CrimethInc.

Anybody interested in this topic should check out the Crimethinc Collective. They have many excellently written essays about the minutiae of activism, including ins and outs of the more dangerous "black bloc" tactics. http://crimethinc.com/

Crimethinc, the same anarchist collective in the OP who is complaining about getting banned from twitter by Musk, has been banned by social media before. https://crimethinc.com/2020/12/21/surviving-the-social-media-crackdown… The idea that there are "two sides" and that one was "in power" before and the other now, is an over-simplification. I can't find an exact piece to quote now, but I know I saw crimethinc and/or other anarchists urging people not to get so excited about calling for twitter to ban things too, on the grounds of: Don't count on capitalists or the state to rescue us, they will much prefer to use their tools against us, and overall the power twitter has to control discourse is the problem and we've got to get off of it.

Not GP, but I stumbled across this website in college[1] that had a lot of interesting articles on anarchy and “the worker’s collective.” I don’t agree with the viewpoints but I learned a lot from it! Really cool material. [1] - https://crimethinc.com/

Amazing to see this discussion on HN! Here's another article that I'm pretty fond that explores how modern democracy has failed us and what we might be better off with in its place: https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-freedom

Vijucat's advice is excellent. It's good to hear this before you turn 30. On a similar vein, consider looking at these two titles from Crimethinc: "Days of War, Nights of Love" http://www.crimethinc.com/books/days.html "Work" http://www.crimethinc.com/books/work.html

See: http://www.crimethinc.com Also, it looks like you're in the Bay Area. You can stop by Bound Together Books in SF, The Long Haul Infoshop in Berkeley, or The Holdout in Oakland. The East Bay Anarchist Conversation and Book Event is next Saturday at Humanist Hall in Oakland: http://eastbayanarchist.com/the-second-annual-east-bay-anarchist-conve… As an entrepreneur, you might also be interested to read about the anarchist community's overlap with the creation of projects such as Twitter (see the Institute for Applied Autonomy), as well as the early emphasis on self-publishing through projects like Indymedia.

My advice is this: Become a different person. Take your life and incinerate it. Not literally of course. I mean completely change what and who you are. You’re an accomplished software engineer at 30? Great. You’re done doing that. Go buy a $15k trailer, get a truck, and hit the road. Stop looking at screens, only read books. Stop working a job behind a desk, find something else, or if you can afford it don’t work at all. I suggest reading CrimeThInc: Days of War, Nights of Love. https://crimethinc.com/books/days-of-war-nights-of-love Pick up a guitar, learn to farm, meet some nomads. Do it all in another country. Break the law. Do whatever you feel like. Don’t hurt people, obviously, but you’re probably a sane enough person to not want to anyway. Learn a new language. Stop speaking your old one. I mean, really, and truly, break out of the matrix. Go to the edges of your universe, like the “Thirteenth Floor”. Get fit, dissolve your old identity. Become awesome at yoga, or weightlifting, or Jiu Jitsu. You really can choose to become unstuck. Fly to Europe, buy a bike and a tent, and just go, man. Figure it out later. What’s there to be afraid of, really?

The way I've learnt this shit was very unstructured, extensively unoptimized and even still, I'm far from being anywhere near the l33ts. However, over the past 2 years, I can say for sure I became pretty proficient in identifying vulnerabilities in (web) applications for the most part. The article that brought back my interested in hacking was this: https://gist.github.com/jaredsburrows/9e121d2e5f1147ab12a696cf548b90b0 after reading this: https://crimethinc.com/2018/06/05/hackback-talking-with-phineas-fisher… There was a bunch of things I didn't understand when I first read it, so I took notes of mostly everything and started slowly by isolating topics, trying connect the dots as I was learning something new. Every once in awhile, I would go back to see if there were still things I didn't get it / or had missed, and there was always something. Eventually, the whole thing became a little more straightforward. From there, it was just a matter of sharping my knowledge regarding more specific types of vulnerabilities and basically try them out into the wild. Worth mentioning, I have a background as a developer and although I had always been interested in cyber security, some concepts just escaped me. My programming skills however, made it easier to understand how to attack / defend applications. But this is just a small part of it. Hacking is broader than that though, so it's not something that happens overnight. There…

