"Socialism did not have anything particularly new to teach me; however, it provided me with the theory to verify what I already knew emotionally from my own past. I was poor then; I am poor now. Because of this I have been overworked, mistreated, tormented, oppressed, deprived of my freedom, exploited, and ruled by people with money. I had always harbored a deep antagonism toward people with that kind of power and a deep sympathy for people from backgrounds like mine. The sympathy I felt for Kō, the menial at my grandmother’s in Korea; the feeling, almost as for a comrade, toward the poor dog they kept; and the boundless sympathy I felt for all the oppressed, maltreated, exploited Koreans I have not written about here but whom I saw while at my grandmother’s—all were expressions of this. Socialist ideology merely provided the flame that ignited this antagonism and this sympathy, long smoldering in my heart.

Oh how I want to… to give my life, to give everything, in the struggle for this wretched class of mine!"

Adam Curtis, in his movie HyperNormalisation, talked of a theory that this kind of activism disappeared around the 70s and 80s. It's the kind that requires banding into groups, to a significant extent giving up individuality. According to the theory this is also the death of politics: the hyper individuality took away politic's power and left only spectacle and populism. The way he told it was that the hippy revolution back-fired: the look-within insight turned into consumerism and heightened individuality. My retelling is a bit scattered. The movie is well worth a watch.

HyperNormalisation is an excellent movie. I don't necessarily agree with everything in it but it gave me something to think about.

to be fair, it's on the anarchist library, which is very much leftist in and of itself - this looks to be, largely, and exploration of the role of natural hierarchy in anarchism. so saying it's compatible with modern leftism as an attack makes ... no sense ... but saying it's compatible with modern leftism insofar as it's an exploration does seem pretty accurate.

A lot of anarchist writing is leftist or comes from leftism. But a lot of it leaves or at least attempts to leave the left/right template behind.