Mini-Theory Blog: the War on Sharing Escalates in Georgia
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Against the Left
Over the past decade, I’ve devoted a significant portion of my work to examining a very mainstream “war on sharing” that is woven into the ideological, social, and legal structures of capitalist society throughout much of the western Pig Empire. This war on sharing places our states alongside literal fascists, in that both are foundationally against the political left, otherwise known as the people who believe in solidarity and sharing. Although this war is always quite literal for marginalized people and activists, in times of stability for the ruling capitalist order, this war manifests itself rhetorically, and in the form of propaganda primarily. In times of crisis however, like during this present period of rising fascism on a boiling planet, the violent, repressive contours of this war on ideas, and on the very concept of an alternative to capitalist life, become increasingly open and apparent.
Consider the barely-reported news that Georgia Attorney General Chris Carr has indicted sixty-one people allegedly involved in the Stop Cop City protests with violating the Racketeer Influenced and Corrupt Organizations (RICO) Act, charges that stand in addition to the already absurd arrest of forty-two people reportedly involved in the same protest movement on allegations of “domestic terrorism.” The indictment, which spans a hundred and nine pages, is unarguably political, and ideological in nature. Georgia identifies the protest as a criminal conspiracy, makes a direct attack on a straw-man version of anarchist ideology, and directly connects the resistance in Atlanta to establishment fury over the 2020 anti-police violence protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, an African American man, by a white police officer in Minneapolis. Even mainstream observers have noted the clear civil rights danger and political fuckery involved in Georgia attempting to make protesting a criminal terrorist conspiracy, and engaging in mutual aid a criminal offense.
Of course, this isn’t actually a new state of affairs. For example, at the height of those very same 2020 anti-police violence protests, then presidential-candidate Joe Biden publicly called for the prosecution of “anarchists” while simultaneously trying to support both police, and Black Lives Matter activists protesting against racialized police violence. Alarmingly, this occurred at the same time noted fascist and then-president Donald Trump was actively working with Attorney General Bill Barr to declare “Antifa” a terrorist organization, used Federal Marshalls to kidnap activists off the streets, and engaged in a political assassination/revenge killing of anarchist activist Michael Reinoehl, on behalf of an allied fascist street gang, the Proud Boys.
Indeed, and perhaps more importantly, this official, state-sanctioned suppression against those who oppose capitalism, hierarchies, and grotesque inequality is more or less an objective constant in American history. The aforementioned Defund the Police protests were met with extraordinarily open, and casual violence by the state against both protestors, and journalists who deigned to report it. The Occupy Wall Street movement was crushed by police repression, as was the anti-globalization movement before it. The eighties saw the American government spying on and criminalizing the activities of feminists, environmental activists, and movements for racial equality in a still covertly-segregated, white supremacist society; a point made explicitly clear by the 1985 bombing of MOVE activists in Philadelphia. In the decades prior, Marxists, anti-war protestors, and Civil Rights activists were met with state violence, McCarthyism, and J. Edgar Hoover’s infamous COINTELPRO program; the exposure of which briefly threatened to destroy the entire American national security structure. During the interwar period, the IWW and numerous African American rights advocacy groups were literally hunted into extinction; pacifists and leftists who opposed U.S. involvement in the First World War, were jailed. Finally of course, we must never forget that the Espionage and Sedition Acts themselves were created to criminalize (primarily) migrant anarchist labor organizers; a long holdover of U.S. policy to violently suppress anarchist movements under the guise of preventing “another Haymarket bombing;” an event that itself, bears all the hallmarks of a state frame-up of left wing organizers in the never-ending war on sharing.
Although none of this history is a secret, many Americans remain under the delusion that this type of fascist-aligned repression does not, and cannot happen here; a delusion quite common across the entire western Pig Empire, despite all evidence otherwise. While I personally find it absurd that I have to argue about whether or not a country that is actively criminalizing feeding the homeless, and exercising your right to protest, is fascist, the plain truth is that most people are not prepared to accept this reality yet. Given that this war on sharing in its current state is actually a very real conflict with very real violence, such naivety is a clear and present danger to anyone who would oppose this machine. When I say that the state agrees with the fascists about more things than it agrees with the left, this is precisely what I mean. When the chips are down, both open nazis and mainstream American power agree that the real enemies are the people who want to end the fuck barrel, and so long as we keep pretending that isn’t true, our resistance movements will be at a tactical disadvantage in the war on sharing.
– Nina Illingworth
Anarcho-syndicalist writer, critic and analyst.
You can find my work at ninaillingworth.com, and on Mastodon.
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