I'm New Here

Welcome comrade, I am also of a similar age (18, just about to finish sixth form going into work, not uni). It seems we have got a fair few people like us signing up recently, Ive been here for a while.

If you actually friends/peers in your school that share radical politics anything near to anarchism, that's fucking amazing. Most of us were not so lucky, I know I certainly wasn't.

Welcome Comrade! It is great to hear that you are considering such a venture and wish you all of the luck in the world in that.

yeah i had that problem at college last year when i was 18/19.

To RedFlagg:
(sorry for how long this comment is!)

i'd say its because most anarchists only develop their politics later on. (in the education system, its only really at places like universities that you can count on there being at least a handful of anarchists). still, even if this is depressing, there is pride to be taken in the fact you developed your political views way before the future comrades from your peer group

What i loved doing was reading loads about anarchism and marx, so i had all the arguments to engage with the loud mouth capitalists in my school classes, and then when they next said something outrageously pro-capitalist, intervening and defeating them in debate in lessons in front of the class.

Sounds a bit nasty, but if you can challenge their rubbish and win, you get people approaching you to talk about it later on. Trick is to appear confident (but not overconfident), even though you might be absolutely terrified of putting yourself and your views so out in the open (i definitely was)

Another thing i found helpful was (in my lessons) to try and delay labelling myself or my views for as long as possible, preferring to instead push the content of my politics and establish myself as a rational and thoughtful person, (mainly because if you don't people will just make fun of the fact you are an anarchist, and label you as stupid/naive).

I can agree with Harrison about how good it feels to smack down some capitalist nonsense. The most recent example was in my politics class when we were doing ecology. The teacher asked who thought the environment could be saved within our current economic and social systems. Not many people said yes at all (most people recognized how bollocks liberal environmentalism was but just didn't have the faith in deep ecology because it required too much radical change)apart from these two guys. I delivered the smack down on one of them talking about how it is impossible to be truly environmentally friendly and live sustainably etc under capitalism as it is fundamentally in capitalism's interest to expand and over produce for profit leading to waste and environmental damage.

hey thats ace to hear. i'm not very clued up about the education systems of other countries - i think college translates to university over here in England.

It definitely gets better - in school the main criticism i received from my teachers was that i was straying off the subject matter (when i knew i wasn't, i was just applying an analysis outside the scope of the curriculum!). At university, my grades shot up without me changing my method of writing, due to the fact that the grading system is so different from (and superior to) that used in school. Also, graders are obliged to treat all political views equally.

(I also imagine school in the US is a bit more rigidly anti-communist)

Yeah some one please confirm this? Cheers

College is pretty much any post-high school education besides trade school.

(by the way, this post came out too long and i answered things i'm not sure you asked, but i've posted it up anyway as it might be useful to other anarchists currently in school)

yeah i think its really unfair how somehow the responsibility to explain yourself is placed upon you (because you hold a minority viewpoint) while they use an attitude as though they don't have to justify themselves because they are not disagreeing with the existing order of things.

best thing to do is to let / coax them into getting passionate to the point where the're not making proper arguments, whilst you remain really calm, collected and logical. then the whole 'mad commie' stigma starts to go out the window. then leave / disengage while they're in disarray.

Normally, its only worth arguing with them if there are others around who might be influenced according to who 'wins' the debate.
But if they are a nice person, its worth engaging with them in friendly discussion even if it is just you and them, as they will normally take a view back to their friends like 'i disagree with them, but they know their stuff'.

Its good that there is that responsibility to explain ourselves though, because it forces you to get better politics, but on the other hand, yes people arguing for the status quo often don't really have a clue and tend to not explain themselves because certain things just seem obvious and inevitable to them.