Perspectives on Anarchist Theory

05/11/2026

Get a copy of this small book and talk about it with friends, comrades, coworkers, & neighbors.

Distro Highlight ✨️
Naming the Moment: Revolutionary Strategy in a Time of Crisis
by The Emergency Brake Collective and from Eberhardt Press

The need to choose between creating a revolution to free humanity or to accept our relentless slide into barbaric authoritarianism confronts us everyday.

In flight from the N***s, Walter Benjamin wrote in 1940 that, contrary to what many believed, revolution was not the locomotive engine driving history into the future; instead it was the passengers pulling the emergency brake.

As the transnational capitalist class continues to extract and burn fossil fuels and wage imperialist war, the presumption that our planet will continue to be hospitable to human flourishing is in serious doubt.

How do we pull the emergency brake so that we can create a fundamentally different society together? What and who is standing in the way of this? Who amongst us could remake the world? How do we create a world in which everyone's needs are met and where people can pursue their highest aspirations?

Questions such as these are what prompted The Emergency Brake Collective to write this document. As they struggle for answers, they invite us to join them!

Now available to order at AKPress.org!

05/07/2026

"The need to choose between creating a revolution to free humanity or to accept our relentless slide into barbaric authoritarianism confronts us everyday.

How do we pull the emergency brake so that we can create a fundamentally different society together? What and who is standing in the way of this? Who amongst us could remake the world? How do we create a world in which everyone's needs are met and where people can pursue their highest aspirations?

Questions such as these are what prompted The Emergency Brake Collective to write this document. As they struggle for answers, they invite us to join them!"

Get your copy here: https://www.akpress.org/naming-the-moment.html

03/22/2026

Important piece from excellent movement journalists Alissa Azar & Sabr Qalam. Pay attention to this.

Nine people face decades in prison after a July 4 protest outside Prairieland Detention Center was prosecuted as “terrorism.” One shooter. No coordinated plan. Still, sweeping convictions. This case sets a dangerous precedent: showing up can now be treated as conspiracy.

03/20/2026

We're almost to our goal! We only an additional $141 to be able to get an electric charging station to Nadia in Ukraine so she can continue documenting mutual aid and self-organization projects since the Russian invasion. Every amount makes a difference! Click on the link: https://gofund.me/a6cae1678

Love & Solidarity

02/13/2026

A member of the Perspectives collective talks about "Visions & Interventions," their forthcoming AK Press book, as well as the state of the world & ways to change it. Give a listen and share widely!

Why does anarchy get such a bad rap? Is it all chaos or should we be practicing how to live in a world free of hierarchical domination?

01/29/2026

The answer is that this is ICE in Minneapolis. But the fact that it’s hard to tell whether it’s the IDF or the US Army or ICE is the whole story. Both the United States and Israel are imperial and settler colonial projects who support each other. The United States spends trillions to be a hegemonic power and tests its weapons in places like Iraq and Afghanistan. It also sends billions of dollars in aid and military equipment to Israel to suppress Palestinians and to be an outpost of western empire in Southwest Asia. Israel develops cutting edge surveillance technology and repressive tactics used against Palestinians that are then exported back to the United States and to many other countries. The tactics of occupation and the blurring of lines between the military and the police in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Palestine are all reflected in the appearance, weapons, and tactics of ICE.

And let’s not forget: Israel is still engaged in kidnapping, imprisoning, torturing, detaining, killing, and expelling Palestinians during the so-called ceasefire. Both Trump and Netanyahu and their far right supporters are intent on ethnic cleansing and terrorizing whoever remains.

-Viet Thanh Nguyen

01/27/2026

Deadline Extended to February 16th!

CONTROL: Call for Perspectives’ Submissions: 2025-2026 October 19, 2025September 21, 2025 We’re back! After a hiatus that allowed us to put together an anthology of essays for AK Press showcasing the first thirty years of our work (due out July, ’26!), Perspectives on Anarchist Theory is once ...

01/23/2026

★Crash-helmets, batons and against all authority - demonstrate with attitude...

“We must protect ourselves and others from increasingly militarised policing - where chemical weapons, fi****ms, tasers, etc are in common use against unarmed demonstrators and individuals. At the very least, every demonstrator should carry a baton. The police are the attack dogs of the state, the army of the rich."

Hamburg, Germany, 1986. In response to attacks by police on squats in Hafenstrasse, the movement unleashed its own counter-offensive, marching more than 12,000 strong around a “black block” of at least 1,500 militants carrying a banner reading “Build Revolutionary Dual Power!”

At the end of the march, the Black Bloc beat back the police in heavy fighting. German media labelled the protesters ‘die schwarze block’ after their clothing.

The next day 13 department stores in Hamburg were set alight, causing nearly $10 million in damage. Later that year, following the Chernobyl disaster, militant anti-nuclear activists used this strategy and a global militant tactic was born.

“The factors compelling youths from poor neighbourhoods and ghettos to embrace the methods of the Black Blocs are relatively obvious: 1) they allow them to physically express their anger, be it towards the "system," the police, the rich, etc.; 2) they reduce the risk of being arrested, even though the penalty for those arrested will be harsh; 3) they make it possible to get hold of merchandise ordinarily beyond their means; 4) they enable them to protest without getting involved in militant networks usually exogenous to their own social networks and dominated by "highly educated, white, middle-class activists" who are often in a position to devote time to more formal, organisational activism."

• Who’s Afraid of the Black Blocs? Anarchy in Action Around the World. Book Trailer: https://vimeo.com/97247392

01/21/2026

Visions & Interventions, the Perspectives collective's book with work from our first 30 years, will be published by AK Press this July! We are currently working on our next print issue. While you wait, get a copy of "Transformations," our most recent issue, available directly from the Institute for Anarchist Studies. Just click on this link:

https://anarchiststudies.org/shop/perspectives-on-anarchist-theory-issue-no-33-transformations-copy/

12/11/2025

If you think it's weirdly administrative and fascist enabling for Portland City Hall to merely charge a fee for a place that facilitates the abduction and disappearance of our fellow humans, you're not wrong. Portland City Council's new ordinance that basically bills the ICE facility landlord for the costs to the city for things like police overtime, is a perfect encapsulation of the severe limitations of social democratic politics. Not abolition, but mild mannered management. Journalist Alissa Azar expertly lays out the situation in Portland, Oregon in this excellent piece.

Portlanders have repeatedly shown up to City Hall with one message: We refuse to negotiate the terms of our own oppression. People weren’t there for symbolic accountability, or for another round of policy cosplay. They came to demand the obvious: Shut the ICE facility down. Completely and permanen...