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shit MANarchists say

really can't stand all this manarchism stuff. the problems the anarchist 'scene' has with attracting immature kids in it for aesthetic notions of rebellion and 'babes' has more fundamental roots in the general shitty nature of how they organise and the theories which are popular within their groups than it has to do with 'masculinity' or 'masculine attitudes'.
 
It's a meme as well, with Ryan Gosling. But I don't know what Ryan Gosling has to do with it, who is he anyway? I don't think I know any of his films.
 
smmudge said:
It's a meme as well, with Ryan Gosling. But I don't know what Ryan Gosling has to do with it, who is he anyway? I don't think I know any of his films.
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he was in the believer which was a pretty crap story of a jewish neo-nazi. i dont need to continue with that do i? thats a quid ill not see again from amazon!
 
butchersapron said:
An americman i think.

Where are you coming across this stuff in this country uberdog?
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Manchester anarchist circles had a meeting on the crisis of manarchism within their groups not so long ago. it's rife all over the self-identified 'autonomous' vaguely green 'scene'. anywhere you have a Solfed or an Afed this stuff doesn't follow too far behind ime.

basically i have more interaction with the 'activist community' than is good, proper or healthy.
 
That stuff always got very short shrift during my time in the AF - identity/privilege politics was relentlessly attacked within the organisation and publicly (in mags/journals and in activity). Same goes for sol-fed. It's really not accurate to tie in any modern day localised emphasis on this way of dealing with social issues specifically with these two groups. If anything, it's coming from unorganised (in formal groups at least) individuals whose anarchists contacts tend to be internet based and with US individuals - it's a sign of their distance and aleination from groups like the AF (and wider society come to that).
 
definitely, it's more of an issue amongst the localised activist 'cells' - but these are more and more common and increasingly taking on recruits from across different anarchist orgs so far as i can see. there's a lot of overlap... serious AFers and Solfeders that i know don't have any time for it, but there's a whole new breed of scripted anarchist kids who move between numerous different groupings and never really bother to learn anything in-depth about history etc and just eat all this up. i'd actually say this kind of thing has reached 'chronic' proportions amongst a lot of layers of the young, self-defined 'autonomous' and anarchist circuit... not just a question of internet politics anymore. i don't think we can underestimate quite how far all of these orgs (non-anarchist too) have degenerated culturally and politically over the past 20 years
 
it's also particularly present amongst the greens, etc... i think it'd be fair to say that all these new faddy ideas (also 'consensus decision-making' etc) are more prevalent in areas where the branches are made up of recruits from the late 90s anti-capitalist green movement onwards rather than from before that
 
Das Uberdog said:
definitely, it's more of an issue amongst the localised activist 'cells' - but these are more and more common and increasingly taking on recruits from across different anarchist orgs so far as i can see. there's a lot of overlap... serious AFers and Solfeders that i know don't have any time for it, but there's a whole new breed of scripted anarchist kids who move between numerous different groupings and never really bother to learn anything in-depth about history etc and just eat all this up. i'd actually say this kind of thing has reached 'chronic' proportions amongst a lot of layers of the young, self-defined 'autonomous' and anarchist circuit... not just a question of internet politics anymore. i don't think we can underestimate quite how far all of these orgs (non-anarchist too) have degenerated culturally and politically over the past 20 years
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If only some of the old anarchists who know what they're talking about would come along and tell the younger anarchists what they should be doing. If they did that then we could all have those pesky hierarchies and power structures dismantled by teatime.

I find it interesting that you use the phrase 'self-defined' with apparent derision. Who exactly should we be defined be? If younger anarchists are taking a different tack from previous generations, and quite possibly getting everything wrong in the process, then that's probably because they've taken a good look at what passed for anarchism in the past and decided it wasn't for them for whatever reason. One of the reasons for this is the general attitude shown in the post quoted above.

Anarchists are just humans, they're a product of their culture and their uprbringing just like everyone else. Obviously young anarchists today will be a different breed to those who were around thirty years ago, but there's no sense in moaning about it. I'd happily agree that there is too much lifestyle bollocks going on in certain groups but the problem is by no means endemic. It is not only Afed and Solfed who are capable of being 'serious' as you put it, many of us non-aligned anarchists get as annoyed with all the self-referential cliquey shit as anybody else. Tarring anyone under 35 who owns a black hoody with the same brush is not helpful.

