Freedom Now Maybe: The New Secessionism

By Peter Lamborn Wilson, 2005

from Arthur Magazine

Last November, right after the Election, I attended an odd event in Middlebury, Vermont—a two-day conference devoted to the question of whether Vermont should consider seceding from the USA and declaring itself the “Second Vermont Republic.”

The first Vermont Republic lasted from 1777 to 1791, during which time it recognized neither Britain nor the USA as sovereign. Thanks to Ethan Allen and the Green Mountain Rangers the state has an old and still-lively sense of itself as unique and independent-minded, if not downright cranky.

The keynote speeches delivered at Middlebury by SVR founder Prof. Thomas Naylor and activist/historian Kirkpatrick Sale made it clear that any Vermont independence movement would be radical, Green, Populist non-violent and typically “Vermont-socialist.” (The Bread & Puppet Theater is already interested.) SVR’s underlying philosophy is derived from the “Small Is Beautiful” school of Leopold Kohr (his The Breakdown of Nations is the bible), “Buddhist economist” E.F. Schumacher, the UK-based Fourth World Movement, and ultimately from the minarchism of Thoreau and the American tradition of “unterrified Jeffersonians,” extreme democrats and even anarchists.

All this may be considered odd enough. But what really struck me as strange was the mood of the conference. Everyone there was cheerful, optimistic and pugnacious. Everywhere else in America that weekend leftists, liberals and libertarians were plunged in gloom. But in Middlebury the triumph of Bushite Pre-Millenialist idiocy was taken as a sign that the US Empire is about to disintegrate.

The conference voted unanimously to support the aims of the Second Vermont Republic. Delegates stomped and cheered. One woman, whose son was in Iraq with the National Guard, proclaimed herself ready to die for this new cause if necessary. Suddenly it felt kind of like 1968 again. Were all these people crazy?

Four More Years.

You know what I’m talking about already but let me spell it out. Imagine: Four more years of Neo-Con Jihadist slope-browed pseudo-Zionist McImperialism; four more years of stomping on Iraq and Afghanistan and possibly Iran, Syria and North Korea; of deficit spending and debt both national and individual; of ludicrous Red/Blue culture war; of inflation and unemployment; erosion of civil liberties; no tree left behind; more tax breaks for the rich and the corporations; blah blah blah; and to top it off, “JEB IN ’08!”—and another Four More Years.

Some of my friends are moving to Canada where they can join grayhaired draft-dodgers of the Vietnam era and suffer the bitterness of exile along with the compensations of socialized health care and quasi-legal pot. No one dares to dream of staying on and overthrowing the Empire. Not even us grayhaired really believe in The Revolution anymore. But the piffle of tepid reformism (the “left wing” of Skull’n’Bones, so to speak) makes many of us reel with nausea and depression, or anyway terminal boredom. What’s to be done?

Barely anything remains of the alternative economy and society of the ‘60s and ‘70s. Most of the food co-ops are gone, as well as most of the back-to-the-land communes, and the free schools. Low-rent bohemian enclaves have been yupped up, college campuses have grown quiet and dull (except for binge drinking), labor unions have been smashed or corrupted. The “peace movement” can mobilize millions in minutes but mysteriously nothing happens—war goes right ahead on schedule. The only force holding back environmental armageddon sometimes appears to consist of a handful of brave doomed eco-saboteurs. Leftist organization in the US takes place mostly in cyberspace, where nothing happens except more blahblahblah.

Third parties always end up as mere exercises in futilitarianism, hobby groups for the disgruntled, paper tigers sucking up all dissident energy and turning it into a politics of failure. As far as the Democrats—oh please, I can’t.

If not Canada or Holland or something, then what? Do we have to accept some sacred organic link between the landmass called Turtle Island and the regime called the “USA”? Let’s say we happen to love our land and our language, that we want to stay here. Yet somehow we also want to escape from the sleazy guilt feelings involved with citizenship in the Empire of Stupid Greed. Does this make us schizophrenic?

If a single person is possessed by two antagonistic personalities (call them Red and Blue), the usual solution would be a term in the bughouse. But if a whole state has a split personality, it can actually split. Part of it can secede.

Naturally the government is going to tell you this is a crazy notion, and treasonous as well. The Constitution is our holy founding document and can never be revoked. Too bad you were born too late to sign the Social Contract, but that’s how it is. The Civil War decided it once and for all. Thou shalt not secede.

This argument, delivered with a gun to the head, is persuasive and even conclusive. The US government is not going to allow itself to devolve. Only Indians are permitted to have “independent” reservations and only certain genes carry the right to tribal recognition (in other words race still defines political status in US law). If you don’t like it here go back to Russia…uh… or Sweden, or maybe some rogue nation in the Axis of Evil. What are you, a terrorist?

But wait.

Who would have dared to predict in (let’s say) 1984 that the Soviet Empire was about to break up into dozens of independent little countries?

Or—to take an even more astonishing example—who could’ve foreseen that Scotland (a part of Great Britain since 1707) would succeed in achieving independence again after 300 years? (It’s hard to get information on this, but I gather that the miracle was achieved by a strange coalition of Labour and Scots Nationalists.)

In any case devolution of the USSR and UK would not have occurred without prior economic collapse. A rich empire will tend to cohere, a bankrupt one to Decline and even Fall. With hindsight we can see this clearly. But foresight is always skewed by appearances. The US is believed to be the super-wealthy hegemon of the Global Market and land of total affluence, and so we see it that way.

But is it?

What about the deficit spending, that insane waste of war, that deep debt? America actually produces very little except weapons, data and entertainment—no shoes, no umbrellas, no pencils. Globalism demands that whole countries be proletarianized for the benefit of other countries that can then be called bourgeois or ruling-class. But what if Globalism itself has been derailed by US greed and revanchism? What if Europe gets so fed up with the US that it begins to elect leftoid governments that refuse to serve our interests? What if China went “off the dollar” and on to the Euro? What about a major depression in America? Would that make secession look more “realistic” and less crazy?

Under these conditions (…four more years…) the question of legality might become relevant. Is it in fact legal to secede? The SVR says yes, at least in theory. The Civil War did not decide the issue. In 1789 the Constitution looked like a very bad deal to the true revolutionaries and Jeffersonians, then called “Anti-Federalists.” These radicals liked the Articles of Confederation (based on the Iroquois Confederation, according to many historians) which recognized the thirteen states as independent entities. They made many of the same arguments as the Small-Is-Beautiful school—for instance, that only in small autonomous regions can practical direct democracy work fairly and efficiently.

But the Anti-Federalists were out-maneuvered by Alexander Hamilton and the big bankers. Eventually all the states acceded and ratified. However in three states the protocols of ratification included a guarantee of the right to secede—Virginia, Rhode Island and New York. These protocols have never been rescinded or even challenged in law. By the logic of the Constitution itself, a right that belongs to one state must belong to all. Ergo: secession is legal, q.e.d.

Tell it to the judge, you might say. Or quoting the German fascist legal philosopher Karl Schmidt: law is made by power, not reason or precedent. But if the US Empire loses its power to define law, then secession may become “legal” de facto in the act of secession. Civil war may not be necessary—again, see the case of Scotland, or Estonia. “Devolution” happens.

Although the result of secession would be a new state, many anarchists and anti-authoritarians have supported it as a tactic, a good first step toward small-region autonomy. During the Civil War the American anarchist Lysander Spooner shocked people by supporting both abolition of slavery and the right of secession. Proudhon believed in secession and anarcho-federation. Emma Goldman supported the secession of Catalonia from fascist Spain. Nestor Makno fought for a free Ukraine; and so on. In fact secession has a potential appeal across a wide spectrum of political creeds, since anyone can hope to gain power (or at least a voice) in a new small state.

If you don’t care for Vermont-style secession there are plenty of other movements afoot. Capital-L Libertarians (“Republicans who smoke dope,” as Robert Anton Wilson calls them) have organized the New Hampshire Project, hoping to live free or die. Texas has an old and rather wacky independence movement (I once met their “Ambassador to the Court of St. James” in Dublin after he’d been evicted from his London “embassy” for unpaid rent).

Hawaii has a sovereignty movement based on the old native monarchy, overthrown by US forces in 1893; and there are many other tribal separatist causes. Black nationalists and separatists have their visions of utopia. Alaska has a group, and in Maine a “militia” with secessionist ideals has been founded by novelist Caroline Chute (The Beans of Egypt). In New York City, the secessionists want to secede from New York State as well as the USA. And in the process they plan to have some fun.

