Thu 16 Jul 2009
Things I Like / Things I Hate
Posted by Magpie under Political
[5] Comments
It’s time for another* edition of Things I Like / Things I Hate!
Magpie likes: Outsider Anarchism! That is to say, folks who pick up on anarchism from their own context, and not just get into it through the “movement.” Not that I don’t like the movement, and by working together we’ve come up with really important things. But I like when people get into it on their own and present radically new ideas. Like, probably, Artisanal-Retro-Futurism and Team-Scale Anarcho-Syndicalism, which basically is a modern syndicalism for computer programmers. It doesn’t take on the totality of the state or capitalism, but it’s interesting and useful nonetheless.
Magpie hates: Folks who think they own anarchism! I’m particularly frustrated right now with the slew of online (and fortunately, it’s mostly online) slander that tries to say “if you’re not an insurrectionary, then you’re a liberal” which is quantifiably false. Over on infoshop.org, someone has posted a little screed, “A Warning to Those Who Stole Our Word” that honestly seems to think that the 19th century stereotype of the anarchist-as-mad-bomber is the only legitimate form of anarchism. It also, well, says that you’re either with us or against us, that you either love rioting, in fact believe that the moment of anarchism will be an “orgy of destruction”, or you’re a liberal. Wonderful. Sigh. No, you can’t have the word anarchism all to yourself. Sorry. An anarchist believes that humanity would be better off without government. Everything from there is debatable.
*(the first)
July 18th, 2009 at 1:49 am
Only an anarcho-capitalist can non-hypocritically attempt to privatize teh word of Anarke…
July 18th, 2009 at 2:41 pm
I was one who did find Anarchism from the outside and while I still have a lot of unresolved questions, one thing I do know for myself is that an “orgy of destruction” styled “Anarchism” isn’t really a great way with which interest people and get them to engage with anarchists.
July 19th, 2009 at 10:16 pm
You can’t really separate the defense of ‘the word’ from the publication that little article came from. FtP is desperately trying to take the fiercest parts of GA without the other stuff (which is hard to remember exactly what that was… they layout?).
And the question is does the word need defending?
Sure, many of us get embarrassed. But as much (ok, more) by macho posturing than by hope blocs. The word is not the point and most of us who have been around know it. The great project can be called a thousand things and those things make me smile and never need defense.
July 21st, 2009 at 1:26 pm
I really want to quote a book I’m reading for school on logical fallacies:
“part-to-whole fallacy
anarchist college student-”What’s wrong with killing people? We humans are made up of all the food we ate last year – digested and made into skin and bones. If I shoot you, I’m just rearranging a bunch of former hamburgers and French Fries.”
”
from The Fallacy Detective
Just throwing that out there…
P.S. if anybody is wondering, the authors screwed up on this one, most of the rest of the book is pretty good.
August 4th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
yesssss!