Horizontal Hostility podcast
An anarchist podcast of ethical philosophy and shit talk.

Episode 1: Riseup, Technological Centralization & Snitching

Horizontal Hostility’s inaugural episode. The five hosts gather in the same city and same room (with two spectators and occasional commentators) to talk about Riseup.net’s decision to turn over information regarding two users to the FBI and their justification. Basically Will demonstrates he’s spineless and weak on snitches by talking a lot to defend the value of Riseup’s infrastructure while everyone else disagrees and Pax actively whittles torture implements to use on snitches in Iranian prisons over the course of the episode. Possibly more nuanced conversation is had about the context of Riseup’s decision. Lots of shit is talked about the hacker community. Discussion gets a bit technical at places, but should still be followable.

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Horizontal Hostility on #hacking, #technology, #security culture, #riseup, #snitching,

23 Feb 2017

Everything in the universe is in the public domain

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Speaker 1: All right, this is the show. It is an audio circle jerk. Are you ready? Here we go.

Speaker 4: So this is the inaugural episode of the podcast Horizontal hostility.

Speaker 2: Yeah, true.

Speaker 3: That’s what we voted on democratically. Kind of.

Speaker 5: You’re just going to repeatedly hear that in the background.

Speaker 3: But yeah, we I think we decided horizontal.

Speaker 2: Hostility? I think so.

Unknown Speaker: OK.

Speaker 1: And the dissenting.

Speaker 2: I also it was my second choice, but I would rather that than anything.

Speaker 3: Well.

Speaker 4: What do you want? To call it.

Speaker 1: They realize, realize, realize.

Speaker 2: I went with horizontal hostility so that I I voted major tickets so that the other party didn’t win. I wanted so much for the tolerant.

Speaker 1: Life.

Speaker 3: Or as that was my second chance.

Speaker 2: Put it here comes the last.

Speaker 4: Here comes the left, yeah.

Speaker 5: Here comes the left.

Speaker 4: Yeah. What is that a derivative of?

Speaker 2: You’re right.

Speaker 6: So so this is.

Speaker 5: Episode 1. And we’re going to talk about rise up their Canary and what they released in terms of their statement on turning over to users, to the FBI. Does anyone want to give an overview of that or should I give you overview?

Speaker 4: I can do it, but I mean feel free to chime in. I’ll start at the beginning. No, not really. So I think it was August, when was it, August, when?

Speaker 5: So the the OK, so the detail is the last time they updated the the warrant, their warrant Canary was in August and then.

Speaker 4: And let’s should we does it, should we say, should we explain Warren Canary at all? OK, so from from how I understand it, the Public Library system came up with the the 1^st Ward Canary, which was they had they a crafty way of being able to know when they had a gag order.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Speaker 4: For somebody’s library. Like whatever you call it. Like like, yeah, checkout list, they put a sign outside of the Public Library saying we haven’t been contacted by the FBI, maybe something like that. And then whenever they did have a gag order, they would take the sign away so people could know that there was.

Unknown Speaker: Just.

Speaker 4: Sound. Some, but some government inquiry into somebody’s checkout order and people could be more careful. Or could you know, at least have a heads up. And so this has spread to the now the digital age where a lot of particularly activist based technology and just websites in general will put a warrant. Canary on their site. So as long as the Canaries there then the idea is that they have, the site hasn’t been contacted by. Any government agency?

Speaker 2: But they haven’t received a subpoena with a gag.

Speaker 5: Order, right? So specifically, I think today what’s common is that the the legal situation, I’m not a lawyer et cetera. But I think the legal situation is that proactive. What happens is that with Warren. If you you can’t. If you have a gag order, you can’t do. So you can’t remove a sign. Mary, it’s more like, you know, every month you’re supposed to update it. So every. Month you’re supposed. To say as of this month, I certify that I have never received a gag order. I’ve never, you know, complied or cooperate with the feds. And then if my mom comes by where you. Can no longer. Proactively make that statement and replace it with something new. Then you just say nothing and the saying nothing.

Speaker 2: Right. They can’t compel you to write something on your website, but.

Speaker 5: And and also put taking something away equals an action or something there’s there’s weirdly. But yeah, it’s the basic.

Speaker 4: So in are we saying October? I can’t. I can’t recall which month actually at this point.

Speaker 2: I think NN.

Speaker 4: OK. So in November, it had been a couple weeks and rise up had not renewed the warrant Canary and it started floating around on the Internet that maybe they had a gag order for some reason they had failed to update their Canary in the past and that’s something that is, you know kind of a general criticism of. Weren’t Canaries is that people just fail to update them and it’s become kind of an unreliable system? Sometimes people just don’t. Remember to update them and then it causes a lot of flurry of concern, but as we recently found out in, in the case of rise. Up. The their failure to update the warrant Canary was a intentional act because they did, in fact have. A gag order. I don’t know if there’s any in between detail. Anybody wants to add on.

Speaker 5: That. So I mean, yeah, so there was there was I think what happened was that there was a bunch of WikiLeaks volunteers who were involved with some sort of service that was going to rise up. And they freaked out as they are want to do about the Canary expiring and rise up had previously just failed to update their.

Speaker 2: Married. Because they oh we.

Speaker 5: You know. Totally forgot that we even had that and. Then you know. Got on late. Whoops. Oh God. And and they had been. They had not said like a precise date for when. They would update, but it was supposed to be like every quarter or something like that and. So the the wiki leaks folks freaked out like a week later. Other people were like, wait, what’s going on? And it it very quickly became a chorus of people asking, is your Mary dead and rise up very prominently, not responding and then rise up started to answer other tweets and respond to other things. And I think at that point most of us, like were pretty clear.

Unknown Speaker: Running to that.

Speaker 1: The Davidson the Jackal.

Speaker 4: Right. And so then in a really super cool move on rise of part, they came out and. Were like, hey y’all. No worries. We did have a gag order, but it’s cool cause it wasn’t for anybody important. It was just criminals, obviously. I’m. I might be conveying what side I fall on in this whole. Debacle. But yeah, so.

Unknown Speaker: This.

Speaker 2: Specifically, a DDoS extortion ring, a ransomware.

Speaker 4: And.

Speaker 5: DDS DDoS in case folks don’t know is when you use a variety of hacked machines or machines of different types to flood flood a website or something with enough queries that it shuts down and ransomware is when somebody puts. Malicious software on your computer and compromises it possibly locks down or encrypts your material on your computer and then says send money to me and.

Speaker 1: That’s.

Speaker 5: Then I will. Give you the. Key that will.

Speaker 4: Yeah. It’s a pretty neutral criminal act that you really can’t say that the intentions of the person who’s doing the act but rise up felt pretty justified in deciding that this were these are the kind of like. Criminal acts that defied their policy. And so when? They had a subpoena for information about. You know, I I don’t know exactly what the data was that they were. Asked to. Provide they haven’t actually talked about the specifics. But they have said that they did cooperate with the FBI in this investigation. And they provided user data for. The individuals involved in these ransomware in the US attacks, but you know again with the caveat. It’s cool they weren’t activists. It wasn’t important. And So what we’re here doing today is discussing whether or not that claim is valid. The answer quick, quick answer is no, but we can go. For the long answer.

Speaker 2: The long answer is blah blah blah. No right?

Speaker 5: So so I think that everyone, I think that everyone here agrees that like ransomware and DS can be like valid tactics that people use and that and that criminality can be a valid way to earn a living sometimes.

Speaker 4: Maybe the only at school?

Speaker 5: Arguably, yeah.

Speaker 7: Regardless of the and the. It’s not the status.

Speaker 5: Right. So there’s two, there’s a there’s a couple more points to go in in terms of. In terms of details that are relevant to this, so 1 is that prior rise up had put explicitly an exception saying they would cooperate if pressured in cases of child *********** and child rape. That kind of situation.

Speaker 4: But they’re also they’re I don’t know if you going to say more about that specifically. I just wanted to read also there what is still up on their website as far as under their security policy. It says we are not working with any government agency. We have never simply handed over information when requested and for years have had no logging policy. We have fought and won every time anyone has tried to get us to give up information, we have never turned over any user data to any third party, 4^th party, 5^th party or any party. So that’s a lie that’s on the Rose’s website.

Speaker 6: Right. I mean.

Speaker 5: It’s out of date and they should replace that obviously, but but I think that I think the real thing that that things turn on is that that seems to imply very strongly that they won’t and they never actually say that they won’t. But I think most activists and I certainly have read them saying. That they would not and would rather burn everything.

Speaker 1: They explicitly said they wouldn’t accept in cases of child *********** and other such.

Speaker 2: Specifically, it says. What about child ****, drugs, corruption, etcetera? Would you fight law enforcement requests for users doing?

Unknown Speaker: And.

Speaker 2: Things these things will violate rise up terms of service and unlike some more American libertarian service providers, you do not exist to provide privacy for doing anything you want. We would close the accounts of people doing those things, and the collective may even decide to cooperate with law enforcement rather than set all the servers on fire and destroy the organization.

Speaker 5: Right. Corruption and etcetera are very, I feel like, yeah, but I mean, I mean it does. I think that obviously the people who take rise upside 100% would say that that is like for fair warning and that people should know about that or should have known about that in advance. But I there’s definitely something to be said about the fact that if you run these kind of services most of the time users. Take a certain implication from the way that you present yourself. Especially this comes this comes to bear constantly with a lot of software projects, a lot of tools that activists and radicals will use that suggest that users read a certain contract with them, that they that the developers themselves. Feel that they actually sign, or that they’re actually suggesting, and you oftentimes get people who think like, you know, they’ll use Cryptocat as a great example. Cryptocat was a messaging software based on the UTR protocol. Implied that it provided encrypted messaging for folks, but there was actually a 7 month period, I think, where basically. No encryption. Was being used and so it was marketed quite strongly towards radicals and towards people who needed encryption for chatting and yet had only the barest like throw away. And this is trail software and everything. Nothing is secure or whatever, but it was. It’s how you present that. And if it’s not giant blaring red letters with like a detailed diagram explaining the context of things and users. Tend towards treating things as like a giant button of trust of like rise up is trustworthy. It’s the trustworthy thing and I don’t think people even realize and I think I think to this day the majority of users rise up in other e-mail services. Don’t realize that e-mail is not encrypted by default and that e-mail and that e-mail when it flies across the network or things along those lines depends upon it. Really weak level of security, all things considered. And then also when it sits on rise up servers sits just. Currently, if it is encrypted, it’s encrypted in a way that rise up and violate any at any moment, and even the thing that they’re putting in place right now, they say to provide some level of security for their users, just given that they’re now, they’re complying with the feds. When the feds ask for certain things. At. Least the level of. Security that they’re offering for each user gets their own encrypted. Partition or whatever can still be violated if the FBI hands them a warrant that says when that person logs in, log the password they use to access their own encrypted drives that we can then get access to it. So. It provides a little bit of security in the sense they can’t just request everybody on the server and then read everybody’s emails at once, but it doesn’t provide a great degree of security for individual users and I think that for the last 10–15 years everyone has been using rise up or other services has kind of assumed that those services were encrypted or giant trust fund that those were just trustworthy.

Speaker 1: Are you there?

Speaker 4: Yeah. Yeah, I think that the this question of did rise up like? Break the trust of his users is one side or one like thing to address, but I think that the other I think it also just brings up or it’s like the chance to discuss like is what rise up is offering something we even want. Is it something that’s even good at all? Are they offering anything more than like a place to aggregate data on active? Like and that is like more the question I wanted to get at or like. I’m more interested in.

Speaker 5: I I really want to get to that question. I think that probably first though, we should go over the like the context of like the the accusation of snitching of whether or not we can trust that all of how much of A violation that is.

Unknown Speaker: Yep.

Speaker 6: So so.

Speaker 8: Yep.

Speaker 1: And and and.

Speaker 5: I think there’s also the response. Of like what should we? What sort of consequences should rise up or that people associate with rise up face for what some people see as? An agreed just. Violation of their obligations as anarchists, members of the analyst community. And and I’ll. I’ll be frank. I’m kind of more on the moderate side. You heard it here first. I’m totally weak on snitches, but I I I think that I think, yeah, the I think that the the situation is complicated by the fact that they’re not. It’s not a situation like there’s individuals.

Unknown Speaker: Who?

Speaker 5: Are choosing to comply or not comply in the same in the same way that like? This is a massive infrastructure and so there’s a trade off if they don’t comply then that means burning doesn’t just mean going to prison personally, because I think absolutely if there was a situation where where the cops came up to an activist in their out of the community and we’re like, switch on somebody who’s doing a DS ring or something like that and you turn ******* states evidence then. Like we should all like clearly banish you forever. But the question becomes on on issues of when, when the trade off is, we burn down the infrastructure that is keeping almost every activist project that I know of like afloat because they all depend upon like the emails they all depend upon the list serves. They all depend upon rice that has and other services. Right. That provided and it’s terrible that we’re in the situation of centralization. But for me a lot about the reason why I and I was quite surprised about this. The reason why I don’t feel strong on this in the sense of like ******* forever burn in hell is that I think that it’s a utilitarian trade off and we have to look at the. The the like how much damage is is, is. Their actions, due to the overall state of.

Speaker 1: Activism. I want to be a little pragmatic, though the reality is, and it’s unfortunate in my view. Even more unfortunate maybe of the centralization of rise up is that the technology is probably keeping most activists organizing afloat is Facebook.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: That’s true. Yeah, right.

Speaker 1: Let’s not like.

Speaker 2: We can talk about rise up, but rise up is not the technology that is helping people organize realistically, right? Yeah. I mean, I not only think that they should have burned it rather than cooperate. I still think it should burn, but they’re like it will. What they’re providing is ugly Gmail. We’ll go with more down time. I’m sorry. I’m sorry. With more downtime. Ohh, really? I don’t know.

Speaker 4: Straight to the ad homonyms. I don’t use it. Try their VPN.

Speaker 3: Yeah. The is actually fantastic.

Speaker 1: The VPN is a really good service for a lot of activists. Yeah, honestly, only if you have Ubuntu, you can’t use it on any other operating system for Ubuntu.

Speaker 8: You.

Speaker 5: Androids. You can use it on androids and they’re about to release it for Windows.

Speaker 1: Sometimes, sometimes you can’t connect to it on Android, and sometimes your texts don’t come through because you’re using signal.

Speaker 5: Ohh, another detail that’s important to note is that while we’re talking about these things, we should be clear that one of the things I think is really important to note is that there are really different assumptions around your obligations. As a as an infrastructure provider in the hacker community versus in. The analyst community. And so I think that there is this. Really rise up has perhaps rise up is perhaps making the decision that they made, perhaps sympathizing too much or acculturating too much towards what’s the norms of the hacker community.

Speaker 4: Right. The bar is really low, so we gotta raise it.

Speaker 5: Right, right. Because and yeah. And so there’s, I mean it’s collaboration with grand juries is widespread in the hacker community. I it’s shocking for for hackers to not cooperate, people get.

Speaker 4: Up.

Speaker 5: What are you even doing? And and we should also note that even services like signal, which everybody is trying to get activist sports right now and has a lot of really great developers working on it as. As secure as you can make smartphones. Which is still. Not particularly secure, but provides a certain significant degree of security for activists. Signal cooperated with the grand jury with a grand jury warrant. Now the the the real trick that makes that different is that signal had built their software infrastructure so that very little information could be passed or could be turned over that. They had very little. Logs and they’re not actively supplying. They’re not giving the person software every day that they can backdoor, you know, kind of thing. So signal has openly said that they’re cooperating with federal grants. Three things. They’re just, they’ve put it so that they themselves can’t give very much information, but they can give information and it can be the case that metadata that you pull out of these things could conceivably help in a case. So they I think the two things that and I may be totally wrong on this, if I’m going in front of you. But I think the two things that signal the signal can turn over are like the. Date that the user signed up and the last state that they sent messages to the server, and both of those things could be compromised. There is a lot of information that can still garner into these situations and that a lot of activists are right now seeing the praise of signal and saying it’s this great thing that will totally. Thank you. But there are a lot of cases in which, like information is still leaked, and I think I would have probably given them a pass and something which I think they should. I think they should give them a pass on.

Speaker 1: I think Signal’s a little bit different, though. I think we should. We should avoid trying to make comparisons. While I think that signal is something worth tackling technologically and speaking about, I think that the issue of rise up sort of stands on its own. We don’t need to compare it to like other technologies to clearly we use technologies to snitch on us all the time. The question is, was there a violation of trust?

Speaker 5: Sure. But but you’ll keep it specifically in the case of signal signal is run by anarchists and those people. Or presence of the Internet community or.

Speaker 2: At one community.

Speaker 5: Or a large number of people. And second, they did cooperate with the grand jury in a way that turned over next to no information thing. But you could imagine a higher level of cooperation with federal with federal requests that says something along the lines of please back door use. For code class.

Speaker 1: But we don’t know what signal did, and so if we’re assuming like.

Unknown Speaker: Sure.

Speaker 1: We’re assuming that we know what rise.

Speaker 2: Up did which?

Speaker 1: We have a story if that story is true, then we can talk about that.

Speaker 2: It’s their story. So we chew a lot. All the information we have comes directly from them. So we can only assume that it is either factual or leans more charitably toward them.

Speaker 1: We can’t, yeah. Right. Yeah. I mean we can’t, we can, we can talk about whether or not signal is a snitch and whether or not we should use that. But I think that the in my opinion the, the, the bar of snitching is pretty objective, it’s not. It’s not something that we make relationally.

Speaker 5: Sure. I mean, I guess the broader point that I’m trying to make is that I think that rise up deserves half a pass on this because of the the trolley problem that they’re facing in terms of the destructiveness that would have upon activist organizations to shut down their servers and. Every that’s everyone losing their e-mail because no one uses pop and no one saves locally to their computer, and that’s everyone losing their list servers and everyone losing their contact lists, everyone losing, losing the VPN’s they use for free. The thing, the things that right now for for activists are. Really significant. I think you know I do act this work and I’m astonished sometimes the degree that people rely upon a lot of these technologies and the degree of chaos that happens the moment that any one of them starts to like look a little weak and that’s something that I think we should push really hard. To try to change. Both structurally in terms of like how the. Centralized well, but also culturally. What we normalize, what we expect of both providers and what we try to make like as a as a culture among. But given that the situation exists, I think that there would be. I think it’s objectively true that there be far more damage done to. The. Radical anarchist milieu, or whatever. Radical whatever you want to call it by shutting down, rise up, then turning over people who engage in criminality that they saw as unbelievable and. And also I I do I I know I understand. I understand. I understand. But there’s one other thing to add here which is that upon request rise up. Has responded and said that they did not take the FBI’s word that these people were, you know, so this may be charitable to them. But they said that they’re that this may be them misrepresenting the actual facts. Whatever the case, the rise UPS claims that they didn’t. They did not. They they did not take the FBI’s word. Themself. And they looked into it and people near rise up and said that these people were right wing.

Speaker 2: Roles or activists or people associated with like the, you know, the poll and Gamergate, that whole thing, but we’ll never know because they won’t cooperate with you to the extent that they will cooperate with the FBI. It clearly shows where their trust lies.

Speaker 4: Also, you don’t. You don’t get to take a an abolitionist position and then turn anybody over to the state. It’s just that’s just unacceptable behavior and like.

Speaker 2: Right out. Hack them, beat the **** out of. Whatever.

Speaker 4: Yeah. And I I really disagree with you on the point where you’re where you’re saying that it’s a lot worse to destroy the infrastructure. I I really think that allowing rise up to continue like this is going to be the downfall of our, of our ability to organize and have this kind of it’s not, it’s not rising specifically. I’m not just saying rise up.

Speaker 2: Save.

Speaker 4: The only one but like this is a chance for us to say, OK.

Speaker 5: With centralization.

Speaker 4: This is what we’re not going to handle. So anybody else who wants to set up, provide an e-mail client encryption service like our bar is is going to be higher than this like this isn’t. Going to stand.

Speaker 2: Right. It was built at a time when decryption levels weren’t what they are today, and like I’m not trying to fault them for like the time they were born into. But that time is not now. We have a lot better abilities to improve.

Speaker 7: The pack square, but if you should fall on the shooty sword you built.

Speaker 2: That’s true if you build a ****** story, you. Might fall on it. They yeah. So some, I mean, something better could replace it. It would actually sounds like a dig, but it would be hard for something worse to replace it. I legitimately. Gmail provides as much security as they do. And then like, the larger issue, I think is the informed consent. I I.

Unknown Speaker: Oops.

Speaker 2: Made a WordPress plugin for them. To count the minutes, seconds, days, hours since they last cooperated with the FBI. If they put that on their homepage, I think that that would be a step toward informing them, and I think that people would abandon rights, though if they were, if they were completely honest and transparent about what they’ve done. I think no one would use them.

Speaker 1: Right, let’s let’s talk about another comparison. I mean, let’s talk about hide my ***. Who wants to use hide my ants as?

Speaker 2: A VPN, right?

Speaker 1: They were, so they were hide my as a VPN still is a VPN I think, but they were a VPN. They are a VPN that I don’t know 5–6 years back basically snitched on some of their users. For I don’t remember exactly what you were. I don’t know. They were hacking some hackers. And then in response, the hacker community built its own VPNs and said, hey, we’re not going to spend. Right. And this is the same thing that Riseup has done to some apolitical hackers, right? Which I think we should expect more radicals on that front. So I want to paint. I want to be clear that I don’t think that, like five years time from now, everyone should be using rise up per say, but yeah. Can all agree on that?

Speaker 6: Sure, sure. But yeah, but I do. Think we?

Speaker 5: Have to be pragmatic or practical about like what the the radical community, the hacker community anarchist community has the capacity to build and and also what transitions look like. If there’s one transition that’s happening right now, where as a result of this podcast as a result of other sorts of things where activists speak out against this, people abandoned rise up. And I think that that’s a slow on their own man. Like if you give them a few weeks to like to let them know this stuff and to like, move on to other services. It’s a much better sort of situation than being like if we’re, you know, the FBI could walk in tomorrow and take everything from us, and we have to just burn everything down today, so. So you never get your emails, you never get your list, serve, you never get the like your contacts. Or that kind of thing from it?

Speaker 2: I want my emails. I don’t want my list. Sir. I don’t want my contacts. I don’t. Want them in their hands? I don’t want them.

Speaker 4: And let’s not forget. There are gonna be people in prison. Whoever they are, potentially because of this, they don’t get their lives.

Speaker 5: Sure, absolutely. But I think that there’s I think that.

Speaker 4: Back.

Speaker 5: The damage that it would have done if they had just immediately burned down everything would be quite substantial. I think that it. Would like dramatically what? Sure.

Speaker 4: What are the stands? What about the benefit to like the overall morale of being like? No, we don’t *******.

Speaker 7: Cooperate. What about the damage to the people who are not potentially going to go? To prison because absolutely.

Speaker 5: I’m not in any remote way of saying that. That’s not a terrible thing and that it’s not like a a case of evil versus slightly less evil sort of situation and saying it’s a trolley problem saying that people like die either way. So the situation and there are organizations that I know of that deal with life and death sort of issues. That have their infrastructure and save emails and have all that **** handle that ****. Thankfully, some of them. I’ve urged them now to move off of, rise up and take this stuff and keep local backups and other things and have better encrypted materials and stuff. But I know that like they would have lost like years of information on that kind of. In ways that could have actually seriously hurt people. So I see it as a trade off where like people get hurt either way, and I think that this is a bit different from a situation where we put pressure on individuals. Community who can take down networks, but the damage done to them. Is.

Speaker 1: Just that, but we’ve seen similar things just like.

Speaker 5: With.

Speaker 1: What?

Speaker 2: Prison we’ve seen we’ve.

Speaker 1: We’ve also seen similar things with Lavabit. Yeah, right. And like that happened and like I think that person pulled the cord and I don’t necessarily agree with the way that they ended up cooperating. But I think that they pulled the cord for. The right reasons.

Speaker 5: Absolutely. I agree. I like Lavabit a lot and or. They’re the the. Choice that they made, which also given how low ******* standards the hacker community had, was really shocking to a lot of people. And I I mean, I’m really I want to see people put a hard line and the screws on the hacker community, but some of that has to come from the inside. If anarchists are screaming at them, they don’t really care if hackers, if other hackers are screaming at them, then they care. But.

Speaker 4: Rise up has been has been a like left activist support center. It’s not really.

Speaker 5: That’s something that I was trying to. I was trying to make as a distinction that rise up has its feet in both camps and they tried really hard to to to put the veneer on them that they are. I mean, they come from the anti globalization movement. They come from the history, the same sort of circles as we do. I think that. I think that they made, I think that they might have acculturated to the norms of the hacker community. Such a degree that they don’t see this as like this. And I think that that’s a problem is what I’m trying to say about that and I’m trying to. I’m trying to like to. Dissect why they. Took the action that they took, but again, ultimately, though I think that probably and I don’t know the context. And also I. I I severely dislike. Rise up for not giving us more explanation and more details upon the users and their choices. I think that the I think that I will totally agree with you guys that the the statement they put out was really, really ******* weak sauce and they owe it to the radical community to not just pull this like well, you know, that’s the best you’re going to get from us. Kind of like, you know, we we we went so far and beyond even tell you. That anything was happening. Kind of thing. If they’re, if they’re legally constrained from saying more than they should say that they’re legally constrained from saying more and be honest about that at the very least. But they haven’t said that, right? Yeah.

Speaker 4: Right. They just sound like callous.

Speaker 3: So I guess as as a layman who doesn’t really understand technology or any of that stuff. So like what’s the? Alternative like I use rise up I use bitmask like what?

Unknown Speaker: What?

Speaker 3: What? Where? Where do I go? Like, if I I don’t want to use rise up anymore, there’s services like what’s?

Speaker 2: An alternative and then it doesn’t matter who your e-mail right is because you don’t have to trust.

Speaker 4: And if that’s a a higher bar, then you’re willing to start with, then there’s the what, what amounts to intend? Encryption of two denota. If you use the confidential e-mail. Of course there’s user error because you have to set a password, but you can send an.

Speaker 2: You have a shared password with someone.

Speaker 5: So both Tutanota and ProtonMail, I believe, deliver the code to the browser, and if you’re not, and so the problem with that is, that’s the lava that model, right? So you deliver the code to every time they log in to the web mail, they they every time you log into Webmail through your browser. What gets downloaded to your browser is the entire dev application. And then you like enter your password and your password like unfolds through a complicated process into a bigger key and then you use that key to do e-mail and you don’t see any of that things. If you’re if you’re in A2. If you have a two note account or a ProtonMail account, and you contact. If you have ProtonMail, somebody else who is ProtonMail. If you have two, two to know that somebody else who has that. Then you have automatic encryption theoretically, but the reality though is that the problem why that was unfeasible for a lot of it, and why this model has been this model, has been repeatedly used by by basically everyone in the security community, because it’s a way that you can charge users for access. It’s a way that you can like. Or advertisements to them, or some you can have. You can be the centralized service for them. And so people you know, especially after Snowden, there’s been this huge, like venture capitalist, like explosion of people trying to get rich providing end to end encryption for people. But the problem is, is because they always want to get money out of it. They haven’t built things that are actually secure. They built things that. Enable the centralization necessary to have them make money off of it, and so when you do that end to end encryption through the browser. The problem is that they can just when you go to. Load the page. They can give you malicious code. They can give you code that that figures out what your key is and that decrypts your emails from you, and that this has happened for multiple services that have provided this so multiple multiple times the feds will come to these people who provide quote UN quote end to end encryption and that end to end encryption is completely invalidated.

Speaker 1: Basically, you shouldn’t rely on two to another anymore than you should rely on.

Speaker 5: Well, I would say I would say even less, I would say even less. And so, no, no, I would say even less because we because they’ve been pulling the lava bit approach, the the feds have the pulling the lava bit approach upon people for years now. But technologically speaking signal could.

Speaker 1: That’s always true. I I don’t. Inject bad code just.

Speaker 5: Yes, well not as easily though, so the difference? Yeah. So the difference. Yeah. So the difference is 1. They’re open.

Speaker 1: Source. Right. Well, so actually Tutanota is open so.

Speaker 8: Source and two to the.

Speaker 5: Right, right. So the updates, the updates that come to.

Speaker 1: But it’s not instantaneous. You would have to download an update of.

Speaker 8: Sure.

Speaker 5: You have to download an update. It takes a long time and.

Speaker 1: Signal.

Speaker 5: You it’s hard to target an individual users that way.

Speaker 1: But you will almost certainly update signal if you get a signal update.

Speaker 5: Sure, sure. But the the the way that Google Play in that structure works, I believe is that you can’t provide individual downloads tailored towards individual users. So if somebody tries so, so everybody would get the compromised version, right? So it takes. So it’s a, it’s a much higher bar of compromisation.

Speaker 1: Right. Everybody would have to down, I believe.

Speaker 5: To have or compromise. Thing that happens, that’s.

Speaker 1: It might be, but nonetheless, you’re you’re talking about centralized code being distributed.

Speaker 5: Yes, I agree that. This is inherent to any situation where you have a.

Speaker 1: Code base that’s centralized. It’s always going to be problematic. PGP is the solution, alright? But you know, if you’re going to use PGP then you know you’re safe already.

Speaker 5: Well, so so I’m I’m I know that when this goes this podcast goes lives everyone live. Everyone in the hacker community can scream at me and everyone else. That PGP is a terrible system that no one should use because the hacker consensus right now is that PGP is terrible and signal is great. And. Signals to God. Save us and so the reason they.

Speaker 2: How could that possibly be?

Speaker 1: That doesn’t make any mathematical sense.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: I agree. I agree. So let me let me let me try to get. Let me try to give you the. Justification and I and I disagree with it. Training activists and radicals for five years now and have had people to come to me and talk to me about a lot of use cases that I just entirely disagree. I don’t think that signal provides what real activists need, or people who do underground work serious, radical work. But the argument is. Is that signal provides one forward secrecy. So that if your machine or your computer is compromised, all of your messages going back in history are not. Realized the way that that works is that each time. So when you exchange public key information. So for for people who don’t know. The way that PGP works is that it provides you with a public key and a private key, and the public key you give to everyone. It’s like a lock box or an envelope. You want to give those envelopes that are addressed to you. Everyone wants someone put something inside it. They can seal it, and then no one can open it beside to you. And so the idea being that. One key encrypts 1. He decrypts, but the problem with that model is that it’s the same key every time. So wind and the problem with the world right now is that malware is super rampant and people’s computers get broken into all the time and our activists get targeted near near constantly. So the response that that people constantly give, especially people who are who know what they’re talking about inside the community, is that because we can’t seem to secure our computers in the current. Software ecosystem and we can talk at length about why that is the case and what structural or political you know, forces have shaped. It’s because everything is insecure. Right now. We can’t stop activists from spearfishing. We can’t stop activists from opening up an attachment on an e-mail. And I just know that this is the case again and again and again, you will get an underground group who some journalists will be like. We’re writing a story about you. Do you want to double check that?

Unknown Speaker: No.

Speaker 5: The things that we’ve said about you and it look like it’s coming from guardian.com or something like that and it will be a Word document and you open the Word document in your. Is compromised and this is something that happens again and again and it killed, you know, tons of people in Syria as a consequence of this arguably 10s of thousands of people died in Syria as a consequence of this sort of approach.

Speaker 1: And it’s an uncomfortable number.

Speaker 5: Well the, the, the. As a consequence of PGP, not not as a consequence of PGP per say, but as consequence of of. Spear, spear fishing, right, and the activists always fall to it in in every case that people try to demolish it, they they, like almost always open it. And it’s the case that, you know, I’ve done stupid things too. I have a lawyer during during a period of grand jury repression and stuff inside the Bay Area or inside of North Cali. There a number of US share a number of US radicals who also hackers shared a lawyer, or we’re all friends with a lawyer, and that lawyer sent us, did not have particularly good security on the computer and sent us all PDF’s saying she was or she sent us a link inside of an e-mail to a PDF. And said like, can you guys look this over? This is like the? And and I looked at it and I did the pause and I was like, this could be. Spearfishing.

Speaker 6: And I went and I clicked on the link and I opened the PDF on my computer site.

Speaker 5: And and that’s a good measure. You want your computer to crash and not get compromised cause crashing is better than anything else. And then immediately, like you know, booted back up and emailed and was like, don’t click on. That blah blah.

Speaker 6: And so you’re.

Speaker 1: Basically saying that the problem with PGP is that you keep both the private key and the password potentially on your computer, whereas signal stores it server side.

Speaker 5: No. So signal I want to be clear. Signal doesn’t store that server side. What signal does is it provides the capacity where every time that you have a negotiated conversation with someone, you will set a different key for that. Nation. Then you will you. You will use the existing key that you have your core private key and their core private key will negotiate a basically a distinct encryption or distinct keys for them.

Speaker 1: That’s functional and meaningless. What do you mean? If you OK, so if your system is compromised, you can derive the private key. So functionally it’s. Meaning.

Speaker 5: No, it no, that’s not the case. So the way that perfect forward secrecy works inside it, no, I mean like this is a real thing, OK. Like the way that perfect forward secrecy and this is also why people are urging people to use OTR as opposed to PG. Way back then, the way that this **** works is that there’s a kind of like second negotiation that happens. There’s you have the encrypted channel to begin with, and then you where you use that base and then you negotiate based upon things that are generated right at that time in such a way that it can’t later be compromised because it’s easier to start. So there’s such a thing as effective. Keys for a short period or for individual conversation, and then those things are presumably discarded in the future, and that idea being that you then can’t if, if, if if you get ahold of that person’s key, you can’t. You can’t. You can’t decrypt their keys in the past, and you can’t. And the people that they were. Negotiating with or what? You can’t go going forward compromising things using those.

Speaker 7: Systems. So I I guess the question I have is so with signal on an iPhone you can’t pass space signal. So if if you’re if you have an iPhone and even if you’re using signal and it sees by.

Speaker 5: There’s it’s yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 7: The cops or whoever. That you don’t want reading your.

Unknown Speaker: That’s.

Speaker 7: If you don’t have a passphrase on your phone, or if your passphrase on your phone is hackable, yeah, they can just get into your signal anyway.

Speaker 6: If you still.

Speaker 5: So the the, the. The trick here is that if you’ve deleted your texts in the past, then they can’t get they can. They can can see where we see the things that fire or your connection or whatever. But they can’t decrypt those and even signal itself as the centralized password of these things can’t decrypt that they get ahold of your your keys right now. Decrypt the conversations that you had in the past with other people. If you have deleted those messages.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: That’s a huge.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 5: Right. Yeah, sure. Well, that’s that’s that’s that’s why signal has done this. Why signal has tried to make disappearing messages as core functions out of there? Well, for some activists it does count. And I agree. I agree. I’m on. I’m actually here on the side of PGP. Personally, I agree with everyone in this room that PGP is better than signal for serious work, isn’t it?

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: That’s meaningless, so I don’t delete my right. I’m I’m interested technologically in what you’re talking about, but we can talk about that later. I mean, I think that like like fundamentally though like I can decrypt all of my.

Speaker 5: This but.

Speaker 1: Conversations just by having my. Passphrase which is weak encryption, sure.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 5: So so if we were to build a culture where activists deleted their conversations, and one of the things I will tell you is that while people in this room may not do this, a number of people that I know, a number of organizations that I know have, like we do not have emails that or we do not have single.

Speaker 1: And and PGP provides at least that much if. Not ten times.

Unknown Speaker: More.

Speaker 5: We do not have single conversations that don’t auto delete within 24. Or sometimes people will set it to 5 minutes. I’ve had conversations with people where they set the they set the. Timer. 5 minutes and of course you can write a backward version signal on your phone that would keep the messages or whatever. Or you could just screenshot or there’s all sorts of things you can see what we do. If one person wanted to be malicious in that thing, but the idea being that signal builds. In a thing that by default stops. Or that by default deletes the messages of both parties in that situation and that provides us a significant degree of security. That that PGP communications don’t. If they compromise your computer where you’re having. Your GP but. The question here then becomes, are computers more secure than smartphones or like laptops and desktops? Most more than smartphones, and they are, so they’re more secure. The question is how much more secure the problem with signal? That horrifying. Problem with signal is that smartphones are incredibly insecure. Hacking a smartphone is relatively easy and lots of people do it repeatedly, and many of the apps that people download compromise their phones. But.

Unknown Speaker: OK.

Speaker 1: I think it goes beyond start, yeah.

Speaker 6: And.

Speaker 2: Good. I don’t want to bring it back. I feel like you said something that shed a lot of light back on the rise up situation in that opening. The PDF crashed your system rather than compromised you. And that that was preferable. Presumably you lost any files that weren’t saved. You you lost.

Speaker 7: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Please.

Speaker 2: Whatever you didn’t back up that critical infrastructure was gone at the expense of not going to prison.

Speaker 5: Sure, but but but there were, there were, there’s there’s different degrees of damage that it could be done to me. Like if if it had destroyed my hard drive too, I don’t know, given that I wasn’t I.

Speaker 6: Period.

Speaker 5: I would never engage in illegal activity, but I certainly wasn’t at that time. There was nothing that would really compromise and when I was talking to it was a fresh computer in a lot of ways. But there was information on it and if that it hadn’t been backed up other places and I if I had lost all of that, I it would have been a huge blow. I’d.

Speaker 4: Much rather get half lose that information. Really. I bet if we asked any organization or any lists.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Those on rise up. Would you rather have your all of your? Past messages and e-mail blown away or given to the feds. Everyone would say blown away. And that’s sort of what we’re looking at since we can no longer trust what says.

Speaker 6: But but the distinction here is.

Speaker 4: About what they. Provided.

Speaker 5: I mean, I don’t. I don’t know.

Speaker 6: That we can’t.

Speaker 4: And this doesn’t have to be a one to one, you know I’m. Not I’m not.

Speaker 5: Arguing with you. I’m. I’m I I I don’t know that we can’t trust. Rise up to not compromise people that they. Think are politically activist.

Speaker 6: And I think that that.

Speaker 4: As they move that goalpost over further and further.

Speaker 6: I think that. I don’t know that I.

Speaker 5: Think that that goal post has, in their mind, really been moved. I think that they’ve been relatively constant as to what they think that is. And I think that we can agree that maybe that is a miss that’s a bad decision on their part. But I think that I think that they have been at least consistent in my perspective of. Their politics on that. Yeah, exactly.

Speaker 7: If you consider yourself an anarchist and you’re you makes you sort of. Also seeking community. And. Criminality and anarchy. Then I just don’t think you’re worth a damn. And I don’t think you have any business claiming to provide infrastructure for anarchists or radicals.

Speaker 2: Also, wouldn’t see DDoS rings as corruption. I don’t that doesn’t corruption is like from the corruption is a is from an official. You know it’s from a place of authority.

Speaker 4: It’s a tactic.

Speaker 6: Sure, but let’s.

Speaker 5: Let’s also be clear that that rise up did state that they looked into the situation, identified the people, and said that they were not political by their definition. Yeah. So. So I agree that I. I agree, I agree, but I.

Speaker 2: 1^st of June.

Speaker 6: Think, but I think that I.

Speaker 5: Think that that suggests that they do have a definition, and I don’t. I don’t see that definition as a goalpost. That’s changed. I see that as.

Unknown Speaker: But they did.

Speaker 5: A goal poster they were in on explicit.

Speaker 4: Specifically, say, years ago, however many years ago, five years ago, the only. The only situation the only context under which we would provide information to. Law enforcement is, in this case of child ***********. That is what that is what came out, and now it’s expanded.

Speaker 2: And the definition before the before the one that. I read yes.

Speaker 4: That, that that came out to like, I forget what the what, what caused it to arise, but that was the one. Caveat they said to their not their non collaboration with the state and now it has expanded. It seems like every time they’re going they interface with the new challenge that that group of people that are willing to under the bus grows and grows. And what if it’s, you know, oh, I’m not interested in. And property damage. OK, if that’s what you, you know.

Speaker 2: Right, right, right. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Like it becomes a a personal. A politic which I don’t give a **** what they like. Think personally.

Speaker 2: I mean, yeah, I can also host e-mail on my personal server and my friends will know that they’re safe. And that’s essentially what rides up.

Unknown Speaker: It’s looking great.

Speaker 1: Alright.

Speaker 5: Well, so I do think that that the distinction is that a lot of people are not tax savvy enough and that today we’re seeing a really, really encouraging distinction that I hope goes further. And as I say, like I hope that rise up as it presently exists as a centralized infrastructure.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 5: I hope that activists diffuse out and set up their own things and and capacity in the Community grows. A lot of ways, but we have to remember that when Riza got started and for vast majority of people who use it, they don’t know anyone. Who has any? Remote capacity and they’re facing a lot of these groups is the capacity to log in to rise up. And. Start a list serve. Which is like, you know, esoteric knowledge. To a lot of people, a lot.

Speaker 2: Of activists and. But yeah, it’s it’s my worry that they’re relying on that. Ignorance to continue as a service I. Seeing. Being people describing the change they’re making. It’s like, well, I mean that was bad, but now they’re switching to end to end encryption. And I’m like, no, they’re not. They never said they are. They’re switching to end to middle.

Speaker 5: Well, so let me also be clear on what’s happening there. So rise up, the people behind rise up are also. Overlaps strongly with the people behind LEAP, and so Leap is a project that has gotten a lot of attention within the hacker community, but has gotten almost 0 funding because it’s turned by anarchists and explicitly such its associations with rise up has have led it to not get the funding that’s signaling for. Projects have gotten LEAP is trying to build end to end encryption and other structures in the e-mail so that those systems would. So that e-mail would be far more secure and so that providers would not have to like. So the e-mail, there’s so many problems with e-mail that are well known. So they’re trying to build a different number of different services that would that would the end goal is end to end encryption in a way that’s more.

Speaker 1: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 5: Usable than PGP presently is. Now they’re middle step. Yeah, so that may be the case, but their middle step is to is to provide middleware encryption where every where every user’s password then unlocks a local partition inside of that on the server that’s specific to them. And I agree that.

Speaker 6: I don’t think.

Speaker 1: You can do that.

Speaker 2: That’s not secure, though. It adds almost nothing to the situation. Like, I’m sorry I violated. I, like, gave away your information. From now on, I’m going to put your information in a locked box that.

Speaker 5: Only you and I have the key to. The only thing that it provides is that it does segregate users from one another, so that if they turn, if the FBI says no seriously turn over your entire server to us they will be like, well, you need to specifically give us which users which sub servers, which sub encrypted partitions you want us to.

Speaker 1: Like it’s far worse.

Speaker 5: Legally, the this is the distinction where where the feds would have to. Like, I agree that it’s risky technologically that.

Speaker 1: Logically than even what 2 to?

Speaker 5: Notice. Oh sure, I agree. I agree.

Speaker 1: The offers.

Speaker 2: It offers a place to.

Speaker 1: Aggregate well so. Radical and that?

Speaker 5: Here’s something that Tutanota and ProtonMail don’t allow. Presently 2 to Noda and ProtonMail don’t allow you to use to IMAP or POP. At least I know this is the case with ProtonMail. I think this is the case, and so with those things you are unable to then use a proton. No e-mail account with something like Thunderbird and PGP yourself. You have to rely upon their programs and they’re in browser loaded program, which again is the Lavabit model, which we’ve known is compromised for. Years now, and so Tutanota and ProtonMail both explain Oh no, we’re not just relying upon Webmail. We also provide apps for people’s phones.

Speaker 1: But let’s be fair, it’s not just the lava bit model, it’s also the model of almost the entirety of the Bitcoin ecosystem.

Speaker 5: But **** them, I mean.

Speaker 1: Yes, but also how many compromises have there been?

Speaker 5: A lot. I mean of the Bitcoin community.

Speaker 1: Not really. Not if you no. I mean there was bit secure which was compromised, but like by and large the JavaScript encryption model hasn’t been compromised.

Speaker 5: You know, I don’t have these things that have on my tongue. So, but I was under the impression that there was a lot of that the. The especially the Bitcoin community has seen a lot of failures in that model, but I I I don’t. I don’t have it available and I yeah, I may be wrong on.

Speaker 1: I only know the one. That and that wasn’t so much the JavaScript encryption as much as just post data.

Speaker 5: I think though we have to be clear, you may be saying that like we haven’t seen this. Happen very frequently. But we saw it happen to love a bit however many years ago, and we’ve known about it all this time that this is something the Feds totally have the capacity to do. To request legally and that and that organizations fold for them. And so I think that just saying like, well, we haven’t seen the, the we haven’t seen the evidence that this is bad yet is. A terrible way. Of judging whether or not we should trust things, given that we know that that we know that it is compromised.

Speaker 1: Certainly. But it’s it’s far better than trust us because saying trust us is saying the same thing that Tutanota is saying, except technologically inferior. Sure, if if your if your method is using rise up without PvP, then I agree that that is far less secure than to.

Speaker 5: ProtonMail, I think.

Speaker 4: Also, because we we know rise up to be snitches, whereas we don’t know that of.

