Quick note on something that annoys me: when people are like “let’s criticize [name of some ideology]” then give a really overgeneralized statement of that ideology. A social system like capitalism has a social logic that is subject to criticism, though there are important limits to the use of general social-systemic criticisms (because we don’t live in capitalism-in-general, we live in a particular time and place in a particular version of capitalism). Ideologies like marxism and anarchism don’t. They don’t have a logic so much as a grab bag of qualities built up over time. Most adherents to an ideology disagree with what’s actually in that grab bag too, so really they’re composed of clouds of grab bags that have roughly and only roughly similar labels written on them. This is why criticism of a particular -ism falls flat when that criticism operates at a general level of “this -ism is like THIS.” Instead people should quote, summarize and paraphrase, and name people and criticize the ideas in those quotes and summaries. That way the criticisms are actually valid and hit their targets.

Of course, more general terms are very useful for constituting a scene and a scene-based identity.