Mystagogue of the Diaspora

I have been putting my old zines up on my website. Today it's the turn of “Theory Head № 1” … a short zine about the role of theory in the struggle for social change.

I put this together back in grad school to try to explain to my anarchist punks friends why I thought bothering with theory was worth it. As a zine, I still really like it! It's pretty and coherent and satisfying. And, I still think analysis and reflection are important. But, I also think I was far too kind to the world of theory. A lot of it is wordy milquetoast. Instead of offering this to my friends as a defense of theory I should have turned to fellow theory heads and challenged them to do better.

Anyway, here it is for you to enjoy.

I’m seeing a lot posts from folks in the US-sphere about how to “prepare” for the next four years. And they’re mostly good, (though, not entirely¹) and folks are right to fear what may come. For a lot of folks the coming years are going to be hell; let’s call that category 1. But, in a way, I’m more afraid that, for many nothing, will come at all, or at least only very little will change for them. I don’t mean the rich and racist who are salivating for future horrors; let’s call that category 3. I mean all the folks who with a small shrug and a bit of adaptation will blithely and happily continue along with their lives. This is category 2. The thing is, I strongly suspect that a lot of folks (not everyone; I’m not saying that at all) posting, reading, thinking about “preparing” actually fall into this second category, even though they might think they are in the first.

I think a lot of folks are going to be all geared and gussied up to fight fascism and then find that it has come in the night to beat up some folks in that other neighborhood (you know the one) and they at most heard some sirens in the night. I think folks are so focused on being prepared, on their own safety, on knowing how to react, on being the target that they’re going to miss the fact that fascism might not care about them all that much. A story my Grandmother used to tell was that after the war ended a neighbor a few doors down knocked on their door and said proudly (smugly?) “I knew what you were doing and I didn’t rat you out to the Germans.” and my Grandmother politely said “thank you” but in her mind was thinking “That’s the absolute bare minimum you asshole [I’m paraphrasing here]; that’s not being part of the resistance. That doesn’t make you one of the good ones.”

I’m not saying bad shit isn’t going to happen and lots of folks aren’t going to get hurt. That is definitely going to happen. But, well, for example. You’re book club isn’t going to pick Trump’s “Stories of True Patriots™”…but it only has 4 members. The local church, a nice normal church, might though because Lucy really wants to, and the President did ask everyone to read it, and what’s one book to stay friends with Lucy? You aren’t part of that church. What are you going to do about it?

I’m glad so many folks are interested and eager to think about the work ahead. I really am! And I’m not offering a full blown solutions here, which is a weak-sauce cop-out, I know. But I would like to offer one small correction and one small addition to the present discourse. First, yes be prepared but be realistic about what you—you specifically—are actually going to face. Second, to that end, look more closely at how historical and present day fascist and totalitarian states operate. Present day Hungary and India, recently Philippines and Poland, historically East Germany and Portugal are all good examples. Unfortunately there are many. The scenes that play in the popular imagination of jackbooted thugs smashing down your door and sending you to a camp to die the day after you dared say “the Leader is a poo-poo head” are … simplistic. Those regimes are/were scary and awful as fuck. But also more complex and janky than a Hollywood hero movie.

And now this post is starting to veer into what fascism actually is and isn't and how it's not just anything ultra conservative or any big shot who wants to be a dictator but a specific combination of the two that has love of Power (with a specific capital P) combined with a totalitarian outlook, and totalitarian not just in the political sphere but also the cultural, civic, and social sphere which I think we haven't seen play out in the U.S. to the same extent yet.

But that's not what I wanted to say today! I just wanted to say (tl;dr:) I’m glad y’all are thinking about how to prepare but just keep in mind they might not actually be coming for you, or even your next door neighbor, and certainly not necessarily in an overt show of force way and you should also be ready to handle a thousand soft choices while the black shirts are terrorizing that other neighborhood (you know the one) and do you actually know anyone over there? Because—and be honest with yourself about this—your neighborhood might actually continue unscathed for a good while yet. That’s one of the scariest things about fascism.

