What I’ve been up to in 2019

This is a brief note to tell you all what I have been up to in 2019. For starters I’ve started a weekend call in show (and podcast) called Anarchy Bang that introduces a new kind of conversation into the anarchist mix. We have just finished episode nine and so far it has been a success.

This past month we have finally released my collection of interviews and writing about the intersection between anarchism and indigeneity. The Fight for Turtle Island is available now.

If you’d like more information you could do worse than the third The Brilliant podcast of 2019. Episode 93 is an interview about the book and discussion of the themes. You might also be interested in Episode 92 which is a book review / discussion about the AK Press / IAS book Joyful Militancy. Episode 91 is a discussion with Bellamy on Corrosive Consciousness and the drama and misdirection around it by The Anarcho-Primitivists.

Coming up are a few new titles from LBC this year (Novatore, The Anvil, and some interview titles), a brand new Black Seed (April-May timeframe), and other projects as they develop.

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What I’ve been up to in 2019

This is a brief note to tell you all what I have been up to in 2019. For starters I’ve started a weekend call in show (and podcast) called Anarchy Bang that introduces a new kind of conversation into the anarchist mix. We have just finished episode nine and so far it has been a success.

This past month we have finally released my collection of interviews and writing about the intersection between anarchism and indigeneity. The Fight for Turtle Island is available now.

If you’d like more information you could do worse than the third The Brilliant podcast of 2019. Episode 93 is an interview about the book and discussion of the themes. You might also be interested in Episode 92 which is a book review / discussion about the AK Press / IAS book Joyful Militancy. Episode 91 is a discussion with Bellamy on Corrosive Consciousness and the drama and misdirection around it by The Anarcho-Primitivists.

Coming up are a few new titles from LBC this year (Novatore, The Anvil, and some interview titles), a brand new Black Seed (April-May timeframe), and other projects as they develop.

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MAFW and Anarchy

For some time now, it’s been no secret that there is an evil cabal of anarchists behind the MAFW page. While the various political positions, memes, and admissions of its moderators could leave no doubt about it, there has actually been very little in the way of explaining the “anarchism” that these anarchists are so […]
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Intercorporeality as a theory of social cognition

ncbi.nlm.nih.gov Intercorporeality as a theory of social cognition Shogo Tanaka 52-66 minutes This article has been cited by other articles in PMC. Abstract The main aim of this article is to revisit Merleau-Ponty’s notion of intercorporeality (intercorporéité) and elaborate it as a new theory of social cognition. As is well known, theory of mind has […]
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Podcasts I have been featured on

  ANARCHIST NEWS PODCAST   01/11/2019: Anews Podcast 98 https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2019/01/anews-podcast-98-1-11-2018/ 12/21/2018: Anews Podcast 95 https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2018/12/anews-podcast-95-12-21-2018/ 11/23/2018: Anews Podcast 91 https://podcast.anarchistnews.org/2018/11/anews-podcast-91-11-23-2018/     FREE RADICAL RADIO 05/31/2015: Episode 82 – On Dating, Death, and Hedonism http://freeradicalradio.net/episode-82-on-dating-death-and-hedonism/ 07/26/2015: Episode 85 – Hack the Planet!, Cheating, & Green Anarchism http://freeradicalradio.net/episode-85-hack-the-planet-cheating-green-anarchism/ 08/19/2015: Episode 86 – On Avoiding Work, Post-left […]
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Sartre, Group Formations, and Practical Freedom

A Chapter from Realizing Freedom: Hegel, Sartre, and the Alienation of Human Being Abstract In this essay, I attempt to remedy the relative neglect that has befallen Sartre’s analysis of social relations in the Critique of Dialectical Reason. I show that, contrary to the interpretation of certain commentators, Sartre’s analysis of social relations in this […]
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Summary of New Year Projects – 2019

2018 was a good year for me, but it wasn’t productive when it comes to my research and writing. And really, this lack of productivity goes back further than a year. At most, I’ve been able to write only a few things over the past 3-4 years. Some reviews for AJODA, some blog posts, the […]
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The Cybernetics Question

