To develop an effective anti-ruling class strategy, the structure and tactics of the ruling elite must first be understood. The Anglo nations, particularly America, are dominated by two largely identical parties that represent contending factions of the corrupt elites. The right wing of the ruling class consists primarily of “old money,” i.e., banking, oil, agricultural cartels, arms merchants, etc. The left wing of the ruling class consists of newer, high-tech, capital-intensive industries such as media, entertainment, medical, and computer related corporate interests. Both principal factions cement their support base by appealing to contending cultural factions—“social conservatives,” the dominant ethnic group, and religious fundamentalists on one end, and elite members of minority groups, union bosses, public sector workers, and environmentalists on the other end. Zionists appear to be rather influential within both camps. The key to building any sort of successful opposition would be to disrupt and neutralize existing ruling class coalitions.[124]
For an Anarchist Vanguard
It is interesting to note that existing ruling class factions and their constituencies include some rather bizarre alliances. What exactly do aristocratic country clubbers have in common with backwoods religious fundamentalists? Yet both are a part of the Republican coalition. What do traditional working class union members have in common with militants from the homosexual counterculture? Yet both are a part of the Democratic coalition. An effective oppositional coalition would draw away certain elements from both of the enemy coalitions, yielding them ineffectual. To achieve this objective, several strategies might need to be simultaneously employed. First, there is the question of leadership. Mark Gillespie postulates the idea of an “anarchist vanguard” whose primarily function is the construction of an anti-ruling class coalition. Says Gillespie:
Anarchists can work to foster alliances between disparate groups. As mediators and vision-holders, we can help each group to see that uniting for the common goal of freedom, trumps their own agendas. After all, once the government is gone, no one will care if you set up an all-black, all-white, all-Jew, all-Muslim, all-socialist, all-capitalist community. We should pick up the torch of unity and educate people into respecting the diverse views of others. I may like what you’re doing, saying, being, etc. but I will defend to the death your right to do, say or be it.[125]
This kind of modern Voltairean outlook might serve as the core principle of the anarchist vanguard. In a sense, we should seek to emulate our deadly enemies, the neoconservatives, in an effort to become a highly influential element in great disproportion to our actual numbers. David Michael suggests that such an effort might be done through non-traditional political strategies such as resource acquisition, alliance building, and community formation.[126] This could include the establishment of self-sufficient intentional communities, alternative media, alternative economic institutions, and even alternative legal institutions or defense organizations as some in the US militia/ patriot/constitutionalist movement have sought to do. Such communities and institutions might eventually develop a cultural presence and identity of their own in the same manner that the divergent ethnic groups in large cities currently do. These could in turn be the building blocks of localized political movements and, eventually, full-blown local and regional secessionist or autonomist movements.
Hans-Hermann Hoppe argues that the proliferation of independent or semi-independent free cities, such as those that emerged in the latter Middle Ages, might be the core institutional foundation for the subversion of modern centralist, imperialist states.[127] A core idea within the national-anarchist milieu is the creation of anti-establishment communities functioning on a largely autarchic basis, highly diverse in their cultural and ideological orientation, but mutually supportive of one another against the common enemy.[128] In this way, a common alliance of those wanting out of the System could develop. Divergent forces might form a common agreement to work to gain political pre-eminence in their own areas of influence with each agreeing to support the others in their efforts to do so as well. Thus, communities formed by the All-African Peoples’ Revolutionary Party in the inner-city regions might be tactically aligned with similar communities formed by the Militia of Montana in rural areas.
While efforts of these types might go along way as far as dealing with “extremist” elements within the ranks of various oppositional tendencies, and such elements might form the core constituencies of an anti-ruling class coalition, there remains the question of how to reach mainstream working people not inclined towards any sort of clearly articulated ideological structures or any particular aspect of peripheral cultures. Troy Southgate argues that a tactic known as “entryism” might be appropriate as far as creating an organizational infrastructure that can be utilized as a political vehicle goes. Says Southgate:
Entryism is the name given to the process of entering or infiltrating bona fide organizations, institutions and political parties with the intention of either gaining control of them for our own ends, misdirecting or disrupting them for our own purposes or converting sections of their memberships to our cause. . . . So what are we looking for? Any organization with a weak, apathetic or elderly leadership. An organization that has a youth section or a youthful membership . . . What we need is an organization that has idealists, people motivated by ideology and an organization that has—or could have—some sort of influence, given the right leadership in the community . . . It is the case that many organizations currently dominated by both Left and Right simply need turning away from their present ideology . . .[129]
Organizations of this type might include dissident or minor political parties, neighborhood or grassroots community organizations, single-issue pressure groups, territorial secession movements, labor unions, and educational institutions, particularly university humanities departments. Cadre of anarchists would seek seats on the board of directors of the National Rifle Association or the American Civil Liberties Union. Anarchists would obtain positions on the executive committees of “third parties” or local civic organizations. Anarchist educators would be teaching the history of the United States during the twentieth century from the perspective of Murray Rothbard, William Appleman Williams, or Lawrence Dennis rather than Arthur Schlesinger Jr. at the local university. Anarchists sitting on the advisory boards of local business associations, churches, or charities would do much more for the broader struggle than anarchist agitators who throw rocks through Starbucks windows currently do, although the latter is not necessarily without its place as well.
