Val @ Val @anarchist.nexus

If I state a fact that seems blatantly false It's because I want to make a

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I just went over to NVK. I shouldn't really waste my time playing the graphic intensive games anyway. The indies are better.

I tried dkms but it took so long to install I gave up.

So all of your ideas are so simplistic that you think no-one will disagree with you? or do you think you can kill them before they can kill you? If you are an anarchist, decide to ally yourself with communists, and start talking about guillotining, I can guarantee you it's only a matter of time before you're called counter-revolutionary and get killed yourself. Or you could decide not to ally with them, in which case they get added to the list of people you'll need to kill. Making it rather long. And you can be sure that sooner or later a charismatic autocrat will take your place and use it to consolidate power. Thinking that killing our enemies is a path to victory opens up so many potential vectors through which power could be consolidated. It's just better to do without them.

It's not asking for sympathy. It's asking to understand that killing them won't fix anything. We are up against ideas. You kill Hitler, someone takes his place. The world isn't being run by great men who we can't do without. It's run by people. Shuffling the names around won't really achieve anything, you need to destroy the thing that is giving them the power. The Ideas inside peoples heads that they need to be governed. As I put very succinctly in another comment. If we can destroy those ideas we don't need to kill anyone as they would be powerless and if we can't killing them won't change anything. In fact it will just allow whoever comes after to use their death as a way to drum up support for wiping you out.

If you want vengeance then lets enact it on this plane of existence, where we know what is happening to them. If you want things to change killing individuals is simply not productive.

Of course I am. Aren't you? Being considered not anarchist/revolutionary enough and killed to maintain the purity of the anarchist/revolutionary vision². This is exactly what happens once you start considering some people as killable. The definition expands and expands and you end up with the same authoritarian structures that we try to escape from.

This kind of othering is exactly why we cannot use violence¹ as a means to advance our cause. It gives an easy solution to disagreements, fuels tribalism and sows discord.

¹: on people, property destruction isn't violence. Killing of cops, CEOs, and politicians is always self-defence as they maintain the status quo that is killing us. Although they should always be given the option to quit.

²: kinda like what the bolsheviki did by calling everyone counter-revolutionary. This kind of thinking leads to Kronstadt.

What do you mean by this?

Oh hey, I have a quote for that: https://youtu.be/xnouj9Yz-Gs?t=35

Winning? Is that what you think it's about? I'm not trying to win. I’m not doing this because I want to beat someone, or because I hate someone, or because I want to blame someone. It’s not because it’s fun. God knows it’s not because it’s easy. It’s not even because it works, because it hardly ever does. I do what I do because it’s right! Because it’s decent! And above all, It’s kind! It’s just that. Just kind.

Here is a section of AFAQ as well: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionJ.html#secj73

And we don't need to scare people. Fear shouldn't be among our weapons. It creates conformity, timidness, a desire to cower and hide until it goes away. Values that are antithetical to anarchism. Or in the worse case, fighting, attacking those creating fear ruthlessly and without mercy. Nothing is more scary than someone backed into a corner. How many innocent people would be killed by rulers who want to go out in a blase of glory because they know they'll die anyway? Their power comes from the people that uphold the social structures. To win we need to destroy the ideas that justify their power. If we can do that, we don't need to kill them, and if we can't, killing them will accomplish nothing, the people will just fall behind another leader, one who will now try and enact their revenge.

Revenge is a cycle, "Eye for an eye and the world would go blind". The only thing killing will accomplish is more killing. Our success is dependent on our ideas winning, and nothing destroys peoples willingness to listen than ruthless killing.

Did you read the article? Here is a couple of sections I think put it correctly:

When we see ourselves as fighting against specific human beings rather than social phenomena, it becomes more difficult to recognize the ways that we ourselves participate in those phenomena. We externalize the problem as something outside ourselves, personifying it as an enemy that can be sacrificed to symbolically cleanse ourselves. Yet what we do to the worst of us will eventually be done to the rest of us.

Often, all it takes to be able to cease to hate a person is to succeed in making it impossible for him to pose any kind of threat to you. When someone is already in your power, it is contemptible to kill him. This is the crucial moment for any revolution, the moment when the revolutionaries have the opportunity to take gratuitous revenge, to exterminate rather than simply to defeat. If they do not pass this test, their victory will be more ignominious than any failure.

It is possible to be committed to revolutionary struggle by all means necessary without holding life cheap. It is possible to eschew the sanctimonious moralism of pacifism without thereby developing a cynical lust for blood. We need to develop the ability to wield force without ever mistaking power over others for our true objective, which is to collectively create the conditions for the freedom of all.

