Archive for February, 2010

(Warning: the links attached to the word “fear” in this post are directed to articles and videos pertaining to State violence)

A die is cast.

South Carolina has decided that all subversive groups must register with the government and Charles “RadGeek” Johnson has responded, clearly, that the ALLiance of the Libertarian Left not only belongs on their register, but we take it as a point of pride.

I applaud Charles in this declarative act of obedient disobedience, even though I felt my stomach tighten.  I want to take a moment to express that I feel fear; also pride, but I want to talk about the fear.

“Fear is pain arising from the anticipation of evil.”  –Aristotle: Rhetoric, Book II

I am fully aware that my moral, political and spiritual beliefs place me in opposition to and in the cross hairs of a criminal band that has abandoned, in accordance with a principle of authority, reason and argument as a method of persuasion.   Without reason “persuasion” is achieved through the application of force to produce conditions of subordination, exclusion and deprivation.

These conditions are heartbreaking and, in the long run, dehumanizing; in other words, it is reasonable to be afraid.

It is important that this fear is acknowledged; that it is discussed and openly felt.

“Our fears do make us traitors.”  Shakespeare, Macbeth.

Stories of bravery in the face of danger, staring down the police at the G20 or staying strong while a jackbooted thugs point a gun in your face are great, but how do they help us deal with the fear one should be feeling in these situations.

These activists are marvelous monuments of towing bravery, but are they scared?  They have to be!  I wish more people would talk about these feelings, how they overcame them and why.

As an anarchist I am not looking for heroes to look up to or follow.  I am looking for a community that will see me as a human and wants me to see them as humans.

“If you’re not ready to die for it, put the word ‘freedom’ out of your vocabulary.”  –Malcolm X.

My biggest fear is succumbing to fear.  What happens to me when I am tested and I fail?  Do I cease being an anarchist?  Am I no longer seen as an equal in the community?  Will I even be allowed to enter?

In my life I have come face to face with brutal police, been drug down stairs in hand cuffs and had police dogs barking, salivating at the chance to complete their training on my tender flesh.  I have been in tiny windowless rooms surrounded by cops who bully, push, threaten and intimidate.  I didn’t run or beg or submit, but I wasn’t brave.  I did the only things that I could: shut down and weep.

If under those conditions, or something worse, someone “broke” or “sold out,” I would not be surprised or angry.  I would probably react the same way as before: shut down and weep.

No one wants to betray the cause that fills them with life.  This is why I hope more people will talk about their fear.

“If submissiveness ceased, it would be over with all lordship.”  –Max Stirner: The Ego and Its Own, My Power.

There is a light at the end of the Statist tunnel, but the tunnel is dark.  I hope I don’t trip or trip anyone along the way.   I am afraid, but I will keep walking forward with my hands open.

It will be a group, a community, which stands up together in solidarity that will eventually dissolve the State.

ALL the Best.

Many people hear the word “collectivism” or “socialism” and see a homogenous mass of uncaring human monsters assimilating or destroying everything before their boots.

Many people hear the word “individualism” or “egoism” and see some hunched unkempt ravenous creature with a recognizable human form that has long been disregarded for a loping powerful frame, blood thirsty teeth and throat ripping claws.

And even more people believe that “anarchism” or “libertarianism” is the unholy marriage of the two, consummated in the bed chambers of extreme poverty or extreme opulence; bombs and dynamite the wedding gifts.

They will not start out with these severe assertions, but as you continue to parry and counter their arguments in favor of statism or diminished liberty they will, eventually, fall back to one of these caricatures.

It is my contention that these “fall back” caricatures are merely a recitation of undigested propaganda.  This propaganda supports a paradigm that makes it hard, sometimes impossible, to see beyond the caricatures.  I have empathy for them and understand that the reevaluation and reflection can be painful.

How do we diminish the effect and power of these caricatures?

We fight back! No matter how small.  As Roderick T. Long said,

“I figure if we want to combat the use of the term “anarchy” to mean violence and chaos, we need to start calling people on it when they so use it.”

He goes on, here, to present a number of “letters to the editor” to pop culture outlets.

Here is how Charles “Radgeek” Johnson responded to commenter who offered another anarcho-caricature:

“Man, an “anarchists can’t get organized” joke. Ho ho ho. Never heard one of those before.

“ANARCHISM … the name given to a principle or theory of life and conduct under which society is conceived without government – harmony in such a society being obtained, not by submission to law, or by obedience to any authority, but by free agreements concluded between the various groups, territorial and professional, freely constituted for the sake of production and consumption, as also for the satisfaction of the infinite variety of needs and aspirations of a civilized being.” – P.A. Kropotkin

I don’t mean to be an old stick in the mud, but really, this old chestnut involves such a complete misunderstanding of what the overwhelming majority of anarchists in the history of the world (who have tended to assign a lot of importance to freely constituted, participatory associations) have thought, that it really just fails as humor.”

If we are dealing with a paradigm and want to revolve it, then we must point out every incongruence, every discrepancy.  We have to bury them in anomalies.

“What is truth?  Truth is something so noble that if God could turn aside from it, I could keep to the truth and let God go.”  –Meister Eckhart, Fragments

For further insightful commentary on this subject: Media and Anarchists Violent Reputation, Zinn and the Libertarians and Howard Zinn, RIP.