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Title: Against Identity Politics
Author: Lupus Dragonowl
Date: 2015
Language: en
Topics: identity politics, oppression, essentialism, spectres, privilege, dropping-out, exodus, community, Maoism, AJODA, AJODA #76
Source: Retrieved from "Anarchy - A Journal For Desire Armed", No. 76, p. 29-51.

Lupus Dragonowl

Against Identity Politics

Identity Politicians (IPs) are a particular kind of leftist who use the

spectre[1] of an identity-category (gender, race, sexuality, etc) as a

lever to obtain power. In the sense discussed here, they should not be

considered coterminous either with groups of people oppressed by

identity categories, or even that subset who prioritise identity as a

key site of struggle. Not all women, Black people, People of Colour

(POC)[2], or members of other specifiable groups are IPs; not all

feminists, anti-racists, or even separatists are IPs. Racism, sexism and

other oppressions along identity axes are sociologically real, and not

every person involved in the struggle against such oppressions is an IP.

Intersectionality - the recognition of multiple forms or axes of

oppression, with complex interacting effects - is an effective

theoretical response to the problems of Identity Politics, but there

have clearly been difficulties putting it into practice. In

identity-linked movements, some people use intersectionality as a way to

avoid the idea of principal contradiction, although occasionally in

practice, people who claim to be intersectional end up treating one or

two oppressions as primary. Nevertheless, the fact that not all

identity-related theories or movements need to be treated as Identity

Politics does not mean that the influence of Identity Politicians is

trivial. The writers and activists discussed here not only exist, but

their ideas and practices are often insidious and unfortunately

widespread. Recognizing the importance and necessity of countering that

deleterious influence is my motivation for writing this essay.

It should here be emphasised that this is not a critique of all forms of

radical theory focused on racial or gender oppression. This critique of

IPs is by no means a critique of every position which focuses on a

particular type of oppression (such as gender or race). Indeed, aspects

of this critique are already present in a number of theorists who work

with identity. For instance, the iconic anti-colonial writer Frantz

Fanon argued that dualistic identities deform interpersonal relations

and reproduce colonial power. While the struggle against colonial power

is in fact an irreducible antagonism, and moves similar to those of IPs

are strategically useful to fight it, the ultimate goal is to overcome

such binaries in a future of the disalienated “whole [hu] man” (Wretched

of the Earth, 238-9). He even articulates an almost Stirnerian’ claim

that “the real leap consists in introducing invention into existence ...

I am endlessly creating myself” (Black Skin, White Masks 204).

Similarly, in her later works, Gloria Anzaldúa argued that we are

citizens of the universe, sharing an identity at a cosmic or subatomic

level which is wider than any racial or social category (This Bridge We

Call Home, 558). She came to criticise IPs for putting up walls and

causing violence between groups (Interviews, 118). Neither of these

authors arrives at a Stirnerian position: Fanon moves towards humanism,

and Anzaldúa towards spiritual holism. However, their rejections of

fixed identities overlap and intersect with mine, and serve to counter

any suspicion that the rejection of Identity Politics entails a failure

to take patriarchy, colonialism, or racism seriously.

Some feminists and Black radicals do not deploy the reactive affects

discussed below, and instead seek to regenerate a force of becoming to

one degree or another (e.g. Mary Daly, Germaine Greer, Audre Lorde,

Edouard Glissant). Others, notably dependency theorists and

socialist-feminists, emphasise structural oppression, and struggle

primarily against macro-structures - destroying capitalism, modernity,

or the world-system - rather than focusing on the micro-politics of

privilege. None of these approaches falls within what is being critiqued

here. Academic approaches that draw on poststructuralism are also

distinct from Identity Politics, in that they typically reject the

primacy of any particular position. Academic theories related to

oppression and identity - for example, Queer Theory, Critical Race

Theory, Postcolonial Theory, and poststructuralist feminism - generally

reject the idea of principal contradiction. The popularity of Identity

Politics among radicals is partly due to the influence of academic work

on identity, but, in academic spaces, most strategies of IPs would be

rejected as essentialist (there are other issues of disagreement between

post-left anarchy and poststructuralism, and between post-left anarchy

and leftist types of structuralism, but these issues will not be covered

here).

What is being criticised here is a particular political style, rather

than a theoretical orientation - a style which labels as oppressive any

deviation from a particular political line, which resorts almost

immediately to public denunciation and exclusion, and which entails

analytical and categorical rigidity, with corresponding

boundary-policing. They can be distinguished from those whose approaches

pursue open-ended becomings through the deconstruction of

identity-categories (eg Heckert), which are minoritarian becomings

rather than minority identities.

IPs see one axis of oppression as primary - the principal

contradiction[3] They demand that everyone focus on this axis. If

someone fails to do so, IPs label them racist, sexist, white

supremacist, patriarchal, etc. Ditto if they refuse leadership by the

oppressed group (often meaning the IPs themselves), deviate from the

IP’s proposed political line, or criticise an IP. Such terms are

deployed only by a member of the correct group, and are used to silence

criticism - in the case of Patriarchy Haters, even the word violence is

monopolised; those who oppose them “do not get to decide what counts as

violence” (Voline). The idea of a principal contradiction leads to

contempt for other issues and priorities. For instance, IPs in APOC, who

focus on race, argue that “bleating about gender and class” is an

instance of “diversionary tactics” to deflect from race (Anon, Open

Letter). Early CWS work treated issues other than racism as

“distractions” (Dot Matrix), and Lorenzo Ervin demands that

“anti-racism/anti-colonialism” be made “the core concern” of every

activist group (315). He also dismisses anything outside his own

agenda - from climate change to anti-fascism - as a “white rights” issue

(133, 290, 302).

This political style boundary-polices identities in a way which renders

them rigid and authoritarian. In many cases, fighting alleged racism or

sexism inside radical groups is seen as the most important issue in

radical politics - more important than fighting racism/sexism in the

wider society. Ervin calls white radicals the worst kinds of racists,

worse than hardcore conservatives (240, 272-3). Usually, these attacks

take the form of militant struggle from the Maoist milieu: public

denunciation and/or disruption, criticism/self-criticism, purging/

exclusion, and the policing of micro-oppressions within the movement or

scene; activists refuse to draw distinctions between allies and

sympathisers, active enemies, and anything in-between. Ostracism, “the

ultimate form of social control,” “is very infrequently used” in

indigenous cultures (Peaceful Societies), but is used almost immediately

by IPs for the smallest perceived transgressions.