Speaker 2: And if.

Speaker 5: Yeah. I I don’t. OK, I guess this. Is that’s entirely something when I guess my subjective read of whether or not you know that an organization snitch in the past, I don’t feel ways. Very strongly with. Me because I think the thing that is more important is what? Is the technological capacity. So in that same sense, like if Signal had committed egregious sense against users in the past, but their software now was secure such against themselves. Then I would still be like, well, **** it. You signal it’s the best thing out there for the for the, for the.

Speaker 4: Those use cases, I mean also technologies always evolving. We don’t have some like static read on things. We can always assume that like at some point there is the next threat model that we haven’t yet seen. And what we are trying to make like Mary is. Good technology with people who stand by that technology and have integrity. That’s what we want. As anarchists, as activists, as as hackers. And it that is part of the conversation. And when you have some group that you know that now you can’t trust, that has to be relevant. It’s not, you know, it’s. Which?

Speaker 1: Who wants to use hide my ***?

Speaker 2: The way, yeah, I mean, the way you rise up like positioned himself against the alternative makes American libertarianism sound quite appealing. Oh, yeah, American libertarian party. Here I come. If your position is don’t testify against random apolitical criminals.

Speaker 5: I’ll sign you up tomorrow. That is, that is actually the position of a lot of agris. I mean, that is what agorism is as a, as a thing I I have my own critiques of.

Speaker 2: Here I come.

Unknown Speaker: Yes. The money.

Speaker 2: The black girl gave me into that.

Speaker 5: Well, well, I mean it’s it’s it’s one of the positions of agorism, but it’s as a major component of the plank, right? I mean so like the the great example would be would be Silk Road, right? So and the Silk Road, you know, the Silk Road, we saw somebody run. Open.

Speaker 1: This is ours.

Speaker 5: To sell drugs on the Internet and and the position of the agorist community of the like, you know, weird want to be Han Solo and cap community has been consistently like to hell. This guy’s a hero. We need to support him 100%. And how dare anyone ever snitch? I mean, OK, so he tried to kill some people. But like, you don’t snitch on somebody trying to.

Speaker 2: Kill some people. Go to hell cause I’ve ever known who have had anything negative to say. Day against Dread Pirate Robert and or Ross Ulbricht have been people who didn’t understand the situation. They’ve been like. Well, I heard you had tried to murder some people. Well, he did try to murder someone who threatened to right, sell out. Like, I don’t know what, maybe 20,000 drug dealers information.

Unknown Speaker: Right.

Speaker 2: To the police.

Unknown Speaker: Which is.

Speaker 2: And at that point, everyone’s been like, OK, well, that person absolutely had anything coming to them.

Speaker 5: But it’s also just like, even even if that person wasn’t intentionally gonna snitch out, like in terms of like as a as a trolley problem, one person’s life versus 20,000 people going to prison for the rest of their lives, it’s.

Speaker 2: A clear and easy thing, right? But in the?

Speaker 8: Like.

Speaker 5: Regardless of their culpability.

Speaker 2: In the Silk Road snitches defense. I don’t think any of. People have ever been confirmed to be activists.

Unknown Speaker: Sure.

Speaker 2: They are drug dealers, which is, I think, coming in version 3.0 of Rise of anti State Policy.

Speaker 5: Agorism being agorism, being the illegal list wing of the hand, caps all of them are entirely you know, they would not make it any distinction between activist and and someone criminal aside, maybe like murdering children or sport or something.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Yeah. **** agros and and caps. But they do have the best memes.

Speaker 4: So. I want to know what you think. Just a little bit more I. Haven’t heard of a students perspective?

Speaker 3: I mean, I I’m I’m sure I. Yeah, I I don’t understand a lot of the like technical aspects of it so I. Mean.

Speaker 4: Yeah, but I mean.

Speaker 3: But I yeah, like I’m. I’m definitely against what? Rise up did and I’m really concerned about the fact that I use rise up and I I mostly just like want to know what what do I do now like what’s what’s the alternative. I don’t want to use rise up anymore. What do I do?

Speaker 5: I would advise I would advise all users you can to switch off or rise up, especially if you have security concerns or other things.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I still have a resist account from back in the day.

Speaker 8: The the question the question is.

Speaker 2: Like came from behind the Dark Horse. In the back. Made the comeback, it turns out hosting a website for a snitch better than snitching itself by all measures.

Speaker 4: So what up? Well, what do we all? I mean, maybe this is jumping the gun, but I feel like we’ve we’ve kind of gone on for a while. What does everybody see as like, best case scenario moving forward? And.

Speaker 5: I I hope that rise up builds the infrastructure and the code base that leak that they kept on saying they were going to build and that they didn’t have the money or the devs to build. They hope that that gets finished because. It looks good. The idea of the code itself looks good. I hope that users significantly choose better trust models than just like, oh, these guys seem cool and they’ve got to have our backs before we’re going to. This thing and that may look like, you know our ProtonMail, if you don’t have technological skills, but I would strongly advise people to instead of those things, consider signal and then if you can have technological skills, or if you if you if your phone is something that you download random apps on and that you are, you put yourself inside of dangerous situations. Repeatedly use PGP. Learn how to use PGP instead, and then it doesn’t matter. What you’re using using Gmail?

Speaker 1: I think the I mean one is they’re answering two different problems signal it’s not an e-mail solution.

Speaker 5: Are you surprised at how many accuracy using this investigation?

Speaker 1: OK. But I mean so, like, if you’re gonna use e-mail, I think that, you know, use a secure e-mail that doesn’t rise up signal, you know, like if you’re using signal on the phone, you’re already potentially compromised able. So it doesn’t really don’t trust it too much because your ISP can. Need that data to you, so there’s nothing you can do. And I mean we, you know, we’ve seen this in the past, so don’t trust it with your life, right?

Speaker 3: So basically just keep using Facebook Messenger for all.

Speaker 1: Use PGP for anything that’s secure.

Speaker 2: My Facebook Messenger actually has exactly the exact same encryption protocol as sync.

Speaker 3: Literally exact same people are gonna be.

Speaker 6: So there’s there’s, there’s.

Speaker 2: The there’s the Facebook private. So so.

Speaker 5: Facebook private messages. But the one thing that it doesn’t as far as my knowledge currently have is real authentication. So something that I think most people and most users, most activists that I repeatedly see when I do training sessions with them, they’ve never even considered the notion of authentication and authentication is the notion is making sure that the encrypted connection you have to someone. Is an encrypted connection to the. Person that you would. Like it to be because what can happen is that you make an encrypted connection to a fed and that fed makes the connection to the person that you want to talk to, and they just pass messages back and forth while. And you see that you have an encrypted connection, but you don’t see it, but it’s to whom and so you need to activists need to. Authenticate. Who they’re talking. To and signal the app provides you the capacity. To do that. You go to settings, signal or conversation settings within these lines and then it says like you know, verify. Right. You click verify simple numbers will give you comparable screens and click on the big. The big QR code and that will scan someone else’s QR code. If you’re in person with them, or you could read off the numbers to them in other situations and you can check to see that those numbers are the. Same. And that’s on authentication. That’s an authentication system that signal provides. PGP also provides that you can compare the key fingerprints or to the public key from people, and that your own public and they and they. And check off with your public key. But Facebook Messenger does not actually provide the capacity that as far as I know right now to do authentication.

Speaker 2: It’s the same issue.

Speaker 6: It was WhatsApp or.

Speaker 1: The.

Speaker 2: Telegraph one of them was using the Signal protocol telegram.

Speaker 4: What’s that?

Speaker 2: Right. Oh, I see whichever one it was that was using the Signal Encryption protocol didn’t have. It didn’t tell you basically. From someone so it was vulnerable to the middle. Technically signal is vulnerable to the same thing, although they try to make. Uh. And to answer the where do we go from here? Problem. Every rise up Birch be demoted to 1^st year crime. Think anarchists. They should be dumpster dive. Being four nights a week, maybe dropping banners, maybe, and they and they should work their way. Up from there.

Speaker 5: I can agree.

Speaker 2: With that. I think it’s it’s the perfect place for someone like rise up.

Speaker 1: So that honestly, I’d like to see you rise up.

Speaker 5: Harsh but fair.

Speaker 1: I’d like to see rise ups. Adopt their services. Their e-mail services. I. Mean they can keep.

Speaker 8: We.

Speaker 1: The log in so you can grab your archives, but they should promoting their service as anything. Stop.

Speaker 3: But what what e-mail client would you say would be the best? Like if I want something that’s secure?

Speaker 4: It might be something that.

Speaker 2: Isn’t is it gonna have PGP or?

Speaker 3: I mean, yeah, it’s, yeah. Ideally it should have.

Speaker 4: I think it’s time for. I do think it’s time for anarchists to step up, like learn ******* PGP and and like.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: But otherwise 2:00 to 2:00.

Speaker 2: You’re not gonna use PB2 to know that if you are gonna use PGB ******* Gmail. Let me just let. Me. Just throw that. There. So Gmail fights every ******* every gag order that they receive as a.

Unknown Speaker: But what it?

Speaker 2: Policy.

Speaker 3: But what if you like with Gmail a lot of stuff you have to like? Give them a phone number and whatnot like I want. Like some I could set up like an anonymous e-mail account that I could just like e-mail with my friends that’s not connected to.

Speaker 2: Yeah. OK.

Speaker 3: My phone number.

Speaker 5: So right now the hassle to set up a new to node or a new ProtonMail is really small. It’s really small and I advise folks to just set up throw away ones. You know for those. And one of the nice things you can do when you have secure connections or you’ve set up PGP or you’ve set up encrypted e-mail ahead of time is you can create anonymous e-mail accounts, trade those like addresses with your friends, and then just have them for an emergency. When you need to connect to one another through an e-mail address, that’s secure that no one you’ve never used and never type your identity before, and that’s something that a lot of activists and, and and in terrible situations can you use to great effect, however. One of my main defenses if I was going to make the defense surprise at keeping their e-mail servers up for now, is that it’s really easy for a lot of activist groups to create e-mail accounts there. They don’t filter off tour if you have to eat. If you have two rise of e-mail accounts to begin with, you can generate an infinite number of us observing e-mail accounts for any sort of situation.

Speaker 2: Do we know?

Speaker 5: And the question then becomes, then you should just use GPG over it because you shouldn’t ******* trust rise up to like check those emails. But. He said about and I agree that in some ways Gmail is better than rise up if you’re using PGP, but in some ways rise up is better than Gmail. If you’re using PGP, because Gmail may shut down your account if they find out that you’re like a activist. Decriminalize right. Whereas like, if rise up to Simmons that you’re the activist, they sort of criminal, then rise up may decide that they’re going to fight to. The death to keep your account. And they may turn over that. And if I don’t know where they’re at, but they they probably wouldn’t deny you service in a way that’s the Gmail I could see. Really doing and saying you should know you’re a terrorist. You should no longer be able to, like, use this e-mail and they’ll just shut it down. Whereas Riser may fight. That might fight a lot harder to keep that. Afloat. So if.

Speaker 4: You’re using. Yeah, that seems to be completely untested.

Speaker 2: Sun might not rise tomorrow.

Speaker 4: So I think that like part of also figuring out an alternative. Is getting rise up to admit that they were wrong? I think a lot more people are going to start trying to answer that question. If we can first acknowledge that what Risa did was wrong and is not an acceptable standard, and that’s what I want to see happen, I want. To see rise up. Instead of just being like, yeah, we were totally. You know we did. Yeah, we did it. We did exactly what anyone else would do. I really want to be able to to find a way to convince this organization that that that was not acceptable. And I want them to, you know, acknowledge that publicly and take down their servers. And if they don’t, they’ll be taken down for them. But, you know. That’s I think that that would be, you know, step number one and then. Either you know there’s an alternative that exists, or we create something else, but we have to like decide whether or not this is acceptable protocol.

Speaker 2: So like I don’t know to what extent this is like paranoia, but the ******* doesn’t. The invite system on rise up do basically precisely what people criticize Facebook for doing Thai activists to other.

Speaker 5: Activists, my impression is that they don’t keep track of what accounts were started by what other accounts I may. Be wrong, I hope if they if.

Speaker 2: And that you’re right.

Speaker 5: If they do, if they, if they do keep track, then and if they keep track. In in the long term of that kind of. Then that would actually be quite a significant security, but I have no information on. Anything really true?

Speaker 2: Yeah, and yeah, I had some trust for them, and that’s like, honestly, my match to a certain thing. But I’m I’m quite sure I’m not the only one.

Speaker 1: Feel like it’s go ahead.

Speaker 3: Ohh yeah, I was gonna say as someone. Who, like doesn’t is sort of. Like I said, a lay person when it comes to stuff like I, I honestly thought like, oh, rise of secure. Like they’ll never turn over my information. Like a lot of it’s encrypted.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Almost every part of. That is untrue.

Speaker 6: Yeah. And that’s something and and and that.

Speaker 5: Was untrue before they even complied, or even if they had an intention not. To comply before that’s. Something that I I have repeatedly found doing trainings and I used to trains in the day at least once a. Month for activists. And sex workers. And whatever and everyone, especially the activist in the black. This community will come one-on-one with us. Consistently estimated that I use rice up there for. And my and my.

Speaker 4: Right. But is that the? User error? Or is that the implication that rise of?

Speaker 6: I think it’s. I think it’s both.

Speaker 5: But I think that I think that I think that rise up is culpable to some degree in that, and I think that’s something that we should pressure and I would love to see more pressure upon developers and providers across the board. I’ve been screaming at people in conferences years now there’s I’m blocked by a lot of people on Twitter as a consequence of this. And that I think that like. You. There’s a really, really patronizing attitude that that the hacker community and the security community, including the radical hacker and anarchist hacker community, has had towards a user base and some of that may be justified in a in a really ****** ** kind of like trolley problem sort of situation where people will repeatedly say that. Look, you know we want to get as many people encrypted as possible, and if that means that some of the people with the most security get hit as a consequence. But we protect Joe activist. You know who’s doing some ******** vegan bake sale thing then? Like then? That’s great. That’s what we’re trying to do is try to get as most people as possible. And there’s all sorts of tensions here that I don’t think are easily resolvable, where people. Where the the the tool that protects a victim of domestic abuse, who’s trying to hide from. Her partner, who has low level script kiddie hacking ability or is like setting up camping like Wi-Fi sniffing outside of our house. The the tools that protect her are not the tools that protect the people who are doing underground work. Facing severe state repression and I have been screaming since 2000. 12 consistently about the sort of danger that people on the run underground, that kind of thing are facing. And I think the hacker community, partially because they have ****** politics, a lot of them have ****** politics, and they justify the work that they do and the fact that they’re in any conflict with the state through the through the notion of like one just trying to protect the people who have nothing to hide in the 1^st place, which is. Incredibly thought up, but the other thing is that it’s just. It’s easier to talk, it’s easier to get money when you’re talking about. Well, I’m just trying to use this program for like XYZ, totally, like totally acceptable things and I’m not trying to use this to like run an assassination market and take on politicians, right? Like, I would never justify that. Say, and I think that. Part of the problem with doing these big infrastructure projects is that you can’t outright say I’m building this tool so that people can run an assassination market and kill all politicians. You you can’t really do that.

Speaker 1: Right. But there’s there are technological like innovations going on in the realm of end to end encryption and communication.

Speaker 5: Sorry, what’s the?

Speaker 1: I said that there are there are those innovations going on within within, like open source community?

Speaker 5: Yes, my my point is that the people who’ve done the big projects have consistently shifted through a variety of sociological and ideological forces or tendencies. To war.

Unknown Speaker: Woods.

Speaker 5: Towards embracing a we want to get everyone on. Board kind of. And there is something to be said of the fact that if, like you have a million people signed up to something, then. The fact that somebody. Signed up to. Something doesn’t make the standard, but the reality is consistently the use cases of activists that I’m most concerned about are the people who could be like assassinated. For the work that they do. People who go to prison for the rest of their lives, people who are doing things that do break the law quite significantly, and I want to protect them and or that have state adversaries who significant degree and. So that things like signal have signal centralized, Moxie has made a very specific decision that in some in some ways there are Security benefits to having a centralized server infrastructure. You push out updates and you can confirm that everybody’s on the latest update and they’re not using old versions. So you don’t have to do it backwards. Compatibility nightmare. Other stuff, but the flip side of that is, is that the state can grow in one day and shut down all. Servers and and there would be nothing they could really do about it. If you use PGP on e-mail then it be it’s much harder for the state to shut down the entirety of the Internet and the entirety of e-mail and.

Speaker 2: It’s it’s old information. I mean, they changed their protocol so that they’re operating over the Google Play protocol when you’re sending messages, you’re transmitting it through Google servers.

Speaker 5: Yeah, so, so, but either way, they could lean on, they could lean on Google. It’s a centralized infrastructure, right? So the real, yeah, so well, but they could, they could they. Could Google will? Comply if you say like stop allowing these people to route over this, right? And so the so the situation.

Speaker 1: Or more importantly, for some corrupted update. Yeah, to through the Google Play store.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Yeah. So so. Relying upon that centralized infrastructure is. Was something that made sense when the state adversaries that were really strong against dissidents were just like Iran or whatever, which was the. That some people had, and now we’ve it’s become a lot more clear with the Trump administration and with suddenly liberals catching on to the level of authoritarianism that we can’t trust that, and then it may be the case that somebody turns around tomorrow and shuts down all the signal. So there’s two real things that I see that are problems with signal and. One is. But it doesn’t work for people who have severe threat risk because if it’s on your phone, your phone is like hugely insecure to begin with. And then two, it if you’re if every if everything you’re doing is going through this other centralized infrastructure because I OK, I known activist groups that switched from rise up to signal the moment the gag order.

Speaker 7: So.

Speaker 5: And they were like we we used to use a Lister run on rise up. Let’s use signal and said I’m like well now that’s encrypted. So you’re right that now listservs are not encrypted, so you now get that benefit but but signal has downsides. And. You know, I know activists who are now facing the threat of, like their friends being confiscated, who have been having this conversation. And they’re like, oh ****, I need to encrypt things. Oh ****. I need to, like, delete my old messages and that kind of thing is now coming forward for them. And hopefully they’ll survive that kind of situation. But the reality is, is that. You know, they could be compromised other ways on their fronts and not know it, and that that would compromise everything. So I think that signal is problematic from those two fronts. And so for a lot of activists, it’s better to use PGP than one another.

Speaker 2: And just I guess there are like. I don’t know the technical level of everyone listening and I’m sure quite varies, but you can do listservs through PGP, you can imprint messages on a more than one to one basis. You can encrypt messages in a way that there are 10 people coping.

Speaker 5: And almost no one has developed on that technology and made it usable. And.

Speaker 2: They should, right? Well, yeah. I mean every like. You can e-mail client. I mean, I’m speaking specifically of Thunderbird enigmail.

Speaker 5: But you have to have the list of emails that you’re sending to and so you have to have their keys for each individual person, or you have to encrypt towards the centralized server that then relays so it can become problematic to push the updates to individual users. If you sign someone onto a list. For something like that where you’re like and then. List all of these emails and download all of the keys people have tried to build add-ons to. Facilitate that and. Make it smoother for people and those things are not complete. That’s that’s.

Speaker 2: All I’m saying, and it’s also there’s it’s. There’s like half a step of more difficulty, but with you can still use PGP without an IMAP. It’s another thing that, like every tutorial I’ve seen, has used pop and IMAP, which again to denoted doesn’t have.

Speaker 1: And I think that’s I think I think it’s a bad. Choice.

Speaker 2: To use it without pop or IMAP, use it with with pop or IMAP, yeah.

Speaker 1: 3.

Speaker 2: I mean, I guess I don’t know why, but I know that it’s not necessary and people.

Speaker 1: Think that’s necessary? I think when you put everything in one place, then you, you you make yourself the.

Speaker 2: Compromise rule aspect of. So your your physical machine is the weakest thing. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1: Well, you actually it becomes they have your private key, your emails and all they need is your password. Whereas hypothetically, if you don’t have a browser history then they might not know where your e-mail is stored. So there are ways to secure yourself by using Webmail. Well, if you for example are being rated, if they don’t know where you’re at and they’re trying to get to it and it’s all exclusively stored on the server, then obviously that can be a problem. But even with web mail, if you know that’s a potential problem. You can just delete your e-mail, so it’s not really.

Speaker 2: Right. Yeah, totally. And and I think that there is work needed to be.

Speaker 1: Technological issue?

Speaker 2: To make that something that’s accessible to all users, that’s what I want to work on, especially in light of the.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it’s.

Speaker 2: Horizon.

Speaker 4: Yeah, it’s like 2 pronged, both like users, especially people who take on like political risks should. Actively engage in learning these technologies, but also people provide these technologies to do a better job of explaining. You know the the levels like like signal I think is a good example of something that just you know it’s been around for years, but it just shot up in terms of like actors use cases. But people seem to be using it as if it’s like a perfect secrecy. Whatever application and like where are they getting that information from? Like I, I mean, I’ve definitely been to open Whisper Systems website, but I don’t remember there. Being like very. Clear like like explanation of of like you know in in in non-technical terms like what what we’re providing, what we’re not providing. And like examples of like what? It’s not good to use for because like otherwise it’s it’s, you know it’s just word of mouth and then that gets kind of muddled and. In the end, you know we need both sides to come together a little bit more, and then there’s the separate aspect of like, if you’re trying to provide these infrastructures for these communities, then you know there should also be values that you share.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I I mean, I went because of this. I like, I’ll admit, like everyone else, I don’t read privacy policies or UAS. But it’s a. Confession. What confession. Ohh. My deepest darkest secret. I sometimes scam UCLA. The word for word. I click agree, but I don’t necessarily agree. But so I went back to open whisper. Some privacy policy to. Air and their worlds apart, I mean granted, like these are like things rise up. Should have rise up. Should say that on the following day and cooperated with an FBI investigation that led to the prosecution and imprisonment. 2 individuals that should be on their homepage or at least on the registration page. Like no uncertainty, no legalese. Umm. But so they. So rise UPS policy has the thing you listed like we would rather shut down than work with the state. You’ve never provided information to the state. You’ve never provided information to any third parties, whereas like open Whisper systems privacy policies much more direct and has no posturing. Which is what I think. Is A is was what I think rise UPS privacy policy is all about open Whisper Systems says. We don’t not share any information with companies, organizations or individuals outside of open whisper systems unless one of the following circumstances applies with your consent. Do normal communication with a Federated server operated by another entity. EG some signal users may be registered with other providers like Sanos Anmod which requires passing messages, synchronizing views of registered users etc. Or three, when legally required, they also say what information they store.

Unknown Speaker: Easy.

Speaker 2: The phone number you use randomly generated authentication tokens. Profile information like an avatar you pick. That’s what they have and that information they will provide when legally required. I don’t know. I feel like you can make a more informed decision that should also be on their ******* that. Should be in. Their app description you know that like. I think good for good sentence key and if like if you trust rise up to not be to not ever think you are like if you trust that the state could never frame you and call you an apolitical right wing activist. If you trust rise up should never like perceive your actions as being apolitical right. Being self-serving corrupt, then use rise up. Just know what happened. Know what the consequences are. And I think they’re both like neither one passes my test for what I would consider informed consent, but open with persistence.

Speaker 5: I think that it’s really, really hard when you’re a developer to like to, to actually list. Here are the ways that you can use. My tool to get ******. Over like and I and I think that with even open whispers.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 4: Wait, why is that hard? I mean, you should be. The one not.

Speaker 5: Right. Right. No, no, no. I’m saying that it’s psychologically hard. I’m not passing the buck on them. I’m not saying that they shouldn’t do it. I think. They should. I’ve been yelling at them that they should. So I think that I think that the reason why no technology that I know of has a giant screen that says this is how you’re going to get ****** if you. Use my technology.

Speaker 4: But is your intention to be the big cool guy who made the awesome software? Or is your intention to, like, create something that is useful for people and have like integrity?

Speaker 8: On.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 4: Back it up, I.

Speaker 5: Yes. So I think that people come to varying degrees on this and I think that we need to.

Speaker 4: Mean.

Speaker 5: Do more to pressure. People inside of the radical community, and specifically the radicals within the hacker community who work on these things to hold themselves to a higher level and to see their peers as other radicals and not as the apolitical nerd politic hacker who doesn’t think that anyone should actually defy a grand jury kind of thing. And so specifically, I mean there are there are good programs out there are good, there’s good software out there developed by people who I think for the most. Part are doing it not to be like big men, you know or whatever, but are doing it to build a better world and to protect people and are trying to save lives or save people from prison. Whatever. But I think even still there is a psychological tendency that you can hide that you you end up hiding from yourself or you just flinch away from putting smack, dab and flaming. Red letters on the center of your. Home page like these are the ways that you will get ******. Whether you can get ****** using this technology and and I don’t wanna be, I don’t wanna pretend there’s no one has done anything like this like tails does. It has a has a page on their website that does a good roll through of things that you can get ****** on. Tor also give some components whispers.

Speaker 2: I run a big Cryptocat. I remember cryptocat. Being like we’re just software, you should never trust software with your life.

Speaker 5: I yelled at him. Yeah, but even, but even then, we know there’s there’s people in this room who use crypto count. I’m not gonna single anyone out. But there are. People who use. Crypto cat in situations they should not have been using Cryptocat and. And and so my my. And and he. Have that up for a really long time and. Even when he did put it up.

Speaker 6: I think though there’s.

Speaker 1: Something to be said about cryptography like. Yeah, OK. Cryptocat wasn’t particularly secure, but also. Like it doesn’t have dedicated users, so you never know which chat somebody is going to be in. Hypothetically speaking, it’s very difficult to and unless you’re going to be taking the entirety of the chat, you can’t pin it to any individual unless they’re it’s.

Speaker 5: The weight.

Speaker 1: Identifying information shared whereas with e-mail or telephones, that’s. A complete story.

Speaker 5: Well so, but you could you could say if you could get the three people who are in a chat that they’re conspire. Expiring. You don’t know which. One did it and further, if you know well, sure, yes. But one of the things that’s problematic with the lack of established identities.

Speaker 2: Yes.

Speaker 5: With Cryptocat and the and the lack of good authentication in the beginning of, it was that was that people would be like, well, how do I find out what chat room I should be in and at what time? And so the way this was communicated was literally over phone and and they were like, well, this provides additional security and it’s hard. And that that just goes to like the situations of authentication and setting things up. Fans, and it’s hard for people to to realize what they’ll need in situations of emergency when those situations arise and and this is one of the reasons why it goes so hard on why PGP is so necessary is that you can set up a bunch of throw away emails in advance many years in advance. Make those connections with your friends. You all know the secret. E-mail over here corresponds to this person and when **** comes down, you never use those e-mail. You never tie them to yourself, that you have the. Keys you can change you can. Get in that conversation. And.

Speaker 4: Yeah, that’s real serious and real important. So like. You don’t want to be setting up your security during a moment of crisis. You want to set it up now. That’s that’s on you. That’s on every one of us to, like, be proactive in advance. Just to piggyback from the.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I have another question that maybe a little off topic, but so I use bitmask and I. Great for me. Snitch biz. Yeah, I mean, I just. I mean, I. Just use it.

Speaker 1: That’s not fair. That’s not fair.

Speaker 3: That’s more than charitable. I mean, I I know that like tour is ideal.

Speaker 1: I don’t think Bitmask is rise up, is it?

Speaker 3: But like.

Speaker 5: No. So Bitmask is developed by people at Leap who are basically the same people as Riza and and it’s and you and you can the code base is open source and it’s a good code base and they’re trying that I like a lot of the things that we do.

Speaker 1: Ohh that’s good to know. That’s.

Speaker 2: Good to know, yeah.

Speaker 3: The.

Speaker 5: Because we’re doing things that. No one else is going to do. Because these things were too, these things were like, well, you would only need that if you were going to like and and. And those of us who were actually in situations of of whatever. Or we’re like, well, yeah, people do need that. It’s not just the the, the good victims. And so leap is developing good. Tools that way. You can use that you can use.

Speaker 1: Fork it, fork it. Yeah.

Speaker 5: Bit mask with different providers, so that’s one of the things that that mask provides. When you start bit mask, it’s like which of these major bitmask servers do you want? To log into right, it’s. Just one of.

Speaker 3: Them so I could continue using bitmask and it’s like not, I’m not.

Speaker 1: Chu Chu what was your question?

Speaker 3: Let me super sketchy.

Speaker 2: Use it not through the rise of servers. If you’re going to use it at all. There’s so many VPNs that I would really recommend it.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 6: Switching. You heard it here. You heard it here. I’m taking that cut. I’m taking that cut. That’s right. That’s our cold open pack says. I reckon my snitch.

Speaker 2: I recommend.

Speaker 3: Well, like I, I mean I I understand that Tori’s ideal like if you’re doing something that’s you know.

Speaker 1: I think combining VPNs with Tor is.

Speaker 3: But like I just like when it like anytime I turn on my computer and start web browsing the Internet, I turn on bitmaps.

Speaker 1: Ideal. Yeah, yeah. That’s fine. I think there are better VPNs, but I think that’s fine.

Speaker 3: I mean, it works great for me and I was able to set it up dummy so it’s works fine for me so. It.

Speaker 4: Other VPNs are going to be just as easy.

Speaker 2: There are other beacons that are, yeah, better point.

Speaker 1: Click so the.

Speaker 5: The difference is that bitmask provides some additional cryptographic security that other. Don’t provide.

Unknown Speaker: But I think we’ve been.

Speaker 1: Spending a lot more time on tech than like than than the the ethical discussion.

Speaker 4: Tech and.

Unknown Speaker: Should.

Speaker 4: The thread that that binds us, as they say is, is anarchy and we’ve really gone into very. Little about the political position or the I would say the the ethical position that is or quandary that’s at the heart of this.

Speaker 2: I can so.

Speaker 4: This is going to be a. Rough edit.

Speaker 2: Right. It reminds me of this anecdote, which may seem off topic, but really it’s back where I one of one of the first. Like vegan versus not being in debates that I got in with somebody being. I just don’t like being political. And. Because I want to relive the moment where I got a good singer. I was like, what is not political about the meat industry? It’s like every every decision you make is political. They’re like these people weren’t political. It’s like what they’re doing is political and like snitching is political, even if it’s not an activist like it’s just right wing, like testifying is a right wing decision. And they’re casting it as like. This is separate from politics, but I think like the message of politics in the last like 40 years has been the personal as political and like everything you do has political consequences. But for some reason, we get to write off the like oppressive things that we do as not political.

Speaker 5: With a pressure diesel polisher when it’s difficult for us, we’re like, oh, but that would be like a little bit hard and I can find this easy way to paint this as in a political situation and. Who would really think of?

Speaker 4: It as political, really right, right. When it comes down to it that that. Moment when? You have to like stand for what you believe in. It’s never going to be easy and it’s never going to come at a convenient time. Have to like be prepared to to to do that whenever, whenever. Like, whenever duty calls. And I think that’s the that’s the hard thing is that you always. Want. To find some justification for not doing something difficult. But that’s that’s like that is where you have integrity or you.

Speaker 5: I guess for me, I think the crime that right, the rise up committed or the people behind rise up committed was not a single moment, it was a. Really drawn out. It was decisions made every step of the way that seemed reasonable, but that really were the result of not truly grappling with their position, their power. Their info. And also the consequences and the future likelihood of different things where they built up the network as it currently exists with the the infrastructure as it currently exists and you can think of like hey, you can isolate every single step along the way and you can be like well, this seemed like a reasonable trade off at the time like either you sign up activists or they go to Gmail, you know, and you see. Every stuff that they made along the way. And these concessions looked individually reasonable to the people. Time and I would, I would urge a longer view and I think the problem here isn’t I’m I wouldn’t say that there’s, I wouldn’t say that I don’t. I don’t. I don’t view the action that they took turning over these people because I I kind of do trust their claim around that they were doing whatever they, you know were. In some sense, a political. So I think that there. Is you can we can talk about.

Speaker 4: All we know about them is that they needed money. That’s all we can verifiably say and.

Speaker 5: I would like to surprise up, give more detail on that, absolutely.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I can’t even like if we could review it, then maybe we could say that they were, that they were extortionists of some kind. Can’t even say that. It’s like if the state wanted information on me badly enough. I’m quite sure that they could fabricate that kind of information. It would be.

Speaker 6: Nonetheless.

Speaker 2: Sure of no difficulty.

Speaker 5: I I this is this has been a really weird situation for me because I tend to think of myself as being really, really intensely strong on the snitch position, and I’ve kicked activists out of communities. I’ve done all kinds of things with the center. For example, had somebody turned states, evidence against people, and she was like, oh, this is totally apolitical, this is. You know, it was. It’s a matter of drugs on something completely related and they were otherwise going to do all these other things I was like, **** you kind of on that. But so I was. I I was really surprised that I came out kind of different on this issue and didn’t see the individual actions that bad, although, you know, it has baldness to it. I think that’s because of the stakes involved, and because I I I’m intimately connected with a lot of I’ve seen a lot of how activists use these systems, and I know what kind of what would be lost. And so I think that is pretty high income in in consequence. But I do think so. I don’t think the. Action. I don’t think that the the the. The sin of rise up here was in the action of snitching itself. It. So much as the sin was in the long build up that led to there being such a situation where they could and did snitch where they had the infrastructure, where they had all the people that they were putting in where they didn’t alert people where they didn’t provide informed consent for people where they set up a situation where people.

Speaker 1: How is all of that not just add up to the same thing that any snitch is like?

Speaker 2: Every snitch has their backs.

Speaker 1: Yeah, every snitch can be like, well, you know, you could have seen it coming from a mile away. Yeah. And maybe that’s true, but like, at the same time, you didn’t, like, announce before that that like, alright, we’re gonna sit you. You basically said like. We will snitch on these people, which I I agree. I think that like to me that raised a lot of red flags and I was like, OK, I can no longer trust rise up. They’ve dropped the bar to like. Nothing, essentially like they’ll snitch on anything but like regardless, you know, it’s it doesn’t. It doesn’t defend them any to be like, you know, you could have seen this coming. It was like. Death by 1000 paper cuts, I think.

Speaker 5: The difference for me and the reason why I see it building up, is the difference of the stakes and when somebody’s snitching to save themselves. I have no ******* sympathy. When somebody, when somebody is snitching and the consequence of their of their snitching.

Speaker 4: There were individuals facing potentially that this is their claim is that they’re they’re facing jail time themselves, that there is a personal investment in a lot of ways. I see this the the reasoning being like and and it’s something that I’ve been told. People who are, you know, somewhat closer to the situation that people in the end said this is not a a person. This is not a situation where I feel good about going to jail for, so I’m not going to stand up. For. It and like you know.

Speaker 5: That’s I I don’t. I don’t have. I don’t have that contact directly. I’ve I’ve because I’m in the hacker community. I’ve engaged with people who are in the rise of collective. I had good impressions and I’m going off the trust of other people in some ways that the personal status, my impression, was not that it was a turn on fear personally about going to prison. But that it was a matter of like the cost that it would have. Upon the total access. Structure and I see that as being something that I I don’t see there. If if they’re. If their decision was sincerely just, I don’t want to go to prison to stop, you know, somebody drug dealer or some US, some whatever, some criminal that’s apolitical in some sense. I don’t see that as like yet, and I see that’s something that the community should be incredibly negative and and react incredibly in in a punitive manner towards. But I the reason why I I have a different take on this is because. I feel like it is a trolley problem because of the infrastructure involves a lot of people.

Speaker 1: The public face said both.

Speaker 2: After exhausting our legal options rise up, recently chose to comply with two sealed warrants from the FBI rather than facing court, whichever would have resulted in jail time for rise up birds and or termination of the rise up sation and.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: I wanna speak to the organizational one because I think that like. My take on it is that they should have seen it coming and like, honestly, we should have seen that coming and. I agreed that like there might have been like a lack of organization to come out of rise up just shutting down all of its servers, maybe it would have had, like, significant problems. Honestly, it would have resulted in far better outcomes, in my opinion, if they’d have shut it down, because sure, we’d have lost organization. More time. We just figured it out. We’d have mourned the loss of that data, and we’d have organized better around decentralization. Now as it stands. They announced this basically in secret, in a place that nobody really like checks, so most of the people that use prize up don’t even know about it, and there is no chance for us. There’s no chance for us to, like, deal with fallout because. There is. No fallout. It just appears as if rise up. As functional.

Speaker 7: I mean, I think that also if they’re, if they’re trying to salvage some sort of facade of legitimacy. Or respectability that they should then be doing everything that they can to encourage people to switch to. Other forms of communication that are that are.

Speaker 4: But they see what they’re doing as providing a very vital service that they’re continuing to provide that and what I I’m at least I’m saying is that they’re no longer providing really any service. They’re they have essentially given the state. And this happened, I mean, I would agree that this actually. Occurred when they came out about the willingness to provide information about. Child ***********. They basically said if the state wants information, all they have to do is follow these simple steps. Tell us that ex person is a child pornographer and then we’ll give them data. They they basically giving you the the secret password to any information they’re not providing. Privacy anymore.

Speaker 2: And there’s like other things besides cooperate that they could do in the instance of, like, the far right, organizing on rise up or child pornographers organizing on Rise Up. There are people that you can hand over IP logs to other than the state in a way that you tear those people.

Speaker 4: Right as inner kiss we deal with. Yeah. You know, or we lose attempt.

Speaker 5: Sure. I think there’s there’s two things I want to address here. 1 is that.

Speaker 4: To.

Speaker 5: I mean, I agree 100% that the statement in the way that it was done and the lack of prominence of it, they should have pushed emails out every single e-mail.

Speaker 2: Lord knows every time they fundraise, I ******* get an e-mail newsletter.

Speaker 8: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 6: Anyway, so so I think I think.

Speaker 5: That they should put something on the front page. They should have. They should have.

Speaker 1: Initiative. They should have the the way that it was.

Speaker 5: Worded was kind of slimy and I’m not happy with it at all.

Speaker 2: For you, they snitched. They didn’t want to, but to protect all of us.

Speaker 6: Well, so so, so. But I do think you said.

Speaker 5: Something that was that was related or that you said about about just taking the feds work and what they’ve said publicly on Twitter is that they did not take the state’s word at it and in fact. They did their own investigation now I. Don’t know any details about that. And I want to see them. Really, right. More on that. I want to see actually I want to know what that looks like. Yeah, I want the receipts, but I. But I I do think that.

Speaker 2: On the receipts.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Can I just say for a minute, I mean, I hear you saying you don’t know anything about it. I’m not asking you to know if we’re just going to be logical for a second, if there’s a a state sponsored investigation. The only people who know about that investigation or the state, there is nowhere else to go. Yeah, they could collect some user data and maybe they could do an investigation into the people, but. Like maybe, but all of the evidence is going to be owned by the state, so I it’s hard to envision that as often but shifting.

Speaker 5: I could easily envision I could easily envision if they’re using these websites, if they’re using these e-mail addresses as once they send blackmail out of then all rise up has to do because all e-mail is fundamentally unencrypted on their service to them. Basically, they can unencrypt their servers, all they have to do is just go get that. Person’s e-mail account look at the individual emails and if that person’s being like, you know, turnover 70,000. Dollars or we? You know, delete the things that are we deeply. There’s you could see you could see e-mail, you could see their emails and that can constitute proof. I think that it could I. Could easily imagine. A situation where they would feel that they had sufficient proof from what they had available to themselves, but I agree we don’t know and we will not know even if rise up gives us some tell because people are trusting them might evolved to such. At this point, it’s certainly the case, and I think this is a psychology thing that we need to. I think that people really need to get in their heads right now. When you get into a situation where you can’t talk to other people, there’s oftentimes an echo effect thing that happens when you talk to the other people who are also in the same boat as. And you echo back on one another and you talk about the situation you’re in because nobody you can’t talk to anybody else. And what seems reasonable to you starts to shift and you start to be like, oh, this.

Unknown Speaker: Is just what the.

Speaker 5: Community would expect, and I honestly think that the people if rise up, is listening to us, I. Honestly think they’re would be dead shocked. At the at the level. And they’d be like we we never, you know, kind of thing because I think that they lost touch of what the mainstream. Anarchist perspective expects of them.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I I agree. And I don’t think that there’s no like coming back from them. It’s just that their position right now is just kind of like abhorrent compared to what we want to see from anarchists.

Speaker 2: Their bagel got in this now there’s no coming. Back I I I. They were. I demoted them earlier. They’re they’re no longer web hosts there. Dumpster diver, banner droppers. They can play in a metal band, I think.

Speaker 1: The bar for metal bands is really well, yeah, yeah. Nazis.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean so, but also you characterized it as the leading your grandchildren’s photos and I don’t want to like let that pass as like the absolute like most.

Speaker 7: So some some people deserve to have their grandchildren.

Speaker 3: They don’t look like.

Speaker 2: Like, yeah, I guess the target could be anything on a ransomware attack, although you have to think about who has data that they would pay money for you. Someone was like, I’m good. All your data like well, I run Linux, I have to ******* install my operating system every three days anyway. Gives a ****.

Speaker 4: You might be doing something wrong right? Running Linux.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I feel like I feel like I feel like I would. I would pay for my data, but.

Speaker 7: Don’t know.

Speaker 1: Like I also would pay for my data because my work data is on and it’s like it makes me money.

Speaker 2: Right. But so then DDoS, you’re talking, you’re then definitely talking about somebody who owns a server.

Speaker 4: Interesting.

Speaker 5: Anita Sarkeesian, so I so I I used to. I used to work. I used to work for radical design. So one of the things that we consistently did was try to keep inducer keys in servers online, and we no longer do this. So this doesn’t leak any information about like.

Speaker 2: Look. Yeah, yeah. Mean there could.

Speaker 8: Be that.

Speaker 5: Who they can pressure but, but like the amount of attack that we got and we did get, you know, there were, there were. Yeah. So there are plenty of people out there that get targeted. I’ve also seen malware, ransomware attacks upon people who have. I’ve seen it up because what you’ll oftentimes do with these things is you’ll just try to cast a wide net and you’ll see whoever you can get with that software like you’ll put an app in the App Store. You’ll wait however many months, and then you’ll see. What you can do bring. Your phone and then and this happens repeatedly with with activists that this that I’ve, I’ve seen this, I’ve seen this. Happen with people who were activists. They didn’t get targeted because they were activists. They just got targeted. Sad security. So I I don’t think that this is something that I, I mean I don’t know. I would love to see the statistics on who gets targeted by malware by ransomware. I would love to see who gets targeted. On these things and see if that’s.

Speaker 1: Definitely police, right? Yeah, there.

Speaker 5: If only, I mean, I hope.

Speaker 6: Is.

Speaker 2: There is a long standing record of police being the targets. I mean this is. The someones getting their pictures of their grandchildren. She’s one end of the spectrum of how charitable we’re being and the other end of the spectrum, which is Police Department. But there is a long standing record of police departments getting ransomware because they’re at the perfect intersection.

Unknown Speaker: Sure.

Speaker 2: Of people who don’t understand technology being put in charge of technology and information which is financially valuable, being in their hands, almost no one has that important of data being held by that stupid of people.

Speaker 4: Dumb.

Speaker 2: On earth. It’s beautiful and cops are literally handling valuable tech data. Actual literal cops.

Speaker 3: Well, when when you all are talking about like, oh, I’m all there and like that could be used. For good I. Was like, I don’t even know.

Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, OK, if rice if rice up snitched knowingly on someone who is doing malware of the police, I would burn down their servers and try to.

Speaker 3: People.

Speaker 7: Lynch them. How? How. How do you know the things?

Speaker 2: I’ll hold you up.

Speaker 5: Sure, sure, sure. I mean, but there’s a spectrum, right?

Speaker 2: Because their security came back.

Speaker 6: You can’t. You can’t the the.

Speaker 5: Fact that there’s the fact that there’s the fact that there’s a certain amount of and we also it is important to note that like to some degree rise up. I mean, rise up did have a Canary war and you don’t. They didn’t have a Canary up and a warrant Canary and you don’t put a warrant Canary up unless you think that in some way in some situation you. Might find, say.

Speaker 4: Which brings us back to the point of, like you decide these things outside of a crisis scenario and like what you were talking about with, like, the sort of insular, like when you’re in the middle of a of a situation, especially if you have a gag order and you only have each other to look to that, it’s that that can be a difficult situation and. Like a better approach would be, you know, decide where your ethics are and provide your community with that data and get feedback and like take take a strong stand and it’s and then and then you can you live by you don’t have to decide in the moment when you’re you know facing down the barrel of you know years in prison you decide ahead of time and then you know.

Unknown Speaker: I guess I.

Speaker 2: Think that that’s. I don’t know. That’s not how I’ve understood Canaries to be an implication that you. Will testify against people. I think it’s an implication that you’ll cooperate with the gag order, but like what of what uses of the knowledge that they’re complying with the warrant? To me, if they’re actively complying with it?

Speaker 5: It can well, the the thing the thing. So. So I think that rise up was stunningly loudly silent on the gag order. And so very quickly.

