Rev Left Radio - Revolutionary Anarchism and Autonomous Anti-Capitalism

Episode Date: September 4, 2017

It's Going Down is a digital community center from anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous anti-capitalist and anti-colonial movements. Our mission is to provide a resilient platform to publicize and promote revolutionary theory and action. Brett sits down with a member of the collective to discuss anarchism in the 21st century. Topics Include: Anarchism, Hedges and Chomsky on Antifa, Left Unity, Gun Culture on the Left, Anti-Colonialism, being a race traitor, and the future of the revolutionary Left.  ------- It's Going Down can be found here: https://itsgoingdown.org  Our music this week comes from Voltaire Slapadelic with the song American Dream. Check out more of their music here: https://voltaireofficial.bandcamp.com    ---------------------- Please rate and review us on iTunes and support us on Patreon if you have some spare change laying around.   This podcast is officially affiliated with The Nebraska Left Coalition and the Omaha GDC.

Please support my daddy's show by donating a couple bucks to patreon.com forward slash rev left radio. Please follow us on Twitter at Rev. Left Radio. And don't forget to rate and review the Revolutionary Left Radio on iTunes to increase our reach. Workers of the world, unite! We were educated, we've been given a certain set of tools, but then we're throwing right back into the working class. Well, good luck with that, because more and more of us are waking the fuck up. so we have a tendency to what we have, we have earned, right? And what we don't have, we are going to earn.

We unintentionally, I think, oftentimes kind of frame our lives as though we are, you know, the predestined. That people want to be guilt-free. Like, I didn't do it. Like, this is not my fault. And I think that's part of the distancing from, like, people who don't want it to do it with their prejudice. Because that's always how our imperial war machine

justifies itself. It's always under the context of liberating the Libyan people, liberating the Iraqi people. The U.S. Empire doesn't give a fuck about anybody except the U.S. Empire and its interest. According to the legend, Sterner actually died due to a beastie. So the ultimate individualist was actually killed by the ultimate collectivist. Both sides are responsible for the violence. What the fuck are you talking about, dude? Are you kidding me?

there's one side inciting fascist violence. The other side saying give us free health care. Hello everyone and welcome to Revolutionary Left Radio. I am your host and comrade Brett O'Shea and today we are talking with It's Going Down. We're going to talk about left-wing independent media. We're going to talk about anarchism and anti-fascism. So our guest today is a member of the collective it's going down. Would you like to introduce yourself and say a little bit about your background? Sure. It's Going Down. the digital community center for anarchist, anti-fascist, autonomous, anti-capital movements.

Our mission is to provide a resilient platform to publicize and promote revolutionary theory and action. Moreover, we kind of want to create a space where people from different movements, be the black liberation, indigenous struggles, anarchists, anti-fascist, anti-capist, class war can all kind of come together and share what's happening on the ground. Yeah, so that's why we,

We exist. We have a podcast. We have a news platform. And, you know, we run active social media accounts on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. Yeah, we've been a fan of you guys for a long time. And I think we have some overlapping goals with the goal of this podcast and your guys' podcast. Before we get into, like, the meat and potatoes of this discussion, what is so important about having independent leftist media out there, especially in the times we're living through, in your opinion? Well, I think the first thing is that, um, the power of the mainstream media is is breaking down you know the center is is cracking in many ways the media historically aligned with the democratic party and neoliberalism i mean its power is is

really faltering um and that's why it's important to note that the you know the far right um kind of has a head started on us in many ways you know on social media on youtube uh post charlotsville that's been kind of shaken up um and also there's a question of just like what exactly that reach actually means like does it translate to people in the street? But definitely, you know, the mainstream media is switching things up under Trump. I mean, they're trying to kind of justify themselves again. They can't just come out with a bunch of bullshit. You know, they have to actually begin to fact check and, you know, think about what actually power is doing to kind of like, again, justify themselves as the media.

But as we've seen, you know, this last week after Berkeley, definitely. a huge role of the media is, again, to frame and kind of put into a box social movements and social struggles and either find out if they're going to play the game of politics, are they going to be brought into the Democratic Party? Are they going to be brought into the political process? Are they going to be controlled and managed? Or are they going to be set up for destruction? And obviously, you know, this last week, the majority of the media from the right onwards,

even into some of left-wing media has basically said that, quote-unquote, Thiefa deserves to be destroyed by the state. You know, moreover, you know, most of what the news does is not, it's not report, per se, but it's about pushing a narrative and perspective and reaffirming these positions, which is why, you know, we really need to be producing our own media and working on creating our own infrastructure, you know, looking at what's happened to the alt-right since Charlottesville, So, you know, we should be thinking along the lines that they're thinking right now. I mean, they're thinking about like, you know, oh, shit, we got deep platform, we got kicked off of this and that.

And there's no reason that that can't happen to us, you know, what happens when, you know, cloud flare refuses to, you know, supply us with DDoS prevention and, you know, all these different things. You know, WordPress kicks us off of websites and everything like that. I mean, we're going to have to eventually come up with the infrastructural. capacity to fix all these problems because at some point, I mean, they're going to come for us on our side and we're going to have to really figure that out. But beyond that, I mean, you know, it's so clear that part of waging a revolutionary struggle in today's world is creating your own media. I mean, we have to be producing our own media. We have to create our own infrastructure. We have to be telling, you know, our stories about the struggles that we're engaging in from

workplace organizing to fighting pipelines to anti-fascist action to autonomous you know hurricane harvey relief i mean we're the ones carrying out these actions we're the ones doing the organizing putting in the work there's no reason that we should rely on anybody whether it's mike dot com or the huffington post or the new york times to to then tell that story like we have to own it and we have to tell it um and we need to have big goals for our media as well i mean before we we started we were talking about like the growth of the hits just for this podcast but i mean we need to have even bigger goals there's no reason that we can't have you know our own answer to something like info wars i mean there's no reason you know these ideas are far reaching they talk about people's

everyday lives like they need to be as big as some of the uh the right wing stuff yeah and the corporate stuff yeah exactly but we should also be worried of this idea that social media equals power Like, for instance, in Boston, you know, there was a guy actually that used to work for InfoWars that went to the rally that 40,000 people showed up to oppose. I mean, he's got 400,000 Twitter followers and only 30 people showed up to support him. So it's like just kind of sad, you know, or even Unite the Right. You know, how many millions of Twitter followers collected did all those people that came out have? And they only had like a couple hundred people show up. So, I mean, everything that we do media-wise or on social media needs to come part and parcel with the idea that we're going to pull people off of the internet and into the real world, you know, get them involved in organizing where they're at, connected with other people they live around, because that's where change is going to happen.

