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

  • December 4, 2024 12:05 am

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)

‘Animus’ Reader Book Release Event + Film Screening – Oct. 20

  • October 13, 2024 1:24 am

from Reeking Thickets Press

Animus, animut, animul, animis, amirus…

Join us at ORCA (email orca.philly@protonmail.com for the location) on October 20th at 7pm for a free event for the release of Animus. Free copies (crudely bound+limited availability, reading and printing pdf’s will be free online after the event, and physical copies will be $5 after to cover some of the cost of materials, plus shipping) will be available and if you feel like hanging around we’ll be watching The Fever (2019, 98 min., by Maya Da-Rin) and having a short discussion. Masks will be available and are encouraged. If you’d like to throw cash to future publishing efforts or ORCA there will also be options for that, though not expected at all. If you have stickers, zines, etc. you’d like to give out feel free as well! You can read a pdf of the introduction here.

A first foray into small-scale bookmaking, this initial edition is unfortunately quite rough, with some edges trimmed on a slant, too-small margins, some occasional slightly faded text or misprints not significantly preventing legibility, a too-stiff cover, and the possibility of some toner rubbing off over time.

Animus is an unauthorized collection, a 446pg. paperback of mostly already-published, excerpted writings which brings together anarchist pieces (anti-civilization, queer, insurrectionary, illegalist, and nihilist) with anthropological ones on the indigenous peoples of Amazonia, the North American Eastern Woodlands, Siberia, and Oceania (in the currents around ‘new animism’, Amerindian perspectivism, the so-called ontological turn, and on egalitarian `societies against the state’ and the relationships with these and with hierarchy/civilization of gender, magic, ontology, and violence – also as it concerns animals or spirits, predation, on `supernatural’ planes, or as a quality or possibility), some history, and a few studies of insurgent strategy.

The Fever is a realist, myth-like film by Maya Da-Rin, in collaboration with an indigenous team, featuring some relevant Amazonian cosmologies explored in the book, in industry, humanity, and the wild’s mirroring clashes. From the Criterion Channel description: “This spellbinding narrative feature debut from Maya Da-Rin is an entrancing, enigmatic meditation on the material, spiritual, and dream lives of Brazil’s Indigenous people. Justino (Regis Myrupu, winner of the Best Actor prize at the Locarno Film Festival) is a forty-five-year-old member of the Desana people who works as a security guard at a cargo port in Manaus, an industrial city surrounded by the Amazon rainforest. Since the death of his wife, his main company is his youngest daughter (Rosa Peixoto), a nurse who will soon be leaving him to study medicine in Brasilia. As the days go by, Justino is overcome by a strong, unexplained fever. During the day, he fights to stay awake at work. At night, a mysterious creature follows his footsteps. Torn between the oppression of life in the city and the distance of his native village, Justino can no longer endure an existence without place.”

The book has recurring focuses on the origins and concealed qualities of state-like forms, the paradoxes of semiosis as key to both civilized and anti-civilized forms, and the complication of relations between ‘opposites’ beyond a simplified dualism or nondualism. Animus is a chaotic, naive attempt at collection and distribution emerging from a historical and personal period spent both adrift and under torque. It’s intended as a broad and efficient introduction to the depths of some particularly incisive or relevant approaches in anarchy and anthropology (the specific varieties share some important influences and perspectives, yet differ on others and appear quite compartmentalized), catalyzing as much magico-insurrectionary rupture and insight as possible, for those both well-versed or unfamiliar. A compulsive, propulsive effort (not exactly the fruit of this book’s editor or, in its triangulated particularity, that of the authors either) to weave a fabric that might unravel a few of the threads making up our worlds; those instituted as well as those counter-posed.

Original contributions include an introduction, compiled timeline of the anarchist propaganda of the deed era, a very brief overview of the Bonnot gang’s activities and international illegalist dispersions of that period, a historical outline of the origins of contemporary insurrectionary anarchism focusing on Italy and a timeline of some contemporary insurrectionary attacks, and a preface to two of the included sections on gender in historical Lenape/Delaware and colonial contexts.