Being urban cynics unlike the sincere Vermonters, the NYC secessionists don’t necessarily expect to succeed. But the City has always dreamed of independence—a tradition no doubt dating back at least to Dutch resentment of the Brits, and farmers’ hatred of feudal landlords. We New Yorkers (I speak here for at least a dozen people) simply feel that folks with no power have nothing to fear from the “politics of the very worst.” If the Empire’s going to implode, let it. At least we’ll be ready with some sort of Plan B.

In the meantime we expect a bit of political adventure, and some good parties. Maybe eventually the other kind of party, too. A good motto for us would be Fats Waller’s famous saying: “One never knows—do one?”

A Mass Action against Genetically Modified Wheat

Take the Flour Back

May 27, 2012

taketheflourback.org


European activists link up to draw the line against GM


The following statement has just been released from the crowd of around 400 people at Rothamsted Park this afternoon (27th May).

More than 400 growers, bakers and families from across England, Ireland, Scotland, Wales, France and Belgium marched against the return of open air GM field testing today. Take the Flour Back linked arms with their European counterparts, notably France’s Volunteer Reapersand walked calmly towards the site, before being stopped by police lines.

Kate Bell from Take the Flour Back stated that “In the past, kids, grannies, and everyone in between has decontaminated GM trial sites together. Here at the beginning of a new resistance to this obsolete technology, we see GM hidden behind a fortress. We wanted to do the responsible thing and remove the threat of GM contamination, sadly it wasn’t possible to do that effectively today. However, we stand arm in arm with farmers and growers from around the world, who are prepared to risk their freedom to stop the imposition of GM crops.”

People enjoyed a GM free picnic whilst listening to a range of speakers opposing the trial, including Graciela Romero, International Programmes Director of UK development charity War on Want. Lawrence Woodward, previously Director of Elm Farm Organic Research Centre, former head of standards at the Soil Association, and now involved in Citizens concerned about GM. Plus several British farmers including Peter Lundgren, a conventional wheat farmer from Lincolnshire.

Gathuru Mburu, co-ordinator of the African Biodiversity Network, spoke on the global fight for control of our food supply.

Mburu explained that:

“Experimenting with staple crops is a serious threat to food security. Our resilience comes from diversity, not the monocultures of GM. Beneath the rhetoric that GM is the key to feeding a hungry world, there is a very different story – a story of control and profit. The fact is that we need a diversity of genetic traits in food crops in order to survive worsening climates. Above all, people need to have control over their seeds”

This statement is released amongst growing calls for the scientists to demonstrate sensitivity to public concern by harvesting the crop before pollination, removing any risk of contamination with non-GM plants.

Listen to our debate with Rothamsted on BBC Radio 5 Live (starts 27 minutes in).

Did you watch the debate on Newsnight? Join in online on twitter using the #newsnight hashtag.

If you are coming to Take the flour back, please read a list of things to bring, important information on nearby non-GM research trials at Rothamsted, and the legal briefing. Transport is being organised from various parts of the country.

Statements of support:
Statement from African Biodiversity Network and Gaia Foundation
Statement from Bees Action Network
Statement from Joanna Blythman
Statement from Community Food Growers’ Network
Statement from Faucheurs Volontaires
Statement from Friends of the Bees
Statement from GMO-free Poland, the International Coalition to Protect the Polish Countryside, EKOLAND, and other anti-GMO campaigners in Poland
Statement from Richard Higgins
Statement from Karnataka Farmers’ Association (KRRS)
Statement from Movement for National Land and Agrarian Reform (MONLAR), Sri Lanka
Statement from Dr. Vandana Shiva, Navdanya
Statement from Rising Tide

The position of other campaigns on this issue:
Statement from Real Bread Campaign
Stop the open-air release of GM Wheat that contains genes ‘most similar to that of a cow’

Rothamsted have planted a new GM wheat trial designed to repel aphids. It contains genes for antibiotic-resistance and an artificial gene ‘most similar to a cow’.

Wheat is wind-pollinated. In Canada similar experiments have leaked into the food-chain costing farmers millions in lost exports. There is no market for GM wheat anywhere in the world.

This experiment is tax-payer funded, but Rothamsted hope to sell any patent it generates to an agro-chemical company. La Via Campesina, the world’s largest organisation of peasant farmers, believe GM is increasing world hunger. They have called for support resisting GM crops, and the control over agriculture that biotech gives to corporations.

‘Take the Flour Back’ will be a nice day out in the country, with picnics, music from Seize the Day and a decontamination. It’s for anyone who feels able to publically help remove this threat and those who want to show their support for them.

Meet Rothamsted Park, Harpenden, Herts (30 mins from London by train) 12 noon on 27th May. At 1.30pm we’ll take a 20 minute stroll on public footpaths to the trial site.

Take the Flour Back is a grassroots network of individuals. It has no membership and no mandated representatives, but if you are press seeking a comment we will happily put in you touch with someone who will be attending.

OWS LATEST VICTIM OF PHONY TERROR PLOT

May 21, 2012
By the Staff at AFP


In late April, five Occupy Wall Street (OWS) teenagers from Cleveland were arrested and charged with conspiracy to commit terrorism. An FBI agent had originally urged them to “blow up the headquarters of some Nazi or the Ku Klux Klan.” Instead, he framed the group for a plot to destroy a Cleveland bridge, marking the first known instance that the tactics used by the FBI to suppress Islamic and white-oriented political dissidents have been used against the OWS movement.


The phony, federally concocted terror conspiracy was immediately used by the city of Cleveland to revoke the permit under which the Occupy movement there had been operating. This announcement was then carried by newspapers across the country as evidence of the “danger” of the OWS threat.



Yet the script that the federal agents who made the arrests were reading from was a tired and old one, which AMERICAN FREE PRESS has been exposing for the past year, and which has even recently drawn the attention of establishment newspapers such as The New York Times.


In this most recent case, a federal informant was sent into an OWS encampment to try to recruit angry, foolish or mentally disturbed individuals and get them to agree to commit crimes. The informant happened upon a group of young anarchists, whose anger at what they viewed as the “racist capitalist patriarchy” he transformed into a “terrorist” plot involving fake bombs provided by the government—in this case, persuading the youth that the bombs, provided by the informant, could be detonated through the use of text messages sent by cell phone.


The operation was launched as part of a larger sting designed to “discredit” OWS in much the same way the federal government and its Zionist-bankster backers have sought to discredit so-called white supremacism and “Islamism.”



The inability of the government to recover from the economic collapse it and its Wall Street allies created in 2008 has caused the Obama regime to become increasingly desperate in its efforts to maintain control and distract the public from real problems, which it is unable to address. The Obama regime used a similar tactic near the end of 2011 to justify the imposition of sanctions on Iran. This scheme is being used to distract the public with a phony threat of war and is also used to discredit left and right-wing political activists who have raised questions and garnered public support in opposition to the regime’s agenda.


Traditional opponents of the Obama regime in the neocon movement of course hailed the arrests in an effort to persuade their readers that OWS is more of a threat to the ordinary American than the phony “war on terrorism” being instigated by the FBI. It’s all part of a plan to position people on both sides of a debate so they can frame and control it, and distract the people into cheerleading for one team or the other while both teams, knowingly or unknowingly, work toward the same goal—in this case, the goal of a world dictatorship.

How to Create an Occupy Tribe

From Global Guerrillas

By John Robb

There's no question that the Occupy groups have done a great job with constructing the outlines of resilient communities in the heart of many of our most dense urban areas.

People pitch in to do work. They are considerate despite the difficulty of the arrangement. Food gets served. The area gets cleaned. There is entertainment. There's innovation (equipment, tech, workarounds). There is education (lots of seminars being taught). There is open, participatory governance. All of this is great and this experience will definitely pay off over the next decade as the global economy deteriorates, panics, fails. It will make building resilient communities easier (there are lots of ways to build a resilient community, we're trying to document all of the ways how on MiiU).

However, is this experience building a tribal identity? An Occupy tribe? Something that can eventually (there's lots to do in the short to medium term) go beyond protest and build something new? One even strong enough to create new resilient economic and social networks that step into the breach as the current one fails?

