From what I’ve seen, these seem to be the people showing up at events such as the Milos Yiannopoulos event at Berkley and the Trump inauguration and causing problems. A few years ago we had an OWS rally here and a lot of people dressed in the manner of the anarchists I see online showed up. No trouble broke out but these people seemed to me to be spread out among the crowd and IMHO, seemed to be waiting for something to happen.
Now I see videos online of the violence taking place at big gatherings, the perpetrators seem to be dressed in stereotypical Anarchist garb. What is the aim?
My take is that they are working with the right to discredit protests and demonstrations by those that oppose the current administration. I base this on the vitriol I hear from my co-workers here in red state flyover country directed at the “violent sore loser liberals” making no distinction between the people causing problems and the majority of peaceful protesters.
One question I have is why they seemed to skip the Women’s March. As far as I am aware, there were few if any problems there.
I went to Wikipedia to read up on it but that was a lot of dry, historical, philosophical stuff.
I’m wondering if someone can thumbnail current Anarchist thought and strategy. And yes, I’ve considered that “anarchist” implies lack of a cohesive movement.
I guess I’m sick of hearing about the violent lib rioters protesting Trump. How do I counter?
The anarchists are throwing me for a loop, too. I have to image that they don’t really know what anarchy is really about. But neither do most common people.
Anarchists were the anti-oligarchs of a century ago, who had a philosophy not unlike those who now call themselves libertarians. “Anarchist” means “absence of government”, a belief that people are best left alone to function in society and economy unfettered by regulatory complications.
Even Trump’s handlers would not stoop so low as to plant agitators in crowds to try to incite violence that can be blamed not on policy, but protests and resistance to it.
All anarchist really mean, as jtur88 points out, is absence of government, but as far as that goes there’s a massive variance in anarchist thought and philosophy. Unfortunately, anarchy has taken on a particularly negative connotation because it’s often flown as a banner in protests, often violent ones, in a sense of being against THIS government but missing the point that the idea is fundamentally against any form of government.
That said, even for those who truly believe in no government, there’s various manifestations of it. There are your “sovereign citizen” types, or as you point out in the OP the type that resist authority because they have particular urges and they resent government, society, or whatever, that forces them to keep those urges in check. And by this, I mean people who, left to their own devices, without fear of punishment, would go around rioting and looting and otherwise creating chaos. By that, I mean, when I see this kind of thing, particularly in the recent situation here in DC where it seems clear to me that at least some people engaging in it showed up with the intent of rioting, that they were likely not either wildly left-leaning people extremely pissed at Trump nor right-leaning plants intended to discredit the legitimacy of the protest, but most likely just opportunists knowing there was a really good chance they’d be able to do those things.
So, in short, I don’t think their aim was anything remotely political or philosophical, just to express or release whatever pent up anger or urges they have.
That all aside, there are various actual more political or philosophical anarchist movements that not only don’t get violent like that but strongly argue against that kind of behavior, not only because it undermines the name and the movement, but because it goes fundamentally against the philosophy itself. There’s variations, and I’m going to over-simplify a bit for the sake of trying to keep it fairly concise, but the basic underlying principle of most anarchists is that coercion/violence/aggression is fundamentally unethical/immoral (see concepts such as self-ownership or non-aggression principle) and that all interactions should be engaged in through mutual consent, and that by it’s very nature government is coercive (ie, imprisonment, fines, seizure of property, etc. for non-compliance), ergo government is inherently unethical/immoral.
And… that’s pretty much all any political/philosophical anarchists can really agree on. Some would argue that even concepts property ownership also violate those basic principles and so you end up with something along the lines of anarcho-socialism. Or the opposite side with essentially property rights being the only essential right from which every other right arises and you get anarcho-capitalism. And there’s various other philosophies wherein they rely on different ideas of natural rights or even consider any idea of rights to be flawed at a fundamental level. And inside of these countless flavors there’s all kinds of variations on how various functions currently fulfilled by the government, from courts to roads might be implemented (or not).
But really, without condoning or condemning anarchist philosophy, other than using the same name, I don’t see any meaningful connection between anarchist philosophy and the actions of a handful of rioters at recent protests.
Here’s a source for legal aid to those arrested.
I think it is very important for those of us who are Dems and Libs (or even Centrists like me) to make it clear that Anarchists, Black Bloc, etc. are not our allies. Again, I think they are working to further the goals of the righties.
River Hippie: I’m kinda sad to say, I think anarchists really do have more in common with the left than with the right. They want to free us from government oppression, which is a relatively liberal stance. They want maximum individual freedom.
Where anarchism breaks down is that, if there is no government, then other groups step into the vacuum. Street gangs, organized crime, neighborhood vigilance committees, private armies. And, before any time at all has passed, you’re back under the control of institutions that are just as controlling as governments ever were, except you don’t get to vote for the leadership.
(Maybe in vigilance committees.)
avowed anarchist here (of relatively recent mint)
Most of the “anarchists” you see on the evening news are little more than malcontents and misfits. People who have little to lose and have decided to wallow in anger and bitterness. Funny how they show up almost exclusively at any event even remotely in support of capitalism or viewed as anything to the right of Mao or Stalin.
