Author: Keith Preston

All Posts by Keith Preston

On Being the Leader of Anarcho-Fascism in America Reply

Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism

Saith the Lefto-Totalitarian aspiring Stasi at Libcom.org:

I’m particularly bothered by these so-called “anarcho”-nationalists that are trying to take advantage of the increase in interest in anarchism. The leaders of this fake “anarchism” are Keith Preston (USA), Troy Southgate (UK), Richard Hunt (UK), Peter Topfer (Germany), Hans Cany (France), and Flavio Goncalves (Portugal). What is worrying is that Keith Preston at least is trying to give his ideas legitimacy by hooking up to the tendency to bridge the gap between the libertarian “right” and “left” (as Kevin Carson is trying to do). It’s all very fishy. Websites trying to link Bakunin and Julius Evola, Proudhon and Alain de Benoist, Kropotkin and Otto Strasser. Strange shit.

Any thoughts? It seems to have grown out of hippy-dippy “anarchism”, at least in the UK – Richard Hunt, Southgate’s comrade-in-arms, was part of that “Green Anarchist” scene. But elsewhere…? Where the hell does this crap come from?

So I am the leader of “anarcho-fascism in the USA”? Hmm. I’m actually more “liberal” on most social/cultural questions than most liberals. For instance, I’m pro-abortion, pro-euthanasia, anti-death penalty (though not for the usual reasons), pro-drug legalization, pro-gay rights, pro-sex worker rights, pro-prison abolition, pro-homeless, pro-disabled peoples’ rights, pro-indigenous peoples’ rights, pro-rights of the mentally ill, anti-drinking age, anti-compulsory schooling, anti-censorship and I’d put more strident limits on the powers of the police than the ACLU would. I’m also interested in anarcho-syndicalist or “libertarian socialist” economics. This is far more left than most liberals and even many hard leftists. I’m not a carte blanche liberal. For instance, I agree with the far right on the right to bear arms. I’m more moderate on immigration and I despise political correctness. Like many conservatives, libertarians and other right-wingers who profess opposition to statism, I oppose the Federal Reserve, the United Nations, income taxes, the public school system, welfare, affirmative action, antidiscrimination laws, the Environmental Protection Agency, “hate crimes” (really thought crimes) legislation, public housing, campus speech codes, zoning ordinances, social security, and many other forms of statism and authoritarianism typically championed by “the Left.”

Of course, what really seems to set these Totalitarian Humanist types off the most is my upholding the rights of free speech, freedom of religion and freedom of association (or not to associate). This is why, unlike anarchists of the leftoid persuasion, I welcome national-anarchists, third-positionists, members of the European New Right, conservative Christians, black separatists, white separatists, Jewish separatists, survivalists, paleoconservatives, “right-wing” libertarians, and other decentralists or anti-statists with non-leftist cultural views into the ranks of the anti-System movement.

If this doesn’t jibe with these self-styled “anti-fascist” or “anti-racist” cretins, then too damn bad. As Aidan Rankin has observed, so-called “anti-fascism” is merely a new kind of fascism with a leftist outward appearance. It will be interesting to observe how these leftoid-totalitarian humanist-antifascist creatures evolve in the future. As Cultural Marxism becomes ever more deeply entrenched and absorbed by the establishment, these gutter creeps are likely to abandon their pretended anti-establishment and anti-American stances, and simply become jingoists, upholding the police state and imperialist war in the name of waging the holy jihad against racism, sexism, homophobia, xenophobia, speciesism, weightism, lookism, yadda, yadda, yadda, blah, blah, blah, fart, fart, fart…

They certainly have a prototype in the Commies/Trots-turned-Know Nothings in the Neocons.

Happy Independence Day and Long Live Treason! Reply

Uncategorized
IN CONGRESS, JULY 4, 1776
The unanimous Declaration of the thirteen united States of America

When in the Course of human events it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the Laws of Nature and of Nature’s God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.

We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, — That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security. — Such has been the patient sufferance of these Colonies; and such is now the necessity which constrains them to alter their former Systems of Government. The history of the present King of Great Britain is a history of repeated injuries and usurpations, all having in direct object the establishment of an absolute Tyranny over these States. To prove this, let Facts be submitted to a candid world.

He has refused his Assent to Laws, the most wholesome and necessary for the public good.

He has forbidden his Governors to pass Laws of immediate and pressing importance, unless suspended in their operation till his Assent should be obtained; and when so suspended, he has utterly neglected to attend to them.

He has refused to pass other Laws for the accommodation of large districts of people, unless those people would relinquish the right of Representation in the Legislature, a right inestimable to them and formidable to tyrants only.

He has called together legislative bodies at places unusual, uncomfortable, and distant from the depository of their Public Records, for the sole purpose of fatiguing them into compliance with his measures.

He has dissolved Representative Houses repeatedly, for opposing with manly firmness his invasions on the rights of the people.

He has refused for a long time, after such dissolutions, to cause others to be elected, whereby the Legislative Powers, incapable of Annihilation, have returned to the People at large for their exercise; the State remaining in the mean time exposed to all the dangers of invasion from without, and convulsions within.

He has endeavoured to prevent the population of these States; for that purpose obstructing the Laws for Naturalization of Foreigners; refusing to pass others to encourage their migrations hither, and raising the conditions of new Appropriations of Lands.

He has obstructed the Administration of Justice by refusing his Assent to Laws for establishing Judiciary Powers.

He has made Judges dependent on his Will alone for the tenure of their offices, and the amount and payment of their salaries.

He has erected a multitude of New Offices, and sent hither swarms of Officers to harass our people and eat out their substance.

He has kept among us, in times of peace, Standing Armies without the Consent of our legislatures.

He has affected to render the Military independent of and superior to the Civil Power.

He has combined with others to subject us to a jurisdiction foreign to our constitution, and unacknowledged by our laws; giving his Assent to their Acts of pretended Legislation:

For quartering large bodies of armed troops among us:

For protecting them, by a mock Trial from punishment for any Murders which they should commit on the Inhabitants of these States:

For cutting off our Trade with all parts of the world:

For imposing Taxes on us without our Consent:

For depriving us in many cases, of the benefit of Trial by Jury:

For transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences:

For abolishing the free System of English Laws in a neighbouring Province, establishing therein an Arbitrary government, and enlarging its Boundaries so as to render it at once an example and fit instrument for introducing the same absolute rule into these Colonies

For taking away our Charters, abolishing our most valuable Laws and altering fundamentally the Forms of our Governments:

For suspending our own Legislatures, and declaring themselves invested with power to legislate for us in all cases whatsoever.

He has abdicated Government here, by declaring us out of his Protection and waging War against us.

He has plundered our seas, ravaged our coasts, burnt our towns, and destroyed the lives of our people.

He is at this time transporting large Armies of foreign Mercenaries to compleat the works of death, desolation, and tyranny, already begun with circumstances of Cruelty & Perfidy scarcely paralleled in the most barbarous ages, and totally unworthy the Head of a civilized nation.

He has constrained our fellow Citizens taken Captive on the high Seas to bear Arms against their Country, to become the executioners of their friends and Brethren, or to fall themselves by their Hands.

He has excited domestic insurrections amongst us, and has endeavoured to bring on the inhabitants of our frontiers, the merciless Indian Savages whose known rule of warfare, is an undistinguished destruction of all ages, sexes and conditions.

In every stage of these Oppressions We have Petitioned for Redress in the most humble terms: Our repeated Petitions have been answered only by repeated injury. A Prince, whose character is thus marked by every act which may define a Tyrant, is unfit to be the ruler of a free people.

Nor have We been wanting in attentions to our British brethren. We have warned them from time to time of attempts by their legislature to extend an unwarrantable jurisdiction over us. We have reminded them of the circumstances of our emigration and settlement here. We have appealed to their native justice and magnanimity, and we have conjured them by the ties of our common kindred to disavow these usurpations, which would inevitably interrupt our connections and correspondence. They too have been deaf to the voice of justice and of consanguinity. We must, therefore, acquiesce in the necessity, which denounces our Separation, and hold them, as we hold the rest of mankind, Enemies in War, in Peace Friends.

