Spencer Beswick

https://kolektiva.social/@spencerbeswick

Historian of anarchism, labor, and the left in the Americas / Visiting Assistant Professor of History at Union College / Views my own, not my employer's

Website: emptyhandshistory.com

Public Key

npub17kwfgp0wphqzese3v0t0zdup0zdsfd0scq9jxwtjhkqqn7gs9rqs8lfj38

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spencerbeswick_at_kolektiva.social@momostr.pink

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nprofile1qqs0t8y5qhhqmspvcvck84h3x7qh3xcykhcvqzer89etmqqflygz3sgpz3mhxue69uhhyetvv9ujuerpd46hxtnfduqs6amnwvaz7tmwdaejumr0ds6vuxdr

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npub17kwfgp0wphqzese3v0t0zdup0zdsfd0scq9jxwtjhkqqn7gs9rqs8lfj38

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Last Notes

2026-01-16 01:36:04 UTC

"Antifa are the real fascists" they repeat, as they send masked paramilitary forces door to door to terrorize and ethnically cleanse the nation.

2025-11-07 23:02:32 UTC

Is it just me or has Instagram's comments algorithm changed to prioritize "controversial" right-wing comments? Seems to be the case very consistently just starting sometime in the past month or two.

2025-10-27 17:11:00 UTC

Remember: the $40 billion bailout to Argentina (actually going to US hedge fund managers allied with Trump) would cover about half a year of food stamp funding or a full year of USAID funding. Privatization takes public goods and transfers them to the pockets of the rich.

2025-10-27 16:10:15 UTC

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But seriously, the fact that Mamdani is about to win big to become the next mayor of NYC is the most hopeful thing we've got going in an increasingly awful political situation.

2025-10-27 16:04:59 UTC

Lmao they got him now!
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/446/973/490/732/532/original/2cca8babefb133cf.jpg

2025-10-23 18:34:13 UTC

Unfortunately for the Margaret Atwood haters, it does appear that The Handmaid's Tale is the dystopia we're heading for. Best of luck to the other contenders in the next round.

2025-10-16 18:25:53 UTC

Penn joined MIT and Brown today in rejecting Trump's absurd "compact" for higher education.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/385/245/528/801/516/original/046d933f88f3b11c.png

2025-10-10 23:20:23 UTC

https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/352/428/529/673/468/original/a30bce541db44bf9.png

2025-10-09 13:37:17 UTC

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I also want to say: I get frustrated when people say that folks who leave the country should "stay and fight." People have always fled authoritarian regimes--from Tsarist Russia to Francoist Spain and beyond--and continued to fight from outside. This is part of the struggle.

2025-10-09 12:45:22 UTC

The fact that scholars of fascism and anti-fascism have been leaving the country -- now including Mark Bray fleeing death threats -- should be a huge wake up call to the American public. They more than anyone know the warning signs and the direction we seem to be headed.

2025-10-01 12:55:16 UTC

Mere affiliation with an anti-fascist organization is now grounds for discipline and potential firing of tenured professors. Unreal.
https://www.dailytarheel.com/article/2025/09/breaking-unc-professor-placed-on-administrative-leave

2025-09-27 21:40:05 UTC

I know I shouldn't be, but I'm still shocked every time I see "small government conservatives" cheering on the military occupation of American cities by the federal government.

2025-09-26 19:07:59 UTC

When the furor over the Epstein Files began a few months ago, the Conservative subreddit was furious. There were multiple posts a day about it and *almost everyone* was pissed at Trump for betraying his promises. Now, there is basically no talk of it. Here's what happened:
The r/conservative moderators clearly decided that they needed to squash the topic. First, they banned posting articles about Epstein, arguing that they were overwhelming the subreddit and crowding out other discussions. Next, the moderators created one official thread in which people were allowed to discuss Epstein, which was heavily moderated. In this thread, anyone criticizing Trump was dismissed as a disingenuous "fellow conservative," AKA a brigading liberal, and comments were deleted.
Meanwhile, official talking points were repeated over and over: Trump had nothing to do with Epstein -- or if he did, he had actually turned on him years before. This is lawfare from the deep state. The real problem is Bill Clinton and the Democrats. Nothing will ever happen. Eventually, the r/conservative moderators lifted the ban on posting articles related to Epstein. But they still deleted articles and comments criticizing Trump and promoted comments that repeated official talking points.
It is incredible how effective the moderators' strategy was. In the span of a few weeks, the conservative subreddit went from being dominated by discussion of Epstein and criticism of Trump's handling of the situation back into the usual pro-Trump and anti-left mania.
Based on r/conservative, I was initially cautiously optimistic that MAGA was turning on Trump over his handling of Epstein. No longer. Now, they are done with Epstein, and are instead busy working themselves into a violent frenzy against "antifa" and the left.

