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London Anarchist bookfair 2020

ETA: In answer to Athos's question above, they (as in the Antiuniversity, not the Bookfair) have Ramon Elani doing a reading from his new book Wyrd Against the Modern World. The only critical text I know of dealing with Elani's work is unfortunately very very long: Of Indiscriminate Attacks and Wild Reactions: An Anti-Civ Anarchist Engages with ITS and Atassa, their Defenders and Their false Critics

In short, Elani argues that we can learn from pre-colonisation indigenous American societies what a society without the state would look like, which is fine in itself, but he leans very heavily into romanticizing a view of such cultures as being like a Hobbesian state of nature founded on constant violence and so on, which is not so good. In particular:
The essay that editor Abe Cabrera considers to be the flagship of Atassa is "The Return of the Warrior," by Ramon Elani, a generous and perhaps all-too-credible reading of french political anthropologist Pierre Clastres...
Elani sums up the main contention of Clastres on page 57 of Atassa: “The thesis that Clastres is best known for is simple: the permanent state of war that one finds in most indigenous societies is a strategy, deliberately employed, to retain territorial segmentation and prevent the development of the State or monolithic culture. Tribal war resists globalization.” He goes on to quote Clastres directly: “The war machine is the motor of the social machine: the primitive social being relies entirely on war, primitive society cannot survive without war. The more war there is, the less unification there is, and the best enemy of the state is war. Primitive society is society against the State in that it is society-for-war.”

...
“The Return of the Warrior,” then, is Elani’s paean to what he calls the “most elegant theorist” of the warrior. And what do we find there? What, for Elani, does this elegance consist of? And what has engendered the taste for it?

Right off the bat, Elani describes in adulatory tones the brutal raids of young Yanomami men upon neighboring camps, who beat their mothers back with the paddles of canoes and bite them when the latter try to stop them from embarking. You can feel his excitement. With italicized quotes he stresses Clastres' observation that boys in Yanomami society are “encouraged to demonstrate their violence and aggression. Children play games that are often brutal. Parents avoid consoling them. The result of this pedagogy is that it forms warriors.”15 And later: “Fostering this care for violence is the main task of primitive pedagogy and European observers have frequently remarked with horror on the brutal violence that is often done to very small children, who are given to understand this as a prelude to the life of war that they will enter.”16 In fact, Elani approvingly, glowingly, and repeatedly quotes European colonizers as credible sources on the character of the peoples whose destruction they sought, and he writes that upon arrival in the New World, “they were struck without exception by the love of war they found among the people.”17 One of the colonizers whose estimation of the insatiability of an Algonkin warrior is esteemed as exemplary is no less a countenance than that of Samuel de Champlain, “Father of New France,” navigator, cartographer, draftsman, soldier, explorer, geographer, ethnologist, diplomat, and chronicler, maker of the first accurate map of the east coast of Canada.18 I can’t think of any self-interested or dubious motive for why these observers would remark with horror, can you? Maybe it’s because they had a vested interest in making indigenous peoples look like warlike apes to justify their civilizing colonial ventures. Maybe underlying that was a perceptual bias, that spiritual illness that inheres in the very culture we claim to be trying to fight...

After reiterating that primitive war is a means of preventing radical inequality19, we learn that “This is the complexity of primitive society: there are enemies and there are allies [...] Such alliances are created and maintained primarily through the exchange of women, who are also accumulated as spoils of war. This paradox, the exchange of women in securing alliances and the capture of women in war, illustrates, for Clastres the disdain toward exchange economy. Why should we trade for women when we can simply go get some for ourselves: “the risk [of war] is considerable (injury, death) but so are the benefits: they are total, the women are free.”
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I don't think that someone who uncritically writes "Such alliances are created and maintained primarily through the exchange of women, who are also accumulated as spoils of war" when describing a society that he sees as a positive model should be welcome... just about anywhere recently. I also just found a newer interview with him where he writes "I will add that I am not a leftist or an anarchist, and that I do not have much affection for either of those worldviews, as I see both as operating within the delusion of progress." So that's fairly unambiguous really.
 
Athos said:
It's just game-playing. Cowardly and disrespectful.
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Smacks of a politics/style developed in online spats rather than wider engagement. Might look clever to your faction but in general a straight answer goes down better to a general audience IME.
 
