Eight-Pointed Stars & Why We Shouldn't Let Fascists Steal Things

The Black Ram (@A_Skoteinos) joins us for a brief history of the Chaos Star and we talk usage of symbols. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:05):
Welcome to It could Happen Here, a podcast where we
talk about things falling apart, and this week we're talking
about our ability to have things that that don't get
co opted by fascists falling apart. Garrison, Hello, take us,
take us away. Yes, so today we're going to talk

(00:28):
about kind of why maybe it's great not to seed
any aesthetic ground to fascists anytime it's uncomfortable to do.
So we've brought on someone who I found on Twitter
who wrote a very very great article about some kind
of ongoing debate and drama around like anarchists symbols um

(00:48):
and fascists trying to use symbols um. But I'm we
are talking to a black ram. Hello, Hey, how's ills things?
I'm I'm I'm actually I'm actually doing okay, I've been
I've been looking forward to this chat for a while.
So yes, if um, if people are unfamiliar, it looks
like the past few weeks people have really freaked out

(01:09):
about an eight pointed star. People really really seem concerned
about it. Um. Yeah, this has a lot tied in
with what's been happening in Ukraine, because, as always happens
when there's a new story that has anything to do
with the far right. UM people got acquainted with some
symbols that they had not been aware of before, particularly

(01:30):
the son and rad, which is a common symbol that
you'll see on members of the as Off Battalion kind
of some other far right organizations in Ukraine as well
as elsewhere. You know, the christ Church shooter wore a
son and rad, and then they started identifying all sorts
of things that they felt looked like san and rad's
everywhere on the internet, and things kind of spiraled from there. Well,

(01:53):
and I think there's actually a little bit more to
it than that. Well, we're gonna get into We're gonna
get into black Ram's article here shortly, but yeah, I
kind of first just briefly go through I think why
it's this kind of why this debate happened now, because
the debate has happened before, but it's never gotten this
like intense. A big part of this his tied to
Russia's invasion of Ukraine and everyone wanting to play like

(02:14):
where's Waldo with symbols being like can you spot the
son and red on the on the pictures of the
ace Off Battalion UM, and I think the other. So like,
so everyone's already kind of looking for symbols as like
a fun game. But the other thing that's kind of
happening is because of the Russia Dugan connection. Of Dugan's
like a political fascist writer who's a very influential inside Russia. UM.

(02:36):
But because of the Russia Dugan connection, some people are
now seeing Dugan's symbol, the Uration Square for the first time, right,
And now that they've seen the square, they're seeing anarchists
using the Chaos Star, which looks a little similar. They're
they're not the same, but they're because they just because
they just learned about the Uration Square. Now they're seeing

(02:59):
the Chaos Star, and they've never really noticed the castAR before.
Maybe they're they just don't really care about what symbols
random people use. But now that they see the Uration
symbol and they see the chaostar, they're making this connection
here and they think this is a new development, right,
they think this is like like they're they're they're asking themselves, like,
why are anarchists suddenly using this fascist symbol UM, which

(03:20):
they either think to themselves or they think out loud
on Twitter dot com. Uh, which is really rich because
I mean, anarchists have been using the chaost are longer
than Dugan has been using his uration Square. And if
you have been watching anarchists for any amount of time
on the internet, I know you you would have seen
them using the chaostar Um. It's not it's not a
new development by any means. But because everyone's trying to

(03:42):
like where's Waldo and oh since their way through the war,
they're they're kind of drawing these false connections, which is
kind of unfortunate because there is actually some interesting things
to talk about in terms of how Doogan did kind
of base his design off of Michael moore Cox Chaos
Star and a whole bunch of stuff around like why

(04:03):
anarchists use the chaos Star, and you know, there's a
whole there's there's a nice debate to be had there
around fascists always in asserting themselves in these subcultures and
trying to gain ground, whether it be like the punk scene,
the industrial music scene, uh, you know online gaming, right,
Fascists always try to do this just often we want
to we try to push back on that, right, like