Ervin’s repeated tirades against white anarchists provide a textbook

case of this approach; his recent antics include labelling the entire

Anarchist Black Cross racist because, at their recent convention in

Denver, someone - at the request of Black political prisoner Jalil

Muntaqim - read aloud a racist letter by a prison guard. Roger White’s

Post Colonial Anarchism exemplifies this too, as do the faction of APOC

who disrupted the Crimethlnc convergence in Philadelphia in 2009,

verbally abusing participants and damaging their belongings. Kill

Whitey, one ofthe cheerleaders for this attack, later extended the

disruptors’ accusations of“white supremacy” to Food Not Bombs and other

anarchist groups, demanding that all such groups accept black

leadership. The attack by activists from the Qilombo social centre on

the CAL Press table at the Bay Area Anarchist Book Fair in 2014 is

another case; subsequent comments online by Qilombo supporters clearly

show the same rhetoric. Patriarchy Haters, the group which emerged from

the Patriarchy and the Movement event in Portland, represent a feminist

variant; their most notorious intervention was to shout down Kristian

Williams at an unrelated event for criticising their political style in

his article, The Politics of Denunciation.

Identity and Spectres

From a Stirnerian anarchist perspective, at the root of the problem with

IPs is the spectre - the use of an identity-category as a transcendent,

abstract category which possesses and defines values. In Stirner’s

theory, the problem of oppression is the problem that people value

spectres and the things which benefit spectres - instead of valuing the

things which they desire as a “unique one.” All categories, words,

concepts, can become spectres if they are allowed to possess and

dominate us - even those which refer to our properties or attributes

(59, 151). If people are defined as essentially and primarily

something - whether it be humanity, whiteness, blackness, masculinity,

femininity - this is always alienating, because the category is always

“his essence and not he himself,” and therefore something alien (28),

which requires “my valuelessness” (145). As a real person, each of us is

a processual being, an embodied self, located in a field of becoming.

From a Stirnerian perspective, systems of oppression such as racism and

patriarchy are oppressive impositions of a particular spectre. Systems

of oppression based on gender, race, and so on are sociologically real,

but ultimately rest on other people imposing a particular spectre -

treating another person not as a unique one, but as an instance of

femininity, or “just another X.” Such systems entail valuing a

particular category to the exclusion of others, leading to violence

against those excluded.

However, the subordination of one spectre to another is not the base

level of the problem; the problem is that spectres do not liberate or

empower those who belong to the category they value, because those

belonging to the category are valued only as instances of the category,

not in their full, unrepresentable being. Hence, a right of humanity or

a white privilege is never my right or privilege, because my unique

being is not identical with humanity or whiteness. Even if I qualify as

human or white (by falling within the extensional set of each category),

there is some residue of uniqueness which is prohibited by the spectre.

Stirner’s concept of the un-person expresses this clearly. An un-person

falls within the category human, but is deemed to deviate from the

essence, for instance by putting uniqueness before humanity. The

un-person is not liberated, but jailed or hospitalised. Indigenous

people always fell within the extensional set of humans, but were

historically exterminated or assimilated because they fell outside the

essence of what colonisers defined as having human value. The

hierarchising of representational categories is secondary to the initial

oppressive gesture of subordinating real becomings to abstract

categories.

By analogy, white or male privilege is the privilege of the spectre, not

of the extensional set. There is the spectre as a category, which

usually has a set of normatively defined characteristics (such as

masculinity, whiteness, humanity). And then there is the set of people

who are classified as part of the spectre, who may or may not have these

characteristics. A male white person becomes un-white or un-male when he

ceases to conform to dominant ideas about the category. We might say

that white privilege is not something which is owned by a person defined

as white; it is owned by an alien spectre (112), the category of

whiteness.

Spectres are connected to sovereignty, as theorised by Agamben. In

sovereignty, a political ruler has the power to decide which instances

of the extensional set conform to the essence of the spectre and are

accorded value - who is “person” (qualified life) and who is “un-person”

(bare life). This leads to “abyssal thought,” the devaluing of those who

fall outside dominant normativity (de Souza Santos). In Maoism and

Leninism, sovereignty operates in the form of vanguard ism or

substitutionism. The Party or leader defines the spectre and hence

claims to speak for all those covered by it - but such statements are

really political decisions rather than empirical claims. The IP, the

leader, claims to speak as and for POC, Black people, women, and so on -

but never for all those covered by the category. In a sneaky semantic

move, the moment the oppressed criticise the vanguard, they are no

longer the oppressed, but objectively have become allied with the

oppressors. An enemy of the IP becomes an enemy of the entire category —

the spectre.

Identity Politics and Maoism

IPs IMAGINE SPECTRES TO BE MATERIALLY REAL. Whereas Stirnerians insist

that becoming is unrepresentable, IPs follow Marx’s view that it can be

identified with an essence. For Stirner, binaries are artificial effects

of spectres; for Marxists, they are correct theoretical reflections of

binary structures within reality itself. The IP’s style is descended

from Maoism. Younger IPs are unlikely to have been directly influenced

by Maoism, but important elements of Maoist political grammar were

imported into earlier forms of Identity Politics and continue to

operate.

Maoists and IPs are strong structural determinists. This means that they

work with a model of social life in which macro-social structures

determine people’s identities and political outcomes. For instance,

Ervin says that any white radical has “middle class racial privileges...

and it does not matter about their personal beliefs” (268). IPs deny

that people exist as unique individuals at all; people are simply

instances of spectres. As an APOC writer says, “It’s completely arrogant

and pretentious to think you are unique. You are just another white

person” (Anon, Open Letter). People are taken to be effects of, and

reducible to, particular social structures: these structures determine

their material interests, which determine their unconscious investments,

which determine their beliefs and actions. People’s real, unconscious

desires are always “racialized desires” stemming from “racialized,

classed, and gendered subjectivities” (comments on Anon, Smack a White

Boy Part Two). In the case of privileged people, desires are not to be

liberated, but purified. In the case of oppressed people, what they

desire is automatically, instinctively right — provided it follows from

the spectre.

This approach depends on the conflation of the spectre (eg whiteness,

masculinity) and the extensional set it covers (eg white people, men).

Roger White asserts that “white, Christian men have held power and

privilege” - without distinguishing between the spectres, the elite, and

all members of the categories. And the founder of CWS writes of “the

guilt that comes from being who I am: a white person of conscience in a

white supremacist society” (Dot Matrix).

All of these positions entail the view that we are our spectres. As

Williams argues, it classifies people as “particular types of people who

are essentially those things,” and reduces oppressed as much as

abuser/oppressor to “political symbols used by others to advance some

specific ideological line.” Normatively, anything which aids the

oppressed spectre is good; anything which harms it is bad. The same

action - silencing, violence, abuse, eviction - is praised in the former

case and condemned in the latter. A person’s intent is irrelevant; the

real significance comes from the effect, as defined in the IP’s frame.

