Mastodawn

@richpuchalsky

I've been thinking about this. Mamdani took power and instantly became a cop lover. The weird ammosexuals took power and instantly stopped hating the idea of federal cops. Progressives are losing power and so are becoming less pro-cop. Communists love cops when they're in charge and hate them otherwise. Poor gay people chant "bottoms, tops, we all hate cops" but rich gay people support them.

I'm beginning to think that one's relationship to the police is not a matter of ideology, but a matter of specifically whether you have power or not. I think anyone who gains power (or who becomes part of the ingroup) is going to be corrupted into a cop-lover.

The implications of this, as an anarchist, are something I've been thinking through.

It's not so such an implication of anarchism as it *is* anarchism. You can not be in power in a hierarchical system without loving cops (or whoever the equivalent enforcers are in your society). The hierarchy doesn't maintain itself and always requires physical force.

@richpuchalsky

I mean, if loving cops is something that comes and goes from ideologies depending upon their power in society, what does that mean for us when we win? Are we going to become bootlickers, and if so, how can we avoid that?

I'm not an anarchist because I like the idea. My anarchism is based on it being the most pragmatic and realistic way forward, and I think we have a real chance of winning in my lifetime (I think we came closer than people realise to a successful revolution in 2020.)

As anarchists, however, we have a tradition of thinking things through carefully before we do them. We don't rush in heedless of the consequences like communists or liberals do. We understand that no system outgrows the circumstances of its birth, so we need to be careful about those circumstances. If there's a chance of us becoming cop-lovers, then I think we need to take that seriously.

As an outsider who is very anarchy-curious, and who tries to educate myself when I have the spoons, one thing I've noticed about the anarchist community on Masto is that a lot of (English-speaking) anarchists still carry significant cultural baggage from their Western upbringing, specifically the more pernicious parts of individualism and the Hobbesian idea that men are intrinsically evil, covetous, and unfaithful.

Add to that conflating power and authority, and...

...it creates the conditions for "cop-loving", bc the cop's product-market fit is that they're the "thin blue line" between the civilized few and the seething masses just yearning to fuck shit up.

Which is why the moment people escape the "seething masses", they start to appreciate the value of a good line, thin and blue, between them and the people they were acculturated to try to flee from. (They're all trying to flee from each other all the time, is the point)

I don't know about this, because the least totalitarian and autocratic states in the world are largely the western ones.

That's debatable.

After all, the US has *by many multiples* the largest prison population in the world. It's in the bottom 10% for prison conditions.

We also just convicted 8 people of terrorism for "wearing black while at a protest" and "zines".

In 2020 it was Democrats leading the way on prosecutions of peaceful protesters demanding police accountability

None of this sounds "least totalitarian", tbh, and that's just the tip of the iceberg

The US certainly skew the balance - I didn't have them in mind, so much as the EU and CANZUK.

Well, to Passenger's point, the EU and CA/UK have coasted on stolen wealth for so long that, now that their empires are waned and the lucre isn't flowing like it used to, they're clamping down on benefits and going full nativist. To maintain their style of life, they're tripling down on oil and gas and other natres wealth sources (considerably easier than discarding their entire ideology) and betting that "AI" will give them to tools to put down unrest.

I forget who said that fascism is colonialists colonizing their own people, but that's what we've been living through for the last 50 years.

@johnzajac @alessandro @richpuchalsky

It was Aimé Césaire who said it, although it's often misattributed to Michel Foucault.

Re your earlier point:

I think you're right about circumstances creating behaviour. Most anarchists would agree with you on that - people get reshaped by their niche in society, whether that niche be "straight White male" or "mayor of Chicago." Most anarchists, as you point out, are also examples of this ourselves. We're no exception to the rule.

To take myself as an example, I was a liberal until the 2007/08 financial crash, then I was an electoral socialist until 2016. I am reshaped by the world around me and my experience of what it is to live in it.

