Aside from being reductive, yes, I’m an anarchist. I’m not opposed to writing down some rules, but I am opposed to the coercive use of force to impose them on others. It is possible to organize a system of preventative and restorative justice without the use of a hierarchy.

This video is a good introduction to how justice can work in an anarchist society.

And this is where we disagree. Because, to me, thinking that every single lawmaker in the history of humanity (we have laws that date back thousands of years and are just copy-pasted between countries) was writing laws with malicious intent is some form of paranoidal insanity on par with “lizard people are controlling the government”.

It’s not about the intent of each individual cog involved in the creation and application of the law, but the intent for which the system of laws and hierarchies were created. Plenty of reform-minded people or naive pro-establishment folks participate in the legal system with good intentions, and sometimes find success reducing the harm that it causes, but that doesn’t change that the system continues to uphold class society and was created for that purpose. The effect of our system of laws and hierarchical institutions is the preservation of a system of division between distinct classes, and since I have yet to see a legal system that does not do this in some form I have concluded that this is the fundamental nature of laws.

All of those laws are unequally enforced. Anti money laundering laws are applied only to the subjugated socioeconomic group (drug dealers belonging to the working class, etc.). The dominant socioeconomic group gets their children protected, their rape victims to receive justice, their human rights defended. The subjugated socioeconomic group rarely benefits from these laws, which is why thousands of rape kits sit in warehouses never being investigated, why children born into poverty are more often separated from their parents and institutionalized rather than receiving the help they need, and why human rights are routinely violated without consequence.

The people making such laws can sometimes intend for them to be universal, but such people fundamentally misunderstand the nature of laws, and it never quite pans out that way in practice.

The law is extremely clear in this regard - the ICE dude murdered a person for no reason. The rules on the use of deadly force literally use a moving car as an example of when not to use deadly force - as long as there are “other defence options, such as moving out of the way”.

When the people tasked with upholding the law consistently disregard it in particular circumstances - as they do when it comes to abuse of power by law enforcement - that law only exists in the circumstances in which it is consistently applied. Things like qualified immunity have effectively nullified any law that ostensibly holds law enforcement accountable. The law does not exist for any other purpose except to protect the dominant socioeconomic group in a given country without binding them, while binding the subjugated socioeconomic group without protecting them. Who is in which group is dynamic and always subject to change, but this rule almost always holds except in cases where very skilled lawyers are able to argue in court that someone in the latter group actually belongs to the former in some specific circumstance. That is the law being used for something that it was not designed to do, a bit like an exploit in a video game soon to be patched.

Oh you misunderstand, he knows the law well. He just knows how to use it as a tool to protect the elites from accountability and as a bludgeon to punish the people for non-compliance, as well as how to make sure that never gets flipped.

Neck-deep in liquid mercury wearing tungsten shoes is how I do my morning workout. Better gains than the Dragon Ball gravity chamber.

This is the kind of thing the blazed out of his mind guy sitting next to you at the Waffle House at 3am says to you unprompted.

I only said we have to go through the process, but there’s no reason we can’t speed it up or prepare better for the consequences. I think the role of those who learn from history is to work behind the scenes to soften the blows we know are coming to those who learn the hard way, and ease the transition from one phase to the next.

In more concrete terms, maintain solidarity even with people you think are making a mistake, and prepare for the moment they are ready to do more.

The movement needs to go through this more naive phase and reflect on the results so that it can mature and adjust strategies. It’s easy to learn about history, see what finally worked in the past, and think that we should just ‘skip to the end,’ but that’s not how large groups of people operate. You can expect an individual to learn from history and do what’s most effective, but groups must always go through the entire process because the group infrastructure has to be built brick by brick.

Colloquial use of the word Nazi is pretty much synonymous with fascist, and I don’t really have a problem with that outside of - like - academic discourse and such.

The IHRA definition of antisemitism is “if you criticize Israel you’re antisemitic,” and restrictions on boycotts are unconstitutional. These orders should have been rescinded even if Adams hadn’t been indicted on federal corruption charges.

Well, it’s been a very big topic in American politics since Oct. 7th, as the majority of Americans have now become aware that Israel is committing genocide against the Palestinians with our tax dollars, and most of our politicians are complicit. Even the right-wing has largely woken up to this, though there is some extra baggage in their case.