We, therefore, the Representatives of the united States of America, in General Congress, Assembled, appealing to the Supreme Judge of the world for the rectitude of our intentions, do, in the Name, and by Authority of the good People of these Colonies, solemnly publish and declare, That these united Colonies are, and of Right ought to be Free and Independent States, that they are Absolved from all Allegiance to the British Crown, and that all political connection between them and the State of Great Britain, is and ought to be totally dissolved; and that as Free and Independent States, they have full Power to levy War, conclude Peace, contract Alliances, establish Commerce, and to do all other Acts and Things which Independent States may of right do. — And for the support of this Declaration, with a firm reliance on the protection of Divine Providence, we mutually pledge to each other our Lives, our Fortunes, and our sacred Honor.

— John Hancock

New Hampshire:
Josiah Bartlett, William Whipple, Matthew Thornton

Massachusetts:
John Hancock, Samuel Adams, John Adams, Robert Treat Paine, Elbridge Gerry

Rhode Island:
Stephen Hopkins, William Ellery

Connecticut:
Roger Sherman, Samuel Huntington, William Williams, Oliver Wolcott

New York:
William Floyd, Philip Livingston, Francis Lewis, Lewis Morris

New Jersey:
Richard Stockton, John Witherspoon, Francis Hopkinson, John Hart, Abraham Clark

Pennsylvania:
Robert Morris, Benjamin Rush, Benjamin Franklin, John Morton, George Clymer, James Smith, George Taylor, James Wilson, George Ross

Delaware:
Caesar Rodney, George Read, Thomas McKean

Maryland:
Samuel Chase, William Paca, Thomas Stone, Charles Carroll of Carrollton

Virginia:
George Wythe, Richard Henry Lee, Thomas Jefferson, Benjamin Harrison, Thomas Nelson, Jr., Francis Lightfoot Lee, Carter Braxton

North Carolina:
William Hooper, Joseph Hewes, John Penn

South Carolina:
Edward Rutledge, Thomas Heyward, Jr., Thomas Lynch, Jr., Arthur Middleton

Georgia:
Button Gwinnett, Lyman Hall, George Walton

The Coming North American Confederation of Anarchies, Mini-Republics, Micro-Nations and Intentional Communities Reply

Uncategorized

An interesting new book by Bill Bishop, The Big Sort: Why the Clustering of Like-Minded America is Tearing Us Apart, explains how Americans are self-separating along cultural, political, religious, ethnic and racial lines. Here’s how the book is described:

This is the untold story of why America is so culturally and politically divided.America may be more diverse than ever coast to coast, but the places where we live are becoming increasingly crowded with people who live, think, and vote like we do. This social transformation didn’t happen by accident. We’ve built a country where we can all choose the neighborhood and church and news show — most compatible with our lifestyle and beliefs. And we are living with the consequences of this way-of-life segregation. Our country has become so polarized, so ideologically inbred, that people don’t know and can’t understand those who live just a few miles away. The reason for this situation, and the dire implications for our country, is the subject of this ground-breaking work.

In 2004, journalist Bill Bishop made national news in a series of articles when he first described “the big sort.” Armed with original and startling demographic data, he showed how Americans have been sorting themselves over the past three decades into homogeneous communities — not at the regional level, or the red-state/blue-state level, but at the micro level of city and neighborhood. In The Big Sort Bishop deepens his analysis in a brilliantly reported book that makes its case from the ground up, starting with stories about how we live today, and then drawing on history, economics, and our changing political landscape to create one of the most compelling big-picture accounts of America in recent memory.

The Big Sort will draw comparisons to Robert Putam’s Bowling Alone and Richard Florida’s The Rise of the Creative Class and will redefine the way Americans think about themselves for decades to come.

 

What does this mean for the pan-secessionist cause? It means it’s already happening and that secession may well happen sooner and be less messy than some would expect. What all of these de facto separatists are doing is creating the framework for the anarchies, mini-republics, micro-nations and intentional communities that will be the political framework of a future North America.  Consider some of the political arrangements that have existed in the past. Did you know how many anarchist political systems there have actually been?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_anarchist_communities

Are you aware of the Icelandic Commonwealth or the Holy Roman Empire, a federation of three hundred autonomous kingdoms at its peak?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Icelandic_Commonwealth

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Holy_Roman_Empire

Were you aware of the ancient and medieval republics and city-states?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanseatic_League

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lombard_League

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_ancient_Greek_cities

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_Republic

And don’t forget contemporary micro-nations:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andorra

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Liechtenstein

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monaco

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iceland

This doesn’t include the thriving intentional communities all over the world:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Orania,_Northern_Cape

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intentional_community

http://www.twinoaks.org/

http://www.ic.org/

There are plans for many more communities underway:

http://www.noi.org/

http://www.ph1landrews.com/tm/

http://oae.sagepub.com/cgi/content/abstract/15/2/131

Indeed, anarchism, separatism and communitarianism are being practiced all over the world:

http://www.charlierose.com/shows/2006/04/04/2/a-conversation-with-anarchist-david-graeber-about-anthropology

What needs to be done is already being done. All that’s left is to get rid of the imperialist police state that is hindering further progress.

 

Shutting Down the American Police State Reply

Fourth Generation Warfare, Police State/Civil Liberties, Strategy

Consider these grim statistics:

-There are 36,000 paramilitary police raids on private homes in the United States on an annual basis.

-The United States has five percent of the world’s population but twenty-five percent of the world’s prisoners.

-One in thirty-one American adults is in prison, on probation or on parole.

Are Americans any more inherently inclined towards criminality than any other national grouping? Probably not. Instead, the problem is one of gross overcriminalization. The so-called War on Drugs is the most well-known example of this, but there are many others including the use of prisons to warehouse the mentally ill or the homeless and the modern debtor’s prison system of incarceration for economic “crimes” like bad checks, non-payment of child support (even when there is no means of payment), fines, tax code violations, traffic “offenses”, as well as a penal code that turns ordinary, single illegal acts into an infinite multitude of felonies. As Peter Brimelow explains:

“In the old days punishments were harsh, but they were not arbitrary. You could be hanged for stealing a sheep, but you would not also be charged with conspiracy to commit sheep stealing, willful evasion of taxes on stolen sheep and diminishing the civil rights of the sheep owner. Attacks on property? Asset forfeiture, aimed at drug dealers when radically extended by Congress in 1984 but now covering 140 other offenses, allows seizure on “probable cause” – i.e., at the discretion of police and prosecutors. Proceeds go to the seizing agency, creating a corrupting motive.”

Indeed, mass incarceration has become a big business for lawyers, judges, police, prison officials, private prison construction and management companies, prison guards unions, and a wide assortment of public sector and private sector interests engaged in profiteering from this overcriminalization system.

Rather than trying to counter this with all sorts of do-gooder politicking, it might be better to simply shut the whole thing down using action as radical as necessary. Ideally, a National Resistance Militia should form, committed only to the single issue of completely exterminating the police state-prison industrial complex-legal racket, and drawing from the ranks of anyone committed to such a goal. Theoretically, this could include conservative patriots, leftwing radicals, black separatists, white separatists, radical environmentalists, Christians, survivalists, anarchists, gun nuts, gangbangers and anyone else who recognizes the common enemy. Such a national resistance militia would then drive the police away on a locality by locality basis (remember the disappearing acts pulled by the Los Angeles and New Orleans police during the Rodney King riots in ’92 and Hurricane Katrina in ’05?). Such a militia would then provide assistance to communities and neighborhoods in setting up genuine citizen patrol systems to deter genuine crimes (robbery, burglary, mugging). Likewise a new legal system will be necessary. The actor Omar Sharif described how things work in Arab countries:

We, the Arabs… We are not like [regular countries],” he said, explaining why he warned Bush against encouraging democracy in Iraq. “We are sects. This is how we have always been.”

“People like me prefer to go to the neighborhood sheik. I like going to him, and he resolves all the problems. If someone stole from you, you take him to the neighborhood sheik, and you say, ‘This man stole from me.’ The sheik says to him, ‘Return the money, or never come back to the neighborhood.'”

