Feeling squeezed? White males need not apply.

Recently I  was at a supermarket that uses the American flag for its logo. The ladies at the deli were handing out samples of buffalo chicken salad, and I asked if I could buy a pound of it. They said, “No, it only comes in sandwiches that were made at a warehouse in Massachusetts.” We can assume the sandwich assemblers were recent immigrants, possibly illegals. Then the ladies at the deli complained that their hours had been cut. I was infuriated. The process of outsourcing jobs and insourcing illegal and legal immigrants has massively accelerated.

What other conclusion can we draw from this article in the Hindustan Times entitled “US healthcare expansion means big business for India.” So let’s get this straight. We are borrowing money from China, to pay India to administer our healthcare system? While there are millions of unemployed?

War has been declared on us.

When white Americans have been outsourced and insourced out of our jobs, we won’t be able to fall back on the Welfare State. Welfare is not for people like us. People like us work to support the welfare state. When we have no work, there will be no welfare state.

Besides, the people I know, in the culture I grew up in, cannot stand to have our work taken away from us.  We are proud, independent, hard working people, not a flock of “Social Services Sheeple” who can be bought off with food stamps and free cheese.

Outsourcing and insourcing are not products of “market forces.” They are products of sheer inequities of power. The reason you are being laid off and your job is being shipped overseas is because the people who control the commanding heights of the economy have the power to do it to you. If outsourcing is the imperative of impersonal market forces, why does it not happen to your bosses too? Simple: the reason corporate fat cats are not laid off and their jobs shipped to Bangalore where some bright young MBAs will do them for pennies on the dollar is because you don’t have the power to do it to them.

But you have more power than you think.

The key is economic relocalization: white Americans need to stop being employees who exist at the sufferance of evil elites and far-flung, vulnerable global networks. We need to retrain ourselves to look for opportunities to produce things for ourselves in as localized a manner as possible, and to encourage and support others in our communities who are doing the same thing.

We need to begin now, to get economic relocalization to reach critical mass while we still have the freedom to do so. We need to create something that is resilient enough that it can’t be outlawed or expropriated or crushed under the iron heel. We do not have much time left.

If we lose the country it’s our own damned fault. We are sitting atop more than enough resources; it’s just a matter or redirecting the resources into decentralized/localized rather than centralized/globalized economies.

Millions of ordinary laboring entrepreneurs can do things cheaper, better, more efficiently and more resiliently than Walmart and the US government. I have seen this with my own eyes time and again.

My focus is relocalization of the food supply, because this is the most basic form of local economy. We have to rebuild civilization from the ground up, and it all started with agricultural surpluses.

Right now we are no more than desperate hunter-gatherers of Federal Reserve Notes. All production and distribution is controlled through the fiat currency system, a diabolical network that can rob you of the fruits of your labor not only with printing presses, but merely with the stroke of a computer key.

Relocalization of the food supply will organize people on a micro-social level and teach us social intelligence again. With social intelligence we can turn our private car system into an ad hoc mass transit system, among other things. The only reason we don’t do that now is we lack social intelligence, which allows corporations and government to easily administer a centralized, granular control over us.

Agricultural relocalization will teach us the social intelligence we need to take back control of our own commerce. From this will proceed small workshops, “smith-shops” repair shops, flea markets and second hand trade – a million ways to ameliorate the painful economic contraction by withdrawing from and replacing the consumer-corporate economic model.

So the real mission is to increase social intelligence. Books won’t do it. This is something that must be learned from practice, from a radical change in “lifestyle.”

With social intelligence we can put Walmart out of business and laugh while the US government drowns in a vat of its own debt. That’s not our debt. We didn’t sign any loans to China, or agree to borrow money from Central Banks to give it to Israel or bail out Goldman Sachs or go to war on Iraq and Afghanistan.

If you are the sort of person that makes things happen, get in touch. I am not going to spell out the details of my easily replicated economic relocalization activities in this article, but I will talk to any individual I deem trustworthy. That is relocalization in practice.

There’s a great article in Time magazine by Amanda Ripley (I wrote a review of her great book, The Unthinkable in the City Journal) on one of the most under covered security lessons of 9/11:  that an aware citizenry can defend itself.  It ends with this telling para which depicts the government reasserting its authority to prop up its legitimacy:

After the passengers [heroes] of Flight 253 deplaned in Detroit, they were held in the baggage area for more than five hours until FBI agents interviewed them. They were not allowed to call their loved ones. They were given no food. When one of the pilots tried to use the bathroom before a bomb-sniffing dog had finished checking all the carry-on bags, an officer ordered him to sit down, according to passenger Alain Ghonda, who thought it odd. “He was the pilot. If he wanted to do anything, he could’ve crashed the plane.” It was a metaphor for the rest of the country: Thank you for saving the day. Now go sit down.

