article_cache/attackthesystem.com/articles.json

[
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/propaganda-by-the-deed-fourth-generation-warfare-and-the-decline-of-the-state/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "Propaganda by the Deed, Fourth Generation Warfare and the Decline of the State\n\nAn Examination of the History of the Decline of the State’s Monopoly on Violence and Warmaking\n\nI. The Rise of the Modern State and Its Monopoly on Violence (1300 to 1800)\n\nII. Anarchists Vs. the State and Propaganda by the Deed: Early Challenges to the State’s Monopoly on Violence (1885-1915)\n\nIII. Liberalism Vs. Anti-Liberalism and the Emergence of Non-State Military Actors (1945-1989)\n\nIV. Fourth Generation Warfare and Non-State Military Actors (1989- )\n\nV. Fourth Generation Warfare and the Decline of the State (1975- )\n\nWorld events of recent years have called to the forefront of public attention and intellectual debate the matter of what is commonly called “terrorism”. Efforts at merely defining this provocative term have proven difficult, and no consensus exists among scholars as to what “terrorism” actually is. The standardized cliche’ that “one man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter” appears to have some actual basis in fact given the ideologically charged nature of many efforts at summarizing the core characteristics of terrorism. Can all individuals or organizations who engage in extra-legal violence for political purposes be objectively classified as “terrorist”? Or do such actors need to engage in a narrower set of behaviors, such as inflicting injury or death upon persons not directly involved in whatever “cause” or “struggle” the alleged “terrorists” may be motivated by, in order to validly earn the “terrorist” label? Is the term “terrorism” itself appropriate when describing non-state actors who engage in political violence? Does this label signify any characteristics at all that are unique to those to whom it is being applied, or is the “terrorist” label merely a subjective ideological construct?(1)\n\nOf course, the use of physical threats and raw violence towards the achievement of political ends by rulers and the ruled alike has been commonplace since time immemorial. Political history is to a large degree the story of  palace coups, massacres, purges, insurrections and other incidents of violence occurring outside the context of any formalized legal infrastructure. However, “terrorism” as it is commonly perceived of by contemporary Westerners certainly carries with it the imagery of particular kinds of actions such as bombings, assassinations, hijackings and deliberate destruction of physical infrastructure carried out by persons devoted to the achievement of some political program through the use of such tactics and doing so in a manner that is frequently indistinguishable from that of common criminals so far as established legal norms are concerned. An examination of the history and evolution of modern Western “terrorism” would indicate that this lay perspective is indeed rooted in fact. However, it is inappropriate to associate extra-legal political violence with ordinary criminality. To understand why this is so, it is necessary to first understand the relationship between “terrorism” and the modern institution of the state as it has evolved in the Western nations and subsequently been exported to other parts of the world.\n\nAs will be shown below, political governance underwent a major transformation in the Western world in the eras between the early Renaissance period and the rise of modern nationalism in the nineteenth century. The foremost characteristic of this transformation was the emergence of government as a corporative as opposed to personalized conception. Parallel to the development of this impersonalized, bureaucratized manifestation of government was the decline of the older polycentric order of Europe whereby powers that were previously shared by a variety of institutions (including warmaking powers) were now concentrated into the hands of the corporative state. The state then claimed for itself an exclusive monopoly on the use of political violence. Over time, the state evolved from its role as a means to an end (the maintenance of order) to an end unto itself. This latter process transpired from the time of the French Revolution to the explosions of the “total wars” of the twentieth century.\n\nBeginning in the late nineteenth century, the state’s monopoly on political violence and warmaking began to meet challenges from contending ideological currents and organizational forces. One of the earliest manifestations of this trend was the advent of so-called “propaganda by the deed”, a term given to the tactics of the classical Anarchists, an ideological tendency that ironically denied not only the legitimacy of the state’s monopoly on violence but the legitimacy of the state in its entireity. Though the classical Anarchists of the “propaganda by the deed” period effectively died out as a political or ideological force following their defeat in the Spanish Civil War and the eclipsing of radical labor movements by the Second World War, their tactics were appropriated and utilized by a wide variety of dissident political currents in Europe and the Americas during the postwar period. Such currents originated from all over the geographical and intellectual spectrum. Some were “far Left”, others “far Right”. Some were religious in nature, others avowedly secular. Some consisted of indigenous Europeans or Americans, others originated from the Third World.  Some killed or bombed indiscriminately, others were more selective. Indeed, the only common denominator to be found among postwar Western “terrorist” groups is their resolute opposition to one or another of the manifestions of modern liberalism and its foundations: bourgeoise commercialism, neocolonialism and liberal imperialism, relative cosmopolitanism, rapid technological expansion and parliamentary forms of government.\n\nFollowing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War, the Western liberal model has achieved unprecedented hegemony and taken root in an expanded number of nations. The elimination of the Soviet Union as a constraint on liberal imperialism has been accompanied by a predictable rise in militarism on the part of Western liberalism.(2) Furthermore, the universalist presumptions and economic determinism of liberalism, combined with the ongoing process of the globalization of capital, have propelled the liberal powers, particularly the United States, towards the pursuit of unprecedented and unchallenged global hegemony. That this state of affairs should meet with resistance from many of the world’s peoples is no surprise, particularly those peoples whose cultural foundations are the most antithetical to liberalism, i.e., those of the Islamic world. Interestingly, pockets of resistance to liberal global hegemony have arisen within the First World as well, including the United States.\n\nMuch of conventional opinion regards the practice of modern “terrorism” as originating from ordinary criminal motivations, ideological extremism, mental illness or moral deficiency on the part of its practicioners. Accusations of this type are frequently selective, uninformed and heavily ideologically-intoned. In this paper a dissenting point of view will be presented, that of “terrorists” as non-state political and military actors engaged in the rational application of ordinary principles of realpolitik and in the process mounting a challenge to the state’s claimed monopoly on political violence, and in ways that are not fundamentally different ideologically, morally or psychologically from those of state actors. Instead, the kinds of “terrorist” groupings to be examined will be shown to be representatives of a new stage in the evolution of modern war (so-called “fourth generation war”). Additionally, an examination of modern military history, contemporary military theory and the dramatic expansion of both the scale and success of so-called “terrorist” entities will demonstrate both the rise of such entities as major political contenders and the decline of the state as a monopolist of political violence.\n\nMartin Van Creveld on the Rise of the Modern State and Its Monopoly on Violence (1300-1800)\n\nThe Dutch-Israeli military historian Martin Van Creveld, in his seminal work “The Rise and Decline of the State” (1999), describes the origins and development of the modern conception of the state as it emerged during the fourteenth through the nineteenth centuries in Western Europe. Van Creveld emphasizes the importance of distinguishing the state from government per se. What characteristics are unique to the state that are not necessarily to be found in government generally? The most important of these is the notion of the state as a legal person unto itself. The state has a legal and institutional life of its own that exists above and beyond its individual members or subjects and is self-perpetuating even as its personnel change. The state is a corporate body, but unlike other corporate entities (business corporations or religious and educational institutions) the state regulates and externally establishes the conditions of operation for other kinds of corporate bodies, maintains for itself an exlusive territorial monopoly and a monopoly on particular attributes of public authority (“sovereignty”), and is recognized by and interacts with other state entities in a way that non-state entities do not.(3)\n\nVan Creveld points out that prior to the rise of the state political government was carried out with varying degrees of formality by tribes, chiefdoms, city-states and empires. Typically, ownership and rulership went hand-in-hand. Those who acquired ownership of land and resources, by whatever means, also ruled over those who lived upon the land.(4) An important contribution of the Greek cities and the later Roman Republic to the eventual rise of the state was to separate ownership from rulership. The operation of the machinery of government existed independently of the private property of owners and individual rulers. One could lose one’s political position without losing one’s personal wealth in the process. However, the political arrangements of antiquity did not conceive of government as an institution independent of its individual members. Van Creveld cites Thucydides’ claim that “the city is its men” and Cicero’s description of the Republic as “an assembly of men living according to law”. (5)\n\nWith the collapse of the Roman Empire in Western Europe and the emergence of the subsequent feudal era, a historically unique set of arrangements came about that created the conditions necessary for the rise of the state. Van Creveld observes that unlike previous disruptions of centralized authority and the dispersion of power into the hands of  localized rulers, the medieval feudal rulers who comprised the Holy Roman Empire found themselves in the position of having to share power with the Church. The Church was a massive institution unto itself. The Pope maintained his own seat of authority in Rome, while the domain of the Emperor moved from place to place. The Pope also possessed his own armed forces and the Church maintained many privileges of its own that preserved its independence from secular authority. Out of the cracks in the overlapping authority of Church and Emperor came the monarchies who formed the basis of future states. The monarchs persistent struggle against the powers of the Church, the Holy Roman Empire, the independent cities,  and the feudal nobility proved successful over the long term and the time of absolute monarchs began.(6)\n\nVan Creveld describes the process by which these centralized monarchies began laying the foundations of the state by building a bureaucratic infrastructure for administrative purposes.(7) The bureaucracy eventually became a power unto itself and began to challenge  the power of the monarchy, the Church and the centers of authority to be found in the broader society. The bureaucracies’ powers of collecting both information and taxes from the citizenry at large transformed its relationship to the citizenry. The emergence of a bureaucratic infrastructure with the power of taxation subsequently made it possible for the bureaucracy to gain a monopoly over the raising of armed forces and making war, an activity that had previously been largely privatized. The growth of regular armies, along with internal police organizations and penal institutions, cemented the concentration of authority into the hands of the bureaucracy. By the end of the eighteenth century, the bureaucracy had grown to the point where it crystallized into the person of the state.(8)\n\nDuring the centuries of its evolution, the state was accompanied by the parallel development of a radically altered intellectual culture, one which gradually came to deny the previous theological foundations for political legitimacy in favor of a more pragmatic secular concern for the obtainment and preservation of order. As the state grew, the power and influence of intermediary institutions such as the Church, aristocracy, the individual monarch, the patriarchal head of the household and the slave master diminished. Particularistic attachments along with traditional systems of rank and privilege began to decline. Rulers and authority figures came to be seen as ordinary persons whose powers and privileges were derived from their official positions rather than any instrinsic virtue, wisdom or superiority of their own. As traditional hierarches began to vanish, subjects began to be seen less in terms of their ascribed status and more as individuals in terms of their relationship to the universal authority of the state. Egalitarian doctrines arose whose effect was to extend political rights to ever growing groupings of citizens (classes, religions, ethnicities) within the state. This leveling of traditional hierarchies, combined with the disruptions and dislocations generated by the industrial revolution, caused the state to grow ever more powerful.(9)\n\nVan Creveld examines the transformation of the state from a means to an end (the preservation of order and the protection of life and property) to an end unto itself. The intellectual framework in which this occurred involved the marriage of the state with nationalism.(10) The glorificaton of the national state and the transfer of traditional particularist, provincial or parochial loyalties to the state first found full expression in the French Revolution. Traditional religious sentiments were replaced with the quasi-deification of the state and the nation. State ceremonies, rituals and pageants began to take on quasi-religious symbolism and expressions of reverence. This trend was manifested in particularly spectacular ways by the totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century, but was also observable in less extravagant ways in the liberal states such as France, England and America. Conscripted, popular armies became the norm and to give one’s life in the fight for one’s country was elevated to the level of the highest ideal. The state strengthened its control over civil society not only by means of its police and penal institutions but also through assuming control over education, welfare services, banking and other sectors of social and economic life as well. This unprecedented dominance on the part of the state afforded individual states the means with which to wage war against one another with previously unheard of levels of death and destruction.(11) Ironically, the state, whose original purpose had been the maintenance of peace, became an instrument of unparalleled disorder. Martin Van Creveld thus describes the legacy of the modern state:\n\n“In return for fostering technological development which made possible a much-augmented standard of living the state exacted protection money. Essentially it consisted of unlimited blood and treasure, a development which climaxed during the first half of the twentieth century. Reveling in total war, the state demanded and obtained sacrifice on a scale which, had they been able to imagine it, would have made even the old Aztec gods blanch.”  (12)\n\nAnarchists Versus the State and Propaganda by the Deed: The Rise of Modern Western Terrorism and Early Challenges to the State’s Monopoly on Violence (1885-1915)\n\nAs previously mentioned, the use of violence to promote political ends has always existed in some form or another. The actual use of the term “terrorism” began during the time of the French Revolution. The term was brought into common language by the English political philosopher Edmund Burke, who denounced the “terrorism” of the French revolutionaries.(13) What is of importance to the thesis outlined in this paper is not politicized violence per se, but the manner by which the use of such violence has arisen in the modern Western world and its relationship to the modern state and the future of the modern state. What is distinctive about modern terrorism is not that it is “terrorism” but that it occurs within the context of an institutional framework where a single corporative entity (the state) claims exclusive monopoly on the use of violence as opposed to one where the waging of war by private individuals and groups is expected and where private acts of violence (such as assassination) are standardized political tools.\n\nThe popularized image of “terrorism” in its contemporary form is traceable to the tendency of nineteenth century revolutionaries to engage in political assassinations. Such tactics were utilitzed by a number of ideological tendencies (for instance, Irish nationalists), but by far the most notorious and stereotypical of such tendencies were what would now be called the “classical anarchists”.(14) There is a certain amount of irony in the fact that among the earliest challengers to the modern state’s monopoly on violence would be an ideological tendency that denies the very legitimacy of the state itself, as opposed to the legitimacy of a particular type of state or a specific state policy or action. Although fairly obscure today, the classical anarchists were in their time a rather large movement, considering the radical nature of their ideas, involving millions of people and maintaining a presence in most countries, not only in Europe and North America but also in Russia, Asia, Latin America and even Africa. As might be expected, the anarchists were a diverse and often eccentric lot and their ranks included everything from labor militants to organizers of utopian colonies, proto-feminists and homosexuals to those who synthesized anarchist militancy with the ethos of machismo common to Latin cultures, quasi-Marxists to extreme individualists, pacifists and extreme idealists to, of course, proponents of terrorism or what was called “progaganda by the deed”. (15)\n\nThe concept of “propaganda by the deed” was formulated by the anarchists as a means of describing their notion of leadership by method of “direct action” as opposed to conventional political outlets like political parties. Not all efforts at “direct action” or even “propaganda by the deed” involved violence. Sometimes these terms took on milder connotations, such as the creation of alternative institutions (for example, worker cooperatives or independent schools) that the anarchists hoped would be a model for the broader transformation of society. However, these terms eventually came to be identified by the public at large and many anarchists alike as mere synonyms for acts of political violence. There were many such incidents. The most notorious of these were the regicides carried out by the anarchists. In his study of the origins of urban terrorism, Anthony M. Burton observes that over a thirty year period in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century centuries, the anarchists assassinated a head of state or cabinet official approximately once every eighteen months. The most well-known attacks of this type  were the assassinations of Czar Alexander II of Russia, President Carnot of France, King Umberto of Italy, Empress Elizabeth of Austria and President William McKinley of the United States. (16)\n\nThe actual political and intellectual theories of the anarchists were more sophisticated than what they were often given credit for, and not all anarchists approved of the actions associated with “propaganda by the deed.” (17)Indeed, the anarchists included within their ranks many rather innovative thinkers, including the pioneer sociologist and leading anarchist militant Peter Kropotkin, the economist Pierre Joseph Proudhon, the geographer Elisee Reclus and other individuals of similar caliber. Some anarchists opposed violent actions outright, and others felt somewhat conflicted about the question. However, some anarchists leaders were unabashed champions of armed insurrection and overthrow of the existing bourgeoise order by any means necessary. The majority of anarchists did not simply oppose the state and its laws and institutions. They were also social revolutionaries of a type and bitterly denounced the frequently deplorable working conditions the laboring classes of the day were subjected to, a characteristic they shared with socialists and progressives and all stripes. Political violence was not merely an end unto itself but an act of revolt against political and economic situations regarded as unduly oppressive and unjust.(18)\n\nOf the leading personalities of classical anarchism, the one who was perhaps most representative of the stereotype of the anarchist as the terroristic madman was the German-American Johann Most. By the time of his immigration to America in 1882, Most had already served time in Germany’s Reichstag (as a socialist deputy) and in Germany’s prisons (as a treasonous socialist revolutionary). Deciding that socialism lacked the revolutionary fervor he desired, Most became an anarchist. As editor of the anarchist publication Freiheit (German for “Liberty”), Most was an incessant preacher of violent revolution.(19) He was at times described as a “terrorist of the word” with his writings characterized as “like lava shooting forth flames of ridicule, scorn and defiance…and breathing hatred.”(20) The title of one of Johann Most’s published works provides a sufficient descripition of his general outlook: Science of Revolutionary Warfare: a Manual of Instruction in the Use and Preparation of Nitro-glycerine, Dynamite, Gun Cotton, Fulminating Mercury, Bombs, Fuses, Poisons.(21) Johann Most was based in  Chicago, location of the Haymarket incident of 1882, when a bomb was thrown into a crowd of persons, killing eight policemen. Though no actual perpetrator was determined, eight anarchist militants were prosecuted for incitement. Four were executed and a fifth committed suicide while awaiting the gallows.(22)\n\nAnarchists were predictably regarded by the authorities of the day as mere deviants and criminals. Two interesting works that survive from the Haymarket period bear this out. One of these, Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe, was written by Michael J. Schaack, a Chicago police captain who supervised the investigation following the Haymarket bombing. Schaack describes the anarchists with language resembling that of the “international communist conspiracy” rhetoric that later came to be popular in the United States during the 1950s:\n\n“Let none mistake either the purpose or the devotion of these fanatics, nor their growing strength. This is methodic-not a haphazard conspiracy. The ferment in Russia is controlled by the same heads and the same hands as the activity in Chicago. There is a cold-blooded, calculating purpose behind this revolt, manipulating every part of it, the world over, to a common and ruinous end.”(23)\n\nThe other work in question, The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America, by an unidentified author using the name “George N. McLean”, describes the Haymarket incident and the subsequent investigation, trial and executions. Included is a section with the subtitle “The Anarchist’s Fatal Delusion”, providing the following characterization of the anarchist:\n\n“Under the fascination of rose-tinted delusion whose fatal mists obscure the mental and moral realm of thought, many become criminals, goaded on by blind infatuation which persevered in becomes a passion all-absorbing in its nature. In the blindness of their infatuation they seek to immortalize their names by a bold and base attempt at the subversion of law and order.”(24)\n\nSo much for the prosecution. In assessing the incendiary rhetoric and violent behavior of the anarchists from the perpsective of a historian, context is immensely important. Yes, the anarchists could be violent at times, but so could their opponents. The labor battles of the era often approximated the idealized “class war” preached by radicals of the day. Violence was common on both sides, and utilized not only by labor militants, but also by strikebreakers, “scabs”, policemen, soldiers and state militiamen. Many acts of violence carried out by the anarchists were done in response to repression of dissent or lethal action against labor organizers and striking workers carried out by the forces of the state and business interests. The anarchists’ antigovernment rhetoric, in the context of the present era, often mirrors that of contemporary political conservatives. Many of the issues championed by the anarchists, such as the right of labor unions to organize, the right to birth control, and freedom of political speech, are now mainstream and frequently uncontroversial. So were the anarchists criminals and deviants as their enemies proclaimed or were many of them simply people whose thinking was ahead of its time? (25)\n\nWhat is important about the classical anarchists for the purposes of the present study is not their specific beliefs, but their role as one of the earliest and most famous political tendencies that sought to overthrow the modern liberal states that have taken root in the Western world over the last one and a half centuries. The anarchists would eventually fade from the scene, but many other groups would subsequently arise that would utilize tactics identical to those associated with “propaganda by the deed”. The anarchists offered an alternative to liberal-democratic capitalism that contained a vision of decentralized confederations of autonomous worker communes and farming villages. Future insurrectionists would possess alternative political visions of their own. These differing visions would be as divergent as possible, but with the common denominator being a shared hatred of the values of modern liberal society.\n\nLiberalism and Anti-Liberalism: Political Violence by Non-State Actors in the Postwar Era (1945-1991)\n\n“Insisting it is the lack of freedom that fuels terrorism, Bush declares, “Young people who have a say in their future are less likely to search for meaning in extremism.” Tell it to Mussolini and the Blackshirts. Tell it to the Nazis, who loathed the free republic of Weimar, as did the communists.\n\n“Citizens who can join a peaceful political party are less likely to join a terrorist organization.” But the West has been plagued by terrorists since the anarchists. The Baader-Meinhoff Gang in Germany, the Red Brigades in Italy, the Puerto Ricans who tried to kill Harry Truman, the London subway bombers were all raised in freedom.”\n\n“”Dissidents with the freedom to protest around the clock,” said the president, “are less likely to blow themselves up at rush hour.” But Hamas and Islamic Jihad resort to suicide bombing because they think it a far more effective way to overthrow Israeli rule than marching with signs…”\n\nPatrick J. Buchanan, September 10, 2006 (26)\n\n“We need a Revolution, be it fascist, comunist or islamic, please God(s), save Portugal from big money democracy, I’m willing to suport anything other than this.”\n\nPortuguese revolutionary nationalist, September 10, 2006 (27)\n\nPolitical violence by non-state actors declined in the West during the period between 1914 and 1945. The labor battles that had characterized previous decades were overshadowed by the fury of the First World War. In some countries, particularly the United States, the war effort was used as a pretense for the repression of dissident political movements under the guise of protecting against “sedition” and preserving national unity. Structural changes implemented by Western governments during the interwar period had the effect of either coopting or subjugating labor unions and the Socialist parties.  In some countries, particularly those of Central and Eastern Europe, the newly emergent fascist and communist movements often maintained violent quasi-military organizations of their own, but these soon came to either dominate the state (such as the German Nazis or Italian Fascists) or suffer repression when their enemies were able to seize political power (such as the Communist Parties in countries where right-wing authoritarian regimes came into being). The atmosphere of total war that accompanied World War Two had the effect of diminishing conflict between states and non-state actors, and the conflict of this type that did take place (the resistance in France, for example) primarily pitted indigenous resistance forces against the forces of direct foreign occupation. Prior insurrectionary forces like the anarchists were overrun by the hegemony achieved by Communism on the political Left following the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 and the increased respectability, cooptation and “mainstreaming” of the labor movements of the various Western nations.\n\nThe defeat of the Axis powers in 1945 and subsequent American occupation of Western Europe, the region from where the state first originated, assured for that region the preeminence of liberalism. Martin Van Creveld observes that while the corporative state was subsequently exported to other regions following its initial rise in Western Europe, particularly Eastern Europe, Russia and Latin America, it was in the nations of the Anglosphere that the state became most firmly established.(28) It was in these nations that a particular ideological expression of the state, liberalism, became the most pronounced. How can liberal states be best described? The irreducible minimum qualities would be a parliamentary form of government of some sort, a commercialist/capitalist/bourgeoise economic foundation, an expansive technological base, a relatively cosmopolitan cultural atmosphere and, since at least the mid-twentieth century, an extensive public sector managerial bureaucracy. Additionally, the defeat of the Axis forces in World War Two, the resulting occupations of Western Europe by the United States and Eastern Europe by the Soviet Union, and the emergence of the Cold War between the two great superpowers had the effect of reducing Europe to the status of de facto colonies or vassalages to one of the two Cold War contenders. Also, the unprecedented level of international power achieved by the United States in the postwar era combined with its ongoing rivalry with the Soviet Union, brought about a drastic expansion of American intervention into conflicts between other states and into the internal politics of other states.\n\nThe presence of this arrangement in the Western world in the latter half of the twentieth century means that political violence exercised by non-state actors during this period, at least in the West, amounted to acts of violence against the United States and its protectorates, client states or de facto colonies in Europe, Latin America and because of the symbiotic relationship between the United States and Israel and the propping up of the Saudi oil cartel by the US, the Middle East. In examining this phenomenon, it is once again essential to point out that the concern of this study is not the question of political violence per se or even non-state political violence (so-called “terrorism”) but the relationship between political violence carried out by non-state actors and states who claim to possess a legitimate monopoly on such violence and the effect of this relationship on the evolution of warfare and the likely future of the state. During the postwar era, liberal and/or American hegemony was challenged by an amazing variety of organizations, groups and tendencies with grievances, ideologies, agendas and strategies of their own, and some of them rather colorful to say the least. In 1982, Dennis Pluchinsky observed that Western Europe had become the focus of terrorist activity and that 33 percent of terrorist actions between the years of 1968 to 1980 had occurred in this region. Latin America achieved a close second place with 21 percent.(29)\n\nThese non-state armed resistance forces can be broken down into roughly the following classifications: First World Marxist, Third World Marxist, Nationalist, Separatist, Religious, Racialist, Traditionalist, and Ecologist and/or Technophobic. Each of these, of course, could be broken down into several sub-categories of their own. In 1992, Stephen E. Atkins identified more than eighty major organizations involved in violent resistence to Western states and/or puppet regimes in Europe, North and South America, and the Middle East.(30) Many of these organizations are considerably well-known. Among those who can be considered “First World Marxist” are Germany’s Red Army Faction (Baader-Meinhof), Italy’s Red Brigades and America’s Weather Underground. These kinds of insurrectionary groupings typically claimed hostility to Western imperialism, neocolonialism, capitalism and racism, and profess solidarity with leftist revolutionaries, or “Third World Marxists”, whom they see as their counterparts in the lesser developed regions. Most of the more significant armed, militant leftist groups from the Third World have, during the postwar era, originated from Latin America. These included El Salvador’s Farabundo Marti Liberation Front (FMLN), Nicaragua’s Sandinista National Liberation Front (FSLN), Peru’s “Shining Path” (a popularized term for the Communist Party of Peru-Maoist), Colombia’s Armed Forces of the Colombian Revolution (FARC) and the “Zapatista” peasant revolutionary force of the Mexican state of Chiapas.\n\nSome groups wished to achieve the independence of a particular national entity from a foreign colonial power (for example, the Irish Republican Army). Others desired the separation of a particular region from a larger state entity (such as the Basque autonomists). Still other factions maintained religious motivations, usually of an extreme fundamentalist or strongly orthodox nature (for instance, various Islamic “terrorist” groups, the Falangists of Spain or the violently anti-abortion militants in the United States). Some desired the independence or separation not of territorial entities or “nations” per se, but of racial and ethnic groupings in a biological sense. One such faction, an America neo-nazi group simply called “The Order”, carried out a series of armed robberies during the 1980s for the purpose of establishing an “Aryan” homeland in the US state of Idaho.(31) Particularly interesting has been the rise of militant resistance groups in  recent decades committed to violent or extra-legal actions on behalf of environmental causes. Indeed, the US Federal Bureau of Investigation currently classifies evironmental and “animal rights” militants as the primary domestic terrorist threat within the United States.(32)\n\nFollowing the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War in the late 1980s and early 1990s, a new target emerged that became the source of much hostility on the part of armed militant or “terrorist” organizations worldwide. This target was the unprecedented global hegemony achieved by the United States following the demise of its only true rival. Lacking the constraining force of the Soviet Union, the United States was afforded a freer hand in its capacity to impose its desired liberal-capitalist order on the entire world. This effort has been met with resistance by a wide range of forces, many of them the same organizations that opposed Western states or Western neocolonialism during the postwar period. The globalization of capital is offensive to dissidents worldwide for a variety of reasons. Some regard globalization as a force for greater exploitation of labor, particularly in lesser development regions. Others are concerned about evironmental destruction. Still others are concerned about the erosion of traditional cultural, religious, ethnic, national, racial and regional identities.(33) The most zealous and effective opponents of the unipolar domination of the United States and its program of liberal-capitalism have, of course, been the Islamic fundamentalists.(34) However shocking such incidents as the hijackings and destruction of September 11, 2001 may have been to people the world over, it is also true that many of the world’s peoples share many of the concerns that drove some individuals to such extreme action. As William S. Lind explains:\n\n“To many of the world’s peoples… (the global triumph of liberal capitalism)…represents Hell, and they will fight it literally to their dying breath.” (35)\n\nThis is true even of some within the United States itself. The journalist Joel Dyer described the US militia movement of the 1990s in the following terms:\n\n“”Following (the killing of dissidents by federal agents at) Ruby Ridge and Waco, the antigovernment movement focused on the creation of militias. With its military arm in place, the movement’s next push came in the form of common-law courts. As the sovereignty concept took hold across the nation, antigovernment adherents began to form organizations that encompassed all of these antigovernmental elements-sovereignty, courts and militias. The goal is that each organization should become self-sufficient, able to fully govern its membership with no assistance from the outside world. It’s as if there are thousands of independent countries operating within the border of the United States…Regardless of their differences, which are substantial, these groups realize that they must ultimately support each other to avoid being crushed by the federal government…These self-governing antigovernment bands range in size from a dozen people to several thousand…The actions of these supposedly sovereign groups are often in direct conflict with the laws of the United States, which they no longer recognize…The longer it exists, the stronger it grows, as more and more people are choosing to opt out of the federal system, whose taxes make the difference between a family’s eating or sending its children to bed hungry…The government’s refusal to recognize the sovereignty of these pockets of patriots is understandable: That would lead to anarchy.”