A Sense of Doubt blog post #2975 - Merry Crisis and Happy New Fear - CrimethInc Newsletters

A Sense of Doubt blog post #2975  - Merry Crisis and Happy New Fear  - CrimethInc Newsletters

I have been a fan of CrimethInc since my good friend Ryan Walters lent me a copy of Days of War, Nights of Love until  I bought my own copy.

For years, I have been meaning to do a series from the book on the blog, and so maybe this is the year as I hope to tackle two-three other books in the near future.

For now, a quick share, because I am busy preparing my presentation on banned books. More on that in tomorrow's post.

This is some good reading, though.

Love it.

Thanks for tuning in.

View this email in your browser Friends, lovers, (ex-)workers, comrades, Greetings from the CrimethInc. ex-Workers’ Collective! Almost one year ago, a catastrophic fire destroyed our office and a substantial portion of our books, posters, and other materials. But, as we declared at the time, we were “BURNT DOWN—NOT OUT!” Thanks to an amazing outpouring of support from all of you, we managed to raise enough money to recover and continue our operations. Since then, we’ve successfully reprinted Days of War, Nights of Love and the Contradictionary. (If any of you participated in our Kickstarter and forgot to send us your address, this is your last reminder.) We also provided crucial anarchist coverage of the invasion of Ukraine and Russian anti-war resistance—the inspiring defense of the Atlanta Forest—and the struggle for self-determination as it relates to both gender and abortion access. Last week, another catastrophe struck. As part of a broader attempt to shift global political discourse to the right, billionaire Elon Musk banned us from Twitter at the urging of a far-right troll and Instagram followed suit. Since then, a wave of sympathetic coverage has exposed how Musk's self-declared “free speech absolutism” is only a smokescreen for empowering the extreme right while silencing those who fight bigotry and oppression. Over the last two years, we've been specifically targeted by the most powerful government in the world, the richest capitalist in the world, the most powerful social media company in the world, the most powerful newspaper in the world, and even by the elements themselves. And yet, as should be clear by now, THEY CAN'T STOP US! Comrades, if there's one thing that we have learned from the centuries of anarchist combatants whose black banners we take up today, it's that together, we are unstoppable. This newsletter is a message in a bottle to all of you out there who continue to fight on, no matter what forces are arrayed against us. Here's how you can support us and what you can expect from us in the weeks to come: No Twitter? No problem! Follow us on Mastodon and Telegram and subscribe to our RSS feed. You can also find us on YouTube, Tumblr, and Reddit. If you want to help us continue to reach people offline, order stickers and others materials to distribute here. We'll keep thwarting the efforts of billionaires and right-wing trolls who want to silence us. You can help by printing and pasting up posters, amplifying our efforts to intervene in corporate media discourse, and building communities that don’t depend on corporate social media platforms to stay connected. We'll continue to publish reports on struggles against authority across the globe. We remain in touch with our correspondents from Colombo and Tehran to Warsaw and Rio de Janeiro, and we're committed to keep bringing you action-packed long-form coverage from the front lines of global revolt. We're expanding our audio presence to make sure our efforts will remain accessible no matter what stunts the billionaires pull. Soon, you'll be able to find an enormous amount of audio content through YouTube, Soundcloud, and Spotify. This will include newly produced audio versions of the latest articles on our website as well as our back catalog of podcasts, audio books, and audio zines. If you're interested in helping our CrimethInc. audio affinity group, please reach out! We'll be stepping up our on-the-ground presence at book fairs and community events across North America. If you're hosting something in your community and you'd like us to show up with a table of literature or to offer a presentation, let us know! In the new year, we've got several new exciting projects in the works, including an audio version of our anti-capitalist classic Work, new posters and stickers to decorate your community, new zines, our first new print book in years, and much more! In the meantime, you can expect regular monthly updates from us via this email newsletter with articles, event announcements, and the like. If you want, you can donate to us here. The strength of our networks of anarchist resistance cannot be measured in followers, “friends,” likes, or retweets. However we engage with social media as we move forward, the most important thing is to deepen and strengthen our concrete relationships of solidarity until they extend across the globe. If you're reading this, you are a vital link in that chain. Rest assured that so long as there is breath in our lungs, we will keep fighting to create a future in which neither politicians, Supreme Court justices, fascist trolls, nor billionaires can wield power over anyone. The future is unwritten; the revolution will not be tweeted. We'll see you in your inbox—and we’ll be beside you in the streets. Keep loving and keep fighting, the CrimethInc. (Ex-)Workers’ Collective

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friends, lovers, (ex-)workers, comrades!

