How I Became An Anarchist

As a newbie journalist and a writer at my college’s newspaper, I was assigned to work on the politics beat.

I sat down at a cozy coffee shop in the U District and met with the President of the Young Democrats to talk about the involvement of the club on campus. We continued our conversation in an amphitheater where a NATO debate between the College Republicans and the Young Democrats was held.

The following day, I came up to this almost empty classroom. A young man was sitting at the teacher’s desk. He was a College Republican’s club member. About 5 other students came in a few minutes later. They all carried the heavy load of keeping the club alive and recruiting new members because of all the resentment they received from other students.

A member said she didn't want to tell her friend where she was going, so she instead mumbled that she was on her way to a "secret society."

Another one described how many students didn't feel comfortable walking around with a picture of a red and blue elephant or a Dino Rossi button on their backpacks or binders. He recalled wearing a McCain/Palin T-shirt during the 2008 presidential race. He said that on his way to class an Obama campaign advocate jumped in front of him and shouted in his face, "Vote for change."

A master's student in the Evans School of Public Affairs, said many Republicans tend to not bring up the subject of politics too often on campus. "I am cautious in expressing myself [as a Republican], because friendship is more important than my political views," he said.

After publishing the article, I visited my former supervisor telling her about how Republicans didn’t have a voice on campus. She smiled at me and said “traitor!” before going back to her office.

This is when I realized that it wasn’t solely about Republicans and Democrats, it was much deeper of a problem than that. How someone who respected me and believed in me was able to label me without even reading a sentence of my work? How did people develop such bumper-sticker ingrained mindsets?

I started doing research and found a lot of information about how our culture is filled with disinformation that is constantly, repeatedly and sneakily poured on us like empty obedient receptacles, as it is the case in dictatorships.

This is when I discovered Ron Paul and became an anarchist.