#liberals play pretend at being anarchists > anarchism is liberal

[ganondorf]

sometimes i see people on here talk about anarchism and it's very clear their understanding of it is on par with people whose understanding of communism is "under communism we all use the same toothbrush"

[drdemonprince]

redownloaded tumblr for this 🫡

i’m an anarchist and a bootblack, who is learning from another lefty bootblack. at this point when someone says “bootlicker” it absolutely makes me grin. There’s a charm in having a new context for a pejorative— it’s fun, it’s ironic, and it’s a little campy to me.

but also leather history is tied up with the history of uniform worship. bootblacking has its roots in the military custom of spit-shining shoes. it’s worth being aware of that history when you’re doing the kink. still, don’t count out the anarchist bootblacks!! we’re not everywhere, but we’re out here ;)

Yeah, leather history is tied very strongly to the aesthetics and structure of military life, policing, and even downright fascist movements and their practices. I think there's a lot of fun to be had in playing with whatever feels taboo and frightening to you, and that's part of why I gravitate so naturally to power exchange probably as an anarchic PDAer. I don't think we need to make that fact politically righteous, though some will say that by dragging militaristic styles into the sexy muck with us and playing around with them, we are reclaiming and reconstituting them into something new and liberating. That by pretending to be authority figures over one another for fun sexy play, we are calling into question entire systems of unjust authority and thus it's a politically freeing act. I think sometimes that's more an overly intellectually embellished justification when something feeling good ought to just be enough -- I kinda do want to be fully and wholly controlled, that's just a weird, fucked up thing about me that might be an outgrowth of society's traumatizing authoritarianism. Or it might not. Who knows. But it's fun and I'm gonna do what feels good regardless, and I see my anarchism as a personal reflex more than some grand ideology I am beholden too. I serve no gods including my own beliefs, which can themselves be so fleeting. But regardless, there are a lot of anarchists and leftists who enjoy leather play, including boot play, and it really only presents a contradiction if we assume that what turns a person on reflects their sincere beliefs about how society should be structured, and we can't really assume that. The whole problem with the zillennial tradwifes is that they've made that generalization.

[christmasintheloonybin]

I really hate the nazbol thing, it's so dumb, so much of this shit is like music these days where they just put two different things together. like let's mix shoegaze and uh industrial music. pitchfork aoty. but people do this with politics too where the entire ideology is one huge contradiction. national bolshevism isn't so bad but its the beginning of the end. just saw one. national anarchism. what does this even mean? and it's funny especially because all of these anti-liberal ideologies are being used only in a COMPLETELY liberal way, as a mark of unique identity for people online. and you can always tell that they never had one fucking thought in their entire lives. they just have to be different.

this is what annoys me about punk music too. you have one band thats anarchist and another band that's fascist but they're all lying, they're all just dressing up and playing pretend in order to sell records. which you would think would be against their ideology. this is why I never understand when people say "omg you can't listen to such and such they're nazis" if they were real nazis they wouldn't be making music, especially harsh and unpleasant music (noise, black metal) this is completely and only LIBERAL, they are just using the vibes of fascism, they are fucking expressing themselves there is nothing fascistic about it.

[thehouseofjohndeaf]

How did this happen?

(photo cred)

The global pandemic has shed a light on some misconceptions regarding individualism and anti-authority.  The line between anti-authority and anti-science has been blurred during a major public health crisis putting health officials and medical experts in the driver’s seat.  This has led to major outcries against stay-at-home advisories, the closing of non-essential businesses, and mask mandates.  The groups of people who are against the public health regulations are primarily right-wing, and are viewing these precautions as government overreach, despite the fact that the republicans have current control of the federal government.  The current president has found ways to pawn off responsibility to the governors of individual states, and we see the outcry mostly coming from those living in blue states.  These are primarily Americans who are part of a spectrum of right leaning politics, and identify as conservative, libertarian, alt-right, and republican.  Despite all these identities and beliefs there is also a heavy anti-authoritarian and anti-government overtone to these outcries.  How is this?  How have right leaning individuals started believing they are the real anti-establishment counterculture, holding a firm belief that the left are the true authoritarians?

