India will be a developed nation when it celebrates 100 years of Independence, and it will have no place for corruption, casteism and communalism, Prime Minister Narendra Modi told news agency PTI in an interview today.
#India #Casteism #Communalism #PM
https://www.ndtv.com/india-news/corruption-casteism-and-communalism-will-have-no-place-in-our-national-life-pm-narendra-modi-to-news-agency-pti-4355051

Crosspost from Cohost:

[Note I wrote this to add to people's discussion of Borges short story the Immortals, specifically how terrifying the City of Immortals was built, so that it felt utterly hostile to human life.] It reminds me of the book I'm currently reading (and nearly finished) by Murray Bookchin.

Now Bookchin is a communalist (though he's adopted by the anarchist crowd, I'm uncertain if he directly called himself that), and he writes a lot about how cities were where people gathered and built their community. The book I'm currently reading of his is called From Urbanization to Cities: The politics of Democratic Municipalism. In it, he painstakingly goes through the history of Europe - focusing on that to limit his scope but also to show how the way we each the history of Europe is wrong - to show how for much of its history, people and their politics were rooted in a city, people's ties and their kinship was city-based and not specifically to any empire or nation. How even in the medieval ages, much of that time period was cities run by the people, and that those cities heavily resisted (often quite violently) any sort of monarchy or absolutism that tried to centralize power.

So how did these cities form into nations then? How did we go from having walkable cities that were the center of communal life, where people would gather in councils to debate ways of running the city and other necessities?

Partly due to capitalism. Capitalism stripped that from us. It alienated us, isolated us, and corralled us into narrow confines. Into labyrinths. Why? Because we can't overthrow capitalism and the centralized bureaucratic authority that caters to capitalism if we can't band together and build community.

He digs into it a heck of a lot deeper than just that, but I wanted to briefly sum up some of his conclusions.

He believed that the best way to overturn capitalism was to take back our cities and create decentralized communities and city confederacies. To tear out the labyrinths, the car-centric natures, the top-heavy authority, and focus on building community with one another. Where the community meets in councils to decide what is best for their community and the city. To build a commune so to speak. Hence communalism.

Near the end of his chapter on "politics to statecraft," he writes:
__

"That there is a logic in certain historical premises, one that unfolds more as a tendency than a necessity, is certainly not arguable: nationalism does foster totalitarianism, and the centralized state tends to develop into an all-embracing state. But it is certainly difficult to argue that a super human phenomenon called "history" exists and predetermines a society's development. The Communeros [of Spain] had opened a pathway to a cooperative, unified Spain that could have yielded a very different dispensation from that which came with a centralized nation-state. So, too, had earlier city confederacies, whose achievements meet with so much disdain [from historians]. Politics had to be structured around a community of one kind or another, whether as a polis [Ancient Greek], Gemeinde [Medieval Central Europe], burg, commune, or city. Lacking the flesh and blood of politically involved people and comprehensible self-governing institutions, the human phenomenon we call "society" tends to disintegrate at its base, even as it seems to consolidate at its apex.

Centralization becomes most acute when deterioration occurs at the base of society. Divested of its culture as a political realm, society becomes an ensemble of bureaucratic agencies that bind monadic individuals and family units into a strictly administrative structure or a form of "possessive," more properly acquisitive, individualism that leads to the privatization of the self and its disintegration into mere egoism. The city, in turn, is no longer united by any sort of ethical bond. It becomes a marketplace, a destructures and formless economic unit, a realm in which the Hobbesian war of "all against all" becomes a virtual reality, ironically designated as a "return to nature."

Such a condition and the mentality it produces constitute a dissolution of nature and society's evolutionary thrust toward diversity, complexity, and community, a problem that appropriately belongs to the newly developing field and philosophy of social ecology rather than urban sociology. It is a social problem because we are talking about one of the most elemental forms of human consociation - the city - where people advance beyond the kinship bond to share, create, and develop means of life, culturally as well as economically as human beings. Here, humanitas as distinguished from the "folk," comes into its own. And it is an ecological problem in the sense that diversity, variety, and participation constitute not only the basis for the stability of human consociation but also for the creativity that is imparted to us by diversity, indeed, ultimately the freedom that alternate forms of development allow for the evolution of new, richer, and well-rounded social forms.

Urbanization, which I see as the dissolution of the city's wealth of variety and as a force that makes for municipal homogeneity and formlessness, is a threat to the stability, fecundity, and freedom that the city added to the social landscape."

__

Here he is discussing his conclusion after a very thorough examination of how Europe could have instead developed confederacies of city-states, which is what the Swiss Confederacy was for most of its existence. These cities built confederacies to limit the power of the papacy and another absolutism governments (like monarchies) and were in existence for hundreds of years off and on. They showed up in the region of Italy (much of Italy's history is actually city confederacies and it's only recently with the onset of Capitalism that Italy became a full nation-state), Greece (especially Ancient Greece such as Athens and so forth), Central Europe, Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and even Scandinavia.

