I am a Libertarian Anarchist
When people ask me about my political opinion did I not have an answer for them, because what I believe is hard to describe. I did not know that there does actually exist a term for it.
Here in the U.S. people ask me, if I am Republican, Democrat or a Green. I am neither of them. In Germany people asked me, if I am Conservative Christian Democrat, Social Democrat, Liberal, Green, Socialist or a Communist.
I am neither of them. So what am I?
I just found that out a few days ago when I watched the episode titled “Activism, Anarchism, and Power” of the educational series “Conversations with History” by the Institute of International Studies of the University of California at Berkley.
The host Harry Kreisler had a 1 hour conversation with Noam Chomsky, linguist and political activist on March 22, 2002. I watched the video recording of it, which I downloaded from Google Video.
Here is a link to the complete one hour episode.
I learned that I am a Libertarian Anarchist.
This has nothing to-do with liberals in the United States, who are completely different from who call themselves “Liberals” in Germany, which is different from what the word actually means. The anarchist part of it does also not refer to chaos or lack of organization of the society. I am sure most people get it wrong when they hear it for the first time and probably think that I am a Lenin citing and Molotov Cocktail throwing radical or something like that. This is of course far off from the truth and not what I am.
I created a short 6 minutes video with excerpts from the original 1 hour conversation and added some pictures for illustration, which are blended into the video in the top left corner when appropriate. I also added some background music to make it “less dry” to consume.
I called the short video “Wage Slavery, Freedom and Libertarian Anarchism” and here it is.
Backup URL to video on YouTube.com
The video explains some of the principle beliefs of Libertarian Anarchists and then explains where the term comes from and how it is defined, if you go by the book.
The key sections of the video address the following subjects:
- Wage Slavery = Chattel Slavery
- Power is illegitimate by assumption
- The use of violence may me justifiable sometimes
- What is Libertarian Anarchism?
It feels good to be able to express in a word (or two) what you belief in. Now I can say that I am also a part of something. Okay, I admin that the Libertarian Anarchists are a minority among people, but there are more out there than you might think, most of them probably don’t know that they are Libertarian Anarchists, like I didn’t know until now.
No, I am not an activist though. You don’t have to fear hearing endless political lectures from me, don’t you worry :). I was just excited to find out and decided to write about it.
Cheers!
Carsten aka Roy/SAC
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