Radicals Will Devour Themselves Before They Devour The State

We are living through overlapping crises. In moments like this, movements fracture easily. Fear sharpens. Lines harden. And too often, the energy that could be directed towards state violence is directed inward at each other. Before we dismantle systems of control around us, we have to look honestly at how it lives inside of us, and ask what new world do we want to birth? 

Start With Shooting the Cop in Your Head.

Before we talk about revolution, we have to talk about the internal systems we carry inside our bodies. After all, revolutions begin in your head before they can take action.
The cop in your head is not a person, it is a mindset that has been hammered into us since birth. It is the voice that demands punishment instead of repair. It is the reflex to exile instead of transform. It is the belief that safety comes from control rather than relationship. This pattern exists in other elements of our individual upbringing including family dynamics, religion, and school. 

Many radical spaces say they want liberation, community and care- yet recreate surveillance, divisive rhetoric, language policing, performance to virtue signal, hierarchy, and fear internally. People than watch their language constantly. They fear making mistakes. They are evaluated for ideological perfection instead of their actions towards community care and not supported in growth. The result is not freedom, it is exhaustion, silence, fragmentation and makes a lot of people leave the space.
Accountability is important and language can cause harm. But how groups handle these things has become full of anger, poor communication skills, critical thinking, and requires people to prove they’re  “pure”. 

We are living in a time (like we always have) when communities face real threats but could get increasingly worse: violence, displacement, ecological collapse, and systemic oppression. And yet, instead of building deep skill and cohesion, many spaces that claim to be anarchist, or leftist-collapse into internal policing. Who said the wrong thing? Who isn’t radical enough? Who has the wrong past? 

People wait in the shadows for the next person to fail their standards to call them out, cancel them- which is nothing more than cult/ cop like behavior. 

When movements become obsessed with moral purity, they become disconnected from material survival and collective care. The revolution becomes an aesthetic instead of a practice.

The first step toward liberation is dismantling the internal structures that replicate carceral logic. That means examining our own impulses toward punishment, exclusion, and control — especially when we claim to be building something different.

Critical Thinking Questions:

When you feel unsafe or uncomfortable in a space, do you reach for punishment or conversation first?

What does accountability look like without exile?

How has fear shaped your political relationships?

Would you still feed a houseless person with different ideals, or background from you? 

The Seduction of Purity Politics

Purity politics promises clarity and false control in a world that feels chaotic. It promises that if we just remove the “wrong people,” the movement will be safe and strong. It offers a simple world divided into heroes and villains. But liberation is not simple, and neither are people.

Purity politics can become a form of internal policing rooted in white supremacy culture — ranking people, creating unspoken hierarchies, and rewarding those who perform the most radical identity or language. It can replicate carceral thinking by treating mistakes as crimes and growth as impossible.

How many people have left activist spaces because they were afraid to speak? Because they were publicly shamed instead of mentored? Because they were treated as disposable rather than as part of a collective learning process?

I’ve had so many conversations with people who have left these spaces who did activism work for over 20 yrs and finally left over language policing and tension within the spaces. The hypocrisy is loud, and the call might be coming from inside the house. I have also had conversations with folks who are now entering more leftist spaces who feel sad, and hopeless that even in those spaces there can’t be some form of shared vision for a better world without policing and attacking each other. When movements prioritize ideological perfection over shared goals, they shrink. They become echo chambers where disagreement is treated as betrayal. Instead of building power against the common enemy, they collapse inward.

This doesn’t mean safety concerns aren’t real — they are. But safety built on exclusion alone is fragile. Safety built on accountability, skill, action, and relationship is resilient, and we can also just agree to disagree on some things too. We can also allow for mistakes, and learn how to truly move forward without the “ideal” solution. 

A huge critique I have is that i see this mostly in white radical spaces.  I believe accountability and correction should be guided first by those who experience the greatest impact from oppressive systems. When Black, Brown, and Indigenous people, and others living at the sharp edge of harm — are centered in leadership, spaces become more grounded in lived reality rather than theory or comfort. The bottom line? Black, brown and indigenous people need to be the ones leading and creating the rules. 

Critical Thinking Questions:

What skills does your community need right now to survive and protect each other?

What structures could allow people to share skills while remaining accountable

What would it look like to value growth over ideological background checks?

The Tribal Brain, Fear, and the Urge to Exile

There is also a deeper layer to these dynamics that is worth examining through an anthropological lens. Humans evolved in small survival based groups where cohesion, shared norms, and trust were necessary for survival. In early societies, identifying who belonged, and who might threaten the group, was not abstract ideology. It was about food, safety, and protection from real danger. Communities developed ways to signal belonging through language, behavior, and shared moral codes. When stress increased, boundaries tightened. Fear often led to shaming or exile as a way to maintain group stability.

That evolutionary wiring still lives inside our nervous systems. When movements experience repression, instability, burnout, or collective trauma, people may unconsciously revert to ancient survival responses: scanning for ideological threats, enforcing rigid language norms, and shrinking the circle of belonging in an attempt to feel safe.