The same spirit of being in control, regardless of government inaction/incompetence, should be true for other aspects of our lives under a similar assault by a global system run amok.What am I talking about?  Our economic and societal future.  If it’s not clear to you already after seeing a global economic meltdown caused by the gluttony of financial parasites, it should be.  But it’s worse than that.  The entire system has failed to produce anything resembling improvement in our lives for years:

• Median male incomes today are the same as they were in 1974 in the US (and likely all over the western world).  No progress has been made despite a doubling of productivity and massive top line GDP growth. Worse, given that female incomes aren’t on par with male incomes yet, the typical American family makes much less per hour worked than in 1974.
• All of the requirements for entry into the middle class are now private expenses.  From health care to a college education, if you can’t afford the minimum (let alone high quality versions), you aren’t allowed entry.  Worse, those expenses are spiraling out of control at rates many times the rate of inflation.  Nothing is being done to address this.
• The system is geared to make us fail.  Not only has outsourcing/off-shoring just started (everything that can be moved offshore to take advantage of the arbitrage opportunity in wage disparities between western and workers in developing countries will be) we are being laden with un-repayable debt. To wit: there’s been NO job growth in the last decade (despite tens of millions in population growth) and total debt from all sources is still near ALL time historical highs.

To add insult to injury, efforts to correct any of the above through governmental or regulatory reform have failed miserably (the government and both parties have been captured by transnational business interests):   from endless bailouts to industries actually writing the legislation that covers them to guarantee rich profit growth while solving nothing meaningful (as we saw with both the recent health care and finance bills).  We are at a dead end.So, take control.

NOTE:  My solution is to form a tribal layer.  Resilient communities that are connected by a network platform (a darknet).  A decentralized and democratic system that can provide you a better interface with the dominant global economic system than anything else I can think of.  Not only would this tribe protect you from shocks and predation by this impersonal global system, it would provide you with the tools and community support necessary to radically improve how you and your family does across all measures of consequence.  Of course, this may not be the right solution for you, but if it is…

NOTE2:  Seems like the term darknet is confusing people.  Going to need to rethink the branding and terminology.

From Global Guerrillas, January 3, 2010

TOQ Online:

Andrew Yeoman: At its heart National Anarchism is a purely political framework, but any group or religious movement can adopt it to advance the aim of establishing an autonomous region or community.  Religion has a special importance for National Anarchism as it is one of the most powerful motivating factors of human society, and it is vital for many religious traditions to form communities where their values are respected and recognized by the territorial administrators of the land they live on.

Forming communities exclusively on the basis of religious conviction is a perfectly acceptable option for National Anarchists.  National Anarchists have been known to advocate for autonomous Christian, Muslim, Pagan, and secular regions according to the values of the National Anarchist in question.  This is how traditional societies have operated for most of human history.

Any particular National Anarchist may advocate for areas to be administered according to certain religious values or even be a strictly secular enterprise, but that the ideal determining factor being the will of the people involved in a given region.

For purely practical reasons, some groups such as BANA take no official position on what religious values participants should have. However, activists are encouraged to have strong beliefs concerning the tradition they follow and tolerance of differences between comrades in the same struggle for national liberation.

TOQ Online: BANA got a lot of attention for protesting a rather large homosexual event in San Francisco. Tell me about that. Obviously it took some courage. What was the rationale for the protest? Are there homosexual National Anarchists?

Andrew Yeoman: The event in question was the Folsom Street Fair, an annual sado-masochist event in San Francisco that has been running for over 25 years. It is essentially a public orgy where any and all acts of sexual deviance take place in full view of the police.  In other words it’s the antithesis of sexual responsibility.

Our protest centers on the fact that children and minors — some as young as babies and three-year-olds dressed up in leather suits and dog collars — and were brought to witness the spectacle. Many are brought by adoptive gay parents who believe that having their children witness these events exposes them to greater diversity.

In our statement on the reasons for this protest, we made it clear that we can’t prevent adults engaging in risky or vile behavior, but we have the shared responsibility to prevent harm coming to children at these events who may be abused at home.  We have been criticized for appearing to be anti-gay or a square “right wing” group tolerating only Christian family values.  If that is the case, then my view is “so be it.”

Our goal is to represent the people in our tribe and the views of the people in our local area.  The overwhelming majority of people who have learned about this event through us have supported our actions 110 percent.  We even have our supporters among adult attendees who don’t like minors at the event, and among queers who believe it gives their community a bad name.

What is most telling is the complete lack of coverage from the mainstream media and government of an event that draws tens of thousands of people from across the country.  By saying nothing, we believe they are encouraging child abuse, recklessly promoting the spread of sexually transmitted diseases, and ignoring the complaints of the vast majority of their constituents in San Francisco.

The ideology of National Anarchism makes no requirement on what kind of sexual preferences people take.  Although most National Anarchists hold traditionalist or conservative views of sexual relationships, I know of queer National Anarchists.  National Anarchists who are queer tend to have folkish views on racialism and may support establishing enclaves that are devoted to their lifestyle of choice.  To paraphrase Troy Southgate, the most well-known National Anarchist ideologue, there is every reason to support queer individuals to act as white blood cells in our society rather than pariahs.

The cultural and tribal goals of BANA necessitate the promotion of traditional relationships between men and women and the growth of successful families.  That does not mean we persecute individuals who have alternative lifestyles. On the contrary, alternatives are perfectly acceptable as long as differences of opinion are respected.

