To comment back to DeAnna who said:

>>>”If community is family, they play the role of the dissatisfied 15-year old who HATES YOU ALL and refuses to speak to you in public. Annoying, and often counter-productive, and it makes you want to just slap them right upside the head, but still family.”<<<

If community is family, who are the cops? Who’s the National Guard? Who’s the sheriff’s dept? Who’s the FBI? Who’s the corporate sponsored thugs who beat the shit out of us? I think they are the psychotic, murderous dad who’s kicking the shit out of our family every chance he gets.

I also disagree that this brand of anarchist that we’re talking about here is the family member who’s the petulant child. I believe that this brand of anarchist (however uncomfortable they make us sometimes) is the family member who’s sick of getting beat up, who’s sick of seeing his family members beat up, who’s sick of his family members apologizing for dad saying “we should really look at how we can improve as people before we judge dad - we’re not perfect you know,” or: “you’re only 15, when you get older you’ll see this differently and mellow out…” or: “don’t judge us for the way we deal with dad, we’re all trying to work toward a more peaceful home life! Oh wait, shut up, here comes dad.”

I think that this particular brand of anarchist is the guy in the prison camp who gets fed up with the abuse he and the other inmates are taking and finally attacks one of the guards and tries to kill him with his bare hands. He might make us say: “Oh shit man! What the hell are you thinking!?! Those guys have guns! We’re not ready to put our lives on the line like that and now you’re making us all do that! We’re not ready for a revolt! We’re just trying to stay polite! Shit, now we’re really gonna get it!”

It’s one thing to say that this brand of anarchist is rude and not inclusive in the way that’s consistent with their ideals (it’s hard for an abused kid who feels sold-out by his family to not have ‘trust issues,’ however much they say that trust is what they value the most) but I think when you take stock of the “family situation,” and YOUR role in the facilitation of dad’s abuse, it’s pretty disrespectful to dismiss the actions of these anarchists as immature and ‘just a phase.’

It’s a great idea to build a coalition in your fight against our family’s psychotic abusive dad/ civilization/ prison guard, and try to move as a team (black bloc and the ‘old pagan ladies’ together) in our actions. On the other hand, there’s a lot of baggage that some of us have, having seen our family and homelife destroyed by this brute and seeing all these so-called allies doing nothing but trying to calm us down, get us to be peaceful, get us to have mercy flow out of us and into our dad, and insulting us while they putt around in their hybrids eating tofu. I think that the mercy needs to flow from The Left to this brand of angry anarchist and understand that they’re not just “young and unconstructive and hating everybody,” they’re abused and angry. They’re doing what they can, nursing wounds.

As for the cheapskate tendency/ entitlement of this anarchist, I think that this is just another (useful in this case) defense mechanism against civilization’s psychotic scheme of getting you to obey the “rules of polite and thoughtful conduct,” and then killing your forest while you sit back and consider their feelings.

Now clearly, as Scout points out, the next step is to try to heal ourselves and learn to tell the difference between a government asking us to pay a duty to support their military, and Derrick Jensen, Urban Scout, or any other wild-ally asking you to support the hard work they put into spreading the anti-civ message in a bold, humorous, and public way.

I don’t want to just keep apologizing for this “irate, cheap, anarchist bogeyman.” Admittedly, in the end, the bogeyman has work to do. But it’s important to remember that we need to have some mercy for each other. Like all of us, they carry baggage from having grown up civilized. Like all of us, they have work to do. Most of these black-clad folks are sincerely doing a courageous job of trying to move out of The System, resist The System, and try to create a different - more just paradigm. They’re not petulant children. They’re not self-entitled brats.

There really are assholes, everywhere all the time aren’t there. Fuckers! Haha. Thanks for your comments. I still refer to myself as an anarchist sometimes, but mostly for shock value. Haha. People still call me an anarchist all the time.

Archangel,

Thanks for your comments. If you ever end up in Portland, send me a note.

