Full list of texts
Jeff Shantz
Defending Ourselves
Self-defense based on mutual aid & solidarity

The rising tide of fascism and organized political violence of the Right, particularly the mobilization of street-level right-wing forces, such as the Proud Boys and the Oathkeepers, have returned the question of self-defense to the center of anarchist and antifascist concerns. This has become more burning following the brutal fascist mobilization and violence in Charlottesville, Virginia in August. The murder there of Heather Heyer by a neo-Nazi gives the issue of self-defense life or death importance.
Nov 9, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Antifa Under Attack from “Many Sides” & Doxxing
Right-Wing Sets Agenda; Liberals Join In
Coming out of antifa smashups with fascists, in Charlottesville and Berkeley in August, condemnation of those physically fighting the alt-right has given new life to Trump’s charge that “many sides” are responsible for violence at anti-fascist actions.
And, some on the left are contributing to this.
Nov 6, 2017 Read the whole text...
Paul Walker (Peter Werbe)
In Defense of Self-Defense
Thoughts on violence & martial arts
TWACK! My fighting stick landed exactly where I aimed it—diagonally across the face of a fascist who was trying to rip down a banner a friend and I were holding, to which the stick was attached.
The blow struck him with such velocity that it snapped his head back while a rosette of blood gushed forth from his broken nose and split lips intermingled with a piece of a tooth and broken lenses from his glasses.
Dec 12, 2017 Read the whole text...
Robcat
Mainers Against the Klan!
A Brief History of Maine’s Resistance to the KKK
It’s Late February in central Maine. A group of anarchists and other anti-racists have gathered at the Margaret Chase-Smith bridge in Skowhegan to respond to recent Ku Klux Klan activity around the state.

Anti-Racist Action Maine put out the call to condemn these racist terrorists. Mainers are out on the streets to let our neighbors know we will defend each other from KKK terror. This is not a plea for the authorities to protect us. Only we can protect ourselves.
Nov 29, 2017 Read the whole text...
Bill Weinberg
The Anarchist Alternative in Cuba
A former community center that hosted a youth rock scene is now being occupied by activists, seemingly ignored by the authorities. A few blocks away, urban farms are bright patches of green in the landscape, producing vegetables and fruits for the community.
Oakland? Detroit? Manhattan’s Lower East Side?
Oct 30, 2017 Read the whole text...
Jason Rodgers
The X-Files
Subversive Ideas & Recuperative Media
The X-Files, the science fiction television series that aired from 1993 to 2002, featured fictional FBI agents Fox Mulder and Dana Scully concerned with unsolved cases involving paranormal phenomena and aliens. Its popularity was such that it made many young people aspire to be FBI agents of the same type. However, I never wanted to be Mulder or Scully. I wanted to be a member of the Lone Gunmen, three geeks on the program who published a conspiracy research zine which was often Mulder’s source for information related to his cases.
Dec 12, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Armed Against Fascism

With “These faggots kill fascists” emblazoned on their banner, an army of international volunteers formed the first LGBT fighting unit to “smash the ISIS caliphate. This July photo shows them raising the rainbow flag in Raqqa, Syria. According to an online statement, The Queer Insurrection and Liberation Army, or TQILA, exists to “smash the gender binary...and advance the sexual revolution.”
Jan 10, 2018 Read the whole text...
Bernard Marszalek
The Museum of Capitalism
An Oakland pop-up project exhibits the economy
The Museum of Capitalism (MOC), in Oakland, California, was a provocation not solely for being situated in the Jack London waterfront district, a gentrified marina area, but also for occupying a white elephant of a building erected just as the entire US economy collapsed.
The so-called Great Recession of 2007 could just as appropriately be called the Great Economic Coma, and the capacious future food market that the Museum reclaimed for its quarters, stands as the unintended main exhibit—a cadaver of capitalism.
Nov 14, 2017 Read the whole text...
Paul Dalton
Dancing on Capitalism’s Grave
We gather today not to praise capitalism, but to bury it. Rejoice, the great god greed is dead! It lived far too long, laying waste to all it touched. Its chains have been broken, its tentacles severed. The world is free to breathe again; to grow, to flourish, no longer weighed down by this voracious monster.
Nov 14, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Right Wingers Charged in Seattle Shooting
After a three month investigation, a right wing couple was charged in the January 20 shooting and wounding of an anarchist member of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW). The assault took place during a protest against the appearance of alt-right provocateur Milo Yiannopoulos. (See “An Anarchist is Shot in Seattle,” FE #398, Summer 2017.)
Dec 12, 2017 Read the whole text...
Mars Z. Goetia
The Game of not Seeing the Game
How do we deal with power relationships within anarchist communities?
“They are playing a game. They are playing at not playing a game. If I show them I see they are, I shall break the rules and they will punish me. I must play their game, of not seeing I see the game.”
—R.D. Laing, Knots
I remember sitting in a circle, making tough decisions about how to respond to a community conflict that had escalated to the point of physical violence. It was a heated discussion. None of us knew what the fuck we were doing. We were angry. We were scared. No one wanted to be wrong.
Dec 15, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Call for Submissions for Issue #400
Next issue will be our 400th since we began publishing 52 years ago. If you’d like to be part of this historic edition, please send proposals for essays, articles, and fiction to our email address or post office box.
Photographs, art, and poetry are also welcome. Please view our submission and manuscript guidelines on our web site. All submissions should be consistent with our political views.
Jan 10, 2018 Read the whole text...
Errekaleor Bizirik Collective
Basque Country Squat
Defense of home in northern Spain
Errekaleor Bizirik is a large squat occupied by over 150 adults and children in Vitoria-Gasteiz, the capital city of the Basque Autonomous Community in northern Spain.

