To some extent, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: an unbridgeable divide deals with that issue, or perhaps with its early roots. When I was more involved in anarchist spaces in the early 2000s, people knew about this article, and generally considered lifestyle anarchists to be wankers. But since the rise of social media, it seems like a kind of lifestyle anarchism has become the dominant tendency, with people rejecting not only hierarchical power relations, but any kind of organization that might have any hierarchical structure, like the federations traditionally endorsed by anarchists. And rejecting all authority, even Bakunin's "authority of the bootmaker" (i.e., expertise).
It's a very bad state of affairs, and I think it comes about partly because baby anarchists today learn from word of mouth rather than from books or textfiles, and in particular, from baby anarchists who hardly know more than they do but have social media followings. Kids these days, is what I'm saying. They need to get off of my our lawn.
I think that lifestylists, or at least lifestylism, still copped a lot of flak when I was an anarchist. I still fondly remember my days quoting that Bakunin passage at the lifestylists lol.
Obviously I'm much more sympathetic towards platformism and libertarian municipalism and the like, even today, but it's sad to hear that lifestylism has become the predominant trend in (online) anarchism although I can understand its allure; you don't need to worry about organising or even reading literature or any of the hard work really because you can just reject that out of hand and focus on doing what feels right for you.
To some extent, Social Anarchism or Lifestyle Anarchism: an unbridgeable divide deals with that issue, or perhaps with its early roots. When I was more involved in anarchist spaces in the early 2000s, people knew about this article, and generally considered lifestyle anarchists to be wankers. But since the rise of social media, it seems like a kind of lifestyle anarchism has become the dominant tendency, with people rejecting not only hierarchical power relations, but any kind of organization that might have any hierarchical structure, like the federations traditionally endorsed by anarchists. And rejecting all authority, even Bakunin's "authority of the bootmaker" (i.e., expertise).
It's a very bad state of affairs, and I think it comes about partly because baby anarchists today learn from word of mouth rather than from books or textfiles, and in particular, from baby anarchists who hardly know more than they do but have social media followings. Kids these days, is what I'm saying. They need to get off of
myour lawn.I think that lifestylists, or at least lifestylism, still copped a lot of flak when I was an anarchist. I still fondly remember my days quoting that Bakunin passage at the lifestylists lol.
Obviously I'm much more sympathetic towards platformism and libertarian municipalism and the like, even today, but it's sad to hear that lifestylism has become the predominant trend in (online) anarchism although I can understand its allure; you don't need to worry about organising or even reading literature or any of the hard work really because you can just reject that out of hand and focus on doing what feels right for you.