So about these riots...

[Bruno]

So there's this area in Seattle that's calling itself the "Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone". Some people are referring to it as "Antifa's Autonomous Zone" because of course they are. Everything is Antifa now. 

https://www.seattletimes.com/seattle-news/welcome-to-the-capitol-hill-autonomous-zone-where-seattle-protesters-gather-without-police/

Anyway, It's kind of vague what's going on there. According to some, warlords are claiming territory and demanding protection money, and white supremacist neo-nazis are on their way there along with the usual mishmash of boogalooers and armed superpatriots  to liberate it from gay space communist anarchist antifa whatever.

All of this "information" is, of course, coming from self-proclaimed "pundits" and "experts" who are not actually there, and therefore know no more about what's going on there than anyone else with access to Google.

[Cain]

Ah yes, the vicious Antifa warlords who are, allegedly, beating people up.

Warlord standards are slipping.

[altered]

I have friends on the inside of Capitol Hill.

It's just a bunch of nerds and local businesses saying that the police stay out. The cops keep lying on the scanners about Nazis on their way there, and they've begun lying to the media about what's going on there, talking about extortion and armed checkpoints. But it's just people living their lives without police, is what it boils down to.

Doing a good job of it too. Local businesses are running basically full-time and apparently making better than normal money despite a lot of free service to protestors.

[Cramulus]

I have friends on the inside of Capitol Hill.

It's just a bunch of nerds and local businesses saying that the police stay out. The cops keep lying on the scanners about Nazis on their way there, and they've begun lying to the media about what's going on there, talking about extortion and armed checkpoints. But it's just people living their lives without police, is what it boils down to.

Doing a good job of it too. Local businesses are running basically full-time and apparently making better than normal money despite a lot of free service to protestors.

thanks for that, really curious to hear any other impressions from the ground level.

[Bruno]

I have friends on the inside of Capitol Hill.

It's just a bunch of nerds and local businesses saying that the police stay out. The cops keep lying on the scanners about Nazis on their way there, and they've begun lying to the media about what's going on there, talking about extortion and armed checkpoints. But it's just people living their lives without police, is what it boils down to.

Doing a good job of it too. Local businesses are running basically full-time and apparently making better than normal money despite a lot of free service to protestors.

Well, I wish them the best of luck. If any Nazis do show up, I hope they're delicious.

[Bruno]

Ah yes, the vicious Antifa warlords who are, allegedly, beating people up.

Warlord standards are slipping.

At least in this case there seems to be some actual Antifa involvement beyond the usual invisible buses and such.

https://twitter.com/RainCityAntifa

[minuspace]

One thing I've noticed that makes talking about systemic racism difficult is that all of our language around racism (and I saw a black Salish Nation anarchist talking about this recently) is individualistic and active. Racism is something you do, you are guilty of, racism is people acting out something, and these ideas are baked into the very language for it.

Systemic racism sounds like an oxymoron. Think of the concept of "systemic beatboxing" — it's a complete nonsequitur. "Systemic drunk driving." "Systemic sports."

We don't have words for racism that aren't sunken in this individualistic, active connotation, which makes it sound like total gibberish if you don't see it first hand.

I appreciate the distinction, I think, in the sense of emphasizing the active part. In the way of it being characterized as activity I suppose is how the mental component thereof can be considered pervasive to the extent of being systemic-like. Any implied reference to the physiology of the circulatory system would itself count as most probably racist in this context. So I concede the term is not appropriate to now.

[altered]

Systemic racism isn't active at all though. It's the opposite. Nothing at all needs to be done for it to stay racist. No one needs to be behind it for it to stay racist. So long as the system is the way it is, it will be racist forever. You can even make a great many changes to it without destroying its fundamental racism. You can swap all the people around in terms of their roles within the system and the system will recover its original racist intent without any particular effort.

"Racism" doesn't lend itself to talking about this kind of a system. Racism is a thing that someone does. We call a person a bigot because they engage in bigotry, but the system doesn't engage in racism, it is the structure of racism.

But if you talk about "the structure of racism" you start talking in terms that white people read and go "oh, so we can just pull the racism out and keep the rest". When the issue is that there is no "rest": the entire basis of Western civilization is colonialism is systemic racism, full stop, end of story. There's almost nothing else left in modern Western governance once you remove the racism. Rebuilding it without the racism part is kind of like rebuilding the Tower of London without rocks, or a modern skyscraper without glass. It's a contradiction in terms, what you get is simply not sensible for normal use anymore.



(Sound doubtful? Easiest possible proof is that there is any place on earth where people are legally forbidden to survive under some circumstance, no matter how ridiculous. It turns out we have a lot of these, and not just in the US. If you're starving almost anywhere in the world and you steal to get food... just for starters.

Now, who is this sort of criminalization of survival going to disproportionately affect? Poor people. And who is going to make up the bulk of that group? The traditionally unwanted people, starting with non-whites and working their way down depending on locale, because they have no chance to get rich before the criminalization of being poor destroys their access to social mobility.)



But no one wants to hear that sort of thing, because that involves actual change and real work. They'd rather play a sad song, paint over a billboard, give one person a mediocre check, and call it a day.

[minuspace]

but the system doesn't engage in racism, it is the structure of racism.

That makes sense

But if you talk about "the structure of racism" you start talking in terms that white people read and go "oh, so we can just pull the racism out and keep the rest". When the issue is that there is no "rest": the entire basis of Western civilization is colonialism is systemic racism, full stop, end of story. There's almost nothing else left in modern Western governance once you remove the racism. Rebuilding it without the racism part is kind of like rebuilding the Tower of London without rocks, or a modern skyscraper without glass. It's a contradiction in terms, what you get is simply not sensible for normal use anymore.

