Month: September 2025

The world is entering an era where identity is no longer a matter of personal relationships, lived experience, or even paperwork. Increasingly, it is reduced to biometric scans, algorithmic verification, and digital tokens. Across the globe, governments and corporations are rolling out digital identification systems, facial recognition passports, biometric driver’s licences, app-based vaccine passes, QR-coded welfare access, and unified digital wallets. The language that accompanies these projects is familiar – efficiency, convenience, modernisation, inclusion. We are told that digital ID will make life easier, reduce fraud, and open new opportunities.

The reality, however, is far more sinister. Identification has never been neutral, it has always been a weapon of power, wielded by states and capitalists to monitor, control, and discipline populations. From passports to colonial passbooks, from welfare cards to border regimes, the apparatus of identification has always been tied to domination. Digital ID is simply the latest iteration of this long history, but with a scale and sophistication that makes its dangers even more profound. Far from liberating us, it is forging new chains and binding us more tightly to systems of surveillance, exclusion, and exploitation.

Identification as Domination

To grasp what digital ID represents, we must situate it within the longer history of identification as a tool of authority. The passport, now normalised as a necessary object of travel, was originally a way for states to restrict movement. In medieval Europe, peasants and serfs required written permission to leave their estates. Colonial regimes across Africa, Asia, and the Pacific perfected these systems of control, forcing indigenous people to carry passes while settlers roamed unhindered. In apartheid South Africa, the “pass laws” criminalised Black South Africans for existing outside their assigned zones, reducing life itself to a bureaucratic calculation of permission.

Identification has never been about protecting the individual; it has been about protecting property relations. States have needed to know who people are in order to tax them, conscript them, and deny them rights. Employers demanded papers to guarantee that workers were legally exploitable. Landlords used identification to screen tenants, banks to gate-keep credit, police to track dissenters. The notion of “identity” under capitalism has always been bound up with surveillance and discipline.

Digital ID does not break from this tradition but it intensifies it. What once required a physical stamp or signature now demands a biometric scan or QR code. Where once a police officer demanded to see your papers, now an algorithm silently determines your access. The shift is not from control to freedom, but from analogue domination to digital domination.

The Logic of Digital ID

Behind the rhetoric of convenience lies the hard logic of capital and the state. Digital ID is not being built for us, it is being built to extend the power of those who already govern our lives.

At its core, digital ID represents the enclosure of access. Increasingly, the essentials of life, healthcare, housing, employment, welfare, travel, are gated behind digital checkpoints. Without the correct identification, people are excluded. This transforms existence itself into a series of permissions, each mediated by algorithmic verification. Access to food, shelter, or work becomes conditional on whether a machine recognises your fingerprint or face.

It also expands surveillance capitalism. Every scan, swipe, or login generates data. This data is stored, tracked, and monetised. Digital ID reduces human beings to data streams, feeding the profits of corporations like Microsoft, Mastercard, and Accenture, companies deeply embedded in global ID initiatives. Far from empowering individuals, digital ID empowers corporations by turning our lives into commodities to be sold.

Digital ID also disciplines labour. By tying welfare payments, work permits, or banking access to digital identity, states and corporations acquire powerful new tools to coerce populations. In India, the Aadhaar biometric system has left millions excluded from rations and pensions when fingerprints failed to scan, producing not efficiency but hunger. Migrant workers across the world are increasingly monitored through digital verification, making precarious labour even more vulnerable.

Perhaps most insidiously, digital ID normalises surveillance itself. By embedding digital checkpoints into daily life, whether entering a building, logging into a service, or accessing healthcare, surveillance becomes routine. What once might have provoked outrage becomes ordinary. Control does not need to be imposed violently when it is integrated seamlessly into the everyday functions of existence.

The consequences of digital ID are not abstract. Around the world, its implementation reveals the sharp edges of exclusion and control.