  [placeholder] What is Cybernetics? History History of Cybernetics Theory Cybernetics and the Social Sciences Applied Cybernetics Cybernetics and the State A Review of Surveillance Valley A Review of The Exploit   Living in a Cybernetic World Populations and the Metropolis https://www.citylab.com/equity/2012/03/us-urban-population-what-does-urban-really-mean/1589/ https://www.census.gov/geo/reference/ua/urban-rural-2010.html https://www.un.org/development/desa/en/news/population/2018-revision-of-world-urbanization-prospects.html The Digital Divide What is the Digital Divide Speculations on the […]
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An Invitation to Desertion by Bellamy Fitzpatrick

From https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bellamy-fitzpatrick-an-invitation-to-desertion By Bellamy Fitzpatrick Spring 2018 The Crisis of Modern Civilization The Politics of “The End of History” The Failure of Alternative Political Ideologies The False Liberations of Minimalist Anarchism Leviathan and the Civitas Desertion Autarky Reinhabitation Our Invitation Backwoods is an invitation to those who can hear it, those who already know that […]
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The Philosophy of Our Time by Ronald Aronson

Jean-Paul Sartre’s existential Marxism offers a radical philosophical foundation for today’s revitalized critiques of capitalism. Nearly forty years after his death in 1980, the French philosopher Jean-Paul Sartre is best remembered as the father of existentialism. We are most familiar with him as the theorist of freedom, authenticity, and bad faith in philosophical treatises such […]
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Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anarchist Philosophy Reviewed by Steven Hendley

William L. Remley, Jean-Paul Sartre’s Anarchist Philosophy, Bloomsbury, 2018, 277 pp., $114.00, ISBN 9791350048249. Reviewed by Steven Hendley, Birmingham-Southern College Was Sartre an anarchist? William L. Remley attempts to convince us that he was, despite the pervasive tendency in the literature to see Sartre’s political philosophy, especially in his major opus, the Critique of Dialectical […]
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Sartre’s anarchist political philosophy – a draft for a diverse society? by Alfred Betschart

This is the text of a presentation given at the 22nd Meeting of the North American Sartre Society at the University of Wilmington (N.C.)     Good morning. Are you ready for something new? I would like to thank the committee for giving me the opportunity to talk about Sartre’s anarchist political philosophy and to […]
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Editorial for 10/19

The failure of criticism

For many years I’ve had issues with criticism. My particular issue was as narrow as feeling like post-left anarchism being being “just a criticism” has made itself too rarified for the long term. I personally have found a critical eye, and more importantly a kind of rigor around criticism, to be one of the most important things I’ve learned from anarchism BUT I think that part of that perspective is also thinking clearly about what assembling options are available after a concerted dissassembly process. Post-left anarchism, IMO, hasn’t done a great deal, if any, of that and I think we are less for that.

This week in the context of discussing the last podcast someone dropped a link to a podcast I’ve never heard of before but I am aware of the type (which is more evidenced by the site design than by me taking a deep dive into their material. It isn’t that interesting). The Corbett Report is very concerned with the representation of Climate Change by politicians, the media, and the UN. The video shared was a parsing of the messaging around Climate Change and many of the points were fairly put. We agree that something as big and epic as general human made climate change is not going to get an honest reading in the media. To the extent to which the issue is huge and requires buyin from rival factions of the Power Industrial Machine an honest reading is by its very nature impossible.

But instead of discussing propaganda Corbett seemed to live in the critical space of making fun of (with citations) the recent UN report. The bigger question was basically left untouched. If we care to save humanity what would it take, in the context of climate change? Authoritarian rule? Robot armies? Bigger arms to hug each other and the species dying around us? This is where Corbett’s critical take and anarchists have similar orientations. We aren’t capable of making the change we’d like to see in the world so we are left as commentators. What needs to be done, alongside deciding what needs to be done, is so big that we tend to rely on some larger “other” be it the state, google, or the goddess to do it for us.

