Episode 45 – a bunch of conversational nonsense

Wow. Sounds like party time over at the hyper-opinionated anarchist raver venue. Somebody pass the ecstacy and glow sticks so we can start the revolution. 😉 But, all jokes aside, the anon interviewee does make some legit points despite the occasional digression and an apparent reluctance to flesh out his ideas beyond their larval stages. I found the “are you a bleeder?” anecdote to be particularly hilarious, not to mention demonstrative of how ridiculously out of their depth the anarchist left is when it comes to comprehending where they fit within the societal juggernaut.

I can also identify with his discussion of language and how he felt it necessary to constantly police other people’s words in the early days of his involvement with the anarchist mileu. This, I think, ties into what Aragorn! referred to in the previous episode as “social justice fighting;” and it is so thoroughly engrained in activist and left-anarchist subcultures that even those who may have some inkling that it’s just a superficial word game may still find themselves getting swallowed up in it. I can still remember one of the first “organizing” meetings that I attended where I used a gender-specific pronoun in reference to a mixed group of individuals. Between the awkward silence, uncomfortable glances, and subsequent lecture, the message was loud and clear: “that’s not how we do things and, if you want to fit in, it won’t be how you do things either.”

But years of pussyfooting around lefty sensibilities can wear thin after a while. You can only pretend to believe something that, deep in your gut, you know is bullshit for so long before you just say “to hell with it” and start speaking your mind. It’s at this point when the tendency of “the Scene” toward exclusion and ostracism can rear its ugly head pretty quickly and you can find yourself a persona non grata as far as the in-crowd is concerned. For all of my previous criticisms of ITS and eco-extremism, I have to give credit where credit is due in at least one regard: they don’t waste their time trying to ingratiate themselves to the lefties (or anyone else, for that matter). Which brings me to my final point:

When I recently visited the Atassa website, I came across a post dated March 31 which speaks of a “certain article” on @news that apparently likens the post-left milieu and its sympathizers to fascists. I haven’t read it myself and don’t really plan to (because, frankly, I don’t really care what it has to say) but, according to Atassa, a number of “supposed ‘nihilists’ and ‘individualists’ are getting themselves into a tizzy claiming that they aren’t Nazis or fascists.” If that’s the case, then Atassa is quite correct to point out that this is extremely lame. If left-anarchists want to think that I’m a fascist because I reject the false equation that “Anti-Authority = The Collectivist Hive Mind,” then they can go ahead and be my guests. I’m not going to pander to their dust-clad relic of an ideology or attempt to mitigate their distorted perceptions of my worldview just because some dipshit wrote an article. Given the choice, I’d rather just leave them to flail around froth at the mouths like a pack of rabid dogs than dignify them with a response.