For more serious crimes, there might need to be a system of common law courts with formalized rules of evidence, procedural rights for the accused, maximum penalties that can be imposed and a system of appeal. What about the huge American prison population? We might look no further than the general amnesty declared by Saddam Hussein prior to the beginning of the current war in Iraq in 2003:

Iraqi television has been showing pictures of joyful prisoners leaving jail, shortly after the authorities announced an unprecedented general amnesty.

A nationally televised statement from the Revolution Command Council, read by Information Minister Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, said the “full and complete and final amnesty” applied to “any Iraqi imprisoned or arrested for political or any other reason”.

The amnesty was intended to thank the Iraqi people for their “unanimity” in last week’s presidential referendum, the statement said.

Iraqi President Saddam Hussein won 100% support in the poll, in which he was the only candidate.

The amnesty also included “prisoners, detainees and fugitives… including those under sentence of death, inside or outside Iraq,” the statement said.

The exception, the statement said, was for murderers, who would be released only with the consent of the victims’ families.

It Does Not Matter Why You Attack the System; It Only Matters That the System is Attacked Reply

Uncategorized

Ever wonder why anti-System movements never get any further than they do in spite of near universal disdain for the American government and ruling class?

One obvious problem is that while most people agree they don’t like the status quo, they disagree wildly on WHY they don’t like the status quo. Either the System is too racist, or it’s not racist enough, or its too pro-gay, or not anti-gay enough, or too socialistic, or too capitalistic, or too decadent, immoral, hedonistic or libertine, or too puritanical, repressive, moralistic or conservative. Either the System does too much to protect the environment, or not enough, or spends too much money on education and welfare or not enough.

Would not the solution be to have different systems for different kinds of people with different values? Why should there be only one system for 300 million people? Why shouldn’t people who dislike one another and can’t get along simply separate themselves from one another? No doubt there is a practically unlimited number of reasons why someone might want out of the System. These could include everything from anti-zoning activists who wish to create a separate county or municipality without zoning ordinances to UFO believers who think the federal government has fallen under the influence of extraterrestrials.

What does it matter, so long as the System is attacked.

Why the Pan-Secessionist Movement Must Be a Big Tent Reply

Uncategorized

Among some secessionists, there is a debate going on as to whether secessionist groups should collaborate with other groups whose political ideology or cultural values are the opposite of their own. This is particularly common to secessionists with “liberal” or left-wing values and who look askance at those secessionists with less than liberal views on matters like religion, gay rights, feminism, race, immigration, abortion and a number of other things.

Well, isn’t the whole point of secession to provide a framework where people with conflicting values can “do their own thing” without being bothered by those with other values? And if you strongly object to someone else’s values, shouldn’t you want to be separate from them? If their values are of the kind that you find particularly noxious, isn’t it that much more important that they separate themselves from others?

A pan-secessionist movement will naturally attract people from across the cultural and ideological spectrum, ranging from “moderates” who simply think the present system has gone too far to “extremists” espousing views that many would find rather bizarre. This is how it should be. Differences of opinion over moral philosophy, cultural norms, political ideology, theology and the like are matters for different secessionist groups to debate internally. The only time this should be an issue is when more than one group claims a particular territory. For instance, both black nationalists and southern nationalists claim parts of the South. Realistically speaking, some kind of compromise resulting in mutual autonomy will have to be worked out. Likewise with the Southwest, where multiple groups also claim territorial rights. Large cities, which tend to be quite diverse, raise still other issues.

Many of the individual American states are in fact larger than many other nations. Rougly one half of the territory of the USA is controlled by governments, federal, state or local. That’s a lot of turf that can be parceled out for the sake of forming new nations and intentional communities. Just as a pan-secessionist movement will need its moderates, as they will be the ones who give the indication that one can be a secessionist without being particularly outside the mainstream culturally, so will it need its extremists, because they are the ones who will be most likely to stand their ground and fight.

Updated News Digest June 29, 2008 Reply

Uncategorized

Quote of the week:

“[W]hen the Justice Department prosecutes an organized crime family,
I’m not sure which side to root for. Violent urban gangs are scary
things. So are police forces who face no competition in the market for
extortion. I don’t know which is worse….The best argument I’ve ever
seen against gun control was on a bumper sticker that said “When guns
are outlawed, only the police will have guns.” (p. 34)

Steven Landsburg, “The Armchair Economist”

http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20080622/pl_nm/usa_politics_evangelicals_dc

Is the Religious Right Moving Left?

http://vdare.com/roberts/080621_lawless.htm

A Totally Lawless Regime  by Paul Craig Roberts

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/nat?guid=20080625/4861c2c0_3ca6_1552620080625557948060

Former Tough Guy Actor Turned Candidate Speaks with a Refreshingly Frank Voice

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/the_rise_of_the_post_paleos_a_second_look

The Rise of the Post-Paleos and the Future of the American Right  by Paul Gottfried

http://www.takimag.com/blogs/article/hitchenss_trotskyite_morality/

Hitchens’ Trotskyite Morality  by Pat Buchanan

http://www.lewrockwell.com/lind/lind141.html

The Cowardly Press  by Bill Lind

http://antiwar.com/justin/?articleid=13046

Is War Good for the Economy  by Justin Raimondo

http://thirdpartywatch.com/2008/06/25/nader-critical-of-obama-for-talking-white/

Ralph Nader on Obama, Black Nationalism and White Guilt

http://www.newleftreview.org/?page=article&view=2057

Christopher Lasch and the Moral Agony of the Left   by Aidan Rankin

http://conservativedemocrats.20m.com/photo3.html

“Anti-Fascism” is the New Fascism by Aidan Rankin

http://sayanythingblog.com/entry/montana_threatens_to_secede_if_supreme_court_rules_against_individual_gun_r/

Montana Threatens Secession if Gun Rights are Threatened by Supreme Court

http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=13056

Who’s Planning Our Next War?  by Pat Buchanan

http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0826,the-w-stands-for,478462,4.html/1

The W Stands for War Criminal   by Nat Hentoff

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese470.html

No White Guilt  by Charley Reese

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/27/world/middleeast/27addiction.html?_r=3&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Iran’s Humane Drug Policy

http://www.truthout.org/article/child-detainees-battle-system-alone

America’s Child Prisoners

http://www.vdare.com/taylor/080624_orthodoxy.htm

Egalitarian Orthodoxy-Noble Fiction or Noxious Poison?  by Jared Taylor

http://thusspokebelinsky.blogspot.com/2008/06/victory-for-gun-rights.html

A Victory for Gun Rights

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2008/06/17/291-federal-lands-in-the-us/

Who Owns the Land in America?

 

Updated News Digest-June 22, 2008 Reply

Uncategorized

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/06/15/magazine/15wwln-Q4-t.html?_r=2&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=all&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

Gore Vidal- The New York Times interviews the patrician radical

http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis113.html

Is the U.S. going to war with Pakistan? by Eric Margolis

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/1382115/Getting-to-know-the-Hitlers.html

Hitler’s long lost relatives-they’re living on Long Island! No, really!

http://www.townhall.com/columnists/JohnStossel/2008/06/18/legalize_all_drugs

Legalize All Drugs! by John Stossel

http://vdare.com/roberts/080617_obama.htm

Obama Grovels to The Lobby, GOP Grovels to Tyranny by Paul Craig Roberts

http://leftconservativeblog.blogspot.com/2008/06/dr-pauls-prescription-still-right-one.html

Dr. Paul’s Prescription Still the Right One-from The Left Conservative

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/rethinking_1948/

Rethinking 1948 by Martin Van Creveld

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/man_of_the_century/

Was U.S. Involvement in World War Two Necessary? by Pat Buchanan

http://www.takimag.com/site/article/the_judicial_shakedown/

Hey, Conservatives, Enough with the Judge Thing! by Daniel Flynn

http://www.recycledart.org/uk-politics/national-anarchist-evangelicals-predictably-given-short-shrift

National-Anarchist Evangelicals Given Short Thrift

http://www.stormfront.org/audio/stormfront_radio-learned_lessons-06-15-08-folkan
dfaith.mp3
Radio interview with Folk and Faith

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2008/jun/17/soldiers-or-criminals/ 