As for saying that anarchist organisations have degenerated so far in twenty years, what was going on twenty years ago that was so fucking special? What right have you got to make an assertion like that? And what are you personally doing to reverse this downward trend besides moaning about it?

Butchersapron will be along momentarily to tell me I'm wrong about everything and that I'm not even an anarchist so I don't get an opinion. And thus shall he prove my point.
 
agreed frank. not all anarchos follow this identity politics bollocks (bollo-ticks?). however, generalisations on anarchists in general are frequent from the socialists so unsurprised to see this here.
 
Maybe I should do a youtube video of 'shit grumpy old anarchists say'.

Same as all other grumpy old people basically. There were none of this when I were a lad. Kids these days don't know they're born. There were none of this when I were a lad. Did I say that already? Who are you? Is this my house? During the war all this was grass. It was me who killed Thatcher you know, not the IRA. Who are you?
 
SpookyFrank said:
Maybe I should do a youtube video of 'shit grumpy old anarchists say'.

Same as all other grumpy old people basically. There were none of this when I were a lad. Kids these days don't know they're born. There were none of this when I were a lad. Did I say that already? Who are you? Is this my house? During the war all this was grass. It was me who killed Thatcher you know, not the IRA. Who are you?
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Don't let London_calling hear that ageism!
 
I don't think that video gives good examples of what most people mean when they say 'manarchism'. It's mostly a collection of annoying things that young people in activist 'scenes' tend to do, mostly to try to gain social status within the group. Which interestingly includes making videos that no one outside their scene can understand...

As I understood the term it is about allowing the norms of mainstream patriarchy infect everything you do while you pretend to hate all forms of domination. It can result in heavily male-dominated groups that get into a downward spiral of not providing a welcoming atmosphere to women, which results in women never joining, which means patriarchal attitudes are never challenged, which means the men go on behaving in ways that put women off from joining...

This has some better examples, though it also has some stuff that is stretching it a bit: http://youmightbeamanarchistif.tumblr.com/

butchersapron on what grounds did people critique the idea of privilege? It's not that I love it, and you have to avoid being essentialist about it, but it can sometimes be useful to explain to, say, a white middle class man, why it is that he's never had to think about race issues too much.
 
Blagsta said:
What's a manarchist?
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I really don't think American anarchists are as bat shit crazy as some peeps in Britain like to think at times . . . and the smell in the hall at this year's Anarchist Bookfair in NYC was the exact same smell as the one that used to waft through old Anarchist Bookfairs held at Conway Hall.

If I'd ever read any Proust, I could have claimed it as a Proustian moment. :D
 
Brainaddict said:
butchersapron on what grounds did people critique the idea of privilege? It's not that I love it, and you have to avoid being essentialist about it, but it can sometimes be useful to explain to, say, a white middle class man, why it is that he's never had to think about race issues too much.
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Who is going to explain it? :D Prvilige is just the US version of the sort of identity politics that we've seen over here but individualised (despite its claims to be based on a social analysis), cut free from wider social/class understanding and then turned round and used as a competitive stick with which to beat others by - often by those who in traditional terms are the most advantaged (despite whatever preemptory self-justifications about how its to be used are offered) - and by those who reduce political action to either a) perosnalised attacks on other individuals or b) being present at some sort of min-riot (i.e smashing windows, not fighting). This might be worth a read, can't remember though: Privilege politics is reformism
 
butchersapron said:
Who is going to explain it? :D Prvilige is just the US version of the sort of identity politics that we've seen over here but individualised (despite its claims to be based on a social analysis), cut free from wider social/class understanding and then turned round and used as a competitive stick with which to beat others by - often by those who in traditional terms are the most advantaged (despite whatever preemptory self-justifications about how its to be used are offered) - and by those who reduce political action to either a) perosnalised attacks on other individuals or b) being present at some sort of min-riot (i.e smashing windows, not fighting). This might be worth a read, can't remember though: Privilege politics is reformism
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That's just your white male privilege showing through ;)
 
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