If I were raised to president of my country, I would absolutely be a shitty brutal corrupt ruler. I understand this about myself. That's why I don't want to be president.

@alessandro @johnzajac @richpuchalsky

You're Canadian, go ask some First Nations people about whether they'd like their lands back and what's stopping them.

Totalitarianism is by nature invisible to those who agree with its ideology, and the core ideology of Canada (and other settler countries) is "this is our land now." And that will be defended with force and the threat of force.

@johnzajac @richpuchalsky

Got it, a country can only be 100% good or 100% bad. Enjoy your conversation.

Most of the people in this thread are avowed anarchists, so they honestly think the *concept* of the State is 100% bad.

Which is not really all that controversial a point of view, imho

What you're feeling right now is probably something worth interrogating, tbh

The implication of your post was that non-western countries are closer to the anarchist ideal, which I really don't think is the case. I'm not saying that western states are perfect, much less that they are anywhere close to anarchism - I'm just saying that states elsewhere are no closer. I've read Kropotkin and others, I'm not coming here to defend anything.

@[email protected] @passenger @richpuchalsky @alessandro

Alessandro, come on. This is not a zero sum game. This is a conversation about values & power.

Anarchism doesn't require an underlying theory of human nature. You can believe (as probably a majority of anarchists do although I am not one) that human beings when not raised in authoritarian systems are naturally sort of cooperative and friendly, or you believe in anything else including a Graeberian idea that people try out a whole lot of different things, but anarchism is really about what kind of systems you build not about what you supposedly have to build.

It's fashionable to say that one should never read the dead old Euro people but this was the core disagreement between Marx and Bakunin. Bakunin basically said that when you put a worker in charge of other workers, they're no longer a worker. They are part of a "new class" of supervisors (and he then went on to pretty much predict the collapse of the USSR before the USSR even happened).

Anarchists can't "win" within our current society or other societies that hold to its basics.

Police exist to enforce top down power. Anarchists exist to dismantle top down power. I could be president of the universe and I would still be an abolitionist.

@FranceskaMann

If you were President of the universe you would quickly discover that you could not be an abolitionist. If you tried anyway the system would dispose of you.

@FranceskaMann @passenger

If I ever daydream about what I would do if somehow made President, what I would do is cleverly destroy everything to the maximum amount possible. In other words, pretty much what Trump is doing (without the trans panic), but on purpose. Of course he's "better": I don't think I would have had the fortitude to switch positions that many times within one speech, and greet every sign of negotation with "ha ha I win" in order to make inter-state negotiation worthless.

You would destroy things? I would repurpose existing architecture, implement a green new deal, destroy colonialism & encourage collaboration. There would be massive scientific education globally. Our world is focused on profit. Imagine a world focused not on profit but on saving the other species on our planet. We would do everything differently. Billionaires & police are abolished. Insects, water, air & soil health are prioritized.

@FranceskaMann

Well none of that would happen. The idea that by being President you could make that happen is not a good idea.

Presidents always can destroy things though.

@FranceskaMann @richpuchalsky

In what way do you think you would be corrupted by the experience of having authority?

I ask because, and I don't mean this as an insult, I read that post in the voice of Galadriel doing her "beautiful and terrible" speech about what she would do if she had the One Ring. We are all susceptible to corruption and Tolkien wrote some vivid portrayals of it.

Don't even have to go to Galadriel: Samwise the Strong wanted to make gardens.

@FranceskaMann

My career was yoga instructor. I took it seriously. I taught all over the world and owned a studio & boutique on Maui. Every so often my classes would get super popular and I would respond by getting strict with the students. You can call that sabotage. But I was never interested in a popular class. I wanted to reach people's hearts and get them to look at the world differently. It was a higher calling. I think I failed.

A popular instructor is a powerful instructor. So I was never interested in the power, or the popularity. And when it happened naturally, I pushed it away. Now I know that I am just an anarchist and that's how we are. But I don't believe I would handle power well. It made me unhappy.

