There’s A Problem with Anarchist Media – by Nerd Teacher

“Perhaps it starts with the fact that these anarchist media organisations are often established as formal businesses and nonprofits (even if they call themselves worker-run collectives). Infuriating though it might be, they have to be established in some way because they’re aware that they have to exist within a capitalist system. If they sell things and generate any kind of revenue, they’re required to submit taxes so that they can continue to provide their products for our “intellectual self-defense,” a term that feels a bit holier-than-thou for what buying a book or listening to a podcast is.

And honestly, I’m not here to say that all of the work they publish and share is meaningless because it isn’t. I have found numerous texts that have shifted my own ideas or helped me build upon or articulate others, and I’ve listened to people who have improved my understanding of different topics or sent me down rabbit holes I never expected to follow.

But it is telling that, though they claim to hold anti-capitalist values, they persist in using capitalist strategies and fail to recognise how that impacts them, the way they organise, and their customers. And that third category is customers because it’s not really comradeship to sell stuff. It can be seen in the ways they talk about their work and what they do, and it can be understood in the gaps they create because they’re too focused on competing in a capitalist system against traditional media (whether they recognise it or not).

It’s a bit perplexing that we’ve bought into this model so thoroughly, they’ve actively chosen to use these strategies. They recognise that traditional media is their competition, but they’re choosing to compete with them using their tools.

Should we be there? Yes. Should it be our primary focus? I really don’t think so..”

https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/nerd-teacher-there-s-a-problem-with-anarchist-media

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