Speaker 2: Stunningly, loudly loud to the FBI. Sure, sure.

Speaker 5: Alright, the point I’m trying to make is that I I you know I put a I put a post up on the center very quickly after it became. Blindingly obvious that they were complying with the gang, saying this is the situation. They’re complying with the gag order. I personally think there’s a low level they’re gonna turn over activists and is there something I used? But there’s a possibility now. This is the situation. And also like e-mail is fundamentally insecure in this. It doesn’t matter who you’re providing it with or who your provider is, and the thing that I was doing is trying to tell. I went through the check. I was like, here are the things that you can do to move off of. Please be doing this quickly because the situation might emerge where they in the situation most most when. I wrote it was.

Speaker 2: That one.

Speaker 5: You have a gag order. You’re fighting that and you may lose the fight against the police. Turn over, right. And if and if you get to that point where you need to turn over that information and you’re like, well, I got to burn down the server then. Then we lose all the infrastructure that’s associated with that and all the all the **** that’s unfortunately built up in the centralized way. So one of the things that I did try to do and I got so much hate from people about this was to tell people, make backups of your information, take your emails, back them up if you need them. Delete them if you’re worried about them being read on the server, although that you may have already have have sailed and further set up fall backs because it’s you know, there’s so many situations where people are like Oh well I need to continue this conversation because then somebody might go to prison and we’re having it over GPG. But now the, the, the, the e-mail provider no longer.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Functions. What is the e-mail that they didn’t tell them to go to and?

Speaker 2: How do I?

Speaker 5: Convey that in a way that trust, etc. And so those things some people did start to like. Take those precautions and move on. So I think that. In that, to that degree, the gag order and the Canary Warrens did serve their purpose. They alerted people to the fact that there was this situation and some people went quite wild with it and was like rise up is actively collaborating with the NSA and I was like, I don’t know if that’s true though. And it turned out to. Be I think arguably less. Than if we trust that the work the demo. Turned over to individuals is not. The same thing user user. And.

Speaker 4: Can I just say something in there just cause sometimes you go on a little long and I forget what I’m about to say is that.

Unknown Speaker: Exactly.

Speaker 4: So one thing that that comes up in, you know, just like actors, communities is that you know what one reason we we try to talk about not cooperating at all even against non activists even you know talking at all during a. That you know, if you are subpoenaed to a grand jury or never talking to the cops if they come to your door is because once you’ve said anything to them, once you’ve provided them any information, you are a much more likely target the next time they want information. Yeah, once. Once they see that you are an open door, then then you know they’re just going to push that further and further.

Speaker 5: That’s a good point.

Speaker 4: And so this even if you do side on the the. The argument that, OK, well, this was just some random malicious people. Then you know the next time they come. Back it might be you and the.

Speaker 5: Legal president will change, too. I mean, cause they’re standing changes quite dramatically if, if, if, if, if you the first thing you say is you try all these legal things. If you’re like, I can’t actually apply that it’s it takes time, etc. And then you finally comply. They can go back the next time you like did it. And so the difference is this time they may be like activist stuff and then rise up is like, well, let’s nuke the servers then and maybe they do follow through with that. Then we’re at the same situation where now we’ve lost the infrastructure plus two people went to prison. And that may be something that goes forward. So like, if you have, if you have things that are critical of your infrastructure, make a backup of the emails that you have.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 5: On your list or makeup of the e-mail accounts and the ways and the things that you push, make a backup of all those things and provide and get other.

Speaker 2: Apps, right? And if you’re able to set up an encrypt it like I’m sure it sounds really difficult for people. But like there are step by step guides to setting up an encrypted e-mail server on your own server, you can get server space for $5.00 a month that is sufficient. It’s easier than you. If you’re like.

Speaker 4: You can even use old hardware. You don’t even need to.

Speaker 2: Need to use service base yeah. You need to get a dedicated.

Speaker 1: So we’ve gone back to technology.

Speaker 4: Only briefly.

Speaker 2: Sorry, I ran out of jokes for a second, but I’ll have a. Few more in a minute.

Speaker 4: You were a lot of the push behind that technology discuss.

Speaker 1: It was also. The push to get out of the. Technologies.

Speaker 5: I don’t think that like cleaning up the mess that you’ve already made absolves you entirely.

Speaker 1: Of alright, whatever. I’ll talk technology if that’s what we wanna do.

Speaker 5: Alright. So it is honestly almost two hours. So I think that that’s a good.

Speaker 2: We should be able to cut that down to 7 minutes. Of usable content.

Speaker 3: Yeah. Alright and yeah, I. Was. I was definitely pushed. I was definitely pushed farther into the burn it down. That right, Cam the right position? Because like I honestly, I mean you brought up like the trolley situation of like, oh, like cooperating with these two people or, you know, burn it all down and like weighing the.

Speaker 4: Always a good thing? Thousand.

Speaker 5: Mm-hmm.

Speaker 3: You know, weighing the consequences of whatnot, and I honestly think that. Like. Taking the the precedent of taking like a lazy fair like attitude towards cooperating with the FBI and like setting that precedent is actually going to cause a lot more harm in the long run than like potentially burning down. The servers and like losing all that infrastructure.

Speaker 2: Right setting the setting the status quo at cooperate again, I think that you can make utilitarian argument. That, but I don’t know. That’s kind of argument.

Speaker 5: I I guess a lot of this. There’s so many variables in play, it’s hard to like what the weights are. I’ve unfortunately seen under the hood of a lot of access I think, and it’s in terms of security. And so I would love if this podcast.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 5: To take more work. But also that’s the same thing that makes it made me feel. When I was urging people to get off of rise up or to take not to completely abandon it, but to take precautions to back.

Speaker 2: Up their things.

Speaker 5: Etcetera. After the Canary went dead and I saw even more horrors about how dependent people are and how incapable. In the Angus at present skill level or what they. Their skill level is. To take other steps, which is I think something we need. This needs to be if if any good can come of this, it needs to be a siren call. There needs to be a screening plaques and that we need to deal with the situation and we need to deal and we need to spread. Infrastructure decentralized it. We need to spread similar base. And expectations in.

Speaker 2: I’m trying to get my WordPress plugin on the market. It got rejected because it was called rise up. It had rise up in the beginning of the name so it got rejected. That’s that’s their trademark or something.

Speaker 5: We rise up trademarked and and filed the counter response or.

Speaker 2: They didn’t file a response, but word presses bureaucrats said that could violate trademark. So I have to change the name. But that siren call isolate. Liza, I said, listen, Liza, Liza, realize, realize, realize.

Speaker 6: And with that.

Speaker 3: Power.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but then we’ll have a countdown that everyone hopefully rise up. It’s it’s like 15 lines of JavaScript. So even they should be able to. Understand it.

Speaker 4: And since we just haven’t really, I don’t know if we’ve explicitly said this, it’s never good idea to talk to the police, and there are plenty of people throughout. Long history of activism who did not speak to the police when?

Unknown Speaker: 1.

Speaker 4: When investigated, when, when, when called to who, some of whom lost their lives, spent long periods of time in prison, you could, you know, this is it’s it’s a choice. And like many people have made. The correct choice.

Speaker 3: Prepare for it now. Yeah, it’s and some people have decided to not talk about this.

Speaker 1: Sure, yeah. And put.

Speaker 4: Yeah, he didn’t talk to the cops in his own deposition for his own lawsuit. That was.

Speaker 2: That’s how strong the snitch is. You won’t even snitch against his against his enemies. In his own lawsuit.

Speaker 4: Is.

Speaker 5: And this is an expectation like it it it’s not. It’s not just that you shouldn’t, it’s that we.

Speaker 1: Yes.

Speaker 5: Will hold you. Accountable and the and we will. We should hold others. In the community accountable. Holding you accountable for this kind of thing, we need to build a culture that strongly censors and strongly responds to snitching and to collaborate with the cops to any level. The level that gets a pass in the hacker community at present is just.

Speaker 2: And like because I think look, accountability gets like misused and used in weird ways, it’s. Like.

Speaker 3: To be right now, have another two hours. Let’s open this can of worms, right? Right now.

Speaker 6: Let’s right. We. Or three.

Speaker 2: I feel like accountability means acknowledging that you had a choice to do what you did or to do something different. The choice you made has consequences and that you. Bear the responsibility. These consequences, and I don’t feel like they have been, they have been any of those real terms they have, they have, but like equivocated they have downplayed.

Speaker 7: Hey, happy. For this.

Speaker 4: I think I. I think we would all maybe with the exception of packs would all welcome them to respond to, to change their position. Now it’s better late than never.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I’m interested. Certainly me.

Speaker 4: I mean when? We were talking the other day. You seem to be like, burn them, throw them out. I don’t care. And I don’t want. To see them ever again, just how PAX talks about everybody.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Burn me. Throw me out. Doesn’t matter. No, but just like Iran. I like to see my victims confessed before their execution.

Speaker 5: You can’t smash it. Set it on fire.

Speaker 4: Yeah, we’re gonna have to cut that. Out.

Speaker 5: Alright, I’m going to cut it off.

Speaker 3: That was horizontal hostility.

Speaker 4: Next time we’ll be a little more coherent.

Unknown Speaker: We’ll be.

Speaker 5: We will be more professional and possibly have the sound better drunk.

Speaker 1: Kurt.

Speaker 8: Activist. It’s loaded with theories. The hearts are filled with passion, shared the same last swing. Politics like the same music they were part of the process itself as a family. The way they dress. Now. Taken by miss. You tell me what you think. Whichever what she’s just. The compass. Test organization and I have the char and a paper. And I have fun. The recipe to make these slow sushi curse your friends to follow through with their plans. They were gonna build a farm and blow. Didn’t know it was an FBI for it. Conversations are being recorded. With the FBI informed. Share his dreams forever. Now a standing body. Be careful what you say might be used against you. One day thinks she’s a hot. She’s just a ******* man. Black firms and AR15 rifles. Made the arrests in the Kmart parking lot with the supplies of the bomb in hands, feeling charged with conspiracy against the government. Red intention traded testimony for exchange for leniency. 20 years and they didn’t know it was an FBI. The 5^th. Moments shared his dreams. Revolution now. You tell me what you think. Be trouble. What you say might be you, Sir. One thing. She’s such a ******* sick.

Episode 2: Potholes, Goals, Spectacle, & Portland

Our second episode! The five hosts, now dispersed around the world, talk about how almost every ideological strand of anarchism became a self-parody in their responses to a couple folks filling potholes in Portland. We score easy laughs and praise the pothole-fillers for the greatest troll in a long time. Along the way we try to engage more seriously with the ethics of infrastructure and resistance, propaganda and spectacle, a world without work, whether anarchism is about goals, and the context of the Portland anarchist scene. The main takeaway however is that Will and Sean oppose poetry and Pax opposes their faces.

pothole, you pothole
do you reinforce the civ
help white people live

pothole, you pothole
do you want to cut my wage
coopt all the rage

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Horizontal Hostility on #activism, #libcom, #anticiv, 2 Apr 2017

Speaker 1: Are you wearing a pillow on your head?

Speaker 2: Bring Michael.

Speaker 3: Over your head.

Speaker 4: Maybe.

Speaker 5: So this is the second episode of horizontal hostility, and today we’re going to talk about popular gaze. For those of you who are not paying attention to, like, the absolute minutiae and crazy drama of the anarchist milieu. A few weeks ago. Maybe like 2–3 people and I don’t even know who they are in Portland. Did like a photo op of patching some potholes while on black block and it got a ton of positive media from the mainstream media, or bulk weeklies, or that kind of thing around the world and promptly the anarchist movement basically everywhere online blew up and everybody’s radical. Politics said that this was a terrible thing, but they all said it for. Completely different reasons and. Almost all those things, it’s really hilarious.

Speaker 4: It’s it’s so silly because like, it’s one of those things. When I first saw it, I was just like, whatever, like, I don’t really care. Like, I mean, it’s like I guess it’s kind of cool, but like, I don’t really care. But then seeing all the. This ship came about. It just was, really. Kind of disheartening, but also really funny.

Speaker 1: I know. What do you think that is? That makes people just like want to? Jump on something that’s getting. They’re like being seen in a positive light, or that’s just like has some sort of novelty to it, it seems like. The larger radical scene always wants to destroy. Everything. Well, that’s what I like.

Speaker 4: Doesn’t say do we want to just like go through the different arguments that people were making and the various different platforms like?

Speaker 5: Yeah, it’s send it.

Speaker 1: Now let’s start with the the most ridiculous first.

Speaker 2: OK.

Speaker 5: I I don’t. Know if I can rank these in terms of ridiculousness? I think everybody will have a.

Speaker 2: And we should write.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 5: We should rank them at the end, though at this the most ridiculous. Yeah. Oh, absolutely. Absolutely. I’m. I’m down for ranking it. Alright so 80s and like the nihilistic anti Suffolk who populate that took a line and and there was some talk about about whether or not we could actually trust whether or not anyone.

Speaker 4: Inspector.

Speaker 5: Actually, seriously taking this then, because you know it was ridiculous. But they took the line. Basically destroying roads is good and thus repairing roads is fascism, which was a literal characterization made by two people, although maybe that’s posed. Amusingly, a liberal weekly in Seattle made the same argument. You know, they said that, you know, cars are bad, potholes are straight cars, they’re for patching potholes, is reactionary. So that’s one argument. Social Justice, Tumblr and number of people I saw on Twitter actually took the line into varying degrees, but in one expression was literally that poor white people helping other poor white people, which was, you know, their characterization of all of Portland is white people was stellar colonial. Inherently, which means that even baking a pie for other poor white people is seller colonialism, because it’s making their presence on stolen land easier. So if you like, you know, pick it your your poor white friend’s boss, then you’re making his life easier or her life easier on your life, easier on stolen land and and that’s reactionary.

Speaker 1: Oh, I just want to say a. Quick comment as. The first step in Colonialization is always to whitewash an entire population. Right perspective. Sorry. Go on.

Speaker 5: Yeah. So and then the the other, the the main Trinity of terrible arguments was libcom took this and we’re like they are. They are you on Twitter that doing work for free scabbing.

Unknown Speaker: No.

Speaker 5: So Atticus providing their own? Chances they’ll be stealing jobs from city service workers. They they were in, and whoever was running the Libcom Twitter accounts defense, they were eventually talked down out of that after, like, hundreds of people jumped on them. But but there were people that put their side in that originally too. So I think I’m going to vote for that.

Speaker 6: As the most ridiculous.

Speaker 4: Because that one makes the most sense to me out of all of the. Arguments, which is to say next to none and not none. The rest make no sense. Well, I mean like if. If city workers were on strike and then people started fixing the roads like. I could see that argument as the. I could see that as being a form of scattering if there was like some sort of Labor dispute. But when it’s just like in general, outside of that context, it seems like a really ridiculous argument.

Speaker 1: Yeah, but they’re all pretty out there.

Speaker 6: No. They’re all reaching pretty far. Yeah, that.

Speaker 2: That one’s just.

Speaker 4: The most card should actually ever.

Speaker 5: I don’t know. I feel like I feel like the any helping, any helping white people or any white people helping other poor white people ever equals settler colonialism. Is probably. I feel like the most reaching of all of them, like they can understand where Lib pumps coming from on this and they did get topped out of it once they were like umm, I guess, you know, maybe it doesn’t just being unions and and you know like. The anti civilian.

Speaker 1: Please, let’s come as. An anarchist right?

Speaker 5: Well, we’ll come. We’ll come sometimes comes there. And because they, I mean they, they take their libertarian communist line, right. So some of them are like, well, you know, the way I characterize lip balm is that they’re the sort of anarchists who who go honestly, I feel more I feel more like I have. I feel like I have more in common with with Marxists.

Speaker 4: Here they are.

Speaker 5: And and authoritarian communists than I do with most anarchists.

Speaker 1: Exactly.

Speaker 4: Kind of like me year or two years ago.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: I’m I’m muscle.

Speaker 6: Even know what to say about it? I just. I’m pro the pothole sellers now.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 4: The the Internet has this weird way of like pushing me in these directions and like defending things. I don’t even really care about, and that’s kind of how I feel about the pot whole thing where it’s like I didn’t really care about it and now it’s like.

Speaker 5: I’m like militantly pro it and I kind of feel like that was I I I get the impression that’s all over impressions like I didn’t give a **** about the model.

Speaker 6: I’m not. Militant. Right.

Speaker 5: But but the more that people like became self parodies and opposing it, the more that I was like, OK, I totally support whoever did the whole thing cause they are the best roles on this planet.

Speaker 4: Like all the best trolls, I’m assuming that they didn’t know that they were being trolls. Did they just? Live in the neighborhood and they were doing that and they thought that they would make a, like, cheeky little inside joke because there’s always been that sort of like who will fix the roads troll. In anarchist discourse, and they were like, ohh, see, we’re fixing the. Roads. And assumed that it would get like 3 likes on Facebook. And. And it turned into a crazy shitstorm. And.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: I didn’t even realize that it had blown up until, so I read that a post on it’s going down that was like. The Eric’s movement is gaining momentum. Everything from DC to the pothole incident. Wait, are you trying to claim the pothole filling as like, a noteworthy moment in in in 226, like 2017 anarchist like? Activity that’s stretch, but then I was like, well, it actually has.

Speaker 3: Reached.

Speaker 1: National news. I’m also sort of interested in in. In talking about why. We think that is, but I’m more interested in laughing at these arguments some more so. I I think it’s good. It’s a. It’s good to to go into that, that person you mentioned will. Be like kind of the anti Sid perspective. Everything about cities, our civilization is bad. Therefore potholes are good. That specific argument, obviously, is like is. Pointed at this incident, but it can be abstracted to the more general like. Argument that I see a lot or I’ve seen a lot in primitivist and enticing circles of like any infrastructure is worthy of attack and anything we do that fights civilization is good. And I think that there’s a lot of. That has a lot of. Draw for people at least it did. Maybe like 10 years ago. And I think it’s it’s worth at least being genuinely genuine in in combating that if it’s if it’s coming up again where like. That’s a really. Dangerous and like a scary position for inner cause to be taking that like. You know, take out the electricity grid and then lots of people die. And that’s not OK that’s not what we like, want to see. Same thing with pot is we don’t want people to get into car accidents or fall off their bike and. Like crack their head open, these are not anarchistic goals.

Speaker 5: I mean a lot. Of people would disagree it seems, and I. And I don’t think. That they actually went away and like you were saying 10 years ago, it was common to hear these kinds of things. I mean, the example I love to give is that there was a. One of those bombs and Shields, but one of the big insurrectional websites at the time reported on an incident where a janitor had been breaking fluorescent light bulbs and throwing them instead of motel pools so that the kids who would be in The Who go to The Who who go swimming, we cut themselves. And the Incorrecto news site like reported on it like this is just one more example of social war and someone striking back against the system. And, you know, really made clear that their perspective on the issue is that or they’re, you know, it really highlighted just how their perspective was, like, attack everything and kill everyone total destruction. It’s not a meme. It’s like our actual politic. And I don’t think that’s really gone away right, because like ITS and other kind of like. This you know. Nihilists make total destroy as an actual politic group. Continued to strike continued to like murder people. Individuals were savagely attacked on a Children’s Hospital charity, you know, and ******* GMO’s. But like you’re going to bomb Children’s Hospital charity they they put out a hit on an artist in Mexico City. They’ve attacked students and grad students. And it’s that kind of thing. And so I think for a lot of people, there’s kind of an unbroken chain that this continued to be their perspective. But you know, I like, I do think that there is some valid or there’s some. There are some important questions to be answered here like you know, are we pro cars for example if we are because I don’t actually conceive of myself as being pro carries. I see myself and maybe this is a residual component of my own comment history, but I’m opposed to like the car culture of the infrastructure. I’d rather there not be roads like there are right now. Not not no roads, but like certainly nothing like the current infrastructure and what it normalizes in our society. But the question then becomes like, what does a transition look like and the right, right and and the the proponents of anti siphon, you know always respond with like you know anybody who’s an anarchist who supports revolution inherently supports disruption. And there’s going to be like a a a death toll associated with that. Like if you’re going to transition.

Speaker 1: Right. Because I was going to. 1^st.

Speaker 5: You’re gonna break with the existing order. That break is going to come with a cost and the insurrection position of just like, break all windows or like attack, you know, whatever. Like there, there always has been a certain amount of collateral damage, even from the like the ethical perspective of anarchism. Even the the like things that we’ve considered to actually be real, substantive damage to people there always has been like a component of that. So I I I don’t, I don’t know. Yeah.

Speaker 2: But mitigating that.

Speaker 1: Is mitigating that suffering. Mitigating that loss is like integral to. The at least a line of anarchist thought of like if you’re in this to increase well-being that you’re not trying to create as. Much. Pain and as much death along the way as you can. And also like we have a an analysis of. Like oppression and analysis of domination, and we know that things like, you know, access to cars is going to affect people differently based off of their abilities based off of like a lot of different things and that we should be looking at who’s going to suffer the most from this. And is it that somebody at you know, at the bottom of the hierarchy? If that’s true, then we need to think of a different way. We shouldn’t.

Speaker 2: You know.

Speaker 1: We have to go about this in a way that that does the most good with the least harm. At least that’s the ethical way to approach this. If you were. If you’re serious about an anti carp position, you know creating a bunch of potholes is not.

Speaker 4: It’s interesting because since I ever since I was a baby anarchist, it’s sort of been my goal to merge anarchist culture with car culture so. That way, a conversation I’m interested in but.

Speaker 2: I mean, but like in all.

Speaker 4: Fairness, like I I’m also like. Critical of of car culture and I don’t necessarily think you know everyone driving a a a car is necessarily the most sustainable thing or the most desirable thing. But I think oftentimes the question gets framed in these very individualistic terms where. Instead of viewing car culture as like a a symptom of a broader system, we we view it in these, like individualistic, moralistic terms of like individual drivers are like bad because they just don’t care or like the the reason we have car culture is because of just like individual people who just don’t care about the environment. They’re just uneducated. And like I I just, I find that just to be really silly and like counterproductive. And I think a lot of the whole, like, what’s built the like, let’s create potholes in the street so like stop cars is is just kind of like a product of that like very like kind of shallow analysis of the situation. But that’s just I don’t know.

Speaker 5: So I think there’s definitely and it’s it’s an important point that that, you know, car culture and the modern infrastructure was built very intentionally and very politically it was invested to create a certain political and social and even cultural condition. And it succeeded in those things, the. The the placement of roads, the the, the norms around roads, the extent of them, all of those were deliberate choices that were made and that were. Financed specifically to create. A more manageable populace, larger firm size, economies of scale, that kind of. Thing but and but I think that actually plays into talking about how. While the individual choices that people make to have a car and to use a car and that kind of thing. Oftentimes, our choices people make with, you know, around perceptions of liberation because, you know, having your own car gives you a sense of autonomy. It gives you autonomy in a very meaningful way. Most of the people that I know growing up who were like dead poor or whatever, like, they have a car. Uhm. Or they aspire. To have a car, even if they like, you know, ride public transit all the time and feel a certain amount of pride in that. And but those that drive for individual autonomy would, you know, be characterized by those in the anti civilia as like a kind of false sense of freedom as a, you know, false consciousness or as a, as a sort of limited. That, that, that, that, the effect of which it builds up into reestablishing or restrengthening systems of regression and structures of impression because, you know, like if everybody you know, obviously if everybody chose not to drive a car or everybody who could, you know. And out of that. Much of the infrastructure that currently exists would like dissolve.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I don’t really see that how? Infrastructure is going to. This all I also don’t think that like the interest in cars kind of came before the infrastructure, I think that like in a lot of. A lot of ways, like capitalism, creates desire and. People want to drive cars because they exist and then they’re. You know being. Funneled in that direction, so I really don’t see.

Speaker 5: I wasn’t saying that that the desire for cars, I mean I think that there wasn’t. There was, there’s always been a desire for quicker transportation, for autonomy, etcetera. But I don’t think that the the desire for cars, we would really say like in in any significant way preceded the construction. By capitalists and by the state. Of the environment in which those things were far more profitable, far more usable, etc. Where the infrastructure is created and we’re, you know, mass production for just like, you know, production and advertising, that kind of thing created the bizarre. I’m not denying that. What I’m saying is that given that, that desire started to emerge and given that this context. We’ve emerged like it became rational for. People to or became understandable that people’s desires turn towards having a car, and so there’s kind of a sense of a collective action problem that’s identified with sense that like you know everybody, now that this infrastructure exists kind of wants to perpetuate it because in their individual. Experiences it’s more liberating to have a career than not, but the anti the argument here would be that you know those some individual actions or desires for a slight greater degree of freedom or choice inside of one’s life or autonomy or whatever you want to call. Up to helping re helping strengthen existing norms and I’m not, you know, I’m not. Sure that you know. Obviously no one’s going to. We’re not all going to collectively make a consumer decision to boycott riding in cars. There might be there, there’s there are small. And increasingly, larger demographic shifts away from car culture. But but it’s not to be some sort. Of shift over. So the question then becomes like if you want that kind of shift, how would that actually arrive in a way that wasn’t? Either backed by the. Or, you know, or it really wasn’t backed by the state, and that somehow arose from, like, you know, anarchist association from from individuals.

Speaker 1: Right and. Like if you don’t.

Speaker 6: Which is that the the anti car culture issue is something that this touches on. I also think that like even if we don’t want cars. The idea that potholes are doing anything substantial to deter cars is just sort of ludicrous to me, and I think that we can safely say that, like filling potholes isn’t going to make people buy more cars or use their cars more. And not filling potholes. It wasn’t going to in car culture, so I don’t.

Speaker 1: It’s similar to that argument where people like to make where like when your neighborhood with trash like gentrification, it smacks of that argument.

Speaker 2: It’s like.

Speaker 6: We should talk about that.

Speaker 1: That you were probably going to do or not do anyway, you can actually fight these systemic large power structures. It’s like meth.

Speaker 6: Kiss off your neighbors and destroy everything that you hate simultaneously.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, it’s not like potholes are good for bikes or pedestrians. If anything, they have a higher impact on bikes.

Speaker 2: So.

Speaker 4: She’s like, easily eat ****. So on a pothole on your. Yeah, but bikes are as much as cars are. I mean, I don’t know. Whatever. Yeah. And like when I was in Portland like the last couple. Months. When I was there, like the potholes were something that, like everyone was complaining about. Like I’ve heard, like so many people complaining about it and being like. Why won’t the city do anything about this? Like the produce potholes everywhere, like so it kind of makes sense for anarchists to like. Just go fill some of the potholes and just be like, hey, we can actually just solve these problems ourselves and we don’t, you know, solve all our problems and we can do this collectively, it’s. Just people and like, I don’t know, that kind of makes sense. I think that’s like kind of cool. But I mean it’s not the. Greatest thing in the world, but. It makes sense. I understand why they did it.

Speaker 1: Yeah, like I agree with that. I. See you see. You try to fill it. Yeah, I think that the, the ragtag, haphazard, potentially not, like, structurally sound way. I don’t really know exactly how they. Did I don’t know if. It’s actually really very there’s really much to it. Maybe it’s just like. Some of the attempts of criticism in the media.

Speaker 4: The city says they did it wrong.

Speaker 6: And the city has been doing it right.

Speaker 4: What’s? Did it wrong?

Speaker 1: Wait. And I’m not. I’m just saying, like, I don’t actually know. Like, maybe if you feel it the wrong. Way it actually becomes a sinkhole. You know, who knows? I would like to see like inner case. Try to do something right? At least like Google it before they do it. I’m not sure. That they didn’t do that.

Speaker 6: I bet I’m sure that they did it.

Speaker 1: But that’s that’s more like. What I would. Concerned about?

Speaker 5: Well, maybe maybe these, maybe these these pothole fails are actually anti civic activists and they are opposed to Google and they filled it in right. And they filled them florally so that they could create sinkholes and undermine the city’s efforts to replace them, thus actually destroying the infrastructure.

Speaker 4: Open poorly.

Speaker 2: It’s.

Speaker 6: So 1 of. The things I’ve read about it is that they are actually using well established technique called coal patching that has have been used for a long time and is.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 6: It works. I don’t. I mean, I don’t know what their mix is made of or whether or not this publication is accurate in the description, but.

Speaker 5: I just want to throw that.

Speaker 6: Out there so that we’re not like, say, making random conjectures about their techniques.

Speaker 4: And and it seems like there’s been other groups who’ve started doing it as well, like just on Facebook. I’ve seen other posts of people being like, hey, we’re like another crew of Portland. And we started doing portals too, like. I don’t know. So it seems like there’s multiple groups, or at least. Those groups.

Speaker 2: So.

Speaker 4: There’s there’s. It seems like there’s multiple crews of. People doing it in Portland just from. Madam should have seen on Facebook so. I don’t know if it’s all the same.

Speaker 6: Do we want to talk about? One of the other arguments.

Speaker 5: Well, I think you know, maybe talking about the fact that this is happening in Portland, like what a lot of the a lot of the hate that seemed to pour down on this seem to be rooted in the fact that you. There’s a certain impression of Portland that has spread. I think this has a lot to do with, like the Patriarch in the movement thing and and the fact that like a lot of the the nihilist Bros were like, Ohh Portland’s the worst. And so there’s residual hate about that. But there’s also the other side of it, which is like there’s. Reputation of Portland for being all white. And so, and obviously, Portland isn’t all white and the but the history of of all of that is, is complicated. And there definitely, you know, the Northwest definitely has racism structurally and historically very significantly. And I think that those things. Or that impression? Was playing into a lot of people’s reactions.

Speaker 6: Right, yeah.

Speaker 1: As far as just like the the general like. Antagonism towards Portland, like within a radical scene, actually think, and maybe I’m. Like. You know, coming from a slight bias, having lived and and and worked as an intern there for a long time, but I actually think that. That. As much as I might say, I don’t really like Portland. I think there’s like a lot of innovation and a lack of like being afraid to try new things there that I really that I value that people. Are willing to. Try out an idea and not not be trying. To be like the cool kids. Which I appreciate even if I.

Speaker 2: Think I don’t know.

Speaker 1: I have. I do have some criticisms of this whole feeling, but I think that trying something new like nobody’s figured it. Out. Trying a new way to like. Get in touch with your neighbors to. His anarchy. Some sort of like positive light, something that somebody might attach to that could be valuable to them, like go for it, you know? And I like that that Portland does that. And I think people criticizing Portland for being.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Touchy feely. We’re talking about Portlandia or whatever. It’s just a. A way of. Of passing that. Uniqueness and a bad life.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I I I feel.

Speaker 4: Like Portland, like just can’t win as far as like the like. North American anarchist scene is concerned because like this whole whole thing, everyone’s like all Portland. They just too, like silly like. Like stupid actions like this or whatever, but then like a couple months back when, like after the Trump was elected and there was, like, the riot and. Pearl districts like after that, all the anarchists were like, at least Aragorn was like talking **** and being like, like, oh, like a bunch of white people with their like, pumpkin Chai lattes, like marching through the streets like blah blah. Like, I don’t know, it’s like, no matter what Portland anarchists do, like, people are just going to like. Talk to them like I don’t know. It doesn’t matter if they’re right. It doesn’t matter if they fill potholes. It doesn’t matter what people are going. Like. Try to like try to like project.

Unknown Speaker: If it’s.

Speaker 5: Well, I think you know, I think that rice is out of a couple of specific things like the creation of Portlandia, Portland’s new identity and like American like perceptions as like the hipster retirement home. These kinds of things are not relative of Portland historically or any. Being there’s so many other complexities at play, but it’s kind of created Portland as like the thing that you hold up as the punching bag for all the like the rich white, you know, liberal, hipstery shift that you hate and it’s, you know, it’s extraordinarily obnoxious to poor, you know, working class or people of color in Portland or those of us, you know, who have. Who, who grew up here and have. And and you know have to deal with people whose perception of Portland is of maybe like 5 or less percent of the population of gentrifiers of Portland, but are not reflective of the city as a whole. I I have this stupid story where I I once actually canvassed Carrie Brownstein’s house when I was. 18 for some actress fit and and I remember I knocked on her door and it was, oh, she was Carrie Brownstein. Carrie Brownstein’s the with Fred Elston, the two creators of Portlandia. The show has kind of pushed this. Narrative of Portland and we had, like, a really in-depth like 20 minute conversation about, like gentrification in Portland. And this is long before she done the show and. And the history of, you know, working class ship and the punk scene and all, and and all that kind of thing. And she seemed to be on the right page. She seemed to understand that ship. But. Then she went off and made Portlandia, which you know is obnoxious and unrepresentative with his ship. It’s also, you know, the sort of thing where, like the joke, the sort of Portlandia. Looks like really play to Middle America. They say things like I’ll meet you at the vegan, you know, Chinese restaurant. Ohh, rich, vegan Chinese restaurant like, you know, like it’s such a, you know, silly thing that Portland has multiple vegan Chinese restaurants, which I just think is, you know. Like a a ****** critique like and and also misses the history where like you know, the progressive history of this town was built by the working class was built by. The people here who were disenfranchised and then was later appropriated by, you know, a bunch of hipsters who fled in with gentrification. But you know, they didn’t actually create. And they’re the ones who mock and who are the. Main. Subjects and consumers have ship like Portland. Anyway. That’s a long grant to fund. We can get back on. The topics.

Speaker 4: I don’t even like right. Like once again, the Internet is forcing me to defend something I don’t even really care about. Ohh it’s also I feel like it’s. The way in which it like represents a misunderstanding is I feel like it was like. I feel like it was an in joke, kind of like that, like 10 years ago. The the disc and more. The discourse was like. Liberals being like? Yeah, and it would be great. But who would fix the roads? That was like? Like a meme of 10 years ago, before there were memes as we understand them now, and I sort of wonder if, like. That. That aspect of the dialogue is missing some, like Occupy anarchists and like, I don’t know, people that hopped on sterner’s **** 15 minutes ago.

Speaker 1: That’s the ******* necrotic astic over there.

Speaker 2: You might.

Speaker 5: Even say that it’s haunted.

Speaker 4: Yeah. So I don’t know. I I feel like it’s like it’s like watching someone like, like, dissect a joke, not knowing it’s a joke, somebody I don’t know. That’s what we’ve been like.

Unknown Speaker: Well, one of.

Speaker 5: The critiques that I heard was actually responded to that in in there was this perception that who build the roads is an ANCAP meme and not an anarchist meme, because anarchists aren’t interested or social anarchists shouldn’t be interested in like. How things would function? After the Rev.

Speaker 6: What’s the justification for that?

Speaker 1: Why would?

Speaker 5: Well, I mean, it’s just it’s a standard anti sieve and like nihilistic kind of **** where like the only thing that matters is me immediate. And anarchism is anarchism is a is a sensation or a like a psychological state. It’s it’s not about, it’s not about actually changing the world.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 5: Changing the world is for you know that authoritarians, liberals. And caps that kind of thing.

Speaker 1: Well, yeah, I mean and because. It’s it’s definitely worthwhile to know what we how we think we should organize and get things done in a like revolutionary society.

Speaker 2: I think that.

Unknown Speaker: At least.

Speaker 1: I very much want. An interface praxis and not just a. Abstract. Ideology in my head. Offer figured how to fix 3.

Speaker 2: Nothing.

Speaker 5: But it isn’t ideology, right? Like you know, the the whole, the whole. This ****** branch of current post left is who are on sterners **** and **** they. Like there there there is a a widespread perception that like the opposite of ideology is to fetishize, like, emotional, effective states to be like that, you know, anarchy is a poetry that can never be realized in the real world. And here I’m basically quoting. And so you. So it’s not an in state in terms of like of of a way that the world could be really it’s it’s more about the ways that we you know you know charitably the ways that we relate to one another here and now and I you know I think that there’s something to that like I do think that anarchism has a lot to say about interpersonal. Take some relations, but.

Speaker 6: I also think though that like if if everyone is struggling for poetics rather than like an actual ends, then. You know he can call it. What he. Wants if he wants to call that in or cause him then. You know, that’s whatever. I think that the anarchism that I’m struggling for is an end.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Certainly my honor isn’t isn’t ends.

Speaker 1: It sounds like a whimsical way of saying I don’t really want to put the work in what I hear that sounds about right for most.

Unknown Speaker: Yes, Sir.

Speaker 1: Of those folks. So. But. I would like to work towards a. A tangible and of his society, however impractical, or however far away we are right now, the goals are real.

Speaker 4: So anything that poetry, I would guess, so poetry.

Speaker 5: I actually argued one time to some infamy that that poetry is violence.

Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, I’ve actually said that before, like, jokingly. But like, yeah, no violence.

Speaker 2: Is one of those.

Speaker 1: Things. It’s like it’s like really?

Speaker 4: Yeah, it looks stupid. better than I have ever imagined you’d be.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I’m with you always. OK to say that you hate country music or poetry like that ******* unpopular opinion. All you’ve ever read was Robert Frost. Then then I would totally understand, and that may be your your poetry. But poetry isn’t really something that you can just, like, put a blanket.

Speaker 2: Statement. On so, I don’t know.

Speaker 4: Unpopular opinions unpopular, like *******. There, I said. I’m gonna go out, and I’m gonna go. I’m gonna live.

Speaker 2: And shave it so.

Speaker 5: So I mean my. Actual troll argument about this is that you know, poetry appeals to affected states. It like removes us away from rationality. At least it can it it. Speaks in sort. Of generality, metaphors and you look at the difference between like continental philosophy and analytic philosophy. Oftentimes, the way this will be phrased is that you know con angles will sneer that analytics want to treat philosophy like it’s science or mathematics and analytics will sneer that Continentals want to treat philosophy like it’s poetry, and then both sides will bite the bullet on them, like Continentals would be. Like. Ohh yeah, totally. You know, philosophy should be just poetry if it doesn’t. All flows we should be is like, you know, arbitrary things that reach you and resonate with you. And on a on an emotional level and whether or not they’re, like intellectually coherent, whether or not they’re logically coherent is like completely irrelevant. Actually. Yeah. I mean it. It is. It’s it’s. It’s in a place of.

Speaker 1: That sounds like. That’s not.

Speaker 2: Thank you.

Speaker 5: People would disagree. Some people argue, and you know, rhetoric departments, this is this is a big issue in them is rhetoric actually philosophy?

Speaker 1: What are you talking about?

Speaker 5: Their actual their actual departments of rhetoric at at some colleges.

Speaker 1: Like the DMV, there’s like.

Unknown Speaker: No, no, I mean like.

Speaker 5: Departments in in like in universities. So like you have like a philosophy department and then yeah sure. I mean I’m I’m I I feel that there are two dangers to kind of lose aphoristic emotional appeals and I feel that most of anarchism.

Speaker 2: Oh.

Speaker 5: At least the popular **** on a news or I mean a news, isn’t that popular anymore, but the kind of sterling, right? Whatever shift. That’s that’s really cool. In the last 15 minutes, really appeals to, like, emotional valence and not to like not to. Not to like concrete worked out arguments.

Speaker 1: All right. Well, I feel like that if we were to really talk about poetry, it’d be a lot of it. That’d be. A different that’s different. But do we want to get back to any of the? Arguments against. The potholes are we are we just. We’re just going to go. Where we go? Well, you know, you know I.

Speaker 5: Think that I think that the the emotional thing actually, like, sags to what I think are is some of the arguments that are that are hiding underneath peoples horror at the pothole filling. So I mean, like, if you’re if your perspective is that, like, you know that. And or his, you know, as a consequence of intellectual analyst rhetoric over the last like, you know, few years is. Just poetic, unworldly, like emotional, like experience and quality and ways of. You know, whatever. Then you then, naturally, that kind of **** is muddied by the banalities of economics or doing **** in the real world or anything that’s practical or that has, like, you know, requires a dimension of engagement with the realities of the world and further, like the pothole filling, obviously. Became like an outreach spectacle. And if your perspective on anarchism is that it’s an emotive thing, not about changing the world, then you’re probably not going to be very happy about the notion of of recruiting people to anarchy because we we have seen like this massive influx of people who have become anarchists, who now self identify. And we, you know, continuously but you know, we could say in recent history or in the last few years, thanks to the Internet and one of the things that comes with this is like a bunch of people, a bunch of noobs who really don’t know as much or don’t don’t necessarily agree with everything that we think of as like. You know canonical enterprise positions and that can be really true. Writing and I think that’s legitimate, but you know, with that if you or somebody who is not even attempting to change the world, you’re just trying to, like have moments of, like, rupture that you feel or you engage in, then it’s you probably don’t think that it’s worth it to recruit people. To anarchy, right?

Speaker 1: Yeah, but those people like matter so little to me, it’s not worth talking to or about them. Like if it’s all. If it exists in your head, if you’re not looking to recruit, and because if you’re not looking to see. And because I realized and like I have nothing to say to you, you.

Speaker 4: Don’t matter. Yeah, yeah. That’s how I feel. But it’s still funny that **** talk them and because they still.

Speaker 1: I’m sorry I’m going. To be a little too earnest and it’s.

Speaker 6: Not as fun, but they provide some pretty valuable fodder for this show, considering it’s called hostility, where would we be without them?

Speaker 1: Writing position papers.

Speaker 6: Yeah. I mean, I think that it is important to recognize that a lot of the people who are like concerns on those levels are simply trying to keep. Anarchy, you know, some sort of uh. Exclusive club. And.

Speaker 2: You know.

Speaker 6: Something that they. Have the means to. Curate on an individual level, which I don’t think. I think that the the five is the idea of anarchy in general. Anarchy is for everyone. And I think that’s an important idea. And keeping it elite is, you know, the last thing we should be striving. For and most of those. People will also critique the elitism simultaneously, and they’re like awash with contradiction in themselves. So.

Speaker 5: They critique the legalism. Yeah, his my impression is. That you know.

Speaker 4: Like.

Speaker 5: Or that I’d characterize the whole like nihilistically, sterner, right, whatever. Maybe it was being super elitist. It’s all about reality. I mean, they they literally, you know, attract them or they’re attracted the word aristocracy, right. Like they they in many ways they replicate fascist rhetoric and fascist tropes about that kind of elitism.

Speaker 2: Layer.

Speaker 5: Oh, I’m sorry. Were you saying that they’re critiquing?

Speaker 6: I think that OK, I mean I guess you know each one of them is an individual and I don’t know which particular groups you’re talking about, but I certainly see people who identify as malice and hear them in person talking about how, you know, anarchy is just, you know.

Speaker 5: At least.

Speaker 6: A lot of white middle class people you know, and they critique the actions based on identities perceived like you were saying here, going, complaining about the riot being just a bunch of white people in Portland. With pumpkin lattes? I mean, if that’s essentially a critique of elitism. So we can, I mean that they may not be like I want. I want to include everybody in anarchy, although I think that a lot of them do a lot of people that identify as nihilists.

Speaker 5: With it.

Speaker 6: Uhm. Maybe not. I don’t. I mean, I don’t. I I feel like I’m not really familiar with this particular strain of nihilism that you’re talking about.

Unknown Speaker: I.

Speaker 5: Guess I’m can talk specifically about. In fact split. Up lattes comments of Aragorn’s critique. Or I. Don’t know if. That was shown. I saw that actually as an elitist statement itself. Kind of a petito. Yeah, I mean, so particular saying, like, those people are of a cat considered really basic, right? Not actually elites.

Speaker 4: Yeah.

Speaker 6: Sure. But it’s also, I mean, I guess the connotation to me is also that they are part of an elite. You know middle class or you know, comfortable class whatever we want to call it.

Speaker 1: Within deserve to ride it because they aren’t the authentic.

Speaker 6: Right. They’re not. They’re not the revolutionary subject in some, like, Marxian sense.

Speaker 2: OK.

Speaker 4: I guess I guess I kind of saw it as more of like an opportunistic like appeal to like the shallowest like identity politics. Possible because he doesn’t like Portland because they. Like when he tried to speak there a few months earlier, like there was a big **** storm or whatever. I don’t know it like doing the whole like oh, it’s just a bunch of white people. It’s not like an authentic like it because it’s a bunch of white people, even though, like, that’s totally not true. And that, like, there were like people of color who were debating in those events. But nonetheless, I mean, I I, that’s just how I read it.

Speaker 2: But.

Speaker 5: Should we move on to?

Speaker 1: The would come argument.

Speaker 6: Yeah. Let’s move on to another argument. Unless we want to continue talking about no less contradiction.

Speaker 1: I’m interested in what people have to say about the the argument that, and maybe we already went over it. I don’t know if there’s anything more to say, but the whole idea that if.

Speaker 2: You if you.

Speaker 1: Do something. Essentially, that’s the stakes. Job that you are. Yeah.

Speaker 6: Yeah, I want to. Hear why PAX thinks that that’s the best argument.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Thank you. We were in Dallas packs deals with the your Why you think that Whitcomb’s argument was the closest thing to a real argument?

