Equus goes on to make a number of comments, with the same assertions repeated to the point of redundancy, concerning the history of private violence between left and right wing extremists. The following is a sufficient illustration of such comments:
However (and what an ominous word that can be!), when the “matters of controversy” are ideologies, or, people supporting and espousing ideologies that are diametrically opposed to those held by Anarchists it becomes an entirely different matter. It is simply illogical to fight alongside someone who may very well want to murder, beat, or rape you post-revolution. Perhaps the words “murder,” “beat,” and “rape” seem extreme, but they most certainly are not, especially when one places “Anarcho-nationalism” in-line with Anarchism. Nationalists across Europe, and fascists all over, have indeed murdered, raped, and beaten Anarchists throughout history inside and outside of the state.
I might be inclined to take such sentiments seriously if it were not for the fact that the so-called “anti-fascists” have a lengthy history of collaboration with Communist groups, whose tendency towards bloody repression of anarchists once in power is well-known. Besides, it is ludicrous to associate all rightist political activity with violent neo-Nazi psychopaths, and so-called “anti-fascists” are not beyond engaging in unprovoked criminal violence of their own. Suffice to say that in a libertarian legal order, aggressive violence (whether by “fascists” or “anti-fascists”) would be disallowed.
The idea behind Third Positionism is that two communities that oppose each other will not live together and go on to their respective communities post secession, but assume for a moment that these two hypothetical groups live in the same neighborhood. By the “anarcho-nationalist” point of view, if that neighborhood is rightfully theirs (say the majority of the neighborhood is anti-Semitic) then there is absolutely nothing to stop them from murdering, raping, and/or beating their Jewish neighbor.
The inclination towards aggressive violence is hardly something that is unique only to “fascists.” The possibility of intercommunal violence following the breakdown of the state is all the more reason to build a pan-secessionist movement that works towards negotiated alliances and settlements for the purpose of avoiding such violence.
Say there is a Tibetan Anarchist who was dropped off at this Monastery as a child. He/she now identifies with the community he/she lives in, but cannot help his belief that the organization of the monastery is wrong. He/she talks about it with some friends and they all agree. Soon, there’s a faction of Buddhist monks that wish to reform the organization of their monastery. Does an Anarchist across the planet now turn the same indifferent eye towards the monastery?
Hell no.
This is the psychology of a Christian missionary who cannot bear the idea that even one soul in the far corners of the earth might not achieve salvation. Having been both a Christian fundamentalist and a reactionary leftist at various points in my life, all I can say is that I’m done with trying to save the world. Others may attempt to do so if they wish.
Nowhere in Equus’ rebuttal does he outline any provisions for what his ideal form of anarchism might look like, nor does he discuss any ideas on how such preferences might be achieved. This statement by Equus is indicative of what is wrong with left-wing anarchism at present:
Since Anarchists (leftists) all have a general consensus about what they are against and the only legitimate quibbles are about what they are for, there is no real reason to call for a broad alliance of them since it already exists.
In other words, left-wing anarchism is simply a reactionary movement with a laundry list of what it opposes. It offers no practical vision of what is it for because it doesn’t have one. Like the Marxists, the presumption of the left-anarchists is that all will be fine once the state simply withers away. Historical experience reveals this to be foolishness. I realized as much twenty years ago, which is why I went on to found American Revolutionary Vanguard and AttacktheSystem.Com for the purpose of building an alternative anarchist movement that is devoid of such weaknesses. Our own tendencies are growing exponentially, and expanding to an increasingly diverse array of demographic groups. Likewise, our preferred tactic of pan-secessionism continues to receive conventional media coverage. We are the future of anarchism, and not those who are stuck in a time warp where it is always 1968.
15
No Friends to the Right, No Enemies to the Left?
An article by Spencer Sunshine, “Drawing the Lines Against Racism and Fascism,” of Political Research Associates (led by “former” Stalinist Chip Berlet and funded by the Ford Foundation, representatives of the left-wing of capitalism) is well worth reading because it’s an excellent illustration of the pathology, paranoia, and hypocrisy that dominates the particular strand of the hard left that “Sunshine” represents.
This guy is specifically arguing that “progressives” (whatever that means) should exclude from their midst not only the “far right” (presumably everything from moderate conservatives to Nazis) but also anyone from the left, libertarians, “people of color,” presumably gays, LGBTs, etc. that do not tow the leftist party line, or who are judged guilty by association. Sunshine puts his cards on the table to a much greater degree than most leftists. This actually works to our advantage because he’s allowing the “totalitarian humanists” to be seen for what they really are. The implicit racial arrogance of white leftism is also exposed. This guy is essentially taking it upon himself to decide how minorities should go about being minorities, and what is an appropriate range or mode of thought for “people of color.” This is standard white leftist racial paternalism.
