| > Direct Democracy Isn’t Anarchy, You Fucks Here's a quick thought experiment: Imagine for the moment that anarchy-- the type with roots in 19th century Europe and fits and starts in Catalonia and Andalusia-- is the key to universal enlightenment and human cooperation. (Not saying it is, just a thought experiment-- humor me.) Now imagine that there is a small but dedicated cabal of evil demons intent on keeping the world from coming to realize this truth. If you were an advisor to the cabal, how would you suggest they use their meager resources? If it were me, here's what I would do: 1. Split the demons up and send each to a burgeoning center for anarchy. 2. Tell each demon to play up what is idiosyncratic and novel in that particular region's understanding of anarchy. Eschew both clear, standardized terminology and laymen's terms for something that sounds passionate, yet somehow also particular. 3. Discourage genre literacy, and don't cite sources. 4. Favor novelty over intellectual rigour. 5. Develop clever inside jokes. 6. When faced with a powerful intellectual adversary, fall back on tribalism. And once the demons are comfortable in their new surroundings, the kicker: 7. Convince the demons that it is now safe for them to earnestly believe in their new form of fun-house-mirror anarchism. They are safe to defend and most importantly love the little tribe they have created. Using such a technique, I'm fairly certain I could guide my demons to an easy victory. In the event that any of the disparate anarchist groups tries to band together in a spirit of cooperation or defense against a common adversary, passive-aggressive tribalistic infighting will eat up a critical mass of their resources! * Now, let's get back to reality and realize there is no such conspiracy to derail anarchism. Still: mission accomplished, no? Edit: wording. Also-- I'm only critiquing the concept of anarchism implicitly espoused by the authors. The anarchists of the early 20th century seemed to have suffered from a much different problem, which was the inability to manufacture enough arms-- to ward off both the fascists and the communists when they retook Barcelona, for example. |