Speaker 4: Ohh. I mean just that like. Those are like union jobs and that. That there’s some of the better like jobs that pearls can have out there and that it. But when you do something for free, it is undercutting. The people who get paid to do those things. It resonated more than 0 for me. It’s it’s one of those things that I I couldn’t agree that it. It’s something that I at least had to think about for a few minutes before I was like, yeah, this is ********. Made it the best. Right, all the anti civil ones. All I had to do was say lol and they were repeated rhetorically.

Speaker 6: Yeah, I mean. I feel like it the argument though to me is exposed to me immediately by the fact that it basically claims but anarchism should be based in a capitalist infrastructure, which I don’t. I mean, I don’t agree with we’re not working. Or better or more work for the Poles you know, or hopefully working toward the liberation from that dynamic for everyone.

Speaker 4: Because such like it’s like one of the most complicated aspects of, like, building a new system in the old. Because like for sure I am, I am anti work right? But it’s like one of those areas where we have to. You know, it’s. It’s like suddenly half of the jobs went went away.

Speaker 6: Tomorrow, that wouldn’t be a good thing, necessarily. Filling potholes is not going to take away half the jobs. One, we know that there’s plenty of potholes to be filled. Too. It’s really like a mutual aid sort of thing. They’re helping out their neighbors, right. And I think that, like, that transcends a, a critique that they might be scabbing unless they are scabbing. But in this case, they’re not. I mean, it’s just not even right. Yeah. If they’re like Sean said, if there was. A strike? It would be one thing, but you know there’s not. And they’re just performing mutual aid, yeah.

Speaker 1: Right. The alternative is to like, ask them to to like appeal to the. City government more. It definitely seemed like.

Speaker 6: Or to start a business and pay people.

Speaker 1: Yeah. This is most in line with like what we. Believe in or want to. See, even if it’s still kind of. Even by the end result is I don’t necessarily want a world where people dress up in black walk and fill potholes.

Speaker 4: And honestly, like that was kind of my biggest criticism of the whole pot pot pot. Whole thing was like the optics of it, of dressing up in black plot.

Speaker 1: I have. Concern whenever I hear something that entertains, do they give some sort of? Traction that seems like. Maybe it’s easy, maybe it’s a it’s a. It’s something quick to do and it’s not particularly conflictual, it kind of. In the like support or you know this like positive. Anybody could do it kind of genre that a lot of people are going to gravitate to it in lieu of other intricate activity that might be more difficult, might be more long term or more risky and and that’s kind of the things that we need to fight capitalism. The state, you know, like pothole filling, is not going to. Bring about. The end of domination. And like I’m saying, this is this isn’t to make a dichotomy between pothole fillers and, you know. People who are trying to abolish the police, for example, but I just have that that knee jerk reaction of like, oh, I don’t. Want this to be? The end I don’t this. I don’t want this to be the thing that everyone picks up and then all of a sudden enter his and means, you know, we go around filling in potholes. I don’t know if anyone else went through that, that. Kind of. Sentiment. But it’s just something I wanted to mention that that I kind of felt that too, that like. You know that I just don’t trust inner kids to really want to, like, dig in and do the hard work.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I really ended up being conflictual. Which. They couldn’t have foreseen that, but the end result is good. The fact that the state got mad, the fact that other anarchists gotten mad. I think it created a lot of conflict. And so I think that’s tight. And again I, I cannot imagine that these people would have gone into this thinking there would be fights on a news or that this state would respond in any way. It’s just seemed like a cheeky little young joke.

Speaker 1: We haven’t done anything to at least to my knowledge like it seems like people haven’t.

Speaker 4: They’re asking for people to turn them in.

Speaker 1: Really.

Speaker 4: Yeah, because they said that they did it wrong and that they want to, like, teach them how to actually do it. Like, I know, which ironically probably means putting them in jail and making them work on the side of the highway.

Speaker 1: That’s going to develop.

Speaker 6: They really want to be folk heroes. They should come forward and see if the state actually will teach them. Yeah.

Speaker 4: The the like cool anecdote that I heard from a friend who was listening to the country music station. For Portland is that they were discussing it on the country music station, which is cool. And then B, they were like when they mentioned that the state wanted them to turn them in, they were like. The the question was floated among the three hosts of the radio show. Would you turn them in and two of them said no. But if they knew who it was, they wouldn’t turn them in, which I did. I don’t know. I thought that was ******* cool as hell, and I’m glad that like, that discourse got created.

Speaker 6: Why work in England?

Speaker 4: But like kind of to Carrie’s point, like what if this sort of like became a trend where, like, and this became like a, you know, anarchist in Portland started like filling potholes? And this became like a long term project like? How would we feel about that if, like when, when all the dust settles, this continues forward and people just? Becomes this like cool being.

Speaker 5: How do you feel about being right?

Speaker 6: Ohh yeah.

Speaker 1: Didn’t hear that.

Speaker 6: How do you feel about food not bombs?

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Again, it’s like it’s like easy stuff to do like. Where are they the interface like? You know.

Speaker 2: Well, you know, I.

Speaker 5: I agree that there’s definitely. I think I think your point is super valid that Eric has have a really bad tendency at least Eric is the last few decades and this goes against like the forward thinking like you know. Creative history of anarchism, especially, you know, over a century ago, but anarchists of the last couple of decades have or last few decades have. Pretty much just been like you know had. 0 ingenuity or or inventiveness. And then when somebody stumbles into something that works and it is easy, immediately that becomes a franchise. Everyone ******* does it for the rest of time, and everyone thinks that that’s like the. Thing that you need to do to be an anarchist, then, that that’s sufficient. Also too. And and you know. It the point? I think is more to pat ourselves on the back to feel good that we’ve done a thing to build some sort of sense of community with the people who we’re doing it with and it’s very rarely to like look at how efficiently we’re. Changing the world or recruiting people or whatever.

Speaker 1: Or like being. Detrimental and disruptive to the things that we actually hate and want. To see go.

Speaker 6: I think, though, that there’s this, there’s there’s also this like back and forth between, like, constructive and destructive anarchism, where there is like a you’re doing the easy work narrative on both sides. And I don’t think that either is fair. There’s a whole lot of work to be done. I don’t think that it’s fair to be like that’s easy. Where to like? Feed the poor or you know whatever build roads. I don’t think that is easy work. I get what you’re saying here. It’s like there’s not. There’s not necessarily the same risk involved. But like, also people have gotten arrested for food not bombs. People might get arrested for filling potholes, you know, like, sure, it’s not.

Speaker 1: That’s true.

Speaker 6: Necessarily, like looking at terrorism charges. But I mean also. You know, I just don’t think it’s fair to like continue the narrative of, like, denigrating other peoples’s work. I think that it is relevant to be like you should also be doing other things, I think.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Trying to get it, or at least that I want to be able to like add into the critique like I think I’m. I’m overall I’m saying. Like I’m glad this is happening. But that. Seeing like US anarchism be so like comfortable and complacent in a lot of ways where people like don’t really feel like they have to be. But their lives don’t have to be disrupted at all by by the enterprise that they do. Or like if if it does, that’s that’s the end of it for them like that’s that’s unrealistic. And. I just. I just. Want to be able to add in there that like. Yeah, still topples fine, but that that just is that can’t be the end of it or like what we’ve lost sight of like this really large like that we’re that we’re you know, in the midst of.

Speaker 5: I think there’s a, you know, inherently when you build a movement, there’s going to be people who come to it to varying. Degrees of capacity. And varying degrees of commitment. And I don’t think that we can make a binary where we’re like, you have to be this level of committed to be an anarchist. And I think that, yeah, I mean I’m I’m entirely with you and saying. That like you know. That that people need to step it up and that like anarchism. Needs to be, you know, conceived of in in stronger terms, and that people, you know, need to more generally commit stronger. But I also like, you know, there’s a danger here that I just want to point out, which is that, like, if if we say that, like, you know, we start making it so that you have to be this called the right. Kind of thing with with regards to like with regards to like being a member of the Community or being an anarchist or whatever. There was a lot of people for like, you know, disability reasons for like having kids, all sorts of different, you know, contextual dynamics that they’re not going to be able to step up to, that mental health issues. And and and and I and I. I just want to point out as a difficulty. I also want to say that like the the difference between or the the tension between like the, you know, anarchism is destructive or anarchism is it’s as creative. I think that you know obviously like it, you know it’s easy to throw critiques. It’s sort of a lot of disruptive or destructive anarchist stuff, you know, like it’s easy to just as people would poke fun at some food, not bombs, efforts to, like be like, oh, and then one day you got together with 20 of your friends and you broke the windows at a Starbucks. You know, what does that really accomplish? So I think that, you know, there’s critiques that can go both ways. The important thing for me though in that is not to. Is also read this as a creative versus destructive cause. I don’t think that very many people aside from like the worst people and a news or whatever really still buy into like the dichotomy between creative and destructive. I think that.

Speaker 4: Like.

Speaker 5: Probably more. Or is the thing that I that I want to highlight or say that people should be working towards is more audacity and the sort of work that they do and not just copying and cloning. You know, actions that have been done before. Like, you know, that’s absolutely right that like there is difficulty and. And prices that some people pay for doing work, like food not bombs. And sometimes that’s really meaningful. And sometimes that’s really. Again, people do get arrested. People do face persecution. People have been murdered for doing food, not bomb, right? I mean, not in this country, but in Eastern Europe, etcetera. People have literally been bombed at food, not Bahamas, for daring to be anarchist in public. So I I agree that there’s I just, you know, I. I would like to take things in the direction of like I wish that we. Were inventing more. I wish that we were more open and we had a better Community too, kind of creating new ways of attack or ways of creating whatever the case may be.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Being humble enough to say that that. We don’t have all the answers and anyone who steps up with an idea is worth listening to something that all more.

Speaker 2: What else we got?

Speaker 5: Well, we skipped over this. Earlier but but I do think it might. I I I would be interested to return to talking about like the problems attendant to anarchist outreach. So 1 critique is that you know. And this was a critique that was leveled a lot of places that I saw against the pothole fillers was that this is obviously, you know, outreach and spectacle or that’s what it’s become. And the people that it’s the people that are likely to be reached by this are not the people that are true anarchists. They’re not. They don’t have the anarchist spirit within them. They’re not motive, they they don’t have an orientation towards the world that resonates the way that you have to have in order to be an anarchist. So they’re bad recruits. They’re poisoning the anarchist garden by trying to pull them in. They’re they’re, you know, they’re going to come in and just spread their anarcho liberalism all over the place because they’re interested in things that aren’t real anarchism. And you know, like I, I actually think that there’s something something to that.

Unknown Speaker: Some.

Speaker 5: In the sense that like if, if. It’s true that this kind of outreach is going to. You. Prove our name a little bit with some liberals and maybe it’ll bring on some liberals who are like, well, let me read more about that under this thing and that kind of lines up with what I’m into. And maybe they only read the bits that like line up the best with what they’re into. And then you get a situation a couple years down the line where they’re like, well, but anarchism means. Like voting, Bernie Sanders, you know that.

Speaker 4: Right.

Speaker 5: And we get. A lot of this, like we see a lot of people who get converted in the easy ways to anarchism and don’t necessarily catch the fullness of what anarchism is. Not saying that like I agree with this critique, really because I I I think that the notion that there’s some kind of like a sensual. Perspective that is an or emotional orientation that is an anarchist orientation that is like a part of your character or that can’t be like you can’t be persuaded into. I think it’s ********. I think that you can persuade people to change their ethics and to change their orientation and their values in this world. And I think a lot of people’s values in this world are easily movable. Towards anarchism, including liberals, yes, as well as you know, all sorts of other people. But but I do think there’s something to that critique.

Speaker 1: I think you’ve got. You’ve got people where you know you have a a raucous Black Rock go by and smash the window, and that really calls to somebody who hates the bank that, you know, that just got smashed. And that can pull somebody in for a certain reason. This should be because you’re filling in the potholes that speaks to somebody and after after that, the arguments themselves us to keeping somebody around and I think they do. Hold and I think.

Speaker 2: Like.

Speaker 1: Genuinely like meaningful things that make up Eric’s ideology. And and like. That’s what’s going to win people over in the long run and what we want to put people in from all sorts of places, right we want. We want our air, his worlds. Not. We’re not just reaching for a specific audience, though I think that. Anyway, we get people. The the value of our release should come through.

Speaker 6: I think I mean, I I agree that we want. We want anarchism to be a thing that strives in a particular direction, but I think that this particular critique is. I’m. A little bit self. Defeating in that if anarchism is a. A personality trait that is like, you know, some sort of fatalism for that individual, that like, it doesn’t matter whether or not there are a billion people calling themselves anarchists who want to support Bernie Sanders, those people that have that trait will necessarily perform. That trait, so it’s it doesn’t really. Doesn’t really stand as any sort of critique. It’s again more of an elitism.

Speaker 5: Right. But but if you if you, I mean and I I I dislike this position, but I’m I’m trying to give voice to it and to give our our adversaries some kind of decent representation.

Speaker 2: But if your.

Speaker 5: Perspective is that you are trying you have this innate fatalism or this this perspective that you’re born with, or that is a part of you, and that is not something open to ideological. Change that is not is not a is not a consequence of of persuasion. It’s not a consequence of logical argumentation or whatever. You just are enabling this way, and there are other people in this world who are innately that way, and I think that there are certainly a lot of people who both believe that and value anarchism as a meeting place for those people. For that elite, if you will, I mean.

Speaker 2: Like.

Speaker 5: That I mean, consider like air worms, like throaty, like, introduction to the brilliant was like, you know, like there are some people in this world who are, you know, you know, elites and brilliant and and and and are untroubled by the pale, whatever, blah blah, blah blah, blah all this, you know, magical, poetic ********. To go on about how like there are some people who are the like, who have a certain perspective in this world that is just the way that they are. They’re just essentially this sort of thing. And anarchism is their meeting place. And *** **** those people who are cluttering up the meeting. And that are wearing the name tag without actually like having the core character trait that makes an anarchist anarchist from their perspective.

Speaker 6: That’s garbage, but no, I mean, I don’t want to protect that. That’s the thing. I don’t. I don’t really care about the protection. Of a like. A specific community of tendency like personality trait, I guess in this case I think that if anarchism is a personality trait, then those people should create a personality trait identifier and group of those people and not call it a political or philosophical thing, right like. There is there’s any number of ways to create a community around like personality that don’t need to mask itself as a politic and you know it. I just, I I mean one again, I think that like if it is some sort of fatalistic thing that like. You can’t destroy it and to like if it is something that isn’t a politic and isn’t philosophy then like, stop pretending that it is and go find the people that like for whom it is specifically a personality trait and let the people for whom it is a politic and a philosophy through their work. Separately.

Speaker 5: Well, charitably, I mean, this is what the whole antipolitics.net tendency within post leftism was trying to build, right? Like the nihilist movement current in the North American, you emerged out of this kind of thing of saying that one, they wanted to steal anarchism, but then two as a term, but then 2 they wanted to like. Characterize it as not a policy.

Speaker 4: Right.

Speaker 5: Yeah. And so you know, I mean, in fairness, this is kind of an argument over the.

Speaker 6: Definition of the term, sure. And I’m not saying it’s not consistent with their wacko beliefs, but you know.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: One of the best anarchists, right? We can all agree on that.

Speaker 6: The best.

Speaker 1: Like what did I start out as? I was a jock who was selfish and mean. It’s it’s. It’s just a lot of years and a lot of people help me be as great as I am today.

Speaker 2: I had the.

Speaker 4: I had the opposite hat where I started out as an anarchist and then I. Became a mean jock. Yeah, took a lot of a lot of a lot of managers to bring me down to the ******* person I am today. Turned it up and they chipped away and they chipped away. And then you have.

Speaker 2: Even before you yeah, Google trademark. Come on your face. Exactly.

Speaker 1: Taxes literally went to Google across their forehead and not just.

Speaker 2: Floor.

Speaker 5: There’s this. There’s this white bit of sludge across patches. With that we will logo on it. I think that it’s trying to be a headband, but.

Speaker 1: Something like like.

Speaker 5: I I agree, like obviously packs and and Sean are now terrible people and but. But really what you know, I’m sorry. What? I’m what I was trying to say is like, you know. Yeah, like I got introduced to anarchism when I was really young through my father. But I got introduced to like a really ****** variant of Mannerism. And thanks to engaging myself and with other people and hearing other arguments and discovering things like I changed who I am and my values have changed dramatically over that. Like I used to be. What in today’s world would probably be called like an anti specialist or like a premise back in that time I was, I was Emma Stoner. I was, you know, I was into certain things that were that I was very much like kind of selfish in a lot of regards. And my perspective was like, you know. Like all those all. Power relations will collapse on their own. You know, like and and etcetera that. Stupid ******** like that. And the and the struggle or the all there is is power and that like you just. Kind. Of like, pull yourself out of it or succeed in some sense, all this stupid ******** which I had gotten over and changed my perspective in dramatic ways. My orientation towards the world, my values, etcetera. So I I think this notion of like the central characters or whatever, it’s just complete ********, but. I mean.

Speaker 1: Yeah, it’s funny. I didn’t even know that. That’s what something that people said. I don’t follow those. Those trains of thought. But they are funny. You can come. In. I like. I like to laugh.

Speaker 6: I just have one more thing to say and that’s what I like poetry.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I have my. UM. I didn’t. I didn’t end up finishing it. I I got distracted by.

Speaker 1: You couldn’t finish a haiku.

Speaker 4: Well, well, I I would bring a larger haiku.

Speaker 2: OK.

Speaker 4: I can. I can read the first two stanzas. Pothole you pothole do you reinforce the sieve? Help the white people help the white people live? Do you want to cut my wage, coopt all the rage? Maybe two more stanzas started, but I don’t have the finishing line for the for them.

Speaker 1: In case anybody, I mean, I don’t, I don’t expect anybody to listen to this, but just say somebody who did run the pothole. Filling jobs listening. I just want to say like.

Speaker 2: Yeah, good job or.

Speaker 1: Figuring out something to do because something is always better than nothing.

Speaker 6: TLDR It’s better than nothing.

Speaker 4: Yeah. Thanks for the balls at least. Thanks for nothing.

Speaker 7: Actually, I tape on the holes in my shoes. I stick my tongue in the holes in my teeth. I stick X puddings in the holes in my thought process when I speak. My friends stick to their guns and got a bunch in the woods of Vermont till the end time.

Speaker 3: No where to live. As if the world wasn’t gonna end. And I admire it straight.

Speaker 7: Day I’m gonna do my best to drink coffee in the morning and live as if I didn’t feel lonely and hopeless and helpless.

Speaker 3: To save myself for the one where I live. And tonight when I create and will be that the. Chucky spit on the drug money on community gardens and collect housing. Their neighbors besides. The angry one with the yard, with the press and the talk. You get that ship.

Speaker 7: Have started filling potholes, collecting garbage to prove we don’t need government to do these things. And awake up burning Times Square as we sing.

Speaker 3: Throw your hands in the air property. It’s robbery.

Episode 3: Zizek, Brain chips, Facebook, And The Gap Between Our Minds

In this episode four of the five hosts use a recent interview where Slavoj Zizek discusses brain interface technology as a launching point to talk about the radical potentials, dangers, and philosophical implications of technology. Will and Vanc argue about how much responsibility rests on us as developers versus as consumers. To what degree are anarchists drawn to problematic technologies like Facebook or Twitter as a result of personal utility as opposed to social pressure? What’s the difference between the manipulative pressures of advertising and building interfaces that people can more quickly adapt to? And philosophically is “freedom” to be found in division or connection? Should the gap between us and the world be abolished? Ciarrai and Will both support greater connection but differ when it comes to organizational prescriptions in our present world between collectivism and individualism.

[Download mp3]

Horizontal Hostility on #technology, #Zizek, #Musk, #social media, 4 May 2017

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Speaker 1: South.

Speaker 2: I will.

Speaker 1: So this episode. We’re going to talk about sort of maybe dissect a little bit a clip from a conversation between our 2 news and savija about a recent development in non must never ending pile. Scientific ventures, at any rate, the background is that. So Elon Musk, who has a physics group, was a programmer. He’s now just sort of a billionaire who puts his money behind lots of different ideas, like the Tesla electric vehicles, the SpaceX rockets, and a lot of private sector science. And his realest interest is this company called Neuralink, which is advancing technology on bring, like, implants, chips that can help expand the possibilities or or. Augment our organic brains. He’s he’s developing this because of this kind of interesting and very wacko fear of, I mean, I guess not wacko, but he’s afraid of artificial intelligence. He’s, you know, at least publicly he’s well documented as being like. Incredibly afraid of what it will be like to live in a world where they are being smarter than humans, and it seems like his underlying fear is that he doesn’t want to become house pet, part of his intelligence. So he’s funding his venture to to basically increase our our intelligence so that we can keep. Pace with AI. Anja comes in which you know, I don’t have a lot of. If anyone has a better background on Juju. But you know he’s a, he’s a modern philosopher, contemporary philosopher who brings up some of the questions, some of the concerns. Practical and existential about this technology. I’ve broken it down into. The six questions that I can mention, unless somebody else has something they want to say.

Speaker 4: Right now, well, I think I think we should mention quickly that Jack is infamous for being kind of terrible on a lot of friends. I mean, yeah, like, that’s well documented. Stolen the sympathies and wear some terrible transphobic stuff just so that we we’re not seeing this like losing past that.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 3: And it’s and it’s a Russia Today video, which is also problematic. So it’s kind.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Of funny though.

Speaker 2: Wait news is problematic. Oh, that’s.

Speaker 1: What a surprise. Yeah, those are all good points. But that being said. It still poses some maybe interesting questions I guess. We’ll find out. So the way I saw it, the things that were brought. Up. In this, in this exchange between RT and JUJAK include. Sort of a general question. What? What does it mean to be human and and is that important? Is that something that we’re looking to preserve or maybe that doesn’t doesn’t even necessarily bring up that question, it doesn’t go that far, but he definitely brings up, you know, this idea of like. What is humanness he talks about? You know this parallel of. The like formal powers that exist in the world and this advancing technology, and how how? Basically, how are we going to deal with power and control? As. Technology offers more possibilities for those things on both fronts, but you know the question of how do you keep technology liberatory? We also saw. I guess the the the sort. Of piggybacking off of that. Question or part of whatever aspect of the discussion is this, this question, I think this was kind of the main point in in Jesus’s perspective is. Like.

Unknown Speaker: How?

Speaker 1: Are we going to know if we’re in control of these brain implants? How will we know if there’s a human brain and technological? Like interface who’s going to be at the driver seat and and how will we even know if it’s us if you know if we think that it’s us, how will we know for sure? And then there’s some some smaller points like. That I thought was sort of interesting for you brought up the new frontier of like, commodity is going to be physical space. The the being able to remove yourself from the digital world, but that sort of thing to be inaccessible to most people potentially as. As technology increases. Just the general question about how we depend more and more on technology and what that means for us. And the last thing. This he brought up this barrier between our internal perspective and our external reality and is is technology technological advancement breaking that barrier down and what does that? What does that mean for our experience? What does it mean for us to? Feel like we are, you know, God like and then we can. Affect the world around us. What does it mean for us to maybe not even? Perceive the difference?

Speaker 4: Yeah, I think the the point on, I think the point on point on the gap between our subjective internal experience and our direct or our or our engagement with the world, the gap between us and the world and the the winnowing of that. Gap of the the the ultimate dissolution of that gap, I think that’s about like a minimal a minor point. I think that’s probably like at least to me, it’s probably the most philosophically and ethically and for anarchists, most substantial issue inside of that video, but there’s. So. I think you’re also right, maybe about the rest of things being important. I am. I also kind of. I’m kind of sympathetic to you on Musk, actually, on this point where? He’s responding to a milieu of of friends in this or ex trends, humanists who are really focused upon the idea of like an AI that you know they either want to control and enslave, or that they’re just going to control and enslave them or, you know, disregard them but stomp across the world, you know, smashing their toys. And I think that. That’s a question that’s. Doesn’t hasn’t really been discussed in the anarchist community, so it’s often addressed in a very kind of like distant, cartoonish way we tend to. When when people bring up these kinds of things, it’s it’s vary from afar, not really understanding the. Substance the content or the contours of the arguments that have gone down in these circles, but I actually think that. I I I don’t. I don’t remotely agree with the people who want to like who who’s who are spending all their time and energy as opposed to, like, fighting for a better world. You know, the abolition of capitalism, etcetera. They’re they’re like, well, **** all that because it doesn’t really matter in the long run. The only thing that’s going to matter is whether or not humanity gets eaten by an AI. So we have to determine. But we have to. Race to control and to enslave an AI for. And God, like AI power, and I disagree with them. But I think that the arguments aren’t trivial in the same way that I don’t think that the arguments for like anti SIV or primitivism aren’t trivial. I think there’s like some intelligent substance to that stuff so.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I definitely agree that the that there’s substantial. I I think it comes across as cartoonish in his in the fact that someone who has like $14 million, he can throw his weight behind anything. Just happens to. I mean, I’m sure he has, you know, an argument against it. But he also believe that he believes it up as sort of cartoonish. And so I find it, it’s a very important question and that sort of sort of humorous that for him having this fear means that he gets to put billions of dollars behind new technological business, which is great. For the rest. Of us, but it’s kind of at least a little bit humorous.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I mean, you know Musk. Is an incredibly naive character in. A lot of ways. But on the other hand, like. There is that interesting contrast where unlike I, I tend to consider him like a liberal plus a little bit of audacity, right? Like he has all the naivety, all the stupidity of the standard liberal. But then and especially around political issues around issues of, I doesn’t really understand environmental issues always since he’s basically naive as ****. But then he on some issues, he’s incredibly. He has a lot of drive and it’s kind of interesting because I almost define liberalism by like not having audacity by not having, like, forward thinking, by not having any sort of gumption or, you know, attempt to do anything. And so while his attempts may sometimes be, you know, forcible or laughable, I do kind of think that at the very fact that he. In his, you know, I mean, ultimately he’s a billionaire and we want to take that money from him and **** him, you know? But but, you know, the very fact that he. Striving for things in a way that doesn’t just seem entirely self-serving is, I think, probably and and also seems somewhat novel and driven. I think that’s at least ahead. Most of the average liberals so.

Speaker 2: I mean, I think 1 of. The. Things here though, is that like both. The fear of Elon Musk succeeding and believing that. What Elon Musk is doing is technologically and potentially for the species good is not necessarily in contradiction, right, because the issue that. I think she’s that brings up and also the primary issue that I think a lot of people would have is, you know who is producing this and who has the back door keys or whatever, you know. And it’s like, so I don’t trust Elon Musk. I want the technology to be developed. But I also want it to be open. And so I don’t, I don’t necessarily think that those two ideas are in conflict. And I think that Elon Musk putting money into the project is good. But what happens in the end? And who actually ends up having control over the technology? I don’t know that that concern about the intersection of capitalism and technology is, I think, the for me, the biggest concern that Jack brings up.

Speaker 1: OK.

Speaker 4: A lot of the times this conversation gets bogged down in the concept of like chips and a lot of science fiction horror stories about, you know, brain control and things along those lines. Well, the thing that really interests me in this technology and and I. For transhumanists, I actually don’t care that much about a lot of advanced futuristic technologies that people are proposing, but one technology that I do care quite a lot about is the brain to brain sort of interface and the possibility for more direct conduits for communication and expression because that’s.

Speaker 2: That.

Speaker 4: I see is perhaps the defining limiting factor of human society as the person exists is the the limited bandwidth we have by which to communicate the limited capacity that we have to express our ideas to communicate with one another, to be intimate with one another, that kind of thing. And I think that. You know, so for example, in the early aughts, there were computer scientists and whatever who literally put chips inside their, you know, early, very ****** chips or whatever. But they hook their brains together with chips between, like there was there was this pair of lovers, I think, who were computer. Science professors and and that kind of thing, through voluntary having that, having that extra capacity for deeper and richer levels of communication doesn’t have to be kind of like the invasive to the point where you control your brain or where you were necessarily like.

Speaker 1: What we’re talking about here like we’re. One thing is that this this this company is so new that we don’t actually know anything about the technology that they’re looking to utilize. So to say that it’s this and not this is.

Unknown Speaker: So.

Speaker 1: Really like.

Unknown Speaker: No, I’m. I’m, I’m.

Speaker 4: Not. I’m not saying that Elon Musk is developing, like, you know, better tools for lovers to better whisper to one another secret, you know, secret things in the middle of a, you know, in the middle of a party. I’m not saying that. That’s like, what do you want? Musk is deliberately developing. I’m saying that the technology that he is developing, the airspace technology has many different facets. Right. And application. The the fundamental thing that he is working on, or that his company is explicitly trying to do, has many different. Consequences in different directions in which you can go, and so it’s important to, I think not just frame things in terms of like you know will you get a chip inside of your brain that makes it so that like, you know, when your boss, your boss always knows where you are and what you’re thinking and how loyal you are, that kind of thing. But that there are many. Other directions that can go and so. Because oftentimes I think a lot of radicals think ohh, you know, this is 1 horrific in terms of like consequences. We’ve seen the sci-fi film, we’ve seen this film kind of rejections from the popular narratives or anti science narratives that are. Inside of our culture. And technology narratives and and don’t really see what possible upsides could be to this technology. So I’m just trying to describe like one additional direction that I don’t think it’s sufficient discourse or the the coverage inside the discourse.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, I mean that, that makes sense. I just think that it’s also, I think one of the reasons it comes up so often is because it is, it is scary to people, something necessarily people don’t see the upside, it’s that it’s philosophical. It’s a really interesting question of like. How do you know that you’re in control of the things that you do? I think that it’s a a question throughout time and I think that it’s important. Also, to just address that it isn’t necessarily a new question that comes up with technology, it’s a question that we’ve been addressing and and I guess the other side. Of it is just. Like this, this fear of US, specifically technology and power. Is a bit of a. And how to say it like a? It’s to pretend that that power doesn’t like, have all this control that technology brings up the possibility for there to be this, this, this whole power and control. And actually that’s what we we already have. Until we already. Like our fighting against the technology doesn’t necessarily bring an opportunity that isn’t isn’t already. Sort of. The the de facto status quo.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I think it’s important that that we resist, you know, the controlling forms of technology. And I think it’s important to to, to focus upon. You know, I like to say the technology. Raises the stakes. You know, it raises the stakes for good and for evil. You can do a lot more horrific levels of authoritarianism and control with technology, especially with brain chips. I mean, obviously. That’s the the ultimate end kind of state of of aside from mass murder like. In terms of constraining and constraining people’s freedom, brain shifts are probably like present. The highest possible oppression you could possibly have, but at the same time, I think that, you know, it was really interesting to me that that Zach brought up and I don’t think he actually addressed what it’s actually called, but he talked about the issue. Of kind of whether or not we. Are fully aware or whether or not our perception of. Our freedom is actually free, whether or not our perception of of when we have free choice is actually reflective of us having agency, and he didn’t really address the common terms because he rates in the continental philosophy tradition and they’re kind of anemic when it comes to understanding philosophy of of the mind. But but they so instead of neuroscience, there’s the Aurelian interpretation and the stall and misinterpretation, which are literally terms that are used instead of neuroscience. About how consciousness is formed in response to the actions that we take. So the reality that has been found again and again and again in the labs is basically that our conscious narratives are not actually reflective of the causal sources of our actions. For the most part, there’s a broad statistical correlation that happens when you repeat things over time. When you change what your character. Is and you change kind of like your instincts. But in the immediate when we are forced to make an immediate decision, we are conscious perception of having agency. There is absolutely incorrect if you if somebody controls your arm to go up and down and they don’t do any. Saying. Regarding your conscious interpretation of that, it’s just your arm that they move up and down and you, and if you’re not aware that somebody else is controlling like the at the at the stem of your arm or whatever, controlling the muscle or controlling the nerves. You will perceive most people will perceive inside of their brain their conscious and for their conscious experience, their qualia of that will be that they that they will their arm to move and they may not be able to present a particularly compelling narrative as to why they will there on to move, but they will. Their consciousness is a is a narrative that’s created over a bunch of sub processes that happen within your brain. It kind of coalesces together and and the impression that we have of free will in the immediate is just completely it doesn’t exist. And that’s at least that’s what neuroscience and many, many, many different like. Laboratory experiments have have have had the result of proving and. And it was interesting that Zizek was actually referencing that, but the reality there that I think is important is that that is already the case, right? Like that. That’s not the case with technology. That’s not something that technology changes. It’s the fact that like, as regular human beings in the Paleocene or whatever, like, you know, way back when we have always. Never really had that kind of like agency that we perceive in the immediate although.

Unknown Speaker: The.

Speaker 4: The reflection that we have upon issues and the ways that we build up on specific things can like through our intentional constructs, the narratives that our consciousness can create can bias the direction in which we’re likely to to choose things in the future. And and that’s proven. So there is a sense of. Of freedom. But it’s not immediate.

Speaker 1: Right. And it’s also a reference.

Speaker 2: I I was just going to say that I think that in this sense, in shijak referring to the potential of somebody controlling us in in that way doesn’t isn’t it doesn’t describe to me a particular like problem that we know. And actually occur, we have yet to be able to control the minds of individuals. Yeah. And somebody’s controlled somebody’s arm. They didn’t respond to it, but not in any really functional sense. So it’s. It’s sort of a a discussion that isn’t isn’t really reachable until we know the capacity of brain control, obviously. As an electrical system, it could hypothetically be controlled from a chip or whatever, but I mean, I think that that is. So far away that. Elon Musk is not going to be developing like some sort of. Implant but all of a sudden Tesla can make you go buy a Tesla or something.

Speaker 1: Right. It’s one thing to move your hands, move somebody’s hands with a be able to control that kind of set of movement, but get somebody to jump off a bridge or, you know, do something that that really defies their own interest in.

Speaker 4: It’s important to note that.

Speaker 1: I think that it would be more. Difficult. Well, that, that’s. You know that’s.

Speaker 3: I I want to.

Speaker 4: I want to say that there is a good point that the brain is complex and that it’s not. We’re not in a place and we might not not ever be in a place we’re not going to be likely in in that place for quite a while where we are able to directly. Concepts like Go buy Tesla on the someones brain because the the neurology the the neural patterns that each person crafts inside their head are going to be distinct instead of like you know, construct the ways that we were that each individual person, each individual human brain is going to like conceive of Tesla. The concept which this car and buy and all those kinds of things are going to be arranged differently and the brain is just stunningly complex in that regard. There’s not like, it’s not like we all have a common. Like vocabulary of of like parts within our brain that can easily be pointed to and every single like neuron is embedded within a mesh of other things with complex like array of contingency that is unique to each individual so you know it’s not going to be. It’s not easily it’s. Not trivial like if if not if. If you’re on Musk. If the technology was developed to the point where you could scan someone’s brain somehow, you know, like, do a pile of math, a ridiculous pile of math, figure out the mappings of things from a little bit of interactions with them, and then figure out then. Ohh, this is what I need to poke in. Order to make. You buy Tesla. You already have the power to rule the world entirely as is. And you don’t need and human brains no longer matter to you because you have more computational power. You have more capacity to do things than you would ever need someone in their labor, intellectual or physical, so that that is is not a likely possibility. But I do want to kind of want to push back upon the notion that, like. Control is just limited to very. Or the control can’t still be, can’t, can’t still be used or can’t still be applied through these kinds of technologies? I mean, we control people through all kinds of different means not to get like too much of A hippie. But like, you know, if you are sugar addict, right. Like that has an effect upon the ways that you perceive the world, the ways that you interact with the world. Uh. And the the just basic things that you know about a person or, you know, like there’s basic chemical changes, you could change the brain. There’s basic stimuli that you could like change inside of different ways that you know, you can make them more pro social if you stimulate this section. And these are very like obtuse, you know, levels of interaction with the brain. But they’re the sort of thing that you may not. Actually, you know like and and and to go more and and see sex direction like they may be things that if you’re fully connected up in some sort of massive amount of like. Invasive brain shift you you know, they they. I could. There’s there’s a huge number of ways in which someone could, like, change the degree of attention that you’re like that your your audio processing is is is is appended to you you could fill you know it’s certainly with things like. We have a high degree of knowledge of cortical neurons. We have a high degree of of knowledge of of of how images are processed within our brain and how those turn into concepts and how those are associated with things. We can, for example prove. I think even non invasive means I’m not. I’ll have to look this up, but you know, years ago, actually, researchers at Berkeley were able to, with very limited levels of, of if there wasn’t base of stuff at all around someones side, be able to while they were sleeping, play on a monitor the images that they were dreaming. So you know, I I don’t think it would be that hard necessarily to reverse that to change the processing of like what you see and like make it. So that for example like you know certain so that there’s like a certain like you know. In the chain of mediation within your within your neural network, something else is inserted that that processes out something for you so that you don’t perceive something inside your visuals. All of that is like you know. Like feasible in a level that like, you know, buy a Tesla is not feasible. So I I I.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Though that’s we’re both engineering. The thought is a is you can’t just say like, oh, if I can. Yeah, we can. We can get we can get images from dreams now. Yes, that that’s like maybe to to reverse engineer that and to actually. Implant thoughts like that’s not something. That.

Unknown Speaker: Yes.

Speaker 1: Because it’s just as simple as being. Yeah. OK, well, we let’s just just do it backwards. It’s that’s that’s easy. And I. And also, I mean, you guys can keep talking about this, but I have. Yes, I feel like to say in the the neuroscience level, the the you know these areas that I don’t like have expertise and it’s easier. We need to talk about how it, you know, philosophically or how it relates to. To to us as as radicals. But I. Don’t you know? There’s only so much that I feel like I could say. Scientifically, about these things about going beyond. What I think is is certifiable then.

Speaker 4: Sure. And I want to quickly say that I’m not suggesting that we can, you know, implant thoughts. I’m not talking about like inception kind of thing where there’s a full conceptual framework work that we impose upon someone like that’s not what I was trying to talk about. What I was trying to talk about is that there are many means of control that are not as obtuse. Or as as physical as something like moving your arm, and then you just perceiving that you Weld the movement of your arm. There’s plenty of other things that we could like, you know, the the cranial stimulation thing where people, you know, get, get overly, they run electrical current through the through just like. And this is something that like. Brain hacker like you know, kids do like in New Zealand or whatever, where they just play like as a, you know, a piece of metal on one part of their head and a piece of metal and other just run electricity through it. And it enables them to, like, have more focus inside of some areas or whatever. Do other things you could through. That kind of obtuse thing. Someone, instead of some way instead of some Broadway where they’re paying more attention to, they’re more pro social instead of some aspect they have, like, more, more and more on it. There’s there’s there’s obtuse ways that you could do things where you will not be able to change their direct, specific thoughts of their of their experience because the brain is just too complex for that. To to do. That kind of reverse engineering all the way down. I totally recognize that. But you can do things where in terms of dreams, you’re not in finding the concepts, but you are like, changing how someone visually perceives the world without them realizing it. And you could do things more and more that they think that their choice, they think the actions they took are in fact choices that they themselves made but had their origin causally, at least, inside of a chip. I’m just. I’m just defending Isaac to that.

Speaker 2: I think that that to some again, that’s one of those things that comes up and you know, while we can potentially, you know, find a way to like, I don’t know, pro prob the brain towards like a particular inclination or whatever. They already sort of do that. In the world. Today, with marketing and advertisement, I mean it’s the same idea. It’s just has, you know, less physicality to it. And our fear of having that done directly to our brains. Is, you know, sort of this fear of personal invasion, but we ignore the fact, well, anarchists don’t. But often humans ignore the fact that it’s going on all around us happens on our Facebooks or. Our TV’s or whatever. And most of our world is, you know, taught to us. So we don’t, you know, the things that we want are things that are generally constructed for us, oftentimes by capitalist entities or state entities. So.

Unknown Speaker: We don’t, really.

Speaker 2: Have a whole lot of different. Going forward and that I think that that fear is legitimate, but it also to me, brings up the question of, like, what are we doing about the things in our society today that do that are anarchists refusing Facebook are anarchists. The avoiding the. The newest. Television shows or advertisement arenas or whatever, you know. And the answer by and large is no, despite the fact that I think that we know better in a lot of cases, we think that our critiques or analysis give us some sort of defense, but I actually I think that our critiques and analysis and our our confidence in those things. Sort of leave us vulnerable. More vulnerable. A lot of times to being. Blind sided.

Speaker 4: So there’s something. And that I kind of want to push back against which is. That the the ways in which advertising control us are, by all accounts, diminishing in their strength. So despite like 5 seconds ago me arguing that that, you know, our we’re not as in control of our conscious processes as we think that we are. And and our narrative of our conscious narrative of, of agency and and choice is not always reflective, I do think.

Speaker 2: That.

Speaker 4: In total of our experience, we have wisened up quite a bit to advertising and this is this is. Known by advertisers. We’re in this glut of advertising right now. Every major Silicon Valley like company is basically an advertising company, right? Like what does Google and yeah, and Facebook and like sell? They sell either ad space. Or they sell your information to advertisers. That’s almost the entirety of these walled gardens. And they’re like economic models and what they’re facing is, like, incredible diminishing returns. And part of the reason for that is, is that our society has gotten more and more complex. And I think our knowledge. Modes of control function have also gotten more and more complex, which has, I would argue, and I think to some degree insulated us from that, but. If you look at things like brain chips and you look at things like advanced technologies like that, what particularly you know? Negative way of looking at them would be to say that they’re the forces of advertising or the forces of, like, you know, cultural control increasing their own complexity and and their own level of like fine-tuned individual responsiveness in order to rise to the occasion or rise to the challenge. The the the sudden like storm of self feedbacking complexity that the Internet has. Cut off has kind of impeded. Their capacity to control people.

Speaker 3: So but I.

Speaker 2: I think that I think that one thing that well, it’s true that, you know, whatever the latest commercial on a TV show is is not as powerful as it was in the 70s. The mode of advertisement tends to come more through social pressure at this point in time, and So what we are seeing is that. You can’t not have Gmail. You can’t not have Facebook. You can’t not have a smartphone, you know, and these things, you know, these things come with sacrifices too, because everybody knows that their information is being sold off and they don’t want it to. So we should, especially as anarchists, be rejecting. Those things, those medians where our data, our data, especially because it’s so precious to us. We have to be saying no. But we’re not. We’re not saying no in mass. There are some places where people are choosing to use, you know, diaspora or other forms of Federated social media, but the. The end comes out that, you know, at least the anarchists that I’ve known in the US seems to be just as vulnerable as that social pressure. As the average you know and isn’t the Internet and so.

Speaker 4: One sensor, social pressure. Economic pressure. Like if if you if you if you if you choose not to have a cell phone right then you would a massive disadvantage inside of our society.

Speaker 3: All.

Speaker 2: Sure, but you don’t need a smartphone. I mean, you can still get texts, right? So, like, it’s it is. It is economic pressure to an extent and and you know, you can get away without having a cell phone too. But as especially as anarchists we. We can choose to say use a cell phone for work and never carry it with us, right? Like if that’s really the important thing. You know, there’s a lot of choices we can make. We know we we choose not to despite being fully informed about the sacrifices for me. So we have informed consent for for this as an anarchist.

Speaker 4: So what I think you’re.

Speaker 2: And that’s the concern, right?

Speaker 4: Talking about is is is less like. I think this isn’t a matter of like the kind of manipulative pressures that that advertising have leveraged historically. I don’t think this is a matter of people like. Being misinformed as to things or like defaulting upon like the simplistic choices that are presented to them on television, I think this is an issue of like broad social norms that aggregate out of individual decisions that are being made. And you know, like this is a standard and and legitimate critique of certain technological or infrastructural forms that once you introduce a new technology. If that technology is going to be if its benefits outweigh its negative to most people, then the people who disagree with that are suddenly gonna be find themselves in the minority. Who? No longer have the capacity to who, who are as a consequence of the mass of everyone else using that thing, are now at a disadvantage or or pressured into using it. You say that anarchists can choose to like not use a phone outside of like work, but that’s like less and less true. I mean one of the major problems with their present. Is that like I? So I you know, I I do freelance work and. I have clients that think that my personal phone is something that I should be responding to 24/7 and they get that not from any sort of like. Definitely not from like the terms of the the contract or things along those lines, but they get that. From just the like the norms that have started to seep into the world. And that’s not even a matter of like. Yeah, I’m. Kind of militantly against phones in terms of like halls and have always been like, it’s a holdover, like it is. But but it’s in terms of things like e-mail, people will. Get really ******. Or, you know, things will. Cultural things change very quickly on the Internet, for example, if you’re on social media, you’re on Reddit or you’re, you know, some form or something like that and somebody responds to you. And you don’t respond within like, you know, 24 hours or something like that because you just had better things to do. So you’re seeing is losing the conversation they’ve seen as not having a response as being, you know, pushed into silence. So this and people are aware of that. So then people feel obliged to, you know, stay hyper alert, you continue to check Facebook. They continue to check their phone. You know, employers expect you to answer emails at like, you know, 11:11 PM at night. And if you’re out at the if you’re out, you know, at a party or at a show or something like that. Well, you should brought your small, small fun with you. We’re seeing these norms change. And I think that we should obviously press back against them or whatever. But I do think there’s some validity. That these norms are real, substantive things that are economic pressures that are sociopolitical pressures in a lot of ways. And I don’t think that’s the same thing as advertising. It’s not, it’s not. It’s not like I, I.

