As I seem to encounter quite a few anarchists who just love to produce word salad, here’s some grandmotherly words of advice. When you want to create a better world and you do so by writing, learn how to write in a way that is accessible. The people you are trying to reach might not have time to work through pages of word salad. The language you write in might not be their native language. They might not have any academic education. They might be dyslexic or have a short attention span.

It is tempting to use long words and sentences. You might be concerned that if you write in a simple way people will think your message is not true, or that your philosophy lacks depth, or even worse that someone else could think you are stupid. But in the worst case people will think none of those things because they can’t be arsed to read beyond the first few words of your text in the first place, and will immediately move on to something more easy to read. Also, there’s a big difference between Trump-level populism and accessible texts with substance.

Accessible texts with substance point towards some activity people can do in real life, some change they can bring about by doing a specific thing. Nobody cares if Anarcho-Capitalism or Anarcho-Coprophilism is better, but you can convince people to buy at a small grocery instead of a big supermarket. Don’t tell them they should engage in mutual aid - instead give them ideas about how to help their neighbours.

I’m as guilty as the next person when it comes to posing as a smartass - but I try to fight it, because talking to each other to be heard is better than being very clever while nobody understands what we actually want to do.