TOQ Online: Most nationalist groups are predominantly composed of single men. Is this true of BANA? Are there women, married couples, families with children?

Andrew Yeoman: To date BANA has been most successful with Bay Area youth.  BANA consists mostly of people under 30 and is about 70 percent male/30 percent female. However there is a growing trend of women and families supporting our campaigns.  I am very proud to share that we have been blessed with a pair of comrades becoming engaged, and we also have female members taking leadership roles within the network.  As a tribe it’s essential for us to have a wide cross-section of people at different stages of life and to foster positive and meaningful experiences for the people who become involved.

Although the youth predominate in our street actions, older members are involved in other ways, either as advisers or as advocates.

The website and YouTube channel that we use to share our experiences and events are the public record of BANA. Unfortunately, due to the limits of the technology, this acts as sort of a one-way mirror. There also many activities we do that for one reason or another don’t become publicized.

TOQ Online: What are some concrete skills and practices that BANA is developing in order to be a resilient and flourishing community even as California plunges from the First World into the Third World?

Andrew Yeoman: I divide our training curriculum along three lines: knowledge, skills, and experience.

For knowledge we have a very active book sharing club and discussion groups on European customs and culture.

For skills I stress those disciplines that help individuals become fully realized in the roles they wish to play in the network and their lives as a whole.  This can be anything from writing, public speaking, physical fitness, survival skills, protest organizing, and the art of diplomacy.  We want to share the experiences and skills we have learned so we can mentor new members of the tribe in the ways of community organizing.

The culmination of this work is to prepare activists for the challenges and obstacles they will face while undertaking political struggles. The only way to do this is through the hard work of experience and winning hearts and minds to our cause.  As far as I’m concerning, a person cannot call him or herself a BANA activist without taking public action to win our people over to our cause or create allies in other tribes that respect our differences.

It is my belief that all political movements are defined by what they do and how they are viewed by the community they represent.  If the actions of the movement are inconsistent with the prevailing cultural attitudes of those people, they will be rejected for being incompatible with the people’s desires.

To date National Anarchists are known, significantly in my opinion, for their actions rather than their words.  We are a young movement, and the evolution of the National Anarchist ideas since the year 2000 has been extraordinary.  There are few writers who write objectively in favor of National Anarchism, yet our influence has dominated discussions of Left wing anarchists for the last few years.

It is also significant that the goals of BANA and other National Anarchists are modest in comparison with political movements who have macroscopic world views that pit themselves against a host of large national, racial, or corporate interests.  BANA’s focus is just the opposite, resting exclusively on representing the interests of our people in the nine Bay Area counties and no further.

In practical terms we train our cadre in the arts of self-sufficiency, gardening, self-defense, renewable energy, mutual aid, technology, and provide a support network for people.

As the slide into Third World status accelerates, as it has been, I believe that a community utilizing this model of organizing and training will produce the leaders and support network capable of handling sensitive situations with greater skill and determination than activists who do not continually strive to find, rectify, and eliminate blind spots that could compromise the success of our mission: to represent and defend the interests of our tribe and like-minded people.

TOQ Online: Let’s end on a visionary note. What do you hope BANA will have accomplished in ten years’ time? What form would you like the BANA community to take as it develops?

Andrew Yeoman: In ten years’ time BANA will be one of a number of regional autonomous networks that support each other in providing a social movement of activists who are neither Left nor Right but true to their cultural heritage and act to fully realize the desires of its membership without compromise.

It is my desire that BANA, in line with the demographic reality of California today, develop to not just represent the interests of my tribe but instead represent the interests of hundreds of tribes working in concert on mutually beneficial objectives.

When a million tribes rise up and refuse to acknowledge authorities higher than themselves, the global system will lose the base it depends on for its existence, and the first stage of our goals will be achieved. Then the Tribes will be free to follow their destiny as they see fit, from each according to their abilities and to each according to their needs.

TOQ Online:

Andrew Yeoman: In my opinion anarchism is most easily understood in terms of the Greek origin of the word: anarch.  An anarch is defined as a sovereign individual.  Ernst Jünger used a famous analogy, “the Anarch is to the anarchist, what the monarch is to the monarchist,” to describe this idea. So anarchism is about the pursuit of sovereignty, individual and collective.

Classical anarchism has evolved into anarcho-communism, anarcho-syndicalism, anarcho-capitalism, green anarchism, anarcho-primitivism, etc.  All of these tendencies hold that government and capitalism do more harm to people than good. Thus anarchists are united in attempting to envision an organic form of society without the state. Note also that nearly all of these form of anarchism focus on alternative ways of organizing the economy.

TOQ Online: In what sense is National Anarchism nationalist?

Andrew Yeoman: While ideologically a National Anarchist agrees with the anarchist criticism of government and capitalism, what makes us different is that economic concerns are of secondary importance to the individual’s primary loyalty to his or her cultural, ethnic, and ethical identity.  In the context of the vast social pathologies of global capitalism National Anarchism provides tactics and strategies to foster autonomy amidst adversity.

