American Incompetence, not Afghan Corruption: A Post-Mortem of Good Intentions Like most children in Palestine, many of the first foreigners I met were well-intentioned volunteers and academics working for, and funded by, international non-profits and institutions. I idolized these young, lively, and worldly supporters of the Palestinian cause throughout my childhood. However, with adolescence comes…

It’s never been easy to know what to make of self-styled free-marketers who see global capitalism as a real-life instantiation of their values. Given the deep and decisive role of state violence in the creation of global capitalism, they’re either unaware of the basic facts, and so unqualified for their positions, or engaged in a…

Back on March 14, 2020, I began a series on the Coronavirus, which continued through 35 installments (the most recent of which was posted on November 10, 2021). This is not technically an installment of that series, but it addresses another kind of infection, which persists to this day among a certain brand of “libertarians”—who exhibited symptoms of it way back…

On February 16, 1967, NBC aired the twenty-second episode in Season 1 of “Star Trek“; it was called “Space Seed,” known to Trekkies as the episode that introduced the world to the character Khan Noonien Singh, he who would come back with fury in the 1982 film, “Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan.” For those who aren’t familiar with…

One of the central claims of capitalism is that it is the best system to bring supply and demand together; when people need a good or service, the capitalist market will provide. However, the reality of the situation can be quite the opposite. An excellent example of this—from my perspective as a lay person whose…

Over the last several weeks, it has been difficult to ignore the whining that has been going on throughout much of the so-called “online left” — and even some in the mainstream press — over the utter collapse of the Build Back Better bill, mostly due to opposition to said bill by extremely conservative Democrats…

As an anarchist prisoner, it has been said many times that one can learn a great deal about society by looking towards its prisons. Look towards its dungeons and there you will see in concentrated and microcosmic form the sickness of the entire system. And today there is something that is particularly revealing about the…

An Abolitionist Approach to Reactionary Violence: Lessons from the Kyle Rittenhouse Case On August 25th, 2020, Kyle Rittenhouse shot two people dead and injured one at a protest against the police shooting of Jacob Blake. Though this event (and the trial proceedings that follow) will be the main focus of this article, my analysis and…

From the height of the COVID-19 pandemic to today (and likely to continue with the sudden rise of Omicron), we—speaking particularly of the U.S.—have seen a massive disruption in global supply chains. The obvious (and correct) answer to ‘why?’  is that labor is the basis of society, and when it—particularly that part involved in moving…

When people think of totalitarianism they think of an all-controlling leader who dictates their wishes to bureaucrats and prefects, which are then carried out with ruthless efficiency. One thinks of the Nazis, the Stalinist Soviets, or many representations in popular culture like the Star Wars Empire. Certainly, this model is what we have understood as…

This essay is an English translation of On Turkish “Libertarians” I will explain my perspective towards individuals who have reached a large audience on platforms such as Twitter in Turkey and yet support statist-nationalist views on immigration despite their self-promotion as liberal/libertarian. It was subsequent to a Turkish person being heard on national television saying,…

The concepts of political realism and apoliticism are often conflated, but merit owed to the former is often incorrectly assigned to the latter. Generally, political realists maintain a practical attitude toward the politicians, governments, institutions and other political factors that create laws, and regulate societies and economies. Instead of keeping a faith in people in…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] There is an odd side to the American Dream. One deemed worthless long ago, by the Soviets, by the Maoists, by the BPP. There exists a culture of greed. Though most people lack an in-depth understanding of economic terms…

It’s best to start this piece off by admitting that I am not particularly tech-savvy. I am a cheerleader for open-source, peer-to-peer, decentralized, appropriate, etc. technology, but, otherwise, I am only about as knowledgeable about this stuff as your average zoomer [1]. However, some things in the technological and digital world appear quite obvious to…

[Hear an in-depth discussion on this article and its topics in this episode of The Enragés] When the term “sharing economy” is heard nowadays, it often conjures up thoughts of apps such as Uber, Lyft, or AirBNB, but such apps are little more than attempts at coopting the branding of the sharing economy while not…

The Automotive Free Clinic is starting a right to repair campaign in Alabama in coalition with a number of different organizations. Modern equipment such as passenger vehicles, semi trucks, and farm equipment are controlled electronically by proprietary software. Often, this software is not made available to the public, meaning that only dealerships and authorized repair…

On a long trawl through Youtube out of boredom, I came across a video from HBomberGuy, titled “Vaccines: A Measured Response.” I usually watch him because he has decent takes on current events, but the messaging at the end of the video I think hits home in the realm of “radical politics:” There is another…

Ross Ulbricht’s life has become a nightmare. In 2013 he was given a life sentence with no chance of parole; he was charged with being the suspected founder and operator of the online drug market Silk Road. The operator of this site was previously only known as Dread Pirate Roberts- a name one might recall…

Anarchists and many others in the radical left and libertarian movements are rightly skeptical of gun control due to the history of state power, including gun laws, being weaponized to directly target and oppress marginalized communities while simultaneously maintaining a state monopoly on violence. Despite the dangers of gun control, gun violence is still a…

The political vocabulary of the average modern western “civilian” is quite limited. There are lexical gaps everywhere, and certainly when talking about meta-political concepts. And with anarchism, this is even greater, as it is a unique paradigm, and a shift towards a new way of conceiving human nature. Anarchism, for a lot of people who…