Author Archives

Keith Preston

Organizing the Urban Lumpenproletariat

For some time now, I have argued for an alliance of left-wing anarchism and right-wing populism against the common enemies of imperialism and Big Brother statism. I have argued that the strategic application of such an alliance would be a pan-secessionist movement rooted in the traditions of the […]

The Concept of the Vanguard

Recently a reader of Attack the System wrote: Keith Preston, in his Liberty and Populism: Building an Effective Resistance Movement in North America, writes of “anarchist” “city-states”, “anarcho-papis[m]“, and “anarcho-monarchis[m]“! In the same essay he writes that most anarchists favor the “town meeting” approach of “direct democracy”. To […]

Updated News Digest June 7, 2009

Quote of the Week: “We can tolerate intolerance and we can tolerate intolerance of intolerance.”  -TGGP “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 […]

Shrinking the Prison System

TGGP of the “Entitled to an Opinion” blog has an interesting post up on the prison-industrial complex, and he’s asked for some of my views on how to shrink the prison system in the near term. I have an extended essay on dealing with crime in a stateless […]

Is Something Really Wrong with Kansas?

ABSTRACT: The widely believed claim that many voters in American elections are voting against their economic interests (“lower income Republicans versus affluent Democrats”) in favor of their social or cultural values is not supportable by the data concerning class voting patterns. American voters are polarized on both a […]

Updated News Digest May 31, 2009

Quote of the Week: “An intellectual is someone who has discovered something more interesting than sex.” “That all men are equal is a proposition which, at ordinary times, no sane individual has ever given his assent.” “There’s only one corner of the universe you can be certain of […]

The Political Theory of Carl Schmitt

By Keith Preston   Discussion:   Carl Schmitt The Crisis of Parliamentary Liberalism  The Concept of the Political The Weimar Republic Sourcebook (p. 331, 334-337, 342-345)             The editors of The Weimar Republic Sourcebook attempt to summarize the political thought of Carl Schmitt and interpret his writings […]

Ernst Junger: The Resolute Life of an Anarch

by Keith Preston Perhaps the most interesting, poignant and, possibly, threatening  type of writer and thinker is the one who not only defies conventional categorizations of thought but also offers a deeply penetrating critique of those illusions many hold to be the most sacred. Ernst Junger (1895-1998), who […]

Updated News Digest May 24, 2009

Quote of the Week: “The exception is more interesting than the rule. The rule proves nothing; the exception proves everything: It confirms not only the rule but also its existence, which derives only from the exception. In the exception the power of real life breaks through the crust […]

Updated News Digest May 10, 2009

Quote of the Week: “There’s the populist wing of the libertarian movement, and then there’s the Washington crowd that’s still trying to sell libertarianism, or their version of it, to elites. These people want to go along and get along. As long as they can abort their babies […]

Why I am an Anarcho-Pluralist, Part Two

Imagine, for one horribly unpleasant moment, that the anarchist movement (movements?) in North America, in their present form, were to carry out an actual revolution. What kind of social or political system would be the result? The Wikipedia entry on anarchism in the United States lists a number […]

You Musn’t Forget S-L-A-V-E-R-Y!!!!!!

In contemporary American political discourse, we often hear talk of “the legacy of slavery,” primarily in discussions of racial issues. To be sure, the “legacy of slavery” has had a damaging impact on American race relations (it wasn’t so wonderful for the actual slaves, either). Many of the […]

Updated News Digest April 26, 2009

Quote of the Week: “Yes, something very ugly has surfaced in contemporary American liberalism, as evidenced by the irrational and sometimes infantile abuse directed toward anyone who strays from a strict party line. Liberalism, like second-wave feminism, seems to have become a new religion for those who profess […]

Why I Am an Anarcho-Pluralist

Over the last few days, there’s been an interesting discussion going on over at the blog of left-libertarian philosopher Charles Johnson (also known as “Rad Geek“). I’ve avoided posting there, due to the presence of an individual who has declared themself my mortal enemy (a role I’m happy […]