As already mentioned India’s Aadhaar project, the largest biometric ID system in history, covers over a billion people. It was presented as a means of reducing corruption and expanding access to welfare. In reality, it has excluded millions of poor and rural people from food rations and pensions because their fingerprints did not register. Reports have documented starvation deaths when families were denied grain for lack of proper authentication. For the poor, the system is not convenience, it is a death sentence.

In Europe, digital ID takes a different but equally insidious form. The EU is developing a unified “digital identity wallet” for banking, healthcare, and travel, promoted as freedom for citizens. At the same time, the Eurodac database stores the fingerprints of asylum seekers to enforce deportations and prevent secondary movement. Digital ID here is double-edged, advertised as seamless mobility for the privileged, but functioning as chains for migrants.

Across Africa, the World Bank and multinational corporations are funding digital ID projects under the guise of “financial inclusion.” Tied to mobile money systems, these IDs are less about inclusion than about expanding debt markets and integrating populations into circuits of extraction. They replicate colonial practices where identification was a prerequisite for resource exploitation and labour discipline.

In settler-colonial states like New Zealand and Australia, digital driver’s licences and facial recognition technologies are being trialled under the language of security and convenience. But both countries maintain extensive databases of their populations, and both have long histories of surveillance and repression against indigenous peoples and political activists. Digital ID here strengthens existing patterns of racialised and political control, embedding them in everyday transactions.

The Role of the State

For anarchists, it is no surprise that the state is at the centre of these developments. The state has never been a neutral provider of services. It is a machinery of class rule, designed to enforce property relations and maintain hierarchy. Digital ID offers the state new levels of efficiency in population management. Welfare can be rationed through digital checkpoints, ensuring that only the “deserving” poor receive aid. Policing is strengthened through biometric databases, making dissent and protest more dangerous. Borders become omnipresent, extending into every workplace, clinic, and street corner. Even the ritual of voting is increasingly tied to digital verification, further legitimising the state’s hold.

But the state does not act alone. The infrastructure of digital ID is outsourced to corporations, tech giants and consultancy firms whose profits depend on extracting and selling data. ID2020, the flagship global digital ID initiative, is a partnership between Microsoft, Accenture, Gavi, and Mastercard. This fusion of state power and corporate capital creates a techno-bureaucratic regime that is incredibly difficult to resist at the level of the individual. It is not simply your government demanding your data, it is a web of global corporations embedding control into the infrastructure of daily life.

Resistance and Its Possibilities

And yet, systems of domination are never total. The chains of digital ID can be resisted, but the struggle requires collective defiance. Individuals cannot simply opt out when access to food, housing, or healthcare is increasingly contingent on digital verification. Resistance must be social, coordinated, and rooted in solidarity.

It begins with exposing the lie of convenience. The marketing of digital ID depends on people believing it is in their interests. By revealing its function as surveillance, exclusion, and profit-making, we can puncture the narrative that it is a neutral technological advance. Convenience is the sugar that coats the poison pill.

Resistance also means standing with those most affected by exclusion. When people are denied access to food or healthcare because a machine rejects them, solidarity demands that communities step in. Mutual aid networks, food distribution, and grassroots healthcare can undermine the state’s monopoly on survival. By caring for each other without demanding documents, communities demonstrate the possibility of life beyond identification.

Direct action has its place as well. Surveillance infrastructure can be disrupted, whether through physical sabotage, digital hacktivism, or leaks that expose the collusion of states and corporations. Every act that slows the expansion of digital ID chips away at its inevitability.

Perhaps most crucially, resistance means refusing to internalise the normalisation of surveillance. We must continue to feel anger each time a new checkpoint is introduced, each time a new biometric system is trialled, each time a new database is constructed. The greatest victory of power is not when it controls us, but when it convinces us that control is natural.

Digital ID is not a neutral innovation. It is the frontier of capitalist surveillance and state control. It deepens exploitation, excludes the vulnerable, and integrates every aspect of life into the machinery of profit and domination. Identification has always been a tool of authority, from medieval passes to apartheid laws, and digital ID is the most sophisticated form yet.

