The Strangest Thing About Being an Anti-Natalist

The strangest thing about being an anti-natalist isn’t the philosophy, it’s how angry people get about it. I’m not proposing laws. I’m not advocating forced sterilization. I’m not suggesting the state regulate reproduction. All I’m doing is saying I don’t think having children is ethically justified, and that I personally choose not to do it. Yet somehow that turns into accusations of eugenics, nihilism, fascism, or wanting to wipe out humanity.

This is interesting because the philosophy most people are actually arguing with — usually without realizing it — comes from thinkers like David Benatar, whose book Better Never to Have Been makes a pretty straightforward argument: bringing someone into existence exposes them to suffering to which they never consented. That’s it. That’s the core of it. And once you see the argument clearly, it’s hard to unsee.

Nobody consents to being born. That’s not rhetorical flourish. It’s just a fact. Every other major moral system we use in society revolves around consent. We treat it as one of the most basic ethical principles we have. Yet the biggest decision anyone will ever experience — the decision that creates their entire existence — is made without it.

Now, obviously, consent from a nonexistent person is impossible. Anti-natalism recognizes that, but that impossibility doesn’t magically make the ethical problem disappear. Instead it raises a question:

If creating someone exposes them to pain, illness, loss, anxiety, and eventually death … what’s the moral justification for doing it?

“But life is good!”

This is the first response. People say life is beautiful, meaningful, joyful. Sometimes it is. Anti-natalism doesn’t deny that pleasure exists. The argument is that pleasure doesn’t justify imposing suffering on someone who didn’t ask for the gamble in the first place. You can’t miss pleasures you were never born to experience, but if you’re born, you can absolutely experience suffering, and everyone does.

There’s also the eugenics accusation. One of the strangest criticisms I’ve heard over the past two days is that anti-natalism is a form of eugenics. This makes absolutely no sense. Eugenics is about selective reproduction. Deciding who should reproduce based on genetics, race, disability, or social status. It doesn’t say certain people shouldn’t have children. It says no one has a morally compelling reason to create new people at all. If anything, that’s the opposite of eugenics. Eugenics wants better babies. Anti-natalism questions whether creating babies in the first place is ethical.

Then there’s the whole “But what about the future?” This is another common argument that refusing to reproduce is defeatist. People say humanity needs future generations to fix the world. But this argument quietly assumes something strange: That the solution to suffering is creating new people who will inherit it. Imagine solving poverty by creating more poor people who might someday fix poverty. Imagine solving war by creating more soldiers. At some point the logic starts to look less like hope and more like a pyramid scheme.

The intensity of the backlash says something interesting. Anti-natalism isn’t just a philosophical argument. It pokes at one of the deepest assumptions our culture has: that having children is automatically meaningful, noble, and morally good. Questioning that assumption feels threatening. If reproduction isn’t inherently justified, then one of humanity’s most fundamental behaviors suddenly requires ethical scrutiny. That’s uncomfortable. So the response is often to attack the person making the argument instead of engaging with the argument itself.

At the end of the day, my decision to not have children doesn’t harm anyone. It doesn’t take anything away from people who wants families. But the philosophy matters because it forces us to confront a question most people never ask:

“Why do we assume creating life is morally neutral — or even good — by default?”

Maybe the answer is still yes. Maybe humanity keeps going forever. But if that’s the case, it should at least be a decision people think about seriously instead of treating reproduction as something automatic. If nothing else, anti-natalism forces that conversation. And judging by the reactions I’ve been seeing online the past two days, it’s a conversation a lot of people would rather avoid.

More Anarchist or Communist?

I’m firmly rooted in my beliefs as an anarcho-communist, but what does that mean? Am I an anarchist or a communist? How can one be both? Every political label has a built-in identity crisis, but few produce quite as much confusion as anarcho-communism. People squint at it like it’s a glitch in the ideological matrix: “Are they more anarchist or more communist? Which part matters more?”

Here’s the honest answer: you can’t pull the two apart without breaking the whole thing. Anarcho-communists aren’t halfway between the two. They’re the union overlap in the Venn diagram. Let’s break it down:

Anarchism: The Method

Anarchism begins with one foundational argument: hierarchy is not self-justifying. If someone claims the right to rule you, the burden of proof is on them. And good luck making a convincing case.