That's where power is going to be built. Lastly, I would say that we also need to keep in mind that, you know, like Bannon just gave an interview in the economist where we talked about, you know, basically, their goal right now is to continue to attack the Democratic Party over identity politics and push a platform of economic nationalism. I mean, and the way they're going to do that at Breitbart, you know, is through their media. So, I mean, these people aren't going to go away. You know, they're not going to pull back. They're just going to continue to go even harder.

In fact, most of them are going to double down on what they're doing. So we have to be ready to do that too. Absolutely, yeah. And I think you mentioned, you know, controlling the narrative. telling our own stories. That's extremely important. And then what we've been harping on in this podcast lately is this notion that we have to build up alternative institutions. We have to do things ourselves. We can't rely on the structures that are already in place and just, you know, weighed through them. And so creating our own media outlets is one way to do that. But you did

mention Charlottesville and Boston and the whole anti-fascist movement. And recently there's been a lot of, you know, discussion about articles that have come out from Chris Hedges and an interview with Noam Chomsky, who have both come out with disparaging remarks about Antifa and the use of political violence and fighting fascism, you know, basically echoing the same boring, liberal platitudes that we often hear on the subject. But what do you think that is and what are your feelings about what Hedges and Chomsky said about Antifa? Well, I think, first of all, I mean, for, you know, fuck these people. I mean, fuck them. I mean, they, they deserve no, like, they deserve no quarter in our spaces, you know, anytime soon.

I mean, Hedges, I'm not as surprised about because he's the one that wrote that essay, The Cancer of Occupy, which was essentially the exact same argument. I mean, Chomsky's a little different because, I mean, since he was a teenager, he's somebody that's more or less identified as an anarchist or an anarchist or an anarchist or whatever. But, I mean, you know, his first essay he wrote when he was 16 was a defense of the Spanish anarchist fighting against Franco. So, I mean, where's that 16-year-old?

all that, Noam. You know, what's up? But I think at the heart of these arguments, and you know, what really sucks about that is because, you know, every article that's come out since has mentioned Noam Chomsky is basically seeing him as this left figure and said, like, well, even Nome Chomsky, you know, is saying this. And it, you know, lines right up with whatever the FBI or the DHS or Tucker Carlson is saying, it's just a complete package. And, you know, know, it's complete bullshit. But where most of these, like, especially hedges and Chomsky are coming from two directions. The first one is that the idea that combative or even quote unquote violent essentially people saying enough for themselves and pushing back if the police

attack them or other social forces attack them, turn people away is just totally false. I mean, if we look back over the past, you know, three or four years from Occupy to the no-daple struggle to Ferguson, to Charlottesville, I mean, when something gets broken or when people fight back against the police or they attempt to hold an area, I mean, that doesn't cause things to like, you know, people get scared and nobody comes out. Actually, the opposite happens. More people get involved. And also, this happens largely with the media blackout or even a negative media image of those events. In other words, even if the media is not covering it, for instance, like the prison strike that happened. in September of 2016, or if there's like a negative kind of media coverage about the event, so something like Ferguson or Baltimore, it still doesn't stop things from spreading. You know, there's an autonomous power to these things, and they spread to other sectors. They spread to other towns and communities, and they keep growing. And often when people see other people fighting back, I mean, that's a reason for them to get involved.

It's not this kind of like placid, we're going to walk in a circle with the sun. and hopefully some rich and powerful person will pay attention to us and they'll do something even though we know that's not going to happen so that kind of idea from hedges is just kind of blown out the window um the other kind of place that this comes from is like the idea that anti-fascism is somehow playing into what the alt-right wants and in effect it's saying like essentially it's not effective then it's doing uh the exact opposite of what an effective strategy should do, which again, if you look back at Chomsky's history,

you know, his, his praising of the Spanish anarchist, both as a successful anarchist revolution, but also, you know, the need to combat fascism physically through the use of anarchist militias. I mean, it's just ridiculous. You know, and also just like his own personal kind of ethos is like he sees himself as not telling working class people what they should do, but just giving them, you know,

analysis and and knowledge about what's going on. But I mean, just looking at what's happened in the United States since Charlottesville, the dramatic effect that anti-fascist resistance has had against the alt-right is staggering. I mean, if you go on to where all right trolls are actually truthful, you know, 4chan and 8-chan, I mean, you'll see them saying things like, you know, things are really messed up. We have a huge image problem now. People are dropping out of the movement. You know, there aren't any really all-right rallies being organized. The biggest set of far-right rallies that were called for on September 10th,

which was organized by Act for America, which is an anti-Muslim group, they had a set of rallies on June 10th that, you know, were largely outnumbered, anarchist, communist, socialist. People in general just came out and by and large, shut them down, including in some places like Austin, Texas, where you would expect that the far right would outnumber our team. But they canceled their rallies on September 10th, and they cited, quote, unquote, you know, threats of anti-fascist violence. But what they really meant was like, well, it's probably not a good time to like have a far right rally that we know

the bulk of people that will come out will be all right trolls, neo-Nazis, and militia types, just like we had back in June 10th. And also like people like Nathan Domingo have stepped down from Identity Europa, you know, everybody's pointing fingers at Richard Spencer calling him soft and weak and a horrible leader. Most people have distanced themselves from Jason Kessler, who was the original organizer of Unite the Right. If you look at Berkeley, there was huge findouts between a lot of the organizers there calling different people weak and bad organizers and just kind of placing blame. Like, these people who really aren't really good organizers, they just, you know, have a cult of personality based around them. So, you know, they've really

hit a huge roadblock because of what anti-fascist did in Charlottesville, but also all the months and years before that. So this idea that somehow people played into their, into their, into their strategy is just totally false. Yeah. And I think you hit the nail in the head when you talk about it's objectively working. We have empirical proof that instead of creating more of these rallies, we're actually decreasing the amount of the rallies that are occurring. They're getting scared. They don't want to come out. A lot of people that would be on the fence that maybe can sit on 4chan or 8chan and social media and talk about putting the Jews in the oven. When push comes to shove and they see people that think like them out in the