Though queerness is a main focus throughout, only a relatively small portion of the material directly focuses on explicitly queer sexuality, gender, or experiences as conventionally understood. Instead, it’s queer in the sense that it’s grounded in and meant to inform and sharpen our lived, mutual relation of hostility with the core structures of gender, sexuality, group and individual identity, morality, sociopolitical organization, semiosis, and indeed ontology, cosmology, and metaphysics that underpin civilization’s power.

In consciously engaging with the `anthropological’, we aim to use the means provisionally designated under this broadly understood, nebulous field against itself, as its best practitioners (opponents?) often seem to do. This indeed can characterize the approach of both its best from a redemptive reapplication of the practice of trying to better understand, complicate, perceive, relate to, or encounter people and the social and of those from its sinister colonial locus. In both – a differing of mentation and a mentation of the different. We find, both in the looking and what is seen, that two impulses of these kinds often impersonate or appropriate each other but genuinely have radically different, opposing trajectories. Many of the included pieces likewise seem to imply that stratified institutions, civilized sexual, gender, and ethno-racial regimes, nationalism and oppressive xenophobia, the alienating order of language, and quasi-Cartesian humanism may have emerged or cloaked themselves under the necessarily possible inversion of forms created specifically for their prevention, and continue to be partly powered by these functions persisting in them as a residue, as well as potentially subverted by them. These egalitarian forms still extant in indigenous `societies against the state’ include the chiefs whose structural power (not properly their own) exists in them being prevented by everyone else from exercising hierarchy. Localized kinship bands whose version of unity exists to violently ensure broader dis-unity. The many indigenous origin myths of how all beings were once human, unlike the civilized myths of animal descent. Humanity as a bodily (yet agent-ed and not scientifically biological or materialist) way of creating one’s self common to all beings (but only through each kind of being’s view) and resting, always unstably, on the capacity to appropriate other kinds of beings’ hostile, animal otherness through a play of mimetic-empathic, mutually defining, metamorphic, violent contact, without getting lost and oneself becoming appropriated into the `humanity’ of the others. A threatening yet all-sustaining given ground of potential sociality and culture (one conflictual and egalitarian) common throughout the cosmos.

Christian Dominionism, The New Apostolic Reformation and the American Fascist Movement

  • August 16, 2024 1:36 am

from Philly Fash Watch

The purpose of this text is to provide anti-fascists with the necessary background to understand the beliefs, organizing model and radiant influence of The New Apostolic Reformation (NAR), as well as the particular threat it poses as an emerging center of gravity for the developing American Fascist movement.

 

There are many denominations and movements cultivating authoritarian political beliefs amongst Christian Americans, but the New Apostolic Reformation is unique in terms of its inherently authoritarian politics, theological flexibility, networked organizational structure and ability to influence Christians from different traditions. Furthermore, the NAR was the first Christian group to promote Trump, and have taken on the role of his spiritual advisors and links to the Evangelical community. This was originally a controversial move, but was justified by comparing the obviously godless Trump to King Cyrus of Persia, the virtuous pagan who ended the Babylonian Captivity and allowed the Jews to return to Palestine. This rather impressive theological bullshit has paid back in dividends as more and more Christians have accepted the idea that modern Prophets are guiding the Christians of America.

 

Christian Dominionism is defined as the belief that Christians should take control of the State. While the term has entered the mainstream of many parts of the American Left, many antifascists tend to see it as just another incarnation of  evangelical politics, if a more totalitarian one, and not particularly worthy of much attention when compared to the deluge of white supremacist shooters and would be terrorists currently threatening our communities. While neo-nazis represent the most advanced terrorist threat within the far right, the New Apostolic Reformation is the most advanced Social threat. By this we mean that they have an extraordinary power to shape the very experience of reality of massive communities of American Christians. Most neo nazis are skeptical of Mass Politics, due to the long history of federal infiltration of their movements. The New Apostolic Reformation is devoted to mass politics; their faith revolves around the concept of revival, or mass conversion to their cause. Currently, the NAR is dedicated to winning power via the legitimization of the American political process. THey have already had a good deal of success on this front. Representatives Lauren Bobert and Marjorie Taylor Green are deeply affiliated with the movement, as is the Speaker of the House, Mike Johnson. Pennsylvania State Senator Doug Mastriano and Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito are also connected, in addition to scores of state and local level office holders. When Donald Trump, contrary to the prophecies of the movement, lost reelection, networks of “Prophets” and “Apostles” were some of the main forces in galvanizing the January 6th Capitol riot. This act demonstrated the movement’s willingness to seize power by non-democratic means and should be understood as a sign of things to come.  The New Apostolic Reformation is changing America, and if we want to prevent them from achieving the power they desire, we have to understand them on their own terms.

