How can one live freely in the shadow of a prison?

Submission

flyer .png: https://upload.disroot.org/r/hUBqVExC#PhuSmVKBegubTa6qLs72At5lyIHGsK3aX6at31YXjIU=

flyer PDF: https://upload.disroot.org/r/DfteY0Wu#BVshmlG7jvVnbolWTfoSUAylk+Dm7KAf4m97jB1/HEg=

How can one live freely in the shadow of a prison?

There are moments, like today in Syria, when we can only rejoice. See the statues of Bashar and his relatives looted, the crowds in the streets, the open prison doors. These moments that remind us that all regimes, including the most authoritarian ones, can fall.

If there is a constant in the revolutions, it is that of freeing prisoners. Symbol of power, of who can decide the freedom of its subjects, prison is one of the nodes on which rests submission to the State and acceptance of social norms.

One of the worst prisons in the world, Sednaya, has apparently been completely emptied of its prisoners, allowing people to see their relatives whom they had not heard from for many years or even meet them for the first time. But let’s not be mistaken, while the «rebels» are emptying the prisons of the fallen regime, those under their control are already filled with opponents.

Revolutionaries have already fallen in the trap of supporting pro-State organisations, by third-worldism, against imperialism, seduced by kurdish communalism or the romanticism of the guerrilla. Unfortunately it is more a religious alliance, wishing to give direction to “the will of the people” than the insurgents in Syria who managed to overthrow the regime. Such structures using military practices will never be desirable. We want to carry an anti-authoritarian and without borders solidarity with the revolted in Syria, because our hopes in the Syrian revolution go beyond the perpetuation of a society held by arms, subjected to a celestial power as earthly, which requires prisons to exist.

While we welcome the liberation of syrians from the shackles of Assad’s clan, we can only hope that what was in seed during the 2011 insurrections can go even further, towards a self-organisation of all spheres of daily life, attack and the total questioning of power and property.

Here as there, so much remains to be destroyed. Prisons, Religions, States.

Happiness to the reunion of the freed, force to the ones locked up all over the world!

Anarchists, confident as wary,
France, December 9th 2024

Jews who Like to Fight: A Response to an Anti-fascist Proposal

Submission

Our group… called for active resistance. But public opinion was against us. The majority still thought such action provocative and maintained that if the required contingent of Jews could be delivered [to death camps], the remainder of the ghetto would be left in peace. The instinct for self-preservation finally drove the people into a state of mind permitting them to disregard the safety of others in order to save their own necks… the Germans had already succeeded in dividing the Jewish population into two distinct groups – those already condemned to die and those who still hoped to remain alive. Afterwards, step by step, the Germans will succeed in pitting these two groups against one another and cause some Jews to lead others to certain death in order to save their own skin.” – Marek Edelman, co-founder of the Warsaw Ghetto’s Jewish Combat Organization, reflecting on July 1942, when armed Jewish uprising was initially rejected.

Jews, you are being deceived… Do not let them take you to death voluntarily. Resist! Fight tooth and nail… Fight for your lives!” – The illegal socialist bulletin, Storm, of the Warsaw Ghetto.

I started writing this in response to an article and booklet put out by Jewish anarchists called “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism.” It is now a more general proposal for Jews and non-Jews to see the need and outlines of aboveground and underground resistance.

The basis of what I am going to be saying comes from resonating moments of Jewish anti-fascism. These moments include the Warsaw Ghetto uprising where hundreds of Jews killed their Nazi guards and defended parts of the ghetto for weeks against a far better armed SS fighting force. Warsaw combatants had been preparing for years through underground combat organizations with different detachments and commanders elected in the ghetto. They met regularly, coordinated counter-espionage and intelligence, procured weapons and explosives, forged alliances, and operated an illegal printing press. This was all within the confines of an extremely surveilled open-air prison. After the war, the 43 group and 62 group formed, made up of anti-fascist Jews with boxing, martial arts, and military experience in Britain, using street fighting and deploying combative counter-protests at fascist speaking events from the 1940s until the 1970s. And although limited in their success, there are groups like the 2000s’ direct action Palestine-solidarity group, Anarchists Against the Wall, based within the borders of the state of Israel.

Growing up, being Jewish meant a connection to these parts of history. I know like many Jews coming from union families or working class backgrounds, my family took the most pride and found its roots in the historical figure of the Jewish activist, resistance member, labour organizer, holocaust survivor, and artist, rather than any religious or Zionist tradition. A family member had participated in guerilla warfare against the Nazi regime in France. All the other old timers were survivors who had gotten lucky owing largely to chance run-ins with underground resistance. I know I really deeply internalized a lot of these stories, particularly their incredible violence that, from a young age, made me afraid, angry, and want to fight. I have nothing but disgust or rage for the rabbis and collaborators who encouraged six million Jews to, without resistance, walk into gas chambers, die as slaves, and be slaughtered in the open streets.

Already, there is little resistance to the far-right’s platform of attacks on reproductive rights or the mass deportation and internment of migrants. We need to start looking at the places and times where fascism was actually defeated. This includes the historic guerrilla movements of Yugoslavia, France, or China. Today, the revolution in Rojava largely eradicated the fascist Islamic State within Syria in favour of a libertarian feminist society. What all of these projects have in common is armed militias or cells, and combative solidarity based in above-ground mass organizations such as unions, explicitly far-left political organizations, and neighbourhood and town council structures.

Many of the suggestions outlined in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” are important, emphasizing our need to rest, develop our skill sets, create collectives based on deep relationships, and practice direct action & mutual aid. I consider its writers comrades and have no intention but a friendly response. Reading their text, I cannot help but feel that a study of our actual Jewish anti-fascist history would have stressed different lessons. This history teaches us that there are uncomfortable risks that we will need to take going forward, that there are disruptions to our usual lifestyles that are required, a necessity of underground fighting groups and sabotage, and the need for organizational infrastructure that can have massive outreach and participation. It is not that the “care culture,” popular among the Jewish Left, is wrong, it is just misleading and an incomplete proposal if taken on its own – as it has been by many. In line with the conclusion of some Black anarchists following the George Floyd uprising, there continues to be a need for “networks of aboveground and underground self-organized resistance.”

In this vein, I would like to respond to the tendency of many Jewish radicals, leftists and anarchists who I feel do not want to fight because they would like to preserve their comfort for as long as they can, and turn their nose up at fighting as though we are not submerged in a dramatic confluence of violence, crises, and hierarchy: fascism or not. We know from the Holocaust that this instinct to not throw ourselves into battle, leads only to prolongation of suffering and attempts to find ourselves within the lucky few who are saved while we leave others behind to suffer. I know it is difficult because many of us have been raised by survivors and working class Jews who fought to survive and now pressure us to live the American Dream. The benefits of our labour union struggles and communalist culture have made many of us, but certainly not all, privileged. Yet, for young people, there is still that desire for revolt, a deep-felt solidarity, and spirit of autonomy that needs encouragement and support, not recuperation and sedating.

This failure of Jewish radicalism is reflected in the present state of Israel. There was never a serious drive by Jewish anarchists and socialists to destroy the Israeli state and capitalism. Even worse, there was no serious effort to prevent the state from forming. The Jewish working-class accepted, passively or actively, ethno-nationalism above all else, a compromise with the Jewish bourgeoisie and political class rather than a revolutionary struggle to overcome them. This is despite the attractive alliances available, not to mention basic obligations of solidarity, with Palestinian revolutionaries. It is impossible to speculate on such a dramatic imaginary turn in history, but had such an anarchist spirit existed and prevailed in executing a revolution in Palestine, there could have been self-organization, communalization of property and workplaces, and cooperative multi-racial communities in the place of government authority. This is a mistake by the Jewish left of historic proportions. I do not see how the suggestions listed in “Don’t Just Do Nothing to Counter Fascism” would materially undermine states like Israel or have changed the course of this history. There needs to be a greater emphasis on guerilla, mass movement, and other attacks that would be required to overthrow a government. And for this to exist, there must be the structure and group cultures that can bring this insurrection about. Unless we follow this path, we’re just speculating on ways to carve out our own comfortable activist lives within fascism as Israeli leftists have done.

It is worth studying the success of the 1904-1907 Yiddish anarchists in Poland’s industrial city of Bialystok. There, anarchism became the dominant political ideology among the working class. The Bialystok groups were taken up as a tendency across the Russian empire due to their success, including by the anarchists of Gulyai Pole who would later liberate a territory of up to seven million people. Anarchists created neighbourhoods within Bialystok which the police dared not enter, ensured the victory of strikes (typically through terrorizing bosses into accepting strikers’ demands), and when a pogrom started in the city, it was anarchists who led its armed defence and street patrols.

These Yiddish anarchists organized through groups, usually based on affinity, with different sections for technical, agitational, propaganda, Polish-language outreach, and weaponry work. All combined, the anarchist groups never had more than a few dozen members, most aged 15 to 20. One account of a meeting of a group, done in a cemetery, counts just four members in attendance. Connected to the groups were federations of hundreds of workers organized along an anarchist basis and divided by industry. Furthermore, the small groups created spaces within the city where crowds could gather for political discussions, debates, and the distribution of anarchist flyers and newspapers. In this way, these numerically small anarchist groups developed an outreach and influence across a broad population. The confidence in the group was so considerable that they developed an arbitration board, being overwhelmed with people, including petitioners from villages surrounding the city, coming to them to settle interpersonal disputes and issues of daily exploitation. Anarchists stockpiled weapons for the complete takeover of Bialystok and the development of an “industrial-military commune,” something for which workers were ready to launch a general strike, only to abandon the plans due to a lack of joint revolutionary action from other cities.

