microRevolt projects investigate the dawn of sweatshops in early industrial capitalism to inform the current crisis of global expansion and the feminization of labor

Cory Doctorow on GMErgate and why shorts are actually good.

I think one reason the GameStop thing is fun is because it is apocalyptic in the sense that it reveals the hypocrisy and opt-in delusions of capitalism. I like this take:

"And the Redditors said, “Who cares? I don’t care about your equations. I don’t care about your valuation models. I’m going to make the price go up because all it is to me is a number on the screen.” So they just stripped all the pretense out of Wall Street and used that to expose it and to screw it."

"So to sum it up, don’t be a fucking idiot and bypass White Metal because you don’t like what they’re saying because guaran-damn-teed you will miss out on some critically great stuff due to blind ignorance and…fear."

Photographs of Loukanikos, "sausage", the legendary stray "riot dog" who was present at nearly every outbreak of mass class struggle and social disorder in Athens up until 2012, when he was adopted and retired outside the city. He died peacefully in his sleep in 2014, aged around 10.

RIP Loukanikos (~2004-2014)

Very fair overview of [American] individualist anarchism on a libertarian website.

"Conservatism consists of exactly one proposition, to wit:

"There must be in-groups whom the law protectes but does not bind, alongside out-groups whom the law binds but does not protect."

A review by Kristian Williams.

"Perhaps, then, Camus’ analogy may be borne out by reality: Perhaps the means of fighting pestilence will prove to be the same as those for fighting fascism."

Bakunin was right.

"To vote is to abdicate. To name one or several masters for a short or long period means renouncing one’s own sovereignty. Whether he becomes absolute monarch, constitutional prince or a simple elected representative bearing a small portion of royalty, the candidate you raise to the throne or the chair will be your superior. You name men who are above laws, since they write them and their mission is to make you obey."

Another good one from Bob Black. "If you’re not revolting against work, you’re working against revolt."

Black originally wrote this in 1982. It could have been written today.

"the immiserating orderings of society have never been voted away, but that electoralism—for all the plaintive promises that we can both rabble-rouse and ballot-box—has regularly served as a mechanism of capture for potentially transformative social movements."

Some history on the anarchist tradition of abstention candidates

"As to the anarchist position that universal suffrage did not legitimize authority, it is worth taking seriously. ... Even if we disagree that authority is never legitimate and Dewey’s self-aware public has been achieved, not all uses of authority — especially when it comes to state violence — can be justified by the vote. To do so would be to treat suffrage as a mythical unquestioned good rather than a reasonable choice."

The only consistent market anarchist position: dynamic price signals coupled with looting.

And really, the only way markets could ever even approximate their claims of efficient distribution in societies with poverty is if some people get things for free.

The 1A radio program on NPR gave anarchism a fair spot.

On the whole I thought several of the questions and answers were good, and it was nice that they got actual anarchist writers to go on. Though I think I disagree with William C.'s first answer. He implies that revulsion to anarchism is based on a misconception that mistakes the anarchist terrorists from a hundred years ago as the entirety of anarchism. But I don't think there is any level of peacefulness that would make anarchism palatable to those who can't see beyond their present society. If the Galleanists had never set off any bombs, Trump would still be seeking to demonize anarchism, because it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a someone who is rich to enter an anarchist society.

The New Testament includes several passages that warn against false teachers and express frustration that the earliest Christian communities are so easily taken in by lies. That this has been an ongoing problem since the beginning, for almost 2,000 years, makes me almost suspect that the people who are attracted to Christianity tend to be people who are attracted to any old nonsense that makes them feel like they have been given privileged knowledge.

This is an audio documentary series. I've listened to the first two episodes. It is well produced, and I understand Trump a tiny bit better now.

Many inspiring quotations in this article (1907):

"it is the very ones who declaim so unceasingly about “law and order” who are themselves the corrupters of the nation’s morals, the buyers of its legislatures, the polluters of its courts, the defilers of its elec-torate, the stealers of its public domain, and the heartless vampires that suck the lifeblood of the people."

"Treason to despotism is devotion to freedom. “Law and order” is a phrase mouthed by hypocrites to command the obedience of cowards."

"The capitalist class buys law, as it does labor, using the one to fleece the other, and what it means by “law and order” is cringing submission to slavery."

"'Law and order' is the wand of the imposter, the mask of the robber. Beware of him who ceaselessly gabbles about the sanctity of the law."

"John Brown, were he living today and saw the slaves in the pits and mills and their babes in the sweatshops, would again don the panoply of battle and swear death to wage-slavery. Were he living today he would be hated and persecuted as fiercely as he was by the chattel slave aristocracy half a century ago. But he is dead. And the ruling class against which he rebelled, the ruling class which put him to death and which he cannot now resist, seizes him as one of its own heroes and insults his memory by en-rolling his name in its calendar of saints."

"the idle owners, by the mere fact of ownership, get most of what the miners produce. The workers have submitted to this exploitation long and patiently, but the limit has about been reached. Why should they have to deliver up to others the wealth they produce? Why not themselves enjoy the fruit of their own labor?"

"Chattel slavery has disappeared. Wage-slavery has yet to be conquered. The struggle has already begun. There can be no compromise and no retreat"

"The wage system has only slavery for the working class and oft-times even that is denied them. It has served its time and purpose and must soon be abolished. The workers do not need masters; they can and must be their own."