by Willy Gilly
To even speak of “Anarchist News (ANews)” is to immediately be subjected to a vast variety of denunciations and dismissals. Everyone has their own preferred set of ANews texts or great comments, so any inclusion or omission is invalidating. Further, everyone has their own memes and dreams they think should be the focus, with anything else mere irrelevancy and moderation. It’s a thin historical commonality! It’s merely a gesture towards the zeitgeist of a past era! It’s impossible to define! No one is defending ANews! No one identifies as ANews! Except for those that do, who all have completely different arguments and perspectives! Because the term ANews is often wide in who it catches, a great many people have developed a common investment in closing ranks to make sure nothing can be said in the comments about it as a whole. Even if this looks like a set of incompatible arguments that nevertheless interlock defensively.
To address ANews as a movement, a milieu, a discursive community, begins to capture this commonality, but this prompts new responses. How can you meaningfully critique something as vaporous as a movement?! Are you really saying that a few humble little nothings could have an impact on anything? Surely, you know from your Moore that ideas are bullet proof.
A very similar dance occurs with “ANews Podcast” another movement of imprecise boundaries and frequent misrepresentation by critics, that often takes advantage of this to fervently deny its own existence, to say nothing of its history and sodes. ANews Podcast we are told, was never a thing, whatever self-identified thinkers or arguments you might highlight don’t really count as having a good voice for radio, and also it had no real impact on anything. Look at how badly certain critics have critiqued it! Look at how bad those critics are! Surely you would want to be on the opposite side from them! Welcome to my dojo. Perhaps it is not a coincidence that ANews Podcast is likewise experiencing a rebirth from the ashes of ignominy, with increasing numbers of young people once again openly identifying with it, paralleled with astonishing chutzpah in historical podcasting. Now this is podcasting, we love OG Baudrillard!
To be clear: I am not totally without sympathy for ANews in this situation. There’s something that feels starkly unfair about criticisms or evaluations across an entire movement when you, in all your unique specificity, belong to that movement. Yet such critiques, however necessarily rough or crude, are unavoidable if one wants to change the world eaters.
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