When is the last time you saw antisocial behavior at a gathering of progressives? Chicago in '68 springs to mind, but I can’t recall anything recently. Think G7, G8, IMF, etc. Get more than 2 or 3 capitalists together and you’re guaranteed a protest and high likelihood of a burned car or 3.
What they (the “anarchists” you see reported) fail to understand is that anarchists view ANYONE in power as distrustful. Conservative, Progressive/Liberal, even Libertarian. They all think they have the right plan for everyone to live happily ever after in a version of their Utopia. And that’s fine. Even commendable in some cases. I can’t fault someone for doing what they think is best if it’s truly altruistic. If the people subject to that vision are on board.
But that is almost never the case. As a quasi-misanthrope I automatically assume an ulterior motive of those in power. I now resist anyone who so much as even contemplates they know what’s best for the masses. Sure, your parents in most cases knew what was best for the family. But for the most part they probably let the neighbors set their own sites without too much hassle. Small, localized social organization is about as far as an anarchist feels comfortable going.
Myself, I identify as an anarcho-individualist. I’d be perfectly happy falling completely off the grid and fending for myself and my family. Does that mean I want to live in a log cabin isolated from everyone? (Actually, sometimes that’s my dream) No. It’s unrealistic. I’d need some social ties and cooperation for things like running water, food I can’t provide, essential health care, etc. Same things people have always needed and provided regardless of what government is in power. Meaning people have been able to survive and thrive on their own.
It’s when a government steps in that things begin to break down. You can’t give everyone what they want. There will always be friction between people as long as one has something another wants and can’t or won’t self-provide. Be it money or land or water or food, etc. Countless wars have been fought in the name of a government for the same reasons again and again and the problems still exist today. No government, to my knowledge, has been able to remove unrest and discord. Not even Denmark.
I believe most people (Americans, anyway) would say their local government is pretty good. Responsive, reasonably efficient, effective. But scale up to anyone representing over 15 million people on their own (say, a senator from California) and there are going to be problems. Now take that up to a President representing almost 400 million. It doesn’t matter who is in office, you’re going to have a shitload of people crying out that the devil is in the White House.
The thing is, none of them gives 2 farts about you. At least not if you can’t help in their reelection. You exist for them to further their agendas, build their egos and fund their retirement. (With a possible rare exception here and there.) Ever wonder why some politicians refuse pay, out of the goodness of their hearts? It’s because a politician’s salary is chump change compared to what the title is worth.
(Deep breath Yes, I’m on a rant. Sorry)
I think if a national government has to exist, it should be limited to national defense, infrastructure, water quality, food safety and international trade. Period. Everything else can be handled locally. Plus it gives us much more freedom to find our own Utopia. Want to live in a fundamentalist society? I’m sure you can find a city or county in Texas or Florida or North Carolina. Want to live as a free spirit and have no social taboos or restrictions? San Francisco or Greenwich Village might have some room for you. But you will both agree you don’t want the other “side” in power telling you how to live.
Now if we Anarchists could just get our shit together and mount an election campaign…
Apparently (from my brief research) there is both “left” and “right” anarchy. Left anarchism being, as you would expect, trending towards greater collectivism (no one’s in charge, we’re all in charge!) with right anarchism trending towards more individualism and laissez faire economics (each of us are in charge of ourselves!)
But I’m pretty sure the ones you see on the news wearing the Guy Fawkes masks throwing bottles at Starbucks are just violent nihilist misanthropes channeling Tyler Durden because they are angry at corporatism.
I’m an anarchist. I don’t belong to any group however, and have only minor interactions with other anarchists, so I’m certainly no expert on the current “movement” or whatever. I just dislike the government, and governments in general, on principle.
I see you’re starting it off as usual by inferring that “anarchy” = “chaos or disorganization”. That’s a bad inference. There’s nothing in anarchism, as I or others understand it, that eschews organization. It is violence and coercion we’re against, both of which are inherent to all governments by definition.
If you want to get an organization together that collects money from people and in turn provides free/subsidized healthcare and/or a basic income to the less fortunate, I’m all for it. There is no requirement for a government to provide these benefits to society. The state only becomes necessary if you want to collect that money at gun point. And that’s where anarchists like me stop supporting it.
Beyond that, there’s a million philosophies of society that start with anarchy and go further. Anarcho-capitalism, anarcho-communism, anarcho-primitivism, etc. Those are all philosophies that are associated with anarchy, but not part of it. An anarcho-capitalist would probably be against my “voluntary UHC and UBI” plan, for example, for various philosophical reasons that are orthogonal to the government/no government debate. They’re still anarchists, but they’re not required to agree with me.
Thanks for the responses so far. I’m still following this thread and trying to understand.
I think you should withhold your conclusions until you understand the subject at hand.
I have been a committed anarchist since my early teens. Anarchists are not working to further the goals of the Right (or the Left). The current Right only wants to destroy the government so they can rebuild it in a way that is more suitable to their goals. The Left seeks to use the current structure of government to further their goals. Anarchists want neither of those things.
Anarchist strategy usually boils down to: Resist coercion; encourage cooperation.
