i find it really bizarre when people bring up social categories that they don’t even belong to as an example of how certain tactics are alienating or incomprehensible or only capable of being performed by a select few people.
like when you’re a white person saying “people of color and migrants can’t participate in riots/black blocs/militant street action” do you understand how you’re actually contributing to a narrative of disempowerment? are you ignorant of the countless times people of color have engaged in riots and militant actions in the United States, and how many migrants in European countries (and the U.S., maybe not recently) have done the same? to what extent are you consciously using the image of some oppressed group for the sake of backing up your argument? this isn’t the same as saying “people of color and migrants face different issues and consequences when it comes to engaging in illegal action”. there is an obvious difference.
likewise with saying shit like “what use is smashing windows to a minimum-wage employee or a single mother on welfare, how are they going to look at that and find anarchism appealing” or some shit like that. you don’t fucking know the motivations of every person in your victimized group du jour. i know single mothers on food stamps who would love to see some yuppie business district getting trashed and i know plenty of minimum-wage employees who want to burn down their workplaces. there are places where anarchist ideas and tactics have been articulated to such an extent that people immediately understand the motivations of some random kid trying to burn down a bank. there are places where multi-generational histories of radicalism exist. appealing to material conditions isn’t the only way to appeal to people.
which of course leads to the question of whether “the mass appeal of anarchism” is even the key feature of an anarchist success. i wouldn’t say so.
and anyway i don’t even see how members of an oppressed group can claim to speak on behalf of the identity as a whole. individual experience and applying analysis are one thing but i still find it fucking absurd when somebody says “x group cannot y action” no matter who it is.
that’s the end of my inarticulate rant i guess.