Howard Zinn: "To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. 1/4 "What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, 2/4

The disconnect between public perception of academia vs. the reality is so immense. Anti-intellectuals on the right and left assume that academia is run by--and full of cushy tenured jobs for--"Marxists." The reality is that universities are run like neoliberal businesses. 1/ There has been a sea change in the academic labor market. Decades ago, the majority of profs were tenure track, with a minority of adjuncts. The latter were often "professionals" teaching a class or two in their field as a passion project. 2/

Eco-anarchism 🧵

The core of the radical environmental movement that developed in the 1960s-1990s largely embraced anarchist thought and practice. Radical environmentalists criticized Marxists for their support of rampant industrialization and their propensity to delay 1/ environmental action until “after the revolution.” Eco-anarchists like the Earth First!er Judi Bari argued that the environmentally destructive practices of socialist countries reflected both a failure of Marxism and the fact that all states privilege economic growth and 2/

Great discussion on anarchism in race today in my class on anarchism & syndicalism. Is #anarchism a "white" phenomenon? 🧵from a forthcoming article of mine.

The heyday of American anarchism around the turn of the twentieth century was dominated by European immigrants who, 1/ although racialized by mainstream society, were predominantly white by later twentieth-century standards. 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. 2/

As we repeat Biden vs. Trump it's worth revisiting my piece in @truthout from last year: "The liberal repudiation of fascism through the defense of electoral democracy and mainstream institutions is not enough to defeat the fascist menace. 1/
truthout.org/articles/defen… "We need to address the root causes of the deepening crisis and provide an alternative vision of a better world. When the left limits its activity to defending mainstream liberal institutions, fascists are emboldened to present themselves as the only real alternative 2/

Fascism doesn't mean "things I don't like." It also doesn't mean "anything authoritarian" or "any attempt to limit free speech." It is a particular far-right, mass-based political phenomenon born in reaction to crises of liberal democracy and capitalism. 1/ I like Robert Paxton's definition in his book "The Anatomy of Fascism" (2004): "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, 2/

Howard Zinn: "To be hopeful in bad times is not just foolishly romantic. It is based on the fact that human history is a history not only of cruelty, but also of compassion, sacrifice, courage, kindness. 1/ "What we choose to emphasize in this complex history will determine our lives. If we see only the worst, it destroys our capacity to do something. If we remember those times and places—and there are so many—where people have behaved magnificently, 2/

Twelve years after Occupy Wall Street, the truth is that I feel totally defeated and adrift politically. My life was transformed at age 18 in Occupy Boston. We were building a new world in Dewey Square and I naively believed the revolution was at hand. But we failed. 1/ Since then, I have been searching for glimpses of that new world. But every project I have been part of for the past decade has failed. It has been devastating. Sometimes I feel I retreated into history because I cannot bear the pain of continuing to believe in the future. 2/

Early 20th century anarchism across the Americas 🧵

Social movements at the beginning of the long twentieth century were driven by the anarchist Left. Early industrialization across the Americas provided a working-class social base for anarchist politics. 1/ Beyond unions, anarchists were active in every sphere of life, from mutual aid societies and cultural organizations to newspapers, vegetarian restaurants, and nature retreats. Anarchists were prominent in four major transnational networks throughout the Americas. 2/

Murray Bookchin: "What compels me to fight this society is, of course, outrage over injustice, a love of freedom, and a feeling of responsibility for perpetuating and enlarging the human spirit - its beauty, creativity, and latent capacity to improve the world. 1/ "I do not care to come to terms with an irrational society that corrodes all that is valuable in humanity, that eats away at all that is beautiful and noble in the human experience.

Capitalism devours us. At the molecular level of everyday life, it changes us for the worse, 2/

"Love and Rage: Revolutionary Anarchism in the Late Twentieth Century" dissertation abstract:

This dissertation examines the post-1960s evolution of North American anarchism in order to rethink the role of the radical left during the neoliberal counterrevolution. 1/ I conducted extensive oral history interviews across the United States, as well as archival research in the US, Germany, and the Netherlands, to investigate how the anarchist movement responded to the new social terrain of the late twentieth century world. 2/