Scout

I saw this article linked on the Fabulous Forager, and replied there as well to Giuli’s post. I just wanted to say hi, and I appreciate what you had to say. I sometimes but not always call myself an anarchist, and used to more, but don’t really care any more. I remember when I was still using the term a lot, I thought about how the most anarchist person I know was my friend Dan (probably I have a few more like him these days), who’s just really decent to others, and considerate. He’s open and will listen to what those around him are saying, and isn’t coercive in his interactions with people. I think now that anarchy, if it means anything to me, means those sorts of traits.

Anyway, I’m kind of wandering these days, having left NYC a month or so ago. If I’m ever around Portland, maybe we can meet up? I’d definitely like to learn some of the sorts of skills I think you’re familiar with, and maybe I can be of help to you too. Cool man- be well.

Lets get straight to the point. I used to consider myself an anarchist. I thought there was such a thing as anarchism. everything almost made sense to me. But yet, my experience of ANARCHY! was so much more then mere anarchism. The way you talk about anarchists, is like some mental image you might have of them, some bunch of kids that scream revolutionary one-liners throw some stones and go home to get smashed. Yet this is far from the truth. Like i said i dont mirror my identity to an ideology anymore, so i dont consider myself to BE an anarchist, yet anarchy is in my thinking my acting and experiencing the world. Other people WILL call me an anarchist and if that makes it easier for them thats cool i guess. The anarchists you mentioned, is just one sub-species of them, the angry kid type anarchist i guess, they arent all that bad really i know quite some of them as well. Outside of that archetypical image of contemporary anarchists there are much much much more strands which MIGHT not label themselves even as anarchist , but express anarchy and freedom on a level where it doesnt need a (brand)name.

MOST IMPORTANTLY: theres ASSHOLES everywhere…..all the time……

You have a great Blog ! and i hope to read more more more…. take care man! -from holland

They think that “Fuck the System” means, “Fuck All Systems.” It doesn’t.

and Silver Arrow said:

In anarchy, you fight from a feeling of love, not the other way around!

And I say amen.

Slovakia?!? That’s awesome. Where is that? (I’m a dumb american, please forgive me!) I love crimthinc too, though I don’t like their vegan angle on things. Thanks for sharing your feelings and for reading my blog.

Scout

I am from Slovakia, and I somehow found (after years of activism in saving forests, recycling, etc.) books from John Zerzan, Derrick Jensen and also Crimethinc “romantic” approach to anarchy, which I really like so much:) We started a green anarchy collective here in the east carpathians and I try to translate and distribute green anarchist texts and subtitle some films, we started to do indypendent film screenings and also had a talk with a guy who does open rescues (ALF type) of factory animals. … and we plan some more stuff like a crimethinc eastern europe aliance with some folks from neighbouring counties…

ohhh, what I wanted to say, that there is a anarchist organization/anarchist union, which we got negative press from them, and they use the same language like you have encountered and john and derrick (which I have read some discussions of it)…and it really bothers me, cos I wanted to make friends of them all, but now I know that some try to be elitist anarchists and some not. So I made friends and aliances with some folks and it is going a good path forward, I hope(ohh, by the way, thanx Derrick for the essay on hope, …fuck hope, lets do it, ..or undoit?)

DIY thanx Scout

Super cool story about the grandmas and the black block. Thanks for sharing.

I agree with you and I also have to say that I think the hate phase (that becomes a way of life for some) is inherent in civilization and not in indigenous cultures. The hate only shows because our culture has no way of directing the energy of teenagers, and so it creates angst rather than moves with it. I believe that systems drive behavior, so any mal-content comes more from the system not matching our biology than our biology creating mal-content.

Seems to me that’s the whole purpose of community…there being room for people to be as fucked up as they need to be, and it all balances out in the long run. Like it or not, the anarchists are a part of the community, dysfunctions and all. In fact, anarchists are a part of the community whether *they* like it or not. If community is family, they play the role of the dissatisfied 15-year old who HATES YOU ALL and refuses to speak to you in public. Annoying, and often counter-productive, and it makes you want to just slap them right upside the head, but still family. (Do you have siblings? This analogy might only work for you if you have kids or siblings who’ve acted like that. But anyway, my point is that they usually grow out of it.)

