Sunday, May 27th, 2012

Time	Event
2:57a	Spain 1936 polemics These tweets relate to this http://theanvilreview.org/print/criticalreviewanarchismcity/ last tweet first... '..the prejudices of our culture conflate democracy with liberty and direct action with tyranny...' IF ONLY! Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '...the great mistake...' NON PASARAN! Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat Spain. One of the few states in which anarchism can not be entirely removed from the official narrative and so Marxists love Russia and hate Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat Indeed so is theory bought with the surplus-value sweated out of the alienated labor of hellish cotton factories. ' Engels and Barcelona ' Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat State interest in sponsoring a history of anarchist struggle in Barcelona is highly suss. Well spotted PG. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat I should have fisked this over at blurty - my bad. Nearly at the end anywha Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat Tiny and cult like compared to who? I'd like to see a 70 thousand strong anarcho-syndicalist union movement anywhere today. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..the POUM was a tiny organization ..' This is getting Murdochian. 70K according to Orwell. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/POUM Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..to spread heroic examples throughout the entire society that they could attack and win...' To explore strange new worlds, to seek out ne Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..overlapping and redundant rather than centralized and unified decision-making spaces..' That makes sense. And that worries me Max. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat LIMIT the size of the basic socio-economic-political-whatever unit. Avoid 'too-big-to-fail syndrome. Avoid the tyranny of little Lenin's. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '...Democratic institutions, on the other hand, are imminently capable of generating hierarchy...' and that my friends is why I say LIMITS! Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat http://www.bopsecrets.org/CF/structurelessness.htm I wouldn't normally mention this... but as Gelderloos persists in his crass disrespect for pacific direct-democrats... Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..Direct action tactics and affinity groups on their own are incapable of generating such hierarchies..' Not according to Jo Freeman Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat I've been trying to have petit-bourgeois influences excluded from socialism, specifically Karl Marx and his boss, but its a hard task :) Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..Well, they got donations from the petit-bourgeoisie, and this funding is reflected in their politics and their practice..' Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat In today's environment this translates into cell-structure and network forms (leaderless resistance) as opposed to Plat groups and AS unions Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat Finally there's a paragraph that makes sense. Contrasting affinity groups ( good and strong) with union forms ( flawed under pressure) Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat So Gelderloos indulges himself several times -'defeat', 'failure' and etc -and then disses diversity of tactics to top it all off. Fuck OFF! Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..I mean. to signal repression as evidence of failure is poorly disguised defeatism or pacifism (one in the same, after all)..' Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat Besides the lies of Felix Morrow. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..criticism regarding their failure to show solidarity with the Asturias uprising of 1934..' Is it too much to ask for some evidence? Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat Holding out for years arguably saved Gibraltar - Gibraltar then saved Malta - Malta then saved Egypt - Egypt then saved the oil fields. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat FOR most of 1936 large parts of Spain experienced the worlds greatest social-revolution - ever! This then gave them the strength to hold out Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat For an idea of what a success it was read about the election early in 36 and then 'Homage' by Orwell about November in Barcelona. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 17h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..A fair critique of the anarchist failure..' There you go again! The greatest revolution of all time and morons (and Marxists) keep callin Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..Democracy ALWAYS subverts its own mechanisms. This is in the nature of democracy..' So democracy is something terrible. How Marxist. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat 'Theory will absolve me' presumably. Unfortunately this jackass has a lot of company in a Europe gazing fixedly in the wrong direction. