I recorded my recent talk at the Anarchist Studies Conference and uploaded it to youtube, check it out!
“Spencer Beswick gives a short overview of the anarchist infoshop movement, including its historical roots in West German squats and rapid growth in the US in the 1990s. He also addresses critiques of the model, particularly from the Love and Rage Revolutionary Anarchist Federation, which argued that infoshops should be subordinated to the task of building a revolutionary movement and dual power structures. Love and Rage was inspired by the Zapatistas in Mexico, who they saw as a model and a vision of the future. Ultimately, the debates over infoshops reflected very real differences in revolutionary strategy and tactics that are relevant for today’s movements.
This talk was originally presented at the Anarchist Studies Network Conference in August 2022 on a panel called ‘Prefiguring the Future: Twentieth Century Anarchist Visions.'”