We need answers that can allow us to similarly confront the state and capitalism. Past generations of Jews have developed these responses before. Based on this, here are some additional recommendations for our fight. These recommendations are for everyone in and outside of the US, in rural and in urban areas. Whether fascism seems on the distant horizon or a close reality, the violence of oppression in our current society – call it fascism, colonialism, capitalism, or whatever you want – requires active preparation for a revolution:

1. Create or join underground resistance : This resistance can deploy industrial sabotage, military sabotage, attacks against private property, black blocs, surprise or “whisper” demonstrations, riots, conduct expropriations, looting, seize property (also known as “squats”), execute untraceable online activity, and other combative offensive and defensive moves. They can equally coordinate safehouses for migrants facing deportation or confinement – such as was done by many Polish and French people for us Jews – or perform clandestine abortions – as was done by the Lodz Ghetto survivor, Henry Morgantaler in Montreal.

This resistance can be based in small groups of people who work well together, assist each other in meeting each others’ needs, and develop a robust culture of secrecy and security. There needs to be a focus on propaganda work, onboarding, skill training, critical discussions on short/medium/long-term goals, confederation with other such groups, and connection to above-ground organizations and struggles. There is never a bad time for an underground resistance. It is never too soon. It is only ever too late. Anarchist news sites across the US regularly broadcast report-backs on nocturnal attacks against military facilities, extractive industries, and businesses being targeted by public movements. This resistance work needs to develop further structures (as was done by Bialystok anarchists), courage, affinity, skills, deeper revolutionary analysis, broader propaganda efforts, and synergy with aboveground groups to become a more serious threat.

2. Create or join radical mass organizations or movements : These organizations should be based on individual autonomy, confederation, combativeness, direct action, the elimination of internal hierarchy, mutual aid/education, and solidarity. Anarchist labour unions, tenant self-defence, neighbourhood and student assemblies, and anti-fascist fronts have all been examples employed by Jews from the women working in the Shmata Business, to the New York mothers leading rent strikes from 1918-1920, to the striking students fighting antisemitism at Aberdeen elementary school.

For those not yet ready for underground resistance, these mass organizations are a place to start and one in which most skills of any sort prove to be valuable. But do not mistake an NGO, political party, or your institutional student or workers’ union as such an organization. This is just a recipe for losing time.

3. Create or join a specifically anarchist aboveground group : Potentially modelled in the same way as the anarchist affinity group: unapologetic and vocally anarchist public facing activity is often necessary. Organizations of anarchists, such as Food Not Bombs, are interesting projects, but not a replacement for a specifically anarchist group, just like starting a breakfast program for kids is not a replacement for the Black Panther Party. Public anarchist activity should incorporate infrastructure for meeting peoples’ basic needs through direct action, mutual aid, and social centres where people can gather to build knowledge and relationships. People should be given skills to not just fight fascism, but its roots: the state, capitalism, patriarchy, racism, and all other systems of oppression and authority. Aboveground anarchist activity, namely education, mutual aid, direct action, and social events, can be carried out by these groups.

“Murder us, tyrants, but new fighters will come and we will fight on and on, until the world is free.”

– In Kamf (In Struggle)

Charles Anthony Wilder aka moonmanmac1488 of GDL, WLM-PA, and NJEHA

from Philly Fash Watch

Today’s installment of name the nazi fuckface is someone we’ve been watching since he became active in February of this year, Charles Anthony Wilder II. We noticed a telegram account in the S14 chat called Moonmanmac1488 and began putting the pieces together. This identity gained importance when Charles was in the van and marching last weekend in Columbus, Ohio with “hate club”, a spinoff group from Blood Tribe. This article includes contributions from Kate Ross and some anonymous researchers.

Charles tweeted out that he was at the flash fash rally. Simple enough. He then self doxxed on givesendgo using not just his real name but also using the same profile picture as his telegram account. Thanks for making it so easy Charles! As of publishing, he has raised a whopping $10 for his “move to a new city”. Seems like he really needs his job; we’ll get to that in a bit.

In February 2024 WLM-PA held a rally in Sunbury, Pa. This was the first time Charles attended a white power action in person. Although he is from Hamilton, NJ (near Trenton), he was excited to get active. In the early spring we received photos of him posting stickers in the daytime but his face wasn’t clear enough. It all went into his file we were slowly building. In the summer he attended a protest at the Israeli Consulate in New York City with NJEHA and their boomer civnat leader Dan Dambly. Charles lives about 15 minutes away from Andrew Takhistov, who we wrote about here S14, NJEHA, WLM and ANC Member Andrew Takhistov aka Cossack of East Brunswick, NJ | Philly Fash Watch. Andrew was arrested for plotting to shoot down power stations in New Jersey.

Ever ambitious Charlie made another move and began to stream for GDL, wearing a mask. Typical cringe nonsense, nothing to gain by linking (we promise you’re not missing anything). Our full identification came when he made the (stupid) decision to stream showing his face. Got him! From there everything fell into place. His real name, all his websites, all the details you wouldn’t want just lingering online for people like us to find.

At this point there was no rush to post him, until Columbus happened. Now we want your help to make his life as miserable as possible. Charles Anthony Wilder II currently lives at 13 Dover Drive, Hamilton NJ 08620 with his mom and stepfather. He works at the Amazon Fulfillment Center at 309 Cedar Lane in Florence, NJ 08518. We ask that you politely call that Amazon location at (800) 288-7914 and inform them about their employee. Charles drives a 2015 dark gray Dodge Dart, NJ plate T84JEG

If you’re not familiar with “moon man mac”, it was a character in McDonald’s commercials in the 1980s. Thank you so much for reading!

How to defend yourself during a police interrogation

from Projet Evasions

“An interrogation is not a harmonious exchange between two individuals. It’s a conflict.
And in this conflict, our ignorance is our strength. Ignorance of the meaning of police work, ignorance of the manipulative techniques used, ignorance of the legal framework and, last but not least, ignorance of our means of defence.
In response to this observation, this book is intended as a tool for self-defense against police interrogation practices of interrogation.”

Preface to the English version

In summer 2022, 2000 copies of this book were printed in French and 2000 in German. The french version is now sold out, and the Publisher «Éditions du Commun» had now reissued the book.

The book was written with the intention of serving as a tool of self-defense against the manipulative interrogation strategies employed by the police. As stated in the introduction, “It addresses readers in various countries in which legislation may differ“. And indeed, we soon received feedback that the content conveyed by the book is equally applicable to countries such as Turkey, Morocco, Serbia, Italy, Denmark, and many more. And soon a number of supportive people were offering to translate the book into other languages. This is what happened with the English version, and we’d like to take this opportunity to warmly thank our translator and proofreader for their fine work.

As a consequence of imperialism and colonization, English is spoken today in contexts as diverse as Kenya, Australia and, of course UK and the USA. So many different places from which you may be reading these words, and where the contexts of repression are very different. Most of what is conveyed in the book applies to all these contexts, but, in case of doubts, it makes sense to keep an eye out for certain elements that differ and check them with your local legal team.

Our network lacks relays in the English-speaking world, so let us take this opportunity to pass on the message that we are looking for a publishing house or a collective that would be interested in printing and distributing the book in its geographical regions.

With these words, we wish you a pleasant reading.

Project-evasions – network of anarchist friendships

Some Initial Thoughts On Unity Of Fields

Submission

Some Initial Thoughts On Unity Of Fields

[I am writing as an insurrectionary anarchist in the u$a and speaking to that context]

Unity Of Fields is a counter-info project that emerged in August of 2024. They describe their project as “a militant propaganda front against the US-NATO-zionist axis of imperialism.” It used to be Palestine Action US and has since changed its orientation. It has a website and some social media accounts, some of which have are banned at the time of this writing, they seem to be most popular on Telegram. Although it links to mostly anarchist sources for technical knowledge, Unity Of Fields does not seem to be an anarchist project and their political reading and media suggestions are all over the map. They suggest classic decolonial texts by Fanon and Cesaire, Black liberation writings from the BLA and BPP, texts from various Palestinian resistance factions, as well as authoritarian communists like Lenin and Mao among others.

Mostly their website is a clearing house for news, action analysis, and communiques. Many of the communiques posted are original submissions though they also repost from other counter-info projects and from social media. They also post some of their own original writings to their website. The fact that they post sketchy criminal stuff and link to technical advice on how to better carry out insurrectionary forms of struggle is probably a large part of why they are discussed in anarchist circles at all.

What does the emergence of a project like Unity Of Fields mean for us as anarchists? For one thing Unity Of Fields expands some spaces we occupy as anarchists — the combative struggle space and the digital counter-info space. We are clearly not the only ones re-coloring walls, opening windows, and carrying out our little sabotages and then writing about it, though at least for now others seem to look to our collective knowledge and experience for technical guidance. We are sharing a struggle space, one which is not limited to riotous moments and combative demonstrations, with other rebels who have made themselves visible to us. We are being included (at least some of the time) in a dialogue with other rebels through the sharing of our words and news of our actions, and anarchists have shared writings from Unity Of Fields on our own websites.

Local struggles against zionism, imperialism, and colonialism are visibly taking on more destructive, decentralized, anonymous, and autonomous approaches, a long-term dream of insurrectionary anarchists, yet new questions arise for us. How do we want to contend with other rebels with whom we have ideological differences and tactical similarities? How do we avoid getting lost in the vanguardist, unifying, nationalist tendencies that often accompany revolutionary leftist approaches to combative struggle? Are we interested in conspiring with these others outside the spontaneity of spiky demonstrations, occupations (and potentially riots), and if so how?

As anarchists we both seek to expand and connect anarchic forms of struggle yet also hold a healthy skepticism of unity with people who don’t hold anti-authoritarian views of freedom. Our history includes many betrayals by the left and progressives, from peace policing at demonstrations to executions and imprisonment from newly established revolutionary governments. The question of who to coalesce with and why is not an easy one, and one that is best addressed on a case by case basis. The appearance of Unity Of Fields potentially facilitates the dialogues and understanding that can help us better decide if and how we want to team up. As anarchists can often find ourselves isolated from others who we may have some political parallels with, the opening up of a “militant propaganda front” is a bridge to dialogue and learn across. This is not a call to join forces with anyone on the basis of being anti-zionist or anti-amerikkkan, it’s simply a reminder to always be analyzing the changing terrain around us and to think critically as we carry forward our struggles.