Speaker 2: Everybody’s getting Facebook or Twitter because their job makes them. Nobody needs a smartphone.

Speaker 4: Think.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah, but social.

Speaker 4: Capital right. Like if you can’t, if you don’t have, if you don’t have Facebook and and Twitter, then you’re not going to be able to like know when the party is, I mean. Like so many of so many people are like, well, you know, I’m not going to buy, like, everybody’s on Facebook anyway, or 95% of my friends are on Facebook. Anyway, I will just put this the event on Facebook and and and I expect me to like personally message everyone who’s not on Facebook. Keep track of who’s on the Facebook. Come on, that’s too much hassle upon me. So that person makes an individually, like reasonable game theoretic choice themselves, and the person who chooses not to be on Facebook then is in a situation where they miss out on the events they don’t know which meeting is which meeting. One of those other different things, like I think these pressures are real.

Speaker 2: Yeah, they’re real pressures. Exactly. No, go ahead.

Speaker 1: And I think that I think. Oh, I just. I’m just. I just kind of want to. And I think there’s an interesting point, but I I guess I see that as partly being. Evidence to this other this other. And I think that we all agree with that, I don’t think has really been addressing it which? Is. That like also let’s. Pushing a lot of our decisions right now is like human biology. That’s part of what’s pushing us socially to join Facebook. That’s part of a lot of our the the workings of our cities that seem. Rational are. Coming from a more biological level and. I don’t want biology to be in the driver’s seat of my decision making. You know, just like I don’t want the government to be. And so I actually see this technology as having a liberatory potential to to get away from both of those things and and actually being, you know, making decisions from. Nationality and I think that he’s, like sort of brought up this point in saying, you know, are we even going to be human anymore if we have? These interfaces, and he was sort of bringing it up from this perspective of like. What I perceived as like an understanding of. If I am myself and I receive other selves, that’s what being human is and. I want to retain that and and I think. That I see the. Human as more of this, this conflict between the biology and the rationality. And so I’m going to see this technologies, potentially a chance to communicate from that end.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, like and hasn’t, like, the idea of what it means to be human, like, changed over time. Like, it’s not. It’s not something that’s like static. It’s not something I want to be static and also like. Who cares what it means to be human. Honestly like. I don’t know. Like. Why is that something that we should like? Have your friend? Yeah, real talk.

Speaker 1: I mean specifically I guess want to. Get away. I mean, you know my, my. Reaction to it is. Yes, that a human is. I I see it as more, more fixed. Like it’s this problem. It’s this, like awkward step in between fully rational beings and. Not like a lack of any perception or lack of being able to identify itself, but being being having a perception of self and lacking the tools to direct that self entirely creates a paradox, a difficulty that. I think creates a lot of these, you know, until now just has stayed at this level where we just before our biological technology and that is not you know that’s that’s something. That I see. But the potential for something like the. This some of the top technology we’re talking. About. Being there a step and getting us away from that and. I don’t know if you guys. Have thoughts on that but.

Speaker 4: I mean, I think that I think that like agency means nothing if it doesn’t mean like the capacity to like you know, have desires about your desires and to enact and and to change things about what, you know, the direction that you’re moving. Like if we were just like Billy Balls moving, like, animalistic, like, you know. Automations like side in a certain direction. You know, we definitely can’t be said to have agency and insofar as there is choice in this world that comes from self reflection and unfortunately biology and in a lot of different ways constraints that we all are aware of, cognitive fallacies that humans are easily prone to falling into. That miss read other people the environment around us, around thoughts or experiences. I mean, one example being the very concept of our our misinterpretation of like our own of what we have agency over in terms of like and and what our our, our, our. Conscious or cognitive thought processes were like our phrenological reflection. Self reflection is quite evidently faulty, and because our brains were not made to be philosophers, right, our brains were. Built to help avoid, you know, predators on on, you know, on the planes or whatever our our planes were built for, you know in in many different ways. They’re still focused upon and still have certain biases where you know better to air on the side of paranoia than to have a truly accurate assessment of the possibilities of like whether or not there’s a lion in the in the bushes. There’s a lot of different ways in which we are deeply constrained and also our desires. I mean you look at the anarchist community and you’ll hear the problems that we’ve had over the years. I think almost all of it stems from the fact that so many people want anarchism or radical politics to be a place in which they can get the satiated this need. This very animalistic need. Or like community and belonging, and not to like, make the world a better place. That’s like a very, very distant like. Like tiny, tiny little component, if at all present and and and the ways that people relate to public politics and you know, a lot of people become anarchists because they want, they want to be around other anarchists and they don’t become or they don’t join the community to get things done. So you look at meetings and most meetings, you know, 4 hour long meeting. Or whatever. A lot of the time turns out to just be people wanting to have a kind of like a playpen, like a a pre established like set of rules or set of like social conditions that will facilitate them making friends and not like getting things done effectively or efficient. So I think that you know, I I entirely agree. I think that this this point on on the necessity of like freedom, meaning having freedom and our you know, in our own desires and our own, you know priorities is an incredibly important one and we will never. Remotely be like, substantively free until we’re able to, like, have some control over those kinds of things. Some at least self-awareness of those things so that you’re able to, like, make accurate evaluations.

Speaker 1: I guess in in a way, I felt like a lot of the things that that dujek is bringing out. Are actually. Not as scary as they seem to be, and so I mean that’s that’s sort of the more overarching point that I that I feel when I listen to that talk. And when I when I try to break these things down and I think about them and I think about, you know, like what we were just talking about. I. Don’t want it? Previously, the power structures like. That’s why we’re interfaced. We fight those power structures, right, like we. We are at least like I’ve chosen to be to be getting myself into prison as opposed to being one of the scientists who are, like, create and working with Neuralink. I’m not trying to say that you have to have to get automize it, but for myself. I see this fight against like domination as. Being. The number one fight and everything that touches capitalism, everything that touches power, is going to be correctable until we have those, you know what will happen in conflict with power. Hopefully we have we can move beyond that and. And pace that with technology where we don’t have some sort of cataclysm, but. The point doesn’t change that. We need to be. Like we’re in. Well, we’re in this. Place we already. Like we already. Have this awareness of these power cycle and I don’t see bringing them up in the company of the technology. As being anything really. New it’s sort of I. Feel like it’s used as. A tool to fear monger. When really wallet saying to me is yes, these are real problems. Capitalism is a real problem. I don’t want an implant to tell me what to go and buy. But you know what? I don’t want capitalism at all and I’m going to fight.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And it doesn’t mean that that that’s already happening with you already is what we’ve been saying now. These are things that are going on at different levels and at the end of the day, like nothing is going to be. What we want it to be.

Speaker 2: And I I actually think that in the event, I think that one of the one of the issues that we should be addressing as anarchists who are interested in technology is exactly.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: The social pressures that will and I were talking about earlier, people need to be prepared for the fact that Google is going to have the best neural interface, or Tesla or whoever you know. I don’t think that it’s smart to choose those avenues of technology. I think that at the end of the day, we know. How dangerous it is to subjugate ourself to capitalist powers, and the more we choose to as a species, the more difficult it will be to extricate ourselves from them. I mean, I think that those discussions are important in this case, the fear mongering about you know who controls the switch. Invaluable.

Speaker 1: I also see that as like our obligation to like hack these tools and to provide alternatives and to be part of that, that place, because there is always going to be somebody offering it to this easy and packaged and and and I I totally agree with you think that like we have to now while it’s like a little bit. Easier. There’s a little more distance between us and the technology and make those places cement our our commitment to. Open source. Our commitment to alternative ways and like to to incorporating our values into our technology in every step of the way.

Speaker 4: So the bank brought up the point of. Of Google or find that Google would have like the the best version of the brain interface technology. Or you know that sort of that sort of, you know, capitalist entity would naturally control it and present the best version. But I’m actually kind of sanguine on that. So I think that there’s. Some space for some. I think that there’s some chance, some hope we have in this moment, especially in the coming decade or two, where it seems like there’s going to be this window because. There really is, like diminishing returns to a lot of these walled gardens, and we’ve seen like, they seem a little brittle. They don’t really like, you know, Twitter is a House of Cards, like they don’t really have an income model. A lot of these businesses, you know, I I guess I’m feeling particularly happy today at the very least because Macedon. It’s taken off so quickly. Just really. New social and a new wrapper. But also there’s there have been a number of instances like with things like Uber and Lyft or whatever where you know, long last time ago, those of us in the mutualist or whatever world we’re saying like, well, you know, what should really be made as a version of this, that’s an open source, non wolf garden thing that can just be used as. Cooperative software to help you know individuals, you just have a ranking system or something that you don’t take a middle nonprofit and you can just diffuse that or, you know, set it up as cooperative or make a protocol, or any number of other things. And all of those things have started to happen, and some cities they’ve been more successful. So. And and and. Meanwhile we’re seeing like the Titanic kind of like, you know, these huge corporations, they’re from market pressures in a lot of ways, they make irrational decisions internally. We just watch Pepsi do that ridiculous commercial Speaking of advertising that backfired massively on them. Uber has also, like, lost, massively lost a lot of. Shares. That, and I think that there’s still hope that things like Google and Facebook, and I think Twitter will actually collapse I, you know, probably there will always be something called Twitter. But I think the companies we currently know will probably collapse and because the business models they’ve had are unsustainable in the complex sort of like dynamic chaotic churn of the modern market and of the. Consequences of information technologies. So it is my hope that we are seeing kind of a turn in a direction, but it will be hard for them to put the genie back in the bottle that these technologies or these alternative things will just chew away. The existing strata will chew away these existing data malls or these. Word Colossus and. It may actually be the case that.

Speaker 1: With her away. Kindly. Well, you know well. But you know there is.

Speaker 4: Something to be said for the fact that, like you know, there are places where the kind of the chaotic Ness of of modern information and society has diminished the strength and the capacity of like large scale, Titanic, hegemonic kind of like. Firms or nation states or entities along those lines, like there’s certainly has been like a corrosive acid attendant to the Internet. And I think that, you know, there is a chance and certainly it’s a chance that we have to pressure and we have to. Be organized or proactive and and ready to push the the the weak points when they arise to help kick these kind of entities and have them like fall down and when it comes to things like the tools that they’ve built like I want to put us on a more insurgent footing where like we’re no longer you know like why develop them at a huge disadvantage. And you can just steal Photoshop’s source. Code put it behind a tour. You know, hidden service. And so they get, you know, get repository behind the tower hidden service and develop on it. Right. Like there’s so many things that people been talking about doing for years. And I think we oftentimes get very like disheartened or think that like we’re not winning because we don’t see these necessary steps happen right away. But you know, they, even if they don’t arrive right away, I I’m watching them start to happen like, you know, 5–10 years after we were really, you know, really wanting them to happen. But they do seem to have an effect. And my hope is that maybe, you know, in a very short time scale maybe only 20 years or something like that. Companies and entities like Google and. Facebook. They’re related to dinosaur and that. We are able to. The things that they built, the things that things like, interface, chip or whatever, yet open sourced or where IP law just ceases to become something that someone can enforce. So we get to a situation more like Southern China and certain places where there’s just, you know, IP law doesn’t exist in, in de facto even though it. And it does on the books and people just like mass produce. And you know, like they have smartphones to sell for 10. Like, that’s crazy. Like, I think that. That. Itself presents some. Opportunity to tear down these structures I’m. I’m feeling particularly hopeful for those. So that’s my deal.

Speaker 2: I think that that’s a Good Hope, but I also think that we need to be able to even. Even if that does happen, we need to be able to take control of our lives in a digital sense. And not simply, you know, be pushed along by whatever the current is, which seems to be the way. That people go, you know, people use services that they know are bad for them. And if if we get lucky and the world changes and it all becomes open and great, then that would be wonderful and maybe it will. But I think that we need to be prepared for more of the same and we can continue to hope that. Things will change.

Speaker 4: Well, so I think Mastodon is a good example because we suddenly saw, like, you know, hundreds of thousands of users flock through it in a very short period of time and adopt this new social thing. And and they seem to be actively using it to a degree that was not true with Ella or other things along those lines. And that’s a tool that you know, is exactly what we’ve always expected. What we’ve always and same thing with like signal for example. It it seems to be the case that a lot of these technologies. Pattern goes like boy be really great if someone built this boy. Be really great if someone built this like and then like 15 people build their own like ****** quite get repositories for it and then some other people develop really good code. It does like the core functionality as programmers conceive it really well and then no one. Uses it for 10 years. You know, and then the the graphical user interface. So the other things start to be applied and then people message adopted instantaneously because people do want more control over their lives and the sort. And it seems like we can in many cases. Leverage pressure points against these other these other firms and I think a lot of people you know, like we’re crying for a long time about all all activists going to Facebook or whatever and saying well, why aren’t they using this other tool instead. But if the other tool just is not usable right. Well why why are they using crabgrass? And and if if that tool just isn’t usable for most people.

Speaker 1: Salsa.

Speaker 4: It doesn’t meet the needs. The the like the cognitive like visual interface necessities that that, that speak to people who aren’t like total, you know, coders. Then of course they’re not going to adopt it. So I think maybe the degree to which people have, you know, willfully given up their rights as as a lot of you know. The one that’s tough to say is overstated. Maybe it’s just the fact that you didn’t build or that we as a community didn’t build tools that were usable for them or that you. Know gave them everything that they. And if you give them, you know, XYX&Y, maybe they’ll finally choose. Choose. They’ll be free to choose Z as well. So you.

Speaker 2: I think that’s.

Unknown Speaker: Know.

Speaker 2: That’s pushing the blame on a third party that doesn’t even come into the equation. I think it’s an agreement between, you know, the Facebooks and Twitters and the users. Those are the two parties that share the blame. The rest of us. I mean, yeah, we could build something better. Maybe. But, you know, are we obligated to in order to coax people out of their? You know, like Facebook comas or whatever, so to speak. I don’t, I don’t think that that’s an accurate assessment at all, I I.

Speaker 1: But the model. Exists and I think that what we’re saying is the same thing that comes up with in open source circles. It’s like if it’s ugly and it’s not very usable, people aren’t going to use it and like it doesn’t mean that I don’t think the responsibility should be on them to, to a degree, to actually give a ****. But what it comes down to is that if we make things that are great, but they’re difficult to understand. The interfaces are hard and ugly to use. Then people don’t use them and then they go for the like flash.

Speaker 2: Yeah, this just seems to. Be a greater extent of marketing though. It’s like we’re we’re, we’re flashy, we have all the people and.

Unknown Speaker: I.

Speaker 4: Totally disagree with that. Like if you have a good user. If you have a good user interface, it’s intuitive someone who is not like trained, there’s there’s different frames of mind and people have different cognitive architectures, right? People see things differently. They perceive things different way. When you lay something out on the screen, some things pop to some people and make it easier for them to. Ohh.

Speaker 2: Ohh yes.

Unknown Speaker: Yes.

Speaker 4: I do this to do this. Well, it’s like for some of us, we’re. More analytic, we look through things.

Unknown Speaker: I think you know.

Speaker 3: A lot better than.

Speaker 2: There’s no I mean the desktop metaphor, and this is getting esoteric. This stock metaphor isn’t intuitive. It’s just something that.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: People use because they’re used to it. You know, it’s like people get used to an interface like Facebook, like Twitter, and they just know it. You know, they’re forced to use it initially and then they get used to it. And then they’re afraid to use anything that.

Speaker 4: There’s there’s two components here. 1 You have to build you you uh UX or UI? That’s actually like intuitive. That actually meets people. How they think? One horrible example of a of a tool that doesn’t do this is is big mail and GPG, right? Like we have massive case studies of users that just don’t understand. How that tool works? Play with it. They don’t find it intuitive at all. There’s no there’s no, there’s no pre established language that people are like. Oh, why isn’t this like Facebook? Or why isn’t this like something else? It’s a it’s a new thing. We have the capacity to make it accessible or not, and we chose. Not. To make it accessible but but but when you when you when you talk about, when you talk about things like.

Speaker 3: That’s not him.

Speaker 4: Facebook. Yeah, sure. I think that there’s that other component too where if somebody. If if the language has been pre developed instead of a society, people aren’t going to switch to esperon, right? You know, Esperanto maybe have a better language, but you do have to kind of meet. Them where they’re. At the languages that they currently speak, but that I I I do feel like the the the, the significant chunk of this like does lie upon the Community, I’ll stick. That, and I count myself within that like things that I have built and and places have not been particularly intuitive to folks. But I think that this is, I think that this is an important thing. Like you can’t. If the choice for. School is Facebook or not Facebook. I don’t think we can blame them if they’re like, well, the benefits outweigh the negatives. So I’m going to use Facebook because the benefits might in fact legitimately outweigh the negatives for them personally, individually. Like, there are plenty of situations in which that is true. So then if that’s if, if you’re asking people to sacrifice Facebook because of the negatives. For you, I’ll wait like that. That’s it. It’s ridiculous. So if you’re going to make a tool to pull them out of that, to say yes, and now you can get all the positives that you wanted without the negatives. So use this tool instead. You have to actually present those positive. To them, if part of the positives they had for why they chose Facebook was that it was intuitive, I mean obviously right now the user interface is shut, but like to some people to some degree it has some level of like functionality and even if they went to Facebook. So because they don’t know how to use e-mail, they don’t know how to use anything else, and somebody very quickly when they were young talking how to use Facebook. And so they they used to that interface and then you give them something else and you don’t meet them where they’re at speaking the language that they. Just supposed to Esperanto and you’re like, no, no, no. You need to learn Esperanto. In order to.

Speaker 3: Use.

Speaker 4: This tool, that’s the sort of situation where, like, yeah, that’s totally upon us. We’re expecting way too much upon people and we’re not making things, you know, realistically providing them the benefits or the capacity or the things that would allow them to shift over. So I think that.

Unknown Speaker: I don’t know, I I.

Speaker 1: Still know that they that I agree. That. That you could teach them the interface of Facebook that they had no experience in the computer. You could also teach them PGP in the same amount of time. They’re both like neither of them are are.

Speaker 3: Well.

Speaker 1: It’s like. Instinctually intuitive. People choose one.

Unknown Speaker: No, I mean whatever.

Speaker 1: Over the other, because of the the immediate benefits versus the long term or? The benefits to other I I agree.

Speaker 4: That there’s, I agree that there’s definitely a degree of like immediacy where people. Personal desires. Obscure like the broader sociopolitical things that we should be like committed to, like, you know, neither of us are are acting like rich, you know, small men and and only using completely open software. And like, you know, to completely open hardware and blah blah on our devices. All of us make some sort of concession or. Some some degree. Of like oh, well, in the short term this is more useful for me or this is more productive for me and I also. Don’t think that. It’s the case that we should expect random activists or random anarchists to make a choice, to not use Facebook in a lot of situations, because if they’re like, look, I’m just like, I’m just an organizer of, like punk benefit. Go. Right. Like I don’t have to consider any sort of security culture, that kind of thing. And I need to get people to show up to these things, like build me a tool, build me a situation, a social like condition where I can invite people to events through some other sort of means. And I will use that instead. But to do the things that I need to do to the one thing that I can do, the thing that I’m really good at. Which is throwing events. People to them like this is the.

Speaker 1: Yeah, but it’s throwing other people under the bus by by then, you partake in the technology that we know a large part of its utility is is mapping social networks. If you know that, then you partake in it.

Speaker 3: Best for that?

Speaker 1: And you don’t. Like you are throwing the people under the bus, who then have to choose between that or their own security. And it’s also for yourself. And you might just be an organizer of events. That doesn’t actually mean that you’re going to be safe just because that you don’t. Foresee what you do to be particularly. Subversive and also people holding events before Facebook, you know, and it’s just I think that you just love Facebook because you’re you’re you’re. Prolific on there.

Speaker 4: But the the ease of the use is, I think, important to people. I mean, this gets back to like issues around, like veganism and things along those lines where yes, there are options for some people, but if the ease and a lot of. Tax if it requires someone to, like, take an extra 2 hours out of their day because they live in a food desert or whatever, then that is the sort of situation where we have to, like, recognize that I don’t think that we can put it all on individuals. I think we have to be sympathetic and empathetic to the, to the, to the individually or immediately like rational. Voices that that people make. I don’t think that we can. I don’t think that we’re going to achieve the future that we would like to see just demanding that everyone like live like Stallman, right, like, you know, be aesthetics and like and only use this or only use that because that’s the truth the right way. The thing that has no sense. And do it. And then of course, you know, the primes jump in and talk about coltan mining at this point. But like the the like, there is no way that we can navigate this world without having it without there being trade-offs. And I don’t think that we’re going to win. I mean, I think that there’s a place for individual consumer choice, right. I think that. There there is. There’s some degree to which that can be beneficial. But I don’t think that we can. I think that we should expect individuals to make relatively immediate decisions and make individually. Well, I don’t think we can ask them to sacrifice the entirety of, you know, an extra 2 hours out of the week or an extra. How much? More time and I. And I also, you know, like we might be able to swing socially pressuring or like guilt tripping 3% of activists to do that. But all we’ve really done is remove 3% of activists. But the the best 3% of activists, right, or the best, you know, 5 or 6 or whatever percent or 1% or whatever the point, whatever the number, it is we we’ve managed to now pull them out of the social. Quirks where people are actually talking, we pulled them out of being able to influence people and have those. Conversations. So what is it?

Unknown Speaker: But we missed.

Speaker 1: Argument he tried to shift the culture. That’s what we’re talking about. Not.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I I agree.

Speaker 1: Saying like.

Speaker 4: We should shift the culture. I’m not. I’m not disagreeing with that. I’m just disagreeing with the notion that that we should expect people to abstain from Facebook without US building a better tool. For them to use that meets their needs. In a lot. Of ways, and since there’s multiple fronts with this.

Speaker 1: It’s it is.

Speaker 2: Having, you know, like clients, people that you’re using and users, I mean that’s the problem. It’s like a like catch 22. You can’t build a, you can build a better Facebook if nobody’s using it. Nobody’s. Going to use it and and.

Speaker 4: I also think that like this, this issue of.

Speaker 3: Like who is?

Speaker 2: Using it. Is, is, is the question that I have in. My mind because. Enterprise use it. Use Facebook a lot to just communicate. With each other. There’s no, there’s no need for that. But when there are other social networking tools and yeah, we can pressure people and we pressure people to do things that aren’t easy all the time. That’s anarchy, right? Anarchy is not easy.

Unknown Speaker: If, if if it becomes.

Speaker 2: Easy. Then you know, maybe we’re in a really good world, but you know it won’t be. It’ll never be easy.

Speaker 4: I think that the the the things that we can do is change what’s easy and what’s not easy, right? So like they go to like the another example of like changing something where there’s broad infrastructural. Like like tendencies or broad social norms in a certain direction. Like I think it is far more efficient like with so it’s the Omni Commons, this big space in the Bay Area they they have a hacker, a biohacker lab. There, one of the one of the various anarchist. The collectives of collector in the collective of the collective of collectives, there’s the there’s this bio hyperspace and they develop. One of the projects is to genetically engineer yeast to produce the enzymes. Their presence of the cheese so or the unique enzymes. So then you throw these genetically engineered yeast into a VAT, throwing some sugar, throwing some heat and water said over time. And the enzymes just accumulate, you know, in the background of the yeast living their little lives. Close the bottom. You scrape that off and then you’re able to make chemically identical. I mean, the trick is of course mixing it with other chemicals, whatever at the end, and that they still and fix that. But you know, it’s all of this is ultimately doable. So you mix those things together and you get something that is identical to actual cheese, but no animals were involved. So the production. Like that, I think is probably far more effective than trying to burn down like. Dairy bums. Like in terms of like end impact upon users or in terms of like pressuring the people that if if if I was to go around for the rest of my life being like oh really like but really though and trying to like persuade everyone take the hard step of cutting the addictive. Substance of cheese out of their lives. I would not have as big of an impact as I think. Like the people who are collaborating to that project have. Like their ultimate.

Speaker 1: There’s a lot of.

Speaker 4: Variables. Not sure, like if they’re not successful etcetera. But like if they are successful in that project like the, this would be cheaper in the mass production you can immediately phase out the entirety of cheese production aside from some stupid carnivore hipsters who want the like, the original thing for no reason. The point is you would last finish because you.

Speaker 1: Gasoline. Well.

Speaker 4: But you you would make it easy for people, and that would, and that would enable the transition to to shift. And I think with things like Macedon where you’re looking at like this replacement for Twitter to switch over. Finally, the new social network, the reason why new social network never ******* took off was that it didn’t build something that was usable and met people where they were at. They didn’t like fulfill their needs in terms of user experience and so, you know, one person. Sat alone and wrote a pile of code. A massive amount to make the pool usable and wrote this entire thing and then. And then also, and here’s the other component is like like introduced it at a very intelligent point where a bunch of users were ****** *** at Twitter like he like it literally got like mass introduction. At the point where Twitter had, like, introduced, introduced some new policies and some new like user interface stuff that everybody hated. So a bunch of people suddenly jump.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Leveraging positions or points of weakness in the existing infrastructure of existing norms, the fact that Twitter was such an oversized, you know, beast that it was just stomping around with no attention to like the desires of its users one way or the other, and made decisions that I thought ohh they’ll like this, whatever this so, and also made these decisions desperate for advertising money because they’re making nothing and they’re losing. Talking business. Why isn’t up to advertising in general? So then all of a sudden you saw this mass exodus of users. In particular, you saw the mass exodus of the core user base of Twitter, the original core user base, which was a lot of the like the info sack and and activist communities which switched over. So you see that kind of like pattern like I. Think that this. It shows that we can succeed at. Bring down these bees.

Unknown Speaker: I think that like I think I certainly.

Speaker 2: Think that we can. I also think that like it remains to be seen if, for example, this becomes the dominant micro blogging or whatever, and and if it does, we can’t necessarily reduce it to. Well, it had a good user interface and it was at the right time.

Speaker 4: Trudy will eventually fall, and so will Facebook.

Speaker 2: And so will Google. We all know that. The reasons why.

Unknown Speaker: I mean I.

Speaker 4: Think it will eventually fall like that seem. Like Google could rule this all and like take. Over the world, I’m not, I’m. Not betting on this, yeah.

Speaker 2: Forever infinite. I don’t think. I mean, I think that I think that the collapse of of all empires, including capital empires, is inevitable in time. But I also think that the reasons why opinion shifts, the reasons why things isn’t necessarily as simple as they had a good interface. So I don’t, I mean, you know the things remain to be seen on that level. I’m not.

Speaker 4: Reducing it just to a good user interface, but I’m saying that that’s a significant component of it and I think they have a responsibility to focus upon those kinds of changes because those are the kinds of changes where a limited amount of people with. With strong commitment can make a huge difference, whereas individuals trying to pressure their friends or make these arguments one-on-one about individual consumer choices tends to be incredibly inefficient.

Speaker 3: I mean, I was just going to say that like I’m on Facebook and like, I have a Twitter account and stuff. Not because I think that they’re like great interfaces and like, it’s just great user experience, but it’s like that’s where people are. And it it’s like more and more difficult to navigate socially, especially someone who’s super introverted like me without having their Facebook. Like so much organizing is done over Facebook, unfortunately like especially like moving to a new town. I mean, I have no idea. Like where Mayday is going to be at, what’s going to be going on. And the only way to get that information is unfortunately over Facebook. So like. I don’t know it. It’s not like I just made this consumer choice because I I just think Facebook’s so great. But it’s like there’s just so much social pressure to do so and like it would be so difficult for me to navigate without it. I mean, I wish there was a better alternative, but they’re just not so. What?

Speaker 4: That’s that’s my kind of defense of the Facebook side. But part of the problem is that, like every time that people try to make a a push towards something else but think there was UX limits where a lot of people didn’t want to come over because of that UX. Sorry, with hello, we saw that with. Diaspora, we saw that with crab grass. So there are many different parts to this that fall into play, but I just did want to push back against the notion that that somehow we don’t have a responsibility as people who are as technologists, as developers or whatever, to build tools that are easier for people, I think. That’s probably the the biggest pressure in all of this is on us to do that and it’s not alone going to change things, but it’s something.

Speaker 2: I think that we have some responsibility. To try, but I don’t think that the obligation is on us and I think that like. You know, if you offer people an alternative and they choose not to take it. Then that is that’s on them. I don’t, I don’t necessarily. It’s not that. Facebook doesn’t make things worse for me because I don’t have Facebook. I don’t use it and I don’t really care. But you know, when I hear people complaining about Facebook tracking them. Or whatever. Then it becomes this thing where. Like. You you’ve you’ve weighed a choice and you’ve. Made the choice to stay with somebody that you know is essentially like using your information in the various ways or potentially in the various ways you know that they’re. They have pronounced a desire to snitch on anybody who is, you know, going against whatever the state says so. You know you’re basically like in a group full of snitches all the time. And as anarchists, we should be choosing differently. We should be pressuring each other to choose differently if we think that social networks are useful, then you know there are ones that have successful interfaces. As far as like what most.

Speaker 4: People get out of face.

Speaker 1: Yeah, because my my thought is and I’ll be the first to admit that like I don’t have much of A sense of aesthetics, like wear all black partially because I just don’t know what. The **** else to do but. I don’t really see. I don’t experience a difference in in user interface between something like Facebook and something like crap. So I actually like legitimately don’t feel the difference. Like I agree with you. See theoretically I understand that that like user experience really shifts things for people and usability is really important to people, but like.

Speaker 4: It.

Speaker 1: They’re. It’s not like Facebook is like a. A beautiful or intuitive thing. And so I’m a little bit. Skeptical of that? It’s in some ways like to some degree, I think people. Just. Want the place that like? That isn’t about like because they want. They want a place where everyone is they want what’s hot in pop culture and to some degree it’s the question of, like, what is more important to you, like being. Being like having an in and being like. Part of your like generational like. Experience or like, are you actually trying to like politically organize over this this tool and like then there’s probably a better thing.

Speaker 3: But it’s not just about, like pop culture and like being hip like it’s that’s that’s part of it. But like, I mean, I had a crabgrass before I had a Facebook and like the reason I have a Facebook is because like, that’s where my friends and family and coworkers are. Like, if they were on crab grass, I would. I would have a crab grass instead. That’s just. That’s where people are and like, it’s not just about being hip. It’s just like that’s how it’s staying in touch with people. That’s how I stay in touch with like extended family that I need to see or with, you know, coworkers or whatever. So I just to portray it as like it’s just this hip thing, like that’s a part of it and maybe that that’s problematic. But it’s also I think. Really, like legitimate reasons why people have Facebooks that. I’ll be honest, might be cool.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I think so.

Speaker 3: So it’s not too I am very cool on Facebook.

Unknown Speaker: So.

Speaker 3: You are. You are.

Speaker 4: So I had a Facebook since. 2004 literally like in the 1^st wave of outside of. Is it Yale that it came? From or however it. Anyway. Because I went to at that point was in a fancy liberal arts college and and I really got it because I. Was. Completely antisocial at that point and knew almost no one at my college. It was. Hearing in my life where I was highly withdrawn except for like the National, contributing to one of the scenes on campus and the progression that I would see throughout, and I basically never used it at that point. But because it was all, you know, for rich kids alone. The progression that I saw was that one it provided a service that nobody else was providing really at that point. And then two, in the beginning Facebook. When it became a mass or when. It became white, more widely used. Its main utility was the fact that. It wasn’t my space that had a better user interface that was more clean, more pretty, more accessible than Myspace, and that’s why everyone gravitated towards it. That was the comments. That was the things that everyone was saying is. That this this feels more elite. And who’s who has access and that kind of thing, which is 1 component and drew mostly a terrible crowd through the game. And then two, it was what’s, like, intuitive what’s accessible. And I think that meant a lot to people. And then later. You know Facebook because of the network effects. It grew larger and larger and larger where you just kind of had to have it. And there was this interesting period where Facebook was. Seeing as something that only old people have right, like Facebook is for somebody over 30, Facebook is for like the like your family. You don’t. You don’t. If your kid, if you’re a teenager or whatever you don’t like, get a Facebook because Facebook is, you know, the the the terrible you want to go towards. The more super you know the the one app that just came out yesterday. And in those contexts. Yeah, I could see young anarchists switching to something like that, Aspira and actually using it. Because the pressures weren’t to join up just because your friends want the pressures were to find something was more unique, more your circle of friends. And then people joined. And then at some point, Facebook became so gargantuan that it became basically in many ways one additional like ring of the. States, right, like judicial, you know, legislative, executive and Facebook in a lot of different ways, like people like their experience with society, experience of the social infrastructure and the experience of the world in a lot of ways goes through these big institution. You know entities and at that point Facebook just stopped being responsive to what users wanted and started to be responsive to what advertisers wanted users to experience. In terms of the interface. At that point, Facebook’s interface grew more and more complex. People stuck with Facebook in a lot of different ways because. While it’s more usable than crab grass, I’d say it was still was. It became the language that people it became there became this inertia behind it. But we’ve seen. That these there can be sudden collapses in these kind of ecosystems where you. Know the the. Ruling company becomes more and more attenuated from what you know its user base actually wants as it tries to seek like advertising money that is drying up across the board right now. So they’re desperately chasing that advertiser money, trying to get those clips or whatever. And so some way that actually pays off. And it’s I think advertising like a lot of people said the advertising industry is at least 1/3 overvalued, possibly 2/3 overvalue. That’s like a massive over. Just for what? It’s coming out. When I went on the street and then at that point a lot of people started to use Facebook, ironically, that the younger generation is a kind of subversive way. So lots of people started to use use Facebook accounts that were, you know, did not have their actual user, did not have their actual name, but they were mean focused or that, like, didn’t put their didn’t put their content. Inside of text. Like like actual texts that could be read and could be interpreted by things, but put it within images and complex memes that are hard for, you know, central processing systems to like, interpret. So you kind of see like social singularity feedback and complexity within the within the subculture radical subcultures of Facebook. And one of the reasons that. Facebook has become such a center of modern anarchism is, I don’t think because a bunch of. Like our generation counter globalization, activists started using Facebook. So much, although some did. Certainly. And a lot did actually at. The end of. The day. But I think what would actually happen. Is that most of? The people who are who call themselves anarchists today radicalized online, and so those people. Bar in Podunk wherever they don’t have a scene. They don’t have a place they can go to. They don’t have a way to socialize with. Most anarchists, I think these days in in America don’t exist in the center of urban cores and actually don’t know any or more than just a couple other anarchists. That has been my experience like talking to a lot of the. People who show. Up to events. And talking to people with these things, is that a lot of their knowledge of activism? Like second or third hand, these kind of circles. So I think that there is an immense like utility to a lot of people and that it provides you with a place. To like find that community and or find or be able to discuss certain things that you would otherwise not be able to. So I think that Facebook as a as a medium has come to and things like Facebook have come to shift the way that this course and the way that our culture has like progressed and a lot. Of that has to do with.

Speaker 1: The word.

Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely. For the for the most part, for the worst, with little bits for the better within that. So more people have been radicalized. I think that’s for the better. The more people have been radicalized in an edge floor to read kind of direction, which I think is probably for the worst where and I think the.

Unknown Speaker: The.

Speaker 4: Consequence of that, that, that the nature of that edge lowering us, the nature of social justice, kind of like went upmanship and that kind of thing emerges out of the the structures of the media and that they have been talking through like this structures, even just when you go back further with things like blog comment sections where it’s a linear hierarchy and you get pressures of the ways that people, you know, like if somebody sees you writing. In a certain period of time and then doesn’t see you writing again, you you assume to lose. The argument so. You have to continue to engage at a certain level. There’s all sorts of different ways that thing is, but also within social media. It’s really hard for people to entirely filter out. Would have private conversations or conversations with like certain people have a certain amount of expertise in a certain direction. So like you know, hard to just have the people who have the experience under patriarchy like this in the room to have this discussion and things like Facebook made. Brief interludes where they tried to like, you know, say you who you could tag, which friends were could see which things make that much more accessible to people. They still have that functionality, but they deprioritized it and thus users have started to use it less, which. Means that people are more. Trigger happy and more like is this person, you know? Like who is is my inner circle who’s on the same page as me. Become like. And intensely emotional and and super like hyper present hyper concern for people. And so I think that you know as a medium Facebook has shifted that culture in a way that could be changed if you were to break it apart in a federal structure. But people are still like feedbacking. On that kind of system, because they’re already trapped within those within those frames or within those? Fights that currently exist.

Speaker 3: But I think.

Speaker 4: That we can’t ignore the positives that are mixed with all within all that negative, which is to say that, like most anarchists were around today, would not have fallen into the recruitment kind of channels that we had in the. Late 90s or the odds?

Speaker 2: But I think that there’s no special sauce to Facebook. I don’t. I don’t think there is at all. I think that it it came at the right place at the right time and I think that there are other things that have similar features. That are just as usable. People don’t use them because there are people there. Anarchists don’t use them because I mean well, anarchists in the US, there are anarchists that use them other places, but you know, it’s mostly like US anarchists tends less to gravitate towards like personal security, because I mean, it just seems like there isn’t like. That’s not a paramount for them. Maybe it’s because they’re not doing anything, I don’t know. But you know, it’s it’s a it’s a significant problem when you pose this as like a. You know, I use Facebook, for example, Sean said. He uses Facebook because that’s where everybody is, and that is that is at the issue. If even if you develop an identical structure to Facebook, identical features, you still have to get users. So how do we do that without pressuring other people and putting the onus on them? To make the right choice.

Speaker 4: I think that we do have to pressure other people. I’m not suggesting that that’s not something that happens, but I also think we have to be like smart about strategic, about how we like, advertise or leverage or push those things and we push them. If we’re just continually with saying like you should live like Richard Stallman, all the ******* climate people, no one’s going to do it. But if, like with things like Mastodon, you catch you, you prepare the tools. You spend a lot of time on your own. And actually make the user interface be something that people find familiar and also accessible. And then you push it on them at the right time. You push it on them right when they’re ****** at at Twitter or Facebook as they make some giant. Step. That’s when you can have users, but I I’m I’m saying that like you can’t. You can’t ignore the user interface things. And then just expect social pressure to actually, like, catch and persuade people.

Speaker 2: I think for anarchists you can. And I think that if anarchists just want aesthetics, then you know, maybe they need to rethink their politics. I don’t think that people are doing things just for aesthetics.

Speaker 3: That’s.

Speaker 2: On other social media. But yeah, I mean that’s. Yeah, I mean it’s it’s a I think it’s a chicken and egg problem here that we have to break away from and we have to take responsibility for breaking away from.

Speaker 1: I like that Will’s the only one who actually has a beard on his neck, and he was talking about how we need to. Get away from being Richard Sloan. So we went like pretty far, you know. This is. Like. This is no. Criticism like I think these are. Important things to talk about. I’m. I’m just going to mention that we haven’t talked about the last point that I. Thought was actually. You know, I put it last. I actually did think I agree with you was. Very important, I just. Put it in the wrong spot, addressing this question of. The internal versus external reality. I don’t know that we have time to do that, but I just wanted. To mention that that I. Think it’s actually a really interesting question.

Speaker 4: So I I I did actually write up a little bit on the question I I can go through it quickly. And we can. I mean, you guys can choose whether or not for like continuous conversation or. But I think they’re like.

Speaker 1: The the barriers between itself and external.

Speaker 4: Yeah, the inputs and outputs thing. I think it’s really important I think that it’s it’s, it’s actually really core to like where I’ve. Been going in philosophy. Of antipus theorizing for like the last 10 years. So, because it it’s interesting that you specifically you specifically or yeah, you specifically the word the the gap to talk about like the kind of the gulf between the law world and then our internal like processing it and I this is a huge component of my thought where you know like. They see subjectivity is really like a prison, like I see our skulls as imposing. And boundaries upon the degree and depth at which we can engage with the world around us and to the degree to which the world around us can like further provide feedback and engage with us. And it’s interesting that Jack paints this as like a loss of freedom because it brings to light the the really different like assumptions around the definition of freedom. It seems like he he’s kind of appealing to a notion of freedom from a freedom from control and a feel of kind of like a loss of self. But that’s really weird to me because it’s it’s it’s very much like a focus, a negative focus on negative freedom, like there’s some kind of a central you that if it is being affected or causally impacted by other things and a strong degree is no longer, it’s no, no one makes you free that like isolation is what is free. And.

Unknown Speaker: Hey.

Speaker 4: I I really don’t think that’s coherent with anarchism actually. And and and Jack obviously is not an anarchist, so it doesn’t matter among other but for to me anarchism is about like freedom too. It’s about like increasing the overall possibility and like I think for the world in which like you know, you were influenced by many others and you influence many others and like uncontrollable and complex ways. Is probably what the world of anarchy or the world of freedom, or that direction of of aspiration is all about.

Unknown Speaker: Like.

Speaker 4: There’s there’s this competitive. Notion of like, you know, like in this in this world of like power where you know, everyone sees things in terms of like you know, causality and power relations. And like, you know, the the those things like always assume like specific like concrete discrete actors like this thing. This entity acts upon this entity and changes this entity, and that is a causal power relation, but I like and I’m not saying that like if you diffuse those or make them all over the place like everybody’s chaining everyone down, that somehow it’s better and not taking kind of like a post modern take on it. But what I do think is that. Is that if you what you should be looking at is not like. It’s not like things in terms of specific entities, because we can really ultimately like that. I don’t think that sells really exist ultimately, like even inside of ourselves inside of our brains or whatever within our skulls. We’re this thing with this kind of mess of a. Lot of different cognitive processes. Water directions with like this notion of a singular consciousness being like a superimposed on top of it, awkwardly. And I think that you know, and we of course in Iraq causally with other people in other ways and all sorts of different things, I’m not trying to preserve some kind of essential subject and sort of like human experience or like some meanness or that kind of thing. I’m interested in, like, expanding overall, like the possibilities that are present in the situation. The more the and making a situation. Or making a society more fluid, increasing the bandwidth of like interaction. And that necessarily involves the dissolution of the the ego, if you will, of the the, the, the individual of the discreteness of self, the the fact that that gap is there. But I see that gap is in prison anyway, I’ve repeated myself.

Speaker 1: No, I mean, I wish I could. I could disagree with you in some way because that would be more interesting. And I’m actually surprised that we come to the same conclusion. I’m not exactly sure why, but my predictive assumptions about your belief systems are off, but I totally I totally agree. I think that. The self as we perceive it is illusory and I don’t think it’s to the benefit ethically. I think that the more that the the more atomized we are, like it kind of ties back into biology. We’re we’re fighting for this self. We’re fighting for like our interest and that’s not. That’s not like the good. That’s not like ethical. That’s not what I want. I want to to fight for some sort of collective, something better, something something. You know, new that isn’t about some sort of individual. That’s very boring to me.

Speaker 4: The freedom of all.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah. So.

Speaker 1: Breakdown that area. That’s great. You know, that’s that’s what I want to see. I don’t know. What are you thinking?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, I. My inclination is strong agreement. But you know, I haven’t spent all the time thinking about it recently. I tend to think that. The ego is vestigial. But. You know, I mean I I think that. Our personal identities are uniqueness or whatever we perceive as as uniqueness. Can create some interesting and fantastical. Things in our in. Our world, but also I think it causes us. It puts up barriers between us and. Everybody else, the people that we’re supposed to care about or whatever. So. I don’t see it as a net gain. I guess I’m going to be the most on the fence, I guess about this.

Unknown Speaker: All right.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And I guess it that reminds me that like I was thinking about this while I was rereading parts of post Gear City the other day and there’s like, you know, pictures just bringing up a lot of like you know, you have to liberate this self the individual from subjugation. It’s not really that important to detect, but. It’s reminding me that like a lot of the. Anarchist position focuses on on you know. Being ourself. From.

Unknown Speaker: The.

Speaker 1: The submission that we like, accept that we learn that we you know that we put on ourselves. And so there’s all this. Focus on becoming the freest person. The freest individual that you can be, which is interesting. And maybe it’s like an. Intermediary step I don’t know. I I really think that’s. Worthwhile. But I think more worthwhile is. Like a a complete like. Collective or, I don’t know. How you know, like a a, a dissolution. Of the self and the ego.

Speaker 4: OK so I I do feel like if this is my obligatory point as the individualist to like press back against some of the language there because I’m not a remotely a fan of book channel or remotely a fan of the word collective but.

Speaker 2: Hi.

Speaker 4: Yeah. I mean, I think. Yeah, I am. I am a fan of Swarm or hive minds, yeah. Which is totally different.

Speaker 1: But but but no, I mean realistically.

Unknown Speaker: Here.