The name, Errekaleor, a contraction of a basque word that means dry river, refers to the plateau on which the neighborhood is situated. Like other large squats in Spain, such as Can Vies (see Fifth Estate, Summer 2017), Errekaleor is resisting police and government efforts to evict the residents.
Oct 12, 2017 Read the whole text...
James C. Scott
The Golden Age of the Barbarians
Excerpt from Against the Grain: A Deep History of the Earliest States
James C. Scott has written extensively on how people have transitioned from tribal societies to civilization as part of the process of state formation, and how resistance to state domination has occurred in this context.
In Seeing Like a State: How Certain Schemes to Improve the Human Condition Have Failed and The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia, he explores tools for state control of subjects, such as permanent last names, standardization of Language and legal discourse, regularized weights and measures, records of numbers of people and wealth in land and other property, as well as the design of cities and transportation.
Dec 3, 2017 Read the whole text...
Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons
Anti Toxic Prison Conference Plans Abolition Strategies & Rocks Carswell
Noise Demonstration at Prison Gate
From June 2 to 5, the second annual Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons (FTP) hosted its 2017 National Convergence in Denton, Texas, gathering over 200 activists and revolutionaries from across the country to explore the intersections of the environmental movement and the struggle to end mass incarceration.
Dec 19, 2017 Read the whole text...
Cindy Crabb
Victories for Green Scare prisoner Marius Mason
Moved from repressive unit; given transgender status
After seven years in a highly secretive, repressive unit of a Texas federal prison for women, environmental Green Scare political prisoner, Marius Mason, has finally been moved into a less restrictive section.

He is now able to go outside, touch the trees, and see the clouds and stars, something he reports he will never take for granted again.
Dec 19, 2017 Read the whole text...
Pepper Kincade
Project FANG Builds Solidarity Through Prison Visits
“They’re in there for us; we’re out here for them!”
—IWW slogan
The fight for our imprisoned comrades can take many forms of solidarity. The protest at Carswell prison in Fort Worth on June 5 was a rowdy and exciting example of what support can look like.

Dec 20, 2017 Read the whole text...
anon.
J20 Protesters Answer State Repression with Resistance
People arrested during the January 20 Inauguration Day demonstrations are facing up to 75 years in prison as the Trump administration is bringing the hammer down on protests.

This is being met by an organized legal pushback on the part of the defendants, and by increased solidarity actions.
On January 20 (J20), thousands of people went to Washington D.C. to oppose the inauguration of President Donald Trump. While the day’s events were largely overshadowed in the mainstream media by the Women’s March on January 21—which drew hundreds of thousands of people to the capital—January 20 was an inspirational day of resistance.
Nov 14, 2017 Read the whole text...
Marieke Bivar
Of Sports & Women’s Bodies
Book review
a review of
The Little Communist Who Never Smiled by Lola Lafon. Seven Stories Press, 2016, 320 pp. English translation from French by Nick Caistor
“Today, it is an older, wearier Nadia who raises her arms. She leans into a back walkover, but she falters and falls. “I am not a perfect 10 anymore,” Nadia says. “I can only try my best.”
—People Magazine, 1990 (she was 28)
Jan 10, 2018 Read the whole text...
Steve Izma
Tramp Printers
Freedom within wage work
a review of
The Tramp Printers: Forgotten Trails of the Travelling Typographers by Charles Overbeck. Eberhart Press, 2017
This handsomely and mostly hand-produced book is a tribute to the craft of printing and of historical insight, both of which verge on extinction in the modern world.
Tramp printers, like journeymen in a guild, learned skills as apprentices and then took to the road. Travel and work under different conditions and with a variety of other craftspeople enhanced their skills, but also meant the freedom to leave a workplace whenever they got tired of it.
Dec 19, 2017 Read the whole text...
Ruhe
Punk & Anarchy
a review of
Ethics, Politics, and Anarcho Punk Identifications: Punk and Anarchy in Philadelphia by Edward Anthony Avery-Natale. Lexington Books, 2016, 235 pp.
Like many anarchists who came of age in the 1990s, my first exposure to anarchism came through the punk scene. A friend gave me a cassette tape full of classic punk bands as part of an effort to satisfy my ever expanding interest in punk.
Dec 20, 2017 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Five Ways to Help the Fifth Estate
1. Subscribe. Subscribers are a publication’s life blood. If you bought this at a news stand, consider subscribing and buying one for a friend or a library.
2. Donate. Postal and printing costs continue to rise making financial stability an increasing challenge to publications which refuse commercial advertising. Donations also allow us to continue sending free subscriptions to prisoners & GIs.
Jan 10, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Where Anarchism Meets Surrealism
Noted briefly
Birds of a Feather: Flights of the Anarcho-Surrealist Imagination by Ron Sakolsky. Eberhardt Press, 2017 eberhardtpress.org
Anarchists of many tendencies have long fought for freedom of the individual and the realization of solidarity within communities. Surrealists, in and out of formal groupings, have had their own take on modern un-freedom and the potential for subverting it. In parallel, and sometimes together, anarchists and surrealists have fruitfully explored new avenues of revolt.
Jan 10, 2018 Read the whole text...
Franklin Lopez
Anarchist Filmmakers
...Video Tape Guerrillas & Digital Ninjas
a review of
Breaking the Spell: A History of Anarchist Filmmakers, Video Tape Guerrillas and Digital Ninjas by Chris Robé. PM Press, 2017, 468 pages.
Reviewer’s note: I agreed to write this review before being aware that almost an entire chapter is dedicated to an analysis of my video work and that of sub.Media. It also includes some writing about my work with the Vancouver Media Co-op. I know Chris personally, and we’ve eaten tacos and drunk beers together.
Dec 25, 2017 Read the whole text...
Sylvie Kashdan
CIRA at Sixty
The International Center for Research on Anarchism archive is an important part of the memory of our movement
Anarchist solidarity can take many forms, including collecting books, pamphlets, and letters. Through such activity, comrades active in the world’s anarchist archives are part of anchoring an important segment of the struggle for a libertarian and egalitarian world.

