From the Zapatistas to Seattle: The ‘New Anarchists’

Abstract

In the early 2000s, some commentators such as Barbara Epstein and David Graeber wrote about the ‘new anarchists’, in the aftermath of the so-called Battle of Seattle, opposing the alterglobalisation movement and the police protecting the World Trade Organization (WTO) Summit. At the end of the day, the ‘anarchists’ had stolen the show, either by their civil disobedience non-violent collective action under the umbrella of the Direct Action Network (DAN), which prevented the Summit to open, or the spectacular hit-and-run action of the Black Bloc, which smashed tens of windows of infamous international firms (banks, coffee shops, fast food restaurants, etc.). The goal of the chapter is to explain what lead the new activists to endorse, openly or not, anarchism and how this anarchism translated into their collective organisation, decision-making process, and collective action. While discussing the role of the anarchists within the alter globalisation movement, we deal more specifically with the ‘fluffy vs spiky’ debate (non-violence/violence) and explain how the movement developed the concept of ‘the respect for diversity of tactics’ (which is consistent with anarchism).