Speaker 4: Realistically though, there was a there was a significant distinction, so I am strategically or functionally and epistemically or whatever. I’m an individualist in like my actual pragmatic engagement with the world, because we, because in present human reality, these gaps of of you know, they are the the core determining factor of the structure of our society. The ways that we gonna relate with one another and what can be done and what can’t be done. And so like, I mean this is directly. Like the fact that we have this limit upon what we can like the the the richness of complexity within our brains within our minds, our internal experiences, our concepts are like internal lives, are far more complex than we could ever express or convey to other people. If we were to talk for the rest of our lives nonstop like we just could never get it all out. And that’s kind of a tragedy that every person dies with this huge immensity of of of complexity and of and and and original experience and inventions and insights that they will never be able to share or in a lot of cases parse in the language that people will be able to read or to understand. So I think that’s a tragedy, but I think that the reality that falls out of that is that things like collective meetings are ******* atrocities. We, as long as the gap continues to exist, as long as we are imprisoned in our skulls, as long as language is so. Cheap at conveying the richness of our actual experiences and things along those lines. I think that that obliges an individualist approach where we must act as autonomous actors first and foremost, because that’s where we can most directly without like. Sort of a quagmire of like conversation upon conversion. Then, because I mean like if you have 40 people in the room and one person’s talking at a time, even in this conversation like the three of us talking and I’m currently monologuing whatever. But in that the other people have to like, shut up and listen to you. And that’s one limitation. And if if that scales up, you know, suddenly you have like. 400 people who were all silent just to listen to one person, and it’s incredibly inefficient to have collective decision making and discussions for the most part, I think that there is some that mostly. If we’re going to build communism, it has to be built from one-on-one, relationships with people or small more organic things. And then like grow up from that organically from the roots. I don’t think that. So I’m I’m very much focused on like you know. Individual autonomy is that, and that’s ultimately why I, you know, hard. The reason why I think markets are so useful at achieving communism is that they enable people to relate one-on-one as. Opposed to to. Each other through some sort of artificial like entity like the community or some sort of like constructor, speaker from selling the signs and. I’m not a big singer fan.

Speaker 3: I’m.

Speaker 4: Ohh man we will have we. I’m sure we will have a massive fight on this point but. Yeah. So but, but when it comes to things like so even though I, even though I’m not a big sterner fan, just because you brought up booked and I feel obliged to stick quickly in a defense of the best, the best possible read of sterner, which is to say that, like, one that focuses upon him. As and the creative nothing and that kind of thing as as ultimately dissolving the self as well and and so the ego if you will, is dissolved in some sense or it is not actually refer to the self so the so. In in the. Best possible read of sterner which I don’t think is the most. Likely read anyone. Get if they’re reading it, which is why so many. Like horrible people get terrible things from sterner, but there are good people who did good things from stunner and so. The best possible read, they tell me again and again and again. And I also got it myself way back when from him. Is that you know? Part of shutting off all the artificial like constructs and Spooks or you know, you know, vice or whatever you want to say is shutting off the constructs of selfhood. As well, and transcending them. And I like that interpretation a lot. So I think, you know, I just wanted to put that in so that we’re not characterized as of course you know. Certain people tried to present me as arguing a conventional leftist position in the last podcast, so I thought. I need to push back against that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. Well, we can say that there is currently a visiting you and myself and I’m an individual fee does like 15, although it was it’s it’s not a point that it was a text upon which I.

Unknown Speaker: You know.

Speaker 1: Think about this, but yeah, I’ll I’ll stand there. I have something, yeah. I’m very good.

Speaker 2: No, I think though that there’s something that I would like to mention here and that’s the and and this might be.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Pointless to bring up because maybe it’s already understood by all of us are all. Potentially one or two listeners, and that’s the, you know, like I think a lot of the reason why language doesn’t work well in like you brought up a meeting setting for example is because of the ego, because people walk into the room. With self-interest rather than the interest of, you know the project or whatever. I think that time and again we see that if people are actually there to accomplish something, there isn’t as much need for discussion because people are all working towards the same thing and they know that they need to get the thing done. But once it becomes a process of ego, as a lot of these. Collective discussions due then, yeah, there are time sinks and nothing gets done because the goal of most people there is simply, you know, self promotion or whatever. Or or even, you know, sabotaging the collective in some cases.

Speaker 4: Well, there’s, there’s, there’s.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 4: A lot of dynamics as to why meetings fail, but I I do think that even if you have a group of angels who are perfectly altruistic towards a single goal and are united on that common point of unity, and are there’s not a social capitalist check going on in the background and people are trying to climb status hierarchies or push their own thing or whatever, I still think that there are fundamental limits upon what you can do.

Speaker 2: Absolutely. I’m not gonna disagree.

Speaker 4: Yeah. And I think that those limits are profound and sharp, and that information critical constraint is. Has vast repercussions upon how we should. Structure our society.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I don’t disagree with that at all. I just, I I wanted to to just bring up that I think that there was a an an unmentioned part of the equation and as it applies to ego and as it applies to individuality.

Speaker 4: Sure. I’m pro. Individualist altruism, right. Like you know, the the word individualist oftentimes.

Speaker 1: Just hiding behind the individuals label level.

Speaker 4: Oh, ******* how low. Don’t. Give ammunition to my haters, God dammit. Oh, no, I well, I. Mean. I’ve always said that like in the sense of like, things like like the sea horses and other **** that I work on like, you know, and we’ve published many things that say, like, Communist ends, market means right, like individualism. Is a meet as a strategic means to accomplish. The ends the ethical. Ends of communism is for all. And I don’t think that it’s coherent to have a a discussion or a definition of anarchism at all. It doesn’t mean freedom. For all. I think that anarchism has to mean freedom for all. It can’t just mean your specific individual freedom. Otherwise it’s just a bunch of ********.

Episode 4: Portland Stabbings, ITS and Nihilist Anticiv Terrorism

In this episode the hosts talk about ITS (Individuals Tending Towards Savagery), a nihilist anticiv or “ecoextremist” terrorist group in Mexico. The recent stabbings by a white supremacist of three people in Portland hangs over the episode as it was recorded in the early hours the day after. The hosts discuss ITS’ emergence from green anarchism, its deep divergences from anarchism, as well as what forces led to it and currently defend and propagandize for ITS. Are ITS’ communiques secretly attempts to persuade others or just performances to strengthen the psychology and narratives they’ve grown trapped in? How can the isolation of insurrectionary struggle can cause people to diverge from the movements they started out with? We discuss the motte and bailey and other fallacies beloved of ITS apologists. Meanwhile Sean occasionally pounds on a typewriter in the background from his cabin in the wilderness ruining the audio in an indiscriminant strike against technosociety.

[download mp3]

Horizontal Hostility on #terrorism, #nihilism, #ecoextremism, #ITS, 1 Jun 2017

** Episode 4

Preview:

Speaker 1: They hate nanotechnology and I am not 100% on what nanotechnology even is, so I refer to all technology as nanotechnology, and in particular when it’s. Misbehaving technology, that is especially nanotechnology.

Speaker 2: So it’s episode 4 of horizontal hostility, and we wanted to have a conversation about ITS, also known as individualists tending towards savagery or individuals tending for a while. I don’t know. They have different names that they go by.

Speaker 3: That.

Speaker 2: Kind of. Most commonly, they’re referred to as, but things.

Speaker 3: The only thing we’re just talking about is that literally yesterday evening, 2–3 people in Portland were stabbed. By a white supremacist wing nut nihilist dude. Who killed two of them? Who was oppressing? Two young girls of color, it sounds like one wearing hijab on the light rail here, and three people moved to. If it’s the situation and confront him. And he stabbed three of them at least, and slice the necks and murdered two of them. So we’re kind of still reacting to that news right now.

Speaker 2: Yeah, it’s kind of. An elephant in the room, yes.

Speaker 3: It does kind of. I mean it gives you more opportunistic to do this episode even though we’ve talked about in this episode for a long time, right after that. Kind of event because of how. I mean, he, he openly announced on social media and when he went to like white supremacist rallies and the like, he called himself a a nihilist and an anarcho nihilist. Repeatedly. Lots of that. And, you know, indiscriminate attack with him murdering three people randomly. And him also, you know, expressing the typical and flattery, you know, misanthropic perspectives, I mean, mixed them with plenty of very conventional kind of all right and rightist perspectives on the Facebook that is publicly available. And the other information has been passed from people have done research on them. It you know, so obviously there’s intersections with the topic that we chose to talk about today, but and. Maybe there’s a degree to which it’s opportunistic to make that comparison, but I think there’s also a degree that it’s like, completely fair and utterly in keeping with the things you want to say about it. Yes, to talk about the facts of the matter.

Speaker 1: It’s hard to say to what extent he like. That he held those views versus like. They were just like a nonsense hodgepodge.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 1: I I I feel like I can’t say definitively. One way or the other. Some of his some of the rants that I’ve read have been like bucked up, but. Like coherent or like towards some kind of general theme generally like praising power. And hating Jews and that kind of thing. But then, like in particular, the one where he called himself a nihilist, he also says that he’s sympathetic toward Communism and Nazism. Because of the Semitic, Semitic monotheist power structure, I don’t know.

Speaker 3: We’re coming. Enemies is kind of what he’s trying to get out there. He also reportedly the folks who I think will have leaking other folks who did report. His presence at white power rallies, apparently, while he was sick, killing and stuff. He was like, I’m a nihilist left by politics. I’m a nihilist repeatedly and other instances of that. So I mean, that’s the reason why I get why I bring it up in this context. I think we’re still kind of reeling and there’s not a lot of. Well, there is, there is other information. That will be released soon about the stabbing and about that, things that I don’t know that I feel comfortable saying aloud right now. So we’re kind of in a weird place about this kind of topic, but yeah, that’s the thing that happened in the city that we all spent a lot of time in. I consider to be my home. Regardless of where, if I look at a given point, so that’s kind of hanging this episode. But there’s anything else to fix. We’ll talk about that.

Speaker 4: I guess if if you guys know of any? Like response from. Like the intersection of like. Less than. Any like? Muslim community or like solidarity? Situation going on. If there’s anything to report about that.

Speaker

Otherwise.

Speaker 1: Well, so right, so. There. So there’s a vigil going on tonight. UM. Sort of unsurprisingly. And but interestingly, there is also the same people who put on the like. They called it a free speech rally, but it’s essentially like a white supremacist rally out on 82^nd a month ago, or putting on another one on June 6^th.

Speaker 5: Right. Fourth, I think, right.

Speaker 6: I believe.

Speaker 5: This is Antifa rely on the 4^th. I I saw that.

Speaker 1: So did you enforce? Then yeah, OK. And that’s the one that’s counter demonstration against the same. Yeah, the same people who put on the last one, the one that this guy attended.

Speaker 3: Yeah, it’s on the 4^th.

Speaker 1: And. And they’re like distancing themselves. From him, of course, but. Like, not, of course. They’re not owning the fact that like they’re rhetoric is what helped.

Speaker 3: Right.

Speaker 1: What helps take on? This guy did you what he did? So there is yeah, there is like a chance to fight. Them, whether that’s physically or verbally.

Speaker 3: There’s also, I mean, I don’t, I don’t know. I’m going to be bringing a fruit basket to like a local mosque because this **** is like, so close to the neighborhood. That they’re in and stuff like that. There’s other things that people are doing doing more. Interpersonal or diffuse around here, it’s not just the candlelight vigil kind of protesting.

Speaker 1: It looks so like city. And doesn’t have info about the rally on their website right now, but it is on their Facebook.

Speaker 3: Oh, OK.

Speaker 1: For more info.

Speaker 2: Yeah, there’s also some go fund me pages set up for the victims of stabbing the families of some of the victims. So I don’t have the information company, but people could probably find that pretty easily.

Speaker 1: Yeah. There should be more information.

Speaker 3: I don’t. One of the people who survive the stabbing, the OR the person, at least one of the people involved in the stabbing, one of one of the people who survived will be more information about that person specifically in a bit, but I don’t know where we going to get this episode out and also. With some information.

Speaker 2: Do you want to talk about ITS now?

Speaker 3: Let’s talk about all the murderous ********.

Speaker 6: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So I’m not like. An expert on ITS or anything. So, like people should feel free. To like chime in and stuff.

Speaker 5: Oh, I thought. You were just gonna talk for two hours.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I don’t. Know it seemed like I I didn’t want to supposed to guide this episode. I don’t know. I’m not a leader.

Speaker 5: Yes you are. Well, soon.

Speaker 3: You talking about the history of? Like what like yes is.

Speaker 2: Yeah, if you can get. It started. That would be awesome.

Speaker 4: From my understanding, I TS was. Started as somewhat of the. Small time. Like affinity group slash like Guerrilla group in Mexico outside of Mexico City. Who? OK. So like a group of what originally were anarchists, ecological and nihilist event. Who decided to start taking? Actions maybe initially revolutionary. Towards their goals of ending civilization of. This is where it’s crazy for me. I’m not. I don’t actually recall if any of their actions were. We’re we’re actually more of a a positive and a positive thing. In the past it would probably been early 2000s when I started. But over the years, they’ve definitely. Gone down the path and. Eco fascism, I would say, and have completely divorced themselves from the inner his movement in Mexico and and globally and really kind of jumped off. The depends politically.

Speaker

I think the.

Speaker 3: First communicates were in 2011 at least. Explicitly, is that yes.

Speaker

So.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I think that they started around.

Speaker 4: Didn’t they? OK, I thought that they were before ITS they were something.

Speaker 3: Will they change things?

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 3: While the actions, their beds, they.

Speaker 5: You mentioned.

Speaker 3: And they might have done work as like as green anarchists not identifying as yes before that, I mean probably they did, but. I don’t know that we. Can. Speak that confidently or clearly about. That in this context.

Speaker 2: Yeah, yeah, I’m trying to find it. There’s like, actually like, a an overview on the tossa the of the different, the history of ITS and their different formations and stuff. And I’m just, I’m having trouble finding it.

Speaker

OK.

Speaker 2: Is it the one tab I didn’t pull open when I was preparing for this so.

Speaker 1: Sorry.

Speaker

No.

Speaker 4: That’s cool. You should find that cause I’d rather hear that than like my vague overview.

Speaker 5: I’m sorry, but Sean, you being in the wilderness and making all these typewriter noises just seems like Ted because.

Speaker 6: Plus I can’t see.

Speaker 2: Sorry.

Speaker 4: Which is one of. The main uh. Influencers of ICS for those who don’t know.

Speaker 2: Originally, they now refuted they they reject Kaczynski, you know. Of.

Speaker 5: I wouldn’t call Kaczynski anarchism.

Speaker 3: Right, right. I would be charitable towards towards John on that actually myself. You know, it’s finally disappeared from, but yeah, so I TS got started out with that well, got started by all accounts out of of green. Anarchist brother Lulu. However, you want to define that in Mexico and, or at least we assume mostly in Mexico and people in Mexico City say that they are from the outside to Mexico City and they have changed their perspective.

Speaker 2: A little bit over the years.

Speaker 3: They have gone deeper into some of the more problematic kind of components. They. At least in recent history, do not identify as anarchists anymore, 1 not so recent. It’s been it’s been wild. They identify as novelists. They identify as individualists, that they take. That in really your. Direction and find Super Offensive and irritating they also. They are. They got famous for murdering a bunch of people and so they’re anti serve kind of nihilists is like I think probably the best way. To describe their perspective, they. Have murdered scientists. They bombed the children, they bombed children’s hospitals a couple of times. They they put out a hit on an anarchist but were unsuccessful, which pushed off most of the Mexico City advertising. And they recently took they’ve been claiming a bunch of brutal murders. They did that, or whether or not they’re just claiming things done by, you know, general criminals. But they recently claimed the murder of a of a of a woman. And their politics are extraordinarily reactionary. And they’re backed by a number of so-called anarchist nihilist factions inside the United States, and a few other places around the world, particularly. The publishing house rollback heart. Has we published or has published a book called The Tosa? And of course. They make all the standard like. Distancing about how like they’re they’re just really interested in the ideas and whether or not you agree with the specific actions these people take. You know, we’re just interested in the discourse, but of course they never publish like Maoists or fascists explicitly. You one would hope. And so it’s kind of absurd. They’re republishing us. And of course, the defense that many anarchists in the United States. Many people who within the anarchist know you but now pull themselves violence inside the United States feels repeatedly when they make this kind of when they when they talk about ITS it’s like, Oh well, obviously I have my disagreements with them. But you know, at least they’re doing something. I think the critical thing to be evaluated is whether the thing that they’re doing has anything to do with that. Some has anything to do with anarchy or any of the values. Or ideals that we hold. As of their most recent proclamations, ICS declares themselves anti human and their chief defender in the English language are artor. Abe Kibera is what he goes by online. He says that. You know, he probably was like, oh, yes, of course I’m worse than hello. Little worse than hello. I, you know, probably exceeds that time and I TS. Has called for. The murder of millions of people, you know. All of all of. In kind of a twisted hostility towards humanism, which they blame for ecological crisis or whatever else, and somehow. And also somehow. You know that we can get to the the twists and tensions of identifying as nihilists, but also being involved in that. Kind of terror. Anyway, or that kind of like political. Ideology. Is that good? Does anybody else have anything bad?

Speaker 4: I just think that Sean Press is down way too hard on.

Speaker 2: The keyboard. Sorry I’m I’m sorry.

Speaker 3: That’s very loud.

Speaker 4: Like the red thumbs over there.

Speaker 5: UM.

Speaker 4: Driving you can say something real and then.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, I guess so the reason that we wanted to talk about this was because of the most recent claims that they’ve been making, yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 5: And I mean, I think that. There is speculation that they didn’t actually do the things that they’re just claiming it. The things that I know of.

Speaker 4: That’s what’s going to happen.

Speaker 5: What? So the things that I know of that they’re claiming? Are that they killed a couple hiking in the woods? And. And so they killed some woman near the university in Mexico City. UM. And.

Speaker 2: You know, they sent off a letter they set. They set a random letter bomb. They just, like, placed it at a random part in Mexico City, just on a bench. And it’s a 16 year old girl picked it up and it blew up. And like, luckily it didn’t. It didn’t injure her. But like they they communicated they were like.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Basically. Like. Felt bad, but it didn’t kill her and stuff. And I don’t know. The author.

Speaker 5: Yeah. Right. And I mean the justifications. Are essentially nonexistent. They’re just saying that humans are.

Speaker

Or.

Speaker 5: A virus that needs to be wiped out. Yeah, there’s a. Not much else to it that I read.

Speaker

Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3: I think it’s really interesting to look at how. Their historical ideology got twisted towards this point because it’s kind of a situation where like. You know, you climb a ladder and then you knock the ladder out from beneath you, and then you just kind of like, oh, yeah, make up some kind of random justification for the end point that you ended up reaching. I’m ignoring all the steps that took you to get there. So obviously, like, if you’re going to make, like, more claims around the validity of like, you know. With the problematic Ness of ecocide. The negative, you know, effects that it. Gives you whatever any. Of those sorts of things that you’re trying to argue, you know, to argue that the things that you oppose and things that you’re for, or to try to like, make those claims clearly, those things came out of an analysis that, you know, came out of Kaczynski came out of. And now they’re kind of kicking a lot of that away. And for those of us who were intensely critical of those ideologies from this for for a long time now. It I guess is kind of like the the reductio ad absurdum that we’ve always kind of, you know, said was looking in the closet or was likely to things were likely to arrive at so. I don’t know, I think it. Might be interesting from kind of a. Philosophical direction to. Engage with the ****** arguments that they do make, because they’re obviously just kind of, you know. A quick apology or flat. And engaged more deeply with why they’ve emerged and what kind of like sustains them as ideology, or what makes people even think that that’s something that we can or should or would tolerate this. As I.

Speaker 6: So do you want me to like?

Speaker 2: Read some of the stuff that tosses uh, written or some stuff posted on the tossa by it S and the defenders, just to kind of like, I guess gives people a better idea of like, exactly what. We’re dealing with, like, how reactionary. The network has gotten yeah. Like who?

Speaker 5: Yeah. Do you have some highlights?

Speaker 2: So this is this. Yeah, this is a this is. An editorial posted on the top, so I don’t. I don’t know who is written by. This is the the word plat press. It’s like the English language pop and the England ITS I guess. To be clear.

Speaker 3: There’s a couple people, but specifically are Kibera is this personality or this person connected with Alice in the Bay Area and LBC. Who runs the itasa webblog? He claims that he’s not in contact with or associated with or and keep contact with or associated with the folks, and I guess that he’s distinct from that. He’s doing the standard kind of like spokesman versus like terrorist action. So kind of like distinction that is a kind of important distinction to being with, so he’s. Not speaking formally for ATS unless it’s under the ATSC’s name.

Speaker 2: Yeah, you got. Well, here I’m going. To read little bits. And pieces of the the. Communique that OK, so you’re calling yourself individualists tending towards the wild is taking responsibility for the murder of. And forgive me if I mispronounce your name, but it’s Leslie Bolin. Asoro Martinez, a young woman found dead at the beginning of last week. At the facilities of the National Autonomous University in Mexico, the group says the young woman received what she wanted.

Speaker

Yeah.

Speaker 2: Women at University, City of the good and officiating action that illustrates, are discussed for modern human being. Maybe you think that a person stumbling around in the Don Alice high on drugs, chemicals that they took is will be keeping their life? We think not. That’s why she received what she wanted. What she probably desired state of the extremist group. And. All members of its they continue completely repeating 8 devices among human we flat out rejected discussing the versions. We hate those with little or a lot of money like live. Alter the need to alter their symptoms. These people are a race of air. They are rubbish and trash. Will they be living on men? They’re the same virus that infects people. The earth. That is why they deserve exclusion. No. It’s ******* great. And this is, uh, editorial and and that was posted on the tossa that kind of. I guess editorializes it’s more how how disgusting it is. It’s kind of these editorials responding to sort of this murder sparked massive protests across Mexico amongst students and women kind of. To uh protest the uh. I guess. Systemic violence against women.

Speaker 4: And also the response to this particular. Murder. Because I, you know, interestingly or like hellingly, the I believe it was the administration at UNAM but it could have been a chief of police. I can’t remember exactly. Now came out with us. A watered down version of what ITS is saying when the murder happened. They’re basically like, what do you expect if you’re a woman and walking around in the middle of the night on drugs?

Speaker 5: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 4: You know, maybe has like a no good boyfriend like. Of course, this person. Like lost their life. Like sort of what you expect. And and that was was part of the catalyst for the the huge backlash and the.

Speaker 3: Uh.

Speaker 4: See my math and. Campaign or whatever you call it the. The protests and the the discourse on. All the excuses that people have for femicide and how big of a problem it is in Mexico.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Uhm. Yeah, this editorial goes on and says how repugnant to see all those feminists protesting against a, quote, UN quote feminist side in the middle of one of the cradles of progress that is that you see, they fill their ******* mouths with vicious speeches about equality and equity. We ask ourselves where they were when ITS killed a man and chief of services. The chemistry Department in June last year, at the time during protests that all you kept your mouth shut like powers that you are. How’s that for equality? Your speeches look like a drunk man’s vomit. And after he ate out the *****, it was syphilitic.

Speaker 3: Or.

Speaker 2: You stink, and even more disgusting is that irresistible is the pay play the victim? Don’t you realize that this is taking the stance that you’re playing right in hand system? People these days who have the urge to be, quote, UN quote special snowflakes and solve the social problems of the society are helpless. They go on about the same **** that young people 45 years ago about, blah blah blah. So like I mean, one of the argument. One of the arguments that people like Aragorn. And you know. You know, on the brilliant podcast the the the main arguments that they make to try to distance themselves from ITS is like, oh, you know, we’re not, we’re not for their actions or against their actions. We just want to like. You know it’s we think this is. Really important discourse, you know. And my question is like, how is this important discourse? Like, how is this something that we want to give a platform to like this doesn’t seem to be. Furthering any sort of discourse that I think is in any interest of the internists at all. So.

Speaker 6: I don’t know.

Speaker

Right.

Speaker 3: I think it’s important to. Despite that kind of distancing that they’re trying to do, I mean you repeatedly here, at least they’re doing something or like, you know, claims that. The values that ICS exposes. For the goals of the aspirations that have in some way line up with their own, there’s something and and should line up with like what energy is to live for them is something that you would usually do from the kind of night with. Thank you, so proud, especially LBC kind of folks so. I think it’s important. The place because. Extremism, which is like the formal ideology that is or the name that’s been cast around what? What ITS is currently advocating, I think it’s important to like place. It is nearly one peak of a larger kind of like iceberg. That’s interesting. There was a kind of a small milestone anticipated, but I think one thing pretty plainly above them. And they continue to, you know, differentiate themselves from anarchists and really clear ways. But they refused to. I think. Make that fully explicit and as a consequence are trying to disingenuously go on the fractional. With this, with them on the like the terrible thing. To go in. And I think that I think I want to get out kind of at the start better noise about this whole thing is that. There’s this real push. With LBCC and with those kinds of things to kind of like. Deal individualist anarchism or archaism and like, determine what those terms mean and. Take them in pretty much like the most horrific, like with the field absurd them in absurd straw man kind of direction. So they’re like, oh, yeah, that’s totally what we want. Like, they kind of, they want to mutate the, like, the political or ethical individualism that’s always been part of anarchism and then. Strip away like altruism, empathy, love and just kind of turn it into a sociopathy like an interpersonal capitalism kind of thing. Like ******* one, one another over. Start going from the top of the ones happenstance desires in the moment. And and I think it is, yes. Since we understood as a very clear kind of like apex of this and the like, the One Direction of which this compressed the eco extremists are you where they take this kind of in the direction of like a a federalization of warrior culture that’s strongly. Announcement of, well, basically early fascism. And you know, it’s ideological sociopathy in the direction of being like social capitalist, struggling for, well, that’s another direction that things can go is like this social capitalist election. So there’s like two kind of class like 1 is kind of like the, you know, like low kind of like. The score minus any sort of effects and and that’s basically what really fascist free fighting fascism was. And then the second kind of direction that a lot of leftism.

Speaker

In.

Speaker 3: This vein, those are in the in the brother anti milieu goes is is kind of more in the direction of social capitalism. Kind of struggling for social cred. Spending position for the in a very kind of bold open faced kind of way and those are two kind of stuff with this things like like ITS is in the direction of you know like. A violent kind of emotional effect of of an individual experience of violence and a lot of this morning social capitalist social partners. Of like airplanes, crew are like more in a different direction. But I think I think that’s common between both of those is kind of the stripping away of of any sort of like ethics or empathy or like focus upon love within Arianism. I mean explicitly embrace immorality and immorality, whichever those terms of different situations. And I think that leads to kind of both of those directions or opens the door to them. Also, we find an itts and an eco extremists and kind of abstract worship of wildness or nature that is like never clearly defined. So it’s just this, like really weird jumbled associations that like they reach through some personal sequence of growth, but they’re they’re they’re never rigorous about the finding. What exactly it is. And so it’s left to us or like other instances of writers, to fill in the gaps. So yeah, that’s the sort of association of, like, concrete and Gray things with corners are bad. Green growing things are good. Humans are with the Gray. Therefore the the bad kind of like. It’s a really weird like it philosophically makes no kind of sense. It’s just this weird jumble of things, tech cities, reason, science, they’re all kind of cast in together instead of like hello analysis. But you know. Even a lot of the traditional like privacy analysis, those things still. Held on to some kind of some some notion of ethics, and he has not passed me on either side, so even that kind of foundation isn’t there. Now it’s just like everything, you know, like they it’s kind of like a it’s literally of like, I reject everything, **** everything. Everything is terrible. So maybe like wolves pulling a deer in a forest, that’s that’s super ******. That’s cool. That’s what I want to be. So.

Speaker 4: I wonder if any of you have read more, you know, like extensive leader, their recent. Writings or or. At any point, like how they I’m interested in things like how they. Define or like consider. Like things like nature and like, do they have actual philosophical? Positions on any of these things. How do? We support their. Miss empathy, what I’ve read is not very coherent. It’s it’s kind of just like. Little just like. Spurred it out rhetoric that’s really hard to get. Through. Which is probably why I haven’t.

Speaker 3: Right, so I’ve. Read all of the ITS communicators and I’ve read most of the other things that have been attributed to the equal extremism in the. Forms they are not philosophically rigorous to say the ******* least. I mean, they’re kind of infamous for they what? And some of their initial things in like 2011 ITS was like nanotechnology is this greedy well that’s why we need to bomb like you know students at at colleges that are researching how to build better technology because that technology has to be great view. And well, and they had, like, a really terrible analysis and they didn’t really understand what we’re talking about. And so after they started killing some scientists, like scientists, kind of like. Tamely. We’re like, well, we have a critique of what you wrote because it’s completely wrong and I TS has responds hilariously and famously, just basically like. Well, we don’t care that we were wrong about the particulars. Only eggheads would like. Like even if, like the particulars in the actual conclusions are completely wrong, it doesn’t matter at the end of the day, we still know that. You’re like scientists and humanists and. And part of the Enlightenment and modernists and all of that needs to die. And so you’re not gonna trick us with any of your like reasoning and facts and details and coherency. Yeah, I mean it’s it’s a. Pretty absurd. I I feel like it’s worth pulling up the actual because the actual actually was was we’re not like that, but it was still still pretty, pretty extreme. I just hit the bullet on not knowing it, but. There is a fellow named John Jacob Eye who’s like a kid in I think, North Carolina, and he’s like a very kind of tech analytic philosophy kind of oriented person. So he tries to be a little bit more rigorous about this kind of thing. And he has also been. Occupying the eco extremist like kind of ideological space, although he’s been trying to take it in like a pro science direction, I’ve had really long exchanges with him and.

Speaker

Yes.

Speaker 3: Things were gonna be published publicly at some point, and he’s kind of like back out of that because he just can’t respond to certain arguments to the right and. So, but John’s position or Jacobi’s position is. Is an attempt to get more rigorous about what is meant by wildness, by nature, as opposed to like human artifice. And I mean part of the reason why he doesn’t have ******* response to me or any of the other people who critique him really, is that it. That’s an absurd kind of. Distinction that it’s really hard to. Back up, I mean so. I I mean if you would just like steel mantle shut out of this argument. It’s kind of like made a cognition itself or, you know, thinking about thinking or symbolic thoughts, culture or the kind of like more abstract native processes that humans are involved in. Those things are bad because they move faster. And this is Jacob, because Jacob is trying to make like a more rigorous argument than. Then I tested them for shift about rearranging our actual argumentation. So Jacob’s argument is more that like, you know, our thinking exceeds our. So we you know the complexities of our thought, they spin out of control and we will come up with we will be able to make leaps ahead of what. Evolutionary pressures we’re able to accomplish so. Pretty standard like Alt right argument that like cultural Revolution, proceeds at a certain pace and that people who try to make revolutionary or radical jumps forward in terms of or in in any direction we don’t believe in some sort of objective forward progress. We try to make jumps. They’re too rapid or that involve too many complex. Calculations. You’re going to get those calculations long because reality is more complicated than that, and so you will just for your society, you will destroy everything will go wrong as it will. You know, the world or whatever you value will go terribly wrong if you don’t do things on. Like a generation. Basis this is the reason why this is weak. The reactionaries who are due to get back to that, we need to get back to the societies that work for thousands of years, each worker or whatever, and also the the argument behind getting that 100. Or whatever ship. I’m talking welcome. I think I should also briefly note in passing, but I yes, because they’re more like since it’s be oriented, they totally bite the bullet on hunter gatherer or pre civil societies being actually really horrible. They were like, yeah, they were right on the tooth and claw. And like, lots of people died from do their deaths. Like all the ******* time. Because life is actually kind of terrible and or humans are kind of terrible and like the only real freedom or the real wildness is, like, you know, taking a club to another school. Anyway, so they’re they’re explicit about. That I think that’s important to.

Speaker 5: I sort of. I sort of get the impression that they no longer really care very much about that. Rhetoric, though, I mean obviously they’re still to some degree supporting that idea, but they. You 2 have moved away from caring so much about primitivism or the wild, and now it’s more like. Just humans or plague? And. They need to be eradicated. No real. I mean, we can infer that they’re doing it in some sort of. Continuation of their beliefs about. Wildness or nature or whatever, but. The the claims that they’re making about killing the couple and this girl and and leaving that. Letter bomb. And then people to find. Seems to be that, uh, you know, they no longer have any interest in rhetoric really at all or justifications. And they’ve just sort of like stepped entirely into the like. You know humans are. Humans are the. The primary evil and you know.

Speaker 4: Well, I think.

Speaker 3: They still have interest in, like, emotional justifications. I think that they’ve lost interest in trying to make like rational justifications rather explicitly. They’re opposed to to reason Internationality so I mean.

Speaker 5: Sure.

Speaker 3: Yeah, go ahead.

Speaker 5: Emotional justifications on what level? I guess I’m. Curious where you see that.

Speaker 6: Yeah, so finding.

Speaker 3: Ways to have emotional affect that resonates with people. I mean, they’re they wouldn’t be writing communicates. They just be if, if you really wanted to, like murder people and be efficient at it and just like, you know, whatever you go out with your machete and just, like, kill random people. And not brag about it. You wouldn’t feel the ******* need to go out and, like, write ******* communicates. And even if you’re using it on for whatever and you have all the good security. For your ******* your ability to transmit this new is just even making the communique puts you at more risk and like. And peril is your capacity to murder more people. So, like the very fact that they like, feel obligated to make these communicates and to, like, do their posturing and do their bragging or whatever, and also have all this like, you know. Fluffy, you know poetic rhetoric about ****. That I think shows that they’re trying to. To. Like rebuffed or their own kind of like commitment to the terrible. ***********. They’ve got themselves into right. Like if you are some like green anarchist. Like whatever punk like 10 years ago and you get, like, partially radicalized by anarchism, like a really limited way where somebody, like gives you, like, you know. Like a couple of pieces of anarchism says, like, you know. Oh, did you know that the state is oppressive? Did you know that, like, ecocide is happening right now? Did you know, like, a couple of these things also? Hey, these are things that are like bad to you and you personally kind of saying and then, you know, they never get any of the actual substantive components of, like, you know, abolishing power relations kind of component of anarchism. And how that like innately means like empathy and engagement with other people. Whatever. And that doesn’t. Being like not being antisocial or like individualistic, you can just ******* just being altruistic, right, while still being a stubborn individuals. But anyway. So you know there autism gets cheapen from from liberate everyone to attack everything. They go destroy them. Bumper sticker kind of anarchism. And you know, not neither ruling nor ruled never sets in or deals with them, and they continue trucking along. And they have the kind of, like, rhetorical ratchet effect where they’re feedbacking on one another and being like, Oh yeah, I’m more radical than you like. Yeah. Ohh, yeah. I I reject this as well. I’m totally, you know, it’s. The thing that binds them doesn’t become.

Speaker 5: Like.

Speaker 3: A caring about people or caring about minds or anything it becomes, it becomes like an emotional state that is being fetishized and is being worshipped as like the common point of solidarity between them, between them between you know the the individual and their friends or whatever in that situation like that, we all bond over thinking that everybody. Sucks and you know the world is a terrible place and and ****, **** everyone and. And they just kind of like find new ways to state that to one another and new ways to state that to themselves. And then at some point, they encounter real anarchists. And they’re like, holy ****. Well, we’re nothing like you. **** you guys, and they go even further to differentiate themselves and the rushing effect just runs out of control. Like it’s it’s not. And once you’ve murdered people like you’re, you’re not going to, like, pack that up and go home for, like, a very conventional life.

Speaker 6: OK, I think I think though.

Speaker 5: One of the points that where. Not well. OK, one of the one of the things that I feel about what I’m reading from them is not the. Demonstrative of trying to communicate this emotional collaboration, but rather speaking closer to the modern sort of like. Edgy. Hate everything. Descent into madness vibes that I get from. You know, a lot of the Internet, really. And it’s not. It’s a it seems like a pretty popular thing. Obviously, I think that like. Most people wants to have some sort of emotional validation for their actions and that. They probably do too, but it. I don’t know that claiming these murders isn’t just for shock value, and it seems very like GOON. You know, yeah. It’s not. It’s not really. You know, they’re they’re not coming out and saying we need to do this because, you know, it’s good for anything, really. It’s they’re just saying humans are bad, they’re filth.

Speaker 3: I don’t know. I don’t. I don’t. I don’t see the emotional appeal in that well, I mean, because you’re a decent human being, right? But but if the emotional appeal is, there is something to be said to, like the emotional effect of, like, law conflict. And adrenaline and sociopathic kind of domination of other people like that is addictive, like empirically people like that. That they. Enjoy the feeling of sadism they enjoy. The feeling, like certain people or certain directions. People can get locked into it. There is a kind of emotional positive reaction that people or positive effect that people build with that kind of thing. And I think that like if that is for some people, their notion of what liberty is or what. Like freedom is, and I think it’s interesting that they use the term law. Gold instead of freedom, which I kind of want to thank them for because, you know, obviously what they’re advocating is is like this that, you know, this, this fight of everyone against everyone else or this kind of, you know, don’t care about people or don’t care about people that you don’t know, like, horrible nihilism is obviously not coherently reconcilable, cannibalism. That is obviously a lot of freedom, but that’s obviously not freedom. That’s obviously not liberation, but they still, I think for a lot of people, what freedom or liberty means to them is something kind of like that kind of release from. Uh, some? The the the self constraint that dominates the most today cause most people you know are not motivated by empathy or compassion for other people. Most people don’t do good or don’t like, avoid murdering other people because they like actually give a ****. Most people in this world do that because they are in some sense like actually indoctrinated with like a cop in their head that just tells them not to for some arbitrary reason. Or because they’re like afraid of ramifications for that, they’re they’re afraid that somebody will come down on them if they do, like, just slip someone slits on the bus. And so there’s a lot. Of people who. Feel, you know they enter commune. So rules man. Yeah.

Speaker 4: Wait, can I just? I just wanna. For the record state that I don’t agree with that perspective on humanity. Just so that.

Speaker 2: Hey. Hey.

Speaker 4: You don’t roll into a a group opinion. On that.

Speaker 3: No, no, no, no, it’s good. I I’m sure there’s quite a lots of **** to do and just be and I have a very dark perspective of humans in general, which is also one of the reasons why I’m anarchist, right. Which is not to say that I. Hate humans. I think that humanity is pretty horrible. On the whole, it’s pretty. So if you’re passing on the. Most people are not motivated by compassion for what another and most people. The reason why? This whole analysis thing I think has like really caught on with a lot of people, like people like somehow ITS argues that like with their their justification for bombing and Children’s Hospital or children hospital charity and then and then the children hospital. Was. Was that, you know, they wanted to prove to the world that they’re not enslaved by the the the, by morality, by ethics, which is, you know, only something inside of their mind that could, like occur through, like, indoctrination through ideological indoctrination. There’s no reason anyone would care about somebody that you don’t personally know. You’re not personally connected to, unless that was like. A brainwashing process, right? And a lot of people read that kind of ****. They’re like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Makes sense to me. That’s always my personal perspective. Something that my always my experience. So we can argue over what percentage of humanity, what percentage of people that is in Gen. Role or have that kind of perspective on things, or to what degree they show that perspective? I have a negative view on that, but I I don’t think that we can argue or I do. I don’t, I don’t think that it’s that it’s. I think it’s pretty objective that there are at least some people who have that respect, which is what I was trying to say on the emotional kind of effect that people have around or.

Speaker 5: Emotional violence or liberation? Yeah. So this conflux of the world are emotionally bound to this. ITS uh, cry for attention. Through shock value. All right. Yeah, I agree with that. Yeah, all that level. But I, I mean, I also think that like. I you know it is. You know it has been called into question whether or not they actually have done the things that they’re claiming. And you know, I think that it it’s relevant to point out, at least to me, when I first read it.

Speaker 3: Sure.

Speaker 5: I thought I was certain that they were lying, not necessarily about having done it, but about the reasoning behind it. Because it just doesn’t add up. So I think that you know. Like the communiques in some way or another seem to be wise. Whether they did it and their reasons were secret and they’re not actually telling us the reasons or they didn’t do it and they’re just claiming somebody else’s. You know, horrible acts. I don’t really know, but I certainly don’t think that they are being honest about their motivations and the actions.

Speaker 3: I I I disagree with that. I do think that I, I mean it’s it’s totally open as to whether or not they did certain things. There’s people that have talked from Mexico City about some of the actions that they’ve done and because people really hate them like you seen down there from all accounts.

Speaker 5: Sure. I’m not saying they’ve done nothing right, I’m saying.

Speaker 3: Like you really.

Speaker 5: These recent murders, I guess, and. Things I’m talking about.

Speaker 3: I don’t. I mean, who knows but? But I do think that they actually like, think they fit, that they’re saying like, because I think kind of these arguments from people quite sincere, like the things that that ITS argues that LBC, whatever that Andy said nihilist folks in general are like well you know you can disagree with their actions but. But obviously their ideas are pretty valid and like at the mainstream of anarchism, and we should be having this discourse kind of thing. Those people. There’s plenty of people who argue for that ****, like all the *******. Like the, I like, you know, I encounter plenty of of of ancient nihilists of various stripes. Who who are you for? For almost literally every point by point that that has made in the past. So that has made any ideas communicates. I mean and it maybe it’s worth rolling through those specifically like you know that there’s such a thing as as wildness or nature and humans are in conflict with that, which obviously is not blocking true. It’s a weird Stephen bundle associations that there’s that indigenous perspectives are equally as valid as science, which is like a big thing that a bunch of the any signals folks have tried to flee in the direction of. More recently. Which is obviously just ******* liberal, like, you know, politics and moralizing against the privileging, any perspective over another perspective. And it’s ridiculous that they’re using that for their own. Respective or to that to their own justified self justification. But I know plenty of people who make that argument quite sincerely.

Speaker 5: But I want to I want to point out that I’m not saying that I I don’t necessarily think that they believe the things that they’re saying, what I’m what I’m arguing here is that I think that.

Speaker 1: OK.

Speaker 5: They it they can believe it, like I’ve met plenty of people that are. Misanthropes, at least according to their rhetoric, right. But I don’t think that they are actually acting on those claims in the way that they are claiming, if that makes sense. It what doesn’t make sense to me is that if they actually just hate humanity and want to kill everybody that they’re targeting a couple of random people. Right. It’s, it’s. Quantitatively, it doesn’t make sense to me right? Like. You know, I don’t want to give them any ideas, so I’m not going to list the things that they could. Be doing but like. These random few killings doesn’t add up to I hate humanity, and that’s sort of the big thing that leads me to say like. Maybe they believe these things that they’re saying I’m not going to call that in question. I don’t know the individuals or whatever. But like, I think that their communications are lies in some respects. It just doesn’t add up.

Speaker 3: Uh well, never underestimate how just ******* stupid they could be, right? I mean it. I mean, sure. Like, there’s a lot of things they could do if they wanted to kill. Like, I think they mentioned like 200 million people in your local bio region or something that they like supported murdering. Right. Like if they wanted to do that, they could, like, find ways to attack nuclear power plants they could find. Ways to to do different things right to spread pollution, to do other sorts of like. Yeah. To have to to. To have catastrophic effects upon people’s survival, livelihood. But let’s not underestimate the fact that, like, it’s really easy to stab a girl who’s high on drugs, right? And it’s really ******* hard or it’s a little bit ******* harder to like, actually, like infrastructure and actually murder like. Hundreds of millions of. People. So I I I you know. Just because of society doesn’t.

Speaker 5: Yeah, it says.

Speaker 3: Mean they’re not, like complete idiots, right? You know.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean, there might be idiots, but you know.

Speaker 6: And.

Speaker 5: I. Think hundreds of 1,000,001 is a large range, right? Like. And.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but I I. Get the question from a lot of the the writings and stuff that they’re at least they state that they’re. They’re not trying to like bring about any sort of social change like they they don’t really have any goals, they just view themselves, they their actions. As like a. Visceral reaction to civilization. It’s just like this. But. It’s not. It’s not like a strategic. Endeavor it’s it’s just, it’s just the visceral reaction. It’s not they they don’t have any goals that their goal isn’t to bring it down the civilization. The goal isn’t to. Create any sort of like social revolution. In fact, they explicitly reject that. It’s just about like I’m just reacting, reacting. To the situation around me and there’s no strategy for that.

Speaker 3: And that’s a really good point. Like they it it, they really explicitly make clear the emotional immediatism that they. Can see that is. Like the core of their ideology.

Speaker 4: It’s it’s like what strikes more fear, a strategic attack that you can conceptualize and find ways to bottleneck or just like random out. Like lashing out like, I think that that has this effect of like you don’t know who’s going to be next and you don’t know why and you don’t know where. But like. This group is going to keep randomly assaulting and killing people, and that’s like a chilling. Ideas. I think for a lot of people.

Speaker 5: Suppose although the uh, from what I recall, the attack on the couple was. Attack of opportunity based on them waiting for. People to be illegally logging or something like that. So they were trying to put into effect some sort of tactic or strategy. Uh. At least according to that claim.