My grandparents were in the resistance during WWII. They mostly forged and printed identity documents and ration cards. At the end of 1944 they produced a booklet containing a short story by Vikenty Veresaev called «The Star». A few years ago I translated it from their Dutch edition into English. And now you can read it too. I don't entirely understand why, in such a dark hour, they chose to use precious resources to share this particular haunting story.

• The Star — screen
• The Star — print

Recent events in Amsterdam have reminded folks that sports and politics are inseparable. But, it’s not the only such recent sports story, and not even the only one involving Israel and football.

Tonight Israel is playing against Belgium (as part of the Nations League, not to be confused with the League of Nations) … in Hungary. Why is the game taking place in Hungary? Well, UEFA (the folks in charge of football in Europe (why Israel is part of Europe for the sake of football is a whole other post)) decided back on October 19, 2023 that “After a thorough evaluation of the current safety and security situation in the whole territory of Israel […] that no UEFA competition matches shall be played in Israel until further notice.”¹ Which makes some sense, except when you remember that Russia and Russian teams were outright banned from all competitions in 2022². But fine, no one expects UEFA to know anything about ethics.

Because of UEFA's decision Israel has had to play all of their “home” games in neutral venues, in this case in Hungary. While unusual this isn't entirely unheard of. Ukraine has been playing their “home” games at various stadiums in Poland since 2022³ and the last time Palestine played a “home” game in Palestine was 2019⁴! And there are a few other examples not related to ongoing conflicts, like Kosovo in 2018 and Turkey in 2005⁵. So it's a thing, just not a super common thing.

But that still doesn’t answer: why Hungary of all places?

The first “home” game Israel played in Hungary on November 15, 2023 (vs. Switzerland, 1–1) was held at the Pancho Aréna in Felcsút. The Pancho Aréna opened in 2014 and can host 3,865 spectators. Felcsút has a population of 1,688. Felcsút also happens to be the home town of Viktor Orbán (the far right strong man “Prime Minister”) and a bit of a pet project for him. And that basically sets the tone for this whole story. There are really two parts to this: first there is Orbán’s interest in sports-washing in general, and obsession with football in particular; and second, there is Orbán’s relationship to Bibi/Israel/Jews and how it reflects the broader far right strong man constellation of our time.

The first part of this story is fairly straightforward. Like so many other authoritarian regimes, Orbán loves to bask himself in the “apolitical” goodwill glow of hosting large sporting events. In addition to graciously stepping in to host large international sporting events, Hungary has also seen an intense football stadium building spree. In the last decade nearly 2.5 billion euros were spent on stadiums⁶, with a fair chunk of that likely siphoned off to corrupt Orbán friendly oligarchs on at least 19 new stadiums plus renovations and upgrades of many others⁷. That's a lot!

The pinnacle of Orbán's efforts came in 2020 and 2021 with, yes, Covid. First the 2020 UEFA Super Cup final was moved from Porto to Budapest, and held with some restrictions (this was pre-vaccines, when no one else was holding such large events). And then during the 2020 Euros (held in 2021) the games in Budapest were the only ones to allow 100% attendance and had no restrictions. Because … what else do you expect from a far right strong man? It's the perfect mix of sports washing, populism, mass spectacle, anti-science/“elites”.

The second part is slightly less straightforward. Orbán and Bibi are good friends the way only two far right strong men can be friends. Hungary is also providing the neutral “home” venue for Belarus’ games. But, since this is Israel we're talking about, this isn't just about a shared ideology and world view. Orbán has insisted that Hungary is the safest country in Europe for Jews⁸. Then again, he has also spoken against race mixing, downplayed Hungary’s relationship to Nazi Germany, and promoted George Soros conspiracy theories^{9 10}. It’s not actually surprising that a far right anti-immigrant strong man is also basically anti-semitic. What might be surprising (but shouldn't be by now) is his love of Israel. When Orbán speaks of combating anti-semitism in Hungary what he means is banning pro-Palestinian activity and leaning into Islamophobia more generally¹¹. This is the direct parallel of the U.S. evangelical support of Israel. Essentially, Jews are fine, as long as they go live in Israel, help bash Muslism, and no one forgets that they aren't really part of Us (Hungary/American/whatever). A well trodden story, but it's still important to elucidate and call out the bullshit here.

