Lately, when surveying the works of various anarchist/libertarian/whatchamacallit writers, commentators or bloggers, I’ve starting applying what I call the “National-Anarchist Litmus Test.” That is, I’ve come to think that a fair standard for measuring some anarchist ideologue’s level of intellectual, political, emotional or psychological maturity is his/her ability to discuss the ideas of National-Anarchism without falling into something resembling an epileptic seizure. For those who want to know more about National-Anarchism and its actual ideas, go to the Synthesis website and real some of the articles in their archives. Then go check out AnarchoNation, Bay Area National Anarchists, Folk and Faith, A Heretickel Anarchyste, National Anarchists of Australia and New Zealand, Ean Frick, and  Revolution International. Make up your own mind.

I’m only a fellow traveler to National-Anarchism, but if I had to summarize it with one idea, I’d say it’s primary message is self-determination for all the world’s diverse peoples. You know, all those Tibetans, Palestinians, Kurds, Basques, Irish, Chechnyans, Lakota, Maori, Hmong, Oaxacons, Miskito and other occupied, colonized or oppressed peoples that the Left pretends to give a flying fuck about. Another idea might be the self-preservation of all the world’s diverse peoples. You know, kind of like those endangered spotted owls, snail darters, and sea turtles the Left is always wringing hands over.

Of course, what really gets a hair up the ass of the Left is the fact that National-Anarchists apply the same standards to indigenous Europeans that they do to other peoples. For some reason, this seems to evoke images in the Leftist mind of apartheid, Jim Crow or Nazism, although it would seem to a rational person that self-determination for all peoples is the polar opposite of a stratified racial caste system like Jim Crow or apartheid, much less a genocidal ideology like Nazism.

As I write this, there is a discussion going on over at the Rad Geek blog concerning the infamous Keith Preston and the shady National-Anarchist forces of darkness for whom I am supposedly a front man. Many anarcho-leftoids regard me as similar to the “Mr. Morden” character in the earlier episodes of the old 90s sci-fi show Babylon Five. For non-sci-fi fans, Morden was a human who acted as an operative for unseen sinister alien forces. Ironically, a thread that starts off as a very good and helpful discussion of Starbucks workers organized by the IWW soon degenerates into this from Soviet Onion:

As wishful as it sounds, it’s a welcome antidote to the left-libertarian tendency to treat localism and decentralization as THE POINT rather than an instrumental tool to some more fundamental desire. That shit’s also vulnerable to corruption by every kind of village fascism under the sun. Hence the enabling attitude toward things like National Anarchism coming from Keith Preston and Jeremy Weiland that almost makes ANTIFA-style gang beatdowns seem like a more intelligent response to the phenomenon.

Never one to allow herself to be outdone, my Number One Cheerleader Aster pipes in:

It is hard for me to express how much I appreciate your speaking out against the national anarchist Trojan horse. Thank you.

And that’s precisely it- replacing rights with decentralism completely throws out the principle of liberty. I want the implementation of a specific social system which guarantees individual rights and supports individual autonomy. I’m not interested in a politics which switches this for the goal of acceptance of existing social systems. whether individualist or not. Liberty requires a conscious and rational set of values and institutions which are incompatible with traditional organic society.

I’m a moderate on decentralisation- actually, I think the original 1789 American federal system buttressed by an extensive and enforceable Bill of Rights fully incorporated against local tyranny is a fairly good model. I’m at the moment inclined to say yes to decentralisation in economic matters, no in educational matters, and to favour a mixed system in politics. I think we do need broad regional social organisation in a form which maintains an easy flow of goods, people, and ideas- I think this aspect of the Roman, British, and American empires was a good thing (have you read Isabel Paterson’s God of the Machine?).

Incidentally, I think Jeremy Weiland (if he’s Jeremy of Social Memory Complex) means well, in the sense of wanting a world in which human beings are really happy. I still disagree with him, but he’s not like Preston or Troy Southgate. I’ve been unjustly nasty to him in the past and regret it.

So political and economic decentralization really aren’t so bad so long as an enlightened cultural elite gets to control a nationalized educational system in order to properly brainwash the young with The Official Enlightened Progressive Truth. You know, notions like the idea that human history can be primarily defined in terms of the historic, dialectical, objectively revolutionary, linear struggle for the inalienable, inevitably triumphant sacred human right to suck cock in the men’s room at the airport. Next up is Marja Erwin:

In my admittedly incomplete understanding, collectivist anarchism has historically involved either or both of two kinds of community control. The first being near-monopolistic but temporary; a transitional confederation instead of Marx’s transitional state. I think this was Bakunin’s pragmatic proposal. The second being community control of specific institutions, but neither requiring participation nor forbidding competition.

