TOTW: Anarchist Mentors

this is the way, welcome to my classroom dojo

Topic of the Week: The word mentor is defined as a trusted counselor or guide who is often someone who teaches or gives help and advice to a less experienced and normally younger person. Mentoring is often associated with the business world of professional development for on-boarding new workers into a new job with the process sometimes lasting multiple years. This week were taking some time and space to dig into the world of anarchist mentors.

Did you have someone who you might consider an anarchist mentor when you started exploring anarchist ideas? If so, can you talk about the overall experience, the pains and the joys? Are there historical examples of how anarchist “mentors” and “mentees” were doing this well or poorly? What bothers you most about this topic?

There are 32 Comments

mentoring is probably older than language so I don't think i'll associate it with "business" at all? maybe i should flip the prompt around and argue it's a symptom of extreme alienation that such an old phenomena would be defined that way, even casually.

mentoring is one of those horizons you can't even see until there's something like a real community to meaningfully participate in. if the social networks aren't there, competition with strangers becomes the default and mentoring seems counter intuitive.

somebody needs to be invested in something larger than themselves to want to be a mentor or have one, except if we're just teaching each other how to grift to survive. that's a low bar for an explicitly anarchist mentor but it's not a bad start.

"mentoring is one of those horizons you can't even see until there's something like a real community to meaningfully participate in."

ThE coMMunity, MaN!

That statement completely nullifies everything you said before that, which came off as rather intelligent and thoughtful to me.

"somebody needs to be invested in something larger than themselves to want to be a mentor or have one, except if we're just teaching each other how to grift to survive. that's a low bar for an explicitly anarchist mentor but it's not a bad start"

Yeah sure, fuck max stirner, invest yourself into generic blob before you pretend to know anything. Grifting is the only worthwhile anarchist body of knowledge, sell energy drinks and weight loss products...tell people about Them and How They Control You.

Now kiss

topic is a lot of people in my life have tried to mentor me when i wasn't asking for it, and then in my adult life i have tried to find mentors for skill training and they weren't any less umreasonable and condescending.

Anarchist mentor: it's just as lolworthy as anarcho-capitalist, anarcho-cop, or anarcho-moderator, but there are less strings attached so you can get with more stuff.

People who have helped with skills and other things who weren't condescending asshats...yet one never really finds "acceptance" when it comes from other people...im glad i had the writings of Max Stirner, Renzo Novatore, the wierdo situationists like tiqqun, and others to help me with that. If one finds themselves sad about "the times", Nietszche also provides some sobering wisdom in terms fate and how you can't actually be the winner in terms of political power and enlightenment.

I think the premise is kinda a problem. I think the concept of teacher and learner is an incorrect notion. I think most of the times I talk with ppl who are less experienced they can teach me just as much as I teach them. I think seeing oneself as a mentor is extremely self limiting.

Example I may give my experiences doing stuff, but if u pay attention people who are not experienced with anarchy can accidentally raise rlly good critiques or think abt something in a completely different way.

I see ppl who know little about a topic as opportunities to teach me stuff bc they may see something with fresh eyes that I haven't seen before. So I see it more as interactions with people including learning and growth and have very little use for terms like mentor or mentee.

i first heard the word (& thus the concept) from the kid's show Shazam! where there was a character named Mentor. so, i agree with lumpy here, that the role is much older than a business context, (no, not just from the tv show, lol) but also, now, i would hazard that it is most known from a business context. such is our denuded world.

as to anarchist mentors, *heavy sigh*. i was not entirely new to anarchy when i met a person who i might call a mentor. they were running a free school session on anarchist history, which i didn't know much about, at that time. that part was fine, i learned a lot from them. on a personal level, and really only in retrospect, did i come to have major qualms about this person and their role in my life.

one issue in this sort of relationship is that trust is necessary, and if the mentee is on the naive side, this can lead to violated boundaries. and in anarchy, where the idea of "no rules" is prevalent, this can be a problem. if the mentor is not ethical, violating boundaries can be glossed over as no big deal.

so, yeah, it would be awesome if anarchists could have more interactions like mentoring can provide. alas, in this current time of anarchist thinking that any and all boundaries are only there to be violated this feels out of reach.