(04:23):
Nazi punks fuck off. But it seems specifically with the
Chaos Star a whole bunch of people just want to
cave and let them kind of take this symbol, which
is I know, I think not not a not a
great instinct um, but to to kind of kind of
talk about this and other kind of background stuff, Like
I said, we brought on a black ram Hello to

(04:45):
help to help talk about this. So yeah, what kind
of prompted you to write your article? I guess, um,
you know, watching this debate kind of go down, what
kind of actually just like what was what was the
straw that broke the camel's back and being like, Okay,
now I need to write like a decently long nicle
on this topic. I think I've said this on like
on on Twitter a little while before writing the actual article.

(05:09):
But I think the the spark was a friend from
a guy you may or may not have seen him around.
He's like somebody he's like well dem stock but but
but he has like anarchists leading on his bio, which
I guess sort of which I guess sort of communicates
the idea that he would probably like anarchism if he

(05:29):
did not consider it to be impractical. But anyways, I
actually I kind of wavered on the idea of covering
it at all. I thought it would. I thought it
would only go for like a few days, and it
was sort of a Johnny come Lately by maybe a
day or so. Admittedly they figured it would be sort

(05:50):
of ephemeral, but there's things I sort of kept seeing.
But in the midst of writing it, there was like
some tanky who went even further and made the link
to the Kao star and I think it was the
logo of the Sith Empire from certain Star Wars media. Yeah,
we'll talk, we'll talk about that. It's it's like, well,

(06:10):
it's like, well, one of six lines and they're not
even arrows, they're just like blocks in like a sort
of hexagonal shape. But it's like the same guys really
like the idea that the logo of the Ukrainian Armed
Forces is actually the iron Cross. Yeah. A big chunk
of this, I think kind of the prehistory of why

(06:31):
this became such a specific problem started with kind of
Unite the Right in the period after that, where you
had all these new fascist groups on the ground in
the United States and they all had their symbols, and
you know, I was a part of this. To to
the degree that there's some culpability here um. A number
of researchers, including myself, we're warning people like, hey, there's

(06:52):
some like symbols that people are are taking to right
wing gathering and and they're claiming to be normal conservatives,
and these are these are symbols of groups like the
Fineest Priesthood or groups like different kind of fascist organizations,
and you might not be aware of them, and so
you should know what kind of these, you know, the
Khakistan flag or whatever means, because people are trying to
kind of signpost their sympathy to these extreme groups. And

(07:17):
that I think that was important because those people were
legitimate problems and um, they were trying to kind of
stealthily hide they're very radical right wing sympathies behind some
like obscure images. But the problem is that it got
a lot of people looking not just looking for fascist

(07:39):
symbols and everything, but also looking for the clout that
comes from like pointing something like that out. And I
think that's that's kind of the root of a lot
of these these problems. And it's not surprising that it
happened with Dugan's symbol that there's no absolutely not um
because it does like again, if you're just like kind
of a casual observer. It does look a lot like

(07:59):
the Chaos Star, and it makes its point in star
with arrows, Yeah, and it makes If you know anything
Aboutdugan's philosophy, Alexander Dugan is a essentially a Russian political
theorist and author. Um. There's a lot that's kind of
said about how close he is to Putin. He certainly
was at one point closer to Putin. There's a lot
of debate as to whether or not Putin kind of

(08:20):
saw him as more of like a useful uh person
to kind of a useful propaganda Oregan, or whether or
not he really bought into what Dugan was saying. But
Dugan is and was a really big advocate of like
what he called like multipolar um international politics. Multipolarity, which
is this idea that like the United States should not

(08:43):
be a the hegemonic power in the world right, which
it kind of was after the fall of the Soviet units.
This idea that there should be a bunch of equivalent
powers um, which is number one. You can see how
a lot of folks on the left would be drawn
in by that, even if they weren't particularly fans of Hohoton,
just the idea that like, oh, well, yeah, it's it's
been a problem that the United States, it's his massive