Understanding this is not an excuse for harm or oppressive behavior. Accountability and boundaries remain necessary. But it does help explain why fear can so easily reshape communities into smaller and smaller circles.

Cohesion Over Purity

Revolutionary movements need cohesion, not uniformity. Cohesion means shared goals, mutual trust, and a willingness to learn together — even when people come from different backgrounds or carry complicated histories.

Many communities today are rejecting valuable skills because of ideological discomfort. Medical training, wilderness survival, trauma response, and emergency care are all skills often learned in institutions people critique (for good reasons)  — including the military. The question is not where someone learned a skill, but how they use it now and whether they are accountable to community values, and have done the inner work. 

Communities facing crises need people who know how to stop bleeding, stabilize trauma wounds, build infrastructure, and respond to emergencies. Refusing life‑saving knowledge because of a person’s past affiliation can leave communities vulnerable. However I also understand there are people who don't want to share spaces with veterans and I honor those feelings too.  Having someone who was part of the imperialism machine is hard to accept, generally in these circumstances community asks for the veteran to denounce their relationship, their harm they caused, and prove with action that they have shared community values. 

Transformation is possible. People change. Revolutionary work has always involved people leaving oppressive systems and choosing to align with liberation movements. The goal is not perfection — it is commitment and accountability. No one is born an anarchist, and no one is born fully formed. We don't have to care how they identify - anarchist, marxist etc. We can all just have cohesion within what we are working towards. But maybe that’s part of the problem, we don’t know what we’re working towards? So I ask, What is the world we want to build and how do we get there? 

Lessons From Rojava and Revolutionary Movements

In Rojava, organizing is built through communes, assemblies, and collective chambers that prioritize shared decision‑making. Women are at the center, and women’s liberation is at the forefront. People from different walks of life contribute to the movement — including individuals with previous military experience when they commit to the revolutionary vision and community accountability.

The focus is not on past purity but on present action. Skills are integrated into collective structures. People are mentored into new ways of relating to power and community.

History offers similar examples. Spanish anarchist militias worked with former soldiers who chose to fight alongside revolutionary communities. Anti‑colonial struggles worldwide included defectors from state forces who redirected their training toward liberation. Autonomous movements have often relied on people who once participated in systems they later rejected.

These movements understood something essential: survival requires cooperation across differences.

Critical Thinking Questions:

What can we learn from movements that prioritized cohesion over purity?

How do we create systems where skills serve the collective rather than reinforce hierarchy?

How do we hold people accountable while allowing space for change?

When Radical Spaces Mirror Authoritarianism

Some radical spaces begin to resemble the systems they oppose — rigid ideology, intolerance of dissent, patriarchy, domination, and fear of disagreement. Language becomes a weapon. Mistakes become evidence of moral failure. People compete for status through performative radicalism (and might I add that this usually happens in predominantly white groups). 

This can create divisive dynamics: insiders and outsiders, leaders who claim moral authority, and communities that discourage critical individual thought. Instead of liberation, members experience anxiety and burnout.

If our spaces cannot tolerate complexity or disagreement, we risk becoming authoritarian ourselves. Liberation requires curiosity, humility, and a willingness to be wrong. It requires learning how to disagree without dehumanizing one another, or narrowly placing them under a microscope for one or a few decisions they made in their life. 

Safety is not the absence of difference, it is the presence of trust, actions, and accountability.

Liberation is not built by isolated experts, but by interconnected communities learning together.

Critical Thinking Questions:

When have you seen movements prioritize control over curiosity?

How do we challenge ideas without attacking people?

What does genuine collective safety feel like in your body?

Have you ever felt afraid to ask questions in a radical space?

What distinguishes accountability from authoritarian control?

How can communities encourage disagreement without fragmentation?

Moving Forward: Liberation Begins Within

Revolution is not built through perfect people. It is built through collective practice, skill-sharing, and the willingness to transform together. Communities grow stronger when they value accountability, curiosity, and shared purpose over ideological perfection and embrace differences. 

We must learn to hold contradictions: people who are learning, communities that are growing, movements that are imperfect but alive. We must challenge harm while also leaving room for transformation. We must build systems that emphasize repair, education, and responsibility rather than exile and fear.

Start by dismantling the internal cop — the reflex to punish, control, and dominate. Replace it with relationship, strategy, and compassion grounded in material survival. Build communities where people can evolve, contribute, and learn.

Ask yourself:
Are you building liberation ,or building a hierarchy of purity?
Are you strengthening collective capacity or skills — or shrinking your community through fear?
Are you creating spaces where people grow — or spaces where they are constantly evaluated?

Because liberation is not about recreating systems of punishment in new language. It is about dismantling those systems inside ourselves and in the world around us.

Herbalism, Mutual Aid & Collective Skill Sharing

Community skill sharing, from herbal medicine to emergency response — is part of decentralized resilience. Knowledge must move horizontally through communities, not remain locked behind institutions or hierarchy.

Herbalism teaches relationships: with land, plants, people, and ecosystems. Mutual aid teaches cooperation. Medic training teaches preparedness. When communities share knowledge across backgrounds and experiences, they build capacity to care for each other during crisis.