\n\n“A new breed of other elements within the movement-representing perhaps yet another step in the movement’s evolution-is also seeking foreign funding. One of my contacts, whom I will call ‘Tom’ since he spoke on the condition of anonymity, told me that he is actively seeking money abroad. Tom’s antigovernment organization, which has established dialogue with Mexico’s Zapatistas, South America’s Shining Path guerrillas, and the Nation of Islam, is the antithesis of the Identity-driven groups. But don’t mistake Tom for a leftist-he’s not. His vision of America is similar to that of the sovereigns, with small pockets of self-governed individuals living in regions outside of any federal authority. ‘If blacks want to live separate from whites,’ says Tom,’they should have that right. I don’t think that’s necessary, but people should be allowed to choose how and where they live.’ Tom says that the American government is responsible for creating the conditions worldwide that have spawned the sort of radical organizations his group communicates with in other countries, so it’s only natural that today’s antigovernment movement should consider them as alllies. In line with this vision, he says: ‘Who knows? Maybe someday we’ll have a standoff in Texas …and the Zapatistas will come to our defense. It could happen.” (36)\n\nWilliam S. Lind on the Rise of Fourth Generation Warfare (1989- )\n\nThe historiography and historical narrative presented thus far provides the necessary background for the direct examination of the core thesis of this paper, i.e., that the state’s historic monopoly on violence and warmaking has declined and been rendered archaic as a result of successful challenges to that monopoly by so-called “fourth generation” military forces. The concept of “fourth generation warfare” was first outlined in 1989 by the American military historian William S. Lind.(37) The “generational” division of types of warfare is used to describe the evolution of war since the rise of the state.  Lind traces the beginning of the state’s monopoly on warfare to the end of the Thirty Years War in 1648 with the Treaty of Westphalia. From that point on, wars were fought by states against states. The era of “first generation” warfare reigned from the time of Westphalia until the time of the American Civil War of 1861-65. “First generation” militaries were characterized by their emphasis on formality and a military culture oriented towards rank, order and discipline. Battles often took on the character of formal gamesmanship, open-air fighting and maneuvers involving the movement of large numbers of soldiers simultaneously. During the time of the US Civil War, the “orderliness” of battles began to dissolve and become more chaotic. The second and third generations of warfare each arose as a response to this change.\n\n“Second generation” warfare was devised by the French during the First World War. The “second generation” approach to battle maintains the traditional emphasis on rank, structure, and top-down decision-making. The strategic emphasis is on artillery and firepower, attrition and occupation. The aim is to inflict large-scale casualties on the enemy. The “second generation” approach continues to dominate American military strategy to date. “Third generation” warfare also had its origins in the First World, although it was invented by the Germans rather than the French. The emphasis of the “third generation” is on maneuvers and innovation by the lower ranks. Junior officers were permitted, for example, to disregard orders from superiors if those orders proved ineffective at getting the job done. The highest duty of the combat officer was to achieve victory by any means necessary, even if it meant altering or even abandoning battle plans formulated by commanders. Firepower was also replaced by speed as the focus of “third generation” warfare, and encirclement and dislocation of the enemy, rather that attrition, became the objective of battle. “Fourth generation” warfare represents the shift from wars between states to wars between states and non-state actors, a process Lind regards as the most important change in the nature of war since the initial obtainment of the monopoly on warmaking by the state with the Treaty of Westphalia.(38)\n\nTo some degree, the guerrilla warfare tactics developed during the anti-colonial wars of Asia during the postwar era, such as those led by Mao Tse-Tung in China and Ho Chi Minh in Vietnam, serve as proto-types for “fourth generation” warfare.(39) However, these do not completely qualify as “fourth generation” in nature as they do not represent a complete break from the notion of war as combat between states, but qualify as conventional civil wars with two factions within a state fighting for supremacy, conventional revolutions where one state replaces another, or where a colonial power and its domestic puppet government are regarded by the insurgents as illegitimate and are expelled with the assistance of other states. It is with the rise of contemporary Islamic “terrorism” that fourth generation warfare really comes into its own. The Al-Qaeda organization, for example, is a completely privatized, non-state military entity that managed to carry out an unprecedented attack on the American mainland, inflicting casualties on a level comparable to the Japanese air raid on Pearl Harbor in 1941. Likewise, the present day “insurgent” forces with whom the United States is at war in Iraq do not represent a particular state, nor do they necessarily represent any specific would-be successor state. Instead, they represent religions, tribes, clans, ethnic groups, familial networks, ideologies and causes that exist independently of any recognizable state formation.\n\nAn interesting case study of a “fourth generation force” is the Hezbollah organization of Lebanon.(40) Hezbollah’s entry into the war between Israel and Hamas during the summer of 2006 marks the first time a “fourth generation” force has actually conducted an outright military invasion of an actual state. This proved to be a case where a “fourth generation” entity was able to match the firepower of a state military force and outmaneuver them. Hezbollah was also able to engage Israel in air and naval battles with rocket attacks capable of destroying Israeli planes and ships. Hezbollah did all of this while the Lebanese state sat by unable to defend itself against a massive air assault by Israel. Hezbollah is a particular well-developed fourth generation entity in that it maintains not only an independent military force but also an elaborate system of private social services, religious and educational institutions and hospitals as well. Such a model is a likely prototype for the way in which fourth generation forces will evolve in the future. Such forces will continue to arise from strange places. A story in the April 26, 2005 Washington Times reports:\n\n“Brazilian drug traffickers have teamed up with Columbian rebels to smuggle narcotics through Paraguay, creating a lucrative new channel for distribution to the United States and Europe …\n\nUsing a precisely orchestrated system of flights from the Columbian jungle, Marxists rebels from the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia, or FARC, are shipping 40 to 60 tons of cocaine annually to farms in Paraguay owned by Brazilian drug lords, who then put the cocaine in cars and small trucks and drive them across the nearly unmonitored border into rural western Brazil … in return for arms, dollars and Euros from Brazilian traffickers (for the FARC).” (41)\n\n“How long will it be before and other Islamic non-state forces make their own alliances with the drug gangs and people smugglers who are experts in getting across America’s southern border? Or use the excellent distribution systems the drug gangs have throughout the United States to smuggle something with a bigger bang than the best cocaine?\n\nJust as we see states coming together around the world against the non-state forces of the Fourth Generation, so those non-state forces will also come together in multi-faceted alliances. The difference is likely to be that they will do it faster and better. And, they will use states’ preoccupation with the state system like a matador’s cape, to dazzle and distract while they proceed with the real business of war.”(42)\n\nMartin Van Creveld on the Decline of the State and Beyond (1975- )\n\nMartin Van Creveld argues that without the monopolization of war as the primary function of the state, it would have been very difficult for the state to achieve the level of dominance that it eventually did. It was for the purpose of waging war that the state initially instituted its programs of bureaucracy-building and taxation, and its provision of health, education and social welfare services were intertwined with the development of its warmaking capacities, thereby creating a type of “welfare-warfare” state. These features, combined with the state’s monopoly over money, land and other economic resources, fused with a legitimizing ideology in the form of nationalism, served to make the state into the magnificent (or, some would say, monstrous) entity that it eventually became.  How could such an entity eventually lose its monopoly on war?\n\nVan Creveld traces this phenomenon to five principal sources. First, the advent of nuclear weaponry and modern “weapons of mass destruction” has significantly raised the costs of interstate warfare. The gains of such warfare are now overshadowed by its risks and costs. What does it profit a nation to conquer other nations but lose itself to massive nuclear retaliation? Just as the warfare state has been excessively costly, so has the welfare state. Even the most prosperous regimes have found it difficult to maintain its established levels of social spending without the use of deficits and the acquistion of public debt. A wide consensus exists among policy makers that “trimming the fat” from public budgets will become a necessity at some point, though politicians and political interest groups do their best to delay the day of reckoning. A third challenge to the state’s hegemony has been the internationalization of technology and innovations in the fields of technology and communications that make instantaneous commercial transaction possible by parties on all corners of the globe. The effect of this can only be to weaken dependence on national governments. Still another factor is the failure of the state to fully take root and stabilize itself in many parts of the world, notably Africa, Asia and Latin America. The disorder generated by the failure of the state in those regions has begun to spread to other regions as well (for example, the importation of Central American crime gangs into North America and African refugees into Western Europe). Lastly, there is the decline of nationalistic ideology and a greater unwillingness on the part of citizens to sacrifice themselves on behalf of their respective states. For instance, Van Creveld observes that nearly all states that have abolished military conscription have found it impossible to reinstate it due to overwhelming public hostility.(43)\n\nWhither the state? Van Creveld suggests that the state as it has been described in this study maintains three essential attributes: a corporative as opposed to personalized institutional expression, exclusive territorial monopoly and a monocentric rather than polycentric concept of “sovereignty” ( and, hence, a monopoly on violence warmaking and also on rulership or “law”). Van Creveld argues that the breakdown of the state will result in a proliferation of entities that are, like the states they replace, corporative in nature but also polycentric and extra-territorial. Most importantly, the state’s monopoly on violence will be forfeited and warfare in the future will likely be smaller-scale, more localized and waged by groups who territorial boundaries (if any) will less clearly defined. This new order will be neither a restoration of the medieval world that yielded to the state at the dawn of modernity, nor will it be the decentralist or libertarian utopia of the anarchists, though it may resemble both of these more closely than does the now-fading traditional state order. Will such a world be a better or worse place than the one that we are accustomed to? That would seem to be a matter of individual perspective. Van Creveld prefers to answer this question with a quote from Mao, who gave the following answer when asked what might follow a nuclear war:\n\n“The sun will keeping rising, trees will keep growing and women will keep having children.”(44)\n\nPerhaps this quote from Albert Einstein would be equally appropriate:\n\n“I never think of the future. It comes soon enough.” (45)\n\nHistoriography of the Decline of the State’s Monopoly on Violence and Warmaking\n\nPre-State Era (Before 1300 A.D.)\n\nGovernment is personalized and identified with a particular individual or group. The rulers are believed to have achieved their basis on the basis of divine providence or their superior wisdom and virtue. The Greek cities and the Roman Republic serve as a prelude to the development of the state by separating the concepts of ownership and rulership.\n\nThe Rise of the State (1300-1648 A.D.)\n\nThe monarchies of Western Europe achieve victory over the competing powers of the Church, nobility, city-states and the Holy Roman Emperor. The monarchs achieve a monopoly on violence and warmaking.\n\nThe Emergence of the State as a Corporative Entity (1648-1800 A.D.)\n\nThe monarchies procede to build a bureaucracy for the purpose of waging war. This bureaucracy, with its monopoly on taxation and information, forms the basis for the corporative state. Political theory develops in response to previous theological justifications for political authority. Government is conceived of in secular, pragmatic terms with an emphasis on the need to preserve order and protect life and property. The bureaucracy grows to the point where it overshadows the monarchy and becomes the state itself.\n\nThe Fusion of the State and Nationalism (1800-1945 A.D.)\n\nBeginning with the French Revolution, the state is glorified not as a means unto an end but as an end unto itself. The state expands its activities into the areas of health, education, and welfare. Conscripted armies become the norm. The combination of large popular armies, technological advances, gargantuan state bureaucracies and ideological nationalism creates a situation that erupts in the form of the large-scale international wars of the first half of the twentieth century.\n\nEarly Challenges to the State’s Monopoly on Violence (1885-1915 A.D.)\n\nRevolutionary groups begin using assassinations and bombings as a tactic. The classical anarchists assassinate the head of state of five major countries and many lesser official over a thirty year period. Violence battles between radical labor groups, state forces and private vigilantes become common.\n\nThe State at its Apex (1914-1945 A.D.)\n\nViolence by non-state actors is temporarily eclipsed by the First and Second World War, the Bolshevik Revolution, internal repression within different countries and the cooptation of labor movements by twentieth century governments. “First generation warfare” of the type that developed after the Treaty of Versailles in 1648 gives way to “second generation warfare” invented by the French during World War I. The Germans respond by developing “third generation warfare” during the same period.\n\nContinued Challenges to the State’s Monopoly (1945-1989 A.D.)\n\nThe defeat of the Axis powers result in the division of Europe into blocks of colonies controlled by the United States and the Soviet Union. The rise of the Cold War and American power escalates US intervention into the Third World. Armed resistance groups form in Europe, Latin America, the Middle East and North America to resist US imperialism. These groups are ideologically divergent and frequently hostile to one another. Their only commonality is their opposition to US hegemony and its program of liberal-capitalism. These armed resistance groups continue the tactics of bombings, assassinations, hijackings and other methods used by their nineteenth century predecessors like the anarchists. These groups begin to form the basis of “fourth generation warfare” where states and non-state organizations wage war against one another. A transitional phase between Second or Third and Fourth generation warfare takes place during the guerrilla wars of Asia during the Cold War period.\n\nThe Dominance of Fourth Generation Warfare (1989- A.D.)\n\nThe collapse of the Soviet Union ends the Cold War and its related “hot wars”, such as those of Central America”. The United States now achieves unchallenged and unprecedented hegemony. Resistance forces, acting independently of states, escalate their wars against US imperialism. Included in this are not only attacks against US targets abroad or US allies and interests, but attacks within the US mainlaind as well, whether by domestic insurgent forces (such as the US militia movement or so-called “eco-terrorists”) or by foreign organizations waging war against the United States (such as Al-Qaeda).\n\nThe Decline of the State (1975- A.D.)\n\nThe state begins to recede and its primary function, the waging of war, is rendered too costly by the advent of nuclear weapons. The economic costs of the welfare state also contribute to an implosion of the state. The rapid development of communications and transportation technology renders the state less necessary for the facilitation of trade. The failure of the state to fully consolidate itself in certain regions leads to the spread of disorder elsewhere. Public confidence in the state begins to diminish.\n\n1) For a comprehensive overview of modern terrorism, see the following sources: Anthony M. Burton, Urban Terrorism (London: Western Printing Services Ltd, 1975); Christopher Dobson and Ronald Payne, The Terrorists: Their Weapons, Leaders and Tactics (New York: Macmillan Press, 1979); Jay Robert Nash, Terrorism in the Twentieth Century (New York: M. Evans and Company, 1998).\n\n2) Noam Chomsky, Deterring Democracy (New York: Hill and Wang, 1992), pp. 9-64.\n\n3) Martin Van Creveld, The Rise and Decline of the State (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999), pp. 126-154.\n\n13) “It all Started with Robespierre; Terrorism: The history of a very frightening word”, Geoffrey Nunberg, Head Games, San Francisco Chronicle, San Francisco, October 28, 2001.\n\n14) Anthony M. Burton, Urban Terrorism (London: Western Printing Services, 1975), pp. 17-34\n\n15) Paul Eltzbacher, Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy (New York: Chip’s Bookshop, Booksellers and Publishers, 1958). Translated by Steven T. Byington. Edited by James J. Martin. Originally published in Germany in 1900.\n\n16) Marie Fleming, “Propaganda by the Deed: Terrorism and Anarchist Theory in Late Nineteenth Century Europe”, in Terrorism in Europe, edited by Yonah Akexander and Kenneth A. Myers (London: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982), pp. 8-28.\n\n17) April Carter, Political Theory of Anarchism (New York: Harper and Row, 1971).\n\n18) Richard Suskind, By Bullet, Bomb and Dagger: The Story of Anarchism (New York: The MacMillan Company, 1971).\n\n19) Frederic Trautmann, The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most (Westport, Connecticutt: Greenwood Press, 1980).\n\n23) Michael J. Schaak, Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe (New York: Arno Press, 1977), p. 688. First published in Chicago, by F.J. Schultze, 1889.\n\n24) George N. McLean, The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America (New York: Haskell House Publishers, 1972), p. 267. First published in Chicago, 1890.\n\n25) Robert Graham, Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas, Volume One, From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939) (Montreal, Black Rose Books, 2005)\n\n26) Patrick J. Buchanan, “America’s Ideologue In Chief”, Vdare.com, September 10, 2006. Archived athttp://www.vdare.com/buchanan/060908_chief.htm\n\n27) Flavio Goncalves, e-mail to author via Yahoo discuss list, September 10, 2006.\n\n29) Dennis Pluchinsky, “Political Terrorism in Western Europe: Some Themes and Variations” in Terrorism in Europe, edited by Yonah Alexander and Kenneth A. Myers (London: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982), pp. 40-78.\n\n30) Stephen E. Atkins, Terrorism, (Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, Inc., 1992), pp. 99-136.\n\n31) Kevin Flynn and Gary Gerhardt, Silent Brotherhood, (New York: The Free Press, 1989).\n\n32) Charley Reese, “Let’s Get Real”, Populist Party of America, December 2, 2006. Archived athttp://www.populistamerica.com/let_s_get_real\n\n33) Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, Empire (London: Harvard University Press, 2000).\n\n34) Jane Corbin, Al-Qaeda (New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/Nation Books, 2002).\n\n35) William S. Lind, “Forcing the World to be Saved”, Antiwar.com, January 21, 2006. Archived athttp://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=8422\n\n36) Joel Dyer, Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is Just the Beginning (Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997), pp. 191, 247.\n\n37) William S. Lind, Colonel Keith Nightengale (USA), Captain John F. Schmitt (USMC), Lt. Colonel Gary I. Wilson (USMCR), “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation”, Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989, pp. 22-26.\n\n38) William S. Lind, “Understanding Fourth Generation War”, Antiwar.com, January 15, 2004. Archived athttp://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702\n\n39) Mao Tse-tung, On Guerrilla Warfare: Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung Vol. IX, 1937. Transcribed by Brian Basgen/Maoist Documentation Project. Archived athttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/. See also Cecil B. Currey, “Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers”, Journal of Third World Studies, October 2003. Archived athttp://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200310/ai_n9337860\n\n40) Nir Rosen, “Hezbollah, Party of God”, Truthdig, October 3, 2006. Archived athttp://www.truthdig.com/report/print/200601003_hiz_ballah_party_of_god. See also William S. Lind, “The Summer of 1914”, On War #175, July 18, 2006. Archived athttp://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_7_18_06.htm\n\n41) Carmen Gentile, “Drug Smugglers, Rebel Join in Hand”, Washington Times, April 26, 2005.\n\n42) William S. Lind, “More on Gangs and Guerrillas Vs. the State”, Military.com, April 28, 2005. Archived athttp://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Lind_042805,00.html\n\n45) The Expanded Quotable Einstein, edited by Alice Calaprice (Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000)\n\nAlexander, Yonah and Myers, Kenneth A.. Terrorism in Europe. London: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982.\n\nAtkins, Stephen E. Terrorism. Santa Barbara, California: ABC-CLIO, 1992.\n\nBabkina, A. M. Terrorism: An Annotated Bibliography. Commack, New York: Nova Science Publishers, Inc., 1998.\n\nBenjamin, Daniel and Simon, Steven. The Age of Sacred Terror. New York: Random House, 2002.\n\nBjorgo, Tore. Terror From the Extreme Right. London: Frank Cass and Company, 1995.\n\nBovard, James. Terrorism and Tyranny. Hampshire, England: Palgrave MacMillan, 2003.\n\nBuchanan, Patrick J. “America’s Ideologue In Chief”, Vdare.com, September 10, 2006. Archived athttp://www.vdare.com/buchanan/060908_chief.htm\n\nBurton, Anthony M. Urban Terrorism: Theory, Practice and Response. London: Western Printing Services, 1975.\n\nCalaprice, Alice. The Expanded Quotable Einstein. Princeton University Press and the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, 2000.\n\nCarter, April. The Political Theory of Anarchism. New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London: Harper and Row, 1971.\n\nCatanzaro, Raimondo. The Red Brigades and Left-Wing Terrorism in Italy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1991.\n\nChomsky, Noam. Deterring Democracy. New York: Hill and Wang, 1992.\n\nCorbin, Jane. Al-Qaeda. New York: Thunder’s Mouth Press/ Nation Books, 2003.\n\nCurrey, Cecil B. “Senior General Vo Nguyen Giap Remembers”, Journal of Third World Studies, October 2003. Archived athttp://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200310/ai_n9337860\n\nDobson, Christopher and Payne, Ronald. The Terrorists. New York: Macmillan Press, 1979.\n\nDrake, C. J. M. Terrorists’ Target Selection. London: Macmillan Press, 1998.\n\nDyer, Joel. Harvest of Rage: Why Oklahoma City is Only the Beginning. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press, 1997.\n\nEltzbacher, Paul. Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy. New York: Chip’s Bookshop and Booksellers, 1958. Translated by Steven T. Byington. Edited by James J. Martin. Originally published in Germany, 1900.\n\nFleming, Marie. “Propaganda by the Deed: Terrorism and Anarchist Theory in Late Nineteenth Century Europe”, in Terrorism in Europe, edited by Yonah Akexander and Kenneth A. Myers. London: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982.\n\nFlynn, Kevin and Gerhardt, Kevin. The Silent Brotherhood: Inside America’s Racist Underground. New York: The Free Press, 1989.\n\nGentile, Carmen. “Drug Smugglers, Rebel Join in Hand”, Washington Times, April 26, 2005.\n\nGonzales, Flavio. e-mail to the author, September 10, 2006.\n\nGraham, Robert. Anarchism: A Documentary History of Libertarian Ideas Volume I: From Anarchy to Anarchism (300 CE to 1939). Montreal: Black Rose Books, 2005.\n\nHalperin, Ernst. Terrorism in Latin America. Beverly Hills/London: Sage Publications, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1976.\n\nHardt, Michael and Negri, Antonio. Empire. Cambridge/London: Harvard University Press, 2000.\n\nLevitt, Geoffrey M. Democracies Against Terror: The Western Response to State-Supported Terrorism. New York: Praeger, Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1988.\n\nLind, William S. “Forcing the World to be Saved”, Antiwar.com, January 21, 2006. Archived athttp://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=8422\n\n_______. “More on Gangs and Guerrillas Vs. the State”, Military.com, April 28, 2005. Archived athttp://www.military.com/Opinions/0,,Lind_042805,00.html\n\n_______. “The Summer of 1914”, On War #175, July 18, 2006. Archived athttp://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_7_18_06.htm\n\n_______. “Understanding Fourth Generation War”, Antiwar.com, January 15, 2004. Archived athttp://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702\n\n_______.  Colonel Keith Nightengale (USA), Captain John F. Schmitt (USMC), Lt. Colonel Gary I. Wilson (USMCR), “The Changing Face of War: Into the Fourth Generation”, Marine Corps Gazette, October 1989, pp. 22-26.\n\nMao Tse-tung. On Guerrilla Warfare: Selected Works of Mao Tse-tung Vol. IX, 1937. Transcribed by Brian Basgen/Maoist Documentation Project. Archived athttp://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/.\n\nMcLean, George N. The Rise and Fall of Anarchy in America. New York: Haskell House, 1972. First published in Chicago, 1890.\n\nMeade, Robert C. Jr. Red Brigades: The Story of Italian Terrorism. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990.\n\nMenjivar, Cecelia and Rodriguez, Nestor. When States Kill: Latin America, the U.S., and Technologies of Terror. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2005.\n\nMichel, Lou and Herbeck, Dan. American Terrorist: Timothy McVeigh and the Oklahoma City Bombing. New York: Harper-Collins, 2001.\n\nMickolus, Edward F. The Literature of Terrorism: A Selectively Annotated Bibliography. London: Greenwood Press, 1980.\n\nMickolus, Edward F with Simmons, Susan L.. Terrorism 1996-2001: A Chronology Volume I. London: Greenwood Press, 2002.\n\nNash, Robert Jay. Terrorism in the Twentieth Century. New York: M. Evans and Company, 1998.\n\nNewton, Michael and Judy Ann. Terrorism in the United States and Europe, 1800-1959: An Annotated Bibliography. New York and London: Garland Publishing, 1988.\n\nPluchinsky, Dennis. “Political Terrorism in Western Europe: Some Themes and Variations” in Terrorism in Europe, edited by Yonah Alexander and Kenneth A. Myers. London: Center for Strategic and International Studies, 1982.\n\nReese, Charley. “Let’s Get Real”, Populist Party of America, December 2, 2006. Archived athttp://www.populistamerica.com/let_s_get_real\n\nReinares, Fernando. European Democracies Against Terrorism: Governmental Policies and Intergovernmental Cooperation. Aldershot, UK: Ashgate, 2000.\n\nRosen, Nir. “Hezbollah, Party of God”, Truthdig, October 3, 2006. Archived athttp://www.truthdig.com/report/print/200601003_hiz_ballah_party_of_god.\n\nSchaak, Michael J. Anarchy and Anarchists: A History of the Red Terror and the Social Revolution in America and Europe. New York: Arno Press, 1977. First published in Chicago: F. J. Schulte, 1889.\n\nSmith, Brent L. Terrorism in America: Pipe Bombs and Pipe Dreams. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1994.\n\nSuskind, Richard. By Bullet, Bomb and Dagger: The Story of Anarchism. New York: Macmillan Company, 1971.\n\nTaylor, Max and Horgan, John. The Future of Terrorism. London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000.\n\nTrautmann, Frederic. The Voice of Terror: A Biography of Johann Most. London: Greenwood Press, 1980.\n\nWeinberg, Leonard and Eubank, William Lee. The Rise and Fall of Italian Terrorism. Boulder, Colorado and London: Westview Press, 1987.\n\nWhimster, Sam. Max Weber and the Culture of Anarchy. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1999.\n\nWilkinson, Paul. Terrorism Versus Democracy: The Liberal State Response. London and Portland, Oregon: Frank Cass Publishers, 2000.\n\nVan Creveld, Martin. The Rise and Decline of the State. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999.",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/060908_chief.htm",
      "http://www.populistamerica.com/let_s_get_real",
      "http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=8422",
      "http://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702",
      "http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/",
      "http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200310/ai_n9337860",
      "http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/200601003_hiz_ballah_party_of_god",
      "http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_7_18_06.htm",
      "http://www.military.com/Opinions/0",
      "http://www.vdare.com/buchanan/060908_chief.htm",
      "http://www.findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3821/is_200310/ai_n9337860",
      "http://www.antiwar.com/lind/?articleid=8422",
      "http://www.military.com/Opinions/0",
      "http://www.d-n-i.net/lind/lind_7_18_06.htm",
      "http://antiwar.com/lind/index.php?articleid=1702",
      "http://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/mao/works/1937/guerrilla-warfare/",
      "http://www.populistamerica.com/let_s_get_real",
      "http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/200601003_hiz_ballah_party_of_god",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/the-red-blue-tribal-civil-war-weimar-republic-or-star-trek-vs-star-wars/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "The statistical data that has been gathered on present political divisions in the United States indicates that the divide between Democrats and Republicans is thehighest it’s been at any point since the Civil War. In addition to the mainstream partisan divide, there has also been growing violence between extremist groups on the margins of the Right and Left. Some have invoked comparisons with theviolence between the Nazis and Communists during the period of the German Weimar Republicbetween the two world wars. Others have compared the election of Donald Trump with the rise of the Third Reichafter the failure of Weimar.\n\nYet, it would appear that such comparisons are a manifestation of the hyperbole that has come to dominate political life in the USA of the early 21st century. Germany during the 1920s was a nation that had been ruined by its defeat in World War One, with burdensome reparations having been imposed by means of theTreaty of Versailles, and having been stripped of most of its territories in Central Europe and overseas colonies. One of the conditions of the Versailles Treaty was that Germany was prohibited from having an army larger than 100,000 troops. Nearlyfour percent of the German population had diedas a result of the Great War. The Great Depression was also very severe for the Germans with there beingmillions of unemployed and starving people. Democracy was also a brand new form of government for theGermans during Weimar, having only come into being at the end of World War I after the end of the traditional monarchy.\n\nPolitical and economic conditions in the United States at present do not even remotely approach those of Weimar Germany in the 1920s. There has not been a war found on American soil since the 19th century, and there has not been a foreign war using conscripted soldiers with deaths numbering in the five figures or six figures in nearly half a century. While the military outcome of recent US wars has not been particularly successful, the actual number of American casualties has been merely a drop in the bucket compared to past wars,a mere 7200 in 16 years. There is someevidence that Trump’s electoral victory was due in part to high rates of war casualtiesin the Rust Belt states, in addition to the problems these regions face economically. However, for most Americans the recent wars have been barely noticeable, and have been more of a nuisance than a major burden for the nation as a whole. It is other societies that haveexperienced genuine destruction because of recent American wars.It is also true that neither the Left nor the Right seems to have opposition to war as a primary issue of concern in the same way that opposition to the war in Vietnam was a major public issue in the late 1960s and early 1970s.\n\nWhile theGreat Recession of 2008-2009 was significant, it hardly compared with theGreat Depression of the 1930swhen people literally starved to death. The United States remains one of thewealthiest nations in the worldin terms of overall economic development and living standards. It is certainly true that class divisions are now the widest they have been at any point in the past century, but most poverty in the US involvesrelative poverty, and not theabsolute povertythat characterizes many underdeveloped societies. Whileabsolute poverty is indeed growing in the United States, it continues to exist only in pockets, and has yet to reach the level of a national crisis. Far from being populated by a nation of starving people, theUSA currently maintains the highest rate of obesityin the world.\n\nAs for questions involving claims of oppression, every leading indicator demonstrates that social groups that have traditionally been oppressed in the United States are now better off than ever. For example, while there are stillsignificant disparities between white Americans and African-Americansin terms of wealth, education, and other factors, it is also true that the evidence indicates that African-Americans now a more successful population group than ever, and are more successful thanany other nation with a large black population. The status ofwomen,gays, andother traditional outgroupshas also improved enormously in recent decades as well. This is not to say that there are notproblems in these areasbut it is also true that movements to oppose traditional forms of oppression have been so successful that the concept of “oppression”  has come to be redefined inincreasingly bizarre and implausible ways.\n\nIt is not only the Left but also the Right that is increasingly prone to assert claims of having been oppressed. For example, it is not uncommon for affluent, upper middle class whites to complain about theiralleged serfdom imposed by means of taxes, even though tax rates in the United States are among the lowest of any industrialized democracy. There are persistent claims by 2nd Amendment advocates that the “right to bear arms” is under attack even though theUnited States clearly has gun laws that are among the most liberal in the world. There areconstant claims of oppression being made by representatives of various religious communitiesof a more conservative bent. Yet the United States continues to have among themost liberal laws pertaining to religious liberty in the world. Conflicts regarding freedom of religion in the United States normally involveconflicting claims of civil rights, usually involvingstate run institutions, and notoppression in the traditional sense. For example,Russia recently banned the Jehovah’s Witnesses, something that would never happen in the United States.\n\nIn recent times, there have been increased claims of denial of free speech rights. However, the United States continues to have among themost liberal free speech laws in the worldthanks to thanks to the First Amendment. With one notable exception involving a situation where aforeign lobby has been able to exercise an excessive amount of power over US law, most threats to free speech and academic freedom in the United States come from theuniversitiesand thecorporations,normally involving professional or economic sanctions being imposed on persons with disagreeable views, with bothleftistsandrightistsbeing the victims. While this situation is indeed problematic, it is hardly comparable to the norm in traditional police states wheredissidents are simply rounded up in the middle of the night, and imprisoned, tortured or executed without trial,and often in secret.\n\nProbably the closest thing that currently exists in the United States to traditional forms of oppression such as slavery, genocide, religious persecution, ethnic persecution, the oppression of women and gays found in more traditional societies, etc. would be the system of mass incarceration that exists at present. It is interesting that theUnited States has only 5% percent of the world’s population but 25% of the world’s prisoners. There are also growing concerns aboutpolice militarization,police killings of civilians, andpolice brutalityon a general level. Both theLeftandRighthave criticized growing trends towardsovercriminalizationin US law. However, these have remained only peripheral areas of concern for sectors of the Right, and not an issue of concern at all for much of the Right. The Left has generally criticized these developments only to the degree that there are racial disparities involved (hence, the development of the Black Lives Matter movement).\n\nGiven that recent wars have had very little impact on the lives of most Americans, the high living standards that continue to exist in the US for the most part, the ongoing improvement of the conditions of traditional outgroups, the relative absence of more traditional forms of oppression on a significant scale, and that mass incarceration and related issues remain an issue of only peripheral concern, one has to wonder what Americans are so divided about. What is the real source of the political division that currently exists in the United States?