles, the One Direction of their time, would be canonized as Great by Serious Men after history had forgotten they rocketed to success as their generation’s Tumblr Sexymen. But from the 2000s onward, thanks to an increasingly powerful digital public square, young women and people of color were able to have more influence in mainstream culture and also accumulate more financial power from it. And after Barack Obama’s 2008 presidential campaign was able to connect this new form of pop influence to both liberal progressive politics and, also, social media, well, conservatives realized they had to catch up and fast. And the fastest way to do that is to try and smash the whole thing by dismissing it as feminine.

Pop music? It’s for girls. Social media? It’s for girls. Democrats? Girls. Taylor Swift? Girls and also a government psyop. But this line of thinking has no limit. It poisons everything. If Swift manages to make it to the Super Bowl, well, that has to become feminine too. And at a certain point, the whole thing falls apart because, honestly, you just sound like an insane loser.

[panopti-cunt]

"The so-called drag golden age is really a gilded age, where the runaway success of a few is made possible at the expense of the many. And if economic insecurity wasn’t enough, local performers increasingly face threats of extremist violence from the right. Even the most diehard drag fans should cast a critical eye on Drag Race and its architects, who have built an unequal drag performance economy while remaking the art of drag in the show’s own image."

"Even in the eras of “female impersonators” who toured with vaudeville productions and performed for troops in wartime, the wealth generated by drag flowed upward. But the money now fills the coffers of a single production company and a very select echelon of artists. It is undeniably true that more drag artists are active today than ever, but the exploitation of local artists has similarly increased."

"Anti-LGBTQ legislation and extremist attacks on queer people are on the rise, epitomized by the horrific violence at Club Q in Colorado. Economic insecurity only compounds this fearful atmosphere, and precarious workers and marginalized people are unfortunately bearing the brunt of queerphobic movements. In addition to confronting extremist politicians and organizations, consumers can push back against the enormous inequalities that Drag Race has created by supporting local drag collectives and unionization efforts and insisting that their favorite venues pay equitably. It’s time to put down the Drag Race tour tickets and use that money to tip your local drag performers."

[arunpangar2]

आर्थिक विषमता को दूर करने Maharashtra से चप्पलों में चले Arun Pangarkar,...

Economic communism is the only solution to poverty alleviation.

[tlacatecctzin]

The Decline of the "Left" in Regards to Women's Issues: A Radical Feminist Perspective

In recent years, the decline of the "left" in addressing women's issues has become increasingly evident. This erosion is not only a matter of policy but also a deeper ideological shift that has led to a significant misunderstanding of feminism, the inclusion of trans and other queer (TQA+) people into the feminist movement, and the queer takeover of anarchism. As radical feminists, it is crucial to analyze and critique these developments to reclaim and refocus the movement on the liberation of women.

The Misunderstanding of Feminism

Feminism, at its core, is a movement aimed at dismantling the patriarchal structures that oppress women, for our liberation.

However, contemporary leftist circles often misunderstand or intentionally obscure this goal. Instead of focusing on the material conditions and systemic issues that women face, there is a tendency to dilute feminism into a broader, less defined struggle for "equality" that fails to address the unique challenges women encounter.

Neoliberalism and modern leftist ideologies have changed the definition of feminism from women's liberation to "equality" for "women" within existing structures.

However, equality for women in this system is not only impossible but could never be real while supporting queer ideologies, capitalist systems, or generally liberal politics.

This misunderstanding undermines the movement's potency and distracts from the primary goal of eradicating patriarchal oppression.

Inclusion of Trans and Other Queer People into Feminism

The inclusion of trans and other queer identities into the feminist movement has been a contentious issue. While the fight against all forms of oppression is crucial, conflating gender identity with the distinct biological and social realities of women can obscure the specific nature of women's oppression under patriarchy.

As radical feminists, we recognise that the inclusion of trans women in female-only spaces and discussions often shifts the focus away from issues that uniquely affect women, such as reproductive rights, sexual violence, and economic inequality.

This shift not only muddles the objectives of feminism but also compromises the safety and integrity of female-only spaces, undermines the well-being of women and girls, and dilutes the definition of what it means to be a woman.