2025-09-20 12:40:10 UTC

Pretty wild how all the right wing "free speech absolutists" are cheering on Trump's full frontal attack on free speech. It's almost as if they were lying the entire time!

2025-09-18 12:19:21 UTC

Robert Paxton: "Fascism may be defined as a form of political behavior marked by obsessive preoccupation with community decline, humiliation, or victimhood and by compensatory cults of unity, energy, and purity, in which a mass-based party of committed nationalist militants, working in uneasy but effective collaboration with traditional elites, abandons democratic liberties and pursues with redemptive violence and without ethical or legal restraints goals of internal cleansing and external expansion."
The Anatomy of Fascism (2004)

2025-09-03 23:45:32 UTC

Alexander Berkman: "The social revolution means much more than the reorganization of conditions only: it means the establishment of new human values and social relationships, a changed attitude of man to man, as of one free and independent to his equal; it means a different spirit in individual and collective life, and that spirit cannot be born overnight. It is a spirit to be cultivated, to be nurtured and reared, as the most delicate flower it is, for indeed it is the flower of a new and beautiful existence."

2025-09-03 18:37:16 UTC

Have you practiced anarchist calisthenics today?
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/115/141/811/369/897/615/original/4633c0b5d3e011da.jpg

2025-09-02 16:40:43 UTC

Roland Barthes: "Anti-intellectualism is a historical myth, linked no doubt to the rise of the petite-bourgeoisie... yet its *political* danger must not be overlooked: it is quite simply fascism, whose first objective always and everywhere is to liquidate the intellectual class."

2025-08-25 15:49:15 UTC

We need a movement of small-scale, artisanal/craft knowledge production and consumption that absolutely rejects the pitiful slop of today's mass culture: the AI hallucinated slop articles, the brainless slop of bro-podcasts, the bot-driven AI slop that dominates twitter. Enough!!
Write zines and give them to your friends! Start a band and play for your community! Spend months in archives to write a carefully crafted journal article! Subscribe to (and write for) small publications! Reject AI slop and its culture; create a new world in the shell of the old!

2025-08-24 15:26:39 UTC

Howard Zinn (born 8/24/1922) inspired me to be a historian. "If history is to be creative, to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I believe, emphasize new possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes of the past when, even if in brief flashes, people showed their ability to resist, to join together, occasionally to win. I am supposing, or perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than in its solid centuries of warfare."

2025-08-19 18:35:33 UTC

As we watch Trump take over DC after sending National Guards into to LA, Texas and California compete in gerrymandering, and Oklahoma test the ideology of teachers coming from NY and CA, it's hard not to think that a fragmentation of the US into competing regional blocs is coming.
I tend to think regional fragmentation of the US would be on balance a good thing. It would open the potential for significant progressive change in some regions. But it's going to come with a lot of pain, and the potential for a protracted "cold civil war" that could turn hot.

2025-08-11 15:21:58 UTC

Trump federally taking over DC is a flashing red alarm. Call it fascism, call it authoritarianism, call it whatever you want, but it's happening now. And if his effort to take over DC isn't stopped, you better believe he'll do it elsewhere, too.

2025-08-07 14:37:58 UTC

"For your freedom and ours." Banner held by Russian dissidents in Red Square in solidarity with the 1968 Prague Spring in Czechoslovakia, crushed by Soviet tanks. One of the demonstrators later noted: "a people that oppresses others cannot itself be free."
The Russian demonstrators, a small group consisting mostly of writers, were immediately swarmed by police and KGB, beaten, and arrested. They were later sentenced to years of prison, psychiatric confinement, and/or exile
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/987/985/505/031/547/original/499f74bee3b82e3c.jpg

2025-08-06 22:37:37 UTC

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"For all the different philosophical assumptions, strategies and social recommendations, anarchists are united in their search for a free society without the State and government. They all flow in the broad river of anarchy towards the great sea of freedom.

