Here is a short piece I wrote after exposure to the preponderance of Stirner memes around Facebook and Reddit. Nostalgia and politics is an interesting issue to me personally, so I riffed on that theme for a few paragraphs. Am toying with some ideas for lighter posts in the future.

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Post-left anarchy has been around for decades, although suggesting that post-left anarchy can be grasped as a movement is immediately rejected by some of its advocates, who state that a more accurate reading is that of individuals theorizing separate anarchist ideas. While the rhetorical defense is not without merit, by “post-left anarchy,” we invoke works from the 1960s to the 2000s which share an influence in the non-essentialist egoism of Max Stirner as well as the countercultural aesthetic mostly seen in educated whites during the post-war period. Bob Black, John Zerzan, Hakim Bey, and Jason McQuinn are diverse thinkers but the main ones we see (thanks to their relatively strong distribution) when drawing such a boundary.

The relationship between post-left anarchism and more traditional left-wing forms of anarchy has been explored in limited confrontations, perhaps most visibly the exchanges between Murray Bookchin and Bob Black. (And while that conflict is rich in itself, because of restrictions on time and a lack of interest in portraying this piece as a true scholarly work, we do not view the current project as an introductory primer in the history of anarchism. Please consult the relevant sources.)

Having moved through the years with warmth for post-left anarchy, perhaps enough time has passed that we can offer a critique that is neither dismissive nor endlessly patient. In particular, we would like to very basically draw attention 1) to weaknesses in the transmission of post-left anarchism (hereafter PLA or PLAs), as well as 2) some of its intellectual quirks that are worth analyzing in a manner that does not imply strict loyalty.

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Being a PLA without name recognition is lonely. Many daywalkers whom you encounter will have no clue where the fuck you’re coming from or why you have such an initially bizarre elevator speech for your politics. Regardless of being ‘free’, the intellectual isolation is clear, and while anarchists are generally concerned with community building, post-leftism has usually relied on poorly-traveled spots of the internet and small publishing houses to propagate their thought. We don’t discount the idea that this could be deliberate repression of their ideas, nor do we suggest that post-left theory should be overlook merely because of the material barriers it faces in radicalizing large segments of society.

The point is that PLA’s scarce engagement with mass media is explainable even if one doesn’t assume a primitivist distaste for large machines. Using the tools of techno-capitalist society against itself is taken as a necessary evil if not outright playing-with-fire. With that said, it is important to note that the average person interacts with the internet far more in the present than during the years when foundational PLA texts were first printed and read. The impact these digital lines of flight have on our selfhood cannot be answered fully by baby boomers. Online forums such as Reddit, Facebook groups, and meme sharing pages now expose more people to insurrectionary ideas than lucky, isolated stumbles into egoist theory, although these modern exposures do require that one often also view advertisements and the influence of capital. It is our belief that those undaunted by technological mediation (young Stirner-influenced meme-makers) actually deconstruct (in the sense of Derrida) post-left anarchy.

The integration and ease of information sharing demands fresh methods of keeping secrets and seducing; we can no longer treat the internet as something yet to step into, or inquire about its radical potential. It is now a part and partial cause of the political arena. By doing something as seemingly flippant as incorporating unhinged political theory into the vast potential range of meme sharing, young egoists are bringing irony and humor concerning an abstract subject into a shareable forum. These memes, granting that they most often appear on capitalist-sponsored sites, cross more eyes than zines and communiques of the past.

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Post-left anarchists often oppose ideology to ideas, which justifies its occasional claim not to employ ideology at all. That intellectual content which is granted through authority and coercion is ideology, that which we freely discover and keep are ideas. We object that this distinction can be maintained as the last word in a theory of ideology, adding that there are social pressures, contrarian tendencies, and passive acceptance in how one acquires insurrectionary opinions.

This is why so-called “critical self-theory” a la Jason McQuinn ultimately cannot offer what its name implies. Even though one may arrive at ideas of PLA independent of finding them through authors or other practitioners, the faculties of judgment that make PLA seem convincing grow out of one’s life experience, and surely not all of those standard-forming experiences ask for permission.

Since all knowledge requires an assessment by some standard to pass as knowledge, it is inherently political (knowledge is power). Thus, ideology is embedded in all that we learn from exposure to people, being literally the building block of psyche and the social body under our read. Even what has been called critical self-theory is not merely the production of one psyche, but a psyche’s judgments or decisions regarding a number of social inputs (in this case, ideas about PLA). What are taken by some as being freely acquired ideas in contrast to ideology can often just as accurately be seen as a redeemable portion of ideology.

