From paranoid evaluation to self-inflicted burnouts Image: Scott H. Indeed, if a group develops a rigid culture and uses a set scale of values to judge everyone’s behaviour, then it creates an oppressive atmosphere that spares absolutely nobody. This is key to understanding and integrating a number of seemingly unrelated problems in the militant world. In subtle and overt ways, they will be attacked, mocked, and excluded for getting it wrong, even though these people are often the ones that “good politics” is supposed to support. Whether it is the performance of anti-oppressive language, revolutionary fervour…those who are unfamiliar with the expectations…are doomed from the start unless they “catch up” and conform. The newcomer is immediately placed in a position of debt: owing dedication, self-sacrifice, and correct analysis that must be continuously proved. When a person attempts to integrate in a group whose culture is rigid and implicit, the newcomer faces a dilemma: either they are placed under the authority of more experienced members of the group, (which can lead to abuses of authority or even humiliation), or they can reject the status of “newcomer”, preventing them from integrating in the group. I was not the only one to feel this way! Not only that, but Bergman and Montgomery found the courage to put words to this phenomenon in an attempt to understand it better. I felt relief when I read these words for the first time. In some it is the capacity to have participated in a lot of projects…In every case, there is a tendency for one milieu to dismiss the commitments and values of the others and to expose their inadequacies.
In others, it is the capacity for anti-oppressive analysis, avoidance of oppressive statements, and the calling out of those who make them. In some milieus, the currency of good politics is a stated (or demonstrated) willingness for direct action, riots, property destruction, and clashes with police. What is rigid radicalism?Īlthough I have experienced rigid radicalism myself several times, I was only able to put a word on it thanks to the book Joyful Militancy, written by two Canadian anarchists, Carla Bergman and Nick Montgomery. Firstly, to offer a better understanding of rigid radicalism and secondly, to shed light on joyful militancy, a form of engagement free of such radicalism. This is a pervasive phenomenon affecting civil society in many different ways and remains difficult to define and to overcome. If you answer yes to any one of these questions, it is likely you are encountering rigid radicalism. Have you been lectured by people who say you don’t know anything about social change, your actions are useless, and you aren’t giving enough time to the cause?.Have you resigned from an organisation because a small number of people imposed their ideas on others and it was too difficult to stay?.Have you ever decided not to publish something on social media to avoid confrontation by activists?.
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