No, not necessarily. What's really important to understand when considering the problem of communicating anarchistic ideas isn't whether they're difficult to grasp intellectually—they can be difficult in that way, but that difficulty is no excuse for withdrawal from thought—but that they are fundamentally difficult, perhaps impossible, to fully receive in their actual, radical implications.
The real virtue of simplicity in communication—advocated as it has been by figures like George Orwell—isn't about appealing to the common political denominator but in constructing language that errs towards clarity and mutual honesty between interlocutors, and against the manufacturing of ideology. However, nested within this virtue is a complication. Orwell was a linguistic prescriptivist—talking properly has an important purpose—because he had the luxury of being so. He was middle class and writing was a part of his livelihood. Many people aren't given that luxury of modifying or selecting the articulation of their ideas. So, from that angle, Orwell was really just another middle class prig talking down to others.
And so, there's this bizarre practice among anarchists—quite a few of them who are scholastic professionals—where they delicately construct their language so as to ease the communication of ideas that are often impossibly radical. They interject countercultural images into it or they deliberately deconstruct or even obscure the radical dimensions and complex breadth of their notions for that purpose. Things tend to get lost in translation, and many times the modified transmission of their ideas obfuscates details that otherwise would be very important for anarchists to elaborate on and encourage others to think about.
A close to home example is that during the peak (pique?) of anarchists' enthusiasm for Occupy X, anarchists warned Occupationalists of the terror of police action but invited confrontation with it by confirming, or even lionizing, the brutality of the agitated, enraged crowds in patriotic Egypt while omitting the barbarism of it all. Several acts of rape and bloody beating were perpetrated by furious men in Tahrir Square. Massacres of Christians by salafi Muslims (and retaliations, most likely) exploded in Coptic neighborhoods. Combats between thuggish men protecting property and looters. (Men who were being lauded by some initially for their spontaneous “self-organization”.) If I recall correctly, none of this, and more, was ever truly recorded in anarchists' pro-Egyptian propaganda and all of it was well outside the constraint of Mubarakism. All of the minutiae of police assaults on Occupationalists was recorded though, and continues to be. (Including personal accounts of groping and rape tactics used by the NYPD, which is commendable of course.) This was done in the hopes of generalizing revolt by coopting Occupationalist propaganda, which has been commanded by pacifist demagogues. In doing so they failed to provide a voice for resistance to the barbarism that unfolded during those days of rage. They may have disregarded real clarity with their gratifying political realism and so have become demagogues themselves.
Often what instigates this problem is the lack of intimacy in the circumstances of communication when these ideas presuppose intimacy to a great deal. Anarchist ideas cannot properly be spoken for or heard within the massive dynamics of agitated political bodies. It's too loud in the cacophony of the public discourse on an ideal social order for our ideas to resound, never mind being renowned. And even in the personal meeting of minds our ideas and admonishments often cause others to shrink away. We have too much to say about too many things. We are unrealistic. We are hypocrites who don't follow through on our own beliefs. Or maybe we're just damn anarchists.
“Objectively, the social revolution supposes that the human race must very rapidly process the vast accumulation of its inheritances and work through its history, in order that it might escape from it and engage with itself otherwise.
We are presented then, in the absence of such a flourishing, with the task of manifesting negative thought... of othering that which passes as belonging to the world. Far from seeking further influence within the array of all that is already in play, communists must self-separate themselves from enthusiasm and irrationality, from driven and barbaric practices.
Communist intelligence is defined solely in the act of critically identifying what is absent.
The communist is never more than society’s uninvited guest, its spirit guide, its relentless Virgil, its interpellated Jeremiah.
In his relations with others, the communist supplies, in the objective absence of spontaneous new relations, routes into defamiliarised territories, through provocations, doubts, telling criticisms; any and all of which may only be resolved beyond him and his interlocutors, at the level of social relations.
With regard to his own project, the communist must be prepared to think against his own prescriptions, as the only means of escaping his own dogmas. The ‘Russian Road’ is not a Roman road.
I also asked Isaiah what made him go naked and barefoot three years? he answer'd, 'the same that made our friend Diogenes the Grecian.'
I then asked Ezekiel why he eat dung, & lay so long on his right & left side? he answer'd, 'the desire of raising other men into a perception of the infinite; this the North American tribes practise, & is he honest who resists his genius or conscience, only for the sake of present ease or gratification?'”
