Probably the critics of anarchism that I take the most seriously are survivors of decentralized genocides or warzones who tend to become staunch conservatives upon immigration to western democracies. They may recognize shit sucks, but also assume any boat rocking will return society to a much worse baseline.
Among radicals, revolutionaries and other critics of the status quo there's a general lack of awareness of *how much worse things can be* and I think factoring such in is important.
This is true for a subset of radicals, and has historically been true for focused antifascists in particular, which is among many reasons why I historically gravitated to antifascists back during the pre-2017 era when they were often marginalized within radical communities, but it is not true for a huge swathe of radicals and anarchists (not so coincidentally among whose ranks hostility to antifa is common). Taking our present world as the worst possible is quite common.
One common criticism among the anti-antifa set is the concern that antifascism degenerates into liberalism and functional defense of the status quo. This can be true enough! (Look at the antifascist to CIA-paid CVE researcher pipeline.) But this critique often comes with an implicit rejection of Three Way Fight and an assumption that some nazis are defacto allies in toppling the status quo, whose removal can only make things better.
William Gillis 🏴
Sam Lawton