\n\nThe issue is clearly not economic frustration. The mostrecent polling data gathered by Gallupindicates that only about 20% of Americans cite economic issues as their primary issues of concern down from 80% during the peak of the 2008-2009 recession. Unemployment (7%) and the state of the economy generally (6%) are the only economic issues that any noticeable percentage of Americans are primarily concerned about. This data hardly reflects Weimar-like economic conditions. Issues such as the national debt, income inequality, or taxes barely even make the charts as issues of genuine public concern. Over 80% of Americans currently cite non-economic issues as their primary issue of concern. The most significant issue of this kind at present is “dissatisfaction with government/poor leadership” with 20% of Americans reporting this as their primary issue of interest. Healthcare is a close second at 17% percent with immigration and race relations tying for a distant third at 7% percent, and political disunity coming in fourth at 6%. Seemingly major issues such as the situation with North Korea, poverty, education, crime, terrorism, national security, and the environment were all cited by less than 5% of the US population as their primary issue of concern.\n\nIn other words, there is no single issue that a majority of Americans even come close to recognizing as a priority. The closest is the one-fifth of Americans who cite “dissatisfaction with government” on a general level as their primary social or political grievance. The fact that Americans express such an astounding lack of consensus concerning the issues they find to be the most significant could be explained in two possible ways. One of these would be that most Americans simply do not have that many problems, or at least none of a social, political, or economic nature that are all that serious. The other possible explanation would be that there are indeed many Americans with very serious problems, but the kinds of problems involved vary so widely among individuals and groups that there is nothing even remotely approaching a consensus on which problems are the most important. It is also quite likely that there are substantial numbers of Americans, perhaps even a majority, who really do not care about any issues at all as evidenced by the fact thatnearly half of eligible voters, sometimes more, decline to participate in elections for major offices.\n\nThis data hardly indicates that Americans have reached a political situation resembling the Weimar Republic, or that they are inclined to do so at any point in the foreseeable future. The situation in Weimar Germany was one where a new democracy was being attempted in a nation that faced military and economic ruin, along with national humiliation. The Weimar regime was characterized by political instability and inertia to the point that imminently serious problems could not be effectively addressed. Consequently, the political Center was unable to hold, and otherwise moderate politicians began reaching out to the far fringes of the Left and Right in order to build constituencies for themselves. Additionally, avowedly revolutionary movements developed on the far right and far left that promised to abolish the failed republic and create an overtly authoritarian state which was more in keeping with the monarchist and Prussian military traditions of the Germans. Eventually, both the Nazi and Communist parties grew to the point that they were larger and more popular than the pro-republican parties. At this point, democratic government became an impossibility in Germany.\n\nIn very limited way, political conditions in present day America do resemble those of Weimar in the sense that the Center is very unpopular, and that centrist politicians continue to court elements among the cultural extremes as possible constituents. For example, the GOP since the 1970s has simply been about trying to create a constituency for the right-wing of the ruling class by inciting the most retrograde sectors of American society against all kinds of bogeymen (e.g. the kinds of people who seriously believed that Obama was a Kenyan with a transexual wife, and a liberal, a Communist, a Muslim and a fascist all at the same time). The Democrats response has been to reach out to the far fringes of the cultural left while moving rightward on foreign policy, economics, law enforcement, and all the things that actually matter (“Vote Democrat: Bombs, Poverty, Mass Incarceration and Transgender Restrooms”).\n\nIt is also true that in more recent times violent fringe groups have emerged on the margins of U.S. society as evidenced by the conflagrations that have occurred in Charlottesville, Berkeley, Portland, and Washington this year, as well as lone nuts that have assassinated cops, attempted to murder Congressmen, or murdered African-Americans during a church service. However, the leadership of both political parties has been very quick to distance themselves from and marginalize extremists of a violent nature. However divided the political class may be over partisan interests, there remains a sharp consensus among elites against disruption on the margins. There is no evidence that this will change, and unlike Weimar, the United States has a centuries-long tradition of civilian democratic government.\n\nIt is very unlikely that significant numbers of either the elites or the general public would ever be receptive to the message of revolutionary totalitarian extremists such as neo-Nazis or neo-Communists. The United States at present is not a nation of restless youth, starving peasants, or demobilized soldiers driven by desperation butan aging population of fat and lazy peoplewho think that managing to visit a gym once a month constitutes tremendous exertion. Not exactly revolutionary material. And in spite of the histrionics coming from the leftward end of the political spectrum over the supposed “fascism” of moderate Republican Donald Trump, the“Calexit” movement for California secessionhas thus far gained onlyvery marginal support.\n\nThe present day Red/Blue tribal civil war in the United States would seem to be less of a case of a repeat of the failures of the Weimar Republic, and more analogous to the rivalry between the fans of “Star Tek” and “Star Wars,” or the New York Yankees and Boston Red Sox. People appear tochoose their political affiliationson these basis of reference group influences, personality type and psychological makeup, admiration or dislike of individual personalities, and single issues of personal significance or interest such as health care, gun laws, or animal rights. People tend to purchase their political allegiances in package deals sold to them by their favorite websites, cable news networks, or radio personalities. Many fans of the Republicans no doubt base their position on trade policy on what they last heard coming out of the mouth of Sean Hannity or Laura Ingraham. If Sean were to come out in favor of a stereotypically liberal position (such as increasing subsidies for the treatment of people with HIV infection in Africa), he would likely be praised by his fans as a good Christian man who wants to help the unfortunate. If Michael Moore were to advocate for the same position, he would be lambasted as Communist who wants to waste the tax dollars of Americans on undeserving foreigners. Many fans of the Democrats will no doubt their positions on criminal justice reform on what they heard from Rachel Maddow or Trevor Noah. If Trevor were to call for more lenient criminal justice policies one week, his fans would be on board. If he called for a crackdown on crime three months later, his fans will likely do an about face on the issue as well. No doubt many people feel compelled to take positions on issues they know nothing about, and in their heart of hearts don’t care about, on the basis of team loyalties (“Okay, this is what Colbert said about US-Cuban relations so my position is…”). This kind ofgroupthinkfunctions in the same manner among more extreme political tendencies, and often with a much higher level of intensity to the point that people are willing to engage in violence over their respective tribal affiliations.\n\nThis is not to say that the fans of various political teams are not sincere. Fans of Star Trek and Star Wars have engaged invery sincere disputeswith each other as well. Fans of rival sports teams can bevery intense in their commitments. Our recent wave of “statue warriors” have nothing on sports fans in terms of theircapacity for lethal violence. Still, with the exception of tiny fringe groups such as the neo-Nazis and Antifa, these conflicts are not existential in nature. They do not involve rivalries between cults offering competing visions of other-worldly utopias as was the case in Weimar, where the options presented were between a vision of a eugenically-engineered master race and that of a classless world of superabundance where poverty and suffering have been eliminated. Arguments about policies pertaining to voter identification requirements just don’t have the same sex appeal. So not to worry, civilization will survive. In the meantime, break out the beer and popcorn, and enjoy the show.",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "http://io9.gizmodo.com/its-been-150-years-since-the-u-s-was-this-politically-1590076355",
      "https://fabiusmaximus.com/2017/04/18/about-rising-political-violence-in-america/",
      "http://moderndiplomacy.eu/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=1902:weimar-america-germany-1933-united-states-2016&Itemid=138",
      "http://olc.spsd.sk.ca/de/history20/unit1/sec4_14.html",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_War_I_casualties",
      "http://alphahistory.com/weimarrepublic/great-depression/",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Weimar_Republic",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_military_casualties_of_war",
      "http://mondoweiss.net/2017/07/clinton-because-communities/",
      "https://csis-prod.s3.amazonaws.com/s3fs-public/legacy_files/files/publication/150914_Trends_in_Iraqi_Violence_Casualties.pdf",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_the_Great_Recession",
      "https://www.thebalance.com/effects-of-the-great-depression-4049299",
      "http://www.worldatlas.com/articles/the-richest-countries-in-the-world.html",
      "https://www.brookings.edu/research/the-dangerous-separation-of-the-american-upper-middle-class/",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Poverty_threshold",
      "http://www.poverty.ac.uk/definitions-poverty/absolute-and-overall-poverty",
      "http://www.thedailybeast.com/californias-new-feudalism-benefits-a-few-at-the-expense-of-the-multitude",
      "http://health.usnews.com/health-news/health-wellness/articles/2014/05/28/america-tops-list-of-10-most-obese-countries",
      "https://www.forbes.com/sites/niallmccarthy/2016/09/21/income-inequality-between-white-black-americans-is-worse-today-than-in-1979-infographic/#4e48ddc93740",
      "https://www.cbsnews.com/news/national-urban-league-report-black-america-better-off-now-than-40-years-ago/",
      "http://foreignpolicy.com/2016/08/09/there-are-no-successful-black-nations-africa-diginty-racism-pan-africanism/",
      "https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5115603/",
      "http://www.cnn.com/2015/06/19/us/lgbt-rights-milestones-fast-facts/index.html",
      "https://www.americanbar.org/publications/gp_solo/2014/november_december/equality_people_disabilities_then_and_now.html",
      "http://inequality.stanford.edu/publications/20-facts-about-us-inequality-everyone-should-know",
      "https://thoughtcatalog.com/joshua-goldberg/2014/12/when-social-justice-warriors-attack-one-tumblr-users-experience/",
      "http://www.americanthinker.com/articles/2014/01/property_taxes_pave_the_road_to_serfdom.html",
      "http://www.taxpolicycenter.org/briefing-book/how-do-us-taxes-compare-internationally",
      "http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-do-u-s-gun-laws-compare-to-other-countries/",
      "http://www.heritage.org/civil-society/report/religious-liberty-and-expression-under-attack-restoring-americas-first",
      "http://www.pewforum.org/2015/02/26/religious-hostilities/",
      "http://www.npr.org/2017/02/28/517092031/in-religious-freedom-debate-2-american-values-clash",
      "http://www.centerforpubliceducation.org/Main-Menu/Public-education/The-law-and-its-influence-on-public-school-districts-An-overview/Religion-and-Public-Schools.html",
      "http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/state-department-religious-freedom_us_57b780d6e4b00d9c3a17c321",
      "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/europe/russia-jehovahs-witnesses-ban-supreme-court-dismisses-appeal-vladimir-putin-religion-freedom-a7846826.html",
      "https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/11/freedom-of-speech-country-comparison/",
      "http://www.theamericanconservative.com/articles/a-radical-option-for-trump-on-middle-east-peace/comment-page-1/",
      "https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation-now/2017/08/29/florida-professor-fired-after-suggesting-harvey-karma-texas/612335001/",
      "https://www.forbes.com/sites/quora/2014/04/11/did-mozilla-ceo-brendan-eich-deserve-to-be-removed-from-his-position-due-to-his-support-for-proposition-8/#70d9d8032158",
      "https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/morning-mix/wp/2017/06/26/professor-fired-after-defending-blacks-only-event-on-fox-news-i-was-publicly-lynched-she-says/?utm_term=.bcd40901265a",
      "http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449232/conservatives-face-discrimination-colleges-keith-finks-ucla-case",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_disappearance",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_incarceration_rate",
      "https://www.newyorker.com/news/news-desk/do-not-resist-and-the-crisis-of-police-militarization",
      "https://www.washingtonpost.com/graphics/national/police-shootings-2017/",
      "https://www.nytimes.com/topic/subject/police-brutality-misconduct-and-shootings",
      "https://www.amazon.com/New-Jim-Crow-Incarceration-Colorblindness/dp/1595586431",
      "http://rightoncrime.com/category/priority-issues/overcriminalization/",
      "http://www.politico.com/magazine/story/2015/01/overcriminalization-of-america-113991",
      "http://www.gallup.com/poll/1675/most-important-problem.aspx",
      "http://www.fairvote.org/voter_turnout#voter_turnout_101",
      "http://www.businessinsider.com/the-us-isnt-on-the-brink-of-a-violent-political-revolution-because-it-doesnt-have-enough-teenagers-2017-4?utm_content=bufferf31d8&utm_medium=social&utm_source=facebook.com&utm_campaign=buffer-defense",
      "http://www.complex.com/sports/2014/05/fatal-sports-fan-violence/david-sale-phillies",
      "http://www.newsweek.com/donald-trump-california-calexit-suceede-575219",
      "https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/homo-consumericus/201209/how-do-people-choose-their-political-leaders",
      "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Groupthink",
      "http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/07/06/fight-over-star-wars-and-star-trek-led-to-assault-oklahoma-police-say.html",
      "http://baltimore.cbslocal.com/2017/08/17/survey-ravens-fans-sex-date-rival-team/",
      "http://www.complex.com/sports/2014/05/fatal-sports-fan-violence/david-sale-phillies",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/2026/01/27/toward-a-pluralist-anti-authoritarian-strategy/#comment-367466",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "Debates within anarchist and decentralist traditions have long been shaped by a misplaced expectation: that a single theory, constituency, or organizational form might serve as the definitive vehicle of emancipation. This expectation persists despite repeated historical evidence to the contrary. Modern societies are not unified moral or political projects; they are fragmented, pluralistic, and internally contradictory. Power does not reside in one institution, class, or ideology, but is distributed across a complex ecology of states, markets, cultural authorities, professional hierarchies, and informal social norms. Any strategy premised on the assumption of unity—whether of values, interests, or identities—is therefore likely to reproduce the very coercion it claims to oppose.\n\nThe purpose of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is not to replace one totalizing system with another, but to undermine the conditions that allow totalization to occur in the first place. This requires abandoning the search for a single revolutionary subject or master plan and instead recognizing that different anarchist and decentralist tendencies address different dimensions of domination. Anarcho-communism, syndicalism, mutualism, platformism, anarcha-feminism, queer anarchism, and other currents each illuminate particular sites of power and modes of resistance. None, however, can plausibly claim to resolve all forms of domination across all contexts. The task is not to synthesize these tendencies into a unified doctrine, but to allow them to operate in parallel, complementing one another where possible and diverging where necessary.\n\nA central obstacle to this pluralism is the tendency to equate decentralization with a moral guarantee. Decentralization is often treated as an end in itself, assumed to produce freedom by virtue of scale alone. This is a category error. Smaller units can be just as coercive as larger ones; local tyrannies are no less real for being local. Decentralization is not a panacea. It is a tool that alters the structure of power by dispersing authority, increasing exit options, and reducing the capacity of any single institution to impose uniformity. Whether these conditions yield emancipatory outcomes depends on how they are used and contested over time.\n\nFrom this perspective, pan-secessionism is best understood not as a call for political disintegration or a blueprint for social collapse, but as an orientation toward maximum decentralization across multiple dimensions. Territorial secession is only one aspect. Equally important are institutional secessions from centralized education systems, corporate labor markets, bureaucratic healthcare regimes, financial monopolies, and cultural authorities. Such exits need not be dramatic or collective; they can be partial, incremental, and uneven. What matters is the cumulative erosion of centralized legitimacy and the proliferation of alternative arrangements.\n\nThis orientation is frequently criticized for its ideological neutrality, particularly its willingness to support decentralization even when pursued by groups with values antithetical to one’s own. The criticism is understandable but rests on an implicit assumption that ideological agreement is a prerequisite for coexistence. In deeply heterogeneous societies, this assumption is no longer tenable. Attempts to impose a single moral framework across incompatible communities tend to intensify conflict and justify repression. A pluralist approach accepts that different groups will pursue autonomy for different reasons and in different forms. The strategic question is not whether all autonomous projects are desirable, but whether centralized domination is preferable to a landscape of competing, contestable alternatives.\n\nThis does not entail indifference to oppression. Rather, it shifts the locus of anti-authoritarian struggle from the pursuit of universal enforcement to the expansion of exit, resistance, and contestation. Centralized systems often present themselves as protectors against local abuses, yet they routinely generate abuses of their own, shielded by scale and abstraction. Decentralization does not eliminate domination, but it makes domination more visible and, in many cases, more vulnerable to challenge. Power that is closer to the ground is easier to identify, confront, and, if necessary, escape.\n\nAn often overlooked component of this framework is micro-level pan-institutional anti-authoritarianism. Authority is not confined to formal political institutions; it permeates workplaces, schools, families, religious organizations, social movements, and everyday interpersonal relations. Focusing exclusively on the state risks neglecting these domains and reproducing hierarchical practices within ostensibly emancipatory projects. A micro-level approach targets authoritarian dynamics wherever they arise, regardless of scale or ideological justification. It emphasizes practices such as voluntary association, horizontal decision-making, mutual accountability, and the refusal of unnecessary domination in daily life.\n\nCrucially, this approach does not presume uniform adoption. Anti-authoritarian practices will be embraced unevenly, at different tempos, and to varying degrees. Some communities may prioritize collective provision and egalitarian norms; others may emphasize autonomy and individual exit; still others may resist authority in some domains while reproducing it in others. This unevenness is not a flaw but a reflection of social reality. Historical transformations rarely proceed in a synchronized or linear fashion. They unfold through overlapping experiments, partial failures, and gradual shifts in legitimacy.\n\nUnderstanding revolution in this way requires moving beyond the fixation on singular events. The model is closer to an axial transformation than to a coup or insurrection: a long-term reconfiguration of values, assumptions, and social relations that precedes and conditions institutional change. Political structures persist not only because they are enforced, but because they are believed to be necessary or inevitable. When those beliefs erode, institutions hollow out, even if they remain formally intact. Authority collapses as much through desertion as through confrontation.\n\nThis long-cycle view also clarifies why no single anarchist tendency can claim primacy. Syndicalism addresses domination in production; anarcho-communism confronts scarcity and distribution; mutualism targets monopolies and state-capital fusion; feminist and queer anarchisms challenge intimate and normative hierarchies; platformism grapples with organizational coherence. A pluralist strategy recognizes these as complementary interventions into a multifaceted system. It resists the temptation to subordinate all struggles to a single axis, whether class, identity, or ideology.\n\nOne persistent concern is that such pluralism risks fragmentation without solidarity, leaving the most vulnerable exposed. This concern highlights the importance of distinguishing between decentralization as a structural condition and solidarity as a practice. Solidarity cannot be imposed from above without becoming coercive; it must be cultivated through voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and shared struggle where interests align. A pluralist framework does not preclude solidarity; it removes the requirement that solidarity be universal or permanent. Alliances can be tactical, situational, and limited without collapsing into opportunism.\n\nThe question of capitalism illustrates this point. Fragmentation alone does not dismantle capital; indeed, capital often thrives on regulatory arbitrage and uneven governance. Countervailing practices—commons governance, cooperative production, mutual credit, and anti-monopoly norms—are necessary to prevent decentralization from devolving into privatized feudalism. These practices are not dictated by pan-secessionism but can coexist within it. The absence of a single economic blueprint is intentional; it allows different models to be tested under different conditions, with their successes and failures informing future iterations.\n\nUltimately, the aim of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is modest but consequential: to prevent any one system from presenting itself as the final arbiter of human life. It seeks to expand the range of possible social arrangements by dismantling structures that foreclose choice and enforce uniformity. This does not guarantee liberation, justice, or equality. No strategy can. What it offers is a framework for continual contestation, experimentation, and adaptation in a world where consensus is neither likely nor necessary.\n\nThe insistence on a single path to emancipation reflects an outdated confidence in historical inevitability. In its place, a pluralist approach accepts uncertainty and diversity as permanent conditions. The future will not be designed in advance by theorists or movements; it will emerge from the interaction of countless local experiments, resistances, and withdrawals. The role of anti-authoritarian strategy is not to dictate outcomes, but to keep outcomes open—to ensure that authority remains provisional, contestable, and subject to refusal.\n\nIn this sense, decentralization, pan-secessionism, and micro-level anti-authoritarianism are best understood as enabling conditions rather than endpoints. They create space for multiple emancipatory projects to coexist without requiring synthesis or submission. They recognize that freedom is not a destination to be reached once and for all, but a practice to be renewed continually, in different forms, by different people, under different circumstances.",
    "author": "Keith Preston",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/unity-in-diversity-and-against-war-and-statism/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "During the first weekend in June, I had the privilege of attending theFuture of Freedom Foundation’s “Foreign Policy and Civil Liberties”conference in Reston, Virginia. In the twenty years that I have been attending political events of all kinds-conferences, demonstrations, seminars, festivals-this was uncontestably the best program I have ever witnessed. Two dozen speakers from across the ideological spectrum were featured, including Republican Congressman and Presidential candidate Ron Paul, each of them offering important insights into the most pressing political questions of our time, the ever expanding imperial program abroad and the ever expanding police state at home.\n\nJames Bovardopened the first day of the conference with a discussion of the monstrous attacks on civil liberties that have occurred since 9-11. Such attacks have been so numerous that one barely knows where to begin when attempting a summary of them. Included among them are the authority of the TSA to impose “attitude fines” of up to $1500 on those who are non-cooperative with agents, illegal surveillance conducted inside the US by the Pentagon, illegal wiretappings, FBI agents scavenging through phone books looking for persons with Islamic names, and illegal call tracking efforts invading the privacy of million of Americans. Particulary vile are the so-called“National Security Letters”issued by the FBI to roughly 30,000 Americans annually. These are essentially warrantless searches and inquiries where a subpoenaed person is prohibited from telling anyone, including their lawyer, that they have received such a notification, representing a complete gutting of the Fourth and Sixth Amendments. Equally abomidable has been the legalization of torture, the elimination of habeus corpus and recent efforts to bring the National Guard under the direct authority of the President in violation of the Posse Comitatus Act, thereby creating the infrastructure for full-blown martial law.\n\nHistorianRalph Raicopresented an eloquent case for a non-interventionist foreign policy, drawing heavily on the writings and speeches of early American Presidents to support his position. Raico provided an overview of how this early foreign policy was gradually replaced with an interventionist one at the prompting of elites interested in empire-building, and how such a foreign policy has led to the enormous growth of executive power domestically. In addition to the hundreds of thousands of Americans killed in military adventures, millions of foreigners have died at the hands of the US government’s war marchine, including the targeting of civilian cities in Germany and Japan during WW2 and the 1.5 million Koreans killed in Curtis LeMay’s bombing campaigns. Raico noted that if the Vietnam War Memorial also included the names of all the Vietnamese killed in that war, the monument would have to be 75 times its present size. A major problem, said Raico, is that foreign policy tends to be guided by “special interest groups” with narrow agendas of their own, irrespective of the interests of the nation as a whole.\n\nRobert Higgsbegan by saying that the state is “the most destructive institution human beings have ever devised” and that nothing promotes the growth of the state like war. All states are essentially oligarchies, regardless of their ideological foundations and particular institutional frameworks, and other groups in society attach themselves to the state in search of favoritism, or “booty”. Democracy disguises the exploitation of the people at large by the political class and deludes people with the idea that they are the government. The political class uses war to expand its own power and rally the people in its support. Higgs also provided a good review of how foreign policy adventurism has led to domestic statism. He noted that 9-11 has generated an industry of private homeland security consulting firms looking to feed at the state’s trough. Prior to 9-11, there were nine such firms. Today, there are 33,890.\n\nLew Rockwell discussed how both the Left and Right promote the growth of statism, despite their ideological differences, with the Left rooted in the philosophy of Marx and the Right deriving its ideas from Hobbes. Rockwell classified postwar militarist conservatism as a throwback to the feudal era, with today’s “conservative” intellectuals fancying themselves as the modern day equivalent of the old land barons, clerical elites, warrior castes and royal families. Rockwell contrasted this with the radical tradition of classical liberalism and its growth into modern libertarianism.Justin RaimondoofAntiwar.Comdiscussed the anti-interventionist legacy of pre-World War Two conservatism, or the “Old Right”, and the abandonment of this principle by postwar conservatives. Raimondo also focused extensively on the role of the Israeli lobby in the making of US Middle East policy, while noting that the majority of American Jews hold relatively antiwar opinions. According to Raimondo, there are three primary domestic forces guiding American war policy: the Israeli Lobby, the military-industrial complex with its wide assortment of war profiteers and the “ultranationalist” wing of the GOP.\n\nThe first day of the conference was closed by two speeches, one by retired USAF Lt. Colonel and former Pentagon and NSA stafferKaren Kwiatkowskiand the other by veteran left-wing journalistRobert Scheer, with both speeches being broadcast on C-SPAN. What was perhaps most amazing about these two presentations was that both speakers issued a subtle call for abolition of the federal government. Kwiatkowski traced the growth of statism and militarism in America all the way back to the abandonment of the Articles of Confederation. Scheer provided an amusing anecdote of his earliest encounters with libertarians during his days as a student at the City College of New York in the 1950s, recalling what a strange group he thought they were and how in retrospect they may have been correct. Scheer noted how he hadinterviewed every American President since Nixonalong with heads of foreign states like Fidel Castro and how such experience had made him aware of the dangers of statism. A lifelong liberal, Scheer also observed how federal anti-poverty programs are “miniscule” compared to the military-industrial complex and the corporate state and how he would be happy to abolish the federal government and “take our chances with the states and the private sector.”Kwiatkowski suggested that a loose confederationlike the Articles might be the best model of government for the twenty-first century, observing that contemporary technology makes decentralization less difficult. She also expressed optimism about the younger generation. While they may be undereducated in many important aspects, she said, they also possess a healthy disrespect for authority and disenchantment with the status quo. Scheer discussed Eisenhower’s warnings about the growth of the military-industrial complex and the horrid nature of US foreign policy during the subsequent decades, ranging from entering the Vietnam War under false pretenses to providing support for the odious regime ofPol Pot.The Bush administration, according to Scheer, “has taken our society to a new low” and the root of the problemis that “our institutions are filled with talented, intelligent people who make their living lying to us.”\n\nThe next day during lunch I asked Karen Kwiatkowski when she thought Bush would attack Iran. She predicted such an attack would come by the end of the summer. My friend Jack Ross, a former journalist with theAmerican Free Press,asked if whether or not the military would simply refuse to comply with such a directive, citing the example ofAdmiral Fallon.Kwiatkowski expressed skepticism of this, noting the careerism prevalent among the brass.\n\nThe second day of the conference was opened byRichard Ebelingof theFoundation for Economic Educationwho gave a passionate defense of the classical liberal aversion to war and militarism. He was followed byIvan Elandof theIndependent Institutewho observed that even victorious wars have a negative impact on empires due to their continual drain on domestic resources. Eland also discussed the correlation between war and the growth of statism in America and made a comparison to the ancientRoman Republicand its degeneration from rule by the Assembly to rule by the Imperial Senate to the dictatorship of Julius Caesar to the cult of the Emperors, a process brought on and enhanced by Rome’s military conquests.Thomas DiLorenzoattacked the legacy of Abraham Lincoln’s role as a defacto military dictator during the Civil War and the role of the defeat of the principles of nullification and secession in the subsequent growth of the Leviathan state. He noted how Hitler praised Lincoln’s eradication of the principle of divided sovereignty and how Lincoln-worship has become a standard for present-day neoconservative tyrants.\n\nDaniel Ellsbergof “Pentagon Papers” fame discussed his battles with the Nixon administration and how Nixon had hoped for a “Korean solution” to the Vietnam question whereby the Thieu regime would retain control of the cities of South Vietnam with continued American presence and the countryside ceded to the Vietcong. Likewise, the Bush adminstration is using the“Korean model” of long-term US occupation as a “vision” for Iraq’s future. Ellsberg predicted war with Iran within the next eighteen months and the probability that this will lead to a major constitutional crisis, with the Constitution likely going the way of the way of the Weimar Republic. Ellsberg insisted that public officials should have the moral rectitude to go to jail rather than violate their oath to uphold the Constitution. I later spoke with Ellsberg in the hotel lobby, mentioning the first time I heard him speak at a demonstration against theUS war on El Salvadorat the Pentagon in 1988. He jokingly replied, “Are you that old?”.\n\nA particularly interesting speaker wasRichard Vague, CEO of Barclay’s Bankand a conservative Republican. He mentioned how oil prices have risen from $28 a barrel to $60 since the invasion of Iraq. Displaying an impressive knowledge of terrorism, Vague commented on how terrorism tends to be marginalized in stable, prosperous countries but festers under conditions of occupation and oppression. Insurgent groups often meet needs that are otherwise unmet, citing as examplesHezbollah‘s hospitals and social services and the Taliban’s opening of schools where there were none. The solution to terrorism is comprehensive, meaningful, social, economic and political reform. As an illustration, Vague offered the example of the success of Peru in defusing theShining Pathinsurgency through the use of popular, substantive economic and land reform efforts similar in principle to the Homestead Act from early American history. He also noted that Iran had twice before moved towards democratic reforms before such efforts were thwarted by the Russians and the British in 1905 and by the Americans in 1953. Vague suggested that it is impossible for an empire to behave altruistically.\n\nPerhaps the most poignant speaker of the conference wasJoseph Margulies, a lawyer who has worked extensively on detainee issues. He noted that Guantanamo is just a piece of the larger detention policy. Margulies described documented cases of persons known to be innocent who have been detained without trial and tortured extensively by US agents or foreign collaborators in foreign prisons. Many of these detainees are pedestrian non-combatants, some of them supplied through bounty programs where someone gets paid to turn someone over without any substantive or objective rules of evidence concerning the person’s involvement with terrorism. Only five percent of the prisoners at Guantanamo were captured by the US. The youngest prisoner to be detained was ten years old, the oldest believed to be 105. Severely mentally or physically disabled persons have also been included among the detainees. Approximately 125 persons are believed to have died from torture or summary killing while in US custody. During the question and answer session following Margulies’ presentation, an older man who described himself as a former aide to Ronald Reagan during his term as California’s governor characterized the Bush administration’s detention and torture practices as “mortifying”. A woman who said she grew up during WW2 hearing about the horrors of the Nazi tortures remarked that “we’ve become Nazis ourselves.”\n\nThe third day was opened with an uncompromisingly antiwar and anti-statist speech bySheldon Richmanwho citedClausewitz‘s dictum of war being the continuation of politics by other means. He also argued that the worst tragedy of the present wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are the killings and maimings of innocent civilians in those countries, observing that US troops at least have a choice of whether or not to join the military in the first place. As for the question of terrorism, Richman suggested that perhaps authentic terrorist threats should be handled by the private sector, noting the superior efficiency of the private sector in most matters, possibly even national defense.Joseph Strombergfollowed with a discussion of the role of war in expanding the executive branch of the federal government, insisting that the “US Presidency is the biggest mistake” of the original constitutional system designed by the Founders. He discussed the “unitary executive” theory advanced by contemporary proponents of a defacto presidential dictatorship. As for possible alternatives, Stromberg suggested that the Attorney-General not be appointed by the President, that leading positions in the executive bureaucracy be chosen by elections rather than by appointment as they are in some states, and that there be wider use of impeachment of Presidents, not just for legal crimes but for incompetence and mismanagement. Someone in the audience also suggested acts of resistance to the federal government by states and localities, giving the example of the more than300 cities that have issued resolutionsdenouncing both the Iraq war and the Patriot Act.