Post-Left Anarchism?

Joe R. Golowka joeg at ieee.org
Mon Aug 12 22:41:03 PDT 2002



> I can independently verify all of the complaints about Jason McQuinn raised
> by Janet Biehl. McQuinn has openly promoted left/right convergence and
> conspiracy theories.

What proof do you have that McQuinn supports left/right convergence? In my experience "post-leftists" are critical of cooperating with authoritarians of any type and would certainly oppose collaboration with fascism. A common arguement for post-leftism is that anarchists shouldn't have anything to do with left-wing fascists (leninists) and this requires dumping the "left". Fascists have attempted to recruit from anarchists but it hasn't been very successfull - anarchism is as completely opposite from fascism as you can get. Right-libertarians are a bit more successfull, but not very (the recruiting usually goes the other way, in my experience).

And "promoting conspiracy theories" is newspeak for promoting any theory that clashes with bouergeois hegemony. Any theory which clashes with the dominant paradigm, such as Chomsky's media analysis (an example of an institutional analysis if there ever was one), gets labelled a "conspiracy theory" and mindlessly dismissed as loony & wacked out. But theories put forward by the government or media which clearly meet the dictionary definition of conspiracy are never even referred to as "conspiracy theories." An example is the official story of what happened on 9-11: A vast international evil muslim conspiracy hijacked a bunch of planes and crashed them into buildings because they hate freedom. If anyone other then the government put forth this theory it would be labelled a "loony conspiracy theory." But because the government put it forward it's not only automatically assumed to be correct but isn't even reffered to as a "conspiracy theory" (which it definitely is). The use of the term "conspiracy theory" is similar to the use of the word "terrorist" - it's a "conspiracy thoery" when dissidents believe it but the "TRUTH" when the government/media believe it. Attempts to understand or catalog so-called "conspiracy thoeries" (such as the one at www.publiceye.org) without taking this newspeak into account (and thus not listing the FBI's version of 9-11 as a "conspiracy theory" along with Rupert, et al.) reproduces state-capitalist paradigms.


>Don't lump me in with people who routinely slander anarchists.

How do you know you aren't been duped by people who do?

-- Joe R. Golowka Anarchist FAQ -- http://www.anarchyfaq.org

"By popular government they [the Authoritarian Socialists] mean government of the people by a small number of representatives elected by the people. . . [That is,] government of the vast majority of the people by a privileged minority. But this minority, the Marxists say, will consist of workers. Yes, perhaps, of former workers, who, as soon as they become rulers or representatives of the people will cease to be workers and will begin to look upon the whole workers' world from the heights of the state. They will no longer represent the people but themselves and their own pretensions to govern the people." - Mikhail Bakunin



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