They are helping to maintain a living connection between present-day anarchist activities and that of yesterday’s rebels whose values and goals continue to inspire.
Nov 9, 2017 Read the whole text...
William Boyer
“Detroit”
The Film More Horror Story Than History
a review of
Detroit (2017)
Director: Kathryn Bigelow
143 min.
The misnamed film “Detroit” is more about a triple slaying by police than the city’s 1967 Rebellion. It first opened in the Motor City in July, and then nationwide 50 years to the day of the final riot fatality, a firefighter electrocuted trying to put out one of the last of the smoldering fires.
Dec 20, 2017 Read the whole text...
Jack Bratich
Reality Wars
Notes on the homicidal state
It is required now to bemoan the fact that the current US President is both a producer and product of Reality TV. Indeed, “reality,” “realty,” and “royalty” are all linked etymologically.
The real-estate tycoon, then, Reality TV boss, now completes the triumvirate by taking on a state executive role by treating it as his own monarchical sovereign seat. Instead of addressing this by seeking to reestablish correspondence-based truth via facts), we would be better off seeing reality as a terrain filled with metamorphosis machines, with subjectivities made and destroyed. We can begin an account of these reality wars by assessing the menagerie of alt-right and neo-fascist street actors emboldened by his victory.
Dec 25, 2017 Read the whole text...
Peter Lamborn Wilson
Life is Not a Machine
I recently read an incredibly annoying article in a 2015 New York Review of Books. This liberal-policy-wonk and literary monthly is run by Secular Humanoids, i.e., people trained by universities in the humanities who worship science than most scientists, who (having studied science) do not usually confuse it with theology
Dec 28, 2017 Read the whole text...
Voltairine De Cleyre
The Hurricane
As we face the storms (both literal and figurative) of 2017, we offer a poem by Voltairine De Cleyre, dedicated to the memory of the May 1886 Haymarket strikes and demonstrations in Chicago, and especially to the anarchists murdered for their beliefs by the state.

De Cleyre was born in 1866 into a poor family in Leslie, Michigan. Schooling at a Catholic convent convinced her to reject all religion, and she became a free thinker, dedicated not to God, but to humanity.
Dec 28, 2017 Read the whole text...
John Clark
The Geography of Possibility
Simon Springer on the Spaces of Liberation
a review of
The Anarchist Roots of Geography: Toward Spatial Emancipation by Simon Springer. University of Minnesota Press, 2016
Anyone who wants evidence that anarchist geography is alive and well today need only read this book. The author, Simon Springer, is one of the most active anarchist intellectuals today. In 2016, he authored two books and edited five, mostly on anarchist themes, and he has written numerous articles, some technical, but many deeply immersed in contemporary struggles.
Jan 1, 2018 Read the whole text...
Various Authors
Letters
Our readers respond
Send letters to fe — AT — fifthestate — DOT — org or Fifth Estate, POB 201016, Ferndale MI 48220. All formats accepted including typescript & handwritten; letters may be edited for length.
Taking part in protests is an act of defiance which may result in violent retaliation. “In Defense of Self Defense” by Paul Walker in the Fall 2017 Fifth Estate (#399) made this clear.
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
FE 400th Issue
Welcome to the 400th issue of the Fifth Estate. Our first issue was published in Detroit in November 1965. It was born in the age of the 1960s New Left, civil rights, anti-war, feminist, and gay rights movements.
The Fifth Estate was soon joined by hundreds of other papers and small magazines locally produced by activists, many barely out of their teens. Together these publications became known as the underground press.
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead
FIFTH ESTATE #400, Spring 2018, Vol. 53 No. 1
Fifth Estate
Radical Publishing since 1965
Vol. 53, No. 1, #400 Spring 2018
The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades. www.FifthEstate.org
No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Dismantling the Patriarchy
Everyday sexual predation on women by men of power and prestige in the entertainment world, politics, business, and the university has been an open secret that has suddenly gained massive public attention. Women’s words have been listened to and prominent men have experienced almost immediate banishment from their fields after exposure of their abusive actions.
Apr 3, 2018 Read the whole text...
Brian James Schill
Is Trump The “Punk” President?
Nothing could be farther from reality
Unbelievably, it has become fashionable among some observers of the American political scene to associate the alt-right with punk rock, lauding Donald Trump for his “punk” presidency.
The liberal magazine, The Atlantic, noted in 2016, that Trump and his supporters “created a space in American politics that is uniquely transgressive, volatile, carnivalesque, and (from a certain angle) punk rock.” Similarly, the New York Post gushed that Trump “is a guy with a safety pin through his nose and a purple mohawk.”
Feb 18, 2018 Read the whole text...
Bill Weinberg
In Defense of Tactical Voting
With No Illusions!
My attitude about voting has been like the old Jewish joke about chicken soup when you’ve got a cold—it may not help very much, but it can’t hurt. The more ideological argue that voting legitimizes the system, and they’ve got a point. The more pragmatic counter that such a purist position is an irresponsible luxury in the face of emergency—such as we in the United States are clearly now facing.
Mar 2, 2018 Read the whole text...
Paul J. Comeau
Ursula K. Le Guin
21 October, 1929–22 January, 2018

