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# How to Read a Polemic
- URL: https://murray-bookchin.ghost.io/news/how-to-read-a-polemic/
- Published: 2026-02-01T12:30:00.000Z
- Updated: 2026-07-31T12:00:00.000Z
- Author: Debbie Bookchin
- Tags: #misconception-appendix, #Import 2026-08-04 06:40

Several claims above trace to one book, Bob Black’s *Anarchy After Leftism* (1997). We link it in full — read it beside what it attacks. As you do, watch for six recurring moves. Naming them settles nothing about who was right; it shows how little of the book engages what Murray actually wrote.

#### AD HOMINEM

The argument is aimed at the man — his age (“Grumpy Old Man of 75,” “in his dotage”), his health, his supposed income — rather than at the ideas.

#### THE GENETIC FALLACY

His Communist youth in the 1930s is treated as a permanent verdict: “He hasn’t changed much; or, if he did, he’s changed back.” Where an idea came from does not decide whether it is true.

#### THE FABRICATED PREMISE, SUSTAINED BY REPETITION

The “Dean” title — false, and sixteen years stale even as a professorship — is repeated on nearly every page until it reads as fact.

#### THE STRAW MAN

A defense of social anarchism becomes hatred of individual freedom; an explicitly anti-state confederalism becomes “city-statism.” The position attacked is not the position held.

#### MOTIVE-READING

Imputed ambitions — to “colonize the anarchist scene,” to enrich himself — are treated as evidence. Murray’s reply: “he is a psychic who apparently can read my demonic mind.”

#### TU QUOQUE

Challenges beside the point — why didn’t the 21-year-old Bookchin fight in World War II? — stand in for engagement with what he argued.

[Read *Anarchy After Leftism* ↗](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/bob-black-anarchy-after-leftism) · [Read Murray’s reply ↗](https://theanarchistlibrary.org/library/murray-bookchin-whither-anarchism-a-reply-to-recent-anarchist-critics)