If our, as in anarchisms, greatest and sharpest minds have been critizing the libertarian response to our sick society for the past two decades, perhaps now is time to turn that analysis towards data collection, model building, and thinking about the consequence of what a couple hundred, maybe thousand, people could do who desire attack, love, and an end of authoritarian rule. What does a black flag anarchism project look like that isn’t prefiguration, a platform, or fighting every fight on every street that no one else in the world cares about.

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Editorial for 10/19

The failure of criticism

For many years I’ve had issues with criticism. My particular issue was as narrow as feeling like post-left anarchism being being “just a criticism” has made itself too rarified for the long term. I personally have found a critical eye, and more importantly a kind of rigor around criticism, to be one of the most important things I’ve learned from anarchism BUT I think that part of that perspective is also thinking clearly about what assembling options are available after a concerted dissassembly process. Post-left anarchism, IMO, hasn’t done a great deal, if any, of that and I think we are less for that.

This week in the context of discussing the last podcast someone dropped a link to a podcast I’ve never heard of before but I am aware of the type (which is more evidenced by the site design than by me taking a deep dive into their material. It isn’t that interesting). The Corbett Report is very concerned with the representation of Climate Change by politicians, the media, and the UN. The video shared was a parsing of the messaging around Climate Change and many of the points were fairly put. We agree that something as big and epic as general human made climate change is not going to get an honest reading in the media. To the extent to which the issue is huge and requires buyin from rival factions of the Power Industrial Machine an honest reading is by its very nature impossible.

But instead of discussing propaganda Corbett seemed to live in the critical space of making fun of (with citations) the recent UN report. The bigger question was basically left untouched. If we care to save humanity what would it take, in the context of climate change? Authoritarian rule? Robot armies? Bigger arms to hug each other and the species dying around us? This is where Corbett’s critical take and anarchists have similar orientations. We aren’t capable of making the change we’d like to see in the world so we are left as commentators. What needs to be done, alongside deciding what needs to be done, is so big that we tend to rely on some larger “other” be it the state, google, or the goddess to do it for us.

If our, as in anarchisms, greatest and sharpest minds have been critizing the libertarian response to our sick society for the past two decades, perhaps now is time to turn that analysis towards data collection, model building, and thinking about the consequence of what a couple hundred, maybe thousand, people could do who desire attack, love, and an end of authoritarian rule. What does a black flag anarchism project look like that isn’t prefiguration, a platform, or fighting every fight on every street that no one else in the world cares about.

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Editorial for 10/12/18

Sometimes I write little editorials for the @news podcast. Here is one from a few weeks ago.

Editorial – Anarchist Principles redux

For a number of years I’ve been thinking that the old school anarchist principles have needed updating. In the old days a lot of anarchist questions were answered by using the litmus of Solidarity, Mutual Aid, Direct Action, and Voluntary Association to do it. Anarchists may have squabbled but ultimately Solidarity informed their behavior to one another. When a task was larger then one person or group could accomplish Mutual Aid was the way in which coordination was framed. And Direct Action was how most anarchist activity was described where desire and coordination met. Finally association with each other was (and is) voluntary. We are not compelled to associate with each other.

But today most of these principles are mere shadows of what they were. The idea of anarchist solidarity outside of a demonstration or publication is nice but rare. Most anarchists are barely surviving in an economy on fire and have been mostly flung to the periphery of the periphery or to full time jobs that has little time for coordination against the Empire. Voluntary Association is more often than not about it’s dialectical twin Exclusion.

While exclusion is certainly an important part of defending oneself and ones community it has seemed to have become a perversion of self-defense. Perhaps this is a generational thing but exclusion seems to be the goto tool in many situations where one used to argue for ones positions, feel frustrated, not heard, and through a process of improving ones argumentation, thinking, and changing ones mind would come to a new plateau of positions, feelings, and relationships.

