The unwellness of the term anarchism
I have been identifying as an anarchist because I was - and still am - opposed to might and the machine. But with time, I have become more and more reluctant about using the term. Particularily after finding the societal structure democratic confederalism (democonf) as envisioned by Abdullah Öcalan 🌞
But now by using the term anarchism for describing demconf, I apply the anarchist aesthetics in a way that I dislike, because when I present democonf as anarchist, peoples mind will naturally go towards how society has painted forth anarchism.
Because anarhcism is a heavily painted term. It is clearly rooted in european culture, which means that understanding the term requires insight into western anarchist history; For instance workers struggle, propaganda of the deed, fascism and antifascism. As well as how anarchists has related themselves towards other dragments such as feminism, the rainbow dragment and so on.
The negative aura of the term anarchism
Anarchist symoblics are mostly negative. Negative in the sense that it is opposed to something. The black cat and the black flag is symbols of opposition. The symbol “anarchism is order” is a negative response to the source “anarchism is a society without order” and therefore strengthen the source idea through the force of responding. Even the name is negative as it comes from ancient greek meaning “without ruler”.
To be clear, it’s not to say that we shouldn’t have negative symbols, but rather to be aware of the negative aura of anarchism.
This aura is therefore painted upon all that which associates with anarachism. If you are an anarchist that primarily focuses on mutual aid, then you still get this negative aura painted upon you. This is why it is so easy to distance oneself from anarchism.
**To associate with anarchism is to cover oneself in a negative aura. **
In contrast, positive symbols makes us ask what do we want? This is much more challenging because it requires us to be specific and risk loosing people, or decide who we want to loose. How does society look without patriarchy? Rainbow dragment. How does society look without war? Peace. How does society look without oil? Zero carz. By finding positive symbols, we draw people in.
But let’s make it abundantly clear. Positive symbols doesn’t mean that we move towards lokening. A positive symbol might as well be fascist, liberal, racist or tankie. A positive symbol is simply explicit about how to respond to something unwanted.
Some anarchist flags has a more positive spin in that they combine the black flag with symbolic colors/flags of other dragments such as green for environmentalism, pink/purple for feminism, or the the rainbow flag. But this still doesn’t remove the negative aura.
The umbrella
Anarchism makes us focus on the umbrella term rather than specific societal structures. Anarcho primitivism, anarcho communism and anarcho syndicalism gets covered by the negative aura. The apparant strength of this is that it “unites” all anarchists under a banner, but in reality it weakens the specific structures in that they channel their attention upwards towards the mythical anarchism.
This is why there are successful dragments we would characterize as anarchist that doesn’t want to associate with it.
What we want is for an umbrella term to strengthen us and to enable us to connect with other anarchist societies. We don’t want to channel our attention up towards the umbrella term, but rather downwards. Going away from a negatively and heavily painted umbrella towards a positively and lightly painted umbrella.
Relighting towards horizontalism
For this reason I forward the term horizontalism. This is a positive symbol which sais we strive for horizontal structures.
Horizontalism can be represented with a horizontal line. I do not suggest that it should be used, but I do say that it is possible to use as a symbol for horizontalism.
Horizontalism channels our attention towards for instance demconf, Zapatistas, horizontal tribes and paris commune.
“anarhcism is a heavily painted term.”
It’s important to pay attention when using the passive voice like this, that the actor of the verb is elided from the sentence. If you can correctly identify who is primarily responsible for ‘painting’ the term, you also have an explanation for why many anarchists would find your proposal as a kind of surrender, a step back, and concession to or complicity with enemies of humanity.
Historically, a lot of ideas, concepts, and movements have been renamed in order to avoid the kind of ‘negative aura’ you’re talking about. For example, many terms considered today as offensive ableist language began as medical terms used in clinical settings several hundred years ago. Earlier terms were appropriated as slurs, and new terms were developed to replace them in a condescending manner but with the express intention of compassion. Then over time those new terms also became slurs, and the process began again. This process has been called by some the ‘Euphemism Treadmill’ because it doesn’t stop. There is no final term that remains untainted by a ‘negative aura’ because the negative aura doesn’t come from the term itself, but the society in which the term is used in.