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..the CNT’s self-defeat..' Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence. Gelderloos fails to provide any while appealing to 'theory' Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '...Ealham does not offer any theoretical explanations...' This lunatic Gelderloos wants his histories larded with po-mo bilge, Mike Davis Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat ITS very dangerous having a nutcase like Peter running around spreading vicious lies. Fuck him. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat THE REALITY - POUM.Tens of thousands, who disregarded the 'Old Man' and threw in with the masses, only to be rewarded with reduced rations. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat GELDERLOOS '...POUM, a tiny cult following the teachings of the Butcher of Kronstadt..' Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..the Wikileaks that resurrected the media, by accepting dialogue with the corrupt NYT and then by joining the Russian State TV..' Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..the CNT that resurrected the government, by accepting dialogue with Companys and then by joining the Central Committee..' Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat With friends like this, who needs enemies? http://theanvilreview.org/print/criticalreviewanarchismcity/ Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..Oliver,oddly enough, was astute in his arguments, though his megalomania soon overcame his principles..'More grotesque slander and libel Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat The snot-nosed brat's still alive and well! Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '.. Diego Abad de Santillan, the anarchist economist who was eager to mobilize state power to impose an anarchist economic model..' WTF!? Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat 'undertheorized' que? You say that like its a bad thing! Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat And Geldedgoose is sounding more than a little academic himself these days! From snot-nosed brat to old fogy in three or four years - wow. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat This sounds odd. An academic historian justifying shooting priests? Also odd is an endorsement of Mike Davis execrable 'City of Quartz'. Expand Reply Delete Favorite 18h professor rat ‏@pro2rat '..If it was the priests who were put up against the wall in Barcelona, 1936, a violence Ealham rightly justifies..' P Gelderloos Even subtracting personal likes and dislikes I think there's a couple of serious issues here that could be profitably discussed by anarchs. The revolution is the great techer (Comment on this)
10:00p	CLASS-STRUGGLE MY ARSE “National socialism derives from each of two camps the pure idea that characterises it: National resolution from bourgeois tradition; vital, creative socialism from the teaching of Marxism.” [January, 1934] Schoenbaum, p.57 “We are socialists, we are enemies of today's capitalistic economic system for the exploitation of the economically weak, with its unfair salaries, with its unseemly evaluation of a human being according to wealth and property instead of responsibility and performance, and we are all determined to destroy this system under all conditions.” Toland (Speech of May 1, 1927), 1976, p. 306 Adolf Hitler : The Definitive Biography http://www.abelard.org/hitler/hitler.php Hitler’s anti-Semitism became muddled with ‘racism’. This he muddled further with simplistic ideas of survival of the fittest and Hobbesian ‘nature red in tooth and claw’. Where, like Saint-Simon, Marx saw a struggle between classes, Hitler saw a struggle between races. Both these viewpoints are essentially foolish and simplistic. (Comment on this)
10:22p	BLOOM BERG The `Anarchist Menace,' Past and Present From Bloomberg In Chicago on May 19, three men described by police as "self-proclaimed anarchists" were detained for stockpiling Molotov cocktails and conspiring to attack President Barack Obama's campaign headquarters and other targets. During the following weekend's anti-NATO protests, scores of demonstrators -- many of them clad in black and connected with anarchist factions -- were arrested for participating in militant confrontations with Chicago police. The incidents seemed to be part of an unexpected trend. On Nov. 3, after vandalism and violence broke out following an Occupy Wall Street demonstration, Oakland's interim police chief described some of the protesters as "generally anarchists and provocateurs." On May 1, five men were arrested in Ohio for allegedly plotting to blow up a bridge near Cleveland. FBI spokesmen announced that they had foiled an "anarchist" plot. For almost a century, anarchism has been a forgotten creed. But with the rise of the anti-globalization movement and Occupy Wall Street, the iconic figure of the bomb-throwing anarchist appears to be making a revival. And the response of police and prosecutors to this alleged new threat has some unfortunate historical parallels. Few cultural signifiers have lasted as long, or have justified so many desperate actions, as the image of the anarchist. Opponents of governmental