You been living under a rock?

Communism is a post-socialist mode of production established by resolving the contradictions within socialism. States eradicate themselves by eradicating the basis of class, and this happens by collectivizing production and distribution.

The contradictions within socialism will not be resolved without people acting on their own initiative to resolve them. The state siezing the means of production and claiming it is doing so on behalf of the people forms a new basis of class, it does not eliminate it. It is simply taking the means of production from one set of private hands to another more centralized set that is only somewhat more responsive to the people’s will. The people must act of their own initiative to forcibly decentralize the power of the state until no hierarchy remains in order to eliminate class.

Cooperatives are petty bourgeois collectives of private property, not socialist property. The idea of competing small cells of worker-owners is petty bourgeois in origin and stands opposed to collectivized production and distribution.

Who says they have to compete? Realistically they would form federations to organize production and distribution on larger scales. Cooperatives in Italy do this, though they face strong resistance from corporations and the state as they do so. If you have eaten Parmigiano Reggiano you have eaten something created by many small cooperatives banding together to collectivize production and distribution. The cheese is made with milk from many small cooperatively owned farms that pool their resources together and share in the profits.

states exist to establish the supremacy of a class

Already we’re dropping the pretense of eliminating class, which is the entire premise of communism. A system which establishes supremacy in any form could never hope to eliminate class.

Independence from socialism is a petty bourgeois notion, not proletarian.

And again you are uncritically equivocating socialism and the state. Socialism can and does exist independently of the state whenever workers collectively organize production and distribution anywhere and for any reason. Cooperatives are socialist, not petty bourgeois, because the workers themselves have collectivized the means of production. Small businesses that are privately owned are petty bourgeois.

These [socialism and the state] are one and the same in the context of a socialist state transitioning towards communism.

Always transitioning towards but never quite getting any closer and never will without the people themselves acting collectively to dismantle the state. The idea that the state will just “dissolve,” or even more ridiculously disassemble itself, is absurd.

This slogan sounds nice, but ultimately just means that people should have a right to undermine socialism against the will of the people.

Again, people collectivizing the means of production on their own terms does not undermine socialism, it undermines the state. It’s funny you suggest people acting on their own initiative undermines their own will, and not the state cracking down on them. I thought from our previous interactions that you were more reasonable than this.

a union in a socialist system is somehow “class collaborationist” for being official and supported by said socialist state requires a ton of heavy lifting on your part.

A union in any system that stops short of supplanting the boss and siezing the means of production is class collaborationist. Such a union in a capitalist republic is essentially just a bureaucratic arm of the company that serves as controlled opposition, and in a “socialist” republic is a bureaucratic arm of the state that exists to ensure the working class acts in the state’s interest. You think the latter is acceptable because you believe the state truly represents the will of the people, but I believe that only the people themselves are truly representative of their will.

If it’s not independent then it’s not proletarian. The state doesn’t crush independent unions because they’re opposed to the socialist system, but because they are a threat to the authority of the state. I believe people have a right to self-determination, and preventing workers from organizing on their own terms violates that right. The means of production should belong only to those who actually do the work of production, not private individuals and not the state claiming falsely to represent them in the abstract. I’m a syndicalist in that I believe that the purpose of unions is eventually to overthrow the hierarchy and establish a cooperative, not to settle and become a class collaborationist union or an arm of a class collaborationist state, though it is preferable to no union at all.

the working class is in control of socialist authority

Independent unions are illegal in China with only the All-China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU) permitted by the Chinese state and the Chinese Communist Party to operate. Seems to me like you got it backwards, the “socialist authority” is in control of the working class. Any who attempt to organize on their own terms are met with state repression. Your insistence that the Chinese state only oppresses capitalists, fascists, and saboteurs is provably false.

I’m familiar enough with right wing misinformation to know that immigrants being responsible for increased crime - and even that crime is increasing at all - is an entirely fabricated narrative in the US. I confess not being familiar with the situation in Sweden, but I can recognize the same false narrative reflected in your previous comment.

As long as you continue to blame all of your country’s problems on Muslims you will never have the understanding needed to actually fix them.

Were there not an Israel the USA would have to invent an Israel to protect her interest in the region.

• Joe Biden, 1986