A caller on Anarchy Radio last week mentioned something about some folks on the progressive liberal left calling the green anarchist/anarcho-primitivist view a perspective coming from privilege.
I have heard this accusation before leveled against anarchists in general, and it irritates me because there is a kernel—maybe a bit more than just a kernel—of truth to it. If you look at the demographic breakdown, the folks who call themselves anarchists or primitivists (and perhaps to a lesser extent the folks who call themselves green anarchists) are, statistically speaking, overwhelmingly white and overwhelmingly male.
However, those hurling the privilege accusation don’t seem to realize that that very fact actually makes the anarchist point.
I am a white male. And my white male privilege means that I have a degree of freedom of expression and affiliation, and the opportunities to explore and choose my politics, that a person of color or a woman or a trans person might not have. I’m more likely to be listened to and less likely to suffer any serious repercussions when I speak my mind.
I’m a white male, and I’m an anarchist: what are you going to do about it?
If I was a person of color, or a woman, or trans—or god forbid all three!—I would have far more immediate and pressing concerns to deal with related to racism or sexism or transphobia. And the burden of racism or sexism or transphobia would make it less likely that I would want to make myself even more of a target by calling myself an anarchist.
The very existence of my white male privilege makes the anarchist point exactly. As an anarchist, I’m saying that there shouldn’t be privilege of any kind. Inequities based on race or sex or sexual orientation or gender identification are systemic, they are baked into the system, a system that is based on exploitation and oppression, a system that requires social inequality—inequities in power and the unequal distribution of access to resources are the fuel that drives the consumer capitalist machine.
And as a primitivist, I’m saying that once you remove inequities in power and access, the system will grind to a halt, and people—people of every kind—will be free to live authentically human lives.