I’ve always found the racism of these hard left types to be rather astounding. I first noticed it when I was part of the hard left years ago, and it’s become much more obvious with time. They vacillate between viewing minorities as children who need rescuing, as weaklings who can’t do anything for themselves, or as pawns to be used as tools of the “revolution.” Nothing pisses them off more than a minority that doesn’t play the leftist game. Such a person immediately becomes a “self-hater,” “Uncle Tom,” “opportunist,” “sell out,” etc. The racist tradition within the context of the historic US racial caste system was for white supremacists to regard a self-assertive or independently minded non-white person as an “uppity n—–” who “doesn’t know his place.” I see that kind of attitude on the Left as well, although it’s masked behind a humanitarian or egalitarian charade. Also, Sunshine’s lack of any sincere or principled anti-authoritarian values is demonstrated by his failure to exclude totalitarian leftists from “progressive” circles such as the pro-North Korean Workers World Party, the Maoist Revolutionary Communist Party (allies of the Pol Potist Sendoro Luminoso), the Trotskyist Socialist Workers Party, Spartacist League, or International Socialist Organization (disciples of the chief perpetrator of Krondstadt), etc., etc., etc. He even mentions his inclusive attitude towards “liberal Democrats” (the ruling party of the mother country of the empire, and the only party to ever use nuclear weapons in war).
If this kind of thinking is explicitly adopted by the more reactionary sectors of the Left, it will work to our advantage because it will leave large sectors of well-meaning anti-system people who would otherwise be drawn to the Left without a political home. Meanwhile, we will be there to welcome them.
Some of this stuff is funny. This passage here sounds like Bob Larson raving about Satanic rock in the 80s:
“Progressive groups should come up with their own criteria for people who want to move away from Far Right politics and toward progressive political communities. Recommendations for this include: 1) requiring the person make a public statement disavowing Far Right views, and posting it in their former group’s media; 2) turning over all Far Right books, t-shirts, buttons, etc. to antifascists—especially patches or other insignia of any organizations they were members of; 3) removing all Far Right contacts on social media, and not attending events (either social, cultural, or pol
itical) hosted by these individuals or groups; 4) making a sincere statement of why their former views were problematic, with apologies made to anyone hurt by their actions. (The letter written by former White nationalist Derek Black, son of Stormfront founder Don Black, is exemplary.) If they want to become actively involved as progressive political organizers, they should also 5) be required to go through a debrief to provide information about their former Rightist group’s structures, membership, recruiting tactics, and beliefs.”
Another funny part is his repeated assertion that when “far right” groups have “people of color” among their members, well, that only goes to show how deceitfully racist they are.
Perhaps Spencer Sunshine is really some kind of right-wing undercover operative whose real goal is to undermine the Left by making it as boring as possible. Kids in particular like to join radical movements for excitement, adventure, and rebellion, and not to be lectured to by a bunch of dour puritans.
I was at a libertarian-anarchist conference in Acapulco a couple of weeks ago, and one thing I realized while I was there is just how big anti-system currents outside this reactionary left nonsense are getting to be, from the various strands of the radical right to libertarians to Russia Today-style leftists to the conspiracy milieu to leftists, progressives, anarchists, minorities, gays, etc., who are tired of these overbearing politically correct left-fascists/neo-Stalinists. A whole new wave of radical political undercurrents is growing from the bottom up and eventually these left-fascist assholes are going to be overrun. I suspect we will see a lot more anti-System people coming our way in the future as more and more leftists become frustrated with the basket case state of the Left.
We’ve got guys like Spencer Sunshine out there doing their part to make it known we exist, and likely driving plenty of people towards us with their attitude. I’m increasingly getting messages from leftists saying things like, “I used to think you were a scumbag, but I’m coming around to your position more and more.”
In more recent times, I’ve noticed that the Left really is starting to implode due to the constant fighting among the rival PC factions over who is most oppressed and all that. The left-anarchists, for example, can hardly even have public gatherings anymore without physical altercations breaking out. I’m talking about fistfights between the transgendered and feminists, or between vegans and vegetarians, or other comparable instances of lunacy. The reason they hate us isn’t merely because we blur the left/right distinction, or because they think we’re fascists. These people all hate each other, and I think it’s reflective of their psychological makeup as much as anything else. The social left in its present form attracts a lot of psychologically damaged and pathological people, and fringe politics provides them with a forum for acting out.