(09:05):
hegemonic power. Perhaps it would be better if there were
a bunch of equivalent powers, um and And it's one
of those things where there's a logic to that, but
it does kind of require ignoring all of the times
in the past when we had a multipolar world and
there was tremendous violence. There's a root error in this
sort of pathway which sort of like refuses to deal

(09:26):
with imperialism as a global system. Yeah. The reason that's
a hang up is because it once you once you
think of imperialism as a global system, you you then
have to move on to the idea that it's a
global system that ven has to be dismantled globally. Yeah,
you can't quite do that with Capada because it implicates
nations that are supposed to serve as like moments of

(09:50):
world historic progress against like hegemonic capitalism. And it is
one of those spooks of the mind that people kind
of have to do away with well, which the adoicist
movement sort of does pretty successfully because that mostly comes
from the fact that it starts off from the position
of like the state as an actual sort of structural presence.

(10:10):
It's sort of funny that, like the Marxist argument is
usually down to like hyper focused on the state and
hierarchy is idealist, which is odd when you consider that
hierarchy and the state are very much material in the
same way that capitalism itself is. So it's like it's
it feels more like a sort of argument that's like, well,

(10:34):
my materialism is the materialism. Your materialism is in fact
the form of idealism. I think with with that, we're
gonna go on a quick a quick quick head break,
and then we're gonna come back, and I think we
should probably now talk about like the origins of the
Chaos Star and and Michael Morcock and discordianism, um, and

(10:56):
then we'll kind of get into the kind of current
current debate on it. Uh so more so anyway, here's
here's here's some here's some ads for your ears coming
in through the ear waves. Yeah, yeah, it's time. It's

(11:20):
time to talk about more time for more so. Um,
I guess uh black Craft, you you actually did a
pretty good insistinct kind of thing is on how the
chaost Star came into being initially via Michael Moorecock. Don't
it just like as brief briefly talk about kind of
how he came up with the symbol for his books

(11:43):
and stuff. Okay, so full disclosure, I haven't really read
the books themselves. I've read some Michael Moorecock A lot
of what a lot of my familiarity from him is
pretty secondhand. One of the main things of that is
serifungaling like this, this sort of eighties band that I
sort of think back to. Their whole vibe is more

(12:07):
Cox works. But but but anyways, the reason why the
chaos star is the shape that it is is because
what it's supposed to represent is meant to extend outward endlessly. Yeah,
the counter symbol for order is a single a single
upward pointing arrow voted with Funny enough, when I thought

(12:27):
about that, I fought about the twas room or like tear.
It doesn't really have to say meaning, but it's like
upward pointing arrow in a symbolic context. That's the other
example I have. But but that upward pointing arrow significies
a straight s narrow expression of where possibility goes, where
potential sort of goes, which creates structure the other the

(12:51):
Chaos Star, by contrast, has like the eight directions are
meant to represent all directions in a circular sort of space,
like a comp of sorts, and the energy and the
potential and possibility goes out and all of them. We
have no set path, no definite limit, no boundaries. It
just goes. It just sort of goes out there. It's

(13:14):
little wonder why the chaos magic movement embraced it for
a very similar set of reasons. Yes, it's because even
though it is kind of a myth that there's absolutely
no rules in chaos magic, what is true is that
you can explore very a very very broad and like
almost limitless range of like practical possibilities within that movement

(13:37):
and that sort of within that sort of frame. It's
a it's a very like post structuralist, post modern view
of it, but modern is how I've heard it described.
And kind of getting back to the like what morecock
was in brief, because I do you think we need
to kind of give an overview of who he is?
Um he's still alive. Um, last I checked, at least

(13:58):
he is alive. I I heard him talking at an
Anarchist sci fi conference a few weeks ago. If you
didn't immediately know who he was, he is the most
influential fantasy author you have not heard of? He he
He is like a George RR. Martin level of influence,
if not significantly more so. Like he's he some people
will say he's the most influential fantasy author since Tolkien. UM.

