Sh*t MANarchists say

I know someone on this board who's totally like that.

I LOLed a lot when I first saw this. It's become a running joke with my friends to just be like "you wanna get arrested? you wanna go to Occupy?" at random times.

I saw an earlier version which was absolute shite, but that one was pretty funny

[deleted]

1 joke.

2. BJJ's head

3. straight over

I rather think mine was over yours son.

This is quite good. Although I have been guilty of this recently, said the black panthers were good to some one. Ignorance prevails. I thought they were good because Immortal Technique name dropped them.

I'm not going to watch that video. What do the Black Panthers have to do with anything?

+ 1

Also, who the fuck listens to Immortal Technique? UGH

I dunno, this video is pretty funny.

Immortal Technique drops too many 'F-bombs' and Illumaniti-bombs for me to get into. Both are more than enough to ruin his music for me, but I can't say he doesn't have talent.

Immortal Technique was one of the people that got me into anti government/lefty politics so Im pretty biased. Politics are not sound I guess, but does drop a lot of good knowledge.

I dunno if I've really come across any of these 'MANarchists' so the jokes don't seem to work on me. Is it more of an American thing or do you have to hang around in the anarchist ghetto more to understand it?

Maybe it's because I'm a MANarchist or sumet?

the black panthers were pretty fucked. Eldridge Cleaver, at one point the Panther's "minister of information" and head of the "international section" released a book in which he advocated the use of rape as a weapon against white women. Cleaver claims to have engaged in the practice himself saying that he first raped black women for practice, then moved on to white women. This was part of a strain of thinking that was actually rather prominent in the african-american left at the time. Many leaders felt that black women had somehow stolen the masculinity of black men, and that black men needed to reclaim their dominance. When Stokely Carmichael, 'honorary head of the black panthers', was asked what position women should have in SNCC he replied, "The only position for women in SNCC is prone."

I don't want to be a black panthers apologist, but they were pretty cool when Fred Hampton was chairman.

Shit, I knew Cleaver was a convicted rapist, but I assumed that he dropped that when he became political. Not that he tried to give it a political justification! That is irredeemably fucked

Aye good thing I'm what Brazilian Jujitsu calls middle class student scum. I learned that stuff about the panthers in my african-american history class hehe.

This highlights a lot of issues right. I don't want to be an 'apologist' but, I don't think this is really the strongest critique of the panthers per se. Eldridge Cleaver is clearly an asshole I make no bones about that (he later joined the Republican party too right?) and there was definitely that hyper-masculinist trend in the panthers (which, we could probably generalize all movements which flirt with guerilla warfare etc). But there were also internal debates within the party on the role of women that cannot be reduced to Eldridge Cleaver and Stokely Carmichael (take Angela Davis or Kathleen Cleaver for example. Both 'feminists' in some measure). Indeed black feminism and radical black feminist groups developed exactly out of these internal contradictions. As you say, there was a prominent hyper-masculinist trend, but there was also a prominent gender-equality trend which, became more prominent as the male party members were gradually incarcerated.

In the context of this video I think I can shed more light on what I am trying to say. The problem with 'Manarchism'* and people like Cleaver and Carmichael is the problem of the insidious nature of patriarchy and how it affects our nominally 'libertarian' or 'liberationist' groupings. The problem then, isn't just something particular to the Panthers, but should be seen as part of the wider problem of patriarchy.

* Incidentally didn't someone in the Romanian section of x recently advocate rape in exactly the same way Cleaver did?

They're mentioned in the video.

There's a brilliant essay* on the BP's gender dynamics by Trayce Matthews which I highly recommend. It's called "No one ever asks, what a man's role in the revolution is ": Gender and the Politics of the Black Panther Party 1966- 1971 and is one of many in Charles E. Jones' book The Black Panther Party Reconsidered. (Lol, I'm so whoring this book out! )

The book (which I ought to read) in which Elridge Cleaver discusses rape is called Soul on Ice. During his 1968 presidential campaign, Cleaver promoted the idea of "pussy power", i.e. women's ability to withhold sex in order to compel men to political activism, which is messed up for a number of reasons. Sex and women's bodies are seen as commodities to be exchanged for revolution, that he was an influential leader promoting it as legitimate political action, it's heterosexist in that "real men" are not only identified by their commitment to the BPP, but also by their participation in "appropriate" sexual practices with the a partner of the "appropriate" gender.

