László and Enablers, Cop Yourselves On!

We Dublin Anarchists are often given a tough rap from from the state socialists of various  stripes. We are told that we aren't materialists. Patronised as ‘undisciplined’ in our praxis; and fuck  it maybe that's true. The short lived and embodied experiments in prefiguration and personal agency often disband. Attempts to develop new social relations are hard to quantify in empirical terms,  even when there is tangible benefit and positive effect.  

So maybe anarchists -by and large- are undisciplined, but broadly will tend to be more or less principled in their actions. Maybe not as effective as we might like or need, but there is a limit to  the harm that they may sincerely do.  

I’d like to contrast this with some ridiculously unprincipled rhetoric and reactionary  behaviour coming out of avowed state socialists and I’ll start with this publication: Aontacht  Media. László and enablers should read this next bit very closely. We don’t budge on state racialization, not an inch. I don’t care how convenient it may be to your party, career or ego!  

The articles you’s have published on asylum, are either incredibly unprincipled or overtly  reactionary, Which is particularly odious when the issue materially impacts some of the most  marginalized people in our society. “Working class have a say on immigration Argues Socialist  Republican Group”. No... If you do that, your not socialists. If you spend your time promoting anti-immigrant discourse and acting on that sentiment, you are reactionaries...  

The reason this is, is that in the here and now. Jim O'Callaghan's department of justice -the  one that has continually eroded protesting rights and civil liberties is the same one that locks up  republicans, is the same one that continuously erodes the material rights of asylum seekers and  exposes their bodies to reactionary violence, whilst treating right wing thugs with the kid gloves. It is the same department that has chosen to only publish asylum seeker numbers by race, rather than by  accommodation type. Its all the same thing. 

This repressive function of the state is the same function that brutalizes all of us. We as  socialists don’t budge on this, because if we understand capitalism and the state systemically, we  understand that what we allow them to do to migrants today, they will do to us tomorrow. Freedom  for one is freedom for all. This should be our belligerent conviction because because that's what the politics of solidarity is. That is why so many of us bled a little (some of us a lot) over sanctioning  Israel. Because we knew it was our own lives we were trying to protect. Those fuckers are never  going to pass the Occupied Territories Bill. 

We oppose the building and expansion of a racializing and brutalizing injustice system in all  its forms. The experience of an asylum seeker that has to perform their status to the paternalistic  legal authority. Is fundamentally the same as a protestor having to expose their self in the hopes of  receiving leniency from a judge. It is the same system that we must fight tooth and nail to  dismantle.  

That doesn’t mean we cede this point to the right. Leftists aught to be vocally in opposition  to IPAS as a system. But with a serious materialist critique. It is deeply immoral because it funnels  huge amounts of state money into the pockets of private landlords. So little of the allocation  actually makes its way to provision for applicants. Rather the vast majority is spent to give these  landlords a density of tenants more profitable than they would receive in the already extortionate  rental market. They offer poor services, grass roots efforts are left picking up the slack. It’s the  housing crisis all the way down. The Free State will not address a social problem unless capital can  extract a profit.  

Does this sound familiar? The profiteering and at the expense of the most marginalized. It  should, because its the same systemic issue with our homeless services. Its almost like... say it with  me... its a qualitatively bad set of set of social relations that we use to address these problems. Its a  bad way to dictate use of space and constricted resources. Anyone who says any version of “help Irish first” is a fool. Who prefers a brutalized oversimplification than any kind of dialectic practice.  It’s so painfully useless.

When we adopt pseudo-leftist language to push reactionary positions we are creating  confusion for the young and new leftists. Our analysis is bullshitty and simply there to hold space  for the sake of maintaining our personal position of privilege,“influence” and access.  

And hey! I’m not opposed to you earning your keep as political actors. Earn your space sure, but we need to earnestly centre a politics of meeting community need. The analysis needs to be felt  by caring for the social world. Book theory is useful. Please read widely. A bitta Bell Hooks or  Audre Lorde wouldn’t go astray. I don’t know -god forbid- deconstruct some of the  cultural/gender/sexual baggage you bring to your relationships and organizations.  

Its a dialectic practice that starts in how ye relate to the subject of your discussion. You can’t turn people and their social movements into content. Your just flattening people and their social  movements, without a relationship of solidarity to them. Go platform the people who experience  and care for social failings. Embed and be a resource, strengthening your critique from the human  level.  

Your a socialist if you work for the people in a liberating way. Not through riding an  astroturfed and accelerating fascist wave to capitalist defined success. Cop yourselves on and get  back on the line. The work is to build a better world not just tear down this one.  

~ A$AP