Draft talk:The Anarchist Library
Edits history[edit]
I started the anarchist library article on wikipedia with Aristoxène. I hoped to use some of the same info we already wrote as a jumping off point, changing some of the langauge to be more in the style of RationalWiki, and I got Aristoxene's blessing to use their writing here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:Taodoray#TAL_WP_page
Plus, you can see the edit history of the article on wikipedia here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=The_Anarchist_Library&action=history
It was difficult re-writing a wiki-style article where I liked the info I already wrote, but I've completely re-written it now. Taodoray (talk) 10:20, 28 July 2025 (UTC)
Some links[edit]
Here's some links and a big text dump of info that might be useful towards including criticisms of the way the library is run:
- A text dump on various library publishing ethoses
- Some of The Anarchist Library’s Controversially Published, Deleted & Rejected Texts
- My recommendations for different amusewiki libraries
Michael Shmidt has warning notes on all his texts on the library. Some argue it would be good to see long warning notes on more texts like Ted Kaczynski's. Plus adding the 'not-anarchist' tag to more texts. E.g. for Ted:
This author acknowledged never reading up on anarchism before calling himself an anarchist. Ted for a while kept his true feelings private on subjects like quite liking how some tribes were male dominated, so playing down his own vanguardist politics where he wished anti-tech groups focused only on advocating the destruction of technological society. Later he disavowed any identification as an anarchist.
It's interesting Bookchin had a warning note and Schmidt has warning notes on his texts, as both were more closely associated with social anarchism.
Some social anarchists created a big Anarchist FAQ book & website which re-wrote history in favor of collective action and was scornful of individualist anarchism.
As far as I'm aware, Aragorn! and others ran The Anarchist Library in the way that it has been partially due to a personal desire to push back against this tendency by opening the boundaries of what anarchism meant to include people like Ted K and ITS who neither showed signs of really understanding anarchist history and ideas.
Aragorn! came to regret the level of support he offered Atassa, he deleted his interview with Abe, and stopped identifying as a nihilist after the way he saw it get used by ITS and people he met at the 'Green Scare bookfair' event that was put on.
So, perhaps putting a warning note on Ted K & ITS texts would be a positive step forward, whilst staying true to the archiving ethos that has been contributed to by past librarians.
Sources
Anarchy: Deep in the Woods
https://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/?p=44186
The controversy over Atassa and ITS also appears to have resulted in a split among the admins of ‘The Anarchist Library’, which hosts a number of ITS writings. See: Anarchist Librarian From North America / 10 Years Later, A Reflection And A Response / On An English Language Anarchist Library Project (August 28, 2018) | ‘About’, AnarchistLibraries.net.
About this project Anarchist Libraries.net https://actforfree.noblogs.org/about-this-project-anarchist-libraries-net/
When the people based in the United States involved in the library project decided to publish so-called eco-extremist material, despite the objections which were raised, existing problems and divergences came to light. What to publish? Where is the line drawn? Who decides and on what ground? With whom does one want to work? The U.S. group decided that they are the library and they have the final word.
At this point, I’m not comfortable anymore with the English speaking library claiming to be THE anarchist library and being the project’s flagship: anarchistlibraries.net was born. This name should better express the spirit of the project (a net of anarchist libraries) as I’ve always seen it.
Each library has always been its own project, regardless of the domain name. Each library takes responsibility for its publishing choices.
I think that idea of building THE anarchist library is flawed. I prefer the idea of having smaller libraries (or even sites) loosely connected, even in the same language but maintained by different people, than having THE library. The global search function provided by this site is a step forward in this direction: let’s keep the sites (and the folks) separated, but keep them together for the comrades searching for anarchist texts.
On No Platform and ITS https://humaniterations.net/2017/10/24/on-no-platform-and-its/
LBC’s decision to publish Atassa, Anews’ publication of ITS manifestos, their continued hosting on AnarchistLibrary.org and as audio recordings on Free Radical Radio are obviously beyond the pale in the same way that nazi or tankie texts would be. Not because anarchism cannot survive forbidden readings — although it is shameful we’ve done such a poor job enunciating and defending our values that somehow a small number found ITS’ inane perspective to have resonance — but because such publication legitimizes a profound watering down of anarchist values and basic norms.