2025-08-06 22:35:04 UTC

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"Except for a few diehard fanatics, most anarchists would see the various currents as expressing a different emphasis rather than an unbridgeable chasm. Indeed, some would find it quite acceptable to call themselves individualists in everyday life, syndicalists in wanting self-management at work, and communists in looking forward to a society in which goods are shared in common.

2025-08-06 22:32:49 UTC

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"The boundaries between the different currents of anarchism are not clear-cut; indeed they often flow into each other. Mutualism, collectivism, communism, and syndicalism might well exist side by side within the same society, as different associations and districts experiment with what best meets their specific wants and demands.

2025-08-06 22:31:54 UTC

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"[Anarchism] is a tradition opposed to domination, a tradition which sees the self-governing community as the norm and the drive to create authoritarian and hierarchical institutions as an aberration. Anarchism began to take shape wherever people demanded to govern themselves in the face of power-seeking minorities.

2025-08-04 22:35:14 UTC

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"The ultimate goal of anarchism is to create a free society which allows all human beings to realize their full potential. . . The first anarchist was the first person who felt the oppression of another and rebelled against it.

2025-08-04 22:34:09 UTC

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"They seek to establish the condition of anarchy, that is to say, a decentralized and self-regulating society consisting of a federation of voluntary associations of free and equal individuals.

2025-08-04 22:33:25 UTC

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"All anarchists reject the legitimacy of external government and of the State, and condemn imposed political authority, hierarchy and domination.

2025-08-04 22:32:27 UTC

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"Anarchism is like a river with many currents and eddies, constantly changing and being refreshed by new surges but always moving towards the wide ocean of freedom.

2025-08-04 22:28:58 UTC

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"anarchism will remain a fundamental part of human experience, for the drive for freedom is one of our deepest needs and the vision of a free society is one of our oldest dreams. Neither can ever be fully repressed; both will outlive all rulers and their States.

2025-08-04 22:28:43 UTC

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"both in the negative sense of being free from all external restraint and imposed authority, and in the positive sense of being free to celebrate the full harmony of being. Whatever its future success as a historical movement,

2025-08-04 22:28:27 UTC

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"It presents a telling analysis of existing institutions and practices, and at the same time offers the prospect of a radically transformed society. Above all, it holds up the bewitching ideal of personal and social freedom,

2025-08-04 22:28:13 UTC

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"The continued appeal of anarchism can probably be attributed to its enduring affinity with both the rational and emotional impulses lying deep within us. It is an attitude, a way of life as well as a social philosophy.

2025-08-04 22:27:57 UTC

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"A study of anarchism will show that the drive for freedom is not only a central part of our collective experience but responds to a deeply felt human need. Freedom is necessary for original thought and creativity.

2025-08-04 22:27:40 UTC

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"In general, I [Peter Marshall] define an anarchist as one who rejects all forms of external government and the State and believes that society would function well without them.

2025-08-04 22:27:24 UTC

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"It is the express aim of this book to show that there is a profound anarchist tradition which offers many ideas and values that are relevant to contemporary problems and issues.

2025-08-04 22:27:08 UTC

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"But it is easy to see why rulers should fear anarchy and wish to label anarchists as destructive fanatics for they question the very foundations of their rule.

2025-08-04 22:26:54 UTC

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"This is the spectre of anarchy that haunts the judge's bench and the government cabinet. . . Not surprisingly, anarchism has had a bad press. It is usual to dismiss its ideal of pure liberty at best as utopian, at worst, as a dangerous chimera.

2025-08-04 22:26:35 UTC

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"Anarchy is terror, the creed of bomb-throwing desperadoes wishing to pull down civilization. Anarchy is chaos, when law and order collapse and the destructive passions of man run riot. Anarchy is nihilism, the abandonment of all moral values and the twilight of reason.

2025-08-04 22:26:10 UTC

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(This will be the latest edition of Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism, published in 2010 by @npub1w56…rjua https://pmpress.org/index.php?l=product_detail&p=148. Noam Chomsky says it is "the book I always recommend when asked--as I often am--for something on the history and ideas of anarchism."

2025-08-04 22:25:42 UTC

I have been derelict in my duties as anarchist historian to have never done a full read of Peter Marshall's classic (gigantic) book Demanding the Impossible: A History of Anarchism. I think the time is now, and I will catalogue choice bits in this thread!