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When it comes to ideology, it is not necessary that post-leftism push a singular vision for community. In terms of the Black-Bookchin exchange, the dispute is loosely over what role individual agency plays in anarchist struggle, or, more clearly, if individual fulfillment is compatible with such a struggle. What he proposes for anarchist strategy moving forward is that “[t]he precondition for any substantial increase in anarchist influence is for anarchists to make explicit and emphatic their break with the left. This does not mean placing the critique of the left at the center of analysis and agitation… It is enough to identify leftism, as the occasion arises, as all it really is, a variant of hegemonic ideology — a loyal opposition — which was formerly effective in recuperating revolutionary tendencies.”

We occasionally agree with a criticism of the Old Left as hegemonic, dated, and dwindling, although we would note that not all theories of Leftism are so simple and easy to loathe. For example, Deleuze in his ABC’s interview explains being on the left (gauche in French) as having two features. One is the perceptual choice that global concerns are just as, if not more, pressing than local concerns, while the second facet of Deleuze’s leftism is that one must become a minority, although this is an idiosyncratic usage of that phrase. Deleuze explains in the interview that becoming a minority is something that is always done in defiance of a majoritarian standard which refers to no specific individual. Despite this, a person might define herself through her relation to the qualities of the standard. Deleuze and Black share a conviction that ideas, even revolutionary ones, can hold coercive authority over individual agents, but differ in what they recognize as leftism proper.

The relevance this has for Black’s analysis is that it reveals him to be opposed to certain ideas held by certain leftists, but also less thorough in his treatment of leftists of a post-structuralist vein, leftists who, like Black, also see the ironies, defeats, and opportunities neglected but, unlike Black, are not ready to stop claiming the left-wing tradition. He proposes that anarchism is involved in paradigm shift much like Thomas Kuhn describes in his famous book on scientific structures, a shift out from under leftism. Kuhn notes (and Black does not instruct his reader) that paradigm shifts are not improvements and cannot invalidate their predecessors. Where Black diverges from Kuhn, it is in Black’s paradoxical vested interest in steering the anarchist ship away from leftism for the purpose of creating a new, if loose, paradigm which is a more authentic, internally consistent exercise in liberatory thought.

In terms of what mimetic egoism could offer Black’s analysis, I would suggest that new creative developments first recontextualize anti-authoritarianism in a way that is both more current to the popular interests of young people and less tethered to any anarchist project, even post-leftism if it is taken as the contribution of a few underread men. It may be that mimetic egoism is not a separate paradigm from post-left anarchism but a step deeper into the irony within the same one. Millennial egoism engages the popular means of transmission in a way that keeps the nostalgia of its content-makers alive while also providing a creative outlet pushing education and insurrectionary themes.

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Millennial or mimetic egoism uses popular culture and nostalgia in its content, and these fallbacks are among the most marked differences with what we jokingly now call “traditional” PLA. Considering the standard of online promotion employed by mimetic egoists, one wonders if social organization, labor, or mass movements have any particular value. By being internet-based, however, the very notion of privacy is challenged. One is no longer supervised merely on the clock, but especially during their leisure. In a digital world where every connection can be monitored ever more easily, private property may become just another impossible secret to keep, a more specific offshoot of a general concept of privacy. Meme generation is a type of community in itself, but it is a community that suggests secrecy (hiding behind a virtual, ironic caricature of one’s self and ideas) while working the material in such a way as to produce wisdom. Thus, mimetic egoism suggests a union in which the means of mediation are accessible to greater numbers.

Nostalgia as a radical praxis (if possible) must be about refurbishing symbols. In the related context of mimetic humor, its chuckle appeal flows from its very obsolescence, the fact that you have seen the symbol uncounted times before–an interesting if not totally successful foil to the love of The New under capitalism. Mimetic egoism, like all anarchism, has only ever theorized from the small pond of capitalism. Bourgeois, technologically biased–probably. It feels logical that only those with the privilege (access to technology) to casually interact online could express their ideas in a mimetic style. However, in terms of exposure and raising awareness in a new form of bystander, the (social) media addict, is the .jpg a new vehicle of the communique?

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