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shyradicals: Dial the Introvert Emergency Hotline and share your introvert distress stories: 

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shyradicals: Dial the Introvert Emergency Hotline and share your introvert distress stories: 

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https://www.instagram.com/p/B8EoR1AF06o/

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Hamja Ahsan, Shy Radicals: The Anti-Systemic Politics of the Militant Introvert , 2017. Courtesy: Book Works

'A wave of withdrawal is reshaping the political landscape ... Tremors can be felt from the global Shy Underground... From the boardroom to the bedroom.' As doors close during the lockdown, shuttered exhibitions, theatres, cinemas and clubs have left culture in a lurch. It's time, then, to rethink the nature of that cultural experience itself.

In a way, the world is catching up with the vision of artist Hamja Ahsan's manifesto, Shy Radicals (2017). Ahsan's book called for a 'pan-Shyistic' society of introverts, the asocial and the reclusive. Challenging what he calls 'extrovert supremacy', Ahsan proposes a speculative Walden pond for our moment of hyper-visibility, livestreams and influencers. This state would ensure its citizens 'freedom from small talk; freedom from coercive visual distraction; freedom from enforced jollity'. Its constitution proclaims: 'No one shall be required to attend or perform at social gatherings.'

Hamja Ahsan, Shy Radicals: The Anti-Systemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, 2017. Courtesy: Book Works

When Ahsan published Shy Radicals, it was intended as serious satire. But, seen today, it gets at something larger: that this moment of 'enforced extroversion', which privileges those who speak loudly at meetings and those who beam themselves on screens, may only exacerbate existing disparities. And, as some galleries shut forever while others will reopen, we're seeing how those same disparities have long marked cultural production, a realm in which visibility itself is monetized.

Let's face it: even before Covid-19, the art world had become shot with hand-wringing and tepid apologies. Even among those professionals most beholden to it, the art business was becoming commonplace to poo-poo: environmentally-taxing plane rides, unethical museum boards, many-tentacled mega-galleries and cookie-cutter biennales in every corner. Don't get me wrong, I love much about this system: but in its recent form, it was becoming impossible to justify. I'm probably not the only one to wince at profiles of social media managers in newspapers. Biennales as a gambit for city tourism (read: gentrification) make me uneasy. And: 'Who cares about institutional politics when the world is on fire?' as a writer friend wrote to me in January.

Olga Tokarczuk, Bieguni (Flights), 2019, book cover. Courtesy: Wydawnictwo Literackie

I welcome the moment where shows will open again. But how might we rethink the art world after Covid-19 to be more equitable, more varied, less winner-take-all? Just as arte povera - 'poor art' - took hold amid anti-capitalist unrest in post-war Italy, then we should look to the potential of simple means, now. Ahsan's art imaginatively employs simple means - text on paper - not million-plus dollar programming tools. If, as William S. Burroughs wrote, 'language is a virus', then it follows that words, something we all have, can be a vaccine, too.

In frieze we recently ran a profile of the Nobel Prize-winning author Olga Tokarczuk, who lives in Wrocław, in western Poland, where she also runs a short-story festival. On 31 March, she published a nuanced essay in Germany's Frankfurter Allgemeine newspaper tactfully posing a provocative question: are these coronavirus times not, perhaps, in part a return to normalcy?

Vivian Suter's studio, Panajachel. Courtesy: the artist and Gladstone Gallery, New York and Brussels; photograph: David Regen

Tokarczuk wasn't being callous. She lamented the 'dictates of hyperactive extroversion', and articulated that - despite the very real health crises and global economic shutdown - we can finally attend to ourselves, to what's in front of us and to the (fewer) people we do see. The author of Flights (2007) also decried the reality that borders in Europe are closing, recalling its pre-EU order. But I think we can attend to these facts - to our political realities - more clearly when our ears aren't ringing with the foghorn of 'content', and when curators are not zipping around to the next 'art summit' in a Swiss chalet. This is a time for imaginative proposals, not prosecco at private views.

'Isolation is a state of mind,' I wrote in my recent profile of the artists Vivian Suter and Elisabeth Wild. I was lucky to visit them in Guatemala before this all started. They told me how, in a town with few shops and no mail, they struggled to get oil paint, canvas, paper. And Wild, who died soon after, took to collages after she couldn't paint - the added restrictions of the body. I see them, now, as shy radicals: people who could make partly because of the difficulty they had to access, to see things, not in spite of it. Their remoteness was an eerie premonition of what was to come - the bad and the good of our new, very isolated age.

Klara Lidén, Grounding, 2018, film still.Courtesy: the artist, Reena Spaulings Fine Arts, New York and Galerie Neu, Berlin

Elsewhere in Europe:
In Germany, last week brought good financial news for many artists, freelancers and small business owners. Germany gave out over 1 billion Euros in no-strings-attached relief funds - for many artists, that means that 5,000 Euros have already hit their bank accounts.

Hetty Berg started as new director of the Jewish Museum in Berlin, coming from Amsterdam's Jewish Cultural Quarter.

frieze regular contributor Noemi Smolik won this year's AKDV-Art Cologne Prize for Art Criticism. The award is usually given during Art Cologne, which has been postponed.

Claudia Perren, director of the Bauhaus Foundation in Dessau, is set to direct Basel's HfGK, an art college.

Curator Stefanie Kreuzer is leaving Museum Morsbroich, in Leverkusen, for the Kunstmuseum in Bonn.