 

There is no such thing as the New Apostolic Reformation

 

To call the NAR a denomination would be inaccurate, as it specifically emerged from the world of non-denominational charismatic Christianity. It would also ignore the vectors by which they are able to push their political theology into other Christian groups, Charismatic and otherwise.

Charismatic Christianity is an outgrowth of Evangelicism, particularly the Pentecostal Tradition, best known for its spectacular practices of snake handling and speaking in Tongues. To be a Charismatic Christian is to seek a kind of constant mystical experience of reality, to be filled with the Holy Spirit and to see God’s divine plan manifest in everyday life. It is a rather extraordinary tradition, because organized religion tends to put careful guardrails around mystic practices, and carefully guide mystics to incorporate their work into the pre established orthodoxy of their religion. When this doesn’t happen, mystics and their followers have a tendency of being destabilizing forces in society.

The roots of the NAR traces back to the work of a C Peter Wagner at Fuller seminary in southern California. Wagner was the student of John Wimber, of Grapevine ministries. Wimber brought the practices of independent non-denominational Charismatics to the more mainstream audience of Fuller, and Wagner was his student and successor. These were literal courses in miracles, and helped spread the Charismatic idea that belief in Jesus and the presence of the holy spirit gave Christians supernatural powers.

Around the same time Wagner did graduate work in sociology studying Church growth. The Study of Church growth is a very involved discipline, and Wagner was focusing on Church Governance as a factor. In his later writings he proposed a new structure. He rejected denominational rules and bylaws, democratic structures and individual autocracy in favor of a networked ecosystem of Churches ruled by Charismatic leaders. Now many of these leaders who came into Wagner’s emerging network had already begun to call themselves Apostles and Prophets. These extraordinary titles are literal. These people genuinely believe they are receiving messages from the divine and being told to enact divine will. Their claims are justified using a concept called fivefold ministry which is extrapolated from Ephesians 4:11-13 “So Christ himself gave the apostles, the prophets, the evangelists, the pastors and teachers,  to equip his people for works of service, so that the body of Christ may be built up  until we all reach unity in the faith and in the knowledge of the Son of God and become mature, attaining to the whole measure of the fullness of Christ.” While for the vast majority of more Orthodox Christians the Prophets are a thing of the past and the Apostles passed on their authority to the Church (or the Bible, if you are Protestant) Prophesy and Apostleship are alive and well for the Charismatics of the NAR.

This is the most extreme development away from Christian Orthodoxy since Martin Luther split from the Catholic Church, it is also the fastest growing form of Christianity in America as well as world wide. Furthermore, there is evidence that ideas from the NAR are finding influence in more traditional Churches. A (unreplicated, so inconclusive) study by Paul Djupe from Dennison University suggests that the Core of NAR theology (beleif in modern Apostles and Prophets) is extremely contagious, influencing the theology of much more mainline Churches. In fact he suggests that as many as 25% of the American Christians he polled believe it.

While the NAR was a highly organized project, the nature of the networked structure and its spiritual Oligarchy has tended towards a denial of its unified nature. The influence of a Church growth scholar doesn’t give the group legitimacy  and the nature of Charismatic Spirituality has a preference for the organic and spontaneous. Camouflaging themselves also allows for members of the NAR to recruit more traditional christians slowly, rather than presenting their non-traditional nature for all to see. The American evangelical world is changing rapidly, and the NAR has set itself up to catch those who are looking for something new. This piece from writer Holly Pivec gives tips on how to find if Churches are concealing their NAR affiliations.

