I think this prob is target at ak press. Seeing that they charge for ebooks and file the appropriate buerocracy to copywrite some of the books they publish ak press looks on the surface to be more capitalist contagion of anarchy to make money.

I mean filling paperwork to prevent horrible pirates from stealing your intelectual property by getting a government monopoly to make money from your anarchist project is kinda contorted. I mean sure make money but don't frame it as a anarchist project.

I have a number of thoughts about the original article, and the response linked here hits on a couple of them.

The biggest thing that struck me in the original was called out in this response: why did Nerd Teacher keep it all so vague? It's clear they had specific examples and orgs/projects/people in mind. Why not say what they're refering to and apply the criticisms to actual projects instead of vague allusions? It seems pretty clear to me who and what they're reffereing to most of the time, but only because I'm steeped in anarchist/rad media shit. Without that, I'd be pretty lost in this essay, and even still I'm left to guess and infer a lot of shit. Like, lets be real-- they clearly seem to be refering to: AK press PM press Fifth Estate (maybe?) Alexander Reid Ross Shane Burley Kim Kelly (I think?) Robert Evans Behind the Bastards/all of the spinoff shows like It Could Happen Here and Cool People Who Did Cool Stuff or whatever/all the bullshit on that network

Why not say this and call out specific people and projects and then level their criticisms at specific examples?

And maybe it fell outside the scope of their essay, but what about the rad media projects that very much don't succumb to these pitfalls? Submedia and the Earth First! Journal (tho a little defunct lately, it seems?) come to mind pretty immediately as overtly anarchistic projects that do a lot of the shit Nerd Teacher says/implies anarchist media should do but aren't. Same with It's Going Down for the most part. Unicorn Riot comes to mind as another example to counter some of their points, too, but I'm not sure if its fair or accurate to call them anarchist media.

I dunno. I wish they were more specific and addressed some of the projects that do the shit they say others don't.

active discourse in anarchist scene? woah.