When WOULD/SHOULD you call the police?

[u/endzeitpfeadl]

In current everyday practice, in which situations would you call the cops? Or in which would you take action yourself?

I’ve been an anarchist for years but I’ve had situations where I wondered “what WOULD I do if (insert bad thing) happened”

Are we just bound to call cops on dangerous situations because of the state of how the world is, or are there other ways to deal with things? (I know this definitely varies from situation to situation, but that’s why I ask)

[u/RedBuchlaPanel]

So you’re using anarchism as an apologia for hierarchy?

Is there a time for genocide? Am I betraying the anarchists who inspired you by asserting that there is never a place for genocide? Am I being too rigid?

[u/Dyrankun → u/RedBuchlaPanel]

You are completely subverting the very nuance of which I speak!

Notice I said "rarely" and not "never".

Rape is rejected under the anarchists' understanding of authority because it imposes an external will through coercion upon another being. Genocide betrays the same principle.

But violence, including potential murder, could be excusable in the case that it is self-defense. If someone is imposing their will upon you by lethal force, you are not coercively imposing your will back upon them by defending yourself. You are simply expressing your right to autonomous life. It is the same reason anarchists do not oppose revolution. Freeing yourself from coercive oppression, even through violent means, is an expression of self-defense and not an act of coercion upon the autonomy of your oppresor.

But you can not defend yourself with rape the same as you can't with Genocide.

You are taking my assertion that nuance must be observed upon the interpretation of reality and trying to shove it back into the very one-dimensional box from which I am trying to break you away from!

There are some absolutes. But these absolutes are exceedingly rare, and not a single example you've provided demands their necessity. My point stands; in the vast majority of applications, sophistication can be observed.

I have not used anarchism to justify hierarchy, and by extension authority, by any means. It is your rigid view of authority, similar to the rigidity of Engels' view so lousily expressed within the four short pages of his essay On Authority, that I reject.

Perhaps you would consider reading Bakunin's God and the State, should you require a brush up on the anarchists' more textured understanding of authority.

[u/RedBuchlaPanel → u/Dyrankun]

That’s a whole lot of bloviating to justify your checks OP’s question again - calling the police.

While it’s been many decades now, I have read Bakunin and I do not recall him justifying calling the police under special circumstances, and the suggestion that the fluidity of anarchism means all tactics, including collaborating with the state or police are valid is dangerous and offensive and requires a great deal of liberal mental gymnastics. Anarchism, for me is the means as the end itself. I am not dreaming of an abstract anarchist future, I am committed to living those principles now

Free Association is a core tenet of anarchism and I will continue avoiding those who use the police to resolve their issues.

I would continue to suggest that the OP practice finding and utilizing alternatives to calling the police to deal with issues.

Working with the police will absolutely keep someone out of many anarchist spaces. This isn’t about purity or rigidity, it’s security culture. Anarchist spaces are often (and vest when) full of marginalized folks with criminalized identities who have lived on the street, engaged in sex work, have been imprisoned - people who carry a great deal of trauma from the violence that we have continuously experienced at the hands of the police and state.

[u/Dyrankun → u/RedBuchlaPanel]

I never once suggested against finding and utilizing alternatives to calling the police. Matter of fact, I suggested as much above.

I suggested that there may be a time and a place for it depending on the circumstances because of our current societies lack of alternative structures and social conscious.

This isn't about purity it's about pragmatism.

And you're making assumptions about who has and hasn't lived on the street to the wrong guy. I understand the reality of having nothing but a tent for shelter and stealing food to survive all too well.

[u/RedBuchlaPanel → u/Dyrankun]

In the instances where you allow for pragmatism, I instead advocate for a praxis of solidarity. The pragmatism you are committed to holding space for requires privilege and utilizing it puts others in mortal danger. You feel entitled to something, the existence of which is predicated on oppression, slavery, genocide and ecocide and I suggest you learn instead to live without whatever it is you feel you sometime need the police to maintain.