“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.

Two years ago, Lemmy.world tried a similar move with their MediaBiasFactCheck bot. It was soundly rejected by the community, and they finally relented after weeks of outcry. Why is @Rimu putting us through this again?

I love Doctorow posting.

If your goal is to construct a tree of anarchist thought that is pruned of all problematic thinkers, I have terrible news for you about Prodhoun, Kropotkin, and Bakunin. A tenet of anarchism is that that are no people virtuous enough to rule over others. Most anarchists I know aren’t obsessed with purity of character the same way hierarchical ideologies deify and airbrush their founders. Anarchism acknowledges that all people are flawed, and is consistent when there is a focus on the strength of ideas rather than abusing history to generate virtuous founders to hang its ideology on.

While I think you have an exaggerated impression of Chomsky’s role in the scandal, it is possible for someone to roast and eat babies and still be able to say true and insightful things about politics. Moral failings do not make one politically impotent, and moral virtue is not a replacement for intellectual insight.

Manufacturing Consent is a pretty big original idea that soundly blunted liberal democracy’s primary attack on anarchist thought and allowed the current landscape of anarchist thinkers to find more fertile ground. It’s kind of comical to demand, “Okay, what else?” – some people only have one great idea in their life, and that’s enough. And that’s beside coming up with original ideas that fundamentally shaped the completely unrelated field of Linguistics. I don’t know how many of his other ideas are original to him, but it was important enough for people to hear them from him, because no one else with his platform was willing to share them. His willingness to speak publicly and his elevated profile gave anarchism room to breath while it was being suffocated under the combined pressure of western capitalism and soviet communism.

In many ways, Noam Chomsky was the Carl Sagan of anarchism communication. He’s not perfect, but he was the bridge that supported many people’s transition from liberal to anarchist. Many people who you dismiss as ‘shitlibs’ are somewhere on that path. We set a good example by holding Noam accountable for his words and deeds, but wishing him death and struggling to efface him from anarchism entirely despite his limited culpability for Epstein’s actions does not paint a picture of people driven by an ideology founded on fairness and justice.

that by itself is problematic

I agree. I think he was a victim, but I don’t think Chomsky smells like roses from this. If problematic was a dis-qualifier for all political thought, the world would have no politics. I think anarchists (rightly) have higher standards for the people who speak for them. I’m speaking up because I worry this can go too far. This is a stain on Chomsky’s legacy, but I don’t think it invalidates his observations on the Palestinian genocide.

If anything, Epstein was a supporter of Netanyahu’s politics. Signal boosting his ‘friend’ in contradiction is an attack on Epstein’s legacy.

Yes, that’s my bad. I saw it in a recent RSS feed and thought it was current. The article is from 2024 before there were more details about Chomsky’s relationship with Epstein.

Yes, that’s my bad. I saw it in a recent RSS feed and thought it was current.

you must have missed the advice he gave to epstein abt ignoring the “hysteria” women were causing

No, I haven’t. If you’re familiar with Noam Chomsky’s history of his free-speech activism, anti-violence stance, and criticism of Israel, you’ll also be familiar with how those positions have been characterized as support for holocaust denial, nazis, and antisemitism.

It’s pretty clear where Noam is coming from in his advice to Epstein, and is an understandable misstep for an ageing man who was not aware of the extent of Epstein’s depravity.

“Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in.”

I appreciate the BBC for reproducing Valéria Chomsky’s assessment, which matches my own. I am disappointed by Noam’s relationship with Epstein, but not enough to throw away decades of lucid insight into media, politics, and society.

“Epstein had claimed to Noam that he [Epstein] was being unfairly persecuted, and Noam spoke from his own experience in political controversies with the media. Epstein created a manipulative narrative about his case, which Noam, in good faith, believed in.”

I believe Valéria Chomsky, I think Epstein took advantage of Noam.

Chomsky was in the Epstein files.

So were many other of Jeffrey Epstein’s victims.