First, this starts with one of the biggest misconceptions in America; most people believe the liberals are the left.  This is not true.  Liberals are the center.  The US does not currently have a left-wing party.  Instead we have a centrist party that houses both the center and the left, this causes both and left and center to constantly lean further right.

The graph above, from Quartz Media, shows where the 2020 democratic candidates fall on the political spectrum as opposed to the incumbent republican president.  The DNC continues to be a right-wing organization while being only slightly left of the republican party.  The final two democratic candidates during the 2020 primaries were on opposite sides of the spectrum of the democratic party, a centrist and a leftist.  The same thing that happened in 2016.  The DNC ultimately gave the nomination to the centrist, because they are a centrist organization.

This next graph shows how the US major party candidates of 2020 compare to political parties in the UK.  As we can see, the conservative right-wing of the UK is in line with the sitting republican US president, the centrist liberal democrats of the UK align with the majority of the US democratic candidates, and the UK’s leftist labour party is even further left than the left leaning outliers of the US democrats.

This misconception that the left is liberal in the US has led us to believe that our current definitions of right and left have a chasm of differences between them, when they are in fact all in the same wheelhouse.  The republicans appear authoritarian yet successful because they are unapologetically right-wing and will stir the pot and make a lot of noise to get their way, whereas the democrats appear authoritarian yet incompetent because they are centrists who would more often rather keep the peace with a steady-as-she-goes approach than stir up actual progressive change.  Democrats will pretend to be leftist, inciting progressive change, all while bombing innocents overseas and allowing their own citizens’ water to be poisoned.  Republicans will explain to you why they all deserved it.  It’s the same song played on a different instrument.

Since the left are the outliers, they are viewed as radicals whose ideas would never work in the western world.  This has gone so far as to target anyone who identifies with politics left of center as the “alt-left”.  And yet, every other major western nation has some degree of socialism working for the people in the form of state funded healthcare programs, prison reform, welfare, child tax benefits, pension systems, social housing, and public education.  The US even embraces some of these things, we just refuse to call it socialism or fund it properly, we refuse to allow the right and center to be tainted by the left.

It seems a relatively simple explanation for certain groups of people to be outraged by public health officials making drastic changes to our daily lives; the effects on their income, social and mental health, as well as the economy.  The question is, how is this viewed as anti-authoritarian if the outcry is both in support of the current political party with the most government control and yet also against government overreach enacted by these same people?

For the older generations and those who consume media in a traditional sense, it appears a healthy diet of Fox News and an overall distrust of the “liberal” or “mainstream” media would lead to mass misinformation and a skewed sense of reality.  For the younger generations who grew up on the internet, a diet of reactionary propaganda and alt-right message boards will lead them down a rabbit hole of misinformation.  Both have a distrust for “liberal” media and have a skewed concept that the liberal media is a leftist organization with an agenda to dismantle their freedoms.  Ultimately, this is one way we may arrive at the concept that liberals, who are really centrists but we think they’re leftists, are trying to implement an authoritarian regime of socialist communism, when in reality the liberals have a more middle-of-the-road approach to reactionary thought, which causes conservatives and other right-wing theorists to distrust any form of organized press while they congregate online and adopt conspiracy theories to help them untie the mental knots they tied for themselves in the first place.  Really, the only way for new age conservatives to believe the lies they’re churning out is for there to be some conspiracy at the center, because their views cannot coexist with reality.

But still, how did we get here?  How did we brew a force of pro-conservative anti-establishment?

There was a lot of angst in the post-9/11 world for our youth, as a counterculture emerged against the Iraq War and government oversight including the patriot act and the NSA.  Anarchist thought gave birth to post-anarchism, as anarchism coexisted in a technologically advanced world.  How do we grapple with the concepts of individual freedom and collective living when we’re tethered to companies to provide products that keep us connected and informed?  Even prior to this, most anti-authority groups understood liberalism and conservatism to be of the same breed.  In 2002 Against Me! released the album Reinventing Axl Rose, Laura Jane Grace sings, “Baby, I’m an anarchist, you’re a spineless liberal…” a song referencing the 1999 WTO protests in Seattle.  If one had the misconception that liberalism is leftist, they may interpret this lyric incorrectly.  If liberal is left, then liberalism is more attune with socialism, meaning right-wing and libertarian thought would be opposite liberalism, and ultimately one might come to the conclusion that anarchism is more aligned with right leaning politics than left leaning politics.  This person would then continue on to believe that the conservatives, the alt-right, libertarians, and republicans were the faces of anti-authority as part of their fringe groups.