The ruling class wants us to believe digital ID is inevitable. But inevitability is the language of power. Systems of domination can be resisted, sabotaged, dismantled. The struggle against digital ID is not about nostalgia for the days of paper documents; it is about defending the very possibility of living without being constantly monitored, verified, and reduced to data.

What is at stake is not simply privacy, but freedom itself.

For decades, the world has been captivated by proposed solutions to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, ranging from the two-state solution to the one-state solution. These ideas, while superficially promising, fundamentally fail because they cling to the notion that state structures,whether Israeli or Palestinian, can bring liberation. Anarchism offers a crucial critique of this reliance on states and borders, envisioning a world where people, not institutions, dictate their destinies. In this context, the No-State Solution emerges as the only path toward real justice and freedom.

Mainstream conversations often revolve around the two-state solution, which, despite being heavily promoted internationally, remains deeply flawed. Even if implemented, it would still perpetuate the colonial and capitalist frameworks that created the problem. The creation of two separate states entrenches nationalism and hierarchies of power, rather than dismantling them. Similarly, the one-state solution, which imagines a unified state where Palestinians and Israelis coexist with equal rights, still operates within the framework of a capitalist, hierarchical system. Anarchists recognise that true freedom cannot be found within the confines of any state structure.

The No-State Solution is not an abstract fantasy. It draws from historical precedents and the lived experience of Palestinians themselves. Despite decades of colonisation and displacement, Palestinians have maintained resilient communities through systems of mutual aid and solidarity. In refugee camps across Lebanon, Jordan, and Syria, informal systems of governance emerged without the presence of a state. Property rights, social traditions, and even revolutionary movements were organised autonomously.

These camps, often neglected or subjected to external control, have become hubs for autonomous organisation where Palestinians manage their own affairs. Despite the lack of official recognition or state enforcement, Palestinian refugees have created functioning communities based on mutual aid, solidarity, and traditional practices, demonstrating the potential for anarchist principles to flourish in the most adverse conditions.

In Lebanon, for example, the Shatila and Ein el-Hilweh camps have developed their own internal governance structures. These camps operate with localised councils that manage everything from dispute resolution to infrastructure maintenance. Property rights, though unofficial, are respected within the community through oral agreements and mutual recognition. No central authority dictates who owns what; instead, land and housing distribution relies on informal negotiations based on trust and communal decision-making. This decentralisation of power is an inherently anarchistic approach to governance, where the community collectively handles its own needs without state interference.
Similarly, in Jordan’s Baqa’a camp, which houses tens of thousands of Palestinian refugees, traditional social structures have been repurposed to address contemporary challenges. Families and extended kinship networks play a significant role in maintaining order and supporting those in need. This reliance on social traditions, such as collective child-rearing and communal sharing of resources, reflects the principles of mutual aid and cooperation. These informal systems ensure that, despite the state’s neglect, basic needs are met, and social cohesion is maintained.

In Syria, the Yarmouk refugee camp was once considered a “capital” for Palestinian refugees, where revolutionary movements took root alongside everyday communal life. Before its destruction in the Syrian civil war, Yarmouk was a thriving community where political movements like the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) organized resistance against both Israeli occupation and oppressive state forces in the region. This revolutionary spirit coexisted with a strong tradition of self-help and mutual support. Even without formal political recognition, Yarmouk’s residents managed healthcare, education, and social welfare through grassroots efforts, often in direct defiance of both Syrian state control and external political pressures.

These examples of self-organisation in Palestinian camps show the anarchist potential that exists within the Palestinian society. In the absence of a functioning state, Palestinians have demonstrated that they can organise effectively, build social structures, and foster solidarity. This self-reliance, born out of necessity, embodies anarchist ideals of rejecting top-down authority and building power from the grassroots. It proves that communities can thrive through mutual aid, cooperation, and the rejection of hierarchical control.

