Israel's 'Tent Protests': the chilling effect of nationalism

The Israeli ‘Tent Protest’ movement enjoyed wide popular support, but displayed a distinct lack of political radicalism. Not only did calls for discrete welfare policies replace explicit anti-capitalism, but there was a widespread insistence on the movement’s ‘apolitical’ nature and an avoidance of any direct confrontation with the neoliberal Netanyahu government or calls for new elections. The article argues that these anomalies can be explained by the chilling effect of the patriotic, state-loyalist discourses which reached unprecedented prominence in Israeli society in the past year. This led movement participants to avoid at all costs being perceived as left-wing and disloyal, and created an atmosphere of deliberate self-censorship which silenced any engagement with the Israeli–Palestinian conflict during the mobilization. The movement is understood here as an all-too-brief interlude in Israel’s ongoing move away from democracy

Olive green: environment, militarism and the Israel defense forces

Militaristic societies are ones in which the armed forces enjoy a privileged material and cultural status, and where military priorities and frames of thinking play a key role in policymaking and political culture (Vagts 1981, Evans and Newnham 1988). Militarism is not limited to direct governance by uniformed personnel (“praetorianism”), but may instead coexist with substantive democratic institutions (Ben Eliezer 1997). Thus, contemporary societies described as militaristic are as politically diverse as Switzerland and Burma, North and South Korea, Jordan and Israel. This chapter explores the interface between environmental and military issues in Israel, placing it within the context of the changing fortunes of Israeli militarism. In particular, it is argued that growing public willingness to challenge the military’s environmentally destructive behavior in the last decades was linked to wider transformations in Israeli society. The Oslo Accords and the rise of liberalindividualist outlooks associated with globalization and consumer culture weakened the country’s founding collectivist ideology in favor of material values associated with quality of life. In this context, the military lost its previous immunity to public criticism, and environmental concerns, formerly considered luxuries in comparison with security matters, were able to gain ground in the public sphere alongside other civil agendas. The chapter begins by stating the case for viewing Israel as a militaristic society. It then surveys the military’s environmental activity and the environmental destruction it has wrought, while also noting some early successes in the area of nature conservation. Finally, it discusses how, since the 1990s, the environmental movement and affected residents, as well as the Ministry of Environment and State Comptroller, have pushed the military to clean up its act

Against the wall: anarchist mobilization in the Israeli-Palestinian conflict

Anarchists Against the Wall is an Israeli action group supporting the popular Palestinian struggle against segregation and land confiscation in the West Bank. Incorporating participant observation and recent theories of social movements and anarchism, this article offers a thick cultural account of the group’s mobilization dynamics, and assesses the achievements and limitations of the joint struggle. Three dimensions—direct action, bi-nationalism, and leadership—highlight the significance of anarchist practices and discourses to an informed assessment of the group’s politics of nonviolent resistance. The effectiveness of the campaign is then examined, calling attention to the distinction among immediate, mediumterm, and revolutionary goals

Anarchism and multiculturalism

Anarchism is strongly opposed to racism and bigotry, and celebrates cultural pluralism and the endless diversity of the human race. At the same time, anarchists are very critical of modern “multiculturalism” as a state-driven population and immigration management agenda. The chapter examines this critique, while offering an account of original anarchist approaches to identity and community conceived on an ethno-cultural basis. The anarchist critique of multiculturalism has several dimensions, including its continued reliance on the state, and its obviation of social antagonism in favour of competing demands for status and resources within existing arrangements of power. On this reading, multiculturalism dissolves the potential for solidarities that would challenge the given society by redefining which identities enjoy first-order relevance (namely, ethnic or religious ones) and allowing the state, and its technocratic machinations of coercive urban governance, to engage with groups (or their declared leaders) on that basis. In addition, anarchists have criticised multiculturalism as a privileged liberal ideology that pushed sections of the white working class population “left behind” by neoliberal globalisation into the hands of the far right. At the same time, anarchists celebrate the grassroots, quotidian, non-state-sanctioned forms of “multiculturalism” that people arguably practice on a daily basis – trying to get along with people from other backgrounds and avoiding cultural imposition. These have a long history in the Left, although under other names ("working class internationalism", "transnational solidarity", “cosmopolitanism” etc.). A fair amount of “classical" anarchist writing thus engaged with topics akin to multiculturalism, albeit in terms of "nations," "nationalities," or "peoples." The chapter surveys some of these, from Bakunin’s writings on the rights of "nationalities" to exist and exercise their independence, through Kropotkin’s discussions of national liberation, and on to Rocker’s wide-ranging considerations on state-driven identity in Nationalism and Culture. Many anarchists wrote positively of non-Western cultures and their equality, especially Elisee Reclus, Peter Kropotkin and Jean Grave. These anarchist notions of cultural pluralism engage explicitly with class conflict in a way that contemporary liberal conceptions of multiculturalism do not. Finally, the chapter looks at anarchist responses to contemporary cultural pluralism. The chief argument here is that rather than seeking a blueprint for social relations among diverse groups in the absence of the state, anarchist theory should focus on present-tense questions relevant to its emergent strategic outlooks on social transformation, asking how encounters in mixed communities impact on political-cultural dynamics and how anarchists can use grassroots forms of encounter to push forward radical agendas. Here, the main issue remains the politics of solidarity across difference and asymmetric power. Dilemmas surrounding this issue are explored in two key contexts: settler-colonial societies and societies absorbing immigration

Anarchist geographies and revolutionary strategies

These are certainly fruitful times for anarchist intellectual publishing. Reading through the articles in this special issue of Antipode, I was impressed by the diversity and creativity of efforts to apply anti-authoritarian perspectives to the geographical discipline, whose notorious breadth of application (“everything is spatial”) seems to offer unlimited possibilities for new avenues of research. I also began thinking about two related issues that seem to run across much of what appears in the preceding pages. The first concerns the anarchademic enterprise itself, and its possible contribution to the development of anarchist politics. The second concerns a more specific problematic, which accompanies the integration of poststructuralist insights into our understanding of anarchism, and the concomitant celebration of prefigurative politics in the present tense. What connects the two is the question of revolutionary strategies. Does the postanarchist shift of perspective require us to abandon strategy as a valid category for our struggles? If not, how are strategies supposed to emerge as a conscious artefact of such a decentralized and swarming movement? What is the role of anarchist intellectual labour in such an emergence? Finally, what considerations—however preliminary and open to debate—can be presented as its starting point, and what might a geographical perspective contribute to their elaboration? In what follows, I begin with some thoughts on the pitfalls of anarchist intellectual labour becoming institutionalized in the academy. I then turn to look at the question of revolutionary strategies, a concept that I fear may have fallen victim to a careless misunderstanding of postanarchist insights. Finally, I reiterate a few basic coordinates, which I believe should at least be considered when projecting ourselves into the future of social struggles

Anarchy alive!: Anti-authoritarian politics from practice to theory

Anarchy alive!: Anti-authoritarian politics from practice to theor

Anarchism [[PSA Teachers’ Topic Guides. Topic: anarchism and ideology]

This guide is pitched for A-level teachers looking to keep up with modern developments, and/or to provide material to more advanced students who may be able to go beyond the basics to grasp more difficult approaches to the study of anarchism, probe core concepts or read further on the topic. This guide outlines some key themes in recent literature, it examines some core and advanced topics and provides some new case studies: 1. The Classic Studies: core and advanced topics. 2. Contemporary Studies: core and advanced topics. 3. Case Studies: i) The Spanish Revolution. ii) Occupy X

Whose streets? Technology, anarchism and the petromodern state

Whose streets? Technology, anarchism and the petromodern stat