power, anarchists advocated a type of socialism based on individual autonomy and democratic decision making. Considered bestial, insane, desperate and implacable, the bomb-throwing radical was a bugbear as familiar to fin-de-siecle Americans as the turbaned terrorist is today. Since the 19th century, anarchism has usually been equated with transgression and chaos. If anarchists were criminal by nature, then it followed that they were also criminal in fact. Such simplistic blurring facilitated numerous repressions in the past. And it is just as dangerous now. A century ago, novels by G.K. Chesterton, Joseph Conrad, Fyodor Dostoevsky and Henry James all featured anarchist villains, while melodramatic newspaper serials and lurid pictorials conveyed the character type to mass audiences. Political cartoons depicted them as animals or monstrosities. The image of the rampaging, conniving radical stuck. "Bombs and anarchists are inseparable in the minds of most of us," wrote Guido Bruno, a chronicler of Greenwich Village life. "Mysterious destroyers of life and of property, merciless men who have pledged their lives or their knives or their guns to some nefarious cause or another." Like most caricatures, this description was founded on some underlying facts. From 1880 to 1920, self-professed anarchists carried out a bloody litany of assassinations -- targeting czars and kings, plutocrats and presidents. These murders were interspersed with a series of failed plots, suspected conspiracies and botched assaults. In short, some radical outrage was more or less a daily feature of life. But anarchism was a global movement claiming thousands of adherents. They founded schools, organized mutual-aid societies, worked closely with labor unions and argued eloquently for a post-capitalist society founded on individual freedom rather than profits. Only a handful of them ever acted violently, but the predations that did occur -- compounded by the zealous sensationalism of the press -- were more than enough to defame the entire faction. Newspapers and politicians discussed anarchists with the same excess used by the authors of pulp novels. "They are simply filled with a crazy hatred of people who are better off than themselves," a New York Times editor wrote in 1894. "Every Anarchist crime makes clearer the necessity of putting Anarchists out of the way, like so many rabid dogs." For elected officials, the very real threat of assassination ensured a similar attitude. "When compared with the suppression of anarchy, every other question sinks into insignificance," President Theodore Roosevelt warned Congress in 1908. "The anarchist is the enemy of humanity, the enemy of all mankind." Such rhetoric had serious political repercussions. The supposed "Anarchist Menace" was used to justify new instruments of surveillance and repression, which served as the forerunners for today's intrusive security state. A 1903 statute made it legal to bar anarchists from immigration -- the first time in U.S. history that a political belief was cited as a barrier to citizenship. New York created an "Anarchist Squad" of undercover policemen in the aftermath of a bombing that was attributed to radical conspirators. During World War I -- and in the Red Scare that ensued -- thousands of anarchists were imprisoned and deported. Whenever an act of political violence occurred, even if the perpetrators couldn't actually be identified, authorities were quick to blame anarchist dissidents. In 1886, eight anarchists in Chicago were charged when dynamite exploded among police during a demonstration in Haymarket Square. In 1914, poet and labor leader Joe Hill was arrested for the death of two Utah grocers. In 1920, anarchists Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti were tried for a murder that occurred in Braintree, Massachusetts. All these cases relied on doubtful evidence. And the accused were subjected to politicized trials, in which they were prosecuted for their ideas rather than their actions. In each instance, the defendants were executed. Cultural images have the power to demonize or validate social behavior, and have long served authorities and insurgents alike as potent political implements. Modern-day protesters who carry the black flag, or don Guy Fawkes masks, are signaling their desire to be perceived as a threat. But striking a confrontational pose isn't the same as committing a crime. When prosecutors -- in Illinois, Ohio or elsewhere -- cite the beliefs of the accused as evidence of their guilt, we must insist upon the difference between actions and ideas. Democracy lies in the distinction. (Thai Jones teaches history in the MAT Program at Bard College. His most recent book is "More Powerful Than Dynamite: Radicals, Plutocrats, Progressives, and New York's Year of Anarchy.” The opinions expressed are his own.) To read more from Echoes, Bloomberg View's economic history blog, click here. To contact the editor responsible for this blog post: Timothy Lavin at tlavin1@bloomberg.net For more on the Propaganda of the deed era sear Barbara Tuchmans ' Proud Tower' and Mike Davis ' In praise of barbarians'. (Comment on this)

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