I’ve always been angry about the hands we have been dealt in this life, and for a long time I misdirected that anger at the other people in the trenches. It wasn’t until I directed that anger upwards that things fell into place.

I could have let myself become a blackpilled doomer and been able to sip my coffee and say “ah yes, all is going according to my plan” every time something horrible happened, but I’d rather be an optimist and hope we can make something out of the scraps of world we have left. but yeah, podcasts mainly, I think.

Enthralling question.

I don’t really know.

But perhaps, a large[st] part, abuses by authorities. [And being smarter/wiser than some “teachers” etc., probably too.]

… And that’s not viable to recommend.

I shall be looking for more purely positive "What made you become an anarchist?"s.

Though as I type that, I see again the “made you”. Made me? I wonder how much did I choose, and how much was I made to be an anarchist…

Exposure to anarchist thought (~ not mere academic and literary, but real world), surely healthier.

I guess I was always to some degree, I just didn’t quite understand myself or politics to tell for what it is. In my young adulthood I was dragged into liberalism/libertarianism because it made sense to me to increase the freedom of an individual, but much later I realized the individual can’t be truly free without also having economical freedom, which made me understand what the equality is really about and why it’s essential for your freedom

I think my neurodivergence played a key role. To me the balance of individual and collective needs seems actually works out in current practice and in the potential future society.

I aso vibe with the clarity of anarchism, as it doesn’t need internal politics, kissing up the hierarchy, pretending to be what you arent and so on.

Growing up in a post Soviet country, I had picked up a pretty strong bias against “communism” or, rather, Marxism-Leninism. It was for a good reason too, looking back at the history of Ukraine in the USSR.

Then when I grew up, capitalism also made no sense to me. So I looked for something that rejects both Western and Soviet authorities and anarchism was the thing that fit the best.

I was an anarchist just out of high school, but I eventually felt it was a philosophy that was viable in a world without psychopaths. I was brought back into the fold after reading Walkaway by Cory Doctorow. Someone takes your shit? Walk away. Make newer better shit. Anarchism is perfectly viable in a past scarcity world.

Hell, even in a scarcity world, a psychopaths’ ability to do damage is severely limited in a decentralized system.

The Leftist Cooks on youtube made videos that made me realize that all my lifelong eccentricities weren’t behavior problems but deep longing for justice that isn’t available to people under current societal structures.

I wasn’t an asshole child, I was missing implicit social rules that meant I was nobody’s equal and had no autonomy. We kind of hate kids, considering all the constant winging about the sanctity of life and innocence. Then I found out that’s not a universal thing. Guess that was all it took

Everything else didn’t make sense when I looked closely. Anarchist commentary and critique always seemed the most plausible in various topics.

People always gave me a funny look when I said I didn’t trust any politician, left, centre or right. Struggled with authority, especially if I knew the instructions were incorrect, but people kept saying ‘just do it anyway’. Read some Colin Ward and realised I was an anarchist all along.

I was made aware of it by engaging with Denmark’s ineffective politics. I was radicalized into it by going through its welfare system.

Well that is a fucking wall of text, but alas, it might be hard to read, and I don’t blame anyone who chooses not to, after all it is basically my brain vomiting. For those who do, good luck to your sanity trying to understand my ramblings.

When I was little I looked up into the sky, and I saw it littered with little shiny dots. I was told that these are stars. Later I learned about Gagarin, and I thought “Wow it is so cool”. I read the Dune, watched Starwars and Startreck, thinking, some day I want to be up there, amongst those stars. And I was told that one day I will be, if only I work hard, I will be up there. And from those stars I looked down, back unto earth.

And then I saw the spirits of teacher crushed by the impossible requirements where only those who don’t care succeed, I saw nurses who cared for my grandmama leave the industry because you can’t put “thank you” on bread, I saw fish swim with their belly up in the river where I played as a child and my mother told me not to bathe in there. I saw the forest(it was really just a couple of trees near a forest) where I played with friends get uprooted. I saw the flowery field, where I had my first date, die, the gras turning brown and the flowers wither. And I was told that the corporations dump their waste and so things die. I asked why don’t we do anything about it? And I was told that if only I work hard, I will be in a position where they will listen, because they don’t know better.

I worked hard taking unpaid overtime because I was told that it was loyal, and loyalty is good. Well turns out it was one sided when the corporation moved elsewhere. I worked hard at a family grocery shop, and they a chain supermarket was build, an entire field of corn where my grandfather used to create new strains was turned into concrete, and the family shop went out of business. I worked hard at the Supermarket, but I closed my eyes when a mother tried to steal dried baby milk and diapers, turned out it was the wrong call.

I finished my education and was offered a job, and I took it, I was paid well, I had reasonable hours, the company rewarded me with its loyalty for mine. And yet the price I had to pay was blood, blood of those whose faces I never saw. I thought to my self, well they tried to kill us, so we attacked back and won, sucks to be them. And then they told me we have to attack again, they are building up, I believed them. So we attacked again. Well turns out the things I helped to create didn’t kill those who wanted me dead, with which I would be reasonable fine with, they killed children, they killed those who did not care about me at all. And when I asked why did we do that? they told me “Collateral Damage, shit happens”, and yet when all was done instead of helping those who remained we took from them, and took and took and took, until they were eating each other because there was no food left for them.

They told me that the corporations job is to make money, and it is the job of the government to regulate them. Well fair fucking enough I thought, and I went to the government. Turns out the government is paid by these people to allow them to do that. They told me that I should protest, after all my government allowed me to protest, so they know that I am against this or that. And so I did. I stood there with my friend and people I never saw before. They didn’t care that all of us were against it, matter of fact they were quite pissed off that we were not celebrating them.

The police killed my friend that day, a few too much hits on the head caused a bleeding inside. They told me that I should not protest then.

What was left for me? And so I went back to the place I was born, not much there, not even a quarter of the money I made before, but I didn’t need it. When I go to the butcher he gladly gives me a piece just so when I happen to forget my money, and so does the family farm. And when the time comes I help repair their stuff, because I know how to do it. When it needs be I help their children understand what they couldn’t get in school.

It turned out that when people around me love doing what they are doing, for the sake of doing it, it doesn’t matter, we can live with no care about anything at all. We help each other not because there is an exchange of money going on, but because we are happy to see someone live a little better because we helped.

I would like to end this with a quote from a song.

“I love my country so much, but I hate the government!” (Country in this case referring to people)

I was an edgy communist when I was 13, eventually I grew up.

Several things. The climate report of 2018 made me realize that the world fern isn’t regulating itself, it isn’t able to adapt to changes, because otherwise why would it not have adapted to the situation beforehand? It scared me, and made me want to bring about a change.

I was still following progressive politics at the time and still identified as a democratic socialist. I rooted for Bernie Sanders in the american progressive movement, and was quite upset that he lost again.

That was when I started listening to a youtube channel called re-education, which was some kind of edgy anarcho communist guy. I thought his videos was interesting, and so it felt like anarchism could be achieved. At that point I identified as an anarchist.

However, I have been quite interested in language and how it impacts our conception of the world. Until recently I have identified as an anarchist. But Anarchism is as broad as hierarchism, and so identifying as an anarchist is like having a conversation where somebody is asking “Where are you from”, and me answering “I am from Eurasia.” It is true, but most of the time it would make more sense to be more specific.

We should be clear about exactly how we envision non-state societies. Therefore I now primarily identify as a democratic confederalist and an oakist.

I got radicalized by a friend over signal