Why I Started to Identify as an Anarchist
Okay, let me talk about this, because given that when I joined tumblr I was already pretty anarchist. But the thing is, that this was a development that is still... fairly recent in my life.
Because as I talked about it yesterday: most media we consume is very anti-anarchist. Of course it is. After all anarchism is always also against capitalism (ancaps are not actually anarchists, they love hierarchies - they just hate governments, which is not the same) and obviously media is controlled by capitalism. So, naturally we will get media that is firmly against anarchism, communism and pretty much everything else that challenges capitalism. Which is ironic, because yes, most people I know working in media are fairly left leaning. Not anarchism left leaning, but left leaning. And of course there is the whole "capitalist realism" thing of capitalism somehow absorbing everything to make money off of it, even if it is media that is critical of capitalism.
But I digress. I wanted to talk about how I got radicalized.
Because for me it started with three things:
Becoming interested in colonial history and the concept of decolonization (especially decolonization of the mind)
Going through a super rough patch in my real life
Experiencing mutual aid
Let's go back a couple of years. It is February 2020. The pandemic is starting. We are going into lockdown. I am going through a rough break up. And then... my apartment burns down due to faulty wiring. Within three hours friends foundraise money for me so I can replace everything I lost. Within a day I have a place to stay for the next couple of weeks.
Now mind you, I do not yet know the word "mutual aid". Because literally the only reason I never ended up on the streets in my life despite all odds being for that always had been mutual aid. But let me get some more context.
In 2019 I watched the videos of Conquest of Dread on youtube talking about decolonialism. And through this I started to question a variety of narratives in fantasy and scifi media and decided to blog about this - using my own weblog for this (self-hosted). I started to hyperfixate on the topic, reading books, essays and papers on it. On the colonial mindset, and how it influences everything in our world right now.
And despite being close to homelessness and what not, I do manage to post one of those blogs at least per month during the year of 2020. Going into the different ways of how colonialist propaganda seeps into seemingly innocent plots, tropes, and also general thought patterns (see: heteronormativity and gender norms). And through this I stumble across accounts from indigenous people, how they live, and how many of them survive on mutual aid.
And this is when I realize something: mutual aid. The entire reason I am alive. And also... "the like same 1000 bucks making the round in left wing circles". You know the ones, right? How it is usually the same people giving and asking for support in left wing spaces. Like, right now I need money to pay for uni. A year back I gave 150 bucks to a friend to fix her roof, and just a couple months back I gave 100 bucks to help pay for a friend's cat's vet visit. Basically it is the same money making the rounds.
And then there is also the fact that again... I never experienced full homelessness due to mutual aid. I was thrown out by my foster family when I was just 18 because the foster father beat me and I dared to tell the youth office. Friends allowed me to stay with them until I found a place to move to. Years later I moved to Berlin and could not find an apartment. A friend - who herself only had a one-room apartment - let me stay with her for weeks until I got my own place. While I was living in the US I was living with friends.
Meanwhile I had also once a friend living on my sofa for weeks, because she was supposed to move abroad but something went amiss with her visa, but her lease on her apartment had already experied. And while her furniture was with her parents, they were living in the middle of nowhere.
And yeah... Learning about this concept existing, I realized that frankly... mutual aid had done more for me than the bloody state ever did.
And while the George Floyd protests were going on, I learned that mutual aid originated from anarchism as a concept. And that was... when everything started to make a whole lot of sense.
But it was also when I realized how bullshit the entire left-right thing is. Because yeah, the radical left is sitting here like: "Actually, states and borders are always a form of violence and we do not like violence, though we will use violence to oppose someone else's violence, but generally we just want to help each other out and share meals" and the radical right is like "Kill everyone who is not like us!" See the difference?
Ever since I started to learn a lot more about anthropology and obviously also our neurology. And yes, by now I am not only convinced that it would be good to be anarchist - but that it is literally the only way for humans to live proper lives.
This world we have created is killing us. And it does not need to be. We could be better. And I hate that we are not.