Many Progressives and leftists have told themselves that secularization is an inevitable process that will destroy the influence of the Christian right. The reality appears to be that the number of Christians will shrink, but grow in fanaticism and thirst for political dominance. The fact that the NAR puts so much stock in elections is due to their desire to be act in accordance with what they believe to be the divinely inspired principles of America. When the NAR takes extra-legal steps, it will be with the excuse that their enemies have contaminated The failed insurrection at the capital demonstrated that if they cannot win at the ballot box, they will try by other means. Their ultimate belief is that a precondition of the rapture is the triumph of the church over the earthly governments of the world.

NAR leaders like Sean Fuecht (a harmless looking, guitar playing youth minister) have used Proud Boys as their personal security.  They have deep connections to  “Christian” and “Patriotic” militias around the country. Furthermore, they urge their congratulations to arm themselves and train for war against secular Americans who they beleive are out to get them. The most famous of these is probably Matt Shea, the former Washington State Representative for Spokane. Shea was removed from office for distributing a text he wrote called “The Biblical Basis for War” which contains the memorable line “Kill all males who do not submit”. Shea maintains extensive networks of extremist Churches across Idaho and Eastern Washington. These networks exist across the country.The most important thing to remember about these networks is that many participants in them have been preparing for an American civil war for nearly 50 years. These are people who read the Turner Diaries but are more concerned with oppressing people for not being Christian rather than not being white, though racism is often a hidden part of Christian Supremacism.

 

As capitalist crisis and the general dysfunction of the American political system accelerates, new powers will emerge to fill in the cracks. The NAR will be amongst them, and the rest of us need a plan to counter them. They have been able to grow to the point of having millions of members with powerful representation in government. While effectively being a fascist organization, a church is not something that can be treated like a clique of boneheads. I would urge all antifascists to meet this threat with the utmost urgency and caution. No matter where you live in the US these people are making moves. The first course of action is to find out who locally is already mapping the apostolic networks. This will likely mean working with liberals and even other Christians. We need these people as allies. There are theologians who’s work consists of preventing churches from being taken over by NAR theology. The old slogan of the Anti-Racist action network was expose, oppose and confront. We need to have local exposes of apostolic networks, their relationships in government and business and the threat to our communities that they constitute. When they try to take over school boards we need that to be publicized. When groups like Moms for Liberty pull their stunts we need people to understand exactly what they are confronting. We are well past the point that small group action can have an effect on a group of this scale. As this piece is being written it looks like the Trump campaign is sinking before our eyes. This could mean that the NAR will attempt another extra-legal attempt at seizing power like January 6th. Even if they accept defeat, they will not do so forever. They are building durable institutions to take power, and we need a long term plan to stop them.

Jesus and the Abolitionist Launch Event

  • May 26, 2024 1:32 am

from Instagram

Photo by The Wooden Shoe on May 16, 2024. May be an image of 1 person, book, magazine and text that says 'LAUNCH EVENT JUNE 2, 6-8PM Wooden Shoe Books 704 South St., Philadelphia, PA JESUS and andthe the ABOLITIONISTS D HOW ANARCHIST NARCHISTCHRISTIANITY CHRISTIANITY EMPOWERS EMPOWERSTHEPEOPLE THE PEOPLE TERRY ERRYJ.STOKES J. STOKES Jesus and the Abolitionists By TERRY J. STOKES'.
Join us at the Wooden Shoe for a launch of Terry Stoke’s exciting new book, JESUS AND THE ABOLITIONISTS: HOW ANARCHIST CHRISTIANITY EMPOWERS THE PEOPLE! Compelling, witty and written with a deep sense of purpose and empathy, we hope you’ll join us for Terry’s reading and for questions and answers afterwards.

Happy Birthday Tortuguita

  • April 24, 2023 1:31 am

Submission

Lots of goods were liberated from various places today including Home Depot in memory of Tortuguita! They are with us in every action. Lets crew up with our affinities and redistribute goods to those who need in and out style. Viva Tortuguita!

Vigil and Stroll for Tortuguita

  • January 23, 2023 1:32 am

Submission

On Saturday 1/21 there was a vigil for Tortuguita Manuel Teran. A group of about 40 adults and children placed candles and homemade signs by the turtle in Clark Park.

People spontaneously made speeches about Tortuguita’s death. The speeches touched on people’s experience of them, grief, martyrdom, and continuing to struggle. People called on each other to target cop city’s sponsors and the contractors responsible for building.