What has happened instead, and largely this is due to exclusion, is that anarchist circles no longer talk to each other and, at its worst, no longer each other. Ie this is an inter-circle issue and an intra-circle issue. The result is isolation, a shrinking of the circles (and the meta circles), and a terrible future for anarchist projectuality in the medium to long term. We have eaten our young, we have have largely eaten each other, and now we range the desolation on social media and the left looking for more protein.

I have imagined that a new set of anarchist principles would follow from the Free Software model, from contemporary anarchist thinking, and other sources but it’s hard to see that happening in the condition of isolation-exclusion we find ourselves in. While transparency is a modern principle that makes sense in a certain way for anarchist projects it is bedeviled by the urge for our projects, protests, and publications to be anonymous and untraceable. While we may desire meetings that are less bureaucratic and differently participatory, we have seen that those with the most experience and enthusiasm tend to take their energy elsewhere.

Of course the argument against principles takes us in yet another splintered direction. In the anarchist hyper-youth culture, which looks more-and-more embarrassing as we grey, our disdain for our parents prevents us from admitting we have them in the first place. We have all sprung from Zeus’s head. We have been taught nothing by nobody. We are the first people doing everything for the very first time. We refuse such a beast as anarchist principles because of course they are just trying to tie us down to stupid shit, to rules, to their order which we reject!

After this rant I guess the best I can conclude with is the potential of articulating what my anarchist principles are that drive my work, my projects, and my relationships with others. I desire freedom and think that timing, attack, and my voluntary associations are necessary to achieve it. Before I am free I think the preconditions of freedom are worth methodically going through, I do this by way of publications but I recognize there may be better ways that require a different social organization than the one I have access to. But in this space of creating preconditions I attempt to be transparent, poetic, and open with who I work with and how we do it. I strive for an environment that is both/and rather than either/or. Indifference, exclusion, and isolation are forms of hate. Attack is a form of love.

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Editorial for 10/12/18

Sometimes I write little editorials for the @news podcast. Here is one from a few weeks ago.

Editorial – Anarchist Principles redux

For a number of years I’ve been thinking that the old school anarchist principles have needed updating. In the old days a lot of anarchist questions were answered by using the litmus of Solidarity, Mutual Aid, Direct Action, and Voluntary Association to do it. Anarchists may have squabbled but ultimately Solidarity informed their behavior to one another. When a task was larger then one person or group could accomplish Mutual Aid was the way in which coordination was framed. And Direct Action was how most anarchist activity was described where desire and coordination met. Finally association with each other was (and is) voluntary. We are not compelled to associate with each other.

But today most of these principles are mere shadows of what they were. The idea of anarchist solidarity outside of a demonstration or publication is nice but rare. Most anarchists are barely surviving in an economy on fire and have been mostly flung to the periphery of the periphery or to full time jobs that has little time for coordination against the Empire. Voluntary Association is more often than not about it’s dialectical twin Exclusion.

While exclusion is certainly an important part of defending oneself and ones community it has seemed to have become a perversion of self-defense. Perhaps this is a generational thing but exclusion seems to be the goto tool in many situations where one used to argue for ones positions, feel frustrated, not heard, and through a process of improving ones argumentation, thinking, and changing ones mind would come to a new plateau of positions, feelings, and relationships.

What has happened instead, and largely this is due to exclusion, is that anarchist circles no longer talk to each other and, at its worst, no longer each other. Ie this is an inter-circle issue and an intra-circle issue. The result is isolation, a shrinking of the circles (and the meta circles), and a terrible future for anarchist projectuality in the medium to long term. We have eaten our young, we have have largely eaten each other, and now we range the desolation on social media and the left looking for more protein.

I have imagined that a new set of anarchist principles would follow from the Free Software model, from contemporary anarchist thinking, and other sources but it’s hard to see that happening in the condition of isolation-exclusion we find ourselves in. While transparency is a modern principle that makes sense in a certain way for anarchist projects it is bedeviled by the urge for our projects, protests, and publications to be anonymous and untraceable. While we may desire meetings that are less bureaucratic and differently participatory, we have seen that those with the most experience and enthusiasm tend to take their energy elsewhere.

