True enough... but that sort of (consciously) ideological liberals are not really the vast majority of the population in most countries

Most people, in the West of the early 20th century and throughout the global South of today (and to a lesser extent, even in the West), don't really stand to gain anything from the domination of capital...
the privileged were and still are a relatively small minority


What prompted me to write that post is actually this "Modi selfie point" shit... they seem to have established them in Indian railway stations everywhere, and it's actually quite costly too

That so many people would think it's just so cool, that shit like this makes people think Modi is a cool leader, without reflecting upon his shitty personality or his horrible fascist politics... is just so infuriating! Shitty politics of aesthetics, shallow masses...

(This thing is not exceptional in any way, worse shit of this kind has been happening throughout the last few years since BJP has come into power)

ERNEST: My friend, you are a dreamer.
GILBERT; Yes: I am a dreamer. For a dreamer is one who can only find his way by moonlight, and his punishment is that he sees the dawn before the rest of the world.
ERNEST: His punishment?
GILBERT: And his reward.

— Oscar Wilde, The Critic as Artist

Feminism is not about "men vs women"

“Man, your head is haunted; you have wheels in your head!* You imagine great things, and depict to yourself a whole world of gods that has an existence for you, a spirit-realm to which you suppose yourself to be called, an ideal that beckons to you. You have a fixed idea [fixe Idee]!

Do not think that I am jesting or speaking figuratively when I regard those persons who cling to the Higher, and (because the vast majority belongs under this head) almost the whole world of men, as veritable fools, fools in a madhouse. What is it, then, that is called a ‘fixed idea’? An idea that has subjected the man to itself. When you recognize, with regard to such a fixed idea, that it is a folly, you shut its slave up in an asylum. And is the truth of the faith, say, which we are not to doubt; the majesty of (e.g.) the people, which we are not to strike at (he who does is guilty of — lese-majesty); virtue, against which the censor is not to let a word pass, that morality may be kept pure; — are these not ‘fixed ideas’? Is not all the stupid chatter of (e.g.) most of our newspapers the babble of fools who suffer from the fixed idea of morality, legality, Christianity, etc., and only seem to go about free because the madhouse in which they walk takes in so broad a space? Touch the fixed idea of such a fool, and you will at once have to guard your back against the lunatic’s stealthy malice. For these great lunatics are like the little so-called lunatics in this point too — that they assail by stealth him who touches their fixed idea. They first steal his weapon, steal free speech from him, and then they fall upon him with their nails. Every day now lays bare the cowardice and vindictiveness of these maniacs, and the stupid populace hurrahs for their crazy measures. One must read the journals of this period, and must hear the Philistines talk, to get the horrible conviction that one is shut up in a house with fools.”

— Max Stirner

* An alternative, if equally unliteral, translation of »Du hast einen Sparren zu viel!« might be ‘you have a screw loose’.

“‘Thou shalt not call thy brother a fool; if thou dost...’* But I do not fear the curse, and I say, my brothers are arch-fools. Whether a poor fool of the insane asylum is possessed by the fancy that he is God the Father, Emperor of Japan, the Holy Spirit, etc., or whether a citizen in comfortable circumstances conceives that it is his mission to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a loyal citizen, a virtuous man — both these are one and the same ‘fixed idea.’ He who has never tried and dared not to be a good Christian, a faithful Protestant, a virtuous man, etc., is possessed and prepossessed [gefangen und befangen, literally ‘imprisoned and prepossessed’] by faith, virtuousness, etc. Just as the schoolmen philosophized only inside the belief of the church; as Pope Benedict XIV wrote fat books inside the papist superstition, without ever throwing a doubt upon this belief; as authors fill whole folios on the State without calling in question the fixed idea of the State itself; as our newspapers are crammed with politics because they are conjured into the fancy that man was created to be a zoon politicon [political animal] — so also subjects vegetate in subjection, virtuous people in virtue, liberals in humanity, without ever putting to these fixed ideas of theirs the searching knife of criticism. Undislodgeable, like a madman’s delusion, those thoughts stand on a firm footing, and he who doubts them — lays hands on the sacred! Yes, the ‘fixed idea,’ that is the truly sacred!”