\n\nLibertarian writerAnthony Gregorygave the most stridently anti-statist talk of any of the speakers and discussed how the foreign policy establishment is divided between nationalists and internationalists with both sides committed to interventionism. JournalistDoug Bandow, a former special assistant to President Reagan, argued that the main danger to liberty is not necessarily martial law as much as an ongoing and steady erosion of freedom significantly enhanced by a militarist foreign policy.Joanne Mariner,a lawyer fromHuman Rights Watch,described torture techniques used in CIA prisons outside the US and therefore outside the supervision of US courts. She also discussed cases of innocent persons who were detained and tortured as well those who have simply“disappeared”in a manner similar to those who “disappeared” during the reign of military dictatorships in Latin American countries during the twentieth century.\n\nLaurence Vancespoke on the question of what the churches should be saying on the matter of war and foreign policy. A devout Christian who described himself as being of the “conservative, evangelical, fundamentalist” theological tradition and the Independent Baptist denomination, Vance provided a comprehensive denunciation of US foreign policy, militarism, warmongering and imperialism that made left-wing icons like Noam Chomsky and Howard Zinn seem like lightweights in comparison. He was equally criticial of conservative Christian support for pro-war policies and suggested a number of explanations for this, including 9-11, the viciousness of Saddam Hussein, perception of the war as a crusade against Islam, reflexive patriotism, an attachment to the Republican Party Vance described as “spiritual adultery”, an attachment to the state he characterized as a “God n’ Country Complex”, and a misplaced respect for military institutions. He argued that Christians should not support the troops no matter what they do, but recognize that it is the responsibility of the Christian to refuse participation in immoral acts of aggression and killing, citing the biblical admonition to “obey God rather than men”. Vance noted that US aggression in Vietnam and Iraq has killed as many as two million Vietnamese and a half-million Iraqi civilians, and that Christians who support such mass murders are committing the sin of state-worship or “statolatry”.\n\nOf course, the highlight of the conference wasRon Paul’s appearance on Sunday. Dr. Paul began by describing the interrelatedness of foreign policy and monetary policy, noting that war is typically funded by inflation as taxes are harder for the politicians to sell. He also mentioned how war funding is increasing America’s indebtedness to the Chinese. Expressing an optimistic view of the younger generation, he remarked that “politicians don’t amount to much, but ideas do” and said that because empires usually end with economic collapse, we need to be in place to pick up the pieces when the system falls apart. The first step is to educate people so that public attitudes will begin to change. Dr. Paul also addressed other issues, emphasizing the need to get the state out of health care, something he knows about as a physician. On education, he said that public schools were okay when education was a local matter, but federal interference has drastically reduced the quality of the public schools. He also spoke of the need to withdraw from the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank, to eliminate Executive Orders, to abolish the Federal Reserve and denounced the Military Commissions Act and the provisions for martial law in the latest defense budget. Dr. Paul expressed surprise at the popularity of his campaign and mentioned that while his campaign lacks the big bucks of the other candidates, he can do more with less because the Paul campaign lacks the bloated, overpriced staff of the mainstream candidates.\n\nDr. Paul was followed byJudge Andrew Napolitano,who spoke about the curtailment of civil liberties that typically accompanies war, giving numerous examples from US history. He called the Patriot Act “the most abomidable, unconstitutional, hateful from the point of view of freedom legislation since the Alien and Sedition Act” from the Presidency of John Adams. Most members of Congress never even read, much less debated, the Patriot Act. The Fourth Amendment and the right to privacy have been completely eliminated by the Patriot Act and the Intelligence Authorization Act of 2004. Federal bail requirements have become so stringent that the burden of proof is now on the defendant to demonstrate the lack of flight risk. The Military Commissions Act of 2006 allows for the continued incarceration of persons even after acquittal. Judge Napolitano noted that while the Supreme Court has overturned some of the most egregious abuses of civil liberties since 9-11, this may well change with the retirement of Sandra Day O’Connor and the appointment of pro-Bush administration jurists to the Court.\n\nThe final day included an impressive discussion of foreign policy byTed Galen Carpenterof the Cato Institute. Carpenter began with an overview of US interventions since the end of the Cold War, counting ten major interventions in eighteen years. He also provided a detailed history of America’s sorry relationship with Iran, including overthrowing a democratic government there in 1953 and replacing it with the rule of the sinister Shah who governed through the use of the CIA-trained SAVAAK, a particularly hideous secret police force. Carpenter also mentioned how a frequently unrecognized source of hostility to the United States in other countries is the war on drugs, which includes the spraying of the crops of Third World farmers with deadly chemicals. These efforts, such as Plan Colombia, are used to attack legal as well as illegal crops with horrendous consequences for the health of residents of farming communities where this takes place. Carpenter was followed by former Republican Congressman Bob Barr, who described how modern technology has made government abuses of civil liberties much easier. According to Barr, technology has expanded tremendously since the COINTELPRO abuses of the 1960s. The attacks on civil liberties since 9-11 have been so extreme that Barr was motivated to re-think his earlier positions on the drug war, which opened to the door to the present-day expansion of the police state. Bart Frazier of the Future of Freedom Foundation spoke of the harmful effects of an interventionist foreign policy on the Constitution. Jacob Hornberger, also of FFF, called for a restoration of the Republic.\n\nIn many ways, the attendees at the conference were just as interesting as the speakers. Included in the crowd of about 200 guests were liberals, conservatives, libertarians, independents, Greens, anarchists and anarcho-capitalists. One woman mentioned that she had first come to the US as a child during the 1950s as a refugee from Hungarian Communism. A man from North Carolina described himself as a conservative Republican who had in the past supported Senators Sam Ervin and Jesse Helms. A woman from Georgia described herself as a pro-life, Christian, conservative Republican who was supporting Ron Paul. I also metDr. John Walsh, a member of the Green Party who writes for the leftist website Counterpunch.Org.Sitting next to me during Ron Paul’s speech was LRC contributerJim Glaser,a Vietnam vet who works with the Veterans of Foreign Wars. One man who expressed left-wing sympathies asked me how I thought the radical anti-state ideas of liber\n\ntarians might be implemented and wondered if this might lead to greater abuses by large corporations and neglect of the poor. I replied that as aclassical anarchistI was convinced of Lord Acton’s dictum that “power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely” and while I considered the state to be the most dangerous institution, concentrations of power are to be guarded against anywhere, even in non-state institutions. As for the poor, I recalled how Robert Scheer had mentioned the minimal size of anti-poverty programs compared to the military-industrial complex and suggested we begin by dismantling the empire and worry about food stamps after the corporate state has been abolished. As to how to approach all of this strategically, I answered perhaps secession by smaller political units from larger ones and a general push towards decentralization in all institutions might the best way to go.\n\nI could not help but notice how much more genuinely radical this crowd seemed when compared with leftist antiwar activities I’ve been involved with in the past. There was none of the leftist “money for welfare, not for war” foolishness. There were none of the harangues by Communists or outlandish black racists, calls for solidarity with Third World terrorist groups or tacky, hand-drawn protest signs depicting Bush with a Hitler mustache common to left-wing antiwar rallies. There were no Che Guevera posters, no efforts to use the conference to promote “animal liberation”, “transgendered rights” or other fringe causes. No lamenting that official quotas of this or that group holding membership in the pantheon of the oppressed had not been fulfilled. Only serious people with serious ideas. Refreshing to say the least.",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "http://www.fff.org",
      "http://www.jimbovard.com",
      "http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/03/22/AR2007032201882.html",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ralph_Raico",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Higgs",
      "http://www.lewrockwell.com/rockwell/conflict-or-cooperation.html",
      "http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11069",
      "http://www.antiwar.com",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Karen_Kwiatkowksi",
      "http://www.truthdig.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Playing-President-encounters-Clinton-prepare/dp/1933354011",
      "http://www.lewrockwell.com/kwiatkowski/kwiatkowski184.html",
      "http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/Terrorism/UncleSam_PolPot.html",
      "http://www.americanfreepress.net",
      "http://www.asiatimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/IE17Ak03.html",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Richard_Ebeling",
      "http://www.fee.org",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ivan_Eland",
      "http://www.independent.org",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_DiLorenzo",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_Ellsberg",
      "http://www.antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=11087",
      "http://www.thirdworldtraveler.com/US_ThirdWorld/deathsquads_ElSal.html",
      "http://www.mba.udel.edu/images/CEO_Juniper_Financial_@_Tyler_Lecture.pdf",
      "http://www.truthdig.com/report/print/200601003_hiz_ballah_party_of_god",
      "http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3985659.stm",
      "http://www.motherjones.com/radio/2006/07/marulies_bio.html",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sheldon_Richman",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carl_von_Clausewitz",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_R._Stromberg",
      "http://www.bordc.org",
      "http://www.a\n\nnthonygregory.com",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Doug_Bandow",
      "http://www.counterpunch.org/mariner12232005.html",
      "http://www.hrw.org",
      "http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/713996.stm",
      "http://www.lewrockwell.com/vance/vance-arch.html",
      "http://www.ronpaul2008.com",
      "http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Napolitano",
      "http://www.cato.org/people/carpenter.html",
      "http://www.counterpunch.org/walsh06052007.html",
      "http://www.james-glaser.com",
      "http://www.spunk.org/texts/writers/proudhon/sp001863.html",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/national-defense-and-foreign-policy/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "In fifteen years of attempting to explain anarchist ideas to others, by far the most common objection I have encountered involves the matter of the alleged vulnerability of an anarchist society or territory to external marauders or invaders. It is claimed that a powerful centralized state in possession of a large military bureaucracy is essential if outward aggressors are to be deterred or repelled. If an anarchist nation were to be little more than a “sitting duck”, ripe for conquest by any foreign power willing to make the effort, then this would indeed seem to be a fatal blow to the anarchist position. The defensibility of an anarchist society, in a military sense, is a crucial, perhaps the most crucial, question in determining the legitimacy of anarchism as viable political philosophy. Unfortunately, this is also the realm of anarchist thought where the varying schools of anarchism are the least well-developed. Some anarchists deny that military defense is necessary at all and profess either outright pacifism or make the extravagant claim that an anarchist society would be immune to military conquest because “there would be no state to conquer”, citizens of the anarchist society would resist conquest through civil disobedience, an anarchist nation would have no enemies, “the free market would take care of it” or other inanities. All of this seems to me to be wishful thinking of the highest order. The question of military defense is one that anarchists must be able to answer effectively if anarchist ideas are to ever be taken seriously by more than a handful of people. With the notable exception of David Friedman(1), no major anarchist theoretician has ever attempted to deal with this question in a realistic or nuanced manner. Even those who have approached the issue, like Hans Hermann Hoppe or the Tannehills(2), rely on some simplistic assertion, like the idea of defense services provided by insurance agencies, as a means of dismissing the question. Simply put, anarchists are going to have to do better than that. The efficacy of anarcho-armies organized by insurance companies is by no means a proven fact. Much, much more serious study and analysis needs to be given to this issue of utmost importance. It would seem that there are three primary questions that need to be answered: the matter of how anarchist defense forces would be organized and financed, the manner by which the task of actually defending an anarchist country would be executed, and the implications of a post-nuclear world for anarchist military theory.\n\nIn attempting to deal with these questions straightforwardly, I will make no claims as to what sort of institutions would be prevalent in an anarchist system. Whether the economy would be comprised of anarcho-syndicalist communes or anarcho-capitalist corporations, whether family arrangements would be of a conventional nuclear, extended or “alternate lifestyle” variety, whether the dominant religious perspective would be Christianity, Islam or atheism, are questions I do not address here. Nor do I take up the issue of how an anarchist society would come into being in the first place except to say that the process would probably be a gradual one, as new anarchist institutions emerged to replace decaying state ones, with anarchist institutions and state institutions existing side-by-side at certain times and under certain circumstances. Suffice to say that my arguments here rest on the following presuppositions:\n\n1) In an anarchist system, there is no coercive monopoly in the person of the state.\n\n2) There is no coercive extraction of tribute (“taxes”) from the citizens of the anarchist polis.\n\n3) There are no subsidies to military organizations funded by means of tribute (“defense spending”).\n\n4) There is no involuntary enslavement of persons by military organizations (“the draft”).\n\nWhen attempting to craft a model anarchist defense/foreign policy the first order of business is to gather a realistic assessment of the actual defensive needs of the territory in question. These can vary immensely. An anarchist America might have very different defense needs from an anarchist Tibet. I will focus on America here because that is no doubt where most of the people reading this essay reside. With regards to its military defensibility, America has extraordinary geographical, technological, economic and demographic advantages. A large national territory with a huge population, wealth and the best technological advancements, surrounded by enormous oceans and weak nations with no other major power in the hemisphere is the best one could possibly hope for. The principal military threats to contemporary America involve long-range missile attacks and domestic acts of terrorism carried out by foreign agents. These matters will be dealt with later. Let us begin by taking a look at the matter of conventional military defense forces.\n\nOrganization and Funding of Anarcho-Militaries:\n\nIf any society, whether statist or anarchist, is to successfully defend itself, its citizens must possess a certain conviction that their society is indeed worth defending. If most people are simply unwilling to defend against external aggressors when necessary, then the game is already over. This would be particularly true of an anarchist society where there would be no state who would simply defend its turf with money stolen from its subjects and conscripted slaves. An anarchist society would have to be populated not only by persons who believed in their society to the point where they would defend it with their life if necessary, but would also have to maintain a culture conducive to such values. This would in turn necessitate a revival of such classical virtues as strength, courage, discipline and honor as opposed to the values of laziness, mediocrity, cowardice, materialism and weakness fostered by modern “egalitarian”, therapeutic-welfare-democratic statism. For example, the hysterical “gunphobia” currently prevalent in the realms of media and academia would have to be replaced with mass reverence for firearms and their skillful use. Similarly, the contemporary emphasis on “sensitivity” and political correctness would have to be eliminated in favor of older ideas like “sticks and stones” and “having a backbone”. A society of emasculated whiners, pansies and crybabies is not one that is likely to field an effective defense force against invaders. One’s character and attitude matters.\n\nMost credible military analysts argue that it would cost roughly one hundred billion dollars annually, at the present value of the American dollar, to maintain a national defense force with its current capabilities. Most estimates of this type exclude the costs of maintaining America’s international empire in the form of NATO, SEATO, foreign military bases, military invasion or occupation of other nations, military subsidies to other nations, participation in United Nations “police actions”, etc. It is important to remember, however, that a stateless economy would likely generate a significantly greater amount of overall aggregate wealth and much more rapid technological innovation, thereby reducing the costs of military defense. The unit or units of exchange in an anarchist economy would be much more stable and less prone to inflation so defense costs in terms of overall monetary amounts would be much more static. Also, a bureaucratic statist military includes a tendency towards waste, inefficiency, overlapping and cost overruns that would be minimized in the context of a stateless free market. Finally, the state’s “military-industrial” complex involves a political economy where appropriations are often allocated on the basis of political or bureaucratic influence rather than actual defense needs. We may conclude then that an anarchist military force would be considerably cheaper than a statist one.\n\nAs an anarchist country would be profoundly decentralized, its defense system would likewise be highly localized. Individuals and groups would be primarily responsible for their own defense but would confederate on the basis of mutual defense agreements when necessary. The common anarchist theme of defense services provided by insurance agencies might indeed be realized although this scheme seems far from fool-proof. Insurance agencies of this type could easily degenerate into mafia-like protection rackets, although such an arrangement would still be preferable to an actual state. The economic feasibility of “war insurance” is also questionable. How are such insurance companies to be expected to cover claims if they have been seized, looted or nationalized by foreign conquerors? What incentives would there be to purchase such insurance? Still, it is possible that insurers of this type would come into existence and consequently organize and finance their own private military forces and intelligence services as a means of safeguarding against potential liabilities resulting from external military attacks.\n\nThe abolition of the state would naturally strengthen those intermediary institutions of civil society that the state consistently seeks to suppress-families, communities, neighborhoods, religions, businesses, unions, charities, non-state educational institutions, professional associations, guilds, fraternities, activist organizations and so forth. It is from this milieu that the foundations for a non-statist defense force would be drawn. The core unit of such a defense system would likely be the local militia. Such militias might be modeled on the voluntary fire and paramedic services that currently exist in certain localities or on the citizen posses of past times. Individuals and families would be encouraged to store defensive weapons in their homes and to achieve proficiency in their use. Poor families unable to afford such weapons might have them provided by defense charities. These charities might organize militias of their own. For example, the National Rifle Association, an organization of three million persons, could, at present, establish a militia larger than the entire armed forces of the federal government. Proponents of gun confiscation should keep this fact in mind.\n\nEducation in the use of not only conventional firearms but also more sophisticated weaponry might be provided by organizations set up for such a purpose, perhaps funded by donations or membership dues. “Defense education” of this type might become a common cultural or recreational activity similar to that of bowling leagues or hunting clubs. Students in non-statist schools might undergo firearms training as part of a physical education program. Universities might offer courses in weapons proficiency, military science or guerrilla maneuvers as part of a degree program or as an extracurricular activity. Many young people, particularly young males, would likely find youth clubs oriented towards such activities to be very attractive. Students in private schools might be granted time off to participate in endeavors of this type. Businesses might grant additional pay or benefits to employees in exchange for service in a “company militia”. Likewise, unions might have militias of their own funded by membership dues. Ethnic groups with a history of being repressed might form defense organizations as a deterrent to potential attacks by outsiders. Churches might also start militias paid for by tithes collected from parishioners. Pacifist religions might form medical assistance programs for the defense forces of the anarchist country. Hospitals might donate their services in times of a military emergency and provide medical training to volunteer military medics.\n\nImmigrants often like to think of themselves as patriotic towards their adopted nation. Organizations that sponsor immigrants might make membership in a defensive militia a condition of a grant of assistance. The same might be true of homeless organizations, proprietary communities or professional guilds. Mercenary groups might sell their services to businesses or communities during a time of invasion. These groups might support themselves during peacetime through contracting out for other types of labor including street patrol, private security or bodyguard services, fire and rescue services, construction work, park maintenance, environmental cleanup or disaster relief. Militia recruits might come from some unusual sources. Gangs and outlaw motorcycle clubs might serve as mercenaries during a time of war. (The Hell’s Angels volunteered for service in Vietnam but were refused.) Criminals might work off their restitution debts through service in a militia.\n\nIt is also important to remember that privately organized defense militias of the type described above would not necessarily be similar to the serf armies maintained by the state. The purpose of the militias would be to simply defend the community so there would be no need to resort to the use of brutal brainwashing methods to program soldiers to be mindless killing drones for the glory of the Empire. There would be no slave-like boot camps with rotten food, unsanitary conditions and endless abuse by superiors. Instead, the disciplinary structure of private militias might not be any more extensive than that of an ordinary workplace or sports team. Some militias might elect their own officers. George Orwell, a veteran of the British army who served in the Trotskyist POUM militia during the Spanish Civil War, noted that democratic militias tended to be no less inefficient that traditional armies with a top-down command structure. So military life or militia service would be much more attractive to a much wider variety of people.\n\nSo far I have outlined a potential structure for conventional land defense. But what about air, naval and civil defense? What about intelligence and diplomatic services? Air and naval defense would be of greater importance to communities on the Atlantic or Pacific Coasts or in the Gulf of Mexico region than in the Colorado mountains. Shipping-related industries would be responsible for providing protection for their own vessels and would therefore maintain a fleet of warships in addition to ordinary commercial ones. Communities adjacent to heavily traveled seaports who were heavily dependent on sea trade would raise funds to finance naval defense. Likewise, private mercenary warships might rent their services out to local associations of sea-faring businesses.(3)Just as naval defense would be provided primarily by shipping industries, so would air defense be provided by aviation-related industries. Fighter jets and attack helicopters would be maintained by airlines along with commercial jets. Airline pilots might convert to fighter pilots during wartime. Private airports would organize their own “air militia” from the ranks of local pilots. Intelligence would be gathered by private investigators who sell their services to private defense organizations. Likewise, experts in political science, mediation and negotiation, military science, international relations, etc. would serve as privately contracted diplomats to negotiate the surrender of the enemy, exchange of POWs and so forth. Intelligence agents and diplomats operating in the context of free market competition would also tend to be more effective than those who are simply appointed statist bureaucrats.\n\nAs for the funding of anarchist defense forces, I have already mentioned the possibility of funds being raised by insurance agencies, businesses, unions, churches, community organizations, defense charities and the like. There is also the possibility of defense lotteries. The American Revolution was paid for in part in this manner. There could be a Jerry Lewis-style “National Defense Telethon”. Defense companies might operate all sorts of for-profit businesses-hotels, restaurants, night clubs, sports teams-whose income is used to subsidize military defense. Military Olympics and simulated war games, along with reenactments of historic battles, could be televised on a pay-per-view basis. Paying customers could be given guided tours of warships, military bases or military museums or rides in tanks or warplanes. We should remember that the polio vaccine was invented without a single penny of government money. So extraordinary achievements can take place without funding from the state.(4)While it is indeed interesting to speculate on what a non-statist national defense force would look like, the question that really matters is “Will it work?”. No matter how elaborate or exotic an anarchist military regime might be, it is worthless if it cannot actually defend the country effectively. Fortunately, there are some pertinent historical precedents that can be used to construct a model according to which the efficacy of an anarcho-military might be tested.\n\nWorld War II: The Lessons of Switzerland and Sweden\n\nThe German National Socialist regime that reigned from 1933-1945 is deservedly regarded as one of the most tyrannical in history. At one point, it occupied all of the nations of continental Europe except for two: Switzerland and Sweden. A look at the performance of these two remarkable countries during that time provides us with considerable insight into how an anarchist territory might successfully avoid conquest even in the event of international war between indescribably brutal imperialist powers. While I tend to agree with those “revisionist” historians of the Second World War, such as Patrick Buchanan and Murray Rothbard, who argued that the potential threat to the United States posed by Germany has been greatly exaggerated since the close of that war, it is clear enough that Hitler’s regime was a dire threat to the nations around him, most of whom were conquered with little or no resistance. How did the seemingly weak Swiss and Swedish nations avoid such a fate?\n\nBoth nations practiced staunch political and military neutrality during the war. Both nations recognized the Nazi regime politically and sought to maintain cordial relations with it. Sweden refused to intervene when neighboring Finland was attacked by Stalin’s Soviet Union. The Swedes foreign policy at the time was to guard their historic neutrality jealously and go down fighting to the death if invaded by any foreign power. With only the Baltic Sea separating it from Germany, Sweden continued full trade relations with the Third Reich, including its exports of iron ore to Germany, on which the Fuhrer’s military was particularly dependent. Sweden also maintained a policy of free migration, even allowing German troop trains to travel on its railways.\n\nSwitzerland likewise maintained its trade relations with Germany. The legendary Swiss militia was called out and its six hundred thousand man force was fully activated. The militiamen holed themselves up in mountain fortresses with caves dug out for refuge and an elaborate underground tunnel system established as a supply source. The Swiss army was instructed to surrender under no circumstances and to fight to the last man, by bayonet or by hand if necessary. Meanwhile, Switzerland provided sanctuary to five times the number of Jewish refugees as the United States, relative to population size. It seems that both nations saved themselves largely by following a simple libertarian foreign policy of free trade, free migration, cordial diplomacy, armed neutrality and non-intervention combined with a collective will to defend themselves at all costs. They simply made it not worth the bother for Germany to conquer them.(5)Other similar examples can be gleaned from history. The Costa Rican militia repelled an invasion from hostile surrounding nations in the mid-twentieth century.(6)The Finnish militia successfully defended against a Soviet invasion in 1918. Both the Cold War-era superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were defeated by indigenous guerrilla armies in Vietnam and Afghanistan, respectively.\n\nFrom all of these historical precedents, we can construct a model of how an anarchist America would go about defending itself against a military invasion from, say, China or the European Union. America would be a rather difficult territory to attack militarily. There are two ways an invasion of America could take place. In one scenario, an enemy imperial power would have to establish bases in Latin America or the Caribbean, or in Canada or Greenland, and launch air raids and/or a border assault with tanks and conventional infantry. In the other scenario, the enemy might impose a naval blockade and launch an air assault from aircraft carriers or a Normandy-like land invasion from the ocean. Of course, any state, or alliance of states, that undertook a project of this type would have to be enormously wealthy, powerful and technologically advanced. I doubt any of the world’s current nations, excepting possibly the United States itself, could pull off such a comprehensive assault on an entire continent. Remember how even the Soviet Union, supposedly that master conqueror of falling dominoes, had its posterior severely whacked when simply attempting to subdue the backward border state of Afghanistan.\n\nCompetent economists recognize the superior efficiency of voluntary institutions over the state. Consequently, a non-statist military defense would likely include an elaborate civil defense system. This might involve a large network of radar monitor services, scout ships and planes, sirens and broadcast systems that could be used to notify the public of an eminent invasion, vaccines, antidotes, gas masks, decontamination centers, bomb shelters, underground tunnels, radiation suits, body armor, emergency food and medical supplies, emergency evacuation plans, intelligence services, arsenals and emergency communications centers. These programs, organized and funded by Red Cross or March of Dimes-like organizations, could co-exist along with the private, voluntary militias of the type already described. The civil defense and militia services would be activated in the event of a military emergency. Communities, businesses, churches, insurance companies, schools and universities, unions, mosques and synagogues, foundations, clubs, collectives, communes, syndicates, guilds, towns, villages and cities would confederate their respective defense forces according to some pre-established agreement formed out of the need for military preparedness. These defensive confederations might resemble the defense leagues formed by medieval free cities, such the Hanseatic and Lombard Leagues.(7)Local militias could confederate on a community, municipal, regional or even continental basis. Such a confederation of confederations would be the backbone of the anarchist defense forces. These interlocking networks would render the anarchist society capable of fielding a decentralized mass militia of millions of fighters. A military structure of this type would mean that there would be no command center that could surrender or be conquered by the invader.(8)Instead, a would-be conqueror would have to subjugate many different fighting forces independently of one another. This is precisely the situation that the United States is currently faced with in the emerging quagmire of Afghanistan. (9) Also, a decentralized form of military organization would be a safeguard against the defense forces emerging as a new state once the invader had been repelled.(10)\n\nThe anarcho-military forces would likely differentiate between ordinary infantry and militia fighters on one hand and more professionalized specialists on the other. The militia itself would include ordinary people of all ages and backgrounds. The responsibility of these groups would be to secure supply centers, transportation systems and medical facilities along with ordinary community institutions, businesses and homes. They would likely be armed with weapons that are easy to maintain, transport, supply and use such as high-powered rifles with a good scope, semi-automatic handguns and regular shotguns sawed off as low as possible. An invading army would have to fight on a community-to-community, street-to-street, house-to-house basis. Enemy troops attempting conquest would face an endless barrage of sniper fire, Molotov cocktails, ambushes, sabotage, bombings and assassinations. Guerrilla attacks would be launched from forest areas adjacent to highways where enemy military units were traveling. Anti-aircraft artillery would be placed atop mountains and skyscrapers. Those charged with the use of more powerful or sophisticated weaponry – tanks, laser technology, rocket launchers, land mines, machine guns, grenades, fighter planes, missiles – would likely be drawn from the ranks of mercenaries and other military professionals specifically trained for certain functions. Bounties would be placed on the heads of invading enemy states and bribes offered to defectors from invading militaries.\n\nIt is sometimes argued that a drawback to the type of militia-guerrilla defense system outlined here is the fact that most successful guerilla armies are typically assisted by outside agents, usually states. Examples of this include American support for the mujaheddin fighters resisting the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan and North Vietnamese support for the Viet Cong. However, it is likely than an imperial state attempting conquest of an anarchist country would count many other states among its enemies. These rival states would likely aid anarcho-militaries through subsidies, weaponry and international diplomatic support for the sake of the strategic goal of weakening an enemy state by having it become bogged down in a quagmire of war with an indigenous guerrilla army. Sometimes support for freedom fighters can come from strange sources. An example might be the support given to the American revolutionaries of 1776 by the reactionary theocratic monarchies of France and Spain who wished to see their rival England undermined by defeat at the hands of their seceding American colonies. So we can see that an anarchist society might be able to militarily defend itself quite effectively. The only real remaining question involves that of potential threats from states armed with “weapons of mass destruction”.