Another way of think of National Anarchism is in terms of a tribal society.  A tribal society upholds certain values, ways of life, and territorial integrity that are inviolable.  The community bonds of a tribal society are stronger than capitalism due to the fact that the primary activity of society is not solely based on buying and selling commodities but realizing the higher value of religious, traditional, or political aims.

There are certain principles however that must be held to promote the National Anarchist path of ethnic survivalism: demanding a decentralization of political power, refusing to support government mandated multiculturalism, advocating the autonomy of all nationalities, and morally supporting freedom of association for all people that do not act to harm other people.

This cultural imperative makes National Anarchism different from both anarchism and nationalism yet brings both traditions together in a way designed to genuinely respect other tribes, embrace one’s own, and provide the community necessary to help individuals rediscover a lost cultural heritage.

TOQ Online: When and where did National Anarchism first appear? Who are its creators?

Andrew Yeoman: National Anarchism developed in the late 1990s, and the term was used simultaneously by Troy Southgate (England), Peter Töpfer (Germany), and Hans Cany (France).  Richard Hunt is also an early influence on what was to be called National Anarchism in the 1980s.

The most well-known ideologist of National Anarchism is Troy Southgate, who had a long career in the National Front in the 1980s and other organizations including a role with the Third Positionist movement. Southgate was the first to take the ideas of the French New Right developed by Alain de Benoist and others and apply them to creating a vision of a society that does not rely on capitalism or traditional nationalism (which is primarily motivated by loyalty to the nation-state) to achieve the goal of ethnic and cultural survival.

National Anarchist ideas also came to fruition in the atmosphere of intense persecution for racialist beliefs in Europe, and an important side benefit of the ideology was to provide a solution to the extremely restrictive debate allowed on issues of race in European countries.  Besides developing the means of avoiding government prosecution, the ideology encourages a more positive or diplomatic approach with other nationalities on common goals.

The National Anarchist movement existed mostly online, except for a small group in England called the National Revolutionary Faction which disbanded in 2000.  National Anarchists were involved in street demos in London in 1999, which took the form of a protest against a proposed cinema multiplex in Crystal Palace, where the National Anarchists infiltrated a group of radical greens.

The most influential National Anarchist street protest was led by Welf Herfurth in Australia in 2007 at the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) demonstration in Sydney.  For the first time in 30 years a nationalist contingent made a presence at a street protest in Australia which has been dominated by Left wing organizations for as long as anyone can remember.

Starting in 2007, the Bay Area National Anarchists began street protests in California in support of anti-war campaigns, against child endangerment, illegal immigration, Israel, and other issues.  Although there was an initial wave of interest in National Anarchism in the late 1990s up until 2001, it was not until BANA began a sustained campaign of street protests that the movement came to exist in North America beyond the internet.

In 2008 Troy Southgate agreed with my proposition that “Tribal Anarchism” is a slightly more accurate description of the goals of the movement. However the term National Anarchism continues to be the most common way of describing the movement.

TOQ Online: For more than a century now, the left has had both statist and anarchist tendencies. It strikes me that the primary focus of left anarchists has been the creation of new forms of community while the focus of the statists has been the seizure of state power, either through overthrowing the state through revolution or by gaining representation through electoral means. For the statists, all forms of social organization under the present system are subordinated to the goals of acquiring state power.

Within nationalist circles, the main focus is certainly on the acquisition of state power, by election or revolution. How do National Anarchists respond to the idea that the primary focus should be the acquisition of state power, and that creating new forms of community within the present system is a waste of time unless it is all directed toward the goal of acquiring state power?

Andrew Yeoman: There are a number of important points to consider about power and state power in particular.  For the purpose of this question will assume Lenin’s view that the state is a weapon of collective will.

The important thing to remember that state power is not the only weapon available.  Since state power is not the only form of power, other forms of community organizing must be understood and acquired.  There are, for example, cultural power, economic power, and institutional power. Traditionally these have been more powerful than the state, if only because they are more effective at achieving social cohesion.

For the ideology of National Anarchism the short answer is that the power of the state is less important to us than other forms of power, and the acquisition of state power is essentially unimportant to the success of turning the tide of forces arranged to enslave our people. National Anarchists believe that the current system is corrupt beyond hope of salvation.

On the basis of this belief it is clear that the focus should not be representation in the state but strengthening the communities of like-minded people who believe in these ideas and who see their survival as incompatible with the existence of the current forms of government representation.

National Anarchists see no evidence that the previous 40 to 60 years of nationalist positions on political issues will be achieved within the current liberal democratic system.  For someone with a political agenda to say they want state power, yet they have no means of achieving that power, reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of how political processes work.

For us in the Bay Area the choice is clear: if we want to achieve any success among a rapidly declining demographic group we must seize the initiative on the cultural front, which means creating a social movement in which achieving power outside official government channels. Building a social movement is the necessary precondition to any sort of influence in the communities we live in.