The Munich gallerist Barbara Gross is closing her space after 32 years. She was a longstanding champion of female artists, including VALIE EXPORT, Nancy Spero and Katharina Sieverding.

Asterix illustrator Albert Uderzo died, as did the composer Krzysztof Penderecki, best known for his 'Threnody to the Victims of Hiroshima' (1960).

Galleries and institutions continue to explore new digital offerings. One highlight is the Basel gallery, who have launched an online 'cinema' featuring the likes of Klara Lidén. Others, such as Berlin's Barbara Thumm and Contemporary Fine Arts, are rolling out some of the more convincing virtual exhibition walkthroughs I've seen. Milan's Massimo De Carlo opens its immersive 'Vspace' on 14 April.
For our ongoing series highlighting shows affected by the crisis, see here.

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Why Covid-19 Might Be Our Chance to Reimagine the Arts

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'A wave of withdrawal is reshaping the political landscape ... Tremors can be felt from the global Shy Underground... From the boardroom to the bedroom.' As doors close during the lockdown, shuttered exhibitions, theatres, cinemas and clubs have left culture in a lurch. It's time, then, to rethink the nature of that cultural experience itself.

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Ian Parker takes a tentative peek at Hamja Ahsan's Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert (3rd Edition, 2019, Bookworks).

This book is no joke. Or, it is a joke that erupts, as George Orwell once said all jokes should, into a tiny revolution, giving birth and voice to a new movement of 'sensitive introverts that you dare not fuck with'. I love this book, and that's why I want to tell you about it. It was written, Hamja Ahsan says, 'on the back of a lifetime of resentment', and it throws a sharp unsparing light not only on the 'Extrovert Supremacy' but also on left practices that prop up the ghastly loud world of celebrity, extravagance and self-promotion that is the excessive unsustainable stuff of consumer capitalism.

We are inducted into this loud world from the earliest possible moment, with the schoolroom being one of the arenas in which we are forced to participate in all manner of extrovert-based games in order to show that we really are 'learning'. And what we learn along the way is how to enjoy in this Day-Glo world, and show that we are enjoying to others, which includes micro-aggressive complaint when we are not smiling all the time, team-building away-days and compulsory small-talk around the water-cooler. The book shows us how we are made to accept that flashier is better and so that the more you spend the more successful you
must be. The book is clearly about late-stage capitalism, but it is also about the way that the oppressed so often respond to that by resisting in such a way that buys into some of the underlying ideological assumptions about what is good and right in this world. No to pronouncements from platforms, and no to the many ways that existing self-help books have commodified shyness and allowed it to be recuperated, absorbed and neutralised by the extrovert-capitalist state. The task must be to construct 'zones of tranquillity', which left group meetings are so often not. Against brash arrogant 'leaders', and for doing politics differently, more kindly.

Good news for the left is that, against the current trend to compulsive mass participation and noisy rally-politics, there was, perhaps, something positive in intense well-organised discussion of close reading of texts: 'Party discipline was latent Shy Radicalism'. Che Guevara can be claimed as a proto-Shy Radical; notice how the iconic photo-shots of him have him avoiding eye-contact: 'His eyes are somewhere between that look that Extroverts mistake for aloofness, Autism, self-absorption, and dreaminess'. Good news for the 'Sensitive White Man' whose time came with Edward Scissorhands and which makes him one of the many possible allies for a form of Black-Black 'Vanguard Melancholia'. The extended interview with Amy Littlewood, a Shy Radical political prisoner, is moving, as are the interviews with patients and carers in Introvert Crisis Centres.

I think the book misses a trick in lamenting the way that kids need for 'self-esteem' is overlooked in compulsive happiness-training; surely self-esteem itself is one of the problems, one of the touchstones of celebrity culture that forces us to value ourselves as if we are autonomous little celebrities. And the book has some disturbing consequences for those who like to connect their lives with others on social media, with a particular unfortunate down on sharing images of cats on Facebook.

This is all, at the same time, deadly serious. After a while reading the book you stop giggling and start realising that the critiques and connections that Hamja Ahsan is making are not only about the shy but also about sexism and racism. This struggle, he writes, is intersectional; it must link with and speak to every other form of oppression. So the playful turning around of received wisdom to find other readings opens the space for rethinking what we are doing.

For example, he comments on Audre Lorde's famous dictum that 'silence will not protect you', to point out that, no, there is a sense in which silence is exactly what can protect you. And, against Emma Goldman, it argues that her well-known anarchist demand that 'If I can't dance, I don't want to be part of your revolution' must be subverted; leave us in peace not to dance. What kind of world do we want if not a world where we can be left in peace?

There is sensitivity to the global dimension of the 'introfada' that threads its way through every section of the book, whether that is championing of the hikikomori and otaku of Japan - youth who isolate themselves at the family home who are then pathologised and tech-geeks who spend their time pouring over anime who are then conjured into the popular imagination as potential killers. Aspergistan itself has a precise location, with territories requiring a 'shy identity-based partition' on the Indian subcontinent which will consist of the North-West Frontier Province of Pakistan and semi-autonomous regions, the caves and mountainous regions of Afghanistan, excluding Kabul and the Islamic Republic of Iran, excluding Tehran. The capital will be Qom. This is but the first step, acting as a beacon of hope for all Shy, Introvert and Autistic Spectrum peoples, opening the way for an extension of 'Shyria Law' to purge the 'socialite-class'. This is 'identity politics' with a difference, or, rather, the most radical form of identity politics, that welcomes in everyone who, to different degrees, experience the destructive injunction to 'enjoy', to be always explicitly publicly happy.