“Towards The Last Intifada” and “Towards Another Uprising” seem to be the beginnings of a dialogue among anarchists that address some of these questions. I look forward to more.

Relevant Readings:

Unity Of Fields: Opening Up A New Front

Unity of Fields: Opening Up a New Front

Towards The Last Intifada

Towards the Last Intifada: A Statement on Palestine by Anarchists

Towards Another Uprising

Towards Another Uprising

Archipelago – affinity, informal organization, and insurrectional projects

Archipelago – AudioZine

Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists

Voices from the Front Line Against the Occupation: Interview with Palestinian Anarchists

PS: Some Thoughts On Spectacle

Many if not most of the actions posted to Unity Of Fields are accompanied by some visual media, usually photos, sometimes videos. I want rebels to consider some pitfalls of spectacularizing our struggles. Every photo or video is another crumb for the state to eat up as part of their investigations. Digital media can offer up metadata about where and when and what kind of device it was recorded on if not properly removed. Footage that shows rebels gives the state valuable information, such as number of participants, approximate time of day, whether any passersby were present, as well as biometric data even when a person is masked. Height, skin tone, gait, approximate weight, and other information can be determined from even grainy footage.
Additionally there are the downsides of understanding our struggles in a quantitative way. This approach may blunt the qualitative changes that participating in struggle can bring us individually and collectively. Of course propaganda is useful, the seductive appeal of revolt is made easier with imagery, and these things must be weighted out, no struggle will be pure. I want to remind us that though this is the path that is being worn into the ground, it is not the only one, and should we choose it let us choose it intentionally.

some zines

Submission

Here are some zines that have been floating around for a while in the flesh but have not been available on the internet.

The Social and Survival: On Becoming a Threat – Philly-based critique of anarchist subculture. Appeared as an article in Anathema Vol. 8 Iss. 2

[screen reading] [print]
The Fatigue of Novelty: Disruptive Control in Techno-Dystopia –  Critique of science focused on biological resource extraction, biotechnology, and AI. Appeared as an article in Anathema Vol. 9 Iss. 1
[screen reading] [print]
Targets That Do Not Exist Anywhere Else – Originally from Zundlappen July 2022
[screen reading] [print]
Each zine has a screen reading and print copy.

NJ Hate Watch: Zionist Owned Restaurants of NJ

from Jersey Counter-Info

[This post only contains information relevant to Philadelphia and the surrounding area, to read the entire article follow the above link.]
The majority of Zionist owned NJ restaurants have tried to subdue their outward image over the past year in order to not draw attention their genocidal agenda and beliefs. With the many successful pro-Palestine marches, rallies, and boycotts that have taken place in NJ, Zionist business owners and staff fear that they will draw-in protestors, lose money, and risk being shuttered for good.The restaurants highlighted in this article have been positively identified as being Zionist owned and operated. It is requested that all restaurants listed below be boycotted and exposed for being supporting the ongoing genocide against Palestinians and propping up violent settler colonialism in Gaza and occupied Palestine.

This list is not exhaustive, so it’s important to examine any restaurants that may be suspicious, as it can be difficult to identify what businesses are “safe”. The following information can help you figure out if a restaurant in question is Zionist owned and operated. Many Zionist/Israeli restaurants try to squeak by unnoticed by branding themselves as non-specific “Middle Eastern”, “Kosher”, and/or “Mediterranean” establishments, while stealing commonly used Arab and Palestinian Arab cultural images, recipes, and Arabic phrases which they profit off. While their menus typically feature a range of dishes, they often change the name of individual dishes, making their actual intentions and beliefs known. A prime example of this is “Arabic Salad”, which is re-branded as “Israeli Salad”, or “Israeli couscous”. More reading about the Zionist/Israeli tradition of cultural food theft can be found here. Checking out a restaurant’s social media content and websites can also illuminate whether or not they are owned/operated by Zionists.

1. Mia’s Meals- Located at 3 S Haddon Ave. Haddonfield NJ 08033

Mia’s Meals operates out of Located at 3 S Haddon Ave. Haddonfield NJ 08033, which is pictured on the left.

Mia’s Meals, which is owned and operated by Zionist Mia Eylon, is branded as a “Middle Eastern” falafel bar.

Mia Eylon, is pictured on the bottom left. Mia also runs the restaurants social media accounts.

Eylon has utilized social media to brand the restaurant in a trendy way to attract different subsets of patrons including vegans. Looking deeper at the restaurant’s social media page also reveals explicit support for the Palestinian genocide and Israel.

Eylon has used the business to raise thousands of dollars to support the Israeli Occupation Force (IOF).

Mia’s Meals is directly engaged in funding the Palestinian genocide.

3. Naf Naf GrillLocated at 1041 NJ Route 73 Marlton, NJ 08053

Naf Naf Grill is located at 1041 NJ Route 73 Marlton, NJ 08053, within a corporate park strip mall.

Naf Naf Grill is a smaller national chain restaurant, founded by Israeli Zionist Sahar Sander, that poses as a “Middle Eastern Grill”. There are locations in several states, including NJ. Nationally, Naf Naf Grill offers franchising opportunities to those who have the capital and poor ethics to do so.

Naf Naf Grill’s hours of operation.

Send tips and information: njhatewatch@protonmail.com

Anathema Volume 10 Issue 2

from Anathema

Volume 10 Issue 2 (PDF for reading 8.5×11)

Volume 10 Issue 2 (PDF for printing 11×17)

In This Issue:

  • What Went Down
  • The Secret Is To Really Complain
  • Cherelle Parker Is An Image From The Future
  • Where Is The Anti-War Movement?
  • Imperial Wargaming
  • Don’t Vote?
  • Palestinian Solidarity & Anarchist Interventions In Philly
  • Skilling Up In Shifting Waters

Towards Another Uprising

from Act For Freedom Now

At the end of 2010 an individual act of despair in the town of Sidi Bouzid ignited a daring, enraged, and joyful upheaval that travelled through North Africa into the Middle East and beyond. People defied the oppressive systems they had been immersed in for generations and came together in the streets to topple the political elites at their helm. The authorities, at first stunned by this courageous spirit that they couldn’t understand, then unleashed a cynical and brutal response.

This defeat is still being inflicted on the people in the region, and is also felt all over the world by those who stood in solidarity with the uprisings but were mostly unable to overcome their powerlessness as the uprisings were massacred.

The horrors in the region during the last decade are many. To name some that stick most in my mind: Sisi has turned back the clock in Egypt to military dictatorship with the material support of the US. The regimes in the other North-African countries are paving over any sign of freedom while being coaxed by European countries to shut down the immigration routes over the Mediterranean. Without the murderous military campaigns of Hezbollah and the IRGC in Syria, Assad wouldn’t have survived the uprising. The Iranian regime itself brutally oppressed three different uprisings in the country in the last decade. Most people in Lebanon are in a daily struggle for survival because of the greed of its political leaders while mobs at the orders of Hezbollah beat down street protests. Early on in the uprisings, Hamas, who has shot political opponents in broad daylight on the streets of Gaza, culled attempts at an uprising by rounding up protest organizers and threatening them with murder. Leaders in the region understood once again that they can use any means against the populations under their control without real push-back from outside. Indifference, cynicism and opportunism trump moral appeals, and strategic alliances are always in play. The world churns on. For those of us who have not looked away, how can we not see a connection between Assad bombing Syrian cities into obliteration and Netanyahu razing Gaza?

 

The authors of “Towards the Last Intifada” (Tinderbox ) don’t acknowledge these experiences of the last decade. Instead, they propose to join the opposing side of an American geopolitical alliance (keeping true to American centralism in their own way). According to them, the Axis of Resistance shows the path forward for anarchists to struggle against empire. This article seems to confound resistance with ‘the Resistance’. That is to say, they collapse any form of resistance from people in Palestine, and more broadly in the region, into a particular representation, adopting an umbrella term used by states, militaries, para-state/para-military organizations to describe their own activities. The authors of the article warn anarchists against being too sensitive to hierarchy – as if that is the only aspect of ‘the Resistance’ anarchists might find difficult to accept.

It is now a year after the bloody incursion of Hamas into Israel. Apart from discourse, the accomplishments of the Resistance so far are: Hezbollah has launched ineffectual rockets that have only inflicted significant damage on a Druze village, Iranian leaders are busying themselves with making appeals to the West to reign in Israel, militias in Iraq attacked a couple of US military bases in the country early on and then fell silent, while only the Houthis seem to have taken Nasrallah’s “Unity of Fronts” seriously. They succeeded in disrupting global shipping routes and have carried out some unexpected aerial attacks on Israel. In the meantime, Israel has wiped out the leadership of Hezbollah, drops bombs on Lebanon on a daily basis, has regularly bombed sites in Syria without retaliation, and commits executions in Tehran. The Axis of Resistance and the Unity of Fronts are mere slogans that obscure the strategic dealings among political, authoritarian organisations and states with their own (often differing) interests. It’s delusional to see it as something else. And Israel is calling the bluff of ‘the Resistance’ with an exponential military escalation.

