Why I'm an Anarchist

I guess in some ways I would find it hard not to be an anarchist, or at least some kind of libertarian socialist. My parents are definitely working class - my dad a painter and jack-of-all trades, my mother has worked as a part-time catering worker, shop assistant and clerical type. My family emigrated from England in 1980, mainly for a better life than that promised by Thatcher's England. My Dad had several periods of unemployment and although we never starved or wore rags, we often had less presents than our friends at Christmas, we had one car and we often wore clothes given to us by neighbours. I could see that unemployed people were not necessarily unemployed because they were lazy or some kind of 'unfit' people. As kids we were always encouraged to help out with construction work around the house and learning the merits of working for a common goal. At the same time, we were never a family that went out a lot and we were distinctly removed from any insane form of consumerism. Our holidays (when we had them) were mostly walking trips interstate.

On a personal level, I was considered an intelligent child from an early age, and I got put up a year in school in England. Things such as reading and basic math seemed to come pretty easily and I guess I began to love reading at an early age. When we moved to Australia, I experienced isolation as a kid from England with rather unruly red hair, and this I suppose has been a pushing force in my concern to fight against intolerance. I withdrew further and further into myself, putting a lot of effort into my schoolwork, which I did well at. Although I played sports, I never really had any close friends apart from my brother.

As a child I could see that adults were not neccesarily any smarter than adults. Sure, I didn't know lots of things, and didn't have life experience, but I think I could already see that a lot of authority from older people was not warranted. While I was never a disruptive student (much to unconfident for that), I was always cheeky. I knew (sounds egotistical but I don't mean it that way) were not really any more intelligent than I was and that a lot of what they said was rubbish. Many of these teachers had attitudes were distinctly paternalistic or maternalistic in a negative sense. I could also sense the ultimate stupidity of the school system, even though I performed well. I spent hours each week trying to find words I couldn't spell for the benefit of the teacher. This was pointless, and after a while, quite boring. I really see my time in primary school as a wasted opportunity, a time where I could have learnt so much more but didn't.

At High School things probably didn't change that much, but I didn't feel so isolated, as I made friends with some other kids. However, I maintained a disliking for authority that saw me able to get along with teachers but also get on ok with the kids who were deemed the misfits. A lot of my attitude towards adults probably came from my relationship with my father. He was frequently aggressive towards me and insisted on winning every little argument and at times achieving submission by force. This only encouraged me to stand up for myself, even if I got bruises for it. I was a stubborn little fucker and used to take great delight in arguing, much more so than my brother who was younger and more emotionally fragile. In a way, I got to the teenage rebellion stage before I even reached ten.

This meant that teachers didn't get instant respect if they were idiots. I respected my dad a lot more than them, even if I hated him sometimes, I wasn't going to accept what they said as gospel. I didn't see anything wrong with me, the 85%+ kid talking to other kids who were struggling to pass. I could see why they didn't give a shit. While I didn't see the attractions of smoking and I chose to do most of my schoolwork, I think I had developed my disliking for those who used authority for the purpose of overpowering others and talking them down. I really resented the way some teachers talked about kids I knew who were basically ok but didn't like school.

During this time, one book that put me on the way to anarchism was Orwell's "1984". I first read it when I was fairly young ( I think around 9 or 10), and re-read it several times after for school and my own interest. I could see our society wasn't great, even if I didn't have a very good analytical grasp of why. Reading 1984 showed me how I didn't want to live under Soviet Communism either, but that there must be some other way that wasn't totalitarian or capitalist. I just had to find it.

Not that I didn't have my own reactionary times. It's very easy to follow the unthinking herd. I can remember when the AIDS virus came into prominence in Australia, and the hysteria that followed it. I can remember reacting with a certain paranoia when AIDS was the big scare. The area I lived in was like most, distinctly homophobic. Although I don't think I was necessarily homophobic in the terms of hating gays, I do remember being scared, indignant and ignorant about those who had AIDS, a classic case of media hysteria feeding prejudice. Thankfully, my brain got the better of the manipulation and I soon moved on from this.

I finished High School in 1990, being awarded prizes for all of my five final year subjects and being named as Dux of the school. In typical fashion for me, this was pleasing because it showed I had worked hard, but no big deal in terms of making me a special person or anything. I remained a fairly withdrawn kid with people I didn't know very well, but I did have a wide range of friends or acquaintances. While I always tried to help my classmates with their work, I was always in the outsider group that wasn't quite the 'rebel' or the 'loser' group.

In hindsight, several things indicate a bit of an anti-authoritarian streak. I remember several conversations with teachers where I argued quite vehemently with them. One argument was about how stupid it was to make people wear helmets on their bikes. Looking back, I feel vindicated on that one, especially now that I ride my bike everywhere and realise that helmets don't make bike riding any safer if the roads are still the unchallenged domain of the car. I can also remember how I really resented the banning of black t-shirts with band names on them. In an ultimate show of authoritarian censorship, wearing such shirts was deemed equal to being part of a cult. I wore such shirts and knew this was ridiculous and (with hindsight and a name for it) authoritarian and classist, given that it was mostly the less well off kids who wore them. It wasn't that the shirts were a really big part of me, but that the ban was stupid and petty. The teachers just couldn't handle something different and against their code of conformism. Anything loud and confronting was to be squashed. Who knows what they would have done if kids had been really into politics and anarchopunk? There was no ban on the numerous kids who wore sports clothing and all looked the same, but then they didn't pose any (very weak) threat and they fitted in to the teacher's middle class respectability trip.