With this strategy we disregard the state in all our affairs, except for those policies which we criticize in order to subvert the support for the state in our area.  We work to establish zones of influence, so-called National Autonomous Zones, that create the time and space where our ideals are put into practice with the people with whom we consider kinsmen. When enough people organize themselves with a will to act collectively without the approval of the state, government power becomes essentially meaningless.

The goal of National Anarchist community work is to inspire our people to act in a constructive, meaningful, and social manner that gets the consent of our people to legitimately speak on behalf of the communities we represent.  This is where old school nationalists, for a variety of reasons, have failed to make their cause appeal to a wider audience.

There are also fundamentally deeper reasons to not care about seizing government power based on recent trends of metapolitical warfare.  The reasons for this are the proliferation of non-state actors in a globalized world socio-economic system.

Different thinkers have come to recommend different strategies in order to respond to these contingencies.  People like Troy Southgate in England advocate that individuals quietly develop invisible or black economies and networks of influence in local communities.  In America the Bay Area National Anarchists have made a name for ourselves through noisy protests.

Seeking political power through election or revolution this is actually the path of failure. As intelligence analyst John Robb recently commented on Maoist insurgencies:

Stay on the twentieth-century path of insurgency that demands: political cohesion, control of land, replacement of the government with another government, and you will eventually fail. Go commercial, black market, open source, focus on disruption, etc. and you will thrive.

I believe this is the correct strategy.  Make the objective to disrupt the status quo through an increasing number of campaigns and demonstrations of militancy while at the same time building our own cultural, economic, and institutional power, until the policies of the system can be reversed locally, either openly or discretely, to our folk’s benefit.

Wouldn't it be nice if THEY would seceede from us?

For any movement or system of thought to remain relevant or dynamic, it must possess the internal capability of periodically reassessing its present course and shifting its focus and direction. Thus far, political anarchism has experienced two distinct stages. The first of these was the era of “classical” anarchism. Roughly defined, this was the period between the Marx/Bakunin split in the 1870s and the defeat of the Spanish anarchists in the 1930s. The second stage began during the 1960s with the emergence of a brand of anarchism that internalized the ideological framework of the New Left, and it is this framework that still prevails at the present time.

The classical anarchist movement was primarily oriented towards proletarian revolution and the historic labor movement. This was appropriate as the “labor question” was the principal political struggle of the time. The New Left-influenced anarchist movement (“neo-anarchism”) oriented itself towards the movements that emerged during its own era. These included “anti-racism” (for instance, the movement against American and South African racial apartheid systems), “anti-colonialism” (opposition to the Vietnam War and other manifestations of imperialist aggression), “the womens’ movement” (second wave feminism), “gay liberation” (homosexuals were previously regarded as criminals, deviants or mentally ill by the wider society), the ecology movement, a variety of tendencies collectively known as “counterculturalism”  and other comparable but lesser known movements, all of which had the purpose of challenging traditional institutions, systems of authority, social practices, cultural norms and so forth. The overwhelming majority of contemporary anarchists continue to function within this particular paradigm.

However, the question needs to be asked as to whether this paradigm is really appropriate in the early 21st century. If it were found to be inappropriate, what might the alternative be? In more recent times, an number of tendencies have emerged within the anarchist milieu that have challenged the dominant New Left-derived paradigm. These include primitivists, eco-anarchists, anarcho-capitalists, anarcho-monarchists, national-anarchists, tribal anarchists, anarcho-pluralists, a variety of ideologies that might be collectively labeled “free-market anti-capitalists”, post-left anarchists, Christian anarchists, and a number of other perspectives. While there are significant differences between these tendencies, and each of these rejects the dominant New Left paradigm with varying degrees of consistency or fervor, collectively they compromise a dissident force within anarchism that seeks to move past the current second stage in the history of anarchism and into a new era.

The two most serious weaknesses of contemporary anarchism are illustrated by the opening paragraph of the Wikipedia entry on anarchism:

Anarchism is a political philosophy encompassing theories and attitudes which consider the state, as compulsory government, to be unnecessary, harmful, and/or undesirable, and favors the absence of the state (anarchy.)Specific anarchists may have additional criteria for what constitutes anarchism, and they often disagree with each other on what these criteria are. According to The Oxford Companion to Philosophy “there is no single defining position that all anarchists hold, and those considered anarchists at best share a certain family resemblance.”

Among many contemporary anarchists, there is an observable tendency to ignore the struggle against the state, or the treat the battle against the state as only one matter on a laundry list of preferred causes, usually those of a conventionally leftist or countercultural nature. This is the first weakness. The other is the matter of sectarianism, i.e., setting an amount of “additional criteria for what constitutes anarchism” that is so large that it becomes self-defeating when it comes to the matter of building an actual movement that can wield political influence.

There needs to be a revolution within the anarchist movement itself. This should be a revolution that re-orients the anarchist movement towards the primary anarchist objective of state abolitionism. Second, there needs to be a shift in contemporary anarchist thought and action that involves a retreat from the current tunnel-visioned focus on ultra-leftism and counterculturalism. A new focus that is broader and that speaks to a wider variety of issues and population groups is necessary. Third, there needs to be an evaluation of tactics, and the adoption of new tactics that are relevant to current political realities.