JimW said:
Smacks of a politics/style developed in online spats rather than wider engagement. Might look clever to your faction but in general a straight answer goes down better to a general audience IME.
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Can't belive even that faction think it's clever tbh. It's just shit.
 
hitmouse said:
ETA: In answer to Athos's question above, they (as in the Antiuniversity, not the Bookfair) have Ramon Elani doing a reading from his new book Wyrd Against the Modern World. The only critical text I know of dealing with Elani's work is unfortunately very very long: Of Indiscriminate Attacks and Wild Reactions: An Anti-Civ Anarchist Engages with ITS and Atassa, their Defenders and Their false Critics

In short, Elani argues that we can learn from pre-colonisation indigenous American societies what a society without the state would look like, which is fine in itself, but he leans very heavily into romanticizing a view of such cultures as being like a Hobbesian state of nature founded on constant violence and so on, which is not so good. In particular:

I don't think that someone who uncritically writes "Such alliances are created and maintained primarily through the exchange of women, who are also accumulated as spoils of war" when describing a society that he sees as a positive model should be welcome... just about anywhere recently. I also just found a newer interview with him where he writes "I will add that I am not a leftist or an anarchist, and that I do not have much affection for either of those worldviews, as I see both as operating within the delusion of progress." So that's fairly unambiguous really.
Click to expand...
Bonkers!
 
Athos said:
Bonkers!
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Yeah, if anyone in the London anarcho scene feels like looking for something to kick off about, I'd maybe suggest that investigating how Elani ended up with a workshop might be a bit more pressing than the threat of the ACG having a stall or whatever?

A few more quotes from that article:
If these bits of pedagogy and rape culture sound suspiciously rather like modern compulsions, imperatives, and fantasies to the critically-minded reader, you should know that Elani agrees with you. After assuring us that “we can say that primitive man is by definition a warrior,”21 he goes on to expound upon the nature of this eternal identity: “Simply put, the warrior’s passion for war stems from his desperate, wild hunger for prestige, honor, and glory. This fact helps us understand the existential dimensions of the act of warring. The warrior can only realize himself if society confers meaning upon him. Prestige is the content of this meaning. The community awards prestige to the warrior in exchange for accomplishing specific exploits, which as we have seen in turn increases the prestige and honor of the community as a whole.”22 And more to the point:

We have said that scalping an enemy is a requisite for entrance into warrior society but it is only the beginning of his path. The warrior, like Hegel’s slave, is always in a state of becoming. Just as he inherits nothing from the glorious acts of his fathers, with each scalp he takes he must begin again. It does not matter how many scalps a warrior has hanging on the walls of his hut. Once he stops taking scalps, his glory is at an end. The quest and hunger for prestige is a compulsion. Clastres, who correctly places the warrior in an existential context, writes, “the warrior is in essence condemned to forging ahead.” He never has enough scalps. His bloodlust is never quenched. The warrior is thus paradoxically a quintessentially modern figure. He is always dissatisfied and restless. He is a neurotic. He is formed and conditioned by conflicted forces, a soul that yearns for glory but is dependent on a society to recognize and reward it: “for each exploit accomplished, the warrior and society utter the same judgement: the warrior says, That’s good, but I can do more, I can increase my glory. Society says, That’s good, but you should do more, obtain our recognition of superior prestige.” This paradox is all the more acutely felt as the exploits and the glory they confer are exclusively individual. The warrior does not embody a team mentality. It is every man for his own glory.23

Here, we are dealing with people who refuse to entertain the idea that the exclusively male warrior/barbarian archetype is arguably more a civilized than an uncivilized figure, but who simultaneously advocate for his ascendency or eternality as such...

If the reader will indulge me, I invite you to go back to the block quote above by Elani, the one that describes the Warrior as a neurotic in need of constant validation. Read that quote and the surrounding passages again and ask yourself if the emotional and psychological reality celebrated therein is distinguishable from that of an MRA (Men’s Rights Activist) or pick-up artist? Could this not describe any alt-right keyboard warrior, any Proud Boy, any basement-dwelling tankie or even just your garden variety avaricious businessman or techie scum?

What is it about our civilized culture that renders all of these aspiring patriarchs so endlessly the same while conferring on them (at least for each other) the sheen of gravitas and cool? Why, everywhere that we might seek a portal out of this madness, do we only find a mirror of this culture?

... Regardless, one wonders: what would have been the result had Ramon Elani based his theories not on whichever Warrior most faithfully mirrored his cold, empty mental landscape, but on the veritable libraries full of studies, encounters, tales, anecdotes, documentation, and advocacy for those indigenous tribes-- and particularly foraging cultures-- who are utterly indulgent with their children, where pedagogy is absent, where gender domination is not a norm, cultures in which terminology is lacking for several kinds of abuse because they are exceedingly rare or non-existent, societies in which “someone always intervenes”40 in the event that there is an attempt at domestic battering or any taking advantage of the weak by the strong, etc. It has been seen that some forms of play, of gambling, of conventions in the divvying up of meat or other bits of material culture can be as effective as violence in the maintenance of abolition of hierarchy...