Reprinted from Fifth Estate #382, Spring, 2010. Issues are available as single copies & in bulk.
Related, in this issue: “Le Guin’s Anarchism & Mine” by Andrew William Smith
In a writing career spanning nearly six decades, Ursula K. Le Guin pushed the boundaries of fiction, transcending genre and style conventions to create a unique and distinctive literary voice.
Feb 4, 2018 Read the whole text...
Jesús Sepúlveda
People of the Earth
The Mapuche Struggle
During his visit to Chile in January 2018, Pope Francis officiated a mass in the Araucania region—the ancestral territory of the Mapuche people.
The night before, unknown individuals burned three forest company helicopters, three churches, and a school. Fliers demanding the liberation of Mapuche political prisoners were found nearby.
Mar 9, 2018 Read the whole text...
Bill Weinberg
Positively Quilca Street
Lima anarchist scene survives official clean up
When Lutxo Rodríguez recalls the local punks and social outcasts of the downtown Lima, Peru district he habituates “dressing in black in the ‘80s,” I smile wryly, remembering the Lower East Side of my own youth. But the urban decay that allowed for the florescence of bohemia and an anarcho-punk scene in this small enclave of a South American capital came “in the context of political violence,” he says.
Mar 2, 2018 Read the whole text...
Robcat
Political Prisoners
Maine shows its solidarity with Jennifer Gann, Eric King, & Herman Bell
It’s a cold Friday night in November in Portland, Maine. Comrades from around the state have gathered at the Aphodian Theater to support our imprisoned friend, Herman Bell. The benefit features bands and speakers, including former political prisoner Ray Luc Lavasseur.
It is organized by our group of friends and family, Maine Anti-Racist Action, in order to raise funds to help pay for Herman’s family visits. We give out organic squash, anarchist papers including the Fifth Estate, and prisoner information.
Apr 3, 2018 Read the whole text...
Bryan Tucker
Authoritarian Character Structure
The Negation of Imagination
Radical psychologists Wilhelm Reich and Eric Fromm answered the question of why people submit willingly to authority
While most of us were watching the 2016 presidential election with disgust, someone I’m very close to, looked at me with a fiendish grin and announced, “I’m voting for Donald Trump.”
This was perplexing. How could they be captivated by a racist, xenophobic, homophobic narcissist? Having starkly contrasting reactions towards the object of their affinity, I realized a lot of futile and draining arguments were likely to follow. Rifts, drama, and cut-offs between friends and family have become ubiquitous in American society over the past year, with many left bewildered by the resurgent appeal of authoritarianism.
Apr 3, 2018 Read the whole text...
Xavi Alcalde
Esperanto & Anarchism
A universal language
“Paroli Esperanton estis iam esenca parto de anarkiismo.”
(There was a time when speaking Esperanto was an essential part of being an anarchist.)
When 97-year-old, Barcelona-born Eduardo Vivancos walks down the streets of Toronto where he has lived as an exile since 1954, he never comes across another Esperanto speaker.
Apr 11, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Media News
Unicorn Riot premiered its free documentary, “Black Snake Killaz: a #NoDAPL Story” in November at Minneapolis’ Parkway Theater. The screening was followed by a question and answer session and an after-party featured performances by the punk folk band, Ungrateful Little String Band, Indigenous hip-hop artist, Alas, and DJ MOTHER t ReSA.
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
Shannon Parez-Darby
The Thing After
Making Sense of Sex & Consent
Reprinted from Learning Good Consent: On Healthy Relationships and Survivor Support Edited by Cindy Crabb. AK Press, akpress.org 2016
FE Note: With people today left adrift to face conflicting social cues coming from every direction, this collection looks directly at the complications which arise from sex, consent, abuse, and survivor support. This, and the other essays in Learning Good Consent, is a guide to preventing sexual violence, helping survivors heal, and creating lives which correspond to our ideals. This essay has been shortened by the Fifth Estate editors.
Apr 11, 2018 Read the whole text...
anon57
Slowly They Go
I expected click-click-click
of handcuffs binding wrists,
eyes red with pepper spray,
a haze of tear gas fogging streets,
black ‘copters rotoring the sky,
and cellphone vids of troubled days.
Too late I realized the cunning gist
of protests that shimmer on-screen.
Slowly they disappear from the net-
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Hong Kong’s Black Book Fair
Under China’s Radar
Hong Kong’s Black Book Fair took place November 17–19, 2017 in the lecture theatre of the Visual Arts Centre, close to the Admiralty area where the Umbrella Movement was ignited by a police attack on demonstrators three years earlier.

Mar 11, 2018 Read the whole text...
Peter Sabatini
“Life-style” vs. “Social” Anarchism
an historical note on the correct thoughts of Chairman Bookchin
Murray Bookchin must be getting cranky in his old age. Upon reading his latest broadside, Social Anarchism Or Lifestyle Anarchism: An Unbridgeable Chasm, I was rudely smacked in the face by déja vu. Evidently Bookchin is beating a dead horse, trying to breathe life back into an old controversy within the anarchist movement that dates back a century.
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
AKD868
This is Jail
Nothing can prepare you for life behind bars
Last spring, I became a prisoner in a rural California county jail for 90 days having been sentenced for a non-political offense.
I did some research before surrendering to the authorities, so in many ways I knew what to expect when I arrived. Nothing, however, can really prepare you for the full range of indignity and repression you experience.
Apr 11, 2018 Read the whole text...
Matthew Lucas
Movie Review
New Blade Runner Still Misses Philip K. Dick’s Radical Vision
a review of
“Blade Runner 2049.” Director: Denis Villeneuve 146 min. (2017)
“Blade Runner 2049” slightly recalibrates the social dimensions of Ridley Scott’s 1982 android rebellion tale, “Blade Runner”—based on Philip K. Dick’s novel Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?—tailoring it for a new generation.
Apr 17, 2018 Read the whole text...
Matthew Lucas
No Popcorn
...But Portland’s DIY Church of Film Shows What Others Don’t
Church of Film is a small volunteer film collective in Portland, Ore., whose mission is to provide accessible and free cinema, especially to communities where access to movies is limited. The program was founded in 2013 at the North Star Ballroom in North Portland.
There are no theaters of any kind in the area, and neighborhoods were hurting from a rapidly encroaching influx of development and gentrification. Since that time, the collective has expanded to other venues and parts of the city, most notably the Clinton Street Theater in Southeast Portland, and has shown one or more screenings weekly. Screenings have always been free and donations based.
Apr 20, 2018 Read the whole text...
Joe Nolan
Movie Review
No Gods; No Masters brings the history of anarchism to video
a review of
No Gods; No Masters: A History of Anarchism (2017) (Originally: Ni dieu, ni maitre. Une histoire de l’anarchisme) Writer/Director: Tancrede Ramonet. 156 min. Color/B&W (French, German with English subtitles) Available from Icarus Films icarusfilms.com/if-nogods
For average Americans, the word anarchy calls to mind chaos, destruction, lawlessness, and violence. Most modern Westerners know little about the people, philosophies, and history that make up the broader political and cultural movement we identify under the term anarchism.
Apr 24, 2018 Read the whole text...
Rebecca Lee
The Something
Fiction
In a town with no law, in a far away land, there lived people without protection. In square, boxed houses, they made sections out of walls to shield them from something unknown. It was the something that drove them to worry.
“Do you think it will happen tomorrow?” One asked.
“What do you think it could be?”
Apr 25, 2018 Read the whole text...
Norman Nawrocki
An Anarchist in Poland
In One Gulp! Poland Swallowed Up by Consumer Capitalism
During a recent 10 day visit to Western Poland (Wielkopolska) to do research for a novel based on my family history, I spoke with many people in the street, in bars, cafes, on trains and buses trying to understand the new realities of Central Europe.