streets getting their faces punched in and getting chased out of parks, they don't want to go out there. They don't want to face that immediate physical consequence of their ideas and their actions. So, I mean, what's the liberal alternative? The liberal alternative, the liberal alternative is to sit back, ignore them, maybe write some witty op-eds, and what that would create is a context in which these people feel safe to come out. Rally after rally that goes off successfully without a hitch that seems safe and inviting, that's going to bring these trolls that are sitting on the fence out into the park. So liberalism does nothing except, you know, makes the problem worse. Anti-fastest action objectively, empirically works, and we are seeing that

happening right now. Right. And I think at the end of the day, I mean, anti-fascism is important because it's one of the few struggles where you know you can't point to the state and say like you know you know please state do something about these non-state actors that want to like create white ethno state and carry out genocide and stuff like that i mean ultimately that's what groups like the southern poverty law center or the adl like that's where they come from but like in this climate under trump i mean who's going to make that you know that argument that like you know trump Trump will fix it. You know, Trump's going to stop white nationalism. No, nobody's going to say that. I mean, they're actually looking to the alt-right as a base. They're pulling from it. I mean, all these different things. So anti-fascism is one arena where we can say, like, look, like the power of communities to defend themselves and to push back against, you know, auxiliary far-right forces, which not only want to protect the state, but also, you know, strengthen it to the point of fascism, you know, we need to push back and defend ourselves against these people. And, you know, on. Honestly, most working class, most poor people, I mean, that's a no-brainer.

I mean, there's a group of people that want to come in and harm you. You know, you're not going to rely on the government. You know, you need to protect yourself. You get organized. And obviously, the more people there are in the streets doing that, you know, the safer we all are. And, you know, we can create a working-class culture based around that. And what we need to do is take that ethics and apply it to everything that, you know, working-class people have to go through in the society, whether it's ice raids or whether

it's evictions or, you know, the intense ecological cluster fuck that will be, you know, Texas after all these plants have exploded, you know, along the chemical Gulf Coast. I mean, all that stuff. I mean, we need to apply this kind of ethics of solidarity and mutual aid and also self-defense to everything that we do. And that's very important. And I think that, you know, it's interesting because if you look at Boston, which had, you know, 40,000 or perhaps even more people in the streets against, you know, this quote-unquote free speech rally that included at least one person that was supposed to speak at Unite the Right.

I mean, there was more arrests and more violence at the end of that demonstration with the police than in Berkeley. But the media chose to kind of create this narrative framework that it was it was very peaceful and, you know, nothing was broken and everyone was nice and blah, blah, blah. But then Berkeley came around and then they saw like, oh shit, like actually there's this big, you know, large coalition, which includes unions and includes clergy groups. And it also includes like a black block of like 300 anarchists that were doing security and took over the park from the police and pushed out all right trolls. And even though that the small amount of fights that took place, the violence was actually less than Boston, I mean, it was very important for the media to make a point that like, look, we're not going to have. this anarchist, revolutionary anti-capist bullshit, you know, like that's one step too

far. You know, and the narrative that they created after that was very much in step with that. And like, it's weird because you see like people in the center and on the right say stuff like, well, these people aren't even Democrats, you know, or, you know, they're a gang, you know, essentially greasing the

wheels for greater repression further on. And then of course, right after that, we see all these articles come out about, you know, domestic terror or labeling people a gang and everything. But I mean that's very important and that was very important for the media and that was very important for

the Democratic Party-aligned liberal left to make that distinction and say like, look, like you're not on our side, we have no use for you come 2018, you're not going to help us get elected. Like we'd rather destroy you than have you exist, you know? Yeah, and that's a

very important thing to remember. Yeah, I think the neoliberal elite views revolutionary left as actually more of a threat than the fascist right in a lot of ways and that's starting to pop up and show itself. But you talked about some of these actions and Charlottesville. And in Charlottesville, we saw people like the oathkeepers and the three percenters come out fully armed, full tactical gear in military fatigues. So this proposes a question that I've been asking a lot of people. Should revolutionaries on the radical left be trying to claim or maybe

reclaim gun culture from the right? What are the benefits of groups like Redneck Revolt? or the Huey P. Newton Gun Club leftist picking up arms and making a display of it. Do you think that is tactically right? I mean, what are your thoughts on that? Well, I'd also put another group in there, the Black Women's Defense League, who we had on our podcast. But I think, broadly speaking, I mean, I'm not involved in any of those formations, so I can't really speak to their project.

But I think that we should, you know, be careful not to glorify violence, but instead, you know, what we want to encourage is self-defense in a time. And I'm not saying that those groups do that at all, but I think that when we're organizing, especially and even when it includes, you know, being armed in a tactic of self-defense, you know, we need to imply that, not saying like, you know, violence is great and like we're going to kill people and everything. Like, you know, we shouldn't say that and do that. And I think that that thinking is wrong, you know, and I think we're going to actually get a lot more people on our side if we're thinking very broadly in these, in these ethics of self-defense. defense and autonomy. And keeping in mind that like, like, whether it's anti-fascism or anything, like what we're after is not an escalation of violence, you know, with the state or with the fascists, right, per se. What we're after is gaining more and more power and more control over our lives outside of the state and capital. And obviously within that struggle, like, we're, they're going to try to destroy us and we're going to have to defend ourselves.

But, you know, the way that we get more powerful is not necessarily just by, you know, waging and escalating war with the state. But specifically, I think that, you know, picking out working class spaces like gun shows is very smart. I mean, that's something that we need to be doing is going to places where people are at, you know, swap meets, you know, gun shows, you know, wherever people are. Because, you know, if you go, if you live in like a rural place, you know, where there's not like just downtown corridors where people are hanging out in bars and everything. I mean, where are you going to find people just on the street? Sometimes it's hard,

you know? So, I mean, we need to really politicize spaces where the working class and poor people are at and build bridges into communities. And I think that also we can look for contradictions in things like gun culture that can drive a wedge, you know, against like reactionary and racist ideas. I mean, obviously the fact that anarchists, anti-fascist, communists, and socialists are going to OJava and fighting against ISIS, I think that's a huge potential wedge that we can drive within gun culture. It's like, hey, like this boogeyman that you have ISIS, that in reality most of you know nothing about, like our friends are fighting and dying against them to like build this kind of society that envisions a freedom that you have never even really thought about. So I think when people are faced with that, you know, it opens up a discussion. And yeah, I think that's something to explore and to continue. But we should also be, you know, aware that whenever we bring firearms into our organizing,