The Queer Takeover of Anarchism

Anarchism has historically been aligned with radical feminist principles due to its opposition to hierarchical and oppressive structures. Anarcho-communism advocates for a classless, stateless society where resources are shared equitably, and power dynamics are dismantled. These principles naturally complement the feminist struggle against patriarchy and the liberation of women from systemic oppression.

However, in recent years, the increasing focus on queer theory within anarchist circles has overshadowed the discussion of women's liberation. The inclusion of gender theory, and the prioritization of queer and trans issues, often clashes with the foundational principles of anarcho-communism.

Mutual aid emphasizes the importance of collective support and solidarity within communities. It is rooted in the idea that individuals and groups should help each other to achieve common goals, particularly in the face of oppression. The focus on individual identity and the fluidity of these illegitimate identities, promoted by queer theory can fragment this collective approach, diverting attention from the systemic issues that affect women as a class and weakening the solidarity needed to dismantle patriarchy.

Direct action, another key tenet of anarchism, involves taking immediate, grassroots actions to address injustices and bring about social change. This approach requires a clear understanding of the specific oppressions and systemic issues faced by different groups. The prioritization of queer and trans issues often shifts the focus away from the direct actions needed to address women's unique struggles, again, such as fighting for reproductive rights, combating sexual violence, and achieving economic equality.

Anarchism seeks to abolish all forms of domination and corrupt authority, but the promotion of queer theory within the movement has introduced new forms of ideological conformity and social policing, where dissenting views on gender identity are often silenced and met with violent threats. This undermines the anarchist commitment to free thought and open debate.

Moreover, I must repeat that the inclusion of trans women in female-only spaces and discussions often shifts the focus away from the systemic oppression of women.

The prioritization of queer and trans issues within anarchism can dilute the movement's ability to address and dismantle the patriarchal structures that fundamentally oppress women. To truly advance the cause of women's liberation, it is essential to realign anarchist principles with a focus on the material conditions and systemic issues that women face, ensuring that the struggle against patriarchy remains central to the movement.

Reclaiming Feminism for Women

To counter these trends, radical feminists must assert the primacy of women's liberation in feminist discourse and practice. This involves a return to the roots of feminism, emphasizing the unique experiences and challenges women face under patriarchy. It is essential to create and protect female-only spaces where women can organize and discuss their issues without the intrusion of broader, less focused agendas.

Moreover, radical feminists should critically engage with leftist movements to realign them with the goal of women's liberation. This involves challenging the ideological shifts that have led to the marginalization of women's issues and advocating for a feminism that is uncompromising in its focus on dismantling patriarchy.

The decline of the "left" in regards to women's issues is a pressing concern that radical feminists must address. By understanding the roots of this decline and actively working to reclaim feminism for women, we can revitalize the movement and continue the fight for true liberation.

[elbiotipo]

(Re: the south africa post)

It is correct to state that decolonization/landback movements are not retaliatory in nature. However, there are some unfortunate truths you seem to be pushing aside.

-When given a choice between restitution and retaliation, the latter will invariably be chosen. You may think you're different, but if your family were slaughtered and driven from their lands, you'd likely be singing a different tune.

-Well-meaning movements are oft devoured from within by extremist elements.

This is not to speak against these movements that are doubtless well-intentioned and seek genuine positive change; at least they will likely bring about a better country before this occurs. (I also am not implying these movements are disguising their true intentions; but rather that their good intentions will end up superseded, as they always are, by those seeking revenge.)

Nor is this a defense of those who would oppose indigenous land rights/decolonization; people like that want me and my friends dead or worse. I don't want to go to Europe, but I'm smart enough to see that displacement is better than death. And I'd certainly never throw other marginalized peoples under the bus regardless of the outcome on my end.

Just lamenting the fact that there really is no good ending here, or at least none that doesn't involve mass suffering. I still support indigenous peoples' struggle, and that won't change, but I wish things didn't have to end up like this.

I completely disagree with this ask. I made a post saying "decolonization does not necessarily ends in mass suffering; here are examples where it ends in an integrated equal society" and you're straight up telling me "When given a choice between restitution and retaliation, the latter will invariably be chosen". It's like you read my post and chose just to deny everything I said for no reason other than your own lack of faith in humanity.