Apr 26, 2018 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
Jordan Flaherty
No Heroes Needed
an interview with Jordan Flaherty
The Fifth Estate spoke with journalist and author, Jordan Flaherty, at Detroit’s Source Booksellers. His latest book, No More Heroes: Grassroots Challenges to the Savior Mentality, examines how often people of privilege makes things worse when they try to help oppressed or marginalized communities.
Apr 26, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
New Distro Points for the Fifth Estate
There are many retail outlets which sell the Fifth Estate, but it is the indy projects and infoshops that are dearest to our hearts. Here’s a couple of new ones. Visit them; support them.
Big Idea is one of the few independent bookstores in the Pittsburgh area. They do readings/signings, potlucks, prisoner letter writing events, reading groups, film screenings, fundraiser brunches for arrested anti-fascists, and anything related to anarchism.
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
SK
We don’t Forget
A year of healing & resistance for Seattle shooting victim & community

January 20, 2017, the day Trump officially became President of the United States, was filled with many acts of defiance as well as foreboding.
This day had an additional sinister meaning for anarchists in Seattle. In the name of the liberal concept of free speech, and ignoring months of warnings and protests by students, workers, and faculty, the University of Washington’s administration permitted an appearance by the vicious arch troll and bigot, Milo Yiannopoulos. Previous appearances elsewhere clearly indicated that the worst was to be expected from him and his supporters.
Apr 26, 2018 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
Clinton Greater Danger to Peace
Why Was Trump Putin’s Favorite?
It’s hard not to be distracted by the right wing Shit Show presently playing in the White House with its daily exposures of corruption, racism, xenophobia, and discrimination.
The most glittering of all the baubles dangled for our horror and enjoyment is Russian interference in the 2016 election and the collusion of the Trump campaign with President Vladimir Putin’s operatives. The accuracy of this charge is strengthened almost daily and denied only by the Trump camp, Fox News, and a surprising number of leftists and news sites like CounterPunch.
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
anon.
J20 Defendants
Despite Court Defeat, Government Plans to Continue Trials for Fifty-nine
Federal prosecutors announced in January the dismissal of charges against 129 J20 defendants for actions against the Trump inauguration in Washington DC on January 20, 2017.

Fifty-nine people are still facing seven felony charges each, punishable by over 60 years in prison. While the government alleges that these people damaged property, planned the protests, or had knowledge of the black bloc tactic, the case has always been about political repression and expanding the state’s ability to stifle resistance.
Mar 2, 2018 Read the whole text...
André Naffis-Sahely
Maybe the People Don’t Want to Live and Let Live
In memoriam, Arthur Lee (1945–2006)
Sun-drunk I roll
along the streets of Los Angeles
while the radio rewrites
the world as I know it: the Sahara,
it seems, is no longer a desert:
it is a graveyard, while the Mediterranean
they add, is no longer a sea—it too
is now a graveyard...strung out, I stare
at hummingbirds high on sugar
and switch over to Love. I try to picture you,
Arthur Lee, a jazz-talking child
of redlined south central. You were a prince
Apr 28, 2018 Read the whole text...
Andrew William Smith
Le Guin’s Anarchism & Mine
The idea of an “anarchist saint” might seem kind of silly at first, but that did not stop Autonomedia publishers from starting its annual jubilee calendars of radical saints, now in its 26th year. If anyone who has recently died qualifies for the status of anti-authoritarian saint, I would nominate the author, Ursula K. Le Guin, who is featured on the calendar with prominent and lesser known anarchists.
Feb 4, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Montreal Anarchist Theatre Festival 2018
The 13th annual Montreal International Anarchist Theatre Festival (MIATF), May 22–24 will present an eclectic program of international acts. The only such event in the world, it will feature theatre written by anarchists, about anarchists, or plays that reflect anarchist values. They challenge authority, racism, the Patriarchy, capitalism, treat some form of social injustice, and they may offer anarchist alternatives. Some troupes are professional; others amateur. Some present in English; others in French.
May 8, 2018 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
Lena Kafka
Anarchy on the printed page
A long tradition
Newspapers and magazines have been a part of the anarchist movement since its inception.
They contain daily agitation for ongoing struggles and are excellent sources of the history of a movement that is usually ignored by other left tendencies and historians alike.
They keep the flame of anarchy alive and depend on readers for their solidarity and mutual aid. Take a look at the sampling we have here and consider ordering them to assure their survival.
Apr 29, 2018 Read the whole text...
Cody Constructor
Anti-Fascism 101
Book review
a review of
Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook by Mark Bray. Melville House Books 2017
It’s hard to shake the feeling that we haven’t all wandered into a particularly demented time warp in the last year or so since that Nazi-sympathizer, Donald Trump, bumbled and ranted his way into the White House.
Mar 18, 2018 Read the whole text...
Paul Walker (Peter Werbe)
Antifa Author Mark Bray Meets the Professors
Related: see “Anti-Fascism 101,” FE #400, Spring, 2018.
About 100 people filled a small auditorium at Detroit’s Wayne State University, October 17, to hear a talk by Mark Bray, a Dartmouth College lecturer on human rights and author of Antifa: The Anti-Fascist Handbook.
Bray’s lecture followed the lines of his book, that fascism was and is an authentic threat which should be confronted by means appropriate to the dangers it poses. Tactically, he advocates alliances between anarchists, a tradition with which Bray identifies, and sectors of the left, without consideration of their authoritarian nature.
Mar 18, 2018 Read the whole text...
Lisiunia (Lisa) A. Romanienko
Grief to Resistance
a review of
Rebellious Mourning: The Collective Work of Grief, ed. Cindy Milstein. 37 essays, 412 pp. with 32-page color insert. AK Press, 2017
Rebellious Mourning is an ambitious edited volume by Cindy Milstein with enormous depth and breadth of highly relevant and timely cross-cultural case studies. This work by Milstein (sole author of Anarchism and Its Aspirations, AK Press) represents her third edited book project.
Feb 7, 2018 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
Russia Revolution Books – Review
From Adulation of Christ to Adulation of the Leader
a review of
Bloodstained: One Hundred Years of Leninist Counterrevolution eds. Friends of Aron Baron; Luigi Fabbri, Rudolf Rocker, Nestor Makhno, Iain McKay, Alexander Berkman, Maurice Brinton, Ida Mett, Otto Wile, Emma Goldman, et al. AK Press akpress.org, 2017
The Kronstadt Uprising by Ida Mett. Theory and Practice, 2017 theoryandpractice.org.uk
Apr 30, 2018 Read the whole text...
Josefine W.W. Parker (Voyager)
Millennials
A Generation Born in Captivity
a review of
Kids These Days: Human Capital and the Making of Millennials. Little, Brown and Company 2017
In 2002, my girlfriend and I communicated entirely online over AOL Instant Messenger. We shared seventh grade classes and lived two blocks away, yet we hardly spoke in person, let alone hung out.
May 4, 2018 Read the whole text...
SK
Between myth and reality: The Abraham Lincoln Brigade in the Spanish Civil War
The International Brigades came to Spain to fight fascism, but helped crush the anarchist social revolution.
In recent years, many leftists and even anarchists glowingly cite the communist-organized International Brigades (IB) that went to Spain to fight fascism during the late 1930s as an example relevant to many of today’s struggles. Men and women came from around the world to join forces with the army of the liberal Republican Spanish government in its civil war against a military-fascist rebellion that began in July 1936 led by Gen. Francisco Franco, who was aided by Hitler and Mussolini’s governments. The authoritarian right was finally triumphant in 1939.
Apr 26, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
About this issue
An Anarchist Review of Books