The upshot of all that is that Orbán is extremely happy to come to Israel’s aid, and at the same time Israel is more than happy to legitimize Orbán and his football nonsense.

A common chant at U.S. demonstrations for a while now has been "this is what democracy looks like." I disagree. Marches are a patch for when democracy on its own doesn’t deliver the "will of the people". Ideally we wouldn’t be in the streets; we’d all have a our voices heard in the room. But we march anyway. We understand that sometimes you have to pull on the levers of power you can reach, even while you work to dismantle and rebuild the machine.

The U.S. is, if we are being wildly generous, a deeply flawed democracy. Power is concentrated and fortified by money and violence. Most folks are left out in the cold. We all know this. And yet elections happen. Maybe the outcome only matters a little and maybe the process is warped by the flows of power. But elections still happen. They are still a lever, however inconsequential, that can be pulled.

Some of you are thinking “If voting mattered it would be illegal” and that’s half right, but only half. Power isn’t monolithic. There is a tendency to build up the enemy as a pervasive suffocating power. But in the real world everything is a bit more squishy and porous and human than that. That’s why organizing and demonstrations and all that good stuff sometimes work. Why oppressive power still sometimes inexplicably leaves itself open would require a whole line of analysis that is way beyond the scope of my rant here. The point is that, for now at least, elections are still a thing in the U.S. and, while the process is shit, they’re not yet 100% a puppet show. We have to hit them any way we can, however small.

And some of you are going to start talking about not wanting to consent or be complicit in the horrors of the next administration. There will be horrors. I agree. But voting isn’t a pledge of loyalty. You already don’t believe that the U.S. is a democracy, you already don’t believe that they particularly care about your consent or are in need of your complicity. I know the Liberals like to attach moral baggage to voting. But why would we, as anarchists, accept that? All that talk about “earning” and “deserving” your vote, about the patriotism of participating in the process, about democracy … fuck it. Your vote isn’t any of that. It’s just a thing you can do to maybe make the world slightly better. It costs you practically nothing. At the end of the day those in power are more than happy to take abstention at the polls to mean that you’re basically fine with whatever. Voting is only being complicit if it’s the only thing you do; what matters are the other 364 days.

And I more than admit that the U.S. is system is beyond dumb. If you live in Wyoming or Washington D.C. I don’t care if you vote for the presidency or not. You’re right. You’re vote in that race mostly doesn’t matter. But, and I know this isn't a novel insight, there’s a lot more on the ballot than the presidency. Local races at the city, county, school board, sheriff, judge (can you fucking believe judges are an elected position??) make a massive difference in people’s daily lives. I promise that if you don’t think so you aren’t paying enough attention. Will electing the right people usher in the revolution? Of course not. Neither will not buying stuff from Amazon, using Signal, or running the local Food Not Bombs. But all of those can make the world a little bit better so we do them anyway.

bonus tangent: There is a tension in anarchism between wanting to build alternative institutions and community in parallel to the current world and wanting to challenge the current world. Both streams are living and valid parts of contemporary anarchism. We often try to paper over that difference with talk of “direct action” but I am not convinced that that’s as theoretically robust as we would always like it to be. And my tangent to this tangent is that historically anarchism was all about “propaganda by the deed” and somewhere (if some historian of anarchism could help me pinpoint when I would be deeply grateful!) that fell away. At the very least the idea that anarchists have never wanted to engage with the current system is ahistorical.

That civilians are being killed at an alarming rate in Gaza shouldn't be news to anyone. I suspect that for many this falls somewhere on the range from "civilians die in war, regrettably but inevitable" to "maybe Israel is being a bit careless, but who can blame them; Hamas is evil" extending at most to "Israel is being reckless, and I wish they would dial it back a bit". But none of that actually fully faces the depravity what is going on.