I mean, that's going to be another reason, you know, well, not another reason, but it's going to create a veneer of a context for the state to crack down harder. I mean, I've already seen a lot of articles going around that mentioned. redneck revolt just because, you know, of using guns. And it doesn't matter, of course, that everything they do is legal. It doesn't matter that they're exercising their Second Amendment rights, just like all these other far-right groups are. I mean, look at the Black Panthers. I mean, gun laws were changed just to stop them from successfully organizing against the police in their own communities. So, I mean, again, that's never going to stop them. They're going to come down harder on us than they are on the right. Absolutely. And speaking of the left, because

this goes nicely into the next question. How do you exactly define the left? What problems does IGD have with the quote-unquote left? And what are your thoughts on left to unity? Well, I think, like, when we talk about, I mean, the idea of left and right comes out of, you know, the French revolution that there were two sides of parliament. And, but if we, you know, if we get into the American context, I mean, anarchist, socialist, communist, radical working class politics have really by and large always been pushed. out of the mainstream political discourse or system. I mean, this isn't like Europe, you know,

there was never a push to like integrate social democracy or even like socialist parties into the operation of the United States framework. You know, we had a much more reactionary political system here in the United States. But for us, like looking at the official, quote unquote, official left organs like union leadership, political parties, nonprofits, we see these

things by and large as really being tools to manage and contain working class struggle, which is obviously the opposite of what we want. And also they're moreover based around ideas of kind of a neoliberal multiculturalism and a representation of identities under capitalism based around this idea of sameness and diversity within capitalism as opposed to wanting to destroy colonial. and white supremacist frameworks. So for us, that's the big problem with the left. And obviously, most people will say, like, that's not the real left.

You know, we're the real left. But I think in the language of power, like, that stuff is the actual left. And we're just like crazy people on the fringes screaming about revolution or something. But also in the current moment, I mean, we need to also realize that, like, you know, hashtag the resistance and these people that have created a marketplace for op-eds against Trump and and just pushing really to get the Democrats elected. I mean, they've really reclaimed. They've like kind of taken over like left, you know, the left moniker and like the idea that they are the left. I mean, post-Charlesville has made that very clear. And they even they even come up

with the term alt-left to try to say that they're the real left. Yeah. And why is that? I mean, it's really important, like, it's very important to understand, like, why they say alt-left. And, like, they're very clear that that is Black Lives Matter, which obviously means, you know, autonomous black liberation struggle. You know, anytime black people push back against, you know, imposed colonial white supremac conditions, you know, that's really what they're talking about. They're not talking about the organization or the hashtag. And then, you know, Antifaz is really just any combative anti-fazes. capitalist, anarchist, socialist, communist. I mean, I'm sure they throw DSA in there probably.

But I mean, like for them, anything that cannot be consumed by the, by the Democratic state, by the DNC, like, that is quote unquote, the alt-left, so meaning like it's not part of the political process, which, you know, we would say, yeah, that's totally right. I mean, we're trying to create, you know, a grassroots revolutionary push to like recreate society, recreate, you know, people's relationships and so on and so forth and bring down these structures of domination and control. Now, obviously, I think the term alt-left is stupid, but I think that, you know, that analysis, you know, from our enemies is not necessarily incorrect. So I think, you know, also too, like when we talk about left unity, there was something I read from the Austin Red Guards where they said, and they're Maoists, and they said they were talking. about anti-fascist struggle. They said, you know, the anarchists are our comrades, but also

the anarchists are our enemy because when we're in an organizing space with anarchists, we're trying to push our own set of politics as opposed to allow them to push one of, you know, horizontal power and, you know, decentralization and everything like that. So, I mean, I think that we do need to be like leftists of different stripes or anarchists and communists and socialists. Like, we need to be realistic and not, you know, present this idea that we're all on the same page because we're not. We actually want very different kinds of future worlds and we want very different kinds of movements and we have very different organizing strategies. But at the same time, like, we need to create the spaces in which we can have discussions with each other. So when

we are working on something where we are going to be in the same space, we can at least be on the same page with each other and you know just know you know how are we going to organize like how are we going to do this you know are we going to stab each other in the back are we going to sell each other out to the media and stuff like that hopefully not but we need those relationships in place and I think that's much more important than some idea of quote unquote left unity which really just means you know the ISO tells people what to do in a shitty coalition or something like that yeah yeah yeah I mean I find in my in our organizing here locally um we a whole range of organizations but they all work very closely together, and they're all populated by a pretty even mix of Marxist,

of Leninist, of anarchist, and of Maoist, and of Democratic socialists, and at least in my experiences, which is pretty robust, although it's confined to localities. It's been very comradly. Our debates and our disagreements theoretically are hashed out in a friendly context, and most of what we have to do now, given the Trump era, given the rise of the far right, given how entrenched neoliberalism is, Most of that is something that we can all agree on and we can all mobilize in a unified front against. And I think you touched on something that's important. Instead of this ideological need for left unity, this notion of left unity just based on a similarity of ideas, it's really more about a materialist need for left unity, given the conditions that we're actually operating in right now to sow seeds of division is to weaken our movements.

And so at least at this point, I think it's important to try to struggle with each other over lines, you know, have friendly, comradly disagreements. But at the same time, I think insofar as it can work, it should work towards all of us coming together to fight a shared collective fight. Would you more or less agree with that? Yeah, I mean, I think it's, I think like people there in smaller towns are going to be in a situation where it's like, you know, the local IWW chapter will team up with, you know, D.S. or, you know, the local communist group or whatever, like, like, that's, you know, that's just, like, how it happens in a smaller place, you know, in a, in larger cities where there's, you know, larger groups of people and there's, you know, scenes within scenes. I mean, people can be a little more choosy about who they associate with. I see. You know, in some big cities, you can exist your whole political life and not have to engage with, you know, X, Y, Z alphabet soup group over there or something like that.

But, you know, and we should be real, too. Like, there are a lot of groups on the left that just feed off of social struggle and just, like, you know, throw, you know, they would throw themselves in front of a train if it would get them a little bit of legitimacy with people or, you know, they're just vampires. They go from struggle to struggle from cause to cause, just trying to sell their paper and grow their, and grow their organization. And they don't actually do anything. You know, they don't actually organize. They're not sharing skills. And, you know, we'll talk about some of this later, I believe. But, I mean, for us, there's a big difference between being in an organization and actually being organized.

