Does calling the cops make one not an anarchist?

Question

So, like say a person just shot you or a woman is getting beat by her significant other and calls the cops on the person. Does that make the individual not an anarchist or does it depend?

I don't mean to boil it down to those two situations, just all I can think of at the moment. You can use whichever hypothetical situation where someone calls the police. In case someone misinterprets, it's not meant to be a question on whether or not you would call the police.

Comments

why do you ask?

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Because this is a question and answer site. :P

Answer 1

no single event or action makes someone an anarchist or not-an-anarchist. (it doesn't even "depend," as you posit.)

we learn and figure shit out based on things that happen to us and those around us. (for example, we call the cops and the woman gets picked up instead because she has a warrant out for her. maybe that's still a "better" thing to happen because the significant other would've killed her if left alone. or maybe she is deeply miserable and wanted to die, so the person killing her was acceptable to her.) we can only ever do the best we can, given the information that we have or that seems reasonable. what seems reasonable is what is anarchist or not.  i realize this provides absolutely NO clarity.

we live in a world we don't want. there is no purity.

Comments

Thanks. The question was kind of a vague Bob Black reference. Every article I read about the dude, the comments are based around him being a "snitch" and not an anarchist regardless of the actual content of said article.

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the people who insist on his snitch label are rabid about it in a way that doesn't make sense to me. he gets way more hate than people who are more egregious (afaic) like the guy from common cause/katrina (whose name, amusingly, i can't remember at the moment).

i guess black is a perfect storm of a jerk, and a good gadfly, and a topic--snitching--that people are not sane about (lots of talk, very little actual activity, against betrayal).

that's my take at the moment, anyway. :)

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"Every article I read about the dude, the comments are based around him being a "snitch""

yeah. it doesn't matter if the guy is a snitch, a witch, or a bitch with 10 litters. the dude might be a real d-bag, idk. but the silence of his accusers regarding the challenge of his essay on work (and the follow-ups) and 'anarchy after leftism' is nothing if not a classic ad hominem...if those accusers even understand what that entails. true believers usually don't.

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the whole "kill the snitch" thing is pretty mindless and resembles the thinking of organized crime and the moralism of cops and the legal system, these organizations are the opposite of the anarchist groups. However, there are certain situations when snitching is an unforgivable offense, when it's a sign never to trust a person again.

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@dot, yes, he seems to be the target for all kinds of accusations from being a transphobe, a misogynist, to a snitch. None of which I can find concrete evidence on. I don't consider him a snitch personally. The question was probably a silly question. I believe you may mean Kanye West with the George Bush hates black people thing. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zIUzLpO1kxI

@amorfati "but the silence of his accusers regarding the challenge of his essay on work (and the follow-ups) and 'anarchy after leftism' is nothing if not a classic ad hominem"

When I read comments following post-left articles, the comments seem to consist entirely of no substances. Bob Black gets the brunt of it, but there are others too. It's most common on the anarchism reddit, which imo is a toilet. I haven't figured out why post-left is hated so bad, but maybe one day I will. :P Not that that is relevant at the moment.

@rs666 "However, there are certain situations when snitching is an unforgivable offense, when it's a sign never to trust a person again."

Yes, when a person actually snitches is a good sign not to trust the person. I've always viewed a snitch as one who tells on another to get favorable treatment or to save themselves, not just calling the police on someone.

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zubaz: ???!? nothing to do with kanye west in any way. good lord. no i'm talking about an organizer who started out as an anarchist who started informing to the fbi, and when found out said he was proud of his informing, because ... peace? or something idiotic. nothing has ever happened to him, despite all the "snitches get stitches" talk.

(what on earth would KW have to do with us? weird.)

re: hate on post-left, some of it is related to black flame, a book that makes the argument that post-left anarchy is not anarchy at all. actually this probably deserves a question also... (whee!)

http://anarchy101.org/11805/what-are-the-hostilities-between-different-kinds-anarchism

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Sorry, misread. I assume now you may mean Brandon Darby. :) I read that the author of black flame is some sort of "undercover fascist" and ak press just figured this out and took his books out of print. What deserves to be a question? Why is post-left hated or whether or not it's anarchism?