The related concept of ‘rebranding’ is also popular in the corporate world, for example when the scandalous military contractor Blackwater rebranded to Xe, to Academi, and then to Constellis. The rebranding process requires a top-down effort which is unlikely to succeed among people with anarchist beliefs, and is usually done with the purpose of distancing the group from a significant scandal.
Anarchism as a movement is not without scandal, as with any umbrella political ideology. But it has consistently been on the right side of history, and people who proudly used ‘anarchist’ to identify themselves have been on the forefront of labor history, women’s liberation, black power, and humanist thinking. You can’t rebrand anarchism without stepping down from the shoulders of those giants who built our movement with their lives and deaths.
Anarchism is inseparable from the concept of choosing to use dysphemism over euphemism, and generally speaking plainly, truthfully, and without guile. While most of the world has moved on to using terms like ‘public relations,’ ‘spin,’ or ‘fair and balanced reporting’ for their self-advocacy, many anarchists embrace the old term ‘propaganda’ to describe their own activity. Anarchism is the opposition to what is destroying the world, and the willingness to use negatively loaded terms in a positive way is effective propaganda.
An instructive example is the history of movements and organizations fighting slavery, apartheid, discrimination, and for equal rights. Historically, these movement have had groups who accepted then-modern euphemisms for black people - for example the NAACP founded in 1909 or the UNCF in 1944, they are almost exclusively referred to by their acronyms today. There is a growing realization that conceding linguistically with the society you oppose is a form of collaboration with it.
A good counter-example is the Chicano Movement. ‘Chicano’ was once explicitly a racial slur, but Mexican-American leaders chose to re-appropriate the term as a positive identity. In collaboration with the Black Power movement, they fought against society’s stigmatization of indigenous art, literature, and culture. They were so successful that the past associations of the term are no longer its primary association.
If you consider Zapatistas as a role model, consider this response by Subcomandante Marcos to a smear campaign by the Mexican government:
Yes, Marcos is gay. Marcos is gay in San Francisco, black in South Africa, an Asian in Europe, a Chicano in San Ysidro, an anarchist in Spain, a Palestinian in Israel, a Mayan Indian in the streets of San Cristobal, a Jew in Germany, a Gypsy in Poland, a Mohawk in Quebec, a pacifist in Bosnia, a single woman on the Metro at 10pm, a peasant without land, a gang member in the slums, an unemployed worker, an unhappy student and, of course, a Zapatista in the mountains.
You are welcome to self-identify as horizontalist here, but understand that you are not rebranding anarchism, only creating an offshoot identity that signals its willingness to co-exist with the society that structurally must suppress anarchists no matter what term they use to call themselves.
My intention with saying anarchism is being heavily painted is that it is an umbrella term which shouldn’t be the focus of struggle. It’s as absurd as if fascists, democratic socialists and tankies united under a hierarchist ideology. We shouldn’t brand anarchism, but the individual traditions under anarchism. That would strengthen every tradition.
Having a negative aura in itself is fine; We need to oppose that which is bad. And to use a negative aura with solidaric intent is to be celebrated. There is nothing wrong with opposing the machine, opposing patriarchy, opposing transphobia or opposing racism.
Speaking for myself, the negative aura is creating unnecessary friction in my own thinking and makes me more reluctant about talking about it. I know because I have been self identifying as an anarchist for the last 6 years.
You are welcome to self-identify as horizontalist here, but understand that you are not rebranding anarchism, only creating an offshoot identity that signals its willingness to co-exist with the society that structurally must suppress anarchists no matter what term they use to call themselves.
Our goal must not be to increase the amount of people who identify themselves as anarchist or horizontalist, but rather normalize this way of thinking. To make mutual aid common sense. To spread the warmth and samhold of people. To not fear that our humanity is not respected.
Anarchism is inseparable from the concept of choosing to use dysphemism over euphemism, and generally speaking plainly, truthfully, and without guile. While most of the world has moved on to using terms like ‘public relations,’ ‘spin,’ or ‘fair and balanced reporting’ for their self-advocacy, many anarchists embrace the old term ‘propaganda’ to describe their own activity. Anarchism is the opposition to what is destroying the world, and the willingness to use negatively loaded terms in a positive way is effective propaganda.