Israel’s massacres in Gaza, with the material support of the Western countries, are relentless. The apartheid regime in the West Bank and Israel has been built up for decades, leaving almost no oxygen to breathe for those living under its control. Faced with this bleak reality and an overwhelming powerlessness to put a stop to it, anarchists may be looking for an effective resistance (or rather, as it appears, an image of one). But if we want to fight against oppression, we can’t be content with any opposition. Choosing to join one authoritarian, militaristic system against another will not put an end to the horrors of this world – neither in this conflict nor in any other. It is neither inherently defeatist or a sign of privileged indifference to refuse to take sides between warring groups and states. That conclusion can only be reached if we would reduce reality to simplistic representations. Instead, by being open to complexity and specificity, anarchist action can be a liberating endeavor. It is here that we can find affinities, build relationships on a different basis, and muster the strength and courage – or perhaps, humility and passion – to attack. Anarchists find their effectiveness when they can undermine and destroy oppressive systems. We will not find it in a military prowess which, at the end of the day, produces more oppression and misery. And so those that have a spirit of their own and a memory of past rebellions will fight for another uprising.

From the northern coast of the Mediterranean, with a heavy heart and a soul on fire
Early October, 2024

Not Liking Someone Doesn’t Mean They’re a Cop: On Bad-jacketing

from North Shore

Read the full text, including visuals, online as a PDF.

Find the full text ready for printing as an imposed PDF.

Since the commencement of Operation Al-Aqsa Flood, millions around the world have taken to the streets in support of Palestine against the genocidal Zionist entity. We are, globally, in an unprecedented moment of anti-imperialist mobilisation, which threatens not only the Zionist occupation but the colonial powers that uphold it.

This text was written through the summer and early autumn of 2024 from Anishinaabe and Haudenosaunee territory (so-called Southern Ontario, Canada), where people, many new to the left, have been facing intensified violence and harassment from both police and Zionists. Protests are regularly met with arrests and other attacks, which have created a climate of fear among attendees and organisers.

At the same time, that fear, combined with a disconnect from previous generations of struggle and an often-unchallenged fear of militancy, has led to practices that end up putting our comrades in more danger. This text hopes to address one such recurring issue.

 

what is bad-jacketing?

“Bad-jacketing” (or “cop-jacketing,” “fed-jacketing,” or “snitch-jacketing”) is the practice of accusing people of being a cop, informant, fascist, or other kind of bad actor on specious or non-existent evidence.

The term has been used since at least the 1960s, where it primarily described COINTELPRO operations that bad-jacketed legitimate members of the Black Panther Party and other organisations. It was, ironically, rumours from infiltrators consolidating their own positions that led to organisations not only isolating but, in some cases, severely beating or executing innocent individuals.

 

why is bad-jacketing a problem?

A 2015 text titled “No badjacketing: the state wants to kill us; let’s not cooperate” by the Twin Cities GDC, Local 14, says:

  1. At the least, it pushes away people who have, or are willing, to do work and make sacrifices for the movements.
  2. Worse, it silences entire groups by sowing mistrust within them and making discussion of strategy and tactics difficult.
  3. Very commonly, those accused of acting as informants become so alienated from their accusers that they actually become snitches.
  4. Worst-case scenario, people die. That worst-case scenario is all too common and real, and there is a famous regional history to it as well, in the case of Anna Mae Aquash, a Native American woman from Canada who had worked and sacrificed tireless for the American Indian Movement, or AIM.

Southern Ontario in 2024 is, of course, not the US in the 1960s and 1970s. Our contemporary movements do not act on false accusations of snitching by killing the accused. And while we know that the police are trying to infiltrate us and turn people into informants, the vast majority of these accusations are definitely not coming from people on the state’s payroll.

The biggest threat that bad-jacketing poses to us, here and now, is that it singles people out for state repression. Militants are more likely to be on the receiving end of these accusations, but also, anecdotally, people of colour, neurodivergent people, and anyone who “does not belong” (and, of course, people who fall into all of those categories). In doing so, the people who make these accusations in effect carry out the work of the state. They reproduce the oppressive dynamics of the outside world and push people out – often, the very people our movements are supposed to be fighting for. By pushing them out, bad-jacketing then denies support to people who are often already at heightened risk of criminalisation. It makes people into easy targets, signaling to the police that they can get away with brutalising, arresting, and jailing someone without outcry from the community.

During the 2020 Black liberation uprisings in the US, posts flooded our feeds, warning of “agents provocateur.” Decontextualised videos of police unloading bricks spread like wildfire among both far-right and far-left social media networks. Fascist fear-mongering about out-of-town “ANTIFA” inciting riots trickled down into leftist hyper-vigilance against “white outside agitators.” These warnings often ventured into the realm of conspiracy theories, where protests with unknown organisers or cop cars on fire were signs of a police set-up.

All this has had devastating consequences. The normalisation of this paranoid urge to see false flags around every corner has empowered people “on the left” to share images and openly work to identify individuals carrying out illegal actions. Contrary to what they may believe, these people’s efforts to “root out infiltrators” have in many cases now become the actual basis for the state to arrest and jail its opponents.

Beyond that, bad-jacketing leads to feelings of insecurity and distrust that can tear apart a movement – even without any real infiltrators being involved. Both online and on the ground, we can hear breathless accusations that someone at a protest is an undercover Zionist operative, often for no reason beyond that “they make us look bad.” Zionists, constantly on the lookout for ammunition against us, gladly stoke the flames. Projects like the “Shirion Collective,” a Zionist doxing campaign that claimed on social media to be training undercover operatives, see and celebrate when the left eats its own. We must be equally vigilant against these psychological attacks, which are more subtle and yet can do more damage than any one undercover’s testimony.

 

“professionally trained to make us look bad”
– Kristina Beverlin on Isaiah Willoughby

On October 5, 2021, Isaiah Willoughby, a Black man, was sentenced to two years in prison for lighting a fire outside an abandoned police precinct in Seattle in June 2020. Willoughby acted because of the murders of Manuel Ellis, his former roommate, and George Floyd at the hands of the police.

When it happened, Kristina Beverlin, a white woman who now wears a kufiya and a “Free Palestine” hat in her profile picture, immediately blasted out a photo of Willoughby. She tweeted that he “just tried to start a fire at the abandoned precinct” and called on “everyone in Seattle to retweet the photo of this man.”

In subsequent tweets, she stated her belief that “SPD wanted the precinct to catch fire to make the peaceful protesters look bad, after SPD had looked like monsters for days.”

It was her initial tweet that appeared in a court affidavit against Willoughby, and her photo that the police disseminated to identify him. In other words, it was this white woman’s insistence that the police wanted someone to set fire to the precinct, and that anyone who did so could only have been directed by the police, that sent a Black man to prison. Like any other white vigilante, the self-deputised liberal peace police will discipline, with violence if necessary, Black or people of colour who step out of line. Unlike any other, she does it in the name of anti-racism, with an hashtag in the same breath.

Similarly, social media users widely disseminated photos of a white woman suspected to have carried out the arson of the Atlanta Wendy’s where police murdered Rayshard Brooks. That she was white was proof to them that bad actors with no connection to the movement were behind property destruction during the uprisings, and that without those bad actors, the protests would have been peaceful. As it turned out, the woman in question was Natalie White, who Brooks had called his girlfriend on the night of his death. Two Black men, Chisom Kingston and John Wesley Wade, were later charged for the Wendy’s arson as well. As of December 2023, White and Kingston had accepted plea deals for probation, a fine, and community service, while Wade was scheduled to go to trial.

In both these examples, the people who sought to identify state agents “instigating” at protests were ultimately the people who acted as cops. The gravity of these actions cannot be overstated – they, and we, already know that police kill and torture Black people on the streets, and prison guards do the same against their captives on the inside.

Following the May 2022 leak of the US Supreme Court’s decision to overturn Roe v. Wade, Jane’s Revenge shared a communiqué about the fire-bombing of a predatory anti-choice “pregnancy centre” in Madison. The action sparked the usual uproar among the right about “woke ANTIFA terrorists” waging war against Christianity. But rather than defend the action’s righteousness, much of the left instead occupied itself with speculation about whether cursive graffiti and a “too-neat” circle-A meant that it was a false flag. The underlying logic here was that if something looked “too perfect,” if it made the right too angry, it couldn’t possibly be real. We may talk of rioting against the Supreme Court, but no one seriously means it.

In response to the right-wing outrage campaign about Jane’s Revenge, the FBI offered a bounty of up to $25,000 for information. Days later, in January 2023, the US Department of Justice indicted two people for graffiti on anti-abortion centres in Florida, actions that were also broadcast through Jane’s Revenge. The Florida investigation eventually produced in a total of four arrests, all but one of the defendants being women of colour. Worse, the Florida 4 were prosecuted under the FACE Act, a law intended to protect abortion access. Meanwhile, an investigation that involved 11 different state agencies and the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force culminated in the March 2023 arrest of Hridindu Sankar Roychowdhury for the Madison fire-bombing. Though the right jumped at the opportunity to gloat, widely publicising the defendants’ photos and personal information, charges against Roychowdhury and the Florida 4 received little attention from the left. Roychowdhury pled guilty after being denied pre-trial release and was sentenced to 90 months (7.5 years) in federal prison on April 10, 2024. Three of the Florida 4, after taking felony pleas that avoided convictions under the FACE Act, were also handed down prison time on September 12 of this year, ranging from 30 days to 1 year and 1 day. Popular support may not have prevented those prosecutions, but the significance of solidarity shouldn’t be understated. Instead, much of the left’s message to militants turns out to have been: “we’ll call you feds, and when it turns out we were wrong, we’ll abandon you anyways.”

Though we never had our own Third Precinct moment, left networks in Ontario fell victim to many of the same conspiratorial impulses. Reposted Instagram stories warned of “suspicious piles of bricks” left as bait near march routes and even “black blocs from Montréal” coming into town to start riots.

While, regrettably, no such riot materialised here in 2020, the bad-jacketing of the black bloc has a long history in Southern Ontario, as in other regions. A particularly egregious example came in the wake of the Toronto G20 in 2010, where liberals convinced themselves that the property damage was all an inside job and set out looking for proof. They singled out a muscular white man in combat boots and “cop-like” black pants for looking suspicious, digging up every image of him they could find. All of this crowd-sourced evidence built a convenient case for the police, who arrested and jailed the target of their suspicions.

