A pretty good review of Anarchy Alive! has appeared in the online London Book Review. Overall the reviewer seems to have liked it:
Gordon does a good job of introducing the movement that he calls ‘anarchism reloaded’, providing a readable and succinct account of the key ideas, features and issues that it is engaged in. He examines some of the issues within this movement, describing the internal tensions and disputes that are taking place within it. For those wanting to understand this movement this is a good place to start. For those who are already familiar with the territory there is plenty of polemic too.
The objections, it seems, are less to my own writing as to anarchism as such, and especially to the criticisms of technology and rationality associated with primitivism and postanarchism.
Just got back from teaching my first class for the new term, which went pretty well – though introduction classes are always less work. This course on global environmental politics is going to be a challenge – 3 hours every week to fill with observations and analysis of some of the driest material you could imagine – treaties, negotiations, regime effectivity…probably the most mainstream stuff I’ve ever taught. Of course I’m still bringing in a critique of the root causes of environmental degradation, and discussing north-south relations, social movements and alternatives. Actually why am I complaining? I could imagine much worse lines of work than mine…
Anarchy Alive! recently received mention, of all places, in the weekly newspaper of the Israeli community in Santiago, Chile, La Palabra Israelita. It appears towards the end of a piece by Joanna Wurman when she talks about Jewish anarchism past and present, mentioning Dan Sierasdky of Orthodox Anarchist as well as
Uri Gordon, un periodista que ha recorrido las grandes capitales europeas dando charlas y protestando contra el autoritarismo. Gordon es además autor del bestseller «Anarchy Alive: Anti-Authoritarian Politics from Practice to Theory» aun sin título en castellano.
“bestseller”? Blimey! not yet, anyway…
On the more intense side, the bulk of the piece relates to the Fuerzas Destructivas y Autónomas León Czolgosz, which I haven’t heard of before but according to Wurman’s account seem to be a pretty full-on bombing outfit active in Chile at the moment, having taken responsibility for the attack on the the British embassy in Santiago, as well as two banks, the Intelligence Agency headquarters, a cathedral and a Socialist Youth office.
Not sure if these kids actually hurt anyone or just damaged buildings. But the more worrying piece is that in their communique following the embassy attack they cited British support for Israel as a primary motivation and called for the “absolute and immediate disappearance of the state of Israel, and later of all states”.
This is a choice of phrasing that I am very uncomfortable with. What makes Israel more important to single out as a state to be destroyed than the US, Britain, or Chile for that matter? Shouldn’t these comrades call, first of all, for the disappearance of the state that they live in, rather than enacting a double-proxy attack, on a British embassy in the name of the Palestinian cause? What effect could such an indirect attack bring about anyway? Do I smell Judeophobic bias or am I just experiencing self-defensive Zionist recidivism? Hrumph!
