“The world is one pestilent church covetous and slimy where all have an idol to fetishistically adore and an altar on which to sacrifice themselves.” – Renzo Novatore
A movement of anarchists would, you’d think, be a collective project of individual realisation and freedom, mutual aid and solidarity, honest communication and individual responsibility, of a violent attack against the institutions, managers and structures of domination and alienation, against mental programming and unconscious behaviours, against the reproduction of authoritarian society in our interrelationships and thoughts and actions.
What does the muddle of casual hierarchies, ideological rackets, miserable cliques, identity ghettos, would-be leaders, dishonesty and backstabbing that we see before us if we look at much of the selfidentifying ‘anarchist movement’ have to do with that? Very little except perhaps in words or in a stunted form. Clearly the movement in general is more interested in protecting ideological fortresses, recruiting followers, preserving the suffocating comfort of their scenes, and above all, following their harmless hobby, than in anarchy.
Navigating and trying to find a reference point in the ‘movement’ can be disorientating. Young, or new, comrades entering the ‘movement’ (or rather, the scene) are frequently snatched by one of the brands of package-deal politics or forced to pick between the false choices of proffered products served up by the various ideological rackets. Whenever a system of ideas is structured with a sovereign abstraction at the centre – assigning a role or duties to you for its sake – this system is an ideology. An ideology is a system of repressive consciousness in which you are no longer a willful singular individual, but a component, a cog.
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