The No-State Solution builds on these lived experiences, showing that the Palestinian people have already laid the groundwork for a future without state domination. By scaling up these examples of autonomous governance and mutual aid, Palestinians could forge a path to liberation that transcends the traditional state-based models of control. These refugee camps provide a living blueprint for how a stateless society can function, even in the face of immense external pressure. The challenge now is to expand these principles beyond the camps and into the broader struggle for Palestinian liberation, rejecting both Israeli colonialism and the authoritarian tendencies of nationalist governance.

These examples of self-organisation highlight the anarchist potential that already exists within Palestinian society. The idea of a No-State Solution isn’t about rejecting organisation but about rejecting authoritarianism. It’s about moving towards a future where communities govern themselves, free from the oppression of state power.

At the heart of this solution is the rejection of nationalism as a liberating force. While the Palestinian resistance has historically embraced nationalism as a response to Israeli occupation, anarchists understand that nationalism inherently divides people. It reinforces borders, exclusion, and hierarchy—the very structures anarchism seeks to dismantle. Instead, we should focus on decolonizing social relations, removing not just the physical borders but also the mental ones that divide Palestinians and Israelis. The future must be built on solidarity, where people see each other not as enemies defined by national identity, but as fellow human beings in a shared struggle for freedom.

In practice, the No-State Solution offers the opportunity for true autonomy. It’s a vision where communities manage their own resources, resolve conflicts through dialogue rather than military force, and live without the domination of a ruling class. The solution to the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, therefore, lies not in creating another state but in erasing the structures that necessitate one. This means dismantling capitalism, patriarchy, and colonialism, not just in Palestine, but globally.
Anarchists across the world have a role to play in this struggle. Solidarity with the Palestinian cause cannot be limited to calls for statehood but must support the broader fight against all forms of domination. Boycotts, divestments, and sanctions (BDS) are valuable tools in applying pressure on Israel’s apartheid regime, but they must be paired with direct action and international solidarity efforts. Anarchists must amplify the voices within Palestine that challenge both Israeli colonialism and the oppressive aspects of Palestinian governance under the Palestinian Authority. It is not enough to simply oppose Israel’s occupation, we must oppose the structures of power that maintain it.

We can see a powerful parallel to the No-State Solution in the revolutionary example of the Zapatistas in Chiapas, Mexico. For decades, the Zapatistas have created autonomous zones governed by the principles of direct democracy, rejecting both the Mexican state and capitalist forces. Their movement, born from the resistance of Indigenous people to state violence, has built a functioning society based on horizontal structures, mutual aid, and communal decision-making. The Zapatistas provide a living example of how communities can self-govern without relying on a state, and how they can thrive through cooperative networks rooted in autonomy. Like the Zapatistas, Palestinians can resist both colonialism and the authoritarianism that often arises within their own ranks, building systems of mutual aid and self-determination that do not rely on the violent apparatus of the state.

The Zapatistas’ struggle reminds us that autonomy and statelessness are not abstract concepts but achievable realities. Their success has shown that when communities come together to resist both external oppression and internal hierarchies, they can create new worlds outside of state control. The Zapatistas’ emphasis on decentralisation and the rejection of top-down governance echoes the potential for Palestinians to organise outside of the state paradigm, forging a future based on self-management, communal solidarity, and true liberation.

The model for a No-State Solution can also be seen in revolutionary experiments like Rojava in Northern Syria. Rojava’s decentralised, multi-ethnic federation provides a glimpse of what a stateless society could look like in practice, where communities govern themselves based on principles of direct democracy, gender equality, and ecological sustainability. Just as the people of Rojava have rejected the nation-state, so too must Palestinians and Israelis reject the false promise of statehood as the path to liberation.