(14:21):
And among his you've you've noted the band Sirith Ungle
if you've, if you've been a fan of of any
of the Warhammer games, Um, he's a huge influence on
that because the thing that he created was kind of
the the concept of chaos as a sort of religious entity.
And I'm not going to get into like the depths
of the lore in his books, but a lot of
it is about kind of the struggle between order and

(14:42):
chaos um. And so the Chaos Star he he created
that specifically like for this kind of theological like conflict
that occurs throughout his books, and it became the symbol
of like one of the sides in Warhammer in this
very like there's tens of thousands of people who have

(15:03):
the Chaos Star tattooed on them, not because of Warhammer,
but or not because of any political reason or because
of chast mensic, because they were fans of like Warhammer
forty or whatever. And it's interesting because in the same time,
when I first got into anarchist political theory, before long
before I considered calling myself one, it was because I

(15:24):
came across a book published by a k Press Um
I think I bought it in two thousand seven called
No Gods, No Masters, and it was it's a collection.
A lot of people have a copy of this book
in in their house if they're into anarchist theory. It's
like a collection of early anarchists, like people like Prudon
Um essays on like the kind of the first wave

(15:44):
of anarchist political theory. And it has a Chaos star
on the cover. UM because number one, Michael Moorecock identify
is an anarchist. Um is a is ah like as
an like is both an author and someone who identifies
as an anarchist politically and yeah, politically, and so his
books had were particularly popular among anarchists who don't always

(16:07):
get a lot of chunks of pop culture to themselves. UM.
And so he's he's It was kind of from the beginning,
both this nerdy fantasy symbol that you could see, you
could you could put alongside a bunch of different ships
from the Lord of the Rings. Not that I love
the Lord of the Rings, but like you could see
it as like like like somebody having a tattoo in Elvish.

(16:28):
But it also took on almost immediately this dual meaning
where it was actually representing aspects of anarchists political theory,
and so it was put in printed on like books
that were about political theory and had nothing to do
with fantasy. So it's I can't actually I cannot actually
think of another symbol with a similar pedigree. It's it's
a really pretty unique case. It is. It is because

(16:51):
it's it's less of like an anarchist symbol, but more
a symbol created and used by anarchists, like it was.
It was. It was, it was. It was invented by
an anarchist. It was. It was a symbol invented by
an anarchist to represent something in fiction that had such
resonance that people adopted it as an actual political symbol. Yeah,
it honestly, it honestly doesn't require that much reach to

(17:12):
see why people who would why people who like the
idea of there being no hierarchy and no state. Even
if not total freedom, there's still like the most range
that you could get that results in that negation. It
doesn't take a lot of elaboration to see why the
symbol expressly meant for the symbol of chaos would gain traction.

(17:33):
Absolute absolutely. Yeah. I was talking with Margaret Keilnjoy about
this a while ago, and she was like, yeah, like
if you were in the two thousands and then you
were like a traveling crust punk at least like people
would have chaostar tattoos because that's because that's like it's
about expanding out in all directions. You know, you're the
single arrow is law and order. Instead, we're expanding out

(17:54):
every in every possible way. Yeah, I mean I have
a chaos star tattooed on me, and I I it's
it's it's for primarily ideological reasons as opposed to the
fact that I spent my entire child with playing Warhammer
of so so yeah, it's I think now, so it
is worth mentioning. So the chaos star was invented in

(18:16):
the sixties by Michael Morcock. Of course there is there's
been other eight pointed stars over the course of thousands
of years of history. Of course it is it is.
It is like a broad like geometrical shape. Every kind
of star has meant something, yes, but the specific design
was was made was made by Michael Morcock Um and
then because of because of more cocks like anarchist tendencies

(18:36):
in fiction, his work was used or at least appreciated
by a lot of the Discordians, which is also popular
around the sixties, a lot of the situationists UM. And
then as the Discordian the situationist movement kind of morphed
and started to kind of intermingle with parts of occultism.
We have the chaos magic movement starting in the late seventies,
which started also using the the chaos star, which makes