For anarchists, freedom isn’t something the state grants. It’s something the state obstructs. No kings, no presidents, no vanguards, no bosses, no landlords. Human beings coordinate their own lives without coercive authority. So when anarcho-communists talk about society without a state, they aren’t being edgy. They’re being consistent.

Communism: The Goal

Take the classic communist vision:

No classes

No private ownership of the means of production

No wage labor

No markets

No state

Marx called this the “higher phase of communism.” The endpoint. Anarcho-communists don’t disagree with that goal. They disagree with the path.

Where Marxists-Leninists picture a transitional state to shepherd you into communism, anarcho-communists see the contradiction immediately: You can’t build a stateless society by strengthening the state.

To them, that’s like saying the way to eliminate fire is to pour gasoline on it “temporarily.”

So which matters more? This is the fun part:

They’re anarchists in strategy and communist in outcome.

If you ask Marxist-Leninists then anarcho-communists are “too anarchist” because we reject the transitional state.

If you ask a market anarchist they’re “too communist” because we reject markets entirely.

If you ask an anarcho-communist then we’ll tell you the question is wrong. We see anarchism and communism as two sides of the same project: a society without domination, whether political or economic.

For us, you can’t be truly anarchist if you still allow economic hierarchy, and you can’t be truly communist if you preserve political hierarchy. Authority and exploitation are one machine with two gears.

So what’s the cleanest definition? Anarcho-communism is communism without the state and anarchism without the market. No bosses, no state, no landlords, no wage slavery, just cooperative, decentralized, freely associated communities handling things together.

The “more anarchist or communist?” debate only makes sense from the outside. From within, the two are inseparable.

The Lie of Glory

I started reading Johnny Got His Gun by Dalton Trumbo for one reason: Republicans said not to. They said it was anti-American and socialist. What it is is anti-war and anti-imperialism. If the people who glorify war and worship a flag are afraid of a book then that’s usually a sign the book is telling the truth.

The book isn’t just anti-war. It’s anti-illusion. It’s about Joe Bonham, a World War I soldier who wakes up in a hospital with no arms, no legs, no face; he’s deaf, mute, and blind. His body is gone, but his mind is still very much alive. The entire book consists of his thoughts, his memories, his realization that he’s become a piece of government property in a bed.

There’s no glory in this book. There’s no heroism. There’s silence, darkness, and the sound of your own mind refusing to die.

The deeper I got into the book, the more it hit me: everything recruiters promise — pride, purpose, brotherhood — it’s all marketing. The same system that feeds you “honor” will turn you into cannon fodder the second you sign on the dotted line. When you’re useful, they decorate you. When you’re broken, they hide you.

There’s a chapter where Joe hallucinates Christ walking among the dead and mutilated soldiers. It’s not divine. It’s horrifying. Christ doesn’t save anyone, He just watches humanity destroy itself again, in His name this time. That’s when Trumbo’s message cuts through: war isn’t sacrifice, it’s slaughter dressed up as salvation.

Joe eventually figures out how to communicate: by tapping his head against his pillow in Morse code. What he asks for is simple: let him be seen. Roll him through the streets in a glass case so people can see what “sacrifice for freedom” actually looks like. Of course, they refuse. The military can’t afford truth. They sedate him and shove him back into silence.

That’s how the machine works. It eats you, then buries what’s left under words like “honor” and “duty.”

Johnny Got His Gun isn’t an easy read, but it’s the kind that wakes something up in you. It makes every flag-waving speech sound like a sales pitch. It makes every “support our troops” bumper sticker feel hollow. The book isn’t anti-American. It’s anti-lie. And that’s exactly why they don’t want you to read it.

Candide Through an Absurd and Anti-Natalist Lens

I finished Voltaire’s Candide. I bought it I don’t know how long ago, but I’d get distracted with other books as I often do and just forgot about it until recently. All I can say is “Wow!” It was an excellent satire of philosophy in general. Me, being who I am though, I read it through a lens of pessimism, absurdism, and anti-natalism. It’s surprisingly modern and disturbingly relevant.

