The first text that introduced me to crimethinc was this: https://crimethinc.com/2019/04/08/against-the-logic-of-the-guillotine-why-the-paris-commune-burned-the-guillotine-and-we-should-too.
Having seen one too many posts around the leftist comms on the subject, I made my own small meme about it. A bit more violent than what the article suggests but I think that makes it just that much more effective.
After all what would the life described here be other than suffering:
The worst punishment anyone could inflict on those who govern and police us today would be to compel them to live in a society in which everything they’ve done is regarded as embarrassing—for them to have to sit in assemblies in which no one listens to them, to go on living among us without any special privileges in full awareness of the harm they have done.
Of course I am. Aren’t you? Being considered not anarchist/revolutionary enough and killed to maintain the purity of the anarchist/revolutionary vision². This is exactly what happens once you start considering some people as killable. The definition expands and expands and you end up with the same authoritarian structures that we try to escape from.
This kind of othering is exactly why we cannot use violence¹ as a means to advance our cause. It gives an easy solution to disagreements, fuels tribalism and sows discord.
¹: on people, property destruction isn’t violence. Killing of cops, CEOs, and politicians is always self-defence as they maintain the status quo that is killing us. Although they should always be given the option to quit.
²: kinda like what the bolsheviki did by calling everyone counter-revolutionary. This kind of thinking leads to Kronstadt.
No, I’m not. I’m the guy they call when nobody wants to operate the guillotine.
So all of your ideas are so simplistic that you think no-one will disagree with you? or do you think you can kill them before they can kill you? If you are an anarchist, decide to ally yourself with communists, and start talking about guillotining, I can guarantee you it’s only a matter of time before you’re called counter-revolutionary and get killed yourself. Or you could decide not to ally with them, in which case they get added to the list of people you’ll need to kill. Making it rather long. And you can be sure that sooner or later a charismatic autocrat will take your place and use it to consolidate power. Thinking that killing our enemies is a path to victory opens up so many potential vectors through which power could be consolidated. It’s just better to do without them.