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From the article: “There can be no ethical services provided by the government because they are facilitated through the power of the gun,” writes PARC, presuma
by wz1000 9y ago
From the article:
“There can be no ethical services provided by the government because they are facilitated through the power of the gun,” writes PARC, presumably while flipping the bird like in the top photo. “Don’t get us wrong, we believe that many of these services are crucial for society, like healthcare, education, and maintained roadways, but we believe that the way to achieve access for all is by deconstructing the state and capitalism, as well as other coercive hierarchies that exist in our society. It is this driving philosophy that motivates our actions, not only to fix the potholes, but to take power back from the state, into the hands of the people.”
- nailer 9y ago> facilitated through the power of the gun Fascinating, seeing as many people's experience of self-identified 'anarchism' is through the power of the fist.
- icebraining 9y agoIsn't using your fists just self-defense when someone is pointing a gun at you?
- nailer 9y agoSure, but in most cases anarchism is 'bash the fash' with 'fascist' being defined as 'anyone we don't like' including unarmed people. Fists or makeshift weapons are typically used as they can't be traced. It's odd: anarchists openly justify violence in defense from 'fascism', whereas fascism is correctly defined as obtaining and maintaining power through violence, without seeing the irony.
- icebraining 9y agoAre you sure it's "most cases", or just the ones you hear about in the news? How many do you know personally? Beware of the availability bias. As an anecdote, I live near a left-wing anarchist group called the Center of Libertarian Culture, and I can assure you they're all pacific people. It's odd: anarchists openly justify violence in defense from 'fascism', whereas fascism is correctly defined as obtaining and maintaining power through violence, without seeing the irony. There's no irony; anarchists don't want to obtain and maintain power, just to prevent others from doing so.
- nailer 9y agoI know a couple, from tech, who are anarchists: I'm friends with one of them despite them being very damaged people. Both are openly violent towards anyone right of Bernie Sanders and one other told me, with a serious face, they wanted to stab everyone in the pool at a tech conference I attended. By beating the shit out of people you're obtaining power for yourself. Modern anarchism is fascism, masking itself as the opposite.
- icebraining 9y agoWhy do you think that couple is representative of the whole (or even most) anarchists today?
- nailer 9y agoBecause every anarchist I've known personally, met online, or read about shares their same ideals of moral superiority through violence. Saying 'violent thugs don't represent the original priciples of anarchism' is missing the point, in the same way that people who say 'real communism hasn't been tried' and ignore the 100M dead people.
- perl4ever 9y agoAll of the anarchists I've ever known have been mild mannered geeks and academics.
- nailer 9y agoSome of those academics smash people's skulls with bike locks. People who are mild mannered often enjoy violence when they think they can't be identified.
- perl4ever 9y agoThat is an interesting assertion, but I don't think it is a good way of convincing people to see things your way. The more I hear the message that anarchists and anti-fascists are the real fascists, the less receptive I am to the viewpoint. It's similar to the repetitive promotion of the idea that civil rights activists are the real racists. There is the message you are sending with the argument itself, and then there is the meta-message you are sending by making the argument. The former can be fairly logical, and yet be undermined by the latter.
- marnett 9y agothis is a gross misrepresentation of quite a well defined school of thought.
- nailer 9y agoNot discussing the school of thought, just self defined anarchists, as mentioned in the post.
- hermitdev 9y agoI don't think it's a misrepresentation at all, especially if you consider the anti-Fa movement. anti-Fa is ironically using very fascist tactics in their protest of fascism.
- icebraining 9y agoThat's what I was thinking when I said "beware of the news bias". Regardless of what one thinks of specific actions of the Antifa movement, it's not necessarily true that those represent even Antifa members as a whole, and it's completely specious to assume they represent anarchists as a whole. Antifa is not even an anarchist-only movement.