Right from the start the main character — Candide — and his world are full of relentless misfortune: he starts out expelled from his home, pushed into a brutal army; he witnesses earthquakes, massacres, and hangings. Everywhere he goes, human cruelty and disaster dominate.

For someone like me that’s attuned to anti-natalist thought, the lesson is clear: life is unpredictably cruel, and no amount of idealism or hope can shield anyone from suffering. The character of Pangloss and his philosophy — “this is the best of all possible worlds” — is not comforting. It’s absurd. Voltaire mocks it precisely to show that optimism can blind us to reality.

Candide meets kings unthroned, slaves chained to oars, prostitutes forced by circumstance, and monks trapped in religious life against their will. From the sites of Libson to El Dorado and Paris to Venice, suffering is universal. It doesn’t discriminate by wealth, status, or virtue.

All of this perfectly aligns with anti-natalism. Why bring new life into a world so unpredictable, so cruel, and so universally painful? Voltaire’s stories of absurdly recurring disasters reinforce the ethical argument that procreation inevitably imposes suffering on others. Human ideas are fragile. Pursuits that seem meaningful such as love, wealth, status, and fame often collapse under the weight of reality. For an absurdist like myself, this is expected. The universe offers no inherent purpose and our “ideals” are more likely than not arbitrary constructs.

The end of the book says “We must cultivate our garden.” This is Voltaire’s practical work. Life is absurd and full of suffering, but we can still create meaning in small, tangible ways: tending to our responsibilities, helping others, or our own little personal projects. For an absurdist anti-natalist this means to me:

Accept the universe’s lack’s lack of inherent meaning. Do what you can to reduce suffering wherever possible. And focus on tangible, ethical, or creative work rather than abstract speculation.

So, what did I take away from the satirical work? I learned through its absurd coincidences, relentless misfortunes, and philosophical debates that it mirrors these truths: life is cruel, unpredictable, and often meaningless.

However, like Candide, we are not powerless. We can act, work, and cultivate our little gardens in such a chaotic world, and in doing so, carve out a fragile, ethical, and perhaps even joyful corner of existence.

Freedom, American-Style: Guns Over Healthcare

It says a lot about the state of America when you point out that the U.S. has fallen to 57th place in the global freedom index, and the response you get from a Trump supporter is: “Yeah, well, I get to own guns.”

This is the American illusion of freedom distilled into a single sentence. Forget healthcare, forget workers’ rights, forget privacy, forget the surveillance state, forget the crushing weight of debt—because hey, you can still buy a gun. That’s supposed to make us the freest country on Earth.

But what kind of freedom is that, really? Is it freedom when millions can’t afford basic healthcare? When a medical emergency can bankrupt a family? When corporations own politicians, and workers are trapped in jobs just to keep health insurance? Is it freedom when your choices are narrowed down to which corporate brand you’ll consume, which billionaire will own your data, and which politician will fail you more slowly?

The gun argument is really a confession. It’s saying: “We’ve lost so much freedom that the only one we cling to is the ability to arm ourselves.” Guns have become the consolation prize in a country where every other right and protection is chipped away.

You can’t afford insulin, but you can afford an AR-15. You can’t get mental healthcare, but you can stockpile ammo. You can’t get your child’s asthma medication covered, but you can walk into a Walmart and walk out with a weapon of war. This isn’t freedom. It’s a parody of it.

Real freedom isn’t just the right to own a gun. Real freedom is the right to live without fear of medical bankruptcy, to have control over your workplace and your government, to exist without being exploited by corporations or surveilled by the state. Real freedom is collective, not individualistic. It’s not about clutching a weapon in the ruins, it’s about building a society where weapons aren’t necessary.

The sad truth is that when a Trump supporter says “I get to own guns,” what they’re really saying is: “This is the only freedom I have left, and I’m going to cling to it no matter what else is taken from me.” But clinging to a single hollow freedom while the rest are stripped away isn’t liberty. It’s defeat dressed up as patriotism.

And that’s why America is 57th in freedom. Because we’ve traded healthcare for hardware, dignity for firepower, and genuine liberty for a cheap illusion of it.