It’s been said that a revolutionary’s first weapon is a book.
When the Fifth Estate occupied a physical office in its first thirty years of existence, it always had a bookstore space where texts supporting ideas we published and stimulated us lined the shelves. The last one, in Detroit’s Cass Corridor, carried the name of Ammunition Books and in one listing of our titles used a photo of a .357 magnum pistol as an illustration.
Sep 26, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Masthead, Call for Submissions
Fifth Estate #401, Summer 2018, Vol. 53 No. 2
Fifth Estate: Radical Publishing since 1965
The Fifth Estate is an anti-profit, anarchist project published by a volunteer collective of friends and comrades.
No ads. No copyright. Kopimi — reprint freely.
www.FIFTHESTATE.org
Fall 2018 Fifth Estate
Sep 26, 2018 Read the whole text...
Paul Walker (Peter Werbe)
Anarchists & Guns
“Workingmen: Arm yourselves and appear in full force!”
—1886 Haymarket leaflet
The initial clamor about controlling gun violence following the horrible mass shooting at Parkland, Fla. high school this February mostly subsided following huge demonstrations of students across the country in March and April. Young students appeared everywhere in the media advocating reforms, but no legislation has passed that will staunch the blood flow, and probably none will be forthcoming.
Jul 4, 2018 Read the whole text...
anon.
J20 Trials Continue to Drag on
Support still needed for those arrested at Trump’ s 2017 Inauguration
By the time this is published, the J20 trials, the prosecutions of protesters mass arrested at Trump’s inauguration in January 2017, will likely be in full swing.
Despite having charges dismissed against 129 of the 230 people indicted and the first trial resulting in unanimous acquittals for six defendants in January, the US Attorney’s office has doubled down on its year and a half long legal effort to prosecute the 59 remaining defendants.
Aug 9, 2018 Read the whole text...
Bill Weinberg
Red-Brown Politics
Anarchists Must Not Take the Bait
Fascists are seeking to exploit and co-opt anti-war forces in the US, and build support for war criminals like Assad and Putin. Anarchists have a responsibility to reject such overtures and offer solidarity to those resisting in Syria.
Following the chemical gas attack on the rebel-held Syrian city of Douma in April, Trump staged retaliatory air-strikes, and a protest against the U.S. military actions was held in Los Angeles.
Aug 23, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Anarchism Returns to Cuba
The Anarchist Social Center and Library (Abra: Centro Social y Biblioteca Libertaria) was inaugurated in Havana on May 5. The first word in the Spanish name, Abra, means a place or action through which possibilities can be opened up, which is what the center hopes to be.
Anarchists have been present in Cuba since the 1870s, suffering periodic repression under several different authoritarian regimes. From 1959 on, the Castro government persecuted, imprisoned, and killed anarchists, forcing large numbers into exile or silence-something neither the Spanish colonialists nor the earlier Cuban dictators could accomplish.
Aug 29, 2018 Read the whole text...
Benjamin Olson
Breaking the Cycle of Trauma
Creating a New Lineage of Healing
Trauma is a subtle dominator of experience. Totalizing yet imperceptible, the massive mental shock re-contextualizes life so fully, one forgets what life was like before it.
Indeed, one forgets that there ever was a before. War, mass shootings, rape, famine, can all cause trauma. In fact, sometimes just hearing about these things (living with a loved one or being raised by a parent who once experienced them), creates its own trauma in the listener, causing a cycle that can intensify over generations.
Aug 30, 2018 Read the whole text...
Peter Cole
IWW Marine Transport Workers Local 8
Black lives mattered in this long-forgotten interracial union
Among the greatest obstacles to a working class revolution in the United States (and beyond) has been, and remains, white supremacy Far too many white people, past and present, have put their racial identity above their class interests.
A great many white people understand that racism, xenophobia, and other prejudices only divide workers to the benefit of bosses. But the sad truth for the United States is that, before the rise of industrial unions belonging to the Congress of Industrial Organizations (CIO) in the 1930s, few unions treated African American workers equally.
Aug 30, 2018 Read the whole text...
Robcat
On a MOVE In Maine
Ramona Africa speaks in rural, small towns
“MOVE’s work is to stop industry from poisoning the air, the water, the soil. And, to put an end to the enslavement of life—people, animals, any form of Life.”
—MOVE Statement
I am driving south on Interstate-295 in a freezing April rain toward Portland, Maine. In the car with me are Ramona Africa and Fred Riley of the black liberation organization, MOVE. We pass an SUV that has slid off the highway into the ditch.
Sep 2, 2018 Read the whole text...
Cody Constructor
Alt-right on the Run After East Lansing Antifa Action
But antifascist comrades need our help!