I haven't thought this one through yet but if I read colonialism as capitalism, then the exploit of stacking those rocks and glass was built on the surplus labor of the oppressed. Mechanization and automation has not yet solved that problem as technological advance is still coupled to our current hyper leveraged system of meritocracy. So here we go, pumping the brakes and all.

[altered]

Capitalism is one part of it. A culture of guilt and punishment is another. A culture of comfort is yet another. Not to knock comfort in a personal sense, I'm talking about societal comfort: we don't have anything like a culture of ACCOUNTABILITY or SELF-CORRECTION for instance. We always blame, we always rationalize.

I'm also talking about social comfort: we prioritize "being ourselves" over "being decent people" to a fault. I'm a Discordian, I'm as fond of self-expression as everyone else here. That said, there comes a hard limit, and when your expression calls for genocide you should not be allowed to say "it's just my opinion calm down". You should have to confront that.

If we had a culture of questioning and confronting each other in meaningful ways, we'd have an easier time with this, to the point where confrontation and questioning wouldn't be considered a threat to self-expression. I have to imagine that racism and bigotry wouldn't last as long as it has in that world.

This list goes on. We have a hierarchical culture, we have a culture where morality comes from power rather than the inverse (or better still, completely eliminating the association of power with morality), and on and on and on. Every piece of Western civilization is one brick in a towering monument of racism and inequality. You can't just attack "capitalism", that gets you Stalinism or Maoism, which are basically identical except brutally oppressive and with less illusion of freedom. There is so so sooooo much more to fix before the dismantling of capitalism is even on the table, and there will be more after that, and racism remains a part of every one of those things that need worked on, so you can't be like "yes we will take these things out to reach The Racism and then reassemble the outer facade." No. It's all The Racism, or else the basic fundamental skeleton of any civilization at all. The only meat on the bones is racist.

[Bruno]

One of my favorite people on youtube is in The CHAZ tonight trying to give an honest view of what's really going on there.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6q6Jp4CX_kw

[The Johnny]

Capitalism is one part of it. A culture of guilt and punishment is another. A culture of comfort is yet another. Not to knock comfort in a personal sense, I'm talking about societal comfort: we don't have anything like a culture of ACCOUNTABILITY or SELF-CORRECTION for instance. We always blame, we always rationalize.

I'm also talking about social comfort: we prioritize "being ourselves" over "being decent people" to a fault. I'm a Discordian, I'm as fond of self-expression as everyone else here. That said, there comes a hard limit, and when your expression calls for genocide you should not be allowed to say "it's just my opinion calm down". You should have to confront that.

If we had a culture of questioning and confronting each other in meaningful ways, we'd have an easier time with this, to the point where confrontation and questioning wouldn't be considered a threat to self-expression. I have to imagine that racism and bigotry wouldn't last as long as it has in that world.

This list goes on. We have a hierarchical culture, we have a culture where morality comes from power rather than the inverse (or better still, completely eliminating the association of power with morality), and on and on and on. Every piece of Western civilization is one brick in a towering monument of racism and inequality. You can't just attack "capitalism", that gets you Stalinism or Maoism, which are basically identical except brutally oppressive and with less illusion of freedom. There is so so sooooo much more to fix before the dismantling of capitalism is even on the table, and there will be more after that, and racism remains a part of every one of those things that need worked on, so you can't be like "yes we will take these things out to reach The Racism and then reassemble the outer facade." No. It's all The Racism, or else the basic fundamental skeleton of any civilization at all. The only meat on the bones is racist.

Do you think that it all boils down to a type of tribalism? There's no values, just "in-group" and "out-group", it just happens to be that one of the major manifestations of tribalism is race.

[Ari]

I am way behind on my reading and understanding of history - at best. Please correct me.

But aren't there indicators that the whole witchhunt business was more about getting women out of leading roles within the social construst than fighting "zie devil"?
Cause ultimately this was perfect grounds for the rise of capitalism and to reduce the idea of womanhood to breeding more labor stock and being obedient to the patriarchs? And as it was with the lynchings and how i kinda see authority wielding its sticks today; especially when it comes to poc -- the point was hammered home: if you try to resist, we will fuck you up. Hard.
"Did we make our point?? Okay so we stop doing it this openly from here on out, but remember we can start again any time."

[Doktor Howl]

I am way behind on my reading and understanding of history - at best. Please correct me.

But aren't there indicators that the whole witchhunt business was more about getting women out of leading roles within the social construst than fighting "zie devil"?
Cause ultimately this was perfect grounds for the rise of capitalism and to reduce the idea of womanhood to breeding more labor stock and being obedient to the patriarchs? And as it was with the lynchings and how i kinda see authority wielding its sticks today; especially when it comes to poc -- the point was hammered home: if you try to resist, we will fuck you up. Hard.
"Did we make our point?? Okay so we stop doing it this openly from here on out, but remember we can start again any time."

It was about seizing property and grazing rights.  Giles Corey was a good example.

[Cain]

Specifically regarding witch-hunts, they also coincided frequently with civil or international wars (the English civil war, the Thirty Years War) and usually in the context of Protestant fanaticism (south west Germany is a notable exception, and of course it was witch-obsessed German Inquisitors who prevailed upon the Pope to condemn witches - against the policy of the Vatican that witches do not exist - and wrote the infamous Malleus Maleficarum).