Why the U.S. Hired Nazis but Hated the USSR

It’s one of the strangest contradictions in American history: right after fighting a war against Nazi Germany, the United States turned around and gave hundreds of Nazis safe passage, jobs, and paychecks. At the same time, it launched a global crusade against the Soviet Union, its former ally in the war. So why were ex-Nazis welcomed into the U.S. while Communists were treated like the ultimate enemy?

After World War II, the U.S. quietly recruited more than 1,600 German scientists, engineers, and technicians through a program called Operation Paperclip. These weren’t just neutral “lab coat” types. Many had been members of the Nazi Party or had worked directly for Hitler’s war machine.

Wernher von Braun, who built V-2 rockets with slave labor, later became the father of the U.S. space program. Hubertus Strughold, the “father of space medicine,” had ties to medical experiments on concentration camp prisoners. Why hire them? Because knowledge was power. The U.S. wanted their rocket science, their chemistry, their military technology, and just as importantly, it didn’t want those brains falling into Soviet hands.

While the U.S. was willing to rehabilitate Nazis, it drew a hard line against Communists.

The U.S. was built on capitalism; the USSR was Communist. American leaders saw Communism as a direct threat to private property and global markets. Geopolitics: After the war, the USSR controlled Eastern Europe and projected influence worldwide. The U.S. wanted global dominance and couldn’t tolerate a rival system. Once the Soviets tested an atomic bomb in 1949, the competition turned existential. Anti-Communism fueled McCarthyism and justified military budgets, CIA coups, and repression of leftists at home.

In short, fighting Communism was about preserving U.S. power, not morality.

This is the big contradiction: The U.S. claimed it was defending freedom and democracy, but its actions told a different story. Nazis were a defeated enemy who could be repurposed. Communists were a living enemy offering an alternative vision of the world. So America struck a deal with its conscience: use the Nazis, fight the Soviets, and sell the public a story about good versus evil.

This history cuts through the myth that U.S. foreign policy is about values. The real driver is power. The U.S. was never “pro-freedom vs. anti-fascism.” It was always pro-Capitalism vs. anti-Communism, and if that meant hiring Nazis to help win the Cold War, so be it.

Bill Hicks and Joe Rogan

I’m tired of this whole bro culture that’s going on right now and Joe Rogan seems to be the man in charge of it. He never really amounted to much until someone decided it’d be a good idea to give him a podcast. Years ago I thought he was decent enough because he admired Bill Hicks and he was friends with Doug Stanhope. Hicks and Stanhope are two of my all-time favorite comedians. Then things shifted.

I think Hicks and Stanhope would have differing opinions on Rogan though. Stanhope openly says he doesn’t care if he bombs on stage. He’d rather be himself than pander to an audience. I don’t see this being Rogan’s attitude. However, the difference between Hicks and Stanhope would be Hicks would roast Rogan and Stanhope would shrug, pour another drink, and say “Who gives a shit?” That’s just who Stanhope is. Hicks though? He wouldn’t stand for it.

Rogan would always bring up Bill Hicks and call him a hero, a genius, a prophet. Hicks was all of those things, but if Hicks were alive today he’d tear Rogan to shreds. Hicks spent his career railing against corporations, conformity, American militarism, consumer culture, and the numbing stupidity of mass entertainment. Hicks wasn’t trying to “be edgy.” He was trying to wake people up. He was pissed off because we were all sleepwalking through a corporate-controlled nightmare.

Now look at Rogan. His whole empire rests on platforming reactionary voices, selling supplements, and playing culture-war middleman. He’s not smashing the system, he’s feeding it. Rogan is what Hicks warned us about: the corporatized, commodified version of counterculture. He’s a watered-down rebel packaged for the masses.

Bill Hicks didn’t attack “wokeness.” He attacked greed, imperialism, and consumer hypnosis. Rogan, meanwhile, obsesses over trans athletes while pretending that’s the frontline of free thought. Hicks went after presidents and generals. Rogan goes after strawmen and invited presidential candidates and billionaires on his podcast.

There’s a difference between using a microphone to question power and using it to launder power’s talking points. Hicks’ comedy was dangerous. Rogan’s podcast is safe. It’s safe enough for Spotify to cut him a $200 million check.