Duplicating the historic role of the activist or militant (Vaneigem,

111; Anon, Give Up Activism), the IP makes her/himself indispensable as

an Expert on oppression, based on claimed knowledge of the spectre and

the correct response to it.

Such spectres are used to channel the anger of the excluded into

controlled political forms. Maoism is a power-politics of ruthless

control, but it is seductively appealing to marginalised people because

it contains a moment of empowerment. Especially when out of power,

Maoism encourages the expression of accumulated anger against real

oppressors such as landlords and government functionaries. This practice

is the origin of the culture of denunciation, and the reason why Black

and feminist groups in the ’60s were attracted to Maoism. Once in power,

however, Maoists cannot continue to allow attacks on power-holders.

Instead they channel anger onto folk-devils, such as disempowered former

oppressors, in carefully managed denunciation campaigns (Perry and Li,

7). In the Euro-American context this method takes the form of moral

panics.

This contradictory role is also channelled theoretically. Maoists and

IPs deploy a contradictory fusion of two incompatible ontologies:

realism and perspectivism. Realists maintain that an external reality is

knowable through rational methods by anyone, whereas perspectivists

maintain that everyone’s standpoint is culturally unique, and there is

no way to establish any standpoint as more true than others. Maoists/IPs

are ontological realists in identifying the principal contradiction and

depicting the actions of the privileged (which can be reduced to

externally knowable structures), but perspectivist in their treatment of

the standpoint of the oppressed: if a Black person says something is

racist, it is racist (comments on Jarach et al); if a woman alleges

abuse, the allegation is self-evidently true (comments on Black Orchid

Collective). This turns women and Black people into Experts, to be

unquestioningly listened to and obeyed - a position dehumanising for

them as well as others. In contrast, the real meaning of a white

person’s or a man’s actions is externally knowable, and intent is

irrelevant.

There is method in this madness. In Maoist theory, knowledge is a fusion

of experience, which comes from the masses, and rational theory, which

comes from the vanguard (Mao, On Practice). In practice, this meant that

knowledge emerging from mass meetings, denunciation campaigns,

speak-bitterness campaigns, and so on was systematised and reprocessed

by the Party into the Mass Line, which was presented as the unmediated

experience of the masses. Disagreements within the movement are

“resolved by the method of criticism and self-criticism” (Mao, On

Contradiction). In practice this meant denunciation and

self-denunciation. During the Cultural Revolution, different Maoist

factions began denouncing each other as “objectively

counter-revolutionary,” as part of a competition for resources. Elements

of both of these approaches can be seen in the actions of IPs, the

former as an insistence on leadership by members of a particular group

(Black, women, etc), the latter in the distribution of prestige to

allies based on conspicuous self-abasement and political performance.

Ultimately, denunciation, exclusion, border-policing, promoting us/them

binaries among the oppressed, and harping on principal contradictions

are the methods through which IPs/Maoists mould autonomy into political

power. Anarchism is a threat to Maoism, not because it denies oppression

or comes from privileged groups, but because it carries the

self-expression of the oppressed further.

References to liberation, autonomy, decolonisation, and so on

notwithstanding, in such perspectives, liberation necessarily means

liberation of a spectre, not of concrete people - not even of concrete

people categorised by a spectre (as women, Black people, POC, etc). By

implication, leadership or authoritarian rule by a member of the spectre

is unproblematic. It is still self-determination by the spectre - the

spectre itself remains autonomous, even if its members do not. This is

clear in Ribeiro’s essay Senzala or Quilombo: “[the quilombo] was no

communist society” but had a king; “this is neither here nor [there] ...

[it had] freedom and self-determination.” It does not matter if an

autonomous zone is hierarchically structured, as long as the leaders are

POC.

To enforce this primacy of the spectre, IPs encourage massive

simplifications, reproducing the wider equivalence between stereotypes

and roles (Vaneigem, 134). Members of entire groups (white, male,

straight, middle-class) are deemed privileged. Privilege is often

alleged despite being a result of the actions of a third party (the

police, for example), rather than one’s own. But it carries implications

that the privileged individual is somehow a direct oppressor of the

oppressed individual (Kill Whitey, in True Colors, refers to “white

people” as the oppressor), that they are part of a small, isolated elite

(Ervin, 309), and that they’ve “got it good” in an absolute sense (Anon,

Open Letter). Strategically, the focus is on the privileged person,

rather than the person who actually discriminates against or oppresses

the oppressed person. Such a person is to admit, identify with, unlearn,

or give up their privilege, as if it were an attribute they controlled,

rather than an attribute of a spectre, assigned and reinforced by

others.

In terms of political strategy, IPs declare that people should do what

the Expert defines as structurally responsible, rather than following

their desires. This encourages people to focus on their weaknesses or

internal conditioning, rather than their strengths or outer struggles

(Gelderloos), situating oppression mainly in individual activists’

psyches rather than the dominant social system. IPs insist movements

must have leaders, and these leaders must come from the oppressed group

(Dot Matrix, CWS; Ervin, 291). Spaces must implement extensive policies

of normative regulation and enclosure to meet criteria of safe space,

reflecting a “need for protection and security that eclipses the desire

for freedom” (Landstreicher, 12). Any refusal to do so is taken to be an

instance of racism/sexism within the radical movement - an instance

which is tied to occasional cases of insensitive or prejudiced comments

or actions to paint a misleading picture of a radical scene in which

oppressive behaviour is pervasive and out of control. Normative policing

through safe space policies often makes spaces less safe, by creating

risks of denunciation and purging which are greater than the risks of

micro-oppression (Anonymous Refused). Mixed movements are labelled not

as incidentally white/male, but as deliberately white supremacist and

patriarchal. The illusion is that exclusion creates inclusion; this

rests on the implication that the power to exclude is unproblematic,

provided it is vested in or exercised by the in-group. For anarchists,

the best way to help people feel safer is to recreate autonomous forms

of self-organized control over the basic economic and social conditions

of life, and to provide care and support within networks of affinity.

Without roots in material scarcity, spectres would lose their power to

wound.