Scalia’s Ludicrous Dissent by Bruce Fein

http://vermontrepublic.org/svr_target_of_cia_style_witch_hunt

Second Vermont Republic Target of CIA Style Witch Hunt by Thomas Naylor

http://vermontrepublic.org/12_reasons_why_secession_is_still_such_a_tough_sell_in_vermont_elsewhere

12 Reasons Why Secession is a Tough Sell by Thomas Naylor

http://www.petitiononline.com/antigovt/petition.html

Petition to Abolish the Government of the United States

http://vdare.com/walker/080619_madd.htm 

MADD’s neo-prohibitionist agenda by Brenda Walker

http://www.lewrockwell.com/buchanan/buchanan87.html

Was the Holocaust Inevitable? by Pat Buchanan 

http://www.lewrockwell.com/reese/reese468.html

Who Cares About Gay Marriage?  by Charley Reese

http://www.monbiot.com/archives/2008/06/17/lost-in-the-system/

Bush’s Gulag by George Monbiot

In Defense of the Lost Cause 2

Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Secession

Recently, on another blog, a somewhat well-known figure in the “left-libertarian” milieu attacked the circle around the Ludwig von Mises Institute for their association with so-called “neo-Confederates”. I don’t like to attack other radicals/libertarians/anarchists publicly unless they attack me first (like ChuckO Munson and Daniel Owen), so I’m not going to name any names, but these comments raise some important questions.

“You’re right, neo-confederates don’t have to be racists. They just have to be tribalists who care a great deal about their blood-and-soil attachment to a particular mythologised collective of molding ancestors. And they have to be specifically attached to a cultural nationalism which happens to be a particularly patriarchal and conservative, order-and-rank closed society. And in order to do that, they have to hop evasive rings around the hideous and widely publicised historical consequences of that kind of society.”

Most human beings are tribalists of some sort, including cultural leftists. The specific sets of rituals and taboos may be different, but the capacity for herdthink, groupthink and intolerance of the Other is the same. For instance, liberals and leftists frequently speak of poor whites in the same manner as racists speak of blacks.  And what is so wrong with an attachment to “blood and soil”? As opposed to what? Impersonal and remote abstractions like “humanity”, “the world”, “society”, etc.? How are these any more legitimate than “blood and soil”? As for patriarchy, ever spent any time around urban black males, Latino, Arab, or Asian immigrants? The average Joe White Guy is a committed feminist compared to some of these. And what about the “hideous historical consequences” of Lincoln’s war to “save the Union”? Six hundred thousand or so dead, for starters? The end of the federal republic in favor of a centralized nationalist regime, followed by the growth of the American empire, US entry into WW2, Versailles, Nazism, WW2, the Holocaust, the Stalinist seizure of Eastern Europe, the Cold War, the arms race, present day American foreign policy and other minor details of history?

“No, neo-confederatism isn’t essentially about racism- it’s about anti-thinking tribalist romanticism of America’s most closed society in the face of mountains of real-world evidence as to the nature of this kind of culture.”

Yeah, as opposed to the PC hysterics in your typical university sociology department.

 “Some leftists just will not face the reality of atrocities which occur in non-Western cultures, because it affronts a certain naive picture of the world which they wish to believe in disregard of all facts. Neo-Confederates do the same- but without any possibly equivalent excuse of ignorant idealism or good intentions.”

So leftists who gloss over clitoridectomies, honor killings, or, presumably, human sacrifice are merely misguided idealists while southerners who claim pride in their heritage while overlooking the brutality of slavery or the maliciousness of Jim Crow are sinister monsters.

“Why would anyone who believes in the free spirit and the creative original mind ever get involved with this kind of movement? What kind of mentality would you have to adopt in order to feel a deep, fundamental attachment to the legacy of Dixie? What kind of individualist could care this much about any traditional, inherited identity instead of who they might be and ought to be as an individual?”

What about all the supposed freethinking leftoids who idealize Third World tyrants like Castro or Mugabe? What about the leftoid obsession with identity politics?

“And of course, most neo-confederates are in fact racists, and everyone knows this. One obvious reason for this is the brazen fact that slavery and racism were defining structural features of antebellum Southern society, and that anyone who truly holds these evils in the proper horrified contempt would never desire to sanction a movement even partially infected by that kind of taint.”

Why is this any special sin as opposed to, say, Enlightened Liberal Christopher Hitchens’ support for aggressive war, or Black Liberal Charlie Rangel’s support for the draft, or racism-hating but drug war-loving Liberal Democrats Joe Biden and Chuck Schumer?

“In the long run the only cure for racism and other forms of prejudice is to learn to see people as choosing, thinking, independent, individuals. Neo-confederates revolt deeply against a broader American society with at least some respect for this “I” in the name of a particularly nasty “we”; ugly persecution of anyone who won’t go along with maintaining fake self-esteem which is the purpose of that “we” is just a consequence. Deeply racist societies are deeply racist because they are anti-individualist; anyone who tries to romanticise anti-individualist cultures while denying that racism has anything to do with it is either dreaming or just plain lying.”

This is a joke. Individualism is a dirty word to many leftoids and liberals. How are “neo-Confederates” any kind of special offenders?

“Then there’s the practical point: what do you think a revived Confederate States of America would mean for black people. gays and lesbians, women, non-Christians, etc. trapped in the South? An independent South would ban abortion and reinstate state persecution of homosexuals on the second day after independence. I doubt they’d re-establish slavery, but some how I doubt life would improve for human beings of the browner variety.”

What about Enlightened Liberal California with its huge prison industry and where the Prison Guards Union practically runs the state government? Somehow I doubt California’s prison system is filled with Capitalist Pigs and Reactionary Enemies of the Peoples’ Revolution. What about Enlightened Liberal New York with its Rockefeller drug laws? What about the Upholder of our Sacred Constitutional Rights US federal government with its massive police state the components of which are too numerous to list? What about the US empire and the mere million or two people it has killed in Iraq over the last couple decades?

“especially given that an independent South would be one ruled even more thoroughly ruled by the class-based old-boy networks who form the South’s real power structure.”

As opposed to the models of government with integrity that reign in the blue states and in Washington, D.C.?

“The only good thing I can imagine coming out this situation is that it might allow the rest of the United States to recover the institutions of the open society (might, being the key word; the South is far from the only thing devouring the soul of “the land of the free” right now). But it would not justify abandoning every women, queer, young-person, and non-white to the fate which would be in store for them behind the closed doors (or the iron curtain) of the Mason-Dixon line.”

Yes, it’s those damn southern hillbillies who are responsible for turning the federal government into the fascist monstrosity it’s become. And all this time I thought they were busy trying to find a job and feed themselves. And all those black city officials I see here in the capital of the old Confederacy are just an illusion, and the thriving gay counterculture that exists in my city is a figment of my imagination. And I guess it’s just the federal government and the Enlightened Example of the Yankee and West Coast Bolsheviks that keeps all those young female college students who run up and down my block in shorts and halter tops out of the burkhas and veils.

“Neo-confederates, in short, are not white hats. The principles of 1789 and 1968 just do not mix with the mythology of the Lost Cause.”

Yes, those great liberators and anti-authoritarians, the Jacobins and their favorite invention, the guillotine, and the Trotsky, Mao and Castro loving Paris rioters.

Isn’t it amazing that those who talk the loudest about “tolerance” have least amount of it? “Tolerance” Fascists are just the Moral Majority of the Left.

The State and Immigration 2

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Economics/Class Relations, Immigration, Police State/Civil Liberties, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity

Some months ago I wrote an article for LewRockwell.Com discussing the role of the state with regards to immigration. You can read the full article here: http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig8/preston7.html

Joshua Holmes offers a rebuttal here: http://noonefreer.blogspot.com/2008/01/another-terrible-argument-against.html

Joshua hasn’t converted me, but he makes some points worth addressing. First, he addresses the class issue:

“1. “Immigration is class warfare!” Basically, mass immigration is a way for the rich to exploit the poor.