Feels like an offshoot, but I have made my own word for propaganda :D I like to relight propaganda to sightsteer. To take attention with the goal of changing attitude. This is a word that makes it much more obvious how society steers our sight through advertisements, media and politicians, while at the same time strengthen us to use sightsteer ourselves through chalking, singing and storytelling for instance.
It’s as absurd as if fascists, democratic socialists and tankies united under a hierarchist ideology.
There are strains of ostensibly ‘anarchist’ movements that attempt to enter the anarchist umbrella, and through consensus among anarchist movements have been rejected. If the umbrella was not important there would not be an incentive for entryists to try and usurp it. De-prioritizing the value of the umbrella leaves it vulnerable to future entryism. Fascists in particular love to copy anarchist aesthetics, and opposing this requires vigilance.
And as absurd as your example may seem on the surface, it is not unusual in practice. All three are engaged an a morbid game for control for the levers power within a state. In this high stakes contest, the people cannot be said to be honestly represented by any party - they are the chips the players throw into the pot. Anarchism seeks to stop the game, replace it with one that isn’t predicated on casually discarding human lives. Like rival gamblers towards an outsider who has come to upend the card table, the players are more likely to unite in opposition to anarchists than to concede their justice.
I like to relight propaganda to sightsteer. To take attention with the goal of changing attitude. This is a word that makes it much more obvious how society steers our sight through advertisements, media and politicians, while at the same time strengthen us to use sightsteer ourselves through chalking, singing and storytelling for instance.
If you’re not currently aware, you may want to read up on the concept of Linguistic Relativity. This is a concept that has been explored by many anarchist adjacent authors including George Orwell, Suzette Haden Elgin, and Sonja Lang.
While there may be some correlation between the structure of language and thought, the scientific consensus is that relationship is not strong. Old words primarily carry their modern connotations, and thus any malformed word can be re-purposed by consistent transformative usage. People rarely think of breakfast as the breaking of a fast, for example. More importantly, people who use the word ‘sunrise’ are not more likely to view the word as flat, or the center of the solar system – as its early usage and etymology implies.
Meanwhile new words of the type you are suggesting are subject to increased scrutiny, based on the implied acceptance of the framing that language determines thought. For example your new vocabulary like ‘relight’ and ‘sightsteer’ could be seen as linguistically re-enforcing existing negative biases against blind people or worse intentionally privileging people with sight as more cognitively capable.
To be clear, I am saying that we as anarchists generally should focus on activities that are likely to further our goals, the ultimate goal being a more just society that collectively respects the importance each of its members’ individuality. I think building alternate vocabularies and languages are less effective means of achieving those goals. Despite that, I also believe your experiments with vocabulary are charming, and if you can absorb my criticism and still find it a worthwhile activity, I hope you continue.
Before answering you, I’ll have to say that I have to delve a little deeper into the topic and explore the naming further. Especially getting familiar with horizontalism as practiced in Argentina through horizontalidad, and whether there are other conceptions of it. It seems to me that what is different from horizontalidad and my conception is that horizontalidad focus on being a non-ideological, that’s not my appraoch. I focus on an umbrella horizontalism where responsibility of unwellness lokening is put upon each tradition under the umbrella. When I say horizontalism from here on, I refer to umbrella horizontalism.
I’ll edit the post afterwards to share what I need to focus more on.
There are strains of ostensibly ‘anarchist’ movements that attempt to enter the anarchist umbrella, and through consensus among anarchist movements have been rejected. If the umbrella was not important there would not be an incentive for entryists to try and usurp it. De-prioritizing the value of the umbrella leaves it vulnerable to future entryism. Fascists in particular love to copy anarchist aesthetics, and opposing this requires vigilance.
That’s certainly true. Gatekeeping is necessary. I think this gatekeeping should be done from individual traditions. Each tradition should gatekeep it’s own tradition, but they should also challenge other traditions to be consistent with horizontal values.