There is mounting evidence that Israel is engaged in a concerted strategy of mass starvation and destruction of civilian infrastructure in northern Gaza. I know that sounds too extreme to be real. It's tough to sound sane when the world is crazy. But this isn't my weird extremist anti-Zionist hyperbole. I have receipts.

The U.S. government has raised concerns about the restriction of aid, targeting of humanitarian workers, and destruction of civilian infrastructure multiple times. For example, in a May 20th report to congress¹ the U.S. State Department detailed both the purposeful restriction of aid and the repeated targeting of humanitarian workers. And last week the State Department sent a letter demanding that Israel stop impeding aid in to Gaza and show, with actions on the ground, that “there is no policy of starvation.”²

Multiple UN agencies (UNRWA, OCHA, UNICEF, etc.) have repeatedly raised the alarm³ and specifically pointed the finger at Israel for denying access. On October 11th the UN reported that aid into Gaza is at an all time low⁴ and essentially nothing is entering northern Gaza right now. And the UN investigator on food security has explicitly stated in his report that “There is clear evidence that Israeli officials have used starvation both as a war crime and as a crime against humanity.”⁵

NGOs and aid groups on the ground keep saying the same thing. Human Rights Watch: “The Israeli government is using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare in the Gaza Strip, which is a war crime⁶.” Oxfam: “A safe humanitarian response that meets the overwhelming needs of the people in Gaza has been made impossible by the actions of the Israeli Government⁷.” Plus all of the daily reports online from workers on the ground giving example after example.

And lastly, the International Criminal Court's prosecutor has filed charges⁸ against Bibi and Gallant alleging a purposeful strategy of mass starvation. They convened an outside panel of experts, who agreed that “There are reasonable grounds to believe that Netanyahu and Gallant formed a common plan, together with others, to jointly perpetrate the crime of using starvation of civilians as a method of warfare⁹.”

The details of all these various reports are damning. It's not just that Israel isn't allowing trucks to cross checkpoints. They also detail how humanitarian workers have been repeatedly targeted, repair of civil infrastructure (like water supplies) has been impeded, and in general how the IDF has made the situation hostile for anyone trying to supply essential aid.

That the flow of food and supplies into the area is being intentionally restricted is an incontrovertible fact. That this amounts to sadistic and purposeful collective punishment of the civilian population would take more mental gymnastics to deny than I have the flexibility for. Whether it is also an attempt at ethnic cleansing to clear the area of Palestinians permanently for future Israeli settlement is maybe a matter of debate … for now.

At the moment, the government of Israel has denied that this is their goal. But, there are (loud) voices in Israel who, at the very least, are hoping that it becomes the de facto policy. They held a conference about it back in January¹⁰ and again last week¹¹. Politicians including members of Bibi's party and ministers in the current government, attended both openly. They raised a banner that read “Only transfer will bring peace.”¹² The National Security Minister said that Israel should “encourage emigration”¹¹ and the Finance Minister said “God willing, we will settle and we will be victorious.”¹³

This is a bit analogous to Project 2025. Trump didn't write it. But the folks behind Project 2025 are close associates and it no one is naive enough to take his lack of explicit endorsement as anything more than a halfhearted smoke screen.

Still, even if you want to waffle on the ethnic cleansing and resettlement, the mass starvation of civilians as collective punishment is not only blatantly illegal under international law but morally depraved.

And all of that is just one of the ways that Israel's behavior right now is going beyond "we're really bad at avoiding civilian casualties". The torture and abuse at the Sdei Teman Detention center appears to be at Abu Ghraib levels, if not worse¹⁴. Both the New York Times and Guardian have reported on how the IDF “uses Palestinians as human shields in Gaza.”^{15 16} And we haven't even started talking about Lebanon or the West Bank or the repeated targeting of hospitals and first responders¹⁷.