Just to place a reality check, there was no way that I was a teenage radical. I placed too much faith in what my teachers told me. But as I mentioned before, I had some idea of what was bullshit and what wasn't. I got a Award for Year 12 English because I got 20/20. However, I didn't go to the ceremony at Government House because having gone there as a school representative a few months before, I despised the place. It reminded me of snobby private schoolboys and girls in blazers, while my schoolmate and I, as well as some country and other public school kids looked completely out of place. It was quite funny how the kids without blazers all congregated and sought each other out on this night, already in our own little class niche, even before we left school.

On finishing school, I tried for entry into Electronic Engineering at the nearest university campus. At the start of 1991I got in, but soon realised that this was not for me, particularly when a talk given by the faculty told us that we could end up as 'salesmen'. When the head of the department asked me why I, a bright student didn't want to continue, I told him that I just didn't see myself as an engineer. He was a Christian, and asked me if I wanted a Bible. Already a convinced atheist, I replied that while I respected his belief in God, I didn't not believe myself. This was kind of brave for a kid, who was very, very shy to the point of having panic attacks when talking to people I didn't know! I wasn't going to go to uni to learn how to sell things for a company! Why get a degree you didn't really like to become just a salesman for some high-tech company? I had a crude anti-capitalism but didn't know how to best express it. Capitalism was wrong, so was greed.

For the remainder of 1991, I was unemployed, during one of the worst economic periods in post-war Australian history. This really opened my eyes up to the stupidity of the labour market and the bureaucracy of unemployment. The lines at the DSS office were so long that they reached down the street. I knew I wasn't going to get a decent part-time job in a hurry, and still wanted to go to uni. I still wanted to learn things and university still seemed the place to go to.

When the Gulf War came around, I knew that I didn't support any side. To me, the war was just a disgrace and all the patriotic crap that came out of a Labor Prime Minister's mouth made me sick. I resolved never to vote for the Labor Party ever again. The so called socialists were way to eager to kill people for my liking. The usual aspirations of a young boy had all but disappeared. My dreams of playing for the Australian cricket team or any professional sport were gone, there was no way I was going to wear a sponsors logo all over me! I had the anger, but not the direction. My parents, in particular my father remained quite reactionary in some ways, and I had numerous arguments with him about Aboriginal land rights, the Gulf War and other things.

I still wanted to go to University, which I thought would be different than school. I had an intense fear of working, as I knew I probably couldn't handle a workplace. I wasn't confident in dealing with other people, and saw most work as bullshit. I could see that I didn't need a lot of money, selfishly expecting my folks to look after me (which they did, giving me food and a roof to sleep under, with attendant emotional abuse from my father). Uni was a haven for me, where I could study things I hadn't studied at school, somewhere were I could grow up, while following my almost insatiable curiosity about the world. So, after consulting my English teacher, a keen ridiculer of authority and who I considered as a friend and mentor to some extent, I decided to enrol in a B.A. at Adelaide University.

In my first year at university, I enrolled in a Problems and Perspectives In European History; Justice, Law and the State, Philosophy 1A, 1B and English. I did reasonably well, and looking back on some of the essays, I can see that I was definitely a leftist of some kind, definitely libertarian when it came to attitudes on sex and state interference, anti-fascist and convinced of the stupidity of the Cold War. However, it was my second year of uni that I came across anarchism. I had two anarchist lecturers, one for Anarchism and Libertarianism, and another self-described anarcho-syndicalist for Japanese History. I wrote an essay on Japanese anarchists for the Japanese history course as a result of Anarchism and Libertarianism and wrote an essay about anarchism and Marxism, as well as another smaller essay on von Hayek and the capitalist apologists. Although I didn't probably call myself an anarchist, I knew this way of thinking was for me, buying a few books on anarchism and trying to find out as much as I could about it. I was enthusiastic about anarchy.

Since then, I have grown a lot more in my confidence and my attitudes, and now call myself an anarchist. I met another fellow anarchist from almost the same area as I lived in, and we talked regularly on the bus home about how stupid the world was! When I look through my poetry notebooks, I think I can see a chronology of my developing radical attitudes.. I made a conscious effort to continue refuting the arguments of my father, and have actually succeeded in helping him to see who really is to blame for everything that's fucked with this world. I can see in him so many people who just think that they cannot change things because they are only small people. I have been surprised by my grandparents who are not as reactionary as I thought they were. I can see that so many people know what's wrong. They really believe that 'real communism is a great idea, the only problem is that it just wouldn't work'. I think that embracing anarchism has given me confidence in myself, because I can see that things can change and that I am not alone and not crazy.

I have started an anarchist group in my city. Even though I have been involved in environmental and student access campaigns, attended anti-governmental meetings for some several years, I want to do something on my own terms and still have involvement with other groups. I have to admit that when I saw the film "Libertarias" I cried at the struggle for a better world that was crushed by those who embraced the fascists or took no action against Franco rather than let a libertarian alternative to capitalism and authoritarian socialism survive. While I no doubt have a lot of growing to do, I now consider myself an anarchist. The human race needs to evolve beyond capitalism and I think some kind of anarchy is the way to go. I fear that we may be heading towards a future all to familiar in the dystopic visions of Blade Runner, 1984 and numerous science fiction films and novels all because we have decided to stop evolving as a society, accepting that we cannot move on any further from capitalism. My hope is that more and more people continue to fight the powers that be and create a new, just and exciting society that serves us and the earth much better than the current model