And as absurd as your example may seem on the surface, it is not unusual in practice. All three are engaged an a morbid game for control for the levers power within a state. In this high stakes contest, the people cannot be said to be honestly represented by any party - they are the chips the players throw into the pot. Anarchism seeks to stop the game, replace it with one that isn’t predicated on casually discarding human lives. Like rival gamblers towards an outsider who has come to upend the card table, the players are more likely to unite in opposition to anarchists than to concede their justice.
That’s true. They powder hierarchies as democracies.
If you’re not currently aware, you may want to read up on the concept of Linguistic Relativity. This is a concept that has been explored by many anarchist adjacent authors including George Orwell, Suzette Haden Elgin, and Sonja Lang.
I am very interested in linguistic relativity. I call my approach language bondframe as in how language bind us to everything that is around us. I have looked into George Orwell, but I don’t know Suzette Haden Elgin nor Sonja Lang. Thank you for recommendations:)
While there may be some correlation between the structure of language and thought, the scientific consensus is that relationship is not strong. Old words primarily carry their modern connotations, and thus any malformed word can be re-purposed by consistent transformative usage. People rarely think of breakfast as the breaking of a fast, for example. More importantly, people who use the word ‘sunrise’ are not more likely to view the word as flat, or the center of the solar system – as its early usage and etymology implies.
I’d say the way we refer to something says something about our relationship to it. I refer to this as the language bondframe.
If I say that I do juggling as a hobby, you would probably think that I do it for entertainment. If I say juggling is one of my masteries, then you would probably think that I practiced juggling actively in the pursuite of becoming a master. If I say that juggling is my growth, then you would think that I did it because I feel growth from doing it. Or that’s how I would view it.
Some words normalize structures of might or romanticize them. Being rich for instance is usually seen as something dezirable. The myth of the rich is that they are wise, well dressed, hard working and deservant of their wealth. This myth makes us think of the rich in a favourable light. Even in a term seemingly unrelated to the rich such as “vitamine rich” the word rich refers to “being abundnat”, but we conceptualize this abundance through the image of the rich. That’s how I view it at least, but it woulnd’t surprise me if I have some blindspots in my reasonings.
I’d claim that a word like sunrise doesn’t imply a flat earth regardless of how the sun moves relative to Gaja, from the earth perspective, the sun does move upwards.
Something I would say about the word sunrise is that it is a poetic word in that clearly shows how it’s composition into the knots “sun” and “rise”, each of these knots has clear images, and the knots are used actively in english in other contexts. The word sunrise is therefore partitionable, has imageclearity and is submerged into the language structure. These qualities strengthen our ability to take guidership for our language in the sense that they increase the general insight into the langauge, increase the word creationability and increase the flexibility of the language. They move the language away away from memorizing towards creativity. This is in contrast to words like “composition”, “components” or “quality”.
Meanwhile new words of the type you are suggesting are subject to increased scrutiny, based on the implied acceptance of the framing that language determines thought. For example your new vocabulary like ‘relight’ and ‘sightsteer’ could be seen as linguistically re-enforcing existing negative biases against blind people or worse intentionally privileging people with sight as more cognitively capable.
And rightfully so. A word should be challenged, regardless of whether it is rooted or sprouted.
I believe as long as we are okay with words like enlighted, insight, outlook, then making words from these knots is fine. It is fine to challenge light as a symbol of knowledge, but then it isn’t about challenging the new word, but challenging submerged structures.
To be clear, I am saying that we as anarchists generally should focus on activities that are likely to further our goals, the ultimate goal being a more just society that collectively respects the importance each of its members’ individuality. I think building alternate vocabularies and languages are less effective means of achieving those goals. Despite that, I also believe your experiments with vocabulary are charming, and if you can absorb my criticism and still find it a worthwhile activity, I hope you continue.
The reason I think language is so important in our struggles is because words steers our attention. By being language aware, we can more effectively control our attention to combat the machine and forward the meaningful.
I believe as long as we are okay with words like enlighted, insight, outlook, then making words from these knots is fine. It is fine to challenge light as a symbol of knowledge, but then it isn’t about challenging the new word, but challenging submerged structures.
