I’m an anthropologist, sometimes I occupy things & such.

I see anarchism as something you do not an identity...

...so don’t call me the anarchist anthropologist


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Twitter was David’s public platform and tools for practicing a new language – clear and understandable for everyone, it was a space where he made friends and enemies.

Tweets 7,501 Replies 51,144 Retweets 24,559 Everything 83,204
Sat 4 Jul 2020 11:38

I can read French but never learned to speak it. It occurred to me if I wanted to teach myself, videos like this would be a perfect resource, since I already kind of know what she’s saying https://t.co/5uC23qxq23

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Fri 3 Jul 2020 12:57

“Reflection. On Ranavalona why do we like playful violent rulers?” https://t.co/DvfPlLSqKD

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Fri 3 Jul 2020 12:55

Are Kings a little bit like children? Find out the amazing answer in this passage from the book: “Kings are a Little Bit Like Children.” Or, okay, technically the title is ‘Aren’t Kings…” #a4all .@nikadubrovsky https://t.co/Lka6dUDkT0

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Fri 3 Jul 2020 10:30

this actually does correspond with my experience, no one at RT ever asks me what I’m going to say before I go on air, but BBC & similar “mainstream” media invariably have a pre-interview where they go over your positions very carefully

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Fri 3 Jul 2020 10:28

she says she prefers RT because while it’s obviously propaganda, they never tell people what to say. They just choose people likely to say things they agree with & let them loose. BBC, CNN, etc, are actually much more directly controlled.

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Fri 3 Jul 2020 10:15

my wife grew up in the Soviet Union and when we tried to watch .@BBCNews for a while, we had to give up because it reminded her too much of Soviet newscasts: the cheesy clothes, postures, obvious propaganda… https://t.co/CBj9kcAIWt

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Thu 2 Jul 2020 21:02

so this morning I saw a tweet expressing sorrow about Ghislaine Maxwell’s tragic suicide – next week. And I’d forgotten who she was & was thinking “I really can’t think of anyone that could be that that joke would actually be funny.” Then I realised who she was.

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Thu 2 Jul 2020 10:44

there are some statues and monuments worth preserving here’s a series of them in Germany: #almostallmonumentsmustfall https://t.co/ZawdG2ILHY

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Tue 30 Jun 2020 17:44

Nick Mirzoeff on that disturbing Teddy Roosevelt statue in front of the Natural History Museum in NYC. Funny, it bothered me as a child too. Nice point about how formal education is partly just to make you unlearn your spontaneous good sense https://t.co/iGKjyaYJY7

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Mon 29 Jun 2020 12:17

nice piece asking what happened to all those robots who were about to make menial work redundant during the COVID crisis? https://t.co/hdRCm23wgM

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:47

when I described this to a lot of leftist friends & wondered about extending the logic their first reaction was instinctual rebellion against the idea they had a deep self that WASN’T guilty. I thought: wow. Christianity runs deep. 12/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:44

it’s all framed as “you cannot be a truly free individual, doing what you really feel is right, until you understand those structural forces coercing you by, e.g., making you feel others will see you as less of a man… We need to free you of this so you can be yourself” 11/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:41

it’s inspired a bit by Kurdish revolutionary practice, where old Maoist self-criticism has been totally transformed into a collective process to show individuals how their actions are not really they’re own, but caused by structures like patriarchy they’re unaware of 10/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:37

one thought passed through my head, tho even saying it feels dangerous: what would happen if we redefined racism, sexism, class privilege, not in moral terms, as bad elements of your soul, but as some kind of external disease you need to be cured of to be your real self? 9/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:35

the thought occurred to me, is there some way to neutralise this puritanical narcissism? Which also of course involves the urge to be wannabe cop & identify a sin in would-be allies one can use to condemn them & tacitly establish one’s superiority, the uglier side of same 8/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:31

because I’m not from a middle class background I’m from a working class background & got the shit kicked out of me all the time as a kid. And as such, I can’t think of any topic I’m LESS interested in than how some middle class guy feels about his privilege. I don’t care. 7/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:30

everyone started going on & on about their middle class privilege, agonising, joking, theorising, seriously debating … on and on. And I thought “oh so this must be what it’s like to be the one Black guy in a white activist group in the US” 6/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:28

I remember when I’d just come to UK being at an anarchist debate over violence/non-violence, & someone started saying “well there’s the elephant in the room we’re not talking about: we’re all middle class & have been sheltered from violence as children” – & the room exploded 5/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:26

the particularly US take on identity politics is basically puritan, in that involves endless awareness & contemplation of one or another sort of privilege, which is often (I hate to say this) prioritised over concrete action that might benefit those that don’t have it 4/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:22

puritanism is all about one’s internal moral state, the inevitability of sinfulness, & competitiveness, where – to put it cynically – heroic white males compete over who’s best because they are most aware of their fallen nature, their inevitable internal corruption 3/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:19

Most Abolitionists were puritans of some sort; I still remember a quote from a newly enslaved African when he first met a bunch of them – “they were all singing, which suggested a festivity, but none of them seemed to be having any fun. Actually they seemed rather depressed.” 2/

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Sun 28 Jun 2020 10:17

The first major activist movement in the US after independence were the Abolitionists & I wonder sometimes if they set the tone for US activism – it’s peculiar characteristic puritanism – in ways we rarely acknowledge 1/

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Fri 26 Jun 2020 19:27

my interview in Les Echos has appeared. Why they have a picture of me leaning on a statue of a frog is unclear to me. https://t.co/M2H2D20kdR

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Fri 26 Jun 2020 19:23

this was so obvious at the time – voting for Starmer meant voting for a hard swing to the right. Yet nine in ten Labour Party members kept denying it. Were they being idiots or did they know? https://t.co/pNfaDQ7NK8

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Thu 25 Jun 2020 13:20

On a positive note, I still don’t enjoy being drunk. People tell me I’m a pretty happy drunk, but the physical feeling annoys me. It’s like I’ve poisoned myself for no particular reason. So between the high cost of liquor I don’t hate & that, I think I’m safe from any danger

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Thu 25 Jun 2020 13:17

all my life, I basically didn’t drink. Thought I disliked alcohol. I am slowly realising, no, I just don’t like beer, wine, & most mixed drinks. I rather enjoy cognac, single malt scotch, & absinthe. So: I had expense taste & most of my life I was way too poor to even find out

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Thu 25 Jun 2020 13:01

only guy I saw being led off in cuffs was, predictably, Afro-Caribbean. Why the weird overkill? It obviously wasn’t terror-related, presumably was just harmless neighbourhood weed suppliers? But it had the feel of a racist counter-attack under current political circumstances.

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Thu 25 Jun 2020 12:58

is the UK police state becoming more aggressive? Two days ago there were a dozen cops with automatic weapons, besieging a flat on Cambridge Gardens, right near me. Two helicopters, closed roads. Never saw a word on the news https://t.co/gbCeooJUmt

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Sun 21 Jun 2020 11:12

so they have no need to encourage the equivalent of start-ups, at least to produce catchy theme music, jingles, movie background music, pop hits, etc etc. Or, alternately, if I’m just missing out on the good stuff because I’m not cool enough. 7/

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