How to fight against and beyond ''diversity of tactics''...

Interview with Denis Rancour who offers a critique of progressive activism as a form of collaboration.

"Then I also came to understand that progressives are basically part of the problem. In other words, that the mainstream activists that show up and that are intent on nonviolent or pacifist tactics only, are actually part of the problem. And this relates to my reading of Ward Churchill who wrote the essay entitled "Pacifism as Pathology" to explain the main problem that we have in north amerikkkan mainstream activism. So when you come to understand the progressives as being individuals who are avoiding risk, who are avoiding effective methods and who are mainly after guilt alleviation and who are basically trying to feel good about themselves by doing a kind of weekend activism to express their opinion, when you come to understand that progressives believe a false model of how societal change occurs. They believe that their opinion is going to matter to power. They actually have that as a fundamental belief of how they are acting in society. So when you come to understand progressives, what they believe, what they're about and why they insist on nonviolence and you come to understand that nonviolence actually protects the state and now I'm referring to a book by Peter Gelderloos. I believe it's entitled "How Nonviolence Protects the State" which was written, largely inspired by Ward Churchill's work, when you come to understand what progressives are about...then I came to the conclusion that we should not try to collaborate with progressives, that they're collaborators with the enemy. And I think we have to see the hierarchical system, as anarchists we have to see the hierarchical system as the enemy, as the root cause of all our problems because the hierarchy takes away our individual...influence, our agency, the possibility for our contributions to community and to the public and political life of our communities and larger organizations. So, when you come to understand, as anarchists do, that hierarchy is the problem and you come to understand that progressives support this hierarchy and only want to make it better, you understand that what progressives do in fact strengthens the very system that is the root cause of all of these social injustices both locally in our communities and around the world as capitalist expansion around the world through corporatism and so on. So, it just became clear to me that this diversity of tactics as a way of collaborating with collaborators is a bad idea. And in fact what we should be doing instead is putting the pressure on these progressives who are collaborators so that they at least have a chance to understand that they're on the wrong side of the battle in terms of justice and in terms of the root causes of these problems. So, I think that as activists who come to understand this, if we're serious about wanting to create more justice and wanting to flatten this hierarchical pyramid, then we need to confront these pacifists and progressives and we need to actually try to have an influence on them by making them aware of our position making them aware by exposing them for the collaborators they are and forget about putting energy into this so called diversity of tactics when it involves trying to convince them that we're okay and that we're on the same side. I believe that fundamentally we're not on the same side. I believe that there's a division between direct action anarchists who understand that you actually have to physically resist with your body, with your voice. You have to put yourself at risk...that confrontation is necessary. There are those who understand that and who are willing to do it. And then there are those who are all about believing, supporting, sustaining and improving the hierarchical system which can only create these injustices. So, once you understand that, you have to come to the conclusion that this whole idea of diversity of tactics is a waste of energy and it's a bad idea and it's counterproductive."

hmmm...I wish I'd encountered this way back when I was tangling with all kinds of progressive lefty queers, academics, feminists, feminists of color, caribbean folk (straight or queer), mamas, and every other last blasted liberal I've encountered who has tried to convince me to tone my politic down, tone my words down, tone my body down, tone my sexuality down, tone my critiques down, tone myself down. I've mostly talked or written about it in terms of class and middle-class gentrification of movements for change. You know what I mean when I say gentrification, right? It's as if once the middle-class move in, everything needs to be brought down a notch. There's unnecessary stress placed on being nice, being proper, being popular, having lots of friends on facebook, being comfortable, being well-respected, not upsetting anyone, not being too over the top. People remind you to not alienate potential allies by coming across sounding too radical or angry. Whether online or real time it's been pretty damned intense and I definitely understood the people who tried to shoe horn me into line as collaborators who I could not trust or work with let alone debate with. Waste of time. Boy could I have used these words years ago. Better late than never, I guess.