Of course the argument against principles takes us in yet another splintered direction. In the anarchist hyper-youth culture, which looks more-and-more embarrassing as we grey, our disdain for our parents prevents us from admitting we have them in the first place. We have all sprung from Zeus’s head. We have been taught nothing by nobody. We are the first people doing everything for the very first time. We refuse such a beast as anarchist principles because of course they are just trying to tie us down to stupid shit, to rules, to their order which we reject!

After this rant I guess the best I can conclude with is the potential of articulating what my anarchist principles are that drive my work, my projects, and my relationships with others. I desire freedom and think that timing, attack, and my voluntary associations are necessary to achieve it. Before I am free I think the preconditions of freedom are worth methodically going through, I do this by way of publications but I recognize there may be better ways that require a different social organization than the one I have access to. But in this space of creating preconditions I attempt to be transparent, poetic, and open with who I work with and how we do it. I strive for an environment that is both/and rather than either/or. Indifference, exclusion, and isolation are forms of hate. Attack is a form of love.

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TAPTBSI – episode one

Talking a project through before starting it

I haven’t been blogging lately for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I’m getting pretty tired of responding to “hot takes” as if they are real engagement. They aren’t. I want anarchy to be a project we are all partaking of but I’m feeling not exactly butthurt (but maybe) but indignant at how different what I’m talking about is for other people. Which is to say that I think the anarchy unleashed at WDC, Berkeley, Portland over the past month isn’t. I think responding to right wing idiots is beneath us. I really do. And debating these points has been a straight up losing proposition so I wont do it.

This is bonus sad because of course I do have “experience on the ground” with this particular topic but that experience is what has led me to this point in the first place. Many topics aren’t worth talking about, except f2f, with friends. That’s a change for me. If you aren’t willing to truly destroy those who are your enemy (as in kill them in cold/warm blood) then you are either engaging them in a version of political discourse or you are walking away from that discourse. I advocate doing the latter.

Enough about that. I’m trying to get wound up to do a new project. It’ll probably be a weekly call in show, it’ll probably be very Internet focused, it’ll probably attempt to appeal to a wider audience that LBC + Anews + other projects. I’m kind of hoping that appeal will be because of humor but finding the right tone is a real problem. Here, and before this new project begins, I’m going to brainstorm about how to do a better @ projects based on the lessons I’ve learned from doing a lot of different projects and project types.

It’s worth mentioning that I have always used @ projects as an excuse to do things I’ve been inclined to do anyway. I was inspired by DIY Hardcore and explicitly projects like Dischord Records. But what I like about Dischord is a lot like what I like about anarchism, breadth.

This project is motivated by wanting to figure out how to speak about @ to a larger audience and wanting the experience of doing something like a call-in show (technically). But it’s hard to imagine me starting a project like this and not getting bogged down in idiocy. To keep it straight I’m going to have to do a dual thing that I’m not quite sure how to organize. One, how do I keep a show like this topical and fun. Two, how do I not get mired in the shit talking that I can easily slide into and that I have a crew of people who’d love.

One, let’s take this week and a for example, should an anarchist topical show talk about the death of a US senator. I’ve generally ignored the US government when it comes to @ projects but it’s clear there are a lot of funny things one could/should say about politicians and dying but it’s a hard call. Can one do it w/o sounding like a liberal? Without sounding heartless? Without sounding like a late night comedy show? I guess the latter wouldn’t be terrible but finding that line w/o a room of writers… not so easy.

Two, it is so tempting to talk online anarchist shit. To talk about JZ or the latest FB drama. I think it is incredibly not interesting to anyone outside the 100 or so ppl who engage in both but how can we get to the heart of what are complicated political disagreements without miring every episode in a ton of exposition that is boring, sectarian, and something-else. That something-else is the death of this project from a long-term perspective.