The problem is that keeping desperately poor people from working in the world’s largest economy is, itself, the worst economic exploitation around. Forcing people to scratch out a living in a rural Mexican village or in a war-torn hellhole like the Sudan is the worst sort of class warfare in existence. You can’t call yourself a friend of the workers if you’re stopping them from the richest job market in history.”

Well, first of all, I am not a universalist. Naturally, I am more concerned about the working class from which I come and the indigenous American working class to which I am most closely connected than I am with workers anywhere just as I am more concerned about my own circle of family, friends and peers than I am with “humanity” as a whole. Mass immigration is harmful to the indigenous American working class (of any color). That said, I’m all for the self-advancement of workers in the Sudan and Mexico, which is part of the reason why I’ve been a committed anti-imperialist my entire adult life. I want people in these places to be sovereign in their own homelands, communities and cultures and in control of their own economies and natural resources so that they may develop in their own way and at their own pace. Good luck to them.

“Libertarians say that, if the world is set to rights, there’s nothing wrong with the existence of the rich and the poor. And if the poor choose to work for the rich, that’s a private matter and no one else’s business. Preston nowhere mentions or addresses this argument, even though it’s the fundamental libertarian complaint against state interference in labor-management relations.”

This is such a naive view of political economy it’s barely worth discussing. I’ll simply say, “Joshua, read some Kevin Carson and then we can discuss this further.” You can start here: http://mutualist.org/id4.html

“But even as Preston laments the fate of the workers, he betrays them. Why else would he say, “There are going to be a lot of very wealthy people, and a lot of peons who are going to live in the barrios.” Why use the Spanish word? The reason is ugly but simple; Preston is saying, “I don’t want to live in a country full of Mexicans.” Fair enough, but why should his preferences get enacted into law? There’s nothing libertarian about that.”

I’d rather live in country full of Mexicans than in a country full of white yuppies and megachurch Jesus freaks. The bottom line is that if you move the Third World into the West, you will lower the overall quality of life in the West to Third World levels, rather than vice versa. Erik von Kuehnelt-Leddihn made the argument that the effect of “free, universal and compulsory” education has been not to raise the educational standards of the stupid but to dumb down the smart. Immigration has a similar effect.

“(There also considerable market-oriented literature about the barrios as a creation of unjust legal systems, but that’s not a problem with immigration.)”

Indeed they are, and so are black ghettos.

The bulk of Joshua’s arguments concern a passage from my article he finds particularly objectionable:

“I’m in favor of private property, not just for individuals as the Lockeans are, but also for families (as illustrated by the law of inheritance), communities (“the commons”), property rooted in ancestral traditions (for instance, the recognition of the prerogative of indigenous peoples’ to their sacred burial grounds), the property of tribes and ethnic groups (their historical homelands), and of nations (their generations long established domain). However, I’m also in favor of alternative business models like cooperatives and works councils. Whatever the particular approach to property theory one adheres to, or whatever model of business/labor/economic organization one finds to be most optimal or just, it is unlikely that there can ever be a system of ownership, whether individual or collective, that places no barriers to entry whatsoever. Is an anarcho-leftist commune going to accept all comers, irrespective of beliefs, behavior or economic output? Republicans? Religious fundamentalists? Meat-eaters? Skinheads? And is enforcement of rules pertaining to immigration visas or border crossing inherently any more authoritarian than the enforcement of laws against trespassing or the restriction of entry to private facilities such as school campuses, shopping centers or office buildings? Both involve forcible expulsion of those uninvited persons who refuse to exit on their own initiative and not necessarily anything more.”

Says Joshua, in response to this passage:

“That this passage appears on a libertarian site is breathtaking, because Preston is implicitly arguing that the state is the representative of or embodiment of one of those listed groups. Wasn’t Preston just arguing about the awfulness of class warfare a few paragraphs beforehand, and now he’s arguing that the state is the embodiment of some rights-bearing group? He argues that the elites are using the state to create mass immigration, then argues that the state is the father of us all? Well, which is it?”

I’ve made no such argument at all. I’ve merely argued in favor of property rights beyond the merely individual level, not that the state is the embodiment of families, communities, indigenous peoples, ethnic groups or tribes or even nations. In fact, I regard the state as a parasite on all of these entities and institutions, including their property rights.

“But to answer his question, the difference between the state’s borders and the individual’s borders is “rights”. The state has no right to the borders because it is not a rights-bearing group or its representative. Keep as many folks off your property as you like, but you don’t get to tell me who I allow access. Preston’s argument is akin to an assault defendant saying that it’s perfectly okay to punch people in a boxing match.”

I regard rights as conventions rooted in historic tradition and experience, and relative to the particulars of specific cultures, and not as decrees from On High. Beyond that, I don’t trust the state to uphold “rights” of any kind. Down with the INS, all hail the Minutemen!

“Once again, the LRC folks flail about but can’t answer the serious libertarian argument at the heart of our open borders stance: who I allow onto my property, who I hire and fire, is not the business of anyone else, including the state. “

I would agree with this when it comes to individual property owners, small businesses, genuinely private associations, etc. I don’t agree when it comes to mass corporations and crony-capitalist institutions connected to the state. For instance, while I think private neighborhoods, private schools, private clubs, genuinely private businesses, etc. should be allowed to discriminate all they want, even on grounds liberals find taboo like race, gender, et al, I wouldn’t have a problem with a rule that said McDonald’s, Walmart, General Motors or Microsoft cannot simply refuse to hire blacks, or Mormons or gays simply because they are blacks, Mormons or gays. But I would also have no problem with a rule that Big Capital cannot displace indigenous workers out of desire to exploit immigrant labor. Corporate feudalism really isn’t my idea of liberty.

Beyond that, libertarianism is not the end-all of human existence. It’s not a religion or something that can answer all the world’s problems. I consider liberty to be the highest political value (as opposed to equality or throne and altar or the glory of the fatherland), but sectarian versions of libertarianism are hardly important enough to justify political, economic and cultural suicide, which is what will happen if we Westerners allow our societies to be overrun by immigration. That said, I very much favor standing with Third World nations against imperialism and exploitation by international capitalism. I favor practicing class solidarity with domestic workers, including immigrant workers, even illegals. For instance, I’m a big fan of Caesar Chavez. I favor practicing solidarity with all prisoners, even those on death row, and, yes, even those in immigrant detention camps.

I do not favor creating any new laws whatsoever for the purpose of curbing immigration. I’m simply for ending all state subsidies and entitlements that create incentives for immigration, ending birth citizenship (a privilege, not a right),  decentralizing the naturalization process to the community level according to community standards, repealing laws prohibiting private discrimination, deporting immigrants convicted of violent crimes, forming citizen militias to patrol entry points, creating worker-run enterprises to discourage the employment of cheap immigrant labor, organizing boycotts of employers who do engage in such practices, and outright syndicalist seizure of state-connected industries who displace indigenous labor with immigrant labor.

There’s a such thing as a society becoming so “tolerant” that it leads to self-destruction. For instance, the Weimar Republic did not act to save itself even in the face of imminent Nazi or Communist seizure of power. The same thing is going on in Europe today with regards to unqualified Islamic immigration in the name of multiculturalist ideology. And in America, the indigenous working class is being sold out in the name of trendy liberal notions of “diversity”.

The Bleak Future of the U.S. Economy 3

Uncategorized

From Peter Bjorn Perls: (thanks, Peter)

Chances are that McCain will be the next US prez. That means more military activity abroad, and “staying the course” for Iraq. (Obama is softer and not a hawk like McCain, but will he be much different when he is behind the wheel? Discuss.)

