User:Bridget O'Connor

Me at a glance

Life

This user is a
citizen of the world.

This user lives in Ireland.

42Y

This Wikipedian was born on 28 June 1982 and is 42 years, 4 months, and 12 days old.

TCD

This user attended or attends University of Dublin, Trinity College.

PhD(c)

This user is a doctoral student in History.

This user loves to write.

Political views

This user is an anarchist.

This user is a
platformist–especifista.

This user is a syndicalist.

This user believes in workplace democracy and workers' self-management.

This user is an internationalist.

This user supports "illegal immigrants" and the right to travel freely upon the planet we share.

This user supports the right of all people to resist occupation, colonialism and imperialism by any means necessary.

This user believes race does not exist except as an oppressive social construct and will oppose racism by any means necessary.

This user is a feminist.

This user is a strong supporter of the LGBT community and sees nothing wrong with being queer.

This user supports sustainable living.

Although there probably won't be an anarchist revolution in this user's lifetime, they nonetheless hope that there will be one.

Other views

This user is an atheist.

This user is a Humanist.

This user is a child of the Enlightenment.

V

This user is a Vegetarian.

Interests

This user is interested in history.

This user is interested in Irish history

This user is interested in the history of the English Civil Wars.

This user is interested in the American Revolution.

This user is interested in the French Revolution.

This user is interested in the history of the Anarchist Movement.

This user is interested in the
Russian Revolution.

This user is interested in the Ukrainian Revolution and the Makhnovist movement.

This user is interested in the Kronstadt Uprising.

This user is interested in the Shinmin Revolution.

This user is interested in the Spanish Revolution.

This user is interested in the anti-apartheid struggle.

Books

This user is a Bibliophile.

This user prefers
non-fiction.

This user is currently reading The Unknown Revolution by Volin.

This user knows The Question to the Ultimate Answer, but isn't going to tell you.

7+1

This user enjoys the Discworld series.

This user knows that Oceania is at war with Eastasia. It has always been at war with Eastasia.

Music

This user loves
The Beatles.

King

This user is a fan of the band King Crimson.

MGMT

This user is a fan of MGMT.
Is there any Time to Pretend?

MUSE

This user is a fan of Muse.

This user is a fan of
Pink Floyd.

Queen

This user is easy come, easy go.

This user is a Radiohead fan.

This user is a fan of
The Rolling Stones.

This user is a fan of The Smashing Pumpkins and worships Billy Corgan.

This user is a fan of Tool.

The Who

This user won’t get fooled again.

Films

This user's sister was bitten by a moose!

This user is not the messiah, he's a very naughty boy.

DS

This user knows you can't fight in the War Room.

Miscellanea

This user uses Commonwealth spelling.

C₂H₅OH-3

This user utilizes alcohol at an advanced level.

This user has never been to Fucking Austria

This is the userpage of Bridget O'Connor, a postgraduate history student at Trinity College, Dublin. She is particularly interested in the history of the Anarchist Movement. She finds the coverage of anarchism on Wikipedia frustrating though. It is presented as some kind of ahistorical, vague, amorphous, crude anti-statism. In fact, it is a coherent, modern, rationalist, anti-authoritarian, socialist ideology born out of the Bakuninist faction of the First International in the nineteenth century. It is anti-statist, but it is not reducible to that.

Due to unsympathetic scholarship, and the marginalisation of the movement in the face of the apparent "success" of Marxism in bringing about socialist societies (which were in fact state capitalist), a lot of space was provided for totally unrelated movements to latch onto the anarchist label. Nonetheless, currents describing themselves as capitalist, primitivist, philosophical, individualist, etc. have no place in the movement. Wikipedia's coverage of anarchism is a case study in Okrent's law, that "the pursuit of balance [in this case through NPOV] can create imbalance because sometimes something is true". No matter how much a hyper-capitalist, or a primitivist, or whatever, may believe her/himself to be an anarchist, self-identification is not enough. It is the ideas, rooted in the movement's history, that matter.