*****
By the standards of industrially-damaged rivers, the pathetic blackish-brownish-green body of water that Ally and her fellow cell member walked next to was not so bad. Or rather, it was not as bad as it used to be, thanks mostly to there being no real industry left, neither in the Pittsburgh area, nor in western Pennsylvania at all. Ally was not impressed with the river, as she had spent her early childhood out west with, as she remembered, ‘real rivers’ that flowed quickly and seemed to come only in two colors: blue or crystal clear.
Ally glanced at the map on her phone briefly, checking their progress on the 13-mile riverfront walk.
Standing at the confluence of the Monongahela and Allegheny Rivers as they joined to form the Ohio River, Ally thought silently to herself, ‘boring, boring, boring,’ silently judging each of the three rivers.
Brady, the other cell member, pointed to yet another sign extolling the virtues of Pittsburgh. This particular sign read ‘Zero violent crimes on the Riverfront Park since introduction of tolling system. Congratulations Pittsburghers!’
Brady frowned and added, “Yeah, no crime anymore because they charge an expensive entrance fee to walk by the river and because refugees, in addition to not being allowed to vote in local elections, are only allowed to come down here Tuesday and Thursday between 9am and 4pm.”
“So…refugees are responsible for all the crime here?” asked Ally, though not in an accusing or judgmental manner.
“I won’t lie – areas resettled by refugees do show a serious rise in rates of theft, assault, rape, and whatnot,” said Brady bluntly.
“Hmm,” added Ally, ending this line of conversation. She thought about her early days as a young anarchist and how Brady’s comment denigrating refugees, whether true or not, would have led to a brawl and demands for punishments or an expulsion from the group. Now, all the long-time anarchists were jaded and had given in to describing the world as it was, with no regard to the sensitivities of the listener.
As for Brady’s comment in particular, arguing over the refugee issue was pointless. Nearly everybody in America had made up their minds and the controversy was now hardened into two camps. The first wanted the refugees to go back to where they came from – the South and the Midwest. The other side was sympathetic to their plight and argued that freedom of movement within the United States was an inalienable right. Of course, refugee advocates seldom lived in neighborhoods that were candidates for hosting refugees.
Pittsburgh, its population having doubled in the last decade, was not the only city dealing with newcomers who were fleeing collapsed government, a destroyed economy, decaying services, crime and violence. All cities had their own approach. Here in Pittsburgh, the local government had decided several years before to introduce a strict system of residential, voting and visitor permits for the city and the surrounding suburban areas now under its control. Ally and Brady had easily secured temporary visitor permits. However, the third member of the cell had his request refused, as his profile was deemed too similar to that of a potential refugee. You should never admit to anyone that you are from Missouri. The third member of the cell knew that, but he was too stubborn and too proud of his home state.
The effectiveness of the permit system was made clear on the first day of Ally and Brady’s informal planning sessions. They had to show their permits at the hotel, on public transport, in a supermarket and, randomly, once in the street to plainclothes police officers. It was not something that the average anarchist enjoyed. But Ally had become immune to this sort of document checking, having spent so much time overseas bearing the passport of an undesirable nationality.
“OK, break’s over. Back to work?” stated Ally, picking up the pace of her walk.
Quickening his step and catching up to Ally, Brady made a proposal. “Can we get some of these unrealistic requests out of the way now?”
“Which ones in particular? Half the ones I read last night from your people were beyond ridiculous. Are you talking about that Massachusetts cell?”
“Yeah, those ones,” answered Brady. “I’ll hold my thoughts for now, what do you think?”
“Well, for one, their proposed targets are all human targets. They clearly have no desire whatsoever to do the unexciting but effective work. And not only that, the people they are choosing are…”
“The cool kids at school that ignored them?” added Brady quickly.
“Exactly,” said Ally. “All they want to do is kill athletes, business executives, trust fund kids, and politicians. If you are popular, they want to kill you. I bet if they saw you on the street, Brady, they would want to add you to their list.”
