It might be useful to approach this question from the perspective of "call-out culture." As someone else remarked on Episode #27 of the @news Podcast in relation to the idea of sexual consent, the entire framework of "Anti-Oppression Politics" within left-anarchist subcultures assumes that people (typically women) are frail and in need of protection. This leads to setting up what basically amount to anarchist bureaucracies in which disputes can be addressed through a formal 'process' where offending parties are "called on their shit." Within these formal gatherings, the rhetoric of "safety" often comes up in the context of discussions where it really isn't relevant to the subject at hand - e.g. "I feel really unsafe right now because you're challenging my ideology rather than passively agreeing with it." In response to such statements, one might reasonably ask, "In what sense do you feel 'unsafe?' Does the mere fact that I disagree with you make you feel that I pose you some sort of physical threat? And, if so, on what basis?" But, within the left-anarchist scenester cult, such questions just aren't kosher - and are a quick route to excommunication. More often than not, the words "I feel unsafe" are just shorthand for "My worldview feels threatened."
Anti-Oppression Politics have become so pervasive in the North American anarchist subculture that every disagreement has become a safety issue. As is the case with so many people of my generation, I am old enough to remember when the internet first started to become popular but not so old that my initial exposure to anarchist ideas was able to come from from any other source. That being the case, I was already well steeped in my own particular version of anarchism (at that time, a pretty much orthodox "anarcho-communist" perspective) before I was able move away from the rural community where I grew up and become involved in the local anarchist scene of the city where I went to university. Up until that point, it had just seemed intuitive to me that anyone who adopts a consciously "anarchist" perspective would necessarily be an open-minded person who is receptive to all sorts of unconventional and subversive ideas that the average person would shrink away from in fear. The sense of culture shock that I experienced when I finally got involved with the anarchist subculture cannot be overstated. To my surprize, there was a whole slew of unwritten rules about things you can't say and ways you can't behave if you want to be accepted as "one of us."
The anarchist subculture has a very low tolerance for heretical ideas. Granted, it is fine with rattling the cages of people it deems part of "mainstream" culture but, when it comes to critiquing itself as a social entity, everyone involved suddenly becomes really thin-skinned. Not being from the West Coast, I wasn't at the Seattle Anarchist Book Fair when the whole Atassa Journal incident when down, so I can only rely on the second-hand information that I've heard. While I think that the critical encounter between anarchism and eco-extremism could have potentially posed some interesting questions about the messy realities of resistance to the social order that most anarchists don't want to face, I think that the left-anarchist subcultural bubble has proven itself wholly incapable of exploring these questions in anything other than a hyperbolic and reactionary fashion. Whoever this person was who ripped up the copy of the Atassa Journal at the LBC table clearly had it in their head that they were engaging in some sort of "militant direct action" that would gain them 'cred' among their fellow scene kids. What this person failed to understand is that even direct action can be a form of sanctimonious whining.
