innocuous interests

A veteran anarchist blogs about the world

Blog posts:

The Tech Fetish Hellscape and how to escape it.
2026-04-04
In a previous post I mentioned a lot of things about the infotech hellscape we're in. The bad news about this: it's only getting worse. So we have to work out an escape. Below is a guide on how to use a mobile phone outside the Google Monopoly Hellscape. Preamble and the state of Play:...More

On Mark Fisher's Capitalist Realism
2026-03-05
I recently read Capitalist Realism in a contextual vacuum. I know nothing about Mark Fisher or the book beyond what's contained between the covers, and those covers contain a hot mess of a variety of problems that I felt I needed to address because many of these problems crop up in the anarcho-left's view of...More

Tech fetishism, the cult of productivity, and why can't we work out how to fix this.
2026-01-23
I've been using a computer since I was five or six years old. I don't really like them. Which is ironic, seeing as, over the years, I have been a webdev, a web admin, a sysop, a WordPress monkey, a desktop publisher, an email majordomo, a Linux nerd, a retromodder, a dumpster-box repairer and God...More

On not becoming famous at the earliest opportunity.
2025-11-25
This was a oral presentation to a small group at Black & Green anarchist bookstore in Brisbane in October 2006. This is now an historical curiosity but it also contains some still-relevant points. I've added some explanatory notes to make up for now-faded (counter)cultural memories and assumed knowledge. I've also changed the names of some...More

Today's veganarchists: supporting our troops
2025-10-28
I began this post in Tbilisi, the largest city of Georgia, formerly part of the USSR, while eating at a vegan cafe only a few hundred metres from the Presidential palace. (Which says more about how large Georgia is than the cost of a vegan meal in Tbilisi.) Most or perhaps all staff are Russian...More

Mathematics as metaphor for an anarchist critique of the state.
2025-09-23
This is not about mathematics or statistics per se but is about evoking a perspective that has, as far as I'm aware, previously eluded anarchist and anti-state thinkers of the past. Which is to say I am not a mathematician or statistician, I just play one for the sake of argument. 1 - Set theory...More

On the IWW - Why I was there and why I'm no longer there.
2025-08-22
Part 2 of a multi-part reflection on my time in the Industrial Workers of the World. So why was I in the IWW? Well, I can speak pretty conclusively on that - I joined the IWW because they were there and because I fit the mould. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the IWW...More

When the radical slides Right - reading Bifo and his 'global race war'.
2025-07-21
I am fascinated by the toll that the conflict in Gaza has taken on the Western Left and Western anarchism, though I should stress that fascination is often not a positive experience. Of all the conflicts that have begotten genocide, infanticide, murder, war crimes, ethnic cleansing, theft and whatever else we can say about Israel's...More

On the IWW and the modern world.
2025-06-21
Part 1 of a multi-part reflection on my time in the Industrial Workers of the World. I had an on-again, off-again relationship with the IWW for fifteen years. I was a founder member of a branch, a secretary of another, and a general organiser, paperworker and dogsbody for quite a few years. Around five years...More

European war: Don't panic. Do take it seriously.
2025-03-28
In some ways I'd prefer this blog to remain an occasional dissection of the stumbles and failures of Australian anarchism and trying to correct logical fallacies in other anarchist's arguments. I prefer to keep it internal, by anarchists, for anarchists and about anarchism - far too many 'anarchists' don't do anything but critique the state,...More

The anarchist workplace - beat the rush, exploit yourself.
2025-01-20
When I was working at an anarchist bookstore in Australia nobody got paid. We worked in shifts, 6-8hrs a week each, the store being open 3 days a week. Sometimes we would have more than one person at the store, usually in emotional support for someone who was pulling a single shift, and/or to hang...More

Why anarchist collectives need to build.
2021-04-10
(Originally published on Bastard Archive blog in October 2017.) I don't think growing a popular movement should really be the goal of anarchist organising in the social and political environment we're in. Many approaches should be pursued - I quite fancy the anarchist enclave, for example, where anarchists exist side-by-side with normal society, buying out...More

Local Currency - centre-right economics for 'sustainable communities'.
2021-02-05
(Previously 'published' in early 2018 in the IWW Melbourne email list.) Ted Trainer's article Local currencies: The wasted opportunities, published in November 2017 on Resilience.org, sets out to explain how local currencies fail to live up to their potential and how they can be better put to good use. The ideas he puts forward in...More

On "The Shock of Victory"
2021-01-29
David Graeber's 2007 essay "The Shock Of Victory" begins: The biggest problem facing direct action movements is that we don't know how to handle victory He follows this with the admission that it may seem like an odd thing to say. I agree it's an odd thing to say as I think he's dead wrong,...More

Innocuous Interests.