Anarchist Airbenders

Anarchists get a bad rap. More often than not, TV shows, comic-books, videogames and sometimes even serious journalism portray anarchists as lazy work-shirkers or as cartoonish evil villains, hell-bent on causing chaos for chaos's sake. Unfortunately, the world of Avatar: The Last Airbender is not immune to this habit. Book Three of Avatar: The Legend of Korra even features an antagonist, Zaheer, who is nominally an anarchist. Anarchists would never jealously guard knowledge in a personal library, like the owl spirit Wan Shi Tong. Anarchism involves a radical commitment to democracy-sharing power and an opposition to unjust hierarchies. Anarchism also involves a way of looking at human beings and human interaction. This perspective is encapsulated in the anarchist principle “mutual aid,” which is often ascribed to the Russian biologist and philosopher Pyotr Kropotin.