Look in the coming days a bunch of motherfuckers from journalists to the right wing, from liberals to Nazis, are going to be using the words "anarchists" and "anarchist" in ill-advised and meaningless ways.

I, your friendly neighborhood anarcho-communist sheep farmer, am here to talk to you about what it means to be an anarchist and why it doesn't just mean "people who don't want any rules".

This thread is inevitably going to spawn a bunch of discussion because anarchists LOVE discussion about what what anarchism actually is and means and what we believe and what our points of commonality are and where are we going for lunch, anyway, and do we need another committee?

At its most basic level, anarchism is a political philosophy that rejects unnecessary, coercive hierarchy in favor of radical equality for all.

This ends up having a lot of interesting knock on effects depending on the individual anarchist.

A lot of anarchists are vegans, because they extend that rejection of hierarchy to non-human animals, for instance.

Anarchism also often seeks to abolish the modern nation-state, because they create unequal distributions of resources and unnecessary divisions.

The thing is though that anarchists actually fucking LOVE rules. We will merrily wrangle over bylaws for weeks. We will work for months to hammer out a code of conduct. Anarchism doesn't mean a lack of *structure*, it doesn't mean not acknowledging subject matter experts.

It does mean that an anarchist org will often work very hard to make sure that everyone who wants to be heard on an issue is heard, and that decisions affecting the group are made in a way that doesn't alienate members.

That's why you see me joke about meetings. Anarchists LOVE meetings.

Well ok often we do not actually love them, but what we love is participatory governance of the social group with an emphasis on direct rather than representative democracy.

I can't tell you that no anarchist group believes in violent revolution, because some do. However, some also believe in strict pacifism. Some believe you stick with non-violence right up until you can't anymore, and then it's time to smashy-smashy.

Look, we didn't pick the term. Pierre-Joseph Proudhon started it on the mid-19th-century and here we are, stuck with it in the 21st. The point is that anarchism is an actual political philosophy, and anarchists its adherents. https://twitter.com/rexx1888/status/1347173505356296195?s=19

Disorganized mobs who break into national capitols in an attempt to halt a free and fair democratic election and install a fucking dictator are not anarchists. They're fucking fascists and terrorists attempting a coup.

Cause see, the problem with me being your friendly neighborhood anarcho-communist is that even though I am deeply convinced that representative democracy and capitalism are killing us and we would be better off ditching them, a violent coup violates my principles.

If I truly reject coercive hierarchy then then only legitimate use of violence is defense. I can't, as a minority, force my preferred form of govt on the nation through violence. I can only try to convince you.

Maybe some day a majority consensus in the country will decide to burn down the Capitol and capitalism. Dunno. I probably won't live to see it, because like Big Bill Haywood I got the marks of capital all over my body and some day they're gonna kill me.

But I can work for that day. And I can engage in work to build free communities based on radical equality where people have their needs met regardless of their ability to satisfy the needs of capital via a goddamned job.

I digress. Anarchism: at its base, a political philosophy that rejects coercive and unnecessary hierarchy. A *political philosophy*.

The powers of capital have been working to demonize anarchists in the US for the last 100 years at least. The Sedition Act of 1918 was used to take down a lot of anti-war anarchists at the time.

So when you see journalists and legislators trying to pin the acts of insurrection that occurred yesterday on anarchists rather than fascist supporters of a fascist president, be aware that they're partaking of a lengthy tradition of suppressing anti-capitalist movements.

Anyway thank you for coming to my TED talk I gotta go to the doctor.