How to Manufacture a Tribe

How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history. It has proved it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem. (for more, see: Tribes!)

To build a tribal identity, the Occupy movement will need to manufacture fictive kinship. That kinship is built through (see Ronfeldt's paper for some background on this) the following:

Story telling. Shared histories and historical narratives.

Rites of passage. Rituals of membership. Membership is earned not given due to the geographic location of birth or residence.

Obligations. Rules of conduct and honor. The ultimate penalty being expulsion.

Egalitarian and often leaderless organization. Sharing is prized.

Multi-skilled. Segmental organization (lots of redundancy among parts).

Two-way loyalty. The tribe protects the members and the members protect the tribe. If this isn't implemented, you don't have a tribe, you have a Kiwanis club.

It looks like they are building an identity. The general assembly is the story telling mechanism (the 99% stories are more). Going to an occupy location and helping out is the rite of passage. There are rules of conduct (a shame culture). It's definitely egalitarian and leaderless. It's segmented into different geographies. Given the efforts put in to keep the occupy locations intact, it appears that people have become loyal to the movement.

The only question is whether the tribe truly protects the members. Is the loyalty two way?

Power to the Neighborhood: A Message to OWS [video]

From The Daily Attack

A message to Occupy Wall Street on transcending the left/right spectrum for the purpose of revolution by means of pan-secessionism and decentralizing politics and economics into a system of decentralized cities, towns and neighborhoods where all peoples and political groups can achieve self-determination. Help us spread the message!!!

The Tribal Organizational Model & Open Source Tribal Insurgency

Via AN AI/Attack the System


By Vince

The Daily Attack


John Robb at Global Guerrillas has written a couple of pieces on “manufactured” tribes. That is, using a tribal organizational structure to advance a group’s goals and protect its members. He writes:


How do you manufacture a strong community that protects, defends and advances the interests of its members? You build a tribe. Tribal organization is the most survivable of all organizational types and it was the dominant form for 99.99% of human history. The most important aspect of tribal organization is that it is the organizational cockroach of human history. It has proved it can withstand the onslaught of the harshest of environments. Global depression? No problem.


We Indian people maintain our tribal identities and have in our collective memories our recent tribal past. While we hold onto many of the cultural aspects of our tribal past, the dominant form of social organization in our Indian communities today is that of hierarchical institutions (many tribal governments, for instance,) not tribes. The problem with hierarchical institutions is that they are easily co-opted and easily corrupted. I’d argue that this is one of the fundamental reasons that our Indian communities are not thriving like they should. “Our” institutions don’t work for us. They work for the US Government, which set them up in most cases, and they serve the interests of a few individuals in our communities. Even though we have resources flowing through these institutions and services being provided, very little changes on the ground. They work just well enough to ensure that our die off is slow and less noticeable. Enter the tribal form of social organization.


In a tribal organization, there is no hierarchy. There are common bonds and known leaders, but leadership is based on an individuals ability to move the tribe toward its goals, it is not based on a bureaucratic title or privilege. An example of this is found in the history of the Comanche and the wars on the Great Plains. Among the Comanche bands, war chiefs were not appointed, they were discovered. War parties were not commanded and directed, they were led by example.


S.C. Gwynne, in his book Empire of the Summer Moon writes this about Comanche warriors, war parties and chiefs:


The head war chief, meanwhile, was a grand and glorious warrior but was not actually in charge of many of the war or raiding parties that went out, nor could he determine who joined them or where they went. These were gathered by individual warriors with individual notions about where they wanted to go. In Comanche society, anyone could be a war chief; it meant simply that you had an idea to raid, say, Mexican ranchos in Coahuila, and were able to gather a sufficient number of warriors to do it. Head war chiefs got that way because they were good at recruiting war parties. They would inevitably lead the most important sorties, and would lead the most important expeditions against powerful enemies. But they did not control, nor would they have wanted to, the martial plans of individual braves.


He also has this to say about the Comanche:


There was no big chief, no governing council, no Comanche “nation” that you could locate in a particular place, negotiate with, or conquer in battle. To whites, of course, this made no sense at all. It resembled no governing system they recognized. Across the plains, they insisted on making treaties with band headmen – often very colorful, strong-willed, and powerful ones – assuming incorrectly that the headmen spoke for the entire tribe. They would make this mistake again and again.


What emerged from this social organization was a fluid, adaptable network of bands and warriors capable of striking anywhere at anytime. Those leaders who were good at leading raids were followed into battle. Because of this, the US Government could not defeat the Comanche Nation as a whole on the battle field or through diplomacy or through peace treaties. There were no institutional leaders to buy off, corrupt, or assassinate. It was instead a scorched earth campaign that subdued them.


As a people we American Indians faced extinction. We’ve come out the other side somewhat intact in some cases, and facing a slow decline in others. In many of our communities our survival depends on throwing the US Empire off of our backs and re-establishing genuine, independent tribal nations. To achieve this goal I propose we move back to a tribal social structure as we go on the offensive against the colonizers.


Here are two modern day examples of this, already in place, from among members of my tribe, the Tlingit. I’m sure there are others:


First is the various projects undertaken by Ishmael Hope. He is starting his own language nest to expand the number of native Tlingit speakers by two; his own chidlren. Looking For a Nanny: Working on the Tlingit Language. He is also taking up the idea of a Tribal College as originally conceived by his father, Andrew Hope III. In both cases, he proposes not waiting for grant funding, or for any institution to act on preserving our language or cultural knowledge. He’s just going out there and doing it. Another is his Kickstarter project to write a play on the Alaska Native civil rights movement.


Next is the Old Growth Alliance and their annual Abolish Columbus Day protest. Again, we have a group of leaders who have simply taken the initiative to organize an annual protest.


There are a number of people in the Tlingit tribe taking on similar projects, and others in the tribe are following these successes in everything from building a subsistence based economy to building new tribal houses. This is not coming from the tribe’s institutional structures, these entities are not the tribe, even though they may throw their weight around with the State of Alaska and Federal Government. No, the tribe is something else that exists in our hearts, minds and actions. The young people taking on these projects are the tribe and their actions are a demonstrations of true tribal leadership. No one appointed them or gave them a fancy title. They are not working from within the context of a tribal government or ANCSA Corporation. They simple saw something that would advance the goals of the tribe and did it, and people have followed them.


To make this a true Open Source Insurgency against the empire we need a variety of projects and actions going on. Most important, we need a plausible promise to unite all of these various elements. In the Occupy Wall Street movement that promise (or goal, if you will) is to actually occupy Wall Street. In Egypt it was simply to remove the Egyptian dictator Mubarak. During the war of the Great Plains it was to halt the advance of white settlers. All collectives, bands, and individuals then swarm around that target or goal, attacking and advancing the group toward the objective. What should be the one unifying goal of the American Indian’s new open source insurgency against our oppressors? I have often spoke of establishing true tribal nations. That could be our goal: “Tribal Nationalism” or “Tribal Independence and Sovereignty.” But I am open to ideas.


Next we need more than just cultural projects and protests. These are all well and good, but we will also need to start preparing to defend our respective nations and go on the offense when necessary. Soft line Indians will tell us that we should be working through our tribal governments and with the US Government to uphold long broken treaties, but if you’re with me this far then you know that’s all a bunch of bull shit. They’ve been killing us off since 1492, and those broken treaties and tribal government tail chasers will finish the job if we let them. Furthermore, do you really think they’re going to give up control of Indian Country? They own it in trust, and take from it at will. In this regard, I advise becoming a true Tribal Warrior for you clan and people. Learn to use a weapon and start networking with like minded tribal warriors. Start a small band of warriors from among your closest and most dear friends and relatives. Be prepared. Don’t do anything stupid. Remember to protect the innocent on all sides of any conflict. Read this in detail for more instructions and remember how the Comanche organized and executed their armed struggle.


We will also need counter institutions in all realms; law, economy, and education to name a few.


Lastly, here’s John Robb again, this time on Open Source Leadership:


———————————-


Real Open Source Leadership


It’s important to understand that open source movements do have leaders. But these leaders operate differently than the leaders we are used to seeing. To understand this better, here’s something that I wrote up about the Egyptian open source protest back in January. It applies to the Occupy movement as well:


Open source protests are composed of people with very different views of the world brought together by a single achievable idea. In Egypt’s case, that’s the removal of Mubarak. Unfortunately, as a result of this diversity of views, open source protests are messy. Nobody is formally in charge.


