U.S. Anarchism, Movement Building, and the Racial Order

Between Infoshops and Insurrection: U.S. Anarchism, Movement Building, and the Racial Order by Joel Olson

"anarchist theory has the intellectual resources to develop a powerful theory of racial oppression as well as strategies to fight it"

"it must overcome an analysis of white supremacy that understands racism as but one “hierarchy” among others. Racial oppression is not simply one of many forms of domination; it has played a central role in the development of capitalism in the United States. As a result, struggles against racial oppression have a strategic centrality that other struggles lack. Second, it must reject the current U.S. anarchist scene’s “infoshops or insurrection” approach to politics and instead focus on movement building."

"Organizing working class movements, which was so central to the classical anarchist tradition, has given way to creating “autonomous zones” like infoshops, art spaces, affinity groups, and collectives on the one hand, and glorifying protests, riots, and sabotage on the other. But in the infoshops and insurrection approaches, the vital work of building movements falls through the middle."

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The anarchist-news-dot-org responses show a serious lack of understanding of race and resistance building.

It surprises me that an almost exclusively White political thread such as contemporary US anarchy can just demand and insist that fighting White privilege is tired, unimportant, and diversionary and still take itself seriously. It is blatantly exercising said privilege and showing resistance to losing said privilege. I doubt many, if any, radicals/anarchists of color would take this White "post-left" anarchist position seriously at all.


We have a long way to go.