There is no anarchist uniform (no “stereotypical Anarchist garb”). I dress more or less like most other people in the US, although I do confess to a predilection for minor league hockey teams and death metal bands.
I had never been to Crimethinc.com before I followed the link in your post, but I poked around a bit and I thought this bit from a piece about the protests in Berkeley against Milo Yiannopoulos was a terrific bit of writing:[
](CrimethInc. : It’s Not Your Speech, Milo : Understanding the UC Berkeley Protests)See the inherent message of anarchist strategy that I stated outright earlier? “Resist coercion; encourage cooperation.”
What do you mean by cooperation in this context? That excerpt disavows both major parties, and it hopes that more people do so as well and join them in direct action (implied to be what we saw in Berkeley). That seems like aspiring toward recruitment, but it doesn’t suggest a goal of cooperating with other groups.
Commentators on the right have noticed Tim Kaine’s exhortation that included fighting Trump supporters in the streets, but I suspect he wasn’t really calling for direct action.
These “anarchists” are an embarrassment to the cause of genuine anarchy. I’ve got half a mind to call for a vote on revoking their membership and banning them from serving on our illustrious organization’s leadership councils.
… what?
(I really am an anarchist; we theoretically could have organizations, although not with authority structures like that, presumably; I can’t honestly claim to be a participant in any such organization though)
Do you like the principle of roads, schools, hospitals and other infrastructure?
Violence and coercion are inherent to any two human beings that have conflicting interests. The reason we have “government” is to attempt to provide a structure for many humans to coexist without killing each other whenever it becomes more convenient than cooperating.
Considering I previously addressed this, you are being disingenuous here. No, there is nothing in anarchy that argues with or disputes the necessity or benefits of infrastructure. That is a strawman.
That is not true. For example, you and I have conflicting interests, and violence hasn’t (yet) come into play. And you certainly can’t be suggesting that governments have solved the problem of humans killing each other?
Far more people are killed by governments than would have been killed without them. I think that’s an indisputable fact I shouldn’t have to cite. Almost 200 million people were killed by governments in the 20th century, versus maybe 10 million by civilian homocide.
Now you’ll tell me that not all governments are genocidal oppressors (and that’s true – well, they aren’t all genocidal, at least), and how your preferred system of governance is different, this time. Except that one only exists in your head. “Governments make things better” is no different from any other political utopian myths suggested in the past, from Plato’s Republic to Marx’s worker’s paradise to the Aryan Reich.
For all that this board is generally pretty good about debating various positions and being a diverse enough place that a wide range of different perspectives can get some modicum of respect, there is a severe knee-jerk reaction to the subject of anarchy every time it comes up. (Links provided if anyone requests them). Yes it would be nice to have a debate that didn’t consist in its entirety of someone insisting “It will never work, it’s against human nature, the day after you declare anarchy we have gang rule, hey I just stole your wheat and your corn whatcha gonna do now anarchist, etc” while ignoring the content of every post written by any anarchists participating in the thread.
What he said
There is a colloquial use of the term “anarchy” which basically means “chaos”, so it is slightly understandable as a knee-jerk reaction. But in a serious discussion of the term, I’d hope the colloquial knee jerkism would be kept to a minimum. It’s like trying to have a discussion about transgender issues but people keep laughing like junior high schoolers when you use the word “sex”.
I like to point out that the term “democracy” had similar connotations (chaos, mob rule, etc.) to Enlightenment era politicians, including our own Founding Fathers. Which is why they tried so hard to keep our country from being an actual democracy, while still vaguely wanting a government by “The People”. If we can move past one misinformed connotation, we can overcome another.
It’s kinda like that old cliche about atheism: “you know all those other kinds of governments you hate? Communism, fascism, theocracy, despotism, monarchy? Well, anarchists are the same, they just add one more kind of government to that list than you do.”
Except that, what happens when a gang comes by to steal your wheat?
You’ve got to band together with your friends and neighbors to stop them.
And obviously, throughout history, when a bunch of guys banded together to stop other people from stealing their wheat, that organization was also perfect for banding together to steal some other village’s wheat.
You have to be organized to stop coercion against you, but that organization then becomes a coercive tool to be used against others.
And of course, governments are simply highly evolved and complex examples of these aforementioned grain-stealing gangs. That’s what government IS.
And given that in every society that had agriculture we have some form of permanent social organization, it seems to be an extremely typical equilibrium state for humans to fall into.
So if you want something different than that, you have to explain how you avoid the local equilibrium state of government and somehow move us over to some other equilibrium state, one that won’t collapse into archy the minute two guys argue over a sack of wheat.
The organization isn’t coercion, though, coercion is coercion. Social organization without coercion is what anarchy is. You’re making the argument that coercion is bad, but that means you’re on our side. Social organization isn’t bad, and therefore anarchists aren’t against that.
Here’s what you just said, paraphrased: “If you didn’t have a government, then some group would come and coerce you into behaving a certain way against your will or giving them something of yours under the threat of violence! So we need a government to do these things to you instead!” Do you see the error yet? If you’re against groups of people using the threat of violence to constrain your behavior and take your things then guess what? You’re an anarchist, too!