This isn’t just about tearing down borders or toppling governments. It’s about building a world where power flows horizontally, not vertically. Where decisions are made collectively, resources shared equitably, and no one group dominates another. For Palestinians, this means rejecting the notion that their liberation can come through the creation of a new state, and instead embracing a future of genuine autonomy, free from the yoke of Israeli colonialism and the authoritarianism of any Palestinian ruling class.

Anarchists, in Palestine, Israel and globally, must stand firm in our rejection of the state as a liberating force. We must advocate for a world beyond borders, beyond nations, and beyond oppression. The No-State Solution is not a utopian dream, but a necessary step toward real freedom, a freedom that can only be realised when we dismantle the power structures that keep us divided and oppressed.

Republished from: https://awsm4u.noblogs.org/post/2024/10/20/palestine-the-no-state-solution/

On 10 September 2025, the political landscape of the United States was shaken when conservative activist Charlie Kirk was fatally shot during an event at Utah Valley University. The public reaction was swift and intense. President Donald Trump delivered a formal statement, decrying the violence as a “dark moment for America,” blaming what he termed the “radical left” for fostering an environment of incendiary rhetoric, and pledging measures to crack down on those he holds responsible. Trump’s words and actions in the wake of the tragedy have raised alarm bells among many, especially on the left. Trump’s promise is not merely about bringing a shooter to justice, it represents a broader shift towards authoritarian suppression of dissent, a red-baiting of progressive movements, and a tightening of state power that anarchists have long warned against.

Trump’s immediate reaction followed a familiar script of public grief, heroic framing, and blame. He said he was “filled with grief and anger,” that Kirk was a “tremendous person,” and called his killing “heinous” and “dark.” But while mourning publicly, he also issued pointed blame. The “radical left,” according to Trump, had created an atmosphere in which violence is normalised towards those on the right. In his words, “radical left” actors were comparing “wonderful Americans like Charlie to Nazis and the world’s worst mass murderers and criminals,” which he suggested contributed to political violence.

Beyond rhetoric, Trump did not stop at words. He has restated his intention to build on earlier measures designed to suppress what his administration calls subversive ideologies. Already in 2025, early in his second term, Trump signed Executive Order 14190, titled Ending Radical Indoctrination in K-12 Schooling, which bans educational material deemed “anti-American or subversive,” especially teachings related to critical race theory and “gender ideology.” In August 2025, he declared a crime emergency in Washington, D.C., federalising law enforcement there and deploying National Guard units, actions which the administration justified as an attempt to restore “safety” amid rising violent crime. The pieces were already in place. The Kirk tragedy has simply become the catalyst for promises of even more sweeping crackdowns.

To anarcho-communists, who advocate a society free from hierarchical, authoritarian structures, and in which people govern themselves democratically, a Trump crackdown against the “radical left” is deeply ominous. What might it look like?

1. Criminalisation of Dissent

   The history of modern American politics is replete with precedents. Black activists, anarchists, anti-war protestors, and labour organisers have been surveilled, infiltrated, and prosecuted, not for violence, but for dissent. Under such a crackdown, legal, and even extra-legal, tools could be used to define certain ideas, protests or organisations as “subversive.” Speech could be policed, universities censored, organisers arrested. The Executive Order on indoctrination already signals that schools and teachers may face legal consequences for teaching certain ideas.

2.Surveillance State Expansion

   In order to suppress what is labelled as “radical left,” the state must monitor it through social media monitoring, intelligence gathering, data mining of activist networks, infiltrating groups suspected of “extremist” leanings. Already, debates over what constitutes domestic extremism have created broad tools that can encompass many progressive or leftist actions.

3. Policing and Militarisation

   Deploying federal agents and the National Guard for political ends, often under the guise of crime control, can result in the militarisation of civil life. Police raids, mass arrests, checkpoint-style law enforcement, and heavier penalties for protest actions could become normalised. The conversion of political conflict into policing conflict is a set piece in the authoritarian playbook.

