Hammer

While I haven’t given up on doing this once a month it is a bit more daunting than I anticipated. I’d like each issue to be out in the first week of a new month and reflect most of what is published the month before (ending with the last day of the month). If you feel as though you have a sense of the style of this kind of review please feel free to contribute. Send your contributions to me at the Anvil and we can discuss.

ADCS 2011.1, Journal
This is a journal that has a couple points of departure: Post-anarchism, Internationalism, and Academia. This issue has a peculiar emphasis. It is subtitled “Ten Years After 9/11: An Anarchist Evaluation” and two`thirds of the issue focuses on just this. Frankly this would be enough of a content storm (and the discussion between the editor Michael Truscello & Jack Bratich is nuanced and interesting) but additional essays include two bombshells. One on Zerzan (“Notes on an Anarchist Theory of Language”) and another on Insurrectionary Anarchism (“The Allure of Insurrection”).

This is a journal that gives lie to the argument that anarchists are incapable of thinking theoretically. I am somewhat infuriated as to what that means (especially in regards to the Allure article and the general air of respectability in this publication) but it is what it is. This is a sign of anarchism growing up and I don’t like it very much. Caveat: I am involved in publishing this in a hardcopy edition.
Website, Publisher, Academic/History

The Crisis, PDF
Subtitled “For Class War without Apologies” it could be argued that this is a broadsheet aimed at those who believe that the Democrat’s aren’t fighting hard enough for the working class but as a project of the PCWC we will give it the benefit of the doubt. This is a local publication from Phoenix AZ with an emphasis on Austerity but it barely hits its stride before it is over (it’s only 2 pages). The most interesting essay here is one that is a couple hundred words, provocatively titled “Not enough work? Then let’s do less of it!” that pretty much wimps out with a conclusion that states “(W)e can organize work democratically, so that our workplaces are owned by us, the workers, and all important decisions are made with the agreement of all the workers.”
Website, Agitational

Denver Ignite #1, PDF
Perhaps this is a contentious point but I believe that anarchists will only become stronger (by which I mean more capable of accomplishing goals and existing in (a)political space) when we make more of an effort to do the things we do as anarchists. This is why I am so tickled by the surprising emergence of papers like Ignite which brings the inspiration of Tides of Flame to the context of Denver. Attacks against parking meters (!!!), Nazi… graffiti, and unbannered freeways are covered along with an ABC section, a historical section, EF!, and some reporting on the drug task force. My only fear is that every new anarchist paper will use fire/flame in their title.
Website, Denver/Agitational

Fifth Estate, Magazine
As someone who did a bi-annual magazine for awhile I have nothing but respect for FE and the fact that they (by a generous definition of they) have been doing it for decades. It is truly a joy to behold and the fact that they continue to crank out this publication is a testament to stubbornness. I talk a lot about the role of magazines in the time of the Internet and the question tugs at me as I flip through this issue. While the content is fresh to this issue at least half of its themes have been thoroughly explored in the past few years (Magpie on Fiction, Vancouver riots, Greece during austerity, Gaza). This leads me to a conclusion that I don’t enjoy. The magazine (as form) primarily exists for those readers who don’t read on the Internet. This means that magazines are for the older-than-forty set. Frightening.

Additional content in this issue are a number of stories, poems, and the like that only Fifth Estate seems to still have the chops to be able to share in a meaningful way. It is too bad the only (and of course I don’t mean only but some largely self-selecting group that is trending towards one) readers of this material are the elderly.
Website, Fiction/Magazine

London Calling, PDF
The provocative subtitle says it all “a cellphone and internet security primer for the criminally-minded anarchist.” Right off the bat it starts with a good premise. There is no “safe technology use” but there is harm reduction. Most of the zine covers just how fucked you are if any part of your digital fingerprint includes an anarchist swirl which is more-or-less true but horribly premised. If you are fighting for your life in court you are screwed, your digital fingerprint just informs the direction of the screw. The most important part of this zine is the brain dead simple 10 item checklist at the end. It boils down to 1) Nothing on the phone is private and 2) Anything you do with your computer is very difficult to make private.
Download, Technology/Security