This is the same argument that slavery proponents said in the US, if slavery was abolished. It didn't happen. It was the same with those who supported Apartheid, they said that if South Africa ended it, it would end in a white genocide. It didn't happen. Was there inequality and cases of violence? Yes. Are there still political, social and economic issues to be solved? Yes. There was never the extreme retaliation you say, no "white genocide". It did not happen in South Africa, it did not happen in the United States, it does not happen just because. No matter how many demagogues and extremists are there, people don't want "retaliation", in general, they want to live free and plentiful lives.

So no, they're not "always taken over by extremists"

The cases where violence and expulsion indeed happen where the cases where the colonial powers attempted by all means to continue their rule, the cases where they decide to divide their colonial possesions against the will of the people there, like the French with Algeria. Those who chose the path of reconciliation always end up as more equal societies. Funny that.

It's even crazier when even countries that have experienced violent independence conflicts don't even do the same to their former colonists. Did you know, for example, that there are between half a million and a million Angolans of Portuguese descent? They have chosen to integrate to a new, independent Angola: in fact, many fought for it. And they are accepted as such.

This supposed lust for revenge you put forward as a universal experience is ridiculous.

[my-vanishing-777]

Cho Nam-Joo’s 2016 novel, Kim Jiyoung, Born 1982, is a devastating read. It relates an everywoman’s daily experiences of relentless sexism, inequality and misogyny in contemporary South Korea. It is also a book that helped kickstart the country’s 4B Movement. Because, like Nam-Joo’s heroine, South Korean women have had enough. 

Worn down by the gender discrimination that inhabits all corners of their society, 4B Movement followers don’t just want to fight against patriarchy, but move away from it altogether. As well as Nam-Joo’s novel, 4B drew inspiration from the Escape The Corset campaign that took shape in the country in 2017, thanks to pioneers including Jeon Bora, who photographed women who had shaved their heads as an act of rebellion, and Summer Lee, who filmed herself without makeup, and wearing baggy, ‘boyish’ clothes. Both were documenting South Korean women’s attempts to throw off male domination and helped to attract a growing following for 4B.  

4B is based on four principles: Bihon (no to heterosexual marriage), Bichulsan (no to childbirth), Biyeonae (no to dating), and Bisekseu (no to heterosexual sexual relationships). The movement’s proponents such as YouTubers Lina Bae (a beauty influencer who shares her experiences of unattainable beauty standards) and Baek Ha-na and Jung Se-Young, post updates on its aims and progress. “After studying feminism and non-marriage I’ve started to live my life more focused on myself,” says Ha-Na, while Se-Young’s decision not to marry was influenced by seeing how her mother and grandmother have been treated as “subordinates” in her family. Protests take place online and in cities across the country. A 2018 women’s rights rally in Seoul lasted 33 hours as one woman after another took to the stage to relate their experiences of gender abuse. 

The West often views South Korea through a candy-coloured lens. It’s a country built on dignity, respect, smiling K-pop bands and innovative technology. One that’s certainly more liberal than its Northern neighbour. Yet South Korea has a long record of female subjugation.  

During the 1950-53 Korean War, soldiers made women walk over roads they thought might contain landmines to check for safety. Between 1953 and 2021, abortion was illegal in most circumstances. A 2015 South Korean government study revealed that almost 80% of women had been sexually harassed at work. Digital crime, including stalking and sexual harassment, such as molka – the act of upskirting and secretly filming women in bathrooms – is rife. Under current legislation, men accused of stalking can ask their victims to drop charges. Last year, a man murdered his former colleague after she refused to do so.  

The World Economic Forum’s 2022 Global Gender Gap Index ranks South Korea at number 99 out of 146 countries for gender equality. A January 2023 article in South Korean newspaper The Sisa Times reported that 65% of women in the country do not want children. Some 42% do not want to get married, with over 80% of those citing domestic violence as their key reason.  

The country’s incumbent (male) president Yoon Suk-Yeol has promised to close down the South Korean Ministry of Gender Equality and Family that supports women and victims of sexual assault, claiming it treats men like “potential sex criminals”. Last November, local media reported that Suk-Yeol’s government had removed the terms ‘gender equality’ and ‘sexual minorities’ from school textbooks. 