As the Greeks say, Merry Crisis and a Happy New Fear! 2022 was a hell of a year for us. Between recovering from a catastrophic fire at our mail-order space last winter and fighting back after Elon Musk personally banned us from Twitter last November, we continued to publish, record, speak, and agitate on many fronts. In this update, we’ll review some of what we did in 2022 and reveal some of what we’re planning for 2023.

Highlights from the year

Anarchism, as we see it, is a struggle for freedom against all forms of hierarchy and domination, which cannot be confined to a single issue or terrain. Here are some of the highlights of our efforts this year: In the field of anti-capitalist struggle, we chronicled the surge of anti-work sentiments in the US and beyond, and analyzed contemporary union struggles and what we can learn by comparing the last two general strikes in the United States. At the intersection of anti-police and ecological struggles, we've been inspired by the campaign to defend the Atlanta forest against Cop City and Hollywood, publishing a detailed history of the first phase of the struggle and inspiring accounts from the front lines. Last month, police carried out a massive raid, destroying community infrastructure in the forest and bringing trumped-up charges against six young people for their alleged participation in the struggle to defend it. There is a call for a weekend of solidarity January 13 to 16. Against the rising tide of gender fascism and the repression of trans and queer communities, we published a poster and strategic proposal around reproductive freedom and an analysis and DIY guide towards gender self-determination. Internationally, we devoted considerable time and energy to communicating with comrades in the former Soviet Union in order to cover the Russian state's invasion of Ukraine. Before the war, we reported on the uprising in Kazakhstan, a hint of the tremendous pressure that people throughout the region have already been under. Then, we published analysis from Ukrainian anarchists and the Russian anti-war movement. Check out the Ex-Worker Podcast's audio coverage, too. At the same time, we amplified voices from other struggles across the world—from Chile and Brazil to the Philippines, Iran, and Sri Lanka. And that's just a sampling of our efforts! Check out our 2022 Year in Review, which lays out a full account of what we've been up to and folds it into a broader analysis of the political context from the past year. Stay tuned for an audio version shortly!

Of course, the big story for us at the end of 2022 was our expulsion from Twitter, part of a broader shift that heralds the end of social media as we've known it. Elon Musk and the outright fascists who have his ear are doing their worst to eliminate voices of dissent while welcoming back neo-Nazis, anti-Semites, and other racists to the platform in droves. They aim to silence radical voices, shift global political discourse to the right, and—in gaining control of one of the venues that shapes public opinion—position themselves to make more money off a stock market that responds to it. Since we got the boot in November, many other prominent anarchist and radical accounts have followed, including our friends at It's Going Down, not to mention various journalists and critics of Elon Musk. Yet so far, their plans have backfired. Last year, Musk became the first person in history to lose $200 billion; this week, he lost another $50 billion. He lost a vote of confidence among Twitter users, who are deserting the platform in droves. Hopefully, other aspiring tyrants will take note of his misfortunes and those of his fellow far-right billionaire, Donald Trump, and think twice before attempting to emulate them. Meanwhile, since we've been banned from Twitter, we've actually seen more people reading our articles and accessing our materials. Our friends who haven't been kicked off yet can still share links—and you can too, if you haven't joined the mass exodus yet! In the meantime, we're branching out in several directions. First of all, for those of you who are more digitally connected, we'd like to invite you to join us on Mastodon, a decentralized, open-source social media alternative to the profit-driven corporate surveillance capitalism nightmare of Twitter, Facebook, and the like. On there, you can find all of our new articles, plus commentary on current events, reports from international struggles, explorations of anarchist history, recipes for do-it-yourself skills and mutual aid, calls to action that you can plug into, announcements for our public events, and more. You can also find us on Telegram, Kolectiva, and beyond. We'll keep updating the links on our homepage with all of the accounts we've got. We continue to mail out packages of books, posters, and stickers. Speaking of stickers, we've printed several new ones, which we're including in orders. You can see pictures of some of those in this email.

