Edit: Some of the info here is outdated, as I for instance evolved from Anarchism to ML Communism, but I'll keep it here as an archived post.
Hello friends! I want to use this text to give a preliminary introduction to who I am, how I see the world currently, and what I am / seek to do as a result of that. This is to compound why this blog exists now.
1.0 Who I Am
1.1 Short Bio
Hey again! I’m Khari Eventide, also called TheSnarkyLesbian on Twitch. I’m a Lesbian, Transgender and Anarchist blogger and my pronouns are she / hers. I also am studying sociology and am trying to both apply what I learn there to my process of analysing the world, as well as trying to teach some of it here and on my Twitch streams. I mention all these Attributes because they speak very intrinsically to who I am and what my perspective on the material and symbolic world are. So this is what this blog will be about. Sociology, politics, Queer and Trans topics, activism and my various philosophical views. Please Enjoy!
1.2 Long Bio
1.2.1 Political Views
As mentioned previously, I’m an anarchist, otherwise called a libertarian socialist, or just a socialist. The name doesn’t matter. What does matter is what is intrinsic to anarchism. Anarchists are against all unjustified hierarchies and seek to deconstruct them where possible. This is ontop of the already existing intrinsic attributes of any Socialist view, which seeks to reclaim the means of production for the proletariat (the working class), and away from the capitalist. In this aspect, all Socialists are the same. Control of the “means of production” should go to the people, to society at large and especially the workers of any given “mean of production” (like a factory) for them to democratically decide what happens with their labour. This is the quintessential Socialist view.
From there you then have further left Socialist positions that might deem to spread more and more political power on as many different people as possible, to eventually arrive at what is called the “socialist society”, a society without states, governments or currency. This however is, the utopian end-state any given political affiliation is forced to spin up, as the point one might work towards eventually. Whether or not that point is reachable at all, or however many generations it might take, is fairly irrelevant, as what is really ever up for contention are the next few steps and systematic changes with these utopian ideals existing as a horizon, a basic picture you look at when deciding how to paint your picture and which colour to pick next.
Many socialists will then – due to how utopian the “socialist society” often looks and sounds – develop certain different images as so called “transitionary states”, models of society to work towards for generations to eventually arrive at more and more progressive social models.
The reason for these transitionary states, is that current societies are indoctrinated into capitalist mindsets. Like hoarding food and other material objects, out of fear of not having enough in the future, or inherent senses of competition, or hyper-specialization in terms of which jobs people do, alienation between the worker and his created product, etc. (this entire topic warrants it’s own blog entry). So creating a society that is no longer hindered by these internalized behaviour taught to them by capitalism requires generations of people less and less traumatized by it. Since values are however still partly given to people by their previous generation, (family + environment), such a change would have fairly slowly, just look Racism and how due to generational progression that is still a problem despite equality under the law.
So since you’d only reach that wonderful society over the course of many generations, we need to think of smaller steps, smaller sub-goals to progress along. So we need to think of the short term goals especially, which is why the newer political left might be interested in fighting for imperfect more socialized systems, like Worker-Coops within the sadly capitalist system we currently have.
1.2.2 Gender / Sex / Queer Topics | Trans Anarchism
Next aspect that I highlighted earlier, was me being a queer trans person. Now to speak in very simple terms, I would call myself a trans woman, but since I believe that inherently every transgender person is non-binary (Check: Trans and Class), it doesn’t really matter whether I am a trans woman or a trans agender. Due to pragmatism and psychological reasons I progressed towards society’s more binary narrative of gender, which made me come out and live as a trans woman to gain material privileges like access to hormones and certain medical procedures (at the time in my country you were required to live and identify a certain way to receive treatment). After receiving those, I moved back more towards who I am, which is a very androgynous tomboyish person altogether, now that I have the material ability to do so. Resulting in me identifying as genderqueer for a while, but eventually I pragmatised it back towards “trans woman”, for the benefit it brings in activism. Since certain TERFs and other reactionary groups, including some trans groups, seek to define trans men and women by being those that also adhere to feminine and masculine roles respectively. Youtuber Contrapoints is one of those people, who has fairly reductive views on non-femme trans women and non-binary people, and is found associating fairly openly with some TERFs and so called transmedicalists, people that deem you only “real trans”, if you undergo hormone therapy and further surgical medical procedures.
