Empathy
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Things We Aren’t Supposed to Talk About
We are so much more than this ugliness which reigns. That hurts because despite the ugly, and its armies, and cops, and nation-states, and economic systems, and institutional violence, there is so much beauty. Continue reading
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Money, Divinity, and the Conflict of Enchantments
Romanticism is a crucial component of modern culture. It conveys something to us of the beyond, the divine. We are still enchanted by the natural world. We do love it. A lot of us do sense something in the beyond. Continue reading
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Let’s Do Something Else Instead
People are looking at the structure of this society and asking if it actually makes any sense right now, when we think about the interrelationship that we have with each other, interdependence, dignity, a sense of care for each other, and common good. Continue reading
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When the Future Has No Future
If we don’t start addressing the connection between capitalism—or capitalist realism, as the late Mark Fisher called it—and the psychopathology of depression, then we won’t get very far in treating the phenomenon. Continue reading
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The World at the Fucked Moment
All the analysis of the violence in the world seems to occur with the complete removal of human activity. It seems to exist purely as a form of speaking over people, a game of chess with no pieces, a world with nobody in it but foreign policy experts and talking heads. Continue reading
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Pleasure is Fuel, Pleasure is Freedom
I love that folks are in the struggle on the front lines but dancing with each other, singing with each other, making mixtapes. When we make decisions, we put on R&B and dance together. We’re remembering that we’re not alive to suffer, to fight, to struggle. We’re alive to love each other and build community,… Continue reading
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One Day in Hell
Staying there was not safe at all, because of the potentiality of the warplane’s return. I spent a total of ten minutes there; I felt during these minutes a severe exhaustion, I felt the heaviness of my body, the difficulty of breathing, the inability to think of anything. Continue reading
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Them’s the Rules
For all the money spent by the EU supposedly to provide services for refugees, it is the refugees themselves who are carrying the burden of the mental health disasters in the camps. Continue reading
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SIGMATA: Is Popular-Front Antifascism a Fantasy?
We’re probably incapable, as a society, of forming even a tenuous temporary popular front in the case of extreme emergency. We can’t even appeal, it seems, to the basic precept that genocide is bad. That’s scary. Continue reading
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Radical Empathy and Collective Power
Empathy itself is just feeling another person’s experience. It is a precursor to understanding. It is a precursor to friendship, it is a precursor to reconciliation. Continue reading
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Solidarity, Resistance, and Other Ecstasies
When we do start to say we want things to be different, that’s when people come together, isn’t it? That’s where we find joy emerging. We need more of that, more of the time. Continue reading
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Living Well and Dying Well, Together
We create spaces of care, but it’s difficult to keep them together in a world that tells you this is not allowed. We’re all broken by this structure, which is why I want to get rid of it. Continue reading
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Empathie wird uns nicht retten!
Empathie bedeutet nichts, wenn wir uns nicht für die Machtverhältnisse interessieren, welche die Not des Anderen produzieren. Continue reading
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Die Schuldgefühle, die syrische Revolutionäre umtreiben
“Ich fühle mich nicht schuldig, denn ich weiß, dass das Aufbegehren gegen ein Regime, das gewillt ist, beliebig viele Menschen zu töten das Richtige ist.” Continue reading
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Resisting Left Melancholy
“Heaviness of heart derives from routine. For to be in a routine means to have sacrificed one’s idiosyncrasies, to have forfeited the gift of distaste. And that makes one heavy-hearted.” Continue reading
MANIFESTO
The Antidote Writers Collective seeks to resist and counteract the poisons that course through the veins of our politics, our cultures, our movements, our relationships, ourselves.
We believe that a strong collective immune system is built through knowledge and understanding and that the struggle against division and repression requires building a new culture of discussion that goes beyond flat definitions, brittle ideologies, stubborn dogmas, idle preconceptions, and petty rivalries.
We will share knowledge with each other, aiming to build empathy, and in turn enable the emergence of genuine solidarity—one which does not demand uniformity across contexts, one which does not “include” you, but in which you include yourself.
In this spirit, we will provide a platform for a diverse set of voices, especially for those otherwise silenced or ignored in “mainstream” discussions. We want to hear from people engaged in radical struggles all over the world. We seek neither agreement nor conflict, but rather to identify issues at their roots, and to consider different radical approaches to their resolution. And though we at the Antidote Writers Collective have voices—and we will use them—we will not presume to speak for anybody.
On the contrary, we invite you to offer us new ways of thinking, new ways of seeing. It’s not about establishing a space for comfy ideological self-indulgence, but for questions, for a true diversity of voices and viewpoints, and for turning all of this into action.
One World. One Struggle.
TOPICS & VOICES
Alternative Structures Anarchism Anti-capitalism Autonomy Bureaucracy Climate Change Colonialism Corruption Countermedia Culture of Resistance Deutsch Ecocide Ecodefense Ed Sutton Education Empathy Greece Housing Justice Insurrection Islamophobia Kurdistan LeftEast Minneapolis Mutual Aid Neoliberalism No One Is Illegal No Pasarán! One World One Struggle Palaces & Vaults Philosophy Police & Prisons Political Prisoners Post-Socialism Propaganda & Disinformation Que Se Vayan Todos Racism Russia Russian Reader Self Defense & Non/Violence Smash the Patriarchy Solidarity Squats & Occupations States & Borders Street Movements Switzerland Syria This is Hell! Transcripts Translations Turkey Ukraine United States of America War & Empire Work & Wage
ARCHIVES
“… in the midst of putative peace, you could, like me, be unfortunate enough to stumble on a silent war. The trouble is that once you see it, you can’t unsee it. And once you’ve seen it, keeping quiet, saying nothing, becomes as political an act as speaking out. There’s no innocence. Either way, you’re accountable.” – Arundhati Roy
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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