A review of Daniel Baryon, A Modern Anarchism: The Horizontal Alternative (Oakland: PM Press, 2026)
Daniel Baryon is probably better known as Anark, the fellow with the anarchist Youtube channel. Even I know that channel, although I hardly know any Youtube channels.
Baryon’s book A Modern Anarchism: The Horizontal Alternative builds on a series of four two-to-three-hour long Youtube episodes he recorded between 2022 and 2025. Why a book? This is what he says: “During the writing of that series … I was forced to sacrifice substantial portions of my planned exploration to limit the length of the videos. … This paper publication has allowed me the freedom to reintroduce a few of these deleted portions and to explore some of these concepts in more depth.”
This is interesting. Not long ago, I had a “print vs. social media” debate with a comrade. If you enjoy writing and see it as a humble way to contribute to the movement, how do you do it most effectively? That social media reaches more people than print is without question. But are there any advantages to print other than nostalgia for something tangible, old book stores, and zine tables? I suppose the shelf-life of print can be longer, and, as Baryon points out, you have more space to develop ideas, and perhaps express them in clearer and more nuanced ways, which might make the debates that follow clearer and more nuanced, too. But that’s speculation. In any case, it’s good to see that someone I envy for their reach on online platforms also finds some value in publishing a book.
Baryon’s take on anarchism is quite nerdy, and I’d be surprised if he objected to that description. As he writes in the foreword to A Modern Anarchism, his Youtube channel has an “even academic” approach, and he used writing the book “to expand my studies and synthesizations of anarchist theory with modern science, systems theory, social ecology, queer theory, feminist theory, and much more.” Baryon mixes writers from the anarchist canon (Bakunin, Kropotkin, lots of Rocker) with theorists of “kyriarchy” (which I had never heard of) and “viable systems theory” (which seems related to cybernetics). There’s quite a lot about Stirner, too, which always triggers the German-speaker in me, since his work is so hard to translate, but we’ll save that for some other time.
The peak of nerdiness in A Modern Anarchism is probably reached in the “A Revolutionary Road Map” chapter, which comes with a ready-made diagram of circles, arrows, and triangles. In the “Complex Systems Anarchism” chapter, various relationships are listed and explained, from “Freedom-Unique” to “Solidarity-Equality-Freedom.”
Baryon’s conclusion confirms that an embrace of modern science doesn’t kill poetic streaks:
“We demand neither permission nor forgiveness. We come to demand everything. It is only through this struggle for the horizon, to empower the oppressed peoples of this world, to stamp out every trace of hierarchical power from this existence, that we may ever reach a liberatory future. So let our actions give honor to all of those who have fallen in pursuit of this dream of a liberated world. Let us act so that their struggle was not in vain. We have dwelled long in preparation. It is now time that we set out from the door.”
It’s hard to assess A Modern Anarchism. The title suggests that Baryon considers his take on anarchism innovative, or at least adapted to our times. Readers shall decide for themselves. The book’s a little different, that’s for sure, and that alone can go a pretty long way.
Gabriel Kuhn
(September 30, 2026)