(18:59):
sense because like when Robert you were talking about how
it's like it's like it's almost like personifying chaos as
like a thing to worship um, which is actually a
big part of early chaos magic text is is like
like reveling in the idea of like chaos is like
a primordial god, which there's there's a lot of primordial
gods um in like the actual world. You know, like

(19:19):
if you look like through through histories of various cultures,
like chaos is one of the original primordial gods, so
it is there's a big part of that in early
chaos magic books about kind of looking at chaos as
this like this very ancient force that should be kind
of respected, and I think that that is of that
is a big part of why the chaos magicians started
using uh, the the Star. I mean, obviously there's a

(19:42):
lot of crossover between like sci fi writers like Robert
Anton Wilson Um and Michael Moorecock who then Robert Anton
Wilson was very influential in the chaos magic movement. So
you can see how this gets carried over from like
anarchist sci fi to chaos magic. And then because it's
in chaos magic, it gets way more visibility. So then
it starts then you start seeing it inside more more
like underground anarchistines um. And then so around around this time,

(20:06):
Dugan was starting his political career and he was he
was u was dabbling in a lot of various like
occult circles himself. Right now, he's he's more of like
a traditionalist, like a more like a Christian traditionalist that
is kind of his primarily that is, like, is that
is his primary kind of a cult interest as long
as it could be called a cult. Yeah, it's it's

(20:26):
it's not it's not worth getting too much into the
weeds on on Dougan at this point. I think people
I think it's it's it's worth it, like like he
like he because he obviously did rip the he did
take inspiration from the Chaos Star to make his own
version of it. He's certainly because he was in those
same circles, a cultic leanings and and a degree of knowledge.

(20:47):
I think again, with a lot of things, a lot
of things about Dugan are overstated, including his like closeness
to putin because he's just really easy in part because
he's like so prolific, and and there's a lot available
on him in English. It's really easy to kind of
tie everything happening in Russia to do him to him. Um. Yeah,
and I think that's kind of a degree of what's

(21:07):
happening here. There's a website I've forgotten the name of,
but I think it had like a bunch of like
online reproduction of Dugan's various writings from the nineties, all
sorts of weird shit about occultism. And yeah, and yet
I do think that there's a very obvious gulf between
the dugan of that weird eccentric like esoteric Nazi sort

(21:31):
of phase of like his relative youth versus today where
he frames his entire rationale for multiplorality as a kind
of Christian a Christian crusade against the hegemony that he
legitimately believes to be a Satanic empire. He has basically
said that, and it's not the only thing he considers satanic, Like,

(21:54):
like we should point out that, like one of the
one of the main forces that were that we're going
against Pussy Riot were Eurasianists at these of that time,
and he called them like devils and witches and taught
his followers to show up with pitchforks. People in the
West don't really understand them. So you get guys like
when you get both Alexander reed Ross describing him as

(22:18):
an adherent of chaos magic and some guy from the
National Review referring to him as the leader of a
Satanic cult somehow. Yeah, and and boy, I mean there's
a long history of people liking to flat, liking to
flatten um fascist movements with an occultic tradition to just Satanism.

(22:38):
We're not gonna talk about that at length, but whenever,
whenever you hear people talking about a problem and like
they reduce it to its satanists, you should be a
little on edge because usually they're wrong or at least
incomplete um and they just have have kind of over Anyway,
we don't need to get terribly into that. The only
the only as I wanted to bring that up is

(22:59):
because like this is around the same time that people
that are fascists, we're trying to enter in a lot
of different politicals, like some cultures, whether it be like
the punk scene and industrial music, um, including like the
the occulture, because that that is like their primary means, right,
Like they try to like they are an aesthetic driven movement.