Ninth-Century Muslim Anarchists, PDF
I want to take a moment to sing the praises of zine library. I don’t love the online pdf format, as a rule; I feel it lends itself to skimming and ends up making content something that lives on your hard drive rather than in your heart… but I don’t want to blame zine library for the form. It serves a purpose and for our world it does the best job of it out there. You can always go to the zlib and find something worth skimming (and as an added bonus it holds a a ton of pirated shit). In this case ”something worth skimming” is a JTOR article from Oxford University Press. It is an interesting take on something anarchistic in Islam. It isn’t convincing but this quote is tantalizing.

“All others were infidels who could in principle be enslaved, dispossessed and exterminated by the Najdiyya, should the latter choose to rebel”
Website, History

Play!Fight!, PDF
This is a really strong publication on the intersection between kink/perv and anarchism/activism. The publication is not pretty but the content, arguments, and thinking is strong. If you have any interest in this bag of complicated but fascinating practices check this out. I really liked the article “Becoming Water: Notes of Revolutionary Anarchomasochism” as the pinnacle of this conceptual space. If I grew up on the coasts I’d probably be totally into this shit.
Website, Kink

Revolution and Other Writings – A Political Reader, book, Gustav Landauer
Gustav Landauer is a historical figure from an important time in European history. He was excluded from the Second International, was a pacifist opponent of the First World War, and a participant in the Soviet Republic of Bavaria during 1919 (leaving after a takeover by the KPD).

This volume is a selection of translations by Gabriel Kuhn, and is handsomely “blurbed” by Jesse Cohn, Cindy Milstein, James Horrox, Mark Huba, and Chris Dunlap. Also of kneeslapping mention is this howler from the preface by Richard J.F. Day “In his answer to this question Landauer was one of the first post-anarchists, inasmuch as he read Nietzsche anarchistically, and through his development of a discursive understanding of the state and capitalism as states of relations, rather than ‘things’.”
Publisher, History/Anthology

This is not a program, Tiqqun, book
Initially published inTiqqun #2 in 2001 this essay has now been put out by Semiotext(e) and is their third attempt to cash in on a certain zeitgeist that is swirling around our accused friends from a small village in France. This particular essay is important for a couple constructions and deconstructions. What is constructed is their idea of the war machine and the warrior as a figure of anxiety and devastation. What is deconstructed is class struggle as a woefully incomplete formulation of bad faith and paralysis.

Bloomification, forms-of-life, circulation, molecular, hostis, society, identity are all defined in this essay.

Also included is “…science of apparatuses…”
Publisher, Theory

Tides of Flame #5/#6, PDF
Irrepressible. When I write my mythology about the PNW it will include a section on the unstoppable propaganda machine that has produced 6 issues of an 8 page paper (along with printing the damn thing) in the past three months. An incredible success even if they were to stop today. (But don’t!)

Strong articles include an introduction to the affinity group, more history of the George Jackson Brigade, a journalistic article on the Marion Building, history of the 1916 Everett Massacre, and a loving sendoff to the short lived Autonomia space.
Web, Seattle/Insurrectionary

When They Knock Down Your Front Door, PDF
This is the zine form of a text seen online about the new GAMMA squad in Montreal Quebec. The GAMMA squad is a police agency specifically targeting anarchists, and developed in response to the success of anarchist activities in Montreal over the past few years. The conclusion of this article, which isn’t developed in a meaningful way, is one of the most important points for all anarchists under threat of repression (meaning all of us) to consider. “Now is also a time to work out our differences, and build a critical solidarity with each other, not letting the state tear us apart over petty conflicts. This doesn’t mean that we should erase our differences, or that we all have to work together…”
Download, Insurrectionary