When I was twenty, I moved to Montréal & pretty quickly fell into a group of friends who were activists like me. I hung from the top of a tripod to block the front doors of a bank that financed Alberta’s tar sands; we blockaded a highway with our bicycles to protest a proposed pipeline; we travelled to Ottawa a couple of times, once to show solidarity with the Barriere Lake Algonquin First Nation and once for a Free Palestine rally. We made shoplifting into a sport, cooked vegan food for homeless people under the banner of Food Not Bombs, and sang labour songs to the thrum of an acoustic guitar. Before long I discovered that my new friends were anarchists, and I started to wonder if I was one, too.
I think a lot of people (anarchists not excepted) are extremely prone to or susceptible to black/white thinking, which deeply undermines leftist organizing. The rise of identitarianism and the fetishistic devotion to total horizontalism are both oversimplified misunderstandings in service of a deranged and non-sensical purity culture that has become ubiquitous in queer and leftist discourse and spaces.
Decentralized networks are not totally flat, they are lumpy af, and rejecting entrenched authority doesn't mean we shouldn't have leaders, it means no one gets to wear that hat all the time or indefinitely.
I still consider myself an anarchist, but that operates for me mostly as a statement of and dedication to principles, not some grandiose "theory of change" or idealistic but doomed revolutionary political program.
Historical sidenote: anarchists and socialists in the late 19th and early 20th century did use consensus (they called it unanimity), but only in smaller affinity groups of 3 to 5 people. For larger group decision making they generally used majority vote or 2/3 majority. I wonder why.
Thanks for sharing. I was in lefty groups with many anarchists, never considered myself one but this was really interesting to read. I think I’m still in that disillusioned state, but hopefully/maybe I will get out of it at some point.
As someone who’s gone the opposite way, I appreciated reading this. I still believe a municipally focused anarchism is the best solution for simultaneously solving many of the crises we are in, but it will certainly take a cultural and social revolution to bring that about. Best case scenario, the intense material pressures of ecosystem and food system collapse would be the catalyst. Regardless, I think nationalism is our biggest present hurdle, and it’s probably the main reason anarchism didn’t become a mass movement in the 20th century.
"... a dedication to autonomy and a healthy skepticism towards authority..." The language and axes we have available to us when trying to talk about politics can be limiting. A sentiment like you express here is surely common ground for multitudes of people, all across the various ways the political pie can be sliced. How do we find each other?
Sounds like you have been through a journey. I can understand how anarchy might appeal to people, but in the end it doesn’t seem like a practical way to create larger scale changes.
I think a lot of people (anarchists not excepted) are extremely prone to or susceptible to black/white thinking, which deeply undermines leftist organizing. The rise of identitarianism and the fetishistic devotion to total horizontalism are both oversimplified misunderstandings in service of a deranged and non-sensical purity culture that has become ubiquitous in queer and leftist discourse and spaces.
Decentralized networks are not totally flat, they are lumpy af, and rejecting entrenched authority doesn't mean we shouldn't have leaders, it means no one gets to wear that hat all the time or indefinitely.
I still consider myself an anarchist, but that operates for me mostly as a statement of and dedication to principles, not some grandiose "theory of change" or idealistic but doomed revolutionary political program.
Historical sidenote: anarchists and socialists in the late 19th and early 20th century did use consensus (they called it unanimity), but only in smaller affinity groups of 3 to 5 people. For larger group decision making they generally used majority vote or 2/3 majority. I wonder why.
Thanks for sharing. I was in lefty groups with many anarchists, never considered myself one but this was really interesting to read. I think I’m still in that disillusioned state, but hopefully/maybe I will get out of it at some point.
I’m about halfway and will return to finish this, but so far--wow!
As someone who’s gone the opposite way, I appreciated reading this. I still believe a municipally focused anarchism is the best solution for simultaneously solving many of the crises we are in, but it will certainly take a cultural and social revolution to bring that about. Best case scenario, the intense material pressures of ecosystem and food system collapse would be the catalyst. Regardless, I think nationalism is our biggest present hurdle, and it’s probably the main reason anarchism didn’t become a mass movement in the 20th century.
"... a dedication to autonomy and a healthy skepticism towards authority..." The language and axes we have available to us when trying to talk about politics can be limiting. A sentiment like you express here is surely common ground for multitudes of people, all across the various ways the political pie can be sliced. How do we find each other?
Sounds like you have been through a journey. I can understand how anarchy might appeal to people, but in the end it doesn’t seem like a practical way to create larger scale changes.