An interesting list of historic anarchist communities can be viewed here. One thing that is immediately noticeable about these anarchist polities from the past is how different many of them were from one another. Consequently, it is probable that in a civilization where anarchist communities became widespread there would be wide variation in the specific ideological, cultural or structural content of these communities. This automatically means that the sectarian differences between competing strands within anarchism are irrelevant. Different kinds of anarchists will form different kinds of communities in those geographical regions where their own tendencies are prevalent. For instance, anarcho-communists and anarcho-capitalists, leftist anti-racist anarchists and national-anarchists, anarcho-futurists and primitivists, gay anarchists and Christian anarchists, anarcha-feminists and anarcho-monarchists, may not even consider one another to be “true” anarchists, but these battles simply do not matter if different kinds of anarchists are simply “doing their own thing” within the context of their own communities, institutions and organizations.

How, in a nation-state like the United States, could an anarchist movement become large enough, or influential or powerful enough, to actually carry out a revolution rivaling that of, for instance, the Spanish anarchists of the 1930s? Clearly the anarchist movement in North America could never do such a thing, given its small size and narrow focus. But what about a much larger popular movement, in which anarchists assume leadership roles, and with a much broader focus than what is found in the anarchist milieu at present?

Read this essay by the military historian Martin Van Creveld on the present decline of the state as an institution. Now, read this series of articles on the possible scenarios that will bring about the downfall of the American regime itself. Then read this review of a book that describes how Americans are in the process of sorting themselves out into communities specifically oriented towards their own political, cultural or lifestyle interests. Now, take a look at this opinion poll showing the amount of support for secessionist movements in the U.S., and the surprising nature of these numbers. Then take a look at two books (here and here) which offer us an alternative economic paradigm beyond the standard “big business vs big government” false dichotomy.

My friends, these works contain the ideas and information necessary to develop a popular revolutionary movement in North America. This essay is an attempt to synthesize these ideas and develop a comprehensive strategy for their application. No single reader is likely to agree with every argument or position taken in that essay, but its purpose is to “get the ball rolling” concerning the debate as to how anarchist revolution in North America will actually be carried out. And this essay is a discussion of considerations concerning time frames.

The single idea of state abolitionism will never be popular enough to become a mass movement. Most people simply are not that averse to political authority. However, the idea of secession has its roots in American history, culture and tradition. Therefore, anarchists should simply work to develop their own independent enclaves reflecting the value systems of their particular sect of anarchism, encourage other secession movements, and work to popularize the idea of secession. An effort should be made to appeal to those demographic groups most under attack by the state, those with single issues that put them in conflict with the state, and those who have the least to lose and most to gain by rejecting the state.

Further, anarchists should position themselves as the upholders of the economic interests of ordinary people. This opinion poll indicates that the issues of most concern to the public at large at present are unemployment, government spending and healthcare. What, if anything, do anarchists plan to do about these matters? How many individual anarchists have even given any thought to such topics? There are some ideas on these here, here, and here. If you do not like these, then come up with something of your own.

Particularly problematic is the question of people and groups with polar opposite views on many issues participating in the same movement. For instance, the conflicts between the various anarchist sects (Anarchist People of Color and Crimethinc come immediately to mind), or the conflict between secessionists holding opposing cultural or ideological perspectives. No doubt, there are some people who will not enter into a movement that includes others with whom they strongly disagree on certain questions no matter what. These individuals will simply have to fall by the wayside. The proper response to such questions is the “good riddance” argument.  In a decentralized political system, with voluntary association and community autonomy, leftist anti-racist anarchists and national-anarchists need not have any association with one another, nor anarcho-capitalists and anarcho-communists, nor gays and religious conservatives, nor racists and racial minorities, nor snobby rich people and slummy poor people, nor druggies and straight edges, nor feminists and male chauvinist pigs. Nor Crimethinc and Anarchist People of Color. Everyone wins but the state, the ruling class, and the empire.

From Attack the System, August 11, 2009]]> http://www.toqonline.com/blog/the-revolution-within-anarchism/feed/ 0 http://www.toqonline.com/blog/open-source-warfare/ http://www.toqonline.com/blog/open-source-warfare/#comments Wed, 22 Jul 2009 04:02:49 +0000 News Desk http://www.toqonline.com/?p=3501 “Open-Source Warfare”
by Robert N. Charette
from IEEE Spectrum, November 2007

On the afternoon of Thursday, 8 April 2004, U.S. troops stationed in Iraq deployed a small remote-controlled robot to search for improvised explosive devices. The robot, a PackBot unit made by iRobot Corp., of Burlington, Mass., found an IED, but the discovery proved its undoing. The IED exploded, reducing the robot to small, twisted pieces of metal, rubber, and wire.

The confrontation between robot and bomb reflects a grim paradox of the ongoing conflict in Iraq. The PackBot’s destruction may have prevented the IED from claiming a soldier’s life–as of 31 August, IEDs accounted for nearly half of the 3299 combat deaths reported by coalition forces. But the fact remains that a US $100 000 piece of machinery was done in by what was probably a few dollars’ worth of explosives, most likely triggered using a modified cellphone, a garage-door opener, or even a toy’s remote control. During the past four and a half years, the United States and its allies in Iraq have fielded the most advanced and complex weaponry ever developed. But they are still not winning the war.