After people had been speaking for a while a small group broke off from the vigil. They took the street with banners. Barricades from a nearby construction site were pulled into the street to block cops and traffic. As the march moved graffiti memorializing Tortuguita and against police was tagged. A realty office had its windows smashed.

The rowdy vigil is the first time things have popped off from Clark Park in a while. A few years ago Cark Park was a regular spot for mid sized black bloc demos to start from. We think that this is worthwhile to revisit because it’s a traditionally anarchist neighborhood and there are lots of alleys nearby to easily change in. It’s exciting to see this kind of energy re-emerge in Philly.

Even though Philly is far from Atlanta, Tortuguita’s death has been deeply felt here. We are angry. We are watching. We are acting. Cop city will never be built.

RIP Tortuguita
Neither innocent nor guilty
Neither terrorists nor protesters
Simply anarchists!
A warm embrace to those arrested in Atlanta, Seattle and everywhere else
Death to civilization

West Philadelphia Vigil Remembers Tortuguita

  • January 22, 2023 1:19 am

from Twitter

West #Philadelphia earlier tonight: A vigil at a turtle sculpture in Clark Park to remember #Tortuguita, the forest defender killed near #Atlanta. About 70 people joined a vigil and talked about local struggles. One shared a memory of meeting Tort in the forest last year.

In West #Philly tonight, a small breakaway march from the vigil at Clark Park looped thru the streets and someone tagged “RIP TORT” on a Jersey barrier. #CopCity #Tortuguita

Killing time as high art during quarantine

  • April 7, 2020 1:20 pm

Submission

In times like these, no work to be found even if we want it, not enuf weed and acid in the world to make time pass fast enuf, we must dig deep and remember play as a method of killing time. You could fill your night with such activities as: 1. Walking around your neighborhood til you find a nice banner
2. Cut it down and bring it to your sacred spot
3. Smoke weed until you come up with a cool thing to say on it
4. Remember There’s a bridge over the trader joe’s That’s good for dropping stuff
5. Make a banner encouraging looting of said trader joe’s
6. Bike over and drop that banner

7. Make your way over to the property Joel Freedman owns on 21 and locust.

8. Add your words to those of the crew who got there the night you originally wanted to
9. Steal some snacks to keep you sustained
10. Spray over a security camera at a Wells Fargo
 11. Engage in a low effort cat and mouse type game with a police car

12 haviing come to a spiritual awakening

As a result of these actions , become resolutely committed to sharing the stories of them as well as the tactics involved
 in solidarity with every laid off restaurant worker, and with everyone who’s ever turned a trick,
the anticapitalist contingent of the philly mural arts program


Friendly Fire Collective’s Dissolution Reflections

  • February 2, 2020 9:40 pm

from Friendly Fire

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Collective Statement

Friendly Fire Collective was always an experiment – always changing, re-forming. As a national collective, we formed around a potential zine for anarchist Quakers, and after that fell through, a potential retreat for Quaker anarchists. Over time, that retreat vision changed, hoping to connect revolutionary leftist Christians or, more generally, “mystics”. 30 or so of us gathered in May 2018 in Philadelphia. As a local group in Philadelphia, we formed after the Friendly Fire retreat among friends and comrades as a prayer group. We met weekly to eat, pray, and sing. It was a way to support and encourage one another. We endeavored to be in solidarity (both materially and spiritually) with the revolutionary left, leading us to participate in and support Occupy ICE and the National Prison Strike, as well as create propaganda to push people of faith to realize the need for revolution.

Over time, though, our expectations and visions came into conflict, as we continually failed to have a clear understanding of our mission, or a sense of our structure. In the space of indecision, unspoken disagreements and interpersonal conflict led to the end of our affinity group. A way forward together as a community feels not only impossible, but unnecessary. Instead of spiritual community, it is more important in these times to orient our lives around the work of liberation. For some of us, what we sought in Friendly Fire was what we wanted in a political formation, or a party. But that was not what we were, or were intended to be.