Brady laughed out loud again. Ally’s last comment was understood without any more clarification needed between the two. Brady was tall, athletic, handsome, and dressed well – particularly for an American male. He could walk into any room and deploy his considerable charisma to subtly ingratiate himself to almost every single person there. Unfortunately for Brady, the anarchist recruits were still dominated by people who seemed to hate people like him at first sight, mostly out of resentment at their own social position and their imagination of where Brady fits within the hierarchy of American society.
“And that’s not their only problem,” continued Ally. “Even if we approved these hits, the way they want to go about doing it is unnecessarily elaborate. The plans are all gigantic media hungry drama stunts. It’s almost guaranteed that something will go wrong. I mean, seriously? They want to set on fire some girlfriend-beating football player? During a game? On a live stream? And why does everybody want to set everybody else on fire all the time? Whatever happened to simply shooting someone in the face in an underground parking lot? Their plan will fail fifty different ways.”
Brady laughed along, agreeing with everything that Ally was saying. Pausing to catch his breath, he said “Yeah, I told them already that I thought that plan was a bad one – amongst their many bad proposals. I’m wanting to counter their crazy plan with something proportionate and easy: grab the football player at gunpoint near his home and smash his knees on camera, and then upload the video with a message that this is what happens to guys who beat their girlfriends and wives.”
“OK, done. I agree. But that message, I think it’s a little too White Knight. I’m not sure…just make it simple. And no branding the guy’s face with a hot iron like the one cell was doing. We should destroy his football career, but not make him unemployable for life. What’s next?”
“Well, could I go ahead and reject most of the similar plans?” asked Brady.
“Definitely. But what do you want to do about the overall crappiness of their proposals?”
Brady thought for a few second and then said “How about we assign them some unpleasant homework? I was thinking that they need to get used to targeting a broader array of people. I’m getting quite weary of their usual choice of targets. They need to select an artist, an actor or some sort of lefty type person who is sexually abusive or who economically exploits those below them… But they may need to go to New York for that.”
“Sure, sounds fine,” replied Ally. “But make sure to add some infrastructure or system targets. You know, the grinding and unappealing stuff that the kids hate to do. Like…I don’t know, maybe wrecking some government contractor equipment in a New Jersey warehouse, for example. Property insurance doesn’t cover anarchist attacks, so make sure we claim it.”
“OK. Done,” agreed Brady.
“And aside from the corporate executives, athletes and professional frat boys that they want to kill and cripple,” added Ally, “it’s clear that these guys want to exclusively focus on symbolic and cultural targets. They need that desire to be beaten out of them, and quickly. Or at least balance it. If they propose something like…say, cutting the tongue out of an obscure right-wing talk show host, fire them – or make them match that by throwing a left-winger in the river at the same time. Maybe a professor who trades grades for sex with undergrad
s, for example. There are still plenty of those these days. And I’d say to have your cell throw someone off a building for having unpaid interns, but I think our Unpaid Internship Punishment Unit was way too effective. So for now, let this cell know that they are on the fringe. Their places are not guaranteed. You know how to handle that.”
“I know, I’ve been pushing back a lot on them,” said Brady. “But, you know this: our system is set up to reward initiative, creativity and aggression. They are worried that if they only do the quiet jobs, they will just languish forever at the bottom of the ladder.”
“These kids need to read our history,” said Ally, “to see what happened when we were infested with all those claw-your-way-to-the-top egomaniacs who all wanted to be famous and powerful and loved. It was a cesspool when I joined. It was like anarchists had become members of the Chinese Communist Party, or like the newest young MBA hire at an investment firm. The bootlicking, bureaucratic warlordism and backstabbing was atrocious. I only joined because I was ignorant, just like every other seventeen year old. We almost didn’t recover from that period.”
Ally couldn’t help but to let her frustration show.
“Anyways,” she added, “send them to New York for a while and watch their enthusiasm for corporate targets drop off when they see the sort of security that the Wall Street crowd goes around with. What are the other cells proposing?”