It appears that millennials who grew up in a post-punk era, were clinging to the anti-establishment messages of the early 2000s during a Bush presidency.  They were eventually thrust into an Obama presidency of “progressive change” as some were just entering high school and beginning to pay attention to the world around them, while others were out on their own for the first time in their lives attending college, and the oldest of the generation were first entering the workforce.  This “progressive change” led to a lot of real social changes, what reactionaries call “PC culture”, and what the rest of us just recognize as time moving forward at a steady pace.  Nonetheless, the Obama presidency was rather anticlimactic.  While the liberals patted themselves on the back and slept peacefully to the social changes, the working poor and minorities saw little-to-no benefit, and the conservatives stewed in their rage as a smug charismatic black man was in charge of their beloved homeland.  Eventually, in the height of the Obama years the housing market crash brought libertarians, socialists, and anarchists together in the national movement, Occupy Wall Street.

The problem that eventually erupted was a disdain for liberalism, critically noted as neoliberalism.  While the left has been critical of liberalism and conservatism alike, the right used their view of liberalism as a leftist ideology to create a division at a time when everyone was coming together to recognize the stark inequalities of our current capitalist system, famously uniting us all as the 99%.  This tactic allowed libertarianism to be recognized as the opposite of authoritarianism, however a right-wing libertarian will likely have complete faith that the free market and corporations will do the most good over the individual workers.  We then wind up back at square one, with the corporations as the voices of authority.  When we become dependent on their products, or they come to as close to a monopoly as possible, the working class begins to lose their freedoms.  During the pandemic we’re witnessing this happen as huge corporations like Walmart and Target are open for business and able to adhere to public health and safety guidelines, whereas small businesses cannot remain open because they don’t have the proper space for social distancing or the funds for the required PPE.  The outcries against this have not been against Walmart or Target for hoarding their wealth and becoming some of the only stores able to sell clothes, books, electronics, toys and other nonessentials.  The outcry has been against public health officials for putting safety guidelines into practice in response to the virus.

A socialist response to this issue would have been for the government to provide PPE to small businesses so that they may remain open.  What we have is a libertarian response of letting the bigger fish eat the smaller fish, and the working class are footing the bill.  The current administration has put the majority of the power for economic recovery into the hands of corporations and the wealthiest individuals.  This is what is hurting the working class.  Yet the outrage has been against the public health officials who have put forth social distancing guidelines, stay-at-home advisories, and mask mandates.  None of these things are the reason for the economic turmoil we are experiencing, it’s the current administration's hands-off approach and ignoring small businesses.

The funds for small business loans were given directly to the banks to distribute to their communities.  Problems with this tactic were immediately recognizable.  The banks were more likely to offer loans to the businesses who already had accounts with them, and were more likely to award loans to a business they felt would easily pay back this loan.  Franchises were also recognized as single entities and rather than the corporations bail out their own chains, individual franchise owners were dependent on government funded bank managed loans.  This is how the right and center handle social issues, they give money to the already wealthy and ask them to provide a service to those in need, allowing very little relief to reach those who need it most.

So no, being anti-science in the midst of a global pandemic is not rebellion, nor is it remotely anti-authority.  It is playing directly into the hands of the elite.  If you’re protesting government overreach and the sitting president encourages the protests with messages like “LIBERATE MICHIGAN”, it’s quite obvious the government approves of your actions.  If you’re protesting government overreach while wearing merchandise you purchased from the sitting president, and holding signs in support of him, that irony is so palpable, it’s concerning that so many people cannot see it.

[teachanarchy]

It’s happened many times before. That awkward moment sitting in that one meeting for  [insert organization here]. Then, as you question the direction/tactics because you don’t believe in the politics of demand, you not only become discovered as an anarchist, but also criticized for it. I think it’s too many a time when I was told “anarchism is a white ideology” (whatever that means); “the only anarchists are white”; “anarchism is a privileged political philosophy”; you get the point.

