The death of individuality, part 2: WE WERE RIGHT

[Giorgio] Agamben claims that, by disassociating themselves from all markers of identity, the occupiers of Tiananmen became “whatever singularities”. These whatever singularities remain precisely what they are, regardless of the qualities they happen to possess in any given moment. According to Agamben, in presenting themselves in this way, the occupiers necessarily ran aground on the representational logic of the state: the state sought to fix the occupiers into a specific identity, which could then be included or excluded as such. Thus, Agamben concludes: “wherever these singularities peacefully demonstrate their being-in-common, there will be a Tiananmen, and, sooner or later, the tanks will appear”.

 ...the unfolding of the general law of capital accumulation undermines stable identity formations in all segments of the labour market. More and more people are falling into the surplus population; anyone can, potentially. Increasingly, the stable-unstable distinction is the one that regulates all the other distinctions within the working class. That leads to a widespread sense that all identities are fundamentally inessential...

- quoted in "The Holding Pattern: The ongoing crisis and the class struggles of 2011-2013", Endnotes 3

Apart from the serious ground-level business of helping build workers' resistance to attacks on capital, for real radicals of the new millenium, our overriding strategy must be: DESTROY ALL IDENTITIES. Actually existing personal and social identities do nothing but ensure that you will stay in your box forever. And that includes the identity of "revolutionary" or "magus" or whatever.

- Chaos Marxism, 2009

By happily accepting a description of themselves as "THE HIVE" (or "hivemind"), the massed ranks of Anonymous show that capitalist normality's privileging of individuality as the highest good is a trap. ... I always wondered why my sympathies were always with the bad guys in those cartoons. They hate us because we don't need to be individuals.

- Chaos Marxism, 2011

We interrupt this programme...

I just received this email via an electric bicycle forum, would you believe.

Dear Anonymous,

The purpose of this message is to inform you about the Revolution:

OCCUPY HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT IN LONDON ON NOVEMBER 5, 2012.
OCCUPY CONGRESS IN WASHINGTON D.C. ON NOVEMBER 11, 2012. 

STOP WAR.
CANCEL ALL DEBT.
REDISTRIBUTE WEALTH.

Please, watch the "Nazi Banksters' Crimes Ripple Effect" movie to find out why, how, and to have sound arguments to persuade others. The movie can be easily found with a search engine.

Please, print the flyers at 2012jubilee.info and distribute them.

Please, spread this message and the movie to everyone you know. 

-Anonymous

Ah, Anon. If only revolution - of the kind which really changes things, as opposed to "colour revolution / meet the new imperialist-approved puppet, same as the formerly imperialist-approved puppet" were that simple. But I must say this is exciting and I'm looking forward to seeing what happens.

I think people of the future will realise what a huge impact the Wachowski siblings have had on the culture of the Internet age. Everyone knows what The Matrix (the original movie) did - pretty much bring Gnostic/Buddhist ideas into the mainstream - but V for Vendetta, even though it was a pretty craptacular rewrite of Alan Moore's excellent graphic novel, and it embraces conspiracy theories in quite a reactionary manner, gave birth to Anonymous as a political project.

Anon calls out the Black Bloc

Anonymous: CM prophecy confirmed accurate

"Was Project Chanology for the Intarwebz what May 1968 was for French students?" I asked almost precisely two years ago. The answer appears to be "yes". We now live in an era where Anon is taking on governments, the FBI and major corporations, appears to be actively thriving on persecutions and arrests, and is reported as serious news in the mainstream press. This article from around the same time, suggesting that Anonymous had reached its limits because it could not possibly find a more ideal target than Scientology, is laughable in retrospect - obviously the author couldn't imagine them actually going after the Pentagon or the FBI. (But perhaps it was only the intervention of Bradley Manning and Julian Assange which made that possible.)

Also of note is that Anonymous is a "meme", like al-Qaeda or radical right-wing resistance, so nailing individual participants can't stop the signal. The media have never gotten this - they keep going on about "members of Anonymous" being arrested. Newsflash, guys, a "member of Anonymous" is anyone who does anything under the Anon or associated banners. The Clams' "tech" for dealing with enemies is to nail their leaders personally, but Anon has gone past the individual. This is of course what all radical movements should be doing; however, I think we're still addicted to the "leader / Central Committee" structure, which evolved in the case of a Tsarist police state when the telegraph was the cutting edge of information technology. Networked resistance is the next step. Don't let the 4chan crowd or the fascists out-innovate us.

The death of individuality

By happily accepting a description of themselves as "THE HIVE" (or "hivemind"), the massed ranks of Anonymous show that capitalist normality's privileging of individuality as the highest good is a trap. Remember all those TV shows and stories in which the hero realises that being part of some movement that might change the world - or some old-fashioned "community" - is impinging on his precious individuality, and therefore he gives up and retires to private life, and that's a good thing? Remember how Billy Elliot's dreams of being a dancer (and thus getting all the privileges of the middle classes) lead to his father scabbing on a strike and wrecking the whole way of life of his community, and that's a good thing?

All this of course goes back to 1950's anti-communist sci-fi terror of the evil assimilating aliens who threaten the boundaries of our precious individuality, most recently reinvented as the Borg on Star Trek? Before Seven of Nine was "reverse-assimilated" back into being a (white middle class American) human individual, she yelled at Janeway "WE DO NOT WANT TO BE LIKE YOU". I agreed. I always wondered why my sympathies were always with the bad guys in those cartoons. They hate us because we don't need to be individuals.

P.S.

Welcome to the rebirth of Anonymous as a libertarian political project. It will be interesting to see whether Freeweb undergoes the same kind of process of development as Chanology did. One of the problems with Chanology is that it merged with the existing anti-Clam protest movement, who were (let's face it) mainly ex-Clams and therefore kind of nuts. This protest, on the other hand, has at least the potential to become a REAL mass movement. And, since an unfiltered intarwebz is clearly in the self-interest of the toiling pixel-stained techno-wretches of the world (as the downfall of the poison dwarf David Mi$cavige would not be), the accusations of "moralfaggotry" (aka liberal altruism) are not going to be as damaging to this iteration of the meme. Stay tuned.

In "self-organization of nerds" news...

... trolls now have their own code of honour. Also worth noting is:

I've come to realize that without some artistic fagmastering all these free speech projects will die on the vine (as they should). I could probably write a Consensus TLDR post about this (by this meaning how you should harblecake such an enterprise) the likes of which r3x's code of trollshido / vibe / insane cocksuckery would be jealous.

(source, referring to this). "Harblecaking" means "exercising leadership in a mass movement", as applied to internet activism, with special reference to this. So the above poster is the troll equivalent of Lenin, or perhaps a Platformist.