\n\nAs I mentioned earlier, the most serious military threats to America at present involve acts of domestic terrorism carried out by foreign agents and long-range missle attacks. The best way to deter such potential calamities is to simply adopt a non-interventionist foreign policy. The September 11 debacle was primarily a retaliatory act done in response to five decades of American imperial activity in the Middle East. If indeed Saddam Hussein were to provide devastating weaponry to a free lance terrorist organization, it would only be in retaliation for American aggression against Iraq, a nation that has never practiced imperialism outside of its own backyard, and then only in response to threats or perceived threats from its neighbors, and has never harmed a single American in any way.(11)So contemporary military threats of this type would for the most part be eliminated if a “regime change” were to take place in America, i.e. conversion from an imperialist regime to a non-interventionist regime, even a statist one a la Switzerland.\n\nThe main threat to an anarchist society with regards to terrorism would likely be the remnants of the dislodged state seeking to regain power or other groups seeking to form a new state. These elements could be dealt with in the same manner as external invaders. However, there is also the possibility that a nuclear-armed nation might employ nuclear blackmail as a pretext for conquest. David Friedman describes what might happen in such a scenario:\n\n“It is all very well to fantasize about fighting the invader village by village, commune by commune, or corporation by corporation, according to the dreamer’s particular brand of anarchy. A serious invader would inform each unit that if it resisted or failed to pay tribute, it would be destroyed by a nuclear weapon. After the invader proved that he meant business, the citizens of the surviving communities would be eager to create the institutions, voluntary or otherwise, necessary to give the invader what he wanted.”(12)\n\nClearly, an anarchist country in the contemporary world would need to maintain a nuclear deterrent. Dr. Gary North has suggested how a cost effective deterrent of this sort might be implemented.(13) A thousand cruise missles, armed with nuclear warheads, could be aimed at enemy military installations. These missles could be mobile and continually moved about on ships and trains. As cruise missles are rather slow to reach their destination, they would be useless as an offensive weapon. As they travel below radar, enemy states would be defenseless against them. Such weapons would also be recallable in the event of a mistake. As cruise missles cost roughly one million dollars each, the price of producing and arming them would probably run in the very low billions. A single donation from one or two indescribably wealthy individuals, such as Bill Gates, or businesses, such as GM, would take care of the financial end of things.(14) Such weapons could be maintained by a private foundation employing experts in the relevant fields. There would be no need for the massive bureaucracy of the Pentagon system and its hundreds of billions of dollars per year price tag.\n\nSpeaking of military finances, some readers may object at this point that I have not effectively addressed the matter of the “free-rider” problem, whereby beneficiaries of military defense have no incentive to carry their “fair share” of the burden of the costs of such defense. As an anarcho-military must defend the entire realm of the sphere of activity of its members, financiers and supporters in order to be effective, so it must defend all of the individuals and institutions within its territorial domain, regardless of whether they personally choose to fight, or purchase “war insurance”, or donate to private defense charities, or whatever. Consequently, too many individuals would shirk making a contribution to the common defense to make a private, voluntary, anarchistic defense force viable, or so the argument goes.\n\nI submit that the “free-rider” problem is essentially a cultural and individual psychological problem rather than an economic one. If in the event of a military invasion, the citizens of an anarchist society were concerned about nothing more than the matter of who is going to make a buck from the sale of armaments, how much mercenaries are going to get paid, how much profit can be generated from the sale of war insurance, and how much beneficiaries of defense services can pass the costs along to others, then the society in question would probably be already doomed. Libertarians and free market economists are sometimes accused of attempting to “overeconomize” everything, thereby emulating the mistakes of their rivals, the Marxists, who see everything in terms of narrow economic determinism. This variation of free market ideology simply reduces everything to the level of individuals seeking immediate economic gain in the marketplace. But there are many other reasons why individuals would choose to fight an enemy invader or contribute voluntarily towards such an effort. Psychological attachments of the “blood and soil” variety, loyalty to one’s family, community, religion or culture might be a motivating factor for many people. For example, gays might be eager fight against a potential conqueror known for its persecution of homosexuals. Racists might fight an invader out of base racial hatred for the dominant ethnic group among the enemy. Believers in virtues such as honor and courage or adherents to particular ideals (“justice”, “freedom”, “humanity”) would have their own reasons for fighting beyond the mere economic. Some may choose to fight for the sheer adventure of it all or out of a simple taste for violence and bloodshed. Economic determinism leaves no room for the Samurai compelled by the code of Bushido, the Stoic gladiator, the chivalrous knight or the jihadist. Just as a free society must maintain cultural norms conducive to freedom, so a free society must be inhabitated by persons who value freedom to the degree necessary to effectively defend it.\n\n1) “National Defense: The Hard Problem”, The Machinery of Freedom, by David Friedman.\n\n2) Democracy: The God That Failed, by Hans Hermann Hoppe. The Market For Liberty, by Morris and Linda Tannehill.\n\n3)“Privateering and National Defense: Naval Warfare for Private Profit”, by Larry Sechrest, Independent Institute.\n\n4) The polio vaccine was developed by a private foundation created by President Roosevelt and funded by the March of Dimes. This is mentioned in Our Right To Drugs, by Dr. Thomas Szasz.\n\n5) The Rise And Fall Of The Third Reich, by William L. Shirer. “An Island in an Ocean of Tyranny”, by Bruce Ramsey, Liberty, March 2001.\n\n6)” Costa Rica and the Revolution of 1848″, by Larry Gambone.\n\n7) “The ‘Necessity’ of the State”, by Kirkpatrick Sale, Reinventing Anarchy, Again.\n\n8) “Leaderless Resistance”,by Louis Beam.\n\n9)“Losing Control”, Time, November 18, 2002.\n\n10)“Chiapas and Montana: Tierra y Libertad”, by James Murray\n\n11) Iraq invaded Iran in 1980 only after the regime of the Ayatollah Khomenei threaten to export its Shiah fundamentalist revolution to Iraq. Iraq’s war effort against Iran from 1980-88 was aided by the United States. Iraq invaded Kuwait in 1990 only after Kuwait began slant drilling into Iraqi oil fields.\n\n13)“My Preferred Weapon of Mass Destruction”, by Gary North\n\n14) I do not mean to imply here that industries would be structured in the same way that they are now in an anarchist society. See my“What Would An Anarcho-Socialist Society Look Like?”\n\nCopyright 2002.American Revolutionary Vanguard. All rights reserved.",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "http://www.independent.org/tii/WorkingPapers/Sechrest6.html",
      "http://ahimsazine.com/arch/costarica.html",
      "http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1101021118-388964,00.html",
      "http://postfun.com/racetraitor/features/chiapas.html",
      "http://www.lewrockwell.com/north/north40.html",
      "http://www.anti-state.com/preston/preston5.html",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://www.daviddfriedman.com",
      "http://yasuakikudo.wordpress.com",
      "https://cryptome.org/ap.htm",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/2026/01/27/toward-a-pluralist-anti-authoritarian-strategy/#comments",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "Debates within anarchist and decentralist traditions have long been shaped by a misplaced expectation: that a single theory, constituency, or organizational form might serve as the definitive vehicle of emancipation. This expectation persists despite repeated historical evidence to the contrary. Modern societies are not unified moral or political projects; they are fragmented, pluralistic, and internally contradictory. Power does not reside in one institution, class, or ideology, but is distributed across a complex ecology of states, markets, cultural authorities, professional hierarchies, and informal social norms. Any strategy premised on the assumption of unity—whether of values, interests, or identities—is therefore likely to reproduce the very coercion it claims to oppose.\n\nThe purpose of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is not to replace one totalizing system with another, but to undermine the conditions that allow totalization to occur in the first place. This requires abandoning the search for a single revolutionary subject or master plan and instead recognizing that different anarchist and decentralist tendencies address different dimensions of domination. Anarcho-communism, syndicalism, mutualism, platformism, anarcha-feminism, queer anarchism, and other currents each illuminate particular sites of power and modes of resistance. None, however, can plausibly claim to resolve all forms of domination across all contexts. The task is not to synthesize these tendencies into a unified doctrine, but to allow them to operate in parallel, complementing one another where possible and diverging where necessary.\n\nA central obstacle to this pluralism is the tendency to equate decentralization with a moral guarantee. Decentralization is often treated as an end in itself, assumed to produce freedom by virtue of scale alone. This is a category error. Smaller units can be just as coercive as larger ones; local tyrannies are no less real for being local. Decentralization is not a panacea. It is a tool that alters the structure of power by dispersing authority, increasing exit options, and reducing the capacity of any single institution to impose uniformity. Whether these conditions yield emancipatory outcomes depends on how they are used and contested over time.\n\nFrom this perspective, pan-secessionism is best understood not as a call for political disintegration or a blueprint for social collapse, but as an orientation toward maximum decentralization across multiple dimensions. Territorial secession is only one aspect. Equally important are institutional secessions from centralized education systems, corporate labor markets, bureaucratic healthcare regimes, financial monopolies, and cultural authorities. Such exits need not be dramatic or collective; they can be partial, incremental, and uneven. What matters is the cumulative erosion of centralized legitimacy and the proliferation of alternative arrangements.\n\nThis orientation is frequently criticized for its ideological neutrality, particularly its willingness to support decentralization even when pursued by groups with values antithetical to one’s own. The criticism is understandable but rests on an implicit assumption that ideological agreement is a prerequisite for coexistence. In deeply heterogeneous societies, this assumption is no longer tenable. Attempts to impose a single moral framework across incompatible communities tend to intensify conflict and justify repression. A pluralist approach accepts that different groups will pursue autonomy for different reasons and in different forms. The strategic question is not whether all autonomous projects are desirable, but whether centralized domination is preferable to a landscape of competing, contestable alternatives.\n\nThis does not entail indifference to oppression. Rather, it shifts the locus of anti-authoritarian struggle from the pursuit of universal enforcement to the expansion of exit, resistance, and contestation. Centralized systems often present themselves as protectors against local abuses, yet they routinely generate abuses of their own, shielded by scale and abstraction. Decentralization does not eliminate domination, but it makes domination more visible and, in many cases, more vulnerable to challenge. Power that is closer to the ground is easier to identify, confront, and, if necessary, escape.\n\nAn often overlooked component of this framework is micro-level pan-institutional anti-authoritarianism. Authority is not confined to formal political institutions; it permeates workplaces, schools, families, religious organizations, social movements, and everyday interpersonal relations. Focusing exclusively on the state risks neglecting these domains and reproducing hierarchical practices within ostensibly emancipatory projects. A micro-level approach targets authoritarian dynamics wherever they arise, regardless of scale or ideological justification. It emphasizes practices such as voluntary association, horizontal decision-making, mutual accountability, and the refusal of unnecessary domination in daily life.\n\nCrucially, this approach does not presume uniform adoption. Anti-authoritarian practices will be embraced unevenly, at different tempos, and to varying degrees. Some communities may prioritize collective provision and egalitarian norms; others may emphasize autonomy and individual exit; still others may resist authority in some domains while reproducing it in others. This unevenness is not a flaw but a reflection of social reality. Historical transformations rarely proceed in a synchronized or linear fashion. They unfold through overlapping experiments, partial failures, and gradual shifts in legitimacy.\n\nUnderstanding revolution in this way requires moving beyond the fixation on singular events. The model is closer to an axial transformation than to a coup or insurrection: a long-term reconfiguration of values, assumptions, and social relations that precedes and conditions institutional change. Political structures persist not only because they are enforced, but because they are believed to be necessary or inevitable. When those beliefs erode, institutions hollow out, even if they remain formally intact. Authority collapses as much through desertion as through confrontation.\n\nThis long-cycle view also clarifies why no single anarchist tendency can claim primacy. Syndicalism addresses domination in production; anarcho-communism confronts scarcity and distribution; mutualism targets monopolies and state-capital fusion; feminist and queer anarchisms challenge intimate and normative hierarchies; platformism grapples with organizational coherence. A pluralist strategy recognizes these as complementary interventions into a multifaceted system. It resists the temptation to subordinate all struggles to a single axis, whether class, identity, or ideology.\n\nOne persistent concern is that such pluralism risks fragmentation without solidarity, leaving the most vulnerable exposed. This concern highlights the importance of distinguishing between decentralization as a structural condition and solidarity as a practice. Solidarity cannot be imposed from above without becoming coercive; it must be cultivated through voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and shared struggle where interests align. A pluralist framework does not preclude solidarity; it removes the requirement that solidarity be universal or permanent. Alliances can be tactical, situational, and limited without collapsing into opportunism.\n\nThe question of capitalism illustrates this point. Fragmentation alone does not dismantle capital; indeed, capital often thrives on regulatory arbitrage and uneven governance. Countervailing practices—commons governance, cooperative production, mutual credit, and anti-monopoly norms—are necessary to prevent decentralization from devolving into privatized feudalism. These practices are not dictated by pan-secessionism but can coexist within it. The absence of a single economic blueprint is intentional; it allows different models to be tested under different conditions, with their successes and failures informing future iterations.\n\nUltimately, the aim of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is modest but consequential: to prevent any one system from presenting itself as the final arbiter of human life. It seeks to expand the range of possible social arrangements by dismantling structures that foreclose choice and enforce uniformity. This does not guarantee liberation, justice, or equality. No strategy can. What it offers is a framework for continual contestation, experimentation, and adaptation in a world where consensus is neither likely nor necessary.\n\nThe insistence on a single path to emancipation reflects an outdated confidence in historical inevitability. In its place, a pluralist approach accepts uncertainty and diversity as permanent conditions. The future will not be designed in advance by theorists or movements; it will emerge from the interaction of countless local experiments, resistances, and withdrawals. The role of anti-authoritarian strategy is not to dictate outcomes, but to keep outcomes open—to ensure that authority remains provisional, contestable, and subject to refusal.\n\nIn this sense, decentralization, pan-secessionism, and micro-level anti-authoritarianism are best understood as enabling conditions rather than endpoints. They create space for multiple emancipatory projects to coexist without requiring synthesis or submission. They recognize that freedom is not a destination to be reached once and for all, but a practice to be renewed continually, in different forms, by different people, under different circumstances.",
    "author": "Keith Preston",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/2026/01/27/toward-a-pluralist-anti-authoritarian-strategy/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "Debates within anarchist and decentralist traditions have long been shaped by a misplaced expectation: that a single theory, constituency, or organizational form might serve as the definitive vehicle of emancipation. This expectation persists despite repeated historical evidence to the contrary. Modern societies are not unified moral or political projects; they are fragmented, pluralistic, and internally contradictory. Power does not reside in one institution, class, or ideology, but is distributed across a complex ecology of states, markets, cultural authorities, professional hierarchies, and informal social norms. Any strategy premised on the assumption of unity—whether of values, interests, or identities—is therefore likely to reproduce the very coercion it claims to oppose.\n\nThe purpose of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is not to replace one totalizing system with another, but to undermine the conditions that allow totalization to occur in the first place. This requires abandoning the search for a single revolutionary subject or master plan and instead recognizing that different anarchist and decentralist tendencies address different dimensions of domination. Anarcho-communism, syndicalism, mutualism, platformism, anarcha-feminism, queer anarchism, and other currents each illuminate particular sites of power and modes of resistance. None, however, can plausibly claim to resolve all forms of domination across all contexts. The task is not to synthesize these tendencies into a unified doctrine, but to allow them to operate in parallel, complementing one another where possible and diverging where necessary.\n\nA central obstacle to this pluralism is the tendency to equate decentralization with a moral guarantee. Decentralization is often treated as an end in itself, assumed to produce freedom by virtue of scale alone. This is a category error. Smaller units can be just as coercive as larger ones; local tyrannies are no less real for being local. Decentralization is not a panacea. It is a tool that alters the structure of power by dispersing authority, increasing exit options, and reducing the capacity of any single institution to impose uniformity. Whether these conditions yield emancipatory outcomes depends on how they are used and contested over time.\n\nFrom this perspective, pan-secessionism is best understood not as a call for political disintegration or a blueprint for social collapse, but as an orientation toward maximum decentralization across multiple dimensions. Territorial secession is only one aspect. Equally important are institutional secessions from centralized education systems, corporate labor markets, bureaucratic healthcare regimes, financial monopolies, and cultural authorities. Such exits need not be dramatic or collective; they can be partial, incremental, and uneven. What matters is the cumulative erosion of centralized legitimacy and the proliferation of alternative arrangements.\n\nThis orientation is frequently criticized for its ideological neutrality, particularly its willingness to support decentralization even when pursued by groups with values antithetical to one’s own. The criticism is understandable but rests on an implicit assumption that ideological agreement is a prerequisite for coexistence. In deeply heterogeneous societies, this assumption is no longer tenable. Attempts to impose a single moral framework across incompatible communities tend to intensify conflict and justify repression. A pluralist approach accepts that different groups will pursue autonomy for different reasons and in different forms. The strategic question is not whether all autonomous projects are desirable, but whether centralized domination is preferable to a landscape of competing, contestable alternatives.\n\nThis does not entail indifference to oppression. Rather, it shifts the locus of anti-authoritarian struggle from the pursuit of universal enforcement to the expansion of exit, resistance, and contestation. Centralized systems often present themselves as protectors against local abuses, yet they routinely generate abuses of their own, shielded by scale and abstraction. Decentralization does not eliminate domination, but it makes domination more visible and, in many cases, more vulnerable to challenge. Power that is closer to the ground is easier to identify, confront, and, if necessary, escape.\n\nAn often overlooked component of this framework is micro-level pan-institutional anti-authoritarianism. Authority is not confined to formal political institutions; it permeates workplaces, schools, families, religious organizations, social movements, and everyday interpersonal relations. Focusing exclusively on the state risks neglecting these domains and reproducing hierarchical practices within ostensibly emancipatory projects. A micro-level approach targets authoritarian dynamics wherever they arise, regardless of scale or ideological justification. It emphasizes practices such as voluntary association, horizontal decision-making, mutual accountability, and the refusal of unnecessary domination in daily life.\n\nCrucially, this approach does not presume uniform adoption. Anti-authoritarian practices will be embraced unevenly, at different tempos, and to varying degrees. Some communities may prioritize collective provision and egalitarian norms; others may emphasize autonomy and individual exit; still others may resist authority in some domains while reproducing it in others. This unevenness is not a flaw but a reflection of social reality. Historical transformations rarely proceed in a synchronized or linear fashion. They unfold through overlapping experiments, partial failures, and gradual shifts in legitimacy.\n\nUnderstanding revolution in this way requires moving beyond the fixation on singular events. The model is closer to an axial transformation than to a coup or insurrection: a long-term reconfiguration of values, assumptions, and social relations that precedes and conditions institutional change. Political structures persist not only because they are enforced, but because they are believed to be necessary or inevitable. When those beliefs erode, institutions hollow out, even if they remain formally intact. Authority collapses as much through desertion as through confrontation.\n\nThis long-cycle view also clarifies why no single anarchist tendency can claim primacy. Syndicalism addresses domination in production; anarcho-communism confronts scarcity and distribution; mutualism targets monopolies and state-capital fusion; feminist and queer anarchisms challenge intimate and normative hierarchies; platformism grapples with organizational coherence. A pluralist strategy recognizes these as complementary interventions into a multifaceted system. It resists the temptation to subordinate all struggles to a single axis, whether class, identity, or ideology.\n\nOne persistent concern is that such pluralism risks fragmentation without solidarity, leaving the most vulnerable exposed. This concern highlights the importance of distinguishing between decentralization as a structural condition and solidarity as a practice. Solidarity cannot be imposed from above without becoming coercive; it must be cultivated through voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and shared struggle where interests align. A pluralist framework does not preclude solidarity; it removes the requirement that solidarity be universal or permanent. Alliances can be tactical, situational, and limited without collapsing into opportunism.\n\nThe question of capitalism illustrates this point. Fragmentation alone does not dismantle capital; indeed, capital often thrives on regulatory arbitrage and uneven governance. Countervailing practices—commons governance, cooperative production, mutual credit, and anti-monopoly norms—are necessary to prevent decentralization from devolving into privatized feudalism. These practices are not dictated by pan-secessionism but can coexist within it. The absence of a single economic blueprint is intentional; it allows different models to be tested under different conditions, with their successes and failures informing future iterations.\n\nUltimately, the aim of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is modest but consequential: to prevent any one system from presenting itself as the final arbiter of human life. It seeks to expand the range of possible social arrangements by dismantling structures that foreclose choice and enforce uniformity. This does not guarantee liberation, justice, or equality. No strategy can. What it offers is a framework for continual contestation, experimentation, and adaptation in a world where consensus is neither likely nor necessary.\n\nThe insistence on a single path to emancipation reflects an outdated confidence in historical inevitability. In its place, a pluralist approach accepts uncertainty and diversity as permanent conditions. The future will not be designed in advance by theorists or movements; it will emerge from the interaction of countless local experiments, resistances, and withdrawals. The role of anti-authoritarian strategy is not to dictate outcomes, but to keep outcomes open—to ensure that authority remains provisional, contestable, and subject to refusal.\n\nIn this sense, decentralization, pan-secessionism, and micro-level anti-authoritarianism are best understood as enabling conditions rather than endpoints. They create space for multiple emancipatory projects to coexist without requiring synthesis or submission. They recognize that freedom is not a destination to be reached once and for all, but a practice to be renewed continually, in different forms, by different people, under different circumstances.",
    "author": "Keith Preston",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/law-and-anarchism/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "Anarchist Law: Some Hard Questions\n\nMany would no doubt find the idea of “anarchist law” to be an oxymoron. One of the most common objections to anarchism raised by lay people involves the misperception that “anarchy” would be no more than a free-for-all on the part of brigands and criminals. Informed people know better although some anarchists do profess opposition to “law” rhetorically. However, this is simply a matter of semantics. With the possible exception of certain extreme Stirnerites, nearly all anarchists believe that such acts as robbery, rape and murder should be socially disallowed. It is not my aim here to outline a model for an anarchist crime control system as I have done thatelsewhere.(1)Instead, I want to address the broader questions of how anarchist legal institutions might be structured and what the content of anarchist law would be, along with the thorny matter of the presence of non-anarchist or non-libertarian ideological or cultural groups in a predominately anarchist society.\n\nUnfortunately, the classical anarchists left this area of their respective ideological systems quite underdeveloped. Proudhon, Bakunin and Kropotkin each indicate in their scattered writings that the inviolability of contracts would serve as the basis of an anarchist legal order.(2)Each of these classical European anarchists claimed to oppose “The Law” as an institution. Yet each of them hinted that something similar to common or customary law would replace formal statist legistlation following the demise of the state. Something akin to the modern libertarian notion of the “non-aggression axiom” is implicit in many of their comments on these matters. It is important to remember that Proudhon, et. al. came out of what was largely a feudal society and were heavily influenced by continental European and, to some degree, classical Greek conceptions of justice, freedom and the like. The Anglo-American notions of individualism were largely absent from their culture. So some of their ideas in this area seem a bit muddled from the perspective of modern North American libertarian sensibilities.\n\nContemporary leftist-anarchists are hardly any help on these matters. The more articulate and thoughtful persons among their ranks generally claim to favor a social system that resembles nothing quite so much as a New England town meeting combined with economic arrangements closer in form to the Israeli kibbutzim than anything else with a prevailing egalitarian-humanist-multiculturalist-feminist-ecologist-gay liberationist-animal liberationist cultural ethos. I see nothing inherently “wrong” with this model although the way it is described it often sounds more similar to old-style British Fabian municipal socialism than any sort of actual anarchism.“Anarcho-social democracy”, as I call it.(3)On one hand an America composed of hundreds of miniature Swedens might well be preferable to the current system (at least World War Three would not be looming).(4)However, given the fractitiousness of left-anarchist groups, I doubt their ideal of “consensus-based direct democracy” could maintain much of an actual consensus for long. Also, given the infatuation with neo-Leninist “political correctness” displayed by many in this milieu, I suspect “direct democracy” would more closely resemble a synthesis of a Maoist self-criticism session and outright mob rule. Perhaps mob rule at the neighborhood level would not be all that pernicious.\n\nNot surprisingly, it was the American anarchist Benjamin R. Tucker who had the most well-developed conception of law of any of the classical theorists. His ideas on these matters were quite similar to those of modern free-market anarchists and, indeed, Tucker was a major influence on Murray N. Rothbard. Tucker did not reject “law” per se and accepted the possibility of prisons, torture and even capital punishment under an anarchist legal system. He seemed to favor something akin to common law juries and regarded what is now called“jury nullification”as the primary safeguard against potential oppression by legal institutions. Rothbard developed the idea of free market law much more thoroughly and modeled his system on non-statist legal codes from the past-Roman private law, medieval Law Merchant, admirality law and British common law.(5)Rothbard’s views on the proper application of libertarian law could be rather doctrinaire and the British classical liberal writer Geoffrey Sampson once speculated that Rothbard probably would have considered any deviation from his system to be a form of cryto-statism to be suppressed by force.(6)\n\nOther anarcho-libertarian legal theorists including David Friedman, Bruce Benson, Randy Barnett, Morris and Linda Tannehill, Jarrett Wollstein, Hans Hermann Hoppe and George H. Smith have attempted to outline models for potential anarchist legal systems. Typically, this will include some scheme where private insurance agencies are the primary providers of crime control or “law enforcement” services with legal institutions resembling the private arbitration services currently in existence. This perspective seems to me to be as legitimate as any. However, critics of these schemes who suggest such a system might more closely resemble a form of industrialized feudalism than anarchism do not seem to be without some justifications for their arguments. Also, it should be remembered that one of the things that caused theanarchical IcelandicCommonwealth to drift into statism was the securing of a monopoly over protection services by a handful of individuals or families.(7)Randy Barnett suggests that “Rights-Maintenance Organizations” might provide protection services in the same way that HMOs currently provide health care. However, HMOs are to a large degree oligopolies made possible by state intervention and the rate of consumer satisfaction with HMOs does not seem to be particularly high.(8)\n\nA number of other possibilities exist. Some in the militia-patriot-constitutionalist movement have sought to set up “common law courts” as a parallel to the state’s legal system. There are some fairly solid ideas to be found in this milieu-opposition to victimless crimes, jury nullification, an emphasis on self-defense and victims’ rights, an implicit free market economy. Critics have expressed concern that such a system might result in vigilante violence and private lynchings. Vigilantism is over-criticized in my view, and vigilance committees often served as a rather effective and beneficent force in the Old West and other frontier societies, yet the legacy of racist lynchings and mob action at certain points in the history of the US is unfortunately still with us. (9) The model of “participatory democracy” practiced by theancient Atheniansis sometimes praised by modern anarchists and libertarians. (10) However, a closer look at the actual social structures of Athenian society shows a self-indulgent aristocracy that kept most of the population as slaves, relegated women to a similar status as that imposed by the Taliban and practiced military aggression against neighboring city-states and on the Mediterranean with its superior navy. The Athenian practice of choosing “leaders” through a random drawing of lots might be an interesting model to draw from, but it should also be remembered that it was Athenian democracy that sentenced Socrates to death, thereby souring his successors Plato and Aristotle on the very idea of democracy.(11)\n\nMany traditional societies maintained a system where village or tribal elders were called upon to arbitrate or adjudicate disputes among members of the community but, as the anarchist anthropologist Harold Barclay points out, such systems amounted to a gerontocracy more than anything else.(12)An anarchist society could theoretically develop a type of hereditary system whereby those trained in the mediation of disputes passed their skills and their position down through their line of descendenants or where specially trained communities of scholars, kind of like medieval monks, served as ultimate legal authority. However, it should be easy enough to recognize that such arrangements could become the foundation for a caste system that could eventually evolve into a formal state. Coming back a little closer to institutions with which we are most familiar, a network of “protection and arbitration” cooperatives, modeled on contemporary neighborhood committeees, homeowners’ associations and neighborhood watch programs, could potentially replace the state system. Yet neighborhoods and small towns alike are frequently known for their clannishness and intolerance of outsiders or non-conformists.\n\nIt appears that virtually any alternative to the modern state one can conceive of is not without its flaws. This in no way diminishes the viability of the anarchist critique. I believe any one of the models outlined above would be an improvement over the current police state and gargantuan bureaucracy. Even a return to blood feuds, duelling and formal bribery of the type still practiced in some remote areas of the world would not be particularly unattractive when weighed against the status quo.(13)The current system is an abomination that all decent people should vehemently oppose. The US maintains the world’s largest prison population, with the worst prison conditions of any industrialized nation. Most of these people are imprisoned for “offenses” that are entirely arcane, esoteric, archaic or victimless. The US is second only to China in the number of its citizens it executes annually, many of them no doubt wrongfully convicted. When Republican governors begin commuting the sentences of death row inmates and even some law and order “conservatives” start to come out against capital punishment, we know something is seriously wrong. Murders of unarmed civilians at the hands of the police have become routine. Under the guise of the “war on terrorism”, a parallel totalitarian legal system is being created along Orwellian lines. Compared to what the future likely holds, a system of neighborhood-based mob rule, feudatories run by private defense insurance agencies or local gerontocracies with occasional vigilante lynchings would be a veritable paradise.\n\nWhatever the structure of anarchist legal institutions might be, this has nothing to say about the content of anarchist law itself. This would likely be a source of considerable controversy if the anarchist “movement” were to continue to expand. Most free market anarchists hold to some variation of the non-aggression axiom: “No one may initiate force against the person or property of another”. Immediately the conflicts between leftist and market anarchists become apparent. Many leftist anarchists consider virtually all forms of private property ownership to be a form of violence. I suspect many of these people would also regard any act or even opinion that could be construed as racist, sexist, homophobic, et.al ad nauseum to be the equivalent of a violent crime as well. Leftist anarchist communities of this type would likely be enclaves of politically correct totalitarianism. As for other anarchists, there is the matter of defining “initiating force” and property rights. Most anarcho-libertarians recognize the right of self-defense but how far are self-defense rights to be expanded? Is a “preemptive strike” against someone who has repeatedly made credible threats but has yet to act ever justified? If someone murders a member of my family am I allowed to retaliate in whatever way I choose or do I have to call the local protection cooperative or defense company and summon the offender to a common law court? If someone threatens me with their fists am I allowed to defend myself with a gun?