To create a politics of sacrifice, people have to be taught they have no

inherent value, so they believe in and support the systems of

compensation associated with roles (Vaneigem,139). IPs convey this

message by defining privilege as an ineliminable attribute of identity

and encouraging guilt. Experiences of different groups - separated by

social categories - are taken to be incommensurable and incomparable,

whereas those of individuals in the same group are taken to be

equivalent or identical: incidents of alleged anarchist racism are

likened to slavery and genocide, but instances of police brutality

against black people and white protesters are absolutely incomparable

(Ribeiro). Objecting to IPs’ abuse is “entitlement,” which is always a

bad thing, since privileged people need to “know their place” as docile

subordinates of the new rulers-to-be. In some cases they are also

expected to funnel resources to IPs’ groups, without anything in return,

all the while respecting the group’s “autonomy” to bad- mouth and

exclude them (Ervin, 291; Qilombo).

Despite their rhetorical radicalism, IPs, like all good Maoists, do not

challenge capitalism. On the contrary, Perlman argues that national

liberation movements - the inspiration for IPs - are actually means of

capitalist nation-building. Why is a supermarket packer not a manager,

or a security guard not the chief of police? Because of racism. “There’s

no earthly reason for the descendants of the persecuted to remain

persecuted when nationalism offers them the prospect of becoming

persecutors” (Perlman). The point, however, is that they become

persecutors and not free beings. The overall system remains intact,

dominant, with the spectres reshuffled.

Between anarchy and identity politics

There is a common misunderstanding, going back to Marx’s critique of

Stirner and exhibited in Roger White’s critique of Lawrence Jarach, that

anarchists believe that spectres are simply figments of the

imagination - “pretending [racist/sexist] discourse doesn’t exist just

because you didn’t create it” (White). This means we can wish away

spectres. Stop believing in them, and they lose any power to oppress.

This is a mischaracterisation. While it is true that Stirner believes

that spectres lose their normative force when we disbelieve them, we can

also be oppressed by other people who continue to believe in and act on

spectres. Structural oppressions are sociologically real but are not

material in the Marxist sense. This simply means that one’s own will is

pitted against the wills and beliefs of others - most of whom continue

to be possessed by spectres.

For anarchists such as Stirner, normative thought, or statism, is a

deeper structure of oppression which generates the various other axes.

Binary thinking is itself closely tied to European thought and the

underpinnings of patriarchy and colonisation. Eurocentric statism and

capitalism are bound-up with colonialism, modern thought, rationalism,

and the modern world-system, but at a deeper level, Europe was also

self-colonised first (Clastres, Perlman). While European countries

became the global imperial powers, the problem of imperialism and

ethnocide are inherent to all states (Clastres). The irony is that IPs

are in fact Eurocemtric, relying on European concepts such as rights and

strong binary oppositions Aragorn!, Non-European Anarchism, 10). On a

deeper level, to be anti-Eurocentric and anti-ethnocidal requires a

rejection of the state.

With their inversions of binaries, IPs seek to reproduce institutions of

hierarchical power. The alternative here is affinity: the attempt to

form connections, informal groups, and unions of egoists without these

groups being mediated by spectres. Creating unmediated intercourse

across socially operative hierarchies (race, gender, etc) is

complicated, but by no means impossible - nor necessarily more difficult

than creating unmediated intercourse between members of the same

category. Where radicalism works well, it manages to construct such

direct connections. As Landstreicher argues, “[t]he awareness each has

of the others’ individuality creates a basis where decision and action

need not be separate” (21). Relating to others as unique beings, as

non-disposable creatures valuable in themselves, makes possible

communication even in contexts of radical difference. Anarchic affinity

is undermined by the inability to challenge others’ views, the

construction of oppressed people as Experts, and the idea of

incommensurability (Dot Matrix, CWS). This actually reinforces binary

thinking and relations of domination.

IPs start from a standpoint within the dominant system of spectres, and

encourage us to identify with our position within systems of oppression

(Gelderloos, 13). They require that “any person interested in radical

transformation relinquish the ability to define her/ himself” (Jarach,

5). Instead, people are to dissolve themselves into the pre-existing

social categories into which they are classified, both by the dominant

system and by IPs. As Jarach argues, “they can’t conceive of the

possibility that the elevation of any particular culturally constructed

marker into a significant value-laden category could lead to oppression”

(3). Indeed, they define the possibility out of existence: we really are

our categories; to oppress is to oppress a category; to liberate is to

liberate a category. And leadership of Experts is necessary, if the

extensional set are to be reduced to the spectre.

From a Stirnerian point of view, instead of starting from a

subject-position assigned by the regime of spectres and categories,

anarchists should start from a standpoint of being a unique individual

irreducible to any spectre or category (including those of uniqueness

and individuality). A Stirnerian recognises racism or sexism, not as

one's own privilege separating one from the other, but as an act of

normative repression against other unique ones, and an insult against

one’s own uniqueness. The intensity of internal and external barriers to

free expression vary with context, but there is a basis for networking

together in the rejection of alienation and spectres. This is recognised

from non-Eurocentric perspectives; some indigenous scholars argue that

modern alienation is a kind of sickness, afflicting colonisers as well

as colonised - indeed, that the colonisers infected the colonised

because they were already sick (Duran and Duran, Burman). This position

meshes with the Stirnerian view that oppressor as well as oppressed is

possessed by spectres.

Anarchy does not necessarily stem from any identity at all. More often,

it comes from a standpoint outside the field of available identities -

as in Stirner's idea of a standpoint unique to each person (190-1).

Gelderloos argues that his own experience is that “[a]ll the identities

that society tried to stitch me into don't fit, and the fabric is

coarse” (6), offering “an inheritance stripped of anything I value” (7).

Similarly, for another anonymous anarchist, “Our task is not to give up

some phantom privilege that has never really been our own, but to expose

and move beyond the artificial identities that smother our

individuality” (Willful Disobedience).

Rather than expressing white male privilege, anarchy should be seen as a

form of ethnogenesis: the emergence of a subculture or counterculture

which, if able to continue on its line of flight (or détournement ),

would become a different culture entirely (New Travellers and,

historically, Irish Travellers are good examples). The emergence of new

cultures through ethnogenesis is well-documented, and often stems from

flight from state power (Scott), a process which begins with a choice to

differ from the majority of an existing group. In other words, forming a

counterculture is the first step in becoming non-white. Ethnogenesis is

a problem for essentialists because it entails fluidity in the very

formation of the structural basis; it frustrates border-policing. IPs

denounce both dropping-out and cultural hybridity, dismissing the latter

as cultural appropriation.

The Politics of Affect

If oppression is the imposition of a structure in which people are

assigned to spectres - of which both privileged and oppressed spectre

are largely effects - then IPs actually entrench oppression by

locking-in the spectres and intensifying normativity. If one assumes

that hierarchical power is wrong because it prevents (non-white) people

from living joyously, in the flow of becoming of their own desires, then

the subordination of autonomy to the primary contradiction is not an

appropriate response. Anarchy goes further, because it opposes the

underlying structure of domination of unique ones and flows of becoming

by the order of spectres. IPs seek to abolish the privilege of a

particular spectre; ideally, anarchists seeks to abolish the normative

power of spectres in general - which necessarily also abolishes every

spectre’s privilege. Stirnerian anarchy goes beyond unlearning privilege

— the favouring of one spectre over another — to unlearning spectres —

learning not to be subordinate to spectres.