There are people that belong to organizations, which are not organized at all. They have no organizational capacity. They have no relationship with working class communities and struggle. You know, all they have is their name, you know, in the list somewhere. And they're just mythically part of some group. but I mean being organized is much different having the ability to do things to like do material projects you know many material things happen having relationships with having relationships with people I mean that's what's real and that's what's needed and again you know a big part of our problem with much of the left is that you know a lot of left groups see themselves as like wanting to like put themselves in in front of struggle and I mean not to get off on a secretarian tangent, but I mean, our problem with Leninism is that ultimately, you know, the idea of Leninist revolution for us is about, you know, creating a state out of, you know, an insurrection, basically, or some uprising, you know, and in that state, whether it's imposed by force or it gains enough social capital or credibility to, like, submit itself as a state. I mean, and that's when the revolutionary, that's when the revolutionary project ends. And for us, you know, it's, much, much different in that we want, you know, the end result to be a classless and

stateless society. Right. Yeah, and that goes again into this next question because it's going down, is identified as anarchists. So, so what are the tasks that need to be accomplished by the anarchist movement? What does an autonomous position mean? And what role does autonomous positions play in that anarchist movement? Yeah, we, I mean, just to be clear, we don't say autonomous in the sense, and I'm not trying to put out a line. I mean, this is something I have an affinity with. I don't know if other people involved in IGD would subscribe to this. We're not trying to like sell an ideological package of autonomism, which in the past

has been like associated with like writers like Negri or, you know, past European social movements. I mean, basically use the term just to imply exactly the word that it comes from autonomy. But I think that moreover, um, anarchism. have a series of task ahead of them. And the first thing is, like I said, like being able to physically, like, look at situations and being able to figure out how are we actually going to do X, Y, Z. A lot of leftists and anti-capitalists, revolutionaries, like, they busy themselves with trying to figure out and digest and consume, you know, quote unquote, the correct

revolutionary line, as opposed to seeing a situation and saying, like, okay, how are we actually going to intervene or organize or act within, you know, this situation. So, for instance, like, with what's going on in Texas right now, there's various leftist, anti-fascist, anarchist, autonomous groups that are going out and providing relief. Like, what do we physically have to do to make that work? What do we have to do to get supplies to people? What is the infrastructure we need? What are the connections that we need? How are we going to navigate on the ground? You know, so on and so forth. And the second thing, which I already brought up, is you know the need for infrastructure we need you know meeting halls we need buildings we need the

ability to print publications we need the ability to house websites on servers like we need all these things and they are based in infrastructure and you know that's very important and if if you don't have that you have a huge lack of access to power and beyond that is just the ability you know we need to develop real relationships with people on the ground and actually human communities. I mean, our world atomizes people, distance from each other, you know, breaks people apart.

We need to be able to create spaces in which that process is reversed. And the last thing is growing beyond just a political scene or a subculture. I mean, anarchism historically has always had this problem, you know, in the current inclination of anarchism, especially U.S. anarchism, either being tied to punk rock or you know traveler kids subculture and stuff like that not that

subculture itself is a problem because you know like we brought up you know gun culture something like that that's a subculture but you know being locked within that is definitely problematic and we need to be able to pull from a variety of subcultures a variety of geographies you know from all different kinds of communities and really at the end of the day that's power you know that's that's real power being able to have people across a vast geography all working together all sharing information um all putting in work and i think that that's why um there is an ascendancy of anarchist groups and anarchist organizing now because that's the kind of stuff that we've been building around you know if you look at the large scale turnouts that happen on things like

June 10th or, you know, the wave of stuff that happened post Charlottesville, a lot of that speaks to, you know, the growth of anarchist networks. And within that, there's a variety of groups. You know, there's autonomous affinity groups. There's groups like Redneck Revolt. There's the General Defense Committee of the IWW, so on and so forth. But I mean, these are showing that people are building and they're growing in their communities. But we need to continue to go forward with these kind of principles in mind. Absolutely, yeah. And it's worth noting because I don't say this often enough,

but this podcast and myself are officially affiliated with the Omaha GDC. So that's an organization that we're active in and that we think is extremely important. In our back and forth for the setup to this interview, you mentioned this phrase, beyond insurrectionary anarchism, but not without it. We've had episodes on insurrectionary anarchism with Dr. Bones in the past.

But what does this mean to you? and can you flesh this notion of being beyond insurrectionary anarchism, but not without it? Well, yeah, we kind of touched on it before, but I mean, you know, IGD really comes from a lot of people that come out of insurrectionary anarchism. And insurrectionary anarchism was basically a theoretical and a tactical framework that developed in European countries to basically deal not only with the material conditions in 1970s, Italy, but also the failure, as some people saw it, of the C&T, labor union in Spain once Franco died and the C&T was allowed to come back into existence.

But in the United States, around 2008, after the Republican National Convention, insurrectionary ideas kind of growing off of what Canadian insurrectionary anarchists had been doing and building for a while really grew when there was a multitude of cities that kind of had a similar project of producing publication. and running spaces and really kind of getting more involved with, you know, local community-based struggles, but really kind of basing their activity around this idea of really trying to be organized but not necessarily being involved in the capital O organization. And I think that basically that continued up until Occupy.

And with Occupy, we saw massive state repression that kind of like, you know, destroyed the camps. stop people from occupying buildings. And I think that in many ways, the anarchist movement didn't know how to kind of come to terms with that defeat. And I think that in that moment, people kind of split. And one side kind of went more towards nihilism of just like, you know,

we're not going to be able to actually create the kind of world that we want. And other people kind of thought, well, how could we kind of go beyond this kind of affinity-based model where we're just trying to like intervene when a situation produces itself. And that's kind of where, you know, we're kind of coming from is like kind of taking a lot of these basic principles and trying to build upon them, but also looking at their limitations. Because I do think that in a lot of ways, insurrectionary anarchism, how it's been kind of like nurtured in the United States is very limited.

You know, I don't think, like, there's an idea that, like, having a lot of people involved in something is somehow a bad thing, you know, a mass movement per se. And I don't think we want to massify people in the sense we just want them to be mindless automaton's. But I do think we want a lot of shit ton of people to be involved in a revolutionary project. And I think that in order to do that, we need something much more than just an affinity group of like seven or eight people, which have not. no accountability to something wider than themselves and are just kind of waiting around for the next thing to pop off and then trying to intervene in that, push it as far as it can go, and then kind of going back into their, you know, circle. I don't think that's enough and we need much more.

