3 ms·

No, sorry. Political activists do not get to decide for everyone else what words mean.

• byyyuppa 2mo ago
  Everyone gets to decide what words mean. But anarchism has lots and lots of history of scholarship, debate, and discussion. Kropotkin was writing about this in the 1800s, and we've had well over a century of defining and shaping the definitions. The parent poster isn't inventing anything or deciding anything. They're just sharing what the common understandings are.
  • uyeueuduuidt 2mo ago
    [dead]
  • nixon_why69 2mo ago
    If colloquial usage of "anarchy" has a different definition than, an, I'm sorry, irrelevant niche political movement, then you should assume a given speaker meant the colloquial form.
  • zahlman 2mo ago
    > The parent poster isn't inventing anything or deciding anything. Stating something authoritatively is, in fact, "deciding" it for others. > They're just sharing what the common understandings are. No, it is not at all the common understanding. When I put "anarchy" into a search engine, the first thing I see is "Absence of any form of political authority.", because that is the common understanding. Forming an "-ism" around that is commonly understood to follow the usual patterns. Perhaps people who apply the label to themselves wish to see things that way, but they are (thankfully) a small minority of people. I don't give a damn about the justification, because there's clearly no good reason to care, as it clearly serves a dishonest and dangerous political purpose, viz: attempting to delegitimize the state in order to seize power.