I oppose these requirements and arbitrary gatekeepings. Because I deem human gender to be inherently non-binary and in general thoroughly socially constructed, so my goal tends to be to advocate for two things: Gender Abolishing and Free Access to the Means of Bodily Modification, which I personally call “Trans-Anarchism”, not as a subsection of anarchism, but applying libertarian socialist ideals to trans politics.
Abolishing Gender means to abolish the idea of a gender binary, or applying a certain expected gender identity to people’s sexual characteristics at birth. These socially constructed categories only create issues for people, by resulting in them being shamed for their form of expression. Think of men not being allowed to be feminine, or women shamed for masculine behaviour. Gender abolitionists want to both crumble this categorical thinking and tear these behaviours away from ideas like “feminine and masculine” in the end, since these further reductionary and highly problematic. Gender and gender roles need to be abolished in the end for people to be able to absolutely freely express themselves.
Access to the Means of Bodily Modifcation (Trans-Anarchism) essentially means that everyone, no matter how they identify, should receive access to whichever hormones and surgical / medical procedures they desire. Whether or not people understand it or sympathize it, some people desire their body to look differently, and are forced into long inhumane paths of transition to receive them, whether or not they identify any differently. Currently this is stacked ontop of transsexuality / transgender / intersex policies, where it is assumed that someone seeking to change / modify their body in the area of their sexual characteristics has to be essentialist Trans. But I refute that. Whoever desires changes to their body, including changes to their sexual characteristics, should receive access to them without having to justify themselves over the course of years of degrading therapy and various gatekeepings inbetween. Additionally, these procedures and hormonal treatments should be covered by health care and be furthermore free of charge.
Please note, that I personally call this subset of ideas and policies “Trans-Anarchism” or “Access to the Means of Bodily Modification” based on my previous essay “Trans and Class” where I used this word. It’s possible that these theories already exist in a different way or framing with a different name, so please forgive me for using the wrong terminology here, if that is the case.
These two positions would come about in different ways though, the previous generally being more culturally enforced through living it and a few laws, while the latter definitely requires legislature to come into effect.
In my blog I will likely write about both of these topics, as well as any other gender political or queer political topic that I have good ideas about, or desire to educate people on.
1.2.3 Activism
I don’t do super much right now since I go to Uni on a regular basis and I’m pretty terrible with a lot of physical activities. In the past I did Speeches at Pride Frankfurt (these speeches I can post here). Otherwise I currently organise a bar evening called “Queeres Patientenkollektiv” (Queer Patients Collective) about once a month at the LSKH in Frankfurt, which as bar evenings go is there to garner both the left wing and queer audiences to intermingle and possibly become interested in more lefty politics.
Furthermore I currently stream every Thursday (with more here and there) on Twitch under twitch.tv/thesnarkylesbian where I talk about sociology, politics, work on current Uni stuff and play video games. If you have a question about any of my posts on this blog, or any questions in general, you can come there and ask me live!
Lastly, I have a discord server for trans people, fembois and other gender non-conforming lefties to engage in the most socialist degeneracy we can muster. Join us, whether you post political content, want to femboy around or just want to further our goal of a glorious cuteness society where we pay in headpats, you are more than free to join us! We’re obviously NSFW.
2.0 What I See
2.1 The World Right Now / Liberalism
What I see is a world deeply entrenched in late stage Capitalism, everything one does has to somehow lead – not to the betterment of society – but to the goal of maximizing profit. Schools, universities, education programs, everything is set up to funnel you into the working class, to work for someone maximizing profit or somehow climb the ladder yourself, and as a sociology student I can tell you, class mobility isn’t what they tell you it is. Only a fraction of a tiny margin will ever leave the class they were born into, and even when you can climb the ladder, the system is set up to make you jump through so many hoops and damage you so much in the choice of your habitat, that you yourself will be pushed into the views and values as the higher classes, at which point you will not break the system they set up, but reproduce it. Just like scholars in 20th century and before were likely still only allowed to study under the patronage of either churches or rich land owners, meaning, as they are likely to affirm the goals of the hand feeding them, they too would not criticise their masters.
The same is more or less the case here, while everyone is technically able to engage in political work, the system is skewed against them.