It's worth mentioning that the violence in Honduras is, in no small part, part of the US State Department's bipartisan foreign policy from which we benefit. Fast fashion, which Americans consume, is enabled by the precarious situations we've foist upon the Hondurans by destabilizing their government, and installing leadership sympathetic to our colonial interests. Your ex-girlfriend's uncle died for my t-shirt. > Ten years ago, on June 28, 2009, a general trained at the U.S. Army School of the Americas arrived with troops at the home of the president of Honduras, Manuel Zelaya, and forced him at gunpoint onto a plane bound for Costa Rica. An interim president was appointed by his political opponents who was quickly legitimized by United States. — [The Hill](0) > There was a 1950s-style coup in Honduras in 2009 backed by the government of the United States, and things appear to have been unremittingly messed up ever since. Let me emphasize this one more time. If Honduras is in shambles, it is not because Hondurans are any less resourceful or fundamentally decent than anyone else, or even because its rulers are any more wretched and callous than our own. It is because the structure of the North American economy has made any other outcome impossible. — [No Wall They Can Build](1) - 0. https://thehill.com/blogs/congress-blog/foreign-policy/450462-10-years… - 1. https://crimethinc.com/books/no-wall-they-can-build

I am hard pressed to see Athens from a few thousand years ago as a real case study, its simply to far out of our frame of reference. Switzerland in more recent history is a rather ugly counterexample to your theory. They had a referendum on women suffrage in 1959 which was declined by a 2 to 1 ratio. You assume a well meaning population, which doesnt have to be the case. Direct democracy is still the dictatorship of the majority over the minority. There is just the hope to have better chances on get the equivalent of a benevolent dictator instead of mad tyrants. And if that fails we put our hope in the bdfl in form of the constitution. But back to the point i dont think you can compare business with societal structures. We are not doing democracy because its more efficient. Its extra effort we spend in hopes to achieve a better society. People have an entirely different stake in their job as in society. For your job the hassle is likely not worth the trade off (if there are any for an employee). And back to OP >A lot of people who advocate flat or structureless organizations actually have philosophical problems with even direct democracy for decision making. I have to agree with the statement. The "real" democracy as a solution to the problem of organizations falls short. Crimethinc had an interesting article on the topic (which got turned into a book later) https://crimethinc.com/2016/04/29/feature-from-democracy-to-freedom . Its their usual over the top approach but an…

Yes, there are a few. Days of War, Nights of Love [0] EXPECT RESISTANCE [1] Days of War, at least is almost a super zine compilation, with many points of view. The most interesting thing I got from it was that it gave you permission to take only the parts of an idea, argument, whatever that you liked, and leave the rest well alone, and form your own ideas. (The closest book to this would be The Art of Looking Sideways, by Alan Fletcher [2] which is as apolitical as you can make it, but is basically the guy's creative sketchbook distilled down. Pick what you like, and be inspired.) That sounds so simple and obvious, but there's many times when we fall into a herd mentality for various reasons, and those brilliant ideas get packaged with those not so good ideas. See, for example: any of the main monotheistic religions. Great! ideas in those, and some not so great ideas. One way to get around that is to have plural, indeed anonymous, authors. One problem with more contemporary "Steal This Book" lifestyles is that it is a community-driven ideal. You JOIN a community, and live a certain way within that community. You can't really live outside the margins. Sure, you can read, understand, and appreciate the ideas or point of views from a distance, but I guess the open-ended question is, when are you going to take the plunge? Sounds a bit fascist, but it's based on a system of acceptance and trust. Freaks are not turned away; their unique perspective and problem solving…

This may resonate with you: https://crimethinc.com/2018/09/03/the-mythology-of-work-eight-myths-th…

Israelis are using the cover of retaliation against Hamas to oppress, slaughter, and genocide Palestinian civilians en mass. They also won't let the civilians exit the area of the Gaza strip, the people are trapped. It doesn't get more cut and dry than this. For example, see: https://crimethinc.com/2023/10/17/from-the-galilee-to-gaza-a-voice-fro…

Easy to find with Google. https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2022/11/musk-announces-twitter-ban… https://crimethinc.com/2022/11/25/elon-musk-bans-crimethinc-from-twitt… Edit: just now on HN: https://twitter.com/trickytaipei/status/1597762741108117505

Russians (some of them, to clarify) associate the current Ukrainian regime with Nazism/fascism. After all, far right groups were a major part of the 2014 revolution/putsch. https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/15/war-and-anarchists-anti-authoritaria… (note: the disinformation section is especially relevant)

> They definitely disappeared from the punk scene (for the better) Not aware of inter-group shenanigans so feel free to elaborate, but some Crimethinc publications (like "To change everything") have been very popular in the anarchist punk scene in some places i've visited across Europe in the past 10 years. More lately, two articles of theirs were widely-enough shared that they reached my ears without the help of my RSS feed reader: - https://crimethinc.com/2020/04/10/and-after-the-virus-the-perils-ahead… - https://crimethinc.com/zines/seven-myths-about-the-police

Nope. https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-that-suppo… And now we've moved on to "misinformation" which has no real definition other than being mitigated by so-called fact checkers who mostly work for American for-profit newspapers.