Also, there seems to be nothing on the board that will change the disastrous US economic course:
1) Aggressive expansion of the money supply by the Fed
2) Ditto for credit expansion by banks.
3) Major US federal deficit, with no significant and reliable long-term change in the cards
4) No significant tax reform on the horizon (the Fair Tax is discussed, but I don’t think is has much real support, in any case it is not as much of a reform as I’d hope for and advocate).
5) No likely cuts to US military budget, medicare/medicaid, social security.
What this spells for the future is this:
a) Continuing and increasing inflation, meaning: more economic uncertainty,unwillingness to invest and save, a continuing drop in the value of US$s, stronger unwillingness to own and trade US$, and catastrophe for US import-based businesses, which will see their operating costs spiral out of control.
b) more bankruptcies, especially real-estate based – and a full crash following if the economy does more severe hiccups than it has lately
c) more interest expenses for US citizens on the foreign debt, less future willingness for foreign states to borrow the US money (which means big f’ing crisis the day the creditors stop being creditors – that would be your economic downturn right there)
d) no tax reform means that the state will still base its revenue primarily on income taxation to accumulate the funds needed to keep the state in action. When the crash hits, the tax revenue needs to grow to cover the crash expenses (I assume that a crash will either be directly based on a foreign lending stop, or result in strongly reduced lending willingness, which means more debt-based spending is realistically impossible on the scale it happens today). More income from income taxes means a heightened income tax burdens on individuals and businesses, naturally leading to tax evasion, underreporting, and discontent as people will see their living standard plunge (not only from the crash itself), and their personal economic lives under increased surveillance.)
e) No budget cuts means in the case of no short-term crash, will the long-term economic crash be assured, when the money runs out and the federal state is unable to meets its medicX/SS obligations. That means a lot of people will be placed in situations where desperate action becomes more likely.
– p

 

Why Pan-Secessionism? 4

Anarchism/Anti-State, Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Secession, Strategy

Most Americans agree that the political system in the United States is incompetent, corrupt and not likely to be reformed in any meaningful way. More and more Americans are getting fed up with the Tweedle Dee vs. Tweedle Dum so-called “electoral process”. The problem is that while Americans frequently agree that “the system” is no good, there is virtually no agreement as to what should be done about it or what an alternative system might be. Enter the idea of pan-secessionism.

Secession, of course, involves the idea of regions or localities separating themselves from larger political units, such as the secession of the thirteen American colonies from the British empire in 1776, the secession of the Confederate states from the Union in 1861, the secession of Norway from Sweden in the early twentieth century, or the secession of the various Warsaw Pact nations or Soviet republics from the Soviet empire in the late 1980s.

As the American economy continues to decline due to America’s massive trade deficits, falling currency, rising fuel costs, unemployment, fiscal extravagance, military overstretch, mass immigration, rising health care and housing costs, American society and American politics will become increasingly polarized along the lines of social class, as is the case in many Latin American or Middle Eastern nations, and as was the case in Europe prior to the mid-20th century.

Americans are divided among themselves along cultural, regional, religious, racial, ethnic and political lines. Yet most Americans agree that the system as it stands is no good. And all Americans have a stake in resisting the corporate oligarchy that presently runs the system.  Pan-secessionism provides a way for all Americans to unite against the common enemy (“the system”) and manage their differences at the same time. Simply put, we should all work together to attack our common enemy, and then go our separate ways.

Pan-secessionism provides the framework whereby social conservatives and counterculturalists, religious fundamentalists and feminists or gays, blacks and whites, Christians and Muslims, conservatives and liberals, anarchists and socialists, communists and fascists, libertarians and communitarians, family values advocates and proponents of alternative lifestyles, yuppies and punk rockers, homeschoolers and drug users, militiamen and gangbangers, skinheads and illegal immigrants, vegetarians and pro-lifers can all achieve self-determination for themselves within the context of communities specifically designed to meet their own cultural or philosophical standards or desires. The “system” uses these differences as a means of dividing and conquering all of us who are under their boot. The Honorable Minister Louis Farrakhan once remarked, “If we can’t get along, then we need to separate.”

Already there are over three dozen secessionist organizations in North America. Imagine if they all grew to where they had thousands of members and then tens of thousands and then hundreds of thousands and then entire towns, counties, cities, metro areas, states and regions started declaring their independence from Washington, D.C., and began creating their own intentional communities and intentional states with their own schools, health care systems, businesses, labor organizations, social services, cultural organizations, protection services, courts and militias. Dissenting political forces have done just this in many other countries, and we can do it in America as well. So let’s get to it.

The Third North American Secessionist Convention Reply

Uncategorized

http://middleburyinstitute.org/secessionconvention2008.html

THE THIRD NORTH AMERICAN SECESSIONIST CONVENTION
November 14-16, 2008 in Manchester, New Hampshire

CALL
Issued March 31, 2008

        

MARCH 31—The Middlebury Institute has announced that the Third North American Secessionist Convention will be held in Manchester, New Hampshire, on November 14-16, 2008.

Delegates are expected from a majority of the three-dozen current secessionist organizations in the United States and  Canada. As in the two previous conventions—in Burlington, Vermont, in 2006, and Chattanooga, Tennessee, in 2007—delegations will give reports on the activities in their areas in the previous year and  trade information on strategizing, organizing, and politicking.

In previous years, participants have uniformly expressed enthusiasm for the conventions as showcases for the secessionist movement and workshops for the down-home business of spreading the secessionist message.  Both meetings issued declarations of purpose and policy, available on the website, MiddleburyInstitute.org.

One highlight of the meeting will be a presentation of the idea of an independent Atlantic federation of Canadian maritime provinces and northern New England states. The  proposal has been around for a number of years, but recently there has been renewed interest, especially in Canada, and this venue will provide a way to introduce it in this country in an impactful way.

In addition to delegates mandated by individual secessionist groups, individuals with a general interest in secession and separatism, or who might be considering organizing such a group, are invited to attend.  All who intend to attend must contact the Director@MiddleburyInstitute.org, and of course the sooner the better.

As in the past, the Middlebury Institute is willing to underwrite the travel costs for some of the mandated representatives, especially from the West, who are genuinely unable to pay their own way.

Details of the convention follow:
 
Radisson Hotel Manchester
700 Elm St.
Manchester, NH 03101
603-625-1000

Reservations: 603-206-4109, or 1-800-333-333.  A block of rooms at a special rate of $119 a night (single, double, or triple) is being held by the hotel, and individuals should indicate they are with the Third North American Secessionist Convention.  Online reservations should use the following PAC CODE: SEC08 at http://www.radisson.com/manchesternh.  Reservations must be made by October 24 at 12 p.m. to get this rate.

Schedule:

Friday, November 14
Registration 3 p.m. on, in Lobby. 
Cash bar 5-9 p.m.  

Saturday, November 15—
9-5 p.m., Convention, in Theater.
News conference—5-5:30 p.m.
Banquet—6:30-9:30 p.m. Frost/Hawthorne.

Manchester has a major airport.  The hotel provides transport from it and back.
 
Kirkpatrick Sale
Director, Middlebury Institute
MiddleburyInstitute.org

Barack Obama, You Really Blew It!! 6

Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Religion and Philosophy • Tags: , , , ,

It seems as if Barack Obama has continued in the tradition of Howard Dean insofar as being unable to resist the impulse to insult the working class. Dean, some will recall, said he wanted to reach out to those folks with Confederate flags on their pick-up trucks, and then turned around and lambasted social conservatives for their supposed obsession with “guns, gays, and God” or something to that effect.

Now, Obama steps in with a similar gaffe, making derisive remarks about working class people and their attachment to guns and religion and their hostility to “those who are different” and to “trade”. Read all about it.

That a politician as otherwise savvy as Obama could fuck up so royally is indicative of the contempt that liberals and leftists secretly (and often not so secretly) hold for working class Americans, particularly those of the infamous “white” species. Some writers have wondered why the Republican scam of combining social populism and plutocracy could have lasted as long as it did (since Kevin Phillips designed Nixon’s “southern strategy” in 1968). In comments like these from the likes of Dean or Obama, we have our answer. The Republican scam works, because the Democratic scam of combining plutocracy and counterculturalism is even more ridiculous.

More…

Welcome, ARV and ATS Supporters! Reply

Uncategorized • Tags: , , , , ,

As you can tell, I’m in the process of creating a whole new look for AttacktheSystem.Com. This new blog format will include many of the features of the old site such as the essays by myself and others and a comprehensive links page. I’m also hoping for this blog to be much more interactive, allowing for greater participation from ATS readers and ARV supporters. Hopefully, fresh news articles will appear much more regularly as well. Please bear with me while I work out all the kinks.