To be clear, ‘we’ are okay with these words because the scientific consensus is that a word’s etymology doesn’t have a strong relationship to the thought it represents. People who use ‘enlighted,’ ‘insight,’ or ‘outlook’ unless they’re poets or wordsmiths aren’t consciously choosing to use sight metaphors for knowledge. The prevalence of this metaphor in language is the result of a longstanding historical bias against the blind, but the existence of the words aren’t the primary cause of this bias, they are a symptom. If we could remove social biases against blindness, these words might possibly disappear but more likely remain as linguistic artifacts of a less empathetic time because their actual effect on how we think about blind people is negligible.
The word radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. Thus the saying ‘being radical is grasping from the root’ - treating society’s problems by disrooting their source rather than treating the problem’s symptoms. The word etymology people use today is a symptom of the way people historically thought when the words were invented. Changing the way people think now is much more effectively done by rational argument and demonstrating the effectiveness of new ideas.
My thesis is that because people pay so little attention to word etymology in the process of communicating thought, the entire exercise in thought shaping through extensive use of neologism has little actual benefit. My thesis is supported by the existing research on language relativity. I think your project primarily serves to make the speaker more alien to any outside audience and increases the mental effort required in speaking and writing.
You have repeatedly asserted your belief as fact when it is contradicted by science on the subject: the etymology of words have a powerful influence on the thoughts of casual speakers who use them. Based on your belief, I find your lack of interest in supporting heliocentrism disappointing. I find your casual dismissal of blind people in your brave new words alarming and abhorrent. Based on your statements, you do believe it will steer society’s attention away from their value as people, and yet chose to expand and reinforce the existing linguistic bias you believe is harmful to them.
Scientific consensus
To be clear, ‘we’ are okay with these words because the scientific consensus is that a word’s etymology doesn’t have a strong relationship to the thought it represents.
My thesis is that because people pay so little attention to word etymology in the process of communicating thought, the entire exercise in thought shaping through extensive use of neologism has little actual benefit. My thesis is supported by the existing research on language relativity. I think your project primarily serves to make the speaker more alien to any outside audience and increases the mental effort required in speaking and writing.
You have repeatedly asserted your belief as fact when it is contradicted by science on the subject: the etymology of words have a powerful influence on the thoughts of casual speakers who use them.
Could you be more specific? Are you referring to a specific study or a statement from a scientist? I don’t want to argue on cloudy grounds.
Light as analogy for knowledge
People who use ‘enlighted,’ ‘insight,’ or ‘outlook’ unless they’re poets or wordsmiths aren’t consciously choosing to use vision-based metaphors for knowledge. The prevalence of this metaphor in language is the result of a longstanding historical bias against the blind, but the existence of the words aren’t the primary cause of this bias, they are a symptom. If we could remove social biases against blindness, these words might possibly disappear but more likely remain as linguistic artifacts of a less empathetic time because their actual effect on how we think about blind people is negligible.
Listen… If transferring senses to other contexts are ableist, then it goes much deeper than a critique of light as an analogy for knowledge. Expression like “Listen to your heart.” “I heard that your mother was in town.” “I feel like we are on the same page.” “I can’t stomach it.” “The music wasn’t my taste.” “He had a warmth”. All these expressions transfer senses to other contexts; Would you deem them as ableist? Or is the light analogy for knowledge somehow different from these? Or what is your specific reasoning here? Is there a specific critique you are reffering to? Is this a specific critique from the blind community? You suggest that we use the light analogy because of ableism, could you elaborate on this? Please elaborate your stance, otherwise I’m not going to take this critique seriously.
And even if your critique turns out to be legitimate, that doesn’t change the fact that your critique is hypothetical as of now. You have not linked me to any resources strengthening this claim. You have not reasoned why you have come to this conclusion. You have neither come with an alternative analogy for light as an analogy to knowledge.
I find your casual dismissal of blind people in your brave new words alarming and abhorrent.
This comes out of nowhere. I don’t see how your reasoning implies that “I dismiss blind people”. This comes off like mud throwing than actual fair critique.
and yet chose to expand and reinforce the existing linguistic bias you believe is harmful to them.
I simply entertained the hypothetical critique. I didn’t say I agreed with it. I thought you used it as an example to emphasize your point about that we should scrutinize neologisms, which I agree with.