Our history is riddles with cities that were built by people and for the people, but Capitalism and the centralized authority of nationalism stole that from us.

This is why American cities, especially in the Midwest and outside of the Eastern Coastal states, are built the way they are. Capitalism and a centralized authority demands it. The dissolution of the public sphere in cities is necessary to keep the population from revolting against the exploitation Capitalism demands in its endless hunger for more profits, and a centralized authority cannot retain its power over people if the city's public sphere was to become robust again. The Eastern Coastal states were originally built during a time where the city sphere still had its heart of people running it (before America became a nation-state), and that can be seen in the walkable cores of those cities, but look at their sprawling suburbs now? Those were added to steal the life from the core of the city. To bleed it dry of its creativity, its people, and kill its heart.

Look at the time under the Trumpocalyse? When Trump did some horrific things against immigrants, cities fought back and created Safe Cities for Immigrants, this was such a threat to his centralized authority, that these cities then got hammered with economic sanctions by federal government and other penalties to try to stop them. We are seeing this again, as cities are fighting back against the lack of inaction on Climate Change, and so city governments and the people who live in that city are starting to participate again and create their own form of governance to try to curtail Climate Change with their own initiatives. How does Capitalism and the Centralized authority handle such instances? They try to suffocate them or violently disband such initiatives.

Look at the recent uprisings in cities like Minneapolis, Ferguson, Seattle, and other cities. Look at how people banded together and created forms of mutual aid to help one another. In fact, in several of them there was an autonomous zone of people working together in solidarity due to the state abandoning them (until that zone was violently taken back the the state. See Seattle's autonomous zone in 2020). Look at how the centralized authority tore apart those bonds of community every way they could.

Why do that? Because when we band together and organize ourselves and govern ourselves we become a threat to the centralized power structure that upholds capitalism and white supremacy above all else. (Because let's be real, America was founded on white supremacy and capitalism and not on actual freedom for all people. America was never For Freedom FOR All , but also about Freedom TO do harm to others that don't fit what the centralized power structure/white supremacists/capitalists decide is the "right human.")

We, the people, hold tremendous power, especially when we come together in larger communities. That is a threat to the elites who require our subjugation to continue their machines of war and profits.

Thus, cities have their hearts torn out of them because if city's were allowed to retain their hearts? The centralized power structures and capitalism itself would be threatened and likely soon dismantled. Thus we are all living in what Borges' short story Immortals called City of the Immortals. Our cities have been made to be hostile to us because it's one way the centralized authority and capitalism keeps its hold on us. To be truly free, we have to remake the city and place people back in its heart.

P.S. I highly recommend N.K. Jemisin's The City We Became series that is about how once cities reach a critical mass of people active and participating within it and building communities within it... the cities become a live, and each city has a human avatar to represent it. However, there's an otherworldly horror that threatens to kill cities and infect humans that the city's avatars need to work together to defeat.

What I love about Jemisin's series is that it really digs into how cities are about community and building that community. A city cannot be alive without its people, who participate and build and create within it.

#City #CityDesign #CommunityCare #Community #Diversity #Variety #Communalism #Anarchism #Decentralization #AntiCapitalism

Wondering if the uncontrolled proliferation of AI amplified disinformation will create the necessary preconditions for Bookchin's Confederalism. If you can't trust anything that's transmitted as being real, is the only solution to structure governance around hyper-local direct democracy?

#communalism #bookchin #democracy #ai #llm

Siddique Kappan's interview for The Caravan:

"The Lucknow jail was full of poor people, so many of them from Kashmir, all jailed on fake cases. There were around eighteen Rohingya Muslims too, many of whom did not even have an advocate."

#SiddiqueKappan #HathrasRape #hathras #UttarPradesh #UAPA #PMLA #BJP #undertrials #law #UPpolice #kashmir #rohingya #hindutva #IndianJudiciary #PressFreedom #journalism #HumanRights #muslims #minorities #prisons #communalism #india

https://caravanmagazine.in/interview/journalist-siddique-kappan-hathras-uapa-up-police

I’m in the “it fits in the bowl, it’s a serving” part of the ride today. #plantbased #localfood #smallbusiness #slowfood #produce #garden #intentional #authenticity #jillscott #grooves #vinylrecords #vinyl #truth #meditation #chopwoodcarrywater #books #artmaking #creating #loveyourself #choice #communalism #herbalmedicine #nomad #natural #healingfromwithin

Making sure democracy and the hacker spirit ventures out to space too,
#OpenSourceSpaceport #OpenSourceSpace #HackSpace #HackTheMoon #HackMars #SpaceColony #OffworldColonization

Political labels,
#Solarpunk
#TechnoGaianism
#LeftLiberalism
#Communalism
#AnarchoSyndicalism