Hamja Ahsan knows well this international context - he mines it for cases of oppression and resistance - and he knows well how globalisation under capitalism is accompanied by border control and the intensification of imperialist power. He has been active in the international campaign to free his brother, the award-winning poet Syed Talha Ahsan, extradited to the US on trumped-up charges. And Hamja has recently joined the editorial collective that produces the radical mental health magazine .

His vision of Aspergistan in this book is surely one of authentic asylum. One of the radical texts he cites in his book is the Socialist Patients' Collective classic text ' Turn Illness Into a Weapon '. This is a book about all of us who suffer in a our different ways in a culture that demands that we must always want more and that we should show everyone else how much we are enjoying it, enforced participation in the nasty brash discotheque universe of 'Trendy Club'.

While I was finishing reading this book, the quiet guy who comes to fix my computer came round. He is, I guess, one of the as yet un-politicised inhabitants of Aspergistan, and usually says little. But this time he commented that he had seen me on a demonstration recently, and that set him off on a hesitant but passionate rant about Brexit. This guy dislikes planes, prefers to travel by train, they are quieter, and there is less border control and security bother, and he worries about the ramping up of control as well as the looming chaos of de-alignment
of trading standards, particularly about computers, but then more; he panics about the rapid unpredictable shift from comparatively smooth movement of people and goods to officials barking about who can do what. He complained about racism and exclusion and the end of toleration of difference that, he thinks, Brexit betokens. He is becoming a shy radical, and I hope he might read this book and join the dots, and that the left can build movements that are less shouty and more welcoming to people like him, and me.

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Ian Parker takes a tentative peek at Hamja Ahsan's Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert (3rd Edition, 2019, Bookworks). This book is no joke. Or, it is a joke that erupts, as George Orwell once said all jokes should, into a tiny revolution, giving birth and voice to a new movement of 'sensitive introverts that you dare not fuck with'.

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The Socialist Patients' Collective (German: Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, and known as the SPK) is a patients' collective founded in Heidelberg, West Germany, in February 1970, by Wolfgang Huber (born 1935). The kernel of the SPK's ideological program is summated in the slogan, "Turn illness into a weapon", which is representative of an ethos that is continually and actively practiced under the new title, Patients' Front/Socialist Patients' Collective, PF/SPK(H). The first collective, SPK, declared its self-dissolution in July 1971 as a strategic withdrawal but in 1973 Huber proclaimed the continuity of SPK as Patients' Front.

The SPK assumes that illness exists as an undeniable fact and believe that it is caused by the capitalist system. The SPK promotes illness as the protest against capitalism and considers illness as the foundation on which to create the human species. The SPK is opposed to doctors, considering them to be the ruling class of capitalism and responsible for poisoning the human species. The most widely recognized text of the PF/SPK(H) is the communique, SPK - Turn illness into a weapon, which has prefaces by both the founder of the SPK, Wolfgang Huber, and Jean-Paul Sartre.

Rejecting the roles and ideology associated with the notion of the revolutionary as scientific explainer, they stated in Turn Illness into a Weapon that whoever claims they want to "observe the bare facts dispassionately" is either an "idiot" or a "dangerous criminal."

The group was founded by Wolfgang Huber and became publicly known in 1970 at the psychiatric hospital of the University of Heidelberg.

The SPK established a "free space" for "political therapy", re-framing illness as a contradiction created by capitalism which could be embraced to bring an end to the system which gave it life. They believed that the sick formed a revolutionary class of dispossessed people who could be radicalized to struggle against oppression. Organizing by sickness instead of socio-economic class allowed middle-class student leftists to articulate their own feelings of psychic and political oppression and to struggle against the status quo in their own right in solidarity with other oppressed groups. Additionally, according to the SPK sickness had the advantage of being familiar to everyone, hence everyone was a potential revolutionary so long as they disavowed the medical establishment. Like other anti-psychiatry experiments, such as Kingsley Hall and Villa 21, SPK questioned the patient/doctor paradigm and ultimately called for an overthrow of the "doctor's class".

The SPK collective produced information leaflets, held teach-ins and Heidelberg University studied to recognize SPK as a part of the University. SPK conducted "agitations", called "single" (individual actions) and "group agitations" (collective actions), working from 9 am to 10 pm or later.

However, the SPK experiment was criticized by many within Heidelberg's university and psychiatric clinic and the SPK's funding, salaries and meeting space were threatened. Despite opposition to the SPK, in the autumn of 1970 the university convened an advisory panel of 3 experts who recommended that the SPK should be institutionalized in Heidelberg university. To counter this suggestion, Heidelberg university's faculty of medicine supported the establishment of a counter-panel consisting of 3 critics of the SPK who were mandated to campaign against the group. The Minister overseeing both panels ultimately sided with the 3 SPK critics and decided against implementing any of the recommendations from the pro-SPK panel. SPK's funding was subsequently cut and the group was evicted from the university campus.

