A year before Agency became the PR project that it is today, our founding members came together in 2012 to strategize about how to address the mischaracterization of anarchists and anarchist ideas prevalent in the media and social movement discourse.
Two writers, Chris Hedges and Rebecca Solnit, had recently published misinformed, disparaging attacks on anarchists that, as David Graeber said in an open letter to Hedges at the time, were “not only factually inaccurate, [but] quite literally dangerous. This is the sort of misinformation that really can get people killed.”
Some of us worked on a response with CrimethInc., The Violence of Legitimacy, the Illegitimacy of Violence. We also organized a public discussion to give Chris Hedges the benefit of the doubt, hoping that he might be open to recognizing how he was wrong, or at the very least, we could formally refute his slander of anarchists in the public record.
We are revisiting this event now because Chris Hedges has published an article,“We Are All Antifa Now”. Ostensibly written to denounce the Trump administration’s authoritarian move to label antifa a terrorist organization, the article reads less like a defense of dissent and a call for solidarity, and more like a convenient opportunity for him to re-air his deep-seated hostility toward anarchists, particularly those associated with antifa and Black Bloc tactics.
Sadly, what could be a chance to hold himself accountable for the damage he has caused by sowing division within social movements, this latest screed is instead preoccupied with Hedges reminding his audience just how much he loathes anarchists — to the point that his central argument is as if he said: “Even I, who shares many of Trump’s mischaracterizations of antifa and has helped shape them, understands calling them terrorists is dangerous, and I’ve called them every other name in the book!” That’s not solidarity, it’s opportunism.
Hedges uses this political moment not to push back against state repression, but to reposition himself as the “reasonable” critic; the one who disapproves of antifa just enough to be taken seriously by liberals and law-and-order types, but who still opposes Trump for going a step too far.
This rhetorical posture lends legitimacy to the state’s narrative. It reinforces the idea that anarchists, as “bad protestors,” are the source of chaos and instability, rather than the people who are most consistently resisting white supremacy, capitalism, and fascism. In Hedges’ framing, anarchists aren’t comrades in the struggle, they’re convenient scapegoats, rhetorical phantoms summoned to represent everything he fears about decentralized, bottom-up resistance.
At one point, Hedges brings up the open letter that David Graeber wrote to him in 2012, a thoughtful, public critique of Hedges’ mischaracterizations of anarchists during the Occupy movement. Hedges claims to respect Graeber’s work, but clearly not enough to meaningfully engage with or internalize the points Graeber made. More than a decade later, Hedges is still writing about anarchists in ways that flatten our ideas, ignore our real contributions, and expose anyone who supports organized antifascism and anti-authoritarian politics to greater public misunderstanding and even state violence.
If Hedges truly respected Graeber, who was a comrade of ours, he would stop repeating narratives that help criminalize the very people fighting against authoritarianism. Instead, he continues to speak about anarchists in ways that fuel the same demonization Trump is actively weaponizing.
Hedges’ continued portrayal of anarchists as reckless, hypermasculine, and ideologically rigid isn’t just inaccurate, it’s dishonest. It ignores the extensive history of anarchist organizing grounded in mutual aid, community defense, antifascist research, and decentralized action. It reduces complex and strategic tactics like the Black Bloc to nihilistic tantrums. And most importantly, it internalizes the logic of the state, that the movement is to blame for the repression it receives. It’s the same logic that blamed participants in the civil rights movement for “provoking” police dogs and firehoses.
The state doesn’t need anarchists to justify repression. It has always fabricated enemies when convenient. Today it’s antifa. Tomorrow it could be union organizers, pipeline protesters, or striking teachers. Anarchists are simply the latest convenient specters, political scapegoats used to scare the public into submission. Hedges’ piece, far from resisting that framing, reinforces it.
As long as he continues to perpetuate falsehoods and slander about anarchists, Hedges’ work, however disguised, only serves the state. Hedges may claim to oppose Trump’s escalation, but by obsessively repeating his scorn for anarchists, he plays into the very narrative he claims to be condemning.