Have mass killings ever helped us advance our cause? [...] If we seek transformation rather than conquest, we ought to appraise our victories according to a different logic than the police and militaries we confront.

The image of the guillotine is propaganda for the kind of authoritarian organization that can avail itself of that particular tool. Every tool implies the forms of social organization that are necessary to employ it.

As a tool, the guillotine takes for granted that it is impossible to transform one’s relations with the enemy, only to abolish them. What’s more, the guillotine assumes that the victim is already completely within the power of the people who employ it. By contrast with the feats of collective courage we have seen people achieve against tremendous odds in popular uprisings, the guillotine is a weapon for cowards. By refusing to slaughter our enemies wholesale, we hold open the possibility that they might one day join us in our project of transforming the world. Self-defense is necessary, but wherever we can, we should take the risk of leaving our adversaries alive. Not doing so guarantees that we will be no better than the worst of them. From a military perspective, this is a handicap; but if we truly aspire to revolution, it is the only way. “The guillotine is the law made concrete… It is not neutral and does not permit you to remain neutral. Whoever sees it quakes, mysteriously shaken to the core. All social problems set up their question mark around that blade.”-Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

So we repudiate the logic of the guillotine. We don’t want to exterminate our enemies. We don’t think the way to create harmony is to subtract everyone who does not share our ideology from the world. Our vision is a world in which many worlds fit, as Subcomandante Marcos put it—a world in which the only thing that is impossible is to dominate and oppress.

And lastly:

Precisely because it is sometimes necessary to employ force in our conflicts with the defenders of the prevailing order, it is especially important that we never lose sight of our aspirations, our compassion, and our optimism. When we are compelled to use coercive force, the only possible justification is that it is a necessary step towards creating a better world for everyone—including our enemies, or at least their children. Otherwise, we risk becoming the next Jacobins, the next defilers of the revolution.

Or to put it in my words: Letting them live is the human thing to do, even if they pose a threat. Their power does not come from who they are but from the structures that are build around them. We have to dismantle those structures, killing people doesn't help with that. If we have reached a point where we can guillotine them we will have already won.

If you want to execute them in self-defence (as maintaining capitalism is inflecting violence on the human race, therefor killing anyone doing it is self-defence). Go for it, but make it clear that's why you are doing it, and that there is no better way. Like destroying all the methods they use and make them powerless which will also make them stop without losing your humanity (hyperbole).

Could it be that this is a svg file? The request says "Invalid media file provided".

Apparently slrpnk.net has a problem with svg files. Here is a screenshot png:

Let's not: https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too

“It is impossible to make the revolution with the guillotine alone. Revenge is the antechamber of power. Anyone who wants to avenge themselves requires a leader. A leader to take them to victory and restore wounded justice.”
-Alfredo Bonanno, Armed Joy

Precisely because it is sometimes necessary to employ force in our conflicts with the defenders of the prevailing order, it is especially important that we never lose sight of our aspirations, our compassion, and our optimism. When we are compelled to use coercive force, the only possible justification is that it is a necessary step towards creating a better world for everyone—including our enemies, or at least their children. Otherwise, we risk becoming the next Jacobins, the next defilers of the revolution.

Fuck it. I'm done with you. You don't seem to listen.

Actually, No. Here is the AFAQ chapter on nationalism: https://anarchistfaq.org/afaq/sectionD.html#secd6, and it is the perfect example of what I'm talking about.

This means that anarchists distinguish between nationality (that is, cultural affinity) and nationalism (confined to the state and government itself). This allows us to define what we support and oppose -- nationalism, at root, is destructive and reactionary, whereas cultural difference and affinity is a source of community, social diversity and vitality.

My use of the flags is to showcase the nationalities that partake in this event, as they are in the geographic area. Not the nationalism of the state which has usurped these symbols.

And trust me I am an anarchist. First and foremost. Anarchism is the surrounding idea of the centre of my being, which is one word: "Kind". I doubt there is anything that can overpower it. It's fuelled by the kind of faith that others reserve only for god.

To me it's not emphasising national identity. It's signifying a culture. A culture that has been heavily oppressed and is currently starting to slowly languish as the bigger and more predominant culture slowly smothers it. I've seen this happen in my own mind as my internal monologue switched languages after watching a lot of english TV and Youtube.

