A New Anarchist FAQ: An Introduction to Anarchy in the 21st Century
A New Anarchist FAQ: An Introduction to Anarchy in the 21st Century
It is an attempt at a crowdsourced alternative to An Anarchist FAQ, mainly aiming to eliminate any biases by having multiple people write this work.
But many people did work on afaq, no?
Edit: what things do you think are biased on afaq? I feel like a link to a critique would help.
Raddle is very post-left. For example:
Anarchists are not leftists, we side with neither monarchy nor republic, dictatorship nor democracy, free market capitalism nor state capitalism. We stand for anarchy. The absolute negation of all authority, including both wings of government.
Like I would argue that the items to the left of the bolded text make anarchists leftists, in the sense that we claim to support (and do support) non-hierarchical modes of living as the classical Left claims to do as well. Of course any serious left-wing anarchists do not want to replicate the left wing of the State. But making that critique and rejecting left unity where it conflicts with our anarchist values does not mean that we're not leftists and that there's nothing to be learned from classical Left literature.
So I would assume that the bias is towards the classical Left. Which...I think that the original FAQ is pretty critical of the classical Left? But a shorter FAQ for outsiders or classical-Left-averse people is still incredibly useful IMO.
Very informative! Thanks a lot! :)
I should have clarified in the post; this is not my opinion, nor am I a participant of Raddle. I just found a cool link that I wanted to share.
[An Anarchist FAQ] is written entirely by one man and often pushes a strong Bookchinite perspective, to the point of smearing the anarchist currents that Bookchin rallied against
Again, I don't have much of an opinion on this, as I don't know how much of it is true. I haven't read AFAQ in much detail: I preferred the digestibility of Peter Gelderloos' Anarchy Works.
nor am I a participant of Raddle.
Nothing about Raddle, or it's creator, deserves any kind of trust.
It's maker, Ziq, was caught red-handed on Raddle using an army of sock-puppet accounts to harass participants and manipulate narratives on Raddle itself - a method they were suspected of using to disrupt and hijack r/anarchism way back when.
They are literally a text-book example of a bad actor.
I started the new FAQ, I can provide direct quotes from the old FAQ to outline its biases if you want. But biases aren't really a problem, that's to be expected in any project, the problem is the vicious smears it directs at anarchists of different schools, and the way it's tries to assert monolithic thought onto anarchy, especially the author's ideology of majoritarianism which he borrows from Murray Bookchin's theories.
Hi, I'm the one who started the new FAQ. I started it specifically because the old FAQ repeatedly claims anarchy is dedicated to majoritarianism i.e. direct democracy, and because of how readily it smears and dismisses green anarchy, while praising non-anarchists like Murray Bookchin. You can see some examples here: https://raddle.me/wiki/A_New_Anarchist_FAQ_Instructions
Thanks. I'll check that out. That said, I happen to be in a lot of anarchist groups and read quite a bit in between.
Afaik, the afaq rightfully claims that both direct democracy and consent are legit ways of anarchist group decisionmaking. I'd agree if you said it doesnt shed light of things like qualified majorities which are used in anarcho syndicalism quite a bit.
Am I missing something?
Short version:
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No that's a straw man. There are too many cool options for how to solve that problem, and no i cant explain every detail of my ideal society at its peak to you, because im not the god queen of it, and i want everyone to have a say.
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We tend to propose starting by not putting so many of our combined resources towards doing the bad thing on purpose, then finding the reasons why the bad thing happens and fixing those.
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Can i get some of what you're smoking? It sounds wild.
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No. If you touch me with your toothbrush i will scream.
I think that covers all the standard questions and accusations.
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Fuck off, Ziq.
And take your shitty personality cult masquerading as "anarchism" with you.