You’re right, it is a thought terminating cliche for a lot of people. If you get rid of the thought terminating cliches and put in the work to understand, you open yourself up to all the ideologies, not just anarchism.

but that doesn’t make us incapable of moral judgement or unable to imagine radical alternatives to the status quo

If you want to turn this around and sell something to me, fill that in with details. Anarchists have a way of pointing out things that seem terrible, but then when you ask how things should work instead, getting really vague.

On it’s own that says nothing about the movement itself. But, when it’s literally all you can find even looking hard at an old idea, it starts to seem like there’s nothing there.

Yes, things are the way they are now for a reason, but rarely a good reason.

Doesn’t “a bunch of other things have been tried, and they had X problem” count?

On policy specifically, that’s usually the gist. There’s been a lot of history, very little is original unless new technologies are involved, and even there it’s uncommon (eg. tech monopolies are railroad monopolies).

I recommend the book Capitalist Realism by Mark Fisher, as it is what snapped me out of being a social democrat, personally.

You know, maybe I will. I’m pretty sure I did read Bullshit Jobs. Or maybe just the notes?