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[–] 6 points 1 year ago (3 children)

comparatively little ant-anarchist

"comparatively" doesn't make it actually little. Assuming they don't think you're unserious, walk on a street and tell someone you're an anarchist and they'll think you're a terrorist. Tell them you're a {insert popular alt-right party here} member and they'll just think you're weird and avoid you. Tell them you're a communist and they'll probably have a tamer response thinking you're just deluded. You're not gonna arrive at anarchism along a straight path either.

I think it’s predominantly a Western movement

"West" has a lot of definitions; let's just say Global North. The places where anarchist movements hold the most power (hah) are probably areas of Spain—Global North indeed—and the Global South's Rojava and Chiapas, under the DAANES and Zapatistas respectively.

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  • [–] 6 points 1 year ago (2 children)

    Minor tidbit, the Zapatistas directly and explicitly reject the label "anarchist," they see their own movement as organic and self-driven more than anything. Not saying you can't use them as an example of anarchist-adjacent structures, but they quite clearly dislike the term being applied to themselves.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago* (1 child)

    That's true. It's also worth noting that since they are states that hold power, they obviously all have some distance from anarchism, the ideology against power and states.

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  • [–] 2 points 1 year ago

    I mean, that also applies to the Spanish anarchists as well, who employed labor camps and had some degree of hierarchical structure. At the end of the day, anarchists do have to make compromises with what authority they consider valid and what they don't. I'd say the Spanish anarchists had their own "state" as well, and this applies to all anarchism in historical example. There's a difference between the idealized, perfect anarchism, and the anarchism forced to reconcile the need for some hierarchy, especially when defending itself from outside forces.

    Ultimately, while they reject the label of anarchist, the Zapatistas do have a fairly horizontalist approach, which is why I said they can be considered when discussing anarchist-adjacent structures, their merits, and any problems they may run into.

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