{"id":1173,"date":"2011-08-02T16:04:37","date_gmt":"2011-08-02T20:04:37","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1173"},"modified":"2011-11-13T16:22:58","modified_gmt":"2011-11-13T20:22:58","slug":"scary-story-the-state-vs-anarchists","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/?p=1173","title":{"rendered":"Scary Story: The State vs. Anarchists"},"content":{"rendered":"

by Thomas L. Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Beware: Should you happen to spot me on the streets of Westminster, you are exhorted to summon law enforcement immediately! That London borough\u2019s \u201cCounter Terrorist Focus Desk\u201d considers me a threat to the public safety (\u201cAnarchists should be reported, advises Westminster anti-terror police,\u201d<\/a> The Guardian<\/em>, July 31).<\/p>\n

Yes, I am an anarchist. I state this without apology, understanding that you may find it strange or even scary, or may not understand the term well. I\u2019d like to explain myself to you, while there\u2019s still time, before someone else tells you a scary story and urges you to assist in my apprehension.<\/p>\n

I\u2019m not a nihilist \u2014 someone who rejects all structure in, or institutions of, society. Nor am I an agent of chaos, who believes that life absent government would consist of ongoing, unrestrained mass rampage and wants to see that happen.<\/p>\n

In fact, I consider myself a defender of society and agent of order, opposed to the institution most responsible for the disintegration of social institutions and the attendant orgy of looting, torture and mass murder that was the 20th century: Monopoly government, also known as \u201cthe state.\u201d<\/p>\n

Why is it important for me to convey this to you now? Because the world\u2019s several states, as is their periodic wont, appear set to launch a new round of \u201cscares,\u201d with anarchists as bogeyman, to re-assign blame for their own failures.<\/p>\n

The Anarchist Scare never really dies out. It\u2019s a convenient hook to hang blame for any popular discontent on. Look at any mass protest: If a million people turn out to express dissent toward some government action, the establishment media intently focuses on a few masked window-breakers to discredit the whole affair, dubbing them \u201canarchists\u201d whether they are or not.<\/p>\n

And when things begin to get really<\/em> bad \u2014 when multiple governments find themselves flirting with default on \u201cnational debt,\u201d fighting and losing numerous wars of aggression around the globe, and visibly losing their grip on putative \u201cconsent of the governed,\u201d for example \u2014 they break that masked, bomb-throwing stereotype out of the Excuse Locker and parade it around the block in high profile.<\/p>\n

The unacceptable alternative to such theater is for politicians to accept full responsibility for the consequences of their own actions, and the next time we see that<\/em> happening will be the first time. So, prepare for the next Anarchist Scare.<\/p>\n

Why pick on anarchists? Why do politicians think you\u2019ll find us scary? Because they<\/em> find us scary, of course \u2026 and with good reason!<\/p>\n

Political government is the past. Anarchy is the future.<\/p>\n

Political government brought you hundreds of millions of murders in the last century, and sent you the butcher\u2019s bill.<\/p>\n

In any given month, a typical state kills more of its own citizens pro rata<\/em> than al Qaeda killed in the United States on September 11th, 2001 \u2014 some openly, bullet to brain, some through the suffocating effects of regulation and prohibition \u2014 while extorting from those same citizens a double-digit percentage of their earnings for \u201cprotection\u201d from the likes of Osama bin Laden.<\/p>\n

By any standard of human decency and well-being, the state\u2019s performance constitutes not just massive failure but a monstrous negation of all that is right and good.<\/p>\n

While anarchists cannot reasonably pledge to end murder and theft, we can and do offer an end to the institutionalization<\/em> and legitimization<\/em> of mass<\/em> murder and theft in the name of \u201cgovernment.\u201d An end to, in a word, politics.<\/p>\n

Not an end to law, which existed before the state and will exist long after the state is mere bitter historical memory. All societies outlaw murder, rape, assault and robbery, and if societies vary in their effectiveness at suppressing those activities, none has failed so spectacularly or expensively as the state.<\/p>\n

Nor an end to common defense, a notion the state turns on its head and into a one-stop shop for aggressive capability in its service and at the expense of that capability\u2019s own providers. Local watchmen and constables, and citizen militias, are transformed by the state into occupying, militarized police forces and standing armies whose chief purpose is to tyrannize the very people they\u2019re pledged to \u201cdefend.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hobbes got it backward: The state offers not an end to \u201cthe war of all against all,\u201d but endless escalation of that war, so that it can loot the dead and rob the dying in perpetuity.<\/p>\n

Anarchy is the cease-fire agreement. It\u2019s the peace craze that the politicians desperately hope will blow over so they can get back to their sociopathic, serial killing ways.<\/p>\n

Remember that a week, a month or a year from now when some uniformed animal with a gun and badge tries to tell you that I am the common enemy of you both.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

by Thomas L. Knapp at the Center for a Stateless Society: Beware: Should you happen to spot me on the streets of Westminster, you are exhorted to summon law enforcement immediately! That London borough\u2019s \u201cCounter Terrorist Focus Desk\u201d considers me a threat to the public safety (\u201cAnarchists should be reported, advises Westminster anti-terror police,\u201d The […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[144],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1173","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-thomas-knapp"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1173"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1536,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1173\/revisions\/1536"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1173"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1173"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.peoplevstate.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1173"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}