Dissertation Ch 2 summary: "This chapter covers the period from 1989 through 1993: founding the Love and Rage newspaper, establishing the Love and Rage Network in 1991, and turning it into a formal membership-based Revolutionary Anarchist Federation in 1993. 1/ I explore how local groups interacted with the newspaper and the national network and used them to strengthen their own activities, including NYC Autonomous Anarchist Action, Earth Day Wall Street, the AWOL collective in Minneapolis, and the action against the Gulf War in DC, 2/

The Love & Rage newspaper was a pole around which an intersectional revolutionary anarchist movement coalesced and took form in the 1990s. It was a clearing house in which writers from many groups & tendencies published theoretical articles, calls to action, and scene reports. 1/ In this sense, Love & Rage joined a radical media ecosystem that included Fifth Estate, Anarchy, and other small anarchist journals. Love & Rage did not promote an official “party line,” but it did—like its contemporaries—promote certain forms of political discourse & action. 2/

The Love and Rage anarchist newspaper was officially founded in November 1989 at a small conference in Chicago. The name was taken from a political prisoner who regularly corresponded with a variety of anarchists and always signed off “with love and rage.” 1/ Although some people argued for more traditional names like the “Revolutionary Anarchist Paper,” most of them wanted something with a little more “pizazz” that would distinguish themselves from the usual leftist newspapers put out by Marxist parties. 2/

Conventional wisdom holds that anarchism means chaos and lack of organization. Although this is generally an ill-informed impression, it is true that many anarchists were (and are) vehemently opposed to building organizational structures. 1/ In the 1980s-1990s, some anarchists (like those grouped around Fifth Estate and Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed), were ideologically opposed to any kind of formal organization. They argued that it was antithetical to anarchist principles of individual freedom and autonomy. 2/

An anarchist vision of a new society: the self-organized and self-governing community. From Love and Rage (1997) 🧵

"In place of the State, we propose the self-organized community. We advocate that local people affected by decisions should be the ones making them. 1/ "For larger geographic coordination, say at the regional or continental level, local assemblies can confederate, sending accountable and immediately recallable delegates to present the positions of local communities. 2/

The 1989 "Without Borders" anarchist gathering in San Francisco was an inflection point in the development of the US anarchist movement. Thousands of anarchists came to the Bay Area for a week-long conference that built on the previous three annual continental convergences. 🧵 1/ Building off the 1988 gathering in Toronto, there was a greatly increased focus on feminism, women’s liberation, and challenging patriarchy within the anarchist movement—rather than assuming, as some men did, that it was a space of already liberated personal relationships. 2/

Anarcha-feminism, a short 🧵

Anarchists have long argued for gender equality and sexual liberation, but their theoretical commitments have often given way to male dominance in practice. Although many women and queer radicals have pushed anarchism to live up to its ideals 1/ by fighting against all forms of oppression and hierarchy, anarcha-feminism as such was first developed as an explicit political tendency within the women’s liberation movement of the 1970s. Anarchists expanded the feminist critique of patriarchy into a radical rejection of 2/

Assata Shakur: "I have never really understood exactly what a ‘liberal’ is, since I have heard ‘liberals’ express every conceivable opinion on every conceivable subject. As far as I can tell, you have the extreme right, who are fascist racist capitalist dogs like Ronald Reagan 1/ who come right out and let you know where they’re coming from. And on the opposite end, you have the left, who are supposed to be committed to justice, equality, and human rights. And somewhere between those two points is the liberal. 2/

Re: Texas mall shooting. Although fascism and whiteness have been entangled in the US and Europe, fascism cannot be reduced to white supremacy. For another view, I recommend J. Sakai's provocative essay "The Shock of Recognition" (2002) trueleappress.files.wordpress.com/2018/01/kerspl… 1/ J. Sakai argues that Fascism is not synonymous with white supremacy. Rather, it is a violent patriarchal phenomenon of middle class and declassed men, regardless of race. Fascism, he says, "is the would-be champion of local male classes vs. the new transnational classes. 2/

White anarchist punks practiced a form of race traitor politics that exemplified both the merits and shortcomings of this political approach. Punks attempted to force the major institutions of white society to treat them as antagonists. 1/ The punk writer and academic Maxwell Tremblay explains that in the 1990s, “the more one identified as ‘punk,’ the more one was expected, as part of a larger political project, to reject one’s inherited whiteness … through treason.” 2/