Okay. And you mentioned earlier you were talking about Leninism and the 100 years anniversary of the October Revolution is coming up. And there was what led to the, you know, you know, the October Revolution was a moment of insurrection. So these things are kind of confined by what I would say is like the conditions that pop up at the time. You can't force an insurrection because that's more or less adventurism. But you have to have your finger on the pulse and these insurrectionary movements are kind of organic.

They spring up organically. Would you agree with that? Well, I mean, in the history of the Spanish anarchists, they very much tried to launch, you know, insurrections at times. I mean, you know, groups of peasants would try to take over their towns. People would revolt in order to support political prisoners. I mean, obviously there's examples like, you know, the Easter uprising in 1916. I mean, there is a history of people saying, like, fuck it, like, let's do it, you know. And that's very important.

But at the same time, yeah, I mean, I would be very critical of the idea that like, you know, about quote unquote adventureism. I can see what you're talking about. But again, I think this goes back to, you know, our bone to pick with Lindenism of basically wanting to use revolt, use insurrection to basically take that and then create a state out of it, as opposed to taking the space that is created out of an insurrection that basically pushes the state, pushes the police, pushes the apparatus control outside of everyday life, and then trying to recreate an autonomous. framework, an anti-capital framework, feminist framework, and anti-colonial frameworks, so on and so forth, in that place to recreate, you know, social relationships that are communal, that are

anti-capital. Do you worry that if that situation were to arise, that the sort of, you know, destruction of the state or the pushing the side of the state would leave a power vacuum or possibilities of having, you know, particularly reactionary regions or, or, you know, communities in the, in the country that has just been overthrown. I mean, how would you, how would an anarchist respond to the notion that taking over the state is to put a major tool in the hands of working people that the otherwise wouldn't have and that somebody other, somebody else could come and take if the situation arises if the anarchist refused to take the state? But I think the idea

that somehow there's going to be, you know, like on, you know, on Tuesday, we're all going to go down to Washington, like, that's not going to happen. Like, the idea that, like, somehow the American state is going to be overthrown, like, in one fail swoop and that, you know, we're all just going to have to figure out, like, it's not going to happen like that. If you look back at, like, the history of the United States, whether we're talking about maroon societies, you know, creating autonomous regions or, you know, strikers in 1877 taking over railways. And, like, running them or like the Seattle General Strike in 1919. I mean, these are, I'm not saying like, you know, build the commune in one country, but I'm saying like, you know, the idea that somehow people can, you know, overthrow the state all at one time. I mean, it's just not going to happen like that. I think that that it's much more realistic that, you know, people will take regions. And that might happen in a variety of ways.

It might happen in the wake of huge disasters. It might happen in the wake of, you know, something like Flint, Michigan, where the state becomes like a failed state, essentially, and people just have no hope in it. And things get to a point where they just have to start running to themselves. It might happen out of an insurrectionary situation where people actually are able to push the state back. I mean, we also have to remember, you know, the drive of this government to put down any sort of revolt. I mean, you know, the United States government has used the Air Force on strikers. You know, they bombed black radicals in Philadelphia in the 1980s. I mean, assassinated the Black Panthers, framed up the wobblies.

I mean, this government will use every tool that's disposal to put down dissent, you know, which again is a reason to organize and to build relationships. But, yeah, I don't think that we can, that it's going to be possible to, like, take the entire country. But again, like, if there's one thing the Trump moment has taught us is that the legitimacy of the state is waning, I mean, especially with millennials, like more and more young people are opposed to capitalism, they're opening to anti-capist ideas, and also just, you know, the state is seen as more and more illegitimate. And within that, there's a huge realm of possibilities. This is why one of Bannon's main project, you know, this whole idea of the fourth turning. is to re-instill a sense of the state within young people. And this is why there's such a drive for war with the elites is to reinstill that connection with the state

because it is waning. And I think within that, you know, there's a variety of possibilities. And I think that in many ways we don't really know what's going to happen, but we need to prepare for a multitude of situations. Absolutely. And I see climate change. and the sort of havoc that it's going to wreak as sort of presenting these organic situations where entire areas and regions or even localized communities are devastated

where the state, because they're having to put out so many different fires, you know, metaphorically all over as the sort of environmental catastrophes pile up, that this opportunity for these sorts of localized takings over is going to present itself. And that's the importance for leftists to organize. now and to organize as much as they can and to build connections with actual communities because if if the left doesn't take advantage of those situations the far right will and we started to see that a little bit in in Houston after Harvey you know the the quote-unquote proud boys were down there throwing up white power signs with with weapons in their hands and stuff and

they were talking about shooting looters so in the chaos created by climate change there is going to be a struggle between the far left and the far right and the far left should be as prepared for that as possible yeah and i mean if you look at i mean i just check the news today i mean there's there's massive forest fires happening throughout california there's hurricane irma i believe that's headed to florida yep there's um you know there's all these things and they're not going away and and i mean it really sucks because i mean if if you've seen the news about you know the fallout of you know toxic chemicals being released um into the area of Texas, I mean, it's just disgusting because you know that nothing's, you know, quote

unquote, nothing is going to be done. And probably like 10 years from now, there'll be some news piece like, wow, that like it's really going to suck for people. I mean, like, you know, the majority of people that lost their homes will not be covered on insurance. I mean, this is going to be a huge blow to people, you know? Absolutely. And, uh, but at the same time, like you said, this is an opportunity. I mean, you know, at the end of the day, how are those people going to feel about Trump, you know? him coming out there being like look at this turnout you know they're going to be like fuck this orange motherfucker exactly you know fuck these rich people yeah you know and he even had the audacity to say that he was going to give a million dollars and then his press secretary said oh no he didn't say

that you know i mean these are slimy pieces of shit exactly and uh the longer that this system continues and all it is is you know it doesn't matter who's in power but government all it is is a system of management it's trying to manage this disaster of capitalism that's all it's trying to do And it can have, you know, Barack Obama's face, can have Trump's face, have Hillary's face. It doesn't matter. You know, it's just a system of management. And I think that, again, you know, if we're going to use this language of left unity, I think that one thing that revolutionaries need to push is that, you know, this government, you know, this system, you know, this country is not legitimate. You know, it has no legitimacy. It doesn't have legitimacy to this land. It doesn't have legitimacy to force you into wage labor. It doesn't have legitimacy to rule. you and kill you with police and the sooner people realize that the sooner they they take on their own class interest you know the better off that we will be and the and the much better situation will have to actually attempt to survive you know what's coming which is this ecological fucking disaster i mean just these past couple weeks you know we've been looking at post charlottesville