It is through achieving control of the kinds of institutions being described here, using the methods that Troy Southgate suggests, that anarchists could work their way into positions to influence the broader public. Indeed, a precedent for this does exist. In an excellent essay on the ideas of the classical anarchist godfather Pierre-Joseph Proudhon, Larry Gambone describes how the values of libertarian socialism had at one time begun to enter mainstream society:
Proudhon’s criticism of the credit and monetary systems were an influence upon the Greenback Party. His concept of mutual associations and the Peoples’Bank were forerunners of the credit union and cooperative movements. . . . Support for labor and even “socialism” was found among the upper classes. The British Prime Minister, Disraeli, expressed sympathy for the workers, Lincoln corresponded with the International [Workingmen’s Association] and the editor and publisher of the world’s largest newspaper, the New York Tribune, Charles Dana and Horace Greely, were followers of Proudhon and Charles Fourier.[130]
Beyond Left and Right
The initial way for this new, modernized, revitalized version of traditional anarchism to publicize itself, once it has secured its position in the manner previously suggested, would be to vocally proclaim to be an alternative to the liberal establishment, the reactionary left, and mainstream “conservatism” alike. First, the matter of the culture wars has to be dealt with. This seems to be more of an issue in America that in other Anglo nations lik
e England or Canada and, as I am an American and most familiar with the political landscape of my own country of origin, I will address this question from the perspective of the internal politics of America. A mainstream “conservative” commentator, Dennis Prager, describes some of the controversies that define the culture war:
The Left believes in removing America’s Judeo-Christian identity, e.g., removing “under God” from the Pledge, “In God We Trust” from the currency . . . The Right believes that destroying these symbols and this identity is tantamount is to destroying America.
The Left regards America as morally inferior to many European societies with their abolition of the death penalty, cradle-to-grave-welfare and religion-free life; and it does not believe that there are distinctive American values worth preserving. The Right regards America as the last best hope for humanity and believes that there are distinctive American values, the unique combination of a religious ( Judeo-Christian) society, a secular government, personal liberty and capitalism—that are worth fighting and dying for.
The Left believes multiculturalism should be the ideal for American schools and American policy. The Right believes that the Americanization of all its citizens is indispensable to the survival of the United States.
The Left believes that “war is not the answer.” The Right believes that war is often the only answer to governmental evil.[131]
Prager goes on to describe other aspects of the whole moronic “liberal-conservative” divide including condoms in schools, silicone breast implants, gays in the Boy Scouts, yadda, yadda, yadda. Some of his Prager’s assertions are absurd to the point of comedy, such as his claim that “capitalism” is worth fighting and dying for. Yes, we can all envision the troops marching into battle singing: “If I die, at least I know, I gave my life for Texaco.”Then there is the assertion that America is “the last best hope for humanity.” Yes, an ethos of materialist-consumerism, false egalitarianism, and totalitarian therapeutic statism is most assuredly the road to Paradise. Essentially, these culture wars are between those who prefer that the New World Order take on a distinctively “Americanist” identity and those who prefer a global superstate with a more overtly internationalist face. Should the United States rule the world through the United Nations or through the Pentagon? The discrepancies are not nearly as significant as the partisans to this intramural battle insist. Joseph Sobran points out that the constitutional order that the allegedly “right-wing” or “conservative” Bush regime seeks to impose on Iraq includes provisions for “. . . democracy, non-violence, diversity and a role for women.”[132] This sounds like something out of the mouth of Morris “Dildo” Dees or Hillary “It Takes a Police State to Raise a Child” Clinton. This is to be the conservative “solution” for a highly patriarchal, religious, militaristic society? Even Trotsky, who claimed that under Marxism the average man would reach the level of an Aristotle, would likely have been more practical.