Speaker 3: Well, you know, it’s it’s true that I. Don’t know how much coherence we can really expect from people whose like are explicitly opposed to France, right? So.

Speaker 5: Sure. I mean, obviously they’re incoherent. Umm, so you know, maybe it. Yeah, that’s just something about it doesn’t doesn’t seem to ring true to me.

Speaker

MHM.

Speaker 5: And you know, I think that for that reason, I think that it it makes sense to me that people are like I don’t. Necessarily think that they did these things. It didn’t seem, but I mean, maybe they did. Obviously we can’t know.

Speaker 1: It’s.

Speaker 4: One of those things I think you sort of touched on it a little bit well, but like to me that. Just keeps screaming out. Is this like? Weariness of like long term like. Essentially small scale like guerrilla warfare that like. People who say in these insular groups. Like live in an echo chamber and then can convince himself about just about anything.

Speaker

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: And and it’s an. It’s an interesting thing, at least to me to think about, because in in other ways I see that kind of like. Strategy as being like pretty effective you know in. Some of the. Other iterations that you see of it. Like. You know, here, like, revolutionary struggle A is a is a kind of an. You know, maybe has tactical similarity, but. I really like. Different look at Affinity Group. Uh. Action or, you know the PKK? But yeah that this. That this strategy in the long term often seems to end up with people being really far removed from the movements that they started out being supported by and then like. Either. You know, crumbling in on themselves or just like. Losing all coherence, and that’s part of what I. And sensing here, you know, we know that these people started out as anarchists, but now we’re looking down 10 years of. This kind of. You know, lifestyle and tactic of.

Speaker 1: Well, I don’t know if.

Speaker 5: They started out this years. It’s anarchist, right? Like I mean.

Speaker

6. Well.

Speaker 4: I’m pretty sure I’m pretty pretty.

Speaker 3: I I think that they have it. I mean, they may have self identified as anarchist at some point. I’m not sure I’m willing to concede the fact that they were ever at this to begin with, kind of more important to them trying to make.

Speaker 5: Nobody said this button. That’s true.

Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah, sure. Whatever. If we’re going to talk about who I actually think is an anarchist versus who’s self identifying like that’s going to be a really bad.

Speaker 5: Well, sure, but I’ll do the next. Next there.

Speaker 3: They’re they’re they’re still like, there are still, like, outer peripheral kind of things that we completely exclude, right? Like national anarchists, not anarchists, right. Like everyone should be pretty. Like on the same page with that. And one of the interesting things about it that we haven’t brought up yet is actually that and they. I think made this clear. Themselves that they actually have a lot of affinity with national anarchists. And they’re, I mean, they’re explicit. Ideology is like basically one of national anarchism. Nationalism in the sense of like tribal. But you know a return to like, you know. Only caring about people that you know or that like are connected to you or that like you know, you share that whatever with in in like some immediate sense and not caring about people beyond that like in Group is very core to what ITS has argued before in the past and that’s like the fundamental precept of national anarchism. So I mean like the fact that they’re using all white language and that kind of thing like. They. I I think that there is something to be said for the fact that they don’t fall under the definition of anarchist for like insofar as we. Are to have. Any sort of umbrella or for definition of anarchism that makes any sort of coherent sense whatsoever, has any sort of boundaries. If you if it’s strong enough to kick out national anarchist, which I think obviously any definition of anarchism. To me, I think it would also kick out ITS. Even back when they were calling themselves anarchists.

Speaker 4: Perhaps. Yeah. I can’t even. I can’t really recall the 1^st. Actions, so I’m going based off of what I recall as like a a self identity and without an ideology that was.

Speaker

MHM.

Speaker 4: Like Super strongly professed, I just sort of. Accepted it but.

Speaker

Yeah.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I don’t even one of the. Yeah, I believe in one of their earlier earlier communities, they explicitly or pretty explicitly identified as with initial communism. That makes sense. If you did that pretty strongly.

Speaker 4: I did. Yeah.

Speaker

So.

Speaker 3: Carriers bring up an interesting point when you. Were talking about. About people who go off and do this kind of like cell based struggle or in structuring struggle or revolutionary struggle or whatever off on their own. And I think it’s a really valid point in there about. When you get distanced from the movement that you originally supported, the original supported you and what that leads into. But I think there’s also. An interesting point there of going back to kind of what ITS says themselves and what or what defenders of IDs bring up all the time, which is they say like oh, you know, obviously they try to make the the slight of hand where they pretend as though ITS is values are like remotely. Pale in anarchist circles and that not something that we shouldn’t just like absolutely condemn. And this is like the absolute opposite of anarchism. But they also claim that like Oh well, you know, if you want a revolution and then you’re gonna and you’re going to necessarily you necessarily support the murder of collateral. People in collateral damage of like people whose you know are being picked up by an ambulance and that ambulance doesn’t manage to make it to the hospital or like you shoot a politician. But like that politics, etcetera, that there’s always going to be collateral damage inside of a revolution. And that’s the only consistent position you can. And they’re going and folks on the billing make this argument too. Like somehow without, like dying from shame of making this argument, they claim, like, if you’re if you’re if you’re a pacifist, then you can critique ITS. But if you’re not a pacifist, if if you don’t go with the full on pacifism, then you’re basically the same thing as it’s they’re just being more coherent about it. Or more open about it. And I think that’s absolutely absurd. But I think it’s a point that comes up with heatedly in this conversation.

Speaker 5: I mean, I suppose if your aim is to destroy humanity or just harm people because you hate humanity, then. I don’t know why you would be a pacifist and hold. That believe but. It seems pretty absurd to me to say that you, as a militant, are by default as bad as ITS. If your aims are wildly different, right values are like a really important component that we’re listing or that like they always try to obscure away.

Speaker 3: In a very underhanded kind of way, or the defenders of ideas do, but I think also there’s this kind of, like, very kind of mainstream. Shallow analysis of ethics and the nihilist circles analyst discourse right now, anachrome nihilistic, whatever. Ship is obviously most nihilist and identifies anarchist or we’re not involved in this movement, but it it’s this kind of notion where like it reduces what ethics and morality are supposed to be talking about down to like these absolute. Roman and carpenters. And so like you know, OK, well, we reject that. Therefore, we reject anything that might look like ethics or morality in some abstract sense, because they’re exactly the same thing. Right. Specifically, they will like often say that you know that they’re just like some. Yeah, they essentially characterize them as like the ontology right as the as ethics, morality. It’s like strict rules about or conditions about, like the actions that you take. And they don’t place them in terms of like goals or desires, which would be like a consequential suffix. So for them, like ethics, reality only. Yeah, obviously. I’m. I’m still consequentially.

Speaker 6: Yeah. Hello.

Speaker

But the point?

Speaker 3: But the point is, is that like, you know, even consequentially, you’re not the only contenders. And and what ethics is and what.

Speaker 4: Sure.

Speaker 3: People, even common people, use ethics to mean.

Speaker 4: I just want to say something quick, which is that I think that it’s more than. Nihilists who claim that. Like we should move away from ethics like, I think it’s a pretty popular belief. Among anarchists that, like rationality isn’t useful to us or is patriarchal, or is wrong, or whatever we you know. Most people. Let. Get past that point, but it is something that I hear a lot and I feel like this is a really good cautionary tale of like, what’s the possible worst that could happen if you actually think that there’s no like that, that that we should move away from rationality. I kind of want to be like, well, ITS is kind of.

Speaker 3: I also think that like.

Speaker 4: About that thing.

Speaker 3: Those critiques of. Ethics. Yeah, I think they’re really common in. Radical discourse these days. But they really actually like became common post 2008 when NBC started like pushing their books out really heavily and started pushing their line and trying to normalize it and enter the circles. Like there’s lots of people who now, I guess, been around for almost 10 years, who consider like. Them to be like a mainstream. Thing and I TS to be like a mainstream thing. And just like at the core of anarchism and that like, who would possibly have a problem with those kinds of things? I think that normalization like thatching effect that we’ve seen over the last. Like decade, I guess. Oh God, I can’t believe it’s. A decade because to me I have a really like, I’ve just kind of like dismissively, like talk. **** on it. Out of hand. Because the idea of treating it seriously is just so absurd because I I don’t, I don’t. They’re always like the feminist critiques of rationality. Rationality is patriarchal or whatever. And like the ****** count continental philosophy post modern ship. Has always kind of been around, but I feel like the severity at which those. Perspectives are now leveraged and radical discourses right. All spaces is like. A relatively new thing.

Speaker 5: I I would like to juxtapose the. Well, I’m a strong believer in ethics. I still think that. Even if I. Wasn’t a strong believer in ethics. I could still have practical aims that are self-serving. That don’t involve the murder of all humanity. You know, like I I don’t want to live in a world where humanity is. Murdered every day. You know, that doesn’t sound esthetically feeling, you know.

Speaker 6: Like.

Speaker 5: And I guess you know, some people make an argument that aesthetics and ethics are marriable, so maybe that’s an ethic I don’t know, but it just doesn’t sound appealing to me, I guess. And I think that there are a lot of people that can have. A practical goals. That you know aren’t working. Within an ethical framework, necessarily, or that they admit and aspire towards just wanting. Tragedy.

Speaker 3: Sure, there’s a there’s a real big difference between, like, worse than Hitler. And just like average generic, like apolitical, unethical, like random, like egoist dude.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 2: But there’s like this. Weird moralism that is like a theme of especially a lot of the more recent ITS communications of like you know everyone is guilty of eco side and everyone is culpable. And like I don’t know a lot of especially, you know like the anti drug rather like and stuff. I mean it just reminds me of old like straight edge like hardline. Looking like ******** lyrics, it’s it’s really like Earth crisis lyrics or something like just this hyper moralism but. It’s also this weird like over anti rational anti. You don’t care about ethics and mills, but we lose like this weird moralizing to it all. I don’t know. It’s it’s really confusing.

Speaker 5: Right. Because if they were rational, they would realize the contradiction and spouting moralities that they also don’t believe in.

Speaker 2: Yeah. Yeah.

Speaker 3: You ******* egghead for bringing it up. Like, actually, that’s one of the weird things. Is that like, I mean, it’s not that weird that ITS and their reactionary politics are now basically like. Copying the language of the Alt right or of neoreactionaries right and then the interesting things just watching the near reactionary movement which originally. Early on, had like some ties to the Transformers movement. Then like diverge really hostilely around 2012, we may realize that like, oh, technology could liberate like layers and could, like, let people live in sort of weird ways that we don’t want them to live, alright. Well, then we need to collapse the civilization. Because it was interesting, I like some of these.

Speaker 5: Like.

Speaker 3: Early neo Nazi. All right, folks. Like before the Trump era kind of thing like found that I was a thing and so. They sent me that. That’s for like a week. And one weekend in particular was particularly strong of it. And what was interesting is like. A lot of their threats were. Like argue from a very like almost explicitly like very ITS kind of perspective like they were like the civilization will collapse and the real alpha men will rule his warriors, and you cucks will be driven. I mean, they weren’t using cuts back at this point, but you know, the same sort of analysis will be driven before us as we steal your women. Whatever. And like murder, which is the only real etcetera. Like there was a bunch of, like, utter ridiculous edgelord ********. But it was really fascinating. You know, I go back and I do some research on the people who were fighting my life and find, like, their social media profiles or whatever, and a lot of them had, like, survivalists, but also like, primitivist things that they were like repeating. And I mean we we should probably do like a whole episode upon, like the intersections and tensions and and conflicts and things about that, those kinds of concepts and the, you know the various. Creep and and and and resistance and whatever within those spaces but but it it is fascinating to me that like its is like just outright saying like outright repeating alt right terminology now.

Speaker 2: I guess it’s not that surprising, but.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Once they were kneecapping scientists I just like. I couldn’t see any way to go but right.

Speaker 5: I mean, if anything, I think that they are trying to appeal to, you know, the shock value. But is popular, has been popular in 4 Chan and whatnot, and you know 4 Chan is a big. Uh, I I don’t know if it’s. Like the biggest on the Internet, but it is. It’s one of the biggest breeding grounds of all, right. Nonsense. And I think that like, you know, if you. If you’ve already gone this far. You really want to appeal? Say you know anybody, then your best bet is to appeal to people that don’t give a **** about anything. And that would be that 4 Chan shock value. Crowd.

Speaker 3: I mean I I. I would be surprised if I TS it’s 4 Chan or was like directly connected to it, but I definitely. Agree that there’s like a. Lot of. Millions of people that have that kind of policy or that kind of stance on life or like perspective and that they’re they’re maybe finding greater affinity with those people than otherwise.

Speaker

No.

Speaker 3: And you, you see this a lot in in a news comment section, sort of ****. People, it becomes more and more common. We’re like we’re. Just outright saying on anarchistnews.org that like. Like that, the old like is the cool, like modern rebels, right? That the old light is the new punk rock. And I’ll openly say this, like, not mockingly, but like admiringly and like the comment sections there, which is kind of horrific and whatever your critiques of social justice Jesus Christ.

Speaker 2: Yeah, right. I miss the old ladies.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I like somehow. It’s becoming like.

Speaker 3: Sucking sound, ******?

Speaker 4: Like just some, like, completely nihilistic right wing buffoonery. Like I missed the transition. And I understand that anarchists have largely abandoned, except for a few folks who talk in this podcast. I don’t think any other interests ever look at it.

Speaker

Mm-hmm.

Speaker 4: But it’s really and I like hearing you guys tell me. About it, cause I like don’t. Uh. I don’t go there anymore. No. It’s kind of hard to imagine. It’s like we lost Portland Indian media to the 9/11 truthers and then the anarchist news becomes eco fascists. I’m just like. What’s up? What’s up next?

Speaker 3: Friday.

Speaker 5: Just ****. That’s all the Internet has now.

Speaker 3: I mean, I would. Be much happier of aiming for just **** and not actually alright roles.

Speaker 4: Way more into that.

Speaker 1: Hey.

Speaker 4: Agreed.

Speaker 6: Well, so there, there is kind of.

Speaker 3: I mean, I’ve talked a lot in this, but I. There was another thing. That I really is is important to me about this whole. Thing which is. I really hate the fact that. That folks have been kind of successful in Repolarizing or redetermining what people think of. As host, left or individual sarcasm, and the reason it’s a lot of a valid critiques are things that I think are valid. Obviously people in this podcast will disagree with me on different things have been seized or appropriated by. Like ****** and he said. Now let’s kind of ship eggs and and and the way that they clean those things as as like. As as they’re the as the as though they’re the only representatives of those sort of critiques. Or the only. The only path you can go down if you have those critiques, I think that there’s kind of like this. This, like real Martin Bailey fallacy. Do you folks know what the Martin Daily fallacy? Is should I go over that? It’s it’s the idea that like you have like. An argument that’s really easily defendable, but you also have, like a broader argument that you actually want to defend. So you say a bunch of things that. Like. Essentially, argue the actual you want to defend, but you give yourself like slippery wiggle room on it, so that when somebody attacks you on that, you retreat back to the inner argument that you really want to defend. Or to the. Argument that you don’t want to defend, but it’s really easily defendable. So. One example would be like culture shapes our experiences. That is a. Perfectly valid argument. Hardly anyone to be able to really argue against that, but people can use that to kind of transmit it to the cultural knowledge as just as it’s just as valid as Scientific Knowledge Inc in Eclipse, scientific knowledge or over little scientific knowledge. You behave and argue as though the less defendable belief is true, but you only really have to explicitly defend the more defendable, less extreme belief. So like I have that criticism of Israel shares as a shield for actually being anti-Semitic, I think it’s important to.

Speaker 5: That the policy perfectly.

Speaker

That’s.

Speaker 5: Post left identity.

Speaker 3: Well, I think that I think that it’s at play a lot in the ways that a lot of the post left or a lot of the nihilist crew have appropriated. Kind of arguments are stolen for themselves so. And and this comes into play in the way that ITS I think functions in their own ideology. So like. You have this valid critique of nationalism, and then it values those as being the in Group over the out group. That’s about 50 national, so that’s totally bad. But then somehow like this nation and we, we recognize this is about and somehow this like gets detached from this actual justifications. And gets swirled and gets swirled around, and suddenly nationalism is a bad thing. Gets continued, but then people. Flip the script and say that like internationalism, means only caring about your tribe because nationalism is the thing that’s wrong with nationalism, is about caring about. Too large of its tribe. And then you poke. Them really hard on it and then what they flip around to is like arguing about why war is bad and why, like, not caring about people you don’t know are bad, but then they slip right back to the to the, to the argument they’re actually trying to defend, which is ultimately, if on the nationalism that kind of tribal nationalism. And so that’s, I think, very specific what happens with the National Archives, but also with, like, IPS’s defense of the same sort of thing. The indigenous nationalism oftentimes gets brought up inside like two different things like this very well. We’ve been indigenous nationalism, we just mean blah blah. But then like 5 seconds later you get like this guy like fence, right? Right. Hard. I think he is like a national anarchist. But like, you know, is also a Native American. And he uses that to defend all kinds of horrific. Things because like. Patrick is just part of my culture and. Then you need to see that. Whatever. And so. So I I feel like that’s kind of the same direction that the broader defense. Of ITS that’s been made by LBC or by folks in that kind of like. And he said that was really have have been making like I you know, I think that the critique of organizational and focus on individual agency and you know rather than like subsuming us and oversimplifying spoofs or abstractions that. Are disconnected or not rooted? I agree that’s. Like a totally. The critique. But then 5 seconds later, the slides into like and so therefore, like, don’t care about anyone besides, like maybe your immediate friends or, you know, have any sort of concrete rooted but scientific analysis, whatever, because those things are Spooks too. And like that, you know, that argument is much harder to make, and they don’t, actually, they can’t actually make that argument if you press them on it. But they they use the kind of modern daily thing to slide back and forth from that and to claim that therefore, you know, post leftism means being hostile to. Means being hostile to to, to science, to humanity, etcetera. Obviously, humanity can be a problematic motion, right? You know, there’s the inside of humanity. The outside of humanity. What is? Is a dolphin? A thinking. Staging being that we should care about. Obviously somebody who is the Cyborg or something else like that they may no longer qualify as a formal human. But, you know, I think we should still care about in their mind. So obviously there are critiques and reasonable critiques to. Be made of humanism. In fact, a lot of really valid critiques ultimately boil down to humanism is just another form of nationalism. And like what is the actually the critique of nationalism? Is the pretty good nationalism caring about people?

Speaker

You.

Speaker 3: Give humanism that I find valid is like that. It doesn’t go far enough in terms of like recognizing, you know sentient minds as like, you know, people or as. Like you know. Ethical agents worthy of respect as dolphins or cyborgs or people with you know, tonight this is something that may not identify with the category of human. Whatever arbitrary ******** category that is.

Speaker 4: Or all the other sentient people that you didn’t.

Speaker 3: Yeah, yeah, sure. I yeah, sure. Yes. My that’s that’s.

Speaker 5: Yeah, that’s a good option. Talk about the animals, Phil.

Speaker 2: That’s exactly what my point is that my.

Speaker 4: It’s not just dolphin.

Speaker 3: My point is that the critique of humanism is not going far enough is. Is is a valid critique? It’s one that I share in, but this gets twisted around by people like ITS who take the kind of like oh, everyone who reads comments. Philosophy already knows that humanism is like this terrible thing that only like. Terrible dumb people, whatever. Possibly support. Or and then twist kind of like what that definition means? Or what is the negative thing about humanism to end up being the positive thing about humanism, the caring about people that you don’t know necessarily part of humanism. So it’s just kind of flip that happens. And when you press them, I mean not like yes, but when you press a lot of people in that. You have that kind of like anti human. Critique in in the eco extremist vein early and he said that was vain. They will oftentimes retreat back to the oh, look, it’s nationalism is so bad because war human is miss so bad because humans domineering other lines is bad and like we can agree with that. But that doesn’t mean that like all humans should be killed it. Doesn’t mean that like you shouldn’t care about any living thing. You should just go around hunting and murdering for sports. Right. Like they’re. Completely different sorts of arguments. But it’s a there’s a clear fish, like fallacious chef. Between the two.

Speaker 2: I guess for me it was just. I just. Wanted to counter the. Sort. Of narrative that like this pro like a lot of I I’ve just been seeing a lot of pro IT stuff or, you know, like free free radical radio has been like doing podcasts where they’re just reading off the 80s or reading. ITS communicates and like I don’t know, I just I think that. Just to counter that narrative, I think is important so.

Speaker 4: And I think it’s good. But I also think that we should keep in mind that. Almost nobody outside of this like tiny milieu of idiots, is like. Seeing, I guess in a positive way that I’m aware of and like for instance, last night I was with a friend from, you know, from Greece, who I was talking to about this. I was like, oh, I’m about to do this podcast on this. And she was just like, I don’t believe you.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 4: She was unfamiliar at ITS, but she was like, that’s not real. There’s no way. And then, like, read some of the stuff and was just like, OK, no way anarchist would ever, like, there’s just there’s just this is just way too outside of. Like our belief? I mean, I don’t know at this point I’m just sort of like that, that, that whole group around. The nihilism in the Bay, they’re they’re like halfway between anarchism and ITS already. Like, they don’t really get a seat.

Speaker 5: I’d say probably.

Speaker 3: I think a lot of them are a. Bit further than halfway I. Mean.

Speaker 4: You. You. Yeah. Maybe. I I’m not as I’m not as entrenched in there. Activities but. They they really don’t. They really don’t seem like anarchists to me either. Maybe self identified, but you know.

Speaker 2: I guess the thing that really.

Speaker 4: It’s all. Like.

Speaker 3: Concerns me about this whole **** is that? The way that they’ve that LBC has kind of waged a propaganda campaign on behalf of that ******** and the way that a lot of new kids come into anarchism.

Speaker

Yeah.

Speaker 3: And don’t really get a good swim foundation and soak up kind of like cause it was always comes with like problematic rhetoric that we adopted opportunistically and given situations like make told the story or things like that and then. Kind of like just like normalize to that ******** or to to ******** that’s derived from those kinds of quick, quick rhetoric that that we that we were using and and there. I mean, like, there’s also some so much like it it’s it’s the kind of. 80s punk. Lord. Thing still continuing on and they all right is totally that, right? Like they’re totally in line with that. The kind of ****** Bob black. I’m just going to offend people and call people the N word and be a ****** ***. And all I value is kind of aesthetics and immediacy, shallow impressions, emotional affectations, coolness points. Personal freedom, not like freedom of all that kind of thing. So I think that that’s always kind of been. Present maybe more so in the North American anarchist new, but it’s concerning to me because it’s getting an ideological footing.

Speaker 5: That.

Speaker 3: Threatens basically the entire anarchist project. I kind of feel like if, if, if that kind of Orwellian use becomes normalized. We’re just fine. So.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I think we’re far away from it actually. Normalizing within anarchism, I think that there’s, you know, there’s always been people in anarchism. That end up being pushed out of anarchism.

Speaker 4: Although it’s totally fine to keep pushing them.

Speaker 5: Yeah. I mean, they’re like.

Speaker 6: I do think that.

Speaker 5: You said they’re already starting to not identify as anarchist, which is good.

Speaker 4: But they do. But then there are still things like LBC, like I know somebody from Tucson who went to go to Oakland to in intern with LBC or something, you know, like some newbish anarchist.

Speaker 5: Plate.

Speaker 4: Who was just like ohh cool.

Speaker

OK.

Speaker 4: And for those kind of people, yeah, it would be. It’s good to to to keep you know. Keep reiterating that that isn’t. And enter his perspective. Right. Right. That’s, you know, a right wing perspective that, you know, creeps into anarchism from time to time. Or coach into the inner the social scene, and then we have to like, vehemently and and voraciously push it out whenever it happens.

Speaker 5: We should wrap it up by remembering that time when somebody called on a news called Will the cuck of North American anarchism.

Episode 5: Post-Leftism, Fascist Creep, and Wolfi

In this episode the hosts discuss post-leftism, an article by Alexander Reid Ross, and some drama around the recent discovery that Wolfi Landstreicher had published through a fascist-aligned publisher. What is the post-left? How widely should we cast that term? Are the clusterfucks often associated with it (Bob Black, Hakim Bey...) more characteristic than other figures or tendencies? Will defends many of his haters, arguing that the post-left provides critical and valuable insights that anarchists must integrate, the other hosts are skeptical. The hosts discuss the particular weaknesses of some flavors of post-leftism to fascist entryism, and the disappointing wagon-circling that has resulted from certain critiques, as well as the weaknessness of those critiques. Do anarchist norms against snitching or collaboration with fascists constitute a form of policing or “boycott politics”? Note that immediately after recording Wolfi released his account which people should also read.

[download mp3]

Horizontal Hostility on #post-left, #Wolfi, #Alexander Reid Ross, #Bob Black, #fascism, #antifa, 30 Jul 2017

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Speaker 1: Noam Chomsky isn’t exactly a relevant anarchist to my book.

Speaker 2: So this is episode 5 of horizontal hostility. On this episode, we’re going to talk about a bunch of drama and some context about the post left an article written by Alexander Ross Fallout and responses to that. The notion of whether the post left has connections or is a point of entryism for the right for fascism and figure. And a recent drama surrounding Wolfie Land Fighters publication of the Translational Stoner through a publisher. With it, it turns out, is pretty flashy, and the responses and context. Of that as well. So First off, I guess we’re. Going to try out. Some sort of notion of what the post. Is there’s many different ways you can define that, but.

Speaker 1: Why don’t you start with defining it OK?

Speaker 3: Sure. Post leftist.

Speaker 2: Right. So. I mean, you can look at the post left as like a sociological phenomenon, talking somebody who identifies strongly with it awhile ago and he was saying that basically he sees it as a moment in time, a discourse or a circle that happened to exist for a very brief period of time and is like. Confined to that moment in that context as a kind of conversation. Obviously lots of people identify as post left Despite that analysis, and typically it’s kind of, ironically enough, like a platform of different. Positions are critiques so. Chief among those is anti organizational. ISM is anti ideology, strong critique of bureaucracy, of mass, strong critique of. Like overly formalized systems of being, you know, in the stern right sense of slave to ones to certain idols or ideas. Spooks. Ice. Whatever you want to say and with that. There’s. People go in different directions so. Post left is a really broad umbrella. There was kind of a core group of people around the journal Anarchy or Anarchy, a Journal of Desire arms and said Joda. And the people there? Laurence Girard. Jason Mcquinn, so other folks, etcetera. Those people were kind of a circle of friends who kind of had, like, a certain amount of social connection with one another and they. Launched. A kind of critique of existing anarchist and fancies as they felt or saw them in the 90s and that kind of took off major people who have been identified with the post left who, who identify themselves as the post left include crime thing and probably the most important book or the most influential. Both in the early aughts, from the post left was anarchy in the age of Dinosaurs, published by First Forge Brigade, which was bunch of anarchists operating mostly, I hear tell out of the Northeast, so geographically separate from the crimping folks, John Zerzan is often. Finas in the same vein, the general Green anarchy was oftentimes associated with post. John’s isn’t explicitly, if I remember correctly, kind of denied that association. He positioned himself as anti left. I think the other article was something like one more push post office. And the another major component of the post left central feature of it kind of backing the name is the notion that anarchists should kick off from the historical coalitions or baggage of the left, and how people define the left is of course, an open question. People define it in different ways, see different things, is deeply enmeshed with it. And there has been historically pretty big diversity of thought among the post left, you get people from, like from our clients and kind of tradition who were more the people that I was in contact with when I. Became like felt more affinity for the post after became. Would you meshed? In that kind of politics and identity. And that politics is more 1 of relational anarchism of or relational anarchy, where interpersonal relationships, the ethics of interpersonal interactions were put under more of the focus. That to me was a really great and stunning and wonderful component of the post left for. Idea of it. And so there were lots of people who in the post leftist wave and the early offs. Identify that and then there are other people who have went more in the right direction and then eventually. Postanypolitics.net and that whole wave. Based on, etcetera, they. Identify more with the kind of or more central, more center of the notion of anti morality or critical morality as their. Politician of this one.

Speaker 4: Well, that’s not. Let’s not forget the the main man whose claims have coined the term. I came across Bob Black’s. Suggestions of what close left inner cause was? I’m more saying this for a joke than anything else, but I feel like he is. He’s suspiciously out of the list of characters.

Speaker 2: So I mean I I can list other characters in this there were. Docking Bay, otherwise known as pure Limbo or Wilson, was associated with the post lab, but to varying degrees very early on their peaks and they were level quite finely from the post left. It was a really great piece and killing King Abacus. In 2001, I think, in which the post leftist writers were attacking him for or attacking Hocking Bay for not this type fillers, but variety. Of other things that we should. About him, but specifically that he was like opening the door to the nationalism, the national anarchism. I mean it’s it’s good for you.

Speaker 4: Right. I feel like you remember who represent the nefarious side of post left, but I still think there were mentioning and I was.

Speaker 2: Yeah. So I mean, Bob, Black, Mesa snitch. There’s a number of other people who associate with that airborne.

Speaker 4: I just think that. It’s. Well, I’m trying to look into like, you know, people who are claiming post less enough to. See like OK Bob. Black. Claims to have coined the term and. Like his tenants of proposals are pretty distinct from yours. They include being. And ambiguously anti political hedonistic and. Not necessarily rejected, but at least suspicious of modern technology and extravagant, extravagant laboratory claim made for it.

Speaker 2: Right.

Speaker 4: So you got post leftist that. It kind of runs the gamut, which is my main problem with it, and it’s meaningful.

Speaker 2: Well, there’s a. There are some things that are that are pretty common across all the different blends, right? So there’s an anti organizational tendency that’s very strong. A critique of ideology and the rigid codification of it. And there is a critique of continuing to be bundled up with the rest of the left. And continuing to kind of carry the dead weight, although different people consider or analyze that in different directions. So Curious George Brigade is probably they’re probably the closest. So my politics in the sense that there were tendencies within that wing of people who identify as the post left that were prescience in some sense, folk science, that had the notions pro technology in some sense. People talk a lot about post save and I’m kind of famous from that framework, which is something I was more positive towards that thing. And you also pure storage brigade is actually the people who wrote this, like spirited defense of the city itself and that cities are a good thing. And so that’s something that came out of the post left post left also. Runs to like in selection. For a long time, insurrectionary anarchism will seem to be like, by definition, a post left thing, at least within North America. And so that’s those are tendencies that are also there. And I don’t think should be eclipsed, although there has been a push. In recent areas by certain people to define the post left entirely in terms of stern right egoism. And nihilism or this modern kind of like hash together notion of mysticism or anarchism, that. I feel it has tried to like sideline or push out of the other forms of post leftism, and what’s really annoying about that is that they tend to assume as though what they can act present themselves as though they have a monopoly on certain fatigues. Critiques of organizational lism critiques of mass critiques of things along those of of the left and. Thus, if you share, if you if you are an individualist, if you have certain analysis. Then then they just sort of like, well, you have to be conscripted with. Us kind of thing. And and that automatically means you have to reject ethics too, because that’s just. Google like you. These other things, and that is the tendency that I. Find very annoying and from, but that’s kind of where I stand with things because I see. The positives of the post leftist being people, organizational ISM, I’ve written several pieces on that critique at the left and a lot of it’s like arbitrariness and baggage. The Walker seeds before returning them etc. And I see this as very valuable. I think that anarchism should stand on its own, not as like part of a. Broader beast that is known as the left. I think that anarchists must say what only anarchists can say. And. I worry, but my notion of anarchism isn’t ethical framework, and so I worry. That a lot of people in recent generations are being presented in a way that is quite negative, at least towards the things that I want to, that I aspire to see change in the world.

Speaker 1: But I also think that you’re you’re talking about things that are posts left that are not really descriptive of anything other than like left anarchism in general. You know entire nationalism. I mean, no, it’s just it’s critique of the platform. You’re going to find the same elements, you know.

Speaker 2: I think something.

Speaker 1: Like there’s nothing.

Speaker 2: It goes much further though.

Unknown Speaker: It goes a.

Speaker 1: Little bit further to some degree, I mean instruction or anarchism was pro affinity groups as an organizational method and that’s. Unique I guess, but it isn’t. Explicitly post left. And I mean, I think that like. The post left thing where anti organizational is like is essentially. You know if if that is true of all post left people then I don’t think that most people who claim to be post left are actually post left because they are actually pro organization in some sense or another. It becomes yet again another nebulous idea of like what an organization is, and it isn’t really. In any sense distinct from. Anarchism broadly in that anarchism has historically been a tendency which is critical of other leftist. Tendencies, right? If that’s where we come out of in general. So post left just seems like it is yet another attempting to schism from a very schismatic left tendency.

Speaker 5: Yes.

Speaker 3: Yeah. And that’s kind of always how I’ve sort of seen a slept anarchism. It’s just like it’s just it’s just taking like traditional ultra left critiques and like putting it under this label of. You know, post leftism, which I guess is fine. I mean, I don’t really care what you call it, but I just. I don’t necessarily see it as anything new or really necessarily. All that you need, I don’t know.

Speaker 2: Well, the word has, I mean the phrase has. It it has an implication that’s very strong, right? It says that and if we should kick off from the rest of the left, should not see ourselves as part of the left, should see should focus on anarchism rather than the left. And that is a frame of mind that’s very different from how. I think a lot of anarchists see themselves.

Speaker 1: But. I mean to utilize that you have to define the left and most post left. Anarchists define that, at least in my experience as what I would define as liberals, who I don’t define this left. And obviously we shouldn’t function within like authoritarian.

Speaker 2: Marxist or liberal paradigms, but like that has always been my anarchist critique. You know, other things along the lines, building a great big union has historically been a tendency that or the great big organization, if that’s the platform.

Speaker 1: Some people who.

Speaker 2: Right. Well, but there’s, you know, like if if like the exact opposite of the post left, I would say is like. From platform as I met from Chile, who came up and like took every single possible like stodgy old left line, feminism leads away to left the revolution. I’m not, you know, I don’t give a crap about people’s interpersonal behavior and or misbehavior as the case is. We all just need to function as. Adjuncts of a broader left. I have my critiques of Marxist Leninist and Stalinist to be good allies have left unity, that kind of thing, and I think that there’s value in having an analysis that says, why do we have anything to do? What we. With people who aren’t anarchist. If your, if your analysis isn’t. Reject power relations if your analysis isn’t like, you know, liberation and abolish like constrained. Abolish. You know, controlling one another. If that’s not your position. If that’s not your desire, then why should we have see ourselves as having any affinity with them and just work with them? And when you talk about organizationalist critiques being present and now testing and things like that, I think that. You radically underestimate the degree to which those critiques were expanded on. At the very least, by post office thinkers. The notion that the that the group that you’re part of sits outside is once it’s like fetishize. Construct that sits outside of us and that we start saving our agency as individuals towards or seeing things less through the lens of methodological individualism and start seeing things more through various feedbacking mechanisms. In in a way. That reinforces certain codified structures, or social organisms. As I think an incredibly important critique. That if it isn’t given full throated defense and a specific explicit position, we’ll wither on the vine just because there’s so much like generic leftism, like filtering into anarchism at all points. Because of how we recruit.

Speaker 1: But OK, so I mean and obviously we’re getting some of this later, but I think that. At the same time, some of the people that identify themselves as post left are far worse than traditional Marxists and start, like, you know, being able to be like I’m post left. Honestly, I would far rather be like willing to work with Marxist than amoralist. I think that there is. At least some common foundation where I can find none with somebody who just is unwilling to be critiqued.

Speaker 2: Well, it’s interesting.

Speaker 1: And so.

Speaker 2: It’s interesting, we can trust moral anti moralism or anti moralist and Marxist because in my mind kind of the the critical distinction between and this is where brands from a lot of the people who are the most loud as members of the post up these days and.

Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 2: Whatever. But for me, the defining characteristic of Marxism is the fact that it is a political analysis rather than an ethical analysis. And so, so many Marxists ultimately are themselves amoral or don’t believe in ethics, don’t want to see things within that line. Within that lens. And that’s why you see actually increasingly with those younger generation that has come down or has increased social media, a certain amount of hybridization between like outright tankies and like nihilists where both sides are like, Oh yeah, yeah, I mean we we broadly agree on the same things. The only difference is like what? We personally are interested in. And like. Yeah, and. And that’s also a tendency where you know, you can define the post left as in the tradition of ultra leftism, you can also define it as a break with leftism. Perhaps here, maybe I’m channeling Zosyn a bit too strongly, but you know this notion of, like, actually breaking entirely, not just calling yourself like the next iteration of has some. I don’t I I see the left is, like, really poorly defined. And that means that it’s a jumble of completely different tendencies, desires. And for us, the things that bind it together or like incredibly. Arbitrary situational, actual, and there’s just so much garbage in there, and there’s no recourse to anything that would bring it back in an anarchist direction. But I don’t see why we should be like, continue to tell you that.

Speaker 1: Deadline could be leveled against the anarchism itself, or again the post left, so it’s not really. Like you’re not really refining anything.

Speaker 2: I think that energy some as a word that has some.

Speaker 1: Didn’t.

Speaker 2: Has indifference. With the left is enter key as a word like has without rulership baked into its etymology in a really strong way. And of course all words are contained, you know, contingent on a lot of different things. But that means something has some resonance. It has some restoring capacity to how that word is used socially.

Speaker 1: E. Etymology.

Unknown Speaker: And the.

Speaker 1: It does, but it also doesn’t right? Like I mean, there are people who consider themselves anarchists that there’s no no way that I’m going to work with them. I’d rather work with any post leftist or Marxist over them. And then there’s, you know. People who define themselves as post selects that are closer to my politics than people that define themselves as leftists, even though I define myself as a left-hander. So it’s like I. Mean it really. It doesn’t cause any like greater distinction to me in any sense. When people call themselves. Just left it just you know it. It asks another question like instead of where do you stand on X issue? It becomes like what kind of? Post leftist are you, you know? Are you the good kind? Are you the bad kind? Does post left actually like help us figure out who our friends are? I don’t think that it does. And I also.

Speaker 2: I’m not saying that the word I’m not saying the word anarchy helps us figure out who our friends are. Obviously not. There are plenty of ****** people who call themselves and typists who are ridiculous. There is outright fascists who have tried to appropriate the title for themselves and and of nationalism or nationalism or whatever. I I’m not saying that the word magically has. The tendency or has some greater. Some greater tendency to draw the right people. My argument is that its tendency is to. Continue to keep the definition without rulership, and if you hold your willingness I’m of I am and I am a without rulership. If. And I support fractured rulership of Doggy, Dog of everyone fighting one another or you know, you are all my prey. I will eat you. It’s like the worst sort of notions of store then. That is a contradiction. It’s an orally intention and it’s one that has immense influence in our society and people think that the word that stands for without rulership stands for rulership. They think that anarchy is a world where people dominate one another, independent good diffuse. Decentralized, chaotic way and that itself is something that we can’t avoid tackling that if there’s a if, if. Like a central or willingness within your society is that freedom equals slave. Sorry, you can’t avoid using the word freedom because and contesting that definition, that villain, because if you do the moment you describe in detail what you actually mean, they’ll be like, oh, so you mean freedom, which equals slavery. And so I I think that it’s I think that the word anarchy is. It’s a word that we can’t avoid, but I do think that the word left is so completely amorphous, so completely just up to the vagaries of who it’s associated with, that there’s no reason to fight for it.

Speaker 4: It does have a general. Like. And the historical significance to be like socially liberatory, like to the left of the moderate like it’s not. It’s not completely nebulous.

Speaker 2: Sure, there there are definitely some regards in which the left is positive and but that’s entirely up to, I think the context of the social dynamics that you’re in. The the eastern. There, there’s actually a good reason that crime thing took off dramatically in former Soviet states that became like the form of anarchism that was most easiest to to import, and that was most popular with people. And part of that was that they weren’t using language like the left because to the people in those countries. In that context, the left was nothing. But bureaucratic, like totalitarian solitarian hell. And I think in America and plenty of other places, the left doesn’t resonate with a lot of people as that kind of liberatory history. And while I don’t want to deny the experiences that some people have of that and the value that the left has, language can have or that resonance can have for some people, I recognize that it doesn’t have that for a lot of other people. So I I mean, in some situations I’ll call myself a leftist because it’s a good shorthand for where I stand in other situations, I’m going to say I’ll **** the left. I want nothing to do with that. It’s entirely dependent upon the people that. You’re talking to in the context.

Speaker 3: So if if we want to have a big debate about the post left and like. What it is and what it’s not, and whether or not it’s a a good thing I’m all for that. We should. We should do that. But if we want to actually have a conversation about leftovers and Alexander Ross and the whole drama then. You should probably move on because I thought the whole point was to just kind of have a general overview of what the post left is, not necessarily debate its merits right, but. But just just a couple of words, points real quick, the whole Marxism being a a moral there is a a a large tendency within Marxism to be amoral. But there is that that is a debate within Marxism that I’ve seen that Marxist debating is this an ethical philosophy? Is this are we humanist or are we anti humanist? So like it’s, that’s definitely a debate that’s going on, though I do agree with. Your what you were saying about Tankies and nihilists and the similarities and how a lot of tankies do? Do take an approach towards Marxism that is explicitly amoral and as far as the whole point about. You know, kind of breaking with the left. I mean, I understand. What you’re trying to get at, I just, I fail to understand what that looks like. Like practically. What does that look like? Because I mean, as an anarchist, I want to be a part of movements and struggles that, you know, include a a wide, you know, section of society like. And there’s a Black Lives Matter protest that’s going to pop up down the street to. Protest the police. Shooting. I want to go there and be a. Part of that. I don’t know what everyone’s politics are. Most of the people there probably aren’t going to be anarchists, but like, I still think that anarchists should be a part of that struggle. You know, if if there’s workers on strike down the street, you know, like I want to go try to support those workers like.

Unknown Speaker: Most of those.

Speaker 3: People are probably not going to be anarchists. Like. This idea that we should only be anarchists and not work with the rest of the left just doesn’t. I just. I don’t see how that’s practical if we don’t want to be completely isolated or maybe maybe that’s my position, but.

Speaker 2: Well, I think you bring up. A good point I might and I’ll make this. Brief I just I think that you know. We can work with people without identifying with them. We can. Collaborate with individuals in a situation where we’re we’re in situations where we are. Conscious and very, very front of our mind kind of way about the differences or the uniqueness of that context and the OR and and our perspectives with one another. And I think that. When we have the. Hazy kind of group. Collective identity of the left it leads towards. All kinds of. Fuzzy, sloppy thinking that leads just terrible places and you know, we assume that. We should be working to further. The left and not anarchy anyway.

Speaker 3: Yeah, I mean, I agree with that, but. I mean I I think that some sometimes the best I mean in my experience maybe this isn’t. Shouldn’t be taken as a rule, but. I’ve seen like when when people actually like, are involved and struggle when when anarchists actually like, participate and struggle with other people, like it can be a radicalizing experience for people like I’ve seen like. Like I’ve been involved in like, actions with liberals where like. You know that after the fact, they’re they’re closer to my position on things because we went through that experience together, you know, but. I don’t know what I’m trying to say, but I I think that it’s important that and are disengaged and struggles with people who aren’t necessarily explicitly anarchist, and I understand that that could come with some pitfalls, but. I think it’s.

Speaker 2: Still think it’s important?

Speaker 4: Yeah, I feel like I got things to say, but if we want to move on, then I’m. Not going to say them so.

Speaker 5: Same.

Speaker 3: We do want to have an episode where we disagreed so.

Speaker 1: We can talk about capitalism for that. Oh yeah.

Speaker 2: I’m happy to throw down on markets any ******* time.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: I mean and and I understand what you’re.

Speaker 3: Saying well, about, like your criticism of the left. Like I went. I went to this platform, this event the other day.

Speaker 5: It was the worst.

Speaker 3: Caricature of like left platform, ISM I’ve ever. It was just like super class reductionist like it was like they went over this history of anarchism and it was only like white dudes were the only anarchists that they even talked about like it was.

Speaker 5: It was just.

Speaker 3: So ridiculous. And then when people were asking, like, well, what do I do? You know, how do I get involved as an anarchist? It was just like join an organization like it doesn’t matter what the organization is, just. Join an organization. It was just like. I I was like kind of sitting there being like, well, maybe I’m a post leftist cause like, this is ******* ridiculous. But I mean, I I understand what I’m saying.

Speaker 5: This is.

Speaker 4: What does that label actually give you in any sort? Practical sense to walk away from that or or move in a different direction, like you’re still going to do those things. It’s still a problem working together with people that have different beliefs is is difficult and like labeling your yourself and being like a tighter knit group. That’s like Oh yeah, we’re like, past you all doesn’t actually.

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 4: Like rest the. Whatever the action. So that’s where it becomes just futile to me. It’s like you can tap all you want about like who you are and what. You mean to you? Stop.

Speaker 1: I try every night.

Speaker 4: But like if it doesn’t, if it doesn’t serve your like your anarchist practice then like. I heard I’m. I just like, hardly give a ****.

Speaker 1: Alright, the post left. Carrie hardly gives a ****.

