academiccompositionab
Empowerment Equalizer
SSaragian
Antony Sammeroff
Ann Sterzinger
Rodney
RJ
busterjames
cainusmaxus
Craig FitzGerald
David Heleniak
Caity & Dan Greene
keirmartland
Keith Preston
Bill the Butcher
ljp711
MRDA
Jack Donovan
Rachel Haywire
comrade hermit
Michael
Vince
robertstark2014
Noonan
S E Pearson
Rachel Haywire
Nexus X HumectressA question for our readers and supporters?
What is the best term for the kind of political philosophy we promote here?
Terms I’ve used include anarcho-populism, anarcho-pluralism, anti-state radicalism, anarchism without adjectives, anarchism without hyphens, tribal-anarchism, radical decentralism, anarcho-sovereignism, open-ended national-anarchism, third way/third position anarchism, left-paleocon anarchism, and I could come up with some more.
So what are we?
Attack the System
Categories: Anarchism/Anti-State, Strategy
Pan-Anarchism? Meta-Anarchism?
Of course, there’s pan-secessionism but that’s more of a strategy than an ideology.
These days I just think of myself as an “anarchist.” If pressed for more info I say “tribal anarchist.” I don’t know if that describes all that ATS/ARV is, though.
I tend to do the same.
On a personal level, I’m interested in the sum total of anarchist, libertarian, anti-state, anti-authoritarian, or decentralist thought as it has been developed thus far, and trying to work out some grand synthesis or meta-theoretical framework.
But on a practical level, I’m of course interested in how we’re actually going to complete the task of overturning the U.S. empire and other tyrannical states around the world.
Likewise. One common theme here is an acknowledgement of some base level of human aggression; that in order to maintain any sort of society it must be capable of defending itself. As you delve deeper into tribalism, or even statism, you see that all societies rest on a promise of violence. I’m beginning to think that this is one of our clearest departures from a lot of soft leftist thought. The spectrum of the occupy movement and even many of the Cascadians I correspond with view a revolutionary struggle as some sort of mass movement where civil disobedience will win the day. Here we acknowledge that the ruling class is tribal in nature, and allies itself with a network of tribes/gangs that are willing and able to do violence on its behalf to maintain order. While we certainly should be working to turn these tribes onto our side, we shouldn’t expect most of them to come over to us. Eventually our respective narratives will clash, and whichever narrative can more muster a willing army and execute a decisive war will win. Anything short of this is not a revolution.
This is essentially a tribal outlook. Every tribe I know of has a warrior culture, an acknowledgement even by peace loving mothers that the existence of the tribe depends on the strength of its warriors and their willingness to defend their people, lands and way of life.
What we are doing here is finding a way for lovers of liberty, however they define it, to find their own people, land and way of life within the context of a wider “tribal” network of alliances. There is a need for fierceness. If you speak of liberty and are serious about attaining it, then you must be willing to trade the safety that the state provides and the bubble of impunity in which it applies it’s own sanctioned violence for a world where you may be called upon to man up and fight from time to time. This is the way the world works. It is the way the world works even today, as dominated by Nation States.
Agora syndicalists
I’ve been using the term “tribal anarchist” as well lately to describe myself. To me, it evokes pre-state societies and conveys a recognition of the existence of and need for natural hierarchies and natural authority.
Pan-Anarchism.
” One common theme here is an acknowledgement of some base level of human aggression; that in order to maintain any sort of society it must be capable of defending itself. As you delve deeper into tribalism, or even statism, you see that all societies rest on a promise of violence. I’m beginning to think that this is one of our clearest departures from a lot of soft leftist thought.”
Yes, that’s what Carl Schmitt considered to be the essence of politics.
What I try to do in my work is synthesize not only the various strands of anti-state, anarchist, or libertarian thought, but to also synthesize these with the important insights of other fields of thought: fourth generation warfare, neotribal sociological theory, Schmittian political theory, elite theory, the Nietzschean critique of modernity, my totalitarian humanism theory, etc.
“The spectrum of the occupy movement and even many of the Cascadians I correspond with view a revolutionary struggle as some sort of mass movement where civil disobedience will win the day.”
I’ve noticed that kind of thinking in virtually every movement I’ve been a part of in the past, and I think the reason for it is that most “radicals” in the modern West are essentially middle-class people with the standard middle class values of security, stability, and safety. They may say they’re for “revolution” but not if it involves the prospect of any real danger or unpredictability. Some of the issues RJ raised in his review of Jack Donovan’s books probably come into play here as well: http://thedailyattack.com/2012/06/01/the-way-of-men-an-anarchist-perspective/
Using a term that emphasises decentralisation rather than anarchy might have broader appeal. And they can ultimately mean more or less the same thing. But you tend to have much more positive response from people if you say ‘I’m a decentralist’ rather than ‘I’m an anarchist.’