I totally agree.

Sweet Earth Lover,

Thanks for your stories. I always wondered whatever happened to the Cascadia Forest Alliance.

Eugene,

There is lots of room for help, always! Thanks for the offer. I will hold you to it! Haha.

Laughing Horse, yeah. I rarely go into Laughing Horse. It is not a very friendly sort of place. I get better treatment at chains than I do there, but that is beside the point. One of the last times I went there was about a year ago. I went looking for a Howard Zinn book. I asked the counter fella who then informed me of his hatred for Zinn because he didn’t cover gay issues in his history books. “And don’t get me started on Chomsky. The only person I hate more than Howard Zinn is Noam Chomsky.” I’ve been there a couple of times since, but haven’t bought or supported their organization since. And again, folks I would like to work with but have reservations because they have a habit of tossing out information, just like the U.S. judicial system.

I went to see Ward Churchill at Reed College some several years ago. Wards lecture was amidst the controversy started by that rather slow reader, bill orielly. During Ward’s lectures, he always mentions how Madeline Albright stated that 5,000 dead Iraqi children a month was an acceptable loss. Ward also gave useful information like the law, which, if enforced, would mean that Indians have control of around two-thirds of this nation. The first question during the Q&A were the concerns of deportation from one of the privileged Reed students. He was honestly worried that at some point in time very soon the Indians would deport him, but his comment rang to its root at the end when he was crying out, “WHAT ABOUT ME!?” None of the folks asked what they could do about the murdered Iraqi babies.

Hey, Scout. I like the way you work and what I’ve read and seen that you do. You seem like you would make a good ally, and in this world where it is becoming increasingly difficult for me to find any, I was wondering if there is anything I might possibly be able to help out with in the things that you do? You can e-mail me at: kbooindian@yahoo.com. I don’t have a lot of skills other than shooting off my fat mouth and educating myself and occasionally a member of an unwilling audience (”there is no unknowing”).

If you need help, and think my services might be useful, and I have the time and energy to do so, you have an ally in me, brother. Just ask and I’ll see what I can do for you.

Wow. You have seen and experienced some real shit with anarchists. I know you to be inclusive in your world view, understanding that we do “need it all” to bring it all down. Being able to work with others who have differing viewpoints does not need to undermine our own standards. Groups who are exclusivist tend to end up preaching to the choir, nitpicking each other for purity, burning out, and then dying out.

Remember Cascadia Forest Alliance? I was very supportive of that group when I first came to Portland 6+ years ago. I was infuriated with ongoing clearcutting in national forests, especially when Bush came to Oregon and began pitching his “Healthy Forest Initiative.”

I gave money, visited the CFA shop on Clinton, attended a rally, went out to a proposed logging site with CFA, visited a tree sit, and even went to court to support Mike D. Then I was invited to attend a meeting. I went, and you know I look mainstream, and there was all this tension, like “shh…we’ll talk about THAT, uh later.” Today CFA doesn’t exist, which is unfortunate, because they were doing good work for the forests. Not that CFA were anarchists, so much, it’s just to demonstrate what happens when a group is exclusivist. We all lose. Unless you’re Amish, being pure and exclusive isn’t sustainable.

On the other hand, I know an anarchist, and we got arrested together in an act of civil disobedience. This young man put up with the badgering of the alpha male pacifist organizer of the group, bent to the will of the group, and showed nothing but respect and kindness for the two months I worked with him. Aside from his example, though, it seems anarchists reflect some of the worst aspects of the dominant culture: the inability or unwillingness to work with anyone who isn’t them.

I hope you can find ways to protect yourself psychically from the attacks you are under from those who take issue.

Thank you for bringing Derrick Jensen to town again. I look forward to learning some rewilding from you and your group….like how to make a fire without matches or a lighter….

Shus li

Andrine, Haha. Yes, a long post I know. So much meat to chew through.