There are problems with this article for instance anarcho-populism is not a new phenomenon and anarchism has certainly not been incompatible with populism. In the 1900’s syndicalism with a heavy dose of anarchism, based in the industrial working class, was a mass movement in Europe (especially France and Spain), the US (IWW) and South America. All revolutions and uprisings in history take on anarchist forms of mass direct democracy in their early stages: workers councils and popular assemblies. But saying all that this is a very good reflection on the gut anarchist thinking behind the new movements which have exploded after the crisis of 2008. In fact anarchist ideas connect strongly with many people’s experiences of corrupt states and faceless corporate power, the idea made even stronger with the complete failure of state forms of the left (social democratic and Marxist-Leninist) in the 20th century to alleviate or end capitalism or combine socialism with real forms of democracy (power by the people) “Anarcho-populism is the dominant ideology in contemporary protest movements. It is a form of mass anarchism, or of libertarian populism, in which political traditions apparently at odds with one another come together in contradictory ways. This development can be understood as a consequence of the current situation of economic and political crisis, in which traditional anarchist and anti-statist themes are capable of resonating with sectors of the population well beyond its traditional heartlands. At the time of the NSA scandal and of the politics of austerity, being against the State is no longer an identitarian declaration that only befits the mouths of dishevelled drop-outs hanging out in squats and communes, but it is a persuasion that wide sectors of the population can at the very least relate to.” thenorthstar.info/?p=11024
Posted on: Wed, 27 Nov 2013 11:23:43 +0000
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