Although there has been much debate and finger-pointing over the various failures and setbacks suffered during the prolonged conflict, some military analysts and counterterrorism experts say that, at its heart, this war is radically different from previous ones and must be thought of in an entirely new light.

”What we are seeing is the empowerment of the individual to conduct war,” says John Robb, a counterterrorism expert and author of the book Brave New War: The Next Stage of Terrorism and the End of Globalization (John Wiley & Sons), which came out in April. While the concept of asymmetric warfare dates back at least 2000 years, to the Chinese military strategist Sun-tzu, the conflict in Iraq has redefined the nature of such struggles. As events are making painfully clear, Robb says, warfare is being transformed from a closed, state-sponsored affair to one where the means and the know-how to do battle are readily found on the Internet and at your local RadioShack. This open global access to increasingly powerful technological tools, he says, is in effect allowing ”small groups to…declare war on nations.”

Need a missile-guidance system? Buy yourself a Sony PlayStation 2. Need more capability? Just upgrade to a PS3. Need satellite photos? Download them from Google Earth or Microsoft’s Virtual Earth. Need to know the current thinking on IED attacks? Watch the latest videos created by insurgents and posted on any one of hundreds of Web sites or log on to chat rooms where you can exchange technical details with like-minded folks.

Robb calls this new type of conflict ”open-source warfare,” because the manner in which insurgent groups are organizing themselves, sharing information, and adapting their strategies bears a strong resemblance to the open-source movement in software development. Insurgent groups, like open-source software hackers, tend to form loose and nonhierarchical networks to pursue a common vision, Robb says. United by that vision, they exchange information and work collaboratively on tasks of mutual interest.

And just as in the software community, information technology and the Internet play a pivotal role in bringing insurgents together. The resurrection of al-Qaeda is a good example, says Brian Jackson, a terrorism expert and associate director of the Homeland Security Program at Rand Corp. ”Given the structural changes that were required of al-Qaeda to adapt to its loss of Afghanistan as a safe haven,” Jackson says, ”the interconnections among disparate parts of the decentralized organization that the Internet made possible have been important for its survival.”

The reliance on IT also enables open-source groups to identify and respond to problems much more rapidly than a more structured, top-down entity can–be it the Pentagon or a large software company such as Microsoft. According to some estimates, it now takes Iraqi insurgents less than a month to adapt their methods of attack, much faster than coalition troops can respond. ”For every move we make, the enemy makes three,” U.S. Brigadier General Joe E. Ramirez Jr. told attendees at a May conference on IEDs. ”The enemy changes techniques, tactics, and procedures every two to three weeks. Our biggest task is staying current and relevant.”  Read the rest of the article.

John Robb

Via John Robb on Tribalism at The Occidental Quarterly I followed a link to Robb’s blog Global Guerrillas where he focuses on:

Networked tribes, systems disruption, and the emerging bazaar of violence. Resilient Communities, decentralized platforms, and self-organizing futures.

Here’s his About page.

I’m not sure what to make of Robb, but here’s what I think so far. His analysis of globalism is broad, incisive, and critical, and comes from a technologically informed point of view outside the false dichotomy of partisan politics. He provides interesting opinions and links, though his writing is larded with jargon. Only cryptically, by reading between the lines, can he be understood to recognize the tribal jewish influence that so dominates the West’s politics, finance, and media. He seems a typical deracinated White, for whom even a keen interest in tribalism and communities and opposition to globalism appears not at all motivated by an overt awareness of or sympathy for his own tribe.

His essay Containing Chaos (unfortunately no longer freely visible in it’s entirety) begins:

We are now engaged in a conflict that will dictate whether we succeed or fail in the 21st century. Our adversary in this conflict is, in short, the threat posed by globalization.

and concludes (my emphasis):

Disruptions that result in societal and economic chaos occur most readily in societies where the health and vigor of a society has decayed. In other words, the social and economic system that the nation-state administers must be seen as fair and just, and it must deliver tangible results to the greatest number of people possible. Anything less than this and societal breakdown becomes extremely likely should disruption occur, since the allure of participation in oppositional groups, from black-market crime to guerrilla/terrorist groups, will outweigh outcomes available through participation in the status quo. In short, the nation-state will lose its legitimacy with large subsets of its population.

Here’s an example of not delivering results: The incomes of the bottom four-fifths of Americans have fallen 10 percent, adjusted for inflation, over the last three decades, despite massive improvements in worker productivity. For an example of not being just and fair, we need not go far: Self-dealing financial elites defrauded markets and the government of trillions of dollars realized during the 2008 financial panic, and not one of them went to jail.

In order to retain legitimacy at a level that allows some freedom of action, the government must endeavor to deliver real economic progress to its constituents. That means that every policy should be slaved to increasing incomes in line with increases in worker productivity, and improving the long-term financial wealth of the greatest number. (The best way to measure the success of government efforts in this regard are increases in the median incomes of individuals.) One method of achieving this, already mentioned above, is to remove barriers to community resilience. Community resilience has the potential to substantially improve the incomes and quality of life for the greatest number by reducing end-user costs, creating jobs, and spurring massive leaps in innovation.