There are several things to be owned and learned. The church abolitionist rhetoric, grounded in “Quaker” apocalyptic idealism, was ultimately ultra-leftist. Though we did not officially take this stance, the majority of us supported it to some degree, despite knowing that this was a stance that the masses would not be able to adopt any time soon. Church abolitionism combats an institution that can often play an antagonistic role on these stolen lands, but also plays a vital, unharmful role, especially in the lives of many colonized people, even at times serving the people and inspiring class consciousness. Christians have played roles in revolutions throughout the world, even communities of Christians, such as with the community of peasants in Solentiname led by Father Ernesto Cardenal in revolutionary Nicaragua. There is value to finding the revolutionary potentiality in the Christian narrative, as it is a fair analysis that Jesus was a revolutionary leader.

We also found our orientation becoming church-like, despite our church abolitionism. Our stressing of discipleship and fellowship led us away from the work of building revolution. Within a few months of forming, we fell out of coalition work around Abolish ICE and ceased to plan and collaborate with other orgs on actions. At our best, as an affinity group, we were a presence of care and faith in the revolutionary left. At our worst, we were an insular intentional community.

We must own the role whiteness played in our collective. As we had articulated a number of times in our analysis of liberal unprogrammed Quakerism – whiteness has a tendency of becoming the authority in horizontal, white-majority organizations – the same could be said about our organization, even as we sought to be accomplices and race traitors. What started out as a POC-majority organization became a majority white within months, and the difference was felt. Several attendees noted that our meetings began to feel uncomfortable for a number of reasons, including our conversations becoming inaccessible and our members unfriendly. These issues were discussed between members, but never addressed or properly dealt with. We consistently catered and accommodated to the needs and comfort of our petit-bourgeois white members over the needs of colonized and working class people attending, making our space uninhabitable to many and our vision incoherent. We heed to the wisdom of Loreno Kom’boa Ervin:

“Even so, it is important for anti-racist/anti-colonial activists to continue trying to dismantle racism inside these movements or organizations, and failing that, to dismantle the groups themselves entirely. If allowed to continue, they do more harm than good. Activists must recognize the damage of internal racism, the politics which support it, and how to deal with it, and then act swiftly and forcefully, sometimes even ruthlessly.”

As we formally dissolve our collective, we all encourage those seeking to be faithful to God’s liberatory Spirit to join a revolutionary organization. The u.$.a. cannot be reformed into justice, but rather must be abolished. We will not wage revolution through Marxist happy hours or electing a “socialist” war criminal. Do not give into electoralism and reformism. Revolution is the only solution!

Guard yourselves against liberalism, which Comrade Mao defines as stemming from petty-bourgeois selfishness, placing “personal interests first and the interests of the revolution second, [giving rise to] ideological, political and organizational liberalism.” Orient your life around the work of liberation.

Guard yourselves against white chauvinism. Make your organization accountable to colonized communities. If your organization refuses, seek its destruction. Support colonized revolutionaries and their organizations. There are many good reasons why there are formations of colonized people that refuse to work with white communists. Humbly reflect on that, continually. Read Lorenzo Kom’boa Ervin’s The Progressive Plantation and J. Sakai’s Settlers.

Be disciplined. Read and discuss revolutionary texts with comrades. Study revolution to build revolution. Learn to self-crit. Exercise. Get comfortable with a gun. We only have each other, so we must be prepared to care for and defend our communities.

Serve the people. Live with the people. Learn from the people. Remember Comrade Mao’s words: “The masses are the real heroes, while we ourselves are often childish and ignorant, and without this understanding, it is impossible to acquire even the most rudimentary knowledge.”

Listen to the people’s concerns and needs. Organize around them. See what works. Own your mistakes, and do better. Love the people, and care for their well being. Be humble and kind. With the people, communists seek to build new power, and build towards completely overthrowing imperial power. This is an overwhelming but necessary task – and we must love and support one another to do it. Take care of your comrades.

As we look back on the last couple years we feel a mix of deep sadness, but at the same time we feel an excitement and creative energy burning within us. This spirit, we know, is the spirit of Liberation which burns down in order to build up and breaks in order to bind. Friendly Fire may be coming to its end, but we know that this same Holy Spirit is working within the masses to make a way in the desert for the true kindom of G-d which will tear down every wall, burn down every prison, and break every chain. The work of revolution is only beginning. Amen.