A pattern emerges: subsequent repression draws only a fraction of the concern that the broad left had earlier put into interrogating the legitimacy of an action. This is one of the most insidious functions of badjacketing and disavowal – it aids the state project of disappearing people. Speculation about false flags, made exponentially worse by social media and algorithms that egg on endless engagement, steals away energy that could be spent preparing for the repression to come. It turns actions into abstractions ripe for every person to project their own arguments. That abstraction removes militants’ humanity from the picture, enjoining us to forget that real people, putting their lives on the line for the movement, must have lit the match or thrown the brick. The collective failure to adequately show up for each defendant and prisoner in this section – and many more not named – goes beyond a culture of disposability. It is a mass forgetting that makes each of us who partakes in it complicit in the work of the police, prisons, and the carceral state to not only extinguish our resistance but also erase our memory of its very possibility – and our memory and connection to the people who’ve sacrificed to keep that possibility alive.

 

when people are occupied, resistance is justified

The movement for Palestine has long been one of the most hyper-surveiled and attacked. Only when it comes to the Palestinian struggle will even the most mild, pacifist expressions of support land someone on McCarthyist blacklists like Canary Mission, extensive repositories of personal information stretching back years. It is no wonder, then, that people are – correctly – concerned about being targeted by our enemies, which include not just the settler colonial state itself but also Zionists who self-organise outside of it.

Unfortunately, this has once again meant a dangerous resurgence of bad-jacketing. In February 2024, social media posts from the “Shirion Collective” sparked mass outrage and panic among supporters of Palestine. Announcing an “Operation Global Insight,” the posts claimed to be launching an “undercover operation” in key locations such as Toronto. “Volunteers willing to wear keffiyehs and walk [masked] in these demonstrations” would “be provided an hour long basic training by one of [their] ex-Mossad team leads.” Further, “individuals with Arabic-sounding names and Middle Eastern appearance may be uniquely positioned for deeper infiltration and will receive cash compensation for their vital role in [the] operation.”

Though the collective is, without a question, real, there is plenty of reason to believe that the reaction to the post was disproportionate to their actual abilities. Sensationalist claims of Mossad ties in an emoji-studded public tweet do not paint a picture of a sophisticated intelligence operation. Neither do their existing “exposés” on social media, which, despite techno-babble buzzwords about AI, are largely limited to reposting other people’s footage and open-source information that anyone with access to Google could easily retrieve. The description of walking around at protests and “law enforcement presence” suggests no actual knowledge of how Palestine solidarity groups organise or bring in new members. A few people with bad intentions joining a march of hundreds or thousands, where every angle is already recorded and streamed live on Instagram, can hardly be characterised as “infiltration.”

If that were not enough on its own, the White Rose Society, an anti-fascist research group, shared internal screenshots from Shirion’s Telegram channel that confirmed the post’s real purpose was to sow fear and distrust. One Shirion volunteer is quoted as saying:

We won’t need to do anything. They will:

  1. Tone down
  2. Police their own
  3. Maybe even beat up their own just because they think those are us

That summary of their goals succinctly re-states the risks that bad-jacketing poses to our movements.

Even before the Shirion scare, claims that someone was secretly a Zionist or cop were already commonplace. People who wear the symbols or fly the flags of the Palestinian resistance have been accused of being “agitators,” sent by Zionist organisations like B’nai Brith to make protestors look bad. Over-the-shoulder glimpses of someone’s phone or poor fashion choices have been presented as evidence that a protestor is actually an undercover. Online, Palestinians have been accused of being Zionist sockpuppets off of little more than bad feelings. And, naturally, even minor disagreements or political critiques will end in allegations that so-and-so is a fed. While, thankfully, conspiratorial crowds here have not at least yet handed over one of our own to the cops, these accusations are sometimes accompanied by calls to act against someone. In one case recently, a queer person of colour known to other attendees was followed, harassed, and filmed aggressively at a protest because someone had decided for no clear reason that they were a Zionist in disguise.

As the police continue to crack down on us, it is all the more crucial that we learn from the mistakes of the recent past. We cannot let our rightful vigilance lead us to attack our own comrades. Nor should we water down our political lines, our demands, or our tactics for fear that the media and the right will smear us – they do that regardless. It may not be possible to eliminate some, faint chance that an infiltrator is behind a resistance flag, a punch thrown at a Zionist, a brick through a window, but far more likely is that some brave person, who has chosen to more boldly and unabashedly confront this genocidal system and its supporters, is responsible. For that, they deserve our support and our solidarity against whatever repression may come, not our condemnation.

 

knowing our enemies

An over-emphasis on undercovers may lead to an under-emphasis on other security vulnerabilities. Rather than acting according to a one-size-fits-all checklist or, worse, reacting to threats only as they appear, it’s important to proactively identify and individually study threats in order to understand how to address them. That is to say, what – specifically – is your enemy trying to do? How do they do it? The process of answering these questions is known as threat modeling.

Accounts like Shirion, Leviathan, or StopAntisemitism are real threats, as any of their victims know all too well. But OSINT, as well as everyday acquaintances, are much likelier to be the source of their information.

Your personal Instagram or TikTok page might already give away your identity, the protests you attend, your work or school, and the identities of your friends and family members. Your employer might publicly share profiles, including photos, of all of their staff on their website. Tools like PimEyes and FaceCheck.ID allow anyone willing to pay for them to run facial recognition technology and search the Internet for a given face.

If you’re a student, a Zionist classmate could easily recognise you from criticising racism in class and look up your personal information in a school database. A right-wing former colleague could remember you for being politically outspoken at your shared workplace. Knowing the true identities of everyone at a march will do nothing to prevent doxing if, for example, that march is being streamed online, your face is exposed, and your social media is public.

 

what about the real infiltrators and provocateurs?

Infiltration – actual infiltration, where someone comes into our organisations and our lives, pretending to be our friend, only to hand information over to the state – should not be taken lightly. But our baseline understanding of it often takes the form of a few convenient tropes, reinforcing existing biases against militancy and justifying dismissiveness towards criticism. These tropes prevent us from truly knowing our enemies.

The late Matt Cicero wrote that:

[there is a] misconception that all infiltrators act as agents provocateurs who try to manipulate activists into taking illegal, violent, unpopular, and ineffective actions. But as Gary T. Marx points out in his theory of social movement infiltration, social movements are damaged by “opposing organizational, tactical, and resource mobilization tasks.” In other words, infiltrators suppress social movements by fomenting divisions and internal conflicts, diverting energies toward defending the movement rather than pursuing broader social goals, sowing misinformation or damaging reputations, obstructing the supply of resources (money, transport, meeting spaces), or sabotaging planned actions. Many infiltrators are thus better described as agents suppressants, who are there to gather intelligence and channel groups away from militant action. 

[…]Incidents of provocation can be high-profile and sensational, such as undercover police posing as members of the black bloc at Montebello. This can lead activists to paint all militant action as the work of agents provocateurs, even if there is no evidence that this is true. Conversely, because of the low-profile of most agents suppressants, activists are often unaware of their role and impact in pacifying and controlling social movements.

The spectre of the provocateur itself, then, carries out the suppressant role of “put[ting] a damper on evolving movement militancy.”

The single-minded focus on the agent provocateur often goes hand-in-hand with a short-term view of state repression as having only two main goals:

  1. Criminalising individuals in order to take them off the board while making an example out of them; and
  2. Smearing the movement in the media, stigmatising it to the public, by associating it with criminality.

But as Cicero describes, the state is additionally engaged in a long-term project of suppression and counter-insurgency. The police cannot arrest every dissident – but they don’t need to jail us all to successfully maintain the colonial order. The central goal of counter-insurgency is to preserve legitimacy and control.

To that end, some further goals of state repression include, but are not limited to:

  1. Exploiting existing tensions in the movement in order to sow discord and distrust;
  2. Defanging the movement by discouraging forms of action that exceed accepted norms of protest; and
  3. Collecting intelligence to inform repressive operations, for the purposes of criminalisation and suppression.

We should examine the issue of infiltration with all of these goals in mind. David Gilbert says, “[t]here is no simple litmus test to differentiate sincere militancy from provocation or honest caution from suppression.” The same extends to the search for infiltrators more broadly. Most of the time, the only truly conclusive proof that someone is a police infiltrator comes from seeing the evidence against you that they’ve handed over to the state after you’ve been charged. That isn’t of much help – by the time you have those court documents in your possession, the damage will already have been done. That is assuming that the information they collect ever goes to court at all. RCMP documents from the G20 suggest that there may have been as many as 12 undercover officers. Far fewer than that were ever exposed by name, and the remainders’ identities may never be known.

People who’ve experienced the profound betrayal of finding out that someone they knew was an undercover or informant often end up drawing conclusions that are diametrically opposed from one another. But a common thread persists through most of their takeaways: there are few ways to prove for certain that someone is a cop, and many ways that the hunt for infiltrators itself instead undermines our work and furthers the state’s goals.

Accordingly, we should turn our energies to proactively building a security culture that protects us from both infiltration and other security threats. Much has been written on this subject already. In short: solid security practices should mean that an undercover cop is prevented from gathering meaningful information even if we do not know who they are, and that security risks are dealt with regardless of whether an individual is specifically acting on behalf of the state. If you do everything right, a plainclothes still won’t know who among the bloc smashed that ATM, even if they saw it happen with their own eyes.

As the ever-green “Why Misogynists Make Great Informants” reminds us, many of the greatest threats to our movements may not officially collaborate with the police either. In the Toronto anti-fascist scene alone, multiple people accused of misogyny and sexual violence/gender-based violence later went on to renounce the left, consort with their former opponents, and attack (verbally, physically, and with legal threats) their former comrades. None of those people, to our knowledge, were undercover cops, nor were they secretly fascists all along. Looking for a non-existent smoking gun to show that someone was lying about their identity would – and did – only delay people from taking necessary action against them when the myriad of other red flags should have been more than enough.

