An interesting rebuttal to the last point was made on his youtube page by a person named mm-rj3vo. Figured I’d include it here:

You said in the article that…

“Anarchism cannot shield us from social dynamics of rumour, bias, or mob mentality. Those come with being human.”

But I disagree, as a matter of education on critical thinking, anarchism is perfectly capable of giving us tools to understand social structures, biases, and mob mentality such that we are capable of avoiding them. To your point, of course, we can only do so to varying degrees of success and failure.

Something I’ve dubbed “informational anarchism”.

Informational anarchism is when you treat knowledge, and lies, as power, or when you understand them as motivators for people’s actions. A simple conversion to see the implications of, upon considering “What does someone believe, and how will it affect their actions?”

I’d actually love to have a longer conversation on that aspect as it relates to things like misinformation, personal responsibility for the informational safety of others, etc.

Suffice it so say, I hear the sentiment behind the sentence, and agree with certain aspects of it, but I think it’s missing some vital approaches to that thing I’ve dubbed “informational anarchism”, which I’m sure some other anarchist has probably already expounded upon at some point in the past.

One can train one’s self to enter an introspective state when they hear someone say something seemingly spurious, to recognize when a rumor has been uttered, to use critical thinking and skepticism to protect themselves and other from the spread of misinformation and I truly believe that these strategies are forms of “informational anarchism”.

Anarchism is about self governing. Another way to put it is that it is about self discipline, not the rigid kind, but the exact opposite.

A discipline of openness, a discipline of fair critique of one’s own conceptions, and those of others. A discipline of kindness and gentleness, and recognizing when one’s self or others have failed to do so.

I see your point, though, in that such things as bias and rumor and mob mentality are easy to fall into.

But there are always a miriad of diverse ways to prevent those thought traps