Anarchism and Violence - Public Perception

Public Perception

Depictions in the press and popular fiction helped create a lasting public impression that anarchists are violent terrorists. This perception was enhanced by events such as the Haymarket Riot, where anarchists were blamed for throwing a bomb at police who came to break up a public meeting in Chicago. The writer J. R. R. Tolkien, in a letter to his son, briefly described anarchy as "philosophically understood, meaning abolition of control not whiskered men with bombs."

Read more about this topic:  Anarchism And Violence

Famous quotes containing the words public and/or perception:

    A candidate once called his opponent “a willful, obstinate, unsavory, obnoxious, pusillanimous, pestilential, pernicious, and perversable liar” without pausing for breath, and even his enemies removed their hats.
    —Federal Writers’ Project Of The Wor, U.S. public relief program (1935-1943)

    No one has ever seen a Republican mass meeting that was devoid of the perception of the ludicrous.
    Mark Twain [Samuel Langhorne Clemens] (1835–1910)