Of Indiscriminate Attacks and Wild Reactions: An Anti-Civ Anarchist Engages with ITS and Atassa, their Defenders and Their false Critics https://itsgoingdown.org/of-indiscriminate-attacks-and-wild-reactions-an-anti-civ-anarchist-engages-with-its-and-atassa-their-defenders-and-their-false-critics/
Furthermore, it is worth mentioning that the present essay, along with an ITS-authored response called “Against the World-Builders,” disappeared without explanation for several months from the catch-all archive site The Anarchist Library, before very recently being restored under pressure. In the ITS response, the proponents of Eco-Extremism double down on their rapey psychopath stances, and misrepresent the arguments of the present essay. For example, they claim that the author, like Scott Campbell, has defined ITS as a “eco-fascist” phenomenon, and suggest, comically, that any such critic must be an adherent or defender of Christianity and/or pacifism. A careful reading of the essay and its substantial discussions of fascism, morality, and violence will see that these charges are the inaccurate, self-serving, hamfisted pronouncements of opportunists.
The Elephant in the Room https://immerautonom.noblogs.org/the-elephant-in-the-room/
Yet, we must ask why many other reactionary texts remain on the Library’s catalogue for reasons we cannot guess. Take, for example, “The Poverty of Feminism” by Dominique Karamazov, which describes rape as the “consequence” of “irresponsible” women’s attention-seeking behavior, among other things.[30] Or Bob Black’s “Feminism as Fascism,” which describes rape as something feminists “insist has been inflicted on them (or rather, as it usually turns out, on some other suppositious ‘sister’: the typical radical feminist has it pretty good)” — the implication being that feminists’ claims about rape are fabricated, the victims “suppositious.”[31] Or take the communiques of ITS,[32] a group heavily criticized by anarchists for claiming credit for the femicide of 22-year-old Lesvy Rivera, promoting rape and reveling in misogyny, and even attempting to bomb an anarchist squat.[33] Or “The Ideology of Victimization” by Feral Faun, a.k.a. Wolfi Landstreicher, an anti-feminist reaction produced after Landstreicher saw some graffiti reading “men rape.”[34] Articles in praise of infanticide and elevating mass shooter[35] Adam Lanza for his acts of top-down authoritarian, adult-supremacist violence against children and youths remain in the Library’s catalogue,[36] and it is our personal experience that, (as usual when anarchists reject this style of pseudo-radical top-down oppressive rhetoric, especially misogynistic, transphobic, and adult-supremacist rhetoric,) those who see it as a problem are sneeringly dismissed as moralists, hysterical prudes, and so on. In the case of Bob Black, at least the author — snitch[37] though he may also be — is known as an anarchist writer. So also Wolfi Landstreicher. In the case of the communiques of ITS, one can imagine these documents are part of anarchist history and thus important to preserve (though a disclaimer of some kind would be in order, in our opinion.) But we are entirely at a loss why a text like Dominique Karamazov’s “Poverty of Feminism” should ever have been published on an anarchist archive in the first place, let alone remained there long after it was removed from other publications like LibCom. There is almost no part of this text that is not in some way explicitly reactionary, from the rape apologia to the anti-abortion rhetoric in lines like “The problem of abortion is also the problem of the woman’s acceptance of her role as a mother.” “Dominique Karamazov” is a pseudonym used by French left-communist Dominique Blanc, the primary contributor to the ultra-left journal in which the text is originally published, La Guerre Sociale — a journal known for supporting historical negationism and Holocaust denialism.[38] (Dominique Blanc is also published on the Anarchist Library under his real name.) It is not at all clear to us why this document ought to be granted the legitimacy as an “anarchist” text which its listing on the Anarchist Library seems to lend it.