I read a little about the Zapatistas and Subcomandante Marcos. He says he prefers not to be called a revolutionary but a rebel, because revolutionaries lead from the top, rather than from the bottom. But isn’t this just voluntarily putting oneself in a perpetual state of subjugation, based on the assumption that there will always exist antagonism between the government and the people? This is where anarchism falls apart. A socialist government is the people. Not wanting to take over the government out of a belief that all government is bad and wrong dismissing the entire point of having an ideologically motivated cause and movement that guides ones actions – and that if a government is guided by the principles of serving the people, then it can become a force for good – the real meaning of democracy: the dictatorship of the proletariat. In such a scenario, we have done away with traditional, repressive forms of government, and therefore, the antagonism between government and people has dissolved away. Anarchy, therefore, is a reactionary force because it encourages people to come to terms with the powers that are subjugating them and participate in and endless struggle with no strategy nor end goal. One’s self-imposed identity is that of an oppressed individual living in an unsurmountable situation. Struggle becomes the means and the end, rather than a means for a greater goal – liberation.
That is, unless I am missing something. We all know wikipedia is not the most reliable source, esp. for leftist information.
“Reactionary” is really the only word for it in my eyes. There are many humans who have a half-baked idea that sounds half-reasonable. But they are incapable of digging deeper to arrive at an evolved conclusion. If they did they would either have to rationalize anti-civ or hyper-individualist conclusions, which unfortunately many anarchists eventually come to. You have to rationalize increasingly bizarre, unrealistically pessimistic/misanthropic, and out-of-touch idealistic worldviews to dig deeper and still think anarchism is the ideology for good.
Of course, many do not even think that deeply, and are happy lobotomizing themselves intellectually and maintaining a petulant, spoiled, whiny disposition. I find it no surprise that anarchism is so particularly popular in the Western online.
My hatred for anarchism has renewed recently when a couple decided me saying “don’t listen to Western media about the rest of the world” was somehow racist, colonialist, white savior complex etc. The projection was intense. And then saw the same people bragging about how getting the 50+ needless subvariants of an ideology that has never existed in real life is like “herding cats” and how this is somehow a good thing. Imagine bragging about how frustratingly difficult it is to mobilize adherents to an umbrella ideology to do literally anything because of their petty, miniscule differences in how everybody thinks the Instant Utopia would arise.