but i mean the the warning signs of just impending ecological collapse are just more and more present. Absolutely. Yeah, getting back, we have about 10 minutes left, so getting back to the theoretical underpinnings of anarchism or just leftism generally. This is a question that's really interested me, and we talked about this a little bit before we did the show, but what does quote unquote race trader mean and how does the, how does IDG, but how does the left generally, how should they put anti-colonial ideas into their anarchism or their leftism? Well, I think that, you know, if you go back to writers like W.E.B. Du Bois, it was a, you know, black and socialist author wrote text like, you know, black reconstruction. I mean, one of the things that he touched on was this, as he called it, you know, the blinders of whiteness or the inability of white workers to link up with black workers for their own self class interest. And, you know, other people have. have taken this idea and expanded upon it.

There's a book called The Wages of Whiteness that kind of builds on this critique. But essentially, if we're going to talk about class in the United States or the way the capitalism functions, we really come back to not only know the fact that we are on stolen land and there was genocide that took place in the Americas, but also the fact that a racial caste system

has been developed in the Americas. If you look at Latin America, if you look at Mexico, you look at the United States, you look at Canada. I mean, racial caste division of society was the way that local elites were able to divide people against each other and in the service of the state. And, you know, that's incredibly important. You know, it's incredibly important, you know, especially now in this context. And it's important as well because, like, if we look at the alt-right, I mean, the alt-right is important to look at, for a variety of reasons, not just because they cause a threat, but also because, you know, they are a millennial creation that seeks to, you know, push back against what they see as like multiculturalism or the left colonization of the internet, you know, circa 2008.

But I mean, we need to really look at the way that they view race and their problems with it and also understand that like, you know, the boogeyman that they have of kind of like the left, you know, the left. Tumblr, identity politics person, you know, we're actually different than that, you know, as well. You know, we might be close to that person and be friends with them. But ultimately, at the end of the day, I think, you know, that is much different than saying, like, we need to destroy these colonial systems of white supremacy and the theft of indigenous people's land. I think those are very different positions. I mean, the idea that, like, all identities can exist under capitalism is much different than like saying, like, we need to destroy the system.

And I think that's pretty, pretty basic. And I, like, there was a journal called Race Trader that came out of a group called the Sojourner Truth Organization. Some of the people that were involved in that went on to create that journal. And they were kind of like, like a weird kind of mix of like some sort of Trotskyist, but also like more towards an autonomous Marxist position. But, I mean, they really honed in on this, this contradiction with, in class war politics that white workers can like shoot themselves in the foot over their

own class interest because it furthers, you know, this racial idea of superiority. And I think that obviously Trump definitely, you know, reasserts that position and shows this kind of contradiction. And I think that a lot of leftists really kind of view like all these different things like race, gender classes, like competing and you've got to pick one. I think obviously that's just so stupid you know like these things are a totality um but they're different you know based on where you go in the world but we need to look at all of them you know when we're thinking about how we're going to get rid of the system right yeah i had a mentor years ago um a radical leftist anarchist very active um pews put on the terrorist watch list he couldn't even fly because of his

left wing activities and he was a local person and he and we had a lot of talks and this was right at my critical juncture of becoming radicalized, and I was really wondering about this question of race as a white man, you know, how do I approach these questions of race in this long history of genocide and slavery and white supremacy that this country is founded and perpetuated on. And that was the first time I ever heard the term race traitor. And he said, and this was a non-white person, he said that I have to become a race traitor. And that stuck with me. And this is, you know, this is years and years later and it still sticks with me. I think what he was saying is you have to not be invested in your whiteness.

You have to use the fact that you are white and that no matter what I do or say, I will still passively benefit from white privilege from the white supremacist system just because I am absorbed in the concept of whiteness. But by being a race trader, I think what he meant to say was you need to put yourself at the service

of deconstructing white supremacy, appointing out to fellow white people what it means to be white, what whiteness is and what power and class dynamics whiteness serves and to bang against that whiteness and against the system that props it up. Would you agree that that's what you mean when you say to be a race trader? Sure. I mean, it's, again, it's not about, for us, it's more of like a package of ideas and ethics and

critiques about history and just kind of how we see the United States more than just like, you know, a pin to put on your jacket or something like that. But again, like, you know, like when people talk about gentrification, a lot of times they say like, oh, white people shouldn't move to X, Y, Z, and so on and so forth, which again, I think puts, you know, the agency of change back on the white person, that if the white person doesn't move there, you know, the things will suddenly be magical, which I think, of course, is falling. but you know again to advance these politics means that like no you need to take an active stance you need to take an active role in a struggle that necessarily that necessarily means that you come up against you know this wider structure of of whiteness just like if you're a white person you're at a job and another white person comes up to you and says like hey you want to hear this racist joke and you say no and you know all of a sudden you've put yourself in a situation where you've crossed a certain threshold and you've made your stance very clear and that there may be be consequences to that or I don't know if you if you've ever worked a job where you come in come in contact with law enforcement um and uh you know you have to deal with the police and just you know like letting them know that you don't like them as a white person like you know can have ramifications and like they they assume that just because you're white and like they come across

you on their job and and you do as well that you're going to have this certain relationship you're actually like actually i fucking hate you yeah exactly you know all of a sudden it's like well then you've made you've made a certain position clear and uh you know that's that's that's that's not how it's supposed to go you know you're supposed to be buddies just because of the color of your skin and uh you know obviously like these are just low level daily things but you know they have wider um wider stipulations i think it means ultimately that like doing that means that you're not the agent of change per se but that you must take an active role in an anti-colonial anti-racist struggle.

