by NOB AKIMOTO on MARCH 30, 2013
There used to be a time when anarchists stood for something noble.
The 19th century anarchists and syndicalists were fighting against systems which systematized human oppression and misery. They rejected the statism inherent in 19th century nationalism and liberal imperialism, and instead sought to overthrow social orders that had within the lifetime of the founding lights of these movements had treated human beings as cattle, to be killed and used at the whim of landlords.
Moreover, there was a time when anarchists risked something important for these noble ends.
Even in the United States the anarchist movement was based upon viewing the use of lethal force against the simple idea of organizing for labor purposes. There was the Homestead Strike, the Pullman Strike, and less creditably for the movement the Haymarket Affair. Organized political violence was often used toward the exploitation of labor.
Mikhail Bakunin, the father of anarchism, was involved in uprisings in the Revolutions of 1848. He was later jailed for his part in the Czech Rebellion, and over the course of his lifetime suffered from the effects of his treatment in the aftermath of the ’48 revolutions.
Further along after the many failures of ’48, came “propaganda of the deed”, the idea of using mass violence as a means of expressing political dissent. Auguste Valliante, Emile Henry, Emma Goldman, the youths of Narodnaya Volya were all willing to risk their lives, in political acts of violence. They were ultimately foiled. As Kropotkin had surmised a few kilos of dynamite weren’t sufficient to undo social structures. In some cases in fact they did positive harm to their cause, such as with the assassination of Tsar Alexander II.
But hell, at least these people had the courage of their convictions to stand in court and admit to both their aims and their failings. These weren’t nameless or faceless individuals and they sure as hell didn’t hide behind others.
This is in contrast to so-called modern “anarchists” of the Anonymous and internet vigilante variety.
They wear their little Guy Fawkes masks and proclaim their power over structures, over individuals, over any little thing that offends their fancy. Like a stopped clock they can be right once in a while, but for the most part they exist to satisfy vanity.
Of course Guy Fawkes himself would probably be ashamed by these atheistic wretches using his likeness. Their hiding behind anonymity and fighting for the oppressed privileged young men most of them are.
They hide in the mob, not to make a propaganda of the deed, or even a statement of power structures, but to revel in their untraceability. They make threats to individuals who dare critique them. They are what? A revolutionary vanguard of the oppressed middle class male?
Who actually are the ones standing for something of import? The ones who stand in public, with their real names, their real faces and expose themselves to the slings and arrows of the mob? Or the mob who decide to bask in their anonymity and make threats, attack others and focus on how they are oppressed despite their faceless multitude?
The modern anarchist is morally and socially bankrupt. They are not a counter to the problems of society but rather a symptom of its sickness. The underlying reasons things like Anonymous have traction, the reason the “Male Rights Activists” have traction, the White Nationalists, the Human Biodiversity whackos, all have traction is because they, are a faceless privileged few who feel themselves threatened by those who see past them into a different future.
Also, in case of TL; DR here’s a precis:
Dear Anonymous,
Threatening individuals on the internet through collective, vile action does not make you the moral equivalent of anyone admirable. You’re not Bakunin standing up for serfs and oppressed Czechs. You’re not even Guy Fawkes plotting to blow up parliament. You’re the mob that cheered and threw rotten vegetables as Fawkes was dragged to the scaffold, hung, drawn then quartered.
Love,
Nob
