What is an Anarchist?
Guy Fawkes
- Guy Fawkes - from the V for Vendetta Shrine
- The Life and Crimes of Guy Fawkes – from GuyFawkes.me.uk
- Historical Implications and Interpretations – from The Gunpowder Plot/Guy Fawkes Pages!
- The Gun Powder Plot Society – from gunpowder-plot.org
- Guy Fawkes – from Britannia
- Guy Fawkes as a Holiday
Che Guevara
- The Death of Che Guevara: Declassified – CIA documents
- Che Guevara – Time Magazine’s 100 Most Important People of the Century
- Che Guevara Internet Archive – from Marxists.org
- The Killing Machine: Che Guevara, from Communist Firebrand to Capitalist Brand, by Alvaro Vargas Llosa
- Che Guevara – brief biography
- Che Guevara – the 2008 film
Anarchism
Task: So what is an anarchist?
Mindmap or list all the characteristics of an “anarchist.” If you can show relationships among the qualities, that’s even better.
Extreme radicals, political refugees from the continent, who seek to undermine the capitalist system and the state. These are just some of things that ANARCHISTS are.
Since the start of government systems, anarchists have been around. Some famous examples of anarchists could be Guy Fawkes, one of the main characters from the book called V for Vendetta based on the real life events of Guy Fawkes, mainly, the Gunpowder
Plot in November, 1605. Another famous anarchist is Che Guevara, the man who, in the 1950’s – 60’s became the leader of the guerrilla army and rolled into Havana and overthrew the government.
These examples are anarchists because firstly, they were both attempting to destroy or overthrow a government, ( Guy Fawkes and King James The 1st )( Che Guevara and the Cuban government ), and secondly, they were extreme radicialists.
The difference between an anarchist and a terrorist is that both can be violent but, usually for an anarchist, its just attitude, whereas a terrorist is instantly harmful, whether targeting a single person or a whole group of people. One thing they have in common is destruction. They both destroy or wreck things for themselves and/or their “group” or force. They are also both not socially acceptable, although being an anarchist is not illegal (depending on extent), it is frowned on by societies. Being a terrorist is illegal. One thing they both have in common is that they both want change. In a way they are different in this instance, as anarchists want no-one to have power, but terrorists want the power for themselves.
I see very little here that has to do with Anarchist movements. Guy Fawkes was a monarchist who was trying to bomb parliament in retaliation for the actions of England’s Protestant government against his English Catholic fellows. Alan Moore (who is an Anarchist) used his visage in a comic book- but this does not retroactively make Guy Fawkes an Anarchist by any means.
The assertion that Che Guevara, of all people, was an Anarchist is probably the most ridiculous claim I see here. Che was clearly a USSR statist communist, an avowed STALINIST, and therefore completely at odds with the theories of direct popular self-determination which is the foundation of all legitimate Anarchist theory. Che is well known to have imprisoned and “liquidated” members of the Cuban Anarchist movement. There’s more info below:
http://libcom.org/history/guevara-ernesto-che-1928-1967
Che was a clear enemy of Anarchists everywhere.
Hello Chuckles, fancy meeting you here. You’ve beaten me to the punch but I just dropped by to explain that while V (the comic book version rather than the movie version) was an anarchist Guy Fawkes was anything but, and as for Ché Guevara… having your boat race on the tee shirts and bedroom walls of every baby leftist doesn’t make him an anarchist any more than the people who wear the tees and put up the posters. They like to think of themselves as anarchists but they generally want to ditch the type of government they’ve got and replace it with something else, usually socialist or communist). An actual anarchist would probably have more time for Reagan than Ché, and while they’d certainly want to ditch the form of government they’ve got they wouldn’t replace it with anything.