2025-07-31 19:19:13 UTC

The government pressuring universities to teach/research state approved things is textbook authoritarianism. When universities bend the knee, they are just capitulating and encouraging further authoritarian meddling.

2025-07-29 22:29:13 UTC

Assata Shakur: "There was not a single liberation movement in Africa that was not fighting for socialism. In fact, there was not a single liberation movement in the whole world that was fighting for capitalism.
The whole thing boiled down to a simple equation: anything that has any kind of value is made, mined, grown, produced, and processed by working people. So why shouldn’t working people collectively own that wealth? Why shouldn’t working people own and control their own resources? Capitalism meant that rich businessmen owned the wealth while socialism meant that the people who made the wealth owned it. . .
We're taught at such an early age to be against the communists, yet most of us don't have the faintest idea what communism is. Only a fool lets somebody tell them who the enemy is."

2025-07-29 19:22:34 UTC

This is wild: in Poland in 1990(!): "200 members of Anarchist Inter-City, waving black flags and shouting ‘Down With Prices’ ran through Warsaw ... breaking windows in the Polish Senate and Communist Party headquarters and barging into a luxury hotel" and targeting Solidarity headquarters for their austerity measures.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/938/127/406/097/003/original/d4627e72c2562437.jpg

2025-07-29 18:04:40 UTC

"It's easy to forget that the average person probably only knows about the Spanish Civil War and the anarchist roots of mutual aid."
"And has read Kropotkin's Conquest of Bread, of course."
"Of course."
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/937/816/267/530/837/original/6b00f9b3bbae967b.png

2025-07-28 13:18:31 UTC

Ursula Le Guin: “A child free from the guilt of ownership and the burden of economic competition will grow up with the will to do what needs doing and the capacity for joy in doing it. It is useless work that darkens the heart. The delight of the nursing mother, of the scholar, of the successful hunter, of the good cook, of the skilful maker, of anyone doing needed work and doing it well, - this durable joy is perhaps the deepest source of human affection and of sociality as a whole.”

2025-07-27 16:38:50 UTC

bell hooks: "The first act of violence that patriarchy demands of males is not violence toward women. Instead patriarchy demands of all males that they engage in acts of psychic self-mutilation, that they kill off the emotional parts of themselves. If an individual is not successful in emotionally crippling himself, he can count on patriarchal men to enact rituals of power that will assault his self-esteem."
From "The Will to Change: Men, Masculinity, and Love" (2004)

2025-07-26 12:21:38 UTC

"No to US/USSR imperialism. Mayday! Anarchist Contingent" (1988)
One of the most interesting aspects of writing about anarchism in the 1980s-90s is their position re: the Soviet Union as it fell (I'm writing an piece about this now!). They had great hope, but also saw the dangers of capitalist transformation.
Bob McGlynn of "NYC Neither East Nor West," who had extensive contacts with anarchists and other lefty dissidents in Eastern Europe, wrote an article in the Love and Rage newspaper in April 1990 titled "Whoopie! East Bloc Explodes!"
"Watching one Stalinoid dictatorship after another crumble with embarrassing speed is even more fun than drinking beer! (Well almost.)"
. . .
"Many wonder if this [East-West solidarity] movement is over. Not at all. In fact, it’s needed now more than ever."
. . .
"Opposition movements in the Soviet bloc remain. These are made up of anarchists, independent socialists, draft resisters, ecologists, anti-nuclear activists, workers, women, youth, gays. The battle for relative civil liberties may appear to be won, but the war for everything else is on."
. . .
"In many ways, we’re only just beginning. For instance, the sporadic contacts between anarchists in both blocs can now be cemented.
In April an Italian group is sponsoring a large gathering of East and West anarchists – the first time ever. In a sense we are at point zero. Now we can really move."
But despite his hope, McGlynn presciently identified the potential dangers of the Soviet collapse.
"Western capitalism is poised to eat the East alive, through debt and capital penetration.
. . .
The barbed wire and concrete borders are now being replaced by a border less tangible: that of money/commodity relations and rule. And this game, like the old one, has only enough room for a few players."
In 1990, the future was open. McGlynn ends:
"The paradox is that as the world has gotten very interesting recently, it's also simultaneously becoming increasingly monotone and banal. Pepsi power, etc. This, then, is prime territory for adventurers seeking seams in this seemingly seamless whole. It's been remarked that with Stalinism collapsing, we are now 'at the end of history.' Rather, perhaps, we are only at its beginning."
McGlynn's fears were realized: capitalism remade the former Soviet Bloc in its image. Could this have been prevented by more solidarity across borders? Was a libertarian socialist alternative possible? Or was the choice always simply between Stalinism and neoliberalism?
#anarchism #socialism #communism #history
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/919/484/630/990/516/original/a864ccf08f184587.jpg