 

naming our enemies

The epidemic of bad-jacketing is inseparable from the problem of peace policing. Many organisers advocate for a policy of de-escalation at all costs, even in the face of potentially deadly violence from police and Zionists. They speak of “agitators” who disrupt and “escalate” “peaceful protests” – a nebulous euphemism that they apply to both the Zionist who shows up with a knife and the militant who comes prepared to fight back.

We should be clear: our enemies are not “agitators.”

Our enemies are the police, who brutalise us and lock us away to enforce settler colonial order. Our enemies are Zionists and other white supremacists, who assault and harass us in the streets, and stalk and threaten us in our everyday lives. Our enemies are politicians and other establishment liberals, who carry out colonial and imperialist genocides, here, in Palestine, and around the world, all the while crying crocodile tears about a so-called humanitarian crisis that they created. Our enemies are legacy media institutions, who smear resistance as terrorism and mobilise support for each of these attacks.

We must take care to differentiate between antagonistic and non-antagonistic contradictions, and to distinguish between enemies and potential friends. Too often, we see organisers reject co-strugglers in order to appeal to liberal institutions that will never be on our side. They may frame the conservative path as the only strategic option, rejecting open support for armed struggle, militant direct action, and anything else that would create “bad optics.” Disagreements from co-strugglers are treated as threats worse than that of liberal media, who we must appeal to for sympathy, or Zionists and cops, who we must appease for our safety.

When our enemies attack us anyways, these organisers pin the blame not on the perpetrators but on the co-strugglers who deviate from their line. They forget that to be attacked by the enemy is not a bad thing but a good thing. Our enemies do not strive for unity with us, knowing that ours is an antagonistic contradiction, knowing that our collective liberation requires their annihilation. It is better that we, too, abandon any notions of conciliation and recognise our enemies as enemies.

For all these reasons, we urge people to draw a clear line of demarcation between the enemy and ourselves. Abandon the euphemisms and name our enemies. When we struggle through our differences, let us do so with a shared understanding of what we are for and what we are against.

 

by every means necessary

Not only is bad-jacketing dangerous, it is disempowering and demobilising. It forecloses entire realms of possibility, insisting that we limit ourselves to the same set of legal, non-violent tactics. It threatens state violence against people who do not comply with those limitations being imposed upon their actions. Many people cannot take the risk of arrest. But something being risky does not make it impossible. Just because some of us cannot act does not mean that no one should.

While its meaning is sometimes lost, respecting a “diversity of tactics” means refusing to impose non-violence upon our co-strugglers and declining to condemn those that destroy property or take up arms. As a group of autonomous UCLA students writes in the wake of vicious assaults on their encampment:

We have noticed a trend of the desire to appear peaceful for the media taking precedent over the right of protestors to self defense, mirroring the world’s response to Palestinians’ right to self defense in the face of blatant fascist attacks and eliminationist violence.

We cannot allow our resistance movement to demand obedience over safety in the same way as western imperialist forces against the colonized.

Without drawing false equivalence with a people living under active bombardment and military invasion, the liberal urge that leads people to denounce burning precincts or fake clinics as “giving police an excuse to crack down” is the same that denounces the Palestinian resistance for “giving Israel an excuse to destroy Gaza.” We must refuse any invitation to distance ourselves as the “good,” “peaceful,” “innocent” ones. Instead, we affirm the right of Palestinians and all people to resist colonial domination by any means necessary.

We would remind our co-strugglers, too, that our enemies do not care about the truth, and they have no conscience. We see this in the viciousness with which the police enforce an unprecedented ban on overpass protests in Toronto, where people rallied on the sidewalk to wave flags and chant. We see it in the eagerness with which a long list of electeds, including the Prime Minister himself, leapt to denounce a protest of a Jewish hospital that never happened. We see it in the adamance with which Zionists call the very existence of Palestinians a terrorist threat against them, no matter how young, no matter how innocent, no matter how non-violent. Right-wing propagandists will fabricate scandals out of thin air, and the establishment will happily take up their version of the story. Even if each and every one of us swears to turn the other cheek to our assailants, as long as we challenge the colonial status quo, in our enemies’ eyes, we will never be peaceful.

Another path is possible, and the movement to Stop Cop City sets a powerful example. In February, a journalist asked spokesperson Mary Hooks of Vote to Stop Cop City whether organisers condemned arsons of police vehicles. She answered:

Hell no. No. Not at all, And to be honest with you, Atlanta deserves more than that. Real talk, they’re lucky, this city is lucky, this country is lucky. Atlanta has its hands in literally murdering Palestinians right now. You think we give a damn about some equipment? Not at all. Not at all.

But some of us, we cannot take that risk. And those who can, bless them. Bless them. I cannot take that risk. But Lord knows, I’ll sit with my lighter and be like, damn.

[…]We need every, every means necessary to deal in the police state we are dealing with. So I don’t care, no, and I would imagine my comrades would say the same. No, not gonna condemn nobody for doing righteously what they need to do when our city has silenced every quote-unquote proper, democratic process.

The movement’s aboveground and clandestine elements are two parts of a whole. Both are necessary for our victory.

 

Listen to Isaiah Willoughby speak in his own words on Kite Line Radio:

kitelineradio.org/tag/isaiah-willoughby/

 

Support defendants and prisoners from the George Floyd Uprisings:

uprisingsupport.org

 

Contribute to the Florida 4’s commissary and find other ways to support through the Anti-Repression Committee of South Florida:

linktr.ee/sfl_arc

 

more on peace policing

“ACAB Includes Peace Police: Three Report Backs from Palestinian Solidarity Actions” (November 2023) on Archive.org, online at archive.org/details/acab-includes-peace-police-en-print-8/page/2/mode/2up

“Peace Police are Police: How Protest Marshals Sabotage Liberation and Protect the State” (December 2023) on North Shore Counter-Info, online at north-shore.info/2024/03/11/peace-police-are-police-new-zine-classic-image/

 

more on security

“Confidence. Courage. Connect. Trust. A proposal for security culture” (November 5, 2019) on North Shore Counter-Info, online at north-shore.info/2019/11/05/confidence-courage-connection-trust-a-proposal-for-security-culture/

“Doxcare: Prevention and Aftercare for Those Targeted by Doxxing and Political Harassment” (August 26, 2020) on CrimethInc., online at crimethinc.com/2020/08/26/doxcare-prevention-and-aftercare-for-those-targeted-by-doxxing-and-political-harassment

The Threat Library by the No Trace Project, online at notrace.how/threat-library/

“Threat Modeling Fundamentals” by Håkan Geijer on Riot Medicine, online at opsec.riotmedicine.net

 

more on infiltration

Fuck the (Hamilton) Police, online at fuckhps.noblogs.org

“Infiltrated! How to prevent political police from undermining grassroots solidarity” (May 1, 2017) in Briarpatch Magazine, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/infiltrated

“Living among us: Activists speak out on police infiltration” (July 1, 2011) by Tim Groves, online at briarpatchmagazine.com/articles/view/living-among-us

“Stop Hunting Sheep: A Guide to Creating Safer Networks” (2011) on Sprout Distro, online at sproutdistro.com/catalog/zines/security/stop-hunting-sheep/

“The G20 Main Conspiracy Group: The Charges and How They Came to Be” (2012) on the No Trace Project, online at notrace.how/resources/#toronto-g20-main-conspiracy-group

“Why Misogynists Make Great Informants” (Spring/Summer 2010) by Courtney Desiree Morris on Incite! National, online at incite-national.org/2010/07/15/why-misogynists-make-great-informants-how-gender-violence-on-the-left-enables-state-violence-in-radical-movements/

Wax-ing Pathetic: UPenn Professor Suspended for Racist Remarks, Activism

from Idavox

Freedom of speech does not mean freedom from consequence. Amy Wax is out after years of racist demagoguery.

PHILADELPHIA, PA – The University of Pennsylvania published a public reprimand against racist professor Amy Wax announcing her suspension from teaching for a year and other sanctions. This comes less than two months before she is scheduled to speak at this year’s American Renaissance (AmRen) Conference, a White Supremacist event organized by Jared Taylor, the publisher of American Renaissance who Wax had invited to speak at the university last year and has done so again for her classes this December.

“The Board recommended sanctions including a one-year suspension from the University at half pay; the loss of your named chair; the loss of summer pay in perpetuity; the requirement that you note in public appearances that you speak for yourself alone and not as a University or Penn Carey Law School faculty member; and a public reprimand,” Provost John L. Jackson wrote in the reprimand to Wax, which cited a history of not just making derogatory generalizations about groups by race, ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and immigration status but also in doing so breaching the requirement that student grades be kept private. An example of this was a 2017 interview with Brown University professor Glenn Loury a prominent Black conservative who regularly places the blame on Black people for racism leveled against them, she claimed Black students practically never graduate at the top of their law school classes. “I don’t think I’ve ever seen a Black student graduate in the top quarter of the class, and rarely, rarely, in the top half,” Wax, who has often attributed this observation to genetics, said on his show. In 2018 citing this statement and claiming that it was false, Dean Ted Ruger barred Wax from teaching mandatory first-year law courses. The next year, Wax spoke at the Edmund Burke Foundation’s National Conservatism conference in Washington D.C. and declared while discussing a immigration policy that favored European nations over others that she agreed with Donald Trump’s description of non-European countries as “shithole countries,” argued for a “cultural distance” approach to immigration that “preserves the United States as a Western and First World nation,” and that “our country will be better off with more whites and fewer nonwhites.