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brandon darby... i saw the movie made about him, i think it was called "snitch" or "informant" or something. he absolutely claimed to be proud of the snitching he did. bob black's snitching might be questionable, but darby's is undeniable. someone needs to give him a tatoo of stitches. or something.

that michael schmidt crap with ak press is way too shielded for me to have any sense of what the fuck is going on. ak claims to have evidence, but has not provided a single piece yet. he wrote a response (posted on @news), where he explains how his (deep) undercover journalism had him playing with the fascists on stormfront etc. his explanation seems believable to me, but i don't know shit about the situation, or him. clearly ak has not proven their case, at all, as of yet. and i do know a think or two about them. it all seems like more fucking @-scene drama.

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It seems to be part of the call out nonsense culture. If all they have on him is having fake stormfront and facebook accounts, I'm gonna laugh and grab some popcorn. Usually in call out culture, the individual has to explain themselves, regardless if the assertion against them have been proven or not, and they'll inadvertently say/write something that raises more questions, like this Schmidt fellow saying he's good friends with some woman that's with the National Intelligence Agency. That just sounds pretty sketchy. 

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this leads me to another really live question (for me, anyway)... i'm on a roll today, i guess!

http://anarchy101.org/11813/what-is-a-good-way-for-anarchists-to-deal-with-accusations

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I've thought about making a question a few times concerning the matter on why post-left is not liked, but yours is worded better and more broader than mine would've been. :)

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I personally hate that word "post-left", my views are pretty much post-leftist but it just doesn't sound as appealing as "anarchism" or "nihilism"....i think people hate post-leftism because it only makes negative assertions, and people tend to have a thing for "rightous challenges" (like call out culture) or "pointing out hypocrisy"

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http://anarchy101.org/11805/what-are-the-hostilities-between-different-kinds-anarchism

rs666: then help answer the above question!

Answer 2

It depends.  Anarchists of all people, should understand that involving the police is very likely to make a situation worse, not better.  For example by escalating the violence or by kidnapping someone and feeding them to the prison industrial complex, a system that is likely to make the person's behavior worse, enslave and/or torture them. There are also the practical considerations like the fact that, by the time police get there, the damage caused by the reason for the call will likely have already occurred.  In addition anarchists (and others who have major problems with the state) are likely to lose trust and respect for someone who calls the cops because they're rightly perceived as our enemies.  Ideally there would be always be alternatives to calling the police, unfortunately in a few cases, there aren't any good or reasonable ones, and each person has to judge for themselves whether or not some particular instance is one of those cases...

Here's a couple of thoughts about one of the examples you provided in your question.  So you see someone beating someone else.  Why not try yelling at them to stop?  If you feel able to, and especially if you have friends nearby, why not try physically intervening if that doesn't work?  If it is a domestic violence situation keep in mind that there is a good chance that the person being beaten wants it to stop but also doesn't want to involve the police.  From my POV there are both healthy and unhealthy reasons for this attitude.  Whatever the reasons, however, why would you do something that the person who is being harmed doesn't want?  You could try asking them at least...

As for Bob Black, yeah that dude is a snitch.  In his case he wrote a letter to the police in order to fuck over someone he didn't like.  He was not in the remotest danger, nor was he trying to help anyone else who was.  In addition, most people who snitch on others *at least* have the reason (but not the excuse) that they'll serve long prison sentences if they don't cooperate.  IOW they're not just doing it out of spite...http://www.seesharppress.com/black.html  BTW This doesn't necessarily mean that his ideas are bad...his ideas are bad on their own IMO.

Comments

I don't know about you, but having some dopefiend point a loaded M-1 at two individuals (Black and Hogshire's wife) indicates a real potential for danger and being shot. What ideas of Bob Black do you think are bad? I don't see the reason for adding that without elaborating.

Anyhoot, I'm going to take you're answer to mean no, it does not mean someone is not an anarchist for calling the police.

edit: took out quotation marks