\n\nAs for the question of property rights, most libertarians favor defining such rights according to the dictates of John Locke or Murray Rothbard. This seems to me to be fairly arbitrary. The idea of property rights definded according to traditional usufructuary principles (occupation and use) seems equally valid. Why not define property rights according to the ideas of Henry George or Hillaire Belloc or Peter Kropotkin or G. B. H. Cole or Ronald Coase or, for that matter, Karl Marx or Gregor Strasser? What about property currently owned by the state or by “private” groups whose ownership is derived from state intervention? Who will receive the title to “public” roads and highways following the demise of the state? Private road maintenance companies? A motorists’ cooperative? Will neighborhood associations obtain the rights to streets in their own precinct? Will individual homeowners receive exclusive rights to the sidewalk in front of their residence? What about state-owned industries? Will these be taken over by the workers, sold to bidders on the market or forfeited to creditors? What if the creditor is a state-supported bank? Will government buildings and facilities become the property of former government employees, opened to squatters and homesteaders or turned over to organizations of those who consume their services? Can a village or community claim the right of“common property”to certain resources?(14)Can corporations originally created or chartered by the state continue to claim property rights following the demise of the state?\n\nControversial social issues are equally difficult. The matter of children is particularly tedious. Is there going to be an “age of majority”? If so, what? Can runaways be forcibly returned to their parents? Until what age? Can parents sell their children to other families? Are sexual relations between adults and children going to be legally prohibited and, if so, what will be the age of consent? Can parents be held legally liable for the material neglect of their children? Would this not be a forcible redistribution of wealth? Can a man impregnate a woman and then refuse to provide any support for the resulting child? Do fathers have equal custodial rights to their children or are children the sole property of their mothers? Is abortion aggression or is a woman who desires an abortion simply exercising her property rights over her own body? Should animals have any legally enforceable protection? Or should even gratutious cruelty to animals be beyond the reach of the law? How are criminals to be handled? According to the paradigms of retribution, restitution, restoration, rehabilitation or some combination of these? Is there ever going to be capital punishment? Is mercy killing ever acceptable and, if so, under what circumstances? Is drunken driving an act of aggression if no one is actually harmed? Has a crime taken place if someone attempts murder but fails to kill or even injure their intended victim? Is blackmail a form of extortion or the simple acceptance of payment for withholding information? Are acts of “consensual violence” such as duelling or Roman-style blood sports akin to “victimless crimes” such as drug use or prostitution or are these something entirely different?(15)If someone sells me a television set I know is stolen am I a participant in a theft or an honest buyer of merchandise whose source is not my responsibility? Is “mental incompetence” ever a legitimate defense on the part of those accused of a crime? Of course, environmental problems provide many unique difficulties of their own.\n\nStill more complications arise when the matter of the presence of “authoritarian” cultural or ideological groups in an anarchist society is figured into the equation. David Friedman speculates that anarchist legal institutions could even generate drug prohibition laws if public support for such laws was overwhelming enough.(16)For reasons I will explain, I tend to be skeptical of this claim. However, it is quite likely that local communities would form that would enforce their own cultural, moral, philosophical or religious norms within their own ranks. These could include not only anarcho-socialists, anarcho-syndicalists or anarcho-capitalists but alsoanarcho-conservatives,anarcho-theocrats,anarcho-nationalists,anarcho-white separatists,anarcho-black nationalistsoranarcho-monarchists(yes, all of these actually exist). Additionally, there would likely be territories or enclaves dominated by communists, nationalists, nazis or theocrats as well as remnants of the present system. There might even be localities controlled by overtly criminal organizations. For example, sections of urban areas might come under the control of gangs following the disappearance of the state. Even this might not be wholly undesirable.(17)Tribute rates tend to be lower than tax rates. I once met an anarcho-Satanist who insisted that in a stateless society contract murder and car theft would become legitimate, respectable professions. While it is theoretically possible that mafia-like organizations might develop their own courts and “defense” organizations that did not recognize their favorite forms of aggression as crimes, such groups of outlaws would still be opposed by nearly everyone else and would find themselves in a state of perpetual war against the rest of society.\n\nAt this point, one might be tempted to argue that the kind of pluralistic anarchism I have described here could end up more closely resembling Beruit circa 1984 than any sort of social system conducive to freedom, prosperity and peace. However, I doubt this would be the case. The ideas of decentralization and voluntary association that are central to anarchist thought imply that those with common beliefs and values will naturally drift towards one another and engage in mutual self-segregation with those whose views are incompatible with their own. We see elements of this even in the current system. Some states have capital punishment, others don’t. Gambling is legal in some localities and illegal in others. The “age of consent” in thirteen in some states and eighteen in others. Some remote counties even continue alcohol prohibition. The primary disadvantage of decentralization is the persistent threat of tyranny of the majority. Kirkpatrick Sale notes that is will always be difficult to be the black in the white supremacist community, the Nazi in the Jewish community or the atheist in the fundamentalist community.(18)The antidote to this problem is the relative ease with which persons who are outcasts in a particular community can migrate to a more hospitable community, or perhaps form their own community, in a decentralized system.(19)\n\nTo some degree, the current international system is a “state of anarchy”. America, China, Saudi Arabia and the Netherlands all have radically different cultures and social systems. Yet persons from each of these nations regularly travel to other nations and maintain personal or business relationships with others of completely different belief systems or cultural backgrounds. Secular, democratic, capitalist America regularly exchanges people and goods with theocratic, monarchical, feudal Saudi Arabia. I suspect that a particularly effective anarchist method of eliminating the persecution of some social groups by others would be the abolition of state-organized, tax-funded police, courts and prisons. Under the present system, the state seeks to expand its power by aligning itself with private power groups seeking to use the state to repress their ideological, cultural or economic competitors. The “process costs” and “enforcement costs” of such state actions are then passed on to the whole body of taxpayers and distributed throughout society as a whole. When this avenue is closed off, those seeking to attack others will simply have to pay for such efforts themselves. No matter how much some people may disapprove of guns or drugs, how many of them would be willing to pay the salaries of DEA or ATF agents out of their own pockets? Economic incentives would likely restrict protection services and legal institutions to the chores of settling interpersonal contractual or common law disputes and the repression of serious crimes. Consensual activities and even some “petty” crimes would largely be ignored or handled by means of informal sanctions. For example, the simple apprehension and expulsion of shoplifters from retail outlets without formal legal prosecution. Coercive enforcement of cultural mores would largely be impossible beyond the neighborhood level.\n\nHayek concluded that the hallmark of totalitarian law is not so much its brutality as much as its arbitrariness. This describes the legal regime that currently rules over us rather aptly. Orwell once remarked that the perfect totalitarian state would be a formal democracy where thirty percent of the population lived directly or indirectly off of the government. This too has a ring of familiarity about it. The only good thing about Leviathan states is that they eventually collapse under their own excess weight. When the American Empire finally dissolves, perhaps pluralistic anarchist law will be given a chance to thrive.\n\n1) See my“Dealing With Crime In A Free Society”2)”Anarchism: Exponents of the Anarchist Philosophy” by Paul Eltzbacher3) See my“Anarchism or Anarcho-Social Democracy?”4) Lest I be accused of socialist bias, let me say that I would also consider an America composed of hundreds of Hong Kongs to be an improvement over the current system.5) “For A New Liberty” by Murray Rothbard6) “An End of Allegiance” by Geoffrey Sampson7)“Anarcho-Iceland”, from the Ludwig von Mises Institute.8) “The Structure of Liberty” by Randy Barnett9)”Gunfighters, Highwaymen and Vigilantes” by Roger McGrath10)London Spectator11) Of course, it needs to be recognized that decentralized Athenian participatory democracy had little in common with “mass democracy” of the modern corporate statist variety.12) “People Without Government” by Harold Barclay13) “Tribe Still Means All In Afghanistan” by Charles Lindholm March 31, 2002 Richmond Times-Dispatch14)Carlton Hobbs, for Anti-state.com15) Some libertarians argue that duelling or gladiatorial competitions involve an alienation of the self and the “right to life” and cannot be consented to just as voluntarily agreed upon slavery contracts cannot be consented to as they involve alienation of the will. Personally, I find this logic highly questionable.16) “The Machinery of Freedom” by David Friedman17) I am widely criticized for holding the view that street gangs are a bulwark against the state. I once saw a Chicago police official on television saying that many of these gangs view themselves as independent nations at war with the government. I see no difference between them and secessionist movements in the US who are not necessarily libertarian but whom many libertarians nevertheless support as a decentralizing force.18) “The ‘Necessity’ of the State” by Kirkpatrick Sale in “Reinventing Anarchy, Again”19)The Green Panthers, a drug war resistance group, favors establishing a “stoner homeland” in the marijuana farming regions of northern California and southern Oregon.\n\nCopyright 2003. American Revolutionary Vanguard. All rights reserved.",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "http://www.fija.org/",
      "http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1121",
      "http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=current&issue=2002-03-09&id=1660",
      "http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=362",
      "http://www.lewrockwell.com/dmccarthy/dmccarthy15.html",
      "http://www.lewrockwell.com/sandlin/sandlin13.html",
      "http://www.rosenoire.org/",
      "http://www.folkandfaith.com/",
      "http://www.illegalvoices.org/apoc/books/abr",
      "http://www.angelfire.com/ky/kingdomofyap/positionpaper.html",
      "http://www.mises.org/fullstory.asp?control=1121",
      "http://www.spectator.co.uk/article.php3?table=old&section=current&issue=2002-03-09&id=1660",
      "http://www.anti-state.com/article.php?article_id=362",
      "http://www.greenpanthers.org/",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://anarchopapist.wordpress.com/2013/03/22/modes-of-challenging-anarchism/",
      "http://packinbrent.com/blogs.php?pg=1021714",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/crime-and-conflict-theory/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "“Crime” As a Manifestation of Economic, Cultural, and Political Conflict\n\n“Crime” is not a phenomenon that can be defined according to any objective set of criteria. Instead, what a particular state, legal regime, ruling class or collection of dominant social forces defines as “crime” in any specific society or historical period will reflect the political, economic and cultural interests of such forces. By extension, the interests of competing political, economic or cultural forces will be relegated to the status of “crime” and subject to repression,persecution and attempted subjugation.  Those activities of an economic, cultural or martial nature that are categorized as “crime” by a particular system of power and subjugation will be those which advance the interests of the subjugated and undermine the interests of dominant forces. Conventional theories of criminology typically regard crime as the product of either “moral” failing on the part of persons labeled as “criminal,” genetic or biological predispositions towards criminality possessed by such persons, “social injustice” or“abuse” to which the criminal has previously been subjected, or some combination of these.  (Agnew and Cullen, 2006) All of these theories for the most part regard the “criminal as deviant” perspective offered by established interests as inherently legitimate, though they may differ in their assessments concerning the matter of how such “deviants” should be handled.  The principal weakness of such theories is their failure to differentiate the problem of anti-social or predatory individual behaviorper sefrom the matter of “crime” as a political, legal, economic and cultural construct. All human groups, from organized religions to outlaw motorcycle clubs, typically maintain norms that disallow random or unprovoked aggression by individuals against other individuals within the group, and a system of penalties for violating group norms. Even states that have practiced genocide or aggressive war  have simultaneously maintained legal prohibitions against “common” crimes. Clearly, this discredits the common view of the state’s apparatus of repression and control (so-called “criminal justice systems”) as having the protection of the lives, safety and property of innocents as its primary purpose.\n\nPART ONE: The Theoretical Framework\n\nThe Orthodox Marxist View of Crime and Marxist Class Theory\n\nThe orthodox Marxist view of the phenomenon of “crime” in terms of conflict between social classes and socio-economic groupings has much validity. However, crime in a society such as twenty-first century North America cannot, for a variety of reasons, be explained in terms of conflict between property owners and non-property owners, or between the industrial proletariat and the holders of capital. Indeed, the conventional industrial proletariat (for instance, so-called “blue-collar workers”) often hold rather “conservative” (e.g. moralistic) views of criminality. Yet the difficulties involved with applying a conventional Marxist analysis to the question of crime in an advanced industrial society does not eliminate the possibility of understanding crime as a manifestation of class conflictper se. Instead, a sharp revision and modification of Marxist class theory is required, perhaps one that includes concepts offered by schools of class theory and/or conflict theory that rival Marxism.Essential to such a revision would be an understanding of the “middle class” versus “underclass” dichotomy as the principal foundation of class conflict in an advanced capitalist society.\n\nMax Weber: Class, Power, and Status\n\nMax Weber observed that social hierarchies are rooted not only in material relationships of the kind critiqued by Marxists, but also in relationships of power and status that cannot be defined as purely material or economic in nature. For example, conflict theorists influenced by the legacy of the social movements of the 1960s and 1970s will point out that systems of social stratification can exist with regards to matters of race, gender, ethnicity, religion, age, sexuality, physical handicap, and many other such characteristics. Feminists, for instance, will argue that systems of gender subordination can exist even among persons of the same class position or background.\n\nSeveral concepts postulated by Weber are particularly important to a conflict theorist’s analysis of crime. One of these is formal rationality, or the view that the modern, Western orientation towards the supremacy of reason and efficiency has produced a situation where means are separated from ends. Efforts at the rational management of society through scientific principles has generated the side effect of a permanent, self-perpetuating bureaucracy operating on the basis of this formal rationality, but one where the bureaucracy, operating according to formalized, impersonal rules and institutional mechanisms, has become an end unto itself. Additionally, it was Weber who formulated the definition of the modern state that is perhaps the most penetrating, that of the state as an institutional entity claiming a territorial monopoly on the use of violence, a definition that is particularly important to the study of “crime.” As a further consideration of Weber’s differentiation of power, status and class, it must be pointed as that while police agents are typically not particularly wealthy in an economic sense, they function as a legally protected caste with an abundance of special rights and powers. For instance, police agents frequently kill civilians with impunity, but the killing of a police agent by a civilian is one of the most serious of legal offenses. The police have power and status, but they do not necessarily have wealth. Likewise, persons possessing wealth and/or status can run afoul of those possessing power. The fact that immensely wealthy persons such as Bill Gates, Martha Stewart, Charles Keating, or Leona Helmsley have been subject to prosecution by the state is evidence of this.\n\nThe Philosophical Anarchist Critique of the State, Class Theory and Critical Criminology\n\nThe anarchist critique of the state closely parallels the Marxist critique of capitalism. For the Marxists, capitalism rests on naked exploitation of the working classes, and any claims to the contrary are simply a manifestation of the self-serving ideological superstructure utilized as a justification for the privileged position of the capitalists. Anarchists take a similar view of the state and, by extension, institutions of law, police, and punishment. For the anarchists, the state is simply bold oppression. The state exists to control territory, monopolize resources, protect an artificially privileged ruling class, expand the power and privilege of individual members of the state, and exploit subjects. The state does this through taxation, repression, military conscription, persecution, massacres, and warfare. Any claims to the contrary on the part of the state are simply a matter of self-serving propaganda. (Bakunin, 1870; Kropotkin, 1897; Tucker, 1926; Rothbard, 1974; Block, 1976; Hess, 1969; Carter, 1971; Gambone, 1996)\n\nThe anarchist view of crime is perhaps best summarized by the nineteenth century German philosopher Max Stirner: “The State calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.” (Stirner, 1844) Just as Weber described the state as an institution claiming a territorial monopoly on violence, the anarchists would regard the state as an organization whose real purpose is the monopolization of crime. The state claims the right to engage in behavior that would be considered criminal if engaged in by any other organization or any private individual. While interpretations of crime derived from Marxist theory are among the most prevalent in critical criminology, there are others branches as well. (Chorbajian, 1998). The most radical of these is so-called “anarchist critical criminology,” whose leading theorists include Jeff Ferrell, Harold Pepinsky, Larry Tift and Dennis Sullivan. ((Ferrell, 1991, 1994, 1995, 1995a, 1996, 1997; Ferrell and Ryan, 1985; Ferrell and Sanders, 1995; Pepinsky, 1978, 1984, 1991; Tift, 1979; Tift and Sullivan, 1980) Ferrell summarizes thisperspective as follows:\n\nRather than dismissing criminality as mindless misbehavior, or worse, simply accepting the state’s construction of legality and illegality as definitive of good and bad human conduct, anarchist criminologists seek to explore the situated politics of crime and criminality. Put more simply, anarchist criminologists argue that the political (and politically inequitable) nature of state law and state criminalization means that acts of crime under such a system must also carry some degree of political meaning. And so, as with Foucault and Genet, anarchist criminologists seek to blur and explore the boundaries between crime and political resistance. This exploration neither assumesa priorithat all crime constitutes resistance to state authority, nor ignores the often (but not always) negative consequences of criminality for people and communities. It does, though, call for paying careful attention to various criminal(ized) activities — graffiti writing, “obscene” art and music performances, pirate radio broadcasts, illegal labor strikes, curfew violations, shoplifting, drug use, street cruising, gangbanging, computer hacking  — as a means of investigating the variety of ways in which criminal or criminalized behaviors may incorporate repressed dimensions of human dignity and self-determination, and lived resistance to the authority of state law. (Ferrell, 1998)\n\nCarl Schmitt, Political Legitimacy, and the Friend/Enemy Distinction\n\nSchmitt’s dissection of the presumptions of “liberal democracy” brings with it two important insights concerning the question of crime. The first of these is Schmitt’s recognition that the supposed functioning of the liberal state as a kind of empirical process whose aim is the discernment of “truth” through rational discourse is rooted in hollow claims. The system of rule in a liberal state is simply an agglomeration of shifting coalitions of narrowly focused interest groups. In other words, in a liberal state legislation, including criminal law, is enacted not because it serves some supposed “common good” but because it serves those who hold power at the particular moment. Second, Schmitt recognizes that the existence of the “other” is just as prevalent in a liberal state as any other kind of state, noting that both historic and modern “democratic” regimes practice a great deal of political, economic, and cultural exclusivity. Schmitt’s conceptualization of the essence of politics as organized collectives ultimately prepared to do battle to the death is also helpful in the formulation of a more thorough understanding of the nature of “crime.” For instance, in recent decades, the American regime has declared various internal wars, e.g. the “war on drugs,” “war on terrorism,” and various other wars on “crime,” “gangs,” “illegal” weapons, and so forth. From the opposite end of these wars, various organized collectives have emerged for whom the American regime is a mortal enemy. (Schmitt, 1923, 1932; Preston, 2007)\n\nPART TWO: Operationalizing the Concept\n\nA conflict theory approach to an understanding of crime would emphasize action over order. The particular actions to be observed and analyzed would be those social forces whose conflicting interaction serves to generate the broader cultural, political, legal, and economic construct labeled as “crime.”\n\nIt could be argued that at a micro-level a study of crime would be individualist in nature, in that it would observe specific individual behavior and actions categorized as “criminal.” Much conventional criminological theory is of this nature, in that it asks the question of “why?” some people commit “crimes.” However, a conflict theory approach to crime as a social construct would be collectivist in nature, in that it would seek to understand how conflict between individuals and groups within a wider collective social body produces the overarching construct of “crime.”\n\nIndividual beliefs or value judgments about “crime” could be non-rational in the sense that, for example, a very religious person could adamantly endorse the criminalization of religious offenses, and justify such beliefs with an appeal to faith,tradition, custom or some such authority. Yet an understanding a crime as social construct generated by social conflict would be rational. “Crime” is defined by various component parts of a society engaging in struggle on behalf of their own interests. Those who are successful formalize the persecution of their opponents through the social construction of “crime.”\n\nAn understanding of “crime” as a social construct produced through a process of social conflict could involve a methodological approach that is either deductive or inductive in nature. A deductive approach would begin with the general theory that crime is a representation of social conflict. The next step would then be to formulate hypotheses that support the theory. These hypotheses can then be empirically examined to determine whether they are defensible. If the hypotheses are determined to be valid, then the general theory is strengthened. An inductive approach could also be employed.  Such an approach would begin with the gathering of specific facts concerning the problem of crime, and generating a broader theory from the tangible circumstances that can be directly observed.\n\nThe theoretical framework outlined thus far represents an attempted synthesis of previous insights advanced by Marx, Weber, Stirner, Ferrell, Schmitt and other thinkers from related intellectual traditions. This theoretical framework can be summarized with one primary thesis statement:“Crime” in the formalized legal and political sense is a social construct whose essential purpose is to legitimize the persecution and subjugation of those economic, cultural, and political sub-groupings in a particular society that are perceived to be a threat to the state and to those economic, cultural, and political sub-groupings that are aligned with the state.\n\nThe testing of this theory on an empirical level would require the development of specific hypotheses whose verification would validate the wider theoretical framework. Such an approach would be deductive in nature as it would start from the premises of a generalized theory and then subject to empirical testing a hypothesis or a set of hypotheses that support the wider theory. A researcher conducting such an effort would therefore need to develop research questions whose answers derived from the collection of data accumulated by empirical means would either affirm or contradict the theory.To begin such a project, it would first be helpful to examine routine, publicly available data concerning the operation of police, legal, and penal systems. If the theory being postulated is a valid one, then the data should reveal that such systems consistently exhibit certain behaviors and characteristics. First, it would be necessary to demonstrate that most of the individuals arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and sentenced for “crimes” originate from the lower socioeconomic groups, marginal populations, or disfavored political factions. In some instances, this would be a relatively easy statistic to accumulate, but in other instances the acquisition of such data would be more difficult. Police, court, jail/prison, and probation/parole records typically identify the race, gender, and age of persons who are processed through the “criminal justice system.” Therefore, it would be a rather simple task to determine whether or not, for example, young black or Hispanic males are fed into the criminal justice system at a rate that is well beyond their numerical proportion relative to the wider population at-large. More difficult would be the accumulation of such data with regards to characteristics where the content of public records is not as thorough or revealing, or where differentiating characteristics are not as immediately identifiable. For instance, such matters as race, gender, and age are (generally) much more easily determined by physical appearance than political or religious affiliation, socioeconomic background, or wider attributes such as membership in various subcultures. These latter species of information might be gathered from additional sources.\n\nOne might be a thorough examination of the reports generated by officials within police, legal, or penal systems concerning specific individuals. For example, an examination of the routine reports on persons under the supervision of the criminal justice system issued by prison officials and personnel, or personnel associated with probation and parole offices, would include broader and more detailed descriptions of the backgrounds and general characteristics of such supervised persons. Another source of information might be questionnaires or direct personal interviews with persons associated with the criminal justice system. These could include ordinary police officers and police administrative personnel, prosecuting attorneys, defense attorneys, judges, court clerks, jailers, prison guards and officials, and probation/parole officers. Others might include professional people not directly involved in the criminal justice processper se, but whose activities overlap with those of the criminal justice system, and who are in frequent or regular contact with accused or convicted “criminals.” These might include therapists, psychologists and psychiatrists, substance abuse specialists, social service or child protection professionals, and so forth. Of course, another and more obvious source of such data would be information gathered directly from criminal suspects and convicts.\n\nA major problem with conducting research of this type would be the degree to which the actual data gathered is reflective of wider patterns within the criminal justice system as a whole. Therefore, it would be necessary to gather information from a variety of sources. This might include criminal justice bureaucracies at various levels, for instance, those at the local, state, and federal level. It would be necessary to gather data from differing locations and jurisdictions, and from differing time periods. Another problem would be the accuracy and integrity of the information gathered directly fromquestionnaires and personal interviews. For instance, few police officials, judges, or prosecutors are likely to openly admit to, for example, bias along the lines of the race, class, or cultural backgrounds of criminal suspects or defendants. Likewise, many arrested, incarcerated, or formerly incarcerated persons will have a plethora of reasons for being less than forthcoming concerning certain personal information or information concerning the details of their personal background. Therefore, a researcher should exercise the utmost caution in taking the formal statements of such persons (whether on the “enforcement” or “criminal” side of the question) at face value. Instead, it would be best to attempt an identification of specifically demonstrable trends and patterns that emerge during the course of gathering information of this type.\n\nA second question would be to examine the actual content of criminal law itself, and the subsequent allocation of resources for the enforcement of particular component parts of the law. The presumptions of the operative theoretical framework being proposed suggest that the content of the law and its enforcement should display the followingcharacteristics:\n\n–a generally identifiable pattern of bias in favor of the values, ideologies, lifestyle preferences, economic interests, and cultural norms of the middle-class, and a bias against the interests and norms of the “underclass.”\n\n–a generally identifiable pattern of the criminalization of those population groups lacking material wealth, social status, or political power, with a corresponding understanding that an individual or group need not be lacking in all of these three areas, or need only be lacking in one of these three areas as a matter of degree, in order to be subject to criminalization.\n\n–a generally identifiable pattern of the criminal law and its enforcement operating primarily to serve the interests of the state, the various bureaucratic tentacles of the state, and social groups allied with the state, rather than officially stated objectives such as “public safety,” “protection of innocents,” “civil order,” “justice for the victims of crime,” and so forth.\n\nOne method of procedure might be an examination of criminal and penal codes and a cataloguing of actions potentially leading to arrest according to their general class, status, or power bias. This would be a time-consuming task, as there are thousands of acts classified as crimes by the law, but not an insurmountable one. As for the issue of measuring the bias factor concerning actions subject to arrest, much of this is not particularly hard to discern. As Robert Weissberg observes:\n\nIt is all too easy to overlook that violent neighborhoods are also filled withless-violent crime: illegal gambling (e.g., “playing the numbers”), unlicensed selling of alcohol, fencing “hot” merchandize, petty theft, running errands or serving as lookouts for organized crime, distributing illegal weapons, street-level prostitution, unlawful peddling, dealing small amounts of drugs, and other forms of “hustling.” Even perfectly law-abiding residents may financially profit from these activities and suffer when miscreant family members are jailed. Furthermore, at least some of these activities, e.g., buying shoplifted merchandise, may be culturally acceptable and economically necessary since legitimate businesses avoid poor black neighborhoods. So, police stake-outs to deter drive-by shootings “unintentionally” hinder multiple other illegal (but tolerated) income-producing activities, for example, the street-corner marijuana market. (Weissberg, 2009)\n\nIt is widely recognized that “criminal” activities of this type include the lower socioeconomic orders and marginal population groups as their primary participants. Likewise, it is typically understood that persons arrested or convicted of embezzlement, insurance fraud, securities fraud, tax evasion, employment of illegal immigrant labor, industrial accidents or environmental damage resulting from gross negligence, bribery of public officials, election fraud, public corruption and so forth will be from the middle to upper classes. It should not require an exhaustive study to substantiate these perceptions. An examination of criminal codes for the purpose of studying bias against those lacking power, status, or wealth might also include a simultaneous compilation of seeming arbitrariness in the way that “crimes” are legally defined. Consider, for instance, the list of “crimes” identified by Ferrell: “graffiti writing, ‘obscene’ art and music performances, pirate radio broadcasts, illegal labor strikes, curfew violations, shoplifting, drug use, street cruising, gangbanging, computer hacking.” (Ferrell, 1998)\n\nWhy are these things considered to be “crimes” when other acts that are comparable on a practical or moral level are not considered to be “crimes”? Why is “graffiti writing” considered a crime while deforestation or air pollution is not considered a crime? Why is “obscenity” defined according to the aesthetic, moral, or cultural standards of the middlemiddle-class? Why is shoplifting regarded as a criminal offense while failing to pay employees their due wages is only considered to be a matter of tort liability or administrative sanction? Why is “drug use,” meaning the use of intoxicants favored by the poor, the young, subcultures, or racial/ethnic minority groups considered to be a“crime,” while the use of intoxicants (alcohol, tobacco, pharmaceuticals) favored by the respectable middle to upper classes is not considered to be a “crime”? It would not be sufficient to simply compile instances of bias in the definition or creation of criminal offenses as listed in penal codes in order to test the theory in question. The question of to what degree criminal laws are actually enforced and the amount of resources allocated for their enforcement is also essential. If the theoretical framework being considered is valid, then the allocation of resources towards the enforcement of criminal laws should demonstrate a greater emphasis on the enforcement of laws criminalizing activities whose primary participants are those lacking power, wealth, and status, rather than the enforcement of laws typically broken by those possessing such attributes. The theory does not make the simplistic, reductionist claim that only members of poor, marginalized, or powerless populations can be subject to arrest and criminal prosecution. However, the theory does maintain that the enforcement of crimes committed by the disadvantaged will take priority for those administering the apparatus of criminal law. Therefore, it should be expected that police units devoted to the enforcement of drug law violations will be larger and better-funded than units devoted to the investigation of insurance fraud and other “white collar” crimes, corporate-related crimes, financial crimes or political corruption. Likewise, it should be expected that poor people, racial minorities, young people, and subcultures will be more likely to be arrested and prosecuted for drug law violations than members of the conventional middle class who engage in similar violations. It should also be expected that the degree to which a criminal law is enforced will not necessarily be contingent on the degree of individual or social harm generated by the specific law violation. For instance, if the theory in question is valid, it should be expected that the enforcement oflaws against street prostitution (a misdemeanor level crime) in middle class neighborhoods will be a mid-level to high priority for the police. However, investigation of crimes against street prostitutes, even those of a very serious nature in formal legal terms (rape, murder, abduction, armed robbery), will be given rather low priority.