The decision provoked a confrontation between the SPK and the university, which led to a sit-in and attracted the attention of a wider audience, including the police, in a climate of hypervigilance brought about by radical left-wing extrajudicial actions. Ultimately, the collective moved out of the university and into the homes of its members. On 24 June 1971, a mysterious shooting at Heidelberg police station was attributed to the Baader-Meinhof group, and based on that unrelated pretext, the police began conducting raids on SPK members' houses. Three hundred fifty officers were charged with finding the shooter. At its peak, the SPK counted about 500 members; of these, seven were arrested in the raids, including Huber on 21 July 1971. Firstly SPK was falsely linked to the Baader-Meinhof group but none of the SPK patients arrested was ever condemned due to any relation with the Baader-Meinhof group and neither was ever proved any relation within SPK and RAF. Accounts notice the brutality, legal irregularities and other sort of abuses which surrounded the case, and they also notice this was part of a disinformation campaign against SPK due to their revolutionary positions, and thus SPK was criminalized as part of a political persecution.

The rhetoric denouncing the SPK as engaged in "terrorist activity" and a precursor to the RAF re-emerged after the arrest of Kristina Berster, who crossed the US border illegally seeking asylum from West German counterterrorism operations. Berster was acquitted of all conspiracy charges, and the disinformation campaign was exposed by Greg Guma.

A West German embassy spokesman stated, "By all accounts the SPC was fairly harmless." Kristina Berster explained that "the purpose of the Socialist Patients Collective was to find out the reasons why people feel lonely, isolated and depressed and the circumstances which caused these problems."

Even before Huber was arrested in June 1971, the SPK dissolved. The IZRU or Information Zentrum Rote Volks-Universität (in English; Information Center of the Red People's University) was founded by former SPK members; however, the IZRU was neither the official or unofficial SPK. It organized international congresses, founded a newspaper: RVU (or Rote Volksuniversität, People's Red University), supported prisoners and reprinted some SPK literature.

Since 1973, the SPK has continued as Patients' Front/Socialist Patients' Collective, or PF/SPK(H). The refounding of the collective as Patient's Front was announced by Huber whilst he was in solitary confinement in Stammheim Prison, later called PF/SPK(H). As the founder of the SPK and PF/SPK(H), Huber entrusted all juridical matters concerning the groups to Ingeborg Muhler, an active member of the SPK since 1970, who is an attorney and holds a MA in Computer Science.

Discussion of the SPK in both German-language and English-language written sources increased during the 1970s, fell during the 1980s, and rose again during the 1990s.

Projects that have cited the group include

SPK, an industrial music and noise music group in Australia, founded in 1978 and dissolved in 1988, which was named after the collective;

Surrealist Action Turkey (Surrealist Eylem Turkiye), a group of writers, artists and intellectuals from Izmir, Istanbul and Ankara, founded in 2007 and dissolved in 2013;

Cryzine, an internet magazine opposed to technofascism and founded in 2017 which refers to the SPK as an important influence as well as Karl Marx, the Surrealist André Breton, and the Situationist Guy Debord.

Book: Wolfgang Huber, Socialist Patients' Collective/Patient's Front SPK/PF(H). SPK: Turn Illness into a Weapon. KRRIM - PF-Verlag für Krankheit, Heidelberg, 2002. ISBN 978-3-926491-17-6

Book: Wolfgang Huber, Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv/Patientenfront, SPK/PF(H): SPK - Aus der Krankheit eine Waffe machen (6. erweiterte Aufl). Eine Agitationsschrift des Sozialistischen Patientenkollektiv an der Universität Heidelberg. Mit einem Vorwort von Jean-Paul Sartre und einer Zeittafel von den Anfängen ('65 ff) bis heute; Ausschnitt aus einer Rundfunksendung: Aus Krankheit stark Patientenfront. KRRIM - PF-Verlag für Krankheit, 1995. ISBN 978-3-926491-25-1.

Christian Pross, Sonja Schweitzer und Julia Wagner. Wir wollten ins Verderben rennen - die Geschichte des sozialistischen Patientenkollektivs Heidelberg 1970-1971. Unter Mitarbeit von Sonja Schweitzer und Julia Wagner, gefördert durch die Hamburger Stiftung zur Förderung von Wissenschaft und Kultur, Psychiatrie Verlag, Köln 2016, ISBN 978-3-88414-672-9. (A synopsis in English)

Book: Jillian Becker, Hitler's Children: The Story of the Baader-Meinhof Terrorist Gang, HarperCollins Distribution Services; New edition (28 June 1978) ISBN 978-0-586-04665-4.

Book: Tom Vague, Televisionaries: the red army faction story (1963-1993), AK Press; Rev. and Updated Ed edition (9 June 1994). ISBN 978-1-873176-47-4

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The Socialist Patients' Collective (German: Sozialistisches Patientenkollektiv, and known as the SPK) is a patients' collective founded in Heidelberg, West Germany, in February 1970, by Wolfgang Huber (born 1935). The kernel of the SPK's ideological program is summated in the slogan, "Turn illness into a weapon", which is representative of an ethos that is continually and actively practiced under the new title, Patients' Front/Socialist Patients' Collective, PF/SPK(H).

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Shy Radicals: The Anti-Systemic Politics of the Militant Introvert

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Reading of Shy Radicals with HAMJA AHSAN

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Now in its third edition, Shy Radicals, written by Hamja Ahsan and published in 2017 by Book Works, is both a criticism of capitalism and colonialism as well as a set of political demands by society's Introverts. Review by Emily Rueggeberg

"Introversion is inviolable. No person may disturb its peace or violate its freedom. The state shall guarantee: freedom from small talk; freedom from frivolous public media assaults. No one shall be required to attend or perform at social gatherings." Hamja Ahsan from Shy Radicals

These are just a few things you can expect not to see on a visit to the Shy People's Republic of Aspergistan: A nation-state constructed on the principles of providing refuge for Shy, Introvert, or Austistic individuals. The Shy Underground People's Resistance Army stands ready to protect citizens against Extrovert-Supremacist states, enforcing their rights to solitude and places for quiet reflection. In Hamja Ahsan's re-imaging of the world, the #OCCUPY movement moves from the streets into people's homes, becoming #OCCUPYBEDROOM. There is growing discontentment within the Introvert class who see their only option of destroying Extrovert-Supremacism is to cease all capitalist activities.

