THE HARDEST PART OF ANARCHISM IS STANDING UP TO PEOPLE WHO WANT TO DOMINATE YOU, EVEN WHEN THEY CALL THEMSELVES YOUR COMRADES.
I was involved in anarchist groups for many years, and one of the uncomfortable realities I witnessed was how some people would look the other way when confronted with shady behavior within their own communities. This is something we need to talk about honestly.
Many anarchists struggle to find employment. Some face discrimination because of their political beliefs, while others have criminal records, reputational problems, or other barriers that make it difficult to get hired. I've known anarchists who steal, others who have been blacklisted, and some who have faced serious scrutiny from law enforcement. When people find themselves economically marginalized, organized crime and drug sales can become tempting ways to survive.
But this creates a fundamental contradiction. If we're fighting against exploitation, hierarchy, and domination, we cannot turn around and participate in those same things. A movement that tolerates exploitation within its own ranks eventually destroys its own integrity.
We need to build alternatives that make exploitation less necessary.
That means pursuing cooperative housing, reclaiming abandoned buildings through organized campaigns, developing community gardens and greenhouses, installing solar power, preserving food, sharing resources, and becoming better at dumpster diving and salvaging usable materials. We need to build communities where people can survive without having to depend entirely on employers, landlords, or institutions that may exclude them.
But economic independence is only one part of the problem.
WHAT HAPPENS WHEN PEOPLE TRY TO BUILD A FREE COMMUNITY, ONLY TO DISCOVER THAT SOMEONE ELSE WANTS TO CONTROL IT?
This is something I believe anarchists have struggled with for a long time.
During Occupy, organizers in some encampments faced problems involving drug dealing, intimidation, exploitation, and people attempting to establish informal hierarchies of power. I experienced problems of this general nature in an encampment myself. It's one thing to discuss horizontal organization at a meeting. It's another thing entirely when someone is threatening your neighbors or trying to control the space through fear.
The problem is that organized crime often operates according to completely different principles from a political movement built around voluntary cooperation. Criminal groups may use threats, violence, and intimidation to get what they want. Many activists have little experience dealing with people who are willing to use those tactics.
That creates a serious vulnerability.
The same broader problem appeared in the public controversies surrounding Seattle's Capitol Hill Autonomous Zone, later known as CHOP. The experiment experienced serious disputes over security, authority, and public safety. Its history is complicated, and I don't think we should reduce everything that happened there to a single explanation. But it does raise an important question: HOW DO YOU MAINTAIN A COMMUNITY'S AUTONOMY WHEN THE PEOPLE WITHIN IT DISAGREE ABOUT WHO IS RESPONSIBLE FOR SAFETY, ACCOUNTABILITY, AND ENFORCING COMMUNITY DECISIONS?
Declaring a space autonomous does not automatically give its residents the ability to protect that autonomy.
I'm a longtime martial arts practitioner, and I believe physical training has a role to play here. Learning Muay Thai, mixed martial arts, or other forms of self-defense can help people develop confidence and physical competence. It's encouraging to see activist communities taking self-defense training seriously.
But learning how to fight is not enough.
A community can have excellent fighters and still be vulnerable to intimidation, internal corruption, bad leadership, and organized exploitation. It can even create its own problems if the people responsible for security become an unaccountable authority themselves.
We need to learn how to protect one another without creating a new class of people who get to rule everyone else.
That means collective security, de-escalation, emergency planning, clear accountability, protecting people who report abuse, and having procedures for responding when someone threatens or exploits another resident. It means ensuring that vulnerable people aren't left to confront dangerous individuals alone.
THE OBJECTIVE ISN'T TO CREATE ANARCHIST WARLORDS TO FIGHT CRIMINAL WARLORDS. IT'S TO BUILD COMMUNITIES WHERE NOBODY CAN BECOME A WARLORD IN THE FIRST PLACE.
There is another contradiction we need to address.
Many anarchists support sex workers' rights, bodily autonomy, and the principle that consenting adults should be free to make their own decisions. But we must distinguish consensual sex work from trafficking, coercion, and sexual exploitation.
Some sex workers experience exploitation by criminal networks. Others work independently and have nothing to do with organized crime. We shouldn't stigmatize an entire group because some people within an industry exploit others.
The real issue is whether people have the freedom to make their own choices or whether someone is using threats, manipulation, or violence to take that freedom away.
If somebody is being forced into prostitution, threatened into selling drugs, or prevented from leaving an abusive situation, defending their autonomy means helping them escape that coercion. It doesn't mean standing aside in the name of respecting individual choice.
And this brings me to what might be the most difficult part of the entire discussion.
ANARCHISTS HAVE TO BE WILLING TO CONFRONT EXPLOITATION WITHIN THEIR OWN MOVEMENT.
It's relatively easy to criticize capitalism, the state, corporations, and the police. It's much harder to confront somebody who shares your political beliefs, attends your meetings, lives in your encampment, or calls you their comrade.
We can become so concerned about creating divisions, appearing judgmental, or reproducing the punitive systems we oppose that we hesitate to establish boundaries.
But solidarity cannot mean unconditional protection for people who abuse others.
If someone is involved in trafficking, violent coercion, or organized exploitation, the community needs to confront that conduct. Nobody should be able to use anarchist principles as a shield against accountability or intimidate victims into silence.
That means establishing clear community standards, protecting people who report abuse, refusing to cover up exploitation, and taking steps to remove dangerous individuals from positions where they can harm others. Serious crimes should be addressed through appropriate protective measures and lawful channels, with the safety of victims taking priority.
And yes, sometimes it means telling somebody you consider a comrade that their behavior is incompatible with the community you're trying to build.
That is not easy. Confronting a violent or coercive person can put you at risk. That's precisely why communities need strong support networks and collective procedures rather than expecting isolated individuals to solve these problems alone.
If we cannot hold ourselves accountable, what exactly are we offering society as an alternative?
Anarchism is supposed to challenge domination, not create new forms of it. If we allow pimps, traffickers, violent drug dealers, or other exploitative individuals to control our spaces, then we have failed at something fundamental.
We cannot build a free society by allowing the most dangerous people in the room to dictate the rules.
Ultimately, the real work of anarchism is not simply opposing existing institutions. It is building communities where people can survive without exploitation, organize without domination, and protect one another without reproducing the same systems of coercion they set out to abolish.
That requires economic independence, mutual aid, practical skills, collective preparedness, and the courage to confront abuses of power, even when the people responsible are our own friends.
FREEDOM DOES NOT MEAN GIVING EVERYONE THE RIGHT TO DOMINATE EVERYONE ELSE.
IT MEANS BUILDING A SOCIETY WHERE NOBODY HAS THE POWER TO TAKE ANOTHER PERSON'S FREEDOM AWAY WITHOUT CONSEQUENCES.
And if we aren't willing to stand up to exploitation within our own movement, then we need to ask ourselves a very uncomfortable question:
ARE WE ACTUALLY BUILDING AN ALTERNATIVE TO DOMINATION, OR ARE WE JUST CHANGING WHO GETS TO DOMINATE?
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