What's prompting this brief piece is a dude on Twitter a week ago. He added me to a list called "Posturing Fascists."
I suppose that, to an anarchist, arguably everybody's a fascist. Anyway, in reality, I'm a leftist and it's not true. So, I Tweeted to him, politely but firmly telling him that, and telling him that in addition, I don't like being added to Twitter lists in general and if I weren't removed, I'd have to block him.
Twenty-four hours later, having heard nothing, I did so. I couldn't remember his handle, but when I Twitter-searched for "posturing fascists," my reply to Sherlock Hemlock was first hit.
I've disliked semi-professional anarchism ever since the old Black Bloc hit Seattle in 1998. It's part of why I was leery of the original Zuccoti Park Occupy Wall Street movement — anarchist fellow travelers at Adbusters making the call for the movement. This all intersected with the bullshit claims that it was leaderless vs the actual "hipster-anarchist" leader, Malcolm Harris, discussed in detail here.
It's why I drew a gimlet eye on the so-called Antifa, and beyond any violence against people, or unnecessary violence against property, the often Whiteness of them horning in on local Black Lives Matter and others. And, beyond the violence level, many academic anarchists or quasi-anarchists aren't so good on information and analysis, as David Graeber showed years ago and later in his posthumous book.
I also think that most anarchists have an ox-gored version of hypocrisy on anarchism. If I took a blowtorch to THEIR personal property, they'd be up in my face in a New York minute, most likely. In short, at core, it strikes me as really being an extremely solipsistic version of libertarianism.
And, if there's something truly closer to "posturing fascists" than me, setting aside wingnut culture warriors, it would be solipsistic libertarians.
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