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Anarchy – Issue 70/71

Issue 70/71

Biannual

Joanne B. Conrad

Published by C.A.L. Press, Berkeley, CA, Anarchy purports to “Disarm authority! Arm your Desires! with provocative, creative, and critical anti-authoritarian discourse and art.”

Published by C.A.L. Press, Berkeley, CA, Anarchy purports to “Disarm authority! Arm your Desires! with provocative, creative, and critical anti-authoritarian discourse and art.”

The editor’s “On the Winter of Wikileaks” comments on the “glut of disinformation,” including Wikileaks’ “uncensored and unvarnished truth” and that the “mythical Public…is so inured to talking heads spoonfeeding them soundbites that it remains questionable…whether unfiltered information can be…any use for radical challenges to statecraft.” “Inside Anarchy” decries the demise of a related publication, Counterpoise, and appeals for help from contributors, subscribers, et al. Three appraisals are also cited in this issue of The Coming Insurrection, a French document by an anonymous The Invisible Committee, for which some French were arrested and later released, and promises two more reviews in issue 72. Egypt, Greece, England, and other uprisings are cited as “against all manifestations of entrenched bureaucracy and dictatorship [that] make anarchists happy.”

The first review of TCI (The Coming Insurrection) by Lupus Dragonowl, aims to “develop insurrectionary anti-politics into a movement actually able to destroy global capitalism.” The second review by Lawrence Jarach critiques a book about TCI by Chris Spannos that Jarach says contains “apoplectic and delirious rantings.” The third review of TCI by Wolf Landstreicher says, “the book is not anarchist; it is communist.” Well, maybe issue 72 will clarify.

A “Recent Events” article, “On Violence Against the Police,” in England, says “Someone has to say it: mass violence against the police is necessary as part of any social struggle….The reason is simple: the police defend the state unconditionally, the state defends capital unconditionally, and capital attacks us without remorse.”

In addition to sections for recent events, book reviews, essays, columns, and letters, Anarchy contains media reviews of sister alternative magazines such as Anarchist Studies, The Anvil Review, Arena One: On Anarchist Cinema, The Authoritarian Artist, Brief History of the Working Class, Cabal-Argot, Come Hell or High Water, Fire to the Prisons, The Laugh of the Medusa, and This is Not a Love Story.

Dali-esque or Dali-grotesque artwork by Bernard Dumaine, Christian Edler, Karena Karras, Peter Van Oostzanen, Rodney Gee, Ton Haring, and others, hard to decipher, is interspersed throughout. Recognizable were distortions of Madame Defarge (Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities) and Dorothea Lange’s famous picture of Florence Owens Thompson of the Great Depression. One wonders if the artists ever title their works as they must have messages. To Anarchy’s credit, they do identify all artists.

Rounding out the issue are eight pages of “Letters” and four “Columns,” decrying a September 24th FBI raid, saying, “We encourage anarchists to stand with the victims of these actions, for it will only be a matter of time until the FBI targets anarchists again in their quest to silence those who dissent against the global capitalist system” and “It is the U.S. government that operates as an empire with military occupations of countries all over the world…and underwriting oppression.” John Zernan writes in “Love” that our “affective state is the very texture and timbre of our lives” and that “every political struggle is an affective one.” Spencer Sunshine writes a review of Nietzsche and the anarchist tradition and says “give me…a social anarchism that engages with, and is inspired by the thoughts of Frederich Nietzsche.”

It is a magazine of dissent and sometimes nebulous philosophies for elitist audiences, and, as one letter writer says, “Time for a serious Anarchist-Communist attempt at a solution to the current crisis or we might as well just listen to the preachers tell us everything depends on Jesus or Obama or head for the hills.”
[Published by C.A.L. Press, Berkeley, CA, Anarchy purports to “Disarm authority! Arm your Desires! with provocative, creative, and critical anti-authoritarian discourse and art.”

The editor’s “On the Winter of Wikileaks” comments on the “glut of disinformation,” including Wikileaks’ “uncensored and unvarnished truth” and that the “mythical Public…is so inured to talking heads spoonfeeding them soundbites that it remains questionable…whether unfiltered information can be…any use for radical challenges to statecraft.” “Inside Anarchy” decries the demise of a related publication, Counterpoise, and appeals for help from contributors, subscribers, et al. Three appraisals are also cited in this issue of The Coming Insurrection, a French document by an anonymous The Invisible Committee, for which some French were arrested and later released, and promises two more reviews in issue 72. Egypt, Greece, England, and other uprisings are cited as “against all manifestations of entrenched bureaucracy and dictatorship [that] make anarchists happy.”

The first review of TCI (The Coming Insurrection) by Lupus Dragonowl, aims to “develop insurrectionary anti-politics into a movement actually able to destroy global capitalism.” The second review by Lawrence Jarach critiques a book about TCI by Chris Spannos that Jarach says contains “apoplectic and delirious rantings.” The third review of TCI by Wolf Landstreicher says, “the book is not anarchist; it is communist.” Well, maybe issue 72 will clarify.

A “Recent Events” article, “On Violence Against the Police,” in England, says “Someone has to say it: mass violence against the police is necessary as part of any social struggle….The reason is simple: the police defend the state unconditionally, the state defends capital unconditionally, and capital attacks us without remorse.”

In addition to sections for recent events, book reviews, essays, columns, and letters, Anarchy contains media reviews of sister alternative magazines such as Anarchist Studies, The Anvil Review, Arena One: On Anarchist Cinema, The Authoritarian Artist, Brief History of the Working Class, Cabal-Argot, Come Hell or High Water, Fire to the Prisons, The Laugh of the Medusa, and This is Not a Love Story.

Dali-esque or Dali-grotesque artwork by Bernard Dumaine, Christian Edler, Karena Karras, Peter Van Oostzanen, Rodney Gee, Ton Haring, and others, hard to decipher, is interspersed throughout. Recognizable were distortions of Madame Defarge (Dickens’s Tale of Two Cities) and Dorothea Lange’s famous picture of Florence Owens Thompson of the Great Depression. One wonders if the artists ever title their works as they must have messages. To Anarchy’s credit, they do identify all artists.

Rounding out the issue are eight pages of “Letters” and four “Columns,” decrying a September 24th FBI raid, saying, “We encourage anarchists to stand with the victims of these actions, for it will only be a matter of time until the FBI targets anarchists again in their quest to silence those who dissent against the global capitalist system” and “It is the U.S. government that operates as an empire with military occupations of countries all over the world…and underwriting oppression.” John Zernan writes in “Love” that our “affective state is the very texture and timbre of our lives” and that “every political struggle is an affective one.” Spencer Sunshine writes a review of Nietzsche and the anarchist tradition and says “give me…a social anarchism that engages with, and is inspired by the thoughts of Frederich Nietzsche.”

It is a magazine of dissent and sometimes nebulous philosophies for elitist audiences, and, as one letter writer says, “Time for a serious Anarchist-Communist attempt at a solution to the current crisis or we might as well just listen to the preachers tell us everything depends on Jesus or Obama or head for the hills.”
[www.anarchymag.org]

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