(23:19):
They try to cop to any aesthetic and use it
for their own gains and to to kind of overlook
the anarchist origins of this thing just because fascists tried
to cop it at some point. I think it's very
silly because then like what are you going to throw
away all punk music like come up or even like
or even like crosses, Like yeah, a fascist still used
variations of Christian crosses that still have essentially political Christian

(23:45):
meanings that I'd probably still assume that the majority of
religious fascists do lean on some kind of Christianity, and
to the extent that there's neo Pagans involved, there's sort
of a minority. There's a couple of things that this

(24:08):
is like one of them would be kind of in
the United States, fascist co option of of the flag
of the United States, which we can talk a lot about,
like the fact that the United States is an imperialist power, um,
and the genocide is done on under that flag without
while still acknowledging that attempts by fascist movements to co

(24:28):
opt it as a purely fascist symbol are problematic in
part because that symbol, the United States flag, has a
lot of power to a lot of people. And so
if you if the fascists kind of co opted totally, um,
that's a harmful thing. That's a thing that can like
allow them to get their brain worms into more people.
Which doesn't mean like you should take and wave the U. S. Flag,

(24:51):
but it does mean that, like it's just a matter
of don't you don't have to let them take the ground.
You know um, and I I think on a kind
of a different angle. One of the things I think
about a lot is uh, the first time I went
to India, seeing, especially in a large parts of India,
you'll see swastika's hanging over the doors of many, many

(25:12):
houses all over the place. You'll see them hanging from cars.
They're They're constant things. And it's only unsettling if you
have allowed yourself to forget that the swastika is a
symbol that the Nazis stole from another culture, co opted
and invested with a new meaning Japan. Yeah. Yeah, And
why should people in other parts of the world who

(25:36):
have been using it for a totally different purpose for
thousands of years, why should they be like, well, I
guess we don't get this now. It's like in India
has had to deal with their own fashion. Yes, and
and and there's I mean again, we're delving into a
lot of very deep topics because there's a lot to
be said about how the fact that the Nazis took
the swastika lead to degrees of sympathy with an areas

(25:59):
of Indian true that allowed some fascist ideology to creep in,
and like that's also tied to the fact that both
the Nazis and a lot of Indian nationalists were fighting
against the British Empire. It's all very complicated, right, They're guys,
guys like VDS of Our Care did who were founders
of the Hindu the movement, Yeah, did openly praise Hitler. Yeah,

(26:22):
it's kind of easy for some people to think of
it as entirely motivated by religion, but his whole concept
of nationhood is entirely racial. Yeah, where it says himself
that it has nothing to do with religion. So yeah,
and it's it's it's one of those things. If you
actually want to understand things and engage with them in
a useful area, you have to understand that history and

(26:45):
grapple with it without like looking at a twenty year
old Hindu temple and going, well, I guess they were
Nazis hash hash hashtag problematic. Yeah. The last thing I
actually want to talk about is how how how the
kind of debate around symbols us to symbols has just
kind of morphed into just fast jacketing anarchists in general

(27:08):
and worrying about like, oh, the fascists are secretly infiltrating
the anarchists and they're gonna turn anarchists into fascists. Just
pretty silly, because I mean, if you're gonna, if you're
gonna turn anyone into fascists, think anarchists are one of
the hardest people to do to do that too. This
is this, there's a lot of other people it's way
easier to convince to become fascists than when anarchists go fascists.
They pretty hard well, yeah, but the type, the type

(27:33):
of like fear mongering around it is still it's really
frustrating because like I'm looking at all these I'm looking
at all these Tanky's like fast jacketing anarchists for using
a for using a symbol created by anarchists, which has
been used by anarchists for decades, right, Um, But then
you also have like Tanky superstar Kaitlin Malpin regularly hanging

(27:53):
out with like like Melvin regularly hangs out with dou
Good Um. And then you have someone who's like another
like pretty like popularly like Tinky influencer like Ben Norton
who openly uses dugans multipolar theory. Right, and so if
if if if you're looking for the most visible example
of fascist nationalist rhetoric trying to enter into leftism. You

(28:14):
should look at like the growing like patriotic communists. You know,
people people like patriotic socialists, but yeah, the idea is
basically the same. But yeah, it's like people like Peter
Coffin and this like growing like patriot communist socialist kind
of live streamer grifft um, which is like because like
the easiest entry on the left for fascism is in