However, this DOESN’T mean they aren’t any leaders in the protest. In fact, there are lots. The extent that anyone is a leader in a open protest like Egypt’s is based on:


Does the leader provide ways to move the protest forward, towards completing its goal?


Do they provide good innovations and great examples of what to do?


How closely does the leader’s stay to the protest’s goal? If that is what they focus on, they gain stature. IF their goals begin to grow and become more detailed (ideological), they lose support.


Do leaders coach or command? If they coach, they gain support. If they command, they lose it. If they attempt to seize control, the protest will turn on them.


What this means is that leaders can emerge in Egypt’s protest. They offer the chance to break the stalemate brought on by Mubarak’s survival strategy.


So. when does an open soruce protest reject a leader?


When a leader attempts to fork the protest, by trying to lead it towards an agenda or policy or politics only they care about, they should be ignored/rejected/blocked.

Pulling off the American Emperor’s Clothes Thread by Thread

Wayne Madsen

strategic-culture.org




The United States, which sought to capitalize politically, militarily, and financially from the break-up of the Soviet Union, Yugoslavia, Sudan, and Czechoslovakia and now seeks to reap the benefits from the similar potential fracturing of the Russian Federation, China, Libya, and Iraq, may receive a taste of its own medicine.

Across the United States, there are increasing calls for secession from a federal government that is not providing for the common welfare of the people. Republicans, joined by a number of corporatist Democrats, are echoing the austerity push in Europe to sell-off public assets to vulture capitalists at rock bottom prices. Calls by corporatist politicians to privatize the U.S. Postal Service, AMTRAK, the Tennessee Valley Authority, and even public schools will have the effect of divorcing most Americans from any regular contact with their federal government. Such a development will nurture current movements that call for secession from the United States and seed nascent emergent movements.

One of the latest regions where there are increasing calls for secession is a unique linguistic and cultural region that was decimated by the British Petroleum (BP) Deepwater Horizon oil disaster two years ago. Many of the French Creole-speaking inhabitants of the Cajun region of southern Louisiana now openly talk about leaving the rest of Louisiana and the United States after the state and federal government failed to protect them from the effects of the British petrol company’s oil deluge and the subsequent use of the oil dispersant Corexit, a deadly combination that dealt a fatal blow to the area’s seafood and tourism industries.

The U.S. Coast Guard, which became a virtual law enforcement arm for BP, is looked upon as a foreign military force by the Cajuns, people descendant from French Acadians who forcible deported in the 18th century from French Maritime Canada to Louisiana by a conquering British military force. Many Cajuns, concerned that BP would like to see them forcibly removed from their coastal and bayou homeland of southern Louisiana, vow that they will not allow the British remove them again. And, after the protection and assistance afforded to BP by the Democratic Obama administration and Republican administration of Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, the latter as subservient to British corporate interests as any Indian amah housemaid for a British East India Company colonial lord during the raj, the Cajun people realize they can, with their energy resources and even a crippled seafood industry, make it on their own.

Cajun Louisiana, or “Leta de la Lwizyàn” in the French Creole language, has the necessary requirements for sovereignty and self-determination under international law that has been codified since the Peace of Westphalia. The people of Lwizyan have a common ethnicity, history, and culture – all a requirement for sovereignty, plus a defined geographical region, which is basically the region of Louisiana south of Interstate 10. After the federal and state governments’ abysmal reaction to both Hurricane Katrina and the BP oil blow-out, both of which resulted in a district threat to the Cajun way of life, Lwizyan also has a human rights grievance against their governing political entities. Such human rights grievances have been used by the international community to justify the independence of such nations as Bangladesh, Israel, South Sudan, Kosovo, and East Timor.

Louisiana’s unique French culture has prompted it to take part in a number of international organizations, along with other francophone nations and regions, including France, the Wallon region of Belgium, and the Canadian provinces of Quebec, New Brunswick, Prince Edward Island, and Nova Scotia. Through observer status in the Francophone Community, French Creole-speaking delegates run shoulders with other French-speaking officials from nations as diverse as Haiti and Mauritius and Vanuatu and Switzerland.

After the dissolution of the USSR, fourteen new member states joined the United Nations – including Belarus and Ukraine, which had faux independent UN member state status as “Soviet Socialist Republics.” Although the dissolution of the United States may not be as rapid as that of the Soviet Union, it may experience a gradual breakup as seen in Yugoslavia.

Not only may Lwizyan ultimately take its seat in the UN General Assembly between Luxembourg and Madagascar, but there are other parts of the American empire that have legitimate reasons to break ties with rule from Washington, DC and join the international community as independent states.

Among the first candidates for independence are states and regions with legitimate reasons, including treaty provisions, to go it alone. Native American tribes that signed treaties as sovereign nations with Washington have historical and legal reasons to sever their ties with Washington. Many of the 525 federally-recognized Native American tribal nations possess the requirements to justify sovereignty and self-determination: common ethnicity, history, culture, a defined geographical region, and a long history of human rights grievances, including genocide, against the United States. The Lakota Sioux Nation (which seeks an independent Republic of Lakotah), Iroquois Nation (Haudenosaunee), Navajo Nation, and Hopi Nation have openly advocated for greater independence from American government oppression. The Iroquois have even issued their own passports, a move that was rejected by the Obama administration and American allies like Britain.

Hawaii, which lost its independence as a result of naked American aggression and the abolition of the Hawaiian monarchy, has a strong movement to restore Hawaiian independence. Similar independence movements in overseas territories such as Puerto Rico, Eastern Samoa, and Guåhån (which Washington continues to erroneously call by its colonial name, Guam, and not by its Chamorro name) are gaining in popularity. Hawaii. Guahan, Eastern Samoa, and Puerto Rico were acquired by the American empire during the United States’ 19th century grab for colonial possessions.

There are other American secession movements but many are merely screens and contrivances for racists, including groups that advocate the restoral of Southern Confederate independence and independence for Texas. However, there are other more legitimate secession movements that have are based on historical precedent. The Second Vermont Republic seeks the restoral of the independence of the short-lived First Vermont Republic that existed from 1777 to 1791. A number of secessionists have run for statewide office in Vermont.

The Alaska Independence Party, which is a libertarian party, advocates the independence of Alaska, a former Russian territory that was bought by the United States during the American Civil War. Supporters of Alaskan independence refer to the referendum of 1958, in which Alaskans were asked whether they wanted statehood, independence, commonwealth status, or remain a territory. Independence supporters seek another referendum with the same options.

Separatists in Washington state and Oregon seek to join Canada’s British Columbia to form the independent nation of Cascadia. And there are more than a few Californians who would like to resurrect their once briefly independent nation, the name of which appears on the California state flag: “California Republic.”

With calls for the abolition of Social Security, Medicare, the U.S. Postal Service, federally-funded public education, AMTRAK, and even the National Park system, Americans will increasingly find the federal government to be a useless entity that has sold off the public “commonwealth” to unscrupulous bankers and vulture capitalist investors. When Americans realize that the United States of America is a worthless encumbrance on their rights, we may hear the President of the UN General Assembly, perhaps a foreign minister of Scotland or Quebec, welcoming the independent nations of Leta de la Lwizyan, Guahan, Kalahu’i Hawai’i, and the Republic of Lakotah to take their seats in the General Assembly. The phrase “United States of America” will become as meaningless then as the “Union of Soviet Socialist Republics” and the “Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia” are today. The American Emperor, after his outer and inner threads have been pulled, will be nothing more than a naked representative of stark imperialism, colonialism, fascism, and militarism and will be justly buried in a pauper’s grave.

State-Capitalist Plutocracy or Free Market Prosperity?

We at NATA-NY wouldn't rule out populist nationalism as a threat to the NWO!


from: Center for a Stateless Society


By Darian Worden


While today’s states are very powerful, cracks in their power can open as they adapt to a changing world. Recession is not the only force of change. Economic and social practices and pressures that develop through increasing global contact will have a massive impact on the power and role of the state. Global commerce and communications continue to make the world more interconnected and interdependent.


Possible courses for the changing role of the state in an era of globalization can be represented by three general tendencies, keeping in mind that politics in reality will often be characterized by tensions between them.


The first possible course is reactionary nationalism.


