> Brian is way off base here and I'm going to call him on it. Post-leftism
> isn't really that new and it's more of a dialougue than it is some kind of
> unified ideology.
You say post-leftism "isn't really that new" then a couple of paragraphs later say "Post-leftism is about a historical moment i.e. the left after the fall of the Soviet Union." That was less than 15 years ago. So which is it, new or not?
Then you say it is a dialogue and not a unified ideology. Fine. If it is a dialogue, consider my criticisms of it to be part of that dialogue.
> What really pisses me off about Brian and other
> anarchist of his ilk, is that they are so preoccupied with lumping the
> people who talk about Post-Leftism into their little conspiracy containers
> that they can't see that THEY have a stake in this discussion too.
Far from utilizing my "little conspiracy container" I am discussing this with you. You said it's a discussion, a dialogue. That's what I'm doing: discussing.
As for "anarchists of my ilk" - what "ilk" is that? The ilk that doesn't believe interviewing Ted Kaczynski for a magzine is anything but ridiculous, or that institutions are not inherently evil simply because they are "institutions"? The ilk that believes in labor organizing and tries to consciously work within the milieu of the ideas of Bakunin, Malatesta, Rocker, Dolgoff, Berkman, Pelloutier and not American wankers like Bob Black, Hakim Bey, and John Zerzan? Thanks but I'd prefer my "ilk" any day.
I would
> argue that post-Leftism is a relevant idea for all varieties of anarchists
> and radicals. It isn't OWNED by any one group of people, including people
> who have written books about it.
It's clearly the product of some people. And when I said it seems like a very contrived way to spin a "seminal new idea" out of nothing, I was referring to these people. Otherwise, it's hard to make much coherent sense from it at all, other than that it intends to express a disavowal for authoriarian structures, which much of the left has been doing already anyway.
> Do you understand now?
I understand, but not in the sense that I agree with you.
> Post-leftism is different because it is tied in
> with the current era. Anarchism has become more popular and M-L-M has benn
> discredited. The Left is even looking in new directions, i.e. "Empire."
Earlier you said post-leftism - a "dialogue" as you said, and not any ideology - is not new. The new direction posed in Empire is much like that of post-leftism - vacuous, a lot of nice-sounding words, a lot of circumlocution, and evidence of the "new, seminal idea" fetish. But, then, the left has been looking "for new directions" ever since there was a left.
Brian