Thread by @rechelon

A good prompt. Let me try to do a thread on notable developments / events in US anarchism since 2011...

https://twitter.com/transform6789/status/1297560145736630274

* While the Syrian civil war began before Occupy, anarchist alignment with Kurdish communalists only began to play a huge role after Occupy, influencing an astonishing resurgence of Bookchin from near-irrelevance within US anarchist spaces.

* 2012 the PNW Grand Jury Raids and Leah snitching shattered anarchist scenes in Portland, Oly and Seattle, many people go underground or flee the country, leaving PNW scene mostly dead.

* Jeremy Hammond and Chelsea Manning get sentenced in 2013, becoming central political prisoners of the last decade. This is a marked shift of focus from the eco / animal lib prisoners prior, although they continue being important and others are sentenced.

* Jumping back a second, in 2012 in the Chicago suburb of Tinley Park a bunch of nazis tried to hold an event and got disrupted by anarchists/antifascists, leading to the convictions of the Tinley Park 5, eventually including Jeremy's twin brother Jason.

* Idle No More launches in late 2012 setting off a storm of activism around indigenous land defense and solidarity work. While this is primarily centered in Canada at first it has strong influences on US organizing, also inspiring pipeline blockades.

* Deep Green Resistance, formerly the prominent center of green anarchist 'activism' in the US sees massive criticism for Transphobia. Aric McBay and many others leave. Anarchists universally turn on DGR. Burritos are thrown.

* Patriarchy In The Movement conference and blowup. Video of queer kids protesting Kristian Williams (who wrote an anti-survivor statement and defended the subversion of an accountability process) goes viral, old white dudes across sectarian divisions unify to vilify the kids.

* In 2013 remains of ARA form into Torch, starting to revitalize antifascist work, although some old internal divisions remain for a while and not every local group rejoins immediately.

* The Nihilist vs Primitivist feud out of remains of Green Anarchy mag kicks off.

Black Seed launched (2014), Black and Green Review launched (2015). Black Seed's free mass distribution helps the nihilist anticiv position win out in influence, a profound shift.

* In 2014 Michael Brown is killed and Ferguson kicks off leading to riots and protests across the US that anarchists are strongly involved in. Eventually this wave of insurrection is recuperated into liberal BLM nonprofits and the like.

* Over a few years ITS segues from reactionary Kaczynski primitivism to explicitly anti-anarchist nihilism, celebrating murder for sport, eventually trying to murder an anarchist and bombing an anarchist infoshop. A number of US anarchists aggressively support and embrace them.

* Black Rose is founded in 2014 out of the remains of NEFAC, merging w other groups and growing across the country outside the northeast corridor Platformism had previously been largely confined to.

* To provide an anarchist clearinghouse focused on action and not infested with reactionaries saying the n-word (anews), It's Going Down is launched and rapidly eats / replaces the existing anarchist mediasphere, refocusing on insurrecto, activist, and antifa work.

* Michael Schmidt (co author of core platformist anti-individualist text Black Flame (required reading in Black Rose) gets exposed as a white nationalist / "national anarchist." AK pulps his book. An annoying number of individualists side with him against the "witch hunt".

* Also notorious snitch, misogynist and racist Bob Black gets punched at a talk in Berkeley, he stupidly feuds with Aragorn over not providing him security, and since A! was the only one still platforming him Bob Black is finally banned from anarchy.

* Unicorn Riot is formed out of some of the last remaining ashes of Indymedia and assorted projects, rebuilding anarchist videographer presence, albeit mostly regionally to Minneapolis and the midwest.

* In 2016 LBC publishes a print version of Atassa (english language press office of ITS run by an alt-right trad cath), gets more pushback than they were expecting / banned from bookfairs. Founder of theanarchistlibrary leaves in protest over LBC folk forcing ITS's inclusion.

* Standing Rock kicks off, becoming pretty much the only modern example of the kind of national summit convergence that typified the counter-globalization era. Hundreds of anarchists visit/work in the camps over the duration.

* Trump's successful election renews antifascist work, albeit a tad too late, causing overtaxed local groups that were once minor / fringe aspects of anarchist scenes to become larger and more central organizations. Many hatchets are desperately buried.

* Redneck Revolt, John Brown Gun Club, and Socialist Rifle Association style work explodes in popularity and activity, doing counter-recruitment on 3%ers and militia folks. A number of chapters eventually disassociate with Redneck Revolt over founder's history of abuse.

* Fascist entryism / mass appeal in Battles of Berkeley puts antifa in national normie/conservative attention and narratives for the first time. Fascists win massive gains in finally shaping those narratives ("antifa is punching conservative grandpas"). It's a dark desperate time

* Decentralized groundwork in response to the fascist surge and Charlottesville / Heather Heyer's murder eventually turbocharges antifascism, leading to a proliferation of chapters, crews, groups, etc and broad adoption of antifa as identity.

(This is in part related to the storm of books released with eg Bray and Burley pushing antifascism as broad movement / culture rather than tiny professionalized research groups and skin crews.)

* Around this era anti-antifa currents in anarchism are virtually exterminated / extinguished. Aragorn tries to give anti-antifa talk in Portland, gets scared about mocking comments on fb, backpeddles and flagrantly lies about the whole thing. LBC/Anews gets marginalized further.

* Tankies start resurging and stealing control over online leftist and anarchist groups and meme pages. It takes a while for real world activists to realize or take seriously this new existence of authoritarian communists, during which window they do a lot of damage.

* Indigenous Anarchist Federation is formed, rapidly building out a ton of support. Heralds the increase of explicitly anarchist networks and infrastructure built in indigenous spaces and communities outside more white activist circles.

* People start converting to anarchism in larger numbers purely online, this creates radically new culture, politics, and circles.

One variation of this is that egoism stops being gatekept by a small old guard of postleftists and becomes memey (and shallow, eg Dr Bones).

* Breadtube takes the fuck off, mass recruiting many nerds to wishy-washy libertarian socialism and previously antiquated red political positions, *massive* resurgence in syndicalism/communism/platformism. Also lots of "anarchists vote for bernie" nonsense.

* Meanwhile over the decade a bunch of folks from the green scare era flip to fascist positions. Wolves of Vinland massively recruits former green anarchists to a national-anarchist / pagan / Evola / Kaczinsky / Palahniuk toxic stew. At least they don't rally w/ chuds.

* Occupy ICE encampments start, draw in a ton of new folks with their first experience in AFK in-person organizing / community. Regrettably these often involve a few tankies (eg PSL) now that they're weirdly a thing again, giving tankies a taste of actual organizing.

* Oh yeah, I skipped J20, which, since it wrapped up hundreds of people became a massive central focus in 2017, with cases only dropped in mid 2018.

Fuck, I forgot about the prison strikes in 2016-2018.