Affectively, the orientation of anarchy is to unmediated, active joy.

There is a level of immediate, free becoming which is deeper than the

hierarchy of spectres. Stirner theorises a kind of intense, joyous

exercise of capacities “without reservations” (171), giving “free play”

to one’s capabilities (167), and playing “as freely as possible” (130).

Bonanno argues that capitalism denies us an experience of active (rather

than passive) joy, and counsels a “search for joy... through the search

for play,” driven by a “vital impulse that is always new, always in

movement.” In the excitement of play “lies the possibility to break with

the old world and identify with new aims and other values and needs”

(15-16). Hakim Bey argues that insurrections and autonomous zones should

create peak experiences of extraordinary consciousness and intensity

(TAZ). Such peak experiences are “value-formative on the individual

level,” allowing a “transformation of everyday life” (Occult Assault).

Various anarchist practices, from the TAZ to rewilding, from joyous

insurrectionary struggle to dropping-out and living differently, are

means of recovering this level of becoming and immediacy.

In contrast, the dominant affects for IPs are wallowing in the loss of

immediacy and the inevitability of alienation (guilt, melancholy,

inadequacy), a kind of joyless anger. They reproduce a style of politics

which focuses on telling people “how to behave” (Dot Matrix, CWS),

conditioning people into roles which reproduce the power of the

spectacle. IPs reproduce conventional morality and its structures of

ressentiment — negative affect (often including irrational, even

self-destructive, verbal or physical lashing out) towards others as an

expression of one’s own powerlessness, in contrast to celebration of

one's power. I have lost my capacity to enjoy; you have stolen it; you

must be punished.

On the side of the supposedly empowered, Ervin encourages ruthlessness

and “cold-blooded efficiency” as key virtues (245), reproducing the

affective structur of managers, soldiers, and police. The practice of

calling-out frames whiteness, white supremacy, and patriarchy as

personal moral failures, even though the underlying theory frames them

as structural realities. The cultivation of individual guilt and blame

actually reproduces dominant Calvinist normativity (Gelderloos, 13), and

the development of elaborate group norms reinforces white middle-class

status orientations and etiquette.

For IPs, neither (those assigned as) privileged nor oppressed are able

to escape ressentiment and become empowered. The latter become angry,

rigid, and dependent on the spectre for their sense of power; the former

become docile, submissive, and incapable of autonomous action. With

intense joy forbidden, people become vulnerable to the mundane

manipulation of transitory pleasure and prestige. IPs create a “system

of rewards... to encourage compliance” with leaders from marginalised

groups (Gelderloos, 12), reflecting the broader dynamic by which “skill

in playing and handling roles determines rank in the spectacular

hierarchy” (Vaneigem, 131). For the former out-group, anger and

frustration with the dominant system are channelled onto other radicals,

which sustains continued submersion in systems of oppression by

providing a safety-valve for frustration, creating a substitute for a

less reliable substantive rebellion. It also renders the oppressed

dependent on the oppressors as either docile allies or targets of anger,

and often leads to a politics focused on demands for recognition from

those one also seeks autonomy from. The binary nature of the spectres

adopted by IPs preclude ever becoming autonomous from the supposed

oppressor, whom they paradoxically need to remain in place in order to

ground their own role as Experts. Hence the irony when Ribeiro says of

APOC “it is not about white people at all” — at the end of an entire

article which is all about white people.

The structure of impotent anger, displaced aggression, and policing of

etiquette is most notable in the practice of calling-out or denouncing

other radicals — either for micro-oppressions (small comments or actions

which are insensitive or latently racist/sexist), or for political

disagreement categorised as racist/sexist. For instance, the CrimethInc

disruptors call for a “culture of calling people out on their shit”

(Anon, Smack a White Boy Part Two). In general, calling-out involves a

crude, aggressive style; it carries a tone of I get to tell you what to

do, and you have to obey.

Negative effects of anti-oppression normativity are paradoxically felt

most strongly by the oppressed - poor whites, Black people, young

people, people with psychological problems, and newcomers to a

movement - who are less accustomed to self-policing their social

appearance, less able to do so, or less aware of the operative norms.

IPs thus close down radical groups into tightly bordered sects.

Gelderloos deems the emphasis on micro-oppressions a kind of purism

which seeks to banish deviance so as to create a monolithic

personality-type (18). In practice, what is being challenged is not the

person’s degree of complicity in regimes of oppression, but the extent

of their knowledge of the appropriate anti-oppressive terminology and

related normative codes.

Conceived as a struggle against the enactment of structural oppression,

calling-out confuses the individual with the spectre they are taken to

represent. It is understandable that oppressed people have a low

tolerance threshold for prejudice and insensitivity, but it is unhelpful

to glorify and encourage such reactions as politically valuable.

Aragorn! says that “I tend only to ‘criticize’ when I am willing to take

responsibility for the caring of the criticized” (Toward a Non-European

Anarchism, 6). This position is more attentive to the affective

consequences of calling-out, which, without suitable aftercare, leads to

guilt, despair, and apathy. Alternatives to calling-out include rational

debate, parody, ignoring provocations, trying to channel anger onto the

wider system, and discussing the incident one-to-one outside the

conflictual setting — also known as “calling-in.” Some anarchists

advocate using nonviolent communication in such contexts (Heckert). In

classical indigenous cultures, harmful deviance is taken as a kind of

imbalance or sickness. They would seek to understand how a person has

come into imbalance, and to gently guide them back to the right path

(which is also the flourishing or becoming of their own personality).

Most anarchists are very reasonable if they are told precisely why

something is problematic.

IPs tend to react aggressively to any response to being called-out which

does not amount to unconditional apology. Usually, the responses are not

inherently objectionable. They deploy strategies of argumentative

rebuttal, mitigation by context or motive, etc, which are standard in

many conversational contexts. It is never entirely clear why these

predictable responses are deemed intolerable by IPs (the claim that they

seem to deny the other’s perspective [Tekanji] seems spurious), but it

seems to be because they entail the absence of the desired affective

response of submission.

