Even with power, can one be truly responsible to hold it? Even if collectively?

It’s not about being responsible enough… it’s about being as responsible as possible. And only collective means passes muster at being that.

is there no way around it?

Why should there be? Collective governance is still governance. One would think that the collective use of power would be something anarchists pay a lot of attention to as opposed to merely attempting to find ways of shirking such a responsibility.

Is Anarchy nothing more than a lifestyle as they say?

It never used to be.

What is the ideal Anarchist stance on life

Do anarchists need a stance on life? That’s a job for philosophers… not revolutionaries.

a seismic shift in mentality must happen.

Not really - I think you underestimate society.

It did not require a “seismic shift” to convince people that a monarchy-less society was possible - merely the judicious application of a guillotine.

Half-brick… they are simply superior in every way.

Don’t ask me how I know that.

It’s something different.

If you’re going to cast anarchism as “culture,” I just have to ask… what does this “culture” actually offer the rest of the working class?

Are you sure of that?

Yep. The rebellious teens who drew it everywhere here back in the nineties was doing so because the anarchy symbol was “popularised” during the Satanic Panic of the late eighties - and I can assure you that most of the kids who did so are now full-blown fascists.

But in the context that I exist in normal people do not act anarchically.

Neither do anarchists - I have yet to meet an anarchist who has successfully “opted out” of the capitalist mode of production. If they could there’d be no need for anarchism, would there? There may be some extremely privileged ones who gets to do so… but I have no interest in what they have to say. Politics that aren’t rooted in the experience of the working class is less than useless to any leftist.

One of the joys of anarchism is getting to choose where you belong.

But do you? Anarchists can pretend that they are “choosing” this or that… but their choices are subject to the mathematics of the capitalist mode of production no differently than the (so-called) “normies” in the working class. Counter-culture can provide a safe-space socially, but it cannot provide you with an economic one - unless you’re Chumbawumba, I suppose.

I could never be on the front lines.

Well, neither can I… my health isn’t what it used to be (and it wasn’t really all that good to start off with), but that’s not what this is about. It’s about understanding the true nature of revolution… and the inevitable counter-revolution.

Oh, look… hasbara is now sulking because people weren’t tolerating their white supremacist propaganda.

Oh, look… hasbara just can’t stop being butthurt because people weren’t tolerating their white supremacist propaganda.

Oh, look… hasbara is still butthurt because people weren’t tolerating their white supremacist propaganda.

Oh, look… hasbara is butthurt because people weren’t tolerating their white supremacist propaganda.

Yawn.

Stop trying to waste our time, hasbara.

I don’t see what I do as propaganda. I see what I do as counter-propaganda.

I have no need to “convice” people of anything at all… as the reaction to Israel’s genocidal actions prove, the working class is fully capable of thinking for itself once all the lies have been stripped away. That’s what the working class needs help with.

There’s a damn good reason why we in the working class are gaslit and prodded into converting our romantic relationships into glorified labour arrangements (ie, marriage) as soon as possible - intimacy requires time and energy… time and energy that, under a capitalist system, must be spent labouring for the parasite class and nothing else.

It’s also the reason why any children that results from such intimate relationships must be mass-corraled into glorified creches (ie, our so-called “education system”) at the first opportune moment - we can’t have the working class spend any undue amount of time actually doing any parenting, now can we?

You cannot fake being an anarchist.

You sure about that? Piggy manages it all the damn time. And if a pig - the worst of the working class - can do it, anyone can.

What is it if not culture?

Counter-culture does not win wars. It sure as hell doesn’t win (or even start) revolutions, either - never mind building workable and sustainable societies afterward.

Seeing a Circled A on a street corner frequently makes me smile.

I see them, too - but it doesn’t make me smile, because I know the teen who made it doesn’t know what it even means.

The current norm in almost every country is to be a worker in an industry and vote in elections,

I live in a country with a 40% unemployment rate - perhaps you should reconsider your conception of “normalcy.” There is a big difference between merely rebelling against “normality” and posing an existential threat to the status quo - the risk profile of the latter comes with real bullets, real torture and lots and lots of real death.

You cannot force a person to be anarchist.

Why would I want to?

Any anarchist society that exist must by necessity be populated by people that don’t follow the statist framework.

You mean… what people were doing for thousands of years before states were invented? None of those people thought of themselves as anarchists, you know.

Normal people who did not understand anarchism

Anarchists are not “abnormalities” - I’m going to assume you don’t have a third arm growing out of the top of your head or anything like that.

And you are not understanding why I used that example - I used it because it was an extraordinary thing for the Makhnovists to do. And, just FYI, the KAD turned out to be pretty heavy-handed too - anarchists are not “abnormalities.”

Anarchism is a way of looking at the world.

Anarchism consists of a critique of hierarchy… and not much else. It is not a way of “looking at the world,” it is a way of understanding hierarchy - it has absolutely nothing worthwhile to say about that which isn’t hierarchical. And it is absolutely not anything that can be called “cultural” - no matter how hard you squint.

a powerful enough propaganda machine to sway the general public.

