Domination is an example of a strategy that catalyzes. An individual adopts the strategy of attempting to dominate others and they in response are pressured to change their strategy to act likewise.

Anarchism is about creating strategies that catalyze in the opposite direction.

There are many many strategies that push back:

Disrupting the mechanisms that underpin means of control.

Introducing cataclysmic means of retaliation to force detentes.

Increasing complexity and/or illegibility so as to diminish the capacity to coordinate control systems...

One of the most classic catalyzing strategies is "sacrifice everything to counter those who dominate *and also to sanction/banish those who defect from this strategy*."

Example: Those who snitch to the cops get jumped and those that assist or defend those who snitch do as well.

This is distinct from a strategy like "always fight back" or "seek revenge no matter the cost." That base strategy is very good (on repeat interactions) at carving out respect for boundaries, which can dissuade those who would seek to subjugate. But it's not particularly *viral.*

Anarchistic societies are not characterized by the mere *absence* of catalyzing domination strategies, they're characterized by the *presence* of catalyzing anti-domination strategies. The ones that last lock that shit in culture, habit, practice, (decentralized) law, etc.

It's important to clarify here that "domination" means a radical constraint of one's options, usually to the point of forcing someone to march lockstep to some order. Not merely the presence of *external* causes or influences. Social pressure to *not enslave* is net liberating.

Obviously not every catalyzing strategy is itself ideal or a path to an ideal world. And there are varying degrees of "an absence of domination." Further there are asymptotic behaviors of different resistance strategies. Not every one that is presently useful stays useful always.

"Believe and follow survivors" obviously doesn't work in the *far* domain where every single person in a society automatically believes every single accusation ever.

It is *response* strategy for a landscape where survivors are isolated, targeted, rarely if ever believed, etc.

Yes, if we treat "believe accusations" like a Kantian maxim it trivially fails epistemology and it allows abusers to simply rush to accuse first.

However:

People are not simplistic automatons and "believe survivors" isn't such a simplistic routine divorced from context.

"Believe survivors" as a personal strategy alone is toothless, an eyedrop against an ocean, it takes "believe survivors *and ostracize defectors*" to make it into a catalyzing strategy and -- more importantly -- a distinct movement or congealing social space.

*Movements* are uniquely valuable because they develop and provide unique environments or ecosystems for strategies. We can make room for the emergence of strategies that would presently die out in broader society, that require a certain base critical mass or context to flourish.

What the strategy of "believe survivors and punish defectors" amounts to is a strategy for creating a space *that itself can generate further strategies.*

There are two core things it does for this space: 1) it pushes out abusers, 2) it makes standing more unstable.

The benefits of (1) are obvious. Prime targets of abusers who would otherwise be suppressed by anti-survivor norms can flourish and unleash their potential.

Strategies that are initially fragile in the face of the otherwise omnipresence of serial abusers/etc can take root.

(2) on the other hand is both a downside and an upside. When we create spaces sensitive to accusations it *can* encourage crafty abusers to make up accusations or try to inflate marginal shit into massive claims. There are in turn two things to note about this:

First, for all the unethical harm that a false accusation can generate, it also creates instability in status. Whatever you build could fall down at any moment. So those in it for themselves go elsewhere and those in it for values are incentivized to make themselves replaceable.

Second, *as movements are incubators of strategies* the movement formed will in turn develop strategies for discerning through bullshit. Everyone in queer circles knows the fact that queer relationships have abuse rates on par with hets and often abusers race to accuse first.

Because "ostracize abusers and their defenders" creates spaces more concentrated with those who sincerely care it creates a space of growth in strategies for evaluating claims. These strategies get tested more frequently & there's horizontal transmission of successful strategies.

This means that while "believe and follow survivors and punish defectors" is not particularly detailed as a *starting* strategy, it creates the conditions to cultivate more complex and nuanced strategic particulars towards the same ends (rather than deviating all over the place).

We might say it *unfolds* into a more complex strategic framework.

The *seed* or unifying strategic banner catalyzes outward into a discrete space with counter-dominating norms that then enables catalyzing strategic complexity in new directions that would never emerge without.

Let's give a practical illustration: say there's a small city with a "scene" (protest, punk, whatever) with maybe 50 people, 5 top-tier serial abusers, 5 normal abusers, 10 rabid loyalists to them, 20 people who are milktoast, 5 that care a little bit, and 5 that care intensely.

The five people who care are very rapidly identified as threats by the abusers & their loyalists and attacked viciously. The goal of the abuser coalition is to destroy the threat of the carelords, to push them to silence or out of the scene. Anything to preserve their own power.

This is a strategy that has long worked for the abusers re their targets "they're just jealous/crazy/etc." It works out well for decades. However there's a fundamental weakness to this state of affairs -- strategy ecosystem -- the abusers are generally rigidly self-interested.

There are exceptions, of course, an abuser might be an ideologue, but in general terms the core of any abuser coalition is in it to climb upward in popularity, professional hierarchies, groupies they can rape, etc.

They reject strategies that are net-negative in such metrics.

The carelords, in contrast, have no such limitation. And when a carelord or two finally fights back publicly in the right moment to catch attention, burning their own standing in self-immolation *for others* ... this is a hard to fake signal that draws the 5 carelords together.

The 5 carelords together have achieved critical mass and they pressure their friends -- in particular the 5 who care a little bit -- to turn against the abuser coalition. This is successful because the other 5 really do care and *also don't want to lose the carelords as friends.*

Now there's a scene with 20 hardline partisans of the abusers and 10 partisans of anti-abuse.

