jacoder23Jul 2, 2024
William Gillis 🏴

Honestly a lot of my thoughts these days go to "how can we leave behind useful manuals for the few surviving altruists hiding under the boot of fascism after a century of global extermination of anyone remotely sympathetic to liberalism or humanism, much less anarchism or antifascism?"

In a future where politicians are expected to eat their children alive on television to prove they're not a filthy non-sociopath, how might survivors securely connect up in underground networks?

Jul 1, 2024 at 9:52pmWeb
Show threadWilliam Gillis 🏴Jul 1, 2024
In a world where the only two political camps are "christian fascists" and "egoist fascists" -- each accusing the other of secretly being altruistic and harboring the disgusting weakness of compassion -- where torture and rape are openly taught in schools as important curricula and the entirety of civil institutions and mass media are designed around preventing a return of the horrors of "woke"... how will the five surviving anarchists on the planet continue to fight?
Show threadjoncamfieldJul 1, 2024
@rechelon an archivist once pointed out to me that clay is unique in that’s it’s one of few materials that hardens in fire instead of melting or burning.
Show threadben chambers 🏴Jul 2, 2024
@joncamfield @rechelon there is a great metaphor waiting to be made of that
Show threadanoreonJul 2, 2024

@rechelon I've considered that sort of situation in different terms, "you're the only anarchist vs literally everyone else is a ruthless nazi", as well as the appropriate response in the opposite scenario, "there's exactly 1 nazi and everyone else is an anarchist". Both contrived and not really realistic scenarios to actually occur, but in the latter case it seems like you just shoot the nazi, easy enough, the risk of them existing at all seems greater than trying gentler means to change their worldview.

For the former, I mean "punch nazis" as a tactic kinda goes out the window when that's literally everyone else and will accomplish little but greatly risk your death. Leading me to the depressing conclusion that in such a scenario, that generally only things that are subtle and/or safe you should do, and more or less keep your head down and hope that eventually the tides shift to be more favorable just from the chaos that is humanity. Caching and archiving whatever you can so that if that fails to occur within your lifetime, maybe hundreds of years from now someone decent will discover it and make use of it.

That scenario and conclusion also has the presumption of uniformity and stability in the nazi society which I don't think could actually occur. If they've already genocided all the minorities they hate they'll just invent new ones, and I guess you'd have to try and work with them since due to their social position at least a few of them would shift towards less evil values.

I have no idea what the right approach would be in your hypothetical. It's bleaker than mine on account of being more feasible to actually occur and in the long term more stable, since two competing horrors can reinforce each other in a way that just one cannot.