Above, neo-Nazi Matthew Heimbach of the Traditional Workers Party (rt) looks worried.
For those curious whether Antifa tactics can actually deliver the goods when it comes to disrupting fascist organizing efforts, the activity surrounding white supremacist Richard Spencer’s early March visit to Michigan should serve as a resounding, “Yes!” The alt-right leader, who heads the racist National Policy Institute and wants to turn the U.S. into an exclusively white ethno-state, canceled the remaining dates of a college campus speaking tour after being confronted by a militant antifascist presence during a stop at Michigan State University in East Lansing.
Aug 4, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons Meet & Rally in Pittsburgh

The Campaign to Fight Toxic Prisons held its third annual conference in Pittsburgh, June 8–10. It included lectures, workshops, and discussions about the Prison/Industrial Complex’s mass incarceration and its links to erosion of environmental health both inside and out.
Workshops ranged from toxic conditions in prisons (such as unsafe drinking water and air), to political repression and resistance inside and solidarity outside, to fighting white supremacy in prisons, support for those with disabilities, queer and trans prisoners, as well as support for undocumented detainees.
Sep 4, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
What are you reading this summer?
Section intro: Here are some suggestions among the many books available we found interesting
We put great emphasis on the phrase “the many books available” in our headline since the extent of titles that reflect the anarchist world view are so numerous that even if we were to publish a regularly appearing Anarchist Review of Books, it is doubtful if we could come close to noting them all.
There are many publishers of specifically anarchist literature, but as is mentioned in our article on anarchist fiction in this issue, the desire for freedom without the constraints of the bureaucratic administration of life, and the repression, exploitation, and discrimination inherent in capitalist society, expresses itself in literature internationally.
Sep 4, 2018 Read the whole text...
RB
Hitler’s American Model
Review
a review of
Hitler’s American Model: The United States and the Making of Nazi Race Law by James Q. Whitman. Princeton University Press 2017 press.princeton.eduititles/10925.html
The United States and Germany shared an important characteristic in the 1930s. Both were determined to cement white supremacy into Law. Racist statutes in the US were then state of the art. The Nazis sought to catch up after taking power in 1933.
Sep 5, 2018 Read the whole text...
Ruhe
A Thriller That Might Make You Throw Away Your SmartPhone
Review
a review of
Darlingtonia by Alba Roja. Left Bank Books, 2017 akpress.org; albaroja.noblogs.org
Darlingtonia begins with a juxtaposition characteristic of the times we live in. Anton works in the service industry in San Francisco, commuting each day into the city because he can’t afford to live there and providing concierge services for well-off hotel guests.
Sep 6, 2018 Read the whole text...
Coco Bonobo
Writings by Emile Armand
Review
a review of
Individualist Anarchism/Revolutionary Sexualism: Writings by Emile Armand. Pallaksch Press 2012 littleblackcart.com/books
This is a nice selected edition of mostly shorter tracts by the French sexpol individualist, Emile Armand (1872–1963). Alejandro De Acosta’s translations are excellent. Most informative are the essays “Life as Experiment,” “The Sexual Fantasists,” and “Revolutionary Sexualism.”
Sep 6, 2018 Read the whole text...
Steve Izma
Explaining Anarchism to a Parent Can Be Tough!
Review
a review of
Anarchy Explained to My Father by Francis Dupuis-Deri and Thomas Deri; Translated from the French by John Gilmore. New Star Books, Vancouver, 2017
Any set of ideas whose name defines it in terms of negativity has a lot of explaining to do when it speaks about the future. Proponents of anarchism—in plain English, “against authority”—tend to be adamantly against formulae or against determinism and quite legitimately refuse to describe the perfect, future anarchist society. Nonetheless, anarchism’s critique of oppression leads logically to a set of ideas that explicitly lay down principles for moving forward.
Sep 7, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Anarchy on the Air!
Want to learn how to turn off GPS on your phone? Hear the latest from the pipeline blockade? Or, how to support pipeline resisters near you? The Final Straw Radio (TFSR) is a weekly anarchist radio show and podcast based in Asheville, N.C. TFSR has produced programs since 2010, airing on stations across the country, and offering free downloads at thefinalstrawradio.noblogs.org.
Sep 7, 2018 Read the whole text...
Margaret Killjoy
A Brief History of Anarchist Fiction
Eccerpts
Excerpted and reprinted from Fifth Estate #385, Fall, 2011.
Without even knowing it, you’ve read anarchist fiction. There are literary greats like Leo Tolstoy (“The Anarchists are right in everything ... They are mistaken only in thinking that Anarchy can be instituted by revolution.” [“On Anarchy,” 1900]), Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Henry Miller (”[An anarchist] is exactly what I am. Have been all my life.” [Conversations With Henry Miller, 1994]), Dambudzo Marechera (“If you are a writer for a specific nation or a specific race, then fuck you.”), Ba Jin, Carolyn Chute, J.M. Coetzee (“What is wrong with politics is power itself.” [Diary of a Bad Year, 2007]), Jorge Luis Borges, and William Blake, and other popular fiction authors like Alan Moore, Ursula K. Le Guin, Michael Moorcock, Robert Shea, Norman Spinrad, B. Traven, Kurt Vonnegut, Ethel Mannin, and Edward Abbey.
Sep 9, 2018 Read the whole text...
Eric Laursen
Repression & Resistance
From RNC 2000 to Trump
a review of
Crashing the Party: Legacies and Lessons from the RNC 2000 by Kris Hermes. PM Press, 2015 pmpress.org
Crashing the Party was published three years ago, but it couldn’t be more timely in the age of Trump and Sessions. Kris Hermes’s book is an in-depth account of the legal saga that began with the repression and mass arrests of activists at the 2000 Republican National Convention in Philadelphia.
Sep 9, 2018 Read the whole text...
SK
Looking Back at France, May 1968
The Basic Story
Fifty years ago France was on the verge of social revolution, with millions of workers on strike, factories occupied, and students striking and occupying universities and high schools all over the country. Anarchists and anti-authoritarians were deeply involved in this massive movement which took many, but not all, by surprise.
Aug 15, 2018 Read the whole text...
Barry Pateman
Thoughts on the Significance of France, May 1968

One of the most important things May ’68 achieved was to make rebellion feel exciting, thrilling, and urgent. People took to the streets of France for a variety of reasons but they took to the streets.
Aug 18, 2018 Read the whole text...
Fifth Estate Collective
Intro to May ’68
We’ll Always Have Paris