The relevance of all of this for those of us who are involved in the struggle against the US regime is the question of which side in the “culture wars” will eventually win and, therefore, be our greatest enemy in the long run. I predict that the liberal-internationalist-multiculturalist wing of the US ruling class will win hands down. Even some of the proponents of the “Americanist” perspective agree. For example, John Fonte, a columnist for “Front Page Magazine,” edited by the arch-propagandist for Anglo-Zionist imperialism David Horowitz, speculates:
Thus, it is entirely possible that modernity—thirty or forty years hence—will witness not the final triumph of liberal democracy,but the emergence of a new transnational hybrid regime that is post-liberal democratic and, in the American context, post-Constitutional and post-American.[133]
The simple reason that the “Americanists” are destined to lose is that their ideology is even more utopian and constructivist than that of the “progressives” whom they so ardently despise. There is not, and can never be, an authentic American nationalism. Nationalism must be rooted in the organic culture of the people. This is impossible in a state whose common identity is rooted in abstract ideological concepts, with the debate being over how these concepts are to be applied, and where whatever passes for a common culture is simply a constantly changing amalgam of all sorts of fractious and contradictory tendencies.[134] This is the so-called “melting pot.” Some “Americanists” at least implicitly understand this. Robert Locke, a cynical but candid expositor of Straussian jingoism, observes:
[T]he Constitution . . . is a curious mixture of Greco-Roman ideas, Christian ideas, Lockean natural-rights ideas, plus a few other odds and ends from Montesquieu and other sources . . . The idea that America was founded foursquare on liberty and inalienable rights is the Platonic noble lie of our republic, and as such is entirely appropriate for schoolchildren and most of the rest of us. It is not, however, the truth.[135]
Locke regards the ideological nationalism promulgated by most “Americanists” to be inadequate as a source of national cohesion and prefers to attempt to construct an American nationalism rooted in more conventional nationalist concepts like ethnicity (in a nation where nearly a third of the population are minorities), Judeo-Christian religious traditions (where did the “Judeo” part come from?), language (in an increasingly bilingual society), and “middle class values” (when most of the constituents of political correctness are middle class professionals and intellectuals). Like most crackpot reactionaries, Locke wants to return to an America that may have existed briefly in the early nineteenth century, if it ever existed at all. Modern America is an imperial empire, not a nation. Even the American state itself more closely resembles the old USSR than anything—a continent-wide regime composed of all sorts of sub-cultural and sub-national groupings absorbed into a bureaucratic monolith ordered on the basis of an imposed ideology. Like the Soviets, the Americanists wish to impose a regime of ideological homogeneity on a society ordered on the basis of extreme cultural diversity. It doesn’t work that way.
It is likely, then, that the prevailing future ideology of the United States and therefore the international ruling class will be overt liberal corporatism, globalism, and multiculturalism. All contemporary trends point in that direction. Consequently, the primary target of the anarchist intellectual vanguard should be the liberal establishment and the reactionary left. The David Horowitzes and Ann Coulters are an amusing sideshow to the main event, the professional wrestling of the political/media elite. The liberal orientation of the supposedly “conservative” Bush administration—Keynesian economics, nationalized education, massive subsidies to “curing AIDS in Africa,” the liberal “constitution” to be imposed on Iraq, proposed amnesty for illegal immigrants—attests to this. An interesting parallel might be invoked from certain pages in classical anarchist history. The classical anarchists fought for generations against the capitalists, only to be stabbed in the back by their Marxist arch-enemies when the “socialist” revolution actually came. This is the primary fight that authentic anarchists are in today. Old-style capitalism no longer exists. Modern societies are ruled by the “new class” or “managerial elite” observed by Burnham, Orwell, and Dennis. This class has long since made its peace with both capitalism and socialism (in the form of corporate-social democracy and neo-mercantilist “free trade”) and has adopted “cultural Marxism” (whether of the neo-conservative or neo-liberal variety) as its social outlook. It is this element that is our principal enemy.
Tradition, Revolution, and Anarchism Without Hyphens
Whatever else could be said about the Straussians, one thing they get right is their understanding of the utility of national and cultural myths as a potent force for political mobilization. Although an actual American nationalism is contradictory and impossible, an appeal to classical American revolutionary ideals is entirely appropriate for opponents of the current American regime. Such venerable notions to be derived from historic Americana as inalienable rights, criticism of state power, decentralism, anti-im
perialist revolution, authentic cultural and ideological pluralism (mythically personified by the “First Amendment”), anti-taxation protest, self-reliance, agrarianism, populism, “the right to bear arms,” “give me liberty or give me death,” and symbolized by such events as the Boston Tea Party, Lexington and Concord, the Whiskey Rebellion, the Confederate secession, the Underground Railroad, Haymarket, and much else provides a virtual fountain of cultural resources for modern enemies of the state to draw on. Larry Gambone provides instruction on how to begin:
Anarchists should organize at the local level, i.e., neighborhood, village, municipality or county, around issues that affect the population . . . A city-wide organization could fight to decentralize the city government to the neighborhood level and gain greater autonomy for the municipality.[136]
In such an effort, we might look to the example of Norman Mailer’s 1969 New York mayoral campaign. Mailer remembered:
I ran for mayor of New York in the hope that a Left-Right coalition could be formed and this Left-Right pincers could make a dent in the entrenched power of the center . . . So, we called for Power to the Neighborhoods. We suggested that New York City become a state itself, the fifty-first. Its citizens would then have the power to create a variety of new neighborhoods, new townships, all built on separate concepts, core neighborhoods founded on one or another of our cherished notions from the Left or the Right. One could have egalitarian towns and privileged places, or, for those who did not wish to be bothered with living in so detailed (and demanding) a society, there would be the more familiar and old way of doing things—the City of the State of New York—a government for those who did not care—just like old times.[137]
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