- They do not have the same access to political education as rich people.
- They do not have the same amount of free time to engage in both political education and political advocacy because they need to work long hours to gain the money required to finance their lives (as opposed to owners who make money from owning the means of production).
- They do not have the same amount of finances to be able to create political groups and organize local or national political events.
- Their habitus (habitual day to day live and who shares the immediate environment in your day to day lives, and which values they share with you) does not allow them to easily seek and find communities of likeminded political ideals (especially since the previously mentioned points still apply.
- They are (addendum to the earlier point) not automatically pulled into political work through their direct environment as it would be the case for capitalists who would automatically politicise one another.
The opposite is the case for the capitalist class. Due to their money and how their class inherently seek to uphold it’s own power, access to political education is not just easy, it is usually more or less mandatory depending on the families in question, since most wealthy people are wealthy because they inherited wealth / are living from their parents wealth.
Owners also have high amounts of free time. This is because they do not need to work to earn their wage, they earn money by owning the means of production or various other assets. With that free time they can access political education or engage in political advocacy quite easily. And since this is already the case, the system will further incentivise them to do so. Their great finances also allow them create movements, pay for advertisement, pay off politicians or otherwise sway politicians and the working class through lobby groups. As mentioned earlier, due to being born into already wealthy families, living in areas with more other wealthy people and often sharing activities with other wealthy people (Habitus) they directly affect one another politically. So if they aren’t already massively in favour of keeping each other in power and reducing the rights of the workers, then being affected by other wealthy people will do that.
All this means, that the wealthy bourgeois capitalist class has more than enough ways to sway the system towards staying in power.
So what is that system? That system is called Capitalism, and the political affiliation seeking to uphold and reproduce it, is liberalism. Liberalism goes back to John Locke, an 18th century English philosopher who abstracted humans to economical actors engaging in economic systems in their social actions. Deeming that every human being is a rational actor, solely doing rational actions on the basis of their economic interests (Collins, 1994, p. 121). Which was further compounded by Adam Smith, saying that will use that perfect rationality to pursue what is good for them. And what is good is whatever brings them pleasure. Humans inherently have no base human rights other than a right to their private property.
So do whatever you want, as long as you seek to maximize your profit. A government should only be there to protect people’s property rights.
This classical liberalism (any liberalism is then really just an abbreviation) is more or less the system we live in today. Through the influences of socialists (or milquetoast social democracy, as those socialists who gave up on trying to seize the means of production, and will instead try to make liberalism as socially just as possible) we have various regulations today that are enforced by the government to keep owners and CEOs from exploiting their workers however much they want with no recourse, or to protect the environment. But despite this, the capitalist class will always seek to circumvent these regulations and somehow exploit their workers to maximize their own profits. Furthmore neoliberalism emerged, which deems to reduce these regulations and strip more and more power from the government so they can gain more profit without any limits. This is also why neoliberals are – like anarchists – in favor of open borders, because nationalistic values do not matter to them, more people in the country mean more buyers to them. And growth: meaning making more profit than in a previous quarter, can thus grow further. Making more and more money every quarter is their goal, to gain more and more power.
This is why Liberalism is usually on the right of political affiliation graphics, since right wing and left wing determine what power distribution is being sought. While the left seeks to distribute more and more power to as many different people as possible, the right seeks to distribute more and more power to as little people as possible (which is why of course monarchists and fascists are on the right).
The bland reason why American progressives and other milquetoast centrists are called liberals, is both because the traditionalist fascist side of politics looks down on liberals, as well as seeks to make the left unanimous with baseline liberalism, which, as history and sociological sciences can subscribe under, lives under constant paradoxes, making it easy to dismantle and ridicule. Additionally, the Overton window (best explained here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v-hzc6blGI ) in US America is very far to the right, meaning from the perspective of a far right pundit, liberals might indeed be to their left, eventhough liberals are opposed by the left.
And yes, that means liberals and neo-liberals are technically not conservatives, fascists or otherwise traditionalists, therefore they might not outwardly have a problem with queer people or support racist ideologies, but it should be kept in mind, that the competitive elements in society and economic inequalities are among the biggest predictors in the reproduction of racist, sexist and homo- and transphobic attitudes (their emergence laying in Religion), additionally the upper classes and capitalists usually hail back from conservative families who imprinted their traditionalist values onto them, meaning they will often skew things towards this direction as well.