A Response to “We Are All Antifa Now” by Chris Hedges, from Anarchists Who’ve Tried to Reason with Him Before
A year before Agency became the PR project that it is today, our founding members came together in 2012 to strategize about how to address the mischaracterization of anarchists and anarchist ideas prevalent in the media and social movement discourse.
Two writers, Chris Hedges and Rebecca Solnit, had recently published misinformed, disparaging attacks on anarchists that, as David Graeber said in an open letter to Hedges at the time, were “not only factually inaccurate, [but] quite literally dangerous. This is the sort of misinformation that really can get people killed.”
Some of us worked on a response with CrimethInc., The Violence of Legitimacy, the Illegitimacy of Violence. We also organized a public discussion to give Chris Hedges the benefit of the doubt, hoping that he might be open to recognizing how he was wrong, or at the very least, we could formally refute his slander of anarchists in the public record.
We are revisiting this event now because Chris Hedges has published an article,“We Are All Antifa Now”. Ostensibly written to denounce the Trump administration’s authoritarian move to label antifa a terrorist organization, the article reads less like a defense of dissent and a call for solidarity, and more like a convenient opportunity for him to re-air his deep-seated hostility toward anarchists, particularly those associated with antifa and Black Bloc tactics.
Sadly, what could be a chance to hold himself accountable for the damage he has caused by sowing division within social movements, this latest screed is instead preoccupied with Hedges reminding his audience just how much he loathes anarchists — to the point that his central argument is as if he said: “Even I, who shares many of Trump’s mischaracterizations of antifa and has helped shape them, understands calling them terrorists is dangerous, and I’ve called them every other name in the book!” That’s not solidarity, it’s opportunism.
Hedges uses this political moment not to push back against state repression, but to reposition himself as the “reasonable” critic; the one who disapproves of antifa just enough to be taken seriously by liberals and law-and-order types, but who still opposes Trump for going a step too far.
This rhetorical posture lends legitimacy to the state’s narrative. It reinforces the idea that anarchists, as “bad protestors,” are the source of chaos and instability, rather than the people who are most consistently resisting white supremacy, capitalism, and fascism. In Hedges’ framing, anarchists aren’t comrades in the struggle, they’re convenient scapegoats, rhetorical phantoms summoned to represent everything he fears about decentralized, bottom-up resistance.
At one point, Hedges brings up the open letter that David Graeber wrote to him in 2012, a thoughtful, public critique of Hedges’ mischaracterizations of anarchists during the Occupy movement. Hedges claims to respect Graeber’s work, but clearly not enough to meaningfully engage with or internalize the points Graeber made. More than a decade later, Hedges is still writing about anarchists in ways that flatten our ideas, ignore our real contributions, and expose anyone who supports organized antifascism and anti-authoritarian politics to greater public misunderstanding and even state violence.
If Hedges truly respected Graeber, who was a comrade of ours, he would stop repeating narratives that help criminalize the very people fighting against authoritarianism. Instead, he continues to speak about anarchists in ways that fuel the same demonization Trump is actively weaponizing.
Hedges’ continued portrayal of anarchists as reckless, hypermasculine, and ideologically rigid isn’t just inaccurate, it’s dishonest. It ignores the extensive history of anarchist organizing grounded in mutual aid, community defense, antifascist research, and decentralized action. It reduces complex and strategic tactics like the Black Bloc to nihilistic tantrums. And most importantly, it internalizes the logic of the state, that the movement is to blame for the repression it receives. It’s the same logic that blamed participants in the civil rights movement for “provoking” police dogs and firehoses.
The state doesn’t need anarchists to justify repression. It has always fabricated enemies when convenient. Today it’s antifa. Tomorrow it could be union organizers, pipeline protesters, or striking teachers. Anarchists are simply the latest convenient specters, political scapegoats used to scare the public into submission. Hedges’ piece, far from resisting that framing, reinforces it.
As long as he continues to perpetuate falsehoods and slander about anarchists, Hedges’ work, however disguised, only serves the state. Hedges may claim to oppose Trump’s escalation, but by obsessively repeating his scorn for anarchists, he plays into the very narrative he claims to be condemning.
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