TBF, if you put 4 different anarchists in a room to debate a topic, you’d end up with 7 different opinions; I think that the way that anarchism functions means that we end up with an especially diverse mixture of perspectives and viewpoints, so I don’t think people will ever agree on what anarchism actually is (which I find delightful, in many respects)
This is perhaps a facetious reply to your comment though, given that I realise that the confusion you speak of is very different to the discourse I’m talking about. I agree with your point and I think it’s a very funny joke.
A strategy that I sometimes use to avoid the misconceptions is to just avoid saying the big scary A-word, because I’ve had some bizarre conversations where people are super receptive towards anarchist ideas, but it’s like something shuts off in their brain when someone says “anarchist”. I don’t know whether this strategy feels inappropriately deceptive ¯_ (ツ)_/¯ (I picked my current username as an experiment in “wearing my ideology on my sleeve”, to see how the contrast to the above strategy felt. )
Sometimes I think the last great problem to solve in anarchist theory is how people get this confused about what anarchism is.
Media deliberately conflating ‘anarchy’ with ‘chaos’
Maybe that’s all it is.
if you had never experienced direct democracy how else would you describe it?
TBF, if you put 4 different anarchists in a room to debate a topic, you’d end up with 7 different opinions; I think that the way that anarchism functions means that we end up with an especially diverse mixture of perspectives and viewpoints, so I don’t think people will ever agree on what anarchism actually is (which I find delightful, in many respects)
This is perhaps a facetious reply to your comment though, given that I realise that the confusion you speak of is very different to the discourse I’m talking about. I agree with your point and I think it’s a very funny joke.
A strategy that I sometimes use to avoid the misconceptions is to just avoid saying the big scary A-word, because I’ve had some bizarre conversations where people are super receptive towards anarchist ideas, but it’s like something shuts off in their brain when someone says “anarchist”. I don’t know whether this strategy feels inappropriately deceptive ¯_ (ツ)_/¯ (I picked my current username as an experiment in “wearing my ideology on my sleeve”, to see how the contrast to the above strategy felt. )