Wax particularly stoked anger on campus by inviting Jared Taylor, himself a eugenicist who believes in the inferiority of Black persons to Whites, to speak to her classes in 2021 and 2023. During last year’s invitation, Wax photographed those protesting the event as Taylor disparaged the students assembled against him. According to Philadelphia Magazine, Taylor was invited by Wax to speak to her class in December but due to her sanction it is not known if this will still take place. Wax meanwhile will be speaking during the AmRen conference Nov. 15-17 at Montgomery Bell Park Inn in Burns, TN. The conference, which was attended by organizers of the tragic Unite the Right rally in Charlottesville two weeks before that event and promoted there, has seen a decline in numbers in recent years even though they have featured more prominent figures such as former House Rep. Steve King, former columnist Michelle Malkin, Laura Loomer, a neo-fascist podcaster recently seen in the company of Donald Trump, and this year Anthony Cumia the onetime radio host best known for his “Opie and Anthony” program.

Upon hearing of the sanctions imposed on Wax, Taylor angrily ranted on his podcast, saying it sent a bad precedent. “What has happened to Professor Wax is absolutely disgusting and lamentable and who knows? Maybe she will sue!” Taylor also complained that none of the news articles he read on her case noted her upcoming AmRen conference address. Meanwhile, members of Penn’s Black Law Students Association, regarded the sanctions an “overdue step” but “far from sufficient.” The group called on the administration to fire Wax and ban Taylor from campus. It is indeed rare to punish a tenured faculty member, this being the first such occurrence under Faculty Senate processes in at least 20 years.

Wax is slated to participate on a panel this Saturday in McLean, Virgina at the fall meeting of the Philadelphia Society alongside Trump-appointed Judge David J. Porter of the U.S. Court of Appeals, Helen Andrews, editor at Pat Buchanan’s American Conservative, who once wrote a fluff piece about eugenicist Steve Sailer, and J. Joel Alicea a law professor at the Catholic University of America.

InJekt Division and Its Local Membership

from Philly Fash Watch

In Collaboration with Jersey Counter-Info

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InJekt Division is a lesser known neo-nazi accelerationist crew styled similarly to Atomwaffen Division (AWD), that was founded by Texas native Coleman Thomas “Korb” Blevins. (More reading about far-right accelerationism can be found here). Blevins was radicalized on “Terrorgram”, a loose connection of Telegram accelerationist nazi and white supremacist channels that encourage and plan decentralized violence attacks across the globe, and founded InJekt Division shortly after. Blevins was later arrested by the federal government in 2021 for plotting a mass shooting at a Texas Walmart and was sentenced to 60 months prison for the plot.

Blevins, the founder of InJekt Division, featured in a post from one of the group’s public Telegram channels.

InJekt Division is decentralized and operates in a loose cell structure. They are active nation wide in the United States, with membership concentrated in certain areas like Texas, New Hampshire, Louisiana, Massachusetts, California, and the NY/PA/NJ tristate area. Their goal is to cause the decline of civilization/society through nazi accelerationism; provoking a race war and causing general violence. Their logo is a shield with a needle, referencing Blevins’ prior history as a heroin addict. Their slogan “Pray for Rain”, which references their hope for nuclear war, is often accompanied by their logo and a militarized nazi figure.

A post from one of InJekt Divisions Telegram channels which features their logo.

 

A stylized propaganda piece created by a group member.

 

One InJekt Division member got this corny back piece with the group’s slogan “pray for rain”.

InJekt Division has at least five semi-public facing Telegram channels, their InJekt Division (ID) Channel, Chernobyl Media (CM) Channel, Embrace Division (ED) Channel, Rev Quotes (RQ) Channel, and their Esoteric Thoughts (ET) Channel. Each channel focuses on a different topic, from recruitment/flashy propaganda, to “education” based national socialist materials, memes, inspirational quotes, or doxxes of other national socialists they have issues with. Each channel is also connected to several different private chats, meaning what InJekt puts out to the public is strategic with some security practices in mind.

InJekt Division Telegram channels. Their “ED”, or Embrace Division channel, is a sub crew that was created from the larger InJekt Division group. The “94” mentioned in the post specifically applies to the ED crew.

 

InJekt Division’s “RQ” or Rev Quotes Telegram channel. This channel features quotes from Blevins and other notorious neo-nazis.

 

InJekt Division’s “CM” or Chernobyl Media channel. This channel produces the majority of InJekt’s propaganda.

InJekt Division also has a cult of personality around their founder Blevins, who is featured across all channels. Blevins is believed to be in direct contact with a few close members given the rate in which propaganda is being produced. Blevins is still serving his 60 month sentence in federal custody.

 

Some of the Blevins fan art from InJekt Division.

InJekt Division has long-running beef with several fascist occult branded Terrorgram crews, such as Order of 9 Angels (O9A), Harm Nation, and 764. These crews are often covered on their ET, or Esoteric Thoughts channel. InJekt Division is opposed to these emerging online fascist occult groups, due to the fact that they often pose as a front for child exploitation rings.

InJekt Division posts about their hatred of the many Terrorgram occult fascist groups.

InJekt Division has made a point of denouncing these groups and doxxing their members, in addition to exposing pedophiles within the larger national socialist scene. They even doxxed local nazi and sexual predator Ben Ryder. Understanding the differences between InJekt Division and the nazi occult groups is vital to understanding how both groups operate. They may have commonalities on the surface but their respective principles, goals, tactics, and organizational strategy differ greatly.

Despite their decentralized structure, InJekt Division has key individuals who help run the organization and disseminate propaganda. One such individual is an unidentified Telegram user that goes by the handle 126/edits-props-quotes.(archive). Their main role is to create the groups graphics and disseminate them anonymously through their account and the 126 ID Productions Telegram Channel.

A primary aspect of InJekt Division’s Telegram presence is to bring attention to their crew, recruit new members, and build a loyal base of young followers prepared to follow their accelerationist ideology to its logical conclusion. InJekt’s propaganda reflects this goal, being flashy and topical. Young adults and minors are their prime target for recruitment.

A collection of propaganda geared towards InJekt’s target audience of minors and young adults. They typically feature a militia styled nazi figure with a firearm, 90’s vaporwave aesthetic images with a nazi twinge, and edgy graffiti.

 

Additional propaganda which plays on young fascists’ feelings of powerlessness.

It is well known within US national socialist spheres that InJekt Division allows and recruits minors within its membership. Evidence of which can be seen below.

 

Nazis in a S14 chat discussing InJekt Division’s recruitment policies.

One major way InJekt Division targeted young adults and youth for recruitment in 2023 was by hacking adult film star Riley Reid’s social media accounts via a SIM swap attack. In doing so they were able to use Reid’s accounts to advertise InJekt Division to millions of her followers. It is not known if there are any current members who are minors, but while they target those in their teens and 20’s, there is no age requirement for membership, meaning they have a large potential recruiting pool.

InJekt Division has a sizeable fan base amongst the far-right, with all sorts of white nationalists reposting their content, including local crews like S14 and the now defunct Embrace Struggle Social Club.

An S14 member promoting InJekt Division in a main chat.

 

Embrace Struggle reposting InJekt Division content on their Telegram page before it was wiped in July 2024.

Within the far-right however, the ratio of fans vs. actual members is not proportional. This is because InJekt Division is exclusive about who they let in and gaining membership is an involved process. Membership is not something that can simply be claimed. Prospective members go through an extensive vetting process and must prove themselves and their commitment to InJekt Division/nazi accelerationism in the real world.

So far antifascists have identified well-known neo nazis Scotlyn Schmitt and Mathew Bair, both of PA, as official members of InJekt Division.

Scotlyn Schmitt, confirmed InJekt Division member.

 

Mathew Bair, confirmed InJekt Division Member.

Schmitt, while very young at 20 years old, made a massive impression on InJekt Division’s leadership. Like other nazi accelerationist crews, InJekt Division, follows a paternalistic set of fascist principles, generally viewing women in a chauvinistic way, meaning White women are typically barred from membership. Due to Schmitt’s involvement in running different Terrorgram accounts, her commitment to nazi accelerationism, and connections to Dallas Humber, Blevins, and AWD’s founder Brandon Russell, InJekt Division made an exception for Schmitt and allowed her to join.

Schmitt after joining InJekt Division, holding a firearm.

 

Schmitt trolling people online as a member of InJekt Division.

Schmitt has also been instrumental to the group given her background and is considered a major player. She has connections to nazis on the East coast, West coast, Mid-West, and the South. Schmitt was last spotted around the York PA area in July 2024 and has reportedly been bouncing around the continental US since then.

Bair, with a far less impressive resume, joined Injekt Division in 2022 as his opportunities with other nazi accelerationist groups like Blood Tribe fizzled out. While against InJekt Division’s internal security protocols, Bair has been promoting his involvement all over Telegram.

Bair’s personal Telegram account. He recently updated his profile pic to him posing with his InJekt Division flag.

 

Bair, a resident of South Eastern PA, runs a personal nazi shit post account called the Sons of Pennsylvania. Note Bair’s InJekt Division hat on top of a series of firearms.

These pictures from Bair’s personal Telegram account and his Sons of Pennsylvania account, confirm his general membership status within InJekt Division.

Bair took these photos while visiting Falling Waters, a famous Frank Lloyd Wright house in PA.

Bair cross posted several photos from his trip to Falling Waters to different Telegram accounts, including the ED InJekt Division channel, as evident by the photo in the top right corner. Bair’s brazen actions also confirm his position as a leader of the ED sub crew within InJekt Division. Given Bair’s attitude and status in the ED sub crew, the cringe worthy back tattoo pictured earlier in the piece is more than likely his.

With the recent arrests of high level Terrorgram nazis, Dallas Humber and Matthew Allison, the state is closing in on fascist accelerationist groups. Allison and Humber had no sense of operational security (opsec), which enabled the federal government to trace their illicit activities and arrest them. In comparison, Schmitt and Bair have worse opsec, so it’s a wonder how they have been able to escape a federal indictment up until this point. Regardless, Bair’s, Schmitt’s, and InJekt Division’s time of acting with impunity ends here. Every single one of you will be held responsible.

