I don’t know what the fuck is wrong with populists. Do they really want a revolution in name only? Do they really value popularity over principle? We don’t appeal to the masses simply because they are the masses. The United States population for example is full of social climbing, racist, misogynist, classist fucking assholes, with no solidarity or class consciousness and not a single care in the world about starving children down the block from them, much less in Ethiopia. We have to ask ourselves do we really want them running around calling themselves anarchists? People need to check themselves on this “tactic” of mass recruitment.
Sure, I want them to be anarchists too. It’s true, we need the people to be on our side. But that’s just it, I want them to BE anarchists, not say that they are anarchists and then exhibit every characteristic I fucking despise about this social order. I don’t want to hang out at the proverbial watercooler at a co-op with guys making rape jokes and laughing at African-American culture. I don’t want to be at the public seminar hearing about how “faggots are an abomination” from some asshole with a black and red flag. I’m glad anarchists are exclusive because that’s the way it’s supposed to be. We don’t accept every batshit right-wing nutjob that walks around calling himself an anarchist for the same reasons we don’t call a mental patient a goose when they flap their arms like they have wings.
I’m tired of this knee-jerk reactionary hit squad of primarily teenage and college age white males who go around thinking that the freedom of speech means they can mock, ridicule and dehumanize any person or group they want without repercussion, and that anyone who dare defy them is an authoritarian monster equivalent to Joseph Stalin. That our criticism of their offensive language and attitude is comparative to the political executions attributed to the Bolshevik regime.
Now don’t get me wrong, I like a lot of comedians who use racially charged criteria to make hilarious political statements, but there is a difference between comedy and mockery. Comedy is when everyone is laughing together about a stupid stereotype that we know shouldn’t exist because we know people who don’t exhibit those characteristics, mockery is taking the stereotype as a standard and then laughing at the entire group. As radicals we need to have clearly defined lines about acceptable conduct or else we will find ourselves like so many other movements, far from our principles with a bunch of people talking the talk, but not walking the walk.
redbarsan 