— Max Stirner


* “But I say this to you: anyone who is angry with his brother will answer for it before the court; if a man calls his brother ‘fool’ he will answer for it before the Sanhedrin.” Mathew 5:22. (The Sanhedrin was the highest court of justice at Jerusalem.)

Our wonderful people!

They despise those so-called beggars on the streets who take to begging out of necessity, having nothing, victims of the system and a harm to none...

They have, however, very little against those clowns who perform in the circus called legislative assembly or parliament, and who—having too much wealth—come begging for our votes, who loot us and help the capitalists loot us...

Usually each person is a fanatic for at least one such governmental clown or clown-party.

If patriarchy or gender was natural, they wouldn't have to keep policing you, strictly enforcing (arbitrary) gender norms on all, persecuting queer people...

Patriarchy is a threat to everyone, not just those who identify themselves as queer...

It's imposed on you... so keep resisting

How gender, sexuality concern everyone

The strange phenomenon of the opposition to Anarchism is that it brings to light the relation between so-called intelligence and ignorance. And yet this is not so very strange when we consider the relativity of all things. The ignorant mass has in its favor that it makes no pretense of knowledge or tolerance. Acting, as it always does, by mere impulse, its reasons are like those of a child. “Why?” “Because.” Yet the opposition of the uneducated to Anarchism deserves the same consideration as that of the intelligent man.

What, then, are the objections? First, Anarchism is impractical, though a beautiful ideal. Second, Anarchism stands for violence and destruction, hence it must be repudiated as vile and dangerous. Both the intelligent man and the ignorant mass judge not from a thorough knowledge of the subject, but either from hearsay or false interpretation.

A practical scheme, says Oscar Wilde, is either one already in existence, or a scheme that could be carried out under the existing conditions; but it is exactly the existing conditions that one objects to, and any scheme that could accept these conditions is wrong and foolish. The true criterion of the practical, therefore, is not whether the latter can keep intact the wrong or foolish; rather is it whether the scheme has vitality enough to leave the stagnant waters of the old, and build, as well as sustain, new life. In the light of this conception, Anarchism is indeed practical. More than any other idea, it is helping to do away with the wrong and foolish; more than any other idea, it is building and sustaining new life.

The emotions of the ignorant man are continuously kept at a pitch by the most blood-curdling stories about Anarchism. Not a thing too outrageous to be employed against this philosophy and its exponents. Therefore Anarchism represents to the unthinking what the proverbial bad man does to the child, — a black monster bent on swallowing everything; in short, destruction and violence.

Destruction and violence! How is the ordinary man to know that the most violent element in society is ignorance; that its power of destruction is the very thing Anarchism is combating? Nor is he aware that Anarchism, whose roots, as it were, are part of nature’s forces, destroys, not healthful tissue, but parasitic growths that feed on the life’s essence of society. It is merely clearing the soil from weeds and sagebrush, that it may eventually bear healthy fruit.

Someone has said that it requires less mental effort to condemn than to think. The widespread mental indolence, so prevalent in society, proves this to be only too true. Rather than to go to the bottom of any given idea, to examine into its origin and meaning, most people will either condemn it altogether, or rely on some superficial or prejudicial definition of non-essentials.

Anarchism urges man to think, to investigate, to analyze every proposition; but that the brain capacity of the average reader be not taxed too much, I also shall begin with a definition, and then elaborate on the latter.

ANARCHISM: The philosophy of a new social order based on liberty unrestricted by man-made law; the theory that all forms of government rest on violence, and are therefore wrong and harmful, as well as unnecessary.

The new social order rests, of course, on the materialistic basis of life; but while all Anarchists agree that the main evil today is an economic one, they maintain that the solution of that evil can be brought about only through the consideration of every phase of life, — individual, as well as the collective; the internal, as well as the external phases.

— Emma Goldman,
Anarchism and Other Essays (chapter 1)

Crime is naught but misdirected energy. So long as every institution of today, economic, political, social, and moral, conspires to misdirect human energy into wrong channels; so long as most people are out of place doing the things they hate to do, living a life they loathe to live, crime will be inevitable, and all the laws on the statutes can only increase, but never do away with, crime. What does society, as it exists today, know of the process of despair, the poverty, the horrors, the fearful struggle the human soul must pass on its way to crime and degradation.

