According to a recent study by the Pew Research Center, one in seven Americans have taken part in some sort of political activity in the past year. This, of course, includes such meaningless activity such as posting to Facebook or Twitter. Never before has it been so easy to be an activist. If this study is to be believed, one might even venture to say that we live in a nation of activists.

“Activism - The policy or action of using vigorous campaigning to bring about political or social change.” -Oxford Dictionary

By definition, activism takes place within politics, within society, within the system. By begging, debating, and voting, activists seek to change the system. These means of change, though, are never on a tangible level. Activism is trapped within the realm of ideas…forever trying to convince just one more person to reach critical mass, and eventually changing society...

In my recent piece “Is Anarchy Left Wing?” I attempted to recognize that anarchism, life without rulers, existed long before dead white men coined the term. The left wing is a wing of capital, and cannot remove itself from capital. Rather than abolish work and production, leftist wish to merely reorganize them. To them, producing for “the people” is much preferable to producing for capitalists. Leftists believe that by restructuring and renaming certain aspects of work, it can be made tolerable, or even enjoyable! Frederick Engels wished to “abolish competition and replace it with association.” Peter Kropotkin used the railways of his time as an example of the benefits of association…

“The railway net of Europe—a confederation of so many scores of separate societies—and the direct transport of passengers and merchandise over so many lines which were built independently and...

“A Death Foreordained” is a game I made a few years ago. It is loosely based on the Philip K. Dick short story, “The Skull,” published in 1952. Like most Philip K. Dick stories from that era, it is definitely reminiscent of a Twilight Zone episode. As the player, you are an agent from the future, sent back in time to assassinate a totalitarian leader.

Originally this game was made for Windows only, but I have remade it in HTML5, which should allow it to be played on most desktop platforms.

The game itself is a reflection on violence and vanguardism. The decisions we make, and the actions that we take in our lives, will never result in predictable consequences. Those who believe they are the most righteous…those who believe they have all the answers…are most often those who are the most wrong, or those who do the most damage.

“I know that I know nothing” -Socrates

“This great evil. Where does it come from? How’d it steal into the world? What seed, what root did it grow from? Who’s doin’ this? Who’s killin’ us? Robbing us of life and light. Mockin’ us with the sight of what we might’ve known. Does our ruin benefit the earth? Does it help the grass to grow, the sun to shine? Is this darkness in you, too? Have you passed through this night?” -Private Edward P. Train

“Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” - Arthur C. Clarke

The myth of progress is one that society as a whole has yet to rid itself of. There is a tendency to view history as a sort of line graph with no end. Technology is expected to carry us forever onward into the future, forever increasing our quality of life. Even Marx, father of arguably the most biting analysis of capital, held firm to the theory of historical materialism. Together with Engels he developed the linear theory of history progressing from primitive communism, towards feudalism, and ever onwards towards communism. They even acknowledged the productive capacity of capitalism that they so despised. To them, communism could only occur on the back of capitalist productivity.

“When, in the course of development, class distinctions have disappeared, and all production has been...

They won’t play the song on the radio
The war is being played out
On our televisions
One stare, the drug of the nation
The cultural enriching now begins

Like a nation, like a nation

Your remaining people have no
Trenches left from which to fight
The rich; the nation hold their guns
Will rich buy back the mayhem?
While they’re moving you’re an owl
There’s a devil flying overhead
What a fucking pile of shit

Devastation

“In left-right politics, left-wing politics are political positions or activities that accept or support social equality, often in opposition to social hierarchy and social inequality. It typically involves a concern for those in society who are perceived as disadvantaged relative to others and an assumption that there are unjustified inequalities that need to be reduced or abolished.” -Wikipedia

Many people, anarchists included, tend to group anarchy in with the so-called “left wing” ideologies. To them, anarchy sits in the left palm of capital, along with its pals communism and democracy. To those who consider themselves a part of the left, anarchism is something thought up by European men, like Proudhon or Godwin. This ignores the fact that for the majority of human history, we lived in anarchism. It was not an ideology to be written about or struggled towards. People did not...

“Our calendar is on the web. Our location is on the web. You have a cell phone and you have a cell phone network provider and if your cell phone network provider is Sprint then we can tell you that several million times last year, somebody who has a law enforcement ID card in his pocket somewhere went to the Sprint website and asked for the real-time location of somebody with a telephone number and was given it…We don’t know that about AT&T and Verizon because they haven’t told us…the deal that you get with the traditional service called telephony contains a thing you didn’t know, like spying. That’s not a service to you but it’s a service and you get it for free with your service contract for telephony. You get for free the service of advertising with your Gmail which means of course there’s another service behind which is untouched by human hands, semantic analysis of your email.”...

It has come to my attention that a long-time and prevalent user on the r/Anarchism subreddit has been making some outright sexist comments, as well as defending rape. User MikeBoda, who goes by the name of Mike Koz, is an active anarchist here in Chicago, and the community should be aware of where his ideas on anarchy and revolution truly lie. Here are some choice comments:

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These comments were made two years ago, and while an attempt was made to ban him from the subreddit, it was blocked by users who view Mr. Koz as a “valuable contributing member despite holding bizarre views.” Users have recently begun to call him out on this behavior again, and he has done nothing but defend his views. To be clear, he is literally defending the practice of raping nuns.

Not only is this a clear problem within this particular reddit community, but it is also something endemic to anarchists...

“Bitcoin represents a significant threat to the currency domination of the USA, which is the only thing propping up the nation’s status as a worldwide superpower.” -Rick Falkvinge, Founder of the Swedish Pirate Party

“I see Bitcoin as one of the biggest things for potentially reducing the power of state and uplifting the power of the individual to happen for … forever maybe.” -Zander Marz, Author

Much has been made of bitcoin lately. From established financial companies like Visa critiquing it, to Ron Paul claiming that it could be the “destroyer of the dollar.” What was once solely in the domain of the tech-savvy, has quickly spread to mainstream society. Even after multiple scandals and thefts, bitcoin is showing very little signs of going away. There are even some traditional financial institutions that have come to embrace it.

“We believe Bitcoin could become a major means of...