So there's an "anarchist" scene in my city, but they all just seem to be SJWs. They have these preachy zines that basically say "if you don't agree with me you're a bad person." Isn't anarchism about questioning what you hear?
I would say that it aids the fall of the state. Various minorities with conflict against each other are a surefire way to get some riots going.
Eh, those are the anarchists I don't really want to be near if they have a holier than thou attitude.
Because, what's edgier (sp?) than being an SJW? Being an anarchist. These people are constantly looking for an identity.
I don't think that's true. Many anarchists are actively opposed to the identity politics which typifies social justice movements. Anarchism can be reduced to a belief in the elimination of coercive power and the replacement of hierarchical state institutions with fully voluntary association. Identity politics can fit into that but it doesn't necessarily have a place in all anarchists' politics. It might be that frustration with institutions of the state, through the lenses of racial or gendered justice, is part of the reason people are drawn to that anarchist group and why it has that SJW vibe.
I thought anarchism was when you advocated for little or no legal regulation for something, or society in general.
This^ I'm, let's say, close to anarchism, I've been part of a group (now it's broken up) and I've met several people who identify as anarchists. Some of them view anarchism as "liberation for all", and are very open-minded when it comes to sexuality, gender etc, and different cultures. Sometimes superficially, so they can come across as SJW, and of the naive kind. Also many believe in the elimination of power dynamics and violence in general, so they allign with SJW movements. Some others just adopt the more strict definition of anarchy as a non-hierarchically structured society. And they usually put the intention to revolt above all, so they wouldn't allign with any minority movement, unless it has the intention to abolish the state etc, and has an anarchist ideological perspective in general. Others value all civil unrest, spontaneous dialogue, coming together and solidarity between people, liberation movements. I've met some very homophobic and transphobic anarchists who thought all this is political correctness and identity politics made up by govenments, capitalist degeneration etc. And some others who are hippies who want to make "free love" with each other and abolish gender. Anarchism is chaotic.
Not all anarchists are that way, like for instance this guy I know is an anarchist and also super racist, saying that anarchism will lead to self segregation. So not all anarchists are that way, probably just the ones you have interacted with I would say.
Here's the thing--just like with every political standpoint, there are extremists and SJWs, well, they live to be los extremos. They like to shout about shit without actually doing anything. Real anarchists don't tend to be as extreme, aren't as loud with their views and actually do shit that aids their political views.
"Why are all the anarchists I know intersectionalist?" at which point you've basically answered your own question if anarchism is the abolition of hierarchy and intersectionalism is identifying hierarchies in various identities (oppressive power structures in intersectionalist terms) then to be an anarchist is implicitly to want to abolish those hierarchies thus anarchists are intersectionalist And I think that any anarchist telling you that you're a bad person if you're not intersectionalist is because they think that there's a moral imperative to recognise and abolish these hierarchies and so anyone who doesn't is immoral and therefore a bad person.
I think it's a bit of a jump to say that. I think all forms of anarchism are destined to fail or are inherently undesirable but I will just engage in what definitionally makes anarchism anarchism, because that's what this discussion is about. Anarchism definitionally is generally about the state and other institutions of an historically similar nature (eg. churches). Many anarchists certainly believe in gender roles and have a restrictive sense of what the state of nature implies for human relationships. There are questions of whether or not anarchism is merely the abolition of formal hierarchies (i.e. the nation state and law) or is the active removal of any unequal social barriers of gender, race and so on, which might be termed the informal hierarchies. I don't think that all anarchists automatically take that second step. Some see it as a fait accompli once the state is abolished, because they see states as the cause, or at least the most significant enabler, of virtually all social ills. That is, informal hierarchies are dependent on formal structures to survive and can be replaced by a voluntary, non-statist association. This is the barest form of anarchist communism, in which property is only a right for the goods one can reasonably make use of and communities come to a tacit agreement about sharing resources and contributing labour. Others actively think the state is a corrupting influence on what should be the natural order of things in voluntary communities, ones which are relatively segregated and have distinct roles which are fundamentally just non-institutionalised power dynamics. That's definitely one of the most commonly occurring schools of thought; mainly in agrarian, anarchist communism. Others take a non-communitarian approach, in which it matters less whether you abolish those informal hierarchies, because all they care about is the abolition of state structures with outcomes that are perhaps even less equal and intersectional. This is the core of individualist capitalism, one which assumes that individuals, beholden to nothing but their interests, will form the best forms of associations or the lack thereof. These are genuine forms of anarchism that do not have to take intersectionality into account. I don't think it necessarily follows that you have to be intersectional to be anarchist. That's distinct from the question of whether the principles of anarchism should transfer to intersectionality.