\n\nThe two primary questions posed thus far are not particularly unfamiliar in nature. For instance, conventional civil libertarians will make a sharp distinction between common crimes and the criminalization of political and religious offenses or extreme violations of individual privacy (such as laws criminalizing homosexual relationships). Many ordinary liberals and leftists will argue that the “criminal justice system” displays bias against defendants who are poor, or who come from marginal or disadvantaged groups such as racial/ethnic minorities. Certain subsets oflaissez faireor“free market” conservatives will distinguish between “consensual crimes” or “victimless crimes” and crimes of a more common type. However, a third possible question involves the matter of so-called “violent crime” itself. It has thus far been theorized that those without wealth, power, and status are also those most likely to be on the receiving end of the state’s apparatus of repression. The flip side of this is that it is also these populations who are most likely to be denied the so-called “protection of the law.” For instance, in some areas of some large American cities, the clearance rate for reported homicides is in the single digits, and even this number ignores the question of unreported homicides. (Hutchinson, 2008) Middle-class people typically regard the police as agents of protection, and from their vantage point,this is an overblown but not wholly inaccurate perception. However, those from the population groups being discussed within the current theoretical framework frequently regard the police as enemies, oppressors, or even the equivalent of enemy occupation forces in some instances. Further, those who are outside the “protection of the law” havelittle option other than to resort to self-protection or to join private and even extra-legal groups for the purpose of obtaining protection. Numerous illustrations of this point are available. A middle class family that experiences the murder of a family member can often expect to experience much in the way of sympathy and assistance from law enforcement or the criminal justice system. However, a “ghetto” family will often find that the police could not possibly care less. Therefore, such families have no recourse but to avenge such crimes on a private basis. A twenty-year old, heroin-addicted, street prostitute is not likely to receive much in the way of sympathy or protection from violent pimps, customers, routine criminals, or rogue police agents. Nor is such a person likely to be granted the means of self-protection afforded by the state (such as a “concealed weapon permit”). Therefore, such a person has no choice but to utilize formally illegal methods of self-protection such as the carrying of “illegal” weapons or private killing of violent predatory characters such as the aforementioned who pose an immediate threat to her physical survival.  Still another example are those persons whose livelihoods are derived from formally illegal enterprises such as those identified by Weissberg and Ferrell. Such persons have no formal means of peacefully settling routine business disputes (such as access to courts) and therefore must settle such disputes by formally illegal, often violent, methods.\n\nAn empirical testing of the hypothesis advanced by this third question would be exceedingly difficult. One method might be to gather police and court records concerning crimes involving homicide, felonious or aggravated assault, or weapons violations. A close examination of the particular circumstances of each individual case would be necessary. Data could then be compiled concerning how many such cases involved acts of unprovoked aggression, and how many involved acts of retaliation, preemption, or self-defense according to common logic, or the carrying of weapons for such purposes. However, such data would be incomplete as it would have nothing to say about unsolved or unreported homicides or assaults, and it is homicides and assaults of this kind that are mostly likely to fit within the framework being described.  Another source of investigating this question might be to compile anecdotal evidence from persons involved in or close to the population groups where extra-legal violence and the brandishing or use of weapons is a normal occurrence. Such anecdotal evidence would likewise be imprecise given its non-verifiable nature, and would be useful primarily for identifying patterns that emerge throughout the course of gathering many such anecdotes. Further, the gathering of such evidence would be an extremely dangerous undertaking in some instances.\n\nIf “violent crime” of an individual nature can be understood not as simply a matter of random or unprovoked aggression by individuals against other individuals, though this may be the case in some instances (e.g. serial killers, rape, armed robbery), but also involving acts of defense, retribution, and dispute resolution by members of those population groups denied the formal protection of the law, then a subset of this question would also necessitate an examination of “violent crime” carried out by organized groups. The observations of Chris Hoke, a prison chaplain, carry certainimplications that are relevant to the theoretical framework being considered:\n\nI’ve observed how gang members are not very outlaw after all. Rather, they can be some of the most principled law-abiders I’ve met. The only thing is, they are citizens and patriots of a different law, a different constitution, a different nation.\n\nA gang is a nation in miniature, in its elemental form. They are nations within our nations, comprised of youths our larger gang/nations have rejected and not counted or treated as citizens. And I think they tell us more about ourselves than we’d like to admit.\n\nThe men I work with, for example, are South Siders (Sureños). They have a flag. It is blue, and they wear it, display it, and revere it with a pride that seems ridiculous – until we think of American behavior with the U.S. flag following the Sept. 11 attacks.\n\nLike nations, a gang begins with its turf, and marks its borders clearly. Their need for “protection” justifies their stockpiles of weapons. They don’t take kindly to people crossing their borders without permission, yet often aggressively invade others’ territory with a bold show of armed might and claiming of the area with their colors.\n\nMainstream society scoffs at such “senseless violence,” yet has no trouble accepting the foreign policy and international affairs of our own land, its military obsession, or immigration phobias.\n\nWhat’s most interesting to me is how a gang is not just hostile to outsiders, but equally severe in its treatment of its own members. Those who fail to toe the line are treated as enemies. Gangs call them “levas.” Americans call them “scum” or “unpatriotic.” The same guys who I’ve seen flagrantly break into a car or mouth off to a judge in court would never even risk being seen associating with a member of another gang; they don’t want to be “put in check” by their own gang for breaking the code, the law of the gang.\n\nWhen I invite them to transgress by not harming a Norteño they might cross on the street, for example, my friends look at me as incredulous as an average American patriot would when I suggest he dodge the draft or get arrested for public protest or civil disobedience. I talk to leaders who may attend our Bible studies, inside the jail or out, to forgive another homie’s “stepping out of line.” It’s just as hard as asking a church-going judge to simply drop all charges and acquit a man on trial before him. “It’s not that easy,” they both chuckle at my naïveté. “Something has to be done. I mean, what kind of message would that send to everyone else? This is the law. It’s not totally up to me.” (Hoke, 2009)\n\nHoke’s casual observations concerning the internal mores of street gangs parallels similar observations made by the journalist Joel Dyer concerning antigovernment militia groups of the kind that emerged in the 1990s, whose origins are traceable to the opposite end of the cultural and racial spectrum from those of urban gangs, but from similarsocioeconomic levels:\n\nFollowing (the killing of dissidents by federal agents at) Ruby Ridge and Waco, the antigovernment movement focused on the creation of militias. With its military arm in place, the movement’s next push came in the form of common-law courts. As the sovereignty concept took hold across the nation, antigovernment adherents began to form organizations that encompassed all of these antigovernmental elements-sovereignty, courts and militias. The goal is that each organization should become self-sufficient, able to fully govern its membership with no assistance from the outside world. It’s as if there are thousands of independent countries operating within the border of the United States…Regardless of their differences, which are substantial, these groups realize that they must ultimately support each other to avoid being crushed by the federal government…These self-governing antigovernment bands range in size from a dozen people to several thousand…The actions of these supposedly sovereign groups are often in direct conflict with the laws of the United States, which they no longer recognize…(Dyer, 1997)\n\nSuch organizations as gangs and militias might well be the most pertinent illustration of what a full application of conflict theory to the question of crime might involve. Such groups originate from the lower socioeconomic levels, and openly challenge the monopoly on violence that Weber suggested is a defining characteristic of the state. Further, they epitomize Schmitt’s definition of politics as organized collectives ultimately prepared to do battle to the death. While the state and its operatives formally classify such groups as “criminals,” it is clear enough that a thorough examination of the values and beliefs their members indicates that such elements are essentially competing states or sub-nations and tribes at war with a dominant state. Formal research methods, such as personal interviews with participants in these conflicts (whether gang or militia members on one end or members of law enforcement on the other), would likely vindicate such aperspective.\n\nAn understanding of crime from the perspective of conflict theory helps to make sense of many otherwise inexplicable anomalies and lapses of logic concerning more conventional understandings of crime. Conflict theory also helps to develop an understanding of why crime assumes the particular forms and patterns that it does.\n\nVirtually all societies maintain systems of classifying particular behaviors as “crime,’ in spite of the internal variations within these systems. Does not the universal presence of criminal codification systems signify the existence of crime (as an objectively identifiable social phenomenon), independent of broader, subjective cultural or individual values regarding crime? Does not the obvious presence of persons in most societies that can be rationally defined as posing clear and present danger to the physical and material security of others raise cause for doubting a definition of crime as a purely subjective social construct?\n\nAdorno, Theodore (1975).The Culture Industry Reconsidered. New German Critique:\n\nAgnew, Robert and Francis T. Cullen (2006).Criminological Theory: Past to Present.\n\nLos Angeles: Roxbury Publishing Company.\n\nBakunin, Mikhail (1970).God and the State. New York: Dover Publications. Originally\n\nBar, Noma (2008). Darwinism: Why We Are, As We Are.The Economist, December 18,\n\nBishop, Bill and Robert G. Cushing (2008).The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-\n\nMinded America is Tearing Us Apart. Boston, New York: Houghton Mifflin\n\nBlock, Walter (1976).Defending the Undefendable: The Pimp, Prostitute, Scab, Libeler,\n\nMoneylender, and Other Scapegoats in the Rogue’s Gallery of American Society.\n\nAuburn, Alabama: Ludwig Von Mises Institute.\n\nBonger, Willem (1916).Criminality and Economic Conditions. Bloomington: Indiana\n\nBrooks, David (2001). One Nation, Slightly Divisible.The Atlantic Monthly, December\n\nBurham, James (1941).The Managerial Revolution: What Is Happening in the World.\n\nCarter, April (1971). The Political Theory of Anarchism. London: Routledge and Keegan\n\nChorbajian, Levon (1998). Thinking Critically About Crime.Social Anarchism# 26.\n\nColvin, Mark (2000).Crime and Coercion: An Integrated Theory of Chronic Criminality.\n\nCurrie, Elliot (1985).Confronting Crime: An American Challenge. New York: Pantheon.\n\nDomhoff, G. William (2002). Who Rules America? Power and Politics. Fourth Edition.\n\nDrake, Susan and Kirk R. Williams (1980). Social Structure, Crime and Criminalization.\n\nThe Sociological Quarterly, Vol. 21, Autumn 1980, 563-575.\n\nDyer, Joel (1997).Harvest of Rage. Westview Press, 1997.\n\nDyer, Joel (2000).The Perpetual Prisoner Machine. Boulder, Colorado: Westview Press.\n\nEngels, Friedrich and Karl Marx (1848).The Communist Manifesto.\n\nFerrell, Jeff (1998). Against the Law: Anarchist Criminology.Social Anarchism# 25.\n\nFerrell, Jeff (1991). The Brotherhood of Timber Workers and the Culture of Conflict\n\nJournal of Folklore Research28: 163-177.\n\nFerrell, Jeff (1994). Confronting the Agenda of Authority: Critical Criminology,\n\nAnarchism, and Urban Graffiti. In Gregg Barak, ed.,Varieties of Criminology:\n\nReadings from a Dynamic Discipline, pages 161-178. Westport, CT: Praeger.\n\nFerrell, Jeff (1995). Urban Graffiti: Crime, Control, and Resistance.Youth and Society\n\nFerrell, Jeff (1995a.) Anarchy Against the Discipline.Journal of Criminal Justice and\n\nFerrell, Jeff (1996).Crimes of Style: Urban Graffiti and the Politics of Criminality.\n\nFerrell, Jeff (1997). CriminologicalVerstehen: Inside the Immediacy of Crime.Justice\n\nFerrell, Jeff and Kevin Ryan (1985). The Brotherhood of Timber Workers and the\n\nSouthern Lumber Trust: Legal Repression and Worker Response.Radical\n\nFerrell, Jeff and Clinton R. Sanders (eds.) (1995).Cultural Criminology. Boston:\n\nGambone, Larry (1996).Proudhon and Anarchism: Proudhon’s Libertarian Thought and\n\nthe Anarchist Movement. Montreal: Red Lion Press.\n\nGelman, Andrew and David Park, Boris Shor, Joseph Bafumi, Jeronimo Cortina (2008).\n\nRedState, Blue State, Rich State, Poor State. Princeton and Oxford: Princeton\n\nGouldner, Alvin W. (1979).The Future of Intellectuals and the Rise of the New Class.\n\nNew York: Continuum Publishing Service.\n\nHari, Johann (2009). Blood, Rage, and History: The World’s First Terrorists.The\n\nIndependent, October 12, 2009. Archived at\n\nhttp://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/blood-rage–history-the-\n\nworlds-first-terrorists-1801195.html Accessed on November 1, 2009.\n\nHess, Karl (1969). The Death of Politics.Playboy, March, 1969.\n\nHoke, Chris (2009). Gangs, Nations: Same Thing.Sojourners, April, 2009.\n\nHutchinson, Earl Ofari (2008). Breaking the Cycle of Silence on Unsolved Murders.\n\nNew American Media, May 26, 2008.\n\nJohnson, Charles (2007). Scratching By: How Government Creates Poverty As We\n\nKnow It.The Freeman, Vol. 57, No. 10, December 2007.\n\nKaye, Howard L. (1986).The Social Meaning of Modern Biology: From Social\n\nDarwinism to Sociobiology.Yale University Press.\n\nKeating, Kevin (1992). The Rebellion in Los Angeles: The Context of a Proletarian\n\nUprising.Aufheben# 1. Archived athttp://www.prole.info/pamphlets/lariots.pdf\n\nKropotkin, Peter (1946).The State: Its Historic Role. London: Freedom Press. Originally\n\nManwaring, Max (2005).Street Gangs: The New Urban Insurgency. Army War College:\n\nStrategic Studies Institute, March, 2005.\n\nMcLaughlin, Paul (2002).Mikhail Bakunin: The Philosophical Basis of His Anarchism.\n\nMiller, Richard Lawrence (1995).Nazi Justiz: Law of the Holocaust. Praeger Publishers.\n\nMiller, Richard Lawrence (1996).Drug Warriors and Their Prey: From Police Power to\n\nPolice State. Praeger Publishers.\n\nMills, C. Wright (1958).Power Elite. New York: Oxford University Press.\n\nParenti, Michael (2000).Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis.\n\nPepinsky, Harold E. 1978. “Communist Anarchism as an Alternative to the Rule of\n\nCriminal Law.”Contemporary Crises2: 315-327.\n\nPepinsky, Harold E. 1991. “Peacemaking in Criminology.” In Brian D. MacLean and\n\nDragan Milovanovic, eds.,New Directions in Critical Criminology, pp. 107-110.\n\nVancouver: The Collective Press.\n\nPepinsky, Harold E. and Paul Jesilow. 1984.Myths That Cause Crime, 2nd ed. Cabin\n\nPepinsky, Harold E. and Richard Quinney (eds.). 1991.Criminology as Peacemaking.\n\nPilger, John (2009). Thirty Years On, the Holocaust in Cambodia and Its Aftermath is\n\nRemembered.Lew Rockwell.Com, October 31, 2009. Archived at\n\nhttp://www.lewrockwell.com/pilger/pilger81.1.htmlAccessed on November 1,\n\nPreston, Keith (2008). Free Enterprise: The Antidote to Corporate Plutocracy. Economic\n\nNotes No. 112, Libertarian Alliance, London, 2009. Archived at\n\nhttp://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/econn/econn112.htm. Accessed on\n\nPreston, Keith (2007). The Political Theory of Carl Schmitt. Unpublished.\n\nQuinney, Robert. (1977). Class, State and Crime: On Theory and Practice of Criminal\n\nJustice. National Criminal Justice Reference Service.\n\nRafter, Nicole Hahn (1990). The Social Construction of Crime and Crime Control.\n\nJournal of Research in Crime and Delinquency, Vol. 26, No. 4, 376-389.\n\nRaine, Adrian (1993).The Psychopathology of Crime: Criminal Behavior as a Clinical\n\nDisorder.London: Academic Press.\n\nRothbard, Murray N. (2009).The Anatomy of the State. Auburn, Alabama: Ludwig Von\n\nMises Institute. Originally published in 1974.\n\nSchmitt, Carl (1932).The Concept of the Political.Berlin: Duncker and Humblot.\n\nSchmitt, Carl (1923).The Crisis of Parliamentary Democracy. Berlin: Duncker and\n\nShearer, David R. (1998). Crime and Social Disorder in Stalin’s Russia.Cahiers de\n\nMonde Russe: Russie, Empire Russe,Union Sovietique, Etats Independants,39\n\n(1-2), Janveir-Juin, 1998, pp. 119-148.\n\nShort, Philip (2004).Pol Pot: Anatomy of a Nightmare. New York: Henry Holt and\n\nSpitzer, Steven (1979). The Rationalization of Crime Control in Capitalist Society.\n\nCrime, Law, and Social Change, Vol. 3, No. 2, Springer Netherlands, April, 1979.\n\nStirner, Max (1844).The Ego and Its Own. Leipzig: Otto Wigand.\n\nStuart, Henry and Mark M. Lanier (2004).Essential Criminology. Boulder, Colorado:\n\nStringham, Edward, Editor (2007). Anarchy and the Law: The Political Economy of\n\nChoice. Oakland, California: The Independent Institute.\n\nSzasz, Thomas S. (1965). Toward the Therapeutic State.New Republic(11th December),\n\nSzasz, Thomas (1975).Ceremonial Chemistry: The Ritual Persecution of Drugs, Addicts\n\nand Pushers.Garden City, New York: Anchor Press.\n\nTifft, Larry. 1979. “The Coming Redefinition of Crime: An Anarchist Perspective.”Social Problems26: 392-402.\n\nTifft, Larry and Dennis Sullivan. 1980.The Struggle to be Human: Crime, Criminology\n\nand Anarchism. Orkney, U.K.: Cienfeugos.\n\nTucker, Benjamin R. (1926). Anarchism and Crime.Individual Liberty: Selections from\n\nthe Writings of Benjamin R. Tucker. New York: Vanguard Press.\n\nVan Creveld, Martin (1999).The Rise and Decline of the State. Cambridge University\n\nWeber, Max (1946). Class, Status, and Party.From Max Weber: Essays in Sociology.\n\nEdited by H. H. Gerth and C. Wright Mills.\n\nWeissberg, Robert (2009). Black on Black.Taki’s Magazine, September 14, 2009.\n\nArchived athttp://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/black_on_black\n\nWilliams, Walter E. (1982). The State Against Blacks. McGraw-Hill.",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/politics/blood-rage–history-the-",
      "http://www.prole.info/pamphlets/lariots.pdf",
      "http://www.lewrockwell.com/pilger/pilger81.1.html ",
      "http://www.libertarian.co.uk/lapubs/econn/econn112.htm",
      "http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/black_on_black",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "http://notyet",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/toward-a-pluralist-anti-authoritarian-strategy/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "Debates within anarchist and decentralist traditions have long been shaped by a misplaced expectation: that a single theory, constituency, or organizational form might serve as the definitive vehicle of emancipation. This expectation persists despite repeated historical evidence to the contrary. Modern societies are not unified moral or political projects; they are fragmented, pluralistic, and internally contradictory. Power does not reside in one institution, class, or ideology, but is distributed across a complex ecology of states, markets, cultural authorities, professional hierarchies, and informal social norms. Any strategy premised on the assumption of unity—whether of values, interests, or identities—is therefore likely to reproduce the very coercion it claims to oppose.\n\nThe purpose of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is not to replace one totalizing system with another, but to undermine the conditions that allow totalization to occur in the first place. This requires abandoning the search for a single revolutionary subject or master plan and instead recognizing that different anarchist and decentralist tendencies address different dimensions of domination. Anarcho-communism, syndicalism, mutualism, platformism, anarcha-feminism, queer anarchism, and other currents each illuminate particular sites of power and modes of resistance. None, however, can plausibly claim to resolve all forms of domination across all contexts. The task is not to synthesize these tendencies into a unified doctrine, but to allow them to operate in parallel, complementing one another where possible and diverging where necessary.\n\nA central obstacle to this pluralism is the tendency to equate decentralization with a moral guarantee. Decentralization is often treated as an end in itself, assumed to produce freedom by virtue of scale alone. This is a category error. Smaller units can be just as coercive as larger ones; local tyrannies are no less real for being local. Decentralization is not a panacea. It is a tool that alters the structure of power by dispersing authority, increasing exit options, and reducing the capacity of any single institution to impose uniformity. Whether these conditions yield emancipatory outcomes depends on how they are used and contested over time.\n\nFrom this perspective, pan-secessionism is best understood not as a call for political disintegration or a blueprint for social collapse, but as an orientation toward maximum decentralization across multiple dimensions. Territorial secession is only one aspect. Equally important are institutional secessions from centralized education systems, corporate labor markets, bureaucratic healthcare regimes, financial monopolies, and cultural authorities. Such exits need not be dramatic or collective; they can be partial, incremental, and uneven. What matters is the cumulative erosion of centralized legitimacy and the proliferation of alternative arrangements.\n\nThis orientation is frequently criticized for its ideological neutrality, particularly its willingness to support decentralization even when pursued by groups with values antithetical to one’s own. The criticism is understandable but rests on an implicit assumption that ideological agreement is a prerequisite for coexistence. In deeply heterogeneous societies, this assumption is no longer tenable. Attempts to impose a single moral framework across incompatible communities tend to intensify conflict and justify repression. A pluralist approach accepts that different groups will pursue autonomy for different reasons and in different forms. The strategic question is not whether all autonomous projects are desirable, but whether centralized domination is preferable to a landscape of competing, contestable alternatives.\n\nThis does not entail indifference to oppression. Rather, it shifts the locus of anti-authoritarian struggle from the pursuit of universal enforcement to the expansion of exit, resistance, and contestation. Centralized systems often present themselves as protectors against local abuses, yet they routinely generate abuses of their own, shielded by scale and abstraction. Decentralization does not eliminate domination, but it makes domination more visible and, in many cases, more vulnerable to challenge. Power that is closer to the ground is easier to identify, confront, and, if necessary, escape.\n\nAn often overlooked component of this framework is micro-level pan-institutional anti-authoritarianism. Authority is not confined to formal political institutions; it permeates workplaces, schools, families, religious organizations, social movements, and everyday interpersonal relations. Focusing exclusively on the state risks neglecting these domains and reproducing hierarchical practices within ostensibly emancipatory projects. A micro-level approach targets authoritarian dynamics wherever they arise, regardless of scale or ideological justification. It emphasizes practices such as voluntary association, horizontal decision-making, mutual accountability, and the refusal of unnecessary domination in daily life.\n\nCrucially, this approach does not presume uniform adoption. Anti-authoritarian practices will be embraced unevenly, at different tempos, and to varying degrees. Some communities may prioritize collective provision and egalitarian norms; others may emphasize autonomy and individual exit; still others may resist authority in some domains while reproducing it in others. This unevenness is not a flaw but a reflection of social reality. Historical transformations rarely proceed in a synchronized or linear fashion. They unfold through overlapping experiments, partial failures, and gradual shifts in legitimacy.\n\nUnderstanding revolution in this way requires moving beyond the fixation on singular events. The model is closer to an axial transformation than to a coup or insurrection: a long-term reconfiguration of values, assumptions, and social relations that precedes and conditions institutional change. Political structures persist not only because they are enforced, but because they are believed to be necessary or inevitable. When those beliefs erode, institutions hollow out, even if they remain formally intact. Authority collapses as much through desertion as through confrontation.\n\nThis long-cycle view also clarifies why no single anarchist tendency can claim primacy. Syndicalism addresses domination in production; anarcho-communism confronts scarcity and distribution; mutualism targets monopolies and state-capital fusion; feminist and queer anarchisms challenge intimate and normative hierarchies; platformism grapples with organizational coherence. A pluralist strategy recognizes these as complementary interventions into a multifaceted system. It resists the temptation to subordinate all struggles to a single axis, whether class, identity, or ideology.\n\nOne persistent concern is that such pluralism risks fragmentation without solidarity, leaving the most vulnerable exposed. This concern highlights the importance of distinguishing between decentralization as a structural condition and solidarity as a practice. Solidarity cannot be imposed from above without becoming coercive; it must be cultivated through voluntary cooperation, mutual aid, and shared struggle where interests align. A pluralist framework does not preclude solidarity; it removes the requirement that solidarity be universal or permanent. Alliances can be tactical, situational, and limited without collapsing into opportunism.\n\nThe question of capitalism illustrates this point. Fragmentation alone does not dismantle capital; indeed, capital often thrives on regulatory arbitrage and uneven governance. Countervailing practices—commons governance, cooperative production, mutual credit, and anti-monopoly norms—are necessary to prevent decentralization from devolving into privatized feudalism. These practices are not dictated by pan-secessionism but can coexist within it. The absence of a single economic blueprint is intentional; it allows different models to be tested under different conditions, with their successes and failures informing future iterations.\n\nUltimately, the aim of a pluralist anti-authoritarian strategy is modest but consequential: to prevent any one system from presenting itself as the final arbiter of human life. It seeks to expand the range of possible social arrangements by dismantling structures that foreclose choice and enforce uniformity. This does not guarantee liberation, justice, or equality. No strategy can. What it offers is a framework for continual contestation, experimentation, and adaptation in a world where consensus is neither likely nor necessary.\n\nThe insistence on a single path to emancipation reflects an outdated confidence in historical inevitability. In its place, a pluralist approach accepts uncertainty and diversity as permanent conditions. The future will not be designed in advance by theorists or movements; it will emerge from the interaction of countless local experiments, resistances, and withdrawals. The role of anti-authoritarian strategy is not to dictate outcomes, but to keep outcomes open—to ensure that authority remains provisional, contestable, and subject to refusal.\n\nIn this sense, decentralization, pan-secessionism, and micro-level anti-authoritarianism are best understood as enabling conditions rather than endpoints. They create space for multiple emancipatory projects to coexist without requiring synthesis or submission. They recognize that freedom is not a destination to be reached once and for all, but a practice to be renewed continually, in different forms, by different people, under different circumstances.",
    "author": "Troy Keith PrestonJan 27, 2026",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "https://substack.com/@keithpreston862411",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/2026/02/11/the-globalist-gag-and-the-rainbow-flag/#respond",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "The brutal totalitarianism that we all witnessed and endured during Operation Covid was a terrifying glimpse of the future that lies ahead for us if we allow the globalist mafia to maintain its domination of our societies.\n\nThat is the powerful message from Lisa Miron, akaLawyerLisa, [1] in her 2025 bookWorld On Mute. [2]\n\nThe work is packed full of referenced examples of the ways in which the right to free speech is being taken away from us.\n\nSome of the worst examples come from Germany where, as blogger Bhaskar Kamblewrites, amateur musicians like himself even feel the need to beep out certain words in their song lyrics, in case they lead to the Thought Police hammering on the door. [3]\n\nMiron recounts the case ofBeate Bahner, a German lawyer who, in the early days of Covid, launched a campaign against lockdowns.\n\n“On April 8, 2020, Bahner filed an urgent motion to the German Constitutional Court regarding the unlawfulness of all 16 German federal states’ coronavirus measures”.\n\nNot only did the court refuse to hear her case, but Bahner (pictured) noticed a car repeatedly passing in front of her house and felt threatened.\n\nWhen she called the police for protection, they instead turned up “and with force arrested Ms Bahner and placed her in a psychiatric clinic.\n\n“She was thrown to the floor at least twice, hitting her head on the facility’s stone floor from a one-meter height”. [4]\n\nBahner was refused legal counsel and forced to spend the night on the floor with no toilet or sink.\n\nIn a message to her sister, she wrote: “I have been held here for 20 hours now. If people don’t finally wake up, this is going to turn into the worst régime of terror ever… We are being tyrannised by evil, evil, evil forces”. [5]\n\nAnother German scandal has been the treatment of Reiner Fuellmich of the Corona Investigative Committee in Berlin, who revealed, among other things, that PCR testing for Covid produced 95% false positives.\n\nMiron says Fuellmich and his colleagues “indicated that this generation of false positives suggested intentional wrongdoing by national governments around the world.\n\n“They further concluded that these governments acted on behalf of globalists via a network of multinational corporations, NGOs, and other entities”. [6]\n\nFuellmich (pictured) stated: “More and more scientists, but also lawyers, recognize that, as a result of the deliberate panic-mongering, and the corona measures enabled by this panic, democracy is in great danger of being replaced by fascist totalitarian models”. [7]\n\nHe warned that crimes against humanity were being committed and launched a class action lawsuit – and then in 2023 he was kidnapped in Mexico and locked up in Germany for alleged “embezzlement” – heremains imprisoned today. [8]\n\nLeaked documents have revealed that he was the target of a complex campaign waged by German state intelligence agents. [9]\n\nMeanwhile in the UK, says Miron, “branches of counterterrorism were reformulated to hound citizens for their expressions of dissent from the official forced narrative.\n\n“Ergo, free speech in the UK was eliminated; it was no longer a right. Speech and opinions were recategorized as extremism while the right to dissent was scrapped.\n\n“In one fell swoop, by altering what constitutes allowable speech, the UK authorities fundamentally altered the type of society in which their citizens lived. Indeed, speech-control became the vehicle of tyrants”. [10]\n\nThe Covid Inquisition, says Miron, was waged against anyone publishing what was termed “dangerous misinformation, which is not based in science”, [11] “non-scientific and baseless conspiracy theories about covid-19” [12] or “spreading vaccine hesitancy”. [13]\n\n“The climate of fear and the mechanisms of silence fostered neither truth nor societal health”. [14]\n\nShe says that the techniques used were similar to “early-stage victimization” in a prisoner-of-war camp.\n\nThese typicallyincludeisolation, humiliation and shame induction, accusation and guilt induction, threats and unpredictable attacks. [15]\n\n“I hadn’t seen a discrimination on race or creed that involved the ability to travel, shop, enter legal establishments or even work. I saw the dehumanization and found it very alarming”. [16]\n\nWhat was also alarming about Covid was, of course, the widespread submission and collaboration of the public, the “simpering deference to authority”. [17]\n\nWhen large numbers did rebel, such as with the Canadian truckers’ protest in Miron’s home country, the authorities acted with chilling disregard for legal rights.\n\nShe recalls: “There was no charge, trial, lawyer, judge, or sentencing of the ‘guilty parties’ prior to the seizure of bank accounts. This is more than public mischief; this is the operation of a great tyranny”. [18]\n\nWe witnessed theinversionof what most of us understand to be right and wrong – when power designates its evil activity as “legal”, standing up to it becomes a “crime”.\n\nMiron cites the case, still in Canada, of Ottawa police detectiveHelen Grus, who became worried by the sudden deaths of a number of babies, suspected a link to the Covid jabs and “was concerned the non-disclosure of adverse events might be criminal”. [19]\n\nThis public-spirited initiative led to her being charged with “discreditable conduct” under the Ontario Police Services Act because her investigations were “unauthorized”. [20]\n\nThe extent of the institutional collaboration in this repression was evidenced by the fact that Grus’s trade union, the Ottawa Police Association, refused to provide any financial support to mount her defence.\n\nNotes Miron: “This runs contrary to the union’s previous practice of offering cops legal aid, even for those accused of violent criminal offences!” [21]\n\nGrus (pictured here with supporters) was proved to have been threatened by the “Professional Standards Unit” [22] – leading to the eventual resignation of the police inspector involved – but was still found guilty of the terrible “offence” of investigating children’s deaths. [23]\n\n“This is itself a crime”, judges Miron. “Did our governments give out licenses to kill, set up the infrastructure to do so, and then follow up with an infrastructure to eliminate those who stood in their way?”. [24]\n\nThe book places great emphasis on the role of professional standards bodies – and especially on their “speech committees” or “new-speak committees” [25] as she puts it – in stifling free expression in an insidious and nearly invisible way.\n\nMiron warns that “a new form of cruel control” is being achieved in the form of this “power grab lurking beneath the surface tedium of ‘professional compliance’ – the last place anyone would look for a transnational coup d’état”. [26]\n\nMiron also quotes the statement issued by the US Federation of State Medical Boards on July 28 2021, which threatens disciplinary action against doctors not obediently toeing the official Covid line.\n\nIt declares that physicians “have an ethical and professional responsibility to practice medicine in the best interests of their patients and must share information that is factual, scientifically grounded and consensus-driven for the betterment of public health”. [27]\n\n“Consensus-driven” means no thinking for yourself.\n\nIt warns: “Spreading inaccurate COVID-19 vaccine information contradicts that responsibility, threatens to further erode public trust in the medical profession and puts all patients at risk”. [28]\n\nSimilar policies and wording were rolled out everywhere: Miron cites the cases of a Canadian nurse accused of “misinformation” for opposing jab mandates on social media, [29] a doctor targeted by the Medical Council of New Zealand merely for talking about her own personal adverse reaction to an injection, [30] and three other New Zealand doctors, who had their practising certificates suspended as they were investigated for spreading Covid “misinformation”. [31]\n\nShe also writes of the treatment meted out to Dr Didier Raoult in France (for “false information”), [32] and comments that his professional body was effectively acting as “an extension of the bio-medical-pharmaceutical complex rather than a body acting in accordance with either the best interests of the profession or those of the public at large”. [33]\n\nAuthority declared itself to be automatically in the right, just by dint of being Authority, and demanded total obedience to an official “truth” which was nothing but a cynical lie.\n\nThus the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency found that the opinion of Dr William Bay that the jabs were “the crime of the century” should never have been expressed because it contradicted “the position of local, state and federal government and health authorities, which are in place to protect public health and safety”. [34]\n\nIt is not just the medical realm that has been affected by this authoritarianism and, inWorld On Mute, Miron draws attention to the grave effects on her own profession, whose bodies sought to exclude dissident lawyers.