Speaker 5: Yeah, I mean.

Speaker 3: I just I I mostly associated post lap with people I don’t like or don’t agree with and so I just, I find it interesting that will. To find himself as post lab because I I agree with, I don’t always agree with well, but I agree with him more often than not. I just. I was just kind of curious of like what?

Speaker 2: Well, it’s a situation where you know, at this point the people who most prominently associated with it, or else the people who are are friends with the people who send. Me. Death that. So like I’m I’m not sure that there is very. I’m this is certainly not a position where I win any any points or social capital on this ship is the people who hate my guts. We’re almost all identified as post left. At least within the anarchist milieu, however, you want to describe that in a sense, but I, you know, there was a. ******* beautiful moment, I feel. Where? Like relational anarchism, a lot of things that like crime, that’s always being put out. And and it used to be the mainstream. I mean, if we’re kicking very far back with like and for shop.org and Chuck Munson’s ridiculous. Site, but there were. There were a lot of the things that I found of value in that there’s a lot of pieces. Found that that I. Don’t want to see get chucked out and I definitely don’t want to see get like redefined away or eaten by ****** tendencies. Maybe that’s a? Good point to launch on to talk about Alexander’s articles.

Unknown Speaker: Yes.

Speaker 1: If somebody wants to I. Guess we said we weren’t going to outline it. We should at least talk about what the article is. I think that it was called leftovers.

Speaker 2: How fast the sport the most left?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Uh. Yeah, I think that. Uh. Speaking more about uh. The post left and fascism, then the article I have to say, one of the things that has always like bothered me about the post left is that it does sort of adopt the. Third position as sort of slogan of beyond left and right and. That has always been something that I couldn’t stand next to ideologically. I think that. We if we, if we. Move beyond left and right. Then we open ourselves up to. Right wing entryism and. You know, whatever you consider the third position.

Speaker 2: Well, I think that there’s an infinite number of positions that aren’t left or right. Right. Like there’s there’s a. There is a very large multi dimensional space of political or ethical or whatever you want to call it.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Positions or, you know, desires. A person could have, and whatever falls within the cluster of like the left and falls within the right. There are a lot of of alternatives to that. Yeah. And I’m not trying to give numbers to it, but like obviously fascists and Nazis often identify as the third position.

Speaker 1: And I think that like while there may be Infinity positions, nonetheless there is a a prominent what we would by and large consider ultra right movement that considers itself the third position.

Speaker 2: Well, I think the problem is when somebody starts saying I’m of third positionist, I’m advocating for the third position and using those words specifically. But I think I am not remotely comfortable with attacking anyone who sees value. In positions that are outside of the traditional left or things that are outside the traditional left. Of course I’m going to say that because I think that the calculation will. The. Of economic computation, in the absence of markets or in the absence of that kind of diffuse, autonomous individual association with one another, is. Like ******* valid as **** and I don’t, and I don’t think that’s adopting that. Suddenly like. Crack, you know, places a crack in the dam that is protecting us from the evil influence of the right. If somebody who is a right winger has an idea like evolution. In the Darwinian sense is correct and not Lamarckism. Martinism was a. Failed Soviet ideological scientific theory of evolution that was inaccurate. It was like the draft stretches their neck longer, and that means they’re not longer. I they’re really esoteric instances where this like legally correct for the vast as an actual theory of evolution, is intensely incorrect. And the reason that the Soviet Union like aggressively attacked scientists who. You know, did not agree with the martinism or pointed out counter evidence or, you know, drifted towards the more mainstream definitions of evolutionism was that they were worried that that, that that would open the door to social Darwinism and the right, and that evolution was a right wing theory. And so you couldn’t, you know, how dare anyone put that crack in the door? How dare anyone borrow anything from our ideological enemies because they can never be right about anything. Ever.

Speaker 1: Right. There’s any number of stupid ideas that have come from the left, and I’m not going to say, you know. I don’t. I mean, I don’t know the specific error and whether or not you consider Stalinism an explicitly left ideology, but I think that what I’m talking about is like if you put two people in the same room. And one is 1/3 positionist and 1 is a post leftist to your average individual who doesn’t have a strong political analysis. The things that they’re saying might not seem distinct. So how do we distinguish ourselves?

Speaker 2: Like sell them. How so? Can you give me like the list of things that you think a third position is in the classical sense and a post leftist in the more mainstream sense would agree on?

Speaker 1: Yeah, the the idea that they are neither left or right, right.

Speaker 2: Yeah, but that’s as we as we said that that’s an infinite number of possibilities. It doesn’t define any actual positions. That they share.

Unknown Speaker: Sure.

Speaker 2: What are the things that you think? That the person thinks that they share.

Speaker 4: When you say infinite possibilities, I feel like you’re getting that like more into you sound more like you’re the physicist part of you than anything that’s applicable to like. Political positions.

Speaker 2: OK, so a finite number of possibilities. That’s very large because there are. A lot of different. Things that we could have opinions upon.

Speaker 1: Well, here’s the thing. If you put the fascist in that room and the fascist isn’t trying to come out and say, like, here’s my swastika, I love Adolf Hitler, then they’re going to be very evasive. About the things that they say, I mean they could come out and sound like a leftist for that matter, but that’s because they’re not announcing really any part of their position. Except that they have a critique of capitalism, and that’s the end of it. But their intentions behind it aren’t particularly clear, right, like.

Speaker 2: But it’s not like this. It’s not like the post leftist wouldn’t be listing off their positions or their claims of their deeds. And my point is, is that I don’t think that there’s very much overlap. I would not argue that there’s no overlap. I don’t think there’s very much. Overlap. Between the post leftist positions and anything that the third positions would be able to say, Oh yeah, I’m also provat.

Speaker 1: I mean, I guess it depends on the post leftist again. So you like?

Speaker 4: That’s sort of what this article is about.

Unknown Speaker: I mean.

Speaker 4: It. It’s going into like, what are the commonalities between post left and? Fascism that allow for entryism because of social ties, or, you know, individualism appeal to serialism like. That there are commonalities. And that’s. What we have?

Speaker 2: So.

Speaker 4: To.

Speaker 3: I I would like to point out I think that the article explicitly states that. Post left anarchist post leftism isn’t necessarily any more susceptible to fascist centrism than just leftism in general or any other ideology. It was just specifically pointing out some of the intersections and some of the points of entry, ISM, and some of the ideology ideological similarities that have led to. Actual entry is in in.

Speaker 5: And I think.

Speaker 2: I think it’s really interesting, though, that you all have or that a couple of you have read it in the sense of critiquing the post left as a whole because probably the most annoying thing for me about the response was the way that I’m saying that you read it this way, Sean. But I’m saying that like the most annoying thing about the post.

Speaker 5: That’s the.

Speaker 2: Response to this. Was that they took it as an. Act upon the entirety of the post left saying that post leftism itself is fascist or or opens the door to fascism in a way unique from, say, syndicalism or any number of other like ideologies that also have massive crossover within the left like pancreas or whatever that also have crossover.

Speaker 5: I want to.

Speaker 1: Clarify, I think that I’m not. I’m not saying that I think that the post left is necessarily more susceptible, although I do and I don’t necessarily think that this article is.

Speaker 5: Course.

Speaker 1: You know specifically saying that, but like when I began, I said, you know, I want to talk about like this the issue, the language issue that I find with post left. And I think that the article also addresses some of the language. It isn’t necessarily saying that it’s more susceptible, but it certainly isn’t saying that it’s. Immune to it by. Virtue of being post left rather than third position.

Speaker 2: Sure. I mean nothing’s immune from fascist creep and I agree that there’s significant ways in which I. Discourse and social interactions within the post left have opened the door to fascist free. I mean clearly there is clearly Stoner is being used by Nazis on like a really large scale. Now, whether or not that’s an accurate or you know. Good reading of Sterner is up for debate. I think that it’s actually not a good reading of sterner, although I do think that sterner is weak in certain ways that lends himself very easily to being read by sociopaths and by Nazis as like their guide. But that said, I think the thing that was concerning. For me about the reaction that people have is that basically most public members of the post left circled the wagons. Saw Alexander’s piece as an ideological attack and I think probably somewhat motivated by ideological concerns because Alexander is a more traditional left anarchist. I mean, he’s come at me being like, are you fascist kind of like thing or like, you know, asking those dating questions with me in person. And I think that he’s amenable to reality. But I do think that he has an ideological slant that influences work, even though he was the person who helped expose how black flame. Prominently platformist and extremely not post left quote was actually national antitrust. And see. So I think that that reading that circling the wagons was incredibly counterproductive, and I want to kind of address that. But I do think that like the more that you know, I hear, the more that people say, ohh, that article prove that the post left. Is like particularly susceptible to fascism, or that they themselves feel that on our citing this article as like a lot of proof kind of validates circling the wagons that people did not completely, obviously because it was ****** **. But and it also kind of like points out that Alexander’s. Ideological bias was, I don’t know.

Speaker 4: Well, was it? I feel like you’re getting ahead of yourself and you’re like, jumping. A little bit. Something that’s gone. At least on on what I’m saying, like I maybe I would come out saying that, but that’s not what I’m I’m where I’m at right now. I’m saying that like the article presented it as a unique. There were there were like parallels between all of these points in history when these post left tendencies. Allowed for fascist and explicitly anti fascist to. To work together to a point where some people were brought to the fascist side, or that there was some sort of overlap or whatever, and that there are things to be to be seen as like telltale signs or like, you know, warnings or whatever, just like it was a historical analysis, not that it meant that there isn’t a connection. Between leftism and fascism, like we, we obviously understand that the history goes both ways, but that this was an analysis that gave us some more tools for like. How this happens with the post lab specifically?

Speaker 2: Yes, one of one of the critiques that I feel I have about the article about this article and that I’ve heard other people who. Are knowledgeable about the fight, the struggle against Fascist creed, say is that they feel that Alexander’s article didn’t actually go far enough. In identifying different points of crossover or influence or things along those lines. Because it’s not just a matter of. Ideological affinities or ability to twist certain words or something like that. There is like a long history of social connection, and I think a lot of that has to. Do with the. Fact that the 80s punk scene and the folks who came out of that in the 90s as post office were. Particularly bent towards. Violating taboo in some sense and hung with other people, or identified more strongly socially with other people who were transgressive. And so, I mean, like it’s it’s more than just Oh yeah. Johnson published with a publisher who also published this tucked up ****. It’s more than just this. You know what? We maybe we’ll have time to get to you later on the episode that will be published with a publisher who is pretty fashy went to like an actual funky. Npi conference and was enthusiastic about that nationalist ********. It’s, you know, there, there’s there’s a lot of points and Alexander doesn’t really get into a lot of that. There’s history of error going. Being national anarchist president on in certain spaces of a birthday study group that was in the burbano that. Keep them there or allow it to be or move. Pressure apply pressure to love that person to be coming and on antipolitics.net there was a big fight about it. Just republished them through. Through or through and of his news. And those are all things that you know Alexander didn’t talk about and, you know, to the, to the, to the, to the. Them. The credit that people that I disagree with, there was an iris too, as the main person leading the fight against Aragorn on that issue about like letting national anarchists and to those spaces or to those forums or republishing that material and. And so, you know, it’s not to say that there hasn’t been pushback, but like, they’re my point is that there’s there’s a much broader. Way of things, and I think maybe to the discredit of his article, he kind of take this. He kind of took this meandering historical look at little points of crossover. Interesting. Points throughout his historical like array of things that I think were misrepresentative of the history to some degree and just generally like watered down his point when he if if you’re talking about. Creep within the post left. You should talk. About actual concrete things. Alright anyway sorry.

Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, I I don’t disagree with that. And I think that like it’s fair to like put those caveats on the article. I think, though, that there are. Uh. There are elements within the left post left and whatever individuals that experience personal reactions. And then I think that there’s this like, you know. This this sense to me at least, of people on the post left having a nebulous identity. You know you can call that transgressive, I suppose, or edgy or whatever. But like, you know, if, like, that sort of. Ideation, I think, creates an open door rather than having. What I think is a more firm grounding in an analysis of what you believe. I think a lot of people tend towards edginess. Within a lot of the post lifts ideology or whatever you want to call it, you know like the. It’s not a platform, it’s not an ideology, it’s an anti ideology that has. No strict definition.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think that there’s definitely. Degrees to which people within the post left will oftentimes end up identifying with those who they see as being transgressive or edgy, or tendencies like that, because there’s a kind of common personality or a common sense of one’s position within the world. I think we might get more into this. When it comes to the reactions to rule free publishing, this translational sterner with this fashion publisher. Because you know the the response is there was, I mean for the most part, it was a certain generation genex kind of people who were once Once Upon a time and who came to anarchism kind of through punk and kind of through that kind of genex transgressive. Point in time or context and those people. Uh. Those people have responded for the most part, are circling the wagons in response to critiques of, like, hey, you should publish your book with the fashion publisher by saying like, oh, what is this? Some ******* boycott politics like this is just liberalism. Might as well be boycotting, you know, Whole Foods or whatever. And the fact that they kind of like, see things within that light that their first instinct is that of the community, the which police are out, you know, the the witch hunters are out to get them and that that’s the bigger threat than the threat of like, hey, it actually is really sucked up in a fact. If you’re publishing and lending legitimacy or, you know allowing Hoss over. Ideologically, so explicitly, there’s an actual ******* fascist with actual ******* fascist anyway, yeah, so.

Speaker 1: I think the.

Speaker 5: So yeah.

Speaker 1: We can, I mean. We can talk about that if if you want right now, but I think that like what I would say about the reaction in. I guess like. You know, before we get into it too much is the the the peoples individual reactions come out to me as more of a form of. Nepotism. Which is. You know, obviously it’s present within the post left. It’s also post. It’s also present within the left. I think that those things happen. Regardless of the friend circle and so like while some people on the post left right now are acting particularly sketchy. That isn’t in and of itself, like criticism of the post left, or the ability of fascism to entry into it.

Speaker 3: Yeah, something that I found, like, really concerning about kind of the post left people’s response to the article particularly like kind of the a news nihilistic crowd is. Not only kind of just the immediate defensiveness and not.

Speaker 5: Not even willing to.

Speaker 3: Really engage with any of the like actual like points that the article made, but also this this kind of general hostility towards anti fascism. I see a lot.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah.

Speaker 5: From those circles like.

Speaker 3: Particularly like, I mean John, there’s and like I. I listen to his podcast. He just like he thinks like anti fascism is just like liberalism and like there’s no like threat of fascism in this country and like it’s just you know. It’s. Antifa is just a gang. And it’s all just like a bunch of leftist. Liberal ******** or whatever. And like I I. Don’t know. I I think that that’s really dangerous and I think that’s really concerning to me like. I mean I I think that there’s a critique to be out of the way that antique fashions, you know, maybe operated in specific instances, but. They just dismiss anti fascism as liberalism and like unwillingness to like even address like. Actual fascist infiltration within like. Your meal. You then like, I don’t know, I I. It kind of scares me a little bit, you know.

Speaker 2: I think that a large part of that has to do with the way there’s kind of been fractured subcultural spaces that people within. I don’t, I don’t know. Radicalism. You want to call it that, have operated over the last few decades. I think that there is. Like if you go to like certain spaces or certain circles, antifa. Is or antifa? Hilariously, phrases it Antipas associated with. With ohh this person or these people like boycotted a show of a band. That I really. Like and yeah, this band says some ****** ** things, but whatever, man, you can’t censor art. And this really sucked out. They came from my friend, man. They came from my friend and I think that that has left a residual hostility in a lot of different spaces, but still consider themselves to be anarchists for a long time. And those people were certainly not reading. Anything that anti fascist groups were putting together releasing on the subjects, it was very much seen as like interesting drama and a group of. Outsiders usually, or how they were perceived, who would go in and start witch hunts. And so that was there’s this whole section of the new that sees Antifa only through those lights and is now willing to read. Anything any sort of narrative provenance? Very alt right narratives about what anti fascist work is and who those people are and et cetera. And so for example, the Jeremy Christian, the person who stabbed 3 people. To the death here in Portland not that long ago, Jeremy Christian, identified as analyst online, he identified a bunch of things in much different places, but it was clear that his main orientation was a transgressive.

Unknown Speaker: You can’t tell.

Speaker 2: Me. What to do? **** you. Attitude and that he saw. Anti fraud. Specifically he named check one of the organizations in this town called the City Antifa as being like the Witch Hunt out to get anyone. And that he was fighting the good fight against them. There was actually a scene where somebody videotaped the the day before, you know, murdering those people. He was on the Max that day. He’s shouting out to the entire Max being like there’s no, you know, I keep Members here and who’s going to step up and. And so, you know, he’s saying that it’s for speech, that it’s like that these people are. Italians or. That, or, you know, another narrative is that it’s just liberals who are concerned about the election and that kind of thing. He did a lot of places, but it’s deeply concerning when people like John repeat them to whatever degree. That’s when I don’t really keep that, that I don’t really keep up to date with his show versus. That much, and I think that. The but I think that the the people who the post last have primarily or at least the people of a certain type of post left is simply the sterner right anti moralist, kind of like. Tenancy, who are now the loudest and represent themselves the strongest. And maybe that’s, you know, arguably have better historical client relate more in line with the joda than crime thing. Whatever I hear not for that argument right now, those people. All of the kind of same Lulu is Jeremy Christian. We’ve seen you know here in Portland there’s lots of ****** people who laugh up anything that they hear that you know, tells them that those ends of the kids, they’re the worst and it’s easy for people to quickly great things within that narrative. Oh, the. You know the. The. The the witch hunters are out again. They came from my friend and all he did was like kind of maybe slip off a car and them and blah blah blah and that’s no big deal and etcetera and those people, I think react. More intensely to the immediate visceral reality. If someone saying, hey, your friend is funked up that that you’re associating with them looks bad on you as well. And I think those people see that as the real authoritarianism as the real danger is the thing that is actually salient or relevant in their lives and. Not the fact that, like fascists, just *******. I then left him, left his body on 84^th and Howell. Not that many months ago or, you know, ran down a black kid for sport out. And crush him like. They don’t care about those things because those things aren’t relevant to their lives in the the metal scene or whatever. But the fact that one of their friends that some drama got. Kicked. Up about their one of their friends behavior and that the band was boycotted. That’s the thing that rings to them as the real injustice or the real horrors.

Speaker 1: Right. Which just makes it seem like a lot of these people are not only apolitical and rhetoric, but apolitical in fact. And you know, they’re just. A friend group that identifies as somehow like an exception to normalcy.

Speaker 2: Yeah, I I feel like I’m would be miss that. I didn’t. Push back against that. Use of the term political. Because I mean, there’s various ways that people define it and post left this have a history. Of defining it. In ways that it makes a dissociated with.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: A variety of specific things that I I don’t think is necessarily something that.

Unknown Speaker: You know I.

Speaker 2: I I would agree with certain critiques of the political right. I thought my notion of of anarchism as. Philosophy and not as a political philosophy, is itself a particular political in a certain sense. So, but I would agree to those people are.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 2: Not even motivated by an ethical. Brain as well so.

Speaker 1: But they’re not well. Well, they’re not motivated by a coherent. Belief system. You can call that apolitical anti ideological and amoral. Which a lot of them identify as, and I think that’s particularly problematic and you know, we could go into any of those individual issues at a different episode. But I think that like the conjunction, all, all three of those. Brings you to a point where, like, really, you only come in unity is that you like people. Affinity is is all you have. And if that is the basis of your belief system, then of course, like circling the wagons is what you’re going to do anytime your friend is attacked, because that is your. You know code of ethics, so to speak.

Speaker 2: Yeah. I mean, I think probably the thing that’s most annoying to me about. The people most prominently identified as the post life these days. Is that it’s. It’s become the critique of ideology has been disconnected from a critique of like anything else that like attacks individualism. Or you know. Or that is problematic from an individual’s perspective. With things like Team Sports, social capital, those kind of dynamics are oftentimes discarded critiques of those things are oftentimes discarded, whereas for me. Those were the. Most salient components of what I interacted with that was most left. UM. It was for me, like the critique of, of, of, of just blindly circling the wagons with your friends, of identifying with the term like post left, or sterner, or egoism or whatever. And seeing any attack upon that as an attack on you that itself, that’s like son, you’re really spooked.

Speaker 3: That is like you know.

Speaker 2: I I read dinner a long ******* time ago when I took what I. Could get out of. Him and moved on, and it never even ******* remotely occurred to me that I would identify as a scammer, right? The very fact that there are people who do that is just ******* beyond, I mean. It’s it’s here. Pure social positioning and I think that, you know, the critique I had that I started to leverage when people first started to like. More heavily. Leverage anti moralism or amoralism and critique morality. And you know initially they were like, oh, this isn’t rejecting ethics. It’s just rejecting having a cough in your head and and the oncological whatever things. And then I was like, yeah, but it seems like it’s blending into, like, rejecting ethics as a whole. And they’re like, no, no, no. That will never happen. And of course. Now it’s happened, but those people. Like that rejection of ethics like, I think pretty smoothly blended into a rejection of critiques of those interpersonal kind of like optimism of that like pure social positioning and nothing but that have now started to like, characterize, like nihilist circles and things like. That. I mean it did something wrong. Occasionally we’ll throw a critique about someone behaving like social capitalists out there and you know, some of those critiques that, you know will sometimes be thrown at me and some of them are valid like I’m. A prominent lighter or something like that, and that it operates in. A certain. Conditionality or whatever. That’s totally legitimate, but. It’s just it’s. For the most part, they’ve largely discarded those kinds of things, and that’s horrifying and completely outside of what I considered me the like. The whole premise of. The post left. Especially individuals like. Why are you now acting like ******* you? Know middle school. Politicians, right?

Speaker 1: I mean to be fair, middle school is pretty egoistic. You know, those people are literally trying to come to terms with. Egos outside of their own existing and how they function within a society, and I think that, you know, if you’re critique is **** society, then middle school is a pretty good place to go to.

Speaker 2: Oh, but there’s good versions of **** society, right? There’s good versions of Foxo Lake, the mystified like reified construct of society. **** this notion that, like the social norms are therefore things that I must like, put myself in slave service to.

Speaker 5: I mean, I did a.

Speaker 1: Lot of. Those geeks. And I’m gonna, I mean, you know, again, I don’t want to get into all these things, but I think a lot of these like XYZ are, you know, an attempt to be edgy while simultaneously redefining thing. Ah. Yeah. I mean, if you take a particularly oppressive definition of society and say that what society is is like a top down structuring of like moralism from handed down from, you know. Ages of yore and we want to reject that, then yeah, fine. We all want to reject that. That’s just anarchism. It’s nothing new. But then you know, again, you move on to, you know, **** all social, social congregation outside of. But you know my friend group.

Speaker 2: And I think they’re, I think they’re, I think they’re undercutting to some degree the, the, the, the extent to which this is the **** society thing is a critique of the notion of the of having these fixed ideas that live outside of us or that we like create as.

Speaker 5: Society.

Speaker 2: To be more scientific about it or speak more in a stemming language to say things like heuristics where we have these simplifying concepts like I have this hand and I simplify the vast amount of. Of. Of internal dynamics and complications of the molecules and cells and whatever and tendons and whatever that make up my hand and just call it my hand and abstract it as that. And that can be a good short of hand. It can be a good rule of thumb inside of situations, but we tend to think sloppily as human beings as home sapiens. They tend to like fall into. Shorthand and stick with it to the point where it ***** us over. And when you think of when you, when you. Simplify the vast complexities of a thing by referring to of expanse of of stuff. By referring to it as a single thing. The mind automatically collapses that down to like an object or an agent in a certain way and makes a number of assumptions about them, and oftentimes strips away the internal complexity that makes that thing up when somebody says like society, what they’re talking about isn’t like the ideal isn’t talking about the sum of all like individual associations and.

Speaker 5: I mean.

Speaker 2: Collaborations. All socializing. It’s talking about the abstraction. That, like, starts to woo us and that’s not, I don’t think that’s not fair. That’s that’s something where they’re misrepresenting the situation.

Speaker 5: Right.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 5: It’s not hard.

Speaker 1: Because they’re doing exactly the same thing, they’re not creating anything new by saying like, **** this abstraction of of of society or the the definition of society they are. Actually creating that definition in order to say **** it.

Speaker 2: Which no, I think that I think that the critique is, is, is there are many different bad definitions of the left, right. There are many different ways the left would be defined. For example, going to be left out of society. Many people have many different definitions. The left, but still when you have a concept of the left, it’s an abstract kind of simplification like that, a heuristic, a shorter your hand. A rule of thumb, that kind of thing that you’re using that has a weight in and of itself, just because of the simplicity of its cognitive like. The way that you conceptualize it, but this that have to pull and it can pull off.

Speaker 1: Right. Is getting. A little bit deeper into politics, philosophy and these people aren’t saying, you know, **** words or **** bread or some like inane thing like that. There’s not the same **** words. Let’s not forget the. Yeah. All right. Right, right.

Speaker 5: Well the the.

Speaker 2: OK.

Speaker 1: Specific thing that we’re talking about, you know, is like, yeah, these things have definitions and they’re saying **** this X definition of this thing. They are therefore creating a definition of it.

Speaker 5: No.

Speaker 2: Again, I think you missed. I think again, I think you’re missed. You’re misidentifying what is going on there. The critique is not of the specific definition. The critique is that some of those definitions will congeal when you use or when you place too much attention or emphasis upon those kinds of abstractions. So it’s not that there’s a specific. Definition of the left that all post leftists agree is like this is what the left is and that’s the problem. The more general thing about the the critique of the left is that when you start. When you start putting yourself in service through this big abstract coalition, it has no clear like. Single definition. You will collapse it down in some directions. Some definition among many of the different directions, and that definition will obscure. It will be and it whatever it, whatever it gets to will not be good enough.

Speaker 1: Right.

Speaker 2: Does that make sense?

Speaker 1: But no, I mean. I mean, it doesn’t make any. It doesn’t make sense to any degree where it removes it from the category of strum and. But I mean, yeah, to some degree, I I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t see how the the behavior is any different than the critique.

Speaker 2: Simple. What do you mean by that?

Speaker 1: Uh, you cannot create even if it’s a myriad of definitions of a thing without defining them. And if you are saying we only reject these specific definitions of the thing, then you are essentially creating a. From and and it’s not really a very useful.

Speaker 2: Again, I think you’ve completely misunderstood what I’m saying, which is that it’s the very fact that you’re using a term like the left. You’re giving it a conceptual amount of weight. But regardless of what definition of the infinite number of definitions you can have for left, whatever their weightings and probability, those specific definitions do not matter. The post left is not a specific set of definitions.

Unknown Speaker: And.

Speaker 2: That are being rejected of like the left, right, like ultimately post left is a critique of fixed ideas like the left and the left itself.

Speaker 1: Right. That’s what I’m saying is they’re they’re creating the fixed idea.

Speaker 2: I I don’t see. How that’s the case, I see it as a general push back against fixed ideas, Nick. And and and and pointing out how we. Make that mistake. How we fall into these cognitive biases or fallacies? Again and again.

Speaker 1: Well, we’ve gone back to post lab. That wasn’t my intention, OK?

Speaker 3: I mean, I don’t really care how people define things, just as long as they actually like if they’re going to critique something having like a specific definition that you’re, like, very clear about critiquing it. I just see so often people throwing out where it’s like the left in society, but don’t really define it. And it just comes across as confusing. Yes. Maybe it’s maybe they are like really critiquing some sort of conception of something like. Like kind of what will was saying I never really thought of it that way. It’s like sometimes I’ll read like. Something that’s like critical to the left, and it’s like it defines it very specifically and I’ll be like, oh, I. Kind of agree. With that, other times it’s just, I don’t know, it comes across as kind of just. Trying to be edgy or whatever.

Speaker 2: Well, there certainly are plenty of situations where somebody will then give a working definition of the left that they’re invading against inside of their specific. To, but I think it’s. Almost impossible to take the left to take the post left thrust of all these critiques away from the critique of fixed ideas. And there are different ways that you can take the critique of fixed ideas. I tend to read it in a very. Stemi’s critique of cognitive biases and traps and feedback loops that we get into in the ways that we. Think. About things and then other ****** ******* people. Take it in the direction of like, oh, intellectual coherence is like a bad thing and having any sort of like. Structured beliefs or self-awareness of what your implicit beliefs are is a bad thing. I don’t.

Speaker 3: Having solidarity with anyone outside of your tribe or friend group is a bad thing.

Speaker 2: Yeah, that’s humanism. Don’t you know that’s actually the the worst imperialism?

Speaker 3: Yeah.

Speaker 2: So do you want to? Unless folks have more to say on that, do folks want to? Move on to talking about. Maybe wolfies translation in that situation?

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 3: Sounds good.

Speaker 2: Alright, well, uh, the recent drama on that front, on on the front of Wolfe’s publication is that. He read about translational Sterner but tried to update it, apparently the. People who first translated center brought a lot of baggage. Intellectually, to how they translate him and maybe not the most charitable. So we’ll see his slave wait for a long period of time trying to. Update and new definition or a new a new version of the EGO. The ego on its own, which titles unique in its property. I’ve read most of it. I skipped some sections because I was bored. I already. Said you’re going to send the first time years ago, so we reason to go back over, but I like a lot of the things that Wolfie did with his translation. I think. His analysis maybe brings the four a lot of disagreements I have with her, but I don’t know if we should go get all of that. There are a lot of things that I took away from, Sir as a kid that I like, yeah. Almost and unfortunately. Full fee published bits through. Uh, a publisher that is actually pretty fascist Kevin Slaught. Or. Aye. Is the publisher, is the name of the publisher himself. And. The heaven slaughter is well, he’s deeply connected with countercurrent publishing, which is an openly fascist publisher. He links the alternative right, the American Renaissance bunch of the Nazi groups. He literally went to Richard Spencer’s NPI conference and with front row. And enthusiastic about it and posting about how it was great. He has comments on his ******* where he has sections on his blog about eugenics. He republished his racist sheds. He republished. He published his ******* Jack Donovan, who is basically an oopsie or basically a in that fascist. He kind of realm. And Wolfies defense of turning this publisher. Well, it’s we’re we’re recording this to the point where Wolfe has really saying fully public, he wrote. Personal response is. I don’t know if intended fully for public consumption with the dipole and. And he there’s been a couple of things that have dropped since, but the general just the people taken away is that wolf. He didn’t want to publish with LBC. So anyway, I was kind of, I I like Wolfie like a lot of the things he’s written for a long time. He’s obviously not fascist. I thought his influence. The post stuff was largely very positive. I I remember him writing defenses of of rational thinking and of of critiques and analysis that at at the time in the milieu in which those things were being published. So. Really good impact. He was pushing back against a lot of kind of like ****** thinking. People were falling into. He’s also written terrible things that I disagreed on. His piece on science is one of the worst. Things ever published by anarchists, ever. He literally goes into like the what the bleep do we know grew about quantum mechanics? It’s *******. Dumb. But for the most part, I like. We’ll see who’s clearly not a fascist, clearly anti nationalist. His defense, the defense seems to be that he didn’t fully know. I’m reading kind of between the lines of a lot of the things that come out. You really know. How deep the rabbit hole went on the the proof of that his publisher was fashion and. He wrote a letter to when some things have been brought up, he wrote a letter and the guy wrote a letter back and well, he was like, well, I accept this word. He’s just like, edgy. He’s not actually a fascist. He’s a ******* terrible analysis. But that has set off to this huge shitstorm of people being like. Any critique of and? Doctor Bones, who’s like a prominent social media egoist, called that **** out and and so it’s turned into like a Gen. X. Versus. Millennial kind of showdown within egoist and those left circles on this whole thing. And I maybe talk too much and explain the situation, but yeah, that’s what it is. There’s a lot more you can look on online, but the the degree to which Wolfie publisher is is fashion is like pretty over the top. The real fight has now become this like, is that like? Is is saying that Wolfie shouldn’t have published with a fascist publisher, or that we shouldn’t, like, buy the book and give money directly to an elite fashion person. That’s just boycott politics. That’s just liberalism, which I think is ******* absurd, but maybe.

Speaker 1: Well, caught politics, to be fair, which I’m OK with. As a leftist, I think like, that’s fine.

Unknown Speaker: Maybe we should.

Speaker 5: Well, but there’s.

Speaker 2: Different. There’s different types of boycotts, right? I mean, there’s this silly kind of, like, liberal boycott that doesn’t clearly is not going to impact anything. Other situations where, like yeah, that dude like is ****** people and you should stop providing them with their ******* like basic means of living. Like like there’s things where. A boycott can have a difference, and there’s things.

Speaker 1: You can talk about the the distinctions between those, which I don’t necessarily see. I understand what you’re getting at, like we can’t boycott Israel, but like nonetheless.

Unknown Speaker: Yeah, my. My question I mean to.

Speaker 1: You on this topic though is like how much? Because I’m not really familiar with the publisher at all and take any time to look at it. How much, how, how obvious could it have been? So we’ll see like where, where is the evidence that this person was fascist before? Like this **** blew up because I don’t really know about that.

Speaker 2: It’s basically the website as far as I can tell. So Kevin Slaughter actually has this history. That where he and somebody else put up this website calledunionofegos.com a while. And it was pretty clearly like them trying to like become the one, you know, clearing House of steroid ego was a long line. But in actuality then we slide you down. Let’s shoot towards naziism. And so he’s done a bunch of **** like that, but he’s really good at, like, hiding that ship to some degree, at least in person. We’ll get his website, though, and it’s pretty clear if you take more than 5 minutes to look at it. The question, of course, is like whether or not Wolfie being a creator or that kind of person like. Actually, like delve in look took a look. At the categories. You know, check the new the names of like American Renaissance or whatever knew that those. Were fascist organizations. There any real investigation cause you know you meet somebody? That person seems cool and personally seem on the right page and they’re how many of us really. Put in full ******* like background research on somebody that we’re associating with. Certainly an argument made that wolf should have done more work to like plus out. Somebody was getting bad with as like his publisher but.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 1: I mean, I think obviously like if. You if if somebody tells you that your publisher might be a fascist. Then you ought to do. Due diligence and that’s not the case. And that didn’t happen.

Speaker 5: Yes.

Speaker 2: There are plenty of situations where, obviously it’s perfectly fine to have money that originated from a Nazi. We can talk more about the strategic dynamics of those things, but I do think that like publishing through a Nazi publisher, since straight so straightforward, like of a dumb thing to do and a thing that like they’re reasonable. Social injunctions against and that that’s not *******. It’s not authoritarian for a community to be like, actually, though, we’re going to be upset with you if you like, publish with the Nazi. I mean, I think that’s pretty ******* reasonable. Like social expectations in the same sense. Like, if you snitch to someone. We’re not going. We’re not going to let you hang in our community or we’re going to be upset about that, or if you’re, you know, giving good. If you’re aiding and abetting a snitch, we’re not going to, like, be down with that. I think those are pretty ******* standard, reasonable even from, like, the most ****** of egoist perspectives, one with the same, just as a whole.

Speaker 5: Did you did you? Did you? Read Ziggy’s defensive snitching. Have you read any of the like Bob Black defenses? OK.

Speaker 2: Ohh good bored.

Speaker 5: You. Anti snitch culture is just leftist.

Speaker 3: Moralism. Come on. Come on. Well.

Speaker 5: Oh my God.

Unknown Speaker: Ohh.

Speaker 2: Oh my God.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 3: That was that was that was good. That was classic Andy just right there.

Speaker 2: I what the **** is left? If you if you reflect like and we’re not going to hold stitches or rapists or like ******* fast collaborators accountable in any ******* way. I just and and the thing that really gets me is that there’s a number of people in, like the post. Lefty. Kind of realist. Or egoist community. And I don’t want to. Anyway, those those people have those people have, like, been like Oh yeah, I’m anti fascist. Like I’m really against Nazis because it’s all easy to *******, you know. Present yourself as like being tough and like punching on taxes on line. It’s even not that hard to go and punching off at a rally like that’s not that. Hard of a thing to pull off. You know, it actually does cost you something when you have to, like, you know, hold your ******* friends accountable for being ship ads or for doing something dumb. And that’s, you know, suddenly they’re they’re getting off the ******* train of resisting fascism and resisting fascism anyway. Tracking. Disappointing to say the least.

Speaker 1: And. Yeah. So it sounds like you. Don’t believe uh, Wolfie? His claims, but he didn’t know or.

Speaker 2: I think I think there’s probably, I think you probably didn’t know that much. I think that it’s definitely valid critique to say that he should have done more due diligence on that front. I don’t know. I mean, we’re just guessing. And like before this publication, they may totally. That, you know, lays it all out and it it also sounds like Wolfie was like I made a mess. That was something that he has since said. Again, this is being pulled out of like past e-mail or, you know, like people passing along things from people from people, etcetera. So who knows? I don’t want to look for something.

Speaker 5: Can.

Speaker 1: You pull it from publication. Is that something because?

Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean that that is an option that I think that needs to do. But in Wolfie’s defense, the book is. Clearly anti copyright. And went off as a PDF almost immediately, so I hardly encourage people to put, you know, the text online and to make that accessible to everyone, because props on Wolfie for, like, not trying to profit from intellectual property in that regard, that is a good intellectual property.

Speaker 5: Thanks.

Speaker 2: Right. Yeah. But I mean, like there’s other things that he could have like. Place there’s other ways that he could have. Like, you know, he could have knocked at the PDF. He could have not aggressively. Yeah. Put anti copyright, you know etcetera. So like good on him for that. I think the solution to me the solution seems really straightforward like no one buys a copy of the book from now on and we just or people independently publish it taking. Like taking the PDF, turning off the text. And then formatting that for another book like that just seems straightforward and simple. I’m sorry if that denies Wolfie if some I’m not, I’m not actually sorry if that denies wolf even money because you shouldn’t be taking money via a fashion publisher, but you know, and I also, I want to emphasize that like. Well, well, well this. The the hang up around boycott politics, quote UN quote this ******* dumb. That is not the same thing as being a fascist yourself does help open the door to fascist creep in your community ******* without it. Oh. But it’s ridiculous that people are trying to opportunistically say that, like wolf is a Nazi, like there are points of commonality between sterner and like certain versions of fascism. There are points of commonality between some wings of the post left and some wings of fascism. Anti modernity being a big one, ultraviolence. Mediatised MDM egoism in the sense of kind of sociopathic, like individualism that jives with Ebola and other people like that. There’s definitely overlap in that regard. But you know, the post stuff being hugely anti mask, hugely anti like like organization, group, whatever kind of thing like the the whole idea of nationalism. Totalitarianism. Those things are clearly not something that the post left is like particularly close, and that with. So the sort of people that do tend to like exist at that intersection or more like Jack Donovan’s ******* like, edgy, like. You know, Pagan Spiritualist blows who are really into like machismo and, like and violent warrior culture kind of ****. And Ohh just happened to be, like, kind of kind of white nationalist that’s and and also a lot of them, a lot of Jack Donovan’s ******** people call themselves anarchists. Well, also, you know. As they see anarchism, it’s like that. You can’t tell me what to do, you know.

Unknown Speaker: Which?

Speaker 5: So.

Speaker 1: Some readings of sterner can support.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 1: And I I think that there are elements of sterner that come off as you know. Ragnar Redbeard Esque might mix right or might is right or whatever the book is called.

Speaker 2: **** red. **** red beer, by the way. Like no way, dude. That was such a terrible book.

Speaker 5: Yeah, of course, yes.

Speaker 1: Absolutely. But I mean that specific reading of sterner. Lends itself to this sort of like you know. The strongest is the best by virtue of being the strongest.

Speaker 2: Thus, cops are the best and we should all like *******, right? Bow down to cops cause they have the power. Right now the mice.

Speaker 1: US. Say it’s the best because it’s the strongest, yada yada.

Speaker 2: Yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah, for sure. So I do think that that is like, you know, there is obvious reasons why. A fascist might be interested in certain interpretations of egoism and generalism.

Speaker 2: Yeah. What’s interesting is that so I started calling this **** out years ago that that racists were increasingly using sterner as their gateway to plug into fascism. And I and I, you know, obviously going the direction star wouldn’t fully be down with. Wouldn’t be done with thing you know, but I was calling a lot of this out in the context of, well, some of the newest community I live in. They or whatever ****, but also there’s a lot of, like, libertarians who have been sucked into sterner and they used sterner as the gateway drugs. Those libertarians tend to be like very conventional liberals in the sense of like. Holding to a very codified, very deontological sort of like ****** ethical system with the non aggression principle and then sterner. Johnson and. And interjects like ohh, but actually that’s all ******** morality and you should pick that out. And so they do. And then what remains? Well, they’re privileged white man who like wanna feel elitist and aristocratic. And so, you know, they’ll jump to the next thing that will give them that sense. And that’s why nationalism of it. And so there’s definitely been like a long ******* history of like lots of. Right. Libertarians getting invested in sterner coming in contact with sterner, often flew post left people. And figures and then from the. Using that as a launch point, the the the website, the white stuff. Got its start actually is like. Kind of it. Reactionary Catholicism and like right libertarians, who had turned to sterner, and so there was, like a long history of that. And I remember, like, I was like, hey, this is really sucked up that like, all these people are like friends with like or like. Chatting on Twitter with people who are outright ******* white nationalists and they, you know, you call yourself a stone. Right. And you’re presently with me. Why the **** are you hanging on Twitter with this person who’s fun? And. Straight up, you know. Neo Nazi and everyone’s like, yeah, you’re you’re, you know, the you’re coming into the terrible witch hunt crusader kind of thing, making **** up. There’s no way Sterner is completely the opposite. Of racism is racism. And collectivism, Sir, would never be down. With that and. Now all of a sudden a bunch of ******* people have, like, had to get their heads out of their ***** and realize that there is like a huge percentage of people, probably far more people read sterner as. Pro fascism, we’re in that direction of like broadly fascist perspectives than than they do in, like pro, and this directions. And that’s something to be challenged and we’ll be tries to challenge that in his introduction to the book. But you know, it’s still ******* a pressing concern. Hey, well, are there are there main take away points you want to have? I want to send people off with.

Speaker 1: Post Leftism is a spook. No, I I mean I think that people will take what they can. I I I just want I think that it’s it’s important. Uh, you know that people don’t. One assumed that wealthy is a Nazi because of this potential oversight, and I mean, I don’t know. I’m not saying one way or the other, but like, I think that they should do research before they jump to conclusions. Yeah, I guess, I guess that’s a good rule of thumb for anything. Just do research. Before you jump to conclusions.

Speaker 2: I mean, I guess. We could talk a lot more in depth about sterner things. He gets raped, things he gets wrong, dangers. Things he doesn’t really cover. We also have like a whole episode just fighting about post office and more specifically. I guess mine did.

Speaker 1: He practically.

Speaker 2: Right. Sure. I guess my main critique is that like there’s a lot of **** that summer gets late. But. That he kind of doesn’t really do a good job of getting the the other side of the anarchist coin. I mean, if anarchism is, I will not rule and I will not be ruled. Like Cerner is really good at the I will not be ruled, but he’s kind of ****** at, like, providing a good justification or argument for people to not rule over other people. In fact, you can really easily be read in the opposite direction, even though he has points. Where he does try to push. Back and talk about love and other things. And so I think it’s trivial for for a lot of people to read sterner and not get the anarchist ethic and. So inserting himself didn’t identify as an artist and then go off and really sucked up direction. And I think we should be aware of that and recognize that external loan doesn’t ******* make someone.

Speaker 3: But Sharon and John’s horses, though, man shoutout Daisy.

Speaker 2: He’s been pretty good for the most part. A lot of this ****.

Speaker 5: Yeah, that’s why I.

Speaker 3: Was so disappointed. Is that like?

Unknown Speaker: He he usually comes.

Speaker 3: Down on the right side of like really important things, right. Like I disagree with, like, so much of his ideology but like.

Speaker 5: You know when.

Speaker 3: It the whole like lyric key thing, you know, like transphobia, like he spoke out against that. And I thought that was really important. Like. You know, I I don’t know. Like when people are facing like, you know when there’s. Like repression going on. Here, like he was really good of, like, defending property destruction in the media and like stepping up for votes. But. I don’t know. He’s really wrong about this one.

Speaker 2: Yeah, in general, I think John’s, I mean, I disagree with him intensely, but I think John’s would you have him an anarchist. He stated that I think is I think the the disagreements that people have with John like they’re we might have with John those are solid intra.

Speaker 5: Yeah.

Speaker 2: You know this this agreement, right? But. He is coming. From a place of America’s ethos and I. Think that’s? Solid and something that I like of. Yeah, he deserves praise for sticking to it.

Speaker 6: Some of those workforces are saying the black crosses. Workforces are the same workforces. You.

Unknown Speaker: Now.

Speaker 6: You night night.

Speaker 1: No, you.

Speaker 6: There your chosen. Are just. Chosen just. Chosen right.

Speaker 1: Now.

Speaker 6: Control.

Unknown Speaker: Now. So.

Speaker 6: You.