From Scenes

PDF: Print version | Read version

Appelism is an informal strain of authoritarian communism that has been gaining traction on this continent over the past decade or so. Taking up elements of both the revolutionary party structure and insurrectionary anarchism, this tendency rebrands authoritarian communism as something that looks like informal networks but acts like a party.

Appelists generally do not present themselves as appelists. The term “appelist” refers to The Call (L’Appel in the original French) by the Invisible Committee, written by some of the same authors as the 1999 journal Tiqqun. This is why “appelists” are sometimes also called “tiqqunists.” Both are terms popularized by anarchists to counteract appelists’ claims that they do not have an ideology or established political network.

Appelists’ dishonesty around this is part of a larger strategy of trying to cease being visible as a distinct group or milieu (which they term “opacity”). They then seek to invisibly coordinate various aspects of everyday life towards a form of communism, with an emphasis on building and controlling infrastructure. This is accompanied by a push to intervene decisively in moments of social conflict such that those situations escalate, struggles gain territory, and people are drawn into their infrastructure. Appelists will typically identify themselves as partisans, autonomists, or communists, if at all, though in North America it is more common for them to also selectively call themselves anarchists. Continue reading Against the Party of Insurrection: A Look at Appelism in the U.S. →

Notes on September 26th: Reflections on looting, black liberation and anarchism

Submission

On Monday August 14th 2023, Philadelphia police officer Mark Dial shot and killed Eddie Irizarry as he sat in his car. Police initially lied saying that Eddie attacked the cop with a knife, but video footage showed that Eddie was shot in mere seconds while seated in his car with the window up. Following this Dial was suspended for 30 days pending termination. In early September Dial was charged with a number of crimes including murder but the presiding judge would eventually dismiss his charges. The cops who attended the court date in uniform cheered and celebrated when the charges were dropped. On September 26th, that same day Eddie’s family and the Party for Socialism and Liberation (alongside Black leftist groups like Black Alliance for Peace and the W.E.B. DuBois Movement School) organized a peaceful march through Center City protesting the decision. That demonstration dispersed after a couple hours but was followed by looting, initially in Center City before spreading to West, North, and Northeast Philly as the night went on.

The Black liberation movement is alive! Those who say it’s dead are either racist or not in the street and these revolts are the proof. Although the number of people in the streets was smaller than in 2020, there was widespread revolt across Philadelphia. Police killed Eddie Irizarry, a non-Black Puerto Rican, and Black people responded with revolt. Similarly in 2020 in Kenosha, WI when Kyle Rittenhouse killed two white people in the midst of a riot against police and later had his charges dropped, Black people rioted in the Bay Area. These are both examples of a Black consciousness that recognizes anti-Black systems regardless of if they are targeting Black people in a specific instance.
Continue reading so-called United States: Notes on September 26th: Reflections on looting, black liberation and anarchism →