Saying that you oppose “unjust” hierarchies can be used as a dangerous weasel word to justify nearly anything

But, it’s also important to look at other models of leadership that may even have been hereditary yet led by persuasion rather than dominance or the threat of violence.

There’s a tendency even (especially?) on the colonizer Left to look at these systems as being primitive and ones “naturally” developed away from as a society progresses in organization rather than viewing them as extraordinarily well-developed in their own right.

[Murray] Boockchin understood oppressive hierarchy as centralized in domination. He argued against much of the European left’s incorrect analysis that domination-based hierarchy arose from a desire to free ourselves from the ‘domination of nature.’ Indigenous people have long laughed at these assertions by Marx and others. It has always been deeply alienating. Bookchin calls it out with an understanding we can appreciate as Indigenous people:

“However much the writings of liberals and Marx convey the belief that attempts to dominate nature “led” to the domination of human by human, no such “project” ever existed in the annals of what we call “history.” At no time in the history of humanity did the oppressed of any period joyfully accede to their oppression in a starry-eyed belief that their misery would ultimately confer a state of blissful freedom from the “domination of nature” to their descendants in some future era.”

Full article at Indigenous Anarchist Federation:

https://web.archive.org/web/20201102035517/https://iaf-fai.org/2020/11/02/indigenous-anarchic-hierarchy/ (mirror)