Ally and Brady continued their planning session as they crossed another bridge and chose the direction that would take the most time to walk. As they headed upstream, the various proposals were vetoed or approved, money and support was levied, and operational plans were discussed. All the cells they spoke of were nameless, along with their members. Brady only knew two others – the members of his regional cell. And even then he knew little of their lives, or even their real names. Rarely, Brady would meet with the lower level cell members, but only one-on-one and always with full anonymity precautions. Ally herself only knew about a dozen anarchists, and she wasn’t even fully sure of the roles played by half of them.
The structure of the Insurrectionary Anarchist’s network was not entirely clear, even to the top ranking members themselves. Each region and its individual cells were free to adapt their structure and tactics to meet the challenges that the local environment provided. Overall, the sense within the network was that if the anarchists themselves didn’t know what was going on, then neither would the law enforcement agencies or private security firms that were hunting them.
Ally’s cell was very high-ranking, and focused mostly on operations and far less so on ideological control – even if they avoid the word ‘control,’ as the anarchists deemed that concept to be fascist and military terminology. But control was needed, for both ideology and for operations. Ideology had been deemphasized in order to cut down on the incessant infighting that had plagued the Insurrectionary Anarchists after their membership surged following the death of their ‘martyr’ Robin Lapour. Not only was the infighting highly toxic, but the imaginary world of ideology attracted people who could only be described as useless. Self-identified ‘activists’ created ineffective social media campaigns and published worthless tracts that raged endlessly about every barely-relevant issue possible in the most ideologically extreme manner, while at the same time avoiding any mundane or hard work. Overall, they gave the general impression that upon seizing power, they would dispense not good governance, but rather some sort of anarchist Sharia law.
The Insurrectionary Anarchists had, when Ally was a young recruit, began to purge the ideological warriors and others who were deemed disruptive. Soon after, new opportunities quickly opened up for those young operatives who were willing to do dangerous work and who were willing to kill. This led to the need for more control over operations. While this sounds easy enough, the anarchists had evolved a highly decentralized leadership structure in order to avoid losing their entire leadership in a single raid. This structure gave rise to the necessity to allow lower level cells more autonomy in selecting and conducting operations. However, the various cells began an unspoken competition, each trying to out-do the other with increasingly elaborate and spectacular attacks. This spiraled out of control and led to many incidents that damaged their reputation with the public. Robin Lapour had been clear while he was still alive, and his idea still stood: in order to survive, the Insurrectionary Anarchists need the support of at least 10% of the population in their early revolutionary phase.
A good example of the anarchists’ many public relations disasters, which all newcomers to the anarchists’ ranks were required to read about, was the bombing of an exclusive golf and country club in Connecticut. The clubhouse bombing killed nearly a dozen members, all wealthy businessmen and family who happened to be with them at the time. The Insurrectionary Anarchists immediately claimed the attack and released a video, along with a condemnation of the predatory business practices of the club members in general.
But in addition to the vast majority of the public being against indiscriminate killings of this type, the identities of some of the victims caused a harsh public opinion backlash. The anarchists had killed four members of a family that ran a transport company known for hiring employees for life, providing healthcare to workers even when they weren’t required to by law, giving heavily to charity, and living frugally.
The anarchists, embarrassed and looking to avoid responsibility, condemned the bombing soon after, blaming it on a rogue faction. Then, one week later, they claimed an attack on a police precinct in Boston that was torturing suspected anarchists. They hastily declaimed it the day after when it was reported that the civilians on the public side of a bullet-proof glass barrier were the only ones killed. The bad month for the anarchists continued with the fallout from their shotgun killing of a college basketball player accused of rape. The lawyer for the slain basketball player quickly showed the media the evidence that the defense had been collecting – evidence that completely exonerated his client.