Landstreicher suggests that IPs turns us into “a bunch of shy, yet

inquisitorial mice tip-toeing around each other for fear of being

judged, and just as incapable of attacking the foundations of this

society as they are of relating to each other” (16). Instead, he urges

us to become “a certain sort of being ... capable of acting on our own

terms to realize our own desires and dreams,” in struggle against

domination (3). The point is “to transform ourselves into strong,

daring, self-willed, passionate rebels” (6). This strength and passion

is impeded by affects such as guilt, pity, and regret. We are aiming,

remember, for a state of full life without reservations.

IPs conceive of their angry, disruptive style of politics as a way to

express the authentic experience of being traumatised. But their

distribution of commensurability (absolute within a spectre, but utterly

absent outside it) entails downplaying the degree of specific traumas

suffered by concrete people. And while it is true that listening to and

believing a survivor’s story is crucial to healing, the sources and

symptoms of trauma are too diverse to be dealt with through homogenised

identities and prescriptive restrictions. Furthermore, the tactics of

calling-out and excluding deviants can themselves be traumatic or

triggering.

IPs often turn trauma into a source of power and identity, but marking

trauma as an identity is also a barrier to autonomy. It prevents us

reaching the level of immediacy and joy, keeping us in a field of

scarcity thinking. It’s no coincidence that the most extreme regimes of

oppression (such as Gitmo, supermax segregation, concentration camps,

Native residential schools, and the “seasoning” of slaves) are designed

to cause as much post-traumatic stress as possible. Trauma is also a

block on active becoming and on living life to the fullest. In

indigenous cultures, it is conceived as a sickness of the soul, in which

part of the self retreats from the world or loses its life-energy

(Burman; Duran and Duran).

Being open to people as unique individuals is the best way to respond to

these kinds of problems. The fact that someone else has needs

incompatible with one’s own, or that they can’t guess in advance what

common action or object might be personally unbearable, does not mean

they are oppressing someone.

Exodus versus submersion

One of the biggest disagreements between Stirnerian anarchists and IPs

is on the question of exodus. IPs (and most left anarchists) generally

condemn exodus as a privileged, middle-class strategy, instead favouring

submersion in existing communities of the oppressed. For instance, the

APOC disruptors claim that CrimethInc “encourage the culture of dropping

out of society, which makes the assumption that the reader/attendee has

that privilege” (Anon, Smack a White Boy Part Two). An anonymous Qilombo

supporter terms the anarchist scene a “subcultural playpen” and an

“all-white fantasy world” (comments on Jarach et al). Kill Whitey labels

dumpster-diving as privileged, condemning “white college kids and

middle-class punks hiding in drop-out culture” (Kill Whitey, Food Not

Bombs), while Ervin classifies criticism of the “state’s ability to hold

back a free lifestyle” as middle class (110). IPs allege that the entire

tactical repertoire of horizontalism is privileged, in contrast with

their preferred focus on community organising or intra-movement

struggle.

The grain of truth in this position is that tactics of escape, exodus,

and physical resistance carry different levels of difficulty and risk

for different people. It’s easier to quit a job than to escape from

prison. It’s easier to run from the police if one is physically fit. But

anyone can adopt a perspective of escape, and attempt to create lines of

flight from the system. While it may be easier for some than others,

nobody should be under a moral obligation to remain oppressed just to

avoid being different from others; any such obligation only reinforces

oppression.

There are far more people who squat, shoplift, or dumpster dive who are

from poor and marginal backgrounds; in the global South there are entire

strata living in squatted shantytowns, abstracting electricity, and

scavenging in rubbish tips. Historical practices such as the celebrated

quilombos show that dropping-out is a serious, and often successful,

strategy for the most oppressed.

James Scott’s work shows that peasants, slaves, and marginal groups use

various tactics of exodus to minimise their subservience to elite power.

Similarly, when highly oppressed groups become sufficiently angry, they

often use the most militant forms of protest - as we have seen in cases

like Paris 2005, London 2011, Los Angeles 1992, and so on. Poor people

also use all kinds of high-risk survival strategies, from undocumented

border-crossing to involvement in the drug trade. There is also evidence

that dropping-out worked to defeat aspects of capitalism in the 1970s

(Shukaitis).

Why, then, do IPs oppose exodus? I would hazard a guess that the real

underlying objection is not that poor people cannot drop out, but that

they should not: dropping-out contradicts the IP’s political agenda,

resting on strong spectres and identities within the existing frame.

Structural determinism precludes escape on principle. IPs celebrate

their current blockages, internalise their cage, and insist that the

cage is both inescapable and revolutionary. This is not a perspective of

escape — it is a perspective of entrapment in the guise of solidarity.

IPs’ emphasis on community really comes down to a fear of placelessness.

Their ideological vision of society requires that everyone have

definable positionalities: a conservative vision, but inverted. This

requires that categories remain dominant over lines of flight, escape,

and becoming. Hence the need to enforce a prohibition on exodus - a

prohibition which reveals their similarities with states and other

hierarchical systems, which similarly prohibit the withdrawal of

participation and restrict mobility. It is easy to see how the fear of

the uncontrollable and unknowable - and the parallel desire to order all

of reality into a fixed schema - lies beneath these discursive

strategies.

A lot of the objection to exodus comes down to a hatred of play.

Drop-outs are accused of turning poverty into a game, of saying someone

can be poor and have fun (Anon, Smack and White Boy Part Two). This may

just as well be said of important strands of peasant resistance such as

carnivalesque and folk culture. IPs flourish on a culture of deadly

seriousness and urgency, tied up with a celebration of trauma. Real

activism, after all, is hard work, sacrifice: I cant have fun, so you

shouldn’t either. This entails denying pleasure to others whenever

possible. Of course, dropping out does lead to a kind of privilege - the

person who has escaped clearly has a better life than the person still

trapped in the system. This is equally true of quilombos, maroon

communities, pirate utopias, and so on. But is this really a case

against dropping-out?

Common sense and the community

Instead of seeking to escape the system, IPs place great emphasis on

serving the community, the people, the oppressed, or a particular

oppressed group. Ervin insists that the usefulness of revolutionaries

depends on whether they serve the community (136), as opposed to

“Declasse punks with red Mohawks” (276). White suggests that the “first

priority of resistance” is community consciousness raising. Ribeiro

argues that the “people” are failing to flock to existing anarchist

groups because they represent “a white, petty-bourgeois Anarchism that

cannot relate to the people,” an anarchism which is “individualistic,

self-serving, [and] selfish.” A Qilombo supporter goes as far as to

argue that “involving oneself in the school system” is an “excellent...

investment,” far superior to drop-out anarchism, while another posits a

“need to emphasize community norms and practices” (Kurukshetra), and

Veranasi tells anarchists to get a job so as not to separate from the

oppressed (comments on Smack a White Boy Part Two). There is also a

wider accusation, particularly in Ervin’s work, that the allegedly bad

race, gender, or class politics of radical movements is the reason for

their continued failure (303, 310). This is the Maoist view that a tide

of latent energy is always waiting to be released, which is currently

fettered by the principal contradiction and inadequate leadership (Mao,

On Contradiction; Bouc, 137; Howe and Walker, 176; Gurley).

