Identity Politics – Dark Nights

An Anarchist Critique of Post-Modernism and Post-Anarchism

Posted on 2026/02/08 by darknights

AN ANARCHIST CRITIQUE OF POSTMODERNISM AND POST-ANARCHISM

The 20th century, which began as a revolutionary whirlwind, ended with a collapse of emancipatory ideas, from anarchism to socialism, which were “defeated” by a capitalism that would mutate and transform itself according to its needs. Capitalist domination recovers old “revolutionary” struggles—social, economic, ecological—absorbing many of these emancipatory ideas and incorporating them into its program. On the one hand, the inability of revolutionary movements to see and analyze these new capitalist restructurings, and on the other hand, capitalism with its endless wars and conflicts of domination and destabilization of entire territories, or in its communist form, with its immense sinkholes of moral and material misery, represented by the gulags, led to the destabilization of the revolutionary movements that had cornered capitalism at different points in the 20th century.

This succeeded in shackling all yearnings for freedom and emancipation, provoking a widespread exodus of revolutionary movements that later converged in the ideas of postmodernism. Faced with the fall and crisis of these revolutionary movements, it seems that many found a way out: retreating into individual subjectivity and fleeing to the market as the guarantor of a happiness based on the privatization of life (the destruction of community) and the hyperconsumption characteristic of postmodernism. The hyperconsumption of identities is particularly noteworthy. Continue reading “An Anarchist Critique of Post-Modernism and Post-Anarchism” →

Greece: 4th issue of the insurrectionary/nihilist anarchist newspaper “Blessed Is The Flame”

Posted on 2025/09/11 - 2025/09/11 by darknights

**Download link (PDF):** http://blessed-is-the-flame.espivblogs.net/files/2025/09/ENG-Blessed-Is-The-Flame-Issue-4.pdf

In early September, the 4th issue of the international anarcho-nihilist/insurrectionary newspaper “Blessed Is The Flame” has been published. As always, along whith the counter-information of July and August, we have also collected texts on counter-surveillance, counter-repression and direct action. The newspaper is available in both digital and printed form. If anyone is interested on printing it themselves, the best way is either to print it as simple A4 with a stapler, or as A3 in booklet format.

Note: for printing, we suggest you download the file directly from our website (https://blessed-is-the-flame.espivblogs.net/4o-teychos-tis-exegersiakis-anarchikis-efimeridas-eylogimeni-i-floga/) in case any minor corrections may be made and therefore the download link is renewed.

**CONTENTS**

Counter-information for July & August 2025
Challenges of police investigations into anarchist direct actions
A search for anarchist practices against torture
Useful information for anarchists of action from the investigation files of Operation Diana
Responsibility claim with guide for action [arson attack on machinery of Holcim, Switzerland]
Chile: Black August and solidarity actions for comrades Aldo and Lucas
Monica Caballero Sepulveda: “Political violence”
Uprising in Indonesia and calls of solidarity and support
The authoritarian trap of identity logic
Greece: Summer news about the “Synergy of Vengeance” case
Squat evacuations
About persecuted comrades from USA
Update and call for solidarity assembly for Alfredo Cospito
Message to the climate movement
Why are we being led to our slaughter? We don’t

*Note: Some of the news and responsibility claims for July and August were published after the completion of this issue. All of this will be posted in the next few days on our website.* Continue reading “Greece: 4th issue of the insurrectionary/nihilist anarchist newspaper “Blessed Is The Flame”” →

DA PARI A PARI – Contro l’autoritarismo identitario / ON EQUAL TERMS – Against identitarian authoritarianism (EN,IT)

Posted on 2025/07/08 - 2025/07/13 by darknights

DA PARI A PARI
Contro l’autoritarismo identitario

Siamo alcuni compagni e compagne anarchici che hanno preso parte all’assemblea “Sabotiamo la guerra”. Con questo scritto vogliamo prendere parola su una brutta vicenda capitata alla nostra assemblea (non la sola di questo tipo, ma la più grave), ma soprattutto su una forma mentis e un’ideologia che rendono ormai sistematici episodi di questo genere. Se ci presentiamo in maniera tanto circoscritta è perché “Sabotiamo la guerra” è appunto un’assemblea, fatta di volta in volta da chi vi partecipa, e non possiamo parlare a nome di tutti i suoi numerosi partecipanti, passati, presenti e futuri. Fatta questa premessa, cominciamo a spiegarci.

IT: https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2025/07/07/da-pari-a-pari-contro-lautoritarismo-identitario/

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ON EQUAL TERMS
Against identitarian authoritarianism

We are some anarchist comrades who took part in the ‘Sabotiamo la guerra’1 assembly. With this writing we want to speak out on a bad episode that happened at our assembly (not the only one of this kind, but the most serious), but above all on a forma mentis and an ideology that now make such episodes systematic. If we present ourselves in such a circumscribed manner, it is because ‘Sabotiamo la guerra’ is precisely an assembly, made from time to time by those who participate in it, and we cannot speak on behalf of all its many past, present, and future participants. Having said that, let us begin to explain ourselves.