Franceska Mann 6d ago

I maintained enough popularity and power to not get laid off when instructors around me lost their jobs. But beyond that, I was not interested. Another instructor, a peer, pushed the popularity. She ended up being on Apple TV teaching yoga. Molly. She was great. But she had double the number of people legally allowed in her room every class. It was a fire hazard. She had to break the law and I refused to play that game.
Power corrupts.

@FranceskaMann @richpuchalsky

Passenger 6d ago

Reading that, I absolutely agree: power corrupts. I'm glad that you were honest and stayed away from it, you seem like a decent person and I'd feel sad to see that happen to you.

Franceska Mann 5d ago

Small chance of that, lol. I'm not in the world anymore. I hang out with my dogs and husband in our big fabulous house, and I take care of my cities community garden. I can't even get the garden off of Facebook. I effing hate Facebook. I even built the garden a dedicated website and they still won't take the garden off of effing Facebook. So I wish I had just a teence more power. Enough for folks to use the website!!

Personally, I think politicians like Mamdani, and their families, are explicitly threatened by police when they take office.

Police fraternal orgs are national concerns; they can find and murder anyone without there even being an investigation.

Because otherwise it is *honestly* extremely hard to explain how not one single anti-cop politician has *ever* remained anti-cop after taking office.

The simplest answer is that cops are a national organized crime syndicate

smitten Mar 26

@johnzajac @passenger @richpuchalsky Threats and blackmail are too often overlooked as explanations for behavior. Totally agree.

@johnzajac @passenger @richpuchalsky

Cops threatening electeds is business as usual in Los Angeles and has been since forever.

Here's a timeline of LAPD spying since the 1920s, which has always included extortion files on city council members.

https://stoplapdspying.org/wp-content/uploads/2012/01/Timeline-of-LAPD-Spying-Surveillance.....pdf

For instance in 1927: "LAPD officers, working in conjunction with mob boss Alfred Marco, pay the sister-in-law of an LAPD detective $2500 to seduce married City Council member Carl Jacobson in an effort to discredit him. Jacobson had been critical of the close connection between LAPD and criminals running gambling rings in the city."

And this has continued unabated although mostly less explicitly down to the present. Not always less explicitly, though. Sometimes even now they'll even publicly menace them, as in e.g. this incident from 2020 when what looks like hundreds of LAPD officers surrounded council member Monica Rodriguez in a parking structure and yelled at her about perceived cuts to their funding:

https://x.com/jasmineviel/status/1268961412241473539?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw%7Ctwcamp%5Etweetembed%7Ctwterm%5E1268961412241473539%7Ctwgr%5E%7Ctwcon%5Es1_&ref_url=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.redditmedia.com%2Fmediaembed%2Fgxebwb%2F%3Fresponsive%3Dtrueis_nightmode%3Dfalse

@AdrianRiskin @passenger @richpuchalsky

Yeah, I'm really at the point where Occam's Razor indicates that we should just assume that vast secret conspiracies of the powerful exist by default, and liberal insistence that they do not exist is literally an op.

@johnzajac @passenger @richpuchalsky

At least in Los Angeles, where I understand the machinations of the 0.1% at a disturbing level of detail, it's possible to actually watch zillionaire conspiracies in action because most of their work has a significant public component consisting of lobbyist communication, business improvement district proceedings, etc. They don't have to be secret because what they're actually doing is camouflaged by internalized myths about democracy.

They don't have one overarching conspiracy, but rather a lot of smaller scale conspiracies that network and cooperate and support one another. Since they essentially all want the same things they don't have to work hierarchically among themselves.

In fact, immersing myself in zillionaire politics here is one of the main things that convinced me that anarchism is viable. No laws control the power elite here. They form dynamic alliances with each other when it helps their individual goals. They defer to one another in their own spheres of control. If one of them gets out of line to the extent that it interferes with too many other elites' class interests they'll band together to rein them in or punish them, etc.