(28:37):
forms of nationalist authoritarian communism. Right, It's like you know
that that's that that is how you get like national socialism, right. Uh.
It's like they just had this like super cringe e
nauz Ball convention just a few weeks ago with with
some of the best moments on until Will Smith slapped
that guy. Yeah, but like you know, you have you
have like Coffin and Malpin hanging out, and like Malpen

(28:58):
regularly regularly hangs out with Do Good. It's like, if
you're gonna lift, if you want to be watching out
for like a fascist creep, maybe you should direct it
towards the people, just like doing it out in the
open and not fast jacketing like queer anarchists who have
been doing the thing that they've been doing for like decades.
I guess one of the last things I will mention is, uh,
the hilarious incidents with the Sith Empire thing of people

(29:20):
just fully of like fully getting consumed by their own
brain worms and trying to insist that a Star Wars
symbol uh is secretly uh fascist chaos star um and
then doing the same thing to the Warhammer symbol. Um.
It is it is in in I mean, it's funny
because like in Star Wars it is a fascist symbol, right,

(29:45):
that is, that's not a fascist symbol in the real world,
but it is within the world of of Star Wars
that is absolutely a fascist Also, it's also not a
chaos star. It's not a chaos star uh. And in
Warhammer it is a chaos star, but it's not a
fascist symbol. It's actually an anti just symbol within the world.
You can basically argue that, yeah, because it is. It

(30:05):
is just frustrating looking at all these people being like
trying to play trying to play the Wears Waldo game
just to all like dunk on anarchists, and it's it
just kind of shows a fundamental misunderstanding of the history
of anarchists culture um and the history like anti fascist anarchists.
You know, most of the anti fascists that I know
use the chaos star because it's because it's a red symbol.

(30:26):
It looks rad, it looks cool. Um and yeah, trying
to like in insisting that we must see this ground
and let fascists use anything that they think is esthetically cool.
I think is is a first of all, like a
losing battle to actually just like to just just to
to to start that now, I think is we'd have
some pretty bad implications for fascism and its use of aesthetics.

(30:50):
You don't have to give them things just because they
want to take those things. It makes sense that you
would see like tank yas do it, because then with
your TANKI you could basically get into a position where
you can basically discard all sorts of symbolisms and just
replace everything with like old like Soviet symbology or so

(31:10):
which is which is obviously not tied to any atrocities
that have happened. Right, Oh, oh it's dentally. Don't ever
tell them about Georgia. Yeah, don't don't tell them about Georgia, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Ukraine,
that giant lake that was like the largest lake in

(31:31):
Europe that they turned into a pile of poison. You know,
don't mention a few things, and Trotsky would be proud
considering he wanted to turn mountains into like city structure.
I mean that that actually is one of the things.
I think Trotsky was on the right ball about. More
minis tirats, more minis tirats. Let's teeth up some mountains.

(31:53):
So any any any final thoughts on our lovely circular
chaosis chaostar. I'm thinking I'm thinking of a quote from like, uh,
what was his name, Pablo Freer Day. I hope I've
gotten that name right. A quote I've seen him going
around that I think goes around something to the effect
that when the point of education isn't liberation, the goal

(32:16):
is to become the oppressor. Um, you could sort of
Usually that quote is like relevant to like the material
processes of like being inculcated into a capitalist system. So
so so you can kind of make the most sense
of it as basically like you are educated to become
a boss instead of wanting to abolish all bosses. But

(32:38):
but but on but on a micro level, you can
sort of apply it to the to the ways in
which people, even in like radical spaces sort of to
sort of become like self styled cops as it were.
That I think is a phenomenon that a lot of
the unarcho nihilist tendency sort of responds to. Anyway, this

(32:58):
is coming from a perspective that sort of flirtatious towards
an arco nihilism, but not necessarily. But it's like you
could a lot of the interactions with like like certain
people demonstrate that there are some instances of it where
I think I can't quite tell if it's po or not.
Um somebody I s s somebody posted like a photo