If you’ve ever heard Chomsky talk about feminism or womens rights, you would find his inclusion in a list of pedophiles curious. He was explicitly against pornography, even while much of the anarchist scene held a more nuanced pro-sex worker stance. He’s lived a life indicative of a strong moral compass, and while his principles are counter-intuitive to some, they never included the abuse, degradation, or sexual exploitation of women.

Epstein brought several types of people to his island - people who served as attractions, and people who he used those attractions to leverage for money. Jeffrey was a major donor to MIT which employs Chomsky. Chomsky has rarely turned down a speaking opportunity, and his correspondence with Epstein consists of political discussion, on which they rarely agree.

Chomsky’s role as a Jewish voice against Palestinian genocide continues to be valuable, and permitting such a simple smear to dismiss his decades of work should be beneath us. No one has come forward to accuse Chomsky of sexual abuse. The reputational hit is much less serious than the suffering and trauma of the women who were trafficked. Still, Chomsky should be numbered among Epstein’s victims, not his clients and collaborators.

That sounds like a great idea!

• 0:01 Rich Girl - Gwen Stefani
• 3:56 When I Grow Up Digital Dog Remix - The Pussycat Dolls
• 7:46 This Is What You Came For - Rihanna
• 11:24 The Sweet Escape - Gwen Stefani
• 15:00 American Boy - Estelle ft. Kanye
• 18:53 Birthday - Katy Perry
• 22:24 Blow - Kesha
• 25:28 I Kissed A Girl - Katy Perry
• 28:27 Run Away with Me - Carly Rae Jepsen
• 32:34 Burn - Ellie Goulding
• 36:23 Hollaback Girl - Gwen Stefani
• 39:19 Telephone - Lady Gaga ft. Beyoncé
• 42:45 Cooler Than Me - Mike Posner
• 46:15 Boom Clap - Charli xcx
• 49:02 Super Bass - Nicki Minaj
• 52:21 Single Ladies - Beyoncé
• 55:52 Can’t Get You Out Of My Head - Kylie Minogue
• 59:20 Crazy In Love - Beyoncé ft. JayZ

This is some funny ‘long tail’ shit.

“We can’t return what we stole, if we did, they’d do ethnic cleansing to us.”

– jimmy90

“it is easy to call land stolen, but what about the innocent purchasers who acquired in good faith in the interim? Are they thieves?”

This is the kind of shit that makes me think capitalists don’t actually believe in property. They only have an issue with theft when the loot isn’t laundered properly. ‘Civilization’ is just a word that means ‘fence’ to them.

Bryan answered by explaining in a post that the song “hits on both sides of the aisle”. He later added: “Left wing or right wing, we’re all one bird and American. To be clear, I’m on neither of these radical sides.” But this both-sides-ism felt incongruent with the song’s scathing message, heard in full for the first time on 9 January: law enforcement, ICE, and the onslaught of gun violence in America are contributing to the “fading of the red, white and blue”. (Bryan’s team declined an interview offer.)

It’s a start, but it is so milquetoast.

The stuff you’ve put up so far looks great! This is a wonderful initiative.

I’m glad you’re exploring uploading your videos to places besides Google’s walled garden. What do you think of Peertube?

Even taking the Chinese government at its word, they’re getting ~60% of their energy from Coal, and are opening new coal-fired power plants at a pace not matched by any other industrialized country. Framing their solar adventures as anything other than supplementary power for their growing fossil fuel economy is wildly irresponsible. China is #1 producing 3x the CO2 as the next largest producer (United States) and they’re not resting on their laurels.

People in the pro-Xi camp might claim China is planning to transition to renewables based on the rate of growth of their alternative energy sector, but that’s not a claim the Party has ever made or is likely to make. Their top priority is growing their economy, preventing global warming isn’t even on the list. They over-produced solar because it seemed like the west was signalling they were going in that direction, but now that demand is depressed, they’re likely to cut back production. Based on the Chinese government numbers on installed capacity vs. actual solar energy power use, they’re sending surplus panels to the Tibetan desert to rot.

The reporters at NPR are pining for more competent authoritarians. They don’t care about global warming either, or they’d do actual journalism on the subject.