I think Parecon has sowed the seeds of Prestonism, because it imagines a permanent system which subjects individual choices to community decision, and forbids independent exchange. … And the primitivists like that!

Huh??

Then comes Rad Geek (a writer I actually like, BTW):

For what it’s worth, on this specific issue, I think you’re being subjected to a bit of six-degrees-of-Heinrich-Himmler here, and I think it’s unfortunate and unfair to you. Although Keith Preston is not himself an anarcho-fascist he has put a lot of effort into being accommodating towards anarcho-fascists; and you’ve put a lot of effort into being accommodating towards Keith Preston. I think the links in that chain are worth talking about individually, but I don’t think it’s fair to describe what you’ve been doing as “enabling” the anarcho-fascists by some kind of transitive property.

And pot-smoking leads to cocaine-sniffing, which leads to crack-smoking, which leads to heroin-addiction, which leads to junkie whores turning tricks for their dope, which leads to junkie whores selling their daughters to pedos for their dope, which leads to the collapse of civilization and the conquest of America by homosexuals, al-Qaeda and liberals.

Now for some other jewels. Says William:

Although a majority of folks express annoyance at it (generally by deriding the partisans as rat-bastard “theorists”, and ridiculing the notion that folks should be forced to choose between hugging a tree or holding a union card) Red / Green hostilities nevertheless play an enormous role in shaping the movement. In the muddled mainstream of the movement virtually everyone calls themselves “anti-civ” and supports the IWW in a desire to avoid conflict. The campus activist derived folk side more with the Syndicalists, while the Crimethinc romantic punx side more with the primmies. The fringes are the one’s that produce substantive thought.

In the isolated, insular core of these wings (ie, Eugene and NEFAC) the primmies are likely to write MAs off as irrelevant and the syndicalists are likely to go batshit insane a la McKay.

Might I dare to suggest that an ideological conflict between “primmies” and syndicalists means about as much to Actually Existing Reality as a theological conflict between snake handlers and Scientologists?

My buddy Aster:

There’s some obnoxious political correctness stuff… I got bugged about prostitution a few times (mildly), and one has to mind vegetarian and recycling Ps and Qs to avoid hassles. I got involved in a reasonably benevolent individualist/collectivist anarchist schism which began (I am not making this up) over recycled toilet paper.

These are the folks that old tolerance-mongering Aster prefers to hang out with? Sheesh. Soviet Onion:

I could perhaps try to initiate the conversation (that is supposed to be one of the functions of the Alliance of the Libertarian Left), but I think it would be frustrating at best and dangerous at worst. The Libertarians don’t know enough about the currents of anarchist movement/scene continuum to even “get” the conflict, and social anarchists would react with all the courtesy and consideration currently reserved for the interwebs, if not being equally confused. Given that I’ve also witnessed conversations where market anarchists have been compared to neo-Nazis, I honestly wouldn’t even feel safe doing that, at least alone with a group of them.

What? “Dangerous”? “Wouldn’t even feel safe”? Around all those inclusive, tolerant, humane-humanitarian-human rights loving, sensitivity-mongering anarchists?

Well, isn’t it great that we’ve got that giant squid to keep us from killing each other. It’s a bit like Iain McKay’s strategy of easing up on the mutualists only because he sees anarcho-capitalists as a bigger aberration and threat (and to avoid having to cede history and ideological pedigree to the “other side”).

Someone needs a “strategy” for that? Sounds about as important as a “strategy” for jerking off or picking your nose. William again:

The superficial story is that the primmies control the NW, the SW desert and the Appalachians, while the Reds control the entire NE block and have a mild advantage everywhere else. Also don’t forget that primitivism got much of its start in the UK. Its just that the Reds and Greens have relatively zero interaction there.

Sounds like the Bloods and the Crips. Rad Geek:

For reference, when you refer to a “left-libertarian tendency” to fetishize localism and decentralism, do you have anyone particular in mind, other than Jeremy Weiland? (There’s also Keith Preston, presumably, but he doesn’t consistently identify as a left-libertarian, and in any case I’m not willing to grant him the description.)

Oh, well, poor me.

Folks, this is right out of the parody of leftist anarchism in Monty Python’s “The Holy Grail”: “Help, help, I’m being repressed!!”

This is precisely what the anarcho-leftist milieu was like when I was a hard-core participant in it going on three decades ago now. Unfortunately for anarchism, it does not seem to have progressed one iota since then. Fortunately for the rest of humanity, this sort of thing will be permanently relegated to youthful or bohemian subcultures with nothing better to do. I remember when I first became involved in leftist anarchism and was explaining my new found enthusiasms to my father, who didn’t share my enthusiasms (to say the least). Said Dad: “That just sounds like some fad  that will never amount to anything but crap.” Sorry, dad, you were right.