What I really want:
#DemandUtopia #FullyAutomatedLuxuryCommunism

7/8

Making sure democracy and the hacker spirit ventures out to space too,
#OpenSourceSpaceport #OpenSourceSpace #HackSpace #HackTheMoon #HackMars #SpaceColony #OffworldColonization

Political labels,
#Solarpunk
#TechnoGaianism
#LeftLiberalism
#Communalism
#AnarchoSyndicalism

What I really want:
#DemandUtopia #FullyAutomatedLuxuryCommunism

7/8

and #introduction by #tag

#care #repair #maintenance #reuse

#technology #society #STS

#nature #environment #walking #cloudspotting

#economics #SolidarityEconomy #community #cooperatives

#politics #ecosocialism #communalism #municipalism

#LibreSoftware #linux #emacs #DigitalGarden #IndieWeb

#music #idm #noise #drone #ambient

#writing #NoteTaking #ToolsForThought #wikis

Please fave or reply (and follow if you'd like) so I can find ppl with these interests

As a heads up the one thing I'm not is carfree but I am very invested in creating a car free world.

#astrology
#humandesign
#solarpunk
#libertarianmunicipalism
#communalism
#permaculture
#cooperatives
#coops
#prepping
#urbanism
#carfree
#healthyrelationships
#transformativejustice
#restorativejustice
#conflictresolution

A great online library for people interested in #communalism #democracy #rojava #ecology
https://communalistlibrary.carrd.co

வகுப்புவாதம் மற்றும் வன்முறையை’ கையாள்வதில் சகிப்பு தன்மை கூடாது! என்ஐஏ ரெய்டு குறித்த ராகுல்காந்தி கருத்து
https://patrikai.com/zero-tolerance-in-dealing-with-communalism-and-violence-rahul-gandhi-on-nia-ed-police-raids-on-pfi-sdpi-leaders/

#sectarian #Communalism #religious #Fundamentalist #uncompromising #DANGER #NIARaids #PFI #NIARaidsPFI @RahulGandhi@twitter.com @INCTamilNadu@twitter.com

Went ham on my favorite colors. Now to actually write a blog post today... I've been giving a lot of thought to researching and accumulating knowledge about alternative communities both on and offline. If you have any reading or films or podcasts to recommend, lmk!
#theWorkshop #alternative #communities #alternative-tech #communes #communalism

We must recognize that our problems are not dictated by an absolute science, but because our social norms are dangerously outdated.

We need #socialrevolution!

#anarchism #communalism #libertariansocialism

இந்தியாவில் முதலாளித்துவம் - வகுப்புவாதம் - சோசலிசம்; இந்திய கம்யூனிஸ்டுகளின் நூற்றாண்டுப் போராட்டம் - தோழர் க.கனகராஜ், மாநில செயற்குழு உறுப்பினர் #CPIM #100YearsOfCommunistStruggle #Capitalism #Communalism #Socialism More: https://youtu.be/DxcInbHj2EU @cpmkanagaraj@twitter.com

The wire editor writes about #Modi and the #ayodhya temple in #India.

A well written piece on the issue of #communalism and where he is taking the country to.

https://thewire.in/communalism/sangh-parivar-august-5-kashmir-ayodhya

RT @maya206@twitter.com

A man who has spent his life teaching music of Benares, largely devoted to Lord Krishna cannot be reduced to a simple religious identity-
Meet Badlu Khan, a Symbol of the Syncretic India the Hindu Right Wants to Erase. My piece- #communalism #delhi https://thewire.in/communalism/delhi-riots-hindu-right-syncretic-india

🐦🔗: https://twitter.com/maya206/status/1236986841540091905

WTF #TamilNadu? It's becoming worse now compared to even a few years ago.

RT @SunilAh64145529@twitter.com

A 26 year old Dalit man Shakthivel was lynched to death in Villupuram,Tamil Nadu.

His fault was he got down to pee around the fields of a UC Hindu while passing by.

We cease to be humans anymore, we should hang our heads in Shame.

#Casteism #Communalism

Periodic reminder that the sunbeam.city wiki (https://wiki.sunbeam.city/) is a fantastic resource.

Just reading through the politics page (https://wiki.sunbeam.city/doku.php?id=politics), great place to start if you're interested in social ecology and communalism and where they fit in the context of other tendencies.

#SocialEcology #Communalism

Ran into Bea #Bookchin, #MurrayBookchin's widow, in the cafe at the food #coop in #BTV today.

Apparently my org's co-director has known her for ~20 years, so we chatted a bit. Fanboi'd just a smidge.

#socialecology #communalism #libertarianmunicipalism

Dear #tech folks (especially leftist tech folks who want to stir up the tech sector and get ppl interested in #cooperatives, #platformcoops, #communalism, etc),

please remember to design for non-tech people. If your non-techy relative can't figure out how to use your thing, your thing will never get enough traction to actually change something, and it will always be the same 10 people joining every platform.