Anarchist: You Keep Using That Word, I Do Not Think It Means What You Think It Means

The heyday of the Red Scare may be over but there are still people in this country who try to make anarchists out to be evil boogeymen who desire nothing but death and destruction. Take Steven Kurlander who wrote an article for the Huffington Post titled A Lesson of the Boston Bombings: Stop Classifying Criminal Anarchist Violence as Acts of War. In the article Mr. Kurlander makes the following accusation:

Back in the early 20th century, "terrorists" were referred to as "anarchists" (basically the same thing) and carried out what would be termed these days as "acts of war."

Emphasis mine. As an anarchist I can say that terrorist and anarchist are not "basically the same thing." A terrorist is a person who tries to advance a political cause by instilling fear in the general population. One cannot define an anarchist so narrowly. There are many different schools of anarchism including anarcho-communism, market anarchism, mutualism, anarcho-primitivism, anarcho-capitalism, discordianism, crypto-anarchism, and so on. Within each school there are different factions. Mr. Kurlander mentions a couple anarchists that are well-known in the United States for the acts of violence they perpetrated:

President McKinley was assassinated by one such anarchist, Leon Czolgosz, in 1901 in Buffalo, N.Y. Between the years 1919 and 1920, anarchists led by Luigi Galleani, an immigrant from Italy, mailed bombs to banks, government offices and other institutions and carried out assassination attempts on prominent American businessmen and politicians. That led to the Red Scare that resulted in substantial illegal searches and seizures, unwarranted arrests and detentions and the deportation of several hundred suspected radicals and anarchists.

During the early 1900's social anarchist philosophies became the most prevalent. While many schools of social anarchism are nonviolent but there were also revolutionary groups who advocated using acts of violence to jump start a revolution. The anarchists mentioned by Mr. Kurlander didn't even make up one percent of one percent of anarchists of that time. Blaming all anarchists for the acts of a handful of anarchists is like blaming all gun owners for the actions of a handful of gun owners.

With that said there is a common belief among the varying schools of anarchism. The term anarchism means "without rulers." What defines a ruler differs from school to school (for example, anarcho-communists consider capitalists and employers as rulers whereas anarcho-capitalists do not unless the capitalist or employer is using physical force to coerce employees) but the unifying idea is that coercive force isn't needed to enjoy civilization.

The Tsarnaev brothers were nothing more than immigrant anarchists carrying on a tradition of political violence, this time framed in religious fervor.

How does Mr. Kurlander know this? I've haven't heard whether or not the Tsarnaev brothers have expressed any political philosophy either way, let alone confessed to the crime. Did either of the Tsarnaev brothers claim they opposed rulers? Anarchist isn't a synonymous term for bomber or terrorist, it's a term that expresses a specific philosophy. Somebody who believes in state socialism, theocracy, or a republic cannot accurately be called an anarchist.