How did you stumble into this strange land?

[tout]

Why do you call yourself an anarchist? Why are you interested in anarchism and anarchist ideas? How did it happen?

[[deleted user]]

I sauntered vaguely leftwards for most of my life. I started out as a socdem, got interested in feminism and LGBT rights, shifted to demsoc, got interested in racial justice and (especially after moving to Canada for uni) indigenous rights, briefly shifted to a vaguely Trotskyist place... and then disability ruined my spouse and I's lives, in ways that left us outside most of the safety nets in society, too poor to qualify for most aid, unable to work, his school "wasn't able to accommodate his condition." (Miraculously, they could do everything he requested once everyone needed it due to Covid-19.)

And that pushed me right into anarchism. Reading the theory helped me sort out more precise ideology, but I was already an anarchist before I picked up any Kropotkin or Malatesta.

[Micah]

I'm an anarchist because I think society is terribly organized and we have to do much better - stop acting like children who must obey and tolerate abuse.

I can probably thank Reagan for radicalizing me in part - I understood at a very young age that threatening nuclear war was madness. My home town was conservative, Christian - somehow I was instinctively rebelling against all of this. In the part of the US where I grew up, environmentalism is very important, and anti-war activity against the 1990 Gulf War also resonated with me. Again, I instinctively knew that nothing could be more awful and pointless than a war fought for rich men.

I was a misfit, enjoyed punk music and science fiction. I encountered Marxism in college. After gravitating to critical Marxism like the Frankfurt School, I discovered Castoriadis thanks to Habermas' essay on him. I considered myself a "libertarian socialist" for a long time. When I really started to dive into activism and direct action, almost everyone around me was an anarchist or a "left communist." Of course I was hyped by the Seattle WTO protest of 1999 but I didn't totally identify with the black bloc at that moment. But I found if you really wanted to do any direct action or militant protest, everyone around was an anarchist. So I decided I was too! Eventually I read some classic stuff like Malatesta and read accounts of Russian and American anarchists. It's a Beautiful Idea. I found that a lot of anarchists have a hard time living up to it - I'm still an anarchist though.

[tout]

my honest to god political chronology:

open - dinosaur - pirate - ninja - environmentalist - identify with Native Americans - anti-racist - progressive Luthern - athiest - anti-christian - disgruntled teenager - skateboarder - Chomskyist - Bakunist - Anarcho-syndicalist - obsessed with crimethInc. - animal liberation and earth liberation - vegan - straight edge - anti-fascist - primitivist/anti-civ - post-left - anarchy over anarchism - situationist - insurrectionary anarchist - nihilist - nihilist communist - chaos freak - post-nihilist - insurrectionary anarchist - reading a lot of Marxist stuff - Left Communist - into the idea of animism and magic - Deleuzian - Tiqqunist - Walter Benjaminist - Agambenist - insurrectionary communist - primitive communist - lifestyle communist - commune-ist - likes autonomy - pretty posi - inhabitant - new dad affirming life - fuck 12

[derHeckenschütze]

As a teenager I spent several time listenning british, american and local punk music from 70s and 80s. Distortion, raw and intense music called my attention. Concious messages and anarchy aesthetic was the next steps. Particularly Black Flag and Napalm Death mentions and lyrics.

[King]

Oh gosh... I guess it's because I've been anti-authoritarian since I was a young child and I never seemed to fit in anywhere. I have ADHD, I was socially inept, and was kind of naturally averse to being made to do things (like schoolwork) against my will. I, for most of my life, couldn't find anything to identify with until I found punk rock music which introduced me to radical left-wing politics. Long story short, I found anarchism and started hitch hiking and riding freight trains around the U.S. I wasn't particularly engaged with dense, unfriendly political theory for a long time as an anarchist, though. I found my niche in a kind of anarcho-primitivist way because of this. As I got older and stopped drinking as much, I started to familiarize myself more with theory and really started to engage intellectually. I've grown out of those out-dated beliefs and have since come to find where I stand politically, economically, and philosophically. It's been a hard time learning but I can confidently and happily say that I'm an individualist green anarcho-communist. If that confuses you, just ask.

[Travis]

I believe that trusting each other is the foundation of civilization, and that government and culture based on trust and focused on the maximization of trust is far from a radical vision.
I was introduced to the practice of anarchy through SF Bay Area hackerspaces: mainly Noisebridge. I dissent from some of the core practices of anarchist groups though, believing that specialization, and intentionally following specialists, is necessary for functional anarchism.

[Sarah]

I'm still somewhere around socdem/demsoc when I feel the need to label myself, but I don't think either of those has all the answers. In a utopia, anarchism is the answer. I'm exploring the in between and as many ideas as I can find. A Beautiful Resistance (aka Gods and Radicals) is what gave me interest in anarchism as a real possibility and not just a dream.

[Rikki]

I feel like I largely believed anarchist principles for most of my adult life, but resisted calling myself an anarchist for a long time for fear of seeming like an edge lord. Around the time I turned 27, also around the time I got involved with the Occupy movement, I started meeting a lot of leftists and radicals with very specific labels (I was not well versed in philosophy or theory), and found i had the most in common, morally, with the anarchists.