What is your definition of far-left? Democrats? Because the latter are not left in any sense of the word, beyond being more "liberal" than the far-right Republicans. No leftists I know push for platform-provided censorship, because that inevitably harms left voices; eg: facebook taking down Crimethinc and It's Going Down: https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/19/on-facebook-banning-pages-that-suppo…

this might sound cynical but we have lost this war already in the last century[1]. It's a salami tactic which is applied against us slice by slice and the pandemic (and every protest whether in the Paris banlieus, HK or Seattle) is another successful milestone won by the state to integrate any outliers and test new methods. Since fighting back by going to a protest is viewed as radicalism there are increasingly less (legal) options out of this mess. When you go and join a a protest make sure to cover yourself[2], and look out for the cow[3] [1] Jacques Ellul - The Technological Society ("La Technique") https://archive.org/details/JacquesEllulTheTechnologicalSociety [2] https://crimethinc.com/2014/08/14/staying-safe-in-the-streets [3] https://www.fotomuseum.ch/en/explore/still-searching/articles/27016_la…

I agree that people should earn a living wage that enables them to live in the community that they serve, but all cops are bastards[1]. [1]: http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/atoz/fuckpolice.php

"Deserting the Digital Utopia: Computers against Computing"[1] might be of interest to HN readers as well. The whole piece is quite antagonistic to the HN worldview, and it ends on a sort of challenge to hackers. I submitted it as a link last week and the submission fared poorly then. I mention it here because I would like to see it read and discussed by this crowd. [1] http://crimethinc.com/texts/ex/digital-utopia.html

I really like this comment, you are outlining exactly the sort of things that our society has convinced us are ground state truths, that are actually just capitalist norms enforced by the State. I really think you'd enjoy Peter Gelderloos' "Anarchy Works," because you can keep asking "but what about..." and the book will keep giving you examples from history to answer that exact "what about?" To your points: First, people don't do hard work for the collective benefit, they do it for the benefit of the owners of capital, who allow just enough leftover profit for people to keep themselves alive and for very little else. A lot of that hard work isn't for the good of society, it's bullshit work that maintains artificial scarcity and the systems of capital, like the entire beast of health insurance in the USA, military procurement, landlord administration, advertising, corporate compliance rituals, or predatory lending. Second, capitalism doesn't turn selfishness into selflessness, it rewards and selects FOR selfishness, and punishes and selects AGAINST selflessness. Why publish FOSS under MIT, the most selfless choice, when a major tech company will then just take the library, make money off it, and give you nothing in return? Why contribute to FOSS deployed by a big tech company when that contributes directly to a big tech company's bottom line for nothing in return to you? Capitalism doesn't create incentives through rewards, it redirects people's inherent incentives…

I guess this is another answer to "What is Bitcoin good for?" It's good when (quoting the article) your country's central bank suspends electronic cash transfers, suspends the foreign exchange market, limits cash withdrawals, and prohibits the issuance of foreign currency from retail bank accounts, because you're being invaded by Russia and your government has imposed martial law. Also apparently fighting-age Ukrainian men are prohibited from leaving Ukraine right now. Also https://www.cnbc.com/2022/02/25/4point1-million-in-cryptocurrency-funn… says, "$4.1 million in cryptocurrency funneled to Ukrainian military since Russia invaded," by which it means "nongovernmental organizations and volunteer groups," aka militias or paramilitary troops, because the Ukrainian Ministry of Defense does not "use other payment systems ('Webmoney,' 'Bitcoin,' 'PayPal,' etc.)." (Though apparently some of the money is being used to buy materiel to give to the regular army.) So I guess Bitcoin is also good for sending funding to paramilitary militias in countries that are being invaded by much stronger armies. Interestingly the article omits to mention that the most prominent volunteer groups like the Azov Battalion are neo-Nazis, even according to anti-Russian sources like https://crimethinc.com/2022/02/15/war-and-anarchists-anti-authoritaria… Previously: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30447749…