The slogan about socialism for the rich, capitalism for the poor, could be amended with anarchism for the ruling class.

@AdrianRiskin

This is very true in terms of small scale social cooperation among people who know (of) each other, and of course not really true in the sense that all of these people depend on the state in order to keep less-wealthy people in line.

@johnzajac @passenger

@richpuchalsky @johnzajac @passenger

I take your point, but the more I learn about it the more I think it works like this all the way up, so that the state isn't actually intrinsically hierarchical for the pure capitalists that depend on it. It's very like a cooperative for them. Co-ops might come together to form metacoops to promote their interests, e.g. agricultural coops form cooperative organizations of coops.

Similarly, local elites create institutions like state legislatures and state militias to handle problems that require larger scale cooperation, but it's very much the individual locally situated zillionaires that are running things. State institutions are tools of local power and from their internal POV it's very much anarchism.

Clyde Wood's Development Arrested has detailed convincing explanation of how this has worked over centuries in the Mississippi Delta, but it's the same everywhere.

https://www.versobooks.com/products/1643-development-arrested

Development Arrested

@AdrianRiskin

Iain Banks, in this Culture novels, used to depict the anarchists from his Culture society as fitting very easily into aristocratic societies that they had to act as diplomats within, or whatever -- as long as they were supposed to be aristocrats.

@johnzajac @passenger

@richpuchalsky @AdrianRiskin @passenger

The Culture novels are extraordinary partly because Banks' presentation of the Culture is so nuanced and cynical, but also contains a germ of admiration for its ruthless practicality and confident indifference to most "threats" that aren't actually threats.

Anarchists, I think, fall under the latter category in this instance.

@johnzajac @richpuchalsky @passenger I need to reread these books. I first read them long before I had any kind of political consciousness.

@AdrianRiskin

One of the parts of this that even some leftists don't want to admit to is that cop unions are terrible and have contributed to the public immunity for cops. When hundreds of cops surround a politician and yell at them about funding I'm sure that they or someone will describe that as a union action.

@johnzajac @passenger

@richpuchalsky @johnzajac @passenger

Yes, indeed. Here in LA we have a weekly BLM-led protest at the police protective League that's been going on for years, and it really conflicts some white liberals.

https://www.instagram.com/p/C3n7VlYSDSq/

Black Lives Matter Los Angeles on Instagram: "END POLICE ASSOCIATIONS 🗣️ RP: Join us to #Drum4Justice with @blmlosangeles for Black History/ Futures month on 2/21/2024. We join BLM-LA every 3rd Wednesday at their weekly rally to end police associations (rain or shine). We’ll have free bucket drums and sticks for healing justice. Bring your voices, your energy, and your commitment to building a just and liberated world free from police associations and violence."

54 likes, 1 comments - blmlosangeles on February 21, 2024: "END POLICE ASSOCIATIONS 🗣️ RP: Join us to #Drum4Justice with @blmlosangeles for Black History/ Futures month on 2/21/2024. We join BLM-LA every 3rd Wednesday at their weekly rally to end police associations (rain or shine). We’ll have free bucket drums and sticks for healing justice. Bring your voices, your energy, and your commitment to building a just and liberated world free from police associations and violence.".

Instagram

@AdrianRiskin @richpuchalsky @passenger

I feel like my mantra during this pandemicene has been "not everything is the same as everything else", because most people seem to have the idea that a baby and a fish are the same thing because you can put them in a tub of water and they won't die right away, or that dogs and cashmere sweaters are the same thing because they're soft when you touch them.

A labor union and a police union can both be put in a tub of water, but they aren't the same.

Yza Mar 26

@richpuchalsky many cops wish they were ICE. cops very rarely get to make arrests and have fewer opportunities to brutalize people of colour. ICE under trump is a dream job to them

Quasit Mar 26

@richpuchalsky
"Arresting" protesters? Don't you mean "shooting, torturing, tasering, and kidnapping" protesters?