TOTW: Accessibility & Exclusivity

First I think we need to establish who we’re responding to when talking about accessibility and exclusivity. Since the Obama-era the ideas around accessibility have changed and its use a sort of rhetorical sledgehammer to flatten anything with a subversive edge rather than to dismantle social barriers has increased. Ridiculous social media assertions bled out into real life and suddenly reading theory wasn’t accessible, according to first year college students in reference to lower classes of people they avoided on the street. These days that sledgehammer has been swung almost entirely in service of overtly liberal concerns that see the problem not as society overall but that radical politics need to be thoroughly policed and sterilized before they can even proceed out the door. It’s these people and this aspect of the topic that should be ignored and left adrift as it’s the only real battle some of them desire to fight.

Now that that’s out of the way…

Regarding the mentioned movements, Occupy, depending on which camp we’re discussing, attracted people from a broad cross section of classes and backgrounds. If one uses the typical Marxist metric, which is always free for them to alter to their liking, it didn’t do much of anything because the classic representatives of the working class like factory workers and coal miners apparently didn’t join in on the occupations, which ignores the sea change of retail and service workers having become the bulk of the working class, and the number of under/unemployed and homeless that found their ways to the various camp sites. It’s clear that both “mainstream” and “marginalized” people were very present in that movement, despite leadership roles being bandied about by latently Marxist university activists and careerist organizers who would be the ones to most likely harp on about a lack of “mainstream” participants.

The pro-Palestine camps, however, established their own limitations before the tents were even finished being hammered down, save for a few of the more notable occupations. Numerous communiques from around the country came out within the first couple weeks detailing who was and wasn’t allowed in the camps, what the explicit politics of the camps was going to be, and how some camp leaderships capitulated to university bargaining within a matter of days. The character of the pro-Palestine movement has yet to breach student-led(only) mobilizations, made up entirely of kids who get their political education via quick-cut TikTok videos with horrendous information; a student movement that still maintains a class component that refuses to dissolve itself thanks to the almost intentional absence of class politics (with really bad racial analyses supplanting their “main contradiction”) in this new brand of anti-imperialism/third worldism. There was a very vocal refusal of even defensive violence when under attack from the police or zionists purely for the sake of optics, a pathetically middle class concern, and some camps even refused to reach out into the neighborhoods that their universities were gentrifying. Its inability to grow into a broader movement (forget generalizing the struggle itself a la the September 2025 general strike in Italy) was cemented from the outset. World leaders were never gonna pay them real attention.

Suffice it to say, in many ways, accessibility and exclusivity are arguments used to discredit some imperfect movements, but are also real means employed to maintain the illusory perfection of others.

Concerning the anarchist space, I think accessibility (the creation of inroads, openings and general attraction to projects, actions, and the space/movement) is a clear aim, despite what the upturned noses of old cynics like myself tend to indicate. The where and how is always up for dispute but we are all ultimately searching for a means in which to concretize liberated expressions of life, and in many ways that looks like an activity that requires quite a few people. Minimizing, blurring, or erasing our ideas and politics won’t direct us toward who we’re looking to create that life with and I don’t think it’s at all exclusionary or inaccessible to exist in a way that is outright unattractive to some people. Cultivating certain types of exclusivity with public projects can only be maintained through authoritarian means (like the pro-Palestine camps), which is why wearing our more unattractive, less universal ideas on our chests would be preferable. Those who eventually come around, will.

Eventually the question of organization, our perennial quagmire, and who/what/how to do it starts to find clearer paths through practices that aren’t mired in more marxist or liberal concerns around ameliorating static features of a social life we’re looking to destroy. There’s no pretending that identity lines don’t motivate further social and political organization, or that anarchists are so beyond those lines as an every day reality, but there is a difference between valorizing victimhood and propelling the socially excluded toward contesting our exclusion. This is partially why I prefer the way Weir, Bonanno, et al. talk of the excluded vs. included and how anarchists see and position ourselves within that dynamic, as a matter of understanding that having such brash ideas doesn’t dislodge us from the material reality we allege to fight against, and that the our fights are going to converge with those who might have no interest in us, as they might not have much interest in other non-anarchists also battling their way across the same terrain. It’s the practices we establish prior to us meeting that I find to be the most important, so that when we finally do meet there’s no confusing who we really are. But that’s also if anyone actually encounters us.

American political engagement at this point resembles the way that younger and younger people engage with anything, really: memetically, wholly as fandom, for the purpose of self-creation that ends at the social media bio. I think that’s largely due to isolation and the lack of some crucial external features that are necessary to have grounded political ideas. People living in major cities that are more likely to have a visible radical presence can find others to bounce some whacky ideas off of, whereas those stuck in the middle of nowhere surrounded by conspiratorial wingnuts might have a harder time seeing how their brand of anarcho-stirnerite-larouchianism(ukraine flag)(palestine flag)(north korea flag) lands in reality. I think a problem that we who found our politics through more ancient channels like DIY punk have yet to really grasp is that the old ways in aren’t frequented like they used to be, if they aren’t just fully dead. CrimethInc. saw that clear as day, hence their shift toward cringey anarcho-populism… which is actually working for them. They established practices around a particular theory of accessibility by making a lowest-common-denominator-anarchism palatable to more impressionable liberals, while neither excessively challenging their views nor totally acquiescing to demagoguery, and they’re succeeding in their own mission. But none of that elides the very fair criticisms leveled at them by their peers.

In the end none of us can really be held to account for not affecting social change. We’ve always been a minoritarian crowd, and although some of our street tactics and aesthetics have found their influence, our day to day practices still can’t grow real roots. Years of intense governmental repression, the short lifespan of most participants (often relegated to youthful phases), the fracturing of entire scenes with no infrastructure to speak of: all of these contribute significantly to a political scene with big aspirations but little show for itself. Whether or not social change is (im)possible, nevermind if our wild ass ideas are "accessible", is of no concern because the desire for something other than the world we have is enough to draw the curious. Creating and maintaining openings for those curious people, being able to meet face to face, and will those wild ass ideas into existence should be our greatest concern.

Sorry for the long comment, I've been obsessing over this topic for the last several years.

I agree 100%, some things just aren't for you, and if you want them to be YOU might have to do the necessary work to understand, rather than people catering to you.

1. when I have to change my language so much that it ultimately changes the meaning of what I'm saying.

2. not any more than inclusivity.

Wow. Starting your text with a quote from eco-fascist Dave Foreman as a premise... not exactly a clever choice.

def not what what i expected the topic to be given the title

Are we really gonna rehash this same tired thing again. Anarchists have no obligation, and in fact it is detrimental to each of us, to make our ideas, spaces, and activities "accessible". Hard stop.
Anyone who pushes that line is our enemy.

Mass movements fail because most of the participants/members are workerists, the first stage of confined servitude.

When are the forums coming back?