However, Cleaver's sexism/ misogyny is not as clear cut as that as, in building support for the incarcerated Panther Ericka Huggins, he explicitly called for women's equality and liberation (I'd quote his statement, but it's really long). It seems an astonishing turn around so whether it's really a genuine shift in consciousness or political expediency I don't know.

The 'prominent strain in the african-american left at the time' that Soapy refers to is the black matriarchy/ "tangle of pathology", which originated from Daniel Patrick Moynihan's The Negro Family: A Case for National Action (March 1965). Moynihan's report concluded that Black families were matriarchal and that Black men were unable to fulfill the roles required of men in patriarchal society. According to Moynihan, "the Negro community has been forced into a matriarchal structure which, because it is so out of line with the rest of the American society, seriously retards the progress of the group as a whole and imposes a crushing burden on the Negro male, and in consequence, on a great many Negro women as well."

I agree with Matthews that this theory can't be seen in isolation though, as there were also competing ones such as black cultural nationalism with its biological determinism, which the BPP leadership firmly rejected, and white feminism, which they were sympathetic to, but understandably not fully comfortable with.

This. The impression I get from Matthew's essay (and from Regina Jennings' personal account) is that the BPP was patriarchal, what with the divison of labour in the community programmes and prevailing theory of 'black matriarchy', but as she says the gender dynamics can't be seen as either static or linear.

*Having said that, I haven't read anything that has been comparably comprehensive.

The accents in that MANarchists video are like, oh my god, so totally nasal?

Why do US anarchists randomly set 'dumpsters' (lol) on fire?

a sensible discussion seems to have broken out, so i've moved this out of libcommunity.

Inb4 manarchist ryan gosling...

Who's Ryan Gosling?

I have never met any anarchist with any similar attitude, so is this a valid parody at all? I mean, I read a lot about how anarchist groups can preserve sexism, patriarchism which of course true in as long as no organisation, no group, no individual is free from the social upbringing.

In addition, it looks like they make fun of a teenager attitude in general (hence the style of speaking I guess), which is not completely fair either as teens are generally more attached to norms (friend-gang-schoolmate norms), with an additional boost of sexual hunger. As I recall, when I was around 16-17, I could not see through the red-fog most of the times, and was driven to get laid all the time. So to say, the social upbringing was highly exaggerated by my hormones. I don't think that's the ideal period of character for sensitivity toward sexual and gender issues. Just saying...

thing is, would you notice if you had? i mean i've lost count of the amount of times i've heard anarchist blokes talk over women to tell them they hear their concerns, but they're wrong. i've seen plenty of examples of anarchist blokes laying on the 'feminism' all thick to get into someones pants too. i'm sure there's plenty i don't notice, probably on my part too. i mean there's plenty in the video i don't recognise. that might mean i hang around with better anarchists, or might just mean i tend not to notice this kind of thing as i'm not on the receiving end. i'm sure there's at least an element of the latter.

It all reminds me of trendy lefty 1980s bloke, but I don't really recognise this 'manarchist' character. Mind you, that could be because, outside of political meetings, political activity and pub after a meeting, I've never really spent much time socially with 'anarchists' or with the anarchist 'scene'. After all, one certainly wouldn't want to introduce them to one's in-laws, would one?

It fits this one 'medic' dude I know to a T. I thought the video was pretty funny, but mostly since I know him.

*

This is a good point that I don't think gets talked about enough. When I was 18 I was pretty put off by the term "manarchist" and new wave feminism itself. My freshman year of college I was a socially awkward kid who didn't talk well with girls and before I even had the slightest grasp of new wave feminism I was branded a "manarchist" by the other female activists on campus. It really annoyed me for several deeply personal reasons mainly that people assumed that I led this privileged wonderful life of manarchy and being white but what they didn't know was that I suffered from some very real personal problems. Looking back I understand a little more why I was called a "manarchist", I was sexist in ways that at the time I had no understanding of. But it really hurt me and still hurts me when I think of how misunderstood I was, and how everyone assumed that my life was privileged and wonderful when in reality I was suffering quite a bit from very real problems.

it's funny, there is an American activist accent (which also happens to be very annoying). My old housemate and I advertise for a new roommate, and when one came for the interview we could tell from the moment she opened her mouth she was an American activist. Which it later turned out she was.

We gave the room to someone else…

Onto this:

I removed the name of the group, in case anyone read it and believed it without seeing the further comments. For reference, the initial comment said IWA. The IWA doesn't have a section in Romania. However one member of the Initiative Anarcho-Syndicalist of Romania did express support for the rape of fascist women. Since then the group has said they expelled him (although another remaining group have disputed this since, the truth is unclear).