Occult Features of Anarchism w/ author Erica Lagalisse

  • April 18, 2019 1:30 am

from Facebook

In the nineteenth century anarchists were accused of conspiracy by governments afraid of revolution, but in the current century various “conspiracy theories” suggest that anarchists are controlled by government itself. The Illuminati were a network of intellectuals who argued for self-government and against private property, yet the public is now often told that they were (and are) the very group that controls governments and defends private property around the world. Intervening in such misinformation, Lagalisse works with primary and secondary sources in multiple languages to set straight the history of the Left and illustrate the actual relationship between revolutionism, pantheistic occult philosophy, and the clandestine fraternity.

Exploring hidden correspondences between anarchism, Renaissance magic, and New Age movements, Lagalisse also advances critical scholarship regarding leftist attachments to secular politics. Inspired by anthropological fieldwork within today’s anarchist movements, her essay challenges anarchist atheism insofar as it poses practical challenges for coalition politics in today’s world.

Studying anarchism as a historical object, Occult Features of Anarchism also shows how the development of leftist theory and practice within clandestine masculine public spheres continues to inform contemporary anarchist understandings of the “political,” in which men’s oppression by the state becomes the prototype for power in general. Readers behold how gender and religion become privatized in radical counterculture, a historical process intimately linked to the privatization of gender and religion by the modern nation-state.

[April 25 at 7:00 PM – 9:00 PM at Wooden Shoe Books and Records 704 South St]

Spring issue of Friendly Fire

  • April 7, 2019 2:56 am

from Friendly Fire

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s p r i n g    2 0 1 9    i s s u e 

Militant discipleship, revolutionary eschatology, tarot, info on our upcoming retreat what’s there not to love about the newest issue of Friendly Fire? Check it out here ❤ 

Also, you can still apply to the retreat in Minnesota (June 17-20)! You can do that here. Applications are due 4/15.

And if you have any spare cash to help comrades make it out to the retreat, you can donate here on our Chuffed.

Aries Blessings!

Friendly Fire Winter newsletter!

  • January 30, 2019 9:14 pm

from Friendly Fire Collective

OUR WINTER NEWSLETTER IS OUT!

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~For more info on the upcoming retreat in this issue~

The emerging vision of Friendly Fire

  • January 30, 2019 9:12 pm

from Friendly Fire Collective

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Power has a way of co-opting the subversive for its own stability. The teachings of Jesus, an anti-imperialist prophet, included. Within a few centuries, Christ’s communities of holy fools and prophets ossified into a vehicle of imperial power, playing a vital role in historical and contemporary colonialism. Today, Christian institutions are globally advocating for right-wing reactionary ideologies. Christianity has materially and historically proven itself to have a devastatingly synergistic relationship with imperialism, capitalism, white supremacy, and cisheteropatriarchy. For those of us who are Christians with revolutionary anti-capitalist convictions, we are responsible for working through these contradictions for the sake of reparations. U.S. and White Christians are especially called to take responsibility for the sins of their tradition and institutions, working out their salvation in fear and trembling with the knowledge that the sins of the Church are insurmountable.

The Friendly Fire Collective has a number of Christian members currently working through these contradictions. We have been asking ourselves what discipleship in Christ looks like in the context of the US, where Christendom is losing its grip but Christian hegemony remains.

For those not acquainted with our community, Friendly Fire is a network of individuals, cells, and communities who seek to accompany revolutionary and liberatory currents as people of faith. Originally a collective of far left Quakers, we re-oriented our mission early on to include mystics of all faith traditions, including outside Christianity. Though our network is national, our “base” is in Philadelphia, where we have a community focused on anti-imperialist discipleship.

As a community with an apocalyptic vision, we believe that today’s global political  crises are connected and reveal the imperialist order collapsing on us. The last days are here—the world as we know it is coming to an end—and we must build a new world in the ashes of the old. The masses are being called to enact God’s transformative judgment in this world, tearing the mighty off their thrones and lifting up the oppressed. We believe this is essential to the gospel of Jesus.