Shy Radicals is a quiet polemic, satirising the world as we know it. It critiques British Colonialism as well as Islamophobia; two ideologies created and spread by Extrovert-Supremacist governments. The book covers everything one needs to know about the Shy Radical Movement and its allies, what one's rights are and what is expected of them in Aspergistan, as well as how to spot even the most insidious forms of Extrovert-Supremacism.

The book may be far from autobiographical, but the journey of the Introvert turned Shy Radical certainly mirrors some parts of Ahsan's life. A neurodiverse individual himself, Ahsan was thrust into the public eye as he put his artistic career to run the Free Talha Ahsan campaign for his brother, a poet and translator, who was diagnosed with Aspergers syndrome and arrested in the UK on terror charges in 2006. Talha was detained for six years, without charge, trial or prima-facie evidence. He was extradited to the United States and kept in solitary confinement in a supermax prison on death row for nearly two years. In 2013 Talha was released after taking a plea-bargain, and returned home to the UK.

Perhaps as a way to process the trauma both he and his brother experienced, Ahsan reimagines solitary confinement as a comforting cocoon, an escape from the overstimulation of the outside world.

Ahsan finds ways to lighten otherwise serious topics like solitary confinement, reimagining language in a humorous way and adapting words commonly used in Islam for the Shy Radical movement. Sharia - the laws acknowledged by followers of Islam as laid out in the Quran - becomes Shyria. Intifada - a`n uprising or rebellion most commonly referred to in relation to Palestinian protests and riots against Israeili's occupation of the West Bank and Gaza - becomes Introfada, The Introvert rebellion against Extrovert-Supremacism.

As Aspergistan sees more and more individuals defecting from their Extrovert-Supremacist countries seeking asylum, training sessions are organised for new recruits to understand the importance of a quiet nation state and why radicalisation is the only way forward in the Introfada struggle. In a modern context, "radical" has become synonymous with violence, extreme religious or political views and most commonly, terrorism. In one section titled, Shy Radicals are not a Terrorist Organisation, Ahsan differentiates the actions of Introfada members (Resistance) and those of Extremist organisations (Terrorism). Resistance is quiet, and uses the stealth of Guerilla Warfare tactics whereas terrorism is loud and disruptive.

In the chapter Shy Radicals Film Season and Training Films, the Introfada uses films to illustrate the differences between resistance and terrorism to their recruits. The films in the Film Season explore topics around silence, retribution and justice for the quiet class. The Training Films on the other hand, are meant to spark dialogue amongst audience members regarding Shy Radical strategies for overthrowing Extrovert-Supremacism. The films include Heathers, Battle for Algiers and Behind the Candelabra. Each film illustrates different Extrovert-Supremacist archetypes and the ways in which they use bullying, warfare and decadence to intimidate and control the world's population.

One of the most popular training films is Heathers: a dark comedy reimagining high-school hierarchies. The two main characters illustrate different models of Shy Radicals: The Reformist (Veronica) and The Revolutionary (JD). Veronica begins the Extrovert-Abolitionist revolt, destroying social hierarchies from the inside; tactics similar to Guerilla warfare. She decides that the ruling class of her college - three popular girls all named Heather - must be taken down for the betterment not only of the school, but society as a whole. JD sees the world in much the same way as Veronica, but instead of removing those in power, he is willing to use any means necessary to wipe out the old model (in his case, blowing up the school's gym during a pep rally) and start from scratch. He sees nothing redeemable from the existing social structure.

Throughout the book I struggled with the dichotomy between the words 'Shy' and 'Radical'. The question of how two very different mindsets could be married followed me throughout the book, from each section, interview, manifesto, and set of training materials. In the section titled 'Vanguard Melancholia: Black-Black Power,' Ahsan ends with a quote that, for me, was the best way for understanding the Shy Radical movement. He says, 'We need to protect our hood. But we need not Gs (gangstas) as a solution to our problems. But Sensitive Gs. that is to say sensitive introverts that you dare not fuck with.'

Unfolding in real-time in our own world is a pandemic changing how we navigate social interactions. As Covid-19 spreads and government-mandated lockdowns stretch from days into weeks with no end in sight, the world imagined by Ahsan begins to look more and more like a reality. The global pandemic has forced the world to turn towards Introversion as we quickly realise how the Extrovert-Supremacist model has failed, and ultimately exposed us to the things we most feared. It feels fitting to read Shy Radicals during this moment in time because, whether we realise it or not, we are all protesting from our bedrooms. The book's Shy Radicals teach us how to practice activism in isolation and the power of silence. Readers learn how to spread messages for supporting their communities and the most vulnerable in them through forms of quiet protest.

If we can take away anything from Shy Radicals, it is a reframing of how society operates and treats its members who prefer to stay in the shadows instead of the spotlight. Ahsan makes a compelling argument for the radicalisation of Shy, Introverted, and Autisic individuals who suffer at the hands of Extrovert-Supremacism. Introversion is not a character flaw or defect to be corrected. Rather, through the use of anecdotes, storytelling, and manifestos, Ahsan illustrates why we must celebrate Introversion and not punish it as anti-social behaviour. It acts as a cautionary tale that is wholly applicable to our world, creating plausible what-if scenarios for our own future.

Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert by Hamja Ahsan (2017, Third Edition, 2019)
164pp, £9.95, ISBN 9781906012571
Available from Book Works, currently priced £6.97 in a lockdown sale

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Aspergistan: A Nation-State Embracing Neurodiversity - Disability Arts Online

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Now in its third edition, Shy Radicals, written by Hamja Ahsan and published in 2017 by Book Works, is both a criticism of capitalism and colonialism as well as a set of political demands by society's Introverts. Review by Emily Rueggeberg "Introversion is inviolable. No person may disturb its peace or violate its freedom.

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Standing up to the “hegemony of the Extrovert World Order”, the people of Aspergistan aspire to rid themselves of the shackles of “Extrovert Supremacism”, he writes. They seek “the richness of inner life”, found through such marginalised activities as “silence, contemplation, intimate company”.

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In a quiet, undisclosed corner of the world, a group of like-minded people can be found in peaceful reflection, free from "enforced jollity or coerced happiness", as well as the more threatening "bullying, peer pressure and introvert hate crime".

Welcome to The Shy People's Republic of Aspergistan.

In a book that blends fact with fiction, first-person accounts with political manifesto, Hamja Ahsan, artist and author of Shy Radicals, The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert, creates a world that obscures the distinction between satire and heartfelt truth.

Ahsan demonstrates the 'Shy Power salute' from the book (Credit: Uroš Hočevar)

Based on personal experiences of his life as a chronic introvert, the book is a call for action borne out of a cry for help.

"When I was growing up, there was no group that represented me, that represented introverts. You have feminists, you have trade unionists, you have LGBTQ campaigns, but there was no 'ism' or a movement to represent me," Ahsan says.

Years of suffering in silence ended when the 39-year-old Londoner began to pen Shy Radicals in a silent corner of a south London coffee shop. Starting in 2013, armed with an Arts Council grant, over the next three years he would conjure up a mock revolutionary political party, like the Black Panthers - a civil rights group founded by African Americans - but for shy people, proclaiming himself global commander in chief of the international movement.

Standing up to the "hegemony of the Extrovert World Order", the people of Aspergistan aspire to rid themselves of the shackles of "Extrovert Supremacism", he writes. They seek "the richness of inner life", found through such marginalised activities as "silence, contemplation, intimate company".

Ahsan designed a flag for his utopian state of Aspergistan, printed with the movement's motto: 'The World is our Corner' (Credit: Hamja Ahsan)

Since the book was published in 2017, it has grown a steady following from around the world. It also managed to catch more than the eye of the reclusive reader.

Seeing potential in spreading these ideas to the general public, the British Film Institute's Documentary Society picked up the film rights to the book, with a documentary adaptation - entitled Shy Radicals - due for release later this year.

The documentary follows Ahsan as he travels the world "inspiring and educating others through creativity and activism", all the while dealing with the trauma and despair of his brother's extradition case on terrorism-related charges.

In October, 2012, Ahsan's older brother, Talha, a poet, translator and human rights campaigner, was extradited to the US after spending six years in detention in the UK, on suspicion of terrorism. Ahsan led the campaign to successfully release his brother from solitary confinement, and he returned to the UK in 2014 after entering a plea-bargain.

During Talha's detention - one of the longest without trial or charge in the UK's legal history - he was diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome. It was these experiences that inspired Ahsan's state of Aspergistan, and then the book.

According to production company Black Dog Films, Ahsan "has not simply created an artwork, he has created a world that blurs the boundaries between creator and creation, between real life and the life of the imagination, between reality and an imagined fiction in which he is a leading character".

A movement for the shy

So where will this utopia for the silent exist? According to Ahsan, somewhere between the highlands of Pakistan's North-West Frontier Province, across the caves and mountainous regions of Afghanistan, spilling over into the foothills of Iran's Zagros mountains, with Qom as its unofficial spiritual capital.

"I was creating new divisions between the introvert and the extrovert, instead of crossing religious, ethnic and political lines," Ahsan says. "It was a playful nod to the legacy of partition in this part of the world."

While at school, Ahsan says his quietness triggered brutal bullying... Verbal abuse - from saying he had "special needs" to far more profane insults - often led to physical abuse

The book opens with the "draft constitution" of the Shy People's Republic of Aspergistan, listing the various articles which determine the way the state is to function.

From the structure of the state ("All central and local power belongs to the Shy Peoples") and the fundamental rights and duties of the citizens ("introversion is inviolable"), to the national flag and anthem, it drills down to the smallest details.

Though Shy Radicals may be satirical on the surface, at its heart are very serious concerns.

While at school, Ahsan says his quietness triggered brutal bullying. He felt unworthy of friendship, always last to be picked for sports teams, but first to be picked on. He always believed his silence was the reason, and that he was not allowed to simply exist. Verbal abuse - from saying he had "special needs" to far more profane insults - often led to physical abuse.

Ahsan found refuge at the school library, and made that his safe space. His silence and passivity led to a period of depression, which reached its nadir when he tried to commit suicide at the age of 17.

"You're told to succeed in life you have to be outgoing, you have to sell yourself, be charismatic to get that place at university, to get that job - but what if you're not, if you shy away from the limelight, and the thought of someone starting a conversation with you makes you want to calmly walk away to the hills. Where do you go, how do you thrive?" he says.