The internal response to these public relations disasters was for the Insurrectionary Anarchists to introduce a relatively strict system for approving operations at the lower levels. Rapists, police interrogators and predatory CEOs were still to be killed, but you had to wait until their guilt was clear, you couldn’t kill them along with their entire family, and you had to ‘do the paperwork,’ a phrase which had lost its meaning to the younger anarchists. The anarchists had no paperwork, and they had no data, nor any files, digital or otherwise. This resulted in a lack of written guidelines to follow, and certain anarchists did their best to forget the verbally stated rules that restricted their ability to act as they wished – with no oversight.
Ally hadn’t imagined that one day she would find herself approving and vetoing operations for most of the northeastern United States. And with the vague structure of the organization, she was not sure how many other cells had the equivalent rank. But what she was sure of was that there wasn’t actually anybody above her in terms of operational control. There was no leadership to decapitate. In fact, long-term ‘leadership’ of any sort was discouraged. The turnover and semi-retirement of top cell members, along with the avoidance of strong personalities in charge, was seen as necessary to the survival of the organization. Long tenures will result in stagnation – that was the belief that the Insurrectionary Anarchists now held on to. The organization worked hard to broaden its membership, recruiting from amongst groups and individuals previously ignored. And the old class of power-hungry anarchists who couldn’t hide their unbridled ambition were pushed out, often violently. Ally and a few other younger members had been key to this process.
As for Brady, he was the perfect example of the new anarchist. And he was about to prove it to Ally.
“Ally, could we delay the assessment of the other cells’ plans for a bit, like about 20 minutes?”
“Sure. Walking and no talking?” asked Ally, assuming that Brady wanted a break.
“No, I actually want to talk about s
omething else.”
“Sure. What’s up?”
“The two guys in my regional cell are both capable of taking over for me at this level, and we know a girl that should be promoted up to the regional cell in my place. She’s in a cell below the guy that I think should take over for me here.”
Ally hid her disappointment from Brady. This meant that she would no longer be working with him.
“Have you already decided where you are heading?”
“The South. I want to go down a level and recruit cells to go after the forfeiture police. They’re a plague there, and we are weak south of the Mason-Dixon. I want to give it a try.”
Ally was quiet about Brady’s self-demotion. This would be extremely dangerous, and Brady would be heading south with very little operational support. But the ‘civil forfeiture police’ were a perfect target for the anarchists. Their name was an informal term for activities that went back decades. Basically, this activity was the police robbing motorists and other random citizens of their cash, cars and valuables, declaring these to be proceeds or tools of crime – with no evidence whatsoever. The federal government banned the practice once it spiraled out of control, but local and state governments soon continued the programs under newly passed local laws. You were, of course, welcome to return in three months with your lawyer to fight a drawn out legal battle in some rural courthouse to regain your property, but it was usually not worth it. And even if it was, you would probably die mysteriously soon after you returned to whatever Texas, Louisiana, Georgia or Virginia town had confiscated your cash or vehicle. Ally had been to plenty of third world countries where police robbing drivers was commonplace, but in America it had become a fine art on the part of the government to pretend that the police in most southern counties were not 21st century highwaymen, terrorizing travelers and getting rich.
“And one final thing,” added Brady. “I’m going to communicate with the operations group and the financing cell, but I’m not going to have any sort of back-and-forth with the ideological cell. I’ll keep reading the literature and the newsletters, but I’m done with this fantasy world-building exercise of theirs. It’s just that…we’ve completely reformed our image as much as is possible, and still our approval rating maxes out at only 15% in the cities. We are comatose in the rural areas. Plus, blacks and Latinos don’t really care for us. And what’s left of the working class would rather avoid us.”
Ally listened without comment.