I know there is a lot of shit going on in the world. Oppression Olympics is a hopeless game and internet lefties tend to make everything sound like the end of the world. But there really is some next level horror going on here that goes beyond the usual “bad stuff happens in war”.

Do you all remember Shireen? Journalist. US citizen. Killed in 2022 by the IDF. When I say killed by the IDF that isn't speculation or insinuation. She was shot by an IDF sniper while where a blue press vest. When news of her death first came out Israel said: It wasn't us. "We weren't even in the area. It must have been Palestinian militants". Then they said "Ok, so maybe we were in the area, but we don't think we shot her. The Palestinian militants were shooting at us, so it was probably them." And finally they fell back to "Maybe we shot her while returning fire or something but we didn't know who she was." However, separate investigations from CNN, the Washington Post, and the New York Times all established that there had been no Palestinian gunfire prior, that Shireen was standing with a group of other journalists and wearing a clearly marked blue press vest, and her wounds were consistent with being shot by an IDF sniper (whose presence nearby has been admitted to by the IDF).

This is what I mean when you should trust the IDF as much as you trust the cops after they kill someone. Both come out, leaning on their authority, insisting you have to take their version of events at face value. Both delegitimize the other with: they were probably armed, a thug, not so innocent past, gang member, terrorist… None of these are offered as serious justifications, let alone with any evidence. Their real purpose is to dehumanize the other just enough so they are no longer a human whose story is worth listening to. It's about who gets the benefit of the doubt. When there are confusing conflicting stories cops in uniform get the benefit of the doubt. Black men don't. The IDF does. Palestinians don't. But we know that cops lie and that racism is baked into who they are. The IDF has shown over and over and over again that they lie and that disregard for Palestinian life is part of who they are.

Let me be explicit: it seems like a lot of US liberals understand this about the cops but don't want to accept it about the IDF. I don't know how many hospitals need to be bombed or how many villages need to be wiped out or how much evidence of a calculated campaign of mass starvation it will take for that change.

To finish Shireen's story: did the IDF ever do an internal investigation or subject the sniper who killed her to any consequences? No. They violently disrupted her funeral. We only know as much as we do because she was a journalist and US citizen, so the international media paid attention. At the end of the day the only thing we don't know is whether they targeted Shireen specifically or they just didn't give a fuck which Palestinian they were killing. It doesn't take much to imagine how this plays out day after day for regular Palestinians.

One of the things I love about bicycle touring is how it structures your relationship to geography. You notice every slight up and downhill. You care about slight variations in road surface.

But, it's thinking about how to cross stuff that has had the biggest impact on me.

For longer trips we generally follow vies verdes / rails to trails type routes and getting from A to B is straight forward. We don't always have time for those kind of trips though. So sometimes on the weekend we do an overnight camping trip, often in combination with a short train ride. For these we usually have to make our own route, for at least part of the journey.

With a car (or a cycle path in the Netherlands!) you get on the road, follow the signs, and don't worry about anything stopping you. Bridges and underpasses help you across rivers, freeways, and train tracks no problem.

Unfortunately on a bike—especially if you are trying to avoid sharing a busy road with cars—that isn't always the case. Plotting routes out of the city has made me acutely aware of the way landscape, rivers, freeways, and train tracks all interact with each other and the ways that they both connect and, often, divide, nearby communities. And even when you can cross by bicycle, where a car is usually allowed to take a straight flat connection you are often forced into detours and elevation changes that more closely hug the original geography of the land.

For example, going from La Llagosta to Mollet del Vallès. On the left bank of the Besòs river [a] there is either a path that is unsuitable for biking [b] or the BV-5001 [c], which is too busy for my taste (yes, I know lycra-bros do it all the time). On the right bank we have to figure out how to cross the Riera de Caldes [d], which shouldn't be too bad because it's pretty small and usually dry. Obviously we can't take the C-33, C-17, or any of the train tracks [e]. Carretera de Puigcerdà [f] looks promising. Except, it's actually the N-152z here (i.e. a freeway access road). It crosses the C-59 via an unpleasant looking overpass [g] with cars de/accelerating from/to freeway speeds. Doable but very far from ideal.