(33:21):
of themselves with like a like a jacket and they
had like the upside down cross and the inverted pedogram
on board. And somebody someone, somebody with like basically no
followers who somehow blew somehow blew up when they posted
that photo next to like a Nazi uniform to try
and compare the the inverted cross to a swastika or

(33:44):
no not if not a swastika, then like maybe some
other part of the jacket and the pentagram to like
the arm band or something like yeah, yeah, and I'm
still not sure if that was entirely serious. See, that's
that's the thing is, like we have to be like,
I don't like anarchist in fighting. It's rarely useful, um,
and we have to be tulix to be watchful for

(34:07):
like how much of it is just people trolling or
people trying to prompt in fighting just for the sake
of infighting. Right, So if if like I tried for
a long time to not engage in this debate because
I don't like talking about this, like I I don't
like in fighting with anarchists. I don't like I don't
like having these types of debates. So hopefully the next
time this debate starts, we don't need to because we

(34:28):
can just we can just point to how this last
one went and say, no, look, we clearly demonstrated that
this has a this has a long history of use
by anarchists, invented by anarchists, and not starting, not starting,
and not start the debate again because we we don't
we we don't need to do it, and there's no
telling if people are doing it sincerely or people doing
it ironically or people just doing it just to get

(34:48):
you know, people upset um. And I mean like if
you want to look at anarchists and look at I
where where is right wing people? Whereas fascists trying to
kind of blended with anarchists, like look at like books right,
look at end caps right. These people who try to
claim to be anarchists are very bad and actually blending
in because they can't help themselves when they start talking

(35:09):
about like the validity of anarcho capitalism or the validity
of like small nation states, like it's it is, it is.
It is hard. It's hard to actually infiltrate anarchists. This
is the thing that the FBI has said multiple multiple times.
It's hard to actually do. So whenever fascists try to
blend in, whether they're boogloo boys, they can't help but
use their old like boogaloo symbols. They can't help, but

(35:30):
just like like give hints. It is it is astonishing
how how bad they are at this thing. So also
bad at like the protection that they claimed to offer.
Like there was a there was an article from like
last year going over oh we're going over well, part
of it mentioned that they were basically at this like
purported protests that they were supposed to offer protection from

(35:52):
and most and most of what they did was get
drunk and like this on the sidewalks, the Boogloo boys.
I've seen an actual protests who are like with like
play cops stacking protesters, the biglan voice of the first
ones to run because their cowards. Yeah, all right, well,
I guess where can where can people black ground? Where
can people find in you on line? And where can

(36:13):
people read your read your article like Chaos Nihilism and
the Way of No Surrender WordPress. Basically, um, I could
I call a site left the rotical domain, but the
but the link goes like my thoughts born from fire
dot WordPress dot com. I actually try, I actually try
changing the u r L once I changed it to

(36:34):
a left the rotical domain I think in two Bells
of thirteen fourteen, but I figured that doing so would
funk up all of the stats and whatever, so I
just didn't bother. Well, thank thank you so much for
kind of writing what I would say probably the most
definitive stance on this debate at the moment, which you
can always point point back to whenever this inevitably comes

(36:56):
up again in like a year or two, because this again,
I've seen it. I've seen it come up like every
every few years you see it. So thank you, thank
you for that, and thank you for coming on. Um yeah,
if you want to follow follow us, you can do
it at the thing, you know the thing, you know
what our Instagram had happened here pod and cool Zone Media.
You can look at my unhinged chaos tweets at Hungry

(37:19):
bow Tie. Um yeah, nothing is true and everything is permitted.
Also at a Skatiness is where I go to like
sort of ramble about politics and occasionally the occult and
other things. We do we do. We do love a
good We do love a good ramble. All right, that
that that doesn't for us today, Uh funk fascists, Nazi punk,

(37:41):
sunk Off, etcetera, etcetera, etcetera. It could Happen Here is
a production of cool Zone Media. For more podcasts from
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(38:03):
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