2025-07-24 16:49:59 UTC

"Smash the State and Have a Nice Day!" A poem from "Mob Action Against the State: Haymarket Remembered... an Anarchist Convention." This 1986 anarchist convention in Chicago was the first of a series of continental gatherings that revitalized the N. American anarchist movement.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/909/234/952/598/372/original/e1f64bac3c62e41d.jpg

2025-07-23 17:41:50 UTC

Emma Goldman: "Poor human nature, what horrible crimes have been committed in thy name! Every fool, from king to policeman, from the flatheaded parson to the visionless dabbler in science, presumes to speak authoritatively of human nature. The greater the mental charlatan, the more definite his insistence on the wickedness and weaknesses of human nature. Yet, how can any one speak of it today, with every soul in a prison, with every heart fettered, wounded, and maimed?"

2025-07-16 17:06:23 UTC

The most important takeaway from the Epstein files is that the uber rich and powerful live in a totally different world from the rest of us, operating by different rules. Their world is not redeemable. It cannot be reformed. It must be dismantled.

2025-06-17 19:31:55 UTC

As Trump orders everyone in Tehran to evacuate (apparently before Israel destroys it with Trump's blessing), another hearty fuck you to every so-called "anti-imperialist" who backed Trump as the "anti-war" candidate. Stop listening to Jimmy Dore and his ilk, it rots your mind!

2025-06-15 17:44:07 UTC

Ursula K. Le Guin: "We live in capitalism. Its power seems inescapable. So did the divine right of kings. Any human power can be resisted and changed by human beings."

2025-06-10 13:50:07 UTC

White people today: the protesters in LA are hurting their own cause, they should be like MLK and the Civil Rights Movement!
Meanwhile, white people during the Civil Rights Movement:
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/659/368/963/315/969/original/8ad97d4e9cd8daab.jpg
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/659/380/191/145/537/original/4e89545aa3625eb5.jpg

2025-06-09 21:47:08 UTC

Don't blame the people resisting fascist violence for "provoking" it. That's the logic of abusers. The violence is already there (and Trump will always find an excuse); some people are just brave enough to resist and fight back.

2025-05-10 19:54:05 UTC

CrimethInc: "[Direct action] can be the best form of therapy, helping those who act to cure feelings of boredom, hopelessness, and impotence. When one is doing nothing, everything seems impossible; once one has begun doing something, it is easier to imagine what else is possible and recognize opportunities as they arise."

2025-05-05 22:33:52 UTC

Marx: "The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the theatre, the dance hall, the public house; the less you think, love, theorize, sing, paint ... etc., the more you save—the greater becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour—your capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express your own life, the greater is your alienated life—the greater is the store of your estranged being."
From the "Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844"
https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1844/manuscripts/preface.htm

2025-05-01 13:48:33 UTC

Happy May Day!
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/432/887/012/744/192/original/086fb0b234b68b5c.jpg

2025-04-30 20:40:26 UTC

My wife and I equally split laundry duties: I sort, wash, and fold everything, and then she puts the duvet cover back on. We both think we've got the better end of the deal.

2025-04-17 13:56:50 UTC

Anarchists at the 1993 queer march on Washington. Chants: “We’re fucking anarchists, we’ll fuck whoever we want!” and “We’re here, we’re Queer, and we hate the government!”
Some had a banner reading “Anti-Racist Skinheads and Punx Against Homophobia” and chanted “Oi! Oi! Oi! We fuck boys!”
Edit: Read more in a short piece I wrote last year for [@igd_news](https://kolektiva.social/@igd_news ) https://itsgoingdown.org/were-here-were-queer-and-we-hate-the-government-queer-anarchism-against-all-domination/
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/353/642/105/366/487/original/704f005c667a9495.png

2025-04-10 22:34:14 UTC

Errico Malatesta: "By anarchist spirit I mean that deeply human sentiment, which aims at the good of all, freedom and justice for all, solidarity and love among the people; which is not an exclusive characteristic only of self-declared anarchists, but inspires all people who have a generous heart and an open mind."
Umanita Nova, April 13, 1922

2025-04-08 16:18:19 UTC

Thinking about this Naomi Klein quote about abuse of prisoners as an indicator of "a regime that is engaged in a deeply anti-democratic project" re: Trump sending people to the notoriously brutal prison in El Salvador.
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/303/226/883/710/390/original/d84092bd23cbbd79.png

2025-04-07 15:07:05 UTC

Today's recommended reading: Naomi Klein's book The Shock Doctrine (2007), which show how capitalists use crises to force through unpopular policies like deregulation and privatization while getting richer off of buying up more of the world "on sale" as regular people suffer.

