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Notnull's right when saying that anarchists can get onto an opposition movement along people of other perspective over goals that overlap, totally without contradicting antiauthoritarian principles. That's basically what happened with the NoTAV struggle (disregarding its not-so-victorious outcome) and the ZAD. In Italy I've seen conservative Catholic groups taking part in demonstrations filled with leftists and some anarchists. I heard even some fascist group supported the movement. There's an apparently thin yet decisive line to observe between taking part in a same struggle, and collaborating with those involved. This cannot be understated.

Overlapping goals doesn't mean they're even related. That's the thing. Since the '90s we've seen opposition movements bringing together people on *common grounds*, more than common goals and interests. Demos organized by a plurality of diverging groups was apparently novel, back then. There was always a kind of more or less implicit agreement or "social contract" over an antagonistic externality. This is why externalization logic remains at the center of politically oppositional discourse and action (not just that of the Left, no matter how they became notorious for it).

In the case of the ZAD, it was the "NDDL airport project" -at least on paper- even if for most if not everyone the real causes or motivations were something else (sex and drugs lol). While everybody still agreed the airport was something to oppose, the underlying rationale always involved a more specific political and/or personal drive, one that diverts or even goes into conflict with the motives of the other parties involved. This is the main reason why when the police withdrawn from the "carrefour de la Saulce", the conflict that grew under the rug just broke open and became a lasting internal dispute. Well-grounded in each of the groups' respective ideologies, views or principles. So some of us, including me, we were left scrambling to maintain a thin layer of diplomacy between increasingly hostile parties, in a place where it was now pretty unclear who the real enemies were. The closest thing I've ever seen to a "life after the Collapse".

This social agreement didn't occur too much since Occupy. It seemed vague and under-articulated during the BLM uprisings, just like during the failed Standing Rock struggle. It was even more vague during the student strike of 2012.

Also, fighting alongside doesn't mean to be automatically losing your principles... That's what happens actually when you participate in the organizations of the other parties. When a single organization claims the monopoly over a struggle, and pretends being the sole counter-power against this externalized bogeymen, and there's no alternative, autonomous forms of organizing, then this is when you get the integrative pattern Aragorn was talking about, which is basically conformity. Entryism, beyond than just fighting alongside. Collaborating not just along shared enemies, but especially through the same institutions of management... play their social game... be actors into those. This is exactly where the anarchist stops being anarchist (tho this stop doesn't have to be definite and un-doable).

I'm not saying that relying on those externalized grand unifying bogeymen is the way to go, or the best thing we'll ever come up with. I'd like "us" to be formulating together a grand liberating project that doesn't rely on bogeymen, at all, or not at least fundamentally, and even those internalized ones, like seen in the call-out culture. I dunno that can happen tho, or if it will anytime soon. You know a project that has to do with how we're spending our days and nights, ideally outside of screens as much as possible...