Heliocentrism
Based on your belief, I find your lack of interest in supporting heliocentrism disappointing.
I believe in heliocentrism. I challenge your assumption that the word “sunrise” implies that the sun revolves around Earth.
How to steer society
Based on your statements, you do believe it will steer society’s attention away from their value as people,
No, I don’t. We should steer people towards the meaningful and away from the harmful. Towards nature, personal growth, community, solidarity, mutual aid, and so on. Away from materialism, leaders, machine, capitalism, nation states, coldness.
Reasonframe vs bondframe
The word radical comes from the Latin radix, meaning root. Thus the saying ‘being radical is grasping from the root’ - treating society’s problems by disrooting their source rather than treating the problem’s symptoms. The word etymology people use today is a symptom of the way people historically thought when the words were invented. Changing the way people think now is much more effectively done by rational argument and demonstrating the effectiveness of new ideas.
This is where we diverge. I believe that the words we are using today are misguiding us into supporting the machine, normalizing nation states, forwarding coldness, support dehumanization, support hierarchies, support robbing of other countries, alienate ourself from nature, alienate ourself from personal growth, disempower us, and yada yada. Our words are not neutral and all words paint our world and how we bond to it.
If we want to bring about lokening of Gaja and our societies, we need to scrutinize our languages in fern to understand how we are being sighsteered.
Could you be more specific?
Respectfully, it’s like you are not listening to the arguments you are being provided, which have been repeated to you several times already.
I don’t want to argue on cloudy grounds
Respectfully again, your whole approach is cloudy, or should I better say: all over the place.
Verbally interacting is not only about arguing. It can also be about listening, taking into account what the other person or persons are saying, and reflecting on these inputs.
You claim there is scientific consensus, then you at least should be able to refer to a single scientist or somebody who communicates about science.
If you’re an anarchist, I see no point in “pretending” you’re not.
Do you think the, by now century-old, propaganda efforts against anarchism couldn’t be redirected to a new term?
Sure, some people are put off by the term “anarchism” because of its negative connotations. You don’t need new vocabulary to counter that. You can either just correct their misconceptions or show their error by example. The people who aren’t willing to listen to you doing so also aren’t going to be convinced of your ideas of you package them differently.
I think people generally overestimate the extent to which “anarchism” being a scary term matters. Most people don’t even think about anarchism as an active political force.
You would also be distancing yourself from historical and ongoing anarchist struggles and efforts, which I personally think are an important way in which people get to known anarchism in a positive way.
Firstly I’ll just say that the term anarchism is sexy. It makes at least me think about fighting cops, antifascism, throwing molotovs, revolution, covering our face and stuff like that. It’s sexy as fuck. And sexy is very attractive. But we don’t normalize sexy. Sexy draws in a lot of people that want sexy. But in the long term, stability is more attractive at least to most people. Horizontalism goes away from the sexy to the mondane. It’s like meh… It’s boring and normal.
In contrast we should turn might and machine sexy. Relighting the term sate towards beatling, economy towards machine, leaders towards lords and so on. By turning it sexy, we make horizontalism seem far more attractive.
Do you think the, by now century-old, propaganda efforts against anarchism couldn’t be redirected to a new term?
By embracing horizontalism as a lightly painted umbrella term we encourage people to dive deeper into the specific horizontal societal models. It encourages us to commit to a single societal model and explore it’s philosophy and structure.
You would also be distancing yourself from historical and ongoing anarchist struggles and efforts, which I personally think are an important way in which people get to known anarchism in a positive way.
It is true that I would distance myself away from anarchism, but I would also get closer to democratic confederalism which is my focus right now.
Dragging under the same banner is far less important than actually normalizing horizontal way of thinking.
“Horizontalism” is definitely a core element of anarchist thought. I’ve also advocated for thinking in terms of consent.
I do think there’s value in adversarial terminology, but there’s also alienation.
It is important though to be a bit careful about radically redefining a bunch of terminology. Subcultures that do that tend to produce cults.
Also the “circle A” symbol comes from an anarchist Masonic lodge. It is rooted in European culture, but it’s a little more complex than that. It’s also connected to the occult, which includes both orientalist appropriations of Jewish symbolism as well as honest Integrations of traditional Jewish philosophy.
