Tutankhamun’s mummy was provided with two daggers encased in gold sheaths, one with an iron blade and the other with a blade of hardened gold.
Detail of a sheath for the dagger with hunting scenes, from the Tomb of Tutankhamun (KV62), Valley of the Kings, West Thebes. Now in the Egyptian Museum, Cairo. JE 61584B
Extinction Rebellion should be taken off since they’re purposefully getting people arrested by cops
I’d like to add The Green Anticapitalist Front as an alternative bc yeah I can’t in good conscience advise anyone to join XR, made this list a while ago
“XR are using civil disobedience to make a spectacle its drawing lots of public attention to the issue”
Public attention has been attentively on the climate crisis for several years before Extinction Rebellion existed, but the vast majority of us are utterly powerless to do anything about it as individuals. That is why, if we are to take the climate and ecological crises seriously, we need to be looking at how we can collectively work to restructure society based around decentralisation, co-operation, and ecological sustainability. When trying to come up with such a solution, there are two enormous obstacles that arise: Capitalism (in the form of corporations and their owners), and the State (in the form of governments, the police and the military). Public attention and belief alone is no match for the direct and structural violence of capitalism and the state, so any climate “rebellion” is going to have to directly confront those forces with its own, uncompromising violence.
If you’re naïve enough to think that any capitalist or state will not meet a climate protest movement that in any way threatens their wealth and power with brutal violence and repression, read about Operation Backfire and the Green Scare. Despite being responsible for exactly 0 deaths, in 2001 the Earth Liberation Front was branded the “number one domestic terror threat” in the USA following an increasingly successful campaign of economic sabotage and guerrilla warfare to stop the exploitation and destruction of the environment.
You see, what makes an action radical isn’t how much it endangers the activist, it’s how strong the effect of it is on the ruling class. So
far XR have done absolutely nothing in the way of building alternative
social and industrial structures to capitalism, nor have they had any
effect on the economy or corporate profits. The reason for this is quite
simply that the leadership don’t want to, and the membership don’t get a
say. The only outcome of the protests that the leaders of XR want is
for mass arrests and mass publicity, so that they can use the public
outrage they’ve generated to free up government investment in their
“green industrial revolution” and make a mint, whilst continuing to
exploit the earth’s resources and exacerbate the ecological crisis.
There’s been a lot of talk about eco-fascism recently, and how to
identify it and prevent it growing within XR and similar movements. But
there’s not been a lot of critical thinking as to whether the movement
was eco-fascist by design since its inception. An undemocratic movement,
whose leaders make appeals to popular support and run “people’s
assemblies” in name alone, who refuse to provide legal assistance to
members whilst encouraging and recording civil disobedience, who urge their
members to take action and reveal their identities - likely to result in
jail time, in some cases potentially for years, downplaying prison and
the experience of being arrested - whose leaders are made up of
representatives of massive multinational corporations and the non profit
industrial complex? I think there’s something extremely fascist about
such a movement; it seems entirely designed to catapult its
leaders into wealth or power on the backs of mass arrests of their members.
This is why anarchists need to talk to people who are getting involved with the movement. The fact that the left abandoned the yellow vest movement from the start is why eco-fascists were able to co-opt it in many places with little to no resistance, and the same is going to happen to XR if no one steps in. I’ve spoken to people becoming involved with XR and seen them recruit, and at least where I live, most people getting involved are people who are new to activism. They don’t have the tools or experience to distinguish a good movement from a bad one, or to understand why organizing with cops and landlords is a problem.
They’re not people certain anarchists are used to organizing with, which means that they don’t meet anarchists’ expectations of what a politically active individual should know or do, and some people really don’t know how to handle that. But the solution isn’t to just avoid any and all interaction with them, it’s to talk to them before someone else does. These are generally well-meaning but politically clueless people who are easily influenced and can be turned into a powerful force to help eco-fascists and “activists” trying to boost themselves up if they aren’t warned.
Of course, you need to be careful, because there are cops, both open and undercover, within the movement; that’s why you have to be careful about what you say, and you probably shouldn’t say you’re an anarchist. But using some limited interaction with XR newbies to explain the issues with the movement and offer alternatives, which newbies probably won’t otherwise be exposed to, is a way you can nudge them in the right direction and away from the open arms of eco-fascists and green capitalists seeking self gain. At least warn them about eco-fascism, if nothing else.
Because if you don’t talk to them, someone else will.
I made a proposal along those exact lines a while back that I spent a lot of work on suggesting actions along those lines, for those who are interested it’s here
A relief depicting a musicians and acrobats. On major religious holidays all Thebes came alive with music and merrymaking and entertainers performed for the pleasure of the masses. Originally from a sanctuary built by Queen Hatshepsut.
New Kingdom 18th Dynasty, reign of Hatshepsut, ca.1479-1458 BC. Brown quartzite, from the Third Pylon of the Temple of Amun at Karnak. Now in the Luxor Museum.
This blog is mostly so I can vent my feelings and share my interests. Other than that, I am nothing special.
If you don't like Left Wing political thought and philosophy, all things related to horror, the supernatural, the grotesque, guns or the strange, then get the fuck out. I just warned you.