— Emma Goldman,
Anarchism and Other Essays (chapter 1)

But what about human nature? Can it be changed? And if not, will it endure under Anarchism?

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?

John Burroughs has stated that experimental study of animals in captivity is absolutely useless. Their character, their habits, their appetites undergo a complete transformation when torn from their soil in field and forest. With human nature caged in a narrow space, whipped daily into submission, how can we speak of its potentialities?

Freedom, expansion, opportunity, and, above all, peace and repose, alone can teach us the real dominant factors of human nature and all its wonderful possibilities.

Anarchism, then, really stands for the liberation of the human mind from the dominion of religion; the liberation of the human body from the dominion of property; liberation from the shackles and restraint of government. Anarchism stands for a social order based on the free grouping of individuals for the purpose of producing real social wealth; an order that will guarantee to every human being free access to the earth and full enjoyment of the necessities of life, according to individual desires, tastes, and inclinations.

— Emma Goldman,
Anarchism and Other Essays (chapter 1)

“Take notice how a ‘moral man’ behaves, who today often thinks he is through with God and throws off Christianity as a bygone thing. If you ask him whether he has ever doubted that the copulation of brother and sister is incest, that monogamy is the truth of marriage, that filial piety is a sacred duty, then a moral shudder will come over him at the conception of one’s being allowed to touch his sister as wife also, etc. And whence this shudder? Because he believes in those moral commandments. This moral faith is deeply rooted in his breast. Much as he rages against the pious Christians, he himself has nevertheless as thoroughly remained a Christian — to wit, a moral Christian. In the form of morality Christianity holds him a prisoner, and a prisoner under faith. Monogamy is to be something sacred, and he who may live in bigamy is punished as a criminal; he who commits incest suffers as a criminal. Those who are always crying that religion is not to be regarded in the State, and the Jew is to be a citizen equally with the Christian, show themselves in accord with this. Is not this of incest and monogamy a dogma of faith? Touch it, and you will learn by experience how this moral man is a hero of faith too, not less than Krummacher, not less than Philip II. These fight for the faith of the Church, he for the faith of the State, or the moral laws of the State; for articles of faith, both condemn him who acts otherwise than their faith will allow. The brand of ‘crime’ is stamped upon him, and he may languish in reformatories, in jails. Moral faith is as fanatical as religious faith! They call that ‘liberty of faith’ then, when brother and sister, on account of a relation that they should have settled with their ‘conscience,’ are thrown into prison. ‘But they set a pernicious example.’ Yes, indeed: others might have taken the notion that the State had no business to meddle with their relation, and thereupon ‘purity of morals’ would go to ruin. So then the religious heroes of faith are zealous for the ‘sacred God,’ the moral ones for the ‘sacred good’.”

— Max Stirner

A passage that perfectly describes the Brahmins of the indian subcontinent


“As is well known, the priests are the most evil enemies — but why? Because they are the most impotent. It is because of their impotence that in them hatred grows to monstrous and uncanny proportions, to the most spiritual and poisonous kind of hatred. The truly great haters in world history have always been priests; likewise the most ingenious¹ haters: other kinds of spirit² hardly come into consideration when compared with the spirit of priestly vengefulness.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Genealogy of Morality (I. §7)

¹ geistreich
² Geist

Morality ("good and evil") vs ethics ("good and bad" etc; Nietzschean distinction)

“In this way, Ethics, which is to say, a typology of immanent modes of existence, replaces Morality, which always refers existence to transcendent values. Morality is the judgment of God, the system of Judgment. But Ethics overthrows the system of judgement. The opposition of values (Good-Evil) is supplanted by the qualitative difference of modes of existence (good-bad). The illusion of values is indistinguishable from the illusion of consciousness. Because it is content to wait for and take in effects, consciousness misapprehends all of Nature. Now, all that one needs in order to moralize is to fail to understand. It is clear that we have only to misunderstand a law for it to appear to us in the form of a moral ‘You must.’ If we do not understand the rule of three, we will apply it, we will adhere to it, as a duty.”