It is important though to be a bit careful about radically redefining a bunch of terminology. Subcultures that do that tend to produce cults.
If you see some red flags, let me know ;)
Also the “circle A” symbol comes from an anarchist Masonic lodge. It is rooted in European culture, but it’s a little more complex than that. It’s also connected to the occult, which includes both orientalist appropriations of Jewish symbolism as well as honest Integrations of traditional Jewish philosophy.
Ah, interesting. Couldn’t find anyting about it on the internet though.
Reflecting on this, I like anarchism as a negative term. It’s like breath meditation. It’s so easy to get distracted and get lost in the goings-on of the day that you need raw negation to reset and notice things with fresh eyes. Likewise, it’s so easy to defer and get lost in the politicking of a society that you need raw negation to reset and notice things about the politics. And that negation needs to be a regular practice if you want to maintain it.
So specific forms of anarchy such as anarchocommunism rightfully places the negation first. You have to keep stepping away from the structures and see whether they are doing what you want, and if (your perception of) communism doesn’t have the answers then you leave communism behind.
I could see ‘horizontalism’ being warped into a deference to peers - a lynch mob is a horizontal structure, after all. I could see it taken as a prescription to wipe out inequalities like talent or disability. I don’t know if these are fair, but I do know that if horizontalism became the dominant term then 100 years from now there will be people making these complaints. Because it is the nature of words to absorb the felt meaning of what they represent. There is a long list of words for mental disability that are now slurs or slurs old enough to be mere insults because people in the English-speaking world and elsewhere have been trained to feel revulsion at (mental) inability, and no matter how carefully a word is chosen it will absorb that vile intent.
So much of the unwellness of the term is in societal perception rather than the term itself, and will travel along with any rebranding. I do acknowledge your point of white supremacy in western anarchist philosophical discourse, and if a change in name helps reduce that white supremacy even temporarily, then good.
However, I don’t think one person behind a desk imposing a name on dozens of non-white ideological currents based on a western anglophone vibes-based analysis of their supposed shared concepts is a good starting point for reducing white supremacy or dismantling colonial attitudes towards non-white cultures and philosophies. If these currents even have any interest in being grouped together into a single worldwide term, then let them name themselves.
So specific forms of anarchy such as anarchocommunism rightfully places the negation first. You have to keep stepping away from the structures and see whether they are doing what you want, and if (your perception of) communism doesn’t have the answers then you leave communism behind.
I think as long as the societal model is using the negative stance with concent there’s absolutely no issue.
I could see ‘horizontalism’ being warped into a deference to peers - a lynch mob is a horizontal structure, after all. I could see it taken as a prescription to wipe out inequalities like talent or disability. I don’t know if these are fair, but I do know that if horizontalism became the dominant term then 100 years from now there will be people making these complaints. Because it is the nature of words to absorb the felt meaning of what they represent. There is a long list of words for mental disability that are now slurs or slurs old enough to be mere insults because people in the English-speaking world and elsewhere have been trained to feel revulsion at (mental) inability, and no matter how carefully a word is chosen it will absorb that vile intent.
To defend against warping, we need to be authoritative about language. When we see somebody abusing a term, then we should speak loudly and clearly against it. This is what anarchists does all the time. If somebody claims to be anarchist, but use exclusionary and xenophobic language, we would reject them. Or that’s how it should be at least.
In fern to make it easy to defend against warping, we need to make it easy to use our language. Less academic words, more poetic words.
However, I don’t think one person behind a desk imposing a name on dozens of non-white ideological currents based on a western anglophone vibes-based analysis of their supposed shared concepts is a good starting point for reducing white supremacy or dismantling colonial attitudes towards non-white cultures and philosophies. If these currents even have any interest in being grouped together into a single worldwide term, then let them name themselves.
Fair.
I’ll settle with that I’m comfortable with using the term myself.
Could use a symbol like this? ⦵
It retains the circle, like the circle-A or peace sign, with the line. It also makes it clear that it is something and not just a line
That would be one of the benefits with this symbols. You can easily combine it with other symbols.