Bill Hicks wanted us to stop being sheep. Joe Rogan built a career herding sheep in new directions.

Bill Hicks was a prophet of rage against the machine. Joe Rogan is the machine.

Can you be a Marxist/Leninist/Kropotkinist/Chomskyist?

Short answer? Yeah. Long answer? It’s complicated, but that’s never stopped me before.

Look, these four thinkers don’t exactly hold hands and sing the Internationale together. They’ve got different blueprints for tearing down capitalism and building something better. That doesn’t mean you can’t steal the best tools from each of them and sharpen your own.

Here’s how it breaks down:

Marx gives you the blueprint.

He’s the one who showed us that capitalism isn’t a glitch, it’s the whole fucking operating system. Class struggle. Alienation. Historical materialism. Without Marx, you’re just vibing in the ruins, not naming the enemy.

Lenin says “Great. Now do something.”

Marx diagnosed the disease. Lenin started the surgery. He understood that capitalism doesn’t die politely. You need pressure, structure, and a strategy. That’s the whole vanguard party thing: not perfect, but a reminder that wishful thinking doesn’t start revolutions. Power has to be seized, not begged for.

Kropotkin asks, “But what are you building?”

The anarchist in the mix who is the heart. He reminds you that the goal isn’t just a new boss in a red hat. It’s no boss. Mutual aid. Voluntary cooperation. No centralized state. No boot, no neck. A vision beyond power games.

Chomsky cuts through the bullshit.

The living dissident. He’s not storming palaces, but he’s tearing down lies. He’s a scalpel for empire, for propaganda, for power dressed in liberal clothing. Chomsky shows you how to spot the cage even when it’s painted blue.

So can you be all four?

Only if you’re okay with contradiction. With mess. With not having all the answers but refusing to settle for anyone else’s either. You take Marx’s critique, Lenin’s urgency, Kropotkin’s ideals, and Chomsky’s clarity, and you use them all to fight the system while knowing none of them alone are enough.

It’s not a clean ideology. It’s a war room.

Capitalism is adaptive, violent, and relentless. Fighting it means pulling from every angle: materialist analysis, revolutionary strategy, anarchist ethics, and relentless truth-telling. That’s not confusion, that’s firepower.

So yeah, I’m a Marxist/Leninist/Kropotkinist/Chomskyist. Call it a contradiction. I call it a strategy.

What I take from Marx, Lenin, Kropotkin, and Chomsky

American politics are broken. Not just crooked or corrupt, but structurally, irredeemably broken. Corporate power is propped up, sociopaths are rewarded, and it dangles just enough hope to keep people from revolting. Voting feels like choosing flavors of decay, while the wealthy buy policy and workers beg for crumbs.

Instead of looking to the ballot box ever four or two years for salvation, I’m looking to four thinkers: Karl Marx, Vladimir Lenin, Peter Kropotkin, and Noam Chomsky. I’m not looking to them as prophets, but as strategists, builders, and demolition experts. Each of these people offer a different tool for ripping this thing apart and reimagining what politics could be. I’m not interested in dogma. I’m interested in results.

From Marx, I take the foundation that class struggle is everything. Marx didn’t give us a blueprint. He gave us a lens, a way to see power for what it is. Capitalism isn’t just unfair; it’s a system that demands exploitation to survive. You can’t vote away the class war. You have to understand that politics is economics in disguise, and that real change starts by confronting the structures that divide labor from power.

You want to change America? Then start by naming the enemy: capital.

From Lenin, I take the strategy that power doesn’t surrender, it gets taken.

Lenin knew that moments of chaos don’t organize themselves. He built a disciplined machine not to preserve power, but to capture and redirect it. I don’t want a vanguard party or a permanent state, but I do believe in planning, timing, and coordination. American politics love spectacle but fear movement. If we want to be more than angry individuals yelling online, we need to move with purpose. The system isn’t going to implode on its own. You either build power or beg from it.

From Kropotkin, I take the vision that mutual aid is not utopia but strategy.

