An affinity group is a small group of people — usually three to fifteen — organized by mutual trust and shared analysis rather than by formal membership, bylaws, or hierarchy. It is the basic organizational unit of anarchist practice, particularly insurrectionary anarchism.
What holds an affinity group together is not a charter or an institution but trust: the members know each other personally, share an understanding of what they are doing and why, and can make decisions quickly because they have already built the relationships that make consensus possible. This is informal organization at its most basic: a group that exists to act, not to perpetuate itself.
Affinity groups work because they solve a fundamental problem of anarchist organizing: how do you coordinate action without hierarchy? A large group deliberating every decision from scratch is too slow for many situations. A leader who makes decisions on behalf of everyone reproduces the authority the group opposes. An affinity group threads this needle: it is small enough for genuine consensus, cohesive enough for rapid decision-making, and autonomous enough that no external authority dictates its actions.
Multiple affinity groups coordinate through spokescouncils: each group sends a delegate (a spokesperson, not a representative) who conveys the group’s position and carries back information. The delegate does not decide for the group — they carry a specific mandate and can be recalled if they exceed it. This is how federation works at the organizational level: autonomous groups coordinating without subordinating themselves to a central authority.
The affinity group model is also resistant to repression. There is no central leadership to arrest, no membership list to subpoena, no organizational treasury to seize, no office to raid. When the state targets anarchist organizing, it often resorts to counterinsurgency tactics designed to destroy trust itself — infiltrators, informants, and the practice of snitch-jacketing (falsely accusing group members of being informants). Trust is both the affinity group’s greatest strength and its greatest vulnerability.
Related terms
- Consensus — how affinity groups make decisions
- Informal organization — the organizational principle affinity groups embody
- Federation — how affinity groups coordinate at scale
- Direct action — what affinity groups organize to do
- Hierarchy — what affinity groups refuse to reproduce
- Self-organization — the capacity affinity groups express
- Solidarity — the commitment that sustains affinity groups
- The state — the institution that targets affinity groups for repression