Comments Elsewhere

Ryan Booth: I don’t really care about the details of the attacks in Santa Cruz.

That’s your prerogative, but why write about something if you don’t care enough about it to find out whether the things you’re writing are true or false?

Ryan Booth: What’s the other possibility?

As I already explained: “There are some self-identified anarchists who genuinely believe that street riots, and in particular trashing capitalist businesses, are legitimate and productive tactics for social transformation. And other anarchists who do not believe that. Besides that, there are also lots of people loosely associated with radical politics who like to use Anarchist dress and symbols for their radical flair, but know little or nothing about Anarchism as a body of ideas or as a social movement.” The rioters in Santa Cruz might well have been Anarchists; or they might have been kids who think that circle-As are cool and whose understanding of Anarchism comes from Hot Topic and the Sex Pistols. I could tell you which I think is more likely (that it probably was mostly a loosely-affiliate bunch of the smashy-smashy kind Anarchists–the kind whose understanding of Anarchism I disagree with–but I doubt you’d be interested in a long explanation of why. I wrote “possibly” because I do try to limit myself to talking about the things where I know what I’m talking about.

Ryan Booth: think the facts strongly suggest that there was a connection, but again, I have not followed that story in the last two weeks, nor do I have any obligation to do so.

I get it; you’re a busy man, and you no doubt don’t have time to do more than trade in baseless speculation and innuendo. But if you do so, then folks who do actually know something about the situation are going to call you on it, and to point out that you don’t actually know what you’re talking about. No point in getting sniffy about that; it’s just the way it is when you insist on how you have no obligation to know what you’re talking about before you talk about it.