Some Lazy Responses to “Some Questions To Be Addressed Before Milwaukee and the Bay”

This is a very lazy response to the recent piece “Some Questions To Be Addressed Before Milwaukee and the Bay”. I agree with most of the critiques about scene-iness and the resurgence of Bash Back! etc. What is disappointing about this piece is the criticism of the muay thai smoker,as it is clear that wither the report back from the smoker was not read or disregarded. In the report back from the smoker (https://anon.to/shxgbn), it is stated that the warehouse space that it was held in was squatted (i.e. not reserved). It also explains that the smoker was organized explicitly as not part of Bash Back!, in part due to similiar criticisms addressed in “Some Questions…”. I’m curious if/how this criticism changes with some of the points of critique also being critiques in the same vein. With the additional information presented by the report back in mind, these points fall flat. Of course the critique that the proles did not stroll in some orgy of riotous destruction where we fucked each other in the stench of gasoline atop the ashes of UPenn, falling like snow in the light breeze, as we caught the flickering of flames in the darkness of our comrades eyes… or whatever holds true. The smoker was a different girl tho, those weren’t her desires for that night, she doesn’t even go to UPenn. If one desires Bash Back!(TM), the secret is to really begin 😉

Some Questions To Be Addressed Before Milwaukee and the Bay

from Bash Back News

If we name a tendency, how do we make that tendency spread like fire? How can we make that tendency escape the dead-ends of liberal identity politics and/or academia and/or activism? How will we find commonality with forms-of-life that bash back? How can we make this world explode?

Is our violence of substance or of image? Are we joking when we write about violence?

What is meant by that picture of beautiful people holding baseball bats and sledge hammers? Is this symbolism? Is it real? Does it mean anything to bash back?

-Some Questions to be Addressed Before the 2010 Bash Back! Convergence in Denver

The return of Bash Back! in the fall of 2023 with its international convergence in Chicago (the first of its kind in roughly fifteen years) excited and drew in many queer anarchists and anti-authoritarians with promises of ‘orgies and riots’; not a mere reunion, but seemingly a return to form for the networktendencyganghoweveryouwanttoconceiveofit. And while, in many cases, Chicago set a good tone for the nature of what Bash Back! was to mean in the new context in which we find ourselves, it is important that we continue to be very clear and intentional about what exactly we mean when we say “Bash Back!” and when we talk about being violent faggots. We must not let ourselves be so overcome with the glamour and excitement of “doing a bash back” that we lose sight of what this means, or rather, what it could (or should?) mean: sheer, unrelenting, anti-social conflictuality. It would be both counterproductive, misleading, and to some, demoralizing, to take on the image of “orgies and riots” and bring forth only parties, dances, and otherwise chill hangs.

We are not inherently subversive simply through our identities as queers, trannies, faggots, anarchists, punks, dykes, or any combination therein. To accept this, even tacitly, is to accept the liberal identity politics of those we supposedly seek to destroy, to simply want our own aesthetically cool and edgy subcultural niche within this industrial death march called civilization and its society. Do our desires begin and end with an endless trawl of “anarchist” dance parties, galas, fashion shows, raves, or private warehouse sex parties (even if they are fun!). If they are indeed present, what of our desires to see this society destroyed and this civilization reduced to ashes under our feet? When will we trade mere subculture for an anti-culture, one foaming at the mouth for war; one that seeks to ravage the social order, one with a wild fuse, seeking to blow itself up at any moment? For how long will we settle merely for campfires on the rave pier while deferring to set them in the streets, the banks, the factories, the prisons? Are we to simply throw parties until the next wave of social unrest comes, or will we be that social unrest?

Before going on, it must be stated clearly: this critique is written with the utmost love, respect, and appreciation to those who organized the Northeastern Bash Back! Regional convergence in Philadelphia this past spring. Taking on organizing a regional Bash Back! convergence is a massive organizational undertaking to say the least, and there is a ton of work that must go into planning and putting on something like that! And for that, many thanks and kudos go out those who made it happen, especially in the short order that it occurred after the Chicago convergence and the proceeding call for regional convergences. However, in the rush, excitement, and stress of putting on something like this and asking the logistical questions of “how, when, who, and what,” it is easy to forget to ask “Why?” Once again, what does it mean for us to “Bash Back!”?

“Is our violence of substance or of image?” When the queer anarchist Muay Thai smoker is happening and at least one hundred of us collectively chant “A-, Anti, Anticapitalista”, “1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 Fuck 12!”, and “Death to America, Death to Israel!” between rounds in the safety of the reserved warehouse space, the painfully liberal UPenn encampment sleeps quietly on the university lawn two miles away. What if this clear sense of rage, conviction, and unity of purpose in our chants was channeled into an opportunity for a surprise attack against the university, its presumably vulnerable and unsuspecting police forces, or the upscale businesses surrounding the university? What could it have meant to turn the joy of the fight club into the jouissance of a rampage? This is not to imply that the Philly organizers simply did not care about the conflictual and insurrectionary nature of Bash Back!, and in fact, they probably wanted people to bring said energy. Unfortunately though, this energy is not always as spontaneous as we would like. Moreover, it didn’t help that any nods to these insurrectional desires were literally tacked-on at the back end of the daily schedule. In the information zines handed out at the convergence, listed after every day’s events was the following: “11PM–Late: Autonomously Organized Late Night Fun.” Although the implication and intentionality was somewhat clear, the actualization was far from so. This led many interested parties to confusedly wander around the convergence, asking any Philly BB!ers they could find if there was anything that was actually planned for that night, or even if anyone knew of any particularly relevant or vulnerable targets (which were also notably absent from the distributed zine). Such inqueries were usually met with, “Oh, I think they are just expecting people to go do stuff on their own.” Of course, by this point, it was much too late for anyone from out of town to plan and carry out anything substantial. Regardless of the organizers’ intentions, it seemed that any real conflictuality had taken a backseat to hangouts, parties, dances, and movie screenings. To be clear: to realistically expect out-of-towners, many of whom may have never lived in Philadelphia for any period of time, with comparatively little (or completely nonexistent) knowledge of the political, social, or literal terrain to autonomously organize “late night fun,” is at very best a severe miscalculation and at worst, utter laziness.

Others have guessed that this omission of conflictuality may have been actually been intentional, with some organizers prioritizing a need to “rest and recuperate.” Considering the current political climate, this desire, and others like it that focus on ~building connections~ and networking for bigger, more confrontational (and more importantly, presently imaginary) encounters in the ~future~, seems both confusing and out of touch. There are so many others who continue to courageously and tirelessly fight in the here and now. And far be it from this critique to lay out a measured response to the increasing prevalence of the care-pilled “politics of rest and compassion” that seems to be further creeping into anarchist spaces, it is important to remind ourselves that this moment of re-emergence, especially in the context of all that surrounds us, is a critical one. A moment where it is up to us to decide if this thing will merely be consumed by the narcissistic myopia of subculture, and consequently cynically recuperated liberal identity politicians and grifters parroting lines about “Queers Bashing Back” until they or their audiences tire of the fashion. Or, does it instead take the anti-social turn of a destructive, unnameable, nihilistic queerness that truly destabilizes the nature of identity and the social order, refusing the repackaging of its violence into mere aesthetics, its lust for incendiary jouissance into a social nightlife, its negativity into “mutual aid projects”?

“If we name a tendency, what does it mean to make that tendency spread like fire?”

Protest Near Harris-Trump Presidential Debate Opposes Bipartisan Support for Israeli Genocide in Palestine

from Unicorn Riot

Philadelphia, PA – Protesters opposing the ongoing Israeli genocide in occupied Palestine are gathering near the security perimeter erected outside the National Constitution Center — the site of the first debate between 2024 presidential candidates Kamala Harris (D) and Donald Trump (R). A call to “shut down the presidential debate for Gaza” was announced by the Philly Palestine Coalition to rally at City Hall, which is east of the debate site.

Pennsylvania is considered the largest swing state in the presidential election. The statewide winner will take all 19 electoral votes. Street closures entered effect Tuesday morning on Arch and Market streets between 4th and 7th streets in Philadelphia’s historic Old City east of Center City. Eastbound lanes of the Benjamin Franklin Bridge are also closed. Watch our live coverage.


A flyer from the Philly Palestine Coalition circulated online

While Trump has promised he would help Israel “finish the problem” in Gaza, the Biden administration, which includes Kamala Harris as Vice President, has repeatedly gone out of its way to continue arming, funding and politically supporting Israel throughout its deliberate mass killings of displaced civilian children, women and men alongside the targeting of life-supporting infrastructure in Gaza, including the destruction of hospitals and water treatment plants and the torture of healthcare workers.

As of September 10, at least 41,020 Palestinian residents of Gaza have been reported killed and 94,925 injured, while 692 Palestinians in the West Bank were killed and more than 5,700 injured. At least 1,139 Israelis have been killed and 8,730 injured, according to Al Jazeera, based on regional agencies’ data.

Protests outside the Republican National Convention in Milwaukee in July criticized Trump and the Republican Party’s alignment with Israel’s racist and far-right government; demonstrations during the Democratic National Convention in Chicago late last month highlighted the fact that no Palestinians were allowed to speak onstage at the party’s national gathering.

Clips below from Milwaukee and Chicago highlight the scope of Palestine protests that have been the most visible element of dissension around the presidential race.

While paying lip service to talk of a ceasefire, the Biden-Harris administration has continued directly enabling Israel despite the International Court of Justice’s findings that allegations of genocide are “plausible” in regards to the invasion of Gaza and that Israel’s occupation of Palestine is illegal under international human rights law and should be ended.

Recent reporting has also shown that Israeli authorities are subjecting Palestinians held in crowded administrative detention camps such as Sde Teiman to rape and torture at a mass scale – a revelation that has apparently not impacted Harris’ public, unconditional support for Israel in recent media appearances.


For more from Palestine click on image below.