Vanguardism is a pretty much universally hated concept in the Anarchosphere. There have been so few chances to implement socialism in the past century, and the ML vanguardist model hijacked almost all of them and caused it all to crash and burn when they don't give up power OR implement socialism. I just don't get how people still believe it after it spectacularily failed and fell into authoritarian state capitalism time and time again.

Is there an anarchist vanguard? Not directly. The closest equivalent we have is that it's a pretty small number of people who actually read and study theory, so as the movement spreads they will form the nucleus that gets the word out there to the others, but they won't really be empowered as leaders or rulers in any way.