What I love and hate about anarchism

Love:

– Firmly rooted in working-class struggle
– Anti-hierarchical
– Free thinking
– Non-dogmatic
– Anti-capitalist
– Anti-nationalist and anti-patriotic
– Anti-racist
– Anti-authoritarian
– Anti-sexist
– Anti-homophobic
– The most true representation of socialist principles and ethics
– The scope to formulate and determine our own theory
– Anti-liberal and anti-conservative
– Internationalist
– Community organisation
– Workplace organisation
– Antitheistic
– No heroes
– No leaders
– Anti-imperialist and anti-colonialist
– Admiration of individual figures without hero worship
– Reconciliation between the individual and the collective

Hate:

– Liberal creep
– Dogmatism
– Do nothing “pseudo-intellectuals”
– Lack of focus
– Lack of willpower
– Self-appointed spokespeople
– Social justice warriors
– Insincere middle-class activists (Which accounts for most middle-class activists in anarchism today)
– Continued association with and tolerance of Anonymous
– Fantasists (Running down the Mall Winter Palace style)
– Bickering
– Do-nothing “academics”
– Moralisers
– Insular
– Reliance on the left (Which is where most of our propaganda is aimed)
– Buzzwords
– Trendy leftism
– Tolerance of certain types of nationalism (Irish, Welsh, Scottish etc.)
– Too scared to criticise the very idea and nature of trade unions (Craft unions as opposed to industrial unions)
– We’re all branded as “anarcho-syndicalists” (Or just simply “syndicalists”)
– The inability of many to distinguish between communism/socialism and Bolshevism/trade unionism
– The few who believe in representative democracy
– The inability and fear of many to challenge middle-class bullshit
– Those who think that Occupy as a whole was a good thing
– Working-class caricatures
– The theoretical blurring of class lines
– Middle-class colonisation
– The ignorance to or denial of anarchism’s socialist principles and heritage
– Celebrities
– Most student anarchist activism
– Lack of direction
– Increasing reformism
– Lack of interventions and anarchist initiatives
– Laziness
– Lack of optimism
– Too willing to compromise and drop our principles
– Too concerned with who we can bring in and recruit from the within the “left” as opposed to who we can recruit and bring in from the class.

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