You are both an anarchist and a pacifist. Are you a threat to the system? THE SCEPTIC asks, struggling to grasp what it will mean to live in a future dominated by the combination of anarchism and pacifism. Majken Jul Sørensen replies: I hope I am, but not in any traditional way. By stimulating your political imagination, my hope is to influence both the debate about what kind of change we want, and what methods are needed to get there. I as an individual am not a threat, but the ideas I argue for do have the potential to bring much-needed change to the world, and that s pretty cool and powerful stuff. In Political Imagination: A dialogue about pacifism today and the anarchist future, Majken takes us through a mind-blowing introduction to anarcho-pacifism as a realistic alternative to the current disasters of wars, economic inequality and environmental crisis. Challenged by THE SCEPTIC , Majken illustrates, with numerous examples, her understanding of anarcho-pacifism and how it would work in our everyday lives. She starts with a tour though the theory and research on nonviolent resistance to war and occupation, and continues with anarchism s long (but mostly misunderstood) history of rejecting violence, capitalism and the state. Along the way she counters persistent myths about human nature , and argues that militarism, nationalism, capitalism, racism, patriarchy and ecological destruction are so closely interconnected that we cannot understand or tackle any one of them in isolation from the rest. In this personal reflection on why she is an anarcho-pacifist, Majken challenges us all to use our political imagination to visualise the future we want, while also resisting what we disapprove of. To boost our imagination, she uses compelling illustrations showing how we could and should organise our economic, social and political lives by self-organising in non-hierarchical ways that respect people and planet.
