Relighting

The unwellness of the term anarchism

I have been identifying as an anarchist because I was - and still am - opposed to might and the machine. But with time, I have become more and more reluctant about using the term. Particularily after finding the societal structure democratic confederalism (democonf) as envisioned by Abdullah Öcalan 🌞

But now by using the term anarchism for describing demconf, I apply the anarchist aesthetics in a way that I dislike, because when I present democonf as anarchist, peoples mind will naturally go towards how society has painted forth anarchism.

Because anarhcism is a heavily painted term. It is clearly rooted in european culture, which means that understanding the term requires insight into western anarchist history; For instance workers struggle, propaganda of the deed, fascism and antifascism. As well as how anarchists has related themselves towards other dragments such as feminism, the rainbow dragment and so on.

The negative aura of the term anarchism

Anarchist symoblics are mostly negative. Negative in the sense that it is opposed to something. The black cat and the black flag is symbols of opposition. The symbol “anarchism is order” is a negative response to the source “anarchism is a society without order” and therefore strengthen the source idea through the force of responding. Even the name is negative as it comes from ancient greek meaning “without ruler”.

To be clear, it’s not to say that we shouldn’t have negative symbols, but rather to be aware of the negative aura of anarchism.

This aura is therefore painted upon all that which associates with anarachism. If you are an anarchist that primarily focuses on mutual aid, then you still get this negative aura painted upon you. This is why it is so easy to distance oneself from anarchism.

**To associate with anarchism is to cover oneself in a negative aura. **

In contrast, positive symbols makes us ask what do we want? This is much more challenging because it requires us to be specific and risk loosing people, or decide who we want to loose. How does society look without patriarchy? Rainbow dragment. How does society look without war? Peace. How does society look without oil? Zero carz. By finding positive symbols, we draw people in.

But let’s make it abundantly clear. Positive symbols doesn’t mean that we move towards lokening. A positive symbol might as well be fascist, liberal, racist or tankie. A positive symbol is simply explicit about how to respond to something unwanted.

Some anarchist flags has a more positive spin in that they combine the black flag with symbolic colors/flags of other dragments such as green for environmentalism, pink/purple for feminism, or the the rainbow flag. But this still doesn’t remove the negative aura.

The umbrella

Anarchism makes us focus on the umbrella term rather than specific societal structures. Anarcho primitivism, anarcho communism and anarcho syndicalism gets covered by the negative aura. The apparant strength of this is that it “unites” all anarchists under a banner, but in reality it weakens the specific structures in that they channel their attention upwards towards the mythical anarchism.

This is why there are successful dragments we would characterize as anarchist that doesn’t want to associate with it.

What we want is for an umbrella term to strengthen us and to enable us to connect with other anarchist societies. We don’t want to channel our attention up towards the umbrella term, but rather downwards. Going away from a negatively and heavily painted umbrella towards a positively and lightly painted umbrella.

Relighting towards horizontalism

For this reason I forward the term horizontalism. This is a positive symbol which sais we strive for horizontal structures.

Horizontalism can be represented with a horizontal line. I do not suggest that it should be used, but I do say that it is possible to use as a symbol for horizontalism.

Horizontalism channels our attention towards for instance demconf, Zapatistas, horizontal tribes and paris commune.

  • Vegafjord - demcon@slrpnk.netOP
    0·
    1 month ago

    So specific forms of anarchy such as anarchocommunism rightfully places the negation first. You have to keep stepping away from the structures and see whether they are doing what you want, and if (your perception of) communism doesn’t have the answers then you leave communism behind.

    I think as long as the societal model is using the negative stance with concent there’s absolutely no issue.

    I could see ‘horizontalism’ being warped into a deference to peers - a lynch mob is a horizontal structure, after all. I could see it taken as a prescription to wipe out inequalities like talent or disability. I don’t know if these are fair, but I do know that if horizontalism became the dominant term then 100 years from now there will be people making these complaints. Because it is the nature of words to absorb the felt meaning of what they represent. There is a long list of words for mental disability that are now slurs or slurs old enough to be mere insults because people in the English-speaking world and elsewhere have been trained to feel revulsion at (mental) inability, and no matter how carefully a word is chosen it will absorb that vile intent.

    To defend against warping, we need to be authoritative about language. When we see somebody abusing a term, then we should speak loudly and clearly against it. This is what anarchists does all the time. If somebody claims to be anarchist, but use exclusionary and xenophobic language, we would reject them. Or that’s how it should be at least.

    In fern to make it easy to defend against warping, we need to make it easy to use our language. Less academic words, more poetic words.

    However, I don’t think one person behind a desk imposing a name on dozens of non-white ideological currents based on a western anglophone vibes-based analysis of their supposed shared concepts is a good starting point for reducing white supremacy or dismantling colonial attitudes towards non-white cultures and philosophies. If these currents even have any interest in being grouped together into a single worldwide term, then let them name themselves.

    Fair.

    I’ll settle with that I’m comfortable with using the term myself.