academiccompositionab
Empowerment Equalizer
SSaragian
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 Humectress
Episode 368 welcomes back Ian Mayes to have a chat with Skyler on the following topics: working in the neighborhood where George Floyd was killed; his experience with the Minneapolis protests and riots; Kyle Rittenhouse; lockdown created tinderbox across the country and world; Minneapolis “defund the police” campaign; lack of real anti-authoritarian sentiment; political coalition building and guilt by association; civil wars and anarchists; Portland neighborhood “wake up” protests (Reason interview); voluntaryist welfare actions, ie. silver linings; restorative justice systems (Kibbe interview); and more.
Founder and editor of Everything-Voluntary.com and UnschoolingDads.com, Skyler is a husband and unschooling father of three beautiful children. His writings include the column series “One Voluntaryist’s Perspective” and “One Improved Unit,” and blog series “Two Cents“. Skyler also wrote the books No Hitting! and Toward a Free Society, and edited the books Everything Voluntary and Unschooling Dads. You can hear Skyler chatting away on his podcasts, Everything Voluntary and Thinking & Doing.
Attack the System
Categories: Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies
I can find a lot of common ground with these guys:
– They mention a need for neighborhood level anarchism to come out of these protests. People taking care of one another via mutual aid or cooperative networks. In Portland the mutual aid networks that have sustained 100 nights of protest have shifted gears to wild fire disaster relief. We also have neighborhood level food pantries and free fridges popping up all over town and other donation networks which are directly linked to the protest mutual aid networks. This is fulfilling a need where the government came up short with its wimpy $1200 one time coronavirus stimulus. Replacing the welfare state and the FEMA with direct action mutual aid is a huge step.
– The distinction between law enforcement versus security for the community and/or individual. The former is the primary function of the police state apparatus while the latter is a convenient byproduct of the police state (sometimes, for some people, in some places). If you’re a drug user then you need security services to protect you from the state’s law enforcement gangs, for instance. Law enforcement protects the interests of the state while security and safety services protects the individual and community from harm. It’s a hard one for most people to wrap their heads around.
Where I part ways is some of their hand wringing around rioting and violence. The state is not going to give up power without a serious fight. Portland got a taste of that with BORTAC and ICE agents invading downtown. And to be honest it was a relatively mild taste. Best case scenario is that the majority of people withdraw their support from the state and we all walk away. But even then, the states propaganda machine and police state will ramp up to hold on to power and the populace would have to physically fight the state. Additionally I think that rioting and looting (especially Target lol) is a valid and understandable response to state oppression. The underclass is just way better at it than middle class libertarians, and the underclass poses a more serious, physical threat the system as well. Hence the burning of police precincts.
The real test would be what happens with the military. I don’t think it’s possible for the general public to successfully fight the state as long as the military remains loyal. So the military will need to either defect or fragment to the point of becoming largely inoperative (like what happened in the USSR when the KGB attempted a coup against Gorbachev). The overthrow of the Soviet empire in the late 80s/early 90s is the model to draw on. It would be possible to hold off the police at every level with guerrilla insurgencies (like Hezbollah did with Israel in 2001 and 2006) but actual armed combat by civilians against the US armed forces would be a David and Goliath situation. Even then, an Iraq/Afghanistan insurgency is not impossible, but it would come at extraordinarily high costs and the best the insurgents could do is hold their position. De-legitimation is what will need to happen in the sense that enough people refuse cooperation in order to assume a critical mass.
I hate to be so presumptive and jump in here with you guys, but I firmly believe this:
The US military has shown itself as serial losers. After decades, they can’t even defeat goat herders with homemade rifles. Billion dollar jets and drones, humvees and data linked strike teams. It’s possible it was all on purpose, but still embarrassing.
What happens if it is fighting an educated population, also on their own turf, armed as Americans are? Even if the military didn’t crumble almost instantly, it would bleed defectors, and the overall numbers of soldiers so small that their task would be impossible.
The play here is to start civil war, or more likely at this point, bypass (or combine that) with a mass kill bioweapon or EMP, and skew the narrative that government goons are the saviors. The bugs squished, and anyone left starving, all hail Queen Harris!
At this point, I don’t really see much prospect of a “people’s war’ against the government. There are not enough people who identify the state as the enemy for that to happen. It’s more about different tribes battling for control of the state. A much more likely scenario is escalating violence between rival factions. Even that won’t become a civil war because the power elite is essentially running the whole show from the top. They won’t allow things to spiral to the point that their genuine interests are threatened. The complete collapse of the state is a good ways off. The full range of political opinions from the far-left to the neocons is united against Trump, who is merely an interloper in the electoral system and a loose cannon within the power elite. Street fights between the Proud Boys and Antifa do nothing to loosen the grip of the industrial-financial-technological-nuclear-military-intelligence upper strata of the ruling class.
In the most extreme scenario that is likely to happen, the results of the upcoming election will go to the Supreme Court, who will hand it to Biden in a 5-4 or 6-3 vote, at which point the real power elite will say, “It is finished.” If Trump tried to stage a coup, which I don’t think he has the balls to do, the military-industrial complex would quickly overrule that as they did when he wanted to send out the military to crush the riots. If Trumpists tried to stage a rebellion, they would be massacred Waco-stye by the state security forces. If for some reason the SCOTUS gave the election to Trump instead, and the Left tried to stage a rebellion, it would just be more of what’s been going on in recent months. The majority of the power elite would try to use it to their advantage, but they wouldn’t let it become geuinely subversive. Where is CHAZ now? If the leftist rebellion became too intense, they would be massacred MOVE-style.
A very cogent argument, as usual Keith!
“…today, it is infinitely easier to kill one million people than to control one million people.” – Zbigniew Brzezinski
I’m pretty sure the above quote encapsulates the actual plan at this point. That regardless of which retard wins the election, a great culling is coming. It would be the easiest and simplest way for ‘them’ to reach their goals of climate justice, total technocrat enslavement, population limits, and satanic sacrifice, all at once!