Anarchist Outreach
22 02 09 - 11:06 The recent thread got me thinking of ways that we embark upon successful anarchist outreach? Indeed, what does anarchist outreach even mean?Anarchist outreach should be the arm of the movement that is entirely devoted to extending the message and increasing the general public's awareness of anarchism. This is only one form of anarchist action, the others being the dueling twins of "liberal" style social action and more militant insurrection activities. While these two things have a goal to bring about a revolution, no revolution is complete w/out a complementary CONVERSION of the hearts and minds of the people. Now surely "liberal" style social action and militant insurrection represent the ideals of anarchism and aid in this conversion by deeds, but neither of them are "outreach" in the sense of drawing people into the intellectual fold of anarchism, where conversions occur. This becomes clear when we see anarchist actions blend w/the actions of other groups (from hippie peace protests to community garden projects to rioting inner city black youth). As such, when anarchism is in the public eye it's going to be associated w/activities that the vast majority of people are going to find fruity (at best) or dangerous (at worst); in addition, anarchism tends t get drowned out. This is where anarchist outreach steps in. Anarchist outreach is nothing more and nothing less than anarchist propaganda, and it absolute MUST accompany, in a VERY visible way, the other forms of actions. As such, anarchist outreach must seek to be constantly crafting public opinion even when it's not accompanying the other forms of action. And, as w/"liberal" style social actions and insurrection actions, when the time comes, EVERY anarchist is responsible for outreach as well. The thing about outreach though is that the time for it is ... all the time: everyone we talk to is a target for our propaganda, and yes, I do believe that we should be active propaganda mouthpieces and that this is something wholly different than works/deeds based activism.
Now, how does this play out?
Well, we have a wide variety of media at our disposal: web, print, radio, tv, and movies. For a wide array of reasons, the latter three are very difficult to break into, though that's not say they shouldn't be seen as impenetrable media. Print can be hit and miss: it's time consuming to operate, is pretty expensive if you want to be taken seriously, etc ... . So, I'll talk about the medium we're currently engaged on: the web.
The web has many advantages: easy to use, cheap, accessible, etc ... . It also has many disadvantages which become readily apparent if you've ever tried to generate hits for a website.
When we're talking about web anarchist outreach, this site (and others like it: infoshop, crimethinc, submedia.tv, etc ...) is only a small piece of the puzzle ... indeed, it's the endpoint of what should be a far broader and more insidious outreach program.
I'm going to give a brief rundown on how I've come to supplement my other outreach activities, which occur in my classes and other f2f occasions, with a healthy presence on the web.
1. Web communities: there are an almost infinite amount of communities on the web that have absolutely jack squat to do w/anarchism ... and that's a good thing. Why? B/c by engaging people in these environments you can catch them w/their guards down vis-a-vis anarchism. Every anarchist should be an ACTIVE member of as many of these communities as they have the time for. I'm active in 2 communities (one for boardgames and one for a sports team). It's best to narrow down your participation to a number of communities that you can maintain an ACTIVE presence on.
2. Types of web communities: Try to find communities based upon other things you're interested in ... you want to be in non-political web communities. In doing so, you're already building common ground w/your audience by your shared interests. It's important to maintain a presence based on this shared interest at all times.
3. Building your persona: You shouldn't ever just be an anarchist. You want to be a fully fledged and commonly known member of the community ... like in Cheers where everybody says your name when you walk through the doors. In other words, be yourself in every aspect ... in the process, you will make friends, who will serve as your support whether they're anarchists themselves or not.
4. Anarchist outreach: Once, you've become a working member of the community either find the forums dedicated to Off Topic discussions or specifically political discussions. It is very important that you don't enter these discussions wearing your anarchism on your sleeve ... treat these OT discussions (and especially forums) as terra nova and assume that everyone there is hostile to anarchism. You want to engage in these discussions w/out bringing up anarchism or citing anarchist thinkers, so just talk politics like everyone else. Use sources they're familiar with. Take sides (you'd be surprised who'd you'd be allied with sometimes). Over time, you should be trying to become an oddball on the forum, someone people have a hard time pinning down. To those who think this might be difficult b/c anarchism is solidly on The Left, consider how it easy it is to take the side of a conservative in a discussion about the bailout/stimulus (screw the feds ... get them out of our business: rah, rah, sis, boom, bah). Essentially you're trying to plant seeds in the minds of the rest of the community that anarchism is not irrational & dangerous, but it does provide alternative ways of looking at things. In general, these seeds cannot be planted if you "come out" as an anarchist.
5. Coming out: By being a sane and likeable member of the community, you've already done a heaping amount of outreach, but this doesn't do anarchism any good if people don't know you're anarchist. At some point you're going to have to "come out" ... you're going to have to reveal yourself as an anarchist. This is extremely tricky, b/c if you do it wrong or too soon, you can kill the goodwill you've created. Did I mention that people that don't like "anarchy?" So, every time you think you've found an opportunity to "come out" ... don't. Put it off ... put it off until you literally can't take it anymore. The more time between your initial participation and the "coming out" the better. Now, as a long as you've been yourself the entire time (short of coming out and saying you're an anarchist) and have been genuine w/your posts, "coming out" won't be seen as some sort of big trick or an elaborate ruse. It'll just be seen as an "oh that makes sense, now I know why he's been so hard to pin down, but hmmm ... wait a second, he's not a unabomber freak ... interesting." After you've "come out" keep on keeping on as you've been doing, but now you can also begin to introduce anarchism as such ... always slowly and carefully, you'll probably be the face of anarchism in that web community represent us well.
The overarching goal of anarchist outreach is to normalize anarchism on an intellectual level.
For an example of how this works, I'll use my participation in an online board game community (yes, I'm a gamer dork ... shove it! :) ).
The following link is for a discussion I started regarding the worker expropriations in Argentina:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/378676
The next thread is the first thread I started about Anarchism itself ... it garnered a huge audience and a ton of very quick activity, which indicated 2 things to me: that people are looking, starving for something different in politics & society AND that I had a LOT still to learn about how to negotiate my presence in the community.
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352857/page/1
This is the thread where I "came out:"
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352546
And this is the thread that finally pushed me to "come out" in the first place ... the idea that people wouldn't let their kids play w/my kids just b/c we were anarchists was really troubling:
http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/352324
Anarchist action doesn't have to be big to communicate ideas. Anarchist action doesn't have to be "practical demonstrations" to communicate ideas. Anarchist action can be as small and impractical as a strategic conversation over the water cooler or in a thread on a random web community. The opportunity for outreach is all around us, and we must constantly be looking to seize those opportunities.
--GAWD
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