This country is obsessed with bootstraps and billionaires. Kropotkin said fuck that. Cooperation is how we survive, and always has been. Fuck waiting for the state to save us. Let’s build networks, councils, co-ops, and clinics … parallel structures that meet people’s needs now, not after the revolution. Politics don’t just happen in voting booths. It happens in kitchens, strike lines, and occupied buildings. Real change starts when we stop asking permission and start taking care of each other.

From Chomsky I take the filter, meaning if an institution can’t justify its power then burn it down.

Chomsky taught me to look at power and say: “Prove you deserve to exist.” The state, the police, the military-industrial complex, corporate media … none of them pass that test. He also taught me to not waste time reinventing the wheel. If a structure is doing harm then dismantle it. If it’s helping people then democratize it. Reform what you must. Abolish what you can. Build what they fear.

American politics are a shell game designed to keep us chasing scraps while the ruling class counts profits. I’m done playing. If we want to change things then we have to stop trying to fix a broken system and start building a new one from the ground up.

The state won’t save us. The market won’t feed us. But we might if we finally get to work.

Revolution: What Can Be Done?

The other day I asked a communist friend of mine what needed to be done in this day and age, especially in this day and age. She didn’t hesitate.

“We need to form revolutionary cells. Militant, and armed. We need to combine these cells with mutual aid groups and cadres to act as the vanguard. Re-education and promoting independent political action outside of the established bourgeois parties and a focus on anti-imperialism are essential to our movement’s success.

That’s a lot to drop in one breath.

But beneath the revolutionary jargon is something real: the blunt recognition that voting isn’t saving us, capitalism is devouring everything, and the time for passive outrage is long past.

Let’s break this down–not to dismiss it, but to figure out what, if anything, we can actually do.

“Militant and Armed Revolutionary Cells”

This isn’t Reddit larping. She’s talking about small decentralized groups trained in organizing–and possibly armed in self-defense–read to protect their communities and resist oppression. Think Black Panthers, not TikTok tankies.

But here’s the catch:

America isn’t ripe for revolution. Not yet. And we’re up against the most bloated, surveilled, militarized empire in history.

So while “armed cells” sounds bold, it’s also a neon sign flashing “federal indictment.” Strategy matters. So does survival. We can’t fight for a future if we’re locked up before we build anything.

Mutual Aid + Cadres as Vanguard

This part is gold. Mutual aid isn’t charity–it’s infrastructure. It’s food banks when the state fails, rent support when capitalism crushes, first aid when cops won’t help. When you pair that with politically trained organizers (cadres), you start building a base that can actually resist–not just survive.

This isn’t the sexy part of revolution. It’s slow, often invisible. But it works

Re-education

Not brainwashing. Just unlearning the shit we’ve absorbed living under capitalism

That billionaires deserve to rule.
That America is a force for good.
That our only power lies in voting every four years and complaining online the rest of the time.

Re-education means study groups. Memes. Teach-ins. Dismantling propaganda with actual history (I recommend Howard Zinn’s A People’s History of the United States, which I will be reviewing once I finish.) Turning alienation into understanding and understanding into action.

Independent Political Action

Translation: Stop begging Democrats to save us.

This isn’t about throwing elections to the fascists. It’s about building real alternatives. Tenant unions. Worker co-ops. Local campaigns that aren’t bankrolled by the same people gutting your town.

We can’t beat capitalism by playing its game. We need to flip the board.

Anti-Imperialism

This one gets ignored the most.

You can’t fight for justice at home and ignore what your country does abroad. Every bomb dropped, every coup backed, every sanction enforced–it’s part of the same system. Anti-imperialism is not a side quest. It’s the heart of the fight.

So … now what?

You don’t have to be ready to go full Che Guevara in a balaclava. Most people aren’t. But if you feel the rot of this system in your gut, you are ready to do something.

Start local. Start small.

Join or start a mutual aid group.
Host a study group.
Disrupt your comfort zone.
Organize outside of parties that profit off your despair.
Connect with people who want more than reform.
Learn security culture–because if shit gets serious, you’ll need it.

And keep asking: What am I willing to risk? What am I willing to build?

Revolution isn’t a mood. It’s a movement. And movements need more than slogans.

They need people willing to do the work even the unsexy parts.

Even the dangerous ones.