the anti-authoritarian's authority

You know, I've debated saying a thing or three about this whole Chris Hedges-David Graeber imbroglio, but honestly, I'm just so exhausted. Every time I start trying to write about it, I end up lying down for awhile. Hopefully sooner or later I'll get something out.

Here's one quick thing, though: I wish David Graeber would stop stamping around and announcing how very integral he was in starting the Occupy movement. I'm sure that's true. Good for him. But an anarchist, making an explicit plea against the movement police, in the context of an anti-authoritarian movement... well, there's better ways he could spend his energy than broadly waving at his own authority. It's not just that piece, either. There's such a fussiness to his discussion of his own influence. It's pregnant with a desire to say what he knows better than to say: that he has some sort of ownership over it all.

I'm not an anarchist, and this isn't personally my issue. I don't doubt for a second how important Graeber was to starting Occupy. And I have long found the denial of leadership to be a deeply self-destruction impulse within leftist movements. (The maddest anyone has ever been at me, at an organizing movement, was when I told someone he was a leader. That he plainly was didn't moderate his reaction.) If Graeber wants to assert leadership, he should just do it. Having it both ways, by speaking about the status that gives him authority without speaking in the vocabulary of authority, guarantees that the conversation proceed in an unhealthy manner.

Update: Yeah, I need to elaborate some. Give me today to get something put together.