The one follows the other… and a gigantic propaganda machine is no hypothetical. It already exists. And as you can see happening right now in Gaza, they don’t actually even need that propaganda machine working very well to prosecute a war of extermination against you.

At this point it becomes a lot more difficult to paint them as violent terrorists

I hope you don’t mind me saying this… but that’s extremely naive. Being “involved” with the general populace didn’t help the anarchists that was so deeply rooted in immigrant populations of the US during WW1. It didn’t help the Black Panthers who were deeply rooted in US urban communities during the Civil Rights movement. The Ukrainians barely remember the Makhnovists - the memory of the Torch Brigade and the SECC has been completely wiped from South African’s minds. All of them were deeply “involved” in the general populace.

Everyone in that society is by my definition anarchist.

That’s no different than saying everyone in the USSR was a Marxist, or that everyone in the US is a liberal.

Consider this… when the Makhnovists decided to replace the civilian section of the Kontrrazvedska (the Makhnovist counter-intelligence network) with the KAD (Commission for Anti-Makhnovist Activity) because the civilian section of the Kontrrazvedska was found to be too heavy-handed, they had to go look far and wide for people that actually understood anarchist political theory well-enough to make it a properly anarchist organ - the vast majority of the people working and bleeding under the Makhnovist flag actually knew very little about anarchism apart from a few slogans.

If your anarchist society relies on the ideologically pure, your society is screwed - in fact, if you rely on the ideologically pure it will nnever come into existence in the first place.

When you give up your dependency on authority you become an anarchist.

I don’t understand what this means… I don’t go to the doctor to tell them how to be a doctor.

I’m ok with political reservations and not native ones.

Native reservations are political. They are designed to imprison and contain - and that is exactly what the capitalists are offering you in this hypothetical situation of yours.

In this scenario you already are isolated.

No, you are not. If you were isolated, they wouldn’t be negotiating with you because they’d be too busy exterminating you and crushing your revolt. Isolation means inevitable destruction.

without acknowledging that words can have very different meanings to individuals

Yes, let’s pretend everybody’s understanding of words are equally valid. Let’s pretend the capitalist’s framing of the word “anarchism” is perfectly valid. Let’s pretend the fascist’s framing of the word “socialism” is perfectly valid. Let’s pretend the liberal’s framing of the word “democracy” is perfectly valid.

What could possibly go wrong, eh?

Don’t be angry at me because you got caught doing a lot of talking about a concept that you assumed you understood but oh-so-obviously did not.

Its okay if you cant

It’s okay if you cannot appreciate behaviours that are more fundamental to human society than even speech is… but do not blame anarchism for said inability.

Listening to music or watching a performer on stage, that’s all.

So you had no choice in it, huh? You must be an advertiser’s dream, then.

We tend not to follow anybody,

What did you think you’re doing when you listen to Vylan’s music or watching him on a stage, genius?

As to us at least, we eschew hierarchy and that is due to anarchism.

Again… your inability to recognise and appreciate fundamental human social behaviour is not an anarchist problem - it’s a you problem.

They are just repeating the same arguments to each other that they tried to throw at me and patting themselves on the back for it… I sense a deep, deep insecurity at work there.

Gee… it would be a real shame if somebody were to use that against them.

Against a state like that I’m inclined to agree with you.

They all are like that. There are no exceptions. I truly hope that the pretentious fakery of these (so-called) “liberal democracies” has not lulled you into seeing these entities as something which they are definitely not - place the ruling elites of the most “liberal” state in jeapordy, and it won’t take long for them to reveal what they truly are and always have been.

If they truly have no intention of coexisting then obviously the deal would be a trap.

They don’t. Let’s give one of these “liberal democracies” the benefit of the doubt (rather unrealistic of us, so only for the sake of the argument) Let’s say you’re dealing with a regime that has a Bernie Sanders at it’s head - they offer the deal in good faith, you take it. In four year’s time, you are now dealing with a regime headed by a Ronald Reagen - voted in literally because of the “weakness” of the Bernie regime when it comes to dealing with the threat posed by these “anarchist terrorists” - and now suddenly you have well-funded armies of right-wing paramilitaries perpetrating genocide on your enclave while property developers are lining up to sell it’s land to the highest bidder. And that’s just the start.

Have you never wondered why liberalism is so much more effective at maintaining imperialism than fascism is? That’s why - the fascist is our weakest enemy.

Is every person in the world capable of being an anarchist?

That doesn’t matter - an anarchist society (or something close enough) doesn’t require anarchists. It only requires a society that has normalised said society being run from the bottom up - whether the people in such a society call themselves “anarchists” or not is irrelevant.

There is a crucial difference here they owned the land before.

That, too, is immaterial because the capitalist status quo will see and treat your revolt no differently. If they can isolate you, they can destroy you. If they can dictate what you can do economically, they can destroy you. If they can control you industrially, they can destroy you. If they can hamper you socially and politically, they can destroy you.

I truly wish anarchists would read about warfare with the same enthusiasm they read political theory - for an anarchist, it comes with the territory… figuratively as well as literally.