Spencer Beswick Profile picture
Apr 20 4 tweets 2 min read Twitter logo Read on Twitter
The anarchist wing of the 1970s women’s liberation movement operated predominantly through decentralized small groups like the Ithaca Tiamat Collective. Tiamat (1975-78) functioned as both a consciousness-raising group and an outward-facing political organization. #twithaca 1/
Tiamat put out an issue of the national newsletter called Anarcha-Feminist Notes and organized an anarcha-feminist conference in 1978 in Ithaca, NY. This conference brought together anarcha-feminist collectives from across the country to develop their theory and practice, 2/ Image
form personal relationships, and coordinate the movement. Although the conference was criticized by some women for its predominantly white and middle-class attendance, it was an important milestone for the anarcha-feminist movement. 3/
For more on the history of anarcha-feminism in the 1970s, check out Julia Tanenbaum's great article "To Destroy Domination in All Forms: Anarcha-Feminist Theory, Organization and Action 1970–1978" #feminism #anarchism 4/4 theanarchistlibrary.org/library/julia-…

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More from @spencerbeswick

Apr 23
Neoliberalism & anarchist history 🧵

The New Right’s neoliberal counterrevolution dramatically reshaped American society. Neoliberal economics remade the system of production and decimated the labor movement, in part by recuperating struggles against the Fordist factory. 1/
Reactionary masculine individualism was reinscribed as the welfare system was attacked and the liberal wing of the women’s movement was absorbed into the capitalist system. Formal legal equality was granted to Black people while the radical wings of the civil rights & national 2/
liberation movements were violently repressed. The expansion of the prison system served both to contain the radical left & to address an economic crisis. This counterrevolution set the stage upon which much of the radical left moved towards anarchism in the late 20th century. 3/
Read 16 tweets
Apr 21
Anarchism in the late 20th century 🧵

Anarchists survived the post-1960s neoliberal counterrevolution and produced new revolutionary theory and practice that addressed the evolving social conditions of the twentieth century. 1/
They provided compelling answers to the new problems posed by the counterrevolution while drawing lessons from the failures of both the Old and New Left. Black/New Afrikan Anarchists critiqued the Black Panthers and created a new synthesis of Black Nationalism and anarchism 2/
that would later influence the Anarchist People of Color tendency as well as contemporary abolitionist politics. Anarcha-feminists linked patriarchy, capitalism, and the state as they popularized affinity group organizing and consensus-based decision making. 3/
Read 6 tweets
Apr 20
Ex-Black Panther political prisoners including Ashanti Alston, Kuwasi Balagoon, and Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin theorized Black/New Afrikan Anarchism as a new political ideology for revolutionary Black struggle in the late twentieth century. 🧵 1/
Black/New Afrikan Anarchists criticized what they perceived to be shortcomings of the Black Panthers, synthesized anarchism with Black Nationalism, and theorized the Black Commune as the revolutionary form of Black self-determination. 2/
While they lauded the Panthers as the leading organization of the long 1960s, they criticized the party’s authoritarianism and hierarchical and patriarchal tendencies. Their disillusionment with the Black Panthers led to a wider critique of the Marxist-Leninist approach to 3/
Read 12 tweets
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
Mar 19
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…
Read 10 tweets
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

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