It's a shame that a language that is very different in it's construction is starting to slowly be drowned out just because the internet has made english the language everyone speaks. I have no love for the state or the national identity the flag represents. That's why I put a circled A on/next to it. To signify that I reject the state and the nationalism while accepting the culture behind that state.

The problem with nationalism, why it is nationalism, is the idea that only a certain group of people are deserving or valid in a culture. That speaking a different language or having different parents made you somehow different or superior or more deserving. It's a method of othering. This is the core idea behind nationalism and it's the one I (and every anarchist) reject. Everyone who wants to, is an estonian, no matter where they come from, it's a culture, not a nationality¹. There is nothing inferior about being part of a different culture, but that different culture does exist and it needs to have a name and symbolica to survive.

¹: Do I need to say "for me" or "in my opinion". I've gotten a lot of people treating me like an idiot because I leave it out from statements like these, but I just assume that's implied. I'm saying it... and it's blatantly false as a fact... of course it's my opinion.

We have flags for every branch of anarchism for this reason. They all have slightly different ways of doing things. Slightly different cultures and customs. While I could try and come up with a flag design that works for this culture while not referencing the only other flag that the culture uses just because a state snatched it up first, using the already established visual shorthand for the culture is easier. And it's also stealing one of the primary symbols the state uses to legitimise itself, the idea that it speaks for the entire culture. It does not. There are also anarchists who are part of this culture, and reject your nation.

And in the end. I don't even care that much about this (yes this is how much effort I but into things I have minor care for). If everyone on this com said that this is a stupid idea I'd probably change my mind, but as it stands you're the only one who has said anything about this. I wouldn't use the flag in any other situation. I like the standard Circled A on black background for most things, but in situations where I need to reference the region of land between the Baltic sea and Peipsi I will use the blue-black-white flag with A Circled A on top and call it estonia, it's the easiest solution.

Good shout! Making the A black really made the circular one pop. I think it even made the tri-angle work, although that may have just been from having removed the background.

Why do you say that? I could speculate but I'd rather not waste time answering questions no-one has and guess what you meant by this.

No I wouldn't make one with the USA flag, because USA isn't a culture. It's a state. A State baked in colonialism and slavery. The USA flag didn't exist before the state needed one. The design of the flag itself is based on the political reality. If I were to design anarchist iconography for north america I would use the first peoples' flags as a template, or mangle the stars and stripes so much that it becomes unrecognisable.

The baltic flags aren't like that. (Or at least the estonian one can't really speak for the other two.) They are also symbols for the people. Used to identify a culture even when the state didn't exist. A flag that's designed by a bunch of university students that then became used by a country that was just finding it's identity emerging from an oppressive overlord. At it's heart these flags were used as symbols of resistance and identity to fight against a foreign regime. Why not take it one step further and use these symbols to fight against the idea of statehood itself? As a message that we decide what our symbols are and if we want to we can take yours.

The biggest difference is that these flags don't just represent a colony. They represent a unique set of people that have their own language. The fundamental element of culture and until we create visual indicators for these languages that are separate from the states the flags are the best we have.

And as you ended you're comment with a tangential question here's mine: What do I use instead? What visual shorthand can I use to denote that this concerns the baltic region? That there are people who speak Estonian, Latvian, Lithuanian here?

It is branding. Anarchist movements need branding just like any movement. It's how messages spread and people join. The circled A, 1312, The Black Cat; All of these are part of the anarchism brand.

A brand isn't inherently commercial. It's only when you start selling it, and selling anarchism isn't inherently bad as well people need money to survive and if you can make it while also spreading an ideology why shouldn't you.

The problems start when you start using authority to sell things, thus acting completely opposite to the message you are spreading, as long as you make the branding/products yourself it's still anarchy.

The one where the lines go past the circle is the one I call Punk Circled-A. The one I use is more restrained, making it appear more professional and approachable (in my opinion, obviously). But I did do one with the punk-A:

/sidenote: When I say drawn I mean as opposed to designed like the ones in the main post. They are all made in inkscape, but for me drawing is imperfect, while designing tries to maintain as much precision as possible, eg proper ratios, straight lines and equal spaces. While drawing is embracing the imprecision of a human hand.

It's interesting for sure, but the A is very glaring. Making the border around the A bigger certainly improves it but then it starts covering up quite a lot of the flags. It also feels quite generic, I know the other ones are generic as well but this one just feels like "Take the flags and put an A over it." done.

Like this:

I feel like that would make the A too colourful. The circled A is a single symbol. making the A have other meanings conflicts with the simplistic focus of it.