In case you hadn’t noticed, FRR has been on hiatus for the last several months. The TLDR for this goes as follows: One co-host moved, another co-host moved, and I(rydra) moved and lost the recording studio that friends and I built with our own hands in our own warehouse, and some problems with the anarchist milieu and anarchy as it works socially and projectually for a variety of reasons. Now, for the long version.
The Rebel’s Dark Laughter by Bruno Filippi
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This is an excerpt from the Rebel’s Dark Laughter. Some of Bruno’s work is lost but the idea of him lives through his incendiary poetry. His essence seems to be something of a myth. He lived his passions and convictions entirely. The writings of Bruno Filippi are truly beautiful – emotional, irrational, and romantic. His positions are defined by his love of life, but also his expression of suffering. His poetry embodies the most admirable qualities of youth – strong emotions, earnest devoutness for anarchy and the desire for vengeance. His feelings of strong repugnance for domination or subservience in any form is admirable. He was as harsh in his assessment of the slaves who resigned themselves to their slavery as to the masters who exploited and oppressed them. Acquiescence in any form was despicable to him. Surely he would laugh in the faces of many who call themselves anarchists today, much like he did to many that were around him. His writing is bound to offend some who can only read through the lens of political correctness. That is their problem. All forms of puritanical morality impoverish existence.
Dear Aunt Sadie: An Excerpt from Coming to Power
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An excerpt from Coming to Power: Writings and Graphics on Lesbian
S/M. Edited by members of Samois
Coming to Power is a collection of art, essays and erotica from
“lesbian feminists” out of the fabled, feared Old Guard of the San
Francisco BDSM scene. It contains some questionable and dated content
that you have to take with a grain of salt in order to enjoy and learn
from this book. But there’s a wealth of knowledge to be had.
This book came out in 1981. It is a 282 page piece of history I never
thought I would see, written by queer women into S/M, for queer women
into S/M. Samois published this in the midst of the Sex Wars,
documenting and refuting the heated anti-sex climate of established
lesbian feminism. Samois queers found each other caught between the
mortar of heterosexual alienation and they pestle of lesbian feminist
puritanism, and rebelled. This book is a long scream, a maniacal
laugh, a “fuck you.” Excuse me while I gush.
Baedan: The Anti-chamber
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This is an excerpt from the queer nihilist journal Baedan
Join September as it attempts to cultivate a politics of poop:
So, my roommate has one of those Squatty Potty things (he also has a bidet, but we don’t talk about it). It’s like some plastic stepstool that wraps around the bottom of the toilet so you can sit in a squatting position – because apparently sitting while shitting is super bad for your bod, it like scrunches up some muscle inside of you or something. Essentially, this means that modern civilization has filled the world with toilets, which have turned turned out to be physically detrimental to your health, so now we have to get more products to allow us to sit in the shape of a squat, as if we were still pooping out in the woods.
Prison Society: An account of the 2016 New Year’s Noise Demonstration Mass Arrest at Schiphol-Oost Detention Centre by Xander
Yesterday I was held hostage, formally arrested and then held in a migrant detention center by military police in the Netherlands. I was processed at the military police headquarters and dragged from holding cell to holding cell, eventually arriving to a long-term prison cell that to my surprise was nicer than most university dorm rooms I had ever visited and lived in. Standing in the cell and looking out the window, an airport draped the background of stylistically impressed fortified walls that enclosed an orderly grass square, ATM and a playground surrounded by surveillance cameras and barbwire. This place was just a gated community or a housing estate with more fortification, guards and a life explicitly regimented to totalitarian control. These niceties do not change the fact that it is a prison, but the order and architecture of the prison saturates everything, everywhere in(modern) society—transforming and homogenizing the environments that people inhabit.
Cage of Brass by Samuel R. Delany
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Delany explores the depths of a futuristic prison unimaginably deep underground, where prisoners are kept in glycerine coffins of which the only two notable characteristics are darkness and silence. Venture into the minds of three different types of criminals as they decide if they deserve to escape, as they talk of their crimes, their guilt, their passions, and their imprisonment. Contemplate utter silence, unimaginable darkness, and nothing.
Episode 91: All The Things! On Billions of People and Anarchist Projects
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Squee and Rydra host episode 91 of Free Radical Radio and mostly discuss population size and anarchist’s relation to the real, and anarchist news and the benefits and problems of different anarchist projects. We open the show with some personal stuff, is the personal political? Then we get into an extended conversation on anarchist news. Highlights: Squee proclaims that he wants to help people! Rydra is in the elf mines over Christmas as the feudal lords leave their manors to the lowly serfs. Spreading of anarchy and a discussion of occupy and anarchist interventionism.
Anarchist Spirituality Presentation From the 2015 East Bay Anarchist Bookfair
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At some point, many Anarchists in North America will eventually cobble together enough experiences to gain an actual sense of self. At that point their lives will cease to be a desperate scramble to create and defend an insecure social identity, and the deeper question of how to relate to a complex universe will emerge. Their place in a reactionary teenage subculture will be revoked or refused, but sadly, most will turn to some mixture of politics, religious or secular monotheism, and humanism to seek answers. What would it mean to cultivate an amoral, anti-humanist spiritual practice that places one in direct relationship with a living world and offers the possibility of an actual Anarchist adulthood?
Doc and Fluff: A Dystopian Tale of a Girl and Her Biker
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An Excerpt (Chapter 20) of Doc and Fluff by Patrick Califia, read by Hyena
Written in the early nineties but set in the apocalyptic future, Doc encounters Fluff in a bathroom of the home base of the Alamo Angels biker gang. Together they kick start a chase up the West Coast, leaving destruction and mayhem in their wake. The pair winds up in the slums of Portland, where they settle in with a community of sex workers and dykes. This is where we meet them in chapter 20, as Doc and Fluff’s relationship continues its downward slide.
Episode 90: On The East Bay Anarchist Bookfair, Mass Shootings & Insubordinate Care
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Hosted by Rydra, Squee, and Kelpsea. We discuss our day at the East Bay Anarchist Bookfair in Oakland, CA. We discuss tabling and presentations on mass shootings, self care for the damned, post-modernity, rojava, spiritual anarchy, and more. What the fuck is nihilism? Are we nihilists? Can you be a nihilist? Is self care destruction? Is destruction art? Is art inherently irrational? Rydra and Squee finally get into a disagreement, it is over Rydra making claims to being ahistorical and Squee says context matters!