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plasticspoon OP wrote

I appreciate this review of my writings in the Black Agenda Review. It's better than most responses from Anarchists or Socialists over the last 40 years, many of whom are silent or hostile at best. Of course, time can create a new appreciation of what I was saying in the 1970's. Since that period, there is now several federations of Black Anarchists founded in just the last five years. If I had not written Anarchism and the Black Revolution in 1979, and co-founded the Black Autonomy Anarchist federation, this may not have happened.
I have been an Anarchist since 1969, and what seemed odd back then is not so odd now. I have been told that Black Anarchism is all the rage now. When I started there was not only *not a Black Anarchist federation, there were few Black individuals who called themselves Anarchists. It took a lot for me to keep going, and to face the many hostile and condescending comments from white radicals. I was told at one point when I was a member of the IWW that I was a "racial separatist." Me, a Black man in an overwhelmingly white movement, that refused my many requests or proposals to recruit workers and activists of color!
It has taken this long to get any positive recognition. The Anarchist and Left radical publishing houses rejected my manuscript for years, and I remember one Anarchist college professor at the University of Texas-Austin refused to even meet me when I came to the college on a speaking tour. I don't know if he was a racist, but it just reflected the perspective of the North American Anarchists toward the idea of an Anarchist of color. I am not bitter, but I am wise, and fiercely independent. I have spoken to and respect the writings by Peter J. Hudson and the publication by Black Agenda Review of my materials. I am immensely grateful that he took the time and was open-minded enough to give an honest assessment.
Love ands struggle,
Lorenzo Komboa Ervin

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

BAR is generally hit or miss for me; but I think that this article could be a useful read for Black leftists and a decent reaffirmation for Black anarchists in particular, hopefully their new "Black Anarchism" tag will see some more use.

It is, of course, very tilted towards leftist anarchism in particular and shows a pretty heavy bias against the more nihilistic/individualist strains, but that's to be expected from a leftist project.

I was pretty surprised to see MOVE of all groups mentioned, since it falls more under anarcho-primitivist or green anarchist ideology; oddly enough, the (unfortunately defunct) Awareness League received no mention at all despite being more ideologically compatible with BAR's reader base.

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plasticspoon OP wrote

I hear this kind of argument all the time from people and I don't really get it.

imo US BAR is kindof a tendency, but also it's a response to the whiteness of anarchism that uses the resources available while trying to avoid so much of what is so bad in US anarchism

Post-left stuff generally isn't popular because of how focused it is on white people problems, green anarchism is even worse because of how racism and green issues are such easy bedfellows

But people don't nearly as often talk about how post-left stuff is hit-or-miss on this site. We have blowups about pedophilia chats or whatever but it never really challenges post-leftsm as a whole for not getting lots right, it's not about how actually so much post left stuff is hit or miss also, green stuff the same

It's a weird bias for this stuff instead of despite the fact that all tendencies are hit or miss which just seems like a kind of confirmation bias on our side / the post-left side that forces BAR to have to be even more critical and distanced from everybody else

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

Post-left stuff generally isn't popular because of how focused it is on white people problems

Nihilism and individualist anarchism predate the post-leftist critiques; I wasn't referring to Post-Leftism here. The opposition to The Enlightenment values that can be found in Nihilism and Individualist Anarchism are absent in Leftist Anarchism, many strains happen to espouse said values, and are pretty Eurocentric themselves.

green anarchism is even worse because of how racism and green issues are such easy bedfellows

Environmental issues disproportionately affect BIPOC and the poor in the Global South and the West, that's a big part of why I care about them.

But people don't nearly as often talk about how post-left stuff is hit-or-miss on this site. We have blowups about pedophilia chats or whatever but it never really challenges post-leftsm as a whole for not getting lots right, it's not about how actually so much post left stuff is hit or miss also, green stuff the same

It's a weird bias for this stuff instead of despite the fact that all tendencies are hit or miss which just seems like a kind of confirmation bias on our side / the post-left side that forces BAR to have to be even more critical and distanced from everybody else

Yeah, it's a matter of values; leftists generally don't attack the foundations of leftist thought and post-leftists are post-leftists because they generally agree with the critiques that make up post-leftism.

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plasticspoon OP wrote

Nihilism and individualist anarchism predate the post-leftist critiques; I wasn't referring to Post-Leftism here. The opposition to The Enlightenment values that can be found in Nihilism and Individualist Anarchism are absent in Leftist Anarchism, many strains happen to espouse said values, and are pretty Eurocentric themselves.

I agree, I was just lumping them in together, but I'm not sure what difference it makes to what I was saying.

Environmental issues disproportionately affect BIPOCs and the poor in the Global South and the West, that's a big part of why I care about them.

I agree that they are important for those reasons, but green anarchism and the green anarchists it comes with still reeks of whiteness imo, which is what I was getting at, because it seems to be one reason why a lot of BAR is left.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

I agree, I was just lumping them in together, but I'm not sure what difference it makes to what I was saying.

Sorry. My point there was that those tendencies; like Marxism, Anarcho-Communism, and so on, can also be seen as focusing on the problems of white people (Lorenzo Kom'boa Ervin has critiqued white Anarchists for holding this tendency). But that doesn't mean that it can't be reinterpreted under a different lens to better focus on the problems faced by people of color, indigenous people, and/or of queer folk. This article points that out (albeit, primarily for Syndicalism and Anarcho-communism).

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plasticspoon OP wrote

I am just now realising you might have meant BAR as Black Agenda Report and not Black Anarchic Radicalism?

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Yes.

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plasticspoon OP wrote (edited )

Sorry, I'm used to the other usage.

We were talking about different things the whole time.

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OdiousOutlaw wrote

Haha, yeah.

If anything, I want more Black Anarchic Radicalism.

I haven't seen much mention of anarchism in Black Agenda Report beyond a general glance at radical politics; so everything there can be hit or miss with me.

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plasticspoon OP wrote

I assumed you were talking about Black Anarchic Radicalism because it was about Ervin, and Anarkata use BAR as shorthand sometimes for the various groupings of anarcho-friendly black radicals in the US - they'd describe Ervin as part of that broad category.

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plasticspoon OP wrote

(not criticising you specifically, actually just articulating something for the first time so it's less polished than ideal)

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OdiousOutlaw wrote (edited )

It's fine, I get it.

I think Post-leftism, nihilism, individualist anarchism, etc. generally appear white/racist because many of the people with those tendencies are white, but I think they have some value for BIPOC, so I'm a bit defensive.

Anarchism in general isn't even popular or well known among the general populace, so the rarer strains aren't going to get much attention.

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