After school, and his battle with depression, he eventually went on to get a First Class degree in fine arts at the world-renowned Central Saint Martins college in London when he was 27 years old, and then the following year a masters in 2009.

#occupybedroom

Ahsan might have escaped the trappings of school and the threatening behaviour of his peers, but he also found adult life rife with situations that triggered anxiety. Feeling pursued by life's pressures to be loud, popular, sociable, Ahsan chose to disengage from life.

But studying art at St Martin's helped him turn a corner and extract himself from being an "outcast".

"It was only in my mid-thirties that I had some sort of acceptance of who I am... The acceptance that I don't like clubbing and partying and it's fine." Largely through social media, he was able to find another landscape of identity in cyberspace where he could see other people who were also bullied.

This, and the experiences of his brother, is why Ahsan wants the shy, the introvert and those on the autism spectrum (who often struggle to live in a world led by the so-called extrovert supremacists) to know that it's okay to want to spend your weekends at the Poetry Library as he does, or not be forced to go out on a national holiday, or feel pressured to be part of"Trendy Club" culture.

Throughout the book, he references existing global movements where the right to be shy or introverted is honoured.

For example, in his chapter titled #occupybedroom, which lists a number of other shy revolutionary hashtags like #silentstrike, #introintervention and #shyspring, he includes a satirical letter from Japan's hikokomori delegation, defending their choice to "stay at home".

More than half a million of these solitary-loving people in Japan have chosen to shun society completely and instead rely on their parents for support, often locking themselves up in their bedrooms.

The rest of the book is split into short chapters, including a fictional interview with a member of the Introfada - the name given to the Shy Radicals underground movement demanding an independent state.

Amy Littlewood is posited as an Australian national who insists on being recognised as a member of the "Aspergistan homeland state". The fictional character is a political prisoner being held for 13 years in "company confinement" on several charges, including instigating a boycott of the International Introvert Festival of Celebrating Neurodiversity.

"The authorities attempted to divide us into various pathologies," Littlewood is quoted as saying. "Asperger's syndrome, social anxiety disorder, depression. But we are all one. We struggle as one. We fight as one."

'Terrorism is noisy'

A multidisciplinary artist, Ahsan includes a section on the "new lexicon of democracy", with a set of drawings depicting 26 signals using body language to negotiate all democratic signals and motions. The gestures are based on those created by previous social movements, like the "wiggly hands" or "up twinkles" used by the Occupy protest movement to indicate agreement.

A set of drawings from the book depict 26 gestures using body language, to negotiate 'democratic signals' (Credit: Bookworks)

He also includes examples of films that would be programmed in a fictional Shy Radicals film season, in partnership with the British arts organisation, the BFI Southbank. His programme suggests titles from around the world highlighting the power of silence, and other separatist struggles.

The 1988 classic American college film Heathers (starring Winona Ryder, Christian Slater and Shannen Doherty) is offered as an example of a training film that would be screened to all new Shy Radical members.

In the film, Veronica (Winona Ryder) manages to escape the clique of popular girls and partners up with a trenchcoat-wearing enigmatic new student JD (Christian Slater) to carry out a series of assassinations of her former clique and the college jocks, before she eventually distances herself from her boyfriend who she feels has become too "extremist".

Political extremism is a question that pops up frequently throughout this small but punchy book. Even the book cover was designed to stir. It features the title in both English and Arabic, a language he deliberately chose based on his recollections of art school peers assuming anything using Arabic letters must be political.

Within a section labelled as the Shy Radical movement's "public statement", Ahsan states: "Shy Radicals is not a terrorist organisation... Terrorism is always loud," calling himself instead, a "campaigner for civil liberties, against the war on terror".

He goes on to explain that terrorists are the antithesis of introverts, and despite the UK's Prevent programme issuing a "warning signs pamphlet" for the public to be able to identify radicalised youth as being shy or withdrawn, Ahsan is keen to point out that the qualities of an introvert should not make them a prime suspect.

His book tells us: "Terrorism is noisy, with explosions and destruction, it exists on the same plane as extrovert supremacy. Terrorism aspires to be the centre of attention, terrorism loves the camera."

A global movement for the shy

The book has garnered support from all over the world, and Ahsan is keen to stress it isn't written for a particular geopolitical region: "I now have fans around the world, in Lebanon, Korea, Mexico City - and we are all united. The ideas raised by my book transcend borders, they cross gender, culture and religion and unify people."

The book, now in its third edition, has also been translated into Italian. And it has taken off as an art form, like with the mock referendum Ahsan held at the Ljubljana Biennial of Graphic Arts last year.

Ahsan created an installation featuring illustrations from his book and a polling station at the Llubljana Biennel festival (Credit: Hamja Ahsan)

As part of the summer festival, he showcased an award-winning installation that included a visual display of illustrations from his book and a polling station, asking exhibition goers whether the Slovenian capital should join the Aspergistan Federation. Out of 575 visitors, 72 percent voted in favour.

"The people spoke, they want independence. It proved that people no longer want to put up with the ideology of extrovert supremacy," says Ahsan, who is now planning on holding a second referendum in Poland.

With a helpline for introverts already in place and the new documentary in production, Ahsan is now on a "never-ending world tour to overthrow extrovert-supremacy".