4. Targeted Suppression

   Not all “radical left” actors are the same – anarcho-communists, ecological activists, labour radicals, anti-imperialists. Trump’s framing tends to lump together all left-wing dissent in a way that makes specificity irrelevant. But practically, suppression might target groups that are militant, overtly revolutionary, or highly visible. Media outlets, collectives, unions, mutual aid networks, any visible organisation that does not conform, could come under official suspicion.

5. Chilling Political Culture

   Even without outright laws or arrests, the promise of repression chills speech. Teachers may self-censor, protestors may avoid engaging, organisers may be more cautious. Solidarity becomes risky. Activists might face social or legal ostracisation just for being affiliated with controversial causes.

From an anarcho-communist perspective, which seeks the abolition of hierarchy, capitalism, and coercive state power, Trump’s crackdown is not just another instance of political repression; it is a legitimation of deeper systemic violence.

  Anarcho-communism holds that the state is a tool of class power. Laws, police, and courts function to defend property rights and capital accumulation, not equitable justice. Under a crackdown, these tools disproportionately harm the working class, marginalised communities, and political dissidents. Trump’s promise furthers this inherent authoritarian impulse by expanding repressive apparatuses, legal, police, ideological, in the name of “law and order.”

  Trump blames left-wing rhetoric for violence after Kirk’s death, yet has previously supported rhetoric that demonises political opponents as existential enemies, dehumanising rhetoric that can serve as moral groundwork for repression. Trump’s blaming of alleged leftist rhetoric for violence, and simultaneous political mobilisation against the left, equates dissent with danger. This slippery slope often leads to punishment without proof. Who defines “radical left” anyway? Already Trump’s definitions, indoctrination, anti-American, subversive, are dangerously broad. Ideological labels are wielded to erase nuance and dissent. What begins as targeting “extremists” can rapidly expand to cover civil libertarians, anti-capitalists, radical ecologists, or anyone questioning the status quo.

  Anarcho-communism depends on horizontal structures: mutual aid, communal self-organisation, autonomous spaces independent of state or capitalist control. All these are vulnerable in a crackdown. Organisations rooted in community care, radical ecology, or direct action may be labelled extremist or subversive, and suppressed via legal harassment, funding cut-offs, or policing.

If the promises intensify into policy, as often happens, the ramifications are profound. Executive Orders like Ending Radical Indoctrination are already  in place and could be used as precedents to broaden definitions of subversion. Legal doctrines around “dangerous speech,” “national security,” or “public order” can be stretched.

  Once suppressive measures are introduced, they tend to outlast their initial pretext. Laws enacted under crisis often survive by bureaucratic inertia. Then surveillance, ideological policing, and militarised enforcement become normalised features of everyday life.

Trump’s promise to crack down on the “radical left” in response to the shooting of Charlie Kirk is more than a conventional political manoeuvre. It amplifies a discourse that conflates dissent with threat, ideology with violence, and invites state power to suppress voices it fears. For anarcho-communists, invested in a vision of society free from coercion and hierarchy, this moment should not merely be one of analysis, but of fierce mobilisation.

Why We Should Care Here

Some will say: “That’s America’s problem. It won’t happen here.” But we know better. Global capitalism is networked. Authoritarianism spreads. And our ruling class is always eager to import tools of repression from abroad. Anti-terror laws, protest bans, surveillance systems, they circulate between the US, the UK, Australia, and Aotearoa like products on the same supply chain.

Already, New Zealand politicians echo Trumpian rhetoric. They attack “radical activists,” “extremist protestors.” They frame anyone who questions capitalism or colonisation as a threat to “social order.” If Trump normalises a new Red Scare in the US, rest assured it will wash up on our shores.

The nightmare scenario is not inevitable. Resistance can push back, not only through protest, but by building alternative social relations, demystifying the language of repression, and refusing to internalise the frame that the state defines what is radical. When the ruling class centralises power under the guise of security, it is up to social movements to decentralise power, reaffirm autonomy, and confirm that dissent is not violence, but democracy refusing its chains.