You might think that the smaller sub-scene would lose (especially when the 20 milktoast people don't really care that much).

Oh how you would be wrong.

While both coalitions punish people for associating with the other coalition, the abusers (and loyalists) are largely self-interested and the anti-abusers in contrast are willing to self-immolate for the greater good. So the anti-abuser coalition can *collectively* punch harder.

This is MUTUAL AID in the very literal evolutionary systems sense meant by Kropotkin and other scientists. It's also how antifascists win against nazis. Any specific individual anti-abuser partisan might get crushed, jumped, run out, but the overall strategy wins.

So the 20 milktoast people get picked off one by one by the anti-abuser or the antifascist coalition because they're willing to sacrifice harder to secure common gains. Those that remain are pressured into adopting the same hard line against abusers/fascists (& their defenders).

Some hardline fash / serial abusers run off, some hunker down with loyalists and form a tiny residual rumps of the scene. Some of the less committed get pseudo-reformed, some simply learn to live falsifying their preferences as best they can (sometimes even change them).

Some abusers (as yet unexposed) try to ingratiate themselves with the anti-abusers, learn the lingo, apply anti-oppression language to abusive ends, lie, etc. But they inevitably fall because they're surrounded by "piranhas" or more accurately ideologues willing to self-immolate.

This is the place where the "space to grow new strategies" becomes relevant. Without having to constantly deal with the inane blunt strategies of the initial abuser coalition the remaining carelords can start to evolve and integrate more strategic nuance and awareness.

However, for the scene to remain overall aligned with the anti-abusers or antifascists, there need to be means of reaffirming the shared strategic commitment. This means common culture, common ideology, and taking infractions very seriously before they spiral.

There's always the danger of the milktoast motherfuckers who don't *really* care of being allowed to just be like "whatever if my friend's an abuser/nazi, i shouldn't have to suffer friction in our friendship because of it" -- it's imperative that pressure be kept on these folks.

If the pressure relents. If -- for example -- people feel like there will be no consequences for collaborating with a literal slaver who is abducting and selling people, then you're going to see slavery re-catalyze. Freedom requires social pressures.

This is the source of "feminazis" and "antifa are the Real Fascists" discourse. Tho the suppression of abusers/fascists is a net win for freedom, it comes at the cost of vigilant suppression of abusers/fascists and pressuring individuals to pay social prices (ostracizing).

This is very distinct from The State suppressing bad actors, because the state is a singleton which has many incentive and knowledge problems leading to runaway tyranny/corruption. But also trust and disassociation dynamics are inherent to having individual agency.

While (in its best moments) the anarchist movement shakes out as the space for the carelords/antifa, with constant aggressive purification of cryptofash & abusers, and anarchism can comprise the entirety of say a punk or activist scene, the wider Left is still a different story.

Many object to such catalyzing pressures on the same grounds they critique of markets -- that they're impersonal aggregate forces. "Why should I be pressured to ostracize this abuser, he never abused *me or my friends*? Caring about strangers or principles is an "abstraction."

And sadly the root of some leftists' critique of markets is not that capitalism constrains our net choices & options, but that markets involve abstraction & aggregate social forces. This makes them utterly hostile to compounding strategies like "punish abusers & their defenders."

Additionally there's the problem that everything we've talked about has been a matter of individual strategies compounding in various ways & in coalitions. I have most emphatically not been talking about formal organization. Those addicted to managerial hierarchies are horrified.

To the managerialists the lack of universal clarity is inherently bad. Why is there no single Judge that decides whether or not you can ever say "that dude raped my friend"?! Individual-to-individual interactions are illegible and threatening to them.

These two objections (abstraction & illegibility) constitute two perpetual pro-abuser / pro-fascist ideological rumps in The Left. They are distinct camps because their orientations are distinct, but because they become the only safe space for abusers they get overrun by such.

So like one abuser might drape their opposition to "the crazy bitches" in terms of opposition to the "anti-individualist humanist morality of caring about strangers" while another might attack "the non-structural individualist neoliberalism of ostracizing people" but both align.

And there is another critique/coalition: liberal populism. "We just need to win as many people as possible on our side so we can get 51% of the vote (in the revolution). Punishing/ostracizing harmful people reduces our numbers / removes The Big Figures necessary to win voters."

It is always hilarious the instinctive cross-ideological allegiances that emerge against the anarchist swarm. There are the above shared incentives, but amid the rubes of those anti-anarchist coalitions there is also often a common inability to comprehend metastasizing strategies

This is not to laud *any and all* catalyzing strategies of resistance to abusers or whatever, there are myriad dangers, vulnerabilities, & failure modes. But we can drill down concretely into such. The point is that there's a wide class of individual strategies that can go viral.

And the game theoretic considerations are the entire point behind Kropotkin's Mutual Aid. Sacrificing for one another can become a hegemonic strategy. Actually existing stateless societies are not magic, they are a bundle of strategies designed to stop power formation.

Individuals can absolutely change the world. Some of the most impactful folks have been anonymous and/or very isolated women or enbys who were willing to light themselves on fire to stop fucked up shit.

I've seen individuals catalyze strategic phase shifts that swept the planet.

Decentralized bottom-up suppression of tyrants is not only possible, it happens all around us in ways that defy and resist the emergence of new power figures or central committees, that erode hierarchies like acid. And I think that's the best reason for hope that anarchy can win.