For Revolution, Keith Preston

Lessons of the Ron Paul Campaign? 3

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Left and Right, Police State/Civil Liberties, Strategy

It would appear that Ron Paul’s heroic but quixotic presidential campaign is all but finished. That said, what lessons can be drawn from the Ron Paul experience? To some degree, it would appear that those of us advocating a “third way” beyond left and right have been on the right track. Ron Paul’s support came primarily from the vast culture of the “radical right” (those so far to the Right as to be outside the Republican Party) and from “moderates” or “independents” (the radical middle), blacks (no doubt due to his stands on the Iraq war and the drug war), antiwar sympathizers, young people and “secularists” (who are mostly independently minded, dissident intellectuals). These are precisely the constituents a serious beyond left and right movement would need to capture.

Ron Paul is a good candidate. He is quite solid on the primary issues: the foreign policy agenda of the Neocons and their liberal-internationalist accomplices, sovereignty, the police state and its “root causes” (the drug war, terror war, crime war, etc.) and essential trade, monetary and fiscal matters. That mainstream Republicans in general and “movement conservatives” in general refused to support Ron Paul illustrates their true colors as the “Party of War and Fascism”. RP is a solid family man, a baby doctor, an evangelical Christian, pro-life, pro-2nd Amendment, anti-gay marriage, anti-income tax and anti-immigration. One would think he would be the ideal conservative candidate, but he was rejected in favor of the warmongering AIPAC/Military-Industrial-Complex stooge McCain, the used car salesman Romney or the televangelist Huckster. This means we can pretty much forget about “conservatives” as reliable allies against Big Brother.

More…

Do I Believe Jews Control the World? 6

Anti-Imperialism/Foreign Policy, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity

Found this amusing post on the Revolution International blog:

Very strange website. I note you link to Keith Preston (thinks Jews control the world), Peter Topfer (attended Teran holocaust denial conference), the National Bolshevik Party (neo-Nazi and old KGB), Black nationalists who are anti-Semitic (and anti-White), and Folk & Faith (who openly support Mussolini and, at least on their forums, refer to themselves as fascists). Needless to say, you lot aren’t anarchists. Not even close. They are 2 different words – “Anarchist” and “Fascist.” Real anarchists have this history of beating-up and killing fascists, and fascists have a history of jailing and shooting anarchists. Savvy?

These comments come from an Irish left-anarchist by the name of Daniel Owen (http://celticanarchy.org/)

So do Jews really control the world? No, reality is more complicated than that. Modern democratic states are essentially an alliance of the political apparatus of government and the capitalist economic ruling class that displaced the traditional feudal aristocracy in the West. As mass democracy has grown, suffrage has become universal and the mass media has emerged as a major public institution, politics has become a kind of oligopoly of political interest groups seeking to control the forces of state and capital. The composition of the ruling class at any one time represents shifting coalitions of such interest groups, including those of an economic, ideological, cultural, racial, ethnic, religious, generational or some other nature. None of this can be explained in crudely reductionist terms. For instance, the Marxist view of the state as the “executive committee of the ruling class” frequently ignores the role of non-economic forces as well as intra-state and intra-capitalist class rivalries in determining political outcomes. It ignores the question of “bureaucratic thrust” whereby bureaucratic entities take on a life of their own where self-preservation begins to overshadow instrumental purposes.

More…

Paradoxically, Ron Paul’s Success Proving Irrelevance of (Establishment) Libertarianism 2

Anarchism/Anti-State, Culture Wars/Current Controversies, Economics/Class Relations, Race and Ethnicity, Sexuality and the State

British emigre and paleoconservative John Derbyshire has an interesting discussion of Ron Paul, Libertarian and Classical Anarchism on today’s VDARE.com:

http://www.vdare.com

Some responses to Mr. Derbyshire’s critique:

“The libertarian Establishment has disdain for Ron Paul‘s presidential campaign. The geeky idealists of Reason and the Cato Institute failed to warm to him; or, having warmed to him, have quickly cooled again, finding that he fails to meet their standards of ideological purity. “

Agreed, and this is a shameful blight on substantial sectors of the libertarian milieu.

“Not only does Paul want to defend the America’s borders, he has been running TV ads against birthright citizenship!—as if a genuine libertarian gives a fig for such antique concepts as “citizenship”. He is also willing to let the welfare state wind down, fulfilling its current commitments to senior citizens. “

The idea behind traditional anarchism was to replace the state with voluntary communities. Presumably, each of these would maintain their own standards of citizenship which prospective members would be free to accept or reject. An Anarchist federation might well include many different kinds of communities with widely divergent standards of citizenship.

On the welfare state question, as the man is who by far the leading Anarchist economist suggests, it is important to eliminate the state’s functions in the right order, beginning with the apparatus of imperialism, and the corporate state. As the wider welfare state becomes superfluous, it can be phased out.

http://www.attackthesystem.com/ppa.html

“Worse yet, Paul seems to have associated with people, fifteen or twenty years ago, who thought that we were all better off when homosexuals had to be discreet, and that black Americans are prone to civil disorder, and that Martin Luther King was a philandering plagiarist, and that the Confederacy had a right to secede from the Union, and that the Korean storekeepers of Los Angeles behaved in true American spirit when they defended their property with guns against rioters. “

Well, I would consider myself to be pro-gay rights in the sense of believing gay people should be free of persecution by the state or from private vigilantes but opposed to the totalitarian PC agenda of the modern “gay rights” movement. I’m pro-black rights in the sense of favoring reparations for previous generations of unpaid labor, establishing self-governing black separatist states, amnesty for black prisoners, but I oppose the abridgement of freedom of association generated by coercive integration policies and affirmative action. I could care less whether King was a philanderer or plagiarist. I respect him as a critic of Jim Crow and the Vietnam War, but view him as irrelevant to the anarchist struggle given his affinities for coercive integration and state-socialism. I agree the Southern secession was legitimate. In fact, I wish they would secede again. And I’m certainly pro-right to bear arms and pro-self-defense.

“There is of course a difference of sensibility between the anarchist and the libertarian, resting mainly in the anarchist being hostile to money, private property, and markets, while the libertarian does not object to those things, but only wants them freed from state interference. Your anarchist believes that private property is the enemy of liberty; your libertarian, that it is liberty’s guarantor.“

I’m in the middle on this. I’m for property and markets, but against corporatism and state-capitalism. For the peaceful co-existence of anarcho-syndicalist unions, cooperatives, municipal enterprises, land trusts, mutual banks, kibbutzes, individual and family proprieterships, and partnerships!

“Going down a level, anarchism belongs on the Left because it posits human perfectibility—the notion that if only the human personality were not deformed by the need to submit to authority, and to practice acquisitiveness for survival, it would be nothing but sweetness and light, nothing but selfless forbearance and a willingness to cooperate with others.”

I’m actually a cynic. I agree with Michels’ “Iron Law of Oligarchy”, Pareto’s 80/20 principle and Mosca’s theory of the circulation of elites.

“Or check in with the open-borders über-libertarians at The Wall Street Journal. Borders? Nation-states? Race? Ethnicity? Tribe? Faith? Pfui! Just open up those borders and let economics work its magic! We’ll all get on just fine!—like, you know, Hutus and Tutsis, Sunnis and Shias, Prods and Taigs. Right. These guys make Prince Kropotkin look like a hard-boiled cynic.”

I suppose I could be called an anarcho-tribalist. I’m in favor of devolving the state in organic communities organized on the basis of cultural, religious, ethnic, linguistic, commercial, sexual or aesthetic identity with their own indigenous natural aristocracy.

“And yet, of course, both anarchists and libertarians have got hold of an essential truth: too much government is bad for ya. It is only that they have put that truth in the service of false ideas about human nature.”

Agreed. I’m one of the anarchists who is trying to correct for this.

“Both groups are disciples of Jean-Jacques Rousseau – all-time winner, in my opinion, of the title “Person We Should Most Wish Had Been Strangled In His Cradle.”“

You won’t get any argument from me on that one.

“And so libertarianism marches forward with its band playing (“Rejoice, Ye Pure in Heart,” perhaps) and its banners held high, all blazoned with images of Reason’s heroes—Larry Flynt! Madonna! Dennis Rodman! —and affirmations of undying political correctness… straight into the Swamp of Irrelevance, just like the anarchists of old.”

