For August 4th, our reading group will be focusing on two pieces about fascism and authoritarianism.
With eyes turned to the US and an election upcoming in BC as well, it seems important that we familiarize ourselves with how fascism manifests, and how it can be combatted.
The zine Forming an Antifa Group focuses on the latter subject. Self-explanatory and to-the-point, it provides a guide to creating a squad for antifacist action. Some considerations touched upon are security, Antifa principles, and some of the work assumed of groups operating under the name.
The other reading is New Democracy: The New Face of State Violence in Greece from Crimethinc, which consists of an interview with a Grecian anarchist from the anarchist neighbourhood Exarcheia. In 2019, when the interview took place, the party ‘New Democracy’ had just taken power in Greece and consequently begun targeting anarchists and immigrants. The unnamed interviewee describes some of these attacks, as well as other pressures facing the community, such as Air BnB encroaching on Exarcheia, and infighting.
‘Forming an Antifa Group’ can be downloaded as a PDF below. It is also available off the Anarchist Library ready to print as a zine.
‘New Democracy’ is similarly available in imposed zine format on the Anarchist Library. A plain PDF version is attainable here:
In total, the readings are a relatively modest 18 pages. Those who find themselves finishing early are encouraged to look further into an aspect of the topics that catches their interest. This will hopefully lead to a richer conversation on Sunday. Anyone who wishes to is invited to come to the Atrium at 800 Yates St. on Aug. 4, from 2:50 to 5 pm, to join Scholecule for a session of self-guided research.
As always, we meet at Camas Books and Infoshop, 2620 Quadra Street, on unceded Lekwungen Territory at 6:30pm on Sunday August 4th.
Join us for a discussion of Palestinian anarchist Mohammed Bamyeh’s article on the 2010-12 uprisings that swept through north Africa and the middle east, overthrowing dictatorships in Tunisia, Egypt, and Libya.
We were so inspired by reading Andrew Cornell’s history of the Movement for a New Society that we decided to explore the conversations associated with the movement. Please read the following reflective sections regarding MNS theory and praxis for the next gathering. You can find the reading here:
Last week, we read Gustav Landuaer’s Through Separation to Community and decided to swing around to Murray Bookchin’s ideas of social ecology and revolutionary thought. Social ecology is based on the conviction that nearly all of our present ecological problems originate in deep- seated social problems, and is an approach to society that embraces an ecological, reconstructive, and communitarian view on society. Murray Bookchin (1921 – 2006) was an anti-capitalist and advocated for social decentralization along ecological and true democratic lines. His ideas have influenced social movements since the 1960s, including the New Left, the anti-nuclear movement, the anti-globalization movement, Occupy Wall Street, and more recently, the democratic confederalism of the Autonomous Administration of North and East Syria (Rojava.)
After our enthusiastic conversation about the Zapitistas’ model of Participatory Democracy, we wanted to delve more into Zapatista cosmovisión (worldview) and organization by reading Subcomandante Marcos’s “I Shit On All the Revolutionary Vanguards of this Planet,” which is a response to the Basque liberation movement Euskadi Ta Askatasuna’s (ETA) advocation of vanguardist politics. We also teased out the idea of future readings about Rojava in a continuation of our exploration of democratic centralism. Therefore, we decided in anticipation to also include the Feminist Anarchist Border Opposition’s Why Misogynists Make Great Informants, which tackles misogyny and gender violence in left-activist circles and movements.
Our next reading will be the academic article Participatory Democracy in Action: Practices of the Zapatistas and the Movimento Sem Terra, which covers the Zapatistas’ and Movimento Sem Terra’s (Landless Movement-MST) methods of organizing through participatory democracy, which emphasizes obligation to participate in decision making and a shared concern for autonomy.