— Gilles Deleuze,
Spinoza: Practical Philosophy (chapter 2)

“The slave revolt in morality begins when ressentiment itself becomes creative and gives birth to values: the ressentiment of natures that are denied the true reaction, that of deeds, and compensate themselves with an imaginary revenge. While every noble morality develops from a triumphant affirmation of itself, slave morality from the outset says No to what is ‘outside,’ what is ‘different,’ what is ‘not itself’; and this No is its creative deed. This inversion of the value-positing glance — this need to direct one's view outward instead of back to oneself — is of the essence of ressentiment: in order to exist, slave morality always first needs a hostile external world; it needs, physiologically speaking, external stimuli in order to act at all — its action is fundamentally reaction.

The reverse is the case with the noble mode of valuation: it acts and grows spontaneously, it seeks its opposite only so as to affirm itself more gratefully and triumphantly — its negative concept ‘low,’ ‘common,’ ‘bad’ is only a subsequently-invented pale, contrasting image in relation to its positive basic concept — filled with life and passion through and through — ‘we noble ones, we good, beautiful, happy ones!’”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Genealogy of Morality (I. §10)

“While the noble man lives in trust and openness with himself, the man of ressentiment is neither upright nor naïve nor honest and straightforward with himself. His soul squints; his spirit loves hiding places, secret paths and back doors, everything covert entices him as his world, his security, his refreshment; he understands how to keep silent, how not to forget, how to wait, how to be provisionally self-deprecating and humble. A race of such men of ressentiment is bound to become eventually cleverer than any noble race; it will also honor cleverness to a far greater degree: namely, as a condition of existence of the first importance; while with noble men cleverness can easily acquire a subtle flavor of luxury and subtlety — for here it is far less essential than the perfect functioning of the regulating unconscious instincts or even than a certain imprudence, perhaps a bold recklessness whether in the face of danger or of the enemy, or that enthusiastic impulsiveness in anger, love, reverence, gratitude, and revenge by which noble souls have at all times recognized one another. Ressentiment itself, if it should appear in the noble man, consummates and exhausts itself in an immediate reaction, and therefore does not poison: on the other hand, it fails to appear at all on countless occasions on which it inevitably appears in the weak and impotent.

To be incapable of taking one's enemies, one's accidents, even one's misdeeds seriously for very long — that is the sign of strong, full natures in whom there is an excess of the power to form, to mold, to recuperate and to forget (a good example of this in modern times is Mirabeau, who had no memory for insults and vile actions done him and was unable to forgive simply because he — forgot). Such a man shakes off with a single shrug many vermin that eat deep into others; here alone genuine ‘love of one's enemies’ is possible — supposing it to be possible at all on earth. How much reverence has a noble man for his enemies! — and such reverence is a bridge to love. — For he desires his enemy for himself, as his mark of distinction; he can endure no other enemy than one in whom there is nothing to despise and very much to honor! In contrast to this, picture ‘the enemy’ as the man of ressentiment conceives him — and here precisely is his deed, his creation: he has conceived ‘the evil enemy,’ ‘the Evil One,’ and this in fact is his basic concept, from which he then evolves, as an afterthought and pendant, a ‘good one’ — himself!”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Genealogy of Morality (I. §10)

“This, then, is quite the contrary of what the noble man does, who conceives the basic concept ‘good’ in advance and spontaneously out of himself and only then creates for himself an idea of ‘bad’! This ‘bad’ of noble origin and that ‘evil’ out of the cauldron of unsatisfied hatred — the former an after-production, a side issue, a contrasting shade, the latter on the contrary the original thing, the beginning, the distinctive deed in the conception of a slave morality — how different these words ‘bad’ and ‘evil’ are, although they are both apparently the opposite of the same concept ‘good.’ But it is not the same concept ‘good’: one should ask rather precisely who is ‘evil’ in the sense of the morality of ressentiment. The answer, in all strictness, is: precisely the ‘good man’ of the other morality, precisely the noble, powerful man, but dyed in another color, interpreted in another fashion, seen in another way by the venomous eye of ressentiment.”

— Friedrich Nietzsche,
On the Genealogy of Morality (I. §11)

read along with this channel: a passage or two every few days

Anarchy (by Errico Malatesta)

(a good introductory text on anarchism!)

https://telegram.me/anarchyMalatesta