More From Service95

The Female Iranian Photographers Fighting To Be Seen 

September 14, 2023 | By Kamin Mohammadi In her new book, Flowers Of Fire, South Korean journalist Hawon Jung looks at the recent development of feminist movements. When I ask her what she thinks 4B might achieve, Jung points to a quote in her book from Lee Na-Young, a sociology professor at Seoul’s Chung-Ang University. “The patriarchal norms in South Korea, given its economic status and the educational level of its women, are so relentless that the resistance against it tends to be just as intense,” Na-Young says. “Movements like 4B are a message of warning that women would boycott romantic relationships unless society and men change.” 

[reddest-flower]

Only at the end of his life did Karl Marx leave the shores of Europe and travel to a country under colonial dominion. This was when he went to Algeria in 1882. ‘For Mussalmans, there is no such thing as subordination’, Marx wrote to his daughter Laura Lafargue. Inequality is an abomination to ‘a true Mussalman’, but these sentiments, Marx felt, ‘will go to rack and ruin without a revolutionary movement’. A movement of revolutionary understanding would easily be able to grow where there was this cultural feeling against inequality. Marx did not write more about Algeria or about Islam. These were observations made by a father to his daughter. But they do tell us a great deal about Marx’s sensibility.

There was no room in Marxism for the idea that certain people needed to be ruled because they were racial or social inferiors. In fact, Marxism – from Marx’s early writings onward – always understood human freedom as a universal objective. Human slavery and the degradation of human beings into wage slavery awoke in Marx his prophetic indignation. One of Marx’s most famous passages in Capital (1867) pointed out that the ‘rosy dawn of the era of capitalist production’ should not be found in the antiseptic bank or factory. The origin of capitalism had to be found – among other processes – in ‘the extirpation, enslavement and entombment in mines of the aboriginal population, the beginning of the conquest and looting of the East Indies, the turning of Africa into a warren for the commercial hunting of Black skins’. Capitalism grew and was sustained by the degradation of humanity. No wonder, then, that anti-colonialism would play such an important role in the Marxist movement.

When Marxism travelled outside the domain where Marx first developed the theory, it had to engage with what Lenin called ‘the most essential thing in Marxism, the living soul of Marxism, the concrete analysis of concrete conditions’. This formula was valuable from the Dutch East Indies to the Andes.

In the Andes (in South America), one of the greatest (and least known) Marxist thinkers – José Carlos Mariátegui (1894-1930) – wrote in 1928, ‘We do not wish that Socialism in America be a tracing and a copy. It must be a heroic creation. We must, with our own reality, in our own language, bring Indoamerican socialism to life.’ What did Mariátegui do? He read his Marx and his Lenin – and he studied deeply in the social reality of the Andes. Lenin’s theory of the worker-peasant alliance provided a fundamental addition to his Marxism. The ‘socialist revolution in a mainly agrarian country like Peru in the 1920s’, he wrote, ‘was simply inconceivable without taking into consideration the insurgent mobilization of indigenous rural communities that were challenging the power of large land-owners (latifundistas) who were responsible for keeping alive old forms of economic exploitation’. The agent of change in Peru amongst the producing classes had to include the indigenous rural communities whose population was mainly Amerindian. To seek the insurgents amongst the minuscule industrial sector of Lima alone would be to go into battle with capital with one hand tied behind the back. This is an echo of Lenin’s call for worker and peasant unity, but with the indigenous communities now in the framework.

Were the indigenous rural communities capable of a socialist movement? In the 1920s, when Mariátegui was writing, the prevailing intellectual fashion with regard to the rural communities was indigenismo, or Indianness – meaning a cultural movement that revived and celebrated Amerindian cultural forms but did not seek to explore their transformative potential. Indigenismo defanged the Amerindians and romantically saw them as culture producers but not history producers. Mariátegui reinterpreted their history in a more vibrant way – looking backwards at Inca primitive socialism and current struggles against the latifundistas as resources for social transformation. ‘The thesis of a communist Inca tradition is’, he wrote, ‘the defence of a historical continuity between the ancient Inca communal way of life and the Peruvian communist society of the future’. Mariátegui’s Andean socialism was never a restoration of the past, of a primitive communism of an ancient Inca world. ‘It is clear that we are concerned less with what is dead than with has survived of the Inca civilization’, he wrote in 1928. ‘Peru’s past interests us to the extent it can explain Peru’s present. Constructive generations think of the past as an origin, never as a programme’. [my italics] In other words, the past is a resource not a destination – it reminds us of what is possible, and its traces show us that elements of that old communitarianism can be harnessed in the fight against colonial private property relations in the present. When Marxism came to the Third World, it had to be supple and precise – learn from its context, understand the way capitalism morphs in a new venue and explore the ways for social transformation to drive history.