Thinking this way, though, has some ‘truth’ in it. The truth is that none of these claims are true to begin with. But in addition to this, it illustrates the perspective of just how strong media narratives are. It points out that this stereotype (because that is what it really is) is just the same old story pushed and propagated by the media. When one speaks of anarchism, immediately organizers/activists think of black dressed white dudes (never mind you can’t see their face), who go around and breaking windows. They think of anarchism only as how the media spins it off; as black bloc tactics that end in chaos, as a mess.

Never mind that Mao Zedong and many Chinese socialists were at first, anarchist. Never mind that the Mexican Revolution was mainly provoked by mestizo anarchist Flores Magon; never mind that Japanese anarchism took a surge by Noe Itō a feminist and organizer in her own right; never mind the mutualista societies in Mexican and Black communities in the United States; never mind the stateless societies in Latin America, both intentional communities and prior to colonial contact; never mind the Syrian anarchist Omar Aziz, who played a role in the Syrian Revolution; never mind the Rojava Revolution itself, a plural society of Syrian Kurds and Arabs in democratic confederation; never mind the societies not mentioned here.

To say that anarchism is a “white ideology” not only plays into the dominant narratives and stereotyping; it is in itself racist. It erases and dismisses such a diverse and rich history of struggle from all walks of culture and geographies. It ignores the context of different ideas and tactics.

What anarchism proves is its threatening nature to the State and its form. When they find the exception, it is magnified. Let’s not pretend this is not true; state socialists/liberals and activists are always on the defensive because they all know the nature of media. This is true for anarchism as well, especially for anarchism. It is even true for the cities that go up in flames after neighborhoods experience the death of one of its own (Ferguson comes to mind). The media, instead of focusing on economic causes, or systematic failures of the governments, flares against the ‘thugs’, ‘gangsters’, ‘out-of-towners’. What is the ‘truth’ behind the lie though? Well, we don’t need to be asked this. As organizers we know better than to play in the stereotypes the media reproduces.

Usually, anarchists are accused of being ‘unstrategic’, too quick too violence, even vanguardist, hyper-individualist (they haven’t read Emma Goldman obviously). But a quick overview of what it really is proves all these moot. Unless one is citing from the media or government, where the generous use of “anarchist” is used profusely. Have they forgotten the Magonista-Yaqui-American alliance in taking Tijuana and Baja California during the Mexican Revolution? Have they ignored anarchist organizing in Argentina, where collective action is part of its own dissenting society? Or anarchist role in achieving a massive change of society in the Spanish Civil War (Come on y’all, you knew I was gonna bring it up sometime or another)? Or even the role of anarchism in Africa, taking up position with indigenous narratives of resistance?

Perhaps these criticisms might more likely apply to the insurrectionary anarchist projects. It’s romanticization of its theory is well-deserved, but it has updated. And accounting the whole of anarchism as its “insurrectionary” stream is intellectually dishonest – a straw man. It ignores the context of where plots and schemes of politicians and CEOs took place. Consider the climate after the defeat of leftists in Europe during WWII. It was brutal times (another day for the “Global South”, but nonetheless, insurrectionary theories began to take root during these times); desperate times calls for desperate measures.

How else is one supposed to act against dictatorship; against Pinochet, Franco, Mussolini or Hitler? Create an union and then be declared as open-season radicals? Insurrectionary anarchism is certainly threatening for anyone that has planned attacks against nation-state construction. It is no coincidence that then anarchists have to suffer the pains of being attacked by both conservative misconceptions of anarchism, but also leftist arguments (mis)understandings given their agenda.

To recap, why accusing anarchism of being a “white ideology” is wrong:

Because its not; it’s erases the non-white anarchism that has its own history and streams.

Because the media tries to dismiss anarchism through stereotyping.

Because it plays into the common narrative that anarchism is ‘chaos’; it’s not.

Because it goes against the use of the state of both the left and the right, and therefore the stereotype get’s recycled to justify their agenda.

How can we solve this? We can’t control the media, so that’s not gonna happen. What we can do is organize; only by accompanying struggling peoples, whether workers, students, indigenous or anything else, can we transform our own perception to people, as well as transform together in practice.