I wish I could find his response to this 'cause it was stronger than I thought. Most of those writers are as bad if not worse than him politically and want control over something that was mostly his work and already run fairly horizontally.
What happened at Current Affairs is not the story of a malevolent overlord oppressing his minions but a much more mundane one about the inevitable fate that befalls too many left institutions: the magazine was overtaken by what Jo Freeman has termed “The Tyranny of Structurelessness.” This is the mistaken idea that informal structures with ill-defined positions are more truly radical and leftist than those with systems of accountability.
This was my impression as the story unfolded, and I’ve seen similar things in lots of other small groups that take on big projects. At some point you have to grow out of the ad hoc stage, and that can cause issues between folks who have contributed to different degrees.
So basically, the staff’s story was that they were all fired for trying to organize, when in reality they were not fired and they were not trying to organize.
A lot of folks here and elsewhere on the left ate it up uncritically, too. Calls for some self-crit on how we respond to these sorts of accusations in the future.
Yeah wow. I just read most of it. Just… absolutely embarrassing. That one guy who literally didn’t even work at the magazine and followed Nathan into a store screaming at him is really blowing my mind. And honestly, I really am just like “why” and “how”.
I remember reading that and my main takeaway was that it’s a buddy of Nathan’s that lacks a lot of actual knowledge and substance and relies heavily on tone and innuendo.
I wish I could find his response to this 'cause it was stronger than I thought. Most of those writers are as bad if not worse than him politically and want control over something that was mostly his work and already run fairly horizontally.
Edit: found it here: https://yasminnair.com/march-what-really-happened-at-current-affairs/
This was my impression as the story unfolded, and I’ve seen similar things in lots of other small groups that take on big projects. At some point you have to grow out of the ad hoc stage, and that can cause issues between folks who have contributed to different degrees.
So basically, the staff’s story was that they were all fired for trying to organize, when in reality they were not fired and they were not trying to organize.
honestly stunning.
A lot of folks here and elsewhere on the left ate it up uncritically, too. Calls for some self-crit on how we respond to these sorts of accusations in the future.
Yeah wow. I just read most of it. Just… absolutely embarrassing. That one guy who literally didn’t even work at the magazine and followed Nathan into a store screaming at him is really blowing my mind. And honestly, I really am just like “why” and “how”.
I remember reading that and my main takeaway was that it’s a buddy of Nathan’s that lacks a lot of actual knowledge and substance and relies heavily on tone and innuendo.