But essentially neo-liberals will use whatever means necessary to indoctrinate people towards their side of the isle and to keep them from revolting and joining the left in seeking to seize the capitalists power. Whether they need to threaten people, or charm them. Usually they will try to charm them through for instance selling them rainbow merchandise and releasing pseudo-progressive advertisements to seem progressive themselves and to make other like-minded progressive people buy their product and further support them / signal boost that company to give them essentially free advertisement. This is further done by even private people on various outlets of social media to give lip-service to the general idea of progressive political stances (dubbed idpol by progressives and reactionaries alike) to garner social capital as Hume would call it, or generally find acceptance among their peers. But this often does not come from an actual progressive mindset and a desire for material benefits for marginalized groups, but instead to seem enlightened and progressive among peers. Which is for instance how popular American media can advertise Elizabeth Warren in (a woman should become the president, in the name of feminism) but suppress positive coverage of Bernie Sanders because he is a man, yet he actually fought for women’s rights for multiple decades and has posted a plan of what to do as president, a plan that would increase women’s rights, why Warren for instance used to be a Republican decades ago.
Again, when liberals talk about progressiveness and helping women and queer people, they do not want to increase the material lives of these people, they only want to seem progressive while still furthering their agenda or stripping rights of minorities.
2.2 The Right and Fascism
Now the right, including traditionalists, conservatives, neo-liberals and fascists (including Monarchists and Nazis) seek to – as mentioned before – distribute as much power and possible to as little different people are possible, resulting in a majority of the wealth and power laying with a minority (in numbers) of people. And while liberals are often sympathizing heavily with traditionalist conservatives, due to sharing a habitus with them and them often gaining their preliminary values from them (as we all get the from previous generations in our class), at the end of the day they do not necessarily care about either of these symbolic values, they only want more money and more power no matter how. They will milk capitalism and try to balance the fascist right and socialist left for as long as possible to keep their power.
The fascist right is different in that regard. Symbolic values like the nuclear family, 20th century gender roles, being a white anglo-saxon, Christianity and being preferably very much heterosexual are important to them. Now again, these values are merely symbolic, and they are also completely arbitrary as there is no inherent use in any of them to society over any other model. They are not more efficient, or less criminal or anything else. But it’s what they love, and everything else is pushed away or attacked. It deems people as inherently more or less valuable and worthy of support, and seeks to consolidate power onto those who in their eyes “deserve it more” and pull it away from those think “do not deserve power or recognition”.
From there on, fascism only gets progressively worse and more brutal. White supremacists for instance are hyper-racist and usually also hyper-traditionalist, anyone not looking them is seen as a degenerate, without value or often even parasitic. Often to a point where they seek to eradicate who they deem to be degenerate. Everything not like what they deem beautiful and graceful will either have to serve them as slaves, or be eradicated.
Nazis then, are white supremacists plus, so to say. On top of the hyper-traditionalism, hyper-racism, hyper-nationalism etc. they also believe that Jews secretly control the world. They will dogwhistle about this in all kinds of way, for instance by bringing up the “JQ” or “the jewish question” to see if their followers believe the same things they do. They are the ones who will often reject Christianity for it’s Jewish roots, and instead engage in what is academically referred to as “Palingenesis”, which is the idea that through bloodlines and destinies, they are somehow supposed to be higher human beings, and that through eugenics and racial cleansing they are supposed to achieve the rebirth of great human nations like the Roman Empire. It’s all highly esoteric and I recommend people to look up the term “palingenetic ultranationalism”. If you are not a part of these great, destined to lead bloodlines, then you will either be made a slave, or murdered. This is what they want.
Fascists do not inherently care about Capitalism. In fact they deem it problematic as they desire to build hierarchies around the way people were born, their skin colour etc, not how much money they have. So they inherently oppose liberalism. However, because they often share a habitus with traditionalist capitalists, and because they have an easier time infiltrating liberal-conservative spaces they will often refrain from rallying against liberalism. Or if they do the often detach it from it’s own system (describing liberals leftists instead of the political stance affiliated with capitalism). But don’t kid yourself, the more power they get, the more they will rally against Capitalism as well, and past fascists actively have fought it.