The ones who would take me to task, pointing to the sinful stain of my vestigial leftism (or whichever caricature is convenient at the moment) for romanticizing the peoples and places I’ve read about... are the same people who write shit like this: “The shape that looms up before us is a monolith. A vision of death, stasis, calcification. Without movement or energy. But the crystalline soul of the primitive world, cold, hard, and perfect, is shattered, burst open and given life in the flaming heart of war.”42 Crystalline, cold, hard, perfect. Like a machine. Possibly like Elani’s laptop. Maybe like the standards or the emotional repertoire of his mother or father.
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I notice that last year's virtual bookfair did include a talk by Immediatism podcast, a project that host several Elani texts, as well as the equally objectionable Bellamy Fitzpatrick. Will Immediatism be back this year?
 
Reading through this thread a bit more fully. Christ alive the presumption and speculation. Seems mostly geared towards being angry at your own speculation and them getting annoyed at someone who is politely respond where they are able. I'm sorry if you feel offended that I'm not able/keen to provide you with answers to every query, I mean just accept that there maybe things you are not aware about and reasons you might not be informed about it.

For what it's worth, we received the email from Angry Workers and they'll be responded to accordingly, our next meeting is on Wednesday so I guess after that.

This animosity is entirely one sided, I've not said a single thing about what a big chunk of thread are reaching to imply, I also know for a fact that certain people on this thread have entirely the wrong end of this stick after some unrelated twitter beefing I got dragged into and are acting in an ill-informed and perhaps even consciously bad faith manner. Sure my manner is glib at times, I blame a lack of tea in my life making my a bit salty. Me no ones perfect and I'm certainly no Malatesta lol.

As Anarchists, we should respond to the things we KNOW, not just a culmative pile of idle gossip.

The lack of trust in your comrades is deeply disheartening and many people on the thread need to learn to just accept that they might not be informed and there are things that people can't/won't post of random threads on the internet.

The ONLY reason I am here is because I actually have respect for people in the thread and for 70 pages I've been walking a thin line of providing information while dealing with made up bullshit designed to undermine comrades you'd be better reaching out towards and working with.

U75 is just one a many random forums and tho the bantz are fucking on point, it's also a lot of labour and frankly I'm tired of taking flak personally for such the guff in some of your fantasy lives.

I know I'm just some random glib chatter on a thread to most of you, change that. Come meet me and the rest of the Bookfair crew, have some fucking human interaction and realise that shit on the internet isn't always what it seems. We are your fucking comrades and it'd be nice if you had a little mutual respect and a degree of understanding when things occour that you ain't privy too. Truly, if you give a fuck, come down, enjoy bookfair, tell us what we can do better for the following years, join us for a pint afterwords, put your pointless hostility in the bin where it belongs.

Either way, stop winding yourselves up with speculation.

I'm here for questions about bookfair, I'll answer what I can, there are many things that I won't be going into. Live with it x
 
Rhyddical said:
I've not said a single thing about what a big chunk of thread are reaching to imply.
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Yes, I think everyone's noticed that bit.
The lack of trust in your comrades is deeply disheartening and many people on the thread need to learn to just accept that they might not be informed and there are things that people can't/won't post of random threads on the internet.
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Yeah, there's probably better ways of dealing with certain queries. Email, for instance?
 
Of course people are going to speculate ffs. You've gone out of your way to avoid answering a simple question so we haven't been left with any other option apart from shutting up and accepting whatever your mysterious reasons are.

You could have said "I don't know", "They're banned for X", or any number of other reasonable things that would have helped us understand. To now moan about how all this speculation is shit is just pathetic.

Actually lol at your 'come down the bookfair, show some respect, get off the internet bantz' bizzare shit.
 
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hitmouse said:
OK. In case you'd missed it, the ACG have applied for a stall for the 2021 bookfair and seem to have not received a reply yet, and several people are curious as to whether they have a stall or not, and if not why not.

In other news, sure it's been posted upthread, but in case anyone's in West Yorkshire and is unaware, the Bradford bookfair is this weekend:

Click to expand...

Don't bother with London - Come up to the West Riding and in the words of Mark E Smith -
Leave the Capitol

Hit The North
 
Rhyddical said:
Reading through this thread a bit more fully. Christ alive the presumption and speculation. Seems mostly geared towards being angry at your own speculation and them getting annoyed at someone who is politely respond where they are able. I'm sorry if you feel offended that I'm not able/keen to provide you with answers to every query, I mean just accept that there maybe things you are not aware about and reasons you might not be informed about it.

For what it's worth, we received the email from Angry Workers and they'll be responded to accordingly, our next meeting is on Wednesday so I guess after that.