The greatest threat to achieving this outcome lies in the potential for parasitic interests to gain control of government function, since one of the quickest routes to illegitimacy is through the appearance of corruption. This unfortunate outcome was evident in the 2008 financial meltdown, as special interests proved capable of snaring trillions in subsidies from the public treasure for no apparent improvement in the lives of most citizens.

Robb’s analysis is clouded by his conflation of both pro-globalist “self-dealing financial elite” tribalists and anti-globalist al-qaeda-like tribalists (mentioned earlier in his essay) as “parasitic interests”. While Robb sees the jihadi threat clearly enough he seems unwilling or unable to confront the implications of his own analysis regarding the “parasitic interests” who control finance and drive globalism. That their fraud going unpunished implies not the potential to gain control of government function, but that they have already gained it. That this control goes unheralded and uncriticized in the mainstream media implies that the “parasitic interests” also effectively control media function.

The “parasitic interests” who illegitimately control the Eurosphere’s government, finance, and media have made it clear that their most feared and detested enemies are White tribalists. For us repression and punishment are considered normal and deserved, especially in response to opposition to the “parasitic interests” whose genocidal immigration policies are swamping our homelands with hostile non-White tribalists.

UPDATE 16 July 2009: A bit more of Robb’s essay Containing Chaos is available at The Occidental Quarterly Online, including this paragraph:

News in the age of the global supernetwork is often startling. It features an endless procession of crushing financial panics, unexpected food shortages, sharp commodity price spikes, brazen terrorist attacks that have shut down major cities from New York to Sao Paulo to Mumbai, and much more. These extreme events form a pattern of behavior that should serve as an alarm. They are an indication that the system we have come to rely upon, the global supernetwork that connects us to each other and all manner of goods and services is entering a period of extreme turbulence, where we careen from crisis to crisis at an increasing rate and incremental severity. At worst, it may even be an indication of a looming catastrophic failure of indeterminable duration.

John Robb

In 1946, George Kennan keyed the famous “Long Telegram,” which identified the Soviet Union as an enemy of the United States. In 1947, the original telegram was reworked and published in Foreign Policy magazine as “The Sources of Soviet Conduct.” Together, these documents formed the codex for the U.S. Cold War strategy of containment, and thereby the basis of the eventual U.S. victory in that conflict. Here’s what a “Kennan” might have written for the 21st century.

The Nature of the Threat Posed by Globalization

We are now engaged in a conflict that will dictate whether we succeed or fail in the 21st century. Our adversary in this conflict is, in short, the threat posed by globalization.

This threat is completely alien to our mode of thought. It is unlike previous threats we have faced since there isn’t a single source of ideological opposition: no collective mind or body of thought to contest with, no single enemy that can be named with clarity across all venues. It is, instead, a systemic threat, one posed by the very function of a system we have created for our mutual benefit: a morally neutral, global supernetwork that spans all salient features of modern life, from communications to economics.

The threat posed by the emergence of this global supernetwork comes in three forms. Let’s examine them in detail.

Extreme and Chaotic Behavior

News in the age of the global supernetwork is often startling. It features an endless procession of crushing financial panics, unexpected food shortages, sharp commodity price spikes, brazen terrorist attacks that have shut down major cities from New York to Sao Paulo to Mumbai, and much more. These extreme events form a pattern of behavior that should serve as an alarm. They are an indication that the system we have come to rely upon, the global supernetwork that connects us to each other and all manner of goods and services is entering a period of extreme turbulence, where we careen from crisis to crisis at an increasing rate and incremental severity. At worst, it may even be an indication of a looming catastrophic failure of indeterminable duration.

From the standpoint of systemic analysis, our global supernetwork is what is called a dynamically unstable system, or one so responsive and interconnected (i.e., tightly coupled), that it is prone to operating in an uncontrolled manner. That, unfortunately, is the way we made it. Through an organic growth process that emphasized business needs and economic efficiency, we have built a complex web of instantaneous communications, just-in-time computer systems, daily multi-trillion-dollar financial flows, and much more. Even more, we have geared up the system with extreme levels of debt and energy-use to reach the limits of potential performance.

All of this amped-up connectivity provides our global system with an ability to rapidly shift from task to task as the conditions warrant. However, it also makes the system prone to over-reaction and self-reinforcing feedback loops, such that even small changes in the right conditions can cause the system to careen to extreme behavior. Typically, we build systems like this only when we are sure we can control them. For example, high-performance aircraft are dynamically unstable systems. They are designed to want to maneuver, rather than fly straight and level. However, if they aren’t precisely managed — down to the millisecond — by computerized control systems, they will quickly careen into uncontrolled maneuvers that generate forces exceeding the structural capacity of their airframe. In short, one of these planes will wind up a smoking crater if the computer system fails to control its operation for even a couple of seconds. . . . Read the whole article.