'Anarchy'

'Anarchist' isn't a synonym for 'thug' or 'vandal'

Sam Leith
28 Mar 2011

Sir - Am I alone in deploring the corruption of the perfectly good English word "gay" by the militant homosexual lobby?

Is it right that a word that once conveyed carefree insouciance should have been appropriated by degenerates who use the principal sewer of the human body as their playground?" It's not long since letters like this were regularly sent to newspapers, and we all laughed gaily at their fatuousness and futility.

But now I find myself wanting to write such letters myself. I look at headlines such as "Anarchists on the rampage in London" and my hand twitches towards my green Biro: "Sir - Am I alone in deploring the corruption of the perfectly good English word 'anarchist' "

The term has become an all-purpose boo-word for those who protest in ways we don't consider acceptable; and, cripplingly, a way of muddying and ignoring the actual political positions of the quarter of a million people who marched peacefully on Saturday.

Anarchism is a political philosophy. It's a slightly wacky one, for sure - and anarchists tend to be unable to agree even among themselves on what exactly it means. But what does it tell us about the character of the protests or the issues involved to call everyone with a brick in his hand an "anarchist"?

Given that the central idea all anarchisms have in common is the abolition of the state (not necessarily by violence), "anarchist" is a daft way of characterising the violent fellow travellers of a 250,000-strong movement protesting against the shrinking of the state.

I have no doubt that there are protesters who would self-describe as "anarchists", having no more coherent political programme than a vague sense that The Sex Pistols were cool and that you might get laid if you're lucky enough to appear on the Nine O'Clock News wearing a hoodie and an Arafat scarf.

But if a handful of violent teenage poseurs don't know what anarchism means, that's no excuse for the rest of us to adopt their ignorance. People resisting cuts to the public sector are the opposite of anarchists.

In point of fact, the neo-liberal media campaigning against that other mindless boo-word, "bureaucrats", or bleating about "benefit scroungers" and the "client state", have more in common with most anarchists than they do with the committed Keynesians throwing scaffolding poles about yesterday.

"Violent protesters"? Fine. "Thugs?" Sure, if you feel your readers are too dumb to understand a news story without a value judgment. "Vandals"? That might work, too. But then, I guess, you'd have to brace yourself for a tide of outraged letters from stuffy old Visigoths.

Source: http://www.thisislondon.co.uk/standard/article-23935963-anarchist-isnt-a-synonym-for-thug-or-vandal.do