Pretty sure the mentor trend in business is related to Boomers passing on the torch to young Millenial & Zoomer capitalists.

Mentorship in the case of anarchy sounds kinda creepy as a kind of grooming. On the other hand we need a way to pass on the beautiful idea" to newer generations as especially in the social context where the "kids" are being bought through hypernormalization schemes (social media-based ID pols serving as the power differentials for a new form of normativity), we've been largely losing ground in most places. Investing time & efforts in "LGBTQ+" rep politics only ends up making us support neoliberal mass culture agendas, as the authoritarian world is being reproduced and renewed.

Literal definition of mentor, as someone gives requested advice [from a position of experience] to someone with fresh eyes who wants to learn, is totally consistent with "anarchy", but then it's up to us to understand that the best forms of anarchy imply a lack of human influence over natural processes. If we continue to confuse less experience with inferiority, then we are setting up more young people to have terrible experiences with adults and other kinds of authority.

"sounds kinda creepy"? you just start there? no evidence or anything required? that's brainworms talking

Yes, there is evidence that to me, at least, this sounds creepy. What else do you need?

*I am a major global supplier of comment-section evidences since 1993 as my evidence markets have only kept expanding our international operations. Follow me on Facebook and Twitter.*

i don't have needs here but i wouldn't mind if you thought about how younger anarchists don't get to learn from older ones without you showing up to accuse everyone of "grooming" like the worst party guest ever lol

"Pretty sure the mentor trend in business is related to Boomers passing on the torch to young Millenial & Zoomer capitalists."

pretty sure the mentor trend in business is as old as business. & probably mentoring is as old as human relationships, or darn near.

Hmm well said, especially about hyper-normalisation schemes and LGBTQ+ rep politics and the insidious marketing of neoliberal mass culture agendas. This goes for race as well when the mentoring is delivered in a condescending and patriarchal manner to bring about assimilation and enslavement.

Clarence Thomas in light of his attacks on affirmative action is that "he burnt down the ladder he climbed up", and maybe the edgiest thing genuine could actually do is burn down ladders to the top, so that we, the rabid packs of dogs, may feast on the wreckage.

affirmative action = DEEP assimilation...

Daddy Junger mentored me to harness the darkness and deliver psychic knives of blackened fire with my feral mind!

Reading books authored by Ernst Jünger automatically makes you a fascist. From a conservative estimate of the comments on this website, the majority look like they believe that to be true. Regardless that it doesn't make sense.

Huh? Is there a single comment anywhere that says that, besides the above joke? Or maybe the contemptible just need to build the most exaggerated straw men in order to pretend they even have a point …

i’d like to speak with older and or more experienced anarchists but cant find any so far that are both interested in spending time with me and not anarcho-liberals. would be nice though.

also just cant find any that meet any of those criteria period. the one or two ive talked to were too busy or traveling or too cool. whatever. wish i could find an old egoist tbh.

discord reading groups if you tired of impulsive internet addicts like myself. The folks who moderate the sub are sympathetic towards angry leftists, so don't worry about "creeping ideological tendencies" so much.

Imma older fuovken anarch of grate fiockun expeariance an fuick al them ideoholigists orf all tendernsees, Imma tuff indivuidoidal worriah!!..m,!

Having a mentor is like FOLLOWING TEH LEADER?!
Get this liberal authoritarian methodology OFF my beloved @news!

69, brah!

Hierarchical these relationships are.
Already a teacher, the student is.
Everybody knows this.

“muh mentors are groomers and authoritarian” maybe i just want to talk to someone with more experience than myself. or maybe its time for the new thing whatever that is.

The infoshop folks, the homeless anarchists, the intellectuals who knew about theory. Books. Traveling people. Hippies. Vandwellers. All were mentors in various moments. I am grateful.

Anarchist Mentor--move over, it's The Anarchist AA Sponsor's time to shine!

but are there any anarchist mentors capable of helping me not putting my handle in the subject field? Once I learn that trick, it'll all be uphill for me.

Part of the question is - do people even stick around? In my experience, not really. And it’s not just because the angsty rebel youth get to feel they’re ideologically justified in constantly disrespecting their elders. I do wish I had listened more when I was younger instead of just revelling in subjectivity, anarchic or otherwise

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