Quietly assertive, Shy Radicals can confidently claim its place among the stacks of activist literature. Because of it, the UK's Autism Arts Festival now has a programme where people can wear different colours to identify how comfortable they are with communicating.

The Student Union at Cambridge University invited Ahsan to brief its disability campaigns adviser about creating spaces for different personality traits, and he's also campaigning for 2 January, World Introvert Day, to receive greater recognition.

The book has even become part of several cross-disciplinary curricula and is now being studied at universities across the UK - in it is a chapter on how to build a Shy Radical student movement, insisting on extensive curriculum reform.

Ahsan argues that the way shyness is presented in degree programmes, including psychology, as "a problem to be overcome via assertiveness skills and cognitive retraining", is troubling. Being quiet, reserved or shy should not be seen as ailments that need cures.

Ahsan says he uses his artistic intervention to make "tangible differences". Although the Introfada movement doesn't actually exist, the ideology behind it does.

"My belief in social change was shattered following the recent elections in the UK, I am still recovering," Ahsan says, referencing the UK December 2019 polls in which the ruling Conservative Party won a landslide majority. "[And] Trump wasn't even president when I wrote the book, but he is the embodiment of an extrovert supremacist."

And in light of new restrictions on movement with the recent rise in the global coronavirus epidemic, introverts around the world are perhaps the most immune to the impact of so-called "social distancing".

"I find self-isolation quite peaceful and I am quite happy," Ahsan says. " I see the true selfish side of extroverts and extrovert supremacy...I saw how selfish and self-destructive they were. I believe some people need some form of mandatory introvert training."

By challenging ideas of popularity, and creating new space for those who refuse to fit in, Ahsan continues his plight for the quiet: "I'm always trying to find ways to make transformative change. I'm trying to find ways to make it legislative to protect spaces. Libraries are shutting down, as are our quiet gardens, something needs to be done. Our rights need to be recognised and respected."

Shy Radicals: The Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert is published by Bookworks. Ahsan's work can be found on Instagram and Twitter
This article is available in French on Middle East Eye French edition.

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'Shy Radicals': The book that demands an inclusive world for introverts

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In a quiet, undisclosed corner of the world, a group of like-minded people can be found in peaceful reflection, free from "enforced jollity or coerced happiness", as well as the more threatening "bullying, peer pressure and introvert hate crime". Welcome to The Shy People's Republic of Aspergistan.

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Prisoner writing/ writing in solitude/ the right to human company isn’t seen as rights’ violation

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Extrovert dominated world vs. Introvert autonomy (Flipping mainstream politics and tactics)

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-Listening is profoundly political. Declare of Listening.

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Being miserable -> is an act of resistance (like Wednesday Addams (from family Addams)
The procedure to feel content all the time -> impossible-> accepting misery 

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“The power of the quiet. Being quiet protects you. By being quiet you attain two characteristics: 1.You are able to take knowledge from those more knowledgeable than you and 2. You are able to repel ignorance from those more ignorant than you.”

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“Being among people as a fish in water.”

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IHRC Author Evening: "Shy Radicals" By Hamja Ahsan

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Watch the IHRC author evening with Hamja Ahsan for his debut book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert. The panel was joined by Rose Nordin and Nina Power.

The evening took place on Monday 24 July 2017, and was chaired by Moriom Grillo. Watch it below and read some more about the book underneath.

Hamja Ahsan is an activist, writer, curator and artist. He is a campaigner for prisoners, human rights and civil liberties under the War on Terror, and was shortlisted for the Liberty Human Rights awards for the Free Talha Ahsan campaign. He has presented art projects at Tate Modern, Gwangju Biennale, Shaanakht festival Pakistan and Shlipa Academy, Bangladesh. He was nominated for the Al-Hamra Award (Muslim News) Award for excellence in the Arts for the Redo Pakistan touring art project. He co-founded DIY Cultures Festival in 2013.

Rose Nordin is a freelance graphic designer based in London with a focus on print and publishing. Rose currently co runs Rabbits Road Press a Risograph community press in East London focused on producing small press publications through collaboration. She is a co founder and graphic designer for OOMK zine and collective. She was recently awarded the international artist fellowship for social practice to the University of Chicago.

Drawing together communiqués, covert interviews, oral and underground history of introvert struggles (Introfada), here for the first time is a detailed documentation of the political demands of shy people.

Radicalised against the imperial domination of globalised PR projectionism, extrovert poise and loudness, the Shy Radicals and their guerrilla wing the Shy Underground are a vanguard movement intent on trans-rupting consensus extrovert-supremacist politics and assertiveness culture of the twenty first century. The movement aims to establish an independent homeland - Aspergistan, a utopian state for introverted people, run according to Shyria Law and underpinned by Pan-Shyist ideology, protecting the rights of the oppressed quiet and shy people.

Shy Radicals are the Black Panther Party of the introvert class, and this anti-systemic manifesto is a quiet and thoughtful polemic, a satire that uses anti-colonial theory to build a critique of dominant culture and the rising tide of Islamophobia. Shy Radicals author Hamja Ahsan is an artist, curator and activist based in London. He is the Free Talha Ahsan campaign organiser.

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Author Evening: 'Shy Radicals' with Hamja Ahsan

# data[].attributes.attachment_link.description
Watch the IHRC author evening with Hamja Ahsan for his debut book Shy Radicals: Antisystemic Politics of the Militant Introvert. The panel was joined by Rose Nordin and Nina Power. The evening took place on Monday 24 July 2017, and was chaired by Moriom Grillo.