Perfect, yeah, absolutely. What is the Invisible Committee, and how can we put that into an American context? Sure, I would say the other thing that really influenced IGD for some of us has been a body of taxes have come out by the Invisible Committee, which is a group of anti-state communists in France. They published a book, probably the one that everybody's heard about that was on Glenn Beck

as the coming insurrection. The reason why I think that they're important is because they have a pretty simple idea of, quote, unquote, living and fighting. And I think that why it's important is when we find ourselves in groups of liberals and progressives, one of the things we always hear from that kind of crowd is that, you know, we shouldn't be out protesting. We shouldn't be out rioting or fighting the police. We need to be kind of like putting our politics into action, either in like, politics. positive things or like in things that prefigure a certain kind of world like land projects or you know growing food and all that stuff and obviously like none of those things are bad but what they miss is that they're connected to an actual resistance movement that can not only build a

different kind of world but also fight against the state and everything like that so I think that we need to the reason again why they're important is is to really kind of destroy this dichotomy between kind of like positive and negative or like you know kind of opting out of society and creating the world that you want or facing it head on which at times can just look like activism where you're just going from protest to protest

or as they say like chasing the movements where you're just kind of like going around to wherever there's you know quote unquote action or leftist hanging out you know we need you know both both dual power growing autonomy from the state, from the economy, and also like an active, combative movement that can put our ideas into place and also fight back.

I think that we can't divorce those things. And that's probably like the hardest thing to build, but that's exactly what we need. All right. So we're getting to an hour here. We're about ready to wrap up. This is a question I want to ask you because I think you have a, I mean, when you talk, you fire me up and you're very wise about how these things are unfolding. So ultimately, are you optimistic about the future of revolutionary anti-capitalist movements in the United States, particularly and in the world broadly?

Why or why not? I think we should be very determined and optimistic. I mean, we should keep our eyes on the prize. We shouldn't let anything blind us. You know, we shouldn't be blinded by hope, you know, which is basically, you know, relieving agency of ourselves and just like, you know, like, I hope that things will be okay. Like, no, you know, we need to put in the work. you know we've really got to that's what it's about you know it's it's like if you're in a band and you jam with your friends every once in a while and you're like you know one day we're

going to play a show it's like no motherfucker you got to get up there and put flyers out and like you know hit the pavement you got to put in the work and I think really like that's where we've got to go you know there's not anyone ideology that's going to save us there's not a new book that's going to come out that's going to like explain what we have to do like we're going to learn this by acting, by organizing, and by making real relationships. We're not going to get out of that work. You know, we need to stare at our shortcomings in the face and overcome them. You know, that's how we're going to advance. But, you know, just in the broad strokes, again, you know, the state is losing legitimacy, but also within that, it's going to keep lashing out. It's going to

like the state and also, you know, the center, you know, quote unquote, the liberals, they're going to attack us as a way to regain their legitimacy, which in means. many ways is going to be double-sided because as the state loses legitimacy, as it makes us an enemy, like, as we see, like, now there's a backlash to the liberal backlash, you know, against Antifa. So we've kind of, like, seen who our enemies are and also, like, what people stand up with us. Like, you know, we tweeted this out, but I think one of the things that's very positive is that a lot of black radical authors, clergy, organizers have said quite plainly, like, we're a pro-antifah you know and i think that's very telling at a time when there's so many

white liberals that just without even knowing what's going on or have ever stepped on to you know a place where people are protesting they're just writing people off so we need to we need to prepare ourselves for repression and also prepare ourselves for different sectors trying to attack us because they're like shitty rappers and they have to write a song about somebody else just so anybody will pay you know what i'm saying yeah yeah just so anybody will pay attention to them. They're like, we're going to, you know, fuck you, MC, blah, blah, blah. Here's our song. Because that's all they got. I mean, the Democrats are, like, according to polls, the Democrats are even behind Trump in support. We need to keep that in mind.

Also, you know, fascist groups just because the Charlottesville, you know, really put a rain on their parade, they're not going to go away. If you look at websites like all right.com, which is run by Richard Spencer. Right now they're talking about legalist resistance, going underground, you know, engaging in acts of terror and violence and murder that groups in like the late 80s and early 90s did like the order. So, you know, now's the time, again, to think about security, to think about self-defense. Like they're not going away.

They're going to keep pushing forward. And also that, you know, as we talked about earlier, the ecological situation. I think a lot of lessons are going to come out of Harvey, you know, we need to really think about all of these questions, like how to build autonomy, how to build power, how to build networks, how to help, you know, how do we intervene in this moment, how do we organize, how do we make relationships? And again, just thinking about more and more of the U.S. becoming a failed state, infrastructure breaking down, the economic signs, like the elites are pulling their money out of infrastructure.

you know they want tax cuts and they also want to slash benefits for us that's a sign that they're basically saying like shit's about to hit the fan i mean we see all these these like silly articles about how tech moguls are like building bunkers and shit like that but i mean there's a there's a real sense of um of anxiety within the elites that like shit is going to hit the fan there's going to be another economic crisis trump's going to continue to be trump um you know things will continue to go south so they're kind of pulling back in many ways from their involvement within the wider system, and we need to realize that. And just continuing to, you know, be ready to fight, build and organize in a variety of terrains, you know, whether it's in the wake of a hurricane or at these big anti-fascist days of action. And also, you know, the other thing, like the old left is dead. You know, the nonprofits, the entryism to the Democrats, the Democrat. party like no one should be talking about that if we're going to talk about it left unity let's talk

about first like what what actually doesn't work we can all agree on and that shit doesn't work and it just needs to be left at the dustbin of history absolutely all right well thank you so much for coming on i really appreciate it um it's been a blast to talk to you hopefully i can have you back on because it's i mean there's so much more to talk about but where where can viewers find and support it's going down and then what are some recommendations that you would offer listeners who want to learn more about anything we've discussed tonight i would say go to it's going down dot org we have a library section which you can read about you know basically everything we've talked about uh check us on instagram facebook twitter uh it's going down i gd news on most of them

uh check us out we have a podcast that comes out every uh week as well and you know just hit us up we have an email email email us at info and it's going down dot org absolutely please support it's going down they're doing they're doing very important work thank you again for coming on i really, really appreciate it, and let's talk again sometime. Thank you. Appreciate it. $8 billion give the IDF troopers, corporate mooters, the rest of us are high and dry, left-out losers,

telling us our gyms are just pious guy delusions while they eating every word of some childlike nuisance who are viled and gruesome, entitled and brutish, they want to have power, but they'll kill kids to do it. Have you cheer them for them, but they poisoning the water. Have you cheer them for them while they're dropping all these warheads? Have you cheering for them, but they're pushing through posterity. Have you cheering for them but they heal the planet merrily.

I'll be going to his control number Now there's one to see