Image description:
Headline reads: A leaderless revolution has swept Serbia. The world should be watching.
It’s fun watching reactionaries bend over backwards to avoid the word “anarchism”.
There’s already a term for this sort of thing:
Colour Revolution
What’s happening in Serbia does not at all resemble Anarchism, and by connecting the two you’re just communicating that you have a very poor understanding of both the situation in Serbia and Anarchism as a concept.
Care to explain?
I’m not even an anarchist, and all these “lay down” type groups that keep cropping up and calling themselves anarchist just reek of color revolution.
They don’t view their revolutionary activity outside their immediate political environment, and their demands are not clear.
Anarchists may be “leaderless”, but they do have a clear vision, theory, and an internationalist position that makes sense.
Their demands seem fairly clear from my perspective. Remove the existing far right government from power, stabilize the lumpenproletariat, appoint auditors familiar with various affinities to their respective positions and take an audit before making long term commitments.
This is fairly bog standard takeover procedure. You really shouldn’t make sweeping claims and long term plans if you don’t even know how many people are in need of homes. That’s how you get mass starvation.
This is fairly bog standard takeover procedure.
This is part of the point people are making; it is entirely too early to be sure of how this will go, and I skeptically view it as entirely more likely that something which has occurred many times (the West co-opting a populist movement) will happen than anything else. This likelihood of this is amplified by said movement being, to my knowledge at the moment, headless.
I do hope this leads to something other than an alphabet agency backed goon in power, but…it seems so unlikely.
Don’t be too surprised when, not if, all that happens is Vucic gets replaced with a pro-US reactionary and nothing else of substance comes of this.
Maybe this is your first time, but there’s a solid few decades of precedent. If I had a penny for every single time western anarchists thought a “leaderless” protest movement was revolutionary but turned out to be tied to the NED/EED, I’d be able to fund an actual revolutionary movement.
I’m going to be honest with you, and I don’t mean this as an insult, I’ve had several conversations with you and each time I end up asking myself if you’re an ML pretending to be an anarchist specifically to confuse people. Because you seem to consistently have the least anarchist takes every time I see you comment on something. You don’t appear to see the good in people, you don’t appear to trust decentralized movements, and any time you bring up theory it’s always an ML writer. Again, no disrespect, just wondering.
I don’t really think it’s useful to describe ourselves based on 20th century movements. I don’t describe myself as an anarchist, nor would I describe myself as an M-L.
The material conditions of 2026 are not the same as 1926, so our strategies and understanding should be based on our current material conditions. We can learn from anarchist and communist writers alike, and we should apply that knowledge based on our current reality instead of dogmatically sticking to past decisions that don’t necessarily make sense under our material conditions.
If you want to sling totally-not-an-insults, every time I’ve interacted with you, I come away from it asking if you have ever even read any anarchist theory whatsoever, not to mention communist theory. I question whether you even read the articles you comment under or the news related to subjects you bring up. A few days ago, you mentioned Rojava aspirationally and I wondered if you perhaps haven’t followed any of the news related to that project in the last year or more. No disrespect, just wondering.
I do not implicitly trust that all people are inherently good, they need to demonstrate that through their words and actions. If they demonstrate the opposite, I will not hesitate to understand that they are not good.
I do not implicitly trust that movements which claim to be decentralized actually are. I watch their behavior, and I become cynical when they do little to distance themselves from the goals of international capital or the liberal world order.
I’ve been burned enough times that I just don’t trust like that.
I really wasn’t trying to insult you. I’ve given you the benefit of the doubt each time we have spoken, which is a courtesy you have not returned. I have read your recommendations, I have made attempts to understand your perspective, and I have been patient with you, despite your smug condescension.
If you have been here from the beginning then I finally understand why none of the members of hexbear seem to know what an anarchist is and why they think we are all illiterate fools.
That is an insult.
You say “members of hexbear” like we are some unified party and opposed to anarchism, when in fact many members are anarchists and other forms of leftist not ML. We don’t generally think anarchists are illiterate fools from what I’ve seen.
Yeah man you don’t get to complain about condescension when you brought it out first
Have a great rest of your day.
deleted by creator
Seems like a self own to call this anarchism
Why?
Because it’s a movement primarily driven by US NGOs, has completely incoherent goals and membership ranging from far right to neo liberals, has no long term plans or strategies for how to enact change in the country, and isn’t explicitly anti-capitalist. It will effectively be co opted because of these things and only further make serbia subordinate to the EU and NATO. If this is a representation of anarchism, it makes anarchism look incredibly bad and essentially a tool of US imperialism.
Edit: https://hexbear.net/post/9889672
Here’s a thread with more info
Genuine question, what do you think a revolution looks like?
your revolution is guided from washington and brussels friend, just because the vanguard isn’t waving a red flag doesn’t mean there isn’t a core group guiding the masses
There have been a lot of revolutions over the last few hundred years, some more successful than others, and they vary wildly based on the material conditions of the moment
Can you explain how participating in bourgeois elections is anarchism
When you go to open a pickle jar do you start with a hammer or do you work your way up to it?
There are two things David Graeber defines as the “high theory” of anarchism.
-
A better world is possible.
-
There is no vanguard.
These people have met both criteria. They believe in a better world, and they are not following a vanguard. I also like to add a third rule:
- “the ends are the means.”
This means there’s no point in killing for peace unless you are out of options.
I like Graeber, and I appreciate you adding some anarchist theory to the discussion, but that is an incredibly broad umbrella. It’s very close to “everything good is anarchism, unless an organization is directing it.”
There is no vanguard.
Participating in bourgeois elections is most certainly not this because they in effect see the politicians as a vanguard. The protests in Bolivia are closer to anarchism than whatever this is. Bolivian campesinos had MAS, but once the party betrayed the interests of the campesinos, the campesinos simply abandoned the party and left it to rot. But even with the fall of MAS, the campesinos are as organized as ever, proving that the party was merely a means to an end, an instrument that can and eventually was unceremoniously discarded once it outlived its usefulness like a worn tool that could no longer do what it was made to do.
If ends are the means, then is participating in a bourgeois government the end?
-
yeah uh i don’t think that’s anarchism over there
while it is funny implication, and it can be anarchist, if the people it appointed/voted for were anarchist themselves. I hope they do do the state power divesting into people shit, and not, you know, 50 corruption probes to sell everything to ze germans.
as for what people are implying, consider reading gelderloos book on violence (available on anarchist library), specifically chapter on color revolutions (leave aside repeated here “this is definitely usa doing”), and read carefully on the protests, following elections and achieved changes.
*i don’t think we can dismiss it just because of vibes, but it will become very obvious in couple of months. the incoherency of the demands is a feature, not a bug, and not to anarchists advantage, who have fairly coherent demands actually, or at least general shape of demands.
Uhh I don’t think they’re going to abolish the bourgeois state form anytime soon
At least Vucic is out of power or something
Respectfully, what am I supposed to take away from this article?
This may be a leaderless revolution, and a decentralized movement,
but with the way this broad coalition proposes to engage with issues in their country, they seem to aiming for a sweeping reformist government than anything necessarily anarchist
I see. May I ask, how familiar are you with modern anarchist movements? Post globalization era.
Such as which? I am just curious what is your criteria for a movement to be anarchist, from a political theory perspective it’s more than simply being leaderless or horizontally structured.
They should make themselves known with success rather than begging MLs to read their stupid pamphlets.
