Post-wave Anarchy: Moving Beyond the Failures of Post Left Anarchy

It has become obvious that any cohesion that people had hoped would come from post-left anarchy has now reach a failure point. Jason McQuinn, Lawrence Jarach, Wolfi Landstreicher and friends have generated nominal influence over 15 years of taking Bob Black's "Anarchy After Leftism" out of context and applying it to a push to affect the anarchist movement. While the culture has changed, it hasn't strengthened. The power of leftist demagogues and the creeping influence of a leftist authoritarian culture has only had reactionary responses from the camp that started the post-left trajectory. There has been little attempt to understand how to engage present day young leftists in a context where these leftists have steamrolled any gains that came from post-left influences. If we are taking Hakim Bey as part of this trajectory, the zenith of post-left anarchy is the Occupy movement and its ultimately downfall the decolonial, anti-colonial and Black Lives Matters movements which presented a way of looking at the world that post-left anarchists were not prepared to engage.

It is with the real world conflicts of post-left anarchists that we see how out of touch this tendency has become. Old men, often removed from the day-to-day struggles of young, active anarchists, couldn't of seen the change coming until Lawrence Jarach became a stepping stone for the increasing power of this younger leftism. Because post left anarchy is so out of touch, it quickly has taken a reactionary role in how it engages these younger anarchists, which then turn them off as post-left anarchy is more of a #alllivesmatter approach.

Then along comes Crimethinc and their "To Change Everything" tour. To me, this tour is means more than the anti-civ and post-left critics on podcast attempting to find a way to criticize it. It shows that the post-left field has changed enough that it can no longer serve as a signifier of edgy radicalism, but rather signifies at how much of a stick in the mud a curmudgeon may be towards the younger crowd. Crimethinc, looking to Europe and South America, see where the fresh new, relevant anarchy is. It is anti-fascist, it is prison abolitionist, it is insurrectionary, it is engaging. Not as beholden to dead white thinkers as those who claim anti-ideological positions, Crimethinc and its proponents offer a future where anarchists can have wins and successes based on attack. They look at the megalith not as a giant whole or a cluster of minds to affect with philosophic verbiage while waiting for the mass of humanity to somehow reach the point where they also agree with this supposed anti-ideological position, whether as individuals or in small attack groups, small protest, riots or situations of unrest. Without recognizing the philosophic truths, the great mass can't come to grips with truth (the truth is the lack of truth. Anti-ideology is the best ideology as it is less false in a world where nothing can be more true).

Crimethinc instead look at it the way anarchists have look at it for generations. We are not separate from the world, we are not just observing the world and when we do observe the world, it is not from a bubble. It is from the direction of finding a way to create change to affect the system or people or something through action. Anarchists are part of this direction in the story of humanity and from here we create an analysis of the world. Those that call to abandon the streets are fools that don't see that maybe they should abandon the streets, but it is folly to think anarchists even could abandon the streets as it is the streets that define why many anarchists define themselves as such.

And while I do talk about Crimethinc in a positive light, I see other directions that can be taken by those that are looking beyond post-left anarchy. While the situationist wave that created the field of post-left anarchy has finally crashed and ebbed away, we see many remnants and directions to go as a new flow comes with Crimethinc's observation of how to change everything. One of those directions is in projects pioneered by the innovative thinker Kevin Keating. While what he did was done in the shadows of the same wave that created post-left anarchy, the refusal to engage or adopt influence from this direction coming primarily from those in Keating's locality ensured his radical methodology didn't get adopted as a regular approach to anarchist action.

The confusion of anarcho-communists with old left practices like platformism and syndicalism also ensured that Keating's message and methodology, which is a generation ahead of its time, didn't reach the type of people that might be affected in the context of today where these kinds of anarchists are finding it hard to stay relevant by sticking to old workerist modes of operation.

As the loudness of individualists sound more and more reactionary while the leftists grow more authoritarian, a true libertarian, radical direction needs to take shape. Instead of justifying (certain forms of) pedophilia, (certain forms of) bestiality, (certain forms of) necrophilia, (certain forms of) rape, instead of offering apologetics for beta-male misogyny, we need a real voice that can challenge the creeping authoritarian culture that affects both the left and anarchists that can criticize the totalitarianism of protest, activist and active anarchist milieu. The policing micro-state behavior of the left and anarchist milieus needs to be challenged, but by those with credibility, not those we wouldn't trust alone with children or small animals.