Excluding people who bring valuable skills because of rigid ideological boundaries can weaken collective survival. Instead, communities can create agreements rooted in shared values, anti-oppression practices, and mutual accountability.

Critical Thinking Questions:

How can skill-sharing embody anti-authoritarian principles?

What agreements help maintain safety during training spaces?

How does land-based knowledge strengthen collective resilience?

Critique of Leftist/Punk/Anarchist Circles

I have lived inside anarchist, punk, and leftist communities for over 20 years, I have squatted, hopped trains, and lived outside conventional systems for years. I believe in horizontal care, mutual aid, and radical inclusion—but I have also witnessed another reality:

Echo chambers: Ideas circulate within small bubbles, with limited input from outside experiences.

Exclusion over action: Purity politics and ideological gatekeeping often take precedence over actual help.

Limited outreach: Many so-called “communities” fail to show up for people beyond their immediate social circles, even when those people are in crisis.

And I sure as hell didn’t escape a cult of religious fanatics growing up to join liberation spaces that are creating the same power dynamics. We all need our “people,” yes—but community is more than social comfort or affirmation, it’s not a rainbow utopia or a monolith of thinking. True liberation and mutual aid require showing up for people who are not in your immediate bubble, even when they challenge your ideology or worldview. I have also seen more “liberal” folks do more for their community than said groups above. 

We can all maybe agree that leftist groups have a hard time with liberals joining movements and rightfully so (I could write a whole article on why, maybe some other time) but we also need to see the flaws within all spaces to have a better understanding of each other and be prepared to possibly merge under survival necessity. We can take Minneapolis for example right now, people from all backgrounds have come together under one shared goal. When shit really hits the fan I wonder if the constant surveillance would even happen. It makes me wonder if the policing also comes from a place of privilege and comfort. I believe this is also a class issue. 

There is a dynamic where people who are relatively insulated from material danger can:

center language correctness as a form of control or safety

rely on social capital rather than lived crisis experience

treat politics as identity instead of practice

But there’s also nuance:

some people pushing for accountability are responding to real harm they’ve experienced

Others genuinely fear militarism or state violence and are reacting from trauma, and valid reasons, not just comfort, and of course all concerns should be heard. 

Critical thinking questions:

Are our communities inclusive by design or by convenience?

When we police ideology over practice, who gets left behind?

How do we balance “protecting our spaces” with building networks that actually care for the vulnerable?

At some point, we have to ask: when does a “core group of shared values” cross the line into something more cult-like? If a space cannot tolerate different thoughts, complicated pasts, varied skills, or multiple ideological frameworks working toward shared goals, then what is actually holding that group together?

When belonging is contingent on ideological sameness, constant self-policing, and fear of social exile, people begin to act out of survival rather than solidarity. They enforce rules without clear process or consent. That is not collective care, it is social control, and I understand the yearning for that in these moments, but that doesn't mean it should be directed in this way. 

And this is where things get uncomfortable: those dynamics start to resemble the very systems we claim to oppose. The far right and policing institutions also rely on rigid boundaries, moral certainty, punishment, and an “us versus them” framework. The difference is supposed to be the values, but when the tactics mirror authoritarianism, the distinction begins to erode.

This does not mean that values don’t matter. They do. Anti-oppression (in all facets) consent, accountability, and safety are essential. But values without room for disagreement, growth, and transformation become dogma. And dogma doesn’t build liberation, it builds compliance.

So where is the line?

Maybe the line is this:
When questioning becomes betrayal
When past harm outweighs present accountability
When language matters more than material action
When people are expelled rather than engaged

Everything feels blurry right now because many movements are operating under real pressure, surveillance, repression, burnout, grief. In those conditions, fear often masquerades as righteousness. Control feels like safety. Purity feels like protection.

But if our movements require people to critically think, speak, and live exactly the same way to belong, then we are not building a liberated future, we are rehearsing another version of domination. And we are not inviting  more people into movements that could free us all possibly. 

The question is not whether we share values.
 The question is how we live them. Action, Action, Action! And if we do fuck up how we take concern from others and listen, and try to do better next time. The other question is when someone makes a mistake, how do we hold that person? Check in? Compassion? Conversations? 

Do our values invite people into deeper responsibility, or scare them into silence?
Do they expand collective capacity, or shrink it?
Do they move us closer to dismantling the state, or keep us busy policing one another instead? 

Maybe next time you have the urge to call someone out, sit with them, and maybe take that anger to fight the state instead, or create mutual aid, or join one. 

Maybe we should ask whether our methods actually match our dreams? What new world do you want to build? Because I don't want to re -create the power struggles that have left us all oppressed, and exhausted. Because liberation should feel challenging — but it should not feel like living under watch.

 

 

 

*I do want to say that I have also met so many amazing comrades in these spaces, and that I don't want to stereotype, or cause blanket statements. My goal is to provide a provoking thought piece, so we can create a better world together. Im always happy to hear feedback, and grow. I am humble enough to know that I fuck up, and will due to being human. Thank you to those who see the good intentions and step forward with curiosity and engagement. 

In Solidarity- Alex