RELIANCE ON THE INTERNET:
Molly has no great "revolutionary illusions" unlike the owner of one private anarchist empire who thinks he can rebuild the summit hopping fad such that "the crowd advancing towards the police will be so huge that they will run in fear". Actually in such situations look towards who will control the "Solidarity Fund" for those arrested, beaten and perhaps even killed. Human nature is the same whether it wears an "anarchist tag" or not.
This sort of thing is, of course, silly, and it could only gain currency in a closed subculture where criticism and contact with reality is considered the same sort of "mortal sin" as Catholicism defines so many things as. The owner of the empire has actually said that he will not tolerate any contact with the reality of other views "bad mouthing"the overblown rhetoric of anarchist triumphalism. Hard to build up a cult when the recruits are exposed to reality.
But that is neither here nor there. The same sort of nonsense appears on the site of the private empire as it does elsewhere in the anarchist "ethernet", that there is some sort of "security culture" that can prevent the state from knowing each and every time you burp. The whole idea that the supreme arrogance of such people leads them to imagine that they can brag in public forum about how much better they are better than organizations that have thousands of times more resources is actually quite stunning. This sort of arrogance can only exist where there is a deliberate effort to escape from reality. Not just ignorance but deliberate ignorance that will never have to be tested against the real world.
Fine and dandy. Leave those who wish to make a spectacle of anarchism to their games but warn them about the dishonesty of their leaders. What I find more disturbing is the reliance that anarchists who have a connection to to reality have placed on the Internet. One quick flick of a switch and all their communication ceases. That is neither here nor there for a reformist such as Molly, and it is certainly neither here nor there in the situation of most developed countries today. But it should be a matter of concern to those who hold revolutionary pretensions or who simply look either ahead or elsewhere.
Is the Internet overdone in terms of anarchist communication ? Something to think about.