The second is global corporate rule.


The third is global distributed power.


Reactionary nationalism involves the cultivation of local or national chauvinism, the closing of borders to people, products, and capital, and the suspicion of those perceived as “others” or “outsiders.”


Though this tendency does have the potential to inflict significant damage to life and prosperity, it probably will not see much success unless economic trouble becomes significantly more serious – which is of course possible. Regional spheres of influence and trade established in opposition to globalism can arise but they will still be connected to the global economy.


Reactionary nationalism is likely to be less prominent because of increased communication and its influence on ideology and economics, the need for outside resources and products, and improved transportation. If the use of sustainable energy reduces transport costs over the long term then autarky becomes economically less viable.


But more important than transportation or trade is communication – today it is faster, connected to larger networks, and more democratic than ever before, meaning that the average person has an unprecedented ability to not only receive, but to broadcast and fact-check information. Meme Generator pictures can be used to further a cult of personality, but they can also undermine it.


Social identification becomes less nationalistic with increasing global connectivity. Anyone with access to online social networking, especially when a common language or translation is available, can become known to worldwide peers. When we hear unfiltered news from Twitter we become involved in the process of sifting truth from rumor and share the feelings of outrage or triumph. The people we feel are “like us” can be those whom we see as sharing our struggles and successes, not those who look like us or talk like us. A sense of global community really comes into view when pizza orders placed from Egypt feed protesters in Wisconsin, and Anonymous hackers from around the world stage the electronic version of a sit-in protest by defacing a Syrian government website.


It is important to take a brief aside to remember that access to communication technology is not equal. This was well demonstrated by an Al-Jazeera report about residents of northern Uganda viewing the Kony 2012 video for the first time. After millions of people had seen the Kony 2012 video on the internet, many residents of northern Uganda, the region the film focuses on, had not been able to view it until a local charity organization screened the film. The reaction was generally negative.[1] Arab Spring protests were not caused by Twitter or Facebook, but internet communication was one tool used by organizers and protestors, sometimes more to broadcast to the outside world than to locals taking the streets. However as technology becomes cheaper and more accessible and various organizations work to distribute the tools the world will become more connected.


If reactionary nationalism is taken out, that leaves 2 choices: global corporate rule, or global distributed power.


Global corporate rule means the rule of political and economic elites, where political power typically is applied so that risk and cost are socialized while profits are privatized as much as possible. It sees a world of “hollow states” and crony states as people become resources to further the power of politicians and the profits of capitalists. In some cases border crossings offer little restriction on capital but major restrictions on labor, prohibiting labor choice in the global market, appeasing nationalists, and putting further barriers on inter-ethnic solidarity.


Appealing to rationality or the common good will sway few elites in this system, as many would rather have the power that comes with a greater share of wealth than have a lesser share of a greater amount of total wealth – or subjectively value political power over prosperity.


Global distributed power means that the powers held by political and economic elites become more widely dispersed among the population, with no region or body dominating others. It means trade between strong communities. It means that more people are able exercise more decision-making power over their own lives.


The environment of global distributed power provides the greatest opportunity for expanding individual liberty, making it the best choice for libertarians.


But any intention to disperse power runs into several problems.


States tend to be heavily armed organizations. The Federation of American Scientists estimates that over 19,000 nuclear weapons at various stages of readiness currently exist on the planet. The US alone has 8500 nuclear weapons. The US Navy has about 250 commissioned ships including 11 aircraft carriers. Well over a million people are in the US Armed Forces. [2]


Domestic police forces are being militarized. Michael Bloomberg, Mayor of New York, boasted last fall, “I have my own army in the NYPD, which is the seventh biggest army in the world.” The last ten years have seen more police forces equipped with SWAT teams, military rifles, armored vehicles, and even drone aircraft.[3]


Such factors suggest the benefit of avoiding the appearance of a “collapse” into “anarchy” – if only to discourage domestic crackdown and foreign military intervention. It might be best to approach the goal as a transition to an open, cosmopolitan decentralism that continually builds opportunities to further disperse power and to undermine the authority of one person over another in political, economic, and social relations. Rather than create a power vacuum that we must race against authoritarians to fill, it would be better to fill today’s personal and social power vacuums with popular power and individuals empowered by their relations in functioning libertarian communities. It is competing against the state by doing better where it falls short.


Of course, every gun requires someone to control it. This underscores the power of ideas, and the power of identity and allegiance. Will people identify with state power and orders from above or with a libertarian populism? How do they define their interests?


Another potential problem is that an overemphasis on decentralism can be exploited by authoritarians. Militarized police won’t just disappear, so who controls them and what for? Bloomberg the Duke of New York? Decentralism can also be used as a buzzword to promote exclusionary fiefdoms where “outsiders” who don’t belong are violently excluded and a tight-knit tyranny is tied over those who do “belong.” A twisted principle of “non-interference” or “self-determination” can be invoked to argue against outsiders trying to block the ability of local powers to interfere with individuals.


Educational work can mitigate or prevent such outcomes. Individuals deserve the freedom to do whatever does not interfere in the equal liberty of other individuals, to advocate for a way of life and help others when invited, and do not have the right to organize for the purpose of doing violence to people who aren’t invading the liberty of others.


Empowered individuals and libertarian communities bring counter-power to check the power of authoritarians. Within a libertarian community, the availability of a variety of alternatives and the realistic ability to create new alternatives establish a real check on power as organizations cannot stay in existence without pleasing individuals exercising free choice.


Of course, most of today’s powerful probably do not want to let go of their power, and they have many resources and techniques to steer events and discourse their way.


The solution is to dismantle power structures and create alternative social groupings to disperse power horizontally.


People today tend to rely on job and state. How to shift to dependence on voluntary mutual aid associations and alternative trading networks? The friendly societies that used to exist provided a worker-created source of stability: if someone got injured or lost a job, there were people and funds to take care of them as they got back on their feet – no application to the government required and no loss of medical coverage with the loss of a job.[4] But the organization used for emergencies can become a new model for everyday living. In this context the cooperative movement, which promises and often delivers people a chance to be greater participants, to have a greater say, in the services they rely on or the workplace that occupies a large part of their lives, has illustrative value.[5]


Building greater social power removes the personal power vacuum that states exploit, while displacing the authorities from political power.


Showing that a person will derive concrete benefits from participation in organizations of distributed power invites more participation in a community where libertarian social norms can be made to predominate. One kind of organization with the potential to create more widely distributed economic power is the makerspace or hackerspace. Members can pay a fee for private workspace and/or access to machine tools with less investment than would be needed for a startup business or garage tinkering – and they also get the benefits of interaction with other people in a voluntary organization with similar goals.[6] The global exchange of information can make localized production more feasible as people have a broader pool of knowledge to draw upon. More innovation and customization results from more people having access to knowledge and the tools to employ it.[7]


Going local typically doesn’t mean going against the world, but showing an interest in local diversities and in reducing the global burden of energy consumption.


Education will play a major role in bringing about the world of global distributed power. Ideas of liberty and solidarity and skills for making the transition in any specialty need to be researched and taught. The advantages and disadvantages of various alternatives to the status quo should be studied, and the way that emerging economic structures actually function can be better understood through the research methods of economics, anthropology, history, and sociology.


While the state does not hold a complete monopoly on education, state education policy does directly bear on the day-to-day lives of the majority of people of schooling age. Within state institutions, education for global distributed power can be done – in research, courses, and organizations at various levels. Alternatives like unschooling and voluntary community schools can educate while also demonstrating different models of dispersing power. Public gatherings, like those of the Occupy movement also offer opportunities for discussion and teach-ins.


The internet’s importance to making libertarian changes should not be underestimated. Social media and digital content are widely used for all types of information. The hyperlink and the search engine provide a faster way to verify claims than citations in print media or sources listed on television or radio broadcasts. Using Twitter can be more effective in learning global citizenship than looking at textbooks in a classroom. People who specialize in education need to work with, not against, the digital world.


How do some of today’s organizations and activities stack up in terms of tending toward global distributed power?


The European Union sounds good at first. On lands where millions have been killed in combat, war crimes, and genocide over the last century the EU engenders political and economic cooperation between 27 countries of different ethnic and linguistic backgrounds and operates with an ethic of fostering the rule of law and liberal democracy. But it has drawbacks. The way it treats political representation holds the danger of locking current nation-states in place. More immediately, it represents an effort at economic centralization. The EU operates a central bank, and promotes the use of a single currency which has been adopted as the official currency of 17 member states. This is centralizing economic power, and it operates within the system of finance run by economic elites.