Except even a little bravery doesn't actually help! Going that way you'd be stuck on the wrong side of the C-17, and train tracks, because the only bikeable bridge [h] back across the Besòs isn't accessible from Mollet del Vallès except via either the freeway or a bunch of stairs. So if you want to keep going up the Besòs you would have to first take a detour into Parets de Valles and through Montmeló. Luckily there is an alternative. There is a weird little ford across the Caldes [i], with a path to it and everything, right by the train tracks. It works! I've taken the dotted path. (A whole other topic is my amazement at just how many random dirt access paths there are everywhere.) But, it's amazing how one mostly dry river bed and a whole bunch of infrastructure meant to connect stuff, divides these two towns.

How do we keep going in a world full of unbelievable suck? The philosopher Walter Benjamin described history as “one single catastrophe that unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and hurls it before [our] feet.”¹ Sounds like 2017 2024.

The question of how to keep going isn’t new. I imagine my grandparents faced it while in the underground resistance during the Second World War back in Holland. Of course, as Jews—and I believe they would say, as people of conscience—there was no alternative. Today we once again find ourselves in a historical moment where naked fascism is stepping out into the foreground of our collective psyche.

I hope we all agree that it must be stopped.

I keep hearing “We’ve beaten them before,” as though the military defeat of the Nazis in the second World War was the only time fascists were a threat. It wasn’t. For example, just ask the Spanish who suffered under Franco’s rule until the mid-’70s. Or, as if that somehow ensures the invincibility of “Western” Democracy forever. It really doesn’t. The truth is, there is no sure path, no eleven point listicle, to stemming the rise of fascism.

But what actually scares me the most these days is that when I wake up every morning the sun is still shining. Fascism, while apocalyptic, does not arrive with a swarm of locusts or a blood red moon, and does not lead to an inevitable showdown at high noon between good and evil.

The struggle against fascism cannot be reduced to a struggle for normalcy. For many—let’s call them ‘white men’, for short—normal may never be disturbed. And for others, “normal” has been shitty for a while now. To stand with the oppressed is a choice, a choice to actively put oneself into confrontation with the forces of fascism.

This is true at the grand political level; when Antifa faces off against white supremacists they are seeking out conflict because you can’t wait for the neo-Nazis to show up at your door. And it is true in our personal lives, where we must constantly interrogate our own beliefs and behaviors. Or, as the French philosopher Michel Foucault put it, the deepest enemy we need to defeat is “The fascism in us all, in our heads and in our everyday behavior, the fascism that causes us to love power, to desire the very thing that dominates and exploits us.”²

Personally, I cannot think of that confrontation without thinking of my grandparents and what they faced. My close friend Katie once described protest as a ritual to appease our ancestors. That makes sense to me. Of course I carry the memory of Oma and Opa with me everywhere. But, I hope to do more than appease them. I hope to complete their work.

I want a revolution, but not one driven by the desire for utopia but as a gift to the past. Revolutions break the flow of history. They rupture that progression of “catastrophe that unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble”.

I guess you could say I’m not wondering “how do we keep going?” so much as “how do we make it all stop?”

Because through that rupture we can reach back into the past. I know that the past can’t be fixed. But, it could be reoriented towards a new future, made part of a new story, and in so doing redeem all the struggles of our ancestors.

In the meantime, I wake up everyday and greet the still shining sun with a prayer:

Good morning. Today…
  I train my heart to desire revolution
  I teach my mind to think of love
  I shape my mouth to speak resistance, and
  I discipline my legs to stand in solidarity.

Because we must practice the world we wish to see.

A slightly different version of this was first published in 2017 as the backmatter to issue #4 of Steve Stormoen’s The Pros. This version, that I put here in 2024, has been lightly edited—mostly so that it makes sense without needing to have read Steve’s excellent comic.