One should not have to be a religious anarchist to understand why the adage “No Gods No Masters” is antiquated and ought be retired. This would certainly not be to defend the existence of any deity, pantheon or religious practice pertaining to anarchy (which has no mind for any faith whatsoever,) but to recognize redundancies that, intentionally or not, marginalize those who seek complete emancipation through the lens of their own spiritual modus.
Without any material master, there remains both no god for those not wanting one in all senses, as well as a bountiful space for all seeking to practice their hearts’ calling freely. For those who recognize a divine how they do with a mind for total liberation, their struggle bearing fruit is the realization of their faith. A blossoming promise for what their faith guides them towards.
A balance of anarchists possessing their own personal guidance and practicing it in their unified intention is to be the anarchist movement of the coming years, and for that is required a common frame to work out of. One can be opposed to all oppression, including theocracy and religious oppression, without instigating a special persecution onto those who are both faithful and opposed to the state and capital.
We know that the phrase in question originates in the mid 19th century French anarchists (sometimes attributed to Pierre-Joseph Proudhon) who proclaimed Ni Dieu Ni Maître among their labor unions in opposition to both the dominant Christian god and the capitalists who dictated the wages of their lives with protection from the institutions of the former. We know that the phrase became most adopted by western anarchists in punk subcultures seeking to shake off the yolk of their often Christian upbringings in tandem with their defiance against the capitalist landscape. (There are instances in the global south of anarchists using the phrase in defiance of their given religions per their regions.) These are all valid historical and material necessities to be rebellious against certain institutional religious demands that stifle the potential for all that is required to overcome the dominant forces that have claimed the Earth for themselves and cast us all into their servitude. They were right to say “no” to the decree of a god or an institution claiming that god for allowing and enabling slavery, poverty, division, desperation and decay. They were right to pick up the tools themselves and make the change real and now. Part of that was rejecting the internalized behavior that the dominant religion of their culture made innate in their upbringing, that rationalized their suffering into a lifelong dedication to sustaining oneself inside misery, and in some instances this manifested as a rejection of god’s existence entirely in order to overcome that imposed misery.
Whether it truly made a statement for atheism or acted as a provocative call for secularism, it was enticing enough to become one of the main staples of anarchist “wisdom” and in conservative circles made anarchists out to be inextricably linked to a malice toward any divinity. There are certainly those anarchists who view their personal projects as spiteful conspiracies against “god’s sacred order” in hostility towards everything that, truth be told, deserves such hostility. There is no criticism for them, because they are correct to be so impassioned by their freeness from all deities that they refuse to bow to. That is their own course. They would be incorrect to expect everyone else to be on this exact same path. They would be incorrect to view all anarchist practice as perfectly resembling theirs.
Such timely contextual necessities as “killing god for everyone’s sake” do not apply in a pluralistic ethos that is multifaceted, multi-generational and tolerant of both irreligion and religion/faith equally, so long as neither influence the conditions of anyone’s life. The very fabric of striving for complete liberation is stitched with a history of fleeing persecution, both because of specific faith or lack of faith. There are some minor contenders who claim that all people need “freeing” from all faith in order for anarchy to be sustainable. These are authoritarians. These individuals atheistically deify a toxic western frame of thought that views only scientific rationalism to be the valid ethos of so-called “civilized” peoples. Their conception of liberation is enveloped in a wrongly extended categorization to include religious traditions as violations of freedom, rather than free participatory choices that reflect who one is, that are completely acceptable within the core anarchist principles of free association and free dissociation.
It is willful small-mindedness prevailing even in circles of those who profess to be aware of larger and deeper contexts and meanings that dooms the effective practice of freedom. It is the culture of “debate” and team sports of opinion that has corrupted all sense of being on the same page. At the end of all these ridiculous tensions, we find only a violent drive to control others. Whether it is the theocrat or the militant antitheist tugging at the line, they each want to constrict the lives of those who deviate from their sense of normalcy and acceptability. It is only by embracing the basic nuances of each of us as the people we are that we can realize genuine freedom. All the metrics of personal qualifiers must be washed away to invite the full potential of every person regardless of their background. One is not an anarchist if they cannot embrace, or at a minimum tolerate, the wondrous variations in all humankind. One is merely another bigot if they either disregard a person’s humanity because of their affiliation, or venture to jump through intellectual hoops in order to “prove” the inherent unworthiness of a constructed “other”. Their priorities are laid bare, and their extrapolations are invalid.
By what means does an adage of such historical and cultural merit be retired? Well, I certainly do not believe in policing others, because I do not allow anyone else to represent or control me, and so I do not engage with projects that seek to do that. I have merely stated what should be obvious in saying that an anarchist must be welcoming and understanding, must possess the capacity to learn and be humble — while retaining a useful measure of critical thought — in order to be a useful participant in complete emancipation. One must make their judgments and act accordingly; there is no correcting a bigot who has assured himself and prays to a god that assures him that he is correct in his stupidity. There is only dissociation, and further action if casting that bigot out results in retaliation.
My chosen path has been to introduce and propagate alternatives. The no masters component remains too strong, relevant and necessary to abandon completely. But this is retained with the understanding that no conception of [a] god worthy of recognition should resemble a master as the earthly masters of humanity’s history. For us pagan anarchists, some like the phrase Old Gods No Masters. (There are regional variants on this.) Pagan anarchists do not see our venerated entities as “masters” or “lords”, but as worthy guides, essences, spirits or manifestations embedded within the facets of the natural world; the vital, ecological and cosmological reality around and beneath the world that has been imposed onto our Mother Earth. We know that the sources we engage with want us to be happy and free, and we know that the affairs of humankind must be resolved by human thought and action.
For those of us who sense a completeness beyond the here and now while remaining engaged in the existing world, our expression and reasoning of hope is a fleshing of what is to be. We cannot realistically aim to prevent others from raising the anti-god anti-masters flag, because for them that is their objective for themselves. We can only perpetuate for ourselves what we want to see sprouting from our conscious intentions. And in doing so, we acknowledge that it should be enough to do away with all the masters on Earth in order to free our own spirits, no matter the ways in which they are inclined to move.
Ignited In Dark 