2025-04-06 15:59:51 UTC

We should celebrate and feel emboldened when millions of people hit the streets to resist fascism, not retreat into cynicism and irrelevancy. Any mass movement will have contradictions. Make interventions from within and push your political line to people who want to take action.

2025-03-30 15:13:29 UTC

Looks like someone recently uploaded my 2022 article "From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s)" to The Anarchist Library. It genuinely brings me great joy when people read my work and find it useful! https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/spencer-beswick-from-the-ashes-of-the-old
I also saw that the Black Rose/Rosa Negra Anarchist Federation included "From the Ashes of the Old: Anarchism Reborn in a Counterrevolutionary Age (1970s-1990s)" in its suggested readings on US anarchist history: https://www.blackrosefed.org/anarchism-introduction/
And someone made a Wikipedia page for Love and Rage that heavily cites two articles I wrote. Very cool to see my writing out in the world! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Love_and_Rage_(organization)
#anarchism #history

2025-03-21 16:19:19 UTC

Rebecca Solnit: “Hope is not like a lottery ticket you can sit on the sofa and clutch, feeling lucky… Hope is an ax you break down doors with in an emergency.”

2025-02-22 16:11:08 UTC

Today (Feb 22) in 1943, three courageous young people in the group White Rose were executed for distributing anti-Nazi leaflets in Germany. Sophie Scholl: "The greatest damage is caused by the silent majority that just wants to survive, submit and go along with everything."
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/114/048/407/580/682/723/original/5a9cf80b377e62d7.webp

2025-02-06 18:49:25 UTC

On violence
https://kolektiva.social/system/media_attachments/files/113/958/436/454/792/113/original/3202ac92b66350b7.jpg

2025-01-25 17:42:58 UTC

It is clear that many (most?) people view democracy as an abstraction that has little bearing on their material lives. For democracy to have any real meaning, we must build structures that enable people to make real decisions about the things that directly impact their lives.
Murray Bookchin called these structures "forms of freedom" and said that "the future assemblies of people in the block, the neighborhood or the district — the revolutionary sections to come ... will be the living nuclei of Utopia in the decomposing body of bourgeois society."

2025-01-18 14:35:16 UTC

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Ursula K. Le Guin: “If it is the future you seek, then I tell you that you must come to it with empty hands. . . You cannot buy the Revolution. You cannot make the Revolution. You can only be the Revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

2025-01-18 14:33:13 UTC

I updated my website https://emptyhandshistory.com/ after letting it lie fallow for over a year. It's easiest way to find links to all of my publications, including the two peer reviewed journal articles and a book chapter that I published in 2024. As always, DM me for PDFs of anything!

2025-01-10 19:03:25 UTC

I'm re-reading Bookin's Post-Scarcity Anarchism and really appreciating his openness to what he calls "utopian lifestyle," which he says "is indispensable in preserving the integrity of the revolutionary." So different from his later polemics against "lifestyle anarchism"!
"In the very act of refusing to live by bourgeois strictures, the first seeds of the utopian lifestyle are planted. Negation passes into affirmation; the rejection of the present becomes the assertion of the future within the rotting guts of capitalism itself. 'Dropping out' becomes a mode of dropping in—into the tentative, experimental, and as yet highly ambiguous, social relations of Utopia. Taken as an end in itself, this lifestyle is not utopia; indeed, it may be woefully incomplete.
Taken as a means, however, this lifestyle and the processes leading to it are indispensable in remaking the revolutionary, in awakening his sensibilities to how much must be changed if the revolution is to be complete. The lifestyle is indispensable in preserving the integrity of the revolutionary, in providing him with the psychic resources to resist the subversion of the revolutionary project by bourgeois values."
https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-post-scarcity-anarchism-book

2024-11-16 16:16:16 UTC

At a union picket line this morning a man walked up throwing a Nazi salute. I told him to fuck off and he immediately turned and punched me in the head hard enough to knock me to the ground. He was chased off and I'm ok, but this is what Trump's victory emboldens. Take care of each other.