The Comintern tried to be supple, but its limited knowledge of the world meant it ended up being far too dogmatic to be always useful. By the late 1920s, the Comintern suggested the creation of a Black Belt in the southern region of the United States, Native Republics in South Africa and an Indian Republic along the Andean region of South America. From Moscow, it appeared as if the nationalities theory could be easily transported to these distant lands. For South America, the theory was debated at the First Latin American Communist Conference held in Buenos Aires in June 1929. Fierce debate broke out here, with the Comintern’s preferred position being opposed by Mariátegui’s associates. ‘The construction of an autonomous state from the Indian race’, Mariátegui wrote, ‘would not lead to the dictatorship of the Indian proletariat, nor much less the formation of an Indian State without classes.’ What would be created is an ‘Indian bourgeois State with all of the internal and external contradictions of other bourgeois states’. The preferred option would be of the ‘revolutionary class movement of the exploited indigenous masses’, which was the only way for them to ‘open a path to the true liberation of their race’. The debate on goals and strategy became so fierce that this was the only Latin American Communist Conference to be held. ‘The indigenous proletariat await their Lenin’, Mariátegui wrote. He meant not a Lenin as such, but a theory that could emerge from the movements to lead them against the rigid structures of the past and present.

This was not always the lesson that was learned. But it is our lesson now.

Red Star Over the Third World, Vijay Prashad, 2019

[ladywavecutter]

Diamariel Wavecutter - High Elf Ambassador, Patron

“She seemed sweet enough but I couldn’t help but feel I was in a pool with a shark.” - Lieutenant Kyalan of the 6th regiment of the Silver Helms

Diamariel Wavecutter

Motivation: See the Asur take responsibility as mediators of allegiance between the mortal races. Short Term Ambition: Liaise a better trading relationship between Ulthuan and the Empire. Long Term Ambition: See Ulthuan rise to once again be the supreme global power.

The second eldest daughter to Lord Bel-Haner Wavecutter, Diamariel’s lot in life—one of privilege and prestige—was all but secured upon her birth. The only unseen variable was Diamariel herself. A hidden seadrake among her siblings, Diamariel proved herself ambitious and driven enough to secure herself a place in the court of the Everqueen as both dutiful ambassador and confidant to Allarielle the Radiant. Gifted in both the custom of court and the winds of magic, Diamariel has readily proven that eventually her machinations will, through charming diplomacy or arcane mastery,  come to fall in line with her decided outcome.

Background

Diamariel was expected to follow the path of domesticity taken by her mother and eldest sister: find a husband of good standing, raise his children and run a household of her own. It was perfectly ordained to the norms of her people - it was also regretfully boring and the very thought of such an existence made her skin crawl.

Through her guile, wit, and success in study of the arcane arts, Diamariel established herself as not only the rebel of the Wavecutter family, but made a name for herself as an agent and diplomat of the Everqueen Alarielle. She earned the Everqueen’s favor very early in her career, by way of an incident in which the then young Diamariel returned a great stag to the menagerie of Avelorn, from which point she slowly rose to see herself tasked with managing the Queen’s interests and affairs across the Great Ocean in the Empire and beyond.

On these endeavors, the Lady Wavecutter has found herself entangled in circumstances that have each given her a perspective of life outside of Ulthuan that so very few of her kin can boast of. One such expedition into the empire led the Lady to be embroiled in the unraveling of a conspiracy targeting the Supreme Patriarch of the Imperial Colleges of Magic, cementing the alchemists of the Gold College as a valuable personal ally. It was also during this expedition that through less than pleasant means she was first confronted with interpretations of the Asur, and their less than favorable depiction among the zeitgeist of the disenfranchised of Imperial society, as well as a keener understanding of how far behind the times Ulthuan had seemed to be becoming. 