Updated News Digest April 5, 2009

Quotes of the Week: “I read the Social Democratic newspapers. I saw their disgusting attitude towards anything that bore even the slightest revolutionary character, and I realized that there could be no reconciliation between a revolutionary party and a party trying to earn a reputation for ‘moderation’ in […]

Updated News Digest March 15, 2009

Quote of the Week: “All universal moral principles are idle fancies.  All, all is theft, all is unceasing and rigorous competition in nature;…Are not laws dangerous which inhibit the passions? Compare the centuries of anarchy with those of the strongest legalism in any country you like and you […]

Updated News Digest March 1, 2009

Quote of the Week: “Everything the State says is a lie, and everything it has it has stolen.”                                                                               -Friedrich Nietzsche “Journalists and opinion makers who now deride what was revolutionary and progressive about modern capitalism (an easier life and a higher standard of living) do so as […]

Updated News Digest February 22, 2009

Quote of the Week: “Conservatives uphold voluntary community, quite as they oppose involuntary collectivism. Although Americans have been attached strongly to privacy and private rights, they also have been a people conspicuous for a successful spirit of community. In a genuine community, the decisions most directly affecting the […]

Updated News Digest February 8, 2009

Quote of the Week: “A war for Kuwait? A war for an oil-can! The rest is vanity; the rest is crime … an unimaginative, ‘democratic capitalist’ Republican regime, early in 1991, committed the United States, very possibly, to a new imperialism.                                             –Russell Kirk, The Politics of Prudence […]

Updated News Digest February 1, 2009

Quotes of the Week: “A centralised democracy may be as tyrannical as an absolute monarch; and if the vigour of the nation is to continue unimpaired, each individual, each family, each district, must preserve as far as possible its independence, its self-completeness, its powers and its privilege to […]

The State and the Banksters

by Peter Bjorn Perls As an old libertarian and anarchist, news like this is not a surprise to me anymore, and neither should it be for others of like persuasion, but for those not accustomed to cynicism against the Establishment, a lot of reminders of the corruption in […]

Updated News Digest January 11, 2009

Quote of the Week: “As a matter of priority the new generation of “Alternative” righties are decentralists and anti-imperialists first, and culture warriors second, if at all. To them the warfare state and erosion of civil liberties are vastly more important and relevant than the overturning of Roe […]

The 60s Radicals Have Won-Now What?

Forty years ago, in the summer of 1968, leftist radicals fought the police outside the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. Four years later, these same New Left forces went into the Democratic Party, seized control of its nomination process, and put George McGovern on the presidential ticket. The […]

Updated News Digest December 7, 2008

Quotes of the week: “”If the American people ever allow private banks to control the issuance of their currency, first by inflation and then by deflation, the banks and corporations that will grow up around them will deprive the people of all their property until their children will […]

Updated News Digest November 30, 2008

Quote of the Week: “If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear.”                                                                                                       -George Orwell War, Peace and the State by Murray N. Rothbard The MRSA Horror by Robert Klassen Lawrence Wilkerson: A Truth-Teller for Our Times by Tom […]

Updated News Digest November 23, 2008

Quote of the Week: “The fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American Government.”                                                           -Joe Vogler, founder, Alaskan Independence Party Inmate Escapes German Jail in a Box Dual Loyalties Will Doom Obama  by Rannie Amiri Obama: The First Hundred Days by Alexander Cockburn Americans Like […]

Obama's Victory and What It Means

I’m going to go out on a limb and make a few unorthodox statements and predictions concerning the Obama victory. The first question, of course, is why did Obama win in the first place? Most conventional analysis tends to argue that Obama’s victory is traceable to the poor […]

Updated News Digest November 2, 2008

Quote of the Week: “To be governed is to be watched, inspected, spied upon, directed, law-driven, numbered, regulated, enrolled, indoctrinated, preached at, controlled, checked, estimated, valued, censured, commanded, by creatures who have neither the right nor the wisdom nor the virtue to do so. To be governed is […]