Anarchist Violence: Myth and memory

With Matthew Adams & Mike Finn

Anarchism is at the centre of contemporary news coverage; US President Donald Trump has branded states opposed to him ‘anarchist jurisdictions’, whilst UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson has accused the Leader of the Opposition Keir Starmer of being in hock to ‘anarchist union bosses’, simultaneously decrying environmental protestors Extinction Rebellion (XR) as ‘left-wing anarchists’. Central to these characterisations is the spectre of anarchism-as-violence; the rhetorical construction of anarchism-as-violence which has bedevilled anarchism since the era of propaganda of the deed in the 1890s, here mobilised as part of a right-wing, populist, ‘culture war’ against left-wing and progressive politics in general, rather than anarchism in particular.