A collective proprietary attitude to geographical areas corresponds to

this political bias. White anarchists active in poor communities are

accused of failing to get community consent, disrespecting locals, and

gentrifying areas by inserting whiteness (Kill Whitey, Smack a White

Boy; Kurukshetra). Ervin suggests anarchists have no “right to be” in a

Black area (282), Kill Whitey tells white radicals to “get the fuck out

of POC communities” (True Colors); in effect, white radicals are banned

from Black areas in an inverted reproduction of segregation. This is a

double-bind, since anarchist events in rural locations are declared

inaccessible to poor people (Ervin, Racism in ABC; Veranasi, comments on

Smack a White Boy Part Two). This reflects a broader irresolvable

predicament: radicals are both told to be part of the people, and told

they cannot (since their perspective is incommensurable and their

privilege is ineliminable). The glorification of ghettos as autonomous

zones runs up against the reality of imposed racial segregation.

There is a strong tone of ressentiment in the position: I can’t drop out

so you mustn’t. If I was jailed and unable to escape from power, I would

take courage and hope from the fact that others are still able to do so.

The objection to separation tries to force radicals back into avoidable

systems of authoritarian domination, such as work and schooling, thus

reinforcing these institutions. IPs glorify escape from controlled

spaces, such as fleeing the senzala (slave quarters) to the quilombo

(autonomous zone). Yet in practice, they tell us never to flee the

senzala, but instead to work within it as overseers, conditioning

children into conformity, or as exploited, joyless workers. There is

nothing radical and empowering about getting a job. In a context of

generalised entrapment, to separate is not to alienate, but rather to

escape, to slip out of place, to flee dominant categories and those who

impose them.

Community politics is hamstrung by a major problem: the community are

not especially radical. The IP assumption that “the people” or “the

community” has revolutionary instincts is an effect of its construction

as a spectre, not a result of observation of actual people. It also

embeds vanguardist assumptions that the role of radicals is to locate,

lead, and imbue these communities with revolutionary interests. The

orientation to liberate a spectre rather than concrete people is the

source of IPs’ hostility to individualism, personal freedom, and

supposed selfishness among radicals.

IPs also run up against the realities of contemporary capitalism. Today,

most of us do not belong to real, substantive communities. As

Landstreicher argues, “the dominant forms of relating are economic,

based on the domination of survival over life ... Today, neither the

daily interactions of one’s ‘communities’ (these strange, disconnected

‘communities’ of family, school, work) nor the chance encounters (at the

market, on the bus, at some public event) have much chance of sparking a

real and intense interest in another, an impassioned curiosity to

discover who they are and what we might be able to create with them”

(7). Bey argues that simply coming together is already a victory over

capitalism (Immediatism vs Capitalism), and the Situationists exposed

the emptiness of everyday life and the role of urban residential areas

as state-controlled warehouses for workers (Debord, sections 169-76).

Even where some kind of community life persists, it rarely entails a

unitary set of beliefs, demands, and interests, or even (outside of

certain subaltern social movements and indigenous groups) any kind of

collective power. In looking to “the community,” IPs are seeking a

source of strength which is at once a product of the system, and thereby

constituted as weak. If they want dense, mutually supportive, socially

meaningful communities, then they - like the rest of us - will have to

build these communities, often from scratch, on the basis of affinity

and living-otherwise. When IPs speak for the community, they typically

do so as a vanguard, a representative, who substitutes for a community

which is absent in practice.

A short time ago, the new BBC class survey (Heyden) became a fad among

those activists who use social media. Nearly everyone who completed it

came out in a category called “emergent service workers” (ESWs). The

survey has eight categories, and ESWs are the second-bottom category,

defined by low income and precarious work. They differ from the

worse-off precariat in only two ways - “social and cultural capital.” In

other words, the average anarchist is in the same position as the

poorest group, except that we have more education and stronger social

networks. ESWs are not some middle-class elite, hovering over the

authentic poor. The precariat make up only 15% of the population

according to the survey. ESWs are well below halfway. And the moment a

precarian becomes politicised, they tend to gain education and networks,

and become ESWs. So, realistically, anarchy is not a movement of

middle-class kids. It is a movement of politically conscious, socially

networked poor people.

IPs believe that anarchy is irrelevant to the community because

anarchists are privileged, and separate from the community. In fact,

anarchy seems irrelevant to the community because most people who’ve

been conditioned to live within such system-constructed communities have

internalised repressive, statist beliefs, and accept capitalist common

sense (the Gramscian notion of an incoherent everyday philosophy or

ideology prevalent among subaltern people, which embeds uncritical,

hegemonic, and reactionary beliefs). The idea that the oppressed are

just waiting for the right activist leadership, which is blocked by the

allegedly inherent racism/sexism in social movements, is a delusion.

Working in wider communities entails putting up with (and even

glorifying) a lot of common-sense ideologies, prejudices, and bigotry on

a scale far greater than anything within radical scenes. The real

problem is not organisation, or the correct line, or the right

leadership. The problem is whether people actually desire

revolution/insurrection. In fact, no revolutionary “people” exists,

because of what Stimer terms the police sentiments of actually existing

people (116).

The hypothesis that the community is more radical than so-called

privileged anarchists is simply false. Most anarchists already oppose

work, police, prisons, government, and so on whereas most community

members do not. It is not uncommon for anarchists fighting

gentrification, CCTV and other forms of the surveillance state, or

morality-policing to be pitted against other local residents. It might

be in poor people’s material interests to oppose dominant institutions,

but for the most part they don’t. People who lack formal or informal

political education tend not to become anarchists because they tend to

remain stuck in capitalist common sense, dependent on the discourses

made available by the mainstream, and caught up in the pursuit of values

of individual advancement. Their supposed interests have little effect

in mitigating these influences. Any anarchist project directed at the

worse-off need to start from some kind of political education or

political de/resocialisation of the poor (not primarily of ourselves,

though most critical pedagogy is also reflexive and dialogical).

Otherwise, anarchists pursuing such projects will simply be overwhelmed

by the unreflexive common sense of those whose perspectives they

idealise.

The theme of urgency is closely connected to the community orientation.