The East of her Troubles

One of the things that puts Diamariel in stark contrast with many of her kin is her overwhelming sense of empathy to  both elf and man alike. This almost otherworldly emotional intelligence has positives and negatives which have manifested in the Lady’s complete willingness to pause her life in the face of unresolved turmoil. The most debilitating case of this occurred upon a series of burglaries against Asur residents of Altdorf. Upon confronting the thieves, instead of handing them over to the authorities, Diamariel did as she as most who know her would expect her to - engaging them in conversation.

It so happened that these thieves held Brustellite politics, disenfranchised by the systematic poverty experienced in the East End of Altdorf. They  attributed the economic inequality to the forced movement of established communities into this slum following the creation of the Colleges of Magic—an act of meddling by the Asur. Whilst she disagreed that the colleges and the Asur were solely the reason for the city’s ever broadening gap between aristocrat and urban poor, she sympathized with their plight, that their suffering was enough that they felt the need to lash out. In an attempt to put to bed at least some of the bad blood between the residents of the East End and help bring more wealth into the area for its residence, Diamariel established the Wavecutter Company Outreach Initiative.

This initiative began as a way to reach out to locals and get them working alongside Asur traders and sailors, picking up skills and trades starting with apprenticeships that would later on develop into employment. While currently in its infancy, she plans to expand the project to have generational impacts, though some, namely her fellow Asur, would regard her as more than a little eccentric for going this far simply due to the plight of some petty thieves with shaky political motivation.

Diamariel as a Patron

Characters serving Lady Diamariel will find their patron a warm and empathetic, but wise and tactful leader. As an accomplished diplomat, characters will find themselves embroiled in political intrigue, and, when the timing calls for it - action and peril. The political landscape of Ulthuan is a spider web of interconnected threads, weaved together to create a turbulent picture, irrespective of its orderly facade. It is a bureaucratic tumult that demands a great mind to fully understand and traverse, only becoming more daunting when outside influence and interests reach out to entangle themselves within it. 

Once having achieved the seemingly impossible task of learning to maneuver in this vipers den of princes, nobles, guilds and politicians, characters will find Diamariel both guide and taskmaster in understanding and exploring life within Asursociety. She may charge characters as messengers between lords that she is currently petitioning on behalf of her mistress the Everqueen, bodyguards to nobles who have received threats of violence from rival families (or even Druchii rogues), private investigators into matters of legal intrigue of corrupt politicians, and potentially mercenaries tasked with protecting missions of trade and diplomacy between Ulthuan and the Empire.

In short, the Lady Wavecutter is sure to provide her employees with duties to challenge or intrigue them. That said, she is highly attuned to the emotional and physical wellbeing of those who serve her and will equally look to push her employees into opportunities in which they can better themselves, as well as act as counsel for those who have earned her respect. This of course comes with the understanding that characters have earned her respect, and she is not above having those in her service prove their worth to her before any real investment is made on her part.

Traits: Weapon (Quarterstaff) +5

Skills: Charm 100, Cool 95, Dodge 89, Endurance 78, Gossip 100, Intimidate 46, Intuition 102, Leadership 100, Melee (Basic 55, Polearm 55), Navigation 65, Perception 102, Evaluate 102, Channelling (Azyr 80, Ghyran) 80, Language (Battle 100, Classical 100, Magick 85, Reikspiel 100), Lore (Magic) 85, (Ulthuan) 100.

Talents: Acute Sense (Sight), Arcane Magic (Azyr, Ghyran), Attractive, Commanding Presence, Etiquette (Nobles), Night Vision, Noble Blood, Petty Magic, Read/Write, Savvy, Schemer, Second Sight 

Spells: Petty: Dart, Dazzle, Drain, Gust, Shock. Lore of Heavens: Comet of Casandora, T’Essla’s Arc Lore of Life: Forest of Thorns. Trappings: Grimoire, Staff of Diplomats, Best Quality Courtly Clothes, Map, Dagger, Magical License. 

Staff of Isha’s Envoy A staff expertly crafted to be bespoke for its weilder - gifted to Diamariel as a proof of office by none other than the Everqueen Alarielle the Radiant. This staff provides +1 SL to Channeling (Ghyran) Tests and +2 SL to Fellowship Tests