But they fight it from the right, and to make it’s stratification process worse, not better. In order to recruit people over to their side, they will lie about all kinds of things, from their own ideology to the ideology of their opponents. Which for themselves, because Nazism is stigmatized, makes sense, but for the left – who wear their ideals on their sleeves – need to lie and manipulate a lot harder, among other things by abusing the already existing anti-left lies and attitudes by liberals. They, like everyone else critical of Capitalism, understand that Capitalism is an extremely volatile system that constantly crashes as part of how it is set up. Which is why there is constantly financial crashes. Every time this happens, people’s unhappiness increases since their material situation worsens. And unhappy people, especially economically unfortunate ones, are very easy to manipulate and radicalize. Just tell them all will be better once they get rid of whichever group is currently the scapegoat. Tell them that the popular media and politicians care more about whichever minorities you do not like (like blacks, queer people) than about you, and quickly you can radicalize them towards whatever you want.
Now technically the Left could do that as well, especially since we have a precedence for it. After all, socialism would empower the working class. But this is something the Left has always been horrible at. Short and strong messages, unity and public visibility. Especially since in many countries we are heavily stigmatized as well. America for instance literally went through multiple Red-Scares, times in which one was persecuted for identifying as a socialist or even somewhat looking like you might have sympathies for Socialism. Socialists are underdogs, and we in-fight a lot. We do not have the quick rapid fire propaganda and easy to remember messages of the right. And that is something we need to change.
2.3 Present Danger
Now through right-wing watch organisations and people studying these Nazi movements we know that they commit more terror attacks than in previous decades, undergo more attempts at infiltrating certain political echelons or groups with an access to power (like police), they keep Killing-Lists (names of people to murder either now or during a revolution), they support Prepper-Movements that have started banking guns on mass, and as sociologists like Andreas Kemper have claimed, influential groups among them seem to already theorize a “Day X” on which they desire to violently overthrow the Status Quo and current political system.
I personally had similar theories and fears before, so personally I have no doubt that whatever bigger event happening in the west that creates a situation of social “anomie” (coined by Emilé Durkheim), will likely result in them starting a fascist revolution.
So the Question is: Are we strong enough to both protect ourselves from them, and defeat them in the end?
3.0 What I Want
So what do I want? What is my goal? Especially with this blog and all.
Well in short, I want the Left to win. I want as many people as possible to become Socialists, oppose Fascism and Capitalism and preferably also for al of us to free ourselves from the chains put upon us by traditionalists.
Can I do all that with my shitty little blog, a bar evening nobody visits, the odd Speech at Pride and the occasional low effort Twitch stream? Probably not. But I will do my part as good as I can.
We all tend to feel horribly about ourselves, especially on the left we tend to feel like we do not do enough, like we are essentially lazy and weak and never really good enough. But that I believe that to be untrue. Every tiny bit helps. Activism is stressful and often dangerous, especially when done in public. So never force yourself to over-extend. Do what you are comfortable with, and no matter how much do, I am thankful. As long as you assist the left, you are doing enough. As long as you do more than accept this shitty world and stick your head in the sand like the shitliberals do, you are doing enough. And every little bit helps.
Whether you correct a friend making a shitty joke or memeing against socialism, or if you are openly showing flag / lefty symbols (cause visibility is one of THE strongest proponents in activism), or whether you educate people online. You are very welcome. Don’t kneel down in front of some odd authority that is overblown by various online cultures like Cotnrapoints, Peter Coffin, Destiny, Vaush, Hbomb etc., give us your voices;
You are important!
You are valuable!
You are helping!
It doesn’t matter if not a lot of people come, or not a lot of people listen. You are there, you act, you help, you make this world better.
And that is essentially what I am doing too. I don’t want to be some kind of authority, but I have my voice too.
We need to radicalize others, share political theory with them, educate them about social sciences, make them see and understand your perspective. If need be with memes too.
Remember, every little bit helps!
Subsequently, I post political, sociological and other ideas here or try to give small introductions to certain topics (like Trans-Anarchism). Maybe I will share fictional content too, whatever I feel like. I will of course make sure to mark it all correctly, so you can only check what you really care about.
Until then, thanks for reading and fighting with me comrades!
Khari Eventide (aka TheSnarkyLesbian)
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