Anarcha-Punditry
Only post this week as i'm on vacation 🏖🏖 be back next week with a subscriber-review of a movie and whatever other chaotic screeds I can come up with
After my piece about how you absolutely don't have to hand it to the Democrats, I was asked to guest on two different podcasts for conversations about presidential elections, Kamala, MAGA and the depoliticizing, spectacular and repressive function of electoralism.
I joined Patrick Farmsworth on Last Born in the Wilderness, where our conversation focused on the relationship between Democrats, recuperation, and in which I laid out my theoretical perspective on electoralism.
The sense of power and solidarity and hope that we have pulled from the wreckage of 500 years of settler-colonial genocide and planet destruction, that we have managed to yank and build in our communities chosen families and in infrastructures like media, DIY assistance, mutual aid work, and through looting and rioting and marching in the streets together—all of these things we have pulled from the heart of a dying empire—we cannot at this moment give it back to the Democrats because they're finally—finally—throwing a punch. It's not thanks to the Democrats that MAGA movement is falling apart and could be blown over like a feather. The Democrats didn't do that. They did everything they could to fluff the movement. They kept it alive. They literally chose Donald Trump as their opponent in 2015. At this moment, where we're feeling relief—and I am feeling relief, and I am feeling hope—that we are not headed for not only a world historical genocide that the country that I live in is supporting and that the taxes I'm forced to pay are funding—not only that, but then also it's going to turn into full in the street fascism. The fact of that second thing isn't happening doesn't mean I have to hand it to the other forces that have built this situation."
I also joined the Its Going Down Podcast to talk about the Vibe Shift, the potential collapse of MAGA, and how we can interact with the anti-fascist openings and possibilities presented when so much energy is pointed at the election. And the episode coincidentally starts with an interview with one of the hosts of 12 Rules For What, my fave antifascist podcast!
One thing that's actually advantageous about the massive weaponized unreality that has been built by the right, this network of false information built over years and years, this massive hallucinatory space, is that on some level they genuinely don't understand the difference between Assta Shakur and Nancy Pelosi. And the liberals have forgotten how to coopt the left in anything other than vibes and gestures. That means theres actually a lot of space for us to move. We can do a lot of shit that they are not gonna notice because they have gotten out of the habit of noticing. The political class has forgotten their class enemies in a big way, they've forgotten how we move, they're trying to repress the memory of 2020, they're terrified of it...and that's the only thing they can imagine, a big riotous national uprising, so they're really obsessed with vibe management. That gives a lot of space for anarchistic practices of smaller clandestine work, both destructive and constructive.
Between the two podcasts I covered the range of my feelings and opinions on the moment. Both were recorded before the DNC, but the perspective was almost immediately borne out in the convention's final day, where Uncommitted campaigners were humiliated and Harris boasted about having the most lethal military force in history. I'm very happy with how both conversations turned out!