It might also be helpful to identify fault lines on the Left we can use to our advantage. Exposing the establishment connections and funding of the “watchdogs” would be one of these. So would providing an alternative forum for people on the Left who are tired of the crap, and are interested in finding new ways, thereby encouraging mass defections from the Left. Another might be to create rifts between these left-fascist/neo-Stalinist factions by hammering away at the fact that they’re basically a mixture of anarcho-communists, Stalinists, and Trots, and persistently pointing out the history of bloodshed between these groups.
The main thing the totalitarian Left is afraid of is our ability to “take the game away” from them. Matthew Lyons has said that repeatedly, for example. They know that tendencies like ours offer a very open ended paradigm that is able to move past the usual barriers of left and right, uniting all kinds of anarchists and other radicals, members of different racial and religious groups, adherents of different economic philosophies, etc. against the System. This is terrifying to both establishment leftists like the SPLC, who seek to advance themselves within the context of the system, and the hard leftists, who envision some kind of totalitarian revolution led and controlled by themselves, or for whom participation in radical politics is simply a manifestation of personal pathologies.
16
More Anarchistic Than Thou
An uninformed lay person reading the pathetically ignorant and barely literate bromide against Attack the System recently issued by “Anti-Fascist News” would hardly know anarchism is a vast tradition in modern political philosophy with roots in the radical Enlightenment more than two centuries ago. Further, history provides examples of many anarchist prototypes extending back for thousands of years (Peter Marshall’s magisterial work “Demanding the Impossible” ably demonstrates this point). However, our critics at “Anti-Fascist News” would have everyone believe that the sum total of anarchist traditions have never been more than a sectarian brand of anarcho-communism derived from the left-wing of anarchism as it was in the 1930s. This is akin to a modern Protestant fundamentalist insisting that the entire Christian tradition consists of nothing more than seventeenth century English Puritanism (no offense to Puritans).
While I am an admirer of the anarcho-communist tendency within classical anarchism of the early twentieth century, there is certainly no reason why anarchism should be exclusively and forever defined within the confines of these limited parameters. As a reading of even the most elementary level book on anarchism will indicate, anarchism is in fact a collection of many varied and diverse currents just as (using the Christian analogy once again) the Christian faith consists of many thousands of traditions, sects, and denominations that have existed throughout history and throughout the world today. As John Zube has ably demonstrated, there are indeed many readily identifiable traditions within anarchism, some of which maintain a paradoxical relationship to each other. Of course, it is true that there will always likely remain sects within anarchism that refuse to recognize one another as “true” anarchists, just as there are sects of Protestants and Catholics, Sunni and Shiites, who refuse to recognize each other as “true” Christians or Muslims.
However, among the focuses of Attack the System is the creation of a kind of meta-politics that recognizes and aims to synthesize many varied currents within anarchist, libertarian, anti-statist, decentralist, anti-authoritarian, anti-capitalist, and anti-imperialist traditions in a way that aims to establish a new meta-ideological and meta-strategic paradigm that is capable of serving as an antithesis to the universal hegemony of global capitalist monoculture. Such a project necessarily involves transcending ordinary divisions of the kind that normally define the conventional Left and Right. A corollary to this effort is the recognition that different tendencies present divergent narratives that maintain their own appropriateness within their particular contexts. In other words, different forms of anarchism and overlapping philosophies present ideas that are relevant to particular people involved with specific struggles within the context of their own circumstances.
For example, it is entirely appropriate that anarcho-syndicalists are primarily interested in issues that pertain to workers, anarcho-feminists in issues that pertain to feminists, queer-anarchists in issues that pertain to queers, anarcho-pacifists in issues pertaining to resistance to militarism, black anarchists in issues pertaining to African-Americans, and eco-anarchists in issues that pertain to environmentalists. The wider pan-anarchist meta-political paradigm favored by Attack the System certainly does not insist that any particular hyphenated tendency, subterranean ideological strand :-) or sub-tendency renounce its preferred economic system, identity orientation, or favorite social cause. However, the position of Attack the System is that anarchism should not be limited to a focus on issues that are generally favored by leftists. For example, anarchists should not merely focus on demographic conflict within particular societies. As I have written elsewhere:
On this question, the radical left typically puts the cart before the horse. It is well and good to defend unpopular minorities against genuine oppression and to agitate for the ongoing expansion of civil liberties. But it is strategically foolish to adopt an antagonist
ic stance towards the traditional and majoritarian culture of the working masses by attempting to pit varying demographic groups against one another in the form of blacks against whites, women against men, gays against straights, immigrants against natives, tree-huggers against loggers, animal lovers against meat-eaters, eco-freaks against small property owners, peace creeps against veterans, hippies against blue collar workers, poor Appalachian whites against Jewish bankers or whatever.
The Tyranny of the Politically Correct Page 17