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> Anarchism argues that no centralized government is necessary for people to lead happy, just and equitable lives.

How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced society? This concern has always hindered me from thinking of anarchism as viable.




A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy. Democracy is literally legitimization of force against the minority, by virtue of vote. Even the constitution, which supposedly protects minority rights, can be amended to remove those rights by a prejudiced majority.

IMO the prejudiced minority has the best chance when they can make it as painful as possible for the majority to harm them. That is, to disable the state's law as much as possible from being wielded against non-aggressor minorities.

>How does this work when one is a minority in a prejudiced society?

In practice in places like Northern Syria, which much of is essentially devoid of strong government, Syriac Christians banded together with machine guns and literally kill anyone who comes to aggress against them. Sure, Assad / the Kurds (who are their allies) / other majority around them could fuck them up if they like, but it's not worth the trouble.


> A minority in a prejudiced society is always fucked, but especially fucked in a democracy.

The history of genocides and ethnic cleansing, plenty of which happened historically and recently outside democracies, disagrees.


No one is disagreeing that governments are the biggest perpetuator of killing in the past 100 years. Government is responsible for far more killing than by non-government actors. Using your interesting logic, one would disagree with the existence of government if one were trying to minimize these deaths. Is this your argument in support of anarchism?


There are complaints that an anarchist society wouldn't be perfect, as though any perfection can be found in any of the well-over 100 governments run on the principle of capitalism plus government authority. Not even the capitalist ideal is respected (freedom to use your private property however you like), since it would cause so many problems in practice.


The history of the supposed poster child of "democracy" w.r.t. its handling of the native peoples inhabiting its territory disagrees with your disagreement.


One of the core ideas of anarchism is that everyone is an equal. In other words, anarchism presupposes lack of significant prejudice.


> In other words, anarchism presupposes lack of significant prejudice.

That seems to put it in "fun thought experiment" territory.


Or "conditional probability" territory. Of the people who would choose to espouse a philosophy of treating everyone as equal, it is unlikely to find someone significantly prejudiced.


Espousing ideology isn’t the same as believing it or living it. The moment the threat of the state recedes, and sometimes before, anarchist violence turns inwards; race, sex, and gender expression are just as suitable as status markers for anarchists as anyone else.

https://archive.org/details/BetrayalACriticalAnalysisOfRapeC...




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