“Furthermore, our membership has always mocked church-goers, and I would say there is a clear strain of hatred for southern whites in particular. We make fun of the way they talk, they way the dress, the sports they like, and we denigrate them and their culture,” said Brady. “I know that we briefly tried to recruit from southern refugees for a few years, as if exploiting vulnerable people was an acceptable tactic that would produce actual real insurrectionary anarchists. And then we were surprised that the people we ridiculed as white trash and rednecks don’t like us? We are white, urban, and over-educated. And we completely dismissed the type of people who have done most of the fighting in our country’s wars – whether white, black or Hispanic. We have no support from minorities. We have no support from rural whites. We have almost no support from the working poor. We never gave those people a chance. We never listened to them. We dismissed them. Whose idea was that? It was Robin Lapour’s. That’s no way to win an insurgency. And we are now all too scared to deviate from the words of a dead man.”
“The ideological cells,” continued Brady, “they are deluding themselves if they think that we will ever have anything to do with running this country. Even if the system was to magically collapse and we were thrown into a position of power, what do any of us know about running government bureaucracies, building businesses and delivering social services? We would be like Bolsheviks or Islamists: people who were good at killing during their rise to power, so they think that the best way to rule and govern is to continue killing.”
Ally didn’t outwardly show any surprise, or any emotions whatsoever.
“Brady, I would say that you could continue with support from the financing and operations cells for about eight to twelve months. Then the top ideological cell can veto your funding and support. Soon after that they’ll want you out.”
“I know. That’s my guess too. I’ll try to create activities down south that are sustainable without funding and operational assistance.”
“So, are you still an anarchist? Or is that your resignation statement?” asked Ally.
“I don’t think I’ve ever really been an anarchist, Ally. Anyways, I guess now I’m just a fellow traveler,” said Brady, with a shrug.
Brady then let out a long breath, trying to cover up for what should have been a sigh.
“My replacement will contact you in a few months. And I’ll sort out everything with my regional cell within a couple of months. Then I’m heading south.”
“OK,” said Ally, now unable to hide her disappointment. She thought that Brady was the type of person who could actually help transition the organization from an insurrectionary faction to a governing party. But she also truly enjoyed working with Brady. Meeting with him was something that she had always looked forward to with great anticipation.
“And…uh, I’m not heading back to the hotel with you,” said Brady, almost apologetically. “I checked out already and my bag is waiting at the airport.”
“Why?”
Brady looked down at the ground, and then to the side, avoiding Ally’s eyes. Then, after composing himself, he turned to face Ally and looked her directly in the eyes.
“Ally, you’re a scary person. You are truly terrifying. I know that you… I know that you are one of the people who did the internal cleansing. The purging of the old members. You killed dozens of people because, in your eyes, they had deviated from the organization’s charter.”
Brady tried not to fidget with his hands as he felt his discomfort rising.
“Your reputation – what I was expecting – I’ve never seen any sign of that myself. But, it’s always been in the back of my mind. I’m sorry, Ally. I wasn’t sure how you would react to this.”
“I’m not that person anymore,” said Ally quietly, almost under her breath. It was all she could think of to say.
Aside from Liz, Brady was the only person that Ally felt truly comfortable and safe around. Both of these people had helped Ally to push away the feelings of aggression, anger and paranoia that she had been living with for so long. This admission by Brady was deeply hurtful, and Ally was not sure how she was going to handle it.
Ally’s mind stopped racing with so many different thoughts and started to focus on the fact that Liz was gone and Brady was leaving. Ally had a feeling of abandonment building inside her. A tightness formed in her chest and started to creep up her throat. It was not a familiar feeling. Since she was fourteen years old, Ally had only cried once, and that was the week before in the Yucatán.
“I know. I’m sorry, Ally. I don’t feel good about parting ways like this.”
Ally realized why Brady was leaving her like this; leaving her by the river, in a public place. To Ally’s shock, Brady feared for his life in her presence.
Brady, doing his best to look Ally straight in the eye, said “I’m going this way,” pointing to a side street leading away from the riverfront.
Ally stepped in towards Brady and, getting up on her tiptoes, kissed him on the cheek.
“Goodbye Brady.”
Ally turned around and continued her walk up the river. She felt completely, utterly alone. But she didn’t cry.
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