This animosity is entirely one sided, I've not said a single thing about what a big chunk of thread are reaching to imply, I also know for a fact that certain people on this thread have entirely the wrong end of this stick after some unrelated twitter beefing I got dragged into and are acting in an ill-informed and perhaps even consciously bad faith manner. Sure my manner is glib at times, I blame a lack of tea in my life making my a bit salty. Me no ones perfect and I'm certainly no Malatesta lol.

As Anarchists, we should respond to the things we KNOW, not just a culmative pile of idle gossip.

The lack of trust in your comrades is deeply disheartening and many people on the thread need to learn to just accept that they might not be informed and there are things that people can't/won't post of random threads on the internet.

The ONLY reason I am here is because I actually have respect for people in the thread and for 70 pages I've been walking a thin line of providing information while dealing with made up bullshit designed to undermine comrades you'd be better reaching out towards and working with.

U75 is just one a many random forums and tho the bantz are fucking on point, it's also a lot of labour and frankly I'm tired of taking flak personally for such the guff in some of your fantasy lives.

I know I'm just some random glib chatter on a thread to most of you, change that. Come meet me and the rest of the Bookfair crew, have some fucking human interaction and realise that shit on the internet isn't always what it seems. We are your fucking comrades and it'd be nice if you had a little mutual respect and a degree of understanding when things occour that you ain't privy too. Truly, if you give a fuck, come down, enjoy bookfair, tell us what we can do better for the following years, join us for a pint afterwords, put your pointless hostility in the bin where it belongs.

Either way, stop winding yourselves up with speculation.

I'm here for questions about bookfair, I'll answer what I can, there are many things that I won't be going into. Live with it x
Click to expand...
At a more mundane level, people might want to do things like book train tickets and get childcare. Leaving people to find they are not on the poster isn't the best way to help them plan such things.
 
LynnDoyleCooper said:
Actually lol at your 'come down the bookfair, show some respect, get off the internet bantz' bizzare shit.
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Thing is, in 99% of cases I can see the logic behind "don't get all worked up on the internet, have a face-to-face conversation and it'll calm things down instead of fuelling weird drama". But there are exceptions to that, and having a face-to-face conversation in the context of the London bookfair and/or adjacent Wetherspoons feels like one of them.
redsquirrel said:
Don't bother with London - Come up to the West Riding and in the words of Mark E Smith - Leave the Capitol
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Those are Manchester tunes though, surely for the Bradford bookfair you should be posting Hotknives, or at least Gang of Four or something?
 
hitmouse said:
Thing is, in 99% of cases I can see the logic behind "don't get all worked up on the internet, have a face-to-face conversation and it'll calm things down instead of fuelling weird drama". But there are exceptions to that, and having a face-to-face conversation in the context of the London bookfair and/or adjacent Wetherspoons feels like one of them.

Those are Manchester tunes though, surely for the Bradford bookfair you should be posting Hotknives, or at least Gang of Four or something?
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Cadillacs in Bradford
 
Rhyddical In terms of “Come meet me and the rest of the Bookfair crew, have some fucking human interaction and realise that shit on the internet isn't always what it seems.”

I emailed the organising group about attending their meeting when the initial invites went out way back when. Never heard back…

Which is fine. I’m not a well respected national anarchist org.

But you do seem to have an engagement issue.
 
Can the ACG have a stall?
- Silence
You might have missed the email, can the ACG have a stall?
- Silence
Really, can we have a stall?
- Blather, blather, something about masks and ant-vaxxers
Yeah, but our stall?
- 'Look, Look, Here's a list of people who have got a stall?
So, are you saying the ACG have been refused because they are transphobic
- Some other groups couldn't have a stall due to space/Covid
Yeah, but do you have any evidence that the ACG are transphobic?
- You need to be comradely and trust us....
But...
WE AREN'T TELLING YOU!
 
Wilf said:
Can the ACG have a stall?
- Silence
You might have missed the email, can the ACG have a stall?
- Silence
Really, can we have a stall?
- Blather, blather, something about masks and ant-vaxxers
Yeah, but our stall?
- 'Look, Look, Here's a list of people who have got a stall?
So, are you saying the ACG have been refused because they are transphobic
- Some other groups couldn't have a stall due to space/Covid
Yeah, but do you have any evidence that the ACG are transphobic?
- You need to be comradely and trust us....
But...
WE AREN'T TELLING YOU!
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To be fair, Rhyddical did say:
Rhyddical said:
I don't think any organisation which is Transpobic by it's nature applied for a stall, that would be weird.
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We applied for a stall. Therefore he doesn’t think we are by our nature transphobic.
 
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