With the economic crisis in Greece, many people have turned to local alternative currency networks, which participants generally describe as benefitting them economically as well as providing a sense of empowerment that comes with feeling a reliance on one’s own labor yet having deep connections with others.[8] Alternative networks can scale up from local initiative. Mobile applications and digital repositories open opportunities for exchange between a number of systems, and there is no reason why several currencies, local, regional, and global, cannot operate in parallel.


Bitcoin is an innovative digital global currency. It is not without its issues, but it is used to get around state controls. As a competing currency, it spreads economic power wider.


Today’s protest movements – whether Arab Spring, Greek rage, Indignados, Occupy, or even Chinese revolts – have a local basis but a global impact. In populist movements that shake up the status quo and get people into the streets and working together to make alternatives, a number of solutions are going to be proclaimed and sought, but importantly there are opportunities for people to try to live without the control of elites, and communication on what paths to take.


Anonymous and related cyber activist and hacktivist efforts are global undertakings that tend to target those who use repressive force in preventing the wider distribution of power. WikiLeaks makes it harder for organizations to operate in secret – they have a greater risk of public exposure to balance against internal communication, or could choose to bear the cost of operating honestly.


The state might think it’s not going anywhere but the globally-connected world means that it will need to adapt or perish. A creative approach to dispersing power globally can undermine the very foundations of state power. A true international community arises from the conversations held and solidarity felt through social networking and global protest – not from meetings of political and economic elites behind closed doors and security barricades.


Notes:


This essay was presented at the 2012 Association of Private Enterprise Education Conference.


[1] “Kony screening provokes anger in Uganda,” Al-Jazeera, March 14 2012.http://www.aljazeera.com/news/africa/2012/03/201231432421227462.html.


[2] “Status of World Nuclear Forces,” Federation of American Scientists.http://www.fas.org/programs/ssp/nukes/nuclearweapons/nukestatus.html. Retrieved March 19, 2012. Nuclear weapons figures include weapons slated for dismantling. However for the purposes of dismantling the state they remain a factor.


“Fleet Size,” US Navy Naval Vessel Register. http://www.nvr.navy.mil/nvrships/FLEET.HTM. Retrieved March 19, 2012.


“Military Personnel Strength Figures,” US Department of Defense.https://kb.defense.gov/app/answers/detail/a_id/253. Retrieved March 19, 2012.


[3] Hunter Walker, “Mayor Bloomberg: ‘I Have My Own Army,’” Politicker, November 30, 2011.http://www.politicker.com/2011/11/30/mayor-bloomberg-i-have-my-own-army-11-30-11.


Charles Johnson, “No, seriously, I could swear the water in this pot is getting a little hotter… (#7).” October 6, 2008. http://radgeek.com/gt/2008/10/06/no_seriously.


Police Drones Are Already Here, Defense Tech, March 8, 2012. http://defensetech.org/2012/03/08/police-drones-are-already-here.


[4] See for example, Roderick T. Long, “How Government Solved the Health Care Crisis: Medical Insurance that Worked — Until Government ‘Fixed’ It.” Originally published in the Winter 1993-94 issue of Formulations. Online at Roderick T. Long’s website: http://praxeology.net/libertariannation/a/f12l3.html.


[5] For more on cooperatives, see Keith Taylor, “The Lost Generation’s Call To Action,” Center for a Stateless Society, January 20, 2012. http://c4ss.org/content/9526.


[6] TekArts in Milford, New Hampshire is a hackerspace with active libertarian participants. http://tekarts.com.


[7] For more on localized production, see Kevin Carson, “The Homebrew Industrial Revolution,” Center for a Stateless Society, September 2009. http://c4ss.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/C4SS-Desktop-Manufacturing.pdf.


[8] Darian Worden, “Alternative Currency: Coming to Stores Near You?” Center for a Stateless Society, October 15, 2011. http://c4ss.org/content/8644.


Jon Henley, “Greece on the breadline: cashless currency takes off,” The Guardian, March 16, 2012.http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/mar/16/greece-on-breadline-cashless-currency.

Center for a Stateless Society (C4SS.org) News Analyst Darian Worden is a left-libertarian writer and activist. He hosts an internet radio show, Thinking Liberty. His essays and other works can be viewed atDarianWorden.com.

NATA-NY is back!

NATA-NY is very happy to humbly announce the long overdue premier of our new blog! Due to a certain individual's sabotage of NATA-NY.ORG,  my battles with health problems, and Jamie's and my relocation to our homestead in the Adirondack Mountains, it took about a year to find the time to commit to the blog.  Members of NATA-NY at present have joined Jamie and me on our family farm/homestead to work on agrarian and agorist projects centered around a land trust we are developing. This could be loosely described as  horizontal, non-hierarchical feudalism or termed anarcho-feudalism. It is very likely that some members of NATA-NY/NJ will be joining other nationalists and anti-statists to protest the Bilderberg group's presence on U.S. soil (see article). We are very enthusiastic about making our presence in the digital realm (outside of FbiBook) known once again.  We will try to keep the new blog relatively updated, adding material at least once a week. There is going to be more original writing by members of NATA.  Any National Anarchists (particularly in the U.S.) with new original material who wishes to be featured on the NATA blog, please e-mail natlanarchisttribalalliance@gmail.com.

Free Markets vs.Capitalism

By Jamie O'Hara & Craig FitzGerald 

National Anarchist Tribal Alliance - NY

Anarchists with socialist leanings associate the terms “free market” and “capitalism” with oppression and exploitation.  To anarcho-capitalists, the absence of state intervention in the market is the ultimate form of liberty.  In both the underground and mainstream political worlds, free enterprise is virtually synonymous with capitalism.  But these expressions are not one and the same.  The etymology of the word “capitalism” reveals characteristics that are completely antithetical to the concept of a free market, as well as the philosophy of anarchism.

                    

In English, the word “capital” dates back to the thirteenth century, when it was used to mean “primary,” “chief,” or “head.”  These words all necessarily imply the existence of hierarchy; “capitalism” as an organized economic system is inherently hierarchical.  Rather than describe free markets, the word is synonymous with plutocracy, which comes from the Greek for “rule or power of the wealthy or of wealth.”  When “capital” received its financial definition in the sixteenth century, its now double meaning—“money” and “head”—began to solidify this comparison to plutocracy.  No evidence exists of the word “capitalism” until 1854 when it meant the “condition of having capital.”  In 1861, French anarchist Pierre Joseph Proudhon coined the word “capitalism” and described it as a plutocratic economic system.

By the fourteenth century, the word also connoted mortality and life or death (hence “a capital offense” and “capital punishment”).  It is interesting to consider the way that most people today perceive money as a matter of life and death.  For those who participate in the plutocracy, abundant finances mean everything, while the lack thereof can bring one’s demise.  Our culture has been bombarded with the false value that currency equals wealth, and wealth equals life.  In actuality, the most common manifestation of capital punishment is the imposed system of fiat money.

So, capitalism is a life or death system in which money is the hierarchy’s head.  This perception of the word stemmed from an examination of the word’s etymology in English, but even more telling are the original Latin meanings of capitale.   In addition to the definitions associated with being first or on top, capitale could also mean “something stolen.”  This suggests a hint of corruption and theft (which may have influenced Proudhon’s idea that “property is theft”).  It also reflects the contemporary economic situation everywhere: banks and governments steal from the people. 

Such an understanding of the word “capitalism” allows one to draw a stark contrast between this economic system and the potential for truly laissez-faire free markets.  The theory of Agorism, posited by Canadian libertarian Samuel Edward Konkin III in 1975, is an ideal representation of real free enterprise.  The term comes from the Greek word agora, meaning “open marketplace,” and refers to the voluntary building of parallel underground economies.

