It's time to call it, Crimethinc have failed at being a practice of anarchic everyday life. They have become political and boring.
In their embryonic stage CrimethInc represented best of the Vanaeigem strain of Situationist discourse relating to everyday life. They were proto post-leftists in theory waiting to be fleshed out and they had the raw practice of an everyday living anarchy that was to be admired in their theoretical youth. Those days are long gone. As far as I'm concerned what they have become is worse then an old age Johnny Rotten butter commercial. They've become a mouthpiece for elective struggle, something that in its become manifestation can never be anything approaching anarchy.
This is no longer the anarchist group that invited scorn from the likes of class struggling libcom as immature radical brats. Instead of embracing those insults and becoming the everyday life dilettantes that they might have become they have 'grown up' in struggle with their fellow ideological adults. They now parrot standard leftist anti-fascist talking points to the point of WW2 like propaganda in some of their media. Anti-fascism is a mode of ideology that exists in bad times and should not be further enabled by anarchists who actually know some radical history in regards to that leftist umbrella racket. They engage in this and other forms of elective pseudo struggles that are not pertinent to an everyday life of anarchy.
Bob Black once referred to CrimethInc as Bob Black lite which I think is about right in regards to their theory. What they used to have was inspiring practice in regards to everyday forms of non hierarchical existence. It could always be better but CrimethInc represented something that was a great start. I'm of the view that an everyday practice of anarchy is essential for the survival the beautiful idea. In it's elective ideological form it is best situated in the 19th century, a period that is long gone. The idea of anarchy needs an everyday creative drive beyond the ist/ism of it's partial political-economic founding. There is of course the Stirnerian branch of anarchy which I and others would argue is distinct from what began with Proudhon at around the same time in the 1840s. Stirner never once mentions anarchism or anarchist but he does talk of anarchy in a very important passage along with 'lawless and selfhood'. CrimethInc at their become best could have been at least one of the groups that represented the performative practice of everyday life anarchy. This would mean sophisticating and improving the practices of situationist theory as well as finding new forms of daily life practice. An insurrection of everyday life you could say. Just as Druidry is distinct from Druidism anarchy needs it's performing practitioners beyond the on paper positioning. CrimethInc could have been one of those groups, alas, they've become what they used to bash, just another elective struggling political gang.
CrimethInc and their politics are now, boring as fuck.