EN: https://lanemesi.noblogs.org/post/2025/07/07/on-equal-terms-against-identitarian-authoritarianism/

[Corrected English version to be updated in the future]

Resisting Techno-Tyranny: A Dialogue

Posted on 2022/12/06 by darknights

This conversation between Paul Cudenec and the Italian group Resistenze al nanomondo was first published in the July 2022 issue of the printed journal L’urlo della Terra and has recently also been made available online, again in Italian.

1. Resistenze al nanomondo: Can you can tell us about your story, your path, when you started developing a critique of techno-scientific developments and what thinkers you learned from?

Paul Cudenec: I don’t think I could separate my critique of techno-scientific developments from the rest of my opinions and analysis. I have been an anarchist for 30 years now, but even before then, in my youth, I felt a strong instinctive aversion to high-tech consumer society. On the one hand it was associated with everything that I most disliked – big business, the state, the military, authority and control in general. On the other hand it stood against everything that I most appreciated – nature, freedom, community, a sense of historical and cultural continuity. The arrival of CCTV cameras in England was a wake-up moment for me. I worked at the time as a journalist with a local newspaper in one of the first towns to have cameras installed and, since I knew for a fact that there was very little crime there, it was clear to me that this project was nothing to do with fighting crime, as was claimed, but was the roll-out of something much more sinister. I wrote a punk song about this in the mid-1990s (which I put online last year), warning about “the cameras that steal our liberty” and the techno-tyrants who were going to scan our DNA, put microchips in our brains and turn us into robots. With the local anarchist group, which I subsequently helped to create, we used to hold annual protests against the cameras, marking the anniversary of their installation as “Big Brother’s Birthday”.

As you will gather from the above, George Orwell was, unsurprisingly, an influence on me. The history of the Luddites was another inspiration (via Kirkpatrick Sale among others), along with anarcho-publications like Green Anarchist, SchNEWS, Do or Die, Anarchy: A Journal of Desire Armed and various EF! publications. I also read David Watson’s Against the Megamachine, Fredy Perlman’s Against His-story, Against Leviathan, the Unabomber Manifesto plus a lot by John Zerzan and Derrick Jensen. I have more recently been influenced by reading the likes of Miguel Amorós, Jacques Ellul, Theodore Roszak, Charlene Spretnak, Renaud Garcia… But intertwined with that thread of my self-education have been other inspirations. The English nature mystic Richard Jefferies has been very important to me, as has René Guénon, who combined his metaphysics with a strong critique of modernity. I have also read elsewhere about sufism, Taoism, comparative mythology, English folklore, Indian philosophy, German idealism, Jewish anti-capitalist romanticism, Jungian psychology… What interests me, above all, are the connections between these accounts and traditions, or rather, perhaps, the new space that is opened up for our reflection when we consider them together, in the same conceptual context. Continue reading “Resisting Techno-Tyranny: A Dialogue” →

Against Anarcho-Liberalism and the curse of identity politics

Posted on 2022/04/26 - 2022/04/26 by darknights

DN: We re-post this text from 2018 that we feel is still relevant and even more on an international level in the present, against the supposed ‘unquestionably oppressed’, against those identity politicians and academics who just do not comprehend their involvement in the recuperation of anarchy into a passive joke! All part of the civil anarchism & activist psychosis that is due a much updated critique that will be forthcoming in future publications.

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Anarchism in the UK is a joke. Once symbolising hard-fought struggles for freedom, the word has been stripped bare to make way for narrow-minded, separatist and hateful identity politics by middle class activists keen to protect their own privileges. We write this leaflet to reclaim anarchism from these identity politicians.

We write as self-identified anarchists who see our roots in the political struggles of the past. We are anti-fascists, anti-racists, feminists. We want to see an end to all oppressions and we take an active part in those fights. Our starting point though is not the dense language of lefty liberal academics, but anarchism and its principles: freedom, cooperation, mutual aid, solidarity and equality for all regardless. Hierarchies of power, however they manifest, are our enemies.

Identity politics is part of the society we want to destroy.

Identity politics is not liberatory, but reformist. It is nothing but a breeding ground for aspiring middle class identity politicians. Their long-term vision is the full incorporation of traditionally oppressed groups into the hierarchical, competitive social system that is capitalism, rather than the destruction of that system. The end result is Rainbow Capitalism – a more efficient & sophisticated form of social control where everyone gets a chance to play a part! Confined to the ‘safe space’ of people like them, identity politicians become increasingly detached from the real world.

A good example is ‘queer theory’ and how it has sold out to corporate masters. The concept of queer was not long ago something subversive, suggesting indefinable sexuality, a desire to escape society’s attempts to define and study and diagnose everything, from our mental health to our sexuality. However, with little in the way of class critique, the concept was readily appropriated by identity politicians and academics to create yet another exclusive label for a cool clique that is, ironically, anything but liberatory. Increasingly, queer is a nice badge adopted by some to pretend they too are oppressed, and avoid being called out on their shit, bourgeois politics.

We don’t want hear about the next DIY event, queer night or squatter fest that excludes all but those who have the right language, dress code, or social circles.. Come back when you have something genuinely meaningful, subversive and dangerous to the status quo. Continue reading “Against Anarcho-Liberalism and the curse of identity politics” →