Category: Anarchism

Written by Waldo Noesta

The Cantankerous Inward Anarchism of Sludge O’Toole

Though the character is no match for Hennecy’s real-life activist credentials and socialist bonafides..the heart that drives them and the philosophy that guides them are the same. I can speak with confidence on the matter because Sludge is, more or less, me — that is, he, shortcomings and all, represents my present-day influence on my own book about events from the long-ago past. He is the mentor that I’ve had to be for myself while my wordsmith nature daydreams the story into existence. He is the secular patron saint of every independent author who has been compelled to write while working, in the world but not quite of it, to support a family and promote their own work as a one-person DIY writer-publisher in late stage capitalist America.

Written by Waldo Noesta

Against All Authority, Especially My Own

The asymmetrical war is the cause of Estelle’s dissociative symptoms. The “tiny but loud autocrat,” one should quickly surmise, is her ego, which is not the bastion of individuality we assume it to be. This assumption, we learn, is a deliberate Orwellian twist that perpetuates social control over the individual by placing an authoritarian voice of its own creation at the helm of the natural person seeking liberation. The duplicity of the egoic turncoat — acting at times like the liberator but only further ensnaring the self in its grasp — fuels the distrust that keeps them at odds, preventing the one thing that can actually lead to a liberated individual: the rejection of all authority, including one’s own. 

Written by Waldo Noesta

The Honeymoon Isn’t Over (It Never Began)

Biden’s victory is a stopgap that will halt our fast decline into something worse, like catching hold of a tree or a ledge as you’re sliding down a mountain. The next task is to get on our feet and climb toward something better than we are now, something that more resembles a true social democracy. We have to understand that Biden and the DNC establishment will now be among the opposition for this task.