IPs often posit immediately apparent realities, which are deemed

extra-theoretical and extra-political. Disagreement with the IP’s

perspective or actions is belittled as a “topic ripe for a drunk PhD”

(White) or “some intellectual’s grad thesis”(Weaver). The oppressed are

said to “know oppression” from experience: “we lost the need to

understand pain philosophically when we learned it physically”

(Ribeiro). Ervin postures as having no particular expertise, except “a

decent supply of good common sense and street knowledge” (10), and urges

us to “trust the best instincts of the people” (119). Patriarchy Haters

condemn political debate as contrasting with real, life-or-death stakes

for them: “We do not agree with people having a ‘political argument’ at

our expense” (Statement). They suggest that their positions come from

their “BODIES,” which are not “to be politicized, theorized, speculated

upon” (Weaver).

IPs advance a framework in which theory distracts from reality. The

historical origin of this framework is the Maoist emphasis on

“experience” (suitably processed by the party) as superior to “book

learning,” and the corresponding “Red versus expert” struggles of the

Cultural Revolution. The basic gesture is to split issues between the

real reality posited by IPs and associated with experience and the

principal contradiction, and a field deemed secondary or tertiary, and

therefore trivial. This grounds apparently obvious, self-evident claims

and is used to create a sense of urgency: IPs are doing real,

life-or-death politics, and everyone else is just messing around (notice

once again the prejudice against play). The function of this gesture is

to “declare certain questions off-limits” because “the answer is already

known” (Williams). Arguments against IPs’ claims are often displaced

onto the issue of who has the right to decide, which is returned to the

question of spectres

Black radicals don’t have to listen to white critics, male experts have

no right to expound on survivors’ experiences, etc. This is a

category-error, to which the appropriate answer is: I’ve not exposed

your mistake because I think you need my permission - I’ve exposed your

mistake because it leads to oppression, bad politics, or

ineffectiveness. This strategy gives power to those who define which

issues are urgent. In fact, none of the cases discussed here were

anywhere near to being life-or-death situations. And paradoxically, to

heal from trauma, one needs to theorise and intellectualise it.

In fact, the idea of obvious experiences is fallacious. There is no

simple divide between reality/experience and thought/theory. Humans

process experiences through conceptual categories, and in many cases,

these categories affect the impact of an experience - or what,

subjectively, is experienced. People don’t lack theories simply because

they are not formally educated or academically trained. Rather, everyone

has their own stock of theories and concepts through which they

unconsciously process the world, and without which the world would

simply be an incomprehensible mess of sense-impressions. Whenever

somebody claims that their own conceptions are real, or are unmediated

experience in contrast to others’ mere ideas or opinions, they are

actually reifying and naturalising their own socially constructed

beliefs - usually beliefs based on capitalist common sense. There is no

such thing as direct, unmediated knowledge from experience (as distinct

from unmediated experience, which is felt as unrepresentable). In any

case, IPs create a regime of roles, which in Vaneigem’s terms, “express

lived experience, yet at the same time they reify it” (131).

This does not mean that academic theories are always best. Academic

thought is often tied-up with corporate and state power (Dot Matrix,

Science As Capital). Everyday, local knowledges can also be effective

ways of theorising the world. But it is a mistake to reify them into

unmediated experiences which are somehow directly (and therefore more

objectively) true. It shuts down dialogue and reinforces the enclosure

of common sense. And in many cases, everyday common sense is also

extremely oppressive, accepting and imposing normativities complicit

with, and directly reinforcing, institutionalized forms of power. In

addition, many key terms in IPs’ discourse - structural oppression,

privilege, patriarchy, trauma, framing, supremacy, senzala, quilombo and

so on - are not everyday common sense terms, but imports from university

cultural studies texts or historical reading. Anti-intellectualism

handily insulates IPs from rebuttal, but does not make their poorly

based strategies any more effective.

For a World Without Spectres!

From all of this, we must conclude that IPs are just another type of

leftist, promoting sacrifice and renunciation, posing as liberators of

the oppressed. IPs are seductive in the ways they have of identifying

and channelling the anger of the oppressed, the guilt of the

(relatively) privileged, experiences of trauma, and awareness of the

possibility of unintended oppression. But they channel these affects

into political power, using them to entrench the role of IPs as Experts.

This role requires that privilege/oppression be theorised as an

ineliminable original sin.

Against this prevalent form of disguised vanguardism, let us hold forth

the beacon of a world without spectres. Structural oppressions are

sociologically real, but their roots can be traced deeper, to the

structures of statism and representation. If we must theorise a primary

contradiction, then let it be the contradiction between ourselves - as

unique ones, forces of becoming, irreducible and unrepresentable

beings - and the entire regime of spectres and alienation. Let us

dispense with boundary policing, and instead nurture affinities across

social categories. It is in rediscovering the level of immanent,

abundant becoming, the joy of life, the flow of desire and direct

connection, that we destroy the power which spectres exercise over us.

Let us start always from this joy, share it with others when we can, and

use it as a weapon to break down common sense, to rebuild and redefine

community, to replace the graveyard of spectres with a world of life.

May the alien privileges of spectres and the alien oppressions they

engender never come between a unique one, a free being, and its immanent

becoming. @

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[1] Ed. note: In Der Einzige... Stirner uses spuk; the English cognate

"spook," while a decent enough translation in 1907, is currently an

inappropriate (to say the least) option. We chose to use spectre

(especially and deliberately retaining the British spelling) for its

non-colloquial impact.

[2] Ed. note: There was a time when the term POC was inclusive of

everyone who so self-identified (regardless of the term exacerbating

certain unarticulated and unavoidable tensions about homogenizing the

distinct experiences of people from diverse ethnic backgrounds, as well

as the different ways those distinctions resulted in particular

experiences of racism); in the past few years, however, the analytical

category of Blackness/Anti-Blackness has become more popular in

post-colonial discourse, especially among academics and activists.

Michael P Jeffries writes that Anti-Blackness is "not simply about

hating or penalizing black people. It is about the debasement of black

humanity, utter indifference to black suffering, and the denial of black

people's right to exist." The recent twisting of "Black Lives Matter"

into "All Lives Matter" is a good example of how deeply the threat of a

recognized Black humanity runs in the US. Despite the increasingly

problematic term POC, we have retained it out of respect for the many

who continue to embrace it as a self-description.

[3] Ed. note: The fundamental aspect of tension/destructiveness of class

society; for traditional Marxists, it’s bourgeoisie-proletariat within

the framework of capitalism. When resolved through the teleological

process of dialectical materialism (The Revolution™), the resulting

synthesis is supposed to make the secondary (and tertiary, etc)

contradictions like sexism, racism, and other ostensibly trivial forms

of institutionalized oppression, melt away.