2024-11-13 16:03:55 UTC

Trump/Musk's "Department of Government Efficiency" will lead to a cash grab for billionaires. It's been the plan all along.
Noam Chomsky: "That’s the standard technique of privatization: defund, make sure things don’t work, people get angry, you hand it over to private capital."

2024-10-22 17:18:35 UTC

The morning after the 2016 election I remember walking around Boston and everyone was in a state of shock. Some people were crying. Many of us immediately started organizing to protect each other from the incoming administration. I don't want to be there again.
It is only because Trump and his cronies were so disorganized--and because people at all levels of society resisted--that things weren't worse. That is no guarantee that they won't be worse this time, as he becomes "dictator for a day" and sets mass deportations in motion.
That is why, despite my absolute lack of faith in the Dems and all my critiques of electoral politics, I will be voting for them in two weeks. Trump needs to lose, hopefully by a landslide. And then we need to spend the other 364 days of the year fighting for a better world.

2024-10-21 22:29:09 UTC

Happy birthday to Ursula K. Le Guin (Oct 21, 1929). “You cannot buy the revolution. You cannot make the revolution. You can only be the revolution. It is in your spirit, or it is nowhere.”

2024-10-18 15:48:39 UTC

David Graeber: "Anarchism is just the way people act when they are free to do as they choose, and when they deal with others who are equally free — and therefore aware of the responsibility to others that entails."

2024-09-25 15:02:04 UTC

Some people dismiss protests by pointing out that many of the same protesters turn up for many causes: Palestine, climate, anti-police brutality, etc. But is it so surprising that people who want to make the world better take part in many causes fighting for peace and justice?
As MLK said: "Injustice anywhere is a threat to justice everywhere. We are caught in an inescapable network of mutuality, tied in a single garment of destiny. Whatever affects one directly, affects all indirectly." King himself took part in many struggles: civil rights, labor, anti-war, and more.
What did people at the time call MLK? An outside agitator who just wanted to protest, who should stop talking about Vietnam and stick to Black civil rights. But he recognized that all injustice is linked, and he showed up for other struggles.

2024-09-16 18:40:49 UTC

There is accepted wisdom on the left that social movements experience demobilization under Democratic presidents. The argument is that many liberals think everything is ok because there are “allies” in power. I don’t think it’s actually true though, and here's why.
Many of the biggest social movements in the post-war period actually occurred under Democratic presidents. To name a few: under LBJ there was the student movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, the birth of Black Power, the founding of the American Indian Movement, and so on. Under Carter there was the mobilization of the anti-nuclear movement, including the famous Clamshell Alliance occupation of the Seabrook Nuclear Power Plant construction site. Under Clinton there was the anti-globalization movement (and much more). Under Obama there was Occupy Wall Street, Black Lives Matter, and Standing Rock. Under Biden there is the Gaza solidarity movement and major labor mobilization.
So, historically speaking, I think the claim of demobilization under Democratic presidents is simply untrue. Or, and this is what I’m really getting at, perhaps there is initial demobilization after Dems are elected -- in part because they raise the expectations of govt action of many liberals & young people. But then these raised expectations are betrayed by Dem business as usual. A sense of Dem betrayal angers people and things pop off.
None of this is to say that mobilization only happens under Democrats, of course -- for two recent examples, just look at the anti-Iraq war movement under Bush and the George Floyd Rebellion under Trump.
My takeaways here are twofold: first, the left needs to have a compelling analysis of the "raised and then dashed expectations" regarding Democratic presidents, and make sure that disaffected young people turn left instead of right in their rejection of the Democrats. The second takeaway is simple: no matter who is in the White House, we need to focus on organizing movements, taking collective action, and building power from the ground up. Electoral politics is almost always a distraction from the real work that needs to be done.

2024-08-13 01:56:49 UTC

My three favorite depictions of anarchistic societies in speculative fiction that I think everyone should read:
1) Ursula K. Le Guin, The Dispossessed (1974)
2) Marge Piercy, Woman on the Edge of Time (1976)
3) Starhawk, The Fifth Sacred Thing (1993)