How Anarchist Theory Explains the Death of the ISO, the Defeat of the Red Guards, and the Struggles of the DSA

American vanguard parties have not been doing well lately. The International Socialist Organization (ISO) voted to dissolve itself, over what would once have been nothing but a “routine” rape scandal — though, hilariously, a splinter of a splinter of their party continues to try to run their newspaper. The LA Red Guards started a fight with an anarcha-feminist collective, found themselves facing the wrath of the greater LA anarchist community, endured and ultimately lost running street battles, and finally formally dissolved themselves in an attempt at making some sort of peace for their members. Last year, the Socialist Alternative (SA) split and the splitters released the full internal files of the organization. The Party for Socialism and Liberation, I am told, is teetering — details are hard to come by.

Though I think that it would be silly to declare some sort of final victory over the vanguardists at this time, it’s worth discussing why the vanguardists are running into the issues that they are — and why now and all at once, in particular. The unifying cause is, oddly, the internet.

In the post-2015 era, the relationship between American activism and online radicalism has changed. Once, online radicalism was marginal. Now, though, online radicalism has replaced integration with activist communities as the main path towards radicalization. Though it is unclear to me why this happened in 2015 and…