>I have only taken a short look at r/antiwork, [...], which is much more "work shouldn't have to be shitty and all-consuming" than "don't work at all". I was curious about /r/antiwork based on your comment so I looked at it and the description says: "A subreddit for those who want to end work, are curious about ending work, want to get the most out of a work-free life," I also noticed these 2 links in the subreddit's "Intro" sidebar : - The Mythology of Work: https://crimethinc.com/2018/09/03/the-mythology-of-work-eight-myths-th… : >What if nobody worked? [...] That depends on what you mean by “work.” Think about how many people enjoy gardening, fishing, carpentry, cooking, and even computer programming just for their own sake. What if that kind of activity could provide for all our needs? - The Abolition of Work : https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-the-abolition-of-wor… : > No one should ever work. Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you’d care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working. That doesn’t mean we have to stop doing things. It does mean creating a new way of life based on play; in other words, a ludic conviviality, commensality, and maybe even art. So if we assume that picking up garbage is not a form of "play" like fishing or art, nobody should have to _be_…

Not athenian democracy, because that had hierarchy inherent in it. But yes, we believe in Direct Democracy. >Direct democracy might work well for a city state where even poor citizens are independent land owners, One of the principal beliefs of Anarchists is that property is theft[0]. So no one would be an independent land owner. Everyone would be equally involved and have equal rights as we would all be members of the Commune/Council/Community/Collective/Union/whatever term the community wants to use to describe their collective. I prefer either Commune or Union personally. >But I'm not convinced it would work for a large nation where there are enough powerful bad actors that they can use marketing and patronage to get control of the political process. A lot of people have this idea that Anarchism would break down at larger levels. And that's kind of true, but we have organizational techniques to avoid this. One such technique is the idea that you have your commune and it's you and your neighbors or coworkers (you can be in multiple communes) and it will be a small commune where everyone knows each other. This is the group that handles most of your day to day governance and issues. These communes will federate with other communes, and create a commune that are represented by a member of each member commune. These representatives would represent the will of their source commune in the larger federation, and can be instantly recallable if they start making power plays or…

People like to hang on to the same phone # so that makes it super-easy for data brokers/snoops to track. Yes, people could find out who owns a shell company, but that's the kind of work private detectors or financial investigators do, and they don't do it unless they get paid, which is an investment most doxxers wouldn't want to make. Transparency varies from state to state, but some states let you set up corporations with very little transparency, iirc Delaware specializes in this to the point that it's become a problem for financial laundering/tax avoidance, eg https://www.theguardian.com/us-news/2016/apr/06/panama-papers-us-tax-h… You can buy gift cards that work with Visa or Mastercard, and some vendors will let you reload them (I think Walmart does this). That would give you a fair degree of privacy for doing things online and in combination with other things make you invisible from all but very dedicated investigators (or law enforcement). by the way, this article, while aimed at political activists, has lots of useful information and links on how to prevent and/or deal with such a situation: https://crimethinc.com/2020/08/26/doxcare-prevention-and-aftercare-for…

A large portion of the radical left feels this way about Jacobin. I enjoy some of their articles, but it doesn't come without critique. Famously, a post-leftist, anarchist organization called "Crimethinc" published an essay called "Your Politics Are Boring As Fuck"[0] which addressed some of the problems with the attitudes of "Jacobin Leftists". I really like this quote: > The truth is, your politics are boring to them because they really are irrelevant. They know that your antiquated styles of protest — your marches, hand held signs, and gatherings — are now powerless to effect real change because they have become such a predictable part of the status quo. They know that your post-Marxist jargon is off-putting because it really is a language of mere academic dispute, not a weapon capable of undermining systems of control. They know that your infighting, your splinter groups and endless quarrels over ephemeral theories can never effect any real change in the world they experience from day to day. They know that no matter who is in office, what laws are on the books, what “ism”s the intellectuals march under, the content of their lives will remain the same. They — we — know that our boredom is proof that these “politics” are not the key to any real transformation of life. For our lives are boring enough already! 0. https://crimethinc.com/2000/09/11/your-politics-are-boring-as-fuck

> The fabric of the society that has advanced so far in the last 300 years is built on, at the very least, property rights and stability And an anarchist would suggest that that's exactly why the problems that we have have manifested today. Anarchism is something that's hard to have an actual discussion on. The word has too much baggage. Anarchists are viewed as utopians, there's been a lot of inter-faction arguing, and politics are frankly boring. The modern anarchist movement hasn't been able to connect their message to anything that's relevant. As much as I dislike CrimeThinc, they make a really good points in "Your Politics are Boring as Fuck"[1]. Even if you don't think that ridding the world of rulers is a good thing, fundamentally, anarchism's message of truly caring for people still holds value. Groups like Food Not Bombs, Homes not Jails, and many cooperative organizations do a lot of good in the world. You might be surprised to find that even the Black Bloc isn't just a bunch of kids breaking things, though this is endlessly debated every time the G20 comes to town. 1: http://www.crimethinc.com/texts/selected/asfuck.php