When you tell people you're an anarchist...

My dad says I do it "to be different"
I once had some lady tell me I needed to see a therapist.
And mostly everyone else allows me to explain my beliefs before they debate with me, which is kinda fun, unless you're debating with some hot-headed conservative asshole.

 

it seems like everyone reacts the same way to teenagers.
This is weird but I find the song "my generation" by the who to be the best way to describe us.
As "advanced" and "cultured" as our generation is, teenagers or treated more and more insignificant and like infants..it's annoying.

 

UHm actually a book, by adults I might add , I read called Generatie Einstein (it's a Dutch book) proposes the opposite. Children in this day and age are far more involved in decision making etc, while they are still treated the same as kids in previous generations. So it's not so much that people treat us differently, we grew up differently.

 

On my last day of highschool, I plastered the school with posters saying things like "Nobody has the right to tell you what to do", or "If Voting changed anything, it would be illegal."
Nothing too radical.
But I found one of them had been taken down, and somebody wrote a response on the back, and put it back where it was on the wall.

It said "Anarchy is a proven FAILED system. Man up and take some responsibility."

I thought it was really funny, because it was on the back of one that said something like "The only power is YOUR power."
So, y'know, taking the ultimate responsibility... Being completely responsible for your own actions, without any input from a political power, or laws, etc.

Also: Proven failed?
Please, do go on, I'd like to hear how it's proven failed.

I didn't bother responding.
I just took the paper as a souvenir.


I just found it all terribly ironic, because my vision of anarchy IS taking ultimate responsibility.
Y'know, where everyone takes responsibility for themselves, and cooperates, and recognizes that if they don't work, nothing will get done, and they won't survive.

 

I don't tell them I'm anarchist, starting off with labels just brings forth immediate prejudices, like have eben pointed out in this thread. The best approach is to just explain your general stance in a couple of sentences. Then you are much more likely to find a positive reaction, and hopefully genuine interest, so you can point out good reading materials.

 

i usually get "what the fuck is that" or "doesn't that mean like fuck government" or "so you like believe in chaos" fucking stupid media confused society i usually tell them no are you stupid or i laugh

but i do try an educate on it and yes its for the most part how ungovernable said it and as for you blinko look into that shit alot more im only 16 but i bring a big fucking storm of info(non-bias) i give an explanation to every question that i possibly can
i once had a class discussion i told the teacher i was an anarchist and next thing you know i was talking to the whole class about how they wear wrong about anarchy it was nothing the media was pretending it was and i feel it rely opened there eyes tho there was this one chick(fucking stupid ass) she said "i hate how people are all like f government and f society and it makes no sense" and i totally made her think so hard i thought her head was gunna explode cause i explained in the best way i cloud how she was bias on her argument and how it was not what she thought it was then explained her questions i felt proud that day and most responded the way ungovernable said

 

It's actually true. In the media, the reporters can just go say "Oh, some teenagers were throwing bricks and painting the walls with antifa symbols, while fighting the police", and then everybody just thinks that these teenagers are immature vandalists - WHEN do the journalist ever ask: WHY did they do it? And WHO told us they did so? WHO are they? People being run down by the system? People having been beaten up multiple times by police without being convicted of anything?

And it's funny you mention My Generation - when is that song from? The 70's or maybe even late 60's? (can't remember when they did it) - That generation listening to that, doing peacemarches, talking about all the hate of society are the ones now oppressing their childrens thoughts and ideals.


Where i come from, a common reaction is how people start telling me how great my contry's society is - I say, we grew up learning a lot of ideals and being told, that we were in a peaceful world (following the 90's after the end of the cold war) - where is the perfect world they promised? As i see it, it just gets more and more violent

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Also i find it fun that they wrote that anarchy is proven failed - when? It works well in some of the free institutions that we have set up (the youth house for example), and a lot of theories about how anarchy could work in reality have been put up by experts.
- I mean, maybe it's theories, but the idea of free market, liberalism and conservatism also only work in theory - Our financial crisis is a great example of their system proven fail.

 

I get the usual misconceptions,that and "oh like the sex pistols you mean" and my reply is that the pistols weren't anarchists at all.Most think after I've explained the true anarchistic beliefs to them,that it's a very fair ideal,but will never work in practice.I too often get mistaken as a communist and get the old "just look at what the soviet union did".

 

either they laugh to me or they say Im too young for politics. Well..i dont really care about that becouse I think I can have my own opinion in my age and I dont care about those guys who are telling me to stop with my way of life.

but it depends to who Im speaking to.

 

As far as i remember Johnny Rotten is on the list of Anarchist musicians. He just like provoking more than political debating

 

hey i am just getting to be an anarchist but i need some good books or moives or what ever to read because i dont want to look like an ass about it what are some good sources?

 

I think usually best not to tell anyone you're an anything. It just confuse them.

 

When I tell people I usually make sure to mention Peace, Equality and unity. Most of the people I talk to have a hot topic sense of anarchy.

 

Good approach. Anarchy has too much of a bad rep, as even some anarchists have used it interchangably with disorder, rioting and chaos (according to the Anarchist faq anywya).

 

My problem is, even though I make my point across and people understand, they choose to remain apathetic. They all want their capitalist conveniences, and figure it's way to much effort to try to change anything. I know some people that actually think the capitalist system is fair, and I can't change their minds about that. It's pretty upsetting.

 

Sounds like my father, who would argue to his death that capitalism is the best system in the world. then he wonders why i'm not a capitalist bastard like he is

 

Why is Anarchy always said to be Chaos and disorder anyway?

 

Years and generations of misconception, plus saying that makes it easy to scare people into believing they need government to run their lives and make their decisions.

 

i had a manager of a punk concert house called the cretin hop ask me about anarchy (i had an anarchy shirt on at the time) and he said it was impossible to work and as much of my baliefs and ideas i put in he kept on the same subject of how would you like if if you or a family memeber was killed and you couldnt do anything beacuase you live in a anarchy society....to tell the truth i couldnt answer to this and i actually still cant.....how would you react to that and what would you say??

 

that person would be dealt with accordingly, again that anarchy means no rules or regulations is abunch of shit, and that has been addressed numerous times on this forum.