It’s been fifty years since the exciting events of May 1968 in France that shook the country to its foundations. It is still inspiring to remember the widespread revolt of high school and university students, and then workers, that erupted throughout the country, leading to the largest general strike in French history. These events brought society to a stop, temporarily transforming daily life, and posing the possibility of a complete social revolution. The 1968 turmoil in France was part of a worldwide upsurge.
Sep 27, 2018 Read the whole text...
Jesús Sepúlveda
The Animal Hungers
The animal hungers
for light and strength
He hungers
.
Killing himself while hunting
Groaning
fatally and the last
.
Hunger springs
Sleepless
.
There are beasts without burden
that dance / grow fiery
They warily drink water
.
Famine distorts
Tea or sugar or bread
or fuel
or a tender hand?
.
The animal hungers
for goodness
.
The famished grow fat
leaving scraps for neither him
nor her
who remained with her cubs
.
The animal hungers
Tramps through trenches
.
up slopes
Sets out
.
He rears up on both paws and ransacks a beehive
Spreads his wings and throws himself from a cliff
.
The animal hungers
when he moves with the flock
or sells his lungs, his eyes
his goodness, his fury
hangs from meat hooks
.
There is no slaughterer without slaughterhouses
there is a journal. a story. a bus
.
and the barrio where he who writes grew up
.
There are massacres
.
Slaughterers dressed as generals in plastic aprons
or doctors in white coats
the chemists the priests enrobed
.
Or gold buttons / stripes
or suits
Bare-chested
or sweaty
.
When the animal hungers
Everything trembles
Books crumble
The earth quakes
.
Autumn flowers bloom in the garden
In the gazebo unreal and necessary
the breeze rushes
people stroll by
.
Home is one
who smokes sitting in the patio of his house
or in a hotel
or silently waits in the corner of his
infancy
or lingers outside
until they open the door
.
Hunger squeezes through crevices
Cuts grooves
Breathes
Climbs fences
Feeds
.
But the animal doesn’t wait
grows weak or devours
He is hungry
and cold
.
He doesn’t know how to live
with pain and anguish
but tries
.
He prepares tea / bathes
or doesn’t
.
He has had enough
.
Slurps
Dips his bread
.
Sits still a moment
Sep 9, 2018 Read the whole text...
Matthew Lucas
Black Panther
Breakthrough or More Hollywood Marketing?
a review of
Black Panther; Director: Ryan Coogler 134 min.
On the list of watershed films of 2018 will be Black Panther, Marvel Studios’ astronomically budgeted blockbuster, which raked in critical plaudits as well as ticket sales on an unprecedented scale. The film has struck a chord with both black and white audiences.
Sep 10, 2018 Read the whole text...
Tom Schulte
Life Among the Piutes
Review
a review of
Life Among the Piutes: Their Wrongs and Claims by Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins. G.P. Putnam’s Sons, 1883; Kindle edition, 2017. Also, free online
This is an amazing autobiography and first-hand account from Sarah Winnemucca Hopkins (born Thocmentony, meaning “Shell Flower;” c. 1844—1891) the grand-daughter of Chief Truckee (d. 1860), medicine chief of the Northern Paiute.
Sep 27, 2018 Read the whole text...
Carrie Laben
The People’s Republic of Everything
Review
a review of
The People’s Republic of Everything by Nick Mamatas. Tachyon Publications 2018, tachyonpublications.com
Nick Mamatas, who first entered the radical literary scene two decades ago as one of the translators of Jae-Eui Lee’s Kwangju Diary, has been a consistent yet consistently surprising voice since.
Sep 10, 2018 Read the whole text...
Rui Preti
Exploring the Past & Present of Anarchists in New York City
A review of
Radical Gotham: Anarchism in New York City from Schwab’s Saloon to Occupy Wall Street, Tom Goyens, ed. University of Illinois Press, 2017
New York City is well known for its radicals, past and present. The lives and deeds of some noteworthy anarchists who have lived there (including Emma Goldman, Paul Goodman and Murray Bookchin), and the high points of local movement history have been discussed extensively in articles and books. Yet there is a shortage of bottom up histories describing and exploring the lives of non-famous anarchists of earlier times or currently.
Sep 11, 2018 Read the whole text...
Bill Weinberg
True Stories
Review
a review of
True Stories: Tales from the Generation of a New World Culture by Garrick Beck. iUniverse, 2017
Garrick Beck spans a personal journey through radical bohemia in the 1950s, hippie utopianism in the 1960s, back-to-the-land communalism in the 1970s, to applying those ethics today through community work and urban Land-reclamation back in the New York City of his youth.
Sep 27, 2018 Read the whole text...
Peter Werbe
The Way of the Passenger Pigeon
Review: John Zerzan on the End of Civilization
a review of
A People’s History of Civilization by John Zerzan. Feral House, 2018 feralhouse.com
Beginning with John Zerzan’s 1970s jeremiads in this publication, his predictions of social collapse and later of civilization’s were best summed up by the title of his FE #276, January, 1976 article, “The Decline and Fall of Everything.”
Aug 1, 2018 Read the whole text...
Bill Weinberg
Impossible Revolution
Review
a review of
Impossible Revolution: Making Sense of the Syrian Tragedy by Yassin al-Haj Saleh. Haymarket Books 2017
This book is a necessary corrective to the dominant perception—left, right and center—that the opposition in Syria are all jihadists and dictator Bashar Assad the best bet for stability.
Sep 11, 2018 Read the whole text...
Craig O’Hara
PM Press
Ten Years of Literary Molotovs
Bay Area-based PM Press celebrated its tenth anniversary of publishing in May with a bang-up party in Oakland, Calif., where staff, authors, and well-wishers howled at political sketch comedy, smashed a captured Amazon delivery drone, and danced the night away to punk rock.
PM was founded at the end of 2007 by a small group of people with decades of publishing, media, and organizing experience. At the outset we strived to create and distribute radical audio, video, and text releases through every available channel in all possible formats. True to one expanded variation of our name, “Print Matters,” however, we’re biased in favor of hardcopy books as the best format in which to communicate ideas for social change.
Sep 12, 2018 Read the whole text...
Jason Rodgers
What does it mean to be human or transhuman?
a review of
The Transhuman Future: Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom by Cory Doctorow. Tor Books, 2003
Cory Doctorow has a clear vision of the future. In a way, I hate him for that, because it is not a future in which I want to live. But he is probably right.
He extrapolates current situations and trends to create a realistic vision of the future. Often these include business trends, making them even more fleshed out visions. However, he is not a world builder. He writes humanistic stories, but about transhumanism, the idea that people can evolve beyond our current physical and mental limitations, especially by means of science and technology.
Sep 12, 2018 Read the whole text...