Its late as I write this and even later as I post it. This feels like a kind of big idea to me though, so I am going to be a little more active in trying to get people to read it, so if you get to it early on in its life cycle, and there is anything that doesn't make sense or makes me look stupid for saying it, feel free to let me know.
So, now of the writing projects that I have been working on the last two months has been investigating what happened to the Great Plains Anarchist Network (GPAN), a group of many amazing people that I used to organize with against the State, authoritarian hate-filled ideologies, and capitalism. This is the group that I was working with when I was subpoenaed to appear before an FBI Grand Jury and if that is a new story to you, then you can get a sense of it by reading this short story that is a part of a collection of writings related to my life.
This blog post isn’t going to be about any of that experience, or even that much about GPAN or the research I am doing about that, except to point out that one of the surprising things to come out of that research is to realize how much bigger a role patriarchal misogyny (PM) played in the eventual end of GPAN than I realized. I am not even talking about organized, intentionally authoritarian attacks on GPAN that came from state repression, I am talking about deeply internalized patriarchal misogyny that led to members of GPAN and its affiliated organizations and groups harming each other physically, sexually, economically, emotionally, and mentally in traumatic, life impacting ways. Like, on the surface, I always knew that there were abusive people within GPAN, some of whom participated willingly in accountability processes to varying degrees to success, and some who very much did not—including people involved in organizing within my own close organizations and affinity groups…and I even knew that some of those specific incidents led to the dissolution of some organizations and groups, as well as made some people leave anarchist community organizing entirely for feeling the lack of support…but, even though many have called me obsessed with gender and sexuality and confronting patriarchal misogyny…I never really put it together just how thoroughly unchecked or badly-checked patriarchal misogyny was more responsible for breaking up communities, groups and organizations I have loved with my entire heart than any act of state repression or even the demands of a capitalist society.
In the process of trying to understand and answer the question, “what happened to the Great Plains Anarchist Network, and why is there no collective memory of what happened there over the years it was active?” I started to realize that as much as I thought we were thinking about and trying to address sexual violence, gender violence, domestic violence, heterosexist violence, transphobic violence, racist violence, colonial violence, ablest violence, capitalist violence, and all the other violences that patriarchal misogynistic authoritarianism uses to destroy or repress communities, these violences were continuing to happen and enough people were turning away from the difficult conversations of addressing them in the interest of expediency or the immediacy of other conflicts, that the violences continued to happen, over and over again, with the people most responsible for inflicting them bouncing around from community to community or group to group in ways that enabled them to lessen, or even outright evade accountability for the harm they caused. For every one incident or person who caused multiple incidents of violence against vulnerable members of our communities that was called out or into accountability, it seems like there was always at least one more that either no one knew about, or that was actively being ignored for one bullshit reason or another.
At some point, I am going to go into a lot more detail about this, especially as I try to collect my own experiences with GPAN as well as the experiences of others, in what could probably become a book or a digital collection of writings, but that is going to be way too much and too heavy of a load to smash into a blog. The conclusion that I will put forward here, especially in the hope that maybe some folks end up reading this blog who have thoughts, experiences, angers or frustrations that they want to share with others, or process collectively with people who still care about them…is that anarchist organizing within the whole of the United States, and especially within “Red State” regions of the US, has had a very serious problem with internalized patriarchal misogyny that is a bigger and more dangerous threat than the State itself. I recognize that that is a big claim that is going to get some people I care about very, very angry, especially as it might feel dismissive of the struggles of many people and groups trying to confront the multitude of other authoritarian violences that are assaulting the people of planet earth every day. I am personally ready to have difficult conversations with just about anyone who wants to talk to me about this subject, and why I might be totally wrong. But I am also tired of pretending like I haven’t seen immediacy and militancy used by people (including myself) promoting very masculine-centered (and white, and ablest, and cisgendered-centered) means of revolt and resistance as weapons against their communities and as tokens of social capital and prestige. The trauma and fatigue of this repeated cycle has disenchanted so many people from anarchist projects and organizations, and led many into the arms of organizations, institutions saddled with “justified authoritarian” structures, policies and secret, power-holding stakeholders that not only also end up engaging in or directly covering up patriarchal misogynistic violence, but even when they are “being run right” they are so entangled with innately authoritarian bureaucracies that they will only ever be able to address the most surface level symptoms of the underlying problems.
I am not casting stones with this statement. I recognize that it happened to me too, that I dove into academia, where I felt like I had to hide many of my beliefs and goals for what ways of knowing and processes for critically examining those systems of knowledge I was trying to share with my students…and I can only imagine how much worse it has gotten in the last year and a half I have been out of academia. That is feels like an inherent part of “growing up” as an anarchist that you just have to eventually accept that there are some authoritarian practices that are somehow “the good ones” that really protect vulnerable people and not the people in positions of authority. Positions of authority in the US rooted in authoritarian practices that are historically and immediately tied to PM colonial structures that have committed genocide (and continue to) and forcibly transport (import and export) people over hundreds and thousands of miles into hostile environments to use as free/cheap labor, sexual property, and human shields against all those who don’t immediately capitulate to those authoritarian systems. We are seeing the powerlessness of the US political left to live up to any promise they have ever made about using the power of the most violent nation on earth to protect vulnerable populations, due to the ease at which the system discards democratic or anti-authoritarian practices when they are inconvenient for maintaining its control and authority, but it is going to be very, very difficult to welcome the people who are falling out of love with that system when anti-authoritarian autonomous organizations, groups and movements continue to provide the same kind of safe harbor and protections for abusers that are provided to abusers in the most authoritarian political and social movements.