The war against the state will no doubt have to be waged by those outside the official Libertarian or official Anarchist milieus. But, Mr. Derbyshire, we are not all alike. Some of us may surprise you:

http://rosenoire.org
http://revolutioninternational.blogspot.com
http://radian-born.blogspot.com
http://www.newrightausnz.com/

The Wisdom of Paul Avrich Reply

Anarchism/Anti-State, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism

http://www.deadanarchists.org/avrich.html

The late Anarchist historian Paul Avrich probably met and got to know more people from the original anarchist movement than anyone who was young enough to be alive at the beginning of the 21st century. He was acquainted with the sons of Johann Most and Rudolph Rocker, and the daughters of Benjamin R. Tucker and Peter Kropotkin and with those who had been personal friends of Emma Goldman, Alexander Berkman, Sacco and Vanzetti and Voltairine de Cleyre. What did he have to say about the old anarchists?

“I’ve known thousands of anarchists and the percentage of them I didn’t like is very small,” says Avrich. At his sparsely furnished Upper West Side apartment, overlooking the Hudson River, Avrich speaks quickly and passionately about the people and the movement he spent a lifetime chronicling. “I loved these people,” he says, leaning forward with his hand clutching his heart. “I think about them every day.”

Now what did the distinguished historian have to say about what passes for “anarchism” today?

“Avrich does not shy away from controversy in his books, treating the anarchist acts of violence honestly and in the context of the time. He does not condone the violence of Berkman, but says he still admires his decision, considering how brutal Frick acted toward striking workers. But Avrich does not have the same patience for some contemporary anarchists, who choose to destroy property and who, he says, come mainly from educated and middle-class backgrounds. “I’m not so crazy about anarchists these days,” he says. “Anarchism means that you leave other people alone and you don’t force people to do anything.”
He says he is sad that the old-timers are not around to guide the resurgent movement. “They were nicer people – much nicer people.””

Of course, not a few of today’s “anarchists” are really nothing more than brownshirts for the new Totalitarian Humanism. To hell with ’em.

Most Likely to Secede 1

Left and Right, Political Correctness/Totalitarian Humanism, Race and Ethnicity, Religion and Philosophy, Secession

The on-line journal Good Magazine has a very well-done article on the growing secessionist movement in the US:

http://www.goodmagazine.com/section/Features/most_likely_to_secede

Some highlights:

“In an October, 2006, poll broadcast on CNN, 71 percent of Americans agree that “our system of government is broken and cannot be fixed.” A Daily Kos poll in April, 2007, asked, “Should states be allowed to secede from the union peaceably?” Sixty-nine percent of respondents answered in the affirmative. All in all, this was, in the words of the chief impresario of the Chattanooga convention, an impish 70-year-old author and activist named Kirkpatrick Sale, “extremely fertile ground into which secessionists can plant their seeds.”

“Of all the western democracies, the United States stands near dead last in voter turnout, last in health care, last in education, highest in homicide rates, mortality, STDs among juveniles, youth pregnancy, abortion, and divorce—a society which, in keeping with its degenerate morals, wreaks one-quarter of the environmental damage on the planet every day.”

“Vermont, you see, is already a separate country. It is the most radical state in the Union in terms of the number and kind of town meetings—direct democracy in action. Its constitution of 1777 made it the first state to outlaw slavery, it was the first to mandate universal suffrage for all men, and is currently one of only two states that allow incarcerated felons to vote. It has no death penalty and virtually no gun-control laws, yet remains one of the least violent jurisdictions in America. It has no big cities, no big businesses, no military bases, no strategic resources, few military contractors. All three members of its Congressional delegation voted against the Iraq War resolution. It is rural and wild, with the highest percentage of unpaved roads in the nation. And those billboards? It was the first state to ban them along its roads. With its strict environmental-impact laws, Vermont fended off the predations of Wal-Mart superstores longer than any other state, and Montpelier today remains the only state capital in America without a McDonald’s restaurant.”

“It was the stratagems of George Kennan, who died in 2005, that ultimately defeated the Soviet Union. Naylor sees this as historical irony, and he takes pleasure in drawing a dark comparison between the Soviet Union and the United States: There is the same far-flung geography. The same corporate socialism that defies free markets. The same spread of influence worldwide through violence, murder, and pillage. The same stunted public discourse. The same electoral sclerosis in the legislature (Congress is almost as stable in membership as the Politburo). “No one in the Soviet Union in 1960 or 1970 or even 1980 found it imaginable that someday it would collapse,” says Naylor. So, too, he says, is our certainty today in the stability of the United States of America.”

These issues were raised in the Comments section:

“Secession is alluring, but I tremble to think of the massive upheavals it might also produce as factions seize power and threats, real or perceived, are leveled at other groups. How do we navigate ourselves into a more hopeful place without the looming danger of massive violence visited back upon us in as recompense for our own hubris and lust? “

The US empire is going to fall one way or the other. It can either be dissolved relatively peacefully in the way the secessionists envision or it can be bloody. Obviously, the former is preferable to the latter. The best way to avoid a future scenario in North America that resembles post-Communist Yugoslavia is to develop a mutually agreed upon plan for dissolving the empire into autonomous units for incompatible groups following the demise of the present imperial system.

“There are many factors that may lead us to conclude that small is better. However, there is a big downside to secession. I’m the senior editor for a group of alternative papers (Atlanta, Chicago, DC, Tampa, Charlotte, Sarasota), and I’ve written a lot on extremist groups — from Christian Reconstruction to white nationalist outfits such as the League of the South. The League puts on a moderate spin when it is utilizing the credibility Naylor and Sale bring. However, the group is intrinsically white nationalist, as a review of the statements and papers of its leaders will confirm.”

This issue is getting a little tiresome. Aside from the fact that all of the major southern secessionist groups deny that they are in favor of restoring Jim Crow, the South now has a huge black population and many southern cities, particularly the larger ones, have black dominated governments. Blacks are influential in public life in the South. There’s no going back to the “old order”. Even most overtly white nationalist groupings reject such an idea. As for Christian fundamentalists, the Left’s favorite scapegoat group, many of them are actually moving leftward in their cultural and theological outlook. Further, many of them wish to be free of the rule of liberal-secular elites who ridicule their beliefs. Yes, some Christian conservatives may wish to outlaw abortion, reinstate sodomy laws, censor pornography, enforce blue laws, etc. but how are they any different from left-liberals who support bans on private firearms, censoring politically incorrect speech, smoking bans, intrusions into private homes by social service agents, instrusive legislation rooted in environmental fanaticism, bans on gambling and prostitution, etc.? Indeed, it is rather apalling to see politically correct types perpetually whining about racism and homophobia, whether real or imaginary, among dissident groups while giving mainstream liberal Democrats who have been instrumental in bringing into being and perpetually expanding the War on Drugs a free pass. The drug war and the accompanying police state and prison industry that have grown out of it are far more menacing to black Americans and marginal populations than anything associated with the League of the South or religious believers who disapprove of homosexuality for theological reasons. It’s time for liberals to get a life when it comes to these questions.

However, there is the issue of regionalist movements that may contain culturally incompatible elements within their own ranks. I would agree, for instance, that in the event of a southern secession, the liberal-cosmopolitan metro areas and those regions with majority black, Hispanic, Cuban or American Indian populations may need autonomy of their own from the wider “red zones” of the rural and small town South. Likewise, there may be similar conflicts between religious conservatives and other groups like gays and lesbians. For instance, the Christian Exodus Project wishes for South Carolina to become an independent Christian state. Yet sympathy for secession has also been expressed by gay South Carolinians:

http://gaycharleston.ccpblogs.com/2007/10/04/talking-bout-a-revolution/

So why not still more separatism? Why not the creation of independent gay city-states with gay marriage, etc. along with independent Christian communities with school prayer and a ban on abortion or pornography? Surely, this is preferable to an infinite Cultural Cold War that leaves everyone dissatisfied, or perhaps still further degeneration into violent conflict and bloodshed?

Stop the Hate–Smash the State–Unity in Diversity! Separatists Unite!