Quotes from here:
Neo-anarchism is a modern conception of anarchism largely informed by the feminist and peace movements of the 70s, the environmental movement of the 80s, the alter-globalisation movement of the 90s, and the Argentinian uprising of 2001; which coined the term horizontalidad (‘horizontalism’) to describe the movement’s rejection of representative democracy, the use of general assemblies to coordinate activity, and converting abandoned or bankrupt factories into cooperative businesses.
Reading to the end of the article, I'm confused. Why is he singling out these specific movements when talking about 'neo-anarchism'? And why is 'neo-anarchism' the chosen term, rather than being something that actually would linguistically make sense (as in, something that has changed and is different from classical anarchism)? What is he meaning by this?
Because there are... multiple definitions that I've encountered for 'neo-anarchism', and I don't know which one he's trying to choose. (And all of them, I find deeply inadequate and unnecessarily confusing.) If you're detailing 'lifestyle anarchism', then say that; that's at least clear and unlikely to cause confusion.
But again, why these movements? By choosing to highlight these movements, you're showing quite a bit of your ass here: Classical anarchism rarely, if ever, engaged in feminism (whole hosts of anarchists thought women didn't belong anywhere in the movement; people quote James Guillaume as if he was so valuable to the movement, but he thought anyone feminine didn't belong). Classical anarchism barely touched on the environment and was responding largely to industrialisation, when it did talk about it, and it often neglected the impacts on a lot of people with regards to the other movements (or simply was out of date to deal with events happening in the 90s, 2000s, and so on).
I would also highlight that classical anarchism really struggled considering its lack of care and consideration for any of these concepts, particularly with regards to race (which was left out here, as race-focused Civil Rights Movements also informed modern anarchism). It's also worth pointing out that queer liberation was part of this, which was also tied into disability justice movements. Some people mentioned it, but there was a lot of eugenics in classical anarchism (which hit a lot of people in all three of these groups).
I know there's limited space to consider these things, but they are all really important to include in how modern anarchism is being developed as we go along. It's also worth recognising how often a lot of people get written out of anarchism for focus on certain topics, and this is no different.
And it's also important to not simply denigrate these movements when there are others that a lot of lifestylists tend to refer back to, like communes.
Anarchists have generally agreed that the appropriate form of decision making depends on the circumstances concerned, and frequently endorsed variations of majoritarian voting; particularly in mass organisations based on commonalities other than close-ideological affinity, such as unions. The focus for anarchists has generally not been the form of decision-making, but instead the principles of free association and solidarity. Furthermore, though anarchists have always stressed the right of the minority to be free of the majority’s coercion, it is even more important that the great majority be free of minoritarian rule or sabotage.
True, many of our ideas are based around how decisions are made and our relationships to those decisions (and what we can do in response to them).
The fundamental limitations of the ‘public occupation’ or ‘autonomous zone’ , and the defeats which have followed from these limitations, have led some former advocates of the strategy to make a notable transition from neo-anarchism to parliamentary politics. Though inexplicable to some outside observers, the change is easily understood when we consider neo-anarchism’s peculiar view of ‘direct democracy’, or ‘horizontally organised spaces’, as the defining characteristic of anarchism, and not a theory of libertarian revolution against the State and capital.
Where, though? And what kind of public occupations are you talking about?
The EZLN (who do not describe themselves as anarchists but are people who many anarchists look toward for inspiration) have been largely successful in configuring occupation of space, even though they may often have to protect themselves from the government and other outside forces. This is, often, one of the ideas that people have when they think about these spaces.
However, when we look at examples in the United States, there are... problems. And many of them stem from a failure of people to unlearn the toxicity that resides within their own skulls. These examples tend to end in a handful of ways: with the fatal deaths of people (often people of colour, particularly Black people) at the hands of people (frequently white men) "protecting" the community or with some form of legal recognition (e.g., legalised squats).
Legalising squats often happens in Europe, too. However, a more common tactic is that people here tend to lose their squat because the government finds a "legitimate" reason to bulldoze it (see: ROG in Ljubljana).
And here's some more fun pieces of information for you to add to this context: I saw no one outside of Eastern Europe even talk about Slovenia. No one. Internationalism doesn't happen with the US, with Canada, with Australia or New Zealand, or with Western Europe. So again, I have to ask: Where? Which ones? And why don't these occupations succeed?
And why is so much solidarity expected from people outside of those named locations, who ask for international solidarity and are met with silence or hostility? It's telling.
If we accept the idea of anarchism as proposed by the neo-anarchists, there is no fundamental contradiction between anarchism and involvement in parliamentary politics.
Oh, "neo-anarchists" are referring to those who go to more liberal directions of politicking. I don't agree with this at all and think that this is a useless conflation of terminology and tactics. It also feels strangely as if it's denigrating whole hosts of ideas that classical anarchism left out, that have been pushing their way into a largely patriarchal anarchism that has refused to see us, and now we're being denigrated by someone trying to play with words and conflate positions.
More recently we have witnessed the absurdity of a self-proclaimed ‘libertarian socialist’, Gabriel Boric (who touts his association with Chile’s radical student movement), ascending to the presidency in the aftermath of a militant popular uprising.
Instead of ceding or handing over ways of talking about things (or creating confusing and conflicting terminology), why not call these people for what they are? Liberals. They are not any form of anarchist, new or otherwise. They are people who drape themselves in radical movements (even if they were there) to gain access to the power they seek. They're grifters or co-opters.
They are not anarchists. We can denounce them without giving them a title that confuses people.
The reality is that there is no way to fully ‘prefigure’ anarchy and communism through ‘directly democratic’ spaces of ‘autonomy’. Anarchism requires a specific anarchist movement and anarchist practice. Though we must certainly organise ourselves from the bottom up, with a consistent federalist structure, we can not simply bring about our ideal by ‘living anarchisticly’ or relating to one another as ‘horizontally’ as possible. Similarly, the content of anarchism can not be limited to the structure of our movement – its content of revolutionary class struggle must be maintained.
I think there's a balance to be struck, and we need to strike it. Not that we need to concede to party politics, but we need to recognise that some people can only 'live anarchistically', and many of you aren't doing shit to make it easier for us to go beyond that.
I've said this before: As a migrant, I don't have the stability to do a lot of outward anarchist stuff because I can be deported or have my visa denied for my views. Tell me, what are my fellow anarchists doing to prevent that? And not just for me, but for others.
Once again, there are a lot of conflicting variables that a lot of Western anarchists refuse to engage with because honestly? Most of us never have to deal with them, so we do fucking nothing to actually make it possible for people beyond the simple actions of engaging with each other through horizontal methods or doing what little we can.