Unlike capitalism, agorism is compatible with all forms of anarchism, regardless of hyphenation.  In An Agorist Primer, Konkin’s first and third Axioms of Agorism are, respectively: “The closest approach to a free society is an uncorrupted agora” and “The moral system of any agora is compatible with pure libertarianism” (i.e. anarchism).   If an anarchist community maintains an alternative economy apart from the state, that community is implementing agorism, regardless of whether that economy is communist, free market, or anything in between.  In fact, anarchist groups who do not embrace an agorist model will inevitably fail at being independent from the state and its corporate partners.  Even though agorism originated in a libertarian/anarcho-capitalist context, it is equally applicable to socialist anarchist communities.  Whether an anarchist community’s goals include socialized welfare and healthcare systems or alternative currencies and autonomous methods of trade, agorism is the only means.  

Anarchists of all stripes must bridge the gap between theory and action.  Economics is pragmatic, realistic and material.  Without it, anarchist communities are solely philosophical.  Agorism represents a way for tribes to attain successful and sustainable independence from the state. 

The intention behind anarcho-capitalism is to create free markets, not to establish hierarchies of wealth.  Anarcho-capitalists should consider completely disassociating from the label of capitalism at all, and instead employ terms like “free market,” “free enterprise,” “voluntaryism” and “agorism.”  Anarcho-capitalists who argue that their libertarian brand of capitalism is completely different from the statist-corporatist-Keynesian version of capitalism fail to recognize the historical reality that capitalism has never produced a free market.  They also ignore the etymological significance of the word.  While anarchism has enough semantic arguments and divisions, language is important.  The history of words has significance for humanity, and we should be very conscious of the messages we proclaim.

Pushing the System: Troy Southgate’s National-Anarchism: A Reader

via:Counter Currents Publishing

National-Anarchism: A Reader
Ed. Troy Southgate
London: Black Front Press, 2012


“That which is falling, should also be pushed” — Nietzsche, as quoted by Troy Southgate


This is a very well organized book. This is an interesting, enlightening, and autodidactic book. This is a much needed book. While I don’t recall when I first heard about National Anarchism, I do know that I have never really fully understood it. Until now.


Troy Southgate’s own words regarding National Anarchism capture the essence of this book:


Our vision, in a nutshell, is one of small village-communities in which people occupy their own space in which to live in accordance with their own principles. These principles depend on the nature of the people forming the community in the first place, because the last thing we wish to do is impose a rigid or dogmatic system of any kind. In theory, therefore, National-Anarchists can be Christian or pagan, farmers or artisans, heterosexual or homosexual. The important thing, however, is for National-Anarchist communities to be self-sufficient. They should also be mutualist, rather than coercive. In other words, people should be free to come and go at all times. If you are unhappy with the unifying principle of one National-Anarchist community, then simply relocate to another. On the other hand, communities must be respectful of their neighbors and be prepared to defend themselves from outsiders.


Finally, contrary to the increasingly desperate smears of our enemies on the both the Right and Left of the political spectrum, we are not using Anarchism as a convenient tactic t conceal a secret fascistic agenda of any kind—we are deadly serious. In addition, as mutualists we abide by the ‘live and let live’ philosophy. People are different and have different values. I modern, pluralistic societies, those values tend to conflict and it is inevitable that some values will override or perhaps even eradicate others. We think certain values are worth preserving for future generations and this is why we wish to create a climate in which this is possible. National-Anarchism, therefore, is Anarchism sui generis. An Anarchy of its own kind. (pp. 43–44


Troy Southgate has put together an ambitious tome: a reader that holds the essential text of a revolutionary political movement inside its simple black, red and white covers, while remaining clear, to the point, and amazingly approachable. Southgate’s collection of 23 essays is deceptively easy to read, and collectively deep to ponder.


Combining the talents of contributors such as Keith Preston (attackthesystem.com), Welf Herfurth (A Life in the Political Wilderness [Finis Mundi Press, 2011]), Flavio Gonçalves (of Finis Mundi Press), Brett Stevens (of the Amerika.org blog), Andreas Faust, and Josh Bates as well as Troy Southgate, National-Anarchism: A Reader represents the best of a new cycle of visionary thinkers.


From the very first sentences of the foreword, Southgate pulls no punches regarding the ideological underpinning of this book:


It may sound hard to believe, but there was a time when ordinary people had more control over their own lives and inhabited a world in which the vast majority of individuals were able to live in close-knit communities with their own kind, pursue a more rural existence away from the shallow environs of the average shopping mall, hunt or grow food for their own consumption, make conversation and music in a society without television or computer games, and even pass traditional values to their own children without the pernicious influence of Establishment schools and the mass media. So what went wrong? (p. 1)


This book offers both the answer and the antidote to that question. Kicking aside the shallow left and right sidebanks of history, National Anarchism “seeks to transcend the superfluous and obsolete ideologies of ‘left’, ‘right’ and ‘centre’” (back cover).


It is refreshing — in an age where the typical answer to that question would have been full of backward glances, romantic hand-wringing, and pessimistic doom and gloom predictions concerning the outcome of the challenges we are up against as a folk and as a people — to read the words of those who look straight ahead, critically and with sound plans for a continued undimmed and undiminished existence. Our continued undimmed and undiminished existence, and the rest of the sane world’s as well. Hope is here. More than hope — here we see a presentation of vision, a collection of thought, experience, reason, and will combined with a testament of faith from those who have obviously been digging deep and thinking hard about the future we face as our past crumbles away.


The book opens with a historical overview of the movement. Part educational, part who’s who and what’s what, this chapter is essential reading as a refresher or as a crash course, depending on your level of knowledge. Either way, it gives a great amount of detail and background succinctly and clearly, without condescension.


This chapter is followed by Brett Stevens’ interview with Troy Southgate which expands the overview of the movement in an interesting and personable manner. This feeling of personal presence, of the book having been written in the authentic voices of real men, coming out of real experience and practical reflection, is a quality that sets this book apart from most political texts. It is extremely readable (without being ‘dumbed down’); the chapters build with seeming effortlessness upon each other like conversations that take place when great minds meet.


Troy Southgate’s essays act as the central ‘voice’ alternating with and connecting the other ‘speakers’ in this conversation.


Chapter 3, aptly titled “National Anarchism in a Nutshell” is just that. Josh Bates does a great job of distilling the movement to its vital essence: “National-Anarchist philosophy, then, is not the oxymoronic amalgamation of right and left wing political ideologies but a harkening to the original and true meaning of nation combined with a desire to preserve the natural races of man and the aspiration to free all people from the chains of both left and right wing totalitarianism and imperialism” (p. 28).


Flavio Gonçalves’ essay, “National Anarchism: The Way of the Future,” which makes up Chapter 5, defines further what National Anarchism stands for in light of the movement’s repudiation of dogmas of state, racial supremacy, racism, anti-racism, equalitarianism, and the whole left/right concept.


N-A stands for something that many believe to be pessimistic and/or defeatist, and considering the degree of social degradation that is so deep and rooted we see no way of turning this boat around, if you will allow me to use an analogy from “Ship of Fools”. Drugs, alcohol, MTV and sexual degradation have affected our society in such a way that it is impossible to return to the old days, some even consider those things as a fundamental part of our society.


N-A stands for the termination of nation-states, has a necessity for survival and upholds the need of a rebirth of our tribal spirit. All national territories should be regionalized, fragmented, reduced to small territories and within those territories people with common ethnic or cultural affinities will gather together . . .” (pp. 37–38).


Keith Preston’s essays comprise chapters 7, 11, and 13. These vary from his brief 4 page “Anarchism of the Right” which presents core ideas: “White libertarians and anarcho-capitalists tend to be economics-oriented, anarchists of the Right prefer to emphasize the particular, and champion the sovereignty, autonomy, and preservation of the unique cultures, regions, ethnicities, identities, faiths and tribes against the homogenizing and universalizing forces of the global economy, technology and imperialism” (p. 47) and core names: “De Benoist, Nietzsche, Jünger, Evola, Schopenhauer, Belloc, . . . Proudhon, Bakunin, Tolstoy, Stirner and Kropotkin. Its leading current proponents are Troy Southgate, Flavio Gonçalves, Hans Cany, Peter Topfer, Andrew Yeoman, Welf Herfurth, Chris Donnellan and, at least peripherally, myself” (p. 46) to his 103 page “Philosophical Anarchism and the Death of Empire,” an essay which is, as he notes in his preface, “an effort, however humble, to apply traditional anarchist theory to the world situation we contemporary radicals currently find ourselves in, particularly the emergence of the New World Order, the ongoing dilemma of the Leviathan state, and the uniquely subtle form of totalitarianism that has caught the fancy of the elites of the First World nations, so-called “political correctness” (p. 126). Heady, heavy stuff, written in clear and accessible language free of multi-syllabic words that sound clever but are devoid of substance.


