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Mar 19 • 10 tweets • 5 min read
Hi new followers! I'm a historian of #anarchism and the left. I share my writing & archival materials to inform & inspire efforts to build a better world together. I'm on Mastodon @spencerbeswick@kolektiva.social and blog at emptyhandshistory.com
Here's some recent writing: 1/
In @truthout: "Anti-fascism must be embedded in broader struggles against oppression and exploitation. . . To defeat fascism for good, we need to organize mass movements that address the root causes of our social crisis and fight for a better world." 2/
truthout.org/articles/defen…
In @washingtonpost @madebyhistory "While the Jan. 6 committee may help prevent Trump from regaining the presidency, it cannot address our underlying social crises." 3/ washingtonpost.com/made-by-histor…
In @AnarchistSJnl "Ultimately, the article argues that anarchism was revitalised in the late twentieth century because it provided compelling answers to the new problems posed by the neoliberal counterrevolution and the crisis of state socialism." 4/ journals.lwbooks.co.uk/anarchiststudi…
In @Hard_Crackers "Feminists took reproductive care into their own hands and built a mass movement to fight for the repeal of all abortion laws, rather than tinkering around the edges." 5/ hardcrackers.com/abortion-strug…
In @iasperspectives "Communes provide the material foundation to 'live communism' and attack the rule of capitalism and the state." 6/ anarchiststudies.org/living-communi…
In It's Going Down: "Reproductive rights were not won by electoral means, and that is not how we will defend them. Anarcha-feminist traditions of grassroots struggle and autonomous abortion infrastructure offer alternative strategies." 7/ itsgoingdown.org/pro-choice-rio…
In @washingtonpost @madebyhistory "Instead of the slogan 'we’re pro-choice and we vote,' anarchists often marched behind a banner reading 'we’re pro-choice and we riot!'" 8/ washingtonpost.com/outlook/2022/0…
I also have a few video essays up on Youtube, including "Prefiguration or Dual Power? Infoshops and Revolutionary Anarchism in the 1990s" 9/
All of my writing is connected to my PhD dissertation, which I will finish this summer: "Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century."

Stay tuned for more! And check out my shorter pieces and unpublished writing at emptyhandshistory.com 10/10

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More from @spencerbeswick

Spencer Beswick Profile picture
Mar 21
David Graeber: "A revolution on a world scale will take a very long time. But it is also possible to recognize that it is already starting to happen. The easiest way to get our minds around it is to stop thinking about revolution as a thing—'the' revolution, 1/
the great cataclysmic break—and instead ask 'what is revolutionary action?' We could then suggest: revolutionary action is any collective action which rejects, and therefore confronts, some form of power or domination and in doing so, reconstitutes social relations 2/
—even within the collectivity—in that light. Revolutionary action does not necessarily have to aim to topple governments. Attempts to create autonomous communities in the face of power (using Castoriadis’ definition here: ones that constitute themselves, 3/
Read 5 tweets
Spencer Beswick Profile picture
Feb 2
Is #anarchism a "white" phenomenon? 🧵

The heyday of American anarchism around the turn of the twentieth century was dominated by European immigrants who, although racialized by mainstream society, were predominantly ‘white’ by later twentieth-century standards. 1/
The number of self-identified Black anarchists was vanishingly small; even the most prominent Black anarchist in US history, Lucy Parsons, denied her own racial ancestry. The reason for Parsons’s repudiation of her Blackness was complex, but it took place in the context of 2/
what we would today criticize as the colorblindness of classical anarchism. Anarchists rejected all forms of racism on principle and the anarchist-influenced Industrial Workers of the World was one of the first unions to organize across racial lines. Most anarchists, however, 3/
Read 16 tweets
Spencer Beswick Profile picture
Jan 31
Emma Goldman: "#Anarchism stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order 1/
based on the free grouping of individuals . . . Anarchism therefore stands for direct action, the open defiance of, and resistance to, all laws and restrictions, economic, social, and moral. But defiance and resistance are illegal. Therein lies the salvation of man. 2/
Everything illegal necessitates integrity, self-reliance, and courage. In short, it calls for free, independent spirits . . . Direct action, having proven effective along economic lines, is equally potent in the environment of the individual. There a hundred forces encroach 3/
Read 5 tweets
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Jul 26, 2022
I love @dylanrodriguez's Presidential Address to the @AmerStudiesAssn "Weaponized Study in a Moment of (Counter)Insurgency: The Gathering Anti-'American' of American Studies" interrogating reformist academics' role in counterinsurgency and offering an abolitionist alternative🧵1/
Rodriguez: "I ask that you accept this address as an encouragement to mobilize your own forms of collective study to contribute to a gathering force. By this, i mean a persistently gathering force that understands and acts with urgency in the moment of the event, 2/
in the intensity of the conjuncture, and in the protracted presence of the long historical. The gathering force convenes around a shared understanding of these dangerous and deadly temporalities that toxify the present tense as well as the coming days and weeks, 3/
Read 19 tweets
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Jul 25, 2022
"My name is Vermont, I do what I want!" The Vermont Family was a roving band of anarcho-punks that helped build connective tissue linking the dispersed US anarchist milieu in the late 1980s. A fun little 🧵 #AnarchistHistory #RadicalHistory 1/
The Family originally came together within the “Great Peace March for Global Nuclear Disarmament,” in which hundreds of people walked from Los Angeles to Washington, DC over the course of nine months in 1986. 2/
While many of the liberals dropped out or retreated to cars, a core group of anarchists coalesced to form a traveling “anarchy village” which grew from 15 to around 70 or 80 people. They ran the village through consensus and promoted anarchist politics within the march. 3/
Read 14 tweets
Spencer Beswick Profile picture
Jul 25, 2022
“Everything for Everyone: An Oral History of the New York Commune, 2052-2072” is my book of the year so far. Go read it and then give your copy to a friend. It’s Kim Stanley Robinson meets communization theory meets trans feminism and so much more. 🧵 (1/6)
It’s a beautiful vision of the future that shows how we can get through the dark days ahead and build a new world from the ashes of the old, all while healing ourselves from trauma through revolution. And it’s told through oral history interviews that are so, so well done. (2/6)
You need to read this book. Seriously. It is so fucking good. Out now from @CommonNotions (3/6) commonnotions.org/everything-for…
Read 6 tweets

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