Anyway over the next couple months I’m going to think this project through with the goal of launching it with a full audio package of effects, organization, and back up plans by the end of the year. Any thoughts/insights on how to do this well would be appreciated. You can get at me at aragorn@littleblackcart.com or add a comment to this blog and if you want it to stay unpublished it will.

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TAPTBSI – episode one

Talking a project through before starting it

I haven’t been blogging lately for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that I’m getting pretty tired of responding to “hot takes” as if they are real engagement. They aren’t. I want anarchy to be a project we are all partaking of but I’m feeling not exactly butthurt (but maybe) but indignant at how different what I’m talking about is for other people. Which is to say that I think the anarchy unleashed at WDC, Berkeley, Portland over the past month isn’t. I think responding to right wing idiots is beneath us. I really do. And debating these points has been a straight up losing proposition so I wont do it.

This is bonus sad because of course I do have “experience on the ground” with this particular topic but that experience is what has led me to this point in the first place. Many topics aren’t worth talking about, except f2f, with friends. That’s a change for me. If you aren’t willing to truly destroy those who are your enemy (as in kill them in cold/warm blood) then you are either engaging them in a version of political discourse or you are walking away from that discourse. I advocate doing the latter.

Enough about that. I’m trying to get wound up to do a new project. It’ll probably be a weekly call in show, it’ll probably be very Internet focused, it’ll probably attempt to appeal to a wider audience that LBC + Anews + other projects. I’m kind of hoping that appeal will be because of humor but finding the right tone is a real problem. Here, and before this new project begins, I’m going to brainstorm about how to do a better @ projects based on the lessons I’ve learned from doing a lot of different projects and project types.

It’s worth mentioning that I have always used @ projects as an excuse to do things I’ve been inclined to do anyway. I was inspired by DIY Hardcore and explicitly projects like Dischord Records. But what I like about Dischord is a lot like what I like about anarchism, breadth.

This project is motivated by wanting to figure out how to speak about @ to a larger audience and wanting the experience of doing something like a call-in show (technically). But it’s hard to imagine me starting a project like this and not getting bogged down in idiocy. To keep it straight I’m going to have to do a dual thing that I’m not quite sure how to organize. One, how do I keep a show like this topical and fun. Two, how do I not get mired in the shit talking that I can easily slide into and that I have a crew of people who’d love.

One, let’s take this week and a for example, should an anarchist topical show talk about the death of a US senator. I’ve generally ignored the US government when it comes to @ projects but it’s clear there are a lot of funny things one could/should say about politicians and dying but it’s a hard call. Can one do it w/o sounding like a liberal? Without sounding heartless? Without sounding like a late night comedy show? I guess the latter wouldn’t be terrible but finding that line w/o a room of writers… not so easy.

Two, it is so tempting to talk online anarchist shit. To talk about JZ or the latest FB drama. I think it is incredibly not interesting to anyone outside the 100 or so ppl who engage in both but how can we get to the heart of what are complicated political disagreements without miring every episode in a ton of exposition that is boring, sectarian, and something-else. That something-else is the death of this project from a long-term perspective.

Anyway over the next couple months I’m going to think this project through with the goal of launching it with a full audio package of effects, organization, and back up plans by the end of the year. Any thoughts/insights on how to do this well would be appreciated. You can get at me at aragorn@littleblackcart.com or add a comment to this blog and if you want it to stay unpublished it will.

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More about this so-called thinking.

Carrying on from my last post… I might as well begin sloppy. “The United States is a country that doesn’t know itself, nor others.” – opening line to an imaginary essay Last week I began listening to the most recent episode of This Is Hell. In the episode, Anna-Lisa Cox discusses some of the themes […]
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I’ve been thinking about..

I’ve had the urge to begin writing again, but I’m pulled in many directions and haven’t landed on any solid point to begin from. One essay would begin, “The United States is a country that doesn’t know itself, nor others.” Another would tell the story of the tensions between Existentialism, Marxism (including the Situationist International), […]
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