Anarchist propaganda struggle tip
Most regular readers of my blog will be well aware that anarchism has gotten a bad rap. The popular imagination often associates “anarchy” with violence and lawlessness even though what we actually seek is a genuinely lawful society — one with a polycentric legal system that would protect people from the mass murder and other crimes states are currently empowered to commit through their monopoly of law and security.
It’s time to change that.
In 1990, Newt Gingrich wrote a GOPAC memo on language that helped get Republican activists on the same page rhetorically, paving the way for the 1994 GOP takeover of Congress. It contained two lists of words: one with positive connotations and one with negative connotations. The positive list was to be used whenever possible to describe Republicans and Republican policy initiatives, while the negative list was reserved for describing the Democrats.
As activists, we are similarly attempting to change public perceptions.
You see where I’m going with this, don’t you?
When describing anarchism and anarchist ideas, please use the following words:
active(ly), activist, building, candid(ly), care(ing), challenge, change, children, choice/choose, commitment, common sense, compete, confident, conflict, control, courage, crusade, debate, dream, duty, empower(ment), fair, family, freedom, hard work, help, humane, incentive, initiative, lead, learn, legacy, liberty, light, listen, mobilize, moral, movement, opportunity, passionate, peace, pioneer, precious, premise, preserve, principle(d), pristine, pro- children, pro- environment, prosperity, protect, proud/pride, provide, rights, share, strength, success, tough, truth, unique, vision, we/us/our
When describing statists and statist ideas, refer to:
abuse of power, anti-family, anti-child, anti-jobs, betray, bizarre, bosses, bureaucracy, cheat, coercion, collapse(ing), consequences, corrupt, corruption, crisis, cynicism, decay, deeper, destroy, destructive, devour, disgrace, endanger, excuses, failure (fail), greed, hypocrisy, impose, incompetent, insecure, insensitive, intolerant, lie, limit(s), machine, mandate(s), obsolete, pathetic, patronage, pessimistic, punish (poor …), red tape, self-serving, selfish, sensationalists, shallow, shame, sick, spend(ing), stagnation, status quo, steal, taxes, they/them, threaten, urgent (cy), waste, welfare
I have only edited Newt’s lists very lightly. In truth, they apply very well.
Hat tip to: Jerome a Paris
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While I have not faith in the government, and I believe strongly in maintaining individual liberties, there is one point that keeps me from being a Libertarian. I consider myself to be weak and in need of protection (or at least help getting justice). Sorry if that’s an unfashionable sentiment - I know that expressing such sentiments opens me up to being dismissed as a perpetual victim and a complainer. From my perspective, though, it’s just a fact that predators seek out relatively weak and isolated people: they steal from them and subject them to violence just as a matter of projecting built-up anxieties or just because their normal instinct for violence is repressed when they are interacting with people they consider peers. Some people ARE weaker, and they become even more weak and isolated as stronger people network with other people they perceive to be useful and strong.
I don’t believe the weak are useless and should be destroyed by the deserving strong. The weak may have extraordinary intellectual or creative skills - in fact their very weakness may come from their ability to empathize with others, which causes them to eschew aggression.
From what I can see, Libertarians don’t have a solution to this problem. :-/
@pansophia:
I think you may have an inaccurate idea of what I support if you believe I want you to not have any protection. I want you to be able to choose from among a variety of protectors and have someone else to go to in case your current one becomes abusive.
That sounds like a good plan! Can you spell out what some of these alternatives might be? (Then you can write your own agorist sci fi novel…)
pansophia,
Anarchists want to actually do what statists *claim* to do. Bill Clinton said government is just “all of us working together.” Anarchists believe any group of people in a community should be free to really work together to keep themselves safe–but without forcibly collecting taxes from people who prefer other options, or otherwise claiming the right to initiate force against those who don’t voluntarily participate.
The interesting thing is that the state is nowhere legally obligated to protect you from harm. There is no civil standard for negligence when it comes to the state doing an inadquate job protecting you. But the state does claim an absolute right to limit your options for self-defense in circumstances when it can’t defend you. If a bad guy goes after you when there’s no cop around, and you defend yourself by a means the state doesn’t approve of, you can get in serious trouble.
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