Though the institutional Church widely dismisses and even combats the political convictions of our community, we look to the witnesses of the Taborites, Beguines and Beghards, early Quakers, militant Anabaptists, Liberation Theology-inspired Christian base communities, the Christians for National Liberation in the Philippines, and other communities and prophets on the outskirts of Christendom that found subversive power in Christ’s gospel. Prophetic communities have periodically popped up throughout history to reveal the sins of the State Church, and to proclaim and demonstrate a different way of following Christ that is egalitarian, communal, Spirit-driven, and against the cruelty and nonsense of the status quo. Many of them tended to retreat from the world, creating isolated communities of mutual aid, spiritual presence, and committed agape love. Other communities, like those who followed the early radical reformer Thomas Müntzer, were grounded in the experience of God and a profoundly political narrative of the apocalypse, feeling that Christ himself invited them to be disciples through the class struggle. This form of political discipleship laid ground for the German Peasants’ War.

As Christians who seek the death of empire, we take comfort that we are not alone, and millions of others who followed Jesus sought the same thing.

We especially look to the example of Christians like Camilo Torres Restrepo, who famously remarked, “If Jesus were alive today, He would be a guerrillero.” He followed Jesus out of the priesthood and academia, and into the revolutionary struggle, joining the National Liberation Army in Colombia. He was shamelessly a Christian Marxist, and provided spiritual support to his comrades. He was martyred in his first experience of combat. His life embodies the gospel our Christian members believe.

In the context of the US, we understand that essential to our discipleship in Christ is combating Christian hegemony. We see an emerging strategy in the Christian/Religious Left forming, which we tend to call “religion for the commune,” that expounds on this mission. This strategy calls us to orient our spiritual lives, as individuals and as spiritual communities, around accompanying liberatory currents. As people of faith, we feel called to be present to the revolutionary process, seeing the political struggle as a spiritual struggle. The love of God dares us to follow empathy into its most radical leadings, including to revolt against a world built on the exploitation of the masses. We hope to corporately participate in the revolutionary struggle, as well as be present to the spiritual needs of the growing revolutionary movement, creating spaces of prayer, contemplation and pastoral care. Through this work of accompaniment, we intend on modeling a new way of being a spiritual community. We can form a theology and practice built from and for the people.

Spiritual practices are a gift to disciples, transforming affinity groups into disciplined revolutionaries, and they can be a gift to the forming Commune. But we should offer these spaces for healing, contemplation, and spiritual practice with the Commune in mind, never centering our spiritual affinity groups or in any way replicating the dynamics of imperialist Christianity. When we join our faith to the Commune, we can discover with the people how to love and serve God, and even how to be disciples of Christ.

Freindly Fire November Newsletter

  • December 1, 2018 12:21 pm

from Friendly Fire Collective

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You may have missed it, but we put out a newsletter a week ago! You can check it out here.

Topics included: Repentance for missions, God’s wrath, Comrade Alyssa, early Quakers – and more!

Report-back on the Ordination

  • October 18, 2018 1:06 pm

from Friendly Fire Collective

This past weekend our Friendly Fire community celebrated our comrade and friend Matti, as well as their gifts and ministry.

As one of the initial members of the collective, Matti was one of the main organizers of the May Day retreat. They cooked, cleaned, led workshops and prayer meetings, provided pastoral and spiritual care, and went about it all with bliss. When things kept falling apart during our retreat, Matti fearlessly transformed every moment of chaos into grace. Their profound faith has grounded our community in an outrageous sense of love and magic.

Though situated across the so-called US, they have continually offered their anointing and spiritual gifts to the Philly base and the wider Friendly Fire community through tarot readings, intercession, prophecy, and more practical, material support, such as writing for our newsletter.

This weekend, our community surrounded Matti to recognize the Spirit’s ordination of Matti as a seer, prophet, and minister of insurrection. We shared silence and out of that stillness we prayed and prophesied for over an hour, speaking blessings over our community and Matti.

Some friends of our community traveled from out of state in order to celebrate, so as soon as the ordination was done we feasted and celebrated.

Thanks to all our friends who showed up, especially those who traveled quite a distance! Your presence was felt and appreciated.

Thanks, also, to the friends who were willing to endure the marathon of TLC’s finest reality TV show 90 Day Fiancé. We did that, and we did it together.