This article is written by Nicky Reid who in her first sentence declares their identity as a “Queer pro-lie anarchist”. I think that if you happen to be writing an piece to be published, wouldn’t it be better to let your thoughts and ideas carry your message rather than stating which camp you happen to belong to?
I’m surprised/not-surprised that Counterpunch would publish this person’s work, but there was a time when CP was about giving a voice to intelligent authors who had serious arguments that added breadth and depth to many an important topic. Instead what we are presented with is scattered unhinged whinging about how terrible everything is and that the only solution is burning it all down. A small sample:
“Me too. I say that Queer people and our allies on the left start putting our priorities into challenging these scumbags to put up or shut up by thinking big, acting small, and weaponizing our own communities against their institutions.
The best revenge against judicial tyranny is secession and we’ve seen this theory wielded with fantastic results in the form of sanctuary states and sanctuary cities. Local governments who simply refuse to comply with the feds on issues as far-ranging as gun rights and marijuana have exposed their powers for the hopped-up illusions that they really are and rendered them totally impotent in the face of communities who quite simply resist being governed by any authority figure they didn’t vote for.
Let’s take this ethic to the next level by organizing intentional communities across the map around shared ideals like communes and gayborhoods and turning them into sanctuaries from any power that exists outside them. Let’s create a quilt work of Queer autonomous zones and feminist autonomous zones and Black Power autonomous zones and Boogaloo autonomous zones and polygamist autonomous zones and tweaker autonomous zones.”
Really? Because the public good is well served by the destruction of the institutions that maintain the public good? Because creating ‘autonomous zones’ isn’t a recipe for chaos and lawlessness that will hurt everyone not ready to go all in on the “bloody tooth and nail” routine?
Tearing all of society down because *you* inside your bullshit queerness are having an ‘unhappy’ is insanity. Calm the fuck down.
The same goes for you Counterpunch, calm down and stop printing such aggressively stupid articles.
bleatmop
Mystro
Dead Wild Roses 
6 comments
May 30, 2022 at 7:37 am
tildeb
When one’s starting position of understanding a situation begins with presuming a “stagnant swamp of bigotry and hierarchy” produced it, that the situation ought to have room for “degenerate outlaws like me and my people,” (why? to whose benefit?) then any ‘solutions’ one offers is going to be highly questionable not because of inherent bias or discrimination of unreasonable intolerance but because a failure to understand a problem in the real world denies any potential for finding and implementing a reality-based solution.
When the problem is defined as one created by “a pack of genocidal slave-driving oligarchs looking to protect their lily-white asses” in order to ensure “their monopoly on morally repugnant behavior,” and anyone who disagrees with this framing by pointing to the Constitution are “libertarians” who have a “fetish” for the Founding Fathers, then one has missed the boat of reality entirely and are left flopping on the beach of this fantasy wondering where ‘it’ has all gone wrong. Golly gee whiz, it couldn’t possibly be owned by the writer.
This vicious dribble goes beyond tilting at windmills. It ends up as a incoherent rant against them. It’s complaining and whining about a victimizing fiction in order to create a victim identity fiction to justify destruction and anarchy with the sole intent of making every one of us suffer for the delusions and denialism of a deeply disturbed fool.
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May 30, 2022 at 8:06 am
southernpov
In much of the western world, social progress has arrived and been secured via the courts. Now that the Supreme Court and much of the court system has been suborned in the USA, Nicky Reid is searching for other ways to beat back the American Taliban.
If we were to listen to your intolerant ‘ilk’, abortion would be illegal in Canada and St. Henry Morgentaler would have died in prison next to people who have been incarcerated for being gay.
Be careful what you wish for.
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May 30, 2022 at 8:38 am
tildeb
Can you direct me to this “your intolerant ‘ilk? that would lead to abortion being illegal and Morgentaler dying in prison next to gays?
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May 30, 2022 at 10:53 am
The Arbourist
@southernpov
Suborned by who?
Who are the American Taliban? As a Canadian, I have not heard of such a group. Is it a formal religious organization like the Taliban in Afghanistan? What does the American Taliban stand for and how would promoting anarchy and lawlessness as Reid does – beat it back?
It seems to me when there is a lack of lawful presence and rules in society we get situations like this: https://youtu.be/CAIcsHh8vso
I’m confused on this point. What is your definition of intolerance? Because I have a long history – check any of the tags in my cloud – of criticizing the hell out of what is generally perceived to be the ‘right’ in American and Canadian politics. During that decade – I was never once accused of being intolerant. Stupid? Out to lunch? Hopelessly wrong? – Absolutely. But never intolerant (I think – there are quite a few contentious threads to cover). But when I critique obvious batshite crazy stuff on the left I become intolerant? How does that work?
I want to live in a society that works and that believes in the imperfect system that allows us to progress forward incrementally while doing its best to preserve the rights, liberty, and good government for all.
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May 30, 2022 at 11:55 am
Infidel753
Even sanctuary cities and sanctuary counties still have city and county governments which enforce laws — just not certain laws which are overwhelmingly rejected by the local citizens. If these people establish a principle of autonomous zones being able to disregard all laws they don’t like, what’s to stop some corporation from declaring itself an autonomous zone exempt from all regulation of pollution and greenhouse gases?
Well, if Reid and her pals want to buy a piece of land somewhere and set up a commune, fine. But such projects usually founder within a year or two because of freeloaders and internal squabbles. I see no reason to think her autonomous zones would be any different.
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June 13, 2022 at 5:48 am
Counter-Punch: Paul Street now a Far Right Reactionary TERF | Dead Wild Roses
[…] opinion on the matter. Recently I critiqued a piece that was – ideologically speaking – over the top and I had to give it the Red Pen of Justice treatment. The lambasting was due as the claims made could only hold up in a proper collectivist utopia. […]
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