\n\nShe comments: “Imagine a justice system in which the price for making arguments, penning allegations, and setting down pleading is disbarment! This may be one of the most chilling uses of regulatory bodies…\n\n“Once all the lawyers with the courage to files cases are culled, the remaining betas will stay in their lane. Without a bullet fired, democracy is erased”. [35]\n\nEven judges have been targeted as part of this denial of existing law. Miron tells of a German family court judge who ruled in April 2021 that Covid measures were unconstitutional and not applicable at two schools.\n\nInstead of simply appealing the decision, the German authoritiesprosecutedhim for “judicial misconduct” and gave him a suspended jail sentence. [36]\n\nMany of us noticed the obvious similarities between the zeal with which Covid wrong-think was penalised and the way in which compliance to the “woke” agenda is imposed.\n\nMiron even points to intersectionality between the two assaults on our free speech, with woke-style “reasoning” being used to justify draconian Covid measures.\n\nIronically enough, this case involves an American lawyers’ group supposedly committed to defending civil rights!\n\nIn June 2022, the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Lawwroteto US government officials saying they had grave concerns about new guidelines allowing jabbed people to stop wearing masks.\n\nTheir argument was that this would prejudice “Black, Indigenous, Latinx, and Asian frontline workers” and “inevitably place these workers at an increased risk of contracting covid-19”. [37]\n\nOn the pretext of minimising “racial health disparities”, they also complained about people being allowed into shops maskless and without having proven their “vaccination” status. [38]\n\nMiron notes the new UK laws against memes or other social media posts deemed to be “hate speech” or “inciting violence”, pointing out that these are “both highly subjective ideas”. [39]\n\nShe adds: “Violent criminals are regularly given light or non-incarceration sentences, while law-abiding citizens may be jailed for sharing ‘wrong-think’ text or images”. [40]\n\n“I have long believed that once the population is taught to be politically correct, then conquering the society can be completed through teaching that population that opposing their own conquest is not politically correct”. [41]\n\nMiron remarks that “we’re being taught to disregard our five senses and the logic of our minds” [42] and nowhere is that more true than on the “transgender” issue.\n\nI have personal experience of that area of silencing as I was thrown out of a pseudo-anarchist journalism collective six years ago for daring to insist (in a private conversation!) that women do not have penises.\n\nMiron tells the story of Canadian high school studentJosh Alexanderwho “defied the classroom culture of ‘gender identity’ by expressing his sincerely held belief that God created men and women, and no other genders”. [43]\n\nThis was flagged as violating the Catholic school’s “anti-bullying” policy and when he went on to refer to a trans student by their birth name, and suggested that girls should feel safe in their own toilet facilities, the woke tyrants goose-stepped in.\n\n“Alexander was provided a suspension notice – an exclusion order followed by a trespass notice. The police even arrested Alexander for attempting to attend class”. [44]\n\nNot only was his bid for a Judicial Review rejected but, highly unusually, he was ordered to pay costs – his right to free speech had been trumped by the claim that his words had created “an unsafe environment” for others. [45]\n\nThe same inquisitorial terms are deployed time and time again. Miron notes: “‘Hate’ is the new terrorism”. [46]\n\nShe gives this example: “When Canadian parents protested gender identity policies in schools in 2023, Prime Minister Justin Trudeau condemned those marching asdriven by hate“. [47]\n\nAnd she adds: “The ‘hate’ speech laws appear to be pursued with more vigor than gang rape in Germany. Nine men and boys gang-raped a 15-year-old girl in a Hamburg park in 2020. One of the rapists was called a ‘disgraceful rapist pig’ and a ‘disgusting freak’ by a woman, Maja. R. Maja.\n\n“She was jailed for her ‘crime‘ while the rapist, under 20 at the time, was treated as a minor and served no prison time for participating in a horrific gang rape… According to reports, in June 2024 Hamburg authorities were investigating around 140 more suspects for insulting or threatening the gang rapists!” [48]\n\nAs this case makes clear, although wokeness sometimes just seems absurd or even funny, it is part of an extremely dark agenda.\n\nMiron explores the possibility that protected “sexual orientation” might cover child abusers and speculates what exactly lurks behind the ever-expanding “LGBTQIA+” label. [49]\n\nThese “rights” have nothing to do with what most of us think of as beingright– and often represent the exact opposite, she says.\n\nShe suggests that so-called “hate” offenders opposing these agendas are in factwhistle-blowersalerting the public to a great danger – and this is why they have to be silenced.\n\nWhile controversial subjects can bementioned, theopinionexpressed on them can only be that of the self-appointed authorities, otherwise it is a “crime” –aheresy!\n\nThis can apply even to elected representatives, as Lisa Robinson of the City of Pickering in Ontario, Canada, found out when she put forward three (unsuccessful) motions to the council on which she sat.\n\nOne aimed to stop the council from flying special-interest flags (like the rainbow one) on the official flagpole, another sought to protect children from “adult live performances” at drag shows and pride parades, and the third opposed “universal” shared toilets at the local recreation complex. [50]\n\nShe was investigated by “The Ethical Commissioner”, whose very job title has a totalitarian ring to it, and “alleged to have promoted ‘homophobia and transphobia’ contrary to the Canadian Human Rights Code, the Ontario Human Rights Code and in contravention of Pickering Council’s Code of Conduct”. [51]\n\nThe report duly found against her and reached the remarkable additional conclusion that her speech and motions were anti-democratic in character, stating: “This type of conduct and behaviour can have a corrosive effect on democracy, allowing the loudest voices to drown out the marginalized and vulnerable in the community”.\n\nThe councillor was given a 90-day suspension without pay for daring to challenge official orthodoxy on behalf of those who had elected her. [52]\n\nOverall, then, Miron says, “the organizations that regulate various professions are systematically replacing traditional forms of governance with new systems that are completely undemocratic”. [53]\n\n“Increasingly, a concept of acceptable speech has been foisted upon us for either our own ‘safety’ or for the ‘comfort’ of others”. [54]\n\nShe argues that justice is being replaced by a closed system of control in which the system is the complainant, the system makes the decision and the system carries out the punishment. [55]\n\n“The tolerance to having our speech minutely curated by professional bodies would have seemed absurd a mere six years ago. Are we being broken in a systematic way to tolerate more control?” [56]\n\nShe warns we are facing “the reframing of speech as something ‘owned’ by those who regulate access to work and professions”. [57] “The organizations can strip the initiative from individuals to do anything other than conform”. [58]\n\n“I suggest that these subordinate organizations are linking together internationally to form the foundations of a new transnational form of government”. [59]\n\nWe are seeing “the unfolding of tyranny” [60], Miron says, and potentially heading into a “global monolithic system that is not acting in our interests. [61]\n\n“There will be no mechanism to hold the global order to account. It is set up as a dictatorship, while hiding who wields the power”. [62]\n\n“None of this would be palatable if it was presented to us openly. However, it is installed through stealth… replacing the marketplace of ideas with enforced narratives that yoke us to the new global order”. [63]\n\n“No accidents or coincidences exist at this scale; the creeping to all edges must have been long plotted”. [64] “We are looking at a global silencing”. [65]\n\nThe physical infrastructure of this planned global system of total control would be AI, data harvesting, CBDCs and a social credit system of the kind already created in China, she says.\n\nThis is, I would add, the “impact” system that amounts to nothing less than digital slavery. [66]\n\nMiron continues: “Speech committees will expand their reach beyond the professional body version in order to capture the self-employed, the self-sustaining small businesses, the unemployed, those on social welfare and (eventually) those who are sustained through universal basic income (UBI)”. [67]\n\nShe lists some of the emergency powers already possessed by governments and explains that “unauthorized” kinds of speech are now being reframed as presenting, in themselves, an “emergency” that can legally be tackled by totalitarian means.\n\n“All the emergency powers envisioned for nuclear radiation, war, disease, natural disasters, can now be utilized because… somebody spoke!”. [68] “I believe the next iteration of this monolithic entity will be pure terror”. [69]\n\nBut where exactly is this “trans-national globalist attack” [70] coming from – other than from trans-national globalists, of course!\n\nPointing to a “grand conspiracy against humanity” [71], Miron declares: “Who is behind the curtain is not the subject of this book”. [72]\n\nHowever, there are several clues in her 400 pages which point an attentive reader towards the unstated reality.\n\nFor instance, she looked into the accounts of the Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law, which, as we learned, wanted hard Covid restrictions to prevent “racial health disparities”.\n\nShe found that in 2020 its total “gains and other support” was declared at $233,659,552 – “I squinted several times at the number!” [73]\n\nAnd she discovered that its funders included theFord Foundationand theRockefeller Foundation, both of which I have shown to be fronts for the secretive criminal entity I call ZIM, the zio-satanic imperialist mafia. [74]\n\nA second clue as to who is behind the totalitarianism comes from the obvious continuity between the woke and Covid speech censorship detailed by Miron and the current emphasis on silencing all criticism of Israel and Zionism under the feebly transparent pretext of “fighting anti-semitism”.\n\nIn the UK there have been the same type of arrests for social media posts and the same “professional body” attacks on anti-Zionists like academicDr David Millerand the NHS’sDr Rahmeh Aladwan. [75]\n\nI suspect that the initial post-Covid roll-out of “hate speech” arrests against “far right” critics of mass immigration was intended to get people used to the idea that this sort of thingcould really happenin Britain, to persuade “the left” to applaud because it targeted people they did not like and to nudge supporters of those victims to, in turn, applaud the totalitarianism when it was directed against Muslims like Dr Aladwan, as if some kind of fairness had now been restored.\n\nA third clue is the rainbow flag which, whatever its original or apparent meaning, “has become the symbol of globalist authority, power, and omnipotent oppression”. [76]\n\nMiron remarks: “There isn’t a post, stick, crosswalk or architectural item that can’t now benefit from a rainbow…\n\n“To deny access to a full rainbow in every concrete mile must be a violation of human rights codes. And none of this appears the least bit authoritarian and frightening”. [77]\n\nThe rainbow also happens to be the “unofficial” symbol of the judeo-supremacist Noahide Laws – supposedly given by the Jewish god to Noah, as a rainbow marked the end of the Flood.\n\nAnd Lisa Miron knowsall aboutthem, as she was part of theGeopolitics & Empirepodcast that prompted me towrite aboutthat subject – and indeed to read her book. [78]\n\nThe Noahide Laws aim to do exactly what she has seen taking place everywhere – they would replace existing legal structures with a kind of racist global martial law in which non-Jews are reduced to vassal status, with virtually no rights.\n\nAs Miron saidon the show: “They have chosen the Jewish Talmud as the basis for international law… It’s a supremacy regime that is hidden”. [79]\n\nObviously the threat faced by the 99.8% of the world’s population who stand to suffer from a judeo-supremacist global dictatorship is a serious one and Miron urges us to take urgent action.\n\n“What business have they in our societies regulating us? None”. [80] “So long as we genuflect and bow to the monstrosity of authority being assembled, we will not be able to wrestle it down”. [81]\n\n“Unless we awaken soon and protect the public square, we’ll be transitioned from a rights-based existence to a permission-based dystopia”. [82]\n\n“It’s been said that the totalitarian state is first assembled, then the key is turned. I see that an evil will follow any further silence”. [83]\n\n“The globalists have shown their hand. It’s time that we play ours. The outcome of this game will determine the future of our democracies, our way of life, and what we leave for our children and grandchildren”. [84]\n\n“I am convinced that this censorship enveloping us is a systematic means to a more terrible end. Thus, the price of courage now is infinitely less than the price we would pay later when their censorship platform is further entrenched”. [85]\n\n“If words are so feared, it is because they can light the fire of entire nations. We want to be free!” [86]\n\nThanks for reading! Subscribe for free to receive new posts and support my work.",
    "author": "Keith Preston",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "https://substack.com/@paulcudenec",
      "https://winteroakextra.wordpress.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/02/the-globalist-gag.m4a",
      "https://lawyerlisa.substack.com/",
      "https://bhaskarkamble.substack.com/p/fairweather-heroes",
      "http://www.ukcolumn.org/article/coronavirus-lockdown-german-lawyer-detained-opposition",
      "https://x.com/FreeFuellmich",
      "https://wikispooks.com/wiki/Brainwashing",
      "https://donaldbest.ca/detective-grus-case/",
      "https://www.covid19litigation.org/news/2023/09/germany-judge-faces-suspended-jail-sentence-challenging-covid-mask-rules",
      "https://lawyerscommittee.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/Protective-Measures-are-Still-Necessary-to-Safeguard-the-Health-of-Essential-and-Frontline-Workers-of-Color.pdf",
      "https://nationalpost.com/opinion/catholic-board-wants-to-ostracize-christian-teen-he-wants-to-go-to-class",
      "https://torontosun.com/opinion/columnists/trudeau-says-he-never-called-parents-hateful-despite-evidence",
      "http://www.deccanherald.com/world/german-court-gives-woman-harsher-punishment-than-convicted-rapist-for-calling-him-disgraceful-pig-3086695",
      "https://winteroak.org.uk/impact-slavery/",
      "https://winteroak.org.uk/2025/09/01/the-ford-foundation-a-fork-tongued-global-mafia-front/",
      "https://winteroak.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/cudenec-the-single-global-mafia.pdf",
      "https://x.com/Tracking_Power",
      "https://x.com/doctor_rahmeh",
      "https://winteroak.org.uk/2026/01/05/hate-supremacism-and-the-satanic-world-order/",
      "https://geopoliticsandempire.com/2025/12/16/noahide-laws-greater-israel/",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "http://slate-duct-primp@duck.com",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  },
  {
    "url": "https://attackthesystem.com/why-i-choose-to-collaborate-with-the-criminal-underworld/",
    "title": "Attack the System",
    "text": "“The state calls its own violence law, but that of the individual crime.”\n\nThe classical anarchist Bakunin recognized that the vanguard classes of the revolutionary struggle against state-capitalism must be the rural agricultural population, given the threat posed by urban cosmopolitan bourgeoise industrialism to their traditional way of life, and the urban lumpenproletariat, given the extreme alienation of these from bourgeoise society and the polarizing antagonisms between the bourgeoise and the lumpenproletariat. In seeking to advance the cause of anarchist revolution against the contemporary American regime, the question that must be asked involves the matter of which contemporary population groups more closely resemble the peasantry and lumpenproletariat. It is clear enough that the equivalent of the “peasantry” of modern America would be the rural farming population of the heartland areas. This class has comprised the class-base of various militant populist movements throughout US history, most recently the insurgent militia movement of the 1990s. The urban counterpart to the rural underclass would be the mass of urban inhabitants who exist on the very fringe of American society.\n\nIt is not merely coincidental that the two population groups most ignored or even despised by the Left establishment are poor and working class rural whites (whom they view as bigoted, racist, religiously fanatical, xenophobic, jingoistic, uncultured dullards) and the urban lumpenproletariat (whom they regard simply as criminals). The Left establishment is the party of cultural Marxism, eternally obsessed with left-wing identity politics (“racism, sexism and homophobia” and all that), the purpose of which is the advancement of the bourgeoise elements within the traditional minority groups. Nothing could be more subversive to the class struggle. This should be obvious enough as each of the left-identitarian factions have been severely coopted by the forces of bourgeoise liberalism. The contemporary strategy of the ruling class is to wage war against its authentic class enemies under the cover ideology of totalitarian humanism, with its triple banners of Equality, Health and Consumerism. Within this framework, poor and working class whites are attacked (along with other traditional cultural groups) for their alleged opposition to “equality”, meaning the program of state-managed multiculturalism and coercive integration relentlessly pursued by the left-wing of capital whose power is now almost fully consolidated (whether in its left-liberal or neo-conservative variations). Similarly, and in a very overlapping manner, smokers, drug users, gun owners and others are attacked for their alleged threat to “health”, “public safety” and other liberal-bourgeiose therapeutic statist pieties that evoke images of both the Jacobins and the Nazis. Lastly, class war in waged against both the rural and urban poor in the name of “urban renewal”, “development”, “property values”, “gentrification” and other manifestations of cosumerist totalitarianism.\n\nThere are no two factions of American political or social life hated and feared more intensely by the liberal-bourgeoise than “militiamen”, “racists” or “fundamentalists” among the rural, white poor or “gangs”, “drug dealers” and “criminals” among the urban, black or other non-white poor. It is these two respective classes that must form the class-base for a successful insurgency against state-capitalism. To put the question another way: Which would provoke greater fear among the ruling classes? A motley band of students, bohemians, middle-class intellectuals and counterculturalists marching in some sort of 60s-retro “protest” demonstration shouting “racist, sexist, anti-gay”, “the people united will never be defeated”, and other non-sequiters or cliched slogans? Or a phenomenon such as that which actually transpired in Dallas some years back when a New Black Panther Party convention featured Tom Metzger of White Aryan Resistance as its guest speaker, with Metzger noting their common hatred of the US regime, and the headlines the next day reading “Panthers, Supremacists Call for US Overthrow”? Obviously, the latter is much more fearsome in the eyes of the ruling class. Much of my approach to class theory has been shaped by my experiences as a resident of an inner-city environment with a majority black population, along with my previous experiences many years earlier as a gangster and convict. One of the best contemporary, popular works on class theory is the “Redneck Manifesto” by Jim Goad, which argues in the same manner as the Warren Beatty character in the film “Bulworth”, that underclass blacks and underclass whites have more in common with one another that either do with the bourgeoise. At the same time, Goad aknowledges (and I concur) that the proles and plebes are by nature tribalistic and that multiculturalism, feminism, homosexualism and secularism are the values that the liberal elite attempts to inculcate in the underclasses as a means of deculturation and ideological control.\n\nThis is not to say that an authentic class struggle would not have to cross boundaries of race and religion, and include women and homosexuals and all that, but that an authentically lumpenproletarian class-based movement would have to take a much different approach to these matters than that of the liberal bourgeoise, generally favoring tribalism, decentralism, separatism and mutual self-segregation (to varying degrees, of course, depending on which subsets of the respective underclass populations one is dealing with) as opposed to the integrationist, democratist ideals of the liberal elite. Bakunin recognized the need for a “revolutionary vanguard” of what he termed “principled militants” whose function would be to agitate among those population groups from whom the class-base of the revolutionary struggle would be drawn. The emergence of these “principled militants” in contemporary times requires the development of an entirely new ideological paradigm in opposition to the intellectual bankruptcy of both the reactionary Left and the neoconservative/neoliberal establishment alike. There are indeed many who are doing much useful and important work in this area. In economics, there are presently in the works efforts to synthesize traditional anti-statist labor radicalism with the best insights of modern economic thought, such as that of the Austrian school. In geopolitics, there are efforts underway to establishing a strategic geopolitical framework that can successfully challenge American imperial domination. In cultural matters, there are efforts to build a principled defense of both traditionalism and pluralism against totalitarian humanist multiculturalism. However, there remains the problem of how to go about conveying these perspectives and objectives to the masses.\n\nSeveral important distinctions need to be drawn concerning various sectors and layers of the population groups likely to form the foundation of any new radical insurgency. The most essential of these on which we need focus are the intellectual/political leadership of the insurgency (the “principled militants”), the vanguard classes (the “lumpenproletariat” and “neo-peasantry”) and the broader array of constituent groupings likely to form the general populist framework of a new radicalism. The intellectual/political leadership corps will always be restricted to a relatively small of number of persons, not so much out of a deliberate elitism or exclusivism as much from the simple fact that most people are not intellectuals and have no interest in ideology or in esoteric or arcane economic theory beyond ordinary bread and butter issues. Even in the days of the classical socialist and classical anarchist labor movements it was commonly recognized that the workers typically exhibited no particular revolutionary motivations beyond what was at the time called “trade union consciousness”. This is likely to be even more the case in contemporary and future times. At the present juncture, the primary responsibility of the proponents of a new radicalism is to develop the proper intellectual foundations that can guide us in the struggle to come. Indeed, there are many who are doing just that. Illustrating a “trickle down” theory that actually works, the intellectual formulations developed by the philosophical elite subsequently work their way downward into the ranks of the plebes and proles. It is of the utmost importance to make and maintain a sharp distinction between the “vanguard classes” of the struggle and the “peripheral”, “constituent” or “popular” sectors to be included in the wider revolutionary populist umbrella.\n\nIf the great masses of unable to raise themselves above bread and butter questions, perhaps decorated with the accoutrements of one or another set of cultural myths, then it becomes essential to recognize that strategic questions concerning the matter of how to best combat the grave dangers ahead must be approached with the utmost delicacy. It is, of course, essential to maintain a specific hierachy of priorities in the struggle against the System. The prevention of the expanded domination of the New World Order on the international level and the preemption and overthrow of the ever-expanding police on the domestic level are of the primary concerns at hand. Beyond this, there is the matter of the class struggle in the purely economic realm, relevant environmental questions, social conflicts in need of resolution and the do-gooder social reform matters so near and dear to the hearts of so many on the Left. The struggle against imperialism and the police state must in some ways be a separate struggle from the broader array of economic or social struggles. On the question of imperialism, the burden of the resistance must unfortunately fall on those outside the borders of the domestic US. The Islamic fundamentalists have taken up this challenge zealously and thoroughly. It is common knowledge that during the Vietnam War the only thing that Middle America hated more than the war itself was the antiwar movement. Despite the unpopularity of the present war in Iraq, there is no antiwar movement of any significance, most likely because of the absence of military conscription and the still relatively low number of US casualties when comparisons to the Vietnam conflict are made. It is unlikely that the “American people” will ever rise to a level of anti-imperialist consciousness beyond that of a “Bring the Boys Home” variety. Therefore, the anti-imperialist propaganda of the revolutionary movement must be shrouded in a quasi-isolationist package of the type wisely advocated by the current populist Right.\n\nThe struggle against the police state raises even greater challenges. Most people are conditioned to respect authority and to fear disorder. It will be possible to partial overcome this obstacle as more and more people find themselves victimized by the perpetrators of the police state. However, it goes without saying that the proper constituency for full-blown resistance must come from those most frequently in conflict with the System and who have the least to lose by expanding that conflict. In all of my travels and political activities over the years, there is no group whom I have found to be more aware of the true nature of the System than the urban lumpenproletariat. I have often found that when discussing the System with ex-convicts, gang members, drug addicts and dealers, street punks, homeless people, prostitutes, the various population sectors that comprise urban street life and residents of urban ghettos, these people are already profoundly aware of simple truths that lengthy discussions and debates with middle class persons, even professed political radicals, or even conventional working class persons, are unable to convey. It is these and other similar populations that recognize, for example, that the police are nothing more than the attack dogs of the ruling class and the state’s apparatus of repression and control euphemistically referred to as the “criminal justice system” is simply a sham business designed to enrich and empower its proprietors. Therefore, the most hard-core elements to drawn into the struggle against the police state must originate from these urban lumpenproletarian sectors.\n\nThis is likely to prove to be the most difficult as well as the most dangerous of any radical undertaking. It is essential that any authentically radical program include within its efforts outreach projects to all of these population groups. Indeed, the more intelligent individuals among these sectors could well be eventually worked into the ranks of the revolutionary leadership corps, understanding as they do the naked truths regarding the nature of the System. The defense of the lumpenproletariat as a class is vital to the broader class struggle against state-capitalism. Conventional Leftists are aware of the way in which the System exploits differences of race and culture among its subject populations as part of a “divide and conquer” strategy. However, there is considerably less awareness of the means by which the System pits the so-called “respectable” poor and working class against the lumpenproletariat in still another “divide and conquer” effort, particularly for the sake of strengthening the police state. It has been my observation that the urban lumpenproletariat comes under attack most frequently from those elements who also target low-income housing, fast food establishments, late night restaurants, music clubs, tattoo parlors, strip joints or adult bookstores, youth hang-outs, bicyclists, skateboarders, the so-called “squeegeeists”, street vendors or peddlers, shelters and soup kitchens, rooming houses and high-residency apartment complexes, graffitti art, squatters, housing trailers, cruising strips frequented by teen-agers, parties held by college students, all-night bars and nightclubs, and virtually anything else not in conformity with bourgeiose class or lifestyle interests. Therefore, solidarity among all non-bourgeoise economic or cultural interests is required.\n\nOne question that most radicals consistently refuse to address with full honesty is the matter of armed struggle. I can think of no explanation for this beyond mere cowardice generated by a culture of materialism and the prevalence of an intellectual culture with “nonviolence” being some sort of aesthetic principle, with the latter probably being a derivative of the former. It is, of course, vitally necessary that any sort of radical movement worthy of the name, particularly one that claims to be “anarchist” in nature, prepare itself for the day when an armed showdown with the state will be necessary. Probably no other aspect of my own political outlook has generated more controversy or confusion. Those who attack my own views on this matter often give the appearance of believing that the state, the ruling class and their entire police state, military-industrial complex, prison-industrial complex will simply “wither away” magically once the revolution comes. Reality will not be so kind. It is impossible to predict the specific set of circumstances that will lead to the collapse of the US regime. My own wild guess would be that it will probably happen in the same manner as the disintegration of the Soviet Union. However, there will continue to be left behind a vast array of vested interests who will not go away without a fight. It is a vital necessity that proponents of a new radicalism take military matters seriously and recognize that a future revolutionary party or coalition must maintain militia, paramilitary and guerrilla forces of their own. It is a reasonable assumption that many of these will be drawn from those expressions of the lumpenproletariat or neo-peasantry who are already most heavily armed.\n\nThe maintenance of a friendly relationship between the political leadership corps and the urban street gangs would be of immense value to the revolutionary struggle. These groups are already de facto at war with the state anyway. Such groups often provided the initial recruits for insurgent forces that emerged out of 1960s era radicalism such as the Black Panthers or Brown Berets. They already possess an organizational infrastructure and are well-armed. Many of their so-called “criminal” activities, such as drug dealing or numbers running, are entirely victimless. Even some of their common crimes, such as theft or even murder, are miniscule when compared to the crimes of the state. I’ll take the Gangster Disciples over Salvadoran death squads any day. So what if gangbangers occasionally shoot each other over drug markets? Who cares? One can argue that such activities pose lethal dangers to innocent bystanders, and indeed they do, but an educated guess would be that the number of truly “innocent” persons killed or injured in such disorder is relatively small when compared, for example, to the number of persons killed in the current Iraq war, including tens of thousands of civilians. We should aspire to be anarchist revolutionaries and not “law and order” conservatives.\n\nIn applying Lawrence Dennis’ concept of “operational thinking” to anarchist revolutionary strategy, the two most significant questions that emerge become: What is a realistic set of objectives for the anarchist movement? How are these objectives best achieved? Generally, we should aspire to prevent the full consolidation of the New World Order, primarily through the defeat of the US regime. In the process of this struggle, we need to develop practical but radical solutions to the numerous economic and social problems that inevitably arise, while recognizing that Utopia is not an option. An additional matter involves the question of what sort of organizational vehicle will best serve these ends. Given the nature of American history and politics, a new political party, a genuinely revolutionary party to challenge the hegemony of the Republicans and the discredited Democrats, would seem to be the best route to embark upon. The anarchist revolutionary intellectual/political/philosophical elite would then serve as the leadership corps of this party. The party’s internal infrastructure would be decentralized, with the party essentially organized as a de facto federation of local or regional parties. The party should maintain an economic, political and military arm, along with a wider periphery of support groups and alternative infrastructure. The party should offer as a new ideological paradigm a type of libertarian-socialist/third-positionist/anarchist-populism.\n\nThe value of a decentralized party infrastructure would be both its relevance as a model for a post-revolutionary system as well as a strategic method of working around divisive cultural, religious, ethnic and other issues. The relevance of this model of political organization to the relationship between the lumpenproletariat and the revolutionary struggle would be its utility in the formation of strategic alliances with the varying sectors of the lumpenproletariat while at the same time employing an overall populist rhetorical and constituent development framework. In the major urban centers, for example, we might seek to form political interest groups on behalf of drug users, prostitutes and other marginalized populations modeled after such organizations currently in existence in many European cities or nations. Likewise, we might seek the development of prisoner unions of the type that began to emerge very briefly during the turmoil and upheavals of the 1960s-70s era. Furthermore, we might seek to incorporate urban street gang structures into our party militia formations. The function of these militias would be two-fold. First, the military defeat of municipal police organizations under control of local bourgeoise oligarchs. Secondly, as foundation for a broader popular army of resistance to the last remaining vestiges of the state-capitalist regime. To some degree, we can work with both conventional left-wing organizations as well as separatist/nationalist elements among the traditional minority groups on these issues, while recognizing that our own agenda is considerably more comprehensive than theirs.\n\nThe principal obstacles to the successful development of an effective new radicalism are the sectarian nature of most adherents of the current radical tendencies and the residual influence of the universalist presumptions constituting some of the more negative features of the intellectual legacy of the Enlightenment. The first essential task of the next wave of Bakuninist “principled militants” to the development of a new intellectual paradigm capable of combatting such well-entrenched sectarianism and universalism. The second task is the positioning of the intellectual and political leadership of the next wave of authentic class struggle anarchism (that is, class-based politics from an anti-statist perspective) as “mediating coordinators” for the creation of the necessary political coalitions for a total war against the modern state. As a model for such a struggle, we need only to look at our enemies. Our ruling class enemy maintains the neoconservative/neoliberal paradigm as its intellectual foundation, with the corporate mercantilists and liberal bourgeoise as its class base, and a spectrum of stooges ranging from the religious right/Christian Zionists to the black bourgeoise and gay lobby as its grassroots shock troops. Likewise, the new revolutionary movement would maintain a populist-nationalist/libertarian-socialist/third-positionist/anarchist-populist intellectual paradigm, the lumpenproletariat and neo-peasantry (within a larger class-transcendent populist framework) as its economic base, and a spectrum of periphery, alllies and fellow travelers ranging from Far Left to Far Right to the Radical Center. Just as recruits into the US army range from a disproportionately high number of minorities on one hand to “good ole boy” conservatives on the other, so would our revolutionary armed forces likely maintain a similar dichotomy. Among the most militant and effective of our fighters will likely be those whom the state grants the title of “criminal”. How wonderfully ironic!\n\nCopyright 2005. American Revolutionary Vanguard. All rights reserved.",
    "author": "Unknown",
    "date": "Unknown",
    "category": null,
    "has_sources": true,
    "source_links": [
      "http://attackthesystem.wordpress.com",
      "https://twitter.com/share",
      "https://www.tumblr.com/share",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "https://www.facebook.com/PanSecession/",
      "http://panarchy.org/",
      "https://ecovillage.org/",
      "https://www.startupsocieties.org/",
      "https://www.ic.org/",
      "https://theanarchistlibrary.org/special/index",
      "http://www.mrdasinferno.com/",
      "https://lingitlatseen.wordpress.com/",
      "http://exileinhappyvalley.blogspot.com/",
      "http://www.drinkyourmilk.blog",
      "https://www.jack-donovan.com/sowilo/",
      "https://c4ss.org/",
      "https://www.lewrockwell.com/",
      "https://www.antiwar.com/",
      "http://counterpunch.org",
      "http://academiccomposition.com",
      "http://www.amazon.com/Nemesis-American-Republic-Empire-Project/dp/0805079114"
    ],
    "is_opinion": false
  }
]