If you prefer to show up in person, we love that, too! We've already got an array of book fairs on our agenda for 2023. Please drop us a line if you know of other public events where you'd like to see us. We wrapped up 2022 by doing some presentations in the UK, speaking with folks in London and Edinburgh about the newly released book Smash the System: Punk Anarchism as a Culture of Resistance, to which we contributed the foreword. We just kicked off the new year with a talk in Newcastle upon Tyne on January 3, looking back on our book, Work, a decade after its publication. If you prefer to take in your radical ideas in an audio format, we have great news for you! We're excited to announce the formation of our audio affinity group, in which folks from our Ex-Worker and Hotwire podcasts are teaming up with new comrades to take our audio coverage to the next level. Starting this month, we're planning to make audio versions of every article we publish. To keep up with these, subscribe to our podcast feed here. We intend to publish new audio material on YouTube, Soundcloud, and Spotify, too—stay tuned for links as we get those channels up and running. Thanks to all of you who wrote us in response to our last newsletter volunteering to help! We're still welcoming folks who've got recording or audio experience to reach out, if you want to contribute. We'll leave you with the words from our Mastodon post for the new year:

At the conclusion of 2022, we honor all those who have risked their lives and freedom to strive for a world without war, oppression, or exploitation—in Iran and Sri Lanka, in Russia and Ukraine, in Sudan and everywhere else around the planet. Our hearts go out to the imprisoned, to those enduring grueling impoverishment while billionaires accumulate fortunes at others' expense, to everyone who has lost a loved one to state violence, racist or anti-Semitic attacks, environmental disasters intensified by climate change, or the pandemic. In 2023, we will continue to do our best to contribute to movements for the liberation of all humanity and the dignity of all living things. All the best in your adventures. May they intersect with ours. For a free world—for anarchy.

with love and in struggle, Your comrades in the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective

View this email in your browser Friends, lovers, (ex-)workers, comrades! It's only March, and it's already been a hell of a year. Conditions are getting grimmer across the United States and beyond, with state repression and gender fascism drawing battle lines that none of us can avoid. Hypocritical politicians in the United States are competing to promote the most outrageous assaults on trans and queer people. The failure of Silicon Valley banks shows the instability of the tech and data-driven capitalist economy, the failures of which will inevitably hit the poorest people hardest. Meanwhile, a Democratic president proposes to destroy more wilderness to keep fossil fuels flowing cheaply. Keep the party raging on the deck of the Titanic, they're telling us— at least, so long as no one's in drag! Among these tragedies, last month we lost our longtime comrade, Jen Angel. For decades, Jen participated alongside us in the anarchist movement as a writer, publisher, organizer, and media worker. Her involvement spanned from the punk subculture and the anti-globalization movement of the 1990s through to the present day. In a society that dubs us criminal, extremist, terrorist, naïve, or insane for refusing to accept the status quo, it's important for us to honor our own and remember our legacies of resistance. In Italy, anarchist political prisoner Alfredo Cospito has been on hunger strike since October against the solitary confinement regime. We discussed the implications of his case in this article and in audio form here. Today, Cospito is on his deathbed. The fascist-ruled Italian government would rather kill him and deal with the blowback than give an inch. This sort of willful state heartlessness has been a theme all around the world. In Turkey and Syria, the despotic governments of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and Bashar al-Assad have done precious little to assist those impacted by the earthquakes of February 6, while utilizing the opportunity to target their political adversaries with active neglect, blockades, and even bombings. In Greece, the far-right New Democracy government sought to use the fatal train accident of February 28 as an excuse to delay elections. In France, Macron has just forced through legislation to raise the age of retirement by executive diktat. Yet wherever there is oppression, there is resistance, and that resistance has been ferocious. Many voices continue to speak out against the nightmare of policing, surveillance, impoverishment, and ecocide that our enemies aim to normalize. From the embattled forest of Atlanta to the rebellious streets of Paris, and likewise on the digital terrain that both links and divides us, the past several weeks have seen escalations in a wide range of conflicts that will determine the meaning of freedom in the twenty-first century. These lines are drawn starkly in the Weelaunee Forest of Atlanta, one of the largest remaining urban forests in the US, which is the target of a nefarious plot by scheming politicians, entertainment executives, and police who want to destroy it to build a police training facility, popularly known as Cop City, and a soundstage for making cop dramas. Setting new precedents for combative resistance, a fierce coalition of anarchists, environmental activists, abolitionists, indigenous communities, and outraged neighbors has thus far thwarted their efforts. In 2022, we covered the struggle extensively from its origins through earlier weeks of action. This January, in response to the horrific murder of forest defender Manuel “Tortuguita” Teran, we participated in circulating a solidarity statement that was signed by many hundreds of groups. Earlier this month, supporters converged in Atlanta for a week of action beginning with a music festival. After participants in a march destroyed the against the surveillance and construction infrastructure intended to destroy the forest and the movement, police attacked the festival, detaining dozens of concertgoers and campers at random. They released the locals while indiscriminately slapping domestic terrorism charges on anyone without a local address in order to craft a deceitful press release about “outside agitators.” The arrestees have since been denied bail. While frightening, the mendacity and cruelty of this strategy show how desperate the powerful forces behind the project are to clamp down on a movement that is growing larger and harder to control. Over the past month, we've published three new texts to support the movement to Stop Cop City: The Forest in the City, a history of the movement over the past year Balance Sheet: Two Years against Cop City, an analysis of the movement's strategies and tactics and Defend Abundance Everywhere, a passionate call to defend the forest and the way of being that it represents. To stay updated, follow Defend the Atlanta Forest and the Atlanta Community Press Collective on Twitter. You can find zines related to the movement in the Defend the Atlanta Forest library. Check out the Defend Atlanta Forest linktree for more resources, and if you can, please support forest defenders facing legal charges by donating to the Atlanta Solidarity Fund. We urge you to learn all you can and find ways to take action in support of this vital struggle, which links so many different movements and will set an important precedent for future efforts to defend land and freedom. We've continued our robust international coverage, including reports from several frontline struggles that echo themes we are confronting in the United States. In Germany, the battle to defend the small village of Lutzerath from destruction by a coal company ended in defeat, but dramatized the courage of direct resistance while forcing a global audience to confront the collusion of the state and capitalists in accelerating the climate crisis; we published a powerful photo essay documenting the events. Don't miss the mud wizard hexing police! In Peru, a countrywide rebellion headed by campesino and indigenous movements exploded in December and January; we published an interview with Peruvian anarchists about the revolt. In Iran, over the past several months, a powerful uprising against the theocratic government has foregrounded feminist resistance to gender tyranny alongside movements for Kurdish self-determination, economic justice, and political freedom; for International Women's Day, we published a text tracing the history of the movement's key slogan, “Jin, Jiyan, Azadi” (Women, Life, Freedom). If you're connected to horizontal movements for freedom whose voices we haven't highlighted yet, get in touch! For those of you who appreciate the old-school earnestness of classic CrimethInc., you'll enjoy our recent poster, “We'll Go Where Flowers Grow.” As grim as things may seem-as heavily as they weigh on our hearts-it's crucial to remain connected to the passion, wonder, and joy we experience in the struggle for a free world. Not just in some distant future, but here and now. In addition to everything we've published on the website, the Ex-Worker Podcast crew has been hard at work on the audio front. As we announced a few weeks ago, our newly-formed audio affinity group is producing versions of most of the articles we publish for your listening pleasure. We've released seven episodes since the new year, with several more in the pipeline. If you like receiving your radical news and ideas in audio format, you might enjoy our releases on elections, fascism, and popular resistance in Brazil; our 2022 year in review; or our collection on the Twitter ban and the crisis of social media, including four articles we published between October and December on Twitter's anarchist origins, our ban and response, and the future of social media in relationship to social movements. You could also listen to our account of the “Battle of York,” revisiting an antifascist counterdemonstration of 2002 in the context of the 2017 fascist rally in Charlottesville. Finally, you can listen to history, analysis, and accounts from the movement to Stop Cop City and Defend Weelaunee Forest. More audio episodes are on the way, including texts mentioned above about the movements in Iran and Peru and the latest articles about the struggle to defend the forest in Atlanta. Stay tuned! This winter has been brutal-but spring is around the corner. And no politicians, no police, no developers, no fascists, no one can stop the warmth from surging anew, nor prevent the seeds we've sown beneath the snow from bursting forth. We'll go where the flowers grow-and we'll see you in the streets. With love and rage, Your comrades from the CrimethInc. Ex-Workers' Collective

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- Bloggery committed by chris tower - 2304.11 - 10:10

- Days ago = 2839 days ago

- New note - On 1807.06, I ceased daily transmission of my Hey Mom feature after three years of daily conversations. I plan to continue Hey Mom posts at least twice per week but will continue to post the days since ("Days Ago") count on my blog each day. The blog entry numbering in the title has changed to reflect total Sense of Doubt posts since I began the blog on 0705.04, which include Hey Mom posts, Daily Bowie posts, and Sense of Doubt posts. Hey Mom posts will still be numbered sequentially. New Hey Mom posts will use the same format as all the other Hey Mom posts; all other posts will feature this format seen here.