Along with essays that cover stances on everything from alternative education, economic autarky, and environment all the way to addressing and examining anarchism itself,National-Anarchism: A Reader includes essays that deal with components that should be part of every emerging and existing movement’s normal operations. Andreas Faust weighs in on the power of pranks and hijinks as promotional tools, looking at ways activists can use and manipulate the media in his essay “Humour as a Weapon,” and Welf Herfurth offers examples, pointers and truisms concerning the positives of political confrontation in “The Strategy of Tension.” Again, as with every piece of text in this book, the essays are logical, understandable and worth reading.


As an editor of a book that is destined to become the defining text of a movement, Troy Southgate lives up to his role. Not only are his essays well written themselves, and balanced adroitly throughout the book, the chapters are arranged intelligently, each leading up to, complementing or building from the others that come before it. The individual voices of the writers are not lost in an overall mix, yet the book keeps to its single note – that of being a National Anarchist Reader—with no jarring or discordant elements. Apt quotations (“A good man and a good citizen are not exactly the same thing.—Augustine” (p. 74)) head up some of the essays, while handy lists of further reading suggestions follow others. The font is easy to read, the paper stock bright and the margins wide enough for note making.


While no one ought to judge a book by its cover alone, a well-designed cover is no small advantage in giving a book appeal; National-Anarchism: A Reader is beautifully designed—from the glossy black of its background to the stark red of its lettering to the well sized and well placed NAM Star-in-circle symbol presented in eye-catching white in the center of the front cover. The back cover is as well laid out as the front, albeit less stark and more textual as befits its place.


The first real words in the book are from the finest of all English poets, John Keats: “The only means of strengthening one’s intellect is to make up one’s mind about nothing; to let the mind be a thoroughfare for all thoughts” (unnumbered fourth page). The last word printed in this book is “victory.” It concludes a final sentence: “In the long-term, it is the only possible road to victory” (p. 306). I don’t know if Mr. Southgate realized that he began and ended his reader this way, but I find that he chose (however he chose) perfectly — with a fitting opening quotation, and a fitting final word that make two perfectly fitting sentiments. National-Anarchism: A Reader makes a great case for the complete and utter sensibleness of its positions, thoughts, stances, attitudes, agendas, and, ultimately, its victory.

Indigenism, Anarchism, and the State: An Interview with Ward Churchill

I just recently read this interview with Ward Churchill from 2003, in which he makes the excellent argument that Anarchism is fundamentally a form of anti-statist nationalism. Mr.Churchill is a very controversial figure who the American Indian Movement (AIM) maintains is in the employ of COINTELPRO, despite his published material exposing the famed counter intelligence program. -- CF NATA-NY

Ward Churchill is one of the most outspoken activists and scholars in North America and a leading commentator on indigenous issues. Churchill's many books include Marxism and Native Americans, Fantasies of the Master Race, Struggle for the Land, The COINTELPRO Papers, Genocide, Ecocide, and Colonization, Pacifism as Pathology, and A Little Matter of Genocide: Holocaust and Denial in the Americas. In his lectures and published works, Churchill explores the themes of genocide in the Americas, racism, historical and legal (re)interpretation of conquest and colonization, environmental destruction of Indian lands, government repression of political movements, literary and cinematic criticism, and indigenist alternatives to the status quo.

Churchill has recently come under attack for views expressed in the article Some People Push Back: On the Justice of Roosting Chickens, written in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon. An important part of the future of US academic freedom in the coming years will likely be determined by the outcome of the ongoing attempts to strip Ward Churchill of his academic position at Colorado University in Boulder. Two members of Autonomy & Solidarity sat down with Ward Churchill in Toronto in November of 2003 to do this interview. It was transcribed by Clarissa Lassaline and edited by Tom Keefer, Dave Mitchell, and Valerie Zink.

Upping The Anti: We want to start off by asking you about your thoughts on the anti-globalization movement which, in terms of anti-capitalist struggles, has been one of the most significant developments in the past decade. This movement has also been criticized in the US context, as being largely made up of white middle class kids running around "summit hopping". What's your take?

Ward Churchill: I think the anti-globalization movement, for lack of a better term, is a very positive development in the sense that it re-infuses the opposition with a sense of purpose, enthusiasm, and vibrancy. The downside is that it’s a counter-analytical movement in that it thinks it’s something new. We used to call it “anti-imperialism,” just straight up. The idea that “globalization” is something new, rather than a continuation of dynamics that are at least 500 years deep, is misleading. That needs to be understood.

UTA: In your book Struggle For The Land, there’s an essay called “I Am Indigenous.” Can you elaborate a bit on the politics and genealogy of indigenism?

WC: Perhaps I can by way of your introduction of yourselves. You know, you say you're post-Leninists. Fine. But why are you something that goes beyond Leninism, rather than something that isn’t?

UTA: It’s a reflection of the roots of where our political grouping came from.

WC: But you top that off by describing yourselves as revolutionaries, and I’m saying “why?” Do you aspire to overthrow the presiding order in the Canadian state so that you can reorganize the state in a more constructive fashion? Then you’re a revolutionary. Do you want to see the Canadian state here when you’re done in some form or another? If not, then you’re a devolutionary and you might want to call it by its right name.

UTA: So would you say that no anarchists could call themselves revolutionaries?

WC: If they do, they’re deluding themselves. They’re not understanding themselves or the tradition that they’re espousing in proper terms because, for starters, anarchists are explicitly anti-statist. And the object of a revolution is to change the regime of power in a given state structure. So I think “revolutionary” is a misnomer.

UTA: One of the issues with devolution is that, at least potentially, it represents an attempt to go back to some kind of ideal way the world once was. But we can’t just roll back the clock of history.

WC: No, of course not. But again we’re into this implicitly Marxist progression, and anarchists aren’t especially progressive. In fact, you get a physical fight from some of them for using that term, because they consider it an insult. And I think properly so. There’s no immutable law of history. The structures, however, aren’t immutable either, and they can be devolved.

One conflation of terms that really bothers me a lot, which seems to be plaguing the discourse still, is the conflation of the term “nation” and the term “state.” You have this entity out there called “the United Nations.” It really should have been called “the United States,” because to be eligible even for admission to the Assembly you have to be organized in that centralized, arbitrary structure. No “nations” as such are even eligible for admission to the United Nations. “The United States” was a name already taken, however, and this was very useful in obfuscating the reality.


But the upshot of that is that you’ve got a whole lot of anarchists running around thinking they’re anti-nationalist, that nationality, nationalism in all forms, is necessarily some sort of an evil to be combated, when that’s exactly what they’re trying to create. You’ve got four or five thousand nations on the planet; you’ve got two hundred states. They’re using “anti-nationalist” as a code word for being anti-statist. With indigenous peoples, nationality is an affirmative ideal, and it hasn’t got any similarity at all to state structures.


You may have nations that are also states, but you’ve got most nations rejecting statism. So you can make an argument, as I have, that the assertion of sovereignty on the part of indigenous nations is an explicitly anti-statist ideal, and the basis of commonality with people who define themselves as anarchists. We’ve got to deal with our own bases of confusion in order to be able to interact with one another in a respectful and constructive way.

UTA: Are there correlations between your indigenous perspective and anarchism? Many people might make the argument that, in fact, indigenism is an ancestor to anarchism, and not vice versa.

WC: Well, that is precisely my argument. The two are not interchangeable, point for point, but they have far more in common than they have dividing them, if each is properly understood. And part of the task here is to make them properly understood. If you look at green anarchy, for better or worse, you’re going to find all kinds of references to commonalities with indigenous peoples on every basis, from social organisation to environmental perspective. It will take some time, but you can make that conceptual bridge between indigenism and anarchism, and it’s understood.

I would see the main distinction, on this continent, as being a detachment from base. Indigenous peoples are grounded, quite literally. There’s a relationship to the land that has evolved over thousands of years, and that’s completely denied to the people from the settler culture who self-describe as anarchists. With that distinction